Softpanorama

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Home Switchboard Unix Administration Red Hat TCP/IP Networks Neoliberalism Toxic Managers
(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

MIC Bulletin, 2015

Index 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010
2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000

Top Visited
Switchboard
Latest
Past week
Past month

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

[Mar 17, 2019] Mueller uses the same old false flag scams, just different packaging of his forensics-free findings

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It appears the FBI, CIA, and NSA have great difficulty in differentiating between Russians and Democrats posing as Russians. ..."
"... Maybe the VIPS should look into the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who had the security clearance required to access the DNC servers, and who was murdered in the same week as the emails were taken. In particular, they should ask why the police were told to stand down and close the murder case without further investigation. ..."
"... What a brilliant article, so logical, methodical & a forensic, scientific breakdown of the phony Russiagate project? And there's no doubt, this was a co-ordinated, determined Intelligence project to reverse the results of the 2016 Election by initiating a soft coup or Regime change op on a elected Leader, a very American Coup, something the American Intelligence Agencies specialise in, everywhere else, on a Global scale, too get Trump impeached & removed from the Whitehouse? ..."
"... Right. Since its purpose is to destroy Trump politically, the investigation should go on as long as Trump is in office. Alternatively, if at this point Trump has completely sold out, that would be another reason to stop the investigation. ..."
"... Nancy Pelosi's announcement two days ago that the Democrats will not seek impeachment for Trump suggests the emptiness of the Mueller investigation on the specific "collusion" issue. ..."
"... We know and Assange has confirmed Seth Rich, assassinated in D.C. for his deed, downloaded the emails and most likely passed them on to former British ambassador Craig Murray in a D.C. park for transport to Wikileaks. ..."
"... This so-called "Russiagate" narrative is an illustration of our "freedom of the press" failure in the US due to groupthink and self censorship. He who pays the piper is apt to call the tune. ..."
"... Barr, Sessions, every congressmen all the corporate MSM war profiteer mouth pieces. They all know that "Russia hacked the DNC" and "Russia meddled" is fabricated garbage. They don't care, because their chosen war beast corporate candidate couldn't beat Donald goofball Trump. So it has to be shown that the war beast only lost because of nefarious reasons. Because they're gonna run another war beast cut from the same cloth as Hillary in 2020. ..."
"... Mar 4, 2019 Tom Fitton: President Trump a 'Crime Victim' by Illegal Deep State DOJ & FBI Abuses: https://youtu.be/ixWMorWAC7c ..."
"... Trump is a willing player in this game. The anti-Russian Crusade was, quite simply, a stunningly reckless, short-sighted effort to overturn the 2016 election, removing Trump to install Hillary Clinton in office. ..."
"... Much ado about nothing. All the talk and chatter and media airplay about "Russian meddling" in the 2016 election only tells me that these liars think the American public is that stupid. ..."
"... Andrew Thomas I'm afraid that huge amounts of our History post 1947 is organized and propagandized disinformation. There is an incredible page that John Simpkin has organized over the years that specifically addresses individuals, click on a name and read about them. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAdisinformation.htm ..."
"... It's pretty astonishing that Mueller was more interested in Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi as credible sources about Wikileaks and the DNC release than Craig Murray! ..."
"... Yes, he has done his job. And his job was to bring his royal Orangeness to heel, and to make sure that detente and co-operation with Russia remained impossible. The forever war continues. Mission Accomplished. ..."
Mar 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

O Society , March 16, 2019 at 7:55 am

The Truth is Out There. I Want to Believe!

Same old scams, different packaging. That's New & Improved for you.

http://opensociet.org/2019/03/16/the-return-of-the-hidden-persuaders

Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:35 pm

I could not suffer through reading the whole article. This is mainly because I have watched the news daily about Mueller's Investigation and I sincerely believe that Mueller is Champion of the Democrats who are trying to depose President Donald Trump at any cost.

For what Mueller found any decent lawyer with a Degree and a few years of experience could have found what Mueller found for far far less money. Mueller only found common crimes AND NO COLLUSION BETWEEN PRESIDENT TRUMP AND PUTIN!

The Mueller Investigation should be given to an honest broker to review, and Mueller should be paid only what it would cost to produce the commonplace crimes Mueller, The Democrats, and CNN has tried to convince the people that indeed Trump COLLUDED with RUSSIA. Mueller is, a BIG NOTHING BURGER and THE DEMOCRATS AND CNN ARE MUELLER'S SINGING CANARYS! Mueller should be jailed.

Bogdan Miller , March 15, 2019 at 11:04 am

This article explains why the Mueller Report is already highly suspect. For another thing, we know that since before 2016, Democrats have been studying Russian Internet and hacking tactics, and posing as Russian Bots/Trolls on Facebook and other media outlets, all in an effort to harm President Trump.

It appears the FBI, CIA, and NSA have great difficulty in differentiating between Russians and Democrats posing as Russians.

B.J.M. Former Intelligence Analyst and Humint Collector

vinnieoh , March 15, 2019 at 8:17 am

Moving on: the US House yesterday voted UNANIMOUSLY (remember that word, so foreign these days to US governance?) to "urge" the new AG to release the complete Mueller report.

A non-binding resolution, but you would think that the Democrats can't see the diesel locomotive bearing down on their clown car, about to smash it to pieces. The new AG in turn says he will summarize the report and that is what we will see, not the entire report. And taxation without representation takes a new twist.

... ... ...

Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:38 pm

What else would you expect from two Political Parties who are really branches of the ONE Party which Represents DEEP STATE".

DWS , March 15, 2019 at 5:58 am

Maybe the VIPS should look into the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who had the security clearance required to access the DNC servers, and who was murdered in the same week as the emails were taken. In particular, they should ask why the police were told to stand down and close the murder case without further investigation.

Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:47 pm

EXACTLY! But, Deep State will not allow that. And, it would ruin the USA' plan to continue to invade more sovereign countries and steal their resources such as oil and Minerals. The people of the USA must be Ostriches or are so terrified that they accept anything their Criminal Governments tell them.

Eventually, the chickens will come home to roost and perhaps the USA voters will ROAST when the crimes of the USA sink the whole country. It is time for a few Brave Men and Women to find their backbones and throw out the warmongers and their leading Oligarchs!

KiwiAntz , March 14, 2019 at 6:44 pm

What a brilliant article, so logical, methodical & a forensic, scientific breakdown of the phony Russiagate project? And there's no doubt, this was a co-ordinated, determined Intelligence project to reverse the results of the 2016 Election by initiating a soft coup or Regime change op on a elected Leader, a very American Coup, something the American Intelligence Agencies specialise in, everywhere else, on a Global scale, too get Trump impeached & removed from the Whitehouse?

If you can't get him out via a Election, try & try again, like Maduro in Venezuela, to forcibly remove the targeted person by setting him up with fake, false accusations & fabricated evidence? How very predictable & how very American of Mueller & the Democratic Party. Absolute American Corruption, corrupts absolutely?

Brian Murphy , March 15, 2019 at 10:33 am

Right. Since its purpose is to destroy Trump politically, the investigation should go on as long as Trump is in office. Alternatively, if at this point Trump has completely sold out, that would be another reason to stop the investigation.

If the investigation wraps up and finds nothing, that means Trump has already completely sold out. If the investigation continues, it means someone important still thinks Trump retains some vestige of his balls.

DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:19 pm

By last June or July the Mueller investigation has resulted in roughly 150 indictments for perjury/financial crimes, and there was a handful of convictions to date. The report did not support the Clinton wing's anti-Russian allegations about the 2016 election, and was largely brushed aside by media. Mueller was then reportedly sent back in to "find something." presumably to support the anti-Russian claims.

mike k , March 14, 2019 at 12:57 pm

From the beginning of the Russia did it story, right after Trump's electoral victory, it was apparent that this was a fraud. The democratic party however has locked onto this preposterous story, and they will go to their graves denying this was a scam to deny their presidential defeat, and somehow reverse the result of Trump's election. My sincere hope is that this blatant lie will be an albatross around the party's neck, that will carry them down into oblivion. They have betrayed those of us who supported them for so many years. They are in many ways now worse than the republican scum they seek to replace.

DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:26 pm

Trump is almost certain to be re-elected in 2020, and we'll go through this all over again.

Tom , March 14, 2019 at 12:00 pm

The very fact that the FBI never had access to the servers and took the word of a private company that had a history of being anti-Russian is enough to throw the entire ruse out.

LJ , March 14, 2019 at 2:39 pm

Agreed!!!! and don't forget the FBI/Comey gave Hillary and her Campaign a head's up before they moved to seize the evidence. . So too, Comey said he stopped the Investigation , thereby rendering judgement of innocence, even though by his own words 'gross negligence' had a occurred (which is normally considered grounds for prosecution). In doing so he exceeded the FBI's investigative mandate. He rationalized that decision was appropriate because of the appearance of impropriety that resulted from Attorney General Lynch having a private meeting on a plane on a runway with Bill and Hillary . Where was the logic in that. Who called the meeting? All were Lawyers who had served as President, Senator, Attorney General and knew that the meeting was absolutely inappropriate. . Comey should be prosecuted if they want to prosecute anyone else because of this CRAP. PS Trump is an idiot. Uhinfortunately he is just a symptom of the disease at this point. Look at the cover of Rolling Stone magazine , carry a barf bag.

Jane Christ , March 14, 2019 at 6:51 pm

Exactly. This throws doubt on the ability of the FBI to work independently. They are working for those who want to cover -up the Hillary mess . She evidently has sufficient funds to pay them off. I am disgusted with the level of corruption.

hetro , March 14, 2019 at 10:50 am

Nancy Pelosi's announcement two days ago that the Democrats will not seek impeachment for Trump suggests the emptiness of the Mueller investigation on the specific "collusion" issue. If there were something hot and lingering and about to emerge, this decision is highly unlikely, especially with the reasoning she gave at "so as not to divide the American people." Dividing the people hasn't been of much concern throughout this bogus witch hunt on Trump, which has added to his incompetence in leavening a growing hysteria and confusion in this country. If there is something, anything at all, in the Mueller report to support the collusion theory, Pelosi would I'm sure gleefully trot it out to get a lesser candidate like Pence as opposition for 2020.

James Clooney , March 14, 2019 at 11:17 am

We know and Assange has confirmed Seth Rich, assassinated in D.C. for his deed, downloaded the emails and most likely passed them on to former British ambassador Craig Murray in a D.C. park for transport to Wikileaks.

We must also honor Shawn Lucas assassinated for serving DNC with a litigation notice exposing the DNC conspiracy against Sanders.

hetro , March 14, 2019 at 3:18 pm

Where has Assange confirmed this? Assange's long-standing position is NOT to reveal his sources. I believe he has continued to honor this position.

Skip Scott , March 15, 2019 at 7:15 am

It has merely been insinuated by the offering of a reward for info on Seth's murder. In one breath he says wikileaks will never divulge a source, and in the next he offers a $20k reward saying that sources take tremendous risk. Doesn't take much of a logical leap to connect A to B.

DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:30 pm

Are you aware that Democrats split apart their 0wn voting base in the 1990s, middle class vs. poor? The Obama years merely confirmed that this split is permanent. This is particularly relevant for Democrats, as their voting base had long consisted of the poor and middle class, for the common good. Ignoring this deep split hasn't made it go away.

hetro , March 14, 2019 at 3:24 pm

Even more important is how the Democrats have sold out to an Establishment view favoring neocon theory, since at least Bill Clinton. Pelosi's recent behavior with Ilhan Omar confirms this and the split you're talking about. My point is it is distinctly odd that Pelosi is discouraging impeachment on "dividing the Party" (already divided, of course, as you say), whereas the Russia-gate fantasy was so hot not that long ago. Again it points to a cynical opportunism and manipulation of the electorate. Both parties are a sad excuse to represent ordinary people's interests.

Skip Scott , March 15, 2019 at 7:21 am

She said "dividing the country", not the party. I think she may have concerns over Trump's heavily armed base. That said, the statement may have been a ruse. There are plenty of Republicans that would cross the line in favor of impeachment with the right "conclusions" by Mueller. Pelosi may be setting up for a "bombshell" conclusion by Mueller. One must never forget that we are watching theater, and that Trump was a "mistake" to be controlled or eliminated.

Cindy Haddix , March 14, 2019 at 8:04 am

Mueller should be ashamed that he has made President Trump his main concern!! If all this investigation would stop he could save America millions!!! He needs to quit this witch-hunt and worry about things that really need to be handled!!! If the democrats and Trump haters would stop pushing senseless lies hopefully this would stop ? It's so disgusting that his democrat friend was never really investigated ? stop the witch-hunt and move forward!!!!

torture this , March 14, 2019 at 7:29 am

According to this letter, mistakes might have been made on Rachel Maddow's show. I can't wait to read how she responds. I'd watch her show, myself except that it has the same effect on me as ipecac.

Zhu , March 14, 2019 at 3:37 am

People will cling to "Putin made Trump President!!!" much as many cling "Obama's a Kenyan Muslim! Not a real American!!!". Both nut theories are emotionally satisfying, no matter what the historical facts are. Many Americans just can't admit their mistakes and blaming a scapegoat is a way out.

O Society , March 14, 2019 at 2:03 am

Thank you VIPS for organizing this legit dissent consisting of experts in the field of intelligence and computer forensics.

This so-called "Russiagate" narrative is an illustration of our "freedom of the press" failure in the US due to groupthink and self censorship. He who pays the piper is apt to call the tune.

It is astounding how little skepticism and scientifically-informed reasoning goes on in our media. These folks show themselves to be native advertising rather than authentic journalists at every turn.

DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:33 pm

But it has been Democrats and the media that market to middle class Dems, who persist in trying to sell the Russian Tale. They excel at ignoring the evidence that utterly contradicts their claims.

O Society , March 15, 2019 at 3:50 pm

Oh, we're well beyond your "Blame the middle class Dems" stage.

The WINNING!!! team sports bullshit drowns the entire country now the latrine's sprung a leak. People pretend to live in bubbles made of blue or red quite like the Three Little Pigs, isn't it? Except instead of a house made of bricks saving the day for the littlepiggies, what we've got here is a purple puddle of piss.

Everyone's more than glad to project all our problems on "THEM" though, aren't we?

Meanwhile, the White House smells like a urinal not washed since the 1950s and simpletons still get their rocks off arguing about whether Mickey Mouse can beat up Ronald McDonald.

T'would be comic except what's so tragic is the desperate need Americans have to believe, oh just believe! in something. Never mind the sound of the jackhammer on your skull dear, there's an app for that or is it a pill?

I don't know, don't ask me, I'm busy watching TV. Have a cheeto.

https://opensociet.org/2018/12/18/the-disneyfication-of-america/

Sam F , March 13, 2019 at 6:45 pm

Very good analysis clearly stated, especially adding the FAT timestamps to the transmission speeds.

Minor corrections: "The emails were copied from the network" should be "from the much faster local network" because this is to Contradict the notion that they were copied over the internet network, which most readers will equate with "network." Also "reportedin" should be "reported in."

Michael , March 13, 2019 at 6:25 pm

It is likely that New Knowledge was actually "the Russians", possibly working in concert with Crowdstrike. Once an intelligence agency gets away with something like pretending to be Russian hackers and bots, they tend to re-use their model; it is too tempting to discard an effective model after a one-off accomplishment. New Knowledge was caught interfering/ determining the outcome in the Alabama Senate race on the side of Democrat Doug Jones, and claimed they were merely trying to mimic Russian methods to see if they worked (they did; not sure of their punishment?). Occam's razor would suggest that New Knowledge would be competent to mimic/ pretend to be "Russians" after the fact of wikileaks' publication of emails. New Knowledge has employees from the NSA and State department sympathetic to/ working with(?) Hillary, and were the "outside" agency hired to evaluate and report on the "Russian" hacking of the DNC emails/ servers.

DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 5:48 pm

Mueller released report last summer, which resulted in (the last I checked) roughly 150 indictments, a handful of convictions to date, all for perjury/financial (not political) crimes. This wasn't kept secret. It simply wasn't what Democrats wanted to hear, so although it was mentioned in some lib media (which overwhelmingly supported neoliberal Hillary Clinton), it was essentially swept under the carpet.

Billy , March 13, 2019 at 11:11 pm

Barr, Sessions, every congressmen all the corporate MSM war profiteer mouth pieces. They all know that "Russia hacked the DNC" and "Russia meddled" is fabricated garbage. They don't care, because their chosen war beast corporate candidate couldn't beat Donald goofball Trump. So it has to be shown that the war beast only lost because of nefarious reasons. Because they're gonna run another war beast cut from the same cloth as Hillary in 2020.

Realist , March 14, 2019 at 3:22 am

You betcha. Moreover, who but the Russians do these idiots have left to blame? Everybody else is now off limits due to political correctness. Sigh Those Catholics, Jews, "ethnics" and sundry "deviants" used to be such reliable scapegoats, to say nothing of the "undeveloped" world. As Clapper "authoritatively" says, only this vile lineage still carries the genes for the most extremes of human perfidy. Squirrels in your attic? It must be the damned Russkies! The bastards impudently tried to copy our democracy, economic system and free press and only besmirched those institutions, ruining all of Hillary's glorious plans for a worldwide benevolent dictatorship. All this might be humorous if it weren't so funny.

And those Chinese better not get to thinking they are somehow our equals just because all their trillions invested in U.S. Treasury bonds have paid for all our wars of choice and MIC boondoggles since before the turn of the century. Unless they start delivering Trump some "free stuff" the big man is gonna cut off their water. No more affordable manufactured goods for the American public! So there!

As to the article: impeccable research and analysis by the VIPS crew yet again. They've proven to me that, to a near certainty, the Easter Bunny is not likely to exist. Mueller won't read it. Clapper will still prance around a free man, as will Brennan. The Democrats won't care, that is until November of 2020. And Hillary will continue to skate, unhindered in larding up the Clinton Foundation to purposes one can only imagine.

Joe Tedesky , March 14, 2019 at 10:02 pm

Realist,

I have posted this article 'the Russia they Lost' before and from time to time but once again it seems appropriate to add this link to expound upon for what you've been saying. It's an article written by a Russian who in they're youth growing up in the USSR dreamed of living the American lifestyle if Russia were to ever ditch communism. But . Starting with Kosovo this Russian's youthful dream turned nightmarishly ugly and, as time went by with more and yet even more USA aggression this Russian author loss his admiration and desire for all things American to be proudly envied. This is a story where USA hard power destroyed any hope of American soft power for world unity. But hey that unity business was never part of the plan anyway.

https://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/24/the-russia-they-lost/

Realist , March 15, 2019 at 10:38 pm

right you are, joe. if america was smart rather than arrogant, it would have cooperated with china and russia to see the belt and road initiative succeed by perhaps building a bridge or tunnel from siberia to alaska, and by building its own fleet of icebreakers to open up its part of the northwest passage. but no, it only wants to sabotage what others propose. that's not being a leader, it's being a dick.

i'm gonna have to go on the disabled list here until the sudden neurological problem with my right hand clears up–it's like paralysed. too difficult to do this one-handed using hunt and peck. at least the problem was not in the old bean, according to the scans. carry on, sir.

Brian James , March 13, 2019 at 5:04 pm

Mar 4, 2019 Tom Fitton: President Trump a 'Crime Victim' by Illegal Deep State DOJ & FBI Abuses: https://youtu.be/ixWMorWAC7c

DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 5:55 pm

Trump is a willing player in this game. The anti-Russian Crusade was, quite simply, a stunningly reckless, short-sighted effort to overturn the 2016 election, removing Trump to install Hillary Clinton in office. Trump and the Republicans continue to win by default, as Democrats only drive more voters away.

Howard , March 13, 2019 at 4:36 pm

Thank you Ray McGovern and the Other 17 VIPS C0-Signers of your National Security Essay for Truth. Along with Craig Murray and Seymour Hirsch, former Sam Adams Award winners for "shining light into dark places", you are national resources for objectivity in critical survival information matters for our country. It is more than a pity that our mainstream media are so beholden to their corporate task masters that they cannot depart from the company line for fear of losing their livelihoods, and in the process we risk losing life on the planet because of unconstrained nuclear war on the part of the two main adversaries facing off in an atmosphere of fear and mistrust. Let me speak plainly. THEY SHOULD BE TALKING TO YOU AND NOT THE VESTED INTERESTS' MOUTHPIECES. Thank you for your continued leadership!

James Clooney , March 14, 2019 at 11:28 am

Roger Ailes founder of FOX news died, "falling down stairs" within a week of FOX news exposing to the world that the assassinated Seth Rich downloaded the DNC emails.

DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 6:03 pm

Google the Mueller investigation report from last June or July. When it was released, the public response was like a deflated balloon. It did not support the "Russian collusion" allegations -- the only thing Democrats still had left to sell. The report resulted in roughly 150 indictments for perjury/financial crimes (not political), and a handful of convictions to date -- none of which had anything to do with the election results.

Hank , March 13, 2019 at 6:19 pm

Much ado about nothing. All the talk and chatter and media airplay about "Russian meddling" in the 2016 election only tells me that these liars think the American public is that stupid. They are probably right, but the REAL reason that Hillary lost is because there ARE enough informed people now in this nation who are quite aware of the Clinton's sordid history where scandals seem to follow every where they go, but indictments and/or investigations don't. There IS an internet nowadays with lots of FACTUAL DOCUMENTED information. That's a lot more than I can say about the mainstream corporate-controlled media!

I know this won't ever happen, but an HONEST investigation into the Democratic Party and their actions during the 2016 election would make ANY collusion with ANY nation look like a mole hill next to a mountain! One of the problems with living in this nation is if you are truly informed and make an effort 24/7 to be that way by doing your own research, you more-than-likely can be considered an "island in a sea of ignorance".

Tom , March 14, 2019 at 12:13 pm

We know that the FBI never had access to the servers and a private company was allowed to handle the evidence. Wasnt it a crime scene? The evidence was tampered with And we will never know what was on the servers.

Mark McCarty , March 13, 2019 at 4:10 pm

As a complement to this excellent analysis, I would like to make 2 further points:

The Mueller indictment of Russian Intelligence for hacking the DNC and transferring their booty to Wikileaks is absurd on its face for this reason: Assange announced on June 12th the impending release of Hillary-related emails. Yet the indictment claims that Guccifer 2.0 did not succeed in transferring the DNC emails to Wikileaks until the time period of July 14-18th – after which they were released online on July 22nd. Are we to suppose that Assange, a publisher of impeccable integrity, publicly announced the publication of emails he had not yet seen, and which he was obtaining from a source of murky provenance? And are we further to suppose that Wikileaks could have processed 20K emails and 20K attachments to insure their genuineness in a period of only several days? As you will recall, Wikileaks subsequently took a number of weeks to process the Podesta emails they released in October.

And another peculiarity merits attention. Assange did not state on June 12th that he was releasing DNC emails – and yet Crowdstrike and the Guccifer 2.0 personna evidently knew that this was in store. A likely resolution of this conundrum is that US intelligence had been monitoring all communications to Wikileaks, and had informed the DNC that their hacked emails had been offered to Wikileaks. A further reasonable prospect is that US intelligence subsequently unmasked the leaker to the DNC; as Assange has strongly hinted, this likely was Seth Rich. This could explain Rich's subsequent murder, as Rich would have been in a position to unmask the Guccifer 2.0 hoax and the entire Russian hacking narrative.

https://medium.com/@markfmccarty/muellers-new-indictment-do-the-feds-take-us-for-idiots-5406ef955406

https://medium.com/@markfmccarty/how-did-crowdstrike-guccifer-2-0-know-that-wikileaks-was-planning-to-release-dnc-emails-42e6db334053

Sam F , March 13, 2019 at 7:06 pm

Curious that Assange has Not explicitly stated that the leaker was Seth Rich, if it was, as this would take pressure from himself and incriminate the DNC in the murder of Rich. Perhaps he doesn't know, and has the honor not to take the opportunity, or perhaps he knows that it was not Rich.

James Clooney , March 14, 2019 at 11:40 am

View the Dutch TV interview with Asssange and there is another interview available on youtube in which Assange DOES subtly confirmed it was Seth Rich.

Assange posted a $10,000 reward for Seth Rich's murders capture.

Abby , March 13, 2019 at 10:11 pm

Another mistaken issue with the "Russia hacked the DNC computers on Trump's command" is that he never asked Russia to do that. His words were, "Russia if you 'find' Hillary's missing emails let us know." He said that after she advised congress that she wouldn't be turning in all of the emails they asked for because she deleted 30,000 of them and said that they were personal.

But if Mueller or the FBI wants to look at all of them they can find them at the NYC FBI office because they are on Weiner's laptop. Why? Because Hillary's aid Huma Abedin, Weiner's wife sent them to it. Just another security risk that Hillary had because of her private email server. This is why Comey had to tell congress that more of them had been found 11 days before the election. If Comey hadn't done that then the FBI would have.

But did Comey or McCabe look at her emails there to see if any of them were classified? No they did not do that. And today we find out that Lisa Page told congress that it was Obama's decision not to charge Hillary for being grossly negligent on using her private email server. This has been known by congress for many months and now we know that the fix was always in for her to get off.

robert e williamson jr , March 13, 2019 at 3:26 pm

I want to thank you folks at VIPS. Like I have been saying for years now the relationship between CIA, NSA and DOJ is an incestuous one at best. A perverse corrupted bond to control the masses. A large group of religious fanatics who want things "ONE WAY". They are the facilitators for the rogue government known as the "DEEP STATE"!

Just ask billy barr.

More truth is a very good thing. I believe DOJ is supporting the intelligence community because of blackmail. They can't come clean because they all risk doing lots of time if a new judicial mechanism replaces them. We are in big trouble here.

Apparently the rule of law is not!

You folks that keep claiming we live in the post truth era! Get off me. Demand the truth and nothing else. Best be getting ready for the fight of your lives. The truth is you have to look yourself in the mirror every morning, deny that truth. The claim you are living in the post truth era is an admission your life is a lie. Now grab a hold of yourself pick a dogdamned side and stand for something,.

Thank You VIPS!

Joe Tedesky , March 13, 2019 at 2:58 pm

Hats off to the VIP's who have investigated this Russian hacking that wasn't a hacking for without them what would we news junkies have otherwise to lift open the hood of Mueller's never ending Russia-gate investigation. Although the one thing this Russia-gate nonsense has accomplished is it has destroyed with our freedom of speech when it comes to how we citizens gather our news. Much like everything else that has been done during these post 9/11 years of continual wars our civil rights have been marginalized down to zero or, a bit above if that's even still an argument to be made for the sake of numbers.

Watching the Manafort sentencing is quite interesting for the fact that Manafort didn't conclude in as much as he played fast and loose with his income. In fact maybe Manafort's case should have been prosecuted by the State Department or, how about the IRS? Also wouldn't it be worth investigating other Geopolitical Rain Makers like Manafort for similar crimes of financial wrongdoing? I mean is it possible Manafort is or was the only one of his type to do such dishonest things? In any case Manafort wasn't charged with concluding with any Russians in regard to the 2016 presidential election and, with that we all fall down.

I guess the best thing (not) that came out of this Russia-gate silliness is Rachel Maddow's tv ratings zoomed upwards. But I hate to tell you that the only ones buying what Ms Maddow is selling are the died in the wool Hillary supporters along with the chicken-hawks who rally to the MIC lobby for more war. It's all a game and yet there are many of us who just don't wish to play it but still we must because no one will listen to the sanity that gets ignored keep up the good work VIP's some of us are listening.

Andrew Thomas , March 13, 2019 at 12:42 pm

The article did not mention something called to my attention for the first time by one of the outstanding members of your commentariat just a couple of days ago- that Ambassador Murray stayed publicly, over two years ago, that he had been given the thumb drive by a go-between in D.C. and had somehow gotten it to Wikileaks. And, that he has NEVER BEEN INTERVIEWED by Mueller &Company. I was blown away by this, and found the original articles just by googling Murray. The excuse given is that Murray "lacks credibility ", or some such, because of his prior relationship with Assange and/or Wikileaks. This is so ludicrous I can't even get my head around it. And now, you have given me a new detail-the meeting with Pompeo, and the complete lack of follow-up thereafter. Here all this time I thought I was the most cynical SOB who existed, and now I feel as naive as when I was 13 and believed what Dean Rusk was saying like it was holy writ. I am in your debt.

Bob Van Noy , March 13, 2019 at 2:33 pm

Andrew Thomas I'm afraid that huge amounts of our History post 1947 is organized and propagandized disinformation. There is an incredible page that John Simpkin has organized over the years that specifically addresses individuals, click on a name and read about them. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAdisinformation.htm

Mark McCarty , March 13, 2019 at 4:18 pm

A small correction: the Daily Mail article regarding Murray claimed that Murray was given a thumbdrive which he subsequently carried back to Wikileaks. On his blog, Murray subsequently disputed this part of the story, indicating that, while he had met with a leaker or confederate of a leaker in Washington DC, the Podesta emails were already in possession of Wikileaks at the time. Murray refused to clarify the reason for his meeting with this source, but he is adamant in maintaining that the DNC and Podesta emails were leaked, not hacked.

And it is indeed ludicrous that Mueller, given the mandate to investigate the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC and Podesta, has never attempted to question either Assange or Murray. That in itself is enough for us to conclude that the Mueller investigation is a complete sham.

Ian Brown , March 13, 2019 at 4:43 pm

It's pretty astonishing that Mueller was more interested in Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi as credible sources about Wikileaks and the DNC release than Craig Murray!

LJ , March 13, 2019 at 12:29 pm

A guy comes in with a pedigree like that, """ former FBI head """ to examine and validate if possible an FBI sting manufactured off a phony FISA indictment based on the Steele Report, It immediately reminded me of the 9-11 Commission with Thomas Kean, former Board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, being appointed by GW Bush the Simple to head an investigation that he had previously said he did not want to authorize( and of course bi partisan yes man Lee Hamilton as #2, lest we forget) . Really this should be seen as another low point in our Democracy. Uncle Sam is the Limbo Man, How low can you go?

After Bill and Hillary and Monica and Paula Jones and Blue Dresses well, Golden Showers in a Moscow luxury hotel, I guess that make it just salacious enough.

Mueller looks just like what he is. He has that same phony self important air as Comey . In 2 years this will be forgotten.. I do not think this hurts Trumps chances at re-election as much as the Democrats are hurting themselves. This has already gone on way too long.

Drew Hunkins , March 13, 2019 at 11:59 am

Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and Russians.

Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump, which was the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein, Brennan, Podesta and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. It will be fascinating to witness how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?

So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was likely in bed with the Winter Hill Gang.

Jack , March 13, 2019 at 12:21 pm

You have failed. An investigation is just that, a finding of the facts. What would Mueller have to extricate himself from? If nothing is found, he has still done his job. You are a divisive idiot.

Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 1:13 pm

Yes, he has done his job. And his job was to bring his royal Orangeness to heel, and to make sure that detente and co-operation with Russia remained impossible. The forever war continues. Mission Accomplished.

Drew Hunkins , March 13, 2019 at 2:12 pm

@Jack,
Keep running cover for an out of control prosecutor, who, if he had any integrity, would have hit the bully pulpit mos ago declaring there's nothing of substance to one of the most potentially dangerous accusations in world history: the Kremlin hacking the election. Last I checked it puts two nuclear nation-states on the brink of potential war. And you call me divisive? Mueller's now a willing accomplice to this entire McCarthyite smear and disinformation campaign. It's all so pathetic that folks such as yourself try and mislead and feed half-truths to the people.

You're failing Jack, in more ways than you know.

Gregory Herr , March 13, 2019 at 9:13 pm

https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/scheer-intelligence/liberals-are-digging-their-own-grave-with-russiagate-2019-03-08

Drew, you might enjoy this discussion Robert Scheer has with Stephen Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Realist , March 15, 2019 at 3:38 am

Moreover, as the Saker pointed out in his most recent column in the Unz Review, the entire Deep State conspiracy, in an ad hoc alliance with the embarrassed and embarrassing Democrats, have made an absolute sham of due process in their blatant witch hunt to bag the president. This reached an apex when his personal lawyer, Mr. Cohen, was trotted out before congress to violate Trump's confidentiality in every mortifying way he could even vaguely reconstruct. The man was expected to say anything to mitigate the anticipated tortures to come in the course of this modern day inquisition by our latter day Torquemada. To his credit though, even with his ass in a sling, he could simply not confabulate the smoking gun evidence for the alleged Russian collusion that this whole farce was built around.

Tom , March 14, 2019 at 12:30 pm

Mueller stood with Bush as he lied the world into war based on lies and illegally spied on America and tortured some folks.

George Collins , March 13, 2019 at 2:02 pm

QED: as to the nexus with the Winter Hill gang wasn't there litigation involving the Boston FBI, condonation of murder by the FBI and damages awarded to or on behalf of convicted parties that the FBI had reason to know were innocent? The malfeasance reportedly occurred during Mueller time. Further on the sanctified diligence of Mr. Mueller can be gleaned from the reports of Coleen Rowley, former FBI attorney stationed in Milwaukee??? when the DC FBI office was ignoring warnings sent about 9/11. See also Sibel Edmonds who knew to much and was court order muzzled about FBI mis/malfeasance in the aftermath of 9/11.

I'd say it's game, set, match VIPS and a pox on Clapper and the complicit intelligence folk complicit in the nuclear loaded Russia-gate fibs.

Kiers , March 13, 2019 at 11:47 am

How can we expect the DNC to "hand it " to Trumpf, when, behind the scenes, THEY ARE ONE PARTY. They are throwing faux-scary pillow bombs at each other because they are both complicit in a long chain of corruptions. Business as usual for the "principled" two party system! Democracy! Through the gauze of corporate media! You must be joking!

Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 11:28 am

"We believe that there are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of "evidence," particularly if they become aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very different conclusions."

I wish I shared this belief. However, as with Nancy Pelosi's recent statement regarding pursuing impeachment, I smell a rat. I believe with the help of what the late Robert Parry called "the Mighty Wurlitzer", Mueller is going to use coerced false testimony and fabricated forensics to drop a bombshell the size of 911. I think Nancy's statement was just a feint before throwing the knockout punch.

If reason ruled the day, we should have nothing to worry about. But considering all the perfidy that the so-called "Intelligence" Agencies and their MSM lackeys get away with daily, I think we are in for more theater; and I think VIPS will receive a cold shoulder outside of venues like CN.

I pray to God I'm wrong.

Sam F , March 13, 2019 at 7:32 pm

My extensive experience with DOJ and the federal judiciary establishes that at least 98% of them are dedicated career liars, engaged in organized crime to serve political gangs, and make only a fanatical pretense of patriotism or legality. They are loyal to money alone, deeply cynical and opposed to the US Constitution and laws, with no credibility at all beyond any real evidence.

Eric32 , March 14, 2019 at 4:24 pm

As near I can see, Federal Govt. careers at the higher levels depend on having dirt on other players, and helping, not hurting, the money/power schemes of the players above you.

The Clintons (through their foundation) apparently have a lot of corruption dirt on CIA, FBI etc. top players, some of whom somehow became multi-millionaires during their civil service careers.

Trump, who was only running for President as a name brand marketing ploy with little desire to actually win, apparently came into the Presidency with no dirt arsenal and little idea of where to go from there.

Bob Van Noy , March 13, 2019 at 11:09 am

I remember reading with dismay how Russians were propagandized by the Soviet Press Management only to find out later the depth of disbelief within the Russian population itself. We now know what that feels like. The good part of this disastrous scenario for America is that for careful readers, disinformation becomes revelatory. For instance, if one reads an editorial that refers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or continually refers to Russian interference in the last Presidential election, then one can immediately dismiss the article and question the motivation for the presentation. Of course the problem is how to establish truth in reporting

Jeff Harrison , March 13, 2019 at 10:41 am

Thank you, VIPs. Hopefully, you don't expect this to make a difference. The US has moved into a post truth, post reality existence best characterized by Karl Rove's declaration: "we're an empire now, when we act, we create our own reality." What Mr. Rove in his arrogance fails to appreciate is that it is his reality but not anyone else's. Thus Pompous can claim that Guaido is the democratic leader in Venezuela even though he's never been elected .

Gary Weglarz , March 13, 2019 at 10:21 am

Thank you. The next time one of my friends or family give me that glazed over stare and utters anymore of the "but, RUSSIA" nonsense I will refer them directly to this article. Your collective work and ethical stand on this matter is deeply appreciated by anyone who values the truth.

Russiagate stands with past government propaganda operations that were simply made up out of thin air: i.e. Kuwaiti incubator babies, WMD's, Gaddafi's viagra fueled rape camps, Assad can't sleep at night unless he's gassing his own people, to the latest, "Maduro can't sleep at night unless he's starving his own people."

The complete and utter amorality of the deep state remains on display for all to see with "Russiagate," which is as fact-free a propaganda campaign as any of those just mentioned.

Marc , March 13, 2019 at 10:13 am

I am a computer naif, so I am prepared to accept the VIPS analysis about FAT and transfer rates. However, the presentation here leaves me with several questions. First, do I understand correctly that the FAT rounding to even numbers is introduced by the thumb drive? And if so, does the FAT analysis show only that the DNC data passed through a thumb drive? That is, does the analysis distinguish whether the DNC data were directly transferred to a thumb drive, or whether the data were hacked and then transferred to a thumb drive, eg, to give a copy to Wikileaks? Second, although the transatlantic transfer rate is too slow to fit some time stamps, is it possible that the data were hacked onto a local computer that was under the control of some faraway agent?

Jeff Harrison , March 13, 2019 at 11:12 am

Not quite. FAT is the crappy storage system developed by Microsoft (and not used by UNIX). The metadata associated with any file gets rewritten when it gets moved. If that movement is to a storage device that uses FAT, the timestamp on the file will end in an even number. If it were moved to a unix server (and most of the major servers run Unix) it would be in the UFS (unix file system) and it would be the actual time from the system clock. Every storage device has a utility that tells it where to write the data and what to write. Since it's writing to a storage device using FAT, it'll round the numbers. To get to your real question, yes, you could hack and then transfer the data to a thumb drive but if you did that the dates wouldn't line up.

Skip Scott , March 14, 2019 at 8:05 am

Jeff-

Which dates wouldn't line up? Is there a history of metadata available, or just metadata for the most recent move?

David G , March 13, 2019 at 12:22 pm

Marc asks: "[D]oes the analysis distinguish whether the DNC data were directly transferred to a thumb drive, or whether the data were hacked and then transferred to a thumb drive, eg, to give a copy to Wikileaks?"

I asked that question in comments under a previous CN piece; other people have asked that question elsewhere.

To my knowledge, it hasn't been addressed directly by the VIPS, and I think they should do so. (If they already have, someone please enlighten me.)

Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 1:07 pm

I am no computer wiz, but Binney has repeatedly made the point that the NSA scoops up everything. If there had been a hack, they'd know it, and they wouldn't only have had "moderate" confidence in the Jan. assessment. I believe that although farfetched, an argument could be made that a Russian spy got into the DNC, loaded a thumb drive, and gave it to Craig Murray.

David G , March 13, 2019 at 3:31 pm

Respectfully, that's a separate point, which may or may not raise issues of its own.

But I think the question Marc posed stands.

Skip Scott , March 14, 2019 at 7:59 am

Hi David-

I don't see how it's separate. If the NSA scoops up everything, they'd have solid evidence of the hack, and wouldn't have only had "moderate" confidence, which Bill Binney says is equivalent to them saying "we don't have squat". They wouldn't even have needed Mueller at all, except to possibly build a "parallel case" due to classification issues. Also, the FBI not demanding direct access to the DNC server tells you something is fishy. They could easily have gotten a warrant to examine the server, but chose not to. They also purposely refuse to get testimony from Craig Murray and Julian Assange, which rings alarm bells on its own.

As for the technical aspect of Marc's question, I agree that I'd like to see Bill Binney directly answer it.

[Mar 17, 2019] VIPS- Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings

Highly recommended!
Mar 13, 2019 | Consortiumnews

The final Mueller report should be graded "incomplete," says VIPS, whose forensic work proves the speciousness of the story that DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The Attorney General

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings

Executive Summary

Media reports are predicting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is about to give you the findings of his probe into any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump. If Mueller gives you his "completed" report anytime soon, it should be graded "incomplete."

Major deficiencies include depending on a DNC-hired cybersecurity company for forensics and failure to consult with those who have done original forensic work, including us and the independent forensic investigators with whom we have examined the data. We stand ready to help.

We veteran intelligence professionals (VIPS) have done enough detailed forensic work to prove the speciousness of the prevailing story that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking. Given the paucity of evidence to support that story, we believe Mueller may choose to finesse this key issue and leave everyone hanging. That would help sustain the widespread belief that Trump owes his victory to President Vladimir Putin, and strengthen the hand of those who pay little heed to the unpredictable consequences of an increase in tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.

There is an overabundance of "assessments" but a lack of hard evidence to support that prevailing narrative. We believe that there are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of "evidence," particularly if they become aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very different conclusions. We know only too well -- and did our best to expose -- how our former colleagues in the intelligence community manufactured fraudulent "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

We have scrutinized publicly available physical data -- the "trail" that every cyber operation leaves behind. And we have had support from highly experienced independent forensic investigators who, like us, have no axes to grind. We can prove that the conventional-wisdom story about Russian-hacking-DNC-emails-for-WikiLeaks is false. Drawing largely on the unique expertise of two VIPS scientists who worked for a combined total of 70 years at the National Security Agency and became Technical Directors there, we have regularly published our findings. But we have been deprived of a hearing in mainstream media -- an experience painfully reminiscent of what we had to endure when we exposed the corruption of intelligence before the attack on Iraq 16 years ago.

This time, with the principles of physics and forensic science to rely on, we are able to adduce solid evidence exposing mistakes and distortions in the dominant story. We offer you below -- as a kind of aide-memoire -- a discussion of some of the key factors related to what has become known as "Russia-gate." And we include our most recent findings drawn from forensic work on data associated with WikiLeaks' publication of the DNC emails.

We do not claim our conclusions are "irrefutable and undeniable," a la Colin Powell at the UN before the Iraq war. Our judgments, however, are based on the scientific method -- not "assessments." We decided to put this memorandum together in hopes of ensuring that you hear that directly from us.

If the Mueller team remains reluctant to review our work -- or even to interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, we fear that many of those yearning earnestly for the truth on Russia-gate will come to the corrosive conclusion that the Mueller investigation was a sham.

In sum, we are concerned that, at this point, an incomplete Mueller report will fall far short of the commitment made by then Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein "to ensure a full and thorough investigation," when he appointed Mueller in May 2017. Again, we are at your disposal.

Discussion

The centerpiece accusation of Kremlin "interference" in the 2016 presidential election was the charge that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to embarrass Secretary Hillary Clinton and help Mr. Trump win. The weeks following the election witnessed multiple leak-based media allegations to that effect. These culminated on January 6, 2017 in an evidence-light, rump report misleadingly labeled "Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)." Prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only three of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, and NSA), the assessment expressed "high confidence" in the Russia-hacking-to-WikiLeaks story, but lacked so much as a hint that the authors had sought access to independent forensics to support their "assessment."

The media immediately awarded the ICA the status of Holy Writ, choosing to overlook an assortment of banal, full-disclosure-type caveats included in the assessment itself -- such as:

" When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' they are conveying an analytic assessment or judgment. Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."

To their credit, however, the authors of the ICA did make a highly germane point in introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution." They noted: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation -- malicious or not -- leaves a trail." [Emphasis added.]

Forensics

The imperative is to get on that "trail" -- and quickly, before red herrings can be swept across it. The best way to establish attribution is to apply the methodology and processes of forensic science. Intrusions into computers leave behind discernible physical data that can be examined scientifically by forensic experts. Risk to "sources and methods" is normally not a problem.

Direct access to the actual computers is the first requirement -- the more so when an intrusion is termed "an act of war" and blamed on a nuclear-armed foreign government (the words used by the late Sen. John McCain and other senior officials). In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017, former FBI Director James Comey admitted that he did not insist on physical access to the DNC computers even though, as he conceded, "best practices" dictate direct access.

In June 2017, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr asked Comey whether he ever had "access to the actual hardware that was hacked." Comey answered, "In the case of the DNC we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. " Sen. Burr followed up: "But no content? Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?" Comey: "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016."

The "private party/high-class entity" to which Comey refers is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm of checkered reputation and multiple conflicts of interest, including very close ties to a number of key anti-Russian organizations. Comey indicated that the DNC hired CrowdStrike in the spring of 2016.

Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – including a possible impeachment battle and greatly increased tension between Russia and the U.S. -- it is difficult to understand why Comey did not move quickly to seize the computer hardware so the FBI could perform an independent examination of what quickly became the major predicate for investigating election interference by Russia. Fortunately, enough data remain on the forensic "trail" to arrive at evidence-anchored conclusions. The work we have done shows the prevailing narrative to be false. We have been suggesting this for over two years. Recent forensic work significantly strengthens that conclusion.

We Do Forensics

Recent forensic examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23, 25 and 26 May 2016. (On June 12, Julian Assange announced he had them; WikiLeaks published them on July 22.) We recently discovered that the files reveal a FAT (File Allocation Table) system property. This shows that the data had been transferred to an external storage device, such as a thumb drive, before WikiLeaks posted them.

FAT is a simple file system named for its method of organization, the File Allocation Table. It is used for storage only and is not related to internet transfers like hacking. Were WikiLeaks to have received the DNC files via a hack, the last modified times on the files would be a random mixture of odd-and even-ending numbers.

Why is that important? The evidence lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. When a file is stored under the FAT file system the software rounds the time to the nearest even-numbered second. Every single one of the time stamps in the DNC files on WikiLeaks' site ends in an even number.

We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on the Wikileaks site. All 500 files end in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If those files had been hacked over the Internet, there would be an equal probability of the time stamp ending in an odd number. The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power. Thus, these data show that the DNC emails posted by WikiLeaks went through a storage device, like a thumb drive, and were physically moved before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web.

This finding alone is enough to raise reasonable doubts, for example, about Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC emails given to WikiLeaks. A defense attorney could easily use the forensics to argue that someone copied the DNC files to a storage device like a USB thumb drive and got them physically to WikiLeaks -- not electronically via a hack.

Role of NSA

For more than two years, we strongly suspected that the DNC emails were copied/leaked in that way, not hacked. And we said so. We remain intrigued by the apparent failure of NSA's dragnet, collect-it-all approach -- including "cast-iron" coverage of WikiLeaks -- to provide forensic evidence (as opposed to "assessments") as to how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks and who sent them. Well before the telling evidence drawn from the use of FAT, other technical evidence led us to conclude that the DNC emails were not hacked over the network, but rather physically moved over, say, the Atlantic Ocean.

Is it possible that NSA has not yet been asked to produce the collected packets of DNC email data claimed to have been hacked by Russia? Surely, this should be done before Mueller competes his investigation. NSA has taps on all the transoceanic cables leaving the U.S. and would almost certainly have such packets if they exist. (The detailed slides released by Edward Snowden actually show the routes that trace the packets.)

The forensics we examined shed no direct light on who may have been behind the leak. The only thing we know for sure is that the person had to have direct access to the DNC computers or servers in order to copy the emails. The apparent lack of evidence from the most likely source, NSA, regarding a hack may help explain the FBI's curious preference for forensic data from CrowdStrike. No less puzzling is why Comey would choose to call CrowdStrike a "high-class entity."

Comey was one of the intelligence chiefs briefing President Obama on January 5, 2017 on the "Intelligence Community Assessment," which was then briefed to President-elect Trump and published the following day. That Obama found a key part of the ICA narrative less than persuasive became clear at his last press conference (January 18), when he told the media, "The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to how 'the DNC emails that were leaked' got to WikiLeaks.

Is Guccifer 2.0 a Fraud?

There is further compelling technical evidence that undermines the claim that the DNC emails were downloaded over the internet as a result of a spearphishing attack. William Binney, one of VIPS' two former Technical Directors at NSA, along with other former intelligence community experts, examined files posted by Guccifer 2.0 and discovered that those files could not have been downloaded over the internet. It is a simple matter of mathematics and physics.

There was a flurry of activity after Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016: "We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication." On June 14, DNC contractor CrowdStrike announced that malware was found on the DNC server and claimed there was evidence it was injected by Russians. On June 15, the Guccifer 2.0 persona emerged on the public stage, affirmed the DNC statement, claimed to be responsible for hacking the DNC, claimed to be a WikiLeaks source, and posted a document that forensics show was synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."

Our suspicions about the Guccifer 2.0 persona grew when G-2 claimed responsibility for a "hack" of the DNC on July 5, 2016, which released DNC data that was rather bland compared to what WikiLeaks published 17 days later (showing how the DNC had tipped the primary scales against Sen. Bernie Sanders). As VIPS reported in a wrap-up Memorandum for the President on July 24, 2017 (titled "Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence)," forensic examination of the July 5, 2016 cyber intrusion into the DNC showed it NOT to be a hack by the Russians or by anyone else, but rather a copy onto an external storage device. It seemed a good guess that the July 5 intrusion was a contrivance to preemptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish from the DNC, by "showing" it came from a "Russian hack." WikiLeaks published the DNC emails on July 22, three days before the Democratic convention.

As we prepared our July 24 memo for the President, we chose to begin by taking Guccifer 2.0 at face value; i. e., that the documents he posted on July 5, 2016 were obtained via a hack over the Internet. Binney conducted a forensic examination of the metadata contained in the posted documents and compared that metadata with the known capacity of Internet connection speeds at the time in the U.S. This analysis showed a transfer rate as high as 49.1 megabytes per second, which is much faster than was possible from a remote online Internet connection. The 49.1 megabytes speed coincided, though, with the rate that copying onto a thumb drive could accommodate.

Binney, assisted by colleagues with relevant technical expertise, then extended the examination and ran various forensic tests from the U.S. to the Netherlands, Albania, Belgrade and the UK. The fastest Internet rate obtained -- from a data center in New Jersey to a data center in the UK -- was 12 megabytes per second, which is less than a fourth of the capacity typical of a copy onto a thumb drive.

The findings from the examination of the Guccifer 2.0 data and the WikiLeaks data does not indicate who copied the information to an external storage device (probably a thumb drive). But our examination does disprove that G.2 hacked into the DNC on July 5, 2016. Forensic evidence for the Guccifer 2.0 data adds to other evidence that the DNC emails were not taken by an internet spearphishing attack. The data breach was local. The emails were copied from the network.

Presidential Interest

After VIPS' July 24, 2017 Memorandum for the President, Binney, one of its principal authors, was invited to share his insights with Mike Pompeo, CIA Director at the time. When Binney arrived in Pompeo's office at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017 for an hour-long discussion, the director made no secret of the reason for the invitation: "You are here because the President told me that if I really wanted to know about Russian hacking I needed to talk with you."

Binney warned Pompeo -- to stares of incredulity -- that his people should stop lying about the Russian hacking. Binney then started to explain the VIPS findings that had caught President Trump's attention. Pompeo asked Binney if he would talk to the FBI and NSA. Binney agreed, but has not been contacted by those agencies. With that, Pompeo had done what the President asked. There was no follow-up.

Confronting James Clapper on Forensics

We, the hoi polloi, do not often get a chance to talk to people like Pompeo -- and still less to the former intelligence chiefs who are the leading purveyors of the prevailing Russia-gate narrative. An exception came on November 13, when former National Intelligence Director James Clapper came to the Carnegie Endowment in Washington to hawk his memoir. Answering a question during the Q&A about Russian "hacking" and NSA, Clapper said:

" Well, I have talked with NSA a lot And in my mind, I spent a lot of time in the SIGINT business, the forensic evidence was overwhelming about what the Russians had done. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever." [Emphasis added]

Clapper added: " as a private citizen, understanding the magnitude of what the Russians did and the number of citizens in our country they reached and the different mechanisms that, by which they reached them, to me it stretches credulity to think they didn't have a profound impact on election on the outcome of the election."

(A transcript of the interesting Q&A can be found here and a commentary on Clapper's performance at Carnegie, as well as on his longstanding lack of credibility, is here .)

Normally soft-spoken Ron Wyden, Democratic senator from Oregon, lost his patience with Clapper last week when he learned that Clapper is still denying that he lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the extent of NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens. In an unusual outburst, Wyden said: "James Clapper needs to stop making excuses for lying to the American people about mass surveillance. To be clear: I sent him the question in advance. I asked him to correct the record afterward. He chose to let the lie stand."

The materials brought out by Edward Snowden in June 2013 showed Clapper to have lied under oath to the committee on March 12, 2013; he was, nevertheless, allowed to stay on as Director of National Intelligence for three and half more years. Clapper fancies himself an expert on Russia, telling Meet the Press on May 28, 2017 that Russia's history shows that Russians are "typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever."

Clapper ought to be asked about the "forensics" he said were "overwhelming about what the Russians had done." And that, too, before Mueller completes his investigation.

For the steering group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers and congressional staffers. The organization, founded in 2002, was among the first critics of Washington's justifications for launching a war against Iraq. VIPS advocates a US foreign and national security policy based on genuine national interests rather than contrived threats promoted for largely political reasons. An archive of VIPS memoranda is available at Consortiumnews.com.

image_pdf image_print 9280

Tags: Bill Binney Donald Trump Hillary Clinton James Clapper James Comey Mike Pompeo Robert Mueller Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity VIPS WikiLeaks


[Dec 24, 2018] Jewish neocons and the romance of nationalist armageddon

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The Pity of It All : A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933 ..."
"... Perhaps you are making too much of the so called decline of the neocons. At the strategic level, there is little difference between the neocon "Project for a the New American Century" and Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard," both of which are consistent with US policy and actions in the Ukraine. ..."
"... The most significant difference seems to me to be the neocon emphasis on American unilateral militarism versus Obama's emphasis on multilateralism, covert operations and financial warfare to achieve the desired results. ..."
"... Perhaps another significant difference is the neocon emphasis on the primacy of the American nation-state versus the neoliberal emphasis on an American dominated global empire. ..."
"... Interesting to juxtapose Brzezinski and the neocons. In a Venn diagram they would over-lap 90%. ..."
"... Right now, their interests have diverged over the Ukraine crisis. Though many of the American neocons do support subverting Ukraine as does Brzezinski it looks like Israel itself is leaning towards supporting Russia. ..."
"... Right Sector militias are the fighting force that led the coup against the legally elected Yanukovich government and were almost certainly involved in the recent massacre in Odessa. And you support them for their fight for freedom? You should be ashamed. Zionism is sinking to new lows that they feel the need to identify with open neo-Nazis. ..."
"... Well, the point is that Zionists in Israel do not identify with that particular set of open neo-Nazis. I suspect that this is simply a matter of the headcount of Jewish business tycoons that are politically aligned with (western) Ukraine and Russia. Or you can count their billions. ..."
"... The problem with your reasoning, Yonah, is that you are espousing the Neocon line while not apparently recognizing that embarrassing fact. You lament that the US is no longer playing the role of the world's superpower, and acting as the world's cop, confronting militarily Russia, China, Iran and anyone else. It is precisely that mentality that got us into Iraq, could yet have us in a war with Iran, would like to see us defending Ukraine, and thinks we should confront China militarily over bits of rock it and its neighbors are quibbling over. That is a neocon, American supremacy mentality. ..."
"... Zionism under Likud has played a major role in promoting the neocon approach to foreign policy in the US. It was heavily involved in the birth of that approach, and has helped fund and promote the policy and its supporters and advocates in this country. They (Likud Zionists and Neocons) played a major role in getting us into the Iraq war and are playing a major role in trying to get us involved in a war with Iran, a war in Syria, and even potential wars in Eastern Europe. That is a very dangerous trend and one folks as intelligent as you are, should be focusing on. ..."
"... "nationalist Armageddon that is nowhere found in the article by Sleeper" ..."
"... "The misadventure in Iraq has cost the US and the world a lot. The US a loss in humans and money and willingness to play the role of superpower, and the world has lost its cop. " ..."
"... Tough. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives don't rate a mention. ..."
"... " (let the Russians have their sphere of influence, let the Iranians have their bomb, let the Chinese do whatever they want to do in their part of the world, for after all they hold a trillion dollars in US government debt and so let them act like the boss, for in fact they have been put in that role by feckless and destructive and wasteful US policy). But Sleeper does not say that." ..."
"... But even if we do focus on neocons, neocons don't have opinions about foreign policy and USA dominance that are much distinct from what most Republican interventionists have. How much difference is there between David Frum and Mitt Romney or between Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld? ..."
"... Don't look to the US to get any justice in the ME, nor to regain US good reputation in the world. This will situation will not change because US political campaign fiancé system won't change–it just gets worse, enhanced by SCOTUS. ..."
"... But neoocns have the confidence that if they could impose the neocon's theology on the rest of the world, they can do it here as well on American street . They call it education, motivation, duty, responsibility, moral burden, and above all the essence of the manifest destiny. ..."
May 06, 2014 | mondoweiss.net

At the Huffington Post, Jim Sleeper addresses "A Foreign-Policy Problem No One Speaks About," and it turns out to Jewish identity, the need to belong to the powerful nation on the part of Jewish neoconservatives. Sleeper says this is an insecurity born of European exclusion that he understands as a Jew, even if he's not a warmongering neocon himself. The Yale lecturer's jumping-off point are recent statements by Leon Wieseltier and David Brooks lamenting the decline of American power.

In addition to Wieseltier and Brooks, the "blame the feckless liberals" chorus has included Donald Kagan, Robert Kagan, David Frum, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and many other American neoconservatives. Some of them have been chastened, or at least been made more cautious, by their grand-strategic blunders of a few years ago ..

I'm saying that they've been fatuous as warmongers again and again and that there's something pathetic in their attempts to emulate Winston Churchill, who warned darkly of Hitler's intentions in the 1930s. Their blind spot is their willful ignorance of their own complicity in American deterioration and their over-compensatory, almost pre-adolescent faith in the benevolence of a statist and militarist power they still hope to mobilize against the seductions and terrors rising all around them.

At bottom, the chorus members' recurrent nightmares of 1938 doom them to reenact other nightmares, prompted by very similar writers in 1914, on the eve of World War I. Those writers are depicted chillingly, unforgettably, in Chapter 9, "War Fever," of Amos Elon's The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933. Elon's account of Germany's stampede into World War I chronicles painfully the warmongering hysterics of some Jewish would-be patriots of the Kaiserreich who exerted themselves blindly, romantically, to maneuver their state into the Armageddon that would produce Hitler himself.

This is the place to emphasize that few of Wilhelmine German's warmongers were Jews and that few Jews were or are warmongers. (Me, for example, although my extended-family history isn't much different from Brooks' or Wieseltier's.) My point is simply that, driven by what I recognize as understandable if almost preternatural insecurities and cravings for full liberal-nationalist belonging that was denied to Jews for centuries in Europe, some of today's American super-patriotic neo-conservatives hurled themselves into the Iraq War, and they have continued, again and again, to employ modes of public discourse and politics that echo with eerie fidelity that of the people described in Elon's book. The Americans lionized George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and many others as their predecessors lionized Kaiser Wilhelm, von Bethmann-Hollweg, and far-right nationalist associates who hated the neo-cons of that time but let them play their roles .

Instead of acknowledging their deepest feelings openly, or even to themselves, the writers I've mentioned who've brought so much folly and destruction upon their republic, are doubling down, more nervous and desperate than ever, looking for someone else to blame. Hence their whirling columns and rhythmic incantations. After Germany lost World War I, many Germans unfairly blamed their national folly on Jews, many of whom had served in it loyally but only a few of whom had been provocateurs and cheerleaders like the signatories of [Project for New American Century's] letter to Bush. Now neo-cons, from Wieseltier and Brooks to [Charles] Hill, are blaming Obama and all other feckless liberals. Some of them really need to take a look in Amos Elon's mirror.

Interesting. Though I think Sleeper diminishes Jewish agency here (Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban are no one's proxy) and can't touch the Israel angle. The motivation is not simply romantic identification with power, it's an ideology of religious nationalism in the Middle East, attachment to the needs of a militarist Sparta in the Arab world. That's another foreign policy problem no one speaks about.

Krauss, May 6, 2014, 2:11 pm

"Democracy in in the Middle East" was always just a weasel-word saying of "let's try to improve Israel's strategic position by changing their neighbours".

The neocons basically took a hardline position on foreign interventionism based out of dual loyalty. This is the honest truth. For anti-Semites, a handful of neocons will always represent "The Jews" as a collective. For many Jews, the refusal to come to grips with the rise of the neocons and how the Jewish community (and really by "community" I mean the establishment) failed to prevent them in their own midst, is also a blemish.

Of course, Jim Sleeper is doing these things now. He should have done them 15-20 years ago or so. But better late than never, I guess.

Krauss, May 6, 2014, 2:16 pm

P.S. While we talk a lot about neocons as a Jewish issue, it's also important to put them in perspective. The only war that I can truly think of that they influenced was the Iraq war, which was a disaster, but it also couldn't have happened without 9/11, which was a very rare event in the history of America. You have to go back to Pearl Harbor to find something similar, and that wasn't technically a terrorist attack but rather a military attack by Japan.

Leading up to the early 2000s, they were mostly ignored during the 1990s. They did take over the GOP media in the early 90s, using the same tactics used against Hagel, use social norms as a cover but in actuality the real reason is Israel.

Before the 90s, in the 70s and 80s, the cold war took up all the oxygen.
So yeah, the neocons need to be talked about. But comparing what they are trying to do with a World War is a bit of a stretch.

Finally, talking about Israel – which Sleeper ignored – and the hardline positions that the political class in America have adopted, if you want to look who have ensured the greatest slavishness to Israel, liberal/centrist groups like ADL, AJC and AIPAC(yes, they are mostly democrats!) have played a far greater role than the neocons.

But I guess, Sleeper wasn't dealing with that, because it would ruin his view of the neocons as the bogeymen.

Just like "liberal" Zionists want to blame Likud for everything, overlooking the fact that Labor/Mapai has had a far greater role in settling/colonizing the Palestinian land than the right has, and not to speak about the ethnic cleansing campaigns of '48 and '67 which was only done by the "left", so too the neocons often pose as a convenient catch-all target for the collective Jewish failure leading up to Iraq.

And I'm using the words "collective Jewish failure" because I actually don't believe, unlike Mearsheimer/Walt, that the war would not have gone ahead unless there was massive support by the Israel/Jewish lobby. If Jews had decided no, it would still have gone ahead. This is also contrary to Tom Friedman's famous saying of "50 people in DC are responsible for this war".
I also think that's an oversimplification.

But I focus more on the Jewish side because that's my side. And I want my community to do better, and just blaming the neocons is something I'm tired of hearing in Jewish circles. The inability to look at liberal Jewish journalists and their role in promoting the war to either gentile or Jewish audiences.

Kathleen, May 6, 2014, 6:53 pm

There was talk about this last night (Monday/5th) on Chris Matthew's Hardball segment on Condi "mushroom cloud" Rice pulling out of the graduation ceremonies at Rutger's. David Corn did not say much but Eugene Robinson and Chris Matthews were basically talking about Israel and the neocons desires to rearrange the middle east "the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad" conversation.

Bumblebye, May 6, 2014, 2:33 pm

"some of today's American super-patriotic neo-conservatives hurled themselves into the Iraq War"

Have to take issue with that – the neo-cons hurled young American (and foreign) servicemen and women into that war, many to their deaths, along with throwing as much taxpayer money as possible. They stayed ultra safe and grew richer for their efforts.

Citizen, May 7, 2014, 9:03 am

@ Bumblebye

Good point. During WW1, as I read the history, the Jewish Germans provided their fair share of combat troops. If memory serves, despite Weimar Germany's later "stab in the back" theory, e.g., Hitler himself was given a combat medal thanks to his Jewish senior officer. In comparison to the build-up to Shrub Jr's war on Iraq, the Jewish neocons provided very few Jewish American combat troops.

It's hard to get reliable stats on Jewish American participation in the US combat arms during the Iraq war. For all I've been able to ascertain, more have joined the IDF over the years. At any rate, it's common knowledge that Shrub's war on Iraq was instigated and supported by chicken hawks (Jew or Gentile) at a time bereft of conscription. They built their sale by ignoring key facts, and embellishing misleading and fake facts, as illustrated by the Downing Street memo.

Keith, May 6, 2014, 7:47 pm

PHIL- Perhaps you are making too much of the so called decline of the neocons. At the strategic level, there is little difference between the neocon "Project for a the New American Century" and Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard," both of which are consistent with US policy and actions in the Ukraine.

The most significant difference seems to me to be the neocon emphasis on American unilateral militarism versus Obama's emphasis on multilateralism, covert operations and financial warfare to achieve the desired results.

Perhaps another significant difference is the neocon emphasis on the primacy of the American nation-state versus the neoliberal emphasis on an American dominated global empire.

So yes, the nationalistic emphasis is an anachronism, however, the decline of the US in conjunction with the extension of a system of globalized domination should hardly be of concern to elite power-seekers who will benefit. In fact, the new system of corporate/financial control will be beyond the political control of any nation, even the US. If they can pull it off. An interesting topic no doubt, but one which I doubt is suitable for extended discussion on Mondoweiss. As for power-seeking as a consequence of a uniquely Jewish experience, perhaps the less said the better.

ToivoS, May 7, 2014, 8:10 pm
Interesting to juxtapose Brzezinski and the neocons. In a Venn diagram they would over-lap 90%. The Ukraine crisis exposes that 10% difference. Brzezinski I very much doubt has any emotional attachment to Israel though he is happy to work in coalition with them to further his one true goal which is to isolate and defeat Russian influence in the world. In the 1980s both were on the same page in the "let my people go" campaign against the Soviet Union. Brzezinski saw it as a propaganda opportunity to attack Russia and the neocons saw it has a source of more Jews to settle Palestine.

Right now, their interests have diverged over the Ukraine crisis. Though many of the American neocons do support subverting Ukraine as does Brzezinski it looks like Israel itself is leaning towards supporting Russia. When it comes down to it it is hard for many Jews, right wing or not, to support the political movement inside Ukraine that identifies with Bandera. Now that was one nasty antisemite whose followers killed many thousands of Ukrainian Jews during the holocaust. My wife's family immigrated from Galicia and the Odessa region and those left behind perished during the holocaust. The extended family includes anti-zionists and WB settlers. There is no way that any of them would identify with Ukrainian fascist movements now active there.

In any case, there does seem to be a potential split among the neocons over Ukraine. It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy for all of those eastern European Jews who became successful in the US in the last few generations to enter into coalition with the Bandera brigades.

RudyM, May 7, 2014, 9:36 pm
Interesting, meaty analysis here of the various players in Ukraine. This is unequivocally from a Russian perspective, incidentally:

link to wikispooks.com

(I know I'm always grabbing OT threads of discussion, but when it comes down to it, I know much less about Zionism and Israel/Palestine than many, if not most of the regular commenters here.)

I also am going to drift further off-topic by saying there is strong evidence that the slaughter in Odessa last Friday was highly orchestrated and not solely the result of spontaneous mob violence. Very graphic and disturbing images in all of these links:

I have only glanced at these:

American, May 6, 2014, 9:23 pm
" and it turns out to Jewish identity, the need to belong to the powerful nation on the part of Jewish neoconservatives. Sleeper says this is an insecurity born of European exclusion that he understands as a Jew, ..>>

Stop it Sleeper. Do not continue to use the victim card ' to explain' the trauma, the insecurities, the nightmares, the angst, the feelings, the sensitivities, blah blah, blah of Zionist or Israel.

That is not what they are about. These are power mad psychos like most neocons, period.

And even if it were, and even if all the Jews in the world felt the same way, the bottom line would still be they do not have the right to make others pay in treasure and blood for their nightmares and mental sickness.

Citizen May 7, 2014, 9:46 am
@ yonah fredman

"The freedom of Ukraine is a worthy goal."

As near as I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong), the Ukrainians themselves are about half and half pro Russia and Pro NATO. Your glance at the history of the region as to why this is so, and your text on historical Ukranian suffering and POTV on MW commentary on this –did not help your analysis and its conclusion.

There's a difference between isolationism and defensive intervention, and even more so, re isolationism v. pro-active interventionism "in the name of pursuing the democratic ideal". See Ron Paul v. PNAC-style neocons and liberal Zionists.

Also, if you were Putin, how would you see the push of NATO & US force posts ever creeping towards Russia and its local environment? Look at the US military postings nearing Russia per se & those surrounding Iran. Compare Russia's.

And note the intent to wean EU from Russian oil, and as well, the draconian sanctions on Iran, and Obama's latest partnering sanctions on Russia.

Imagine yourself in Putin's shoes, and Iran's.

Don't abuse your imagination only by imagining yourself in Netanyahu's shoes, which is the preoccupation of AIPAC and its whores in the US Congress.

ToivoS, May 7, 2014, 8:49 pm

Interesting to juxtapose Brzezinski and the neocons. In a Venn diagram they would over-lap 90%. The Ukraine crisis exposes that 10% difference. Brzezinski I very much doubt has any emotional attachment to Israel though he is happy to work in coalition with them to further his one true goal which is to isolate and defeat Russian influence in the world. In the 1980s both were on the same page in the "let my people go" campaign against the Soviet Union. Brzezinski saw it as a propaganda opportunity to attack Russia and the neocons saw it has a source of more Jews to settle Palestine.

Right now, their interests have diverged over the Ukraine crisis. Though many of the American neocons do support subverting Ukraine as does Brzezinski it looks like Israel itself is leaning towards supporting Russia. When it comes down to it it is hard for many Jews, right wing or not, to support the political movement inside Ukraine that identifies with Bandera. Now that was one nasty anti-Semite whose followers killed many thousands of Ukrainian Jews during the holocaust. My wife's family immigrated from Galicia and the Odessa region and those left behind perished during the holocaust. The extended family includes anti-Zionists and WB settlers. There is no way that any of them would identify with Ukrainian fascist movements now active there.

In any case, there does seem to be a potential split among the neocons over Ukraine. It would be the ultimate in hypocrisy for all of those eastern European Jews who became successful in the US in the last few generations to enter into coalition with the Bandera brigades.

ToivoSMay 7, 2014, 9:39 pm
Yonah writes The freedom of Ukraine is a worthy goal. If the US is not able to back up our attempt to help them gain their freedom it is not something to celebrate, but something to lament.

What are you saying? Ukraine has been an independent nation for 22 years. What freedom is this? What we have witnessed is that one half of Ukraine has gotten tired that the other half keeps on electing candidates that represent those Ukrainians that identify with Russian culture. They (the western half) successfully staged a coup and purged the other (eastern half) from the government. You call that "freedom". Doesn't it embarrass you, Yonah, that the armed militias that conducted that coup are descendants of the Bandera organization.

Does that ring a bell? These are the Ukrainians that were involved in the holocaust. Does Babi Yar stir any memories Yohan? It was a massacre of 40,000 Jews just outside of Kiev in 1942. It was the single largest massacre of Jews during WWII. The massacre was led by the Germans ( Einsatzgruppe C officers) but was carried out with the aid of 400 Ukrainian Auxillary Police. These were later incorporated into the 14th SS-Volunteer Division "Galician" made up mostly Ukrainians. The division flags are to this day displayed at Right Sector rallies in western Ukraine.

Right Sector militias are the fighting force that led the coup against the legally elected Yanukovich government and were almost certainly involved in the recent massacre in Odessa. And you support them for their fight for freedom? You should be ashamed. Zionism is sinking to new lows that they feel the need to identify with open neo-Nazis.

piotrMay 7, 2014, 10:18 pm
Well, the point is that Zionists in Israel do not identify with that particular set of open neo-Nazis. I suspect that this is simply a matter of the headcount of Jewish business tycoons that are politically aligned with (western) Ukraine and Russia. Or you can count their billions. In any case, the neutral posture is sensible for Israel here. Which is highly uncharacteristic for that government.

yonah fredman, May 7, 2014, 10:38 pm

Toivo S- The history of Jew hatred by certain anti Russian elements in the Ukraine is not encouraging and nothing that I celebrate. Maybe I have been swayed by headlines and a superficial reading of the situation.

If indeed I am wrong regarding the will of the Ukrainian people, I can only be glad that my opinion is just that, my opinion and not US or Israel or anyone's policy but my own. I assume that a majority of Ukrainians want to maintain independence of Russia and that the expressions of rebellion are in that vein.

My people were murdered by the einsatzgruppen in that part of the world and so maybe I have overcompensated by trying not to allow my personal history to interfere with what I think would be the will of the majority of the Ukraine.

But Toivo S. please skip the "doesn't it embarrass you" line of thought. Just put a sock in it and skip it.

ToivoSMay 8, 2014, 12:51 am

Well thanks for that Yonah. My wife's family descended from Jewish communities in Odessa and Galicia. They emigrated to the US between 1900 and 1940. After WWII none of their relatives left behind were ever heard from again. Perhaps you have family that experienced similar stories. What caused me to react to your post above is that you are describing the current situation in Ukraine as a "freedom" movement by the Ukrainians when the political forces there descended from the same people that killed my inlaws family (and apparently yours to). Why do you support them?

yonah fredmanMay 8, 2014, 1:30 am

ToivoS- I support them because I trust/don't trust Putin. I trust him to impose his brand of leadership on Ukraine, I don't trust him to care a whit about freedom. It is natural that the nationalist elements of Ukraine would descend from the elements that expressed themselves the last time they had freedom from the Soviet Union, that is those forces that were willing to join with the Nazis to express their hatred for the communist Soviet Union's rule over their freedom. That's how history works. The nationalists today descend from the nationalists of yesterday.

But it's been 70 years since WWII and the Ukrainians ought to be able to have freedom even if the parties that advocate for freedom are descended from those that supported the Nazis. (I know once i include the Nazi part of history any analogies are toxic, but if I am willing to grant Hamas its rights as an expression of the Palestinian desire for freedom, why would I deny the Ukrainian foul nationalist parties their rights to express their people's desire for freedom.)

Political parties are not made in a sterile laboratory, they evolve over history and most specifically they emerge from the past. I accept that Ukrainian nationalism has not evolved much, but nonetheless not having read any polls I assume that the nationalists are the representatives of the people's desire for freedom. And because Putin strikes me as something primitive, I accept the Ukrainian desire for freedom.

CitizenMay 8, 2014, 9:18 am

@ yonah f

What are you supporting? Let me refresh your historic memory: Black's Transfer Agreement. Now apply analogy, responding to ToivoS. Might help us all to understand, explore more skillfully, Israel's current stance on the Putin-Ukranian matter .?

(I think Nuland's intervention caught on tape, combined with who she is married to, already explores with great clarification what the US is doing.

irishmosesMay 8, 2014, 12:32 pm

Yonah said:

"The misadventure in Iraq has cost the US and the world a lot. The US a loss in humans and money and willingness to play the role of superpower, and the world has lost its cop. Most people here would probably disagree with Sleeper, because he does not deny that the world needs a cop, nor that the US would play a positive role, if it only had the means and the desire to do so. People here (overwhelmingly) see the US role as a negative one (let the Russians have their sphere of influence, let the Iranians have their bomb, let the Chinese do whatever they want to do in their part of the world,"

The problem with your reasoning, Yonah, is that you are espousing the Neocon line while not apparently recognizing that embarrassing fact. You lament that the US is no longer playing the role of the world's superpower, and acting as the world's cop, confronting militarily Russia, China, Iran and anyone else. It is precisely that mentality that got us into Iraq, could yet have us in a war with Iran, would like to see us defending Ukraine, and thinks we should confront China militarily over bits of rock it and its neighbors are quibbling over. That is a neocon, American supremacy mentality.

Contrast that with the realist or realism approach recommended by George Kennan, and followed by this country successfully through the end of the Cold War. That approach is conservative and contends we should stay out of wars unless the vital national security interests of the US are at stake, like protecting WESTERN Europe, Japan, Australia, and the Western Hemisphere. This meant we could sympathize with the plight of all the eastern Europeans oppressed by the Soviets, but would not defend militarily the Hungarians (1956) or the Czechs (1968). It also meant we wouldn't send US troops into North Vietnam because we didn't want to go to war with the Chinese over a country that was at best tangential to US interests. When we varied from that policy (Vietnam and Iraq wars, Somalia) we paid a very heavy price while doing nothing to advance or protect our vital national security interests.

The sooner this country can return to our traditional realism-based foreign policy the better. Part of that policy would be to disassociate the US from its entangling alliance with Likud Israel and its US Jewish supporters that espouse the Likud Greater Israel line.

Zionism under Likud has played a major role in promoting the neocon approach to foreign policy in the US. It was heavily involved in the birth of that approach, and has helped fund and promote the policy and its supporters and advocates in this country. They (Likud Zionists and Neocons) played a major role in getting us into the Iraq war and are playing a major role in trying to get us involved in a war with Iran, a war in Syria, and even potential wars in Eastern Europe. That is a very dangerous trend and one folks as intelligent as you are, should be focusing on.

Please note, my criticism is directed neither at all Jews in general, Jews in the US, nor or all Israeli Jews. It is directed at a particular subset of Zionists who support Likud policies, and their supporters, many of whom are not Jews. It is also directed at Neoconservative foreign policy advocates, comprised of Jews and non-Jews, and overlap between the two groups. Please also note my use of the term "major role", and that I am not saying the Neocons and their supporters (Jewish or non) were solely responsible for our involvement in the Iraq war. I am offering these caveats in the hope that the usual changes of antisemitism can be avoided in your or anyone else's response to my arguments.

The influence of Neocons on US foreign policy has been very harmful to this country and poses a grave danger to its future. It would be wise for you to reflect on that harm and those dangers and decide whether you belong in the realist camp or want to continue running with the Neocons.

seanmcbride, May 8, 2014, 1:01 pm

irishmoses,

Please note, my criticism is directed neither at all Jews in general, Jews in the US, nor or all Israeli Jews. It is directed at a particular subset of Zionists who support Likud policies, and their supporters, many of whom are not Jews.

What about the role of *liberal Zionists*, like Hillary Clinton, in supporting and promoting the Iraq War? Clinton still hasn't offered an apology for helping to drive the United States in a multi-trillion dollar foreign policy disaster - and she has threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran.

What about Harry Reid's lavish praise of Sheldon Adelson?

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has for some time billed the Koch brothers as public enemy No.1 .

But billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson? He's just fine, Reid says.

"I know Sheldon Adelson. He's not in this for money," the Nevada Democrat said of Adelson, the Vegas casino magnate who reportedly spent close to $150 million to support Republicans in the 2012 presidential election."

link to politico.com

Are there really any meaningful distinctions between neoconservatives in the Republican Party and liberal Zionists in the Democratic Party?

talknic, May 7, 2014, 3:24 am

@ yonah fredman "nationalist Armageddon that is nowhere found in the article by Sleeper"

Strange

"state into the Armageddon .. "

"The misadventure in Iraq has cost the US and the world a lot. The US a loss in humans and money and willingness to play the role of superpower, and the world has lost its cop. "

Tough. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives don't rate a mention.

" (let the Russians have their sphere of influence, let the Iranians have their bomb, let the Chinese do whatever they want to do in their part of the world, for after all they hold a trillion dollars in US government debt and so let them act like the boss, for in fact they have been put in that role by feckless and destructive and wasteful US policy). But Sleeper does not say that."

You do tho, without quoting anyone "here".

BTW Pajero, strawmen no matter how lengthy and seemingly erudite, rarely walk anywhere

JeffB, May 7, 2014, 9:06 am

I'm going to put this down as Jewish navel gazing.

Jews are disproportionately liberal. Jews make up a huge chunk of the peace movement. Jews are relative to their numbers on the left of most foreign policy positions.

Iraq was unusual in that Jews were not overwhelming opposed to the invasion, but it is worth noting the invasion at the time was overwhelming popular. Frankly given the fact that Jews are now considered white people and the fact that Jews are almost all middle class they should be biased conservative. There certainly is no reason they should be more liberal than Catholics. Yet they are. It is the degree of Jewish liberalism not the degree of Jewish conservatism that is striking.

But even if we do focus on neocons, neocons don't have opinions about foreign policy and USA dominance that are much distinct from what most Republican interventionists have. How much difference is there between David Frum and Mitt Romney or between Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld?

lysias, May 7, 2014, 10:55 am

The neocons lost one last night: Antiwar Rep. Walter Jones Beats Neocon-Backed GOP Rival:

Strongly antiwar incumbent Rep. Walter Jones (R – NC) has won a hotly contested primary tonight, defeating a challenge from hawkish challenger and former Treasury Dept. official Taylor Griffin 51% to 45%.

American, May 7, 2014, 11:24 am

Yep.

Voter turn out was light .. tea party types did a lot of lobbying for Griffin here .but Jones prevailed. Considering the onslaught of organized activity against him by ECI and the tea partiers for the past month he did well.

Citizen, May 8, 2014, 9:24 am

@ lysias
Let's refresh our look at what Ron Paul had to say about foreign policy and foreign aid. Then, let's compare what his son has said, and take a look of his latest bill in congress to cut off aid to Palestine. Yes, you read that right; it's not a bill to cut off any aid to Israel.

Don't look to the US to get any justice in the ME, nor to regain US good reputation in the world. This will situation will not change because US political campaign fiancé system won't change–it just gets worse, enhanced by SCOTUS.

traintosiberia, May 8, 2014, 9:12 am

Stockman's Corner

Bravo, Rep. Walter Jones -- Primary Win Sends Neocons Packing

by David Stockman • May 7, 2014 link to davidstockmanscontracorner.com

The heavy artillery included the detestable Karl Rove, former Governor and RNC Chair Haley Barber and the War Party's highly paid chief PR flack, Ari Fleischer.

But it was Neocon central that hauled out the big guns. Bill Kristol was so desperate to thwart the slowly rising anti-interventionist tide within the GOP that he even trotted out Sarah Palin to endorse Jones's opponent"

But neoocns have the confidence that if they could impose the neocon's theology on the rest of the world, they can do it here as well on American street . They call it education, motivation, duty, responsibility, moral burden, and above all the essence of the manifest destiny.

[Sep 24, 2018] Why this Ukrainian revolution may be doomed, too

Blast from the past...
Notable quotes:
"... Kiev has become an accidental, burdensome ally to the West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization only paid lip service to future Ukrainian membership, while the EU, which never had any intention of taking in Ukraine, pushed an association agreement out of bureaucratic habit more than strategic vision. ..."
"... The least charitably inclined claim that Poroshenko prosecuted the war in eastern Ukraine as a way of delaying reform. What's undeniable is that the shaky ceasefire leaves the Kiev government at the mercy of Putin and his proxies. Should anything start going right for Poroshenko, the fighting could flare back up at any moment. ..."
"... Everybody in Kiev understands that there's no way of reconquering lost territory by force. Ukrainian politicians publicly pledge to win back breakaway regions through reform and economic success. What they hope for is that sanctions will cause enough problems inside Russia that the Kremlin will run out of resources to sabotage Ukraine. Wishful thinking won't replace the painful reforms ahead. ..."
May 19, 2015 | http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/05/17/why-this-ukrainian-revolution-may-be-doomed-too/

At home, there is the possibility of more protests, a paralyzed government, and the rise of politicians seeking accommodation with Putin. "Slow and unsuccessful reforms are a bigger existential threat than the Russian aggression," said Oleksiy Melnyk, a security expert at Kiev's Razumkov Center. Even if Ukrainians don't return to the street, they'll get a chance to voice their discontent at the ballot box. Local elections are due in the fall - and the governing coalition between Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is so shaky that nobody can rule out an early parliamentary vote.

In its international relations, Ukraine is living on borrowed time - and money. A dispute over restructuring $23 billion in debt broke into the open last week with the Finance Ministry accusing foreign creditors of not negotiating in good faith ahead of a June deadline. An EU summit this week is likely to end in more disappointment, as Western European countries are reluctant to grant Ukrainians visa-free travel.

Kiev has become an accidental, burdensome ally to the West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization only paid lip service to future Ukrainian membership, while the EU, which never had any intention of taking in Ukraine, pushed an association agreement out of bureaucratic habit more than strategic vision.

... ... ...

The least charitably inclined claim that Poroshenko prosecuted the war in eastern Ukraine as a way of delaying reform. What's undeniable is that the shaky ceasefire leaves the Kiev government at the mercy of Putin and his proxies. Should anything start going right for Poroshenko, the fighting could flare back up at any moment.

Ukrainian security officials say that the enemy forces gathering in the separatist regions are at their highest capability yet. The most alarming observation is that the once ragtag band of rebels - backed up by regular Russian troops in critical battles - is increasingly looking like a real army thanks to weapons and training provided by Russia.

... ... ...

Everybody in Kiev understands that there's no way of reconquering lost territory by force. Ukrainian politicians publicly pledge to win back breakaway regions through reform and economic success. What they hope for is that sanctions will cause enough problems inside Russia that the Kremlin will run out of resources to sabotage Ukraine. Wishful thinking won't replace the painful reforms ahead.

[Apr 26, 2018] Drones, Baby, Drones! The Rise of Americas High-Tech Assassins

Apr 03, 2015 | Alternet
...President Barack Obama, who had run a quasi-antiwar liberal campaign for the White House, had embraced the assassination program and had decreed, "the CIA gets what it wants." Intelligence budgets were maintaining the steep upward curve that had started in 2001, and while all agencies were benefiting, none had done as well as the CIA At just under $15 billion, the agency's budget had climbed by 56 percent just since 2004.

Decades earlier, Richard Helms, the CIA director for whom the event was named, would customarily refer to the defense contractors who pressured him to spend his budget on their wares as "those bastards." Such disdain for commerce in the world of spooks was now long gone, as demonstrated by the corporate sponsorship of the tables jammed into the Grand Ballroom that evening. The executives, many of whom had passed through the revolving door from government service, were there to rub shoulders with old friends and current partners. "It was totally garish," one attendee told me afterward. "It seemed like every arms manufacturer in the country had taken a table. Everyone was doing business, right and left."

In the decade since 9/11, the CIA had been regularly blighted by scandal-revelations of torture, renditions, secret "black site" prisons, bogus intelligence justifying the invasion of Iraq, ignored signs of the impending 9/11 attacks-but such unwholesome realities found no echo in this comradely gathering. Even George Tenet, the CIA director who had presided over all of the aforementioned scandals, was greeted with heartfelt affection by erstwhile colleagues as he, along with almost every other living former CIA director, stood to be introduced by Master of Ceremonies John McLaughlin, a former deputy director himself deeply complicit in the Iraq fiasco. Each, with the exception of Stansfield Turner (still bitterly resented for downsizing the agency post-Vietnam), received ringing applause, but none more than the night's honoree, former CIA director and then-current secretary of defense Robert M. Gates.

Although Gates had left the CIA eighteen years before, he was very much the father figure of the institution and a mentor to the intelligence chieftains, active and retired, who cheered him so fervently that night at the Ritz-Carlton. He had climbed through the ranks of the national security bureaucracy with a ruthless determination all too evident to those around him. Ray McGovern, his supervisor in his first agency post, as an analyst with the intelligence directorate's soviet foreign policy branch, recalls writing in an efficiency report that the young man's "evident and all-consuming ambition is a disruptive influence in the branch." There had come a brief check on his rise to power when his involvement in the Iran-Contra imbroglio cratered an initial attempt to win confirmation as CIA director, but success came a few years later, in 1991, despite vehement protests from former colleagues over his persistent willingness to sacrifice analytic objectivity to the political convenience of his masters.

Book cover of 'Kill Chain.'

Photo Credit:

Henry Holt

Click to enlarge.

Gates's successful 1991 confirmation as CIA chief owed much, so colleagues assessed, to diligent work behind the scenes on the part of the Senate Intelligence Committee's staff director, George Tenet. In 1993, Tenet moved on to be director for intelligence programs on the Clinton White House national security staff, in which capacity he came to know and esteem John Brennan, a midlevel and hitherto undistinguished CIA analyst assigned to brief White House staffers. Tenet liked Brennan so much that when he himself moved to the CIA as deputy director in 1995, he had the briefer appointed station chief in Riyadh, an important position normally reserved for someone with actual operational experience. In this sensitive post Brennan worked tirelessly to avoid irritating his Saudi hosts, showing reluctance, for example, to press them for Osama bin Laden's biographical details when asked to do so by the bin Laden unit back at headquarters.

Brennan returned to Washington in 1999 under Tenet's patronage, initially as his chief of staff and then as CIA executive director, and by 2003 he had transitioned to the burgeoning field of intelligence fusion bureaucracy. The notion that the way to avert miscommunication between intelligence bureaucracies was to create yet more layers of bureaucracy was popular in Washington in the aftermath of 9/11. One concrete expression of this trend was the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, known as T-TIC and then renamed the National Counter Terrorism Center a year later. Brennan was the first head of T-TIC, distinguishing himself in catering to the abiding paranoia of the times. On one occasion, notorious within the community, he circulated an urgent report that al-Qaeda was encrypting targeting information for terrorist attacks in the broadcasts of the al-Jazeera TV network, thereby generating an "orange" alert and the cancellation of dozens of international flights. The initiative was greeted with malicious amusement over at the CIA's own Counterterrorism Center, whose chief at the time, José Rodríguez, later opined that Brennan had been trying to build up his profile with higher authority. "Brennan was a major factor in keeping [the al-Jazeera/al-Qaeda story] alive. We thought it was ridiculous," he told a reporter. "My own view is he saw this, he took this, as a way to have relevance, to take something to the White House." Tellingly, an Obama White House spokesman later excused Brennan's behavior on the grounds that though he had circulated the report, he hadn't believed it himself.

Exiting government service in 2005, Brennan spent the next three years heading The Analysis Corporation, an obscure but profitable intelligence contractor engaged in preparing terrorist watch lists for the government, work for which he was paid $763,000 in 2008. Among the useful relationships he had cultivated over the years was well-connected Democrat Anthony Lake, a former national security adviser to Bill Clinton, who recommended him to presidential candidate Barack Obama. Meeting for the first time shortly after Obama's election victory, the pair bonded immediately, with Obama "finishing Brennan's sentences," by one account. Among their points of wholehearted agreement was the merit of a surgical approach to terrorist threats, the "need to target the metastasizing disease without destroying the surrounding tissue," as Brennan put it, for which drones and their Hellfire missiles seemed the ideal tools. Obama was initially balked in his desire to make Brennan CIA director because of the latter's all-too-close association with the agency's torture program, so instead the new president made him his assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security, with an office down the hall from the Oval Office. Two years into the administration, everyone in the Ritz-Carlton ballroom knew that the bulky Irishman was the most powerful man in U.S. intelligence as the custodian of the president's kill list, on which the chief executive and former constitutional law professor insisted on reserving the last word, making his final selections for execution at regularly scheduled Tuesday afternoon meetings. "You know, our president has his brutal side," a CIA source cognizant of Obama's involvement observed to me at the time.

Now, along with the other six hundred diners at the Helms dinner, Brennan listened attentively as Gates rose to accept the coveted award for "exemplary service to the nation and the Central Intelligence Agency." After paying due tribute to previous honorees as well as his pride in being part of the CIA "family," Gates spoke movingly of a recent and particularly tragic instance of CIA sacrifice, the seven men and women killed by a suicide bomber at an agency base, Forward Operating Base Chapman, in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009. All present bowed their heads in silent tribute.

Gates then moved on to a more upbeat topic. When first he arrived at the Pentagon in 2007, he said, he had found deep-rooted resistance to "new technology" among "flyboys with silk scarves" still wedded to venerable traditions of fighter-plane combat. But all that, he informed his rapt audience, had changed. Factories were working "day and night, day and night," to turn out the vital weapons for the fight against terrorism. "So from now on," he concluded, his voice rising, "the watchword is: drones, baby, drones!"

The applause was long and loud.

Excerpted from Andrew Cockburn's new book, Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins Henry Holt, 2015). Reprinted here with permission from the author.

[Dec 03, 2017] How Complex Systems Fail

Notable quotes:
"... complex systems are prone to catastrophic failure, how that possibility is held at bay through a combination of redundancies and ongoing vigilance, but how, due to the impractical cost of keeping all possible points of failure fully (and even identifying them all) protected, complex systems "always run in degraded mode". Think of the human body. No one is in perfect health. At a minimum, people are growing cancers all the time, virtually all of which recede for reasons not well understood. ..."
"... every major investment leads to further investments (no matter how dumb or large) to protect the value of past investments. ..."
"... Tainter argues that the energy cost (defined broadly) of maintaining the dysfunction eventually overwhelms the ability of the system to generate surpluses to meet the rising needs of maintenance. ..."
"... a combination of shrinking revenue base and the subordination of all systemic needs to the needs of individual emperors to stay in power and therefore stay alive. ..."
"... In each case, some elite individual or grouping sees throwing good money after bad as necessary to keeping their power and their positions. Our current sclerotic system seems to fit this description nicely. ..."
"... One point that Tainter made is that collapse is not all bad. He presents evidence that the average well being of people in Italy was probably higher in the sixth century than in the fifth century as the Western Roman Empire died. Somewhat like death being necessary for biological evolution collapse may be the only solution to the problem of excessive complexity. ..."
"... Good-For-Me-Who-Effing-Cares-If-It's-Bad-For-You-And-Everyone-Else ..."
"... The Iron Law of Institutions (agents act in ways that benefit themselves in the context of the institution [system], regardless of the effect those actions have on the larger system) would seem to mitigate against any attempts to correct our many, quickly failing complex social and technological systems. ..."
"... It is that cumulative concentration of wealth and power over time which is ultimately destabilizing, producing accepted social norms and customs that lead to fragility in the face of both expected and unexpected shocks. This fragility comes from all sorts of specific consequences of that inequality, from secrecy to group think to brain drain to two-tiered justice to ignoring incompetence and negligence to protecting incumbents necessary to maintain such an unnatural order. ..."
"... The problem arises with any societal order over time in that corrosive elements in the form of corruptive behavior (not principle based) by decision makers are institutionalized. I may not like Trump as a person but the fact that he seems to unravel and shake the present arrangement and serves as an indicator that the people begin to realize what game is being played, makes me like him in that specific function. ..."
"... However, the failure was made immeasurably worse due to the fact that Exxon had failed to supply that pump-station with a safety manual, so when the alarms started going off the guy in the station had to call around to a bunch of people to figure out what was going on. So while it's possible that the failure would have occurred no matter what, the failure of the management to implement even the most basic of safety procedures made the failure much worse than it otherwise would have been. ..."
"... . . .but it is also true that the incentives of the capitalist system ensure that there will be more and worse accidents than necessary , as the agents involved in maintaining the system pursue their own personal interests which often conflict with the interests of system stability and safety. ..."
"... In Claus Jensen's fascinating account of the Challenger disaster, NO DOWNLINK, he describes how the managers overrode the engineers' warnings not to fly under existing weather conditions. We all know the result. ..."
"... Globalization factors in maximizing the impact of Murphy's Law: ..."
"... Where one can only say: "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do" ..."
"... Subsumption architecture ..."
"... The inverted pendulum ..."
"... Emergent behavior of swarms ..."
"... negative selection ..."
Aug 21, 2015 | naked capitalism

Lambert found a short article by Richard Cook that I've embedded at the end of the post. I strongly urge you to read it in full. It discusses how complex systems are prone to catastrophic failure, how that possibility is held at bay through a combination of redundancies and ongoing vigilance, but how, due to the impractical cost of keeping all possible points of failure fully (and even identifying them all) protected, complex systems "always run in degraded mode". Think of the human body. No one is in perfect health. At a minimum, people are growing cancers all the time, virtually all of which recede for reasons not well understood.

The article contends that failures therefore are not the result of single causes. As Clive points out:

This is really a profound observation – things rarely fail in an out-the-blue, unimaginable, catastrophic way. Very often just such as in the MIT article the fault or faults in the system are tolerated. But if they get incrementally worse, then the ad-hoc fixes become the risk (i.e. the real risk isn't the original fault condition, but the application of the fixes). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire#Wigner_energy documents how a problem of core instability was a snag, but the disaster was caused by what was done to try to fix it. The plant operators kept applying the fix in ever more extreme does until the bloody thing blew up.

But I wonder about the validity of one of the hidden assumptions of this article. There is a lack of agency in terms of who is responsible for the care and feeding of complex systems (the article eventually identifies "practitioners" but even then, that's comfortably vague). The assumption is that the parties who have influence and responsibility want to preserve the system, and have incentives to do at least an adequate job of that.

There are reasons to doubt that now. Economics has promoted ways of looking at commercial entities that encourage "practitioners" to compromise on safety measures. Mainstream economics has as a core belief that economies have a propensity to equilibrium, and that equilibrium is at full employment. That assumption has served as a wide-spread justification for encouraging businesses and governments to curtail or end pro-stability measures like regulation as unnecessary costs.

To put it more simply, the drift of both economic and business thinking has been to optimize activity for efficiency. But highly efficient systems are fragile. Formula One cars are optimized for speed and can only run one race.

Highly efficient systems also are more likely to suffer from what Richard Bookstaber called "tight coupling." A tightly coupled system in one in which events occur in a sequence that cannot be interrupted. A way to re-characterize a tightly coupled system is a complex system that has been in part re-optimized for efficiency, maybe by accident, maybe at a local level. That strips out some of the redundancies that serve as safeties to prevent positive feedback loops from having things spin out of control.

To use Bookstaber's nomenclature, as opposed to this paper's, in a tightly coupled system, measures to reduce risk directly make things worse. You need to reduce the tight coupling first.

A second way that the economic thinking has arguably increased the propensity of complex systems of all sorts to fail is by encouraging people to see themselves as atomized agents operating in markets. And that's not just an ideology; it's reflected in low attachment to institutions of all sorts, ranging from local communities to employers (yes, employers may insist on all sorts of extreme shows of fealty, but they are ready to throw anyone in the dust bin at a moment's notice). The reality of weak institutional attachments and the societal inculcation of selfish viewpoints means that more and more people regard complex systems as vehicles for personal advancement. And if they see those relationships as short-term or unstable, they don't have much reason to invest in helping to preserving the soundness of that entity. Hence the attitude called "IBY/YBG" ("I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone") appears to be becoming more widespread.

I've left comments open because I'd very much enjoy getting reader reactions to this article. Thanks!

James Levy August 21, 2015 at 6:35 am

So many ideas . Mike Davis argues that in the case of Los Angeles, the key to understanding the city's dysfunction is in the idea of sunk capital – every major investment leads to further investments (no matter how dumb or large) to protect the value of past investments.

Tainter argues that the energy cost (defined broadly) of maintaining the dysfunction eventually overwhelms the ability of the system to generate surpluses to meet the rising needs of maintenance.

Goldsworthy has argued powerfully and persuasively that the Roman Empire in the West was done in by a combination of shrinking revenue base and the subordination of all systemic needs to the needs of individual emperors to stay in power and therefore stay alive. Their answer was endlessly subdividing power and authority below them and using massive bribes to the bureaucrats and the military to try to keep them loyal.

In each case, some elite individual or grouping sees throwing good money after bad as necessary to keeping their power and their positions. Our current sclerotic system seems to fit this description nicely.

Jim August 21, 2015 at 8:15 am

I immediately thought of Tainter's "The Complex of Complex Cultures" when I starting reading this. One point that Tainter made is that collapse is not all bad. He presents evidence that the average well being of people in Italy was probably higher in the sixth century than in the fifth century as the Western Roman Empire died. Somewhat like death being necessary for biological evolution collapse may be the only solution to the problem of excessive complexity.

xxx August 22, 2015 at 4:39 am

Tainter insists culture has nothing to do with collapse, and therefore refuses to consider it, but he then acknowledges that the elites in some societies were able to pull them out of a collapse trajectory. And from the inside, it sure as hell looks like culture, as in a big decay in what is considered to be acceptable conduct by our leaders, and what interests they should be serving (historically, at least the appearance of the greater good, now unabashedly their own ends) sure looks to be playing a big, and arguably the defining role, in the rapid rise of open corruption and related social and political dysfunction.

Praedor August 21, 2015 at 9:19 am

That also sounds like the EU and even Greece's extreme actions to stay in the EU.

jgordon August 21, 2015 at 7:44 am

Then I'll add my two cents: you've left out that when systems scale linearly, the amount of complexity, and points for failure, and therefore instability, that they contain scale exponentially–that is according to the analysis of James Rickards, and supported by the work of people like Joseph Tainter and Jared Diamond.

Ever complex problem that arises in a complex system is fixed with an even more complex "solution" which requires ever more energy to maintain, and eventually the inevitably growing complexity of the system causes the complex system to collapse in on itself. This process requires no malignant agency by humans, only time.

nowhere August 21, 2015 at 12:10 pm

Sounds a lot like JMG and catabolic collapse.

jgordon August 21, 2015 at 2:04 pm

Well, he got his stuff from somewhere too.

Synoia August 21, 2015 at 1:26 pm

There are no linear systems. They are all non-linear because the include a random, non-linear element – people.

Jim August 21, 2015 at 2:26 pm

Long before there were people the Earth's eco-system was highly complex and highly unstable.

Ormond Otvos August 21, 2015 at 4:37 pm

The presumption that fixes increase complexity may be incorrect.

Fixes should include awareness of complexity.

That was the beauty of Freedom Club by Kaczinsky, T.

JTMcPhee August 21, 2015 at 4:44 pm

Maybe call the larger entity "meta-stable?" Astro and geo inputs seem to have been big perturbers. Lots of genera were around a very long time before naked apes set off on their romp. But then folks, even these hot, increasingly dry days, brag on their ability to anticipate, and profit from, and even cause, with enough leverage, de- stability. Good thing the macrocosms of our frail, violent, kindly, destructive bodies are blessed with the mechanisms of homeostasis.

Too bad our "higher" functions are not similarly gifted But that's what we get to chat about, here and in similar meta-spaces

MikeW August 21, 2015 at 7:52 am

Agree, positive density of ideas, thoughts and implications.

I wonder if the reason that humans don't appreciate the failure of complex systems is that (a) complex systems are constantly trying to correct, or cure as in your cancer example, themselves all the time until they can't at which point they collapse, (b) that things, like cancer leading to death, are not commonly viewed as a complex system failure when in fact that is what it is. Thus, while on a certain scale we do experience complex system failure on one level on a daily basis because we don't interpret it as such, and given that we are hardwired for pattern recognition, we don't address complex systems in the right ways.

This, to my mind, has to be extended to the environment and the likely disaster we are currently trying to instigate. While the system is collapsing at one level, massive species extinctions, while we have experienced record temperatures, while the experts keep warning us, etc., most people to date have experienced climate change as an inconvenience - not the early stages of systemwide failure.

Civilization collapses have been regular, albeit spaced out, occurrences. We seem to think we are immune to them happening again. Yet, it isn't hard to list the near catastrophic system failures that have occurred or are currently occurring (famines, financial markets, genocides, etc.).

And, in most systems that relate to humans with an emphasis on short term gain how does one address system failures?

Brooklin Bridge August 21, 2015 at 9:21 am

Good-For-Me-Who-Effing-Cares-If-It's-Bad-For-You-And-Everyone-Else

would be a GREAT category heading though it's perhaps a little close to "Imperial Collapse"

Whine Country August 21, 2015 at 9:52 am

To paraphrase President Bill Clinton, who I would argue was one of the major inputs that caused the catastrophic failure of our banking system (through the repeal of Glass-Steagall), it all depends on what the definition of WE is.

jrs August 21, 2015 at 10:12 pm

And all that just a 21st century version of "apres moi le deluge", which sounds very likely to be the case.

Oregoncharles August 21, 2015 at 3:55 pm

JT – just go to the Archdruid site. They link it regularly, I suppose for this purpose.

Jim August 21, 2015 at 8:42 am

Civilizational collapse is extremely common in history when one takes a long term view. I'm not sure though that I would describe it as having that much "regularity" and while internal factors are no doubt often important external factors like the Mongol Onslaught are also important. It's usually very hard to know exactly what happened since historical documentation tends to disappear in periods of collapse. In the case of Mycenae the archaeological evidence indicates a near total population decline of 99% in less than a hundred years together with an enormous cultural decline but we don't know what caused it.

As for long term considerations the further one tries to project into the future the more uncertain such projections become so that long term planning far into the future is not likely to be evolutionarily stable. Because much more information is available about present conditions than future conditions organisms are probably selected much more to optimize for the short term rather than for the largely unpredicatble long term.

Gio Bruno August 21, 2015 at 1:51 pm

it's not in question. Evolution is about responding to the immediate environment. Producing survivable offspring (which requires finding a niche). If the environment changes (Climate?) faster than the production of survivable offspring then extinction (for that specie) ensues.

Now, Homo sapien is supposedly "different" in some respects, but I don't think so.

Jim August 21, 2015 at 2:14 pm

I agree. There's nothing uniquely special about our species. Of course species can often respond to gradual change by migration. The really dangerous things are global catastrophes such as the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous or whatever happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary (gamma ray burst maybe?).

Ormond Otvos August 21, 2015 at 4:46 pm

Interesting that you sit there and type on a world-spanning network batting around ideas from five thousand years ago, or yesterday, and then use your fingers to type that the human species isn't special.

Do you really think humans are unable to think about the future, like a bear hibernating, or perhaps the human mind, and its offspring, human culture and history, can't see ahead?

Why is "Learn the past, or repeat it!" such a popular saying, then?

diptherio August 21, 2015 at 9:24 am

The Iron Law of Institutions (agents act in ways that benefit themselves in the context of the institution [system], regardless of the effect those actions have on the larger system) would seem to mitigate against any attempts to correct our many, quickly failing complex social and technological systems.

jgordon August 21, 2015 at 10:40 am

This would tend to imply that attempts to organize large scale social structures is temporary at best, and largely futile. I agree. The real key is to embrace and ride the wave as it crests and callapses so its possible to manage the fall–not to try to stand against so you get knocked down and drowned. Focus your efforts on something useful instead of wasting them on a hopeless, and worthless, cause.

Jim August 21, 2015 at 2:21 pm

Civilization is obviously highly unstabe. However it should remembered that even Neolithic cultures are almost all less than 10,000 years old. So there has been little time for evolutionary adaptations to living in complex cultures (although there is evidence that the last 10,000 years has seen very rapid genetic changes in human populations). If civilization can continue indefinitely which of course is not very clear then it would be expected that evolutionary selection would produce humans much better adapted to living in complex cultures so they might become more stable in the distant future. At present mean time to collapse is probably a few hundred years.

Ormond Otvos August 21, 2015 at 4:50 pm

But perhaps you're not contemplating that too much individual freedom can destabilize society. Is that a part of your vast psychohistorical equation?

washunate August 21, 2015 at 10:34 am

Well said, but something I find intriguing is that the author isn't talking so much about civilizational collapse. The focus is more on various subsystems of civilization (transportation, energy, healthcare, etc.).

These individual components are not inherently particularly dangerous (at a systemic/civilizational level). They have been made that way by purposeful public policy choices, from allowing enormous compensation packages in healthcare to dismantling our passenger rail system to subsidizing fossil fuel energy over wind and solar to creating tax incentives that distort community development. These things are not done for efficiency. They are done to promote inequality, to allow connected insiders and technocratic gatekeepers to expropriate the productive wealth of society. Complexity isn't a byproduct; it is the mechanism of the looting. If MDs in hospital management made similar wages as home health aides, then how would they get rich off the labor of others? And if they couldn't get rich, what would be the point of managing the hospital in the first place? They're not actually trying to provide quality, affordable healthcare to all Americans.

It is that cumulative concentration of wealth and power over time which is ultimately destabilizing, producing accepted social norms and customs that lead to fragility in the face of both expected and unexpected shocks. This fragility comes from all sorts of specific consequences of that inequality, from secrecy to group think to brain drain to two-tiered justice to ignoring incompetence and negligence to protecting incumbents necessary to maintain such an unnatural order.

Linus Huber August 21, 2015 at 7:05 pm

I tend to agree with your point of view.

The problem arises with any societal order over time in that corrosive elements in the form of corruptive behavior (not principle based) by decision makers are institutionalized. I may not like Trump as a person but the fact that he seems to unravel and shake the present arrangement and serves as an indicator that the people begin to realize what game is being played, makes me like him in that specific function. There may be some truth in Thomas Jefferson's quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Those presently benefiting greatly from the present arrangement are fighting with all means to retain their position, whether successfully or not, we will see.

animalogic August 22, 2015 at 2:18 am

Well said, washunate. I think an argument could be run that outside economic areas, the has been a drive to de-complexity.
Non economic institutions, bodies which exist for non market/profit reasons are or have been either hollowed out, or co-opted to market purposes. Charities as vast engines of self enrichment for a chain of insiders. Community groups, defunded, or shriveled to an appendix by "market forces". The list goes on and on.
Reducing the "not-market" to the status of sliced-white-bread makes us all the more dependant on the machinated complexities of "the market" .god help us .

Jay Jay August 21, 2015 at 8:00 am

Joseph Tainter's thesis, set out in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" is simple: as a civilization ages its use of energy becomes less efficient and more costly, until the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in, generates its own momentum and the system grinds to a halt. Perhaps this article describes a late stage of that process. However, it is worth noting that, for the societies Tainter studied, the process was ineluctable. Not so for our society: we have the ability -- and the opportunity -- to switch energy sources.

Moneta August 21, 2015 at 5:48 pm

In my grandmother's youth, they did not burn wood for nothing. Splitting wood was hard work that required calories.

Today, we heat up our patios at night with gas heaters The amount of economic activity based on burning energy not related to survival is astounding.

A huge percentage of our GDP is based on economies of scale and economic efficiencies but are completely disconnected from environmental efficiencies.

This total loss is control between nature and our lifestyles will be our waterloo .

TG August 21, 2015 at 8:20 am

An interesting article as usual, but here is another take.

Indeed, sometimes complex systems can collapse under the weight of their own complexity (Think: credit default swaps). But sometimes there is a single simple thing that is crushing the system, and the complexity is a desperate attempt to patch things up that is eventually destroyed by brute force.

Consider a forced population explosion: the people are multiplied exponentially. This reduces per capita physical resources, tends to reduce per-capita capital, and limits the amount of time available to adapt: a rapidly growing population puts an economy on a treadmill that gets faster and faster and steeper and steeper until it takes superhuman effort just to maintain the status quo. There is a reason why, for societies without an open frontier, essentially no nation has ever become prosperous with out first moderating the fertility rate.

However, you can adapt. New technologies can be developed. New regulations written to coordinate an ever more complex system. Instead of just pumping water from a reservoir, you need networks of desalinization plants – with their own vast networks of power plants and maintenance supply chains – and recycling plans, and monitors and laws governing water use, and more efficient appliances, etc.etc.

As an extreme, consider how much effort and complexity it takes to keep a single person alive in the space station.

That's why in California cars need to be emissions tested, but in Alabama they don't – and the air is cleaner in Alabama. More people needs more controls and more exotic technology and more rules.

Eventually the whole thing starts to fall apart. But to blame complexity itself, is possibly missing the point.

Steve H. August 21, 2015 at 8:30 am

No system is ever 'the'.

Jim Haygood August 21, 2015 at 11:28 am

Two words, Steve: Soviet Union.

It's gone now. But we're rebuilding it, bigger and better.

Ormond Otvos August 21, 2015 at 4:54 pm

If, of course, bigger is better.

Facts not in evidence.

Ulysses August 21, 2015 at 8:40 am

"But because system operations are never trouble free, human practitioner adaptations to changing conditions actually create safety from moment to moment. These adaptations often amount to just the selection of a well-rehearsed routine from a store of available responses; sometimes, however, the adaptations are novel combinations or de novo creations of new approaches."

This may just be a rationalization, on my part, for having devoted so much time to historical studies– but it seems to me that historians help civilizations prevent collapse, by preserving for them the largest possible "store of available responses."

aronj August 21, 2015 at 8:41 am

Yves,

Thanks for posting this very interesting piece! As you know, I am a fan Bookstaber's concept of tight coupling. Interestingly, Bookstaber (2007) does not reference Cook's significant work on complex systems.

Before reading this article, I considered the most preventable accidents involve a sequence of events uninterrupted by human intelligence. This needs to be modified by Cook's points 8, 9. 10 and 12.

In using the aircraft landing in the New York river as an example of interrupting a sequence of events, the inevitable accident occurred but no lives were lost. Thus the human intervention was made possible by the unknowable probability of coupling the cause with a possible alternative landing site. A number of aircraft accidents involve failed attempts to find a possible landing site, even though Cook's point #12 was in play.

Thanks for the post!!!!!

Brooklin Bridge August 21, 2015 at 8:47 am

A possible issue with or a misunderstanding of #7. Catastrophic failure can be made up of small failures that tend to follow a critical path or multiple critical paths. While a single point of origin for catastrophic failure may rarely if ever occur in a complex system, it is possible and likely in such a system to have collections of small failures that occur or tend to occur in specific sequences of order. Population explosion (as TG points out) would be a good example of a failure in a complex social system that is part of a critical path to catastrophic failure.

Such sequences, characterized by orders of precedence, are more likely in tightly coupled systems (which as Yves points out can be any system pushed to the max). The point is, they can be identified and isolated at least in situations where a complex system is not being misused or pushed to it's limits or created due to human corruption where such sequences of likelihood may be viewed or baked into the system (such as by propaganda->ideology) as features and not bugs.

Spring Texan August 21, 2015 at 8:53 am

I agree completely that maximum efficiency comes with horrible costs. When hospitals are staffed so that people are normally busy every minute, patients routinely suffer more as often no one has time to treat them like a human being, and when things deviate from the routine, people have injuries and deaths. Same is true in other contexts.

washunate August 21, 2015 at 10:40 am

Agreed, but that's not caused by efficiency. That's caused by inequality. Healthcare has huge dispariaties in wages and working conditions. The point of keeping things tightly staffed is to allow big bucks for the top doctors and administrators.

susan the other August 21, 2015 at 2:55 pm

Yes. When one efficiency conflicts with and destroys another efficiency. Eq. Your mother juggled a job and a family and ran around in turbo mode but she dropped everything when her kids were in trouble. That is an example of an efficiency that can juggle contradictions and still not fail.

JTMcPhee August 21, 2015 at 11:38 am

Might this nurse observe that in hospitals, there isn't and can't be a "routine" to deviate from, no matter how fondly "managers" wish to try to make it and how happy they may be to take advantage of the decent, empathic impulses of many nurses and/or the need to work to eat of those that are just doing a job. Hence the kindly (sic) practice of "calling nurses off" or sending them home if "the census is down," which always runs aground against a sudden influx of billable bodies or medical crises that the residual staff is expected to just somehow cope with caring for or at least processing, until the idiot frictions in the staffing machinery add a few more person-hours of labor to the mix. The larger the institution, the greater the magnitude and impact (pain, and dead or sicker patients and staff too) of the "excursions from the norm."

It's all about the ruling decisions on what are deemed (as valued by where the money goes) appropriate outcomes of the micro-political economy In the absence of an organizing principle that values decency and stability and sustainability rather than upward wealth transfer.

Will August 21, 2015 at 8:54 am

I'll join the choir recommending Tainter as a critical source for anybody interested in this stuff.

IBG/YBG is a new concept for me, with at least one famous antecedent. "Aprčs moi, le déluge."

diptherio August 21, 2015 at 9:17 am

The author presents the best-case scenario for complex systems: one in which the practitioners involved are actually concerned with maintaining system integrity. However, as Yves points out, that is far from being case in many of our most complex systems.

For instance, the Silvertip pipeline spill near Billings, MT a few years ago may indeed have been a case of multiple causes leading to unforeseen/unforeseeable failure of an oil pipeline as it crossed the Yellowstone river. However, the failure was made immeasurably worse due to the fact that Exxon had failed to supply that pump-station with a safety manual, so when the alarms started going off the guy in the station had to call around to a bunch of people to figure out what was going on. So while it's possible that the failure would have occurred no matter what, the failure of the management to implement even the most basic of safety procedures made the failure much worse than it otherwise would have been.

And this is a point that the oil company apologists are all too keen to obscure. The argument gets trotted out with some regularity that because these oil/gas transmission systems are so complex, some accidents and mishaps are bound to occur. This is true–but it is also true that the incentives of the capitalist system ensure that there will be more and worse accidents than necessary, as the agents involved in maintaining the system pursue their own personal interests which often conflict with the interests of system stability and safety.

Complex systems have their own built-in instabilities, as the author points out; but we've added a system of un-accountability and irresponsibility on top of our complex systems which ensures that failures will occur more often and with greater fall-out than the best-case scenario imagined by the author.

Brooklin Bridge August 21, 2015 at 9:42 am

As Yves pointed out, there is a lack of agency in the article. A corrupt society will tend to generate corrupt systems just as it tends to generate corrupt technology and corrupt ideology. For instance, we get lots of little cars driving themselves about, profitably to the ideology of consumption, but also with an invisible thumb of control, rather than a useful system of public transportation. We get "abstenence only" population explosion because "groath" rather than any rational assessment of obvious future catastrophe.

washunate August 21, 2015 at 10:06 am

Right on. The primary issue of our time is a failure of management. Complexity is an excuse more often than an explanatory variable.

abynormal August 21, 2015 at 3:28 pm

abynormal
August 21, 2015 at 2:46 pm

Am I the only hearing 9″Nails, March of the Pigs

Aug. 21, 2015 1:54 a.m. ET

A Carlyle Group LP hedge fund that anticipated a sudden currency-policy shift in China gained roughly $100 million in two days last week, a sign of how some bearish bets on the world's second-largest economy are starting to pay off.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hedge-fund-gains-100-million-in-two-days-on-bearish-china-bet-1440136499?mod=e2tw

oink oink is the sound of system fail

Oregoncharles August 21, 2015 at 3:40 pm

A very important principle:

All systems have a failure rate, including people. We don't get to live in a world where we don't need to lock our doors and banks don't need vaults. (If you find it, be sure to radio back.)

The article is about how we deal with that failure rate. Pointing out that there are failures misses the point.

cnchal August 21, 2015 at 5:05 pm

. . .but it is also true that the incentives of the capitalist system ensure that there will be more and worse accidents than necessary, as the agents involved in maintaining the system pursue their own personal interests which often conflict with the interests of system stability and safety.

How true. A Chinese city exploded. Talk about a black swan. I wonder what the next disaster will be?

hemeantwell August 21, 2015 at 9:32 am

After a skimmy read of the post and reading James' lead-off comment re emperors (Brooklin Bridge comment re misuse is somewhat resonant) it seems to me that a distinguishing feature of systems is not being addressed and therefore being treated as though it's irrelevant.

What about the mandate for a system to have an overarching, empowered regulatory agent, one that could presumably learn from the reflections contained in this post? In much of what is posted here at NC writers give due emphasis to the absence/failure of a range of regulatory functions relevant to this stage of capitalism. These run from SEC corruption to the uncontrolled movement of massive amount of questionably valuable value in off the books transactions between banks, hedge funds etc. This system intentionally has a deliberately weakened control/monitoring function, ideologically rationalized as freedom but practically justified as maximizing accumulation possibilities for the powerful. It is self-lobotomizing, a condition exacerbated by national economic territories (to some degree). I'm not going to now jump up with 3 cheers for socialism as capable of resolving problems posed by capitalism. But, to stay closer to the level of abstraction of the article, doesn't the distinction between distributed opacity + unregulated concentrations of power vs. transparency + some kind of central governing authority matter? Maybe my Enlightenment hubris is riding high after the morning coffee, but this is a kind of self-awareness that assumes its range is limited, even as it posits that limit. Hegel was all over this, which isn't to say he resolved the conundrum, but it's not even identified here.

Ormond Otvos August 21, 2015 at 5:06 pm

Think of Trump as the pimple finally coming to a head: he's making the greed so obvious, and pissing off so many people that some useful regulation might occur.

Another thought about world social collapse: if such a thing is likely, (and I'm sure the PTB know if it is, judging from the reports from the Pentagon about how Global Warming being a national security concern) wouldn't it be a good idea to have a huge ability to overpower the rest of the world?

We might be the only nation that survives as a nation, and we might actually have an Empire of the World, previously unattainable. Maybe SkyNet is really USANet. It wouldn't require any real change in the national majority of creepy grabby people.

Jim August 21, 2015 at 9:43 am

Government bureaucrats and politicians pursue their own interests just as businessmen do. Pollution was much worst in the non-capitalist Soviet Union, East Germany and Eastern Europe than it was in the Capitalist West. Chernobyl happened under socialism not capitalism. The present system in China, although not exactly "socialism", certainly involves a massively powerful govenment but a glance at the current news shows that massive governmental power does not necessarily prevent accidents. The agency problem is not unique to or worse in capitalism than in other systems.

Holly August 21, 2015 at 9:51 am

I'd throw in the theory of cognitive dissonance as an integral part of the failure of complex systems. (Example Tarvis and Aronon's recent book: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by me))

We are more apt to justify bad decisions, with bizarre stories, than to accept our own errors (or mistakes of people important to us). It explains (but doesn't make it easier to accept) the complete disconnect between accepted facts and fanciful justifications people use to support their ideas/organization/behavior.

craazymann August 21, 2015 at 10:03 am

I think this one suffers "Metaphysical Foo Foo Syndrome" MFFS. That means use of words to reference realities that are inherently ill-defined and often unobservable leading to untestable theories and deeply personal approaches to epistemological reasoning.

just what is a 'complex system"? A system implies a boundary - there are things part of the system and things outside the system. That's a hard concept to identify - just where the system ends and something else begins. So when 'the system' breaks down, it's hard to tell with any degree of testable objectivity whether the breakdown resulted from "the system" or from something outside the system and the rest was just "an accident that could have happened to anybody'"

maybe the idea is; '"if something breaks down at the worst possible time and in a way that fkks everything up, then it must have been a complex system". But it could also have been a simple system that ran into bad luck. Consider your toilet. Maybe you put too much toilet paper in it, and it clogged. Then it overflowed and ran out into your hallway with your shit everywhere. Then you realized you had an expensive Chinese rug on the floor. oh no! That was bad. you were gonna put tthat rug away as soon as you had a chance to admire it unrolled. Why did you do that? Big fckk up. But it wasn't a complex system. It was just one of those things.

susan the other August 21, 2015 at 12:14 pm

thanks for that, I think

Gio Bruno August 21, 2015 at 2:27 pm

Actually, it was a system too complex for this individual. S(He) became convinced the plumbing would work as it had previously. But doo to poor maintenance, too much paper, or a stiff BM the "system" didn't work properly. There must have been opportunity to notice something anomalous, but appropriate oversight wasn't applied.

Oregoncharles August 21, 2015 at 3:29 pm

You mean the BM was too tightly coupled?

craazyman August 21, 2015 at 4:22 pm

It coould happen to anybody after enough pizza and red wine

people weren't meant to be efficient. paper towels and duct tape can somettmes help

This ocurred to me: The entire 1960s music revolution would't have happened if anybody had to be efficient about hanging out and jamming. You really have to lay around and do nothing if you want to achieve great things. You need many opportunities to fail and learn before the genius flies. That's why tightly coupled systems are self-defeating. Because they wipe too many people out before they've had a chance to figure out the universe.

JustAnObserver August 21, 2015 at 3:01 pm

Excellent example of tight coupling: Toilet -> Floor -> Hallway -> $$$ Rug

Fix: Apply Break coupling procedure #1: Shut toilet door.
Then: Procedure #2 Jam inexpensive old towels in gap at the bottom.

As with all such measures this buys the most important thing of all – time. In this case to get the $$$Rug out of the way.

IIRC one of Bookstaber's points was that that, in the extreme, tight coupling allows problems to propagate through the system so fast and so widely that we have no chance to mitigate before they escalate to disaster.

washunate August 21, 2015 at 10:03 am

To put it more simply, the drift of both economic and business thinking has been to optimize activity for efficiency.

I think that's an interesting framework. I would say effeciency is achieving the goal in the most effective manner possible. Perhaps that's measured in energy, perhaps labor, perhaps currency units, but whatever the unit of measure, you are minimizing that input cost.

What our economics and business thinking (and most importantly, political thinking) has primarily been doing, I would say, is not optimizing for efficiency. Rather, they are changing the goal being optimized. The will to power has replaced efficiency as the actual outcome.

Unchecked theft, looting, predation, is not efficient. Complexity and its associated secrecy is used to hide the inefficiency, to justify and promote that which would not otherwise stand scrutiny in the light of day.

BigEd August 21, 2015 at 10:11 am

What nonsense. All around us 'complex systems' (airliners, pipelines, coal mines, space stations, etc.) have become steadily LESS prone to failure/disaster over the decades. We are near the stage where the only remaining danger in air travel is human error. We will soon see driverless cars & trucks, and you can be sure accident rates will decline as the human element is taken out of their operation.

tegnost August 21, 2015 at 12:23 pm

see fukushima, lithium batteries spontaneously catching fire, financial engineering leading to collapse unless vast energy is invested in them to re stabilize Driverless cars and trucks are not that soon, tech buddies say ten years I say malarkey based on several points made in the article, while as brooklyn bridge points out public transit languishes, and washunate points out that trains and other more efficient means of locomotion are starved while more complex methods have more energy thrown at them which could be better applied elsewhere. I think you're missing the point by saying look at all our complex systems, they work fine and then you ramble off a list of things with high failure potential and say look they haven't broken yet, while things that have broken and don't support your view are left out. By this mechanism safety protocols are eroded (that accident you keep avoiding hasn't happened, which means you're being too cautious so your efficiency can be enhanced by not worrying about it until it happens then you can fix it but as pointed out above tightly coupled systems can't react fast enough at which point we all have to hear the whocoodanode justification )

susan the other August 21, 2015 at 12:34 pm

And the new points of failure will be what?

susan the other August 21, 2015 at 3:00 pm

So here's a question. What is the failure heirarchy. And why don't those crucial nodes of failsafe protect the system. Could it be that we don't know what they are?

Moneta August 22, 2015 at 8:09 am

While 90% of people were producing food a few decades ago, I think a large percentage will be producing energy in a few decades right now we are still propping up our golf courses and avoiding investing in pipelines and refineries. We are still exploiting the assets of the 50s and 60s to live our hyper material lives. Those investments are what gave us a few decades of consumerism.

Now everyone wants government to spend on infra without even knowing what needs to go and what needs to stay. Maybe half of Californians need to get out of there and forget about building more infra there just a thought.

America still has a frontier ethos how in the world can the right investments in infra be made with a collection of such values?

We're going to get city after city imploding. More workers producing energy and less leisure over the next few decades. That's what breakdown is going to look like.

Moneta August 22, 2015 at 8:22 am

Flying might get safer and safer while we get more and more cities imploding.

Just like statues on Easter Island were getting increasingly elaborate as trees were disappearing.

ian August 21, 2015 at 4:02 pm

What you say is true, but only if you have a sufficient number of failures to learn from. A lot of planes had to crash for air travel to be as safe as it is today.

wm.annis August 21, 2015 at 10:19 am

I am surprised to see no reference to John Gall's General Systematics in this discussion, an entire study of systems and how they misbehave. I tend to read it from the standpoint of managing a complex IT infrastructure, but his work starts from human systems (organizations).

The work is organized around aphorisms - Systems tend to oppose their own proper function - The real world is what it is reported to the system - but one or two from this paper should be added to that repertoire. Point 7 seems especially important. From Gall, I have come to especially appreciate the Fail-Safe Theorem: "when a Fail-Safe system fails, it fails by failing to fail safe."

flora August 21, 2015 at 10:32 am

Instead of writing something long and rambling about complex systems being aggregates of smaller, discrete systems, each depending on a functioning and accurate information processing/feedback (not IT) system to maintain its coherence; and upon equally well functioning feedback systems between the parts and the whole - instead of that I'll quote a poem.

" Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; "

-Yates, "The Second Coming"

flora August 21, 2015 at 10:46 am

erm make that "Yeats", as in W.B.

Steve H. August 21, 2015 at 11:03 am

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.

– Swift

LifelongLib August 21, 2015 at 7:38 pm

IIRC in Robert A. Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters" there's a different version:

Big fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas
And so, ad infinitum.

Since the story is about humans being parasitized and controlled by alien "slugs" that sit on their backs, and the slugs in turn being destroyed by an epidemic disease started by the surviving humans, the verse has a macabre appropriateness.

LifelongLib August 21, 2015 at 10:14 pm

Original reply got eaten, so I hope not double post. Robert A. Heinlein's (and others?) version:

Big fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em
And little fleas have lesser fleas
And so ad infinitum!

Lambert Strether August 21, 2015 at 10:26 pm

The order Siphonoptera .

Oregoncharles August 21, 2015 at 10:59 pm

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

I can't leave that poem without its ending – especially as it becomes ever more relevant.

Oldeguy August 21, 2015 at 11:02 am

Terrific post- just the sort of thing that has made me a NC fan for years.
I'm a bit surprised that the commentators ( thus far ) have not referred to the Financial Crisis of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession as being an excellent example of Cook's failure analysis.

Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera's

All The Devils Are Here www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/159184438X/

describes beautifully how the erosion of the protective mechanisms in the U.S. financial system, no single one of which would have of itself been deadly in its absence ( Cook's Point 3 ) combined to produce the Perfect Storm.

It brought to mind Garett Hardin's The Tragedy Of The Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons . While the explosive growth of debt ( and therefore risk ) obviously jeopardized the entire system, it was very much within the narrow self interest of individual players to keep the growth ( and therefore the danger ) increasing.

Ormond Otvos August 21, 2015 at 5:14 pm

Bingo. Failure of the culture to properly train its members. Not so much a lack of morality as a failure to point out that when the temple falls, it falls on Samson.

The next big fix is to use the US military to wall off our entire country, maybe include Canada (language is important in alliances) during the Interregnum.

Why is no one mentioning the Foundation Trilogy and Hari Seldon here?

Deloss August 21, 2015 at 11:29 am

My only personal experience with the crash of a complex, tightly-coupled system was the crash of the trading floor of a very big stock exchange in the early part of this century. The developers were in the computer room, telling the operators NOT to roll back to the previous release, and the operators ignored them and did so anyway. Crash!

In Claus Jensen's fascinating account of the Challenger disaster, NO DOWNLINK, he describes how the managers overrode the engineers' warnings not to fly under existing weather conditions. We all know the result.

Human error was the final cause in both cases.

Now we are undergoing the terrible phenomenon of global warming, which everybody but Republicans, candidates and elected, seems to understand is real and catastrophic. The Republicans have a majority in Congress, and refuse–for ideological and monetary reasons–to admit that the problem exists. I think this is another unfolding disaster that we can ascribe to human error.

Ormond Otvos August 21, 2015 at 5:17 pm

"Human error" needs unpacking here. In this discussion, it's become a Deus ex Humanitas. Humans do what they do because their cultural experiences impel them to do so. Human plus culture is not the same as human. That's why capitalism doesn't work in a selfish society.

Oldeguy August 21, 2015 at 5:52 pm

" capitalism doesn't work in a selfish society "
Very true, not nearly so widely realized as it should be, and the Irony of Ironies .

BayesianGame August 21, 2015 at 11:48 am

But highly efficient systems are fragile. Formula One cars are optimized for speed and can only run one race.

Another problem with obsessing about (productive or technical) efficiency is that it usually means a narrow focus on the most measured or measurable inputs and outputs, to the detriment of less measurable but no less important aspects. Wages are easier to measure than the costs of turnover, including changes in morale, loss of knowledge and skill, and regard for the organization vs. regard for the individual. You want low cost fish? Well, it might be caught by slaves. Squeeze the measurable margins, and the hidden margins will move.

Donw August 21, 2015 at 3:18 pm

You hint at a couple fallacies.

1) Measuring what is easy instead of what is important.
2) Measuring many things and then optimizing all of them optimizes the whole.

Then, have some linear thinker try to optimize those in a complex system (like any organization involving humans) with multiple hidden and delayed feedback loops, and the result will certainly be unexpected. Whether for good or ill is going to be fairly unpredictable unless someone has actually looked for the feedback loops.

IsabelPS August 21, 2015 at 1:02 pm

Very good.

It's nice to see well spelled out a couple of intuitions I've had for a long time. For example, that we are going in the wrong direction when we try to streamline instead of following the path of biology: redundancies, "dirtiness" and, of course, the king of mechanisms, negative feedback (am I wrong in thinking that the main failure of finance, as opposed to economy, is that it has inbuilt positive feedback instead of negative?). And yes, my professional experience has taught me that when things go really wrong it was never just one mistake, it is a cluster of those.

downunderer August 22, 2015 at 3:52 am

Yes, as you hint here, and I would make forcefully explicit: COMPLEX vs NOT-COMPLEX is a false dichotomy that is misleading from the start.

We ourselves, and all the organisms we must interact with in order to stay alive, are individually among the most complex systems that we know of. And the interactions of all of us that add up to Gaia are yet more complex. And still it moves.

Natural selection built the necessary stability features into our bodily complexity. We even have a word for it: homeostasis. Based on negative feedback loops that can keep the balancing act going. And our bodies are vastly more complex than our societies.

Society's problem right now is not complexity per se, but the exploitation of complexity by system components that want to hog the resources and to hell with the whole, quite exactly parallel to the behavior of cancer cells in our bodies when regulatory systems fail.

In our society's case, it is the intelligent teamwork of the stupidly selfish that has destroyed the regulatory systems. Instead of negative feedback keeping deviations from optimum within tolerable limits, we now have positive feedback so obvious it is trite: the rich get richer.

We not only don't need to de-complexify, we don't dare to. We really need to foster the intelligent teamwork that our society is capable of, or we will fail to survive challenges like climate change and the need to sensibly control the population. The alternative is to let natural selection do the job for us, using the old reliable four horsemen.

We are unlikely to change our own evolved selfishness, and probably shouldn't. But we need to control the monsters that we have created within our society. These monsters have all the selfishness of a human at his worst, plus several natural large advantages, including size, longevity, and the ability to metamorphose and regenerate. And as powerful as they already were, they have recently been granted all the legal rights of human citizens, without appropriate negative feedback controls. Everyone here will already know what I'm talking about, so I'll stop.

Peter Pan August 21, 2015 at 1:18 pm

Formula One cars are optimized for speed and can only run one race.

Actually I believe F1 has rules regarding the number of changes that can be made to a car during the season. This is typically four or five changes (replacements or rebuilds), so a F1 car has to be able to run more than one race or otherwise face penalties.

jo6pac August 21, 2015 at 1:41 pm

Yes, F-1 allows four power planets per-season it has been up dated lately to 5. There isn't anything in the air or ground as complex as a F-1 car power planet. The cars are feeding 30 or more engineers at the track and back home normal in England millions of bit of info per second and no micro-soft is not used but very complex programs watching every system in the car. A pit stop in F-1 is 2.7 seconds anything above 3.5 and your not trying hard enough.

Honda who pride themselves in Engineering has struggled in power planet design this year and admit they have but have put more engineers on the case. The beginning of this Tech engine design the big teams hired over 100 more engineers to solve the problems. Ferrari throw out the first design and did a total rebuild and it working.

This is how the world of F-1 has moved into other designs, long but a fun read.
http://www.wired.com/2015/08/mclaren-applied-technologies-f1/

I'm sure those in F-1 system designs would look at stories like this and would come to the conclusion that these nice people are the gate keepers and not the future. Yes, I'm a long time fan of F-1. Then again what do I know.

The sad thing in F-1 the gate keepers are the owners CVC.

Brooklin Bridge August 21, 2015 at 3:25 pm

Interesting comment! One has to wonder why every complex system can't be treated as the be-all. Damn the torpedos. Spare no expense! Maybe if we just admitted we are all doing absolutely nothing but going around in a big circle at an ever increasing speed, we could get a near perfect complex system to help us along.

Ormond Otvos August 21, 2015 at 5:21 pm

If the human race were as important as auto racing, maybe. But we know that's not true ;->

jo6pac August 21, 2015 at 5:51 pm

In the link it's the humans of McLaren that make all the decisions on the car and the race on hand. The link is about humans working together either in real race time or designing out problems created by others.

Marsha August 21, 2015 at 1:19 pm

Globalization factors in maximizing the impact of Murphy's Law:

  1. Meltdown potential of a globalized 'too big to fail' financial system associated with trade imbalances and international capital flows, and boom and bust impact of volatile "hot money".
  2. Environmental damage associated with inefficiency of excessive long long supply chains seeking cheap commodities and dirty polluting manufacturing zones.
  3. Military vulnerability of same long tightly coupled 'just in time" supply chains across vast oceans, war zones, choke points that are very easy to attack and nearly impossible to defend.
  4. Consumer product safety threat of manufacturing somewhere offshore out of sight out of mind outside the jurisdiction of the domestic regulatory system.
  5. Geographic concentration and contagion of risk of all kinds – fragile pattern of horizontal integration – manufacturing in China, finance in New York and London, industrialized mono culture agriculture lacking biodiversity (Iowa feeds the world). If all the bulbs on the Christmas tree are wired in series, it takes only one to fail and they all go out.

Globalization is not a weather event, not a thermodynamic process of atoms and molecules, not a principle of Newtonian physics, not water running downhill, but a hyper aggressive top down policy agenda by power hungry politicians and reckless bean counter economists. An agenda hell bent on creating a tightly coupled globally integrated unstable house of cards with a proven capacity for catastrophic (trade) imbalance, global financial meltdown, contagion of bad debt, susceptibility to physical threats of all kinds.

Synoia August 21, 2015 at 1:23 pm

Any complex system contains non-linear feedback. Management presumes it is their skill that keeps the system working over some limited range, where the behavior approximates linear. Outside those limits, the system can fail catastrophically. What is perceived as operating or management skill is either because the system is kept in "safe" limits, or just happenstance. See chaos theory.

Operators or engineers controlling or modifying the system are providing feedback. Feedback can push the system past "safe" limits. Once past safe limits, the system can fail catastrophically Such failure happen very quickly, and are always "a surprise".

Synoia August 21, 2015 at 1:43 pm

All complex system contain non-linear feedback, and all appear manageable over a small rage of operation, under specific conditions.

These are the systems' safe working limits, and sometimes the limits are known, but in many case the safe working limits are unknown (See Stock Markets).

All systems with non-linear feedback can and will fail, catastrophically.

All predicted by Chaos Theory. Best mathematical filed applicable to the real world of systems.

So I'll repeat. All complex system will fail when operating outside safe limits, change in the system, management induced and stimulus induced, can and will redefine those limits, with spectacular results.

We hope and pray system will remain within safe limits, but greed and complacency lead us humans to test those limits (loosen the controls), or enable greater levels of feedback (increase volumes of transactions). See Crash of 2007, following repeal of Glass-Stegal, etc.

Brooklin Bridge August 21, 2015 at 4:05 pm

It's Ronnie Ray Gun. He redefined it as, "Safe for me but not for thee." Who says you can't isolate the root?

Synoia August 21, 2015 at 5:25 pm

Ronnie Ray Gun was the classic example of a Manager.

Where one can only say: "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do"

Oregoncharles August 21, 2015 at 2:54 pm

Three quite different thoughts:

First, I don't think the use of "practitioner" is an evasion of agency. Instead, it reflects the very high level of generality inherent in systems theory. The pitfall is that generality is very close to vagueness. However, the piece does contain an argument against the importance of agency; it argues that the system is more important than the individual practitioners, that since catastrophic failures have multiple causes, individual agency is unimportant. That might not apply to practitioners with overall responsibility or who intentionally wrecked the system; there's a naive assumption that everyone's doing their best. I think the author would argue that control fraud is also a system failure, that there are supposed to be safeguards against malicious operators. Bill Black would probably agree. (Note that I dropped off the high level of generality to a particular example.)

Second, this appears to defy the truism from ecology that more complex systems are more stable. I think that's because ecologies generally are not tightly coupled. There are not only many parts but many pathways (and no "practitioners"). So "coupling" is a key concept not much dealt with in the article. It's about HUMAN systems, even though the concept should apply more widely than that.

Third, Yves mentioned the economists' use of "equilibrium." This keeps coming up; the way the word is used seems to me to badly need definition. It comes from chemistry, where it's used to calculate the production from a reaction. The ideal case is a closed system: for instance, the production of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen in a closed pressure chamber. You can calculate the proportion of ammonia produced from the temperature and pressure of the vessel. It's a fairly fast reaction, so time isn't a big factor.

The Earth is not a closed system, nor are economies. Life is driven by the flow of energy from the Sun (and various other factors, like the steady rain of material from space). In open systems, "equilibrium" is a constantly moving target. In principle, you could calculate the results at any given condition , given long enough for the many reactions to finish. It's as if the potential equilibrium drives the process (actually, the inputs do).

Not only is the target moving, but the whole system is chaotic in the sense that it's highly dependent on variables we can't really measure, like people, so the outcomes aren't actually predictable. That doesn't really mean you can't use the concept of equilibrium, but it has to be used very carefully. Unfortunately, most economists are pretty ignorant of physical science, so ignorant they insistently defy the laws of thermodynamics ("groaf"), so there's a lot of magical thinking going on. It's really ideology, so the misuse of "equilibrium" is just one aspect of the system failure.

Synoia August 21, 2015 at 5:34 pm

Really?

"equilibrium from chemistry, where it's used to calculate the production from a reaction"

That is certainly a definition in one scientific field.

There is another definition from physics.

When all the forces that act upon an object are balanced, then the object is said to be in a state of equilibrium.

However objects on a table are considered in equilibrium, until one considers an earthquake.

The condition for an equilibrium need to be carefully defined, and there are few cases, if any, of equilibrium "under all conditions."

nat scientist August 21, 2015 at 7:42 pm

Equilibrium ceases when Chemistry breaks out, dear Physicist.

Synoia August 21, 2015 at 10:19 pm

Equilibrium ceases when Chemistry breaks out

This is only a subset.

Oregoncharles August 21, 2015 at 10:56 pm

I avoided physics, being not so very mathematical, so learned the chemistry version – but I do think it's the one the economists are thinking of.

What I neglected to say: it's an analogy, hence potentially useful but never literally true – especially since there's no actual stopping point, like your table.

John Merryman August 21, 2015 at 3:09 pm

There is much simpler way to look at it, in terms of natural cycles, because the alternative is that at the other extreme, a happy medium is also a flatline on the big heart monitor. So the bigger it builds, the more tension and pressure accumulates. The issue then becomes as to how to leverage the consequences. As they say, a crisis should never be wasted. At its heart, there are two issues, economic overuse of resources and a financial medium in which the rent extraction has overwhelmed its benefits. These actually serve as some sort of balance, in that we are in the process of an economic heart attack, due to the clogging of this monetary circulation system, that will seriously slow economic momentum.

The need then is to reformulate how these relationships function, in order to direct and locate our economic activities within the planetary resources. One idea to take into consideration being that money functions as a social contract, though we treat it as a commodity. So recognizing it is not property to be collected, rather contracts exchanged, then there wouldn't be the logic of basing the entire economy around the creation and accumulation of notational value, to the detriment of actual value. Treating money as a public utility seems like socialism, but it is just an understanding of how it functions. Like a voucher system, simply creating excess notes to keep everyone happy is really, really stupid, big picture wise.

Obviously some parts of the system need more than others, but not simply for ego gratification. Like a truck needs more road than a car, but an expensive car only needs as much road as an economy car. The brain needs more blood than the feet, but it doesn't want the feet rotting off due to poor circulation either.
So basically, yes, complex systems are finite, but we need to recognize and address the particular issues of the system in question.

Bob Stapp August 21, 2015 at 5:30 pm

Perhaps in a too-quick scan of the comments, I overlooked any mention of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, Antifragile. If so, my apologies. If not, it's a serious omission from this discussion.

Local to Oakland August 21, 2015 at 6:34 pm

Thank you for this.

I first wondered about something related to this theme when I first heard about just in time sourcing of inventory. (Now also staff.) I wondered then whether this was possible because we (middle and upper class US citizens) had been shielded from war and other catastrophic events. We can plan based on everything going right because most of us don't know in our gut that things can always go wrong.

I'm genX, but 3 out of 4 of my grandparents were born during or just after WWI. Their generation built for redundancy, safety, stability. Our generation, well. We take risks and I'm not sure the decision makers have a clue that any of it can bite them.

Jeremy Grimm August 22, 2015 at 4:23 pm

The just-in-time supply of components for manufacturing was described in Barry Lynn's book "Cornered" and identified as creating extreme fragility in the American production system. There have already been natural disasters that shutdown American automobile production in our recent past.

Everything going right wasn't part of the thinking that went into just-in-time parts. Everything going right - long enough - to steal away market share on price-point was the thinking. Decision makers don't worry about any of this biting them. Passing the blame down and golden parachutes assure that.

flora August 21, 2015 at 7:44 pm

This is really a very good paper. My direct comments are:

point 2: yes. provided the safety shields are not discarded for bad reasons like expedience or ignorance or avarice. See Glass-Steagall Act, for example.

point 4: yes. true of all dynamic systems.

point 7: 'root cause' is not the same as 'key factors'. ( And here the doctor's sensitivity to malpractice suits may be guiding his language.) It is important to determine key factors in order to devise better safety shields for the system. Think airplane black boxes and the 1932 Pecora Commission after the 1929 stock market crash.

Jay M August 21, 2015 at 9:01 pm

It's easy, complexity became too complex. And I can't read the small print. We are devolving into a world of happy people with gardens full of flowers that they live in on their cell phones.

Ancaeus August 22, 2015 at 5:22 am

There are a number of counter-examples; engineered and natural systems with a high degree of complexity that are inherently stable and fault-tolerant, nonetheless.

1. Subsumption architecture is a method of controlling robots, invented by Rodney Brooks in the 1980s. This scheme is modeled on the way the nervous systems of animals work. In particular, the parts of the robot exist in a hierarchy of subsystems, e.g., foot, leg, torso, etc. Each of these subsystems is autonomously controlled. Each of the subsystems can override the autonomous control of its constituent subsystems. So, the leg controller can directly control the leg muscle, and can override the foot subsystem. This method of control was remarkably successful at producing walking robots which were not sensitive to unevenness of the surface. In other words, the were not brittle in the sense of Dr. Cook. Of course, subsumption architecture is not a panacea. But it is a demonstrated way to produce very complex engineered systems consisting of many interacting parts that are very stable.

2. The inverted pendulum Suppose you wanted to build a device to balance a pencil on its point. You could imagine a sensor to detect the angle of the pencil, an actuator to move the balance point, and a controller to link the two in a feedback loop. Indeed, this is, very roughly, how a Segway remains upright. However, there is a simpler way to do it, without a sensor or a feedback controller. It turns out that if your device just moves the balance point sinusoidaly (e.g., in a small circle) and if the size of the circle and the rate are within certain ranges, then the pencil will be stable. This is a well-known consequence of the Mathieu equation. The lesson here is that stability (i.e., safety) can be inherent in systems for subtle reasons that defy a straightforward fault/response feedback.

3. Emergent behavior of swarms Large numbers of very simple agents interacting with one another can sometimes exhibit complex, even "intelligent" behavior. Ants are a good example. Each ant has only simple behavior. However, the entire ant colony can act in complex and effective ways that would be hard to predict from the individual ant behaviors. A typical ant colony is highly resistant to disturbances in spite of the primitiveness of its constituent ants.

4. Another example is the mammalian immune system that uses negative selection as one mechanism to avoid attacking the organism itself. Immature B cells are generated in large numbers at random, each one with receptors for specifically configured antigens. During maturation, if they encounter a matching antigen (likely a protein of the organism) then the B cell either dies, or is inactivated. At maturity, what is left is a highly redundant cohort of B cells that only recognize (and neutralize) foreign antigens.

Well, these are just a few examples of systems that exhibit stability (or fault-tolerance) that defies the kind of Cartesian analysis in Dr. Cook's article.

Marsha August 22, 2015 at 11:42 am

Glass-Steagall Act: interactions between unrelated functionality is something to be avoided. Auto recall: honking the horn could stall the engine by shorting out the ignition system. Simple fix is is a bit of insulation.

ADA software language: Former DOD standard for large scale safety critical software development: encapsulation, data hiding, strong typing of data, minimization of dependencies between parts to minimize impact of fixes and changes. Has safety critical software gone the way of the Glass-Steagall Act? Now it is buffer overflows, security holes, and internet protocol in hardware control "critical infrastructure" that can blow things up.

[Dec 01, 2017] Neocon Chaos Promotion in the Mideast

Highly recommended!
It's interesting to reread this two years article by
Here is an extremely shred observation: "I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster.
Notable quotes:
"... how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia "won't stop us." ..."
"... the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East. ..."
"... the significance of Clark's depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, "the Soviets won't stop us." ..."
"... Would the neocons – widely known as "the crazies" at least among the remaining sane people of Washington – have been crazy enough to opt for war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991? ..."
"... The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their "regime change" scheme in the Middle East may have been what Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century." Putin's comment has been a favorite meme of those who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe. ..."
"... Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States. ..."
"... I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster. ..."
"... "We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." ..."
"... the scene was surreal – funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth, behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl. ..."
"... In her article, entitled "Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria," Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria's (then) 2 ˝-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome: ..."
"... In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren's article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad. ..."
"... "The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren said in an interview . "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda. ..."
"... In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said. ..."
"... That Syria's main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out. ..."
"... As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn't all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress. ..."
"... Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren's report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, divulged some details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled. In doing so, Corker called Obama's abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, "the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I've been here." Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented) with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. ..."
"... Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's foreign policy/defense adviser, no doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of "bedlam? ..."
Apr 15, 2015 | antiwar.com
Former Washington insider and four-star General Wesley Clark spilled the beans several years ago on how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia "won't stop us."

As I recently reviewed a YouTube eight-minute clip of General Clark's October 2007 speech, what leaped out at me was that the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East.

While Clark's public exposé largely escaped attention in the neocon-friendly "mainstream media" (surprise, surprise!), he recounted being told by a senior general at the Pentagon shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 about the Donald Rumsfeld/Paul Wolfowitz-led plan for "regime change" in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.

This was startling enough, I grant you, since officially the United States presents itself as a nation that respects international law, frowns upon other powerful nations overthrowing the governments of weaker states, and – in the aftermath of World War II – condemned past aggressions by Nazi Germany and decried Soviet "subversion" of pro-U.S. nations.

But what caught my eye this time was the significance of Clark's depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, "the Soviets won't stop us."

That remark directly addresses a question that has troubled me since March 2003 when George W. Bush attacked Iraq. Would the neocons – widely known as "the crazies" at least among the remaining sane people of Washington – have been crazy enough to opt for war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991?

The question is not an idle one. Despite the debacle in Iraq and elsewhere, the neocon "crazies" still exercise huge influence in Establishment Washington. Thus, the question now becomes whether, with Russia far more stable and much stronger, the "crazies" are prepared to risk military escalation with Russia over Ukraine, what retired U.S. diplomat William R. Polk deemed a potentially dangerous nuclear confrontation, a "Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse."

Putin's Comment

The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their "regime change" scheme in the Middle East may have been what Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century." Putin's comment has been a favorite meme of those who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe.

But, commenting two years after the Iraq invasion, Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States.

If one takes a step back and attempts an unbiased look at the spread of violence in the Middle East over the past quarter-century, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Putin's comment was on the mark. With Russia a much-weakened military power in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was nothing to deter U.S. policymakers from the kind of adventurism at Russia's soft underbelly that, in earlier years, would have carried considerable risk of armed U.S.-USSR confrontation.

I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster.

Visiting Wolfowitz

In his 2007 speech, General Clark related how in early 1991 he dropped in on Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (and later, from 2001 to 2005, Deputy Secretary of Defense). It was just after a major Shia uprising in Iraq in March 1991. President George H.W. Bush's administration had provoked it, but then did nothing to rescue the Shia from brutal retaliation by Saddam Hussein, who had just survived his Persian Gulf defeat.

According to Clark, Wolfowitz said: "We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us."

It's now been more than 10 years, of course. But do not be deceived into thinking Wolfowitz and his neocon colleagues believe they have failed in any major way. The unrest they initiated keeps mounting – in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Lebanon – not to mention fresh violence now in full swing in Yemen and the crisis in Ukraine. Yet, the Teflon coating painted on the neocons continues to cover and protect them in the "mainstream media."

True, one neocon disappointment is Iran. It is more stable and less isolated than before; it is playing a sophisticated role in Iraq; and it is on the verge of concluding a major nuclear agreement with the West – barring the throwing of a neocon/Israeli monkey wrench into the works to thwart it, as has been done in the past.

An earlier setback for the neocons came at the end of August 2013 when President Barack Obama decided not to let himself be mouse-trapped by the neocons into ordering U.S. forces to attack Syria. Wolfowitz et al. were on the threshold of having the U.S. formally join the war against Bashar al-Assad's government of Syria when there was the proverbial slip between cup and lip. With the aid of the neocons' new devil-incarnate Vladimir Putin, Obama faced them down and avoided war.

A week after it became clear that the neocons were not going to get their war in Syria, I found myself at the main CNN studio in Washington together with Paul Wolfowitz and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, another important neocon. As I reported in "How War on Syria Lost Its Way," the scene was surreal – funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth, behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl.

Israeli/Neocon Preferences

But the neocons are nothing if not resilient. Despite their grotesque disasters, like the Iraq War, and their disappointments, like not getting their war on Syria, they neither learn lessons nor change goals. They just readjust their aim, shooting now at Putin over Ukraine as a way to clear the path again for "regime change" in Syria and Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Why Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia."]

The neocons also can take some solace from their "success" at enflaming the Middle East with Shia and Sunni now at each other's throats – a bad thing for many people of the world and certainly for the many innocent victims in the region, but not so bad for the neocons. After all, it is the view of Israeli leaders and their neocon bedfellows (and women) that the internecine wars among Muslims provide at least some short-term advantages for Israel as it consolidates control over the Palestinian West Bank.

In a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity memorandum for President Obama on Sept. 6, 2013, we called attention to an uncommonly candid report about Israeli/neocon motivation, written by none other than the Israel-friendly New York Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem Jodi Rudoren on Sept. 2, 2013, just two days after Obama took advantage of Putin's success in persuading the Syrians to allow their chemical weapons to be destroyed and called off the planned attack on Syria, causing consternation among neocons in Washington.

Rudoren can perhaps be excused for her naďve lack of "political correctness." She had been barely a year on the job, had very little prior experience with reporting on the Middle East, and – in the excitement about the almost-attack on Syria – she apparently forgot the strictures normally imposed on the Times' reporting from Jerusalem. In any case, Israel's priorities became crystal clear in what Rudoren wrote.

In her article, entitled "Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria," Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria's (then) 2 ˝-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome:

"For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad's government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

"'This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don't want one to win - we'll settle for a tie,' said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. 'Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that's the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there's no real threat from Syria.'"

Clear enough? If this is the way Israel's leaders continue to regard the situation in Syria, then they look on deeper U.S. involvement – overt or covert – as likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict there. The longer Sunni and Shia are killing each other, not only in Syria but also across the region as a whole, the safer Tel Aviv's leaders calculate Israel is.

Favoring Jihadis

But Israeli leaders have also made clear that if one side must win, they would prefer the Sunni side, despite its bloody extremists from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren's article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.

"The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren said in an interview. "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said.

Netanyahu sounded a similar theme in his March 3, 2015 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he trivialized the threat from the Islamic State with its "butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube" when compared to Iran, which he accused of "gobbling up the nations" of the Middle East.

That Syria's main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out.

As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn't all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress.

Corker Uncorked

Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren's report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, divulged some details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled. In doing so, Corker called Obama's abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, "the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I've been here." Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented) with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.

Corker complained, "In essence – I'm sorry to be slightly rhetorical – we jumped into Putin's lap." A big No-No, of course – especially in Congress – to "jump into Putin's lap" even though Obama was able to achieve the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons without the United States jumping into another Middle East war.

It would have been nice, of course, if General Clark had thought to share his inside-Pentagon information earlier with the rest of us. In no way should he be seen as a whistleblower.

At the time of his September 2007 speech, he was deep into his quixotic attempt to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. In other words, Clark broke the omerta code of silence observed by virtually all U.S. generals, even post-retirement, merely to put some distance between himself and the debacle in Iraq – and win some favor among anti-war Democrats. It didn't work, so he endorsed Hillary Clinton; that didn't work, so he endorsed Barack Obama.

Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's foreign policy/defense adviser, no doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of "bedlam?"

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern served for considerable periods in all four of CIA's main directorates.

Reprinted with permission from Consortium News.

[Feb 24, 2017] Andrew Bacevich Washington in Wonderland, Down the Iraq Rabbit Hole(Again)

Notable quotes:
"... *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. ..."
Jun 20, 2015 | naked capitalism

digi_owl June 19, 2015 at 5:39 am

The big F fascism of the 1930s may be "gone", but its basic tenets live on.

hell, i'll claim right here and now that USA is potentially a single leadership change away from going overtly fascist.

And its foreign policy is backing many potential fascists as well.

participant-observer-observed June 19, 2015 at 6:40 am

"single leadership change away"

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.

Your day has arrived, friend.

NotTimothyGeithner June 19, 2015 at 9:48 am

*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.

There isn't a full blown aspect to fascism.

Gio Bruno June 19, 2015 at 1:27 pm

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.

Otter June 20, 2015 at 2:34 am

Russians were outraged. But, came down hard?

Pussy Rioters served less time than US Terrorists serve waiting to be dismissed without charge.

Nick June 19, 2015 at 6:02 am

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.

James Levy June 19, 2015 at 6:59 am

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?

Nick June 19, 2015 at 8:02 am

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.

lolcar June 19, 2015 at 9:08 am

One more Friedman Unit, huh. That'll be about 19 FUs since we first heard that the next six months would be critical.

NotTimothyGeithner June 19, 2015 at 9:53 am

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.

lolcar June 19, 2015 at 10:14 am

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.

sufferinsuccotash June 19, 2015 at 1:27 pm

Your second point is the real kicker. The overriding US (and Western) policy regarding the Middle East should be: Keep The Fossil Fuels In The Ground.

DJG June 19, 2015 at 9:36 am

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?}

How long have you been on the White House staff?

sleepy June 19, 2015 at 9:56 am

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.

Pepsi June 20, 2015 at 12:40 pm

There are several problems with your information.

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.

Doug June 19, 2015 at 6:52 am

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.

Carla June 19, 2015 at 8:05 am

I would love to know what Andrew Bacevitch thinks of Michael Glennon's little book "National Security and Double Government."

Mbuna June 19, 2015 at 9:13 am

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.

Raj June 19, 2015 at 2:37 pm

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.

Larry Headlund June 19, 2015 at 9:35 am

If only Iraq had strong leadership that could maintain order; leadership hostile both to Islamic fundamentalism and to Iran.

short memory June 19, 2015 at 1:26 pm

I was under the impression that Saddam Hussein fit that bill rather nicely. Whatever happened to him?

ambrit June 19, 2015 at 9:40 am

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.

MikeNY June 19, 2015 at 10:16 am

Andrew Bacevich for President, or Czar, or at least Secretary of Defense.

Right now, the lunatics in DC are running the asylum.

RUKidding June 19, 2015 at 10:43 am

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 .

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL June 19, 2015 at 5:00 pm

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.

Steve June 19, 2015 at 11:56 am

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.

Cebepe June 19, 2015 at 3:18 pm

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.

bh2 June 19, 2015 at 11:11 pm

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?

[Feb 23, 2017] The American Century Has Plunged the World Into Crisis. What Happens Now?

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-ŕ-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. ..."
Jun 22, 2015 | fpif.org

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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-ŕ-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.

[Feb 21, 2017] Lawrence Wilkerson Travails of Empire - Oil, Debt, Gold and the Imperial Dollar

Notable quotes:
"... The BRICS want to use oil to "force the US to lose its incredibly powerful role in owning the world's transactional reserve currency." It gives the US a great deal of power of empire that it would not ordinarily have, since the ability to add debt without consequence enables the expenditures to sustain it. ..."
"... Later, after listening to this again, the thought crossed my mind that this advisor might be a double agent using the paranoia of the military to achieve the ends of another. Not for the BRICS, but for the Banks. The greatest beneficiary of a strong dollar, which is a terrible burden to the real economy, is the financial sector. This is why most countries seek to weaken or devalue their currencies to improve their domestic economies as a primary objective. This is not so far-fetched as military efforts to provoke 'regime change' have too often been undertaken to support powerful commercial interests. ..."
"... A typical observation is that the US did indeed overthrow the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 in Iran. But 'the British needed the money' from the Anglo-Iranian oil company in order to rebuild after WW II. Truman had rejected the notion, but Eisenhower the military veteran and Republic agreed to it. Wilkerson says specifically that Ike was 'the last expert' to hold the office of the Presidency. ..."
Aug 15, 2015 | Jesse's Café Américain
"We are imperial, and we are in decline... People are losing confidence in the Empire."
This is the key theme of Larry Wilkerson's presentation. He never really questions whether empire is good or bad, sustainable or not, and at what costs. At least he does not so in the same manner as that great analyst of empire Chalmers Johnson.

It is important to understand what people who are in and near positions of power are thinking if you wish to understand what they are doing, and what they are likely to do. What ought to be done is another matter.

Wilkerson is a Republican establishment insider who has served for many years in the military and the State Department. Here he is giving about a 40 minute presentation to the Centre For International Governance in Canada in 2014.

I find his point of view of things interesting and revealing, even on those points where I may not agree with his perspective. There also seem to be some internal inconsistencies in this thinking.

But what makes his perspective important is that it represents a mainstream view of many professional politicians and 'the Establishment' in America. Not the hard right of the Republican party, but much of what constitutes the recurring political establishment of the US.

As I have discussed here before, I do not particularly care so much if a trading indicator has a fundamental basis in reality, as long as enough people believe in and act on it. Then it is worth watching as self-fulfilling prophecy. And the same can be said of political and economic memes.

At minute 48:00 Wilkerson gives a response to a question about the growing US debt and of the role of the petrodollar in the Empire, and the efforts by others to 'undermine it' by replacing it. This is his 'greatest fear.'

He speaks about 'a principal advisor to the CIA Futures project' and the National Intelligence Council (NIC), whose views and veracity of claims are being examined closely by sophisticated assets. He believes that both Beijing and Moscow are complicit in an attempt to weaken the dollar.

This includes the observation that "gold is being moved in sort of unique ways, concentrated in secret in unique ways, and capitals are slowly but surely divesting themselves of US Treasuries. So what you are seeing right now in the supposed strengthening of the dollar is a false impression."

The BRICS want to use oil to "force the US to lose its incredibly powerful role in owning the world's transactional reserve currency." It gives the US a great deal of power of empire that it would not ordinarily have, since the ability to add debt without consequence enables the expenditures to sustain it.

Later, after listening to this again, the thought crossed my mind that this advisor might be a double agent using the paranoia of the military to achieve the ends of another. Not for the BRICS, but for the Banks. The greatest beneficiary of a strong dollar, which is a terrible burden to the real economy, is the financial sector. This is why most countries seek to weaken or devalue their currencies to improve their domestic economies as a primary objective. This is not so far-fetched as military efforts to provoke 'regime change' have too often been undertaken to support powerful commercial interests.

Here is just that particular excerpt of the Q&A and the question of increasing US debt.

I am not sure how much the policy makers and strategists agree with this theory about gold. But there is no doubt in my mind that they believe and are acting on the theory that oil, and the dollar control of oil, the so-called petrodollar, is the key to maintaining the empire.

Wilkerson reminds me very much of a political theoretician who I knew at Georgetown University. He talks about strategic necessities, the many occasions in which the US has used its imperial power covertly to overthrow or attempt to overthrow governments in Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and the Ukraine. He tends to ascribe all these actions to selflessness, and American service to the world in maintaining a balance of power where 'all we ask is a plot of ground to bury our dead.'

A typical observation is that the US did indeed overthrow the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 in Iran. But 'the British needed the money' from the Anglo-Iranian oil company in order to rebuild after WW II. Truman had rejected the notion, but Eisenhower the military veteran and Republic agreed to it. Wilkerson says specifically that Ike was 'the last expert' to hold the office of the Presidency.

This is what is meant by realpolitik. It is all about organizing the world under a 'balance of power' that is favorable to the Empire and the corporations that have sprung up around it.

As someone with a long background and interest in strategy I am not completely unsympathetic to these lines of thinking. But like most broadly developed human beings and students of history and philosophy one can see that the allure of such thinking, without recourse to questions of restraint and morality and the fig leaf of exceptionalist thinking, is a terrible trap, a Faustian bargain. It is the rationalization of every nascent tyranny. It is the precursor to the will to pure power for its own sake.

The challenges of empire now according to Wilkerson are:

  1. Disequilibrium of wealth - 1/1000th of the US owns 50% of its total wealth. The current economic system implies long term stagnation (I would say stagflation. The situation in the US is 1929, and in France, 1789. All the gains are going to the top.
  2. BRIC nations are rising and the Empire is in decline, largely because of US strategic miscalculations. The US is therefore pressing harder towards war in its desperation and desire to maintain the status quo. And it is dragging a lot of good and honest people into it with our NATO allies who are dependent on the US for their defense.
  3. There is a strong push towards regional government in the US that may intensify as global warming and economic developments present new challenges to specific areas. For example, the water has left the Southwest, and it will not be coming back anytime soon.
This presentation ends about minute 40, and then it is open to questions which is also very interesting.
Lawrence Wilkerson, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William Mary, and former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Related: Chalmers Johnson: Decline of Empire and the Signs of Decay

[Dec 24, 2015] Obama s foreign policy goals get a boost from plunging oil prices

Notable quotes:
"... At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States. ..."
The Washington Post

Plunging crude oil prices are diverting hundreds of billions of dollars away from the treasure chests of oil-exporting nations, putting some of the United States' adversaries under greater stress.

After two years of falling prices, the effects have reverberated across the globe, fueling economic discontent in Venezuela, changing Russia's economic and political calculations, and dampening Iranian leaders' hopes of a financial windfall when sanctions linked to its nuclear program will be lifted next year.

At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States.

"Cheap oil hurts revenues for some of our foes and helps some of our friends. The Europeans, South Koreans and Japanese - they're all winners," said Robert McNally, director for energy in President George W. Bush's National Security Council and now head of the Rapidan Group, a consulting firm. "It's not good for Russia, that's for sure, and it's not good for Iran."

... ... ...

In Iran, cheap oil is forcing the government to ratchet down expectations.

The much-anticipated lifting of sanctions as a result of the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program is expected to result in an additional half-million barrels a day of oil exports by the middle of 2016.

But at current prices, Iran's income from those sales will still fall short of revenue earned from constrained oil exports a year ago.

Moreover, low prices are making it difficult for Iran to persuade international oil companies to develop Iran's long-neglected oil and gas fields, which have been off limits since sanctions were broadened in 2012.

"Should Iran come out of sanctions, they will face a very different market than the one they had left in 2012," Amos Hochstein, the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, said in an interview. "They were forced to recede in a world of over $100 oil, and sanctions will be lifted at $36 oil. They will have to work harder to convince companies to come in and take the risk for supporting their energy infrastructure and their energy production."

Meanwhile, in Russia, low oil prices have compounded damage done by U.S. and European sanctions that were designed to target Russia's energy and financial sectors. And when Iran increases output, its grade of crude oil will most likely go to Europe, where it will compete directly with Russia's Urals oil, McNally said.

Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.

[Dec 24, 2015] Obama's foreign policy goals get a boost from plunging oil prices

Notable quotes:
"... At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States. ..."
The Washington Post

Plunging crude oil prices are diverting hundreds of billions of dollars away from the treasure chests of oil-exporting nations, putting some of the United States' adversaries under greater stress.

After two years of falling prices, the effects have reverberated across the globe, fueling economic discontent in Venezuela, changing Russia's economic and political calculations, and dampening Iranian leaders' hopes of a financial windfall when sanctions linked to its nuclear program will be lifted next year.

At a time of tension for U.S. international relations, cheap oil has dovetailed with some of the Obama administration's foreign policy goals: pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin, undermining the popularity of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and tempering the prospects for Iranian oil revenue. At the same time, it is pouring cash into the hands of consumers, boosting tepid economic recoveries in Europe, Japan and the United States.

"Cheap oil hurts revenues for some of our foes and helps some of our friends. The Europeans, South Koreans and Japanese - they're all winners," said Robert McNally, director for energy in President George W. Bush's National Security Council and now head of the Rapidan Group, a consulting firm. "It's not good for Russia, that's for sure, and it's not good for Iran."

... ... ...

In Iran, cheap oil is forcing the government to ratchet down expectations.

The much-anticipated lifting of sanctions as a result of the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program is expected to result in an additional half-million barrels a day of oil exports by the middle of 2016.

But at current prices, Iran's income from those sales will still fall short of revenue earned from constrained oil exports a year ago.

Moreover, low prices are making it difficult for Iran to persuade international oil companies to develop Iran's long-neglected oil and gas fields, which have been off limits since sanctions were broadened in 2012.

"Should Iran come out of sanctions, they will face a very different market than the one they had left in 2012," Amos Hochstein, the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, said in an interview. "They were forced to recede in a world of over $100 oil, and sanctions will be lifted at $36 oil. They will have to work harder to convince companies to come in and take the risk for supporting their energy infrastructure and their energy production."

Meanwhile, in Russia, low oil prices have compounded damage done by U.S. and European sanctions that were designed to target Russia's energy and financial sectors. And when Iran increases output, its grade of crude oil will most likely go to Europe, where it will compete directly with Russia's Urals oil, McNally said.

Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.

[Dec 23, 2015] The Neocons - Masters of Chaos

Notable quotes:
"... It's now clear that if Obama had ordered a major bombing campaign against Assad's military in early September 2013, he might have opened the gates of Damascus to a hellish victory by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists or the even more brutal Islamic State, since these terrorist groups have emerged as the only effective fighters against Assad. ..."
"... By late September 2013, the disappointed neocons were acting out their anger by taking aim at Putin. They recognized that a particular vulnerability for the Russian president was Ukraine and the possibility that it could be pulled out of Russia's sphere of influence and into the West's orbit. ..."
"... But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself." In other words, the new neocon hope was for "regime change" in Kiev and Moscow. [See Consortiumnews.com's " Neocons' Ukraine/Syria/Iran Gambit. "] ..."
"... Putin also had sidetracked that possible war with Iran by helping to forge an interim agreement constraining but not eliminating Iran's nuclear program. So, he became the latest target of neocon demonization, a process in which the New York Times and the Washington Post eagerly took the lead. ..."
"... As the political violence in Kiev escalated – with the uprising's muscle supplied by neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine – neocons within the Obama administration discussed how to "midwife" a coup against Yanukovych. Central to this planning was Victoria Nuland, who had been promoted to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and was urging on the protesters, even passing out cookies to protesters at Kiev's Maidan square. ..."
"... When the coup went down on Feb. 22 – spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias who seized government buildings and forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives – the U.S. State Department quickly deemed the new regime "legitimate" and the mainstream U.S. media dutifully stepped up the demonization of Yanukovych and Putin. ..."
"... Although Putin's position had been in support of Ukraine's status quo – i.e., retaining the elected president and the country's constitutional process – the crisis was pitched to the American people as a case of "Russian aggression" with dire comparisons made between Putin and Hitler, especially after ethnic Russians in the east and south resisted the coup regime in Kiev and Crimea seceded to rejoin Russia. ..."
"... Pressured by the Obama administration, the EU agreed to sanction Russia for its "aggression," touching off a tit-for-tat trade war with Moscow which reduced Europe's sale of farming and manufacturing goods to Russia and threatened to disrupt Russia's natural gas supplies to Europe. ..."
"... While the most serious consequences were to Ukraine's economy which went into freefall because of the civil war, some of Europe's most endangered economies in the south also were hit hard by the lost trade with Russia. Europe began to stagger toward the third dip in a triple-dip recession with European markets experiencing major stock sell-offs. ..."
Oct 17, 2014 | consortiumnews.com

If you're nervously watching the stock market gyrations and worrying about your declining portfolio or pension fund, part of the blame should go to America's neocons who continue to be masters of chaos, endangering the world's economy by instigating geopolitical confrontations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Of course, there are other factors pushing Europe's economy to the brink of a triple-dip recession and threatening to stop America's fragile recovery, too. But the neocons' "regime change" strategies, which have unleashed violence and confrontations across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and most recently Ukraine, have added to the economic uncertainty.

This neocon destabilization of the world economy began with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 under President George W. Bush who squandered some $1 trillion on the bloody folly. But the neocons' strategies have continued through their still-pervasive influence in Official Washington during President Barack Obama's administration.

The neocons and their "liberal interventionist" junior partners have kept the "regime change" pot boiling with the Western-orchestrated overthrow and killing of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the proxy civil war in Syria to oust Bashar al-Assad, the costly economic embargoes against Iran, and the U.S.-backed coup that ousted Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February.

All these targeted governments were first ostracized by the neocons and the major U.S. news organizations, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, which have become what amounts to neocon mouthpieces. Whenever the neocons decide that it's time for another "regime change," the mainstream U.S. media enlists in the propaganda wars.

The consequence of this cascading disorder has been damaging and cumulative. The costs of the Iraq War strapped the U.S. Treasury and left less government maneuvering room when Wall Street crashed in 2008. If Bush still had the surplus that he inherited from President Bill Clinton – rather than a yawning deficit – there might have been enough public money to stimulate a much-faster recovery.

President Obama also wouldn't have been left to cope with the living hell that the U.S. occupation brought to the people of Iraq, violent chaos that gave birth to what was then called "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" and has since rebranded itself "the Islamic State."

But Obama didn't do himself (or the world) any favors when he put much of his foreign policy in the hands of Democratic neocon-lites, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Bush holdovers, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus. At State, Clinton promoted the likes of neocon Victoria Nuland, the wife of arch-neocon Robert Kagan, and Obama brought in "liberal interventionists" like Samantha Power, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

In recent years, the neocons and "liberal interventionists" have become almost indistinguishable, so much so that Robert Kagan has opted to discard the discredited neocon label and call himself a "liberal interventionist." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's True Foreign Policy 'Weakness.'"]

Manipulating Obama

Obama, in his nearly six years as president, also has shied away from imposing his more "realistic" views about world affairs on the neocon/liberal-interventionist ideologues inside the U.S. pundit class and his own administration. He has been outmaneuvered by clever insiders (as happened in 2009 on the Afghan "surge") or overwhelmed by some Official Washington "group think" (as was the case in Libya, Syria, Iran and Ukraine).

Once all the "smart people" reach some collective decision that a foreign leader "must go," Obama usually joins the chorus and has shown only rare moments of toughness in standing up to misguided conventional wisdoms.

The one notable case was his decision in summer 2013 to resist pressure to destroy Syria's military after a Sarin gas attack outside Damascus sparked a dubious rush to judgment blaming Assad's regime. Since then, more evidence has pointed to a provocation by anti-Assad extremists who may have thought that the incident would draw in the U.S. military on their side. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Was Turkey Behind Syrian Sarin Attack?"]

It's now clear that if Obama had ordered a major bombing campaign against Assad's military in early September 2013, he might have opened the gates of Damascus to a hellish victory by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists or the even more brutal Islamic State, since these terrorist groups have emerged as the only effective fighters against Assad.

But the neocons and the "liberal interventionists" seemed oblivious to that danger. They had their hearts set on Syrian "regime change," so were furious when their dreams were dashed by Obama's supposed "weakness," i.e. his failure to do what they wanted. They also blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin who brokered a compromise with Assad in which he agreed to surrender all of Syria's chemical weapons while still denying a role in the Sarin attack.

By late September 2013, the disappointed neocons were acting out their anger by taking aim at Putin. They recognized that a particular vulnerability for the Russian president was Ukraine and the possibility that it could be pulled out of Russia's sphere of influence and into the West's orbit.

So, Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to sound the trumpet about Ukraine, which he called "the biggest prize."

But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself." In other words, the new neocon hope was for "regime change" in Kiev and Moscow. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Neocons' Ukraine/Syria/Iran Gambit."]

Destabilizing the World

Beyond the recklessness of plotting to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia, the neocon strategy threatened to shake Europe's fragile economic recovery from a painful recession, six years of jobless stress that had strained the cohesion of the European Union and the euro zone.

Across the Continent, populist parties from the Right and Left have been challenging establishment politicians over their inability to reverse the widespread unemployment and the growing poverty. Important to Europe's economy was its relationship with Russia, a major market for agriculture and manufactured goods and a key source of natural gas to keep Europe's industries humming and its houses warm.

The last thing Europe needed was more chaos, but that's what the neocons do best and they were determined to punish Putin for disrupting their plans for Syrian "regime change," an item long near the top of their agenda along with their desire to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," which Israel has cited as an "existential threat."

Putin also had sidetracked that possible war with Iran by helping to forge an interim agreement constraining but not eliminating Iran's nuclear program. So, he became the latest target of neocon demonization, a process in which the New York Times and the Washington Post eagerly took the lead.

To get at Putin, however, the first step was Ukraine where Gershman's NED was funding scores of programs for political activists and media operatives. These efforts fed into mass protests against Ukrainian President Yanukovych for balking at an EU association agreement that included a harsh austerity plan designed by the International Monetary Fund. Yanukovych opted instead for a more generous $15 billion loan deal from Putin.

As the political violence in Kiev escalated – with the uprising's muscle supplied by neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine – neocons within the Obama administration discussed how to "midwife" a coup against Yanukovych. Central to this planning was Victoria Nuland, who had been promoted to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and was urging on the protesters, even passing out cookies to protesters at Kiev's Maidan square.

According to an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland didn't think EU officials were being aggressive enough. "Fuck the EU," she said as she brainstormed how "to help glue this thing." She literally handpicked who should be in the post-coup government – "Yats is the guy," a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who would indeed become prime minister.

When the coup went down on Feb. 22 – spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias who seized government buildings and forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives – the U.S. State Department quickly deemed the new regime "legitimate" and the mainstream U.S. media dutifully stepped up the demonization of Yanukovych and Putin.

Although Putin's position had been in support of Ukraine's status quo – i.e., retaining the elected president and the country's constitutional process – the crisis was pitched to the American people as a case of "Russian aggression" with dire comparisons made between Putin and Hitler, especially after ethnic Russians in the east and south resisted the coup regime in Kiev and Crimea seceded to rejoin Russia.

Starting a Trade War

Pressured by the Obama administration, the EU agreed to sanction Russia for its "aggression," touching off a tit-for-tat trade war with Moscow which reduced Europe's sale of farming and manufacturing goods to Russia and threatened to disrupt Russia's natural gas supplies to Europe.

While the most serious consequences were to Ukraine's economy which went into freefall because of the civil war, some of Europe's most endangered economies in the south also were hit hard by the lost trade with Russia. Europe began to stagger toward the third dip in a triple-dip recession with European markets experiencing major stock sell-offs.

The dominoes soon toppled across the Atlantic as major U.S. stock indices dropped, creating anguish among many Americans just when it seemed the hangover from Bush's 2008 market crash was finally wearing off.

Obviously, there are other reasons for the recent stock market declines, including fears about the Islamic State's victories in Syria and Iraq, continued chaos in Libya, and exclusion of Iran from the global economic system – all partly the result of neocon ideology. There have been unrelated troubles, too, such as the Ebola epidemic in western Africa and various weather disasters.

But the world's economy usually can withstand some natural and manmade challenges. The real problem comes when a combination of catastrophes pushes the international financial system to a tipping point. Then, even a single event can dump the world into economic chaos, like what happened when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.

It's not clear whether the world is at such a tipping point today, but the stock market volatility suggests that we may be on the verge of another worldwide recession. Meanwhile, the neocon masters of chaos seem determined to keep putting their ideological obsessions ahead of the risks to Americans and people everywhere.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, 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.

[Dec 17, 2015] US militarism is Alice in Wonderland

economistsview.typepad.com
anne, December 17, 2015 at 11:50 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/world/asia/navy-seal-team-2-afghanistan-beating-death.html

December 16, 2015

Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Complaints of a Cover-Up
By NICHOLAS KULISH, CHRISTOPHER DREW and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

U.S. soldiers accused Afghan police and Navy SEALs of abusing detainees. But the SEAL command opted against a court-martial and cleared its men of wrongdoing.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Too much training to send to jail.

While E-4 Bergdahl does in captivity what several hundred officers did in Hanoi and gets life!

US militarism is Alice's Wonderland!

[Dec 17, 2015] US militarism is Alice in Wonderland

economistsview.typepad.com
anne, December 17, 2015 at 11:50 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/world/asia/navy-seal-team-2-afghanistan-beating-death.html

December 16, 2015

Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Complaints of a Cover-Up
By NICHOLAS KULISH, CHRISTOPHER DREW and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

U.S. soldiers accused Afghan police and Navy SEALs of abusing detainees. But the SEAL command opted against a court-martial and cleared its men of wrongdoing.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Too much training to send to jail.

While E-4 Bergdahl does in captivity what several hundred officers did in Hanoi and gets life!

US militarism is Alice's Wonderland!

[Dec 13, 2015] US military spending is currently $738.3 billion

Notable quotes:
"... military spending is currently $738.3 billion. ..."
"... Defense spending was 60.3% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2015. ..."
"... Defense spending was 23.1% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2015. ..."
"... Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015. ..."
economistsview.typepad.com

Economist's View

anne said...

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to anne...
"...about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military...."

I do not understand this figure since currently defense spending is running at $738.3 billion yearly or which 6% would be $44.3 billion:

http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

anne said in reply to anne...
Correcting Dean Baker:

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 7.4 percent ** of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

** http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to anne...
Dean Baker clarifies:

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

(I see my comment on military spending here created a bit of confusion. I was looking at the U.S. share of the commitment, 0.25 percent of its GDP and comparing it to the roughly 4.0 percent of GDP it spends on the military. That comes to 6 percent. I was not referring to the whole $100 billion.)

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

-- Dean Baker

djb said in reply to anne...
100,000,000,000/0.06 = 1.67 trillion
anne said in reply to djb...
$100 billion a year, ........about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military

100,000,000,000/0.06 = 1.67 trillion

[ This is incorrect, military spending is currently $738.3 billion. ]

anne said in reply to djb...
http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

January 15, 2015

Defense spending was 60.3% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2015.

(Billions of dollars)

$738.3 / $1,224.4 = 60.3%

Defense spending was 23.1% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $3,200.4 = 23.1%

Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $18,064.7 = 4.1%

djb said in reply to djb...
oh never mind I get it

.25 % is 6 percent of the percent us spends on military

the 40 trillion is the gdp of all the countries

got it

anne said in reply to djb...
"I get it:

.25 % is 6 percent of the percent US spends on military."

So .25 percent of United States GDP for climate change assistance to poor countries is 6 percent of the amount the US spends on the military.

.0025 x $18,064.7 billion GDP = $45.16 billion on climate change

$45.16 billion on climate change / $738.3 billion on the military = 0.61 or 6.1 percent of military spending

anne said in reply to anne...
United States climate change assistance to poor countries will be .25 percent of GDP or 6% of US military spending.
anne said in reply to anne...
What the United States commitment to climate change assistance for poor countries means is spending about $45.2 billion yearly or .25 percent of GDP. Whether the President can convince Congress to spend the $45 billion yearly will now have to be answered.
anne said in reply to djb...
"I get it:

.25 % is 6 percent of the [amount] US spends on military."

[ This is correct. ]

anne said in reply to djb...
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/in-paris-talks-rich-countries-pledged-0-25-percent-of-gdp-to-help-poor-countries

December 13, 2015

In Paris Talks, Rich Countries Pledged 0.25 Percent of GDP to Help Poor Countries

In case you were wondering about the importance of a $100 billion a year, * non-binding commitment, it's roughly 0.25 percent of rich country's $40 trillion annual GDP (about 6 percent of what the U.S. spends on the military). This counts the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia as rich countries. If China is included in that list, the commitment would be less than 0.2 percent of GDP.

(I see my comment on military spending here created a bit of confusion. I was looking at the U.S. share of the commitment, 0.25 percent of its GDP and comparing it to the roughly 4.0 percent of GDP it spends on the military. ** That comes to 6 percent. I was not referring to the whole $100 billion.)

* http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html

** http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2014&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

-- Dean Baker

anne said in reply to djb...
http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTableHtml.cfm?reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2007&903=5&906=q&905=2015&910=x&911=0

January 15, 2015

Defense spending was 4.1% of Gross Domestic Product in July through September 2015.

$738.3 / $18,064.7 = 4.1%

ilsm said in reply to anne...
UK is the only NATO nation beside the US that spend the suggested 2% of GDP. The rest run about 1.2%.

Small wonder they need US to run their wars of convenience.

More telling US pentagon spending is around 50% of world military spending and has not won anything in 60 years.

[Dec 12, 2015] Guyenot Who are the Neocons

Notable quotes:
"... The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.) ..."
"... Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either. ..."
"... He points out dual-citizen (Israel / USA) members and self proclaimed Zionists throughout cabinet level positions in the US government, international banking and controlling the US military. In private writings and occasionally in public, Neocons admit that America's war policies are actually Israel's war goals. (Examples provided.) ..."
"... American Jewish Committee ..."
"... Contemporary Jewish Record ..."
"... If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying . And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren ..."
"... Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech. ..."
"... believes that Truth is harmful to the common man and the social order and should be reserved for superior minds. ..."
"... nations derive their strength from their myths , which are necessary for government and governance. ..."
"... national myths have no necessary relationship with historical reality: they are socio-cultural constructions that the State has a duty to disseminate . ..."
"... to be effective, any national myth must be based on a clear distinction between good and evil ; it derives its cohesive strength from the hatred of an enemy nation. ..."
"... deception is the norm in political life ..."
"... Office of Special Plans ..."
"... The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy. ..."
"... the "chosen people" myth (God likes us best, we are better than you) ..."
"... the Holy Land myth (one area of real estate is more holy than another) ..."
"... General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran". ..."
"... Among them are brilliant strategists ..."
"... They operate unrestrained by the most basic moral principles upon which civilization is founded. They are undisturbed by compassion for the suffering of others. ..."
"... They use consciously and skillfully use deception and "myth-making" to shape policy ..."
"... They have infiltrated the highest levels of banking, US military, NATO and US government. ..."
Peak Prosperity

Mememonkey pointed my to a 2013 essay by Laurent Guyenot, a French historian and writer on the deep state, that addresses the question of "Who Are The Neoconservatives." If you would like to know about that group that sends the US military into battle and tortures prisoners of war in out name, you need to know about these guys.

First, if you are Jewish, or are a GREEN Meme, please stop and take a deep breath. Please put on your thinking cap and don't react. We are NOT disrespecting a religion, spiritual practice or a culture. We are talking about a radical and very destructive group hidden within a culture and using that culture. Christianity has similar groups and movements--the Crusades, the KKK, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, etc.

My personal investment: This question has been a subject of intense interest for me since I became convinced that 9/11 was an inside job, that the Iraq war was waged for reasons entirely different from those publically stated. I have been horrified to see such a shadowy, powerful group operating from a profoundly "pre-moral" developmental level-i.e., not based in even the most rudimentary principles of morality foundational to civilization.

Who the hell are these people?!

Goyenot's main points (with a touch of personal editorializing):

1. The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.)

Neoconservativism is essentially a modern right wing Jewish version of Machiavelli's political strategy. What characterizes the neoconservative movement is therefore not as much Judaism as a religious tradition, but rather Judiasm as a political project, i.e. Zionism, by Machiavellian means.

This is not a religious movement though it may use religions words and vocabulary. It is a political and military movement. They are not concerned with being close to God. This is a movement to expand political and military power. Some are Christian and Mormon, culturally.

Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either.

He points out dual-citizen (Israel / USA) members and self proclaimed Zionists throughout cabinet level positions in the US government, international banking and controlling the US military. In private writings and occasionally in public, Neocons admit that America's war policies are actually Israel's war goals. (Examples provided.)

2. Most American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and do NOT share the perspective of the radical Zionists.

The neoconservative movement, which is generally perceived as a radical (rather than "conservative") Republican right, is, in reality, an intellectual movement born in the late 1960s in the pages of the monthly magazine Commentary, a media arm of the American Jewish Committee, which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945. The Forward, the oldest American Jewish weekly, wrote in a January 6th, 2006 article signed Gal Beckerman: "If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren".

3. Intellectual Basis and Moral developmental level

Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech.

Other major points:

4. The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy.

[The]Pax Judaica will come only when "all the nations shall flow" to the Jerusalem temple, from where "shall go forth the law" (Isaiah 2:1-3). This vision of a new world order with Jerusalem at its center resonates within the Likudnik and neoconservative circles. At the Jerusalem Summit, held from October 12th to 14th, 2003 in the symbolically significant King David Hotel, an alliance was forged between Zionist Jews and Evangelical Christians around a "theopolitical" project, one that would consider Israel… "the key to the harmony of civilizations", replacing the United Nations that's become a "a tribalized confederation hijacked by Third World dictatorships": "Jerusalem's spiritual and historical importance endows it with a special authority to become a center of world's unity. [...] We believe that one of the objectives of Israel's divinely-inspired rebirth is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, foretold by the Prophets". Three acting Israeli ministers spoke at the summit, including Benjamin Netanyahu, and Richard Perle.

Jerusalem's dream empire is expected to come through the nightmare of world war. The prophet Zechariah, often cited on Zionist forums, predicted that the Lord will fight "all nations" allied against Israel. In a single day, the whole earth will become a desert, with the exception of Jerusalem, who "shall remain aloft upon its site" (14:10).

With more than 50 millions members, Christians United for Israel is a major political force in the U.S.. Its Chairman, pastor John Haggee, declared: "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West, [...] a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ".

And Guyenot concludes:

Is it possible that this biblical dream, mixed with the neo-Machiavellianism of Leo Strauss and the militarism of Likud, is what is quietly animating an exceptionally determined and organized ultra-Zionist clan? General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran".

Is it just a coincidence that the "seven nations" doomed to be destroyed by Israel form part of the biblical myths? …[W]hen Yahweh will deliver Israel "seven nations greater and mightier than yourself […] you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them."

My summary:

[Dec 06, 2015] The USA is number one small arms manufacturer in the world

peakoilbarrel.com
Glenn Stehle, 12/05/2015 at 2:54 pm
Ves,

There was an article in one of the Mexico City dailies today, written in response to the shootings in San Bernardino, that cited some numbers that were news to me:

1) The United States is the #1 small arms manufacturer in the world

2) 83% of small arms manufactured in the world are manufactured in the United States

3) The US's closest competitor is Russia, which manufactures 11% of the world's small arms

4) Small arms are the US's third largest export product, surpassed only by aircraft and agricultural products

5) The US market itself consumes 15 million small arms per year, and there are 300 million small arms currently in the posession of US private citizens

6) Saudi Arabia, however, is by far and away the largest small arms consumer in the world, and purchases 33.1% of all small arms produced in the world

7) Saudi Arabia then re-distributes these small arms to its allies in Syria, Lybia, etc.

8) So far in 2015, there have been 351 "mass shootings" in the United States in which 447 persons have been killed and another 290 wounded

9) The world's leading human rights organizations never speak of the bloodbath ocurring around the world due to the proliferation of small arms, much less the United Nations Security Council.

10) Both the United States and Russia seem quite content to keep any talk of small arms proliferation off the agenda.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/12/05/opinion/023a1pol

[Dec 04, 2015] The Neoconservative Movement is Trotskyism

"... Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy. ..."
"... Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back. ..."
"... These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather…they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement. ..."
"... As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world. ..."
"... In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies-policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had. ..."
"... For example, when two top AIPAC officials-Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman-were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them. ..."
"... Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel. ..."
January 22, 2013 | Veterans Today

Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy.

We have to keep in mind that America and much of the Western world were scared to death of Bolshevism and Trotskyism in the 1920s and early 30s because of its subversive activity.

Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back.

These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather…they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement.

... ... ...

As it turns out, neoconservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute are largely extensions of Trotskyism with respect to foreign policy. Other think tanks such as the Bradley Foundation were overtaken by the neoconservative machine back in 1984.

Some of those double agents have been known to have worked with Likud-supporting Jewish groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, an organization which has been known to have "co-opted" several "non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq."

Philo-Semitic scholars Stephen Halper of Cambridge University and Jonathan Clarke of the CATO Institute agree that the neoconservative agendas "have taken American international relations on an unfortunate detour," which is another way of saying that this revolutionary movement is not what the Founding Fathers signed up for, who all maintained that the United States would serve the American people best by not entangling herself in alliances with foreign entities.

As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world.

Moreover, former secretary of defense Robert Gates made it clear to the United States that the Israelis do not and should not have a monopoly on the American interests in the Middle East. For that, he was chastised by neoconservative Elliott Abrams.

In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies-policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had.

... ... ...

Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel.

The FBI has numerous documents tracing Israel's espionage in the U.S., but no one has come forward and declared it explicitly in the media because most political pundits value mammon over truth.

For example, when two top AIPAC officials-Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman-were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them.

In the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel is a major country that pops up quite often. This is widely known among CIA and FBI agents and U.S. officials for years.

One former U.S. intelligence official declared, "There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States.

They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations. People here as liaisons… aggressively pursue classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable."

[Dec 03, 2015] On That Video Where Some Egyptians Allegedly Say Obama Is Insane And On Drugs And Should Be Removed From Office

EconoSpeak

An old and close, but very conservative and increasingly out of touch with reality friend of mine posted a video some days ago on Facebook. He indicated that he thought it was both funny and also insightful. It seemed highly suspicious to me, so I googled it and found that the person who uploaded it onto you tube stated in the comments on it that it is a spoof. Here is a link that discusses why it is known it is a spoof as well as linking to the video itself and its comments. It has reportedly been widely distributed on the internet by many conservatives who think it is for real, and when I pointed out it is a spoof, my friend defriended me from Facebook. I am frustrated.

So, for those who do not view it, it purports to show a talk show in Egypt where a brief clip of Obama speaking last May to graduating military officers about how climate change is and will be a serious national security issue, something the Pentagon has claimed. He did not say it was the most serious such issue, and at least in the clip he said nothing about Daesh/ISIS/ISIL, although of course he has said a lot about it and not only has US drones attacking it but reportedly we have "boots on the ground" now against them in the form of some Special Ops.

So, the video then goes back to the supposed talk show where they are speaking in Arabic with English subtitles. According to these subtitels, which are partly accurate translations but also wildly inaccurate in many places (my Arabic is good enough that I have parsed out what is what there) the host asks, "Is he insane?" A guest suggests he is on drugs. Another claims he just does what Michelle says and that his biceps are small. Finally a supposed retired general pounds the table and denounces him over Libya policy (that part is for real, although his name is never mentioned) and suggests that Americans should act to remove him from office. Again, conservative commentators have found hilarious and very insightful, with this even holding among commenters to the video aware that it is a mistranslated spoof. Bring these guys on more. Obviously they would be big hits on Fox News.

So, I would like to simply comment further on why Egyptians would be especially upset about Libya, but that them being so against the US is somewhat hypocritical (I also note that there is reason to believe that the supposed general is not a general). Of course Libya is just to the west of Egypt with its eastern portion (Cyrenaica under Rome) often ruled by whomever was ruling Egypt at various times in the past. So there is a strong cultural-historical connection. It is understandable that they would take Libyan matters seriously, and indeed things in Libya have turned into a big mess.

However, the move to bring in outside powers to intervene against Qaddafi in 2011 was instigated by an Egyptian, Abu Moussa. This was right after Mubarak had fallen in the face of massive demonstrations in Egypt. Moussa was both leader of the Arab League and wanting to run for President of Egypt. He got nowhere with the latter, but he did get somewhere with getting
the rest of the world to intervene in Libya. He got the Arab League to support such an intervention, with that move going to the UN Security Council and convincing Russia and China to abstain on the anti-Qaddafi measure. Putin has since complained that those who intervened, UK and France most vigorously with US "leading from behind" on the effort.went beyond the UN mandate. But in any case, Qaddafi was overthrown, not to be replaced by any stable or central power, with Libya an ongoing mess that has remained fragmented since, especially between its historically separate eastern and western parts, something I have posted on here previously.

So, that went badly, but Egyptians blaming the US for this seems to me to be a bit much, pretty hypocritical. It happens to be a fact that the US and Obama are now very unpopular in Egypt. I looked at a poll from a few months ago, and the only nations where the US and Obama were viewed less favorably (although a few not polled such as North Korea) were in order: Russia, Palestinian Territories, Belarus, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan, with me suspecting there is now a more favorable view in Iran since the culmination of the nuclear deal. I can appreciate that many Egyptians are frustrated that the US supported an election process that did not give them Moussa or El-Baradei, but the Muslim Brotherhood, who proceeded to behave badly, leading to them being overthrown by an new military dictatorship with a democratic veneer, basically a new improved version of the Mubarak regime, with the US supporting it, if somewhat reluctantly.

Yes, this is all pretty depressing, but I must say that ultimately the Egyptians are responsible for what has gone down in their own nation. And even if those Egyptian commentators, whoever they actually are, are as angry about Obama as they are depicted as being, the fact is that Obama is still more popular there than was George W. Bush at the same time in his presidency, something all these US conservatives so enamored of this bizarre video seem to conveniently forget.

Addenda, 5:10 PM:

1) The people on that video come across almost like The Three Stooges, which highlights the comedic aspect that even fans of Obama are supposed to appreciate, although it does not add to the credibility of the remarks of those so carrying on like a bunch of clowns.

2) Another reason Egyptians may be especially upset about the situation in Libya is that indeed Daesh has a foothold in a port city not too far from the Egyptian border in Surt, as reported as the top story today in the NY Times.

3) Arguably once the rest of the world got in, the big problem was a failure to follow through with aiding establishing a central unified government, although that was always going to be a problem, something not recognized by all too many involved, including Abu Moussa. As it was once his proposal got going, it was then Sec. of State Hillary Clinton who was the main person leading the charge for the US to get in over the reluctance of Obama. This was probably her biggest mistake in all this, even though most Republicans think the irrelevant sideshow of the unfortunate incident in Benghazi is the big deal.

4) Needless to say, Republican views at the time of the intervention were just completely incoherent, as symbolized at one point by Senator Lindsey Graham, who within the space of a single sentence simultaneously argued for the US to do nothing and also to go in full force with the proverbial "boots on the ground."

Further Addendum, 7:10 PM:

One of the pieces of evidence given that supposedly shows that the video is a spoof is that the supposed retired Brigadier General Mahmoud Mansour cannot be found if one googles his name, except in connection with this video. There are some other Egyptians named Mansour who show up, but this guy does not. However, it occurs to me that he might be for real, but simply obscure. After all, Brigadier is the lowest rank of General, one star, with Majors being two star, Lieutenants being three star (even though Majors are above Lieutenants), and with four and five star not having any other rank assigned to them. Furthermore, Egypt has a large military that has run the country for decades, so there may well be a lot of these Brigadier Generals, with many of them amounting to nothing. So, if he is for real, his claim to fame will be from jumping up and down, pounding on a table and calling for the overthrow of the POTUS.

Barkley Rosser

[Dec 01, 2015] US Intervention Before And After

Zero Hedge
WhackoWarner

Before death in Libya....Ghadaffi's crime was in "not playing along and selling out". Kinda like Iraq and all. They all should just hand over everything and say thanks...but they did not . There is disinfo on both sides, But the "madman" and people who actually live there never seem to make the NYTimes.

"For 40 years, or was it longer, I can't remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert, I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child. Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union.

I did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people's committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more. They told Americans and other visitors, that they needed "democracy" and "freedom" never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we've had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination - from thieves who would steal from us.

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.

Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light. When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself...

In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth yet continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.

Kirk2NCC1701
"they hate us for our freedoms"

No, "They hate us for our freebombs" that we keep delivering.

Suppose you lived in a town that was run by a ruthless Mafioso boss. Sure he was ruthless to troublemakers and dissenters, but if you went about your business (and paid your taxes/respects to him), life was simple but livable, and crime was negligible.

Now imagine that a crime Overlord came from another country and decided to wreck the town, just to remove your Mafioso Don. In the process, your neighborhood and house were destroyed, and you lost friends and family.

Now tell me that YOU would not make it YOUR life's mission to bring these War Criminals to justice -- by any and all means necessary. And tell me that these same Criminals could not have foreseen all this. Now say it again - but with a straight face. I dare you. I fucking double-dare you!

Max Cynical
US exceptionalism!
GhostOfDiogenes
The worst one, besides Iraq, is Libya.

The infrastructure we destroyed there is unimaginable.

Sure Iraq was hit the worst, and much has been lost there....but Libya was a modern arab oasis of a country in the middle of nothing.

We destroyed in a few days what took decades to build.

This is why I am not proud of my country, nor my military.

In fact, I would like to see Nuremberg type trials for 'merican military leaders and concentration gulags for the rest of enlisted. Just like they did to Germany.

Its only proper.

GhostOfDiogenes
The USA did this murder of Libya and giving ownership to the people who did '911'? What a joke. http://youtu.be/aJURNC0e6Ek
Bastiat
Libya under Ghadaffi: universal free college education, free healthcare, free electricity. interest free loans. A very bad example of how a nation's wealth is to be distributed!
CHoward
The average American has NO idea how much damage is being done in this world - all in the name of Democracy. Unbelivable and truly pathetic. Yet - most sheeple still believe ISIS and others hate us because of our "freedoms" and i-pods. What bullshit.
Bioscale
Czech public tv published a long interview in English with Asad, it was filmed in Damascus some days ago.Very unusual thing, actually. Terrorism being transported by US, Turkey and France to Syria is being openly debated. http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/svet/1628712-asad-pro-ct-rebelove-jsou-...

Overfed

Compare and contrast Assad, giving an interview very well in a second language, with O'bomb-a, who can't even speak to school children without a teleprompter. Sad.

Razor_Edge

Along with President Putin, Dr al Assad is consistently the most sane, rational and clearly honest speaker on the tragedy of Syria. By contrast, our satanic western leaders simply lie outrageously at all times. How do we know? Their lips are moving. They also say the most absurd things.

We in the west may think that at the end of the day, it's not going to harm us, so why discomfort ourselves by taking on our own elites and bringing them down. But I believe that an horrific future awaits us, one we richly deserve, because we did not shout stop at this ocean of evil bloodshed being spilt in our names. We pay the taxes that pay for it, or at least in my countrys case, (traditional policy of military neutrality), we facilitate the slaughter (troop transports through Shannon airport), or fail to speak out for fear it may impact FDI into Ireland, (largest recipient of US FDI in the world).

We are our brothers keepers, and we are all one. It is those who seek to separate us to facilitate their evil and psychopathic lust for power and money, who would have us beieve that "the other" is evil. Are we really so simple minded or riven by fear that we cannot see through the curtain of the real Axis of Evil?

Demdere

Israeli-neocon strategy is to have the world's economy collapse at the point of maximum war and political chaos.

Then they can escape to Paraguay. Sure as hell, if they stay here, we are going to hang them all. Treasonous criminals for the 9/11 false flag operation.

By 2015, every military and intelligence service and all the think tanks have looked at 9/11 carefully. Anyone who looks at the evidence sees that it was a false flag operation, the buildings were destroyed via explosives, the planes and evil Arab Muslims were show. Those agencies reported to their civilian leaders, and their civilian leaders spread the information through their societies.

So all of the politically aware people in the world, including here at home, KNOW that 9/11 was a false flag operation, or know that they must not look at the evidence. Currently, anyone who disagrees in MSM is treated as invisible, and I know of no prominent bloggers who have even done the bits of extention of 'what it must mean' that I have done.

But it certainly means high levels of distrust for the US and for Israel. It seems to me that World Domination is not possible, because the world won't let you, and the means of opposition are only limited by the imaginations of the most creative, intelligent and knowledgable people. We don't have any of those on our side any more.

L Bean

In their farcical quest to emulate the Roman empire...

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant - Tacitus

They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.

[Nov 28, 2015] Remaking the Middle East: How the US Grew Tired and Less Relevant

Notable quotes:
"... In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is a warmonger on the level of George W. Bush's top staff, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology , according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times . Cheney was an "Iron-ass", who "had his own empire … and marched to his own drummer," H.W. Bush said, while calling Rumsfeld "an arrogant fellow" who lacked empathy. Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths? ..."
"... comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations' foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently. ..."
"... In essence, Obama carried on with much of what W. Bush had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country's less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush's final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of ISIS among others, but that is for another discussion. ..."
"... In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that "might makes right", and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neo-conservatives during W. Bush's era. ..."
"... The folly of W. Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon's over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. ..."
"... The Russian military campaign in Syria, which was halfheartedly welcomed by the US. has signaled a historic shift in the Middle East. Even if Russia fails to turn its war into a major shift of political and economic clout, the mere fact that other contenders are now throwing their proverbial hats into the Middle East ring, is simply unprecedented since the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956. ..."
"... It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already under way, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold. ..."
November 14, 2015 | original.antiwar.com
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is often perceived as one of the "good ones" – the less hawkish of top American officials, who does not simply promote and defend his country's military adventurism but reaches out to others, beyond polarizing rhetoric.

His unremitting efforts culminated partly in the Iran nuclear framework agreement in April, followed by a final deal, a few months later. Now, he is reportedly hard at work again to find some sort of consensus on a way out of the Syria war, a multi-party conflict that has killed over 300,000 people. His admirers see him as the diplomatic executor of a malleable and friendly US foreign policy agenda under President Obama.

In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is a warmonger on the level of George W. Bush's top staff, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology, according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times. Cheney was an "Iron-ass", who "had his own empire … and marched to his own drummer," H.W. Bush said, while calling Rumsfeld "an arrogant fellow" who lacked empathy. Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths?

If one is to fairly examine US foreign policies in the Middle East, for example, comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations' foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently.

In essence, Obama carried on with much of what W. Bush had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country's less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush's final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of ISIS among others, but that is for another discussion.

Obama has even gone a step further when he recently decided to keep thousands of US troops in Afghanistan well into 2017, thus breaking US commitment to withdraw next year. 2017 is Obama's last year in office, and the decision is partly motivated by his administration's concern that future turmoil in that country could cost his Democratic Party heavily in the upcoming presidential elections.

In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that "might makes right", and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neo-conservatives during W. Bush's era.

Nevertheless, much has changed as well, simply because American ambitions to police the world, politics and the excess of $600 billion a year US defense budget are not the only variables that control events in the Middle East and everywhere else. There are other undercurrents that cannot be wished away, and they too can dictate US foreign policy outlooks and behavior.

Indeed, an American decline has been noted for many years, and Middle Eastern nations have been more aware of this decline than others. One could even argue that the W. Bush administration's rush for war in Iraq in 2003 in an attempt at controlling the region's resources, was a belated effort at staving off that unmistakable decay – whether in US ability to regulate rising global contenders or in its overall share of global economy.

The folly of W. Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon's over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. That misconception carries on to this day, where military spending is already accounting for about 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, itself nearly a third of the country's overall budget.

However, those who are blaming Obama for failing to leverage US military strength for political currency refuse to accept that Obama's behavior hardly reflects a lack of appetite for war, but a pragmatic response to a situation that has largely spun out of US control.

The so-called "Arab Spring", for example, was a major defining factor in the changes of US fortunes. And it all came at a particularly interesting time.

First, the Iraq war has destroyed whatever little credibility the US had in the region, a sentiment that also reverberated around the world.

Second, it was becoming clear that the US foreign policy in Central and South America – an obstinate continuation of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which laid the groundwork for US domination of that region – has also been challenged by more assertive leaders, armed with democratic initiatives, not military coups.

Third, China's more forceful politics, at least around its immediate regional surroundings, signaled that the US traditional hegemony over most of East and South East Asia are also facing fierce competition.

Not only many Asian and other countries have flocked to China, lured by its constantly growing and seemingly more solid economic performance, if compared to the US, but others are also flocking to Russia, which is filling a political and, as of late, military vacuum left open.

The Russian military campaign in Syria, which was halfheartedly welcomed by the US. has signaled a historic shift in the Middle East. Even if Russia fails to turn its war into a major shift of political and economic clout, the mere fact that other contenders are now throwing their proverbial hats into the Middle East ring, is simply unprecedented since the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956.

The region's historians must fully understand the repercussions of all of these factors, and that simply analyzing the US decline based on the performance of individuals – Condoleezza Rice's hawkishness vs. John Kerry's supposed sane diplomacy – is a trivial approach to understanding current shifts in global powers.

It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already under way, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold.

For now, the Middle East will continue to pass through this incredibly difficult and violent transition, for which the US is partly responsible.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is a media consultant, an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press).

[Nov 28, 2015] The Perils of Endless War - Antiwar.com

Notable quotes:
"... John Quincy Adams, for his part, loved an America that "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." ..."
November 28, 2015 | Antiwar.com
War tends to perpetuate itself. As soon as one brute gets killed, another takes his place; when the new guy falls, another materializes.

Consider Richard Nixon's intensification of the American war on Cambodia. In hopes of maintaining an advantage over the Communists as he withdrew American troops from Southeast Asia, Nixon ravaged Vietnam's western neighbor with approximately 500,000 tons of bombs between 1969 and 1973. But instead of destroying the Communist menace, these attempts to buttress Nguyen Van Thieu's South Vietnamese government and then Lon Nol's Cambodian government only transformed it. The bombings led many of Nixon's early targets to desert the eastern region of the country in favor of Cambodia's interior where they organized with the Khmer Rouge.

As a CIA official noted in 1973, the Khmer Rouge started to "us[e] damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda." By appealing to Cambodians who were affected by the bombing raids, this brutal Communist organization, a peripheral batch of 10,000 fighters in 1969, had expanded by 1973 into a formidable army with 20 times as many members. Two years later, they seized control of Phnom Penh and murdered more than one million of their compatriots in a grisly genocide.

The following decade, when war erupted between the forces of Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the United States hedged its bets by providing military assistance to both governments as they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. But when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, ousted the emir, and ultimately assassinated about 1,000 Kuwaitis, the United States turned on its former ally with an incursion that directly killed 3,500 innocent Iraqis and suffocated 100,000 others through the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure. The US also maintained an embargo against Iraq throughout the 1990s, a program that contributed to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqis and that UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Dennis Halliday deemed "genocidal" when he explained his 1998 resignation.

The newly restored Kuwaiti government, for its part, retaliated against minority groups for their suspected "collaboration" with the Iraqi occupiers. The government threw Palestinians out of schools, fired its Palestinian employees, and threatened thousands with "arbitrary arrest, torture, rape, and murder." Beyond that, Kuwait interdicted the reentry of more than 150,000 Palestinians and tens of thousands of Bedoons who had evacuated Kuwait when the tyrant Saddam took over. Thus, years of American maneuvering to achieve peace and security – by playing Iran and Iraq off of each other, by privileging Kuwaiti authoritarians over Iraqi authoritarians, by killing tens of thousands of innocent people who got in the way – failed.

The chase continues today as the United States targets the savage "Islamic State," another monster that the West inadvertently helped create by assisting foreign militants. History suggests that this war against Islamism, if taken to its logical extreme, will prove to be an endless game of whack-a-mole. Yes, our government can assassinate some terrorists; what it cannot do is stop aggrieved civilian victims of Western bombings from replacing the dead by becoming terrorists themselves. Furthermore, even if ISIS disappeared tomorrow, there would still exist soldiers – in Al-Qaeda, for instance – prepared to fill the void. That will remain true no matter how many bombs the West drops, no matter how many weapons it tenders to foreign militias, no matter how many authoritarian governments it buttresses in pursuit of "national security."

So, what are we to do when foreign antagonists, whatever the source of their discontent, urge people to attack us? We should abandon the Sisyphean task of eradicating anti-American sentiments abroad and invest in security at home. Gathering foreign intelligence is important when it allows us to strengthen our defenses here, but bombing people in Iraq and Syria, enabling the Saudi murder of Yemenis, and deploying troops to Cameroon are futile steps when enemy organizations can constantly replenish their supply of fighters by propagandizing among natives who deplore Western intervention.

This understanding, though underappreciated in contemporary American government, reflects a noble American tradition. John Quincy Adams, for his part, loved an America that "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Decades later, Jeannette Rankin doubted the benefits of American interventionism, contending that "you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." Martin Luther King Jr. warned that "violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." These leaders adamantly rejected an American politics of unending aggressive war. It is time for us to do the same.

Tommy Raskin is a contributor to the Good Men Project and Foreign Policy in Focus.

[Nov 25, 2015] Turkish military releases recording of warning to Russian jet

www.theguardian.com

Konstantin Murakhtin, a navigator who was rescued in a joint operation by Syrian and Russian commandos, told Russian media: "There were no warnings, either by radio or visually. There was no contact whatsoever."

He also denied entering Turkish airspace. "I could see perfectly on the map and on the ground where the border was and where we were. There was no danger of entering Turkey," he said.

The apparent hardening of both countries' versions of events came as Russian warplanes carried out heavy raids in Syria's northern Latakia province, where the plane came down. Tuesday's incident – the first time a Nato member state has shot down a Russian warplane since the Korean war – risks provoking a clash over the ongoing conflict in Syria, where Russia has intervened to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

... ... ...

Later, in a telephone call with John Kerry, the US secretary of state, Lavrov said Turkey's actions were a "gross violation" of an agreement between Moscow and Washington on air space safety over Syria. The state department said Kerry called for calm and more dialogue between Turkish and Russian officials.

... ... ...

Russian officials made it clear that despite the fury the reaction would be measured. There is no talk of a military response, and no suggestion that diplomatic relations could be cut or the Turkish ambassador expelled from Moscow. However, the tone of relations between the two countries is likely to change dramatically.

... ... ...

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, hit out at the US state department official Mark Toner, who said the Turkmen fighters who shot the Russian airman as he parachuted to the ground could have been acting in self defence. "Remember these words, remember them forever. I will never forget them, I promise," Zakharova wrote on Facebook.

[Nov 25, 2015] The shooting down of a Russian jet tangles the diplomatic web still further

Notable quotes:
"... Recently, Moscow's rapprochement with the Syrian Kurds, the PYD, only added to the huge complexity of the situation. ..."
"... any solution of the Syrian conflict will be based on a precondition that the US and Russia put aside their differences, ..."
"... At least one good thing has come from all of this. At least it took Putin to be the first leader to openly say exactly what turkey actually is. A despicable, Islamist supporting vile wolf in Sheep's clothing. ..."
"... well , just think for a second .... all the image - they were shooting him while he was in the air , shouting "Allah Akbar " then they showed a photo with dead pilot , being proud of that ..... Those ppl are the "hope" for a Syria post-Assad....don't you feel that something is wrong here ? ..."
"... Also as soon as the noble Turkman started shooting at the pilot and navigator once they'd bailed out of the plane they showed themselves to be the terrorists they are. Playing "no prisoners" against Russia. ..."
"... At the G20 Antalya summit of Nov 15, Putin embarrassed Obama publicly showing satellite pictures of ridiculously long tanker lines waiting for weeks to load oil from ISIS, as the coalition spared them any trouble. "I've shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil," said Putin. ..."
"... So there you have it. For 15 months, the US didn't touch the oil trade that financed ISIS affairs, until Russia shamed them into it. Then, the mightiest army in the world bombs 400 trucks, while Russia destroys 1000. Then Russia provides videos of its airstrikes, while the US doesn't, and PBS is caught passing off Russian evidence as American. ..."
"... Of course Turkey did not need to down this jet: well planned and a clear provocation to start the propaganda war against Russia which actually wants to stop this war before a transition without a pre-planned (US) outcome. ..."
"... With Saudi and Turkish support for ISIS , just who have they bothered saving and sending out into Europe amongst their name taking and slaughters ? Wahabists? How many cells set up now globally? ..."
"... The turkmen are illegally staging war. Russia is the only country legally in Syria. That's why CIA, Saudi, Turk, Israel etc etc etc operate clandestine. But they all enjoy bombing hotheads. A pity so many of them think their brands of religion or old stories from centuries ago of enemies have any bearing today. Or perhaps they just believe rich mens newspapers and media too much. Maybe all their educations and futures were lost by gangsters that were funded and protected and given country ownership for oil and now forces clean up their centuries long mess for newer deals. ..."
"... I thought Russia was INVITED by the Syrian Gov. to assist them in eradicating ALL rebel factions including a bunch of Turkmen rebels funded by Erdogan. No others operating in Syria are legitimate. Any cowards shouting Allah uakbar and killing POWs should be eradicated ..."
"... According to the BBC the Turkmen fight with Al Nusra. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34910389 UN Resolution 2249 calls not only for action against IS but also Al Nusra and other AQ associated groups. ..."
"... I also know Turkey has been "laundering" ISIS oil from Syria and Iraq to the tune of $2 million/day. ..."
"... Well, a US Air Force has now also suggested that the Turkish shooting down of the Russian had to have been a pre-planned provocation. Also US officials have said it cannot be confirmed that the Russian jet incurred into Turkish territory. And of course there is the testimony of the Russian pilot. ..."
"... What ethnic cleansing??? Assad has a multi sect and multi ethnic government. Meanwhile western and Turkish backed jihadist have openly said they will massacre every last Kurd,Christian,Alawi and Druze in the country. ..."
"... Shooting down the Russian plane was Turkey's way of flexing its muscles. The murder of the pilot in the parashoot was a cowardly act. These are the people the US are backing. They can be added to Obama's list of most favored and join the ranks of the Saudis who behead and crucify protesters ..."
"... Erdogan is playing both NATO and Russia for fools. Trying to create a wedge and sabotage the restoration of stability in Syria. ..."
"... It is all a giant make-believe. They are only using ISIS as a pretext to occupy and breakup Syria. And Western populations swallow all these lies without blinking and feel victimized by refugees. ..."
"... Now, I'd bet that Putin has no plans to exacerbate the current situation by shooting down any Turkish jets out of revenge for yesterday's incident. But it will be unsettling for Turkish flyboys and their bosses to know that a good chunk of their a airspace is totally vulnerable and they fly there only because Russia lets them. ..."
"... it's astonishing how many of the Putin hating NATObots from the Ukrainian-themed CIF threads turn out to be ISIS supporters. ..."
"... indeed, with the "stench" of US grand mufti all over them.. How far do you think Obama will bow on his next visit to Saudi. ..."
"... Yup the FT estimated before the Russians got involved that ISIS were producing between 30,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil a day. You would need over 2000 full size road tankers just to move one days output. Now its fair to assume after filling up it takes more than a day before it gets back to the pump. Surprisingly the US has neither noticed all these tankers and even more surprisingly the oil tanks and installations. ..."
"... The whole regime change plan is hanging in the balance and every day Russia solidifies Assad's position. If this continues for even another month it will be virtually impossible for the Western alliance to demand the departure of Assad. ..."
"... Their bargaining position is diminishing by the day and it is great to watch. Also good to read that the Russians have been pounding the shi*e out of those Turkmen areas. Expect those silly buggers to be slaughtered whilst Erdogan and the Turks watch on helplessly. If they even try anything inside the Syrian border now the Russians will annihilate them. ..."
"... Erdogan's reaction to Syria shooting down a Turkish jet in 2012. "Erdogan criticized Syria harshly on Tuesday for shooting down the Turkish fighter jet, saying: "Even if the plane was in their airspace for a few seconds, that is no excuse to attack." "It was clear that this plane was not an aggressive plane. Still it was shot down," the corrupt ISIS supporting scumbag said" ..."
www.theguardian.com

The nervousness displayed by the AKP administration, in Ankara, has a lot to do with Turkey's Syria policy being in ever-growing disarray, and its failure to set priorities to help resolve the conflict. As the Syrian quagmire deepened, old anti-Kurdish fixations in Ankara came to the surface, and clashed with the priorities of its allies, centred on Isis. Ankara's blocking moves against the only combat force on ground, the PKK-YPG axis, has impeded the fight against jihadists, and its constant redrawing of red-lines (Kurds, Turkmens, no-fly zone, Assad gone etc) may have been frustrating the White House, but does not seem to affect Moscow. Recently, Moscow's rapprochement with the Syrian Kurds, the PYD, only added to the huge complexity of the situation.

In the recent G20 summit, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once more keen to underline that "terror has no religion and there should be no our terrorist and your terrorist"

... ... ...

So, the tension now rises between one determined and one undecided, conflicted player – one lucid on strategy, the other lacking it. If any, the lesson to be drawn from this showdown is this: any solution of the Syrian conflict will be based on a precondition that the US and Russia put aside their differences, agree in principle on the future of the region, build a joint intelligence gathering and coordinated battle scheme against jihadists, and demand utter clarity of the positions of their myopic, egocentric allies. Unless they do so, more complications, and risks beyond turf wars will be knocking at the door

Eugenios -> André De Koning 25 Nov 2015 23:24

Assad is targeted because it is a necessary prelude to an attack on Iran. Pepe Escobar called that long ago. What is sought is a Syria in the imperialist orbit or in chaos.

Attack on Iran by whom--you ask? Actually several in cahoots, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, et al.

Lyigushka -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 23:22

BBC maps show ISIS controlled territory only a few miles from the Turkmen area where the shooting down took place.
Your not very good at this are you
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27838034

Lyigushka -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 23:11

A brief search on the internet shows many items referring to Turkish support for IS.

Now the SAA with Russian support is on the border dealing with the jihadist Turkmen, Turkey's duplicity is in danger of being revealed .

Hence the impotent rage and desperate pleas for support to its other US coalition partners and the strange reluctance of the complicit western MSM to fully reveal the lies and double standards of the western allies in this foul business.

Only the other day a US TV program was trying to con its viewers that the US was bombing ISIS oil trucks, with video from a Russian airstrike.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/11/pbs-uses-russian-airstrike-videos-to-claim-us-airstrike-successes.html

James H McDougall 25 Nov 2015 23:09

At least one good thing has come from all of this. At least it took Putin to be the first leader to openly say exactly what turkey actually is. A despicable, Islamist supporting vile wolf in Sheep's clothing. Who else was buying ISIS oil....the tooth fairy ? Never in my life did I think I'd be defending the red team yet here I am.

AtelierEclatPekin -> murati 25 Nov 2015 23:06

well , just think for a second .... all the image - they were shooting him while he was in the air , shouting "Allah Akbar " then they showed a photo with dead pilot , being proud of that ..... Those ppl are the "hope" for a Syria post-Assad....don't you feel that something is wrong here ?

Shankman -> ianhassall 25 Nov 2015 23:02

He was awfully quick to accept Turkey's version of events.

As for his Nobel "Peace" Prize, Alfred Nobel is probably still turning in his grave.

Lyigushka -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 23:02

Of course Turkey supports ISIS and has done for all its existence as part of an opposition to its main enemies, Assad and the Kurds.

A brief search of the internet provides countless articles on this without even having to quote Russian sources. Examples
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/research-paper-isis-turke_b_6128950.html
http://www.infowars.com/former-nato-commander-turkey-is-supporting-isis/

iusedtopost 25 Nov 2015 23:01

.....and the censors are out again.....SHAME on you Guardian.

I say again.....MSM now referring to "Turkmen" like they are cuddly toys FFS

They are head chopping....moon howling....islamo-terrorists.

Russia has the right idea....kill the lot them

ianhassall -> ianhassall 25 Nov 2015 22:56

Also as soon as the noble Turkman started shooting at the pilot and navigator once they'd bailed out of the plane they showed themselves to be the terrorists they are. Playing "no prisoners" against Russia.

And as for the US - they can bomb a Medicin sans Frontiers field hospital in Afghanistan for 37 minutes and the best excuse they come out with is "the plane's email stopped working, it didn't know where the target was, they didn't know where they were, so they just attacked something that looked like". So much for US military's navigation abilities.

NikLot -> LordMurphy 25 Nov 2015 22:44

Dear Lord, where did I defend it?!! How do you read that?!!! Of course it is appalling!!!

I wanted to point out that the 'good terrorist' Turkmen militia or whoever else did it would have done the same to NATO pilots and that the story should be explored from that angle too. Statement by Turkey's PM today, if true, confirms my concern:

"Davutoglu told his party's lawmakers on Wednesday that Turkey didn't know the nationality of the plane that was brought down on Tuesday until Moscow announced it was Russian."

ianhassall 25 Nov 2015 22:38

Its amazing that NATO have been bombing ISIS for 2 years and did very little to halt its progress.

Russia's been doing it for a month and have bombed ISIS, the military supplies NATO have been giving ISIS, and the illegal oil racket that Turkey's been running with ISIS - all at a fraction of the cost that's going into supporting ISIS and other Syrian terrorist groups.

I can see why Turkey's upset. Also anyone who thinks Turkey shot down this plane without the approval of NATO and Obama is kidding themselves. Obama has blood up to his armpits with what's been going on in Syria, despite his Peace Prize credentials.


luella zarf -> ArundelXVI 25 Nov 2015 22:28

OK I did some research and I was somewhat wrong, Russia did initiate the bombing of the oil delivery system, but at the G20 summit. This is the actual chronology:

At the G20 Antalya summit of Nov 15, Putin embarrassed Obama publicly showing satellite pictures of ridiculously long tanker lines waiting for weeks to load oil from ISIS, as the coalition spared them any trouble. "I've shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil," said Putin.

The next day, on Nov 16, the US bombed a truck assembly for the first time in the history of the coalition and then claimed to have hit 116 oil tankers. In the meantime, Russia carried on its own airstrike campaign, destroying more than 1,000 tankers and a refinery in a period of just five days, and posting video footage of the airstrikes.

Because the US never made available any recordings, on Nov 19 PBS used footage of Russian fighter jets bombing an oil storage facility and passed it off as evidence of the US hits. The Moon of Alabama website was the first to notice. On Nov 23, a second American air raid claimed to have destroyed 283 oil tankers.

So there you have it. For 15 months, the US didn't touch the oil trade that financed ISIS affairs, until Russia shamed them into it. Then, the mightiest army in the world bombs 400 trucks, while Russia destroys 1000. Then Russia provides videos of its airstrikes, while the US doesn't, and PBS is caught passing off Russian evidence as American.

idkak -> John Smith 25 Nov 2015 22:17

Currently 18 aircraft are patrolling the area on a daily basis, they must have misread the memo.... Downing a Turkish plane over Turkish soil, or attacking a NATO aircraft on mission in Syria within the alliance that is currently bombing ISIS or other terrorist variants... won't be favorable for Russia or their forces in Syria. Even without NATO, Turkey has a very large military and the location we are talking about is about 2-5 minutes to bomb, and 1-2 minutes to intercept.. so the attack would be about the same level of strategic stupidity as attacking Russia from the Ukraine.

André De Koning -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 22:16

How naive: downing a jet who fights al-Nusra. Of course Turkey has supported terrorist there for a long time and left the border between Turkey and Syria porous, so the proxy war can be fought against Assad (just one man (?) always features in the multi-factorial warfare, which is easy on the ears of simpletons). There were already plans in 1957 and more modern ones in the US to ruin Syria and take the land and resources and use it for the oil pipelines from Saudi to Turkey (Assad did not sign off in 2009, so war was bound to happen).

André De Koning 25 Nov 2015 22:11

Imagine a US fighter being shot down? From the beginning of the war Russia and Syria said there were not just peaceful demonstrators, but people who were shooting and grew into ISIS and Al-Nusra and al-Qaeda. This did not fit the western propaganda and the Divide and Ruin policy (title of Dan Glazebrook's recent book of articles) which is that Syria was a on the Ruin-map for a long time. Turkey's Erdogan is intellectually an Islamist and together with Saudi they and the terrorists are fighting this proxy war the US can hardly afford.

In 7 weeks Russia destroyed more of ISIS infrastructure and oil tankers than the US did in a year (the superpower has managed to make ISIS increase seven-fold). The only objective is one man: Assad and the ruin of Syria to be 'rebuilt' (plundered) by western investments and domination of the entire region of the Middle East. The rest is lies to prop up propaganda and doing as if they bring democracy (like the West does in Saudi?! the biggest friend and weapons buyer. Just like Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq, which did not play ball, it will be destroyed by the West. It gets harder with Russia actually wishing to stop the proxy war: Syria itself deciding what their future will be? No way as far as US and UK are concerned (and the weak EU following with their businessmen contingent to reap the benefits). Absolutely disgusting that the people have to suffer it.

Of course Turkey did not need to down this jet: well planned and a clear provocation to start the propaganda war against Russia which actually wants to stop this war before a transition without a pre-planned (US) outcome.

EightEyedSpy -> Eugenios 25 Nov 2015 21:59

Meanwhile, Turkey just gave the Russians a no-fly zone--against Turks.

Not true - unless Russia intends to breach the resolution unanimously passed by the UN Security Council authorising all member nations to fight against ISIS on territory controlled by ISIS in Syria.

Pursuant to the Security Council resolution, which Russia voted for, all member nations have the legal right to use Syrian airspace and traverse Syrian territory for the purpose of fighting ISIS in Syria.

If Russia attempts to impose a no-fly zone against Turkey in Syria, Russia will violate the Security Council resolution ...

btt1943 25 Nov 2015 21:59

Forget about whether Russian jet has infiltrated Turkey's airspace or not as claimed by one and denied by other, the bottom line is Turkey has been wanting to play a big and decisive role in Syrian conflict and ISIS's rise. Ankara does not wish to see Russian's growing influence and intervention in the messy region.


Jimmi Cbreeze -> Normin 25 Nov 2015 21:49

With Saudi and Turkish support for ISIS , just who have they bothered saving and sending out into Europe amongst their name taking and slaughters ? Wahabists? How many cells set up now globally?


Jimmi Cbreeze EightEyedSpy 25 Nov 2015 21:17

The turkmen are illegally staging war. Russia is the only country legally in Syria. That's why CIA, Saudi, Turk, Israel etc etc etc operate clandestine. But they all enjoy bombing hotheads. A pity so many of them think their brands of religion or old stories from centuries ago of enemies have any bearing today. Or perhaps they just believe rich mens newspapers and media too much. Maybe all their educations and futures were lost by gangsters that were funded and protected and given country ownership for oil and now forces clean up their centuries long mess for newer deals.

And then you have the Murdochs and the Rothchilds and the arms industries.

Because where the people are'nt divided by cunning for profit, they are too lunatic and gangster minded to live in peace with each other anyway.
The whole matter is a multi joint taskforce of opportunism. And wealth is going for broke stamping and taking as much corporate ground as possible worldwide.

What chance is there of calling peace? Where and when are all these lunatics going to live in peace and constructively? How would they with half the the globe shitstirring and funding trouble amongst them for profit and gain?

Turkey has attacked Russia on Syrian soil and Russia is the only country legally at arms in Syria. Makes you wonder that Turkey does'nt like Turkmen or consider them a problem. That they provoke getting them wiped out of Syria. How could Assad or anyone govern getting undermined from a dozen directions.

Who knows, the place is a mess. It's no use preaching peace inside the turmoil. It has to come from outside and above. But it appears with this lot-what peace ever.

Bosula trandq 25 Nov 2015 21:07

Since you can't or don't bother to actually read the Guardian or other papers you probably missed that UN Resolution 2249 calls not only for action against IS but also Al Nusra and other AQ associated groups in Syria. The Syrian Free Army is linked with these groups, particularly Al Nusra.

Now you have learned something.


Eugenios 25 Nov 2015 21:04

It seems more likely than not that the Russians will make an effort to capture and try the moderate terrorists who shot the Russian pilot parachuting. It is a war crime after all. The old Soviets would have dispensed with such niceties as trials, but the RF is more legalistic. Nicely enough the moderate terrorists identified themselves on video, don't you know?

There may also be several legal cases brought against Erdogan and Turkey.

Meanwhile, Turkey just gave the Russians a no-fly zone--against Turks.


ozhellene -> trandq 25 Nov 2015 20:57

I thought Russia was INVITED by the Syrian Gov. to assist them in eradicating ALL rebel factions including a bunch of Turkmen rebels funded by Erdogan. No others operating in Syria are legitimate. Any cowards shouting Allah uakbar and killing POWs should be eradicated


luella zarf -> ArundelXVI 25 Nov 2015 20:54

US air strikes destroys 283 oil tankers used for smuggling to fund terror group. You were saying? I don't know why some people around here just feel free to make things up.

Give us a break. The US hit ISIS oil tanks 6 full days after Russia released footage which showed its fighter jets targeting 200 oil trucks and a refinery. In 15 months of bombing ISIS, there were no American airstrikes on oil tanks until Russia came along and showed them how it's done. Even PBS pointed out when reporting the attack "For the first time, the US is attacking oil delivery trucks."

ozhellene 25 Nov 2015 20:35

will this be a "turkey shoot"? Big mistake Mr Erdogan! You just condemned you Turkmen buddies to be bombed by the Russian bears.
Turkey will never avoid the Kurdish finally taking back their rightful lands, stolen during the Ottoman rule.
Never forget that Kurds make up a lot of your population.....waiting for the right moment...

WalterCronkiteBot 25 Nov 2015 20:32

According to the BBC the Turkmen fight with Al Nusra. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34910389 UN Resolution 2249 calls not only for action against IS but also Al Nusra and other AQ associated groups.

These guys advertise and run jihadist training camps for children. http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/09/uighur-jihadist-group-in-syria-advertises-little-jihadists.php

They might not be explicitly AQ affiliated or Al Nusra itself but they share similar doctrines and fight together. Attacking them may not be by the word of the resolution but its certainly in the spirit of it.


ianhassall -> ianhassall 25 Nov 2015 20:13

Whether I think the Turkman should be wiped out is generally irrelevent.

I just know in the past 24 hours I've seen Turkey shoot down a Russian plane over Syria to defend the Turkmen. I also saw the Turkmen shooting at 2 Russian pilots why they attempted to parachute to safety, and one was killed. And I've seen the Turkmen fire a Saudi Arabia-supplied TOW missile at a Russian rescue helicopter, destroying it and killing two pilots.

I also know Turkey has been "laundering" ISIS oil from Syria and Iraq to the tune of $2 million/day.

You reap what you sow.

nnedjo 25 Nov 2015 19:49

In the recent G20 summit, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once more keen to underline that "terror has no religion and there should be no our terrorist and your terrorist".

Yes, just when Erdogan says this, he thinks only on the Kurds, and wonder why the rest of the world considers the Kurds as freedom fighters, and only Turkey considers them as [its] terrorists.

However, the main message of this article is correct. In order to achieve peace in the Middle East, first the rest of the world must come to terms. The divisions in the world, inherited from the times of the Cold War were reflected also on the Islamic world, and so deepened or even provoked a new sectarian Sunni-Shia divisions and conflicts. So although it's "a chronic disease", it is fallen now into an acute phase in Syria and Iraq. And the urgency of the case requires that really has to come to some deal, primarily between the US and Russia, that it could reach the end of the civil war in Syria, but also in Iraq, because it's all inter-connected. Otherwise, this problem will become even more complicated and prolonged, with unforeseeable consequences.

Eugenios 25 Nov 2015 19:58

Well, a US Air Force has now also suggested that the Turkish shooting down of the Russian had to have been a pre-planned provocation. Also US officials have said it cannot be confirmed that the Russian jet incurred into Turkish territory. And of course there is the testimony of the Russian pilot. No doubt the Guardian will be covering these points, yes?

ianhassall -> EightEyedSpy 25 Nov 2015 19:47

Yes, I know. Why shouldn't Turkey defend terrorits and shoot down a Russian jet while its flying missions in Syria and not incur any wrath.

Russians have been fighting Islamic extremists for a bit longer than the West, who have generally only ever funded or armed them. I'd believe Putin 99 times out of a 100 before I'd believe Obama once.

illbthr22 -> EightEyedSpy 25 Nov 2015 19:21

What ethnic cleansing??? Assad has a multi sect and multi ethnic government. Meanwhile western and Turkish backed jihadist have openly said they will massacre every last Kurd,Christian,Alawi and Druze in the country.

Andrew Nichols -> Jeremn 25 Nov 2015 19:14

We don't have a clear, clear understanding of everything that happened today, okay? I've said that and I can keep saying it all day. We're still trying to determine what happened. It's easy to rush to judgments and to make proclamations and declarations after an incident like this.

Which is exactly what the US did - by supporting Turkeys side of the story. Dont you wish the journalist would point this out?

Cecile_Trib -> Spiffey 25 Nov 2015 19:12

Turkmen terrorists backed by Turkey (now from the air) are there not to fight with Assad but to wipe out Kurds in this region - Edorgan's sweet dream to get the political weight back.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/12/world/middleeast/turkey-kurds-isis.html?_r=0

spitthedog -> centerline 25 Nov 2015 18:43

Amazing how Russia attacking the ISIS oil operation can suddenly embarrass the Yanks into doing the obvious. Why didn't they do it before? If ISIS and their FSA buddies loses they can't get rid of Assad for Bibi, simples. The good old FSA, chanting Jihad and carrying white on black Al Qaeda flags. We have an interesting idea of what "moderate" is. Then again Blair was a moderate and he.... ummm....errrr....oops!

luella zarf -> TheOutsider79 25 Nov 2015 18:38

are France the only honest brokers in all of this, the only ones actually doing what they say they are doing - targeting ISIS

No, of course not. It's all spin. France, which was Syria's colonial master, is hoping to regain some of its former influence. ISIS is just a pretext, and they really have no incentive of destroying their only justification for being there in the first place.

When France launched its first airstrikes in Sep, Reuters wrote: "Paris has become alarmed by the possibility of France being sidelined in negotiations to reach a political solution in Syria. A French diplomatic source said Paris needed to be one of the "hitters" in Syria - those taking direct military action - to legitimately take part in any negotiations for a political solution to the conflict."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/27/us-mideast-crisis-france-syria-idUSKCN0RR07Y20150927

This is why they are participating - to get a seat at the table when the great powers break up Syria and hand out land rights for pipelines to big oil.

SallyWa -> HHeLiBe 25 Nov 2015 18:46

Turkey has no interest in the peaceful settlement to the conflict in Syria that world powers are negotiating. As it gets desperate, Turkey will attempt to bring focus back on the Assad regime and reverse the losses it has made both in Syria and geopolitically.


SallyWa -> FelixFeline 25 Nov 2015 18:45

Really? I guess I'll have to take your word for that.

Really. That's sort of your issue, not mine.

Do you have any links to support your claims about these lost ISIS territories?

For example http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/12/russian-airstrikes-support-syrian-troops-to-push-back-rebels-in-strategic-town
Article tried to call ISIS as rebels, though, it happens sometimes as those are always "good terrorists" or just "rebels" if they do what we need, like in this case if they are anti-Assad .


midnightschild10 25 Nov 2015 18:33

Although there has been a war of words between Greece and Turkey, with Turkey charging the Greeks with invading its air space, Turkey has yet to fire on a Greek plane. The turkmen are considered "moderates, and the US arm them to fight the Assad government. Shooting down the Russian plane was Turkey's way of flexing its muscles. The murder of the pilot in the parashoot was a cowardly act. These are the people the US are backing. They can be added to Obama's list of most favored and join the ranks of the Saudis who behead and crucify protesters, one upmanship over ISIS gruesome beheadings, and of course there is alSiSi, who executes all opposition. Petroshenko, wants to freeze the people of Crimea, and has over 6500 Ukrainian deaths notched on his belt since Nuland and Obama gave him the keys to Kiev.

Turkey feels feisty right now, but he obviously isn't aware of the talk coming from Washington about dividing up Syria among four leaders like they did to Berlin.

Turkey will have no part to play, and the US really wants to keep Russia out of the picture. They blame Assad for ISIS but the vacuum left by the US and the coalition left in Iraq is what gave birth to ISIS. Easy to depose governments, and then let chaos reign. Since Obama keeps bringing up the right of a sovereign nation to protect its borders, he should realize that the Syrian government never invited the US onto its soil. The Turkmen through their actions have shown they are terrorists, and Russia will treat them accordingly.

HHeLiBe 25 Nov 2015 18:32

Erdogan is playing both NATO and Russia for fools. Trying to create a wedge and sabotage the restoration of stability in Syria.

Branko Dodig 25 Nov 2015 18:26

The Russian plane was shot over Syrian airspace. Even if it had strayed over Turkish airspace, it was not shot down there. Basically, an act of revenge for bombing their "rebel" buddies.

SallyWa -> FelixFeline 25 Nov 2015 18:24

It is "Turkey screwed up and overreacted". Not confusing at all.

SallyWa -> FelixFeline 25 Nov 2015 18:23

Sorry, but I'm not Russian and also where have you been - Russia has been fighting ISIS in Syria better than US/coalition, though US/coalition did it like for a whole year.The result is that ISIS lost territories which it gained under US's "watch".

centerline 25 Nov 2015 18:12

Since the G20 meeting, Russia has photographed and destroyed the Turkish/ISIS oil convoys.

In the day or so since Turkey shot down the Russian plane in defence of al Qaeda, Russia has for the first time attacked a Turkish logistics convoy to ISIS and al Qaeda right at the main border crossing to Allepo. A number of trucks destroyed and 7 killed in that operation. turkey will pay dearly in the days to come, without Russia ever having to move into Turkish territory.

Any Turks running errands for AQ and ISIS within Syria will now be an endangered species. Or more to the point they will simply be eradicated like the vermin they are.

luella zarf -> TonyBlunt 25 Nov 2015 18:10

What a joke.

In one year of bombing, August 2014-July 2015, the coalition conducted 44,000 airstrikes in Syria-Iraq and killed 15,000 ISIS fighters, which comes at 3 sorties per terrorist!

It is all a giant make-believe. They are only using ISIS as a pretext to occupy and breakup Syria. And Western populations swallow all these lies without blinking and feel victimized by refugees.


pfox33 25 Nov 2015 17:49

The US and Israel were totally freaking when Russia first considered selling Iran S-300 systems, even though they're defensive. It would have taken the feasibility of bombing Iran's nuclear infrastructure to an unknown place. Russia sold these systems to select customers, like China. The S-400 is not for sale. Any search of Youtube will explain why.

When the S-400 is set up around Latakia they will effectively own the surrounding skies for 400 miles in every direction. That extends well into Turkey.

Now, I'd bet that Putin has no plans to exacerbate the current situation by shooting down any Turkish jets out of revenge for yesterday's incident. But it will be unsettling for Turkish flyboys and their bosses to know that a good chunk of their a airspace is totally vulnerable and they fly there only because Russia lets them.

So maybe the Turks pissed in the pickles. This little problem is keeping the Nato nabobs up at night. They haven't said a fucking word.


Geraldine Baxter -> SallyWa 25 Nov 2015 17:47

it's astonishing how many of the Putin hating NATObots from the Ukrainian-themed CIF threads turn out to be ISIS supporters.

indeed, with the "stench" of US grand mufti all over them.. How far do you think Obama will bow on his next visit to Saudi.


Liesandstats -> luella zarf 25 Nov 2015 17:47

Yup the FT estimated before the Russians got involved that ISIS were producing between 30,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil a day. You would need over 2000 full size road tankers just to move one days output. Now its fair to assume after filling up it takes more than a day before it gets back to the pump. Surprisingly the US has neither noticed all these tankers and even more surprisingly the oil tanks and installations.

jonsid 25 Nov 2015 17:33

An article about Syria is now infested with Banderites. They need to worry more about their own long-time disaster of a country instead of stalking every article mentioning Russia.

Anette Mor 25 Nov 2015 17:29

Russians spent all this time signing the rules of engagement and recognition of each other air crafts over Syria with the US, only to be shot by Turkey. Does NATO even exist as a unit other than in the headquarter offices? They constantly refer to the terms which could allegedly force then to support each other in case of external threat, while clearly they will fuck each other on technicalities for years before doing anything practically viable. Russia waste their time talking to NATO, instead had to bribe Turkey separately into a workable local deal. I am sure Turkey got just the same conclusion after wasting time in NATO talks. Corruption and complicity eaten away common sense in western politician and military heads. They only think how weak or strong they would look imitating one or another decision.

aretheymyfeet -> psygone 25 Nov 2015 17:22

Hilarious, checkmate Putin? The only reason the Turks took this drastic action is because the Western alliance has lost the initiative in Syria and they are desperately trying to goad Russia into overreacting. But, as we have seen time and again from the Russians (Lavrov is an incredibly impressive Statesman) that they are cool headed, and restrained.

The whole regime change plan is hanging in the balance and every day Russia solidifies Assad's position. If this continues for even another month it will be virtually impossible for the Western alliance to demand the departure of Assad.

Their bargaining position is diminishing by the day and it is great to watch. Also good to read that the Russians have been pounding the shi*e out of those Turkmen areas. Expect those silly buggers to be slaughtered whilst Erdogan and the Turks watch on helplessly. If they even try anything inside the Syrian border now the Russians will annihilate them. I'd say if anything, the Turks have strengthened the Russians providing them with the perfect excuse to close the Syrian air space to "unfriendly" forces. Check.


thatshowitgoes 25 Nov 2015 16:56

Erdogan's reaction to Syria shooting down a Turkish jet in 2012. "Erdogan criticized Syria harshly on Tuesday for shooting down the Turkish fighter jet, saying: "Even if the plane was in their airspace for a few seconds, that is no excuse to attack." "It was clear that this plane was not an aggressive plane. Still it was shot down," the corrupt ISIS supporting scumbag said"

SallyWa -> psygone 25 Nov 2015 16:56

means he's politically impotent, militarily boxed in a corner and incompetent for self-inflicting

You know you just described Obama and all his policies in a nutshell.

Bob Nassh -> keepithuman 25 Nov 2015 16:54

I believe there's conditions within the NATO treaty that prevent them from defending another member nation providing the conflict was instigated by war crimes committed by the member nation.


MRModeratedModerate 25 Nov 2015 16:50

But of course Turkey was exposed last year...Yet our governments continue to ignore and cover.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/research-paper-isis-turke_b_6128950.html?ir=Australia

luella zarf Jeremn 25 Nov 2015 16:45

The US doesn't bomb ISIS, only pretends it does. Actually nobody bombs ISIS there except Russia.

Only between August 2014 and July 2015 the coalition aircraft have flown nearly 44,000 sorties, according to USNews, and Airwars said the strikes have killed more than 15,000 Islamic State militants during this period.

http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/07/21/stealthy-jet-ensures-other-war-fighting-aircraft-survive

So they needed 3 sorties per terrorist! I have no idea how they manage to be this ineffective unless a) they are world's worst airforce b) it's all make-believe. My money is on option b).

Yury Kobyzev -> Valois1588 25 Nov 2015 16:41

Now fact - turkey government is on ISIS side. Its simplifies situation. Russia now quite free to clean the Turkey border from interface with ISIS. It's half a job in fight.

I don't see why Russia can be damaged by so stupid current west policy. I think that clever part of west will change policy towards Russia in near future and will find there friends as it was during ww2. You can repeat mantra Pu... tin as I use Ooom ... but is he of your level?

Chummy15 25 Nov 2015 16:30

Turkey has made it pretty clear where its primary loyalties lie, with ISIS and the other anti-Assad elements. It was a foolish move shooting down the Russian plane which clearly was no threat to the security of Turkey whether or not it had violated Turkish airspace, something that happen around the world regularly. It adds a further dimension to an already complicated war

[Nov 23, 2015] Tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination

Notable quotes:
"... By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to "bring needed change to Washington." ..."
"... He's very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on "Super Tuesday" with all those southern states voting. I can't see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump. ..."
"... And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that's at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what's to stop Trump from then running as an independent? ..."
"... Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting "death panels!", whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting "Benghazi!", and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn't serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that? ..."
"... ... with Trump in the race, all of those states-which are more red than they were in '08-are likely out for Democrats. Swing states like Colorado and Virginia are clear toss-ups. There are few states that Romney or McCain won where Trump, as the Republican nominee, wouldn't be in the running, and an analysis of other key states shows that Trump's in far better position than his detractors would like to admit. If Trump were to win every state that Romney won, Trump would stand today at 206 electoral votes, with 55 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Similarly, Trump does not necessarily lose in a single toss-up state versus Hillary Clinton and, in fact, is seemingly competitive in many. ..."
"... Which all means that the election comes down to Florida and Ohio, two states where Trump has significant advantages. In Florida (29 electoral votes), he is a part-time resident and is polling better than the state's former governor and sitting U.S. senator. ... ..."
"... A brokered convention, maybe? Even Romney would have a shot. ..."
"... Top-tier presidential campaigns are preparing for the still-unlikely scenario that the nomination fight goes all the way to the 2016 Republican National Convention. ..."
"... There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1976, but the strength of the GOP field, when coupled with the proliferation of super PACs, increases the chances that several candidates could show up in Cleveland next July with an army of delegates at their backs ..."
"... Since the November 13 attacks, every poll-in Florida, two in New Hampshire, and three nationwide-shows Trump maintaining or expanding his lead against his primary opponents. Poor Ben Carson, only recently Trump's chief rival, is losing energy like, well, you know who. In the Fox NH poll, it's Trump at 27, Rubio 13, Cruz 11, and Carson down there at 9 percent alongside Jeb! ..."
"... Play it out: an outsider who's dismissed by his party's elite, comes into the race and overwhelms a large, much more experienced group of candidates in a series of state primaries, both increasing his margins and improving as a candidate as he goes long. All the time riding a crisis that seems made for his candidacy. Does that sound like a sure loser? ... ..."
"... While the investigation into US bombing waste is keyed on who padded the figures rather than the ineptitude of bombing in any use other than taking out property owners to get the greedy to say uncle . The shame of Paris is attributable to the US war machine and every issue requires more money for the pentagon. ..."
"... No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today! Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame. ..."
"... The Devil's Chessboard ..."
Nov 23, 2015 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs said... November 23, 2015 at 06:49 AM
(!Trump watch.)

Thinking About the Trumpthinkable
http://nyti.ms/1jeD39I
NYT - Paul Krugman - Nov 22

Alan Abramowitz reads the latest WaPo poll and emails:

'Read these results (#) and tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination? I've been very skeptical about this all along, but I'm starting to change my mind. I think there's at least a pretty decent chance that Trump will be the nominee.

Here's why I think Trump could very well end up as the nominee:

1. He's way ahead of every other candidate now and has been in the lead or tied for the lead for a long time.

2. The only one even giving him any competition right now is Carson who is even less plausible and whose support is heavily concentrated among one (large) segment of the base-evangelicals.

3. Rubio, the great establishment hope now, is deep in third place, barely in double digits and nowhere close to Trump or Carson.

4. By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to "bring needed change to Washington."

5. He is favored on almost every major issue by Republican voters including immigration and terrorism by wide margins. The current terrorism scare only helps him with Republicans. They want someone who will "bomb the shit" out of the Muslim terrorists.

6. There is clearly strong support among Republicans for deporting 11 million illegal immigrants. They don't provide party breakdown here, but support for this is at about 40 percent among all voters so it's got to be a lot higher than that, maybe 60 percent, among Republicans.

7. If none of the totally crazy things he's said up until now have hurt him among Republican voters, why would any crazy things he says in the next few months hurt him?

8. He's very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on "Super Tuesday" with all those southern states voting. I can't see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump.

9. And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that's at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what's to stop Trump from then running as an independent?'

Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting "death panels!", whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting "Benghazi!", and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn't serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that?

#- Washington Post-ABC News poll, Nov. 16-19, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-nov-16-19-2015/1880

Dan Kervick -> pgl... November 23, 2015 at 10:42 AM

My guess is that if people dug deeper into the support for Trump, they would find that there is a certain percentage of Republicans who have supported Trump because he was a business man - the only one in the pack - not because they wanted another crazy xenophobic racist wingnut. Now that Trump has gone full wingnut, they are frustrated with the mess they have created for themselves.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Dan Kervick...

Here's Why Donald Trump
Really Could Be Elected President http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/donald-trump-could-be-president via @VanityFair
David Burstein - October 22

... with Trump in the race, all of those states-which are more red than they were in '08-are likely out for Democrats. Swing states like Colorado and Virginia are clear toss-ups. There are few states that Romney or McCain won where Trump, as the Republican nominee, wouldn't be in the running, and an analysis of other key states shows that Trump's in far better position than his detractors would like to admit. If Trump were to win every state that Romney won, Trump would stand today at 206 electoral votes, with 55 electoral votes up for grabs in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Similarly, Trump does not necessarily lose in a single toss-up state versus Hillary Clinton and, in fact, is seemingly competitive in many.

Virginia is trending blue, but could be a toss-up, particularly given the tale of Dave Brat, whose success in 2014 could be read as a harbinger of Trump. Colorado will have high Republican turnout, given that it is home to what's likely to be one of the country's most contested Senate races-which could make it more competitive than it should be, considering Trump's comments about Latinos. Depending on how well Trump shows in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, they too could be in play. In two of the remaining states, Wisconsin and Nevada, any Democratic nominee will have an upper hand-particularly Clinton.

But Trump will be able to effectively contest, particularly in a place like Wisconsin, with working-class white voters who elected Scott Walker three times in four years. Finally, Pennsylvania, which has been leaning ever-more blue and will likely go blue this year, will nonetheless require Clinton to spend some resources and time there-taking away from her efforts in other swing states.

Which all means that the election comes down to Florida and Ohio, two states where Trump has significant advantages. In Florida (29 electoral votes), he is a part-time resident and is polling better than the state's former governor and sitting U.S. senator. ...

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Long time, still, from now to the GOP convention. (Curiously, less every week, however.)

Some GOPsters (including Bush, Rubio, various others) know in their hearts that eventually Trump & Carson will fade, or be dumped, and *their* star will ascend. Sure.

A brokered convention, maybe? Even Romney would have a shot.

NH primary poll puts non-candidate Romney first http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/21/gop-voters-would-prefer-romney/WiU9f86jd19UkXYQfb2yxM/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe - Nov 22

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
Could the GOP Really See a Brokered Convention
in 2016? http://natl.re/CLXxxf via @NRO
Joel Gehrke - May 14, 2015

Ask around and you'll hear a consistent theme from political strategists in the Republican party: The 2016 primary is wide open. "It is by far the most interesting presidential year since I've been involved [in Republican politics]," says Steve Munisteri, a senior adviser to Senator Rand Paul.

How interesting? Top-tier presidential campaigns are preparing for the still-unlikely scenario that the nomination fight goes all the way to the 2016 Republican National Convention.

There hasn't been a brokered convention since 1976, but the strength of the GOP field, when coupled with the proliferation of super PACs, increases the chances that several candidates could show up in Cleveland next July with an army of delegates at their backs. "It's certainly more likely now than it's been in any prior election, going back to 1976," Thor Hearn, the general counsel to George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, tells National Review. "I don't put it as a high likelihood, but it's a much more realistic probability than it's been in any recent experience." ...

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Believe It: Trump Can Defeat Hillary
http://www.thenation.com/article/believe-it-trump-can-defeat-hillary/
The Nation - Leslie Savan - November 20, 2015

The Paris attacks have made the demagogue even stronger.

Tt hurts to put these words in print, but… Ann Coulter may be right. Shortly after the Paris attacks began last Friday, she tweeted, "They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight."

Stephen Colbert agrees. He told us this week to get used to saying "President Trump"-and led his studio audience to repeat the words in unison and then pretend to barf.

Yes, it's hard to stomach. America's most entertaining demagogue winning the GOP primaries and then the general? It can't happen here, can it?

Democrats have been expressing absolute incredulity at the possibility, and quietly chuckling to themselves about the Clinton landslide to come if Donald is his party's nominee. The Huffington Post has banned Trump from its politics section and relegated him to Entertainment, as if there he'd be no more than a joke.

The problem is that our liberal incredulity mirrors that of the Republican establishment, which refuses to believe that their front-runner of five straight months could possibly win their nomination. Now even after the carnage in Paris, Beltway pundits are telling themselves that the base will sober up and turn toward "experienced" pols like Rubio or Bush and away from the newbie nuts. As the always-wrong Bill Kristol said of this latest terrorism crisis, "I think it hurts Trump and Carson, honestly."

But, honestly, it's only strengthened Trump. Since the November 13 attacks, every poll-in Florida, two in New Hampshire, and three nationwide-shows Trump maintaining or expanding his lead against his primary opponents. Poor Ben Carson, only recently Trump's chief rival, is losing energy like, well, you know who. In the Fox NH poll, it's Trump at 27, Rubio 13, Cruz 11, and Carson down there at 9 percent alongside Jeb!

It's easy to laugh at GOPers in denial, but progressives who pooh-pooh Trump's chances of beating Hillary may be whistling past the graveyard of American democracy.

A post-Paris Reuters/Ipsos poll asked 1,106 people which candidate, from the entire 2016 field, could best tackle terrorism, and respondents put Trump and Clinton on equal footing, at 20 percent each.

Not good-when it comes to taking on terrorists, a reality-show "carnival barker" who's never served in the military nor held elected office is tied with a decidedly hawkish former secretary of state?

Play it out: an outsider who's dismissed by his party's elite, comes into the race and overwhelms a large, much more experienced group of candidates in a series of state primaries, both increasing his margins and improving as a candidate as he goes long. All the time riding a crisis that seems made for his candidacy. Does that sound like a sure loser? ...

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...

Media hype, more Americans died, most did not want to, from gun violence this past weekend......

While the investigation into US bombing waste is keyed on "who padded the figures" rather than the ineptitude of bombing in any use other than taking out property owners to get the greedy to say "uncle". The shame of Paris is attributable to the US war machine and every issue requires more money for the pentagon.

847328_3527
But they're still ... "jealous of our freedom" right?
sgt_doom

"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s, but they never attacked innocent women and children indiscriminately," he said.

No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today!

Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame.

Recommended reading (to better understand why the USA is known as the Great Satan):

The Devil's Chessboard, by David Talbot

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+devil%27s+chessboard&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=78875381302&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2565125617248777980&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_34lcz93rcf_e_p4

logicalman
Funny how these fucks can come out and say this kind of shit and get away with it. The fucker's basically pleading guilty to murder, FFS.
Ms No
They didn't kill anybody in South America my ass.... The school of Americas, Operation Condor, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatamala, El Salvador .... who the hell are they kidding? The CIA has always been covered and nobody ever cared.
Perimetr Perimetr's picture
"If there's blame to be put. . ."

It's on the CIA for running its global terrorist operations, funded by the $1 trillion dollars a year coming from its Afghanistan heroin operation.

Noplebian

US Gives Their Proxy Army ISIS 45 Minute Warning Before Air Strikes......

http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/11/us-gives-their-prox...

blindman

sirs and madams,
.
"Christmas celebration this year is going to be a charade because the whole world is at war. We are close to Christmas. There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage war.

It's all a charade. The world has not understood the way of peace. The whole world is at war. A war can be justified, so to speak, with many, many reasons, but when all the world as it is today, at war, piecemeal though that war may be-a little here, a little there-there is no justification.

What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst of which we are living now? What shall remain? Ruins, thousands of children without education, so many innocent victims, and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers."

Francis I
.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2015/11/here-is-british-banned-...

Dinero D. Profit

Ladies and gentlemen of ZH.

In history, what must be, will be.

The discovery of America by Europe had to happen. The savages had to be eliminated and The Revolutionary War had to happen. Slavery had to begin, and after it, segregation had to begin, but, what must be, will be, slavery and segregation had to end. Old School colonization of poor nations had to happen. The Boer War had to happen. The Spanish American War had to happen. The Main had to be sunk. WWI had to happen. Calvary charges had to end. Totalitarian Communism had to happen. Germany's 20's depression had to happen, reactionary jingoism had to happen, and Kristallnacht and the Reichstag fire had to happen. The Allies had to win WWII, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to be publicity stunts, and the Cold War had to begin. JFK had to be wacked, the Vietnam War had to happen, the FED still was happening. Civil Rights laws had to be passed. Recognition of China had to happen, going off the gold standard had to happen, and Nixon had to be kicked out of office. Corporate Globalization had to begin. After Carter an actor had to be President. Unions had to be stifled. Perestroika and glasnost had to happen. The Berlin Wall had to come down. The MIC had to find another enemy, and suddenly 9/11 had to happen. …

Over population has to happen, poisoning the environment has to happen, and the NWO has to happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, the NWO is here, and there is nothing you can do, and nothing you could have done to stop it.

Edit. I see none of our supposed enemies 'truth bombing' 9/11, 7/7, and the 13th Paris attacks. I see no trade embagoes, I see no arguments in the Security Council over the illegality of US/Nato bombing in Syria.

blindman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_79...
Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy
Posted: 08/03/2015 11:48 am EDT
.
On July 28, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:

It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell." ...
.
it is the money "system", man.

blindman

corporations and hoodwink powers ride on the indifference of the damned, the silence of the dead and doomed.

Dinero D. Profit

The Satus Quo can rely upon the loyalty of their employees, Congress, the military, the military industrial contractors, their workers and family members, the crime control establishment, all Uniersity professors and employees, and every employee of all publically traded companies, and every person employed by the MSM.

The dead and doomed are irrelevant. If you have an establishment job, you'll obey and ask no vital questions.

Dick Buttkiss
Sunnis and Shiites hate each other far more than they hate Christians, Jews, or anyone else. If it weren't for oil, the USG wouldn't give a flyiing fuck if they anihilated each other. Instead, it conspires with them in ways far beyond its ability to comprehend, much less navigate. Thus is the US ship of state heading for the shoals of its destruction, the only question being how much of the country and the outside world it takes down with it.
ross81
thats bullshit Western propaganda that Shiites hate Sunnis and vice versa. In the same way that the Brits stirred up Protestant hatred of Catholics in Ulster for centuries, the US/Israel/Saudi does the same with Sunnis vs Shiites on a much bigger scale in the Middle East. Divide and Conquer.
geno-econ
This is getting scary in that one or two more attacks will result in travel freezes, flow of Middle East oil and result in huge increase in military as well as Homeland security costs. A depression or economic collapse a real possibility Perhaps time for a Peace Conference of all interested parties. The US started this shit and should be the first to call for a Peace Conference. Macho talk will only make things worse.
moonmac
We can print trillions out of thin air at the drop of a hat but we can't kill a small group of terrorists. Got it!
sgt_doom
Or, we pour billions of dollars every year into the CIA, NSA, and DIA, and only a poor old fart such as myself can figure out that Bilal Erdogan is the ISIS connection to oil trading (Turkish president, Erdogan's son) and Erdogan's daughter is with ISIS?
GRDguy
Ex-CIA boss gets it wrong, again.

"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

should be:

"When you have a small group of financial sociopaths willing to lie-to, steal-from and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

and you'll probably be punished, jailed or shot for tryin' to protect yourself and your family.

Ban KKiller
War profiteer. That is it. Along wth James Comey, James Clapper, Jack Welch and the list is almost endless...
BarnacleBill
"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."

Simply take out the word "their", and the description perfectly fits the CIA, MI6 and their like. For them, it's all a business deal, nothing more - a massive slum-clearance project. Destroy people's houses, provide accommodation and food, ship them somewhere else; do it again and again until the money-printing machine conks out. It's money for old rope.

http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2015/11/slum-clearance-on-massive-scale.html

And, yes, we're all vulnerable. The man got that right.

Duc888
"You get the politicians you deserve."

CIA types are appointed, not elected.

Duc888
I do not know if there are any Catherine Austin Fitts fans on this web site but this is definitely worth the time. The FEDGOV came after her non stop for 6 years when she worked for HUD under Bush Sr. If nothing else this lady is tenacious. In this presentation she uncorks exactly HOW the deep black budgets are paid for...and it ain't your tax dollars. What she uncovered while at HUD was simply amazing..... and she made an excellent point. At the top... it's NOT "fraud" because that's how it was all deigned right from the get go after wwII. It brings to mind the funny computer saying....."it's a feature, not a bug". She digs right into how the CIA was funded... Truly amazing stuff. ...of course the dick head brigade will come along here and deride her because of the conference she is speaking at.... well, who the fuck cares, her presentation is excellent and filled with facts. Yes it is 1 hour 20 minutes long but imho it is well worth the watch...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0mimIp8mr8

Dragon HAwk
After reading all these posts my only question is why does the CIA allow Zero Hedge to Exist ?

except of course to collect names...

[Nov 23, 2015] The Crisis of World Order

It's the same PNAC propaganda all over again.
Notable quotes:
"... From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis. ..."
"... Youd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS. ..."
"... Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security. ..."
"... ... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul: ..."
"... And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy. ..."
"... It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board ..."
"... Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. ..."
"... A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan ( ..."
"... ), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ... ..."
"... Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN ..."
"... Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB ..."
"... doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance. (Wikipedia) ..."
Nov. 20, 2015 | WSJ

...Europe was not in great shape before the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks. The prolonged Eurozone crisis eroded the legitimacy of European political institutions and the centrist parties that run them, while weakening the economies of key European powers. The old troika-Britain, France and Germany-that used to provide leadership on the continent and with whom the U.S. worked most closely to set the global agenda is no more. Britain is a pale shadow of its former self. Once the indispensable partner for the U.S., influential in both Washington and Brussels, the mediator between America and Europe, Britain is now unmoored, drifting away from both. The Labor Party, once led by Tony Blair, is now headed by an anti-American pacifist, while the ruling Conservative government boasts of its "very special relationship" with China.

... ... ...

There is a Russian angle, too. Many of these parties, and even some mainstream political movements across the continent, are funded by Russia and make little secret of their affinity for Moscow. Thus Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has praised "illiberalism" and made common ideological cause with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Germany, a whole class of businesspeople, politicians, and current and former government officials, led by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, presses constantly for normalized relations with Moscow. It sometimes seems, in Germany and perhaps in all of Europe, as if the only person standing in the way of full alliance with Russia is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Now the Syrian crisis has further bolstered Russia's position. Although Europeans generally share Washington's discomfort with Moscow's support for Mr. Assad and Russia's bombing of moderate Syrian rebels, in the wake of the Paris attacks, any plausible partner in the fight against Islamic State seems worth enlisting. In France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy has long been an advocate for Russia, but now his calls for partnership with Moscow are echoed by President François Hollande, who seeks a "grand coalition" with Russia to fight Islamic State.

Where does the U.S. fit into all this? The Europeans no longer know, any more than American allies in the Middle East do. Most Europeans still like Mr. Obama. After President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, Europeans have gotten the kind of American president they wanted. But in the current crisis, this new, more restrained and intensely cautious post-Iraq America has less to offer than the old superpower, with all its arrogance and belligerence.

The flip side of European pleasure at America's newfound Venusian outlook is the perception, widely shared around the world, that the U.S. is a declining superpower, and that even if it is not objectively weaker than it once was, its leaders' willingness to deploy power on behalf of its interests, and on behalf of the West, has greatly diminished. As former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer recently put it, the U.S. "quite obviously, is no longer willing-or able-to play its old role."

Mr. Fischer was referring specifically to America's role as the dominant power in the Middle East, but since the refugee crisis and the attacks in Paris, America's unwillingness to play that role has reverberations and implications well beyond the Middle East. What the U.S. now does or doesn't do in Syria will affect the future stability of Europe, the strength of trans-Atlantic relations and therefore the well-being of the liberal world order.

This is no doubt the last thing that Mr. Obama wants to hear, and possibly to believe. Certainly he would not deny that the stakes have gone up since the refugee crisis and especially since Paris. At the very least, Islamic State has proven both its desire and its ability to carry out massive, coordinated attacks in a major European city. It is not unthinkable that it could carry out a similar attack in an American city. This is new.

... ... ...

In 2002, a British statesman-scholar issued a quiet warning. "The challenge to the postmodern world," the diplomat Robert Cooper argued, was that while Europeans might operate within their borders as if power no longer mattered, in the world outside Europe, they needed to be prepared to use force just as in earlier eras. "Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle," he wrote. Europeans didn't heed this warning, or at least didn't heed it sufficiently. They failed to arm themselves for the jungle, materially and spiritually, and now that the jungle has entered the European garden, they are at a loss.

With the exercise of power barely an option, despite what Mr. Hollande promises, Europeans are likely to feel their only choice is to build fences, both within Europe and along its periphery-even if in the process they destroy the very essence of the European project. It is this sentiment that has the Le Pens of Europe soaring in the polls.

What would such an effort look like? First, it would require establishing a safe zone in Syria, providing the millions of would-be refugees still in the country a place to stay and the hundreds of thousands who have fled to Europe a place to which to return. To establish such a zone, American military officials estimate, would require not only U.S. air power but ground forces numbering up to 30,000. Once the safe zone was established, many of those troops could be replaced by forces from Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, but the initial force would have to be largely American.

In addition, a further 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops would be required to uproot Islamic State from the haven it has created in Syria and to help local forces uproot it in Iraq. Many of those troops could then be replaced by NATO and other international forces to hold the territory and provide a safe zone for rebuilding the areas shattered by Islamic State rule.

At the same time, an internationally negotiated and blessed process of transition in Syria should take place, ushering the bloodstained Mr. Assad from power and establishing a new provisional government to hold nationwide elections. The heretofore immovable Mr. Assad would face an entirely new set of military facts on the ground, with the Syrian opposition now backed by U.S. forces and air power, the Syrian air force grounded and Russian bombing halted. Throughout the transition period, and probably beyond even the first rounds of elections, an international peacekeeping force-made up of French, Turkish, American and other NATO forces as well as Arab troops-would have to remain in Syria until a reasonable level of stability, security and inter-sectarian trust was achieved.

Is such a plan so unthinkable? In recent years, the mere mention of U.S. ground troops has been enough to stop any conversation. Americans, or at least the intelligentsia and political class, remain traumatized by Iraq, and all calculations about what to do in Syria have been driven by that trauma. Mr. Obama's advisers have been reluctant to present him with options that include even smaller numbers of ground forces, assuming that he would reject them. And Mr. Obama has, in turn, rejected his advisers' less ambitious proposals on the reasonable grounds that they would probably be insufficient.

This dynamic has kept the president sneering at those who have wanted to do more but have been reluctant to be honest about how much more. But it has also allowed him to be comfortable settling for minimal, pressure-relieving approaches that he must know cannot succeed but which at least have the virtue of avoiding the much larger commitment that he has so far refused to make.

The president has also been inclined to reject options that don't promise to "solve" the problems of Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. He doesn't want to send troops only to put "a lid on things."

In this respect, he is entranced, like most Americans, by the image of the decisive engagement followed by the victorious return home. But that happy picture is a myth. Even after the iconic American victory in World War II, the U.S. didn't come home. Keeping a lid on things is exactly what the U.S. has done these past 70 years. That is how the U.S. created this liberal world order.

In Asia, American forces have kept a lid on what had been, and would likely be again, a dangerous multisided conflict involving China, Japan, Korea, India and who knows who else. In Europe, American forces put a lid on what had been a chronic state of insecurity and war, making it possible to lay the foundations of the European Union. In the Balkans, the presence of U.S. and European troops has kept a lid on what had been an escalating cycle of ethnic conflict. In Libya, a similar international force, with even a small American contingent, could have kept the lid on that country's boiling caldron, perhaps long enough to give a new, more inclusive government a chance.

Preserving a liberal world order and international security is all about placing lids on regions of turmoil. In any case, as my Brookings Institution colleague Thomas Wright observes, whether or not you want to keep a lid on something really ought to depend on what's under the lid.

At practically any other time in the last 70 years, the idea of dispatching even 50,000 troops to fight an organization of Islamic State's description would not have seemed too risky or too costly to most Americans. In 1990-91, President George H.W. Bush, now revered as a judicious and prudent leader, sent half a million troops across the globe to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, a country that not one American in a million could find on a map and which the U.S. had no obligation to defend. In 1989, he sent 30,000 troops to invade Panama to topple an illegitimate, drug-peddling dictator. During the Cold War, when presidents sent more than 300,000 troops to Korea and more than 500,000 troops to Vietnam, the idea of sending 50,000 troops to fight a large and virulently anti-American terrorist organization that had seized territory in the Middle East, and from that territory had already launched a murderous attack on a major Western city, would have seemed barely worth an argument.

Not today. Americans remain paralyzed by Iraq, Republicans almost as much as Democrats, and Mr. Obama is both the political beneficiary and the living symbol of this paralysis. Whether he has the desire or capacity to adjust to changing circumstances is an open question. Other presidents have-from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton-each of whom was forced to recalibrate what the loss or fracturing of Europe would mean to American interests. In Mr. Obama's case, however, such a late-in-the-game recalculation seems less likely. He may be the first president since the end of World War II who simply doesn't care what happens to Europe.

If so, it is, again, a great irony for Europe, and perhaps a tragic one. Having excoriated the U.S. for invading Iraq, Europeans played no small part in bringing on the crisis of confidence and conscience that today prevents Americans from doing what may be necessary to meet the Middle Eastern crisis that has Europe reeling. Perhaps there are Europeans today wishing that the U.S. will not compound its error of commission in Iraq by making an equally unfortunate error of omission in Syria. They can certainly hope.

Mr. Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" and, most recently, "The World America Made."

Selected Skeptical Comments
anne said... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM
https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan

Branko Milanovic ‏@BrankoMilan

From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis.

Strobe Talbott @strobetalbott

A clarion call by @BrookingsFP's Bob Kagan. Hope (& bet) POTUS has read it. Would-be successors should as well. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-world-order-1448052095

9:03 AM - 21 Nov 2015

anne said in reply to anne... , November 22, 2015 at 05:50 AM

https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/668114578866221056

Branko Milanovic‏ @BrankoMilan

You'd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS.

ilsm said in reply to anne...

Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security.


Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to anne...

Neoconservativism Is Down But Not Out of the 2016 Race

http://bloom.bg/1EpwSou
via @Bloomberg - February 18, 2015

... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul:

'Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in the New Republic this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.'

(The story also notes, prematurely, that the careers of older neocons like Wolfowitz are "permanently buried in the sands of Iraq.")

Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. He was part of the Project for a New American Century, a now-defunct think tank that spanned much of the second Bush presidency and supported a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." PNAC counted Kagan, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, and Jeb Bush among its members. In 1998, some of its members-including Wolfowitz, Kagan, and Rumsfeld-signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton asking him to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan (#), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ...

*- Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN

#- Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...

(I may be a HRC supporter but Neocons still make me anxious.)

'doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance.' (Wikipedia)


[Nov 21, 2015] US Congresswoman Introduces Bill To Stop Illegal War On Assad; Says CIA Ops Must Stop

"Any candidate who supports a safe no-fly zone in Syria, must admit that US/Coalition ground/air troops are need to enforce [it]
Nov 21, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Last month, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went on CNN and laid bare Washington's Syria strategy.

In a remarkably candid interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gabbard calls Washington's effort to oust Assad "counterproductive" and "illegal" before taking it a step further and accusing the CIA of arming the very same terrorists who The White House insists are "sworn enemies."

In short, Gabbard all but tells the American public that the government is lying to them and may end up inadvertently starting "World War III."

For those who missed it, here's the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHkher6ceaA

[Nov 20, 2015] Hillarys Heavy Obligations to Wall Street Money and The Banks Favorite Candidates

jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them.

Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola

People are discouraged and disillusioned after almost thirty years of distorted governance, specially in the aftermath of the 'Hope and Change' which quickly became 'Vain Hope for Change.' Most cannot admit that their guys were in the pockets of Big Defense, Big Pharma, Big Energy, and Wall Street.

The real question about Hillary comes down to this. Can you trust her to do what she says she will do, the right things for her putative constituents and not her big money donors and paymasters, once she takes office?

Or will that poor family who left the White House 'broke' and then mysteriously obtained a fortune of over $100 million in the following years, thanks to enormous payments for 'speeches' from large financial firms and huge donations to their Trust once again take care of the hand that pays them the most?

This is not to say that there is a better alternative amongst the leading Republican candidates, who have been and are still under the same types of payment arrangements, only with different people signing the checks.

Or we could skip the middlemen entirely and just directly elect one of New York's most prominent of their narcissist class directly, instead of another witless stooge of big money, and hope for something different? And how will that likely work out for us?

It is an exceptionally hard time to be a human being in this great nation of ours.

And so what ought we to do? Wallow in cynicism and the sweet sickness of misanthropy and despair? Vote strictly on the hope of our own narrow self-interest no matter the broader and longer term consequences, and then face the inevitable blowback from injustice and repression?

Give up on our grandchildren and children because we are too tired and interested in our own short term comfort? Too filled with selfishness, anger and hate to see straight, and do anything but turn ourselves into mindless animals to escape the pain of being truly human? Do no thinking, and just follow orders? This latter impulse has taken whole nations of desperate people into the abyss.

Or do we stop wallowing in our specialness and self-pity, and 'stand on the shoulders of giants' and confront what virtually every generation and every individual has had to wrestle with since the beginning of recorded time?

Do we fall, finally stricken with grief in our blindness, on the road to Damascus and say at long last, 'Lord, what then wilt thou have me to do?'

This is the question that circumstance is posing to us. And hopefully we will we heed the answer that has been already given, to be 'steadfast, unshaken, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in Him our labor is not in vain.'

And the touchstone of the alloy of our actions is love.

And so we have before us what Franklin Roosevelt so aptly characterized as our own 'rendezvous with destiny.'


Related:
Wall Street Is Running the World's Central Banks
Wall Street's Favorite Presidential Candidates

[Nov 15, 2015] Paris attacks Andrew J. Bacevich A war the West cannot win

"It's past time for the West, and above all for the United States as the West's primary military power, to consider trying something different.
Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself..."
Notable quotes:
"... Today, notwithstanding the Obama administration's continuing appetite for military piddling - air strikes, commando raids, and advisory missions - few Americans retain any appetite for undertaking further large-scale hostilities in the Islamic world. ..."
"... In proposing to pour yet more fuel on that fire, Hollande demonstrates a crippling absence of imagination, one that has characterized recent Western statesmanship more generally when it comes to the Islamic world. There, simply trying harder won't suffice as a basis of policy. ..."
"... Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost than is gained by engaging in futile, open-ended armed conflicts. Rather than vainly attempting to police or control, this revised strategy should seek to contain. .. ..."
Nov 14, 2015 | The Boston Globe

French President Francois Hollande's response to Friday's vicious terrorist attacks, now attributed to ISIS, was immediate and uncompromising. "We are going to lead a war which will be pitiless," he vowed.

Whether France itself possesses the will or the capacity to undertake such a war is another matter. So too is the question of whether further war can provide a remedy to the problem at hand: widespread disorder roiling much of the Greater Middle East and periodically spilling into the outside world.

It's not as if the outside world hasn't already given pitiless war a try. The Soviet Union spent all of the 1980s attempting to pacify Afghanistan and succeeded only in killing a million or so Afghans while creating an incubator for Islamic radicalism. Beginning in 2003, the United States attempted something similar in Iraq and ended up producing similarly destabilizing results. By the time US troops withdrew in 2011, something like 200,000 Iraqis had died, most of the them civilians. Today Iraq teeters on the brink of disintegration.

Perhaps if the Russians had tried harder or the Americans had stayed longer they might have achieved a more favorable outcome. Yet that qualifies as a theoretical possibility at best. Years of fighting in Afghanistan exhausted the Soviet Union and contributed directly to its subsequent collapse. Years of fighting in Iraq used up whatever "Let's roll!" combativeness Americans may have entertained in the wake of 9/11.

Today, notwithstanding the Obama administration's continuing appetite for military piddling - air strikes, commando raids, and advisory missions - few Americans retain any appetite for undertaking further large-scale hostilities in the Islamic world. Fewer still will sign up to follow President Hollande in undertaking any new crusade. Their reluctance to do so is understandable and appropriate.

It's difficult to imagine the nihilism, and contempt for humanity, that could motivate such cold-blooded rage.

The fact is that United States and its European allies, to include France, face a perplexing strategic conundrum. Collectively they find themselves locked in a protracted conflict with Islamic radicalism, with ISIS but one manifestation of a much larger phenomenon. Prospects for negotiating an end to that conflict anytime soon appear to be nil. Alas, so too do prospects of winning it.

In this conflict, the West generally appears to enjoy the advantage of clear-cut military superiority. By almost any measure, we are stronger than our adversaries. Our arsenals are bigger, our weapons more sophisticated, our generals better educated in the art of war, our fighters better trained at waging it.

Yet most of this has proven to be irrelevant. Time and again the actual employment of that ostensibly superior military might has produced results other than those intended or anticipated. Even where armed intervention has achieved a semblance of tactical success - the ousting of some unsavory dictator, for example - it has yielded neither reconciliation nor willing submission nor even sullen compliance. Instead, intervention typically serves to aggravate, inciting further resistance. Rather than putting out the fires of radicalism, we end up feeding them.

In proposing to pour yet more fuel on that fire, Hollande demonstrates a crippling absence of imagination, one that has characterized recent Western statesmanship more generally when it comes to the Islamic world. There, simply trying harder won't suffice as a basis of policy.

It's past time for the West, and above all for the United States as the West's primary military power, to consider trying something different.

Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost than is gained by engaging in futile, open-ended armed conflicts. Rather than vainly attempting to police or control, this revised strategy should seek to contain. ...

Fred C. Dobbs ->Fred C. Dobbs...

'Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost...'

The question remains: Is it possible to do this?

Granted, the Mediterranean Sea is an insufficient barrier.

anne ->Fred C. Dobbs... November 14, 2015 at 12:35 PM
'Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost...'

The question remains: Is it possible to do this?

Granted, the Mediterranean Sea is an insufficient barrier.

[ My understanding is that such a barrier is only possible to maintain when there are working governments in countries through the Middle East. Destroying the governments of Iraq and Libya proved disastrous strategic mistakes, destroying the government of Syria would be another such mistake but we have been determined to do just that. Yemen, the same.

Iraq was a strategic disaster but we learned nothing and went after Libya and now Syria and Yemen. ]

pgl ->Fred C. Dobbs... November 14, 2015 at 12:46 PM
ISIS is doing a lot of boosting now. Osama bin Laden was doing a lot of past late in 2001. What ever happened to that guy? Pissing off both the French and the Russians by killing 100s of their citizens is a good way to get yourself killed.

[Nov 14, 2015] Iraqi warmonger Ahmad Chalabi dies

Notable quotes:
"... Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician accused of providing false information that led to the United States toppling longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion, died on Tuesday of a heart attack, state television and two parliamentarians said. ..."
"... "The neo-cons wanted to make a case for war and he [Chalabi] was somebody who is willing to provide them with information that would help their cause," Ali Khedery, who was the longest continuously-serving American official in Iraq in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, told Al Arabiya News. ..."
Nov 03, 2015 | Al Arabiya News

Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician accused of providing false information that led to the United States toppling longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion, died on Tuesday of a heart attack, state television and two parliamentarians said.

Attendants found the controversial lawmaker, 71, dead in bed in his Baghdad home, according to parliament official Haitham al-Jabouri.

... ... ...

During his heyday, the smooth-talking Chalabi was widely seen as the man who helped push the U.S. and its main ally Britain into invading Iraq in 2003, with information that Saddam's government had weapons of mass destruction, claims that were eventually discredited.

... ... ...

Chalabi had also said Saddam - known for his secularist Baathist ideology - had ties with al-Qaeda.

After Saddam's fall by U.S.-led coalition forces, Chalabi returned from exile in Britain and the United States. Despite having been considered as a potential candidate for the powerful post of prime minister in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's 24-year reign, the politician never managed to rise to the top of Iraq's stormy, sectarian-driven political landscape.

His eventual fallout with his former American allies also hurt his chances of becoming an Iraqi leader.

"The neo-cons wanted to make a case for war and he [Chalabi] was somebody who is willing to provide them with information that would help their cause," Ali Khedery, who was the longest continuously-serving American official in Iraq in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, told Al Arabiya News.

[Nov 14, 2015] Why The Neocons Hate The Donald

Notable quotes:
"... The President, as commander in chief, shapes US foreign policy: indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky , you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you. ..."
"... PAUL: … How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You can not be a conservative if youre going to keep promoting new programs that youre not going to pay for. ..."
"... Here, in one dramatic encounter, were two worldviews colliding: the older conservative vision embodied by Rand Paul, which puts domestic issues like fiscal solvency first, and the internationalist stance taken by what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans , and now goes under the neoconservative rubric, which puts the maintenance and expansion of Americas overseas empire – dubbed world leadership by Rubios doppelganger, Jeb Bush – over and above any concerns over budgetary common sense. ..."
"... Rubios proposed military budget – $696 billion – represents a $35 billion increase over what the Pentagon is requesting ..."
"... Pauls too-clever-by-half legislative maneuvering may have effectively exposed Rubio – and Sen. Tom Cotton, Marcos co-pilot on this flight into fiscal profligacy – as the faux-conservative that he is, but it evaded the broader question attached to the issue of military spending: what are we going to do with all that shiny-new military hardware? Send more weapons to Ukraine? Outfit an expeditionary force to re-invade Iraq and venture into Syria? This brings to mind Madeleine Albrights infamous remark directed at Gen. Colin Powell: Whats the point of having this superb military youre always talking about if we cant use it? ..."
"... Speaking of Trumpian hot air: Paul showed up The Donald for the ignorant blowhard he is by pointing out, after another of Trumps jeremiads aimed at the Yellow Peril, that China is not a party to the trade deal, which is aimed at deflecting Beijing. That was another shining moment for Paul, who successfully juxtaposed his superior knowledge to Trumps babbling. ..."
"... If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, one-hundred percent, and I cant understand how anybody would be against it. ..."
"... Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the isolationist populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybodys bills? Why are we fighting everybody elses wars? Its a bad deal! ..."
"... This is why the neocons hate Trumps guts even more than they hate Paul. The former, after all, is the frontrunner. What the War Party fears is that Trumps contradictory mixture of bluster – bigger, better, stronger! – and complaints that our allies are taking advantage of us means a victory for the dreaded isolationists at the polls. ..."
"... its election season, the one time – short of when were about to invade yet another country – when the American people are engaged with the foreign policy issues of the day. And what we are seeing is a rising tide of disgust with our policy of global intervention – in a confused inchoate sense, in the case of Trump, and in a focused, self-conscious, occasionally eloquent and yet still slightly confused and inconsistent way in the case of Sen. Paul. Either way, the real voice of the American heartland is being heard. ..."
"... Trump has rocked the boat and raised some issues and viewpoints that none of the other bought and paid for candidates would ever have raised. Has he changed the national discussion on these issues? At least he woken some people up. ..."
"... The sentence of We relied on the stupidity of the American voter resonates. ..."
"... What you did, was you fell for the oldest press trick in the book. Its called: out of context . Thats is where they play back only a segment of what someone says, only a part of what they want you to hear, so you will draw the wrong conclusion. What Trump said {had you listened to ALL of what he said} was that he was going to TAKE ISILS OIL. Oil is the largest source of revenue for them {then comes the CIA money}. If you were to remove their oil revenues from them, they would be seriously hurting for cash to fund their machine. I dont have a problem with that. ..."
"... The thing about understanding the attack on The Donald is understanding what he is NOT. Namely he is not CFR connected ..."
"... The attacks on Trump have been relentless yet he is still maintaining his position in the polls. ..."
"... The goal is to have a CFR candidate in both the GOP and Dem fold. Although Hillary is not a CFR member ostensibly Slick Willie has been for more than 20 years and his Administration was rife with them...Hello Rubin and Glass Steagal!!..as is Chelsea... a newly elected member. ..."
"... [American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant. ..."
"... Yes, I have also seen the new golden boy regaled in the media. Lets see where he goes. I wonder if anyone represents the American people any better than the corrupt piece of dried up persimmon that is Hillary? ..."
"... With JEB polling in single digits and hopelessly befuddled, Rubio is the Great Hispanic Hope of the establishment Republocrats. He is being well-pimped, is all. Paul is clearly more intelligent, more articulate, and more well-informed; Trump is more forceful and popular (but independent!). Neither suits an establishment that wants to hold the reins behind the throne. ..."
Nov 14, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Submitted by Justin Raimondo via Anti-War.com,

Most Americans don't think much about politics, let alone foreign policy issues, as they go about their daily lives. It's not that they don't care: it's just that the daily grind doesn't permit most people outside of Washington, D.C. the luxury of contemplating the fate of nations with any regularity. There is one exception, however, and that is during election season, and specifically – when it comes to foreign policy – every four years, when the race for the White House begins to heat up. The President, as commander in chief, shapes US foreign policy: indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you.

The most recent episode of the continuing GOP reality show, otherwise known as the presidential debates, certainly gave us a glimpse of what we are in for if the candidates on that stage actually make it into the Oval Office – and, folks, it wasn't pretty, for the most part. But there were plenty of bright spots.

This was supposed to have been a debate about economics, but in the Age of Empire there is no real division between economic and foreign policy issues. That was brought home by the collision between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul about half way through the debate when Rubio touted his child tax credit program as being "pro-family." A newly-aggressive and articulate Rand Paul jumped in with this:

"Is it conservative to have $1 trillion in transfer payments – a new welfare program that's a refundable tax credit? Add that to Marco's plan for $1 trillion in new military spending, and you get something that looks, to me, not very conservative."

Rubio's blow-dried exterior seemed to fray momentarily, as he gave his "it's for the children" reply:

"But if you invest it in your children, in the future of America and strengthening your family, we're not going to recognize that in our tax code? The family is the most important institution in society. And, yes…

"PAUL: Nevertheless, it's not very conservative, Marco."

Stung to the quick, Rubio played what he thought was his trump card:

"I know that Rand is a committed isolationist. I'm not. I believe the world is a stronger and a better place, when the United States is the strongest military power in the world.

"PAUL: Yeah, but, Marco! … How is it conservative … to add a trillion-dollar expenditure for the federal government that you're not paying for?

"RUBIO: Because…

"PAUL: … How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You can not be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs that you're not going to pay for.

(APPLAUSE)"

Here, in one dramatic encounter, were two worldviews colliding: the older conservative vision embodied by Rand Paul, which puts domestic issues like fiscal solvency first, and the "internationalist" stance taken by what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans, and now goes under the neoconservative rubric, which puts the maintenance and expansion of America's overseas empire – dubbed "world leadership" by Rubio's doppelganger, Jeb Bush – over and above any concerns over budgetary common sense.

Rubio then descended into waving the bloody shirt and evoking Trump's favorite bogeyman – the Yellow Peril – to justify his budget-busting:

"We can't even have an economy if we're not safe. There are radical jihadists in the Middle East beheading people and crucifying Christians. A radical Shia cleric in Iran trying to get a nuclear weapon, the Chinese taking over the South China Sea…"

If the presence of the Islamic State in the Middle East precludes us from having an economy, then those doing their Christmas shopping early this year don't seem to be aware of it. As for the Iranians and their alleged quest for nuclear weapons, IAEA inspectors are at this very moment verifying the complete absence of such an effort – although Sen. Paul, who stupidly opposed the Iran deal, is in no position to point this out. As for the fate of the South China Sea – if we could take a poll, I wonder how many Americans would rather have their budget out of balance in order to keep the Chinese from constructing artificial islands a few miles off their own coastline. My guess: not many.

Playing the "isolationist" card got Rubio nowhere: I doubt if a third of the television audience even knows what that term is supposed to mean. It may resonate in Washington, but out in the heartland it carries little if any weight with people more concerned about their shrinking bank accounts than the possibility that the South China Sea might fall to … the Chinese.

Ted Cruz underscored his sleaziness (and, incidentally, his entire election strategy) by jumping in and claiming the "middle ground" between Rubio's fulsome internationalism and Paul's call to rein in our extravagant military budget – by siding with Rubio. We can do what Rubio wants to do – radically increase military expenditures – but first, he averred, we have to cut sugar subsidies so we can afford it. This was an attack on Rubio's enthusiasm for sugar subsidies, without which, avers the Senator from the state that produces the most sugar, "we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point we're at the mercy of a foreign country for food security." Yes, there's a jihadist-Iranian-Chinese conspiracy to deprive America of its sweet tooth – but not if President Rubio can stop it!

Cruz is a master at prodding the weaknesses of his opponents, but his math is way off: sugar subsidies have cost us some $15 billion since 2008. Rubio's proposed military budget – $696 billion – represents a $35 billion increase over what the Pentagon is requesting. Cutting sugar subsidies – an unlikely prospect, especially given the support of Republicans of Rubio's ilk for the program – won't pay for it.

However, if we want to go deeper into those weeds, Sen. Paul also endorses the $696 billion figure, but touts the fact that his proposal comes with cuts that will supposedly pay for the hike. This is something all those military contractors can live with, and so everybody's happy, at least on the Republican side of the aisle, and yet the likelihood of cutting $21 billion from "international affairs," never mind $20 billion from social services, is unlikely to garner enough support from his own party – let alone the Democrats – to get through Congress. So it's just more of Washington's kabuki theater: all symbolism, no action.

Paul's too-clever-by-half legislative maneuvering may have effectively exposed Rubio – and Sen. Tom Cotton, Marco's co-pilot on this flight into fiscal profligacy – as the faux-conservative that he is, but it evaded the broader question attached to the issue of military spending: what are we going to do with all that shiny-new military hardware? Send more weapons to Ukraine? Outfit an expeditionary force to re-invade Iraq and venture into Syria? This brings to mind Madeleine Albright's infamous remark directed at Gen. Colin Powell: "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

In this way, Paul undermines his own case against global intervention – and even his own eloquent argument, advanced in answer to Rubio's contention that increasing the military budget would make us "safer":

"I do not think we are any safer from bankruptcy court. As we go further, and further into debt, we become less, and less safe. This is the most important thing we're going to talk about tonight. Can you be a conservative, and be liberal on military spending? Can you be for unlimited military spending, and say, Oh, I'm going to make the country safe? No, we need a safe country, but, you know, we spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined."

I have to say Sen. Paul shone at this debate. His arguments were clear, consistent, and made with calm forcefulness. He distinguished himself from the pack, including Trump, who said "I agree with Marco, I agree with Ted," and went on to mouth his usual "bigger, better, stronger" hyperbole that amounted to so much hot hair air.

Speaking of Trumpian hot air: Paul showed up The Donald for the ignorant blowhard he is by pointing out, after another of Trump's jeremiads aimed at the Yellow Peril, that China is not a party to the trade deal, which is aimed at deflecting Beijing. That was another shining moment for Paul, who successfully juxtaposed his superior knowledge to Trump's babbling.

This obsession with China's allegedly malign influence extended to the next round, when foreign policy was again the focus. In answer to a question about whether he supports President Obama's plan to send Special Operations forces to Syria, Ben Carson said yes, because Russia is going to make it "their base," oh, and by the way: "You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians." Unless he's talking about these guys, Carson intel seems a bit off.

Jeb Bush gave the usual boilerplate, delivered in his preferred monotone, contradicting himself when he endorsed a no-fly zone over Syria and then attacked Hillary Clinton for not offering "leadership" – when she endorsed the idea practically in unison with him. Bush added his usual incoherence to the mix by averring that somehow not intervening more in the region "will have a huge impact on our economy" – but of course the last time we intervened it had a $2 trillion-plus impact in terms of costs, and that's a conservative estimate.

Oddly characterizing Russia's air strikes on the Islamic State as "aggression" – do our air strikes count as aggression? – the clueless Marie Bartiromo asked Trump what he intends to do about it. Trump evaded the question for a few minutes, going on about North Korea, Iran, and of course the Yellow Peril, finally coming out with a great line that not even the newly-noninterventionist Sen. Paul had the gumption to muster:

"If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, one-hundred percent, and I can't understand how anybody would be against it."

Bush butted in with "But they aren't doing that," which is the Obama administration's demonstrably inaccurate line, and Trump made short work of him with the now undeniable fact that the Islamic State blew up a Russian passenger jet with over 200 people on it. "He [Putin] cannot be in love with these people," countered Trump. "He's going in, and we can go in, and everybody should go in. As far as the Ukraine is concerned, we have a group of people, and a group of countries, including Germany – tremendous economic behemoth – why are we always doing the work?"

Why indeed.

Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the "isolationist" populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybody's bills? Why are we fighting everybody else's wars? It's a bad deal!

This is why the neocons hate Trump's guts even more than they hate Paul. The former, after all, is the frontrunner. What the War Party fears is that Trump's contradictory mixture of bluster – "bigger, better, stronger!" – and complaints that our allies are taking advantage of us means a victory for the dreaded "isolationists" at the polls.

As for Carly Fiorina and John Kasich: they merely served as a Greek chorus to the exhortations of Rubio and Bush to take on Putin, Assad, Iran, China, and (in Trump's case) North Korea. They left out Venezuela only because they ran out of time, and breath. Fiorina and Kasich were mirror images of each other in their studied belligerence: both are aspiring vice-presidential running mates for whatever Establishment candidate takes the prize.

Yes, it's election season, the one time – short of when we're about to invade yet another country – when the American people are engaged with the foreign policy issues of the day. And what we are seeing is a rising tide of disgust with our policy of global intervention – in a confused inchoate sense, in the case of Trump, and in a focused, self-conscious, occasionally eloquent and yet still slightly confused and inconsistent way in the case of Sen. Paul. Either way, the real voice of the American heartland is being heard.

Bumpo

Im not so sure. If you see it in context with Trump's other message to make Mexico pay for the border fence. If you take the Iraq war on the face of it - that is, we came in to rescue them from Saddam Hussein - then taking their oil in payment is only "fair". It's hard to tell if he is playing a game, or actually believes the US company line, though. I think he isn't letting on. At least I hope so. And that goes double for his "Support" of Israel.

Joe Trader

@greenskeeper we get it, you get butt-hurt extremely easily

The thing about Donald Trump and oil - is that a few years ago, he said all that Saudi Arabia had to do was start pumping oil, and down it would go to $25. Guess what sweet cheeks - His prediction is coming true and the presidency could really use a guy like him who knows what he's doing.

MalteseFalcon

Say what you like about Trump. 'He is a baffoon or a blowhard'. 'He can't be elected president'.

But Trump has rocked the boat and raised some issues and viewpoints that none of the other bought and paid for 'candidates' would ever have raised. Has he changed the national discussion on these issues? At least he woken some people up.

illyia

oh.my.gawd. a rational adult series of comments on zero hedge: There is hopium for the world, after all.

Just must say: Raimondo is an incredibly good writer. Very enjoyable to read. I am sure that's why he's still around. He make a clear, concise argument, presents his case with humor and irony and usually covers every angle.

I wonder about people like him, who think things out so well... versus, say, the bloviator and chief?

P.S. don't blame me, i did not vote for either of them...

Oracle of Kypseli

The sentence of "We relied on the stupidity of the American voter" resonates.

TheObsoleteMan

What you did, was you fell for the oldest press trick in the book. It's called: "out of context". That's is where they play back only a segment of what someone says, only a part of what they want you to hear, so you will draw the wrong conclusion. What Trump said {had you listened to ALL of what he said} was that he was going to TAKE ISIL'S OIL. Oil is the largest source of revenue for them {then comes the CIA money}. If you were to remove their oil revenues from them, they would be seriously hurting for cash to fund their machine. I don't have a problem with that.

palmereldritch

The thing about understanding the attack on The Donald is understanding what he is NOT. Namely he is not CFR connected:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/trump-catches-attention-of...

The attacks on Trump have been relentless yet he is still maintaining his position in the polls.

I expected a take out on Ben Carson, his next closest competitor to move up a CFR-aligned Globalist like Shrubio or Cruz given their fall-back JEBPNAC is tanking so bad...but not this early. They must be getting desperate...so desperate they are considering Romney?!

If it becomes 'Reagan/Bush Redux' again with Trump/Cruz, I hope The Donald has enough sense to say NO! or, if elected, be very vigilant knowing you are Reagan and you have the GHW Bush equivalent standing there to replace you...and we know how that unfolded early in Reagan's first term...NOT GOOD

EDIT: The goal is to have a CFR candidate in both the GOP and Dem fold. Although Hillary is not a CFR member ostensibly Slick Willie has been for more than 20 years and his Administration was rife with them...Hello Rubin and Glass Steagal!!..as is Chelsea... a newly elected member.

So that red vote I just got...was that you Hill?

Pure Evil

The point is Justin seems to believe the Iranians have no intention of building a nuclear bomb ever. I've read a lot of this guy's writing ever since he first came out on his own website and when he wrote for AsiaTimesOnline. He's always had the opinion that the Iranians are not building a nuclear bomb and have no intention to do so. He spews the same talking points about how they've never attacked anyone in over two hundred years.

Well that's because previously they were under the control of the Ottoman empire and that didn't break up until after WW1. I think he's got a blind spot in this regard. You can't tell me that even the Japanese aren't secretly building nuclear weapons since China is becoming militarily aggressive. And, stop being a prick. Your micro-aggressing against my safe place LTER and I'm gonna have to report you for "hurtful" speech.

Raymond_K._Hessel

You ignorant slut.

https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-...

20 years plus of this accusation. Cia and dia both said no mil program.

If you have evidence summon it. Offering your suspicion as evidence is fucking absurd.

And if the israelis werent hell bent on taking the rest of palestine and brutalizing the natives (which, by and large, they actually are) that would sure wet some of the anti isrsel powder.

But no / they want lebensraum and years of war for expansion and regional total hegemony.

Thrn they can ethnically cleanse the historical inhabitants while everyones busy watching white european christisns kill each other, and muslims, as isis keeps not attacking israel or even isrseli interests.

Youre not dumb, you just reached conclusions that are very weakened of not refuted by evidence you wont even consider.

https://theintercept.com/2015/03/02/brief-history-netanyahu-crying-wolf-...

Bazza McKenzie

If you examine the policy detail Trump has provided, there is more substance there than any of the others. Add to that he has a long record of successful management, which none of the others have.

You don't manage successfully without self control. The persona he presents in politics at present may give the impression of a lack of self control, yet that persona and the policies which are/were verboten to the political class have quickly taken him to the top of the pack and kept him there.

If you apply to Trump the saying "judge people by what they do, not what they say", his achievements out of politics and now in politics show he is a more capable person than any of the others and that he is successful at what he sets out to do.

As the economy for most Americans continues to worsen, which is baked in the cake, who is going to look to the public a more credible person to turn it around, Clinton? Trump? one of the others? The answer is pretty obvious.

European American

"I cannot take Trump seriously."

It's not about Trump as President, a year from now. Who knows if he'll even be in the picture by then. It's ALL about Trump, RIGHT NOW. He's exposing the underbelly of a vile, hideous Z-creature that we, here at ZH have seen for some time, but the masses, those who haven't connected enought dots, yet, are getting a glimpse of something that has been foreign in politics, up until now. Everytime Trump is interviewed, or tweets or stands at the debates, another round is shot over the bow, or beak, of the monster creature that has been sucking the life out of humanity for decades, centuries, eons. As long as he's standing and he can pull it off, that is what this phenomenon is all about...one day at a time....shedding light where the stench of darkness has been breeding corruption for the last millenium.

MASTER OF UNIVERSE

Neocons hate because their collective ethos is that of a single misanthrope that crafted their existence in the first place. In brief, neocons are fascist narrow minded automatons not really capable of a level of consciousness that would enable them to think critically, and independently, of the clique orthodoxy that guides their myopic thinking, or lack thereof. Neocons have no history aside from Corporatism, and Fascism.

Escrava Isaura

American Decline: Causes and Consequences

Grand Area (after WW-2) to be under US control: Western Hemisphere, the Far East, the former British empire - including the crucial Middle East oil reserves - and as much of Eurasia as possible, or at the very least its core industrial regions in Western Europe and the southern European states. The latter were regarded as essential for ensuring control of Middle East energy resources.

It means: Africa resources go to Europe. Asia resources go to Japan. South America resources go to US.

Now (2019) the Conundrum: Where will China get the resources needed for its survival? And Russia is not Africa.

"[American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant." ? Zbigniew Brzezinski

Bazza McKenzie

Through either ignorance or malice the author repeats Rand Paul's statement about Trump's comments re China and the TPP.

Trump explicitly said the TPP provides a back door opportunity for China, thus noting he understands China is not an initial signatory to TPP.

The backdoor opportunity occurs in 2 ways. The ability for TPP to expand its signatory countries without going back to the legislatures of existing signatory countries AND the fact that products claiming to be made in TPP countries and eligible for TPP arrangements don't have to be wholly made in those countries, or perhaps even mainly made in those countries. China will certainly be taking advantage of that.

The fact that Paul does not apparently understand these points, despite being a Senator, displays an unfortunate ignorance unless of course he was just attempting to score a political point despite knowing it to be false.

Paul at least made his comment in the heat of the moment in a debate. Raimondo has had plenty of time to get the facts right but does not. How much of the rest of his screed is garbage?

socalbeach

I got the impression Trump thought China was part of the trade deal from this quote:

"Yes. Well, the currency manipulation they don't discuss in the agreement, which is a disaster. If you look at the way China and India and almost everybody takes advantage of the United States - China in particular, because they're so good. It's the number-one abuser of this country. And if you look at the way they take advantage, it's through currency manipulation. It's not even discussed in the almost 6,000-page agreement. It's not even discussed."

If China isn't part of the agreement, then what difference does it make whether or not currency manipulation is discussed? Your answer is that Trump meant they could be added to the agreement later, as in this previous quote of his:

"The TPP is horrible deal. It is a deal that is going to lead to nothing but trouble. It's a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone."

If that's the case, Trump didn't explain himself well in this instance.

Johnny Horscaulk

Johnny Horscaulk's picture

http://www.vdare.com/articles/why-so-much-jewish-fear-and-loathing-of-do...

Neocons should not be used as a synonym for 'militarist.'

That subset was absolutely a Jewish-Zionist movement originating at the U of Chicago whether you know the history or not. Its also obvious just verboden to discuss. Not because its false, but because its true.

Neocons aren't conservative - they are zioglobalists with primary concern for Israel.

There are several groups of militarists in the deep state, but the Israel Firster faction is predominant.

Fucking obviously.

Arthur

Gee I guess we should back Iran and Isis. Must be some great jewish conspiricy that keeps you impovrished, that or maybe you are just a moron.

Johnny Horscaulk

Idiot, the us, and israel ARE backing isis. Go back to watching fox news - this is all way over your willingness to spend time reading about. You clearly have an internet connection - but you utter palpable nonsense.

OldPhart

Arthur

When/where I grew up I'd never met a jew. I think there was one black family in the two hundred fifty square miles of the town, population 2,200 in 1976. I knew jackshit other than they were greased by nazis back in WWII.

Moved out of the desert to Orlando, Flawed?-Duh. Met a lot of regular jews. Good people, best man's dad and mom had tattoo'd numbers on thier arms. To me, their just regular people that have some other sort of religion that christianity is an offshoot from.

What I've learned is that Zionism is lead by a relative few of the jewish faith, many regular jews resent it as an abomination of jewish faith. Zionists are the self-selected political elite and are in no way keepers of the jewish faith. They are the equivalent, in Israel, to the CFR here. Oddly, they also comprise many of the CFR seats HERE.

Zionists do not represent the jews any more than Jamie Diamond, Blythe Masters, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates represent ordinary Americans. Somehow, over time, Zionists came to wield massive influence within our government and corporate institutions.

Those are the simple facts that I have been able to glean from piles of research that are massively biased in both directions.

It's not a jewish conspiracy that keeps many impoverished, it's the Zionists that keep many impoverished, at war, divided, ignorant, and given bread and circuses. Not jews.

Perhaps you should spend a few years doing a little independent research of your own before belittling something you obviously have no clue about.

Johnny Horscaulk

That rhetorical ballet aside, Israel has far far too much influence on us policy, and that is so because of wildly disproportionate Jewish... As such... Political, financial, media, etc power. And they - AS A GROUP -act in their in-group interests even when resulting policy is not in this country's interest - demanding, with 50 million Scoffield JudeoChristians that Israels interests be of utmost value...

And heres the kicker - as defined by an Israel under likud and shas, parties so odious they make golden dawn look leftist, yet get no msm criticism for being so.

Its never 'all' any group - but Israels influence is excessive and deleterious, and that is due to jewish power and influence, with the xian zios giving the votes. Framed this way, it isnt 'Zionism' - it is simply a powerful minority with deep loyalty to a tiny foreign state warping us policy - and media coverage.

MEFOBILLS

Arthur,

Iran is formerly Persia, and its people are predominantly Shia. Shia's are considered apostates by Sunni's. Isis is Sunni. Sunnis get their funding via the Petrodollar system.

Persians changed their name to Iran to let northern Europeans know they were Aryans. Persians are not Arabs.

Neo-Con's are Jewish and they have fellow travelers who are non jewish. Many of their fellow travelers are Sayanim or Zionist Christians. So, Neo-Con ideology is no longer specifically Jewish, but it certainly has Jewish antecedents.

Your comment is full of illogic, is misinformed, and then you have the laughable temerity to call out someone else as a moron.

I Write Code

The only place "neocons" still exist is at ZH. Whatever Wikipedia says about it, the term had virtually no currency in the US before 2001, and had pretty much ceased to have any influence by about 2005.

Is Rubio sounding like an interventionist? Yes. Does he really know what he's talking about? Unclear. Is Trump sounding like a non-interventionist? Yes. Does he really know what he's talking about? Almost certainly not. Trump is the non-interventionist who wants to bomb the shit out of ISIS.

Rand didn't do anything to embarass himself at the latest debate, but he also didn't stand out enough to make up for many past errors. Give him a few years, maybe he'll grow up or something.

But the harder question is, what *should* the US do about stuff? Should we cowboy on alone, or pull back because none of the other kids want to help us. Can't we make common cause with Russia and France at this point? I mean instead of Iran and Turkey? The biggest problem is of course Obama - whatever various national interests at this point, nobody in the world thinks they can trust Nobel boy as far as they can spit a rat. Would anyone want to trust Rubio or Trump? Would you?

Johnny Horscaulk

Nonsense - read this for background beginning with the philosopher Strauss. It has a fixed meaning that was subjected to semantic drift in the media. It came to be conflated with 'militarist' and the conservative thing was a misnomer they were communists who wanted to use American power for israel.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html

Only on zh is absolutely absurd to claim.

TheObsoleteMan

After listening to the press for the last week, I have come to a conclusion concerning Mr. Bush: The party big wigs have decided he can not win and are distancing their support for him.

Their new golden boy? Marco Rubio. The press in the last week has barely mentioned Bush, but every breath has been about "the young Latino". "He's rising in the polls".

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that on radio and the TV. They also had him on Meet The Press last Sunday. Just thought I'd mention it. I can't stand Rubio. When he ran for Senate down here a few years ago, he road to Washington on the Tea Party's back. As soon as he got there, he did what all good politicians do: Dumped their platform and forgot all about them. Scumbag.

neilhorn

Yes, I have also seen the new "golden boy" regaled in the media. Let's see where he goes. I wonder if anyone represents the American people any better than the corrupt piece of dried up persimmon that is Hillary?

Raymond_K._Hessel

Trump picks cruz as veep, offends moderate and lefty independents and latinos on the immigration stuff, kisses Likuds ass (2 million right wing batshit jews out of 8 million israeli voters in asia dominate us foreign policy via nutty, aipac, adl, jinsa, conf of pres, etc etc etc)

And he loses to hillary. The gop can not win this election. Sorry - but admit the direness of our situation - shitty candidates all and one of the very worst and most essentially disingenuous- will win because women and minorities and lefties outnumber right leaning white males.

This is super obviously the political situation.

So - how do we 'prepare' for hillary? She is more wars, more printing, more wall st, more israel just like everyone but sanders who is nonetheless a crazy person and arch statist though I respect his at least not being a hyperinterventionist mic cocksucker.

But fucking hillary clinton gets in.

What does it mean apart from the same old thing?

Red team blue team same thing on wars, banks, and bending the knee to batshit psycho bibi.

cherry picker

I don't think Americans are really ready for Bill to be the First Man, do you? I don't think Americans think about that aspect of Hillary becoming Pres.

Personally, I hope she doesn't get in. There are many other women that are capable who could fit the bill, if the US is bound and determined to have a female president.

neilhorn

"indeed, in our post-constitutional era, now that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, he has the de facto power to single-handedly take us into war. Which is why, paraphrasing Trotsky, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is certainly interested in you."

The post-constitutional era is the present time. Congress is stifled by politics while the rest of us only desire that the rights of the people are protected. The President has never been granted the right to take our nation to war. Other presidents have usurped that power and taken the power to themseves. Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all taken on the right to kill anyone who defied the right of the presidency. However, when the people ever abrogated their right to wage war it was only in response to a police state being established that threatened those who opposed the power of the established authority. Congress, the representatives of the people, has the right to declare war. Congress is also obligated to represent the people who elected them. When will we find a representative who has the backbone to stop the suicidal tendencies of the structures of power?

Captain Obvious.

Don't set store by any politician. They were all sent as a group to suck Israeli dick. Yes, dear Donald too. They will tell you what they think you want to hear.

Raymond_K._Hessel

Ivanka converted to judaism and all - was that for the grooms parents or genuine? Or a dynastic thing?

Wahooo

Another hit piece today in Barrons:

"Donald Trump is trying hard to look presidential these days. Too bad he's using Herbert Hoover as a role model. Hoover, of course, is best remembered as having been president during the stock market crash of 1929 that presaged the Great Depression. What helped turn a normal recession into a global economic disaster was the spread of protectionism, starting with the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which resulted in retaliation even before Hoover signed the bill in 1930."

If I recall my history, in 1927 amidst what everyone knew was already bubble stock market, the Fed dropped rates substantially. This was done against the protests of President Coolidge, his secretary of treasury, and many other politicians and business tycoons at the time. It ushered in a stock market bubble of massive proportions and the coming bust. Protectionism had little to do with it.

Faeriedust

Right. The "protectionism" meme is a piece of corporate persiflage that's been duly trotted out every time someone suggests even SLIGHTLY protecting our decimated economy. According to Wiki: "the general view is that while it had negative results, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was not one of the main causes of the Great Depression because foreign trade was only a small sector of the U.S. economy."

Faeriedust

Well, what REALLY caused the Depression were the bills from WWI. Every nation in Europe had spent years of GNP on the War through debt, all the debts were due, and nobody could afford to pay them. So they loaded the whole pile on Germany, and then screamed when Germany literally could NOT make its payments, and then played extend-and-pretend for a decade. Which eventually caused the Credit-Anstallt collapse, and then everything finally fell like a house of cards.

Very like today, but the current run of bills were run up by pure financial frivolity and corruption. Although one could say that fighting a war that killed 1/4 of all European males of fighting age was an exercise in frivolity and corruption on the part of Europe's senile ruling elites. Nobody was willing to divide a shrinking pie equitably; they all thought it would be better to try grabbing The Whole Thing. Rather like world powers today, again.

CAPT DRAKE

educated, responsible position in a fortune 200company, and yes, will be voting for trump. why? sick to death of the existing elites, and the way they run things. a trump vote is a protest vote. a protest against the neocons and all their types that have caused so much misery around the world.

NoWayJose

If Trump is the Republucan nominee, you can bet that he will point out a lot of things Hillary has done. You know several others in the field will say nothing bad about Hillary. (A la Romney).

Not sure why Rubio still has support - Rand clobbered him on spending, including his new entitlement, and add Rubio's position on amnesty.

Faeriedust

With JEB polling in single digits and hopelessly befuddled, Rubio is the Great Hispanic Hope of the establishment Republocrats. He is being well-pimped, is all. Paul is clearly more intelligent, more articulate, and more well-informed; Trump is more forceful and popular (but independent!). Neither suits an establishment that wants to hold the reins behind the throne.

thesoothsayer

The Military Industrial Complex became entrenched after Eisenhower left office and they murdered Kennedy. Since then, they have taken over. We cover the world to spread our seeds and enrich our corporations. Our government does not protect the people, it protects the corporations, wall street. That is the reality.

dizzyfingers

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/11/trump-was-right-about-tpp-benefitting-china

Trump Was Right About TPP Benefiting China

[Nov 08, 2015] Legendary US Army Commander Says Russia Would Annihilate US In Head-To-Head Battle

Notable quotes:
"... And why is the US seeking a battle with Russia anyway? This is completely absurd....are the neo-cons/neo-libs this fucked up? ..."
"... Having said the above, the prevailing view on the ground in Moscow is that it will be NATO that pre-emptively attacks Russia, hence the refurbishing and re-provisioning of their network of Civil Defence shelters, info via Brother in Law (BNP Paribas Moscow). ..."
"... US/EU GDP approaches 40 trillion dollars. Russia has fallen down below 2 trillion due to the drop in oil prices. 25 to 1 disparity. ..."
"... US population 330 million. EU population 504 million. Russian population 142 million. 6-1 disparity. ..."
"... Carter says Russia, China potentially threaten global order. WTF! These idiots really believe America rules the world! Every country should fear us and do as we say. No other country should EVER dare to challenge our oligarchy. Good for Russia and China for finally saying enough. We patrol the South China Sea like it's our own f***ing bathtub. If China did that to us in the Gulf of Mexico we would already be at war. The GLOBAL F***ING ORDER? Who made us kings of the world? ..."
"... If the neocons think they can bring war to soil mere miles away from Russia and not get a nuclear response if they start losing or we breach a russian boder, theyre insane. Unfortunately one look at current policy confirms that yes, indeed, theyre insane. ..."
"... Any negative assessment of US military capability originating from within the military-industrial complex, must necessarily be considered suspect. First, that assessment would be considered highly classified, unless it was pre-approved and deliberately released to scare more money out of already fleeced taxpayers. Second, .Gov used the same propaganda in our decades-long cold war with the USSR to justify massive spending and involvement in global conflicts. Profligate spending and profligate lies leave them with no credibility. ..."
Zero Hedge
Cochore

The Saker wrote a very insightful post on this matter a while back

US political culture and propaganda has deeply ingrained in the minds of those exposed to the corporate media the notion that weapons or technologies win wars. This is not so. Or, not really so.

Yes, when the difference in technologies is very big AND very wide, meaning a full generational change across most key weapon systems, this can help. But not one weapon system alone, and not when the difference in quality is marginal.

Furthermore, a simpler, more "primitive" weapon which totally outclassed on the testing range can suddenly become much better suited to real combat then some techno-marvel. This is, by the way, one of the biggest problems with US weapons. Here is how they are designed:

You take all the latest and most advanced technologies, put them together, then create a new "superior" design, then design a new mission profile to fit that design, then sell (figuratively and literally) the new concept to Congress, especially to those Congressmen who come from the districts where production is planned - and, voilŕ, you have your brand new top of the line US weapon. And the costs? Who cares?! Just print some more money, and that's it.

Russian weapons are designed in a totally different way:

Take a mission profile, determine a need, then take all the cheapest, simplest and most reliable technologies available and combine them into your weapon system, then have that prototype tested in military units, then modify the weapons system according to the military's reaction and then produce it.

In other words, US weapons are designed my engineers and produced by businessmen and politicians, they are not really designed for war at all. Russian weapons, in contrast, are ordered by the military and created by design bureaus and they have only one objective: real, dirty and ugly warfare.

This is why the good old MiG-29 could fly better with its old fashioned hydraulics then the F-18s with fly-by-wire. It was never that the Russians could not built fly-by-wire aircraft (the SU-27 already had it), but that for the MiG-29 design goals, it was not needed.

What I am getting at here is two things: a) US weapons are not nearly as good as their marketing and b) "older" Russian weapons are often much better for actual warfighting.

Let's say the US delivers large quantities of Javelin's to the junta. So what? All that Russia will have to do in reaction is deliver 9M133 Kornets to the Novorussians. Can you guess which system is both cheaper and better?

When the US gave the junta counter-battery radars what did Russia do? The same thing. Now both sides have them.

Now here comes the key question: which of the two sides relies more on armor and artillery? Exactly - the junta.

When confronted with a problems, Americans love to do to things: throw money at it and throw technological "solutions" at it. This never works, but that is what they are good at.

The fact is that even in the 21st century what wins wars is not money or fancy gear, but courage, determination, moral strength, willpower and the rage which seizes you when faced with brute, ugly evil.

LINK to full article

Occident Mortal

Russia does have some technological advantages over the U.S. though.

Russian missile technology is superior.

The S-400 surface to air defence system is two generations better than anything else in the world.

Russian missiles are superior too. Their ICMB's fly random path trajectories. They are the masters of multiple engine rockets.

Only the Russians have the ability to put a man in space.

America is a little self deluded and they too often extrapolate their warplane technology advantage into a blanket technology advantage. That's just not the case.

Perimetr

"Well now, it seems entirely possible that the US may have to fight a conventional war against the Russians . . ."

Sorry, exactly how long do you think a war with Russia would remain CONVENTIONAL?

As soon a one side or the other started to lose, what do you think would happen? They will surrender?

Demdere

Guys, do not believe anyone who says that any part of any system is managable. Saying "I can win a war" is the same as saying "I can see the future and inside other men's minds". No you an't. You are throwing dice every time, and war is a very negative-sum game, most players don't even break even. Both can easily lose very badly, far more han they ever could have conceviablely won. I believe all modern wars have been of thar variety.

The cost of bad government keeps increasing. The cost of sufficient firepower to cause a 1% loss of GDP is within the budget of a religious cult with intelligence service ties. We spend more than 25$ of our GDP on policing, monitoring, checking, verifying. The overhead of our military is at least 10% of GDP, our industry would kill for that kind of cost advantage. The costs of dishonest are so huge.

runswithscissors

And why is the US seeking a "battle" with Russia anyway? This is completely absurd....are the neo-cons/neo-libs this fucked up?


V for ...

Yep. The new Bolsheviks are criminally insane.

1033eruth

The US? No, Uncle Fraud is trying to get Americans to condone and approve another war through constant media manipulation.

Every major war needs public approval. It doesn't happen until the media maneuvers American zombies into acceptance.

Kent State was the beginning of the end of the Vietnam war. The losses we were incurring were too great for the public to accept. Which also helps to explain why we have switched over to remote control and drone warfare. We can still spend ocean carriers of money which the American public overlooks as a cost for "safety" and the loss of life is minimized therefore less backlash.

Tell me why this hasn't occurred to you?

booboo

More scarey bullshit to whip up more support for spending trillions on another armored up coffin, flying battleship or space shotgun, not that I am under any illusion that the U.S. would win but God Damn, if you don't start a fucking war then you won't have to fight a war.

Blankone

Yes, this. And it works well because all sides lap it up. The MIC has the politicians push the agenda and fear. TPTB have the MSM push it and the sheep eat it up like always. The Putin fan club jumps on the band wagon because its the fantasy they wish was true.

JustObserving
Russia Would "Annihilate" US In Head-To-Head Battle

No wonder the Nobel Prize Winner is pushing Putin into a new world war. CIA created ISIS blows up Russian passenger jet. F-15s sent to Turkey to attack Russian jets. Obama continues to attack oil to bankrupt Russia.

US deploys F-15s to Syria, targeting Russian jets

By Thomas Gaist, 7 November 2015

The US will send a squadron of F-15C fighter jets to Turkey's Incirlik air base, the US Defense Department (DOD) announced on Friday. The nature of the US war planes, which are specifically designed for dogfighting with other highly advanced fighter jets, indicates that the deployment carries a significance far beyond what its small scale would suggest.

The F-15 line of combat jets was developed in response to the unveiling in 1967 of the Soviet Union's MiG-25 "Foxbat" interceptor.

Because they are designed for air-to-air combat against other major powers, the US has, until now, seen no need to deploy the F-15C model to its Middle Eastern and Central Asian war theaters, where the opposing forces have no warplanes.

The sudden deployment, coming less than two months after Russia began sending its own SU-30 fighters to its new airbase at Latakia, makes clear that the jets have been deployed in response to Moscow's air campaign.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11/07/syri-n07.html

Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/nov/09/us-iran-r...

Dark Daze

I dispute that the F-15 was ever intended as a dogfighter. It is fast, much faster than the SU-30 and it can carry an impressive bomb load, but I believe the original design was rapid penetration of enemy defenses and air to ground, not air superiority. All that of course comes only when the F-15 is loaded down with not only fuselage conformant fuel tanks but drop tanks as well, reducing it's effectiveness. When you compare thrust, aerodynamics, stand off weapons and sheer manoevering capability the SU-30 wins hands down. The only air-to-air weapon the F-15's have been retrofitted with that even comes close to the air-to-air that the Russians have is the British Meteor, but that has never been tested. It is a Mach 4 weapon so the SU-30 couldn't outrun it or out climb it, but I remain to be convinced about it's capabilities.

The larger problem for the Americans is that they are stationing their F-15's at Incirlik, which is only 15 minutes from Latakia. Incirlikk was a poor choice for them to be stationing those units when the stated intention was to fly missions against ISIS. If the Syrians/Russians detect the F-15's coming south instead of going east they will have only a few moments to decide on whether to launch S-400's against them, and in an environment that might have a heigntened level of intensity that is a danger. Needless to say, an S-400 launced against an F-15 will take the later out in seconds and no amount of chaffe of manoevering with change that scenario. Check mate.

Blankone

Check mate? They are moving that close to the Russian bases to squeeze Russia and occupy the area. It is a sign they have no fear of Russia being willng to confront.

Dark Daze

Either that or a sign of sheer stupidity and a willingness to sacrifice men and material.

Talleyrand

Russia is not going to attack the Baltic states. Russia is not going to invade Poland. Russia is not going to attack the anachronism that is NATO.

On the other hand, invading Russia has, historically, proven to be a bad idea.

cowdiddly

Just more of this Russophobia boogeyman bullshit to get more funds appropriated for their sick toys and paychecks so they can continue getting their butt kicked all over the globe by anyone more powerful than Somalia.

Parrotile

Jack, Russia has no reason to "invade Europe" since Europe has nothing of immediate benefit to Russia. Having said that Russia will certainly not "telegraph" their intentions by troop movements, and will certainly use their rather capable missile tech to "soften up" EU defences should the opportunity arise. Air defence needs runways, and armies need reliable bulk transport (motorways / rail), the key locations of which (marshalling yards / major intersections) are well known to Russia.

They will not just "roll over the border" and say "come and get us" to the West.

Having said the above, the prevailing view "on the ground" in Moscow is that it will be NATO that pre-emptively attacks Russia, hence the refurbishing and re-provisioning of their network of Civil Defence shelters, info via Brother in Law (BNP Paribas Moscow).

tarabel

Let's review here...

NATO is larger than it ever was before, and Russia is much smaller and weaker than the USSR/Warsaw Pact.

Soviet armor is not parked in central Germany any more.

Vladimir Putin complains endlessly about NATO forces being forward deployed to his border regions.

Virtually every single member of the US military and many cadres from other NATO nations have years of real world battlefield experience, while only a small number of Russians have been shot at.

US/EU GDP approaches 40 trillion dollars. Russia has fallen down below 2 trillion due to the drop in oil prices. 25 to 1 disparity.

US population 330 million. EU population 504 million. Russian population 142 million. 6-1 disparity.

Russian "breakout" from nuclear treaties that limited weapons to an approximate 1-1 parity means that they are stronger in nuclear weapons than the United States, but the nuclear forces of the UK and France mean that the West still possesses a slight but shrinking superiority here

And now you understand why Russia has officially and unilaterally renounced the solemn old Soviet declaration of "no first use" of nuclear weapons. Any conventional war between the West and Russia will end in ruin for Russia even if they can make some hay early on. The economic and population disparities are far too wide for Putin to prevail or even defend his country-- unless he goes nuclear. It is the only type of warfighting in which the sides are remotely equal.

The West has no need or interest in going nuclear on Russia in the event of hostilities. No matter what sort of initial success Russian armies may achieve in the early stages of a war that starts next door to their depots, the economic power of the West is far too much for him to overcome with conventional means.

Draw your own conclusions as to who needs to light the first Roman Candle.

rejected

"Virtually every single member of the US military and many cadres from other NATO nations have years of real world battlefield experience, while only a small number of Russians have been shot at."

Yes,,, but fighting who? Vietnam, a real war, was too long ago. The veterans are old so their experience will be of no use.

The Iraqi's were surrendering so fast it was slowing down the advance on Baghdad.

Libya,,, bombed into a failed state,,, other than the Marines having to defend the gun running US Ambassador there was no fighting.

In Syria our Ally "moderate terrorists" are / was doing the grunt work against Assad.

And we're still fighting (losing) the cave dwellers of Afghanistan 15 years later. In fact they are now advancing against the puppet US government.

Russia will never attack the West but the West will attack Russia because the West is broke. That GDP your referring to was purchased by central bank printing.

The Russian Army will be defending their nation, Nato/US Armies will be trying to establish an empire.

Who do you think will have the most incentive.

HyeM

This is all propaganda.... they're using words like "Annihilate" to terrify the public and get an even larger budget for the military-industrial complex to benefit them and their friends in the defense industry. For the last 80 years we were going to be "Annihilated", first by the Soviet Army, and now this crap.

rbg81

I remember freshman ROTC lectures back in 1979. The USSR was poised to invade West Germany via the Fulda Gap--they could come over at any minute. Ivan was ten feet tall. Blah, blah, blah. Then, after the Berlin Wall fell, two generations of scary propaganda looked like a big joke. Nothing ever changes.

I Write Code

Anybody interested, please click on the link and read the Politico article yourself.

This ZH posting completely misrepresents what the article says.

The article is really about McMaster and the good news that he's still in the game at the Pentagon.

And in two out of three scenarios the US beats Russia, apparently even in this expeditionary scenario.

Now, the whole thing is absurd. The idea that the US and Russia would end up firing major weapons at each other is a mutual nightmare. And the idea that the US would pit a small force against Russia, right against Russian territory, and expect to win, is doubly absurd.

But the Politico article is actually worth reading anyway, and for that, thank you ZH.

rejected

Great!!! Our team wins!

Could have went any way....

V for ...

Fairness, justice, freedom. These are more than words. They are deeds. That was the pledge of the U.S. Military code before it was overtaken by dual citizens like the Wolfowitz Doctrine, Project for a New American Century; those who declare to be the 'chosen ones', and use my country, my people's blood and treasure.

Get off your knees, US Military Code. I have no interest in the failures of dual citizens, and nor should you. My country, tis of thee. Foreigners should fund their own fight.

This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

Then this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKvvOFIHs4k

Temerity Trader

"Carter says Russia, China potentially threaten global order." WTF! These idiots really believe America rules the world! Every country should fear us and do as we say. No other country should EVER dare to challenge our oligarchy. Good for Russia and China for finally saying enough. We patrol the South China Sea like it's our own f***ing bathtub. If China did that to us in the Gulf of Mexico we would already be at war. The GLOBAL F***ING ORDER? Who made us kings of the world?

These guys are sick. We need to pull our fleets and troops out and go home and stay there. Let China and Russia deal with Japan, Taiwan and Syria. Guaranteed these guys will get us into a major war soon. Obama is too weak to fight the MIC. They fill his head with crap about how no country should dare to challenge us.

Americans cannot tolerate large losses. They expect to always kick ass and suffer few losses. The new missile technology has changed all that. Watch the reaction when one of our aircraft carriers goes to the bottom from a dozen simultaneous missile strikes. The oligarchs know they can count on Joe Sixpack believing all their propaganda spewing forth and set his 300lb ass in his living room chair saying, "Let's go kick China and Russia's asses."

seek

If the neocons think they can bring war to soil mere miles away from Russia and not get a nuclear response if they start losing or we breach a russian boder, they're insane. Unfortunately one look at current policy confirms that yes, indeed, they're insane. Just pray they only target political and financial centers when the missiles fly. Might leave us in a better place.

lasvegaspersona

Eisenhower said war is man's greatest folly and those who pursue it or fail to prevent it are a black mark on all of humanity

...wonder if these military geniuses have read THAT military history...

V for ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

Eisenhower warned about a new thing in his time, something called a military industrial complex.

The modern Zionist talks about the MIC being a conspiracy theory, but Eisenhower said it would have 'grave implications', and we 'must guard against ...the military industrial complex...never let it endanger our liberties...'.

Charles Offdensen

What a bullshit article. If the US were to truly go all out war and not give a damn about public opinion, which is media driven for the purpose of tying our hands visa vie Amercan public feeling and emotions, we would by any stretch of the means and definition wipe the floor with any country any where.

The problem is that most people don't realize or care to understand what it takes to win a war. Since when did the enemy give a rats ass about how they killed us. They don't, so why should we care about them or the civilians who have been so brutalized to the point of pure survival who only want the pain to stop no matter who delivers it. And that includes their slave masters which has been discussed ad nausium her at ZH.

Ask yourself. Do you really think people who have been raped and brutalized are going to be better off if we play nice or are they going to do whatever it takes to survive and that means not giving a shit about anyone else but you.

War is hell. There are no two ways about it. But do you sacrifice your objective just to win the hearts and minds of those that would probably shoot you because they can't tell which way is up or down? Especially those from a distinction all third world and seventh century mentality.

To win you have to do what is necessary regardless of judgment because judgment is what defeats us in battle.

The horror!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o6tV1yfEPTk

For the record I tried!!!

V for ...

Blood is thicker than water. The dual citizens think they have captured the USA. I know they have a tiger by the tail.

'they' serve money first by their hideous Talmud, and 'they' are going to die by it.

'they' enjoyed the protection of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, yet strive to destroy those American ways.

F'ck 'em. Don't worry about them.. Let them die in their desert sandpit.

Dark Daze

There was a time, not so long ago, when the US at least tried to maintain the illusion that they were the 'good guys'. Of course history paints an entirely different picture. As I have written many times, from Latin America, South America, China, South East Asia, Africa and now the middle east, the US has overthrown, bombed, murdered, screwed over, enslaved and otherwise brutalised most of the worlds population. Let's not forget that it was less than 40 years from the American Revolution when the US started it's wars of conquest by trying to invade Canada while Britain was tied up with Napoleon.

Glad to see that there is at leasrt one American who makes no bones about his/her true intentions, which is total world domination. Unfortunately for you, you're economy is wrecked, your banks and government are bankrupt, you have no gold left, your population is seething in it's anger and you're vaunted war machine is phoney. So go ahead, try the Chinese or the Russians on for size and see what happens.

docinthehouse

If Russia and China were smart, they would improve theirr own country's infrastructure and let the West continue to rot of its own accord. You get what you accept Ameirca and the west have becomes slaves to debt and a tolerance of freeloading. You get what you accept.

Setarcos

Er! Russia and China ARE improving their infrastructures, Russia especially since sanctions gave a strong impetus.

Have you seen the new bridge being built to Crimea and what a about Sochi, the new technology centre near Moscow, revitalized Vladivostok and the new Cosmodrom, for instance.

Agricultural production is way up and manufacturing is being ramped up.

marcusfenix

as an aside to this piece there was another interesting disclosure regarding the growing gaps in capabilities the US would have to overcome if Washington ever engaged Russia in a conventional war.

namely the cruise missile strikes from the Caspian flotilla, while they did not make a difference in the course of the battle in Syria they did show that Russia has a capability that the US Navy does not and could put them at a serious disadvantage in any engagement. it wasn't the missiles themselves though they did show a vast improvement in Russian long range guided missile capabilities but how they were delivered that is cause for concern in DC.

unlike the US navy which relies exclusively on larger blue water destroyers for it's long range cruise missile delivery, the missiles fired from the Caspian sea were launched from much smaller, faster and more agile corvettes. long range strike capability from a package that is much harder to find, track, target and hit than the US navy's guided missile and aegis destroyers.

this capability has countless advantages but Washington never pursued it's development and apparently did not expect Moscow to either. but now not only did Moscow do just that they proved to the world that they can use it in combat in essence rendering the entire US navy's carrier fleet obsolete. consider this small of a ship, under 90 tons, can position itself anywhere up to 900 miles away and fire up to 12 LRAS missiles from areas where larger ships and even subs simply can not operate. all while still retaining blue water mission capabilities.

it is simply smaller, faster, more flexible, more cost effective and smarter than anything the US navy has to offer. these corvettes are relatively easy to produce and maintain and can be built in large numbers on short notice, they are hard to hunt and hard to kill and can sink carriers from hundreds of miles away.

instead of investing in practical, usable tech like this DC sinks one trillion dollars in the F-35 which still isn't near production and is already obsolete. as one US air force general testified before congress the Russians have had the ability to overcome the Lightnings stealth capabilities for at least 15 years now and in a dog fight it would get shredded by even a 1960's Mig 21 because it is to under powered to generate attack angels and "turns like a garbage truck".

now I wonder how many guided missile corvettes could one trillion dollars buy?

Flankspeed60

Any negative assessment of US military capability originating from within the military-industrial complex, must necessarily be considered suspect. First, that assessment would be considered highly classified, unless it was pre-approved and deliberately released to scare more money out of already fleeced taxpayers. Second, .Gov used the same propaganda in our decades-long cold war with the USSR to justify massive spending and involvement in global conflicts. Profligate spending and profligate lies leave them with no credibility.

tool

Exactly talking their own book fear mongering to increase their allocated budget and by god they will find away to spend every last cent. Remember the recent Afghan compressed natural gas outlet should have cost 500k actually cost billions!

V for ...

Why? November 22 1963. A coup d'etat.

Jack defied the moneychangers, and Israel's want of nuclear weapons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

[Nov 06, 2015] Obama Cracked Jokes While the Rest of the World Mourned

The current American administration will go down in history as one of the most weak and unprofessional with no affinity for etiquette and good manners.
Notable quotes:
"... Where Mr. Obama failed, other Western and world leaders expressed their condolences-British Prime-Minister David Cameron, Polish President Andzej Duda, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping among them. ..."
"... The Kremlin isn't worrying why Barack Obama didn't send condolences, reported Interfax. "Probably, this should not be explained by the Kremlin," said Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary to the Russian President, answering why there was no official telegram from Mr. Obama. Mr. Peskov said there were "a lot" of messages from other world leaders. ..."
"... Russia's national news service Information Agency outed Mr. Obama as "the only world leader that did not express his condolences [to Russia] on the air catastrophe A-321." ..."
"... "This is personal," wrote Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, adding "the current American administration will go down in history as one of the most weak and unprofessional with no affinity for etiquette and good manners." ..."
11/05/15 | Observer

On November 2, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in New York, President Barack Obama poked fun of the Republicans, joking that if they cannot handle CNBC moderators how could they possibly handle Russia's Vladimir Putin?

"Every one of these candidates says, 'Obama's weak, Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's gonna straighten out.' …and then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators!" Mr. Obama said.

"I mean, let me tell you: if you can't handle those guys," he continued, laughing, "I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you."

While Mr. Obama had his fun, he neglected to mention more serious matters-the Russian plane crash over the Sinai peninsula on October 31 that took the lives of all 224 passengers on board.

Where Mr. Obama failed, other Western and world leaders expressed their condolences-British Prime-Minister David Cameron, Polish President Andzej Duda, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping among them.

On his Twitter page, Mr. Cameron wrote: "PM expresses condolences to President Putin over Sinai plane crash. Britain shares Russia's pain and grief."

Mr. Hollande wrote: "[A]fter the occurred tragedy [President] sends his condolences to President Putin and expresses his solidarity with the Russian people.."

Even Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko took to Twitter with the following: "I express my personal condolences to all the families of those perished in the catastrophe of the Russian passenger plane over Egypt."

Not Mr. Obama.

The Kremlin isn't worrying why Barack Obama didn't send condolences, reported Interfax. "Probably, this should not be explained by the Kremlin," said Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary to the Russian President, answering why there was no official telegram from Mr. Obama. Mr. Peskov said there were "a lot" of messages from other world leaders.

Secretary of State John Kerry expressed condolences on behalf of "all American people" to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov-that was all, said Putin's press secretary.

Russia's national news service Information Agency outed Mr. Obama as "the only world leader that did not express his condolences [to Russia] on the air catastrophe A-321."

"This is personal," wrote Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, adding "the current American administration will go down in history as one of the most weak and unprofessional with no affinity for etiquette and good manners."

[Nov 05, 2015] History That Makes Us Stupid

The American Century's not what most Americans think it is. Historians need to set them straight.
Notable quotes:
"... comforting fantasies go unchallenged and lodge themselves ever more deeply in the public consciousness. So the "Good War" remains ever good, with the "Greatest Generation" ever great. ..."
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Today it's race, class, gender, and sexuality that claim pride of place. The effect, whether intended or not, is that comforting fantasies go unchallenged and lodge themselves ever more deeply in the public consciousness. So the "Good War" remains ever good, with the "Greatest Generation" ever great.

[Oct 30, 2015] The Deciders by John Hay

Notable quotes:
"... The cast of characters includes President George W. Bush; L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the first civilian administrator of postwar Iraq; Douglas Feith, Bush's undersecretary of defense for policy; Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's deputy secretary of defense; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard B. Cheney (and Cheney's proxy in these events); Walter Slocombe, who had been President Clinton's undersecretary of defense for policy, and as such was Feith's predecessor; Richard Perle, who was chairman of Bush's defense policy board; and General Jay Garner, whom Bremer replaced as the leader of postwar Iraq. ..."
"... Regarding the de-Baathification order, both Bremer and Feith have written their own accounts of the week leading up to it, and the slight discrepancy between their recollections is revealing in what it tells us about Bremer-and consequently about Wolfowitz and Libby for having selected him. At first blush, Bremer and Feith's justifications for the policy appear to dovetail, each comparing postwar Iraq to postwar Nazi Germany. Bremer explains in a retrospective Washington Post op-ed, "What We Got Right in Iraq," that "Hussein modeled his regime after Adolf Hitler's, which controlled the German people with two main instruments: the Nazi Party and the Reich's security services. We had no choice but to rid Iraq of the country's equivalent organizations." For his part, Feith goes a step further, reasoning in his memoir War and Decision that the case for de-Baathification was even stronger because "The Nazis, after all, had run Germany for a dozen years; the Baathists had tyrannized Iraq for more than thirty." ..."
"... Simply put, Bremer was tempted by headline-grabbing policies. He was unlikely to question any action that offered opportunities to make bold gestures, which made him easy to influence. Indeed, another quality of Bremer's professional persona that conspicuously emerges from accounts of the period is his unwillingness to think for himself. ..."
"... What's even more surprising is how Bremer doesn't hide his intellectual dependence on Slocombe. ..."
"... Slocombe that "Although a Democrat, he has maintained good relations with Wolfowitz and is described by some as a 'Democratic hawk,'" a remark that once again places Wolfowitz in close proximity to Bremer and the disbanding order. ..."
October 27, 2015 | The American Conservative

In May 2003, in the wake of the Iraq War and the ousting of Saddam Hussein, events took place that set the stage for the current chaos in the Middle East. Yet even most well-informed Americans are unaware of how policies implemented by mid-level bureaucrats during the Bush administration unwittingly unleashed forces that would ultimately lead to the juggernaut of the Islamic State.

The lesson is that it appears all too easy for outsiders working with relatively low-level appointees to hijack the policy process. The Bay of Pigs invasion and Iran-Contra affair are familiar instances, but the Iraq experience offers an even better illustration-not least because its consequences have been even more disastrous.

The cast of characters includes President George W. Bush; L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the first civilian administrator of postwar Iraq; Douglas Feith, Bush's undersecretary of defense for policy; Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's deputy secretary of defense; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard B. Cheney (and Cheney's proxy in these events); Walter Slocombe, who had been President Clinton's undersecretary of defense for policy, and as such was Feith's predecessor; Richard Perle, who was chairman of Bush's defense policy board; and General Jay Garner, whom Bremer replaced as the leader of postwar Iraq.

On May 9, 2003, President Bush appointed Bremer to the top civilian post in Iraq. A career diplomat who was recruited for this job by Wolfowitz and Libby, despite the fact that he had minimal experience of the region and didn't speak Arabic, Bremer arrived in Baghdad on May 12 to take charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA. In his first two weeks at his post, Bremer issued two orders that would turn out to be momentous. Enacted on May 16, CPA Order Number 1 "de-Baathified" the Iraqi government; on May 23, CPA Order Number 2 disbanded the Iraqi army. In short, Baath party members were barred from participation in Iraq's new government and Saddam Hussein's soldiers lost their jobs, taking their weapons with them.

The results of these policies become clear as we learn about the leadership of ISIS. The Washington Post, for example, reported in April that "almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers." In June, the New York Times identified a man "believed to be the head of the Islamic State's military council," Fadel al-Hayali, as "a former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi military intelligence agency of President Saddam Hussein." Criticism of de-Baathification and the disbanding of Iraq's army has been fierce, and the contribution these policies made to fueling extremism was recognized even before the advent of the Islamic State. The New York Times reported in 2007:

The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents.

This year the Washington Post summed up reactions to both orders when it cited a former Iraqi general who asked bluntly, "When they dismantled the army, what did they expect those men to do?" He explained that "they didn't de-Baathify people's minds, they just took away their jobs." Writing about the disbanding policy in his memoir, Decision Points, George W. Bush acknowledges the harmful results: "Thousands of armed men had just been told they were not wanted. Instead of signing up for the new military, many joined the insurgency."

... ... ...

In his memoir, Bremer names the officials who approached him for his CPA job. He recounts telling his wife that:

I had been contacted by Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and by Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense. The Pentagon's original civil administration in 'post-hostility' Iraq-the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, ORHA-lacked expertise in high-level diplomatic negotiations and politics. … I had the requisite skills and experience for that position.

Regarding the de-Baathification order, both Bremer and Feith have written their own accounts of the week leading up to it, and the slight discrepancy between their recollections is revealing in what it tells us about Bremer-and consequently about Wolfowitz and Libby for having selected him. At first blush, Bremer and Feith's justifications for the policy appear to dovetail, each comparing postwar Iraq to postwar Nazi Germany. Bremer explains in a retrospective Washington Post op-ed, "What We Got Right in Iraq," that "Hussein modeled his regime after Adolf Hitler's, which controlled the German people with two main instruments: the Nazi Party and the Reich's security services. We had no choice but to rid Iraq of the country's equivalent organizations." For his part, Feith goes a step further, reasoning in his memoir War and Decision that the case for de-Baathification was even stronger because "The Nazis, after all, had run Germany for a dozen years; the Baathists had tyrannized Iraq for more than thirty."

Regarding the order itself, Bremer writes,

The day before I left for Iraq in May, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith presented me with a draft law that would purge top Baathists from the Iraqi government and told me that he planned to issue it immediately. Recognizing how important this step was, I asked Feith to hold off, among other reasons, so I could discuss it with Iraqi leaders and CPA advisers. A week later, after careful consideration, I issued this 'de-Baathification' decree, as drafted by the Pentagon.

In contrast, Feith recalls that Bremer asked him to wait because "Bremer had thoughts of his own on the subject, he said, and wanted to consider the de-Baathification policy carefully. As the new CPA head, he thought he should announce and implement the policy himself."

The notion that he "carefully" considered the policy in his first week on the job, during which he also travelled halfway around the globe, is highly questionable. Incidentally, Bremer's oxymoronic statement-"a week later, after careful consideration"-mirrors a similar formulation of Wolfowitz's about the disbanding order. Speaking to the Washington Post in November 2003, he said that forming a new Iraqi army is "what we're trying to do at warp speed-but with careful vetting of the people we're bringing on."

Simply put, Bremer was tempted by headline-grabbing policies. He was unlikely to question any action that offered opportunities to make bold gestures, which made him easy to influence. Indeed, another quality of Bremer's professional persona that conspicuously emerges from accounts of the period is his unwillingness to think for himself. His memoir shows that he was eager to put Jay Garner in his place from the moment he arrived in Iraq, yet he was unable to defend himself on his own when challenged by Garner, who-according to Bob Woodward in his book State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III-was "stunned" by the disbanding order. Woodward claims that when Garner confronted Bremer about it, "Bremer, looking surprised, asked Garner to go see Walter B. Slocombe."

What's even more surprising is how Bremer doesn't hide his intellectual dependence on Slocombe. He writes in his memoir:

To help untangle these problems, I was fortunate to have Walt Slocombe as Senior Adviser for defense and security affairs. A brilliant former Rhodes Scholar from Princeton and a Harvard-educated attorney, Walt had worked for Democratic administrations for decades on high-level strategic and arms control issues.

In May 2003, the Washington Post noted of Slocombe that "Although a Democrat, he has maintained good relations with Wolfowitz and is described by some as a 'Democratic hawk,'" a remark that once again places Wolfowitz in close proximity to Bremer and the disbanding order. Sure enough, in November 2003 the Washington Post reported:

The demobilization decision appears to have originated largely with Walter B. Slocombe, a former undersecretary of defense appointed to oversee Iraqi security forces. He believed strongly in the need to disband the army and felt that vanquished soldiers should not expect to be paid a continuing salary. He said he developed the policy in discussions with Bremer, Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. 'This is not something that was dreamed up by somebody at the last minute and done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad. It was discussed,' Slocombe said. 'The critical point was that nobody argued that we shouldn't do this.'

Given that the president agreed to preserve the Iraqi army in the NSC meeting on March 12, Slocombe's statement is evidence of a major policy inconsistency. In that meeting, Feith, at the request of Donald Rumsfeld, gave a PowerPoint presentation prepared by Garner about keeping the Iraqi army; in his own memoir, Feith writes, "No one at that National Security Council meeting in early March spoke against the recommendation, and the President approved Garner's plan." But this is not what happened. What happened instead was the reversal of Garner's plan, which Feith attributes to Slocombe and Bremer:

Bremer and Slocombe argued that it would better serve U.S. interests to create an entirely new Iraqi army: Sometimes it is easier to build something new than to refurbish a complex and badly designed structure. In any event, Bremer and Slocombe reasoned, calling the old army back might not succeed-but the attempt could cause grave political problems.

Over time, both Bremer and Slocombe have gone so far as to deny that the policies had any tangible effects. Bremer claimed in the Washington Post that "Virtually all the old Baathist ministers had fled before the decree was issued" and that "When the draftees saw which way the war was going, they deserted and, like their officers, went back home." Likewise Slocombe stated in a PBS interview, "We didn't disband the army. The army disbanded itself. … What we did do was to formally dissolve all of the institutions of Saddam's security system. The intelligence, his military, his party structure, his information and propaganda structure were formally disbanded and the property turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority."

Thus, according to Bremer and Slocombe's accounts, neither de-Baathification nor disbanding the army achieved anything that hadn't already happened. When coupled with Bremer's assertion of "careful consideration in one week" and Wolfowitz's claim of "careful vetting at warp speed," Bremer and Slocombe's notion of "doing something that had already been done" creates a strong impression that they are hiding something or trying to finesse history with wordplay. Perhaps Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran provides the best possible explanation for this confusion in his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, when he writes, "Despite the leaflets instructing them to go home, Slocombe had expected Iraqi soldiers to stay in their garrisons. Now he figured that calling them back would cause even more problems." Chandrasekaran adds, "As far as Slocombe and Feith were concerned, the Iraqi army had dissolved itself; formalizing the dissolution wouldn't contradict Bush's directive." This suggests that Slocombe and Feith were communicating and that Slocombe was fully aware of the policy the president had agreed to in the NSC meeting on March 12, yet he chose to disregard it.

♦♦♦

Following the disastrous decisions of May 2003, the blame game has been rife among neoconservative policymakers. One of those who have expended the most energy dodging culpability is, predictably, Bremer. In early 2007, he testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the Washington Post reported: "Bremer proved unexpectedly agile at shifting blame: to administration planners ('The planning before the war was inadequate'), his superiors in the Bush administration ('We never had sufficient support'), and the Iraqi people ('The country was in chaos-socially, politically and economically')."

Bremer also wrote in May 2007 in the Washington Post, "I've grown weary of being a punching bag over these decisions-particularly from critics who've never spent time in Iraq, don't understand its complexities and can't explain what we should have done differently." (This declaration is ironic, given Bremer's noted inability to justify the disbanding policy to General Garner.) On September 4, 2007, the New York Times reported that Bremer had given the paper exculpatory letters supposedly proving that George W. Bush confirmed the disbanding order. But the Times concluded, "the letters do not show that [Bush] approved the order or even knew much about it. Mr. Bremer referred only fleetingly to his plan midway through his three-page letter and offered no details." Moreover, the paper characterized Bremer's correspondence with Bush as "striking in its almost nonchalant reference to a major decision that a number of American military officials in Iraq strongly opposed." Defending himself on this point, Bremer claimed, "the policy was carefully considered by top civilian and military members of the American government." And six months later Bremer told the paper, "It was not my responsibility to do inter-agency coordination."

Feith and Slocombe have been similarly evasive when discussing President Bush's awareness of the policies. The Los Angeles Times noted that "Feith was deeply involved in the decision-making process at the time, working closely with Bush and Bremer," yet "Feith said he could not comment about how involved the president was in the decision to change policy and dissolve the army. 'I don't know all the details of who talked to who about that,' he said." For his part, Slocombe told PBS's "Frontline,"

What happens in Washington in terms of how the [decisions are made]-'Go ahead and do this, do that; don't do that, do this, even though you don't want to do it'-that's an internal Washington coordination problem about which I know little. One of the interesting things about the job from my point of view-all my other government experience basically had been in the Washington end, with the interagencies process and setting the priorities-at the other end we got output. And how the process worked in Washington I actually know very little about, because the channel was from the president to Rumsfeld to Bremer.

It's a challenge to parse Slocombe's various statements. Here, in the space of two sentences, he claims both that his government experience has mostly been in Washington and that he doesn't know how Washington works. As mentioned earlier, he had previously told the Washington Post that the disbanding order was not "done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad"-in other words, the decision was made in Washington. The inconsistency of his accounts from year to year, and even in the same interview, adds to an aura of concealment.

This further illustrates the disconnect between what was decided by the NSC in Washington in March and by the CPA in Iraq in May. In his memoir, Feith notes that although he supported the disbanding policy, "the decision became associated with a number of unnecessary problems, including the apparent lack of interagency review."

... ... ...

John Hay is a former executive branch official under Republican administrations.

[Oct 29, 2015] President Carter Rips Cheney Over Iraq: 'His Batting Average Is Abysmally Low'

Notable quotes:
"... If you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything and his prediction of what is going to happen, reasons for going over there and obviously this is not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there, to call for a change in policy in Iraq. ..."
"... One measure of the impact of the Iraq War is the precipitous drop in public support for the United States in Muslim countries. Jordan, a key U.S. ally, saw popular approval for the United States drop from 25 percent in 2002 to 1 percent in 2003. In Lebanon during the same period, favorable views of the United States dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, and in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, favorable views plummeted from 61 percent to 15 percent. ..."
"... One of the cell's members, Younis Elian Abu Jarir, a taxi driver whose job was to ferry the group around, stated in a confession offered as evidence in court that they convinced me of the need for holy war against the Jews, Americans, Italians, and other nationalities that participated in the occupation of Iraq. ..."
forums.allaboutjazz.com
Saundra Hummer

February 26th, 2007, 05:07 PM

.

^^^^^^^

President Carter Rips Cheney Over Iraq: 'His Batting Average Is Abysmally Low'

Last week, Vice President Cheney attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) for supporting Iraq redeployment. He charged that their plan would "validate the al Qaeda strategy."

Today, former President Jimmy Carter rejected Cheney's charges, stating that calls for a change of policy in Iraq are "not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there." He added, "If you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything."

Click on the following URL to view.

Watch it:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/25/carter-cheney/

Digg It!

Transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Vice President Cheney this week has been very harsh on those kinds of measures in the Congress.

[CHENEY CLIP]: If we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we'll do is validate the al Qaeda strategy. The al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people.

CARTER: If you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn't been right on hardly anything and his prediction of what is going to happen, reasons for going over there and obviously this is not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there, to call for a change in policy in Iraq.

^^^^^
.


Saundra Hummer

February 26th, 2007, 05:34 PM

.

.........

Iraq 101:
The Iraq Effect
The War in Iraq and Its Impact on the War on Terrorism - Pg. 1

All right, no more excuses, people. After four years in Iraq, it's time to get serious. We've spent too long goofing off, waiting to be saved by the bell, praying that we won't get asked a stumper like, "What's the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?" Okay, even the head of the House intelligence committee doesn't know that one. All the more reason to start boning up on what we-and our leaders-should have learned back before they signed us up for this crash course in Middle Eastern geopolitics. And while we're at it, let's do the math on what the war really costs in blood and dollars. It's time for our own Iraq study group. Yes, there will be a test, and we can't afford to fail.

March 01 , 2007

By Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank
Research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law. Bergen is also a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.

"If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." So said President Bush on November 30, 2005, refining his earlier call to "bring them on." Jihadist terrorists, the administration's argument went, would be drawn to Iraq like moths to a flame, and would perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world.

The president's argument conveyed two important assumptions: first, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to U.S. interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists. However, the White House has never cited any evidence for either of these assumptions, and none appears to be publicly available.

The administration's own National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism: implications for the United States," circulated within the government in April 2006 and partially declassified in October, states that "the Iraq War has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists...and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

Yet administration officials have continued to suggest that there is no evidence any greater jihadist threat exists as a result of the Iraq War. "Are more terrorists being created in the world?" then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rhetorically asked during a press conference in September. "We don't know. The world doesn't know. There are not good metrics to determine how many people are being trained in a radical madrasa school in some country." In January 2007 Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in congressional testimony stated that he was "not certain" that the Iraq War had been a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and played down the likely impact of the war on jihadists worldwide: "I wouldn't say there has been a widespread growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq. I really wouldn't."

Indeed, though what we will call "The Iraq Effect" is a crucial matter for U.S. national security, we have found no statistical documentation of its existence and gravity, at least in the public domain. In this report, we have undertaken what we believe to be the first such study, using information from the world's premier database on global terrorism. The results are being published for the first time by Mother Jones, the news and investigative magazine, as part of a broader "Iraq 101" package in the magazine's March/April 2007 issue.

<< Breaking The Army << >> The Iraq Effect Pg. 2 >> Iraq Effect (continued)
Our study shows that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.

We are not making the argument that without the Iraq War, jihadist terrorism would not exist, but our study shows that the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the Al Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.

In our study we focused on the following questions:

Has jihadist terrorism gone up or down around the world since the invasion of Iraq?
What has been the trend if terrorist incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan (the military fronts of the "war on terrorism") are excluded?
Has terrorism explicitly directed at the United States and its allies also increased?
In order to zero in on The Iraq Effect, we focused on the rate of terrorist attacks in two time periods: September 12, 2001, to March 20, 2003 (the day of the Iraq invasion), and March 21, 2003, to September 30, 2006. Extending the data set before 9/11 would risk distorting the results, because the rate of attacks by jihadist groups jumped considerably after 9/11 as jihadist terrorists took inspiration from the events of that terrible day.

We first determined which terrorist organizations should be classified as jihadist. We included in this group Sunni extremist groups affiliated with or sympathetic to the ideology of Al Qaeda. We decided to exclude terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups, as they depend largely on factors particular to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Our study draws its data from the MIPT-RAND Terrorism database (available at terrorismknowledgebase.org), which is widely considered to be the best publicly available database on terrorism incidents. RAND defines a terrorist attack as an attack on a civilian entity designed to promote fear or alarm and further a particular political agenda. In our study we only included attacks that caused at least one fatality and were attributed by RAND to a known jihadist group. In some terrorist attacks, and this is especially the case in Iraq, RAND has not been able to attribute a particular attack to a known jihadist group. Therefore our study likely understates the extent of jihadist terrorism in Iraq and around the world.

Our study yields one resounding finding: The rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.

And even when attacks in both Afghanistan and Iraq (the two countries that together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of deaths since the invasion of Iraq) are excluded, there has still been a significant rise in jihadist terrorism elsewhere--a 35 percent increase in the number of jihadist terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan and Iraq, from 27.6 to 37 a year, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities from 496 to 554 per year.

Of course, just because jihadist terrorism has risen in the period after the invasion of Iraq, it does not follow that events in Iraq itself caused the change. For example, a rise in attacks in the Kashmir conflict and the Chechen separatist war against Russian forces may have nothing to do with the war in Iraq. But the most direct test of The Iraq Effect--whether the United States and its allies have suffered more jihadist terrorism after the invasion than before--shows that the rate of jihadist attacks on Western interests and citizens around the world (outside of Afghanistan and Iraq) has risen by a quarter, from 7.2 to 9 a year, while the yearly fatality rate in these attacks has increased by 4 percent from 191 to 198.

One of the few positive findings of our study is that only 18 American civilians (not counting civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan) have been killed by jihadist groups since the war in Iraq began. But that number is still significantly higher than the four American civilians who were killed in attacks attributed to jihadist groups in the period between 9/11 and the Iraq War. It was the capture and killing of much of Al Qaeda's leadership after 9/11 and the breakup of its training camp facilities in Afghanistan--not the war in Iraq--that prevented Al Qaeda from successfully launching attacks on American targets on the scale it did in the years before 9/11.

Also undermining the argument that Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are being distracted from plotting against Western targets are the dangerous, anti-American plots that have arisen since the start of the Iraq War. Jihadist terrorists have attacked key American allies since the Iraq conflict began, mounting multiple bombings in London that killed 52 in July 2005, and attacks in Madrid in 2004 that killed 191. Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London bombers, stated in his videotaped suicide "will," "What have you witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq." There have been six jihadist attacks on the home soil of the United States' NATO allies (including Turkey) in the period after the invasion of Iraq, whereas there were none in the 18 months following 9/11; and, of course, the plan uncovered in London in August 2006 to smuggle liquid explosives onto U.S. airliners, had it succeeded, would have killed thousands.

Al Qaeda has not let the Iraq War distract it from targeting the United States and her allies. In a January 19, 2006 audiotape, Osama bin Laden himself refuted President Bush's argument that Iraq had distracted and diverted Al Qaeda: "The reality shows that that the war against America and its allies has not remained limited to Iraq, as he claims, but rather, that Iraq has become a source and attraction and recruitment of qualified people.... As for the delay in similar [terrorist] operations in America, [the] operations are being prepared, and you will witness them, in your own land, as soon as preparations are complete."

Ayman al Zawahiri echoed bin Laden's words in a March 4, 2006, videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera calling for jihadists to launch attacks on the home soil of Western countries: "[Muslims have to] inflict losses on the crusader West, especially to its economic infrastructure with strikes that would make it bleed for years. The strikes on New York, Washington, Madrid, and London are the best examples.

One measure of the impact of the Iraq War is the precipitous drop in public support for the United States in Muslim countries. Jordan, a key U.S. ally, saw popular approval for the United States drop from 25 percent in 2002 to 1 percent in 2003. In Lebanon during the same period, favorable views of the United States dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, and in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, favorable views plummeted from 61 percent to 15 percent. Disliking the United States does not make you a terrorist, but clearly the pool of Muslims who dislike the United States has grown by hundreds of millions since the Iraq War began. The United States' plummeting popularity does not suggest active popular support for jihadist terrorists but it does imply some sympathy with their anti-American posture, which means a significant swath of the Muslim population cannot be relied on as an effective party in counter-terrorism/insurgency measures. And so, popular contempt for U.S. policy has become a force multiplier for Islamist militants.

The Iraq War has also encouraged Muslim youth around the world to join jihadist groups, not necessarily directly tied to Al Qaeda but often motivated by a similar ideology. The Iraq War allowed Al Qaeda, which was on the ropes in 2002 after the United States had captured or killed two-thirds of its leadership, to reinvent itself as a broader movement because Al Qaeda's central message--that the United States is at war with Islam--was judged by significant numbers of Muslims to have been corroborated by the war in Iraq. And compounding this, the wide dissemination of the exploits of jihadist groups in Iraq following the invasion energized potential and actual jihadists across the world.

How exactly has The Iraq Effect played out in different parts of the world? The effect has not been uniform. Europe, the Arab world, and Afghanistan all saw major rises in jihadist terrorism in the period after the invasion of Iraq, while Pakistan and India and the Chechnya/Russia front saw only smaller increases in jihadist terrorism. And in Southeast Asia, attacks and killings by jihadist groups fell by over 60 percent in the period after the Iraq War. The strength or weakness of The Iraq Effect on jihadist terrorism in a particular country seems to be influenced by four factors: (1) if the country itself has troops in Iraq; (2) geographical proximity to Iraq; (3) the degree of identification with Iraq's Arabs felt in the country; and (4) the level of exchanges of ideas or personnel with Iraqi jihadist groups. This may explain why jihadist groups in Europe, Arab countries, and Afghanistan were more affected by the Iraq War than groups in other regions. Europe, unlike Kashmir, Chechnya, and Southeast Asia for example, contains several countries that are part of the coalition in Iraq. It is relatively geographically close to the Arab world and has a large Arab-Muslim diaspora from which jihadists have recruited.

European intelligence services are deeply concerned about the effect of the Iraq War. For example, Dame Eliza Mannigham-Buller, the head of Britain's MI5, stated on November 10, 2006, "In Iraq, attacks are regularly videoed and the footage is downloaded onto the Internet [and] chillingly we see the results here. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and damage our economy...30 that we know of. [The] threat is serious, is growing, and, I believe, will be with us for a generation." Startlingly, a recent poll found that a quarter of British Muslims believe that the July 7, 2005, London bombings were justifiable because of British foreign policy, bearing out Dame Eliza's concern about a new generation of radicals in the United Kingdom.

While Islamist militants in Europe are mobilized by a series of grievances such as Palestine, Afghanistan, the Kashmir conflict, and Chechnya, no issue has resonated more in radical circles and on Islamist websites than the war in Iraq. This can be seen in the skyrocketing rate of jihadist terrorist attacks around the Arab world outside of Iraq. There have been 37 attacks in Arab countries outside of Iraq since the invasion, while there were only three in the period between 9/11 and March 2003. The rate of attacks in Arab countries jumped by 445 percent since the Iraq invasion, while the rate of killings rose by 783 percent. The November 9, 2005 bombings of three American hotels in Amman, Jordan, that killed 60, an operation directed by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq network, was the most direct manifestation of The Iraq Effect in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has seen an upsurge in jihadist terrorism since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There were no jihadist terrorist attacks between 9/11 and the Iraq War but 12 in the period since. The reason for the surge in terrorism was a decision taken by Al Qaeda's Saudi branch in the spring of 2003 to launch a wave of attacks (primarily at Western targets) to undermine the Saudi royal family. These attacks were initiated on May 12, 2003 with the bombing of Western compounds in Riyadh, killing 34, including 10 Americans. While Saudi authorities believe that planning and training for the operation predated the war in Iraq, the timing of the attack, just weeks after the U.S invasion is striking.

The fact that the Iraq War radicalized some young Saudis is underlined by studies showing that more Saudis have conducted suicide operations in Iraq than any other nationality. For instance, Mohammed Hafez, a visiting professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, in a study of the 101 identified suicide attackers in Iraq from March 2003 to February 2006, found that more than 40 percent were Saudi. This jihadist energy was not just transferred over the Saudi border into Iraq. It also contributed to attacks in the Kingdom. The group that beheaded the American contractor Paul Johnson in Riyadh in June 2004 called itself the "Al Fallujah brigade of Al Qaeda" and claimed that it had carried out the killing in part to avenge the actions of "disbelievers" in Iraq. In January 2004 Al Qaeda's Saudi affiliate launched Al Battar, an online training magazine specifically directed at young Saudis interested in fighting their regime. The achievements of jihadists in Iraq figured prominently in its pages. Indeed, a contributor to the first issue of Al Battar argued that the Iraq War had made jihad "a commandment" for Saudi Arabians " the Islamic nation is today in acute conflict with the Crusaders."

The Iraq War had a strong impact in other Arab countries too. Daily images aired by Al Jazeera and other channels of suffering Iraqis enraged the Arab street and strengthened the hands of radicals everywhere. In Egypt, the Iraq War has contributed to a recent wave of attacks by small, self-generated groups. A Sinai-based jihadist group carried out coordinated bombing attacks on Red Sea resorts popular with Western tourists at Taba in October 2004, at Sharm el-Sheikh in July 2005, and at Dahab in April 2006, killing a total of more than 120.

One of the cell's members, Younis Elian Abu Jarir, a taxi driver whose job was to ferry the group around, stated in a confession offered as evidence in court that "they convinced me of the need for holy war against the Jews, Americans, Italians, and other nationalities that participated in the occupation of Iraq." Osama Rushdi, a former spokesman of the Egyptian terrorist group Gamma Islamiyya now living in London, told us that while attacks in the Sinai were partly directed at the Egyptian regime, they appeared to be primarily anti-Western in motivation: "The Iraq War contributed to the negative feelings of the Sinai group. Before the Iraq War, most Egyptians did not have a negative feeling towards American policy. Now almost all are opposed to American policy."

Since the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan has suffered 219 jihadist terrorist attacks that can be attributed to a particular group, resulting in the deaths of 802 civilians. The fact that the Taliban only conducted its first terrorist attacks in September 2003, a few months after the invasion of Iraq, is significant. International forces had already been stationed in the country for two years before the Taliban began to specifically target the U.S.-backed Karzai government and civilians sympathetic to it. This points to a link between events in Iraq and the initiation of the Taliban's terrorist campaign in Afghanistan.

True, local dynamics form part of the explanation for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the use of terrorism, particularly suicide attacks, by the Taliban is an innovation drawn from the Iraqi theater. Hekmat Karzai, an Afghan terrorism researcher, points out that suicide bombings were virtually unknown in Afghanistan until 2005. In 2006, Karzai says, there were 118 such attacks, more than there had been in the entire history of the country. Internet sites have helped spread the tactics of Iraqi jihadists. In 2005 the "Media Committee of the Al Qaeda Mujahideen in Afghanistan" launched an online magazine called Vanguards of Kharasan, which includes articles on what Afghan fighters can learn from Coalition and jihadist strategies in Iraq. Abdul Majid Abdul Majed, a contributor to the April 2006 issue of the magazine, argued for an expansion in suicide operations, citing the effectiveness of jihadist operations in Iraq.

Mullah Dadullah, a key Taliban commander, gave an interview to Al Jazeera in 2006 in which he explained how the Iraq War has influenced the Taliban. Dadullah noted that "we have 'give and take' with the mujahideen in Iraq." Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who is writing bin Laden's biography, told us that young men traveled from the Afghan province of Khost to "on-the-job training" in Iraq in 2004. "They came back with lots of CDs which were full of military actions against U.S. troops in the Mosul, Fallujah, and Baghdad areas. I think suicide bombing was introduced in Afghanistan and Pakistan after local boys came back after spending some time in Iraq. I met a Taliban commander, Mullah Mannan, last year in Zabul who told me that he was trained in Iraq by Zarqawi along with many Pakistani tribals."

Propaganda circulating in Afghanistan and Pakistan about American "atrocities" and jihadist "heroics" has also energized the Taliban, encouraging a previously somewhat isolated movement to see itself as part of a wider struggle. Our study found a striking correlation in how terrorist campaigns intensified in Iraq and Afghanistan. The rate of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan gathered pace in the summer of 2005, a half year after a similar increase in Iraq, and in 2006 the rate of attacks in both countries rose in tandem to new, unprecedented levels.

While the Iraq War has had a strong effect on the rise in terrorism in Afghanistan, it appears to have played less of a role on jihadists operating in Pakistan and India, though terrorism did rise in those countries following the invasion of Iraq. (Of course, neither Pakistan nor India has foreign troops on its soil, which accounts, in part, for the high terrorism figures in Afghanistan.) The rate of jihadist attacks rose by 21 percent while the fatality rate rose by 19 percent. There were 52 attacks after the Iraq invasion, killing 489 civilians, while there were 19 in the period before, killing 182. The local dynamics of the Kashmir conflict, tensions between India and Pakistan, and the resurfacing of the Taliban in eastern Pakistan likely played a large role here. That said, there is evidence that the Iraq War did energize jihadists in Pakistan. Hamid Mir says, "Iraq not only radicalized the Pakistani tribals [near the Afghan border] but it offered them the opportunity for them to go to Iraq via Iran to get on-the-job training."

There is also evidence that the Iraq War had some impact in other areas of Pakistan. In the summer of 2004, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the head of the Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, told followers in Lahore, "Islam is in grave danger, and the mujahideen are fighting to keep its glory. They are fighting the forces of evil in Iraq in extremely difficult circumstances. We should send mujahideen from Pakistan to help them." And Pakistan, inasmuch as it has become Al Qaeda's new base for training and planning attacks, has become the location where significant numbers of would-be jihadists--including some young British Pakistanis such as the London suicide bombers, radicalized in part by the Iraq War--have traveled to learn bomb-making skills.

In Russia and Chechnya, the Iraq War appears to have had less of an impact than on other jihadist fronts. This is unsurprising given the fact that jihadist groups in the region are preoccupied by a separatist war against the Russian military. Whilst following the invasion of Iraq there was a rise in the number of attacks by Chechen groups that share a similar ideology with Al Qaeda, the total rate of fatalities did not go up. The Iraq War does seem to have diverted some jihadists from the Russian/Chechen front: Arab fighters who might have previously gone to Chechnya now have a cause at their own doorstep, while funds from Arab donors increasingly have gone to the Iraqi jihad.

Southeast Asia has been the one region in the world in which jihadist terrorism has declined significantly in the period since the invasion of Iraq. There was a 67 percent drop in the rate of attacks (from 10.5 to 3.5 attacks per year) in the post-invasion period and a 69 percent drop in the rate of fatalities (from 201 to 62 fatalities per year). And there has been no bombing on the scale of the October 2002 Bali nightclub attack that killed more than 200. However, jihadist terrorism in Southeast Asia has declined in spite, not because of, the Iraq War. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was deeply unpopular in the region, as demonstrated by the poll finding that only 15 percent of Indonesians had a favorable view of the United States in 2003. But the negative impact of the Iraq War on public opinion was mitigated by U.S. efforts to aid the region in the wake of the devastating tsunami of December 2004--Pew opinion surveys have shown that the number of those with favorable views towards the United States in Indonesia crept above 30 percent in 2005 and 2006.

However, the main reason for the decline of jihadist terrorism in Southeast Asia has been the successful crackdown by local authorities on jihadist groups and their growing unpopularity with the general population. The August 2003 capture of Hambali, Jemaa Islamiya's operational commander, was key to degrading the group's capacity to launch attacks as was the arrest of hundreds of Jemaa Islamiya and Abu Sayyaf operatives in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore in the years after the October 2002 Bali bombings. Those arrested included most of those who planned the Bali attacks, as well as former instructors at Jemaa Islamiya camps and individuals involved in financing attacks. And in November 2005 Indonesian security services killed Jemaa Islamiya master bomber Azhari bin Husin in a shoot-out. The second wave of Bali attacks in 2005 killed mostly Indonesians and created a popular backlash against jihadist groups in Indonesia, degrading their ability to recruit operatives. And Muslim leaders such as Masdar Farid Masudi, the deputy leader of the country's largest Islamic group, condemned the bombings: "If the perpetrators are Muslims, their sentences must be multiplied because they have tarnished the sacredness of their religion and smeared its followers worldwide."

Iraq Effect (continued)
Our survey shows that the Iraq conflict has motivated jihadists around the world to see their particular struggle as part of a wider global jihad fought on behalf of the Islamic ummah, the global community of Muslim believers. The Iraq War had a strong impact in jihadist circles in the Arab world and Europe, but also on the Taliban, which previously had been quite insulated from events elsewhere in the Muslim world. By energizing the jihadist groups, the Iraq conflict acted as a catalyst for the increasing globalization of the jihadist cause, a trend that should be deeply troubling for American policymakers. In the late 1990s, bin Laden pushed a message of a global jihad and attracted recruits from around the Muslim world to train and fight in Afghanistan. The Iraq War has made bin Laden's message of global struggle even more persuasive to militants. Over the past three years, Iraq has attracted thousands of foreign fighters who have been responsible for the majority of suicide attacks in the country. Those attacks have had an enormous strategic impact; for instance, getting the United Nations to pull out of Iraq and sparking the Iraqi civil war.

Emblematic of the problem is Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman who on November 9, 2005, near the town of Baquba in central Iraq, detonated a bomb as she drove past an American patrol. In the bomb crater, investigators found travel documents that showed that she had arrived in Iraq from Belgium just a few weeks earlier with her Moroccan-Belgian husband Hissam Goris. The couple had been recruited by "Al Qaeda in Iraq." Goris would die the following day, shot by American forces as he prepared to launch a suicide attack near Fallujah.

The story of Muriel Degauque and her husband is part of a trend that Harvard terrorism researcher Assaf Moghadam terms the "globalization of martyrdom." The London suicide bombings in July 2005 revealed the surprising willingness of four British citizens to die to protest the United Kingdom's role in the Coalition in Iraq; Muriel Degauque, for her part, was willing to die for the jihadist cause in a country in which she was a stranger.

This challenges some existing conceptions of the motivations behind suicide attacks. In 2005 University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape published a much-commented-upon study of suicide bombing, "Dying to Win," in which he used a mass of data about previous suicide bombing campaigns to argue that they principally occurred "to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland." (Of course, terrorism directed against totalitarian regimes rarely occurs because such regimes are police states and are unresponsive to public opinion.) Pape also argued that while religion might aggravate campaigns of suicide terrorism, such campaigns had also been undertaken by secular groups, most notably the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, whose most spectacular success was the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female suicide attacker in 1991.

Pape's findings may explain the actions and motivations of terrorist groups in countries such as Sri Lanka, but his principal claim that campaigns of suicide terrorism are generally nationalist struggles to liberate occupied lands that have little to do with religious belief does not survive contact with the reality of what is going on today in Iraq. The most extensive suicide campaign in history is being conducted in Iraq largely by foreigners animated by the deeply-held religious belief that they must liberate a Muslim land from the "infidel" occupiers.

While Iraqis make up the great bulk of the insurgents, several studies have shown that the suicide attackers in Iraq are generally foreigners, while only a small proportion are Iraqi. (Indeed, the most feared terrorist leader in Iraq until his death earlier this year, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was a Jordanian.) The Israeli researcher Reuven Paz, using information posted on Al Qaeda-linked websites between October 2004 and March 2005, found that of the 33 suicide attacks listed, 23 were conducted by Saudis, and only 1 by an Iraqi. Similarly, in June 2005 the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute of Washington, D.C. found by tracking both jihadist websites and media reports that of the 199 Sunni extremists who had died in Iraq either in suicide attacks or in action against Coalition or Iraqi forces, 104 were from Saudi Arabia and only 21 from Iraq. The rest were predominantly from countries around the Middle East. And Mohammed Hafez in his previously cited study of the 101 "known" suicide bombers in Iraq found that while 44 were Saudi and 8 were from Italy (!), only 7 were from Iraq.

In congressional testimony this past November, CIA Director General Michael Hayden said that "an overwhelming percentage of the suicide bombers are foreign." A senior U.S. military intelligence official told us that a worrisome recent trend is the rising number of North Africans who have joined the ranks of foreign fighters in Iraq, whose number General Hayden pegged at 1,300 during his November congressional testimony. A Saudi official also confirmed to us the rising number of North Africans who are being drawn into the Iraq War.

The globalization of jihad and martyrdom, accelerated to a significant degree by the Iraq War, has some disquieting implications for American security in the future. First, it has energized jihadist groups generally; second, not all foreign fighters attracted to Iraq will die there. In fact there is evidence that some jihadists are already leaving Iraq to operate elsewhere. Saudi Arabia has made a number of arrests of fighters coming back from Iraq, and Jordanian intelligence sources say that 300 fighters have returned to Jordan from Iraq. As far away as Belgium, authorities have indicated that Younis Lekili, an alleged member of the cell that recruited Muriel Degauque, had previously traveled to fight in Iraq, where he lost his leg. (Lekili is awaiting trial in Belgium.)

German, French, and Dutch intelligence officials have estimated that there are dozens of their citizens returning from the Iraq theater, and some appear to have been determined to carry out attacks on their return to Europe. For example, French police arrested Hamid Bach, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, in June 2005 in Montpellier, several months after he returned from a staging camp for Iraq War recruits in Syria. According to French authorities, Bach's handlers there instructed him to assist with plotting terrorist attacks in Italy. Back in France, Bach is alleged to have bought significant quantities of hydrogen peroxide and to have looked up details on explosives and detonators online. (Bach is awaiting trial in France.)

This "blowback" trend will greatly increase when the war eventually winds down in Iraq. In the short term the countries most at risk are those whose citizens have traveled to fight in Iraq, in particular Arab countries bordering Iraq. Jamal Khashoggi, a leading Saudi expert on jihadist groups, told us that "while Iraq brought new blood into the Al Qaeda organization in Saudi Arabia, this was at a time when the network was being dismantled. Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia could not accommodate these recruits so they sent them to Iraq to train them, motivate them, and prepare them for a future wave of attacks in the Kingdom. It is a deep worry to Saudi authorities that Saudis who have gone to Iraq will come back." That's a scenario for which Khashoggi says Saudi security forces are painstakingly preparing.

Several U.S. citizens have tried to involve themselves in the Iraq jihad. In December an American was arrested in Cairo, Egypt, accused of being part of a cell plotting terrorist attacks in Iraq. And in February 2006 three Americans from Toledo, Ohio, were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill U.S. military personnel in Iraq. According to the FBI, one of these individuals, Mohammad Zaki Amawi, was in contact with an Arab jihadist group sending fighters to Iraq and tried unsuccessfully to cross the border into Iraq. However, to date there is no evidence of Americans actually fighting in Iraq so the number of returnees to the United States is likely to be small. The larger risk is that jihadists will migrate from Iraq to Western countries, a trend that will be accelerated if, as happened following the Afghan jihad against the Soviets, those fighters are not allowed to return to their home countries.

Already terrorist groups in Iraq may be in a position to start sending funds to other jihadist fronts. According to a U.S. government report leaked to the New York Times in November 2006, the fact that insurgent and terrorist groups are raising up to $200 million a year from various illegal activities such as kidnapping and oil theft in Iraq means that they "may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside Iraq." Indeed, a letter from Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al Zawahiri, to Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in July 2005 contained this revealing request: "Many of the [funding] lines have been cut off. Because of this we need a payment while new lines are being opened. So if you're capable of sending a payment of approximately one hundred thousand we'll be very grateful to you."

The "globalization of martyrdom" prompted by the Iraq War has not only attracted foreign fighters to die in Iraq (we record 148 suicide-terrorist attacks in Iraq credited to an identified jihadist group) but has also encouraged jihadists to conduct many more suicide operations elsewhere. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there has been a 246 percent rise in the rate of suicide attacks (6 before and 47 after) by jihadist groups outside of Iraq and a 24 percent increase in the corresponding fatality rate. Even excluding Afghanistan, there has been a 150 percent rise in the rate of suicide attacks and a 14 percent increase in the rate of fatalities attributable to jihadists worldwide. The reasons for the spread of suicide bombing attacks in other jihadist theaters are complex but the success of these tactics in Iraq, the lionization that Iraqi martyrs receive on jihadist websites, and the increase in feelings of anger and frustration caused by images of the Iraq War have all likely contributed significantly. The spread of suicide bombings should be of great concern to the United States in defending its interests and citizens around the world, because they are virtually impossible to defend against.

The Iraq War has also encouraged the spread of more hardline forms of jihad (the corollary to an increase in suicide bombing). Anger and frustration over Iraq has increased the popularity, especially among young militants, of a hardcore takfiri ideology that is deeply intolerant of divergent interpretations of Islam and highly tolerant of extreme forms of violence. The visceral anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Shiism widely circulated among the Internet circles around ideologues such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada (both Jordanian-Palestinian mentors to Abu Musab al Zarqawi) and Al Qaeda's Syrian hawk, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, are even more extreme, unlikely as it may sound, than the statements of bin Laden himself.

Our study shows just how counterproductive the Iraq War has been to the war on terrorism. The most recent State Department report on global terrorism states that the goal of the United States is to identify, target, and prevent the spread of "jihadist groups focused on attacking the United States or its allies [and those groups that] view governments and leaders in the Muslim world as their primary targets." Yet, since the invasion of Iraq, attacks by such groups have risen more than sevenfold around the world. And though few Americans have been killed by jihadist terrorists in the past three years it is wishful thinking to believe that this will continue to be the case, given the continued determination of militant jihadists to target the country they see as their main enemy. We will be living with the consequences of the Iraq debacle for more than a decade.

Special thanks to Mike Torres and Zach Stern at NYU and Kim Cragin and Drew Curiel at RAND.

<< The Iraq Effect Pg.5 << >> The Data: The Iraq War and Jihadist Terrorism >>
Go on-site for sources, charts, etc. Just click on the following URLs:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_101.html

http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_effect_1.html [B]

[Oct 22, 2015] Russia ready to use military intervention to defend Iran and Syria from Israeli, US and Nato attacks

So Russian position was know to US neocons since at least 2012 and still they push forward "regime change" in Syria.
Notable quotes:
"... Former Member of Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov: Russia Is Ready to Use Military Power to Defend Iran and Syria; Attack on Syria or Iran Is Indirect Attack on Russia. ..."
February 23, 2012 | YouTube

Former Member of Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov: Russia Is Ready to Use Military Power to Defend Iran and Syria; Attack on Syria or Iran Is Indirect Attack on Russia.

Falamu445 10 months ago

And what about China? Should China also seek to protect Iran and Syria with military force if they are attacked?

hudzz

Pakistan will be with Russia if they go to war with usa or isreal

Benny Morris 1 year ago

Good thing that arrogant America is going down. America has spent nearly 70 years being a nuisance to Russians. What a bunch of swine they are when they refuse to admit what the whole world has always known that it was the Soviet Union that won WW2 and America only did so in its dreams.

optionrider12 2 years ago in reply to Brian Hynes

No, you don't understand and I'm not going to fall for your quasi-Hegelian dialectic. Communism can be categorized as a utopia and you're kindly advised to find the definition of Utopia by yourself. Fair enough?

Tristan Xavier 1 year ago in reply to Kati Kati

I understand what you mean but I would never wish the horrors of war on anybody. Peace can be done in different ways. Both Americans and Russians should focus on the corrupted governments that they both possess. The previous generations had their time and they chose either to conform or neglect to the systems. Now we see the results. It's us that needs to stand up and stop this. Why are we going to war for governments that are currently at war with it's own people? N.D.A.A,S.O.P.A and drones etc

[Oct 22, 2015] The Secret History of U.S.-Iranian Relations

Notable quotes:
"... Should we invade Iran for the benefit of our foreign policy, for the benefit of our security interests? ..."
ftmdaily.com
Feb 22, 2012 | youtube.com

FTM (Jerry Robinson): Alright, well, joining me on the program today is Stephen Kinzer. He is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has worked in more than 50 countries. He has been a New York Times Bureau Chief in Istanbul, Berlin, and Nicaragua. He's the author of many books, including the best-selling book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

He's also a professor of international relations at Boston University. My guest today is Stephen Kinzer. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me on Follow the Money Weekly Radio.

KINZER (Stephen Kinzer): Great to be with you.

FTM: I am looking at your book right now-at the Preface to the 2008 edition: "The Folly of Attacking Iran." And I would say, Stephen, that many of the people who are listening to the program today are…I don't want to assume that they're not familiar with the 1953 event, but I want to assume that perhaps they don't know as much about it as perhaps maybe they should. And especially now, as we take a look at the news cycle, we see that Iran is all over the news: talk about invasion; talk about stopping the nuclear program (whether it's even occurring or not is a debate). But the issue at hand right now is, "Should we invade Iran for the benefit of our foreign policy, for the benefit of our security interests?" And you have written a book here that really peels back the layers about this entire question. Why don't you begin by sharing with our audience why you wrote this book and why this topic is important to you?

KINZER: In the first place, you're right that that 2008 edition of the book, which was the new edition, contains this Foreword, "The Folly of Attacking Iran. Now, in the last couple of years, I've been looking at that new edition and thinking, "Boy, that's kind of out of date now." That was at the end of the Bush Administration when we were being really hyped up that Iran was a mortal threat to the rest of the world, but now that introduction is really kind of outdated. Boy, was I wrong! You're absolutely right that Iran has now emerged as the Number One foreign policy issue in this presidential campaign, as candidates flail around for foreign policy issues to beat each other over the head with, Iran really seems to rise to the top of the list. We are in a situation now where we're looking for a demon in the world. I think this is not just an American impulse, but in many countries, it's almost thought that if you don't have an enemy in the world, you should try to find one. It's a way to unite your population and give people a sense of common purpose.

So, you look around the world and pick some country that you want to turn into your enemy and inflate into a terrible, mortal threat to your own security. Iran seems to be filling that role right now. It's an odd situation, because in a sense, the world looks very different from Iran's point of view than it does from here. Iran has four countries in the immediate neighborhood that are armed with nuclear weapons. That's India, Pakistan, Russia, and Israel. Iran also has two countries on its borders that have been invaded and occupied by the United States: that is, Iraq and Afghanistan. So the idea that Iran might be a little unsure as to its defense and wants to make sure that it can build whatever it needs to protect itself doesn't seem so strange when you're sitting in Iran. But even more interesting than all that, when you're looking at differences between the way the world looks when you see it from the United States and the way it looks when you see it from Iran has to do with history.

Whenever I travel in the world, particularly when I travel to a country that I'm not familiar with, I like to ask myself one question: and that is, "How did this country get this way? So, why is this country rich and powerful?" Or, "Why is this country poor and miserable?" When I was traveling in Iran and getting to know Iran for the first time, I came to realize that there's a huge gap between what Iran should be based on its culture and history and size and the education of its people, and what it is. This is a country that has thousands of years of history. It was the first empire in history-the Persian Empire. It has produced a huge amount of culture over many centuries. Its people are highly educated. Nonetheless, it's isolated from the world; poor; unhappy. And I've always wondered on my first trips there why this was. What happened? And as I began to read more, and talk to Iranians, people told me, "We used to have a democracy here. But you Americans came over here and destroyed it. And ever since then, we've been spiraling down." So I decided, "I gotta find out what really happened. I need to find a book about what happened to Iranian democracy." And then I looked around and found there was no such book.

FTM: Wow.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/pW_Rbka6eZ8?rel=0

KINZER: I finally decided that if I was going to read that book, I was going to have to write it myself. And that's how All the Shah's Men came about.

FTM: Well, I would imagine that many in the listening audience would immediately take issue with some of the things that you've stated, and I want to hit those directly head-on. You state in your book some of the reasons why to attack Iran, at least, some of the reasons that are stated.

Number One: Iran wants to become a nuclear power, and that should not be allowed. Iran poses a threat to Israel. Iran sits at the heart of the emerging Shiite Crescent which threatens to destabilize the Middle East. Iran supports radical groups on nearby countries. Iran helps kill American soldiers in Iraq. Iran has ordered terror attacks in foreign countries. Iran's people are oppressed and need Americans to liberate them.

So there's a plethora of ideas as to why American invasion, or some other type of invasion into Iran would possibly be beneficial, not only to our security interests, but also to Iran's state of health so to speak, and bringing them liberty. So you made a good case against it. What do you say to those who say, "You're crazy, Stephen. We need to go over there; we cannot allow them to have a nuclear weapon.

KINZER: In the first place, we don't have any evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon; in fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency has made clear that it has never seen any such evidence, and those inspectors are all over those plants, the uranium is under seal, the seals are under constant video surveillance. It's not as urgent a problem as we're making it out to be.

Nonetheless, I would add a kind of larger perspective, and it's this. When you look at a map of the Middle East, one thing jumps right out at you and it is that Iran is the big country right in the middle. It's not possible to imagine a stable Middle East without including Iran. It's a little bit comparable to the situation that we faced after the end of World War II when there was tremendous anger at Germany for very good reasons.

There was a great move afoot (in fact, we actually followed this policy for a few months) to crush Germany. We were going to slice Germany into pieces, then we were going to forbid it from ever building another factory or industrial plant again. Fortunately, cooler minds prevailed. And we decided to take the opposite tactic. And that was to realize that this country, Germany, had been stirring up trouble in Europe for a hundred years or more, and that the way to prevent that cycle from continuing was not to isolate Germany and kick it and push it into a corner, but to integrate Germany into Europe, and to make it a provider of security rather than a consumer of security. That's what we need to do with Iran. Iran needs to be given a place at the table that's commensurate with its size, and its tradition, and its history, and its regional role.

Now, the United States doesn't want to do that because when Iran is at that table, it's not going to be saying things that are pro-American. It has an agenda that's different than ours. So we don't want it at the table. We want to crush Iran. It sounds like a tempting option, and in fact, if you could wave a wand and make the regime in Iran go away and make Iran be wonderfully friendly to the United States, I'd be all for that. But bombing Iran is likely to produce the opposite result.

First of all, one thing that really surprises me when I'm in Iran is how unbelievably pro-American the people of Iran are. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that there's no country in the world where the population is so pro-American as in Iran. I have been stopped on the streets by people who are practically shrieking when they find out I'm American and tell me how much they love the United States. You don't even get that in Canada! If we're smart, we're gonna realize that this is the Middle Eastern country with the most pro-American population. And this pro-American sentiment in Iran is a huge strategic asset for us going forward. If we liquidate that asset by bombing Iran, we will be greatly undermining our own strategic power. And this is a pattern we've been following in that part of the world for a long time.

The war in Iraq greatly eroded American strategic power. It had the opposite effect that we thought it would have. And this is the real object lesson that we need to keep in mind. When we intervene in countries, we have enough power to achieve our short-term goal, but then we go away; our attention goes to other places. And the resentment and the anger festers and burns in the hearts and minds and souls of people in these countries, and ultimately, we wind up with backlash that we never anticipated and we can't control. In this rush now in these last months to demonize Iran and set the groundwork for an attack on Iran, we are doing something that Americans, and maybe all human beings do too often, and that is: we think about the short term; we never think about the long-term effects of our interventions.

FTM: You open the book with a quote, a quintessential quote, which is kind of common for a book, and it's by President Harry Truman: "There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know." And I would probably say that most of us are obviously familiar with the history of September 11th, 2001, and I would go even further and perhaps say that we are familiar with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and people may remember those days back in the Carter years. But your book goes back to 1953.

In the Preface of your book, you state that the 1953 intervention by the United States into Iran may be seen as a decisive turning point in the 20th Century history from our perspective today. Now I don't know how many people in our listening audience know what happened in 1953. What event are you referring to, and why is it important to what's happening today?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/H8ybj5KULmA?rel=0

KINZER: For most Americans, the history of U.S.-Iran relations begins and ends with the Hostage Crisis. That's all we know, and we know that everything went bad since then. But Iranians don't think that way. For them, the Hostage Crisis is just one of a number of incidents that have happened over the past 50 years. For them, the key moment in the history of U.S.-Iran relations came in 1953. This is an episode that completely defines Iranian history and the Iran-United States relationship. Yet, many people in the United States are not even aware this happened.

Very briefly, this is the story (and I tell it in much more detail in my book): In the period after World War II, Iranian democracy, which had come about at the beginning of the 20th Century through a revolution against a corrupt monarchy, really began to take form. It took on a reality. You had elections; competing parties; parliament. This was something that had not been seen in any Muslim country. So, Iran was truly in the vanguard of democracy. But, because Iran was a democracy, it elected a leader who represented the public will-not the will of outside powers. In Iran, there was one obsession. Iran is sitting, as we know, on an ocean of oil. But all through the 1920's and '30's and '40's, that oil was completely controlled by one British company.

The entire standard of living in Britain all during that period was based on oil from Iran, since Britain has no oil or any colonies that have any oil. Meanwhile, people in Iran were living in some of the most miserable conditions of anyone in the world. Once they had a democracy, they elected a leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who, as prime minister, proceeded to pass a bill in congress in which Iran nationalized its oil industry. This sent the British into a panic. They tried all kinds of things to crush Mosaddegh. Finally, when he closed their embassy and chased out all their diplomats, including all the secret agents who were trying to overthrow him, the British decided, "We're going to ask the Americans to do this for us." So, Churchill asked President Truman to "do this for us. Please go over to Iran and overthrow this guy who took away our oil company. And Truman said, "No." But then, a few years later, when Dwight Eisenhower became president, and John Foster Dulles became Secretary of State, and his brother, Allen Dulles, became Director of the CIA, things changed.

The United States decided that we would work with the British to overthrow Mosaddegh -mainly because he was challenging the fundamentals of corporate globablism, the principle that international companies should be allowed to function all over the world according to conditions that they considered fair. Mosaddegh was saying, "No, we are going to determine the conditions under which foreign companies can function in our country." As a result, the United States sent a team CIA agents into Iran. They went to work in the basement of the American Embassy. They threw Iran into total chaos, and that chaos finally resulted in the overthrow of the Mosaddegh government. That put the Shah back on his peacock throne; he ruled with increasing oppression for 25 years; his repressive rule produced the explosion of the late 1970's, what we call "The Islamic Revolution"; that brought the power, this clique of fanatically anti-American mullahs who are in power now. So, when you do what they call in the CIA "walking back the cat," when you walk back the cat, that is, to see what happened before, and before, and before, you come to realize that the American role in crushing Iranian democracy in 1953 was not only the defining event in the history of U.S.-Iran relations, but it set Iran in the Middle East into turmoil from which it has never recovered.

FTM: In 1953, in the book you point out that democracy was beginning to take root there.

KINZER: It's a remarkable story. This, as I said, is something that had never happened in a Muslim country before. Iran is a remarkable country; very different from the other countries in the Middle East. And I'm not sure that people in the United States realize this. Most of the countries in the Middle East are what you might call "fake countries." They're made-up countries that were invented by some British or French diplomat drawing lines on a map at some men's club after World War I.

Iran is not a fake country by any means. It has lived for thousands of years within more or less the same boundaries, with more or less the same language, and the same kind of population. It's a country with a deep, rich culture and very strong sense of itself. We are treating Iran as if it's Honduras or Barundi or some little place where we can just go and kick sand in people's face and they'll do whatever we want. Iran is not a country like that. And, given its size, and its location, you see that that region will never be stable as long as Iran is angry and ostracized. The only way to stabilize that part of the world is to build a security architecture in which Iran has a place.

The world needs a big security concession from Iran. The world also needs big security concessions from Israel. But countries only make security concessions when they feel safe. Therefore, it should be in interest of those who want stability in the Middle East to try to help every country in the region feel safe. But our goal in the Middle East isn't really stability; it's "stability under our rule…under our dominance." And we realize that when Iran emerges as a strong, proud, independent, democratic country, it's not gonna be so friendly to the United States. So I think there is some feeling that "we prefer it this way" being poor and isolated and unhappy.

FTM: I was looking at a map the other day of the Middle East, just noticing the U.S. military bases in the Middle East, and Iran, if you look at it very objectively, and take a look at the Middle East military base map, you'll discover that Iran is completely surrounded. And as you mentioned, there are four other nations in their general vicinity that have nuclear weapons, and it seems as if pretty much the only way to keep the United States away from your country if you aren't playing by their rules is to have a nuclear weapon. So logically, it does seem to make sense that the Iranians are perhaps seeking a nuclear weapon, but what you point out here again in your book is that the program, to have a nuclear program, was first proposed by the United States to Iran back in the 1970's.

KINZER: We thought it was a great idea for Iran to have a nuclear program-when it was run by a regime that was responsive to Washington. Now that it's a different kind of regime, we don't like this idea. You're absolutely right about the lessons that Iran has drawn about the value of having a nuclear weapon, or the ability to make a nuclear weapon, based on what's happened in the world. Why did the United States attack Iraq, but not attack North Korea? I think it's quite obvious: if North Korea didn't have a nuclear weapon, we would have crushed them already; and if Sadaam did have a nuclear weapon, we probably never would have invaded that country.

An even more vivid example is Libya. We managed to persuade Gaddafi to give up his nuclear program; as soon as he did that, we came in and killed him. I think that the Iranians are acutely aware of this. They would like, if I'm gonna guess, to have the ability to put together a nuclear deterrent, a nuclear weapon-something like Japan has. Japan has something that is in the nuclear business called a "screwdriver weapon." They're not allowed to have nuclear weapons, but they have the pieces and the parts around, so that in a matter of weeks, they could probably put one together. Now, we hear a lot about how the Israelis are terrified that as soon as Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it's gonna bomb Israel. But, in fact, as people in the Israeli security establishment have made clear, none of them really believe that. They fear the Iranian nuclear weapon for a couple of other reasons.

One is, that as Israel well-knows, when you have a nuclear weapon, you don't need to use it. It gives you a certain power; a certain authority. You can intimidate people around you. And second, of course, if there's another nuclear power in that region, it's going to set off perhaps another nuclear race, and other countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia or Egypt would want to have nuclear weapons, too. But when the Iranians look around, I think the first country they see (and I've heard this from a number of Iranians) is Pakistan. Pakistan is a far more volatile and far more dangerous country than Iran. We have serious Taliban/al-Qaeda types not only running around in Pakistan, but doing so under the egious of the government and they have a prospective to take over that government! This is not going to happen in Iran. Pakistan is far more volatile, yet the United States thought that is was fine that Pakistan should have a nuclear weapon. I'm against all countries having nuclear weapons.

I'd like to see all countries that have them abandon them, and I don't want any more countries to get them. But that's a dream world. The fact is, the most that we can do by attacking Iran (as our own Defense Secretary has said) is to postpone the day when Iran has a nuclear weapon, and in the process, make them a lot angrier. The way to reduce this danger is to build a security system in the Middle East where people don't feel the need to be threatening each other. But that requires dialogue, and dialogue requires compromise, and the United States is not ready to compromise with Iran.

FTM: Interesting. And that's where I want to take this in conclusion: What does that look like? Because obviously, the goal of your book here is to see some sort of peace reached. I mean, no one wants to see war. But the Middle East obviously is just an issue that has been debated for a long time. There are all kinds of geopolitical reasons for being involved in the Middle East-namely, oil. But predominantly, as we look at all of this, the question really boils down to this: What are we going to do? If we don't bomb Iran, then how do we prevent them from potentially becoming an explosive nation in that region? You say "security system" over there and also "dialogue." If you were President, what would you do? How do you start that process?

KINZER: The first place, we have never really tried serious diplomatic overtures to Iran. We've got some of our most senior retired diplomats in the United States now who are chafing at the bit to be sent to Iran. People like Thomas Pickering, who was George Bush's ambassador to the United Nations and ambassador to Moscow, and William Lords, another titan of 20th Century diplomacy. These are people who are itching to go to Iran and see what they can do. We have not even asked Iran the fundamental question, "What would it take from us for you to do what we would like you to do with your nuclear program?"

Forget about deciding whether we want to do it or not; we don't even know what the quid pro quo would be! So, we need first to get into a mindset where we're willing to have a real dialogue on an equal basis with Iran. We are not at that point. We feel that any dialogue with them is only going to legitimize their position in the Middle East and is going to make them feel that they're a powerful country, because we will be making concessions to them-that's what you do when you have negotiated solutions. But the fact is, Iran already is a powerful country. It doesn't need us to legitimize it. We need to understand that in dealing with Iran, we're not going to get everything we want. And we are going to have to concede Iran a measure of power in that region that's commensurate with its size, and its history, and its location. We're not even at that point yet. I think that's the first step. We have to make a psychological transition to realize that we're not going to be able to dictate to Iran if we want to reach a peaceful settlement. We're going to have to compromise. We're going to have to accept some things that Iran wants in order to get things that we want. Before we even get to the point of figuring out what those would be, we need to get over that psychological, political, diplomatic hurdle. And we haven't done that yet.

FTM: My guest today has been Stephen Kinzer. He's the author of the book All the Shah's Men. Very enlightening stuff; very illuminating. Stephen, if the folks would like to learn more about you and your work, how can they do so?

KINZER: I've got a website: stephenkinzer.com. My books are all available on that mass website that I don't want to advertise that it's named after a giant river in South America.

FTM: (laughter)

KINZER: But if you want to support your local independent bookstore, I'm sure it would be happy to order All the Shah's Men for you or any of my other books.

FTM: Very good, Stephen. Thank you so much for coming on our program today, Stephen.

KINZER: It was a great pleasure. Thank you.

(Audio Transcript - Saturday, February 11, 2012)

[Oct 21, 2015] Andrew Bacevich A Decade of War

May 15, 2012 | YouTube

Qeis Kamran 1 year ago

I just love Prof. Bacevic. Nobody has more credit then him on the subject. Not only for his unmatched scholarship and laser sharp words, but moreover for the unimaginable personal loss. He is my hero!!!!

Boogie Knight 1 year ago

How many sons did the NeoCon-Gang sacrifice in their instigated Wars in foreign lands....? Not one. Bacevich lost his son who was fighting in Iraq in 2007 - for what?!

Yet the NeoCon warcriminals Billy Cristol, Wolfowitz and/or Elliott Abrams are all still highly respected people that the US media/political elite loves to consult - in 2014!

[Oct 21, 2015] The End of American Exceptionalism with Andrew J. Bacevich - November 7, 2013

An excellent explanation of the key postulates of Neoconservatism.
Notable quotes:
"... We need to reexamine what it means to be free. A moral reorientation of the country as Carter suggested in 1979. Bacevich says it isnt ever going to happen. ..."
Nov 7, 2003 | YouTube
Phil Anderson
Excellent as always. Lecture by Bacevich starts around 13:42.
Wendell Fitzgerald
We need to reexamine what it means to be free. A moral reorientation of the country as Carter suggested in 1979. Bacevich says it isn't ever going to happen.

[Oct 19, 2015] The Banksters and American Foreign Policy by Justin Raimondo

Notable quotes:
"... But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism. ..."
"... , engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout. ..."
"... Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs. ..."
"... Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy ..."
"... The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early 1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad. At the heart of the new policy were America's leading bankers, eager to use the country's growing economic strength to subsidize and force-feed export markets and investment outlets that they would finance, as well as to guarantee Third World government bonds. The major focus of aggressive expansion in the 1890s was Latin America, and the principal Enemy to be dislodged was Great Britain, which had dominated foreign investments in that vast region. ..."
"... In a notable series of articles in 1894, ..."
"... set the agenda for the remainder of the decade. Its conclusion: if 'we could wrest the South American markets from Germany and England and permanently hold them, this would be indeed a conquest worth perhaps a heavy sacrifice.' ..."
"... Long-time Morgan associate Richard Olney heeded the call, as Secretary of State from 1895 to 1897, setting the U.S. on the road to Empire. After leaving the State Department, he publicly summarized the policy he had pursued. The old isolationism heralded by George Washington's Farewell Address is over, he thundered. The time has now arrived, Olney declared, when 'it behooves us to accept the commanding position… among the Power of the earth.' And, 'the present crying need of our commercial interests,' he added, 'is more markets and larger markets' for American products, especially in Latin America.' ..."
July 15, 2011 | Antiwar.com

In a free economy, the banks that invested trillions in risky mortgages and other fool's gold would have taken the hit. Instead, however, what happened is that the American taxpayers took the hit, paid the bill, and cleaned up their mess – and were condemned to suffer record unemployment, massive foreclosures, and the kind of despair that kills the soul.

How did this happen? There are two versions of this little immorality tale, one coming from the "left" and the other from the "right" (the scare-quotes are there for a reason, which I'll get to in a moment or two).

The "left" version goes something like this:

The evil capitalists, in league with their bought-and-paid for cronies in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was nothing left to steal. Then, when their grasping hands had reached the very bottom of the treasure chest, they dialed 911 and the emergency team (otherwise known as the US Congress) came to their rescue, doling out trillions to the looters and leaving the rest of America to pay the bill.

The "right" version goes something like the following:

Politically connected Wall Streeters, in league with their bought-and-paid-for cronies in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was nothing left to steal. Then, when their grasping hands had reached the very bottom of the treasure chest, they dialed BIG-GOV-HELP and the feds showed up with the cash.

The first thing one notices about these two analyses, taken side by side, is their similarity: yes, the "left" blames the free market, and the "right" blames Big Government, but when you get past the blame game their descriptions of what actually happened look like veritable twins. And as much as I agree with the "right" about their proposed solution – a radical cut in government spending – it is the "left" that has the most accurate analysis of who's to blame.

It is, of course, the big banks – the recipients of bailout loot, the ones who profited (and continue to profit) from the economic catastrophe that has befallen us.

During the 1930s, the so-called Red Decade, no leftist agitprop was complete without a cartoon rendering of the top-hatted capitalist with his foot planted firmly on the throat of the proletariat (usually depicted as a muscular-but-passive male in chains). That imagery, while crude, is largely correct – an astonishing statement, I know, coming from an avowed libertarian and "reactionary," no less. Yet my leftist pals, and others with a superficial knowledge of libertarianism, will be even more surprised that the founder of the modern libertarian movement, also an avowed (and proud) "reactionary," agreed with me (or, rather, I with him):

"Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.

"Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.

"Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs."

That's Murray N. Rothbard, the great libertarian theorist and economist, in his classic monograph Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. If you want a lesson in the real motivations behind our foreign policy of global intervention, starting at the very dawn of the American empire, you have only to read this fascinating treatise. The essence of it is this: the very rich have stayed very rich in what would otherwise be a dynamic and ever-changing economic free-for-all by securing government favors, enjoying state-granted monopolies, and using the US military as their private security guards. Conservatives who read Rothbard's short book will never look at the Panama Canal issue in the same light again. Lefties will come away from it marveling at how closely the libertarian Rothbard comes to echoing the old Marxist aphorism that the government is the "executive committee of the capitalist class."

Rothbard's account of the course of American foreign policy as the history of contention between the Morgan interests, the Rockefellers, and the various banking "families," who dealt primarily in buying and selling government bonds, is fascinating stuff, and it illuminates a theme common to both left and right commentators: that the elites are manipulating the policy levers to ensure their own economic interests unto eternity.

In normal times, political movements are centered around elaborate ideologies, complex narratives that purport to explain what is wrong and how to fix it. They have their heroes, and their villains, their creation myths and their dystopian visions of a dark future in store if we don't heed their call to revolution (or restoration, depending on whether they're hailing from the "left" or the "right").

You may have noticed, however, that these are not normal times: we're in a crisis of epic proportions, not only an economic crisis but also a cultural meltdown in which our social institutions are collapsing, and with them longstanding social norms. In such times, ideological categories tend to break down, and we've seen this especially in the foreign policy realm, where both the "extreme" right and the "extreme" left are calling for what the elites deride as "isolationism." On the domestic front, too, the "right" and "left" views of what's wrong with the country are remarkably alike, as demonstrated above. Conservatives and lefties may have different solutions, but they have, I would argue, a common enemy: the banksters.

This characterization of the banking industry as the moral equivalent of gangsters has its proponents on both sides of the political spectrum, and today that ideological convergence is all but complete, with only "centrists" and self-described pragmatists dissenting. What rightists and leftists have in common, in short, is a very powerful enemy – and that's all a mass political movement needs to get going.

In normal times, this wouldn't be enough: but, as I said above, these most assuredly aren't normal times. The crisis lends urgency to a process that has been developing – unfolding, if you will – for quite some time, and that is the evolution of a political movement that openly disdains the "left" and "right" labels, and homes in on the main danger to liberty and peace on earth: the state-privileged banking system that is now foreclosing on America.

This issue is not an abstraction: we see it being played out on the battlefield of the debt ceiling debate. Because, after all, who will lose and who will win if the debt ceiling isn't raised? The losers will be the bankers who buy and sell government bonds, i.e. those who finance the War Machine that is today devastating much of the world. My leftie friends might protest that these bonds also finance Social Security payments, and I would answer that they need to grow a spine: President Obama's threat that Social Security checks may not go out after the August deadline is, like everything out that comes out of his mouth, a lie. The government has the money to pay on those checks: this is just his way of playing havoc with the lives of American citizens, a less violent but nonetheless just as evil version of the havoc he plays with the lives of Afghans, Pakistanis, and Libyans every day.

This isn't about Social Security checks: it's about an attempt to reinflate the bubble of American empire, which has been sagging of late, and keep the government printing presses rolling. For the US government, unlike a private entity, can print its way out of debt – or, these days, by simply adding a few zeroes to the figures on a computer screen. A central bank, owned by "private" individuals, controls this process: it is called the Federal Reserve. And the Fed has been the instrument of the banksters from its very inception [.pdf], at the turn of the 19th century – not coincidentally, roughly the time America embarked on its course of overseas empire.

There is a price to be paid, however, for this orgy of money-printing: the degradation, or cheapening, of the dollar. Most of us suffer on account of this policy: the only beneficiaries are those who receive those dollars first, before it trickles down to the rest of us. The very first to receive them are, of course, the bankers, but there's another class of business types who benefit, and those are the exporters, whose products are suddenly competitive with cheaper foreign goods. This has been a major driving force behind US foreign policy, as Rothbard points out:

"The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early 1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad. At the heart of the new policy were America's leading bankers, eager to use the country's growing economic strength to subsidize and force-feed export markets and investment outlets that they would finance, as well as to guarantee Third World government bonds. The major focus of aggressive expansion in the 1890s was Latin America, and the principal Enemy to be dislodged was Great Britain, which had dominated foreign investments in that vast region.

"In a notable series of articles in 1894, Bankers' Magazine set the agenda for the remainder of the decade. Its conclusion: if 'we could wrest the South American markets from Germany and England and permanently hold them, this would be indeed a conquest worth perhaps a heavy sacrifice.'

"Long-time Morgan associate Richard Olney heeded the call, as Secretary of State from 1895 to 1897, setting the U.S. on the road to Empire. After leaving the State Department, he publicly summarized the policy he had pursued. The old isolationism heralded by George Washington's Farewell Address is over, he thundered. The time has now arrived, Olney declared, when 'it behooves us to accept the commanding position… among the Power of the earth.' And, 'the present crying need of our commercial interests,' he added, 'is more markets and larger markets' for American products, especially in Latin America.'"

The face of the Enemy has long since changed, and Britain is our partner in a vast mercantilist enterprise, but the mechanics and motivation behind US foreign policy remain very much the same. You'll note that the Libyan "rebels," for example, set up a Central Bank right off the bat, even before ensuring their military victory over Gadhafi – and who do you think is going to be selling (and buying) those Libyan "government" bonds? It sure as heck won't be Joe Sixpack: it's the same Wall Streeters who issued an ultimatum to the Tea Party, via Moody's, that they'll either vote to raise the debt ceiling or face the consequences.

But what are those consequences – and who will feel their impact the most?

It's the bankers who will take the biggest hit if US bonds are downgraded: the investment bankers, who invested in such a dodgy enterprise as the US government, whose "full faith and credit" isn't worth the paper it's printed on. In a free market, these losers would pay the full price of their bad business decisions – in our crony-capitalist system, however, they win.

They win because they have the US government behind them - and because their strategy of degrading the dollar will reap mega-profits from American exporters, whose overseas operations they are funding. The "China market," and the rest of the vast undeveloped stretches of the earth that have yet to develop a taste for iPads and Lady Gaga, all this and more will be open to them as long as the dollar continues to fall.

That this will cripple the buying power of the average American, and raise the specter of hyper-inflation, matters not one whit of difference to the corporate and political elites that control our destiny: for with the realization of their vision of a World Central Bank, in which a new global currency controlled by them can be printed to suit their needs, they will be set free from all earthly constraints, or so they believe.

With America as the world policeman and the world banker – in alliance with our European satellites – the Washington elite can extend their rule over the entire earth. It's true we won't have much to show for it, here in America: with the dollar destroyed, we'll lose our economic primacy, and be subsumed into what George Herbert Walker Bush called the "New World Order." Burdened with defending the corporate profits of the big banks and exporters abroad, and also with bailing them out on the home front when their self-created bubbles burst, the American people will see a dramatic drop in their standard of living – our sacrifice to the gods of "internationalism." That's what they mean when they praise the new "globalized" economy.

Yet the American people don't want to be sacrificed, either to corporate gods or some desiccated idol of internationalism, and they are getting increasingly angry – and increasing savvy when it comes to identifying the source of their troubles.

This brings us to the prospects for a left-right alliance, both short term and in the long run. In the immediate future, the US budget crisis could be considerably alleviated if we would simply end the wars started by George W. Bush and vigorously pursued by his successor. Aside from that, how many troops do we still have in Europe – more than half a century after World War II? How many in Korea – long after the Korean war? Getting rid of all this would no doubt provide enough savings to ensure that those Social Security checks go out – but that's a bargain Obama will never make.

All those dollars, shipped overseas, enrich the military-industrial complex and their friends, the exporters – and drain the very life blood out of the rest of us. Opposition to this policy ought to be the basis of a left-right alliance, a movement to bring America home and put America first.

In the long term, there is the basis for a more comprehensive alliance: the de-privileging of the banking sector, which cemented its rule with the establishment of the Federal Reserve. That, however, is a topic too complex to be adequately covered in a single column, and so I'll just leave open the intriguing possibility.

"Left" and "right" mean nothing in the current context: the real division is between government-privileged plutocrats and the rest of us. What you have to ask yourself is this: which side are you on?

Government Warmongering Criminals Where Are They Now

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

The United States already has by far the per capita largest prison population of any developed country but I am probably one of the few Americans who on this Independence Day would like to see a lot more people in prison, mostly drawn from politicians and senior bureaucrats who have long believed that their status makes them untouchable, giving them license to steal and even to kill. The sad fact is that while whistleblowers have been imprisoned for revealing government criminality, no one in the federal bureaucracy has ever actually been punished for the crimes of torture, kidnapping and assassination committed during the George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama presidencies.

Why is accountability important? After the Second World War, the victorious allies believed it was important to establish responsibility for the crimes that had been committed by officials of the Axis powers. The judges at the Nuremberg Trials called the initiation of a war of aggression the ultimate war crime because it inevitably unleashed so many other evils. Ten leading Nazis were executed at Nuremberg and ninety-three Japanese officials at similar trials staged in Asia, including several guilty of waterboarding. Those who were not executed for being complicit in the actual launching of war were tried for torture of both military personnel and civilians and crimes against humanity, including the mass killing of civilians as well as of soldiers who had surrendered or been captured.

No matter how one tries to avoid making comparisons between 1939 and 2015, the American invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, precisely the type of conflict that the framework of accountability provided by Nuremberg was supposed to prevent in the years after 1946. High level US government officials knew that Iraq represented no threat to the United States but they nevertheless described an imminent danger posed by Saddam Hussein in the most graphic terms, replete with weapons of mass destruction, armed drones flying across the Atlantic, terrorists being unleashed against the homeland, and mushroom clouds on the horizon. The precedent of Iraq, even though it was an abject failure, has led to further military action against Libya and Syria to bring about "regime change" as well as a continuing conflict in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the US has been waging a largely secret "long war" against terrorists employing torture and secret prisons. The American people and most of the world bought into the lies and half-truths because they wanted to believe the fiction they were being spoon fed by the White House, but is there a whole lot of difference between what the US government did against Iraq in 2003 and what Hitler's government did in 1939 when it falsely claimed that Polish troops had attacked Germany? Was subsequent torture by the Gestapo any different than torture by a contractor working for Washington?

Many Americans would now consider the leading figures in the Bush Administration aided and abetted by many enablers in congress from both political parties to be unindicted war criminals. Together they ignited a global conflict that is still running strong fourteen years later with a tally of more than 7,000 dead Americans and a minimum of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, Somalis and Syrians.

War breeds more war, due largely to the fact that guilty parties in Washington who piggyback on the prevailing narrative move onward and upward, rewarded in this life even if not necessarily so in the hereafter. A friend of mine recently commented that honest men who were formerly part of the United States government do not subsequently get hired by lobbying firms or obtain television contracts and "teaching" positions at prestigious universities. Though not 100% accurate as I know at least a couple of honorable former senior officials who wound up teaching, it would seem to be a generalization that has considerable validity. The implication is that many senior government officials ascend to their positions based on being accommodating and "political" rather than being honest and they continue to do the same when they switch over to corporate America or the equally corrupted world of academia.

I thought of my friend's comment when I turned on the television a week ago to be confronted by the serious, somewhat intense gaze of Michael Morell, warning about the danger that ISIS will strike the US over the Fourth of July weekend. Morell, a former senior CIA official, is in the terror business. He had no evidence whatsoever that terrorists were planning an attack and should have realized that maneuvering the United States into constantly going on alert based on empty threats is precisely what militant groups tend to do.

When not fronting as a handsomely paid national security consultant for the CBS television network Morell is employed by Beacon Global Strategies as a Senior Counselor, presumably warning well-heeled clients to watch out for terrorists. His lifestyle and substantial emoluments depend on people being afraid of terrorism so they will turn to an expert like him and ask serious questions that he will answer in a serious way suggesting that Islamic militants could potentially bring about some kind of global apocalypse.

Morell, a torture apologist, also has a book out that he wants to sell, positing somewhat ridiculously that he and his former employer had been fighting The Great War of Our Time against Islamic terrorists, something comparable to the World Wars of the past century, hence the title. Morell needs to take some valium and relax. He would also benefit from a little introspection regarding the bad guys versus good guys narrative that he is peddling. His credentials as a warrior are somewhat suspect in any event as he never did any military service and his combat in the world of intelligence consisted largely of sitting behind a desk in Washington and providing briefings to George W. Bush and Barack Obama in which he presumably told them what they wanted to hear.

Morell is one of a host of pundits who are successful in selling the military-industrial-lobbyist-congressional-intelligence community line of BS on the war on terror. Throw in the neocons as the in-your-face agents provocateurs who provide instant intellectual and media credibility for developments and you have large groups of engaged individuals with good access who are on the receiving end of the seemingly unending cash pipeline that began with 9/11. Frances Townsend, who was the Bush Homeland Security adviser and who is now a consultant with CNN, is another such creature as is Michael Chertoff, formerly Director of the Department of Homeland Security, who has successfully marketed his defective airport scanners to his former employer.

But the guys and gals who are out feathering their own nests are at least comprehensible given our predatory capitalist system of government. More to the point, the gang that ordered or carried out torture and assassination are the ones who should be doing some hard time in the slammer but instead they too are riding the gravy train and cashing in. To name only a few of those who knew about the torture and ordered it carried out I would cite George Tenet, James Pavitt, Cofer Black and Jose Rodriguez from the intelligence community. The assassination program meanwhile is accredited to John Brennan, currently CIA Director, during his tenure as Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor. And then there are Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon together with John Yoo at Justice and Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, and Condi Rice at the White House, all of whom outright lied, dissimulated and conspired their way to bring about a war of aggression against Iraq.

There are plenty of nameless others who were "only carrying out orders" and who should be included in any reckoning of America's crimes over the past fifteen years, particularly if one also considers the illegal NSA spying program headed by Michael Hayden, who defended the practice and has also referred to those who oppose enhanced interrogation torture as "interrogation deniers." And then there are Presidents Bush and Obama who certainly knew what was going on in the name of the American people as well as John Brennan, who was involved in both the torture and renditions programs as well as the more recent assassinations by drone.

So where are they now? Living in obscurity ashamed of what they did? Hardly. Not only have they not been vilified or marginalized, they have, in most cases, been rewarded. George W. Bush lives in Dallas near his Presidential Library and eponymous Think (sic) Tank. Cheney lives in semi-retirement in McLean Virginia with a multi-million dollar waterfront weekend retreat in St. Michaels Maryland, not too far from Donald Rumsfeld's similar digs.

George Tenet, the CIA Director notorious for his "slam-dunk" comment, a man who cooked the intelligence to make the Iraq war possible to curry favor with the White House, has generously remunerated positions on the boards of Allen & Company merchant bank, QinetiQ, and L-1 Identity Solutions. He sold his memoir At the Center of the Storm, which has been described as a "self-justifying apologia," in 2007 for a reported advance of $4 million. His book, ironically, admits that the US invaded Iraq for no good reason.

James Pavitt, who was the point man responsible for the "enhanced interrogation" program as Tenet's Deputy Director for Operations, is currently a principal with The Scowcroft Group and also serves on several boards. Cofer Black, who headed the Counter-Terrorism Center, which actually carried out renditions and "enhanced interrogations," was vice chairman of Blackwater Worldwide (now called Xe) and chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions, a Blackwater spin-off. He is now vice president of Blackbird Technologies, a defense and intelligence contractor. Rodriguez, who succeeded Black and in 2005 illegally destroyed video tapes made of Agency interrogations to avoid possible repercussions, is a senior vice president with Edge Consulting, a defense contractor currently owned by IBM that is located in Virginia.

John Yoo is a Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley while Condoleezza Rice, who spoke of mushroom clouds and is widely regarded as the worst National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in history, has returned to Stanford University. She is a professor at the Graduate School of Business and a director of its Global Center for Business and the Economy as well as a fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is occasionally spoken of as either a possible GOP presidential candidate or as a future Commissioner of the National Football League. Her interaction with students is limited, but when challenged on her record she has responded that it was a difficult situation post 9/11, something that everyone understands, though few would have come to her conclusion that attacking Iraq might be a good way to destroy al-Qaeda.

Paul Wolfowitz, the Bush Deputy Secretary of Defense, is seen by many as the "intellectual" driving force behind the invasion of Iraq. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and advises Jeb Bush on foreign policy. A bid to reward Wolfie for his zeal by giving him a huge golden parachute as President of the World Bank at a salary of $391,000 tax free failed when, after 23 months in the position, he was ousted over promoting a subordinate with whom he was having an affair. His chief deputy at the Pentagon Doug Feith left the Defense Department to take up a visiting professorship at the school of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, which was subsequently not renewed. He is reported to be again practicing law and thinking deep thoughts about his hero Edmund Burke, who no doubt would have been appalled to make Feith's acquaintance. Feith is a senior fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute and the Director of the Center for National Security Strategies. His memoir War and Decision did not make the best seller list and is now available used on Amazon for $.01 plus shipping. If the marketplace is anything to go by Feith and Tenet are running neck-and-neck on secondary book exchanges as George also can be had for $.01.

The over-rewarding of former officials who have in reality done great harm to the United States and its interests might well seem inexplicable, but it is all part of a style of bureaucracy that cannot admit failure and truly believes that all its actions are ipso facto legitimate because the executive and its minions can do no wrong. It is also a symptom of the classic American character flaw that all things are of necessity measured by money. Does anyone remember the ancient Roman symbol of republican virtue Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who left his farm after being named Dictator in order to defeat Rome's enemies? He then handed power back to the Senate before returning to his plowing after the job was done. The historian Livy summed up the significance of his act, writing "It is worthwhile for those who disdain all human things for money, and who suppose that there is no room either for great honor or virtue, except where wealth is found, to listen to his story." George Washington was America's Cincinnatus and it is not a coincidence that officers of the continental army founded the Cincinnati Society, the nation's oldest patriotic organization, in 1783. It is also reported that Edward Snowden used the alias "Cincinnatus."

Lord Acton once observed that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." More recently essayist Edward Abbey put it in an American context, noting "Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best." That senior government officials and politicians routinely expect to be generously rewarded for their service and never held accountable for their failures and misdeeds is a fault that is perhaps not unique to the United States but it is nevertheless unacceptable. Handing out a couple of exemplary prison sentences for the caste that believes itself untouchable would be a good place to start. An opportunity was missed with David Petraeus, who was fined and avoided jail time, and it will be interesting to see how the Dennis Hastert case develops. Hastert will no doubt be slapped on the wrist for the crime of moving around his own money while the corruption that was the source of that money, both as a legislator and lobbyist, will be ignored. As will his molestation of at least one and possibly several young boys. One thing for sure about the Washington elite, you never have to say you're sorry.

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

Review Washington Rules

FPIF

For his first 40 years, Andrew Bacevich lived the conventional life of an army officer. In the military world where success depended on conformity, he followed the rules and "took comfort in orthodoxy…[finding] assurance in conventional wisdom." Comfort, that is, until he had a chance to peer behind the Iron Curtain, and was shocked to find East Germany more third-world shambles than first-rate threat.

That experience, combined with the introspection that followed his subsequent retirement from the army, led Bacevich to reevaluate the relationship between truth and power. After having taken his superiors at their word for decades, he slowly came to understand "that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high…is inherently suspect. The exercise of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor."

Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War is Bacevich's fourth book on the subject of American exercise of power. This time, he takes up the question of the political calculations that have produced the basic tenets of American foreign policy since the beginning of the Cold War, examining how and why they came to exist and to survive all challenges to their supremacy.

Bacevich describes two components that define U.S. foreign policy. The first is what he dubs the "American credo," which calls on "the United States - and the United States alone - to lead save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world." Second is what he calls the "sacred trinity," which requires that the United States "maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projections, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism."

These rules, Bacevich argues, are no longer vital to the existence of the United States, and have led to actions that threaten to break the army and bankrupt the treasury. Rather, they are kept in place by individuals who derive personal benefit from their continuance. Bacevich does not hesitate to blame a Washington class that "clings to its credo and trinity not out of necessity, but out of parochial self-interest laced with inertia."

This is a theme that runs throughout the book: that those who make the rules also benefit from them, and thus their demands should always be regarded skeptically.

While abstaining from questioning the patriotism of past leaders, Bacevich is not reluctant to point out how many policies that were later widely embraced were originally trumpeted by ambitious men who had as much to gain personally by their acceptance as did the country: General Curtis LeMay, who built a massive nuclear arsenal as head of Strategic Air Command; Allen Dulles, who backed coups across the globe as CIA director; and General Maxwell Taylor, who rode the idea of "flexible response" from retirement to the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The story of foreign policy, then, is not so much different than any government bureaucracy through which vast sums of money flow, and is driven as much by officials jockeying for status than by genuine concern for policy outcomes. Whether in disputes between the Army and the Air Force or the Pentagon and the White House, and whether over money or over purpose, different sectors of the national security establishment propose and promote new doctrines that necessitate increasing their budgets and enhancing their importance.

But Bacevich is not content to only blame leaders. In contrast to George Washington's ideal of the citizen who would consider it his duty to actively serve his country, Bacevich finds today's Americans "greedy and gullible," pursuing personal gain in the stead of collective benefit. Any solution, he argues, must come from an awakened people who demand change from the people they put in office.

As for what that change should look like, Bacevich proposes a new credo and trinity. As a new mission statement, he offers: "America's purpose is to be America, striving to fulfill the aspirations expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as reinterpreted with the passage of time and in light of hard-earned experience."

As a new trinity, he suggests that "the purpose of the U.S, military is not to combat evil or remake the world but to defend the United States and its most vital interests…the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America…consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self defense."

Bacevich writes in the short, clipped style with which he also speaks, presumably a legacy of his West Point education and decades in the military. His style allows for easy comprehension and neat packaging of his ideas, and readers will not get bogged down in flowery language.

Parts of Bacevich's thinking require further scrutiny and remind readers of his self-identification as a conservative (lowercase "c"). Economically, he is no fan of stimulus spending, and socially he places blame on individual failings and personal flaws, choosing not to mention an unequal economic system that leaves tens of millions of Americans with barely the resources to take care of their families, much less have time to be informed and active citizens.

In fact, the emphasis throughout the book is on the fact that expansionism, at this particular moment, is not wrong but impossible. Bacevich is, after all, a realist when it comes to international relations theory, and though he happens to agree with liberal anti-imperials on many issues, it is often for different reasons.

However, debates over theory can wait for when the republic is in less immediate peril. This is the second work Bacevich has published under the auspices of the American Empire Project, a book series documenting America's imperial adventures and their disastrous consequences. The contribution of conservative authors to this task is vital. They remind us that opposition to imperialism is hardly just a liberal cause, and in fact for much of American history was actually a rallying point for conservatives across the country.

Washington Rules is valuable for putting in print what those inside the military establishment don't dare admit: that, even aside from moral concerns, U.S. international strategy is neither successful nor sustainable and maintained more by lies than by actual results. Bacevich can truly be said to be a realist in that he understand that leaders, when faced with the choice of admitting failure or lying, will almost always choose the latter.

Andrew Feldman is an intern with Foreign Policy In Focus.

The Miami Herald, the CIA, and the Bay of Pigs scoop that didn't run Miami Herald

Miami Herald

The tale of the Herald's Bay of Pigs scoop and its subsequent capitulation to the CIA has mostly been shrouded in mystery for the past five decades. It was explored briefly in Anything but the Truth, a book by Washington reporters William McGaffin and Erwin Knoll that was published in 1968 and quickly disappeared.

'THRILL-SEEKING YOUTHS'

It all started with some kids throwing firecrackers over a fence in Homestead.

On the sultry night of Aug. 26, 1960, 16-year-old John Keogh had called some of his teenaged buddies over to the family poultry farm in Homestead to help him wrangle a bunch of chickens that were scheduled to be shipped off to customers. But the delivery truck never showed, and the bored kids at last gave up and drove off to a little store where they could buy some Cokes and talk about girls.

On the way there, though, one of the guys mentioned seeing a camp for migrant farmworkers nearby. "He said they danced around the fire at night and acted weird," says Keogh, now 70 and working in the auto wholesale business in Land O' Lakes. "So we thought we'd like to see that. And later, that got us called 'thrill-seeking youths' in the newspapers."

When they reached the camp, one of the guys suggested it would be funny to toss a few firecrackers over the fence. A lot of thoughts would flash through Keogh's mind in the moments after the firecrackers went off, and one of them was, these are not your average immigrant farmworkers. A host of weapons, including .30-caliber machine guns, opened up from inside the camp. One of the bullets came through the window of Keogh's pickup truck, hit him in the back of the head and left him blind. Over the next 72 hours, he underwent three surgeries.

When police arrived, the men in the camp said they were members of a Cuban counterrevolutionary army training to overthrow Castro. The cops, unimpressed, arrested 15 of them, mostly for vagrancy. But two faced charges of attempted murder.

Oddly, though, the charges didn't seem to be leading to actual trials. Even the most routine legal proceedings were unscheduled, and all the Cubans seemed to have been released from jail. Finally a cop whispered to a reporter that the State Department had asked for the cases to be tossed.

That's when editors on the Herald's city desk called David Kraslow.

... ... ...

Finally, Kraslow was told to seek an appointment with CIA chief Dulles. With Knight Newspapers Washington bureau chief Ed Lahey, he drove over to the agency's headquarters.

"I didn't show Dulles the story, but I told him, in detail, everything that was in it," Kraslow recalls. "He was stoic, poker-faced. Was he surprised? I don't know, directors of the CIA never, ever look surprised. And he never commented on the accuracy of the story. At the end of it, he said: 'If you publish that kind of information, you'll seriously damage national security.'"

That was the end of the interview. Kraslow called Beebe and Hills back in Miami to tell them what Dulles had said. They in turned discussed it with Herald publisher John S. Knight. "I can't prove it, I'm just guessing, but I've always suspected that the minute I left his office, Dulles called Knight and said, 'Don't publish that story,'" Kraslow says. "Knight was a big Republican and a very patriotic guy, and I think Dulles probably believed a direct appeal to him would work."

Whatever exactly happened in Miami, Kraslow got word from Beebe a couple of days later: The story was dead. The Herald wouldn't run it. Kraslow was disappointed, but not angry. "It was a tough call," he said. "Those guys - Beebe, Hills, Knight - were all great men and great bosses. It's very hard to run a story when the director of the CIA tells you it will harm national security. I think the Herald was wrong, I think the Herald made a mistake, but it was a mistake born of good intentions."

Even though the story wasn't published, Kraslow believes it affected government policy in at least one way: Training of the Cuban exiles was moved out the United States to Guatemala. Meanwhile, other publications - from The Nation magazine to the York Gazette and Daily in York, Pennsylvania - got a whiff of the Bay of Pigs and began nibbling at the story.

So did The New York Times, which on Jan. 10, 1961, published a story on the exile training base in Guatemala. The day after that, the Herald published its own story about the base and the recruiting of exiles in Miami, including some details from Kraslow's spiked story - though it stopped well short of saying the United States was planning a major attack on Cuba.

... ... ...

Kraslow is not certain that publication of his story would have forestalled the invasion. "Maybe, maybe not," he says. "The CIA was very gung-ho to get this thing done."

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article18792675.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article18792675.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article18792675.html#storylink=cpy


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article18792675.html#storylink=cpy

Luminarium

David Rothkopf's recent article, "The Myth of the Innovation Nation" makes for somber reading. But while questioning the alleged American monopoly on creativity, it is of note that he somehow avoids a single mention of American Exceptionalism. It seems hard to avoid questioning what has been one of the central tenets of American foreign policy, while simultaneously raising doubts over a notion that American's have for so long taken for granted: "We are exceptional, and will therefore remain the most powerful, prosperous and influential nation for eternity, so help us God." Yet Rothkopf manages to dance around this phrase, perhaps for fear of repeating those contentious words: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism". But are Americans and America exceptional or aren't they?

The truth behind American exceptionalism, I think, is not in the DNA of its people as opposed to that of the Brits and the Greeks per se, but in the DNA of the nation itself. The beauty and wisdom of the constitution, the system of government and it's separation of powers, protection of freedom and the solid foundation that system has laid for economic progress over the last couple of hundred years. That the U.S's exceptional status, which was once a given, is now being brought into question as in Rothkopf's article (whether in terms of creativity and innovation or educational standards) says wonders about the kinds of changes that have been taking place over the last few decades. Many of these are changes which the founding fathers warned against.

... ... ...

Rothkopf's article does not make for cheerful morning reading. But it should send some alarm bells ringing, as it ends with this message of warning:

Our Condolences How the U.S. Paid For Death and Damage in Afghanistan


An armored vehicle ran over a six-year-old boy's legs: $11,000. A jingle truck was "blown up by mistake": $15,000. A controlled detonation broke eight windows in a mosque: $106. A boy drowned in an anti-tank ditch: $1,916. A 10-ton truck ran over a cucumber crop: $180. A helicopter "shot bullets hitting and killing seven cows": $2,253. Destruction of 200 grape vines, 30 mulberry trees and one well: $1,317. A wheelbarrow full of broken mirrors: $4,057.

A child who died in a combat operation: $2,414.

These are among the payments that the United States has made to ordinary Afghans over the course of American military operations in the country, according to databases covering thousands of such transactions obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the payments are for mundane incidents such as traffic accidents or property damage, while others, in flat bureaucratic language, tell of "death of his wife and 2 minor daughters," "injuries to son's head, arms, and legs," "death of husband," father, uncle, niece.

The databases are incomplete, reflecting fragmented record keeping in Afghanistan, particularly on the issue of harm to civilians. The payments The Intercept has analyzed and presented in the graphic accompanying this story are not a complete accounting, but they do offer a small window into the thousands of fractured lives and personal tragedies that take place during more than a decade of war.

The Price of Life

The data that The Intercept obtained comes from two different systems that the U.S. military uses to make amends.

The Foreign Claims Act, passed in 1942, gives foreign citizens the ability to request payment for damages caused by U.S. military personnel. But the law only covers incidents that happen outside of combat situations - meaning that civilians caught up in battles have no recourse.

Since the Korean War, however, the U.S. military has realized that it's often in its best interest to make symbolic payments for civilian harm, even when it occurs in combat. Over the years, the Pentagon authorized "condolence payments" where the military decided it was culturally appropriate.

Such condolence payments were approved in Iraq a few months into the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and in Afghanistan beginning in 2005. They soon became part of the "hearts and minds" approach to counterinsurgency. To put it another way, in the words of an Army handbook, this was "money as a weapons system."


Click to view interactive graphic.

While it might seem cynical to offer token compensation for a human life, humanitarian organizations embraced the policy as a way to acknowledge deaths and the hard economic realities of war zones.

Condolence payments are meant to be symbolic gestures, and today in Afghanistan, they are generally capped at $5,000, though greater amounts can be approved.

Payments under the Foreign Claims Act take into account any negligence on the part of the claimant, as well as local law. Douglas Dribben, an attorney with the Army Claims Service in Fort Meade, Maryland, said that officers in the field do research, sometimes consulting with USAID or the State Department, to determine the cost of replacing damaged property - "What's a chicken worth in my area versus what it's worth in downtown Kabul?"

Claims for injuries incorporate the cost of medical care, and in the case of wrongful death, the deceased's earning potential and circumstances. "If I have a case of a 28-year old doctor, they are going to be paid more than we'd pay for a child of four," Dribben said. "In Afghanistan, unfortunately, a young female child would likely be much less than a young boy."

The system is imperfect, however. Residents of remote areas often can't access the places where the U.S. military hands out cash. The amounts given out, or whether they are paid at all, often depend on the initiative of individual soldiers - usually the judge advocates who handle claims, or commanders who can authorize condolence payments.

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents detailing about 500 claims made under the Foreign Claims Act, mainly in Iraq. These were the original, often hand-written records of incidents, their investigations, and the military's ultimate decision to pay or deny the claim. Jonathan Tracy, a former judge advocate who handled thousands of claims in Iraq and then devoted years to studying the system, analyzed the entire dataset and found that the decisions often relied on over-broad or arbitrary definitions of combat situations, and that people who were denied claims were only sometimes awarded condolence payment. Yale law professor John Fabian Witt also noted that "relatively minor property awards for damages to automobiles and other personal property often rivaled the death payments in dollar value."

"They present it as if it's very black and white, as though there's the circle of things we can pay for, and you decide if the incident is in or out of that circle, but that's not the way it happens," Tracy told The Intercept. "You'd have two different attorneys doing two different things and [civilians] who'd had much the same thing happen to them would get very different compensation."

Last year the annual defense appropriations bill included a provision, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., which instructs the Pentagon to set up a permanent process for administering condolence payments. The measure is intended to prevent the delay and inconsistencies that marred the system in the early years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to improve record keeping, so that the Pentagon doesn't start from scratch in each new conflict.

A defense official told The Intercept in an emailed statement that the Pentagon has not yet implemented the provision, but is "reviewing the processes related to ex-gratia payments to determine if there are areas where improvements can be made."

Marla Keenan, managing director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, believes that "as the conflict in Iraq and Syria has escalated, they are starting to see a reason for this type of policy to exist. It's unfortunate how a new context where this could be used is the impetus."

Finding the Data

The United States and its allies do not tally civilian deaths in Afghanistan. The United Nations only began keeping track of civilian casualties in 2009; using a conservative count that requires three sources for each incident, the U.N. now reports that more than 17,700 innocent Afghans have died in the past five years of fighting, the majority of them killed by the Taliban or other groups fighting the Afghan government and coalition forces.

Looking at compensation paid out under the Foreign Claims Act or in condolence payments is one way to get a window into the damage caused by the U.S. presence. Yet it's difficult to draw conclusions from the military's records, which are muddled and incomplete, by their own admission.

Sample Afghan claim form


Every cache of documents released comes with caveats. For example, The Nation obtained thousands of pages' worth of records for payments for condolences and other "battle damage" in 2013. Asked for total figures, a military spokesman told the magazine, "I could wade through the numbers to the best of my ability but my numbers would be a guess and most likely inaccurate."

The Intercept received several years' worth of recent data on condolence payments from the military through a Freedom of Information Act request. These records come from a military database keeping track of the Commander's Emergency Response Program, a special pot of spending money for "goodwill" projects.

The database entries are sparse, giving only the basics of who was killed or injured, with no detail on when or how the incident occurred. Location is given only at the province level. Nonetheless, the data represent the Pentagon's clearest accounting of how much money it spends on condolence payments. (This data does not include "solatia," which, just like condolence payments, are compensation for death and injury. But they are paid out of a unit's operating funds, and the Pentagon has said previously it does not have overall figures for solatia.)

According to the data we received, in fiscal years 2011 through 2013, the military made 953 condolence payments totaling $2.7 million. $1.8 million of those were for deaths, and the average payment for a death was $3,426. Payments for injuries averaged $1,557.

Some payments are for multiple people harmed in one incident. For instance, the largest single payment, from 2012, offers $70,000 for "death of a mother and six children." The largest payment for a single death occurred in 2011, when the father of "a local national" who was killed was given more than $15,000. Some family members received as little as $100 for the death of a relative.

Traffic accidents were among the most common claims under the Foreign Claims Act.

Asked about records for payments made before 2011, the Pentagon directed questions to the press office for coalition forces in Afghanistan, which did not reply to repeated inquiries from The Intercept.

Also through the Freedom of Information Act, The Intercept received Foreign Claims Act data from the Army, which handles Afghanistan for the entire U.S. military. As with the condolence payments, the database doesn't include the documentation behind each claim. Rather, it shows a quick synopsis, date and amount for each claim filed.

In all, the Army released 5,766 claims marked for Afghanistan, filed between Feb. 2003 and Aug. 2011, of which 1,671 were paid, for a total of about $3.1 million. Of those claims, 753 were denied completely, and the rest are in various kinds of accounting limbo.

This is only a portion of the claims that were actually made and paid. Douglas Dribben, the attorney with the Army office, described the database as "G.I.G.O. - Garbage In, Garbage Out."

Judge advocates in the field are supposed to regularly update the database with claims received and paid, but spotty Internet access and erratic schedules often made that impossible. Tracy, the former Army attorney, said that in Iraq, he had to enter all the claims he received weekly. In practice, "that never really happened," he said.

A 2010 guidance for claims officers takes a pleading tone: "We know [claims] payments are not your only mission and the last thing you really want is another report but in all honesty the last thing any of us want is an unauthorized expenditure of funds."

A more reliable estimate, Dribben said, comes from Army budget data, which reflects the amount of money transferred out to the field to pay claims. The Army Claims Service did not provide that information, but a training guide from 2009 states that for that fiscal year, the Army had paid $1.35 million in 516 claims in Afghanistan, with 202 denied.

The total for Iraq that year was over $18 million; overall, Afghanistan saw fewer and smaller claims than Iraq, because of remote geography and fewer U.S. troops deployed. Prices for replacement goods or lost wages were generally lower, Dribben said.

The claims synopses typically contain missing words, garbled grammar or obvious errors in the various entry fields. Most refer to a "claimant." Some are entered in the first person. A few dozen have no synopsis at all. Many are completely enigmatic: what happened when "claimant feared soldiers would open fire and panicked?" The claimant was paid more than $3,200.

"Each one took maybe 30 seconds to enter," Tracy said. "There wasn't really room or time to put in a narrative."

The database categorized just 18 payments as wrongful deaths between 2003 and 2011 - very likely an undercounting, Dribben said. The average of those payments was about $11,000; the highest was $50,000, paid to someone in eastern Afghanistan, because "coalition forces killed his father."

The Intercept's Margot Williams and Josh Begley contributed research to this report. Eric Sagara, formerly of ProPublica, also contributed.

Photo: Rahmat Gul/AP; Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images


ŕEmail the author: [email protected]

Menendez and the demise of liberalism Jeffrey Herf

Menendez has been swimming against the main current of liberalism in the Obama era, one that finds little or no room for the traditions of liberal anti-fascism that were once one of American liberalism's defining features.
The Times of Israel

The current controversy over Prime Minister Netanyahu's proposed speech to a Joint Session of Congress obscures a deeper issue about American politicians and U.S. policy toward Iran, namely that they are not lining up conveniently along party lines. It is true that Netanyahu as well as most Republicans in the Congress do not agree with President Obama's approach to negotiations with Iran. I think they are right to do so. Yet the President's life is complicated even more by a Senator from his own party, Robert Menendez of New Jersey. He too disagrees with Obama's approach to Iran and has done so since Obama became President. From 2013 to last month, he did so as the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email
and never miss our top stories
Free Sign up!

Menendez, more than any other political figure in Washington, has prevented the Iran issue from displaying the familiar and convenient divide between Republican "hawks" from Democratic "doves." In numerous speeches on the floor of the Senate and in comments in many hearings in the Committee on Foreign Relations, he has criticized and carefully documented what he views as the steady erosion of the American negotiation position in the talks with Iran. He has led the push for deeper sanctions in the perhaps futile hope that economic pressure would lead the Iranians to turn away from the bomb without the need to resort to force.

The Senator has done so with tact, deep knowledge of the subject and by holding numerous hearings of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the subject. In the process he has earned the respect of Senators in both parties because he is formidably well informed and has command of the broad strategic issues as well as the of the daunting technical details of the negotiations. It is precisely because the President cannot dismiss him as a member of the political opposition that he has been a thorn in the side of the Administration. Yet Menendez has been swimming against the main current of liberalism in the Obama era, one that finds little or no room for the traditions of liberal anti-fascism that were once one of American liberalism's defining features.

Menendez' has proposed support for legislation in Congress to impose new sanctions if the Iranians insist on terms that he believes will allow them to move towards the bomb. At a meeting between the President and Democratic Senators several weeks ago, that legislative proposal drew the President's ire. He told Menendez and other Democratic Senators that new sanctions would lead the Iranians to leave the negotiations and undermine the administration's effort to arrive at a deal. According to the report in The New York Times, the President added that "such a provocative action could lead international observers to blame the Americans, rather than the Iranians, if the talks collapsed before the June 30 deadline."

People, of course, can differ about what impact stiffer sanctions would have on the Iranians. But the President went further. According to the Times, with Menendez's proposals for stiffer sanctions in mind, he said that "he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain." In other words, the President told Menendez in front of a gathering of the other Democratic Senators, that the Senator had taken his positions on Iran because "donors and others" had pressured him to do so. In a room filled with experienced politicians, the President, in effect, said that the Senator had been bought by unnamed persons and groups. The President did not refer to the "Israel lobby" but Menendez understood what the President was implying.

The Times report continues as follows: "Mr. Menendez, who was seated at a table in front of the podium, stood up and said he took 'personal offense.' Mr. Menendez told the President that he had worked for more than 20 years to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and had always been focused on the long-term implications." Imagine the scene of Menendez standing up to say to the President's face that he took "personal offense" at what he had just said. Menendez knew very well that Barack Obama had just questioned his integrity in front of his colleagues. He was having none of it. The Times quoted one of Menendez' unnamed senatorial colleagues as saying that "it was a forceful exchange between two strong personalities. It was not an angry exchange. It was clear, forceful, vigorous." Yet the chances are good that Robert Menendez was indeed quite angry when he rose to tell the President of the United States that he took personal offense at his suggestion that money, not conviction and judgment, were responsible for his views on Iran. All hundred Senators are likely now aware that the President called into question the integrity of one of their colleagues, the former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and now its ranking Democratic member.

To repeat, the problem that Senator Menendez poses for President Obama and for many of his fellow Democrats is that he makes it more difficult for the President and liberals generally to make the Iran issue divide along the conventional left-right divide. It is the same problem currently being posed by the editorial page of the Washington Post or by the New Republic when it was owned by Martin Peretz. It was the problem posed for liberal intellectuals and journalists when Elie Wiesel raised his voice to warn about the Iranian bomb and when Paul Berman published Terror and Liberalism in 2003 and connected the writings of Sayyid Qutb to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. As I pointed out in this blog several weeks ago, it is the same problem that was created by Euston Manifesto and American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto both of which sought to urge liberals to focus on the threats of Islamism, the new anti-Semitism and the Iranian nuclear threat. As the realists in the Iraq Study Group were calling for engaging Iran, these various voices urged liberals to focus on the enormous danger a nuclear Iran posed to the world.

The truth is that these efforts to revive the traditions of liberal anti-fascism applied to Islamist movements and to the Iranian regime have remained marginal in liberal politics in the United States. They remain a minority within the Democratic Party and have not set the tone and substance of policy in the Obama White House. The ascendency of Barack Obama to the Presidency was about opposing the Iraq war, not about discussing affinities between the ideology of the Iranian regime and the radical anti-Semitism of Europe's 20th century.

The now absurd refusal by the Obama administration to connect Islamism as an ideology to the practice of the Islamic state or recently to acknowledge that the murder of Jews is Paris is due to anti-Semitism is part of the irony of the above mentioned liberal silences since 9/11. Those who call themselves liberals have been unable or unwilling to name and recognize the affinities between Islamism in its Sunni and Shia variations to the deeply reactionary forms of totalitarianism of the twentieth century. Liberalism, which was historically the home of anti-fascism, has, in its predominant currents, ceded that position to centrists and conservatives. This is the deeper historical significance of Barack Obama's comment about donors' influence on Robert Menendez. Both Netanyahu and Menendez are right in their implicit assertion that the question of whether or not Iran should get the bomb is not an issue of liberalism or conservatism but one of whether we are going to take the Iranian's intentions seriously or fool ourselves with illusions.

In history, events rarely arrive at times that are convenient for everyone's calendar. If, as may be the case, the United States is about to sign a deal that the Israeli prime minister thinks is a dangerous one, he should use every forum he can find to speak against it. Those Democrats who are unhappy about his proposed speech should be asked how they propose to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and what answers they have to the many good and critical questions that Netanyahu, Menendez and many others have posed about the Administration's approach to the Iran negotiations. Rather than focus their anger on the leader of Israel, a small country that is threatened with destruction should Iran get the bomb, they could spend their time more productively by reading or rereading the speeches and comments of Senator Menendez as well as the text of the many hearings he held in recent years by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about American policy towards the Iranian nuclear issue.

Daniel Sieradski · Top Commenter · Syracuse, New York

Menendez has taken ~$700,000 in pro-Israel contributions. Truly this is about principles.


Reply · · 2 · 12 hours ago

Poll Netanyahu Should be Investigated for Nuclear Weapons Tech Smuggling Before US Visit by Grant Smith

That's pretty brazen behavior from the client-state.
January 29, 2015 | Antiwar.com Blog

A majority of Americans believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be investigated by the FBI for nuclear weapons technology smuggling before being allowed to enter the United States according to a new poll.

In 2012 the FBI declassified and released files (PDF archive) of its investigation into how 800 nuclear weapons triggers were illegally smuggled from the U.S. to Israel. According to the FBI, the Israeli Ministry of Defense ordered nuclear triggers (krytrons), encrypted radios, ballistic missile propellants and other export-prohibited items through a network of front companies. Smuggling ring operations leader Richard Kelly Smyth alleged that Netanyahu worked at one of the fronts – Heli Trading owned by confessed spy and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan – and met with him frequently to execute smuggling operations.

The poll was commissioned by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). When informed of the incident, most Americans (54.9 percent) indicate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be investigated by the FBI before an upcoming U.S. visit.

Israel officially designated the smuggling operation "Project Pinto." Smyth was captured, prosecuted and incarcerated in 2002 after years on the run as an international fugitive. The krytrons were believed to be destined for Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Only 25.8 percent of Americans polled believe Netanyahu should be allowed to freely visit the U.S. while 15.9 percent say said he should neither be investigated nor allowed to enter the U.S.

... ... ...

Grant F. Smith is the author of America's Defense Line: The Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government. He currently serves as director of research at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington (IRmep), D.C. Read other articles by Grant, or visit Grant's website.

The Tragedy of the American Military

Now the USA has contract army almost completely disengaged with public. This way going to war became way too simple, as politicians do not have to feel a backlash.

The Atlantic

Now the American military is exotic territory to most of the American public... As a country, America has been at war nonstop for the past 13 years. As a public, it has not

... ... ...

Robert Altman's 1970 movie M*A*S*H was clearly "about" the Vietnam War, then well into its bloodiest and most bitterly divisive period. (As I point out whenever discussing this topic, I was eligible for the draft at the time, was one of those protesting the war, and at age 20 legally but intentionally failed my draft medical exam. I told this story in a 1975 Washington Monthly article, "What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?")

But M*A*S*H's ostensible placement in the Korean War of the early 1950s somewhat distanced its darkly mocking attitude about military competence and authority from fierce disagreements about Vietnam. (The one big Vietnam movie to precede it was John Wayne's doughily prowar The Green Berets, in 1968. What we think of as the classic run of Vietnam films did not begin until the end of the 1970s, with The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now.) The TV spin-off of Altman's film, which ran from 1972 through 1983, was a simpler and more straightforward sitcom on the Sgt. Bilko model, again suggesting a culture close enough to its military to put up with, and enjoy, jokes about it.

Let's skip to today's Iraq-Afghanistan era, in which everyone "supports" the troops but few know very much about them. The pop-culture references to the people fighting our ongoing wars emphasize their suffering and stoicism, or the long-term personal damage they may endure. The Hurt Locker is the clearest example, but also Lone Survivor; Restrepo; the short-lived 2005 FX series set in Iraq, Over There; and Showtime's current series Homeland. Some emphasize high-stakes action, from the fictionalized 24 to the meant-to-be-true Zero Dark Thirty. Often they portray military and intelligence officials as brave and daring. But while cumulatively these dramas highlight the damage that open-ended warfare has done-on the battlefield and elsewhere, to warriors and civilians alike, in the short term but also through long-term blowback-they lack the comfortable closeness with the military that would allow them to question its competence as they would any other institution's.

The battlefield is of course a separate realm, as the literature of warfare from Homer's time onward has emphasized. But the distance between today's stateside America and its always-at-war expeditionary troops is extraordinary. Last year, the writer Rebecca Frankel published War Dogs, a study of the dog-and-handler teams that had played a large part in the U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Part of the reason she chose the topic, she told me, was that dogs were one of the few common points of reference between the military and the larger public. "When we cannot make that human connection over war, when we cannot empathize or imagine the far-off world of a combat zone … these military working dogs are a bridge over the divide," Frankel wrote in the introduction to her book.

It's a wonderful book, and dogs are a better connection than nothing. But … dogs! When the country fought its previous wars, its common points of reference were human rather than canine: fathers and sons in harm's way, mothers and daughters working in defense plants and in uniform as well. For two decades after World War II, the standing force remained so large, and the Depression-era birth cohorts were so small, that most Americans had a direct military connection. Among older Baby Boomers, those born before 1955, at least three-quarters have had an immediate family member-sibling, parent, spouse, child-who served in uniform. Of Americans born since 1980, the Millennials, about one in three is closely related to anyone with military experience.

The most biting satirical novel to come from the Iraq-Afghanistan era, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain, is a takedown of our empty modern "thank you for your service" rituals. It is the story of an Army squad that is badly shot up in Iraq; is brought back to be honored at halftime during a nationally televised Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game; while there, is slapped on the back and toasted by owner's-box moguls and flirted with by cheerleaders, "passed around like everyone's favorite bong," as platoon member Billy Lynn thinks of it; and is then shipped right back to the front.

The people at the stadium feel good about what they've done to show their support for the troops. From the troops' point of view, the spectacle looks different. "There's something harsh in his fellow Americans, avid, ecstatic, a burning that comes of the deepest need," the narrator says of Billy Lynn's thoughts. "That's his sense of it, they all need something from him, this pack of half-rich lawyers, dentists, soccer moms, and corporate VPs, they're all gnashing for a piece of a barely grown grunt making $14,800 a year." Fountain's novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2012, but it did not dent mainstream awareness enough to make anyone self-conscious about continuing the "salute to the heroes" gestures that do more for the civilian public's self-esteem than for the troops'. As I listened to Obama that day in the airport, and remembered Ben Fountain's book, and observed the hum of preoccupied America around me, I thought that the parts of the presidential speech few Americans were listening to were the ones historians might someday seize upon to explain the temper of our times.

America's Big Challenge: Finding the Off-Ramp in Iraq by Paul Pillar

The National Interest

Americans are not very good at ending their involvement in wars. No, that's not a pacifist statement about a need to stop fighting wars in general. It is instead an observation about how the United States, once it gets involved-for good or for ill-in any one war, has difficulty determining when and how to call it a day and go home. A major reason for this difficulty is that Americans are not Clausewitzians at heart. They tend not to see warfare as a continuation of policy by other means, but instead to think of war and peace as two very different conditions with clear dividing lines between them.

Americans thus are fine with wars that have as clear an ending as the surrenders of the Axis powers in World War II, which continues to be for many Americans the prototype of how a war should be begun, conceived, and concluded. But America's wars since then have not offered conclusions this satisfying. The one that came closest to doing so was Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which swiftly and decisively achieved its declared objective of reversing the Iraqi swallowing of Kuwait. Even that victory, however, left an unsatisfying aftertaste in some (mostly neocon) mouths, because Saddam Hussein remained in power in Baghdad.

It thus is difficult for U.S. leaders, even if they are capable of thinking in disciplined Clausewitzian terms, to explain and to justify to the American public, and to the political class that makes appeals to that public, the wrapping up of an overseas military involvement without a clear-cut, World War II-style victory. This is a problem no matter how well-founded and justified was the original decision to enter a war.

Other dynamics are commonly involved in such situations, including the one usually called mission creep-the tendency in an overseas military expedition for one thing to lead to another and for one's military forces gradually to take on jobs beyond the one that was the original reason for sending them overseas. Any nation can get sucked into mission creep, but Americans are especially vulnerable to it. The yearning for clear-cut and victorious conclusions to foreign military adventures is one reason. Others are the American tendencies to see any problem overseas as a problem for the superpower to deal with, and to expect that if the United States puts its minds and resources to the task it can solve any problem overseas.

Some insights about this subject can be gleaned from comparing two big recent U.S. military expeditions: the one in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 and the one in Afghanistan that began in 2001 and continues today. There is no comparison between the two regarding the original reasons for initiating them, and in that sense it is unfortunate how much the two came to be lumped together in subsequent discussion. One was a a war of aggression with a contrived and trumped-up rationale; the other was a direct and justified response to a lethal attack on the United States. Iraq really was the bad war and Afghanistan the good one. But as time and costs dragged on and Afghanistan became America's longest war ever, it gradually lost support among Americans and Afghans alike.

The failure in Afghanistan was in not finding, and taking, a suitable off-ramp. The off-ramp that should have been taken was reached within the first few months of the U.S. intervention, after the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack that was the reason for the intervention had been rousted from their home and their sometime allies, the Afghan Taliban, had been ousted from power. Regardless of what would have happened in Afghanistan after that, there would not have been a return to the pre-September 2001 situation there, both because the Taliban would have no reason to ally again with a bunch of Arab transnational terrorists who had brought about such a result, and because the United States's own rules of engagement changed so much that no such return would be allowed to occur whether or not U.S. troops were on the ground.

No good off-ramp was found with the Iraq War, and there never was going to be a really good one, given how ill-conceived the war was in the first place and how little thought the makers of the war had given to the post-invasion consequences. The U.S. administration that perpetrated the war did a political finesse of the problem, using a surge of force to reduce the violence in the civil war enough to be able to say that they did not leave Iraq falling apart, and then setting with the Iraqi government a schedule for U.S. withdrawal that would have to be implemented by the next administration. That set the stage, of course, for promoting the myth that the war had been "won" by the time power was handed over in the United States and for blaming the subsequent administration, when it duly implemented the withdrawal schedule it had been given, for all the later indications that the war clearly had not been "won."

It also set the stage, now that the United States has troops back in Iraq, for talk about the need for a "long-term American presence" to avoid repeating the supposed mistake of cutting and running. How long is "long-term" does not get specified. In other words, no off-ramp is identified. In other words, it's again the familiar problem of not knowing how and when to wind up involvement in a foreign war. The error committed in Afghanistan, of missing the ramp and turning what had been a justified response to an attack on the U.S. homeland into an endless attempt at nation-building in a country thousands of miles away, risks being repeated in Iraq.

The Moral Argument for American Restraint-in Iraq and Beyond Noah Berlatsky

Jun 17 2014 | theatlantic.com

Whenever there's a conflict anywhere in the world, a gaggle of American pundits and politicians insists that the United States fix it. Whether it's Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham pushing weapons shipments to Ukraine, former ambassador Robert Ford urging Washington to arm Syrian rebels, or The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol calling for troops to be sent to Iraq, the assumption is always that every problem is America's problem, and that the best way to solve America's problems is with force.

Barry Posen, a professor of political science at MIT and a foreign-policy realist, advocates a different approach. The title of his new book, Restraint, succinctly expresses his policy recommendation. The U.S., he argues, needs to stop trying to do more and more. Instead, it needs to do less. Or, as he puts it, "Efforts to defend everything leave one defending not much of anything."

Posen rests his discussion on two basic arguments. The first is that the United States is, by any reasonable metric, an incredibly secure nation. It is geographically isolated from other great powers-a position that makes invading or even attacking the U.S. mainland prohibitively difficult. U.S. conventional forces are by far the most powerful in the world. Posen notes that the U.S. "accounted for a little more than a third of all the military spending in the world during the 1990s," and has increased the percentage to about 41 percent of all military spending in the world today. On top of that, the U.S. has a massive nuclear deterrent. It is simply not credible to argue that Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan, or even Russia or China have the combination of dangerous capabilities and malign intentions to pose a serious existential threat to the United States in anything but the most paranoid neocon fantasies.

Second, enforcing "liberal hegemony"-a grand strategy of promoting global democracy and peace underwritten by U.S. military power-is simply beyond America's capabilities. As the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, earlier, Vietnam showed, the United States does not have the military resources and political will necessary to impose friendly democratic regimes upon distant peoples. Nor, as all three of those wars also demonstrate, does it have the ability to utterly destroy its enemies forever. Nor, finally, can the U.S. ensure, militarily or otherwise, that no one anywhere gets nuclear weapons-after all, if it could, presumably Pakistan and North Korea wouldn't have them.

The effort to control and police the world through force of arms makes the United States less secure in numerous ways, Posen argues. It bleeds U.S. resources, both military and economic, while leaving the country less prepared to face immediate threats. The belief that America will act as the world's policeman encourages some of its allies to skimp on their own defense spending, forcing the U.S. to undertake further costly investments it cannot afford in the long term. In its role as Liberal Hegemon, it also encourages aggression and risky behavior in states like Israel, which can put off peace deals and engage in provocative actions like settlement construction because of the elaborate pledges of support it has received from America.

Rather than imposing American will by force, Posen suggests that we could more fruitfully and practically engage the world in other ways. For instance, if the U.S. is concerned about genocide, we could join the International Criminal Court and support the prosecution of those who commit war crimes (including, though Posen does not say this, American officials, at whatever level, who condoned, or condone, torture.) If we want to save people, we could honor our commitments under international treaties and open our borders to refugees; as Posen says, we are "rich enough to receive many individuals in such dire straits." We could also send aid to poorer countries to encourage them to receive refugees.

Posen makes a compelling argument. But he makes it almost entirely on realist grounds. He advocates a policy of restraint because it will make the U.S. stronger and more secure, not-or at least not primarily-because a policy of restraint is more ethical than the alternative. His humanitarian suggestions-joining the ICC, opening borders-are addendums to, rather than the essence of, his reasoning.

But liberal hegemony, the argument Posen is rebutting, isn't just based on security interests. It's also predicated on morality. For instance, the rationale for invading Iraq was not only that the United States needed to crush Saddam Hussein for its own safety. It was also that Saddam was uniquely evil and that it would be good for the people of Iraq, and for people around the world, if he were destroyed. Similarly, the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is justified not only on the basis of protecting America from al-Qaeda, but also on the grounds that the Taliban are hideously oppressive, especially to women, and that it is America's responsibility to stop them from returning to power.

Responding to the argument for liberal hegemony, then, requires consideration of the moral as well as the practical arguments for restraint. Fortunately for Posen, the "just war" tradition of ethics yields a very strong argument for the morality of restraint-indeed, in many ways just-war doctrine is based on the restraint principle. As summarized by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

The principles of the justice of war are commonly held to be: having just cause, being a last resort, being declared by a proper authority, possessing right intention, having a reasonable chance of success, and the end being proportional to the means used.

The just-war doctrine is not equivalent to pacifism, which holds that there is no justification for war at all. But it shares with pacifism, as political ethicist Jean Bethke Elshtain has written, the belief that "violence must never be celebrated, and that violence must always be put on trial." Though Elshtain herself supported the Iraq war, the reasoning here suggests, on the contrary, that preventive wars aimed at warding off the eventual emergence of a threat should be anathema. Wars are by their nature bloody, destructive, and impossible to control (as the spiraling and ongoing violence in Iraq demonstrates all too clearly.) It is simply not tenable to argue that starting a war will preserve peace, because war by its nature breeds chaos and more war. That's why war must be a last resort, and why it should solely be used in self-defense; the only time it's reasonable to think that war might reduce war is when you're already at war.

The essence of just war can be summarized generally as follows: first, try to limit harm, and second, treat war with respect and fear. Dropping bombs on Libya or Iran to prevent evil is illegitimate because war itself is evil-and it is an evil not easily contained. Treating war as a convenient tool of policy, rather than as a last resort, sows more death and hardship, not less. Similarly, building up massive stockpiles of weapons that are not immediately necessary creates a temptation to use those weapons-the succinct moral of Johnny Cash's "Don't Take Your Guns to Town." Outsized military expenditures can themselves be seen as a violation of the principles that inform the just-war doctrine.

From the just-war perspective, Posen's realist arguments have an ethical force. Even from the perspective of the World War II-era realist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who rejected pacifism and just war alike as overly idealistic, Posen's position has moral consequences. Niebuhr saw war as moral when it advanced best outcomes. The case Posen outlines suggests what those best outcomes are.

When Posen says, for example, that the U.S. cannot, in the long run, defend Taiwan, that's not just a practical statement, but an ethical one. That's because engaging in an unwinnable conflict over Taiwan-possibly unleashing nuclear war in a lost cause without a self-defense rationale-is, on just-war grounds, or even on Neibuhrian grounds, morally wrong. Similarly, there is plentiful evidence that the U.S. cannot impose its preferred form of government on the peoples of the Middle East. Intervening in Middle Eastern civil wars when there is no realistic chance of success is an ethical failure as well as a tactical one. It is evil to bomb people purely in the hope, against all the evidence, that bombing will make things better.

Restraint is also preferable to liberal hegemony from the standpoint of American ideals. Proponents of liberal hegemony often argue that the United States has an ethical duty to spread its values across the globe. But this argument overlooks the fact that one of the most basic foundational values of America is self-determination. The American Revolution was fought for the principle that people have a right to make decisions about their own fate through their own institutions. When the U.S. sets itself up as a global policeman, it is saying, on the contrary, that U.S. policymakers have the right to decide who should rule in Iraq, or how Iran should conduct its nuclear program. Perhaps, in certain cases, for the security of its own citizens, the U.S. may need to take steps to curtail the actions of other states and other people. But as a wholesale philosophy, "the United States should run the world" contradicts America's most basic value: that people have the right to rule themselves.

Restraint, then, is not merely a practical necessity for the United States to improve its security. It's also an ethical duty, and a specifically American ideal. Rather than fearing America's "decline" because we're not able to undertake a land war in Ukraine or a third invasion of Iraq, we should welcome a world in which the U.S. does not try to solve other people's problems by force. Liberal hegemony hasn't worked, and won't work. The United States will be more secure-and more moral-if it can give up its dreams of empire, and restrain its impulse to war.

Terri_in_LA • a day ago

"For instance, if the U.S. is concerned about genocide, we could join the International Criminal Court and support the prosecution of those who commit war crimes (including, though Posen does not say this, American officials, at whatever level, who condoned, or condone, torture.)"

US Foreign Policy = Follow the Money.

The US Federal Gov't is not primarily concerned about things like genocide when developing its foreign policy. It is concerned about chaotic situations that can disrupt our economy. Concerns for security almost always come back to economic security not physical security. That's why we make the same mistakes over and over. We want to control things that we just don't have much ability to control in attempts to eliminate economic risk. We live in fear that we'll lose access to raw materials, markets, etc. It is why we go head long into the Middle East while we allow wars to rage without intervention in parts of Africa. It's why we are freaked about the Ukraine. We're not worried that Russia is going to wage an actual war, but that it might be in a position to impact our economy or that of our allies. It's why we fear China, when they've shown no interest in meddling in the affairs of countries outside its own region. China has growing economic clout around the world
.
Until we start to discuss foreign policy in more concrete terms (What are our interests exactly? What are we willing or unwilling to sacrifice to protect them?) rather than as if its all high minded ideology or how these are bad guys that need to be taken out for humanitarian reasons, we'll never stop doing things that damage our interests and are damaging to the rest of the world.

A look in the long distance: who will have to pay for "Ukraine v2"?

I just wanted to mention here a topic which is not often discussed in the western press but which does pop-up with some regularity in the Russian press. Let's set aside the current events and ask ourselves the following question:

Sooner or later there will be some kind of state in what used to be the Ukraine until 2014. The Crimea is gone forever to Russia, that is certain. A "People's Republic of Donetsk" all alone like some kind of Lichtenstein but stuck between Russia and Banderastan is most unlikely. Even a "People's Republic of the Donbass" or a "Novorossia" composed of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions would have a very hard time surviving as an independent state. I think that we can assume that the Donbass will either have to join Russia or, at the very least, the Eurasian Union (Rus, Kaz, Bel, Arm, etc.) or some kind of loose Ukrainian confederation. The latter is, of course, only possible if the USA gives up on its delusion of maintaining a neo-Nazi and russophobic Banderastan and accepts some kind of sovereign but civilized "Ukraine" in its place. Right now there are no signs that anybody in Washington is ready to accept that. But whatever the USA does or does not want, there is one thing which is sure: all the successor states of the original Ukraine will need HUGE amounts of foreign financial aid. We are not talking just about providing a few billions in loan guarantees to a clique of corrupt oligarchs, but about fully re-building a more or less modern country almost from scratch. This is a huge program which will take at least a decade and will require immense resources. It will have to be implemented in an highly volatile environment, with massive poverty and corruption, with violence prevalent and possibly with a serious terrorism problem. The political instability of such a environment is guaranteed. So in the light of this - if you were the EU or Russia - would you want to be responsible for more or less of that territory?

Think about it: whoever will end up "owning" (if not de-jure then de-facto) most of this new "Ukraine v2" will also own most of its problems. The EU plan in this regard is crystal clear: the EU wants to own it all and let Russia pay for it all. Unsurprisingly Russia does not agree. The Americans have it even better: they simply don't ask this question, don't think about this issue and have no plans to own anything if by "owning" we mean "paying for". This is completely immature and plain silly. Denying this problem will not make it magically disappear.

Now here is the beauty of it all, at least seen from the Russian point of view:

Russia has already reunited the only part of the Ukraine it really "wanted": Crimea. From a purely egoistic and self-centered point of view, Russia could built a huge wall all along its border with the Ukraine and declare "to hell with it all" and let all the other actors (Ukrainians, EU, US) deal with that. I am kidding, of course, but as a thought-experiment, this is a useful one. Ask yourself: what would happen if Russia did exactly that. Let's assume that Russian public opinion would not be up in arms against such a decision (in reality it would!) and let's just also assume that the (imaginary) "United People's Republic of Donetsk and Luganks" would be fine with that (it's only a though experiment - so indulge me in some unrealistic speculations here, okay?). Let's even assume that Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporozhie, Nikolaev and other cities and regions stop protesting or resisting. All Russia would do is turn off the gas spigot (unless it is paid for in advance), get out the popcorn and beer and watch the reports from the Ukraine. What do you think would happen?

Exactly.

Absolute and total chaos. It's either that or the US/EU would have to come up with a way to not only put a semi-legitimate AND very effective regime in power, but also to pay a bill ranging anywhere form 30 to 100 billion dollars (depending on how much of the problem you want to address immediately). Now look at the same problem from the Russian point of view:

Either the US/EU agree incur huge costs which will severely damage their economies (and they cannot afford that) or

The EU and US begin an ugly fight over "who pays what and under what terms", and

The EU is hit by a series of shocks as a result of the Ukrainian chaos (illegal immigration, crime, political disputes), and

NATO will be seen as either ineffective/incompetent/useless at best, and as reckless and irresponsible at worst.

So no matter what, the AngloZionist Empire will suffer massive consequences for is crazy notion of letting a huge country like the Ukraine explode right in the middle of the European continent.

To be honest, I am quite certain that Russia does not want that outcome at all. First, the Russian public opinion is extremely worked-up about having fellow Russians attacked by a mix of neo-Nazis and Jewish oligarchs and it would never accept putting up any kind of wall or abandon the Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Second, as I mentioned before, Donetsk and Lugansk along cannot be viable in isolation. Finally, I am not at all so sure that only these two regions will decide to hold a referendum, especially after the economic crisis really hits.

Ideally Russia wants a lose Ukrainian Confederation. This confederation would have to be thoroughly de-Nazified and would probably have to join the economic union with Russia and its partners (if only to benefit from Russian financial aid). Russia would also want the US and EU to pitch in its "fair share" of financial and technical support to gradually re-built "Ukraine v2", especially considering that these two entities are responsible for breaking up "Ukraine v1" in the first place. Needless to say, "Ukraine v2" would not be Banderastan and it would not join NATO.

As a side note, it would be really smart for the new Ukrainian leadership of this "Ukraine v2" to declare itself not only neutral but also totally demilitarized. Seriously, what is the point of having a military when stuck right in between NATO and Russia? Provide more targets?

As a (former and "recovering") military analyst I can tell you that by far the best defense against foreign agression for Ukraine would be:

1) the size of its territory (geographical defense)
2) being completely demilitarized (political defense)
3) being officially neutral (legal defense)
4) being in between two rival blocks (military defense by means of "other side")

That does not require a single Hrivna of financing, looks extremely progressive, would get a standing ovation from all its neighbors and would provide the perfect "buffer" to reassure both NATO and Russia. And just imagine the amount of money saved which the "Ukraine v2" could use for far more urgent and contructive needs!

Alas, that would also require a vision which is far beyond what the current freaks in power can even begin to contemplate.

As I have mentioned it in the past, the USA's entire Ukrainian policy is based on a fallacy cooked up by Zbigniew Brzezinski and parroted by Hillary Clinton: Brzezinski believes that Russia cannot be a superpower without the Ukraine and Hillary believes that Putin wants to rebuild the USSR. They are both completely wrong, of course: Russia is already a superpower (it has now defeated the US/EU/NATO alliance in both Syria and the Ukraine) and Putin does not want to rebuild the USSR at all. I wonder if there is anybody in the US polity which understands who much these conceptual mistakes will end up costing the USA. By listening to these two hateful maniacs (this is really what Zbig and Hillary are!) the USA has completely mismanaged every step of its crucial relationship with both the EU and Russia.

In the case of rump-Ukraine more is not better, more is worse; less is better. The less Russia will have to manage and pay for the reconstruction of the Ukraine the better off Russia will be. From the EU's point of view, however, the more Russia takes over of the Ukraine, the better for the EU. This is even better from the US point of view because from the US point of view the more the US/EU "own" the Ukraine, the more they will have to pay for it and the more the transatlantic alliance will come under stress. So, paradoxically, it would be in the best interests of the USA to have Russia take over all of the Ukraine. Sounds crazy? Maybe, but that is still a fact.

So here is the truth: the Ukraine is not a prize at all - it is a huge burden.

That is a truth which no politician can openly state, of course.

Checkmate on all boards
But we can, and should. Because if we keep that truism clear in our minds, we can then see why Russia's victory in this massive confrontation with the united powers of the US/EU/NATO is so total. Can you guess?

Because no matter what, Russia will have the option to chose how much of the Ukrainian burden it is willing to shoulder whereas the West will have to take whatever Russia does not want. Yep, that's right. Just remember the thought experiment we just did above. Russia could, in theory, refuse to take up any further burden and declare "ain't my problem, sorry" and there is nothing the US/EU/NATO could do about it (not to mention that such a Russians stance would completely deflate the stupid canard about Russia being ready to invade the Baltics, Poland or any other EU country).

In a sane world ruled by non-delusional people the real priority of western politicians would be to cuddle, beg, plead, threaten and trick Russia into taking over as much of the Ukraine as possible - the whole thing if possible. Let Russia deal with the neo-Nazis, let Russia pay Ukrainian pensions and salaries, let Russia rebuilt the entire economy, let Russia waste its energy and resources on this ungrateful and truly Herculean task. If Russia agreed to take over the full Ukraine NATO could even re-heat its "Russian threat" canard and justify its existence.

Luckily, however, as long as Putin is in power Russia will never agree to anything like it. Time is on Russia's side and the worst the situation of the Ukraine becomes, the weaker the US/EU/NATO block is, the stronger the Russian bargaining position becomes.

So while Russia cannot remain indifferent and while Russians cannot cynically get some popcorn and beer and watch it all go to hell, Russia will continue to play a very low-key game: Russia will stick to its principled position, it will refuse to be a party to any ludicrous solution, and it will condemn the crazy and neo-Nazi policies of the freaks currently in power in Kiev.

Other than that, Russia will simply wait for western leaders to wake up from their current delusional hallucinations and get serious about solving a problem which is first and foremost their problem which they created and they will have to pay for solving.

The Saker

NY Times Finally Wants Someone Impeached Jay Bybee War Is A Crime .org

The Torturers' Manifesto
By NY Times

To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush's Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect - all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors' statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country's most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos' release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped "Top Secret" were released with hardly any deletions.

But this cannot be the end of the scrutiny for these and other decisions by the Bush administration.

Until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses - and who set the rules and who approved them - there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated.

The abuses and the dangers do not end with the torture memos. Americans still know far too little about President Bush's decision to illegally eavesdrop on Americans - a program that has since been given legal cover by the Congress.

Last week, The Times reported that the nation's intelligence agencies have been collecting private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans on a scale that went beyond the broad limits established in legislation last year. The article quoted the Justice Department as saying there had been problems in the surveillance program that had been resolved. But Justice did not say what those problems were or what the resolution was.

That is the heart of the matter: nobody really knows what any of the rules were. Mr. Bush never offered the slightest explanation of what he found lacking in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he decided to ignore the law after 9/11 and ordered the warrantless wiretapping of Americans' overseas calls and e-mail. He said he was president and could do what he wanted.

The Bush administration also never explained how it interpreted laws that were later passed to expand the government's powers to eavesdrop. And the Obama administration argued in a recent court filing that everything associated with electronic eavesdropping, including what is allowed and what is not, is a state secret.

We do not think Mr. Obama will violate Americans' rights as Mr. Bush did. But if Americans do not know the rules, they cannot judge whether this government or any one that follows is abiding by the rules.

In the case of detainee abuse, Mr. Obama assured C.I.A. operatives that they would not be prosecuted for actions that their superiors told them were legal. We have never been comfortable with the "only following orders" excuse, especially because Americans still do not know what was actually done or who was giving the orders.

After all, as far as Mr. Bush's lawyers were concerned, it was not really torture unless it involved breaking bones, burning flesh or pulling teeth. That, Mr. Bybee kept noting, was what the Libyan secret police did to one prisoner. The standard for American behavior should be a lot higher than that of the Libyan secret police.

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush's example of showy trials for the small fry - like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners - in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

Conflicts Forum's Weekly Comment 25 April – 2 May 2014 Conflicts Forum by Alastair Crooke

Hat tip to Mood of Alabama. Quote: "Alastair Crooke, a former MI-6 honcho and diplomat, is just back from Moscow and has some interesting thoughts on the bigger historic issues which express themselves in the current events in Ukraine."
May 2, 2014 | Conflicts Forum

Following five days in Moscow, a few thoughts on Russian perspectives: Firstly, we are beyond the Crimea. That is over. We too are beyond 'loose' federalism for Ukraine (no longer thought politically viable). Indeed, we are most likely beyond Ukraine as a single entity. Also, we are beyond either Kiev or Moscow having the capacity to 'control' events (in the wider sense of the word): both are hostage to events (as well as are Europe and America), and to any provocations mounted by a multitude of uncontrollable and violent activists.

In gist, the dynamics towards some sort of secession of East Ukraine (either in part, or in successive increments) is thought to be the almost inevitable outcome. The question most informed commentators in Moscow ask themselves is whether this will occur with relatively less or relatively more violence – and whether that violence will reach such a level (massacres of ethnic Russians or of the pro-Russian community) that President Putin will feel that he has no option but to intervene. We are nowhere near that point at the time of writing: Kiev's 'security initiatives' have been strikingly ineffective, and casualties surprisingly small (given the tensions). It seems that the Ukrainian military is unwilling, or unable (or both of these), to crush a rebellion composed only of a few hundred armed men backed by a few thousand unarmed civilians - but that of course may change at any moment. (One explanation circulating on Russian internet circles is that pro-Russian insurgents and the Ukrainian servicemen simply will not shoot at each other - even when given the order to do so. Furthermore, they appear to be in direct and regular contact with each other and there is an informal understanding that neither side will fire at the other. Note - we have witnessed similar understandings in Afghanistan in the 1980s between the Soviet armed forces and the Mujahidin.)

And this the point, most of those with whom we spoke suspect that it is the interest of certain components of the American foreign policy establishment (but not necessarily that of the US President) to provoke just such a situation: a forced Russian intervention in East Ukraine (in order to protect its nationals there from violence or disorder or both). It is also thought that Russian intervention could be seen to hold political advantage to the beleaguered and fading acting government in Kiev. And further, it is believed that some former Soviet Republics, now lying at the frontline of the EU's interface with Russia, will see poking Moscow in the eye as a settling of past scores, as well as underscoring their standing in Brussels and Washington for having brought 'democracy' to eastern Europe.

There seems absolutely no appetite in Moscow to intervene in Ukraine (and this is common to all shades of political opinion). Everyone understands Ukraine to be a vipers' nest, and additionally knows it to be a vast economic 'black hole'. But … you can scarcely meet anyone in Moscow who does not have relatives in Ukraine. This is not Libya; East Ukraine is family. Beyond some certain point, if the dynamic for separation persists, and if the situation on the ground gets very messy, some sort of Russian intervention may become unavoidable (just as Mrs Thatcher found it impossible to resist pressures to intervene in support of British 'kith and kin' in the Falklands). Moscow well understands that such a move will unleash another western outpouring of outrage.

More broadly then, we are moving too beyond the post-Cold War global dispensation, or unipolar moment. We are not heading – at least from the Russian perspective, as far as can be judged – towards a new Cold War, but to a period of increased Russian antagonism towards any western move that it judges hostile to its key interests – and especially to those that are seen to threaten its security interests. In this sense, a Cold War is not inevitable. Russia has made, for example, no antagonistic moves in Iran, in Syria or in Afghanistan. Putin has been at some pains to underline that whereas – from now – Russia will pursue its vital interests unhesitatingly, and in the face of any western pressures, on other non-existential issues, it is still open to diplomatic business as usual.

That said, and to just to be clear, there is deep disillusion with European (and American) diplomacy in Moscow. No one holds out any real prospect for diplomacy – given the recent history of breaches of faith (broken agreements) in Ukraine. No doubt these sentiments are mirrored in western capitals, but the atmosphere in Moscow is hardening, and hardening visibly. Even the 'pro-Atlanticist' component in Russia senses that Europe will not prove able to de-escalate the situation. They are both disappointed, and bitter at their political eclipse in the new mood that is contemporary Russia, where the 'recovery of sovergnty' current prevails.

Thus, the era of Gorbachevian hope of some sort of parity of esteem (even partnership) emerging between Russia and the western powers, in the wake of the conclusion to the Cold War, has imploded – with finality. To understand this is to reflect on the way the Cold War was brought to and end; and how that ending, and its aftermath, was managed. In retrospect, the post-war era was not well handled by the US, and there existirreconcilable narratives on the subject of the nature of the so-called 'defeat' itself, and whether it was a defeat for Russia at all.

Be that as it may, the Russian people have been treated as if they were psychologically-seared and defeated in the Cold War – as were the Japanese in the wake of the dropping of the nuclear bombs by the US in 1945. Russia was granted a bare paucity of esteem in the Cold War's wake; instead Russians experienced rather the disdain of victors for the defeated visited upon them. There was little or any attempt at including Russia in a company of the nations of equals – as many Russians had hoped. Few too would contest that the economic measures forced on Russia in the war's aftermath brought anything other than misery to most Russians. However unlike 1945, most Russians never felt defeated, and some felt then – and still feel – just betrayed. Whatever the verdict of history on how much the Cold War truly was a defeat, the aftermath of it has given rise to a Versailles Treaty-type of popular resentment at the consequences of the post-Cold War settlement, and at the (unwarranted) unipolar triumphalism (from the Russian perspective).

In this sense, it is the end of an era: it marks the end of the post-Cold War settlement that brought into being the American unipolar era. It is the rise of a Russian challenge to that unipolar order which seems so unsettling to many living in the West. Just as Versailles was psychologically rejected by Germans, so Russia is abdicating out of the present dispensation (at least in respect to its key interests). The big question must be whether the wider triangulation (US-Russia-China) that saw merit in its complementary touching at each of its three apexes is over too - a triangulation on which the US depends heavily for its foreign policy. We have to wait on China. The answer to this question may well hinge on how far the antagonism between Russia and the West is allowed – or even encouraged – to escalate. Only then, might it become more apparent how many, and who, is thinking of seceding from the global order (including from the Federal Reserve controlled financial system).

In the interim, time and dynamics require Russia to do little in Ukraine at this point but to watch and wait. The mood in Russia, however, is to expect provocations in Ukraine, by any one of the assorted interested parties, with the aim of forcing a Russian intervention - and thus a politically useful 'limited' war that will do many things: restore US 'leadership' in Europe, give NATO a new mission and purpose, and provide the same (and greater prominence) to certain newer EU member states (such as Poland). Russia will have concluded that the second round of economic sanctions has revealed more about a certain lack of political (and financial) will – or perhaps vulnerability – on the part of America's European allies. Russia no doubt sees the US to be gripped by the logic of escalation (as Administration talk centres on a new containment strategy, and the demonization of Russia as a pariah state), whatever President Obama may be hinting through the columns of David Ignatius. It is a dangerous moment, as all in Moscow acknowledge, with positions hardening on both sides.

Russia is not frightened by sanctions (which some, with influence in Moscow, would welcome as a chance to push-back against the US use of the global interbank payment systems for its own ends). Nor is Russia concerned that, as occurred with the USSR, the US – in today's changed circumstances – can contrive a drop in the price of oil in order to weaken the state. But Russia is somewhat more vulnerable to the West's teaming up with Sunni radicals as its new geo-strategic weapon of choice. Concept of MIC makes it easy to

We have therefore seen a Russian outreach both to Saudi Arabia and Egypt (President Putin recently extolled King Abdallah's "wisdom"). There is a feeling too that US policy is not fully controlled by the US President; and that Gulf States, smelling that US ift, and open to manipulation by interests within the US, will take advantage (perhaps in coordination with certain Americans opposed to President Obama's policies) to escalate the jihadist war against President Assad and to target Obama's Iran policy. Russia may be expected to try to circumscribe this danger to its own Muslim population and to that of its neighbouring former Soviet Republics. But for now, Russia will be likely to play it cool: to wait-and-see how events unfold, before recalibrating any main components of its Middle East policy.

For the longer term however, Russia's effective divorce out of the unipolar international order will impact powerfully on the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia (not to say Syria and Iran) have already virtually done the same.

Yet another totally crazy idea from Banderastan

The Vineyard of the Saker

Unknown said...

The US MIC is salivating at the prospect another tax-payer funded hardware (and a lot of training contracts for both uniformed services and mercenary outfits) give-away program. I have no doubt that the coup gov was urged by the US to do this.


Anonymous said...

What's interesting is:

1. US wedge between Germany and Russia (Eurasian Economic Union) aka return of the US into Eastern Europe.

2. Naming Russia enemy of NATO.

3. Reviving NATO power

4. Transatlantic and Transpacific Unions (economic slavery to the US).

5. Ukraine: will "the little green men" emerge in the pro-Russian defensive positions without radio communication activity on the Russian side which made CIA and other US military intelligence fools for themselves?

6. Ukraine: why the Kiev thugs cry through every media bullhorn/outlet they will start military hostilities against civilians tomorrow morning? Did Hitler published in press in advance the blueprints of Barbarossa Plan?

7. Ukraine: how many death will make Russians to press the button "go ahead" for their armed forces?

Gareth said...

Here is an excellent and up to date source of information on the activities on NATO

Stop NATO…Opposition to global militarism

Anonymous said...

Espina said

The military and the monetary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCb7YKqQUq4

Scotland

Mulga Mumblebrain said...

I think that the latest economic statistics from The Real Evil Empire of Eternal Exceptionalism may, in large part, explain the reckless aggression of the psychopaths at present. The date at which China surpasses the USA as the world's largest economy (and without the gigantic incubus of the USA's massive engine of self-destruction, the financial kleptocracy)grows closer every day. I've noticed that the local ruling Rightwing psychos are growing more frantic here in Oz.

They constantly speak of China being in trouble (they have predicted that for forty years)because its growth is 'only' 7.4%, whereas growth in the REEEE of 0.1% (minus 1% without Obamacare's contribution)is another sign of our Imperial Master's 'resilience'. And the current hard Right Federal regime has just had a hand-picked cabal of psychopaths present an economic blue-print to privatise the country and turn it into a fully-fledged neo-feudal Hell of inequality and privilege. Social solidarity zero, greedy, atomised, hyper-individualism, infinite.

As if the last forty years of neo-liberal class warfare and stagnation, boom and bust and rising inequality was a very good thing, indeed, and we need more of it. This is where Putin is winning, I would say. The rulers of the West are now so plainly revealing themselves as evil, endlessly mendacious psychopaths who fear and hate all others (including one another-as they say, 'If you want a friend on Wall Street, buy a dog'), that someone like Putin, merely by standing up to them makes himself attractive to the remaining fraction capable of independent thought. Which is why brainwashing sewers like the odious 'The Guardian' are screeching that RT must be banned, and the MSM is united in hysteria in denouncing the evil Putin.

The plebs are waking up, and the Bosses are worried.

Anonymous said...

Dear saker- I agree with paul craig-there is no point of Russia thinking of anglosphere world anything but as permanent enemy and deal with the situation if Russia wants to survive.

===============================

quote "Washington Drives The World To War - Paul Craig Roberts

April 14, 2014
Quote "

The danger for Russia is that the Russian government will rely on diplomacy, international organizations, international cooperation, and on the common sense and self-interest of German politicians and politicians in other of Washington's European puppet states.

For Russia this could be a fatal mistake. There is no good will in Washington, only mendacity. Russian delay provides Washington with time to build up forces on Russia's borders and in the Black Sea and to demonize Russia with propaganda and whip up the US population into a war frenzy. The latter is already occurring.

In my opinion, Washington does not want the Ukraine matters settled in a diplomatic and reasonable way. It might be the case that Russia's best move is immediately to occupy the Russian territories of Ukraine and re-absorb the territories into Russia from whence they came. This should be done before the US and its NATO puppets are prepared for war. It is more difficult for Washington to start a war when the objects of the war have already been lost. Russia will be demonized with endless propaganda from Washington whether or not Russia re-absorbs its traditional territories. If Russia allows these territories to be suppressed by Washington, the prestige and authority of the Russian government will collapse. Perhaps that is what Washington is counting on.

In my opinion, the Russian and Chinese governments have made serious strategic mistakes by remaining within the US dollar-based international payments system. The BRICS and any others with a brain should instantly desert the dollar system, which is a mechanism for US imperialism. The countries of the BRICS should immediately create their own separate payments system and their own exclusive communications/Internet system.

Russia and China have stupidly made these strategic mistakes,
By Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/04/14/washington-drives-world-war-paul-craig-roberts/

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/make-believe-maverick-20081016

Hat hip to The Vineyard of the Saker blog. Picked up from comments

Fool on the Hill said...

My money is on McCain. Here's why:

Make-Believe Maverick
A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty

By TIM DICKINSON
October 16, 2008
At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam - call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/make-believe-maverick-20081016

Eisenhower's Farewell Speech Now More Prescient Than Ever by Stephen C. Webster

Three letter agencies are an important part of military industrial complex. May be the most influential taking into account that they control the coverage of foreign events in MSM media. Quote: "The NSA in its present state represents a marriage of military might and technological elitism. It is, in other words, exactly what Eisenhower warned us about 53 years ago, and the threat is poses to our democracy is grave indeed."
Jan. 17, 2014 | The Progressive

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell speech, given 53 years ago this day, shook a nation still struggling to move past the horrors we witnessed in World War II. He warned of a new power that had risen up in the wake of that war -- the power of America's military industrial complex -- telling us in no uncertain terms that it holds the potential to destroy our democracy.

"We must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific, technological elite," Eisenhower said. "It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."

It would seem that his speech is more prescient now than ever before. Please, take a few minutes to watch it in full:

President Barack Obama picked today to announce a series of patheticly meager reforms to the National Security Agency (NSA), America's embattled electronic spying apparatus that has seemingly permeated every layer of our technologically driven society. The White House told reporters that the date was not selected as a nod to Eisenhower. Coincidence, however, is a funny thing.

The NSA in its present state represents a marriage of military might and technological elitism. It is, in other words, exactly what Eisenhower warned us about 53 years ago, and the threat is poses to our democracy is grave indeed.

"The NSA is collecting enormous amounts of information," Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said in a prepared statement this week. "They know about the phone calls made by every person in this country, where they're calling, who they're calling and how long they're on the phone. Let us not forget that a mere 40 years ago we had a president of the United States who completely disregarded the law in an effort to destroy his political opponents. In my view, the information collected by the NSA has the potential to give an unscrupulous administration enormous power over elected officials."

Sanders has been a leading voice for NSA reform in the halls of Congress, and recently demanded to know if the agency was spying on elected officials. In a letter, NSA Director Keith Alexander denied that the agency is spying on Congress, but he added that communications data generated by our elected representatives likely does get swept up by their massive phone and Internet dragnet.

The NSA insists that their dragnet is only intended to be used for fighting terrorism, and does not identify specific communications or even the identity of those who are swept up in it. This claim has been shown to be false. As national security reporter Marcy Wheeler recently pointed out in a piece published by The Progressive, the NSA itself published a training manual which tells its analysts that merely looking at the so-called "metadata" the agency collects can reveal the identity of their targets.

As such, not only can the NSA spy on elected officials, it can also create incredibly detailed dossiers on every single citizen of every modern country in the world. Its massive server farms vacuum up nearly everything on the Internet. Its sensors can peer within computers that are not even connected to the Internet. For a recent spy satellite launch that deployed tech which the NSA will most certainly make use of, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence selected as its mission logo an octopus with tentacles wrapping around the globe. "Nothing is beyond our reach," it boasts.

Despite all of this, a White House review and an outside analysis have both found that the NSA's dragnet does nothing to make Americans safer.

Knowing all of this, listening to Eisenhower's speech in our modern age is like hearing the words of a prophet. Here is the President whose Federal investments gave us highways and satellites, telling us that one day our military and technological elite will come to own our elected officials and eventually dominate us all.

"Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect," he said. "Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength."

What he described is nothing short of a road map to a more harmonious world, but that path is blocked, completely and irreversibly, by the very existence of the NSA. This agency, which overlooks the globe and peers across the horizon of human thought in search of national security threats, is now among the greatest threat to world peace.

The JFK Assassination Marked the End of the American Republic By Lars Schall

August 21, 2013

On occasion of the publication of his latest book, German author Mathias Broeckers talks about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, which he sees as a coup d'etat that was never rolled back.

Mathias Broeckers, born 1954, is a German investigative journalist and the author of more than ten books, most of them related to the topics of drugs, terrorism and deep politics. He works for the daily German newspaper TAZ and the webzine Telepolis. His latest book, "JFK: Staatsstreich in Amerika" ("JFK: Coup d'Etat in America"), was published this August at Westend Verlag in Frankfurt, Germany.

Lars Schall: Mr. Broeckers, a writer who authors a book about the assassination of John F. Kennedy that does not follow the verdict of official history faces the problem of being condemned on an instant basis as a "conspiracy theorist" who engages in "conspiracy theories." May I ask you at the beginning of this interview to explain to our readers that those critics – consciously or unconsciously – are acting exactly according to the "playbook" of the CIA?

Mathias Broeckers: In January 1967, shortly after Jim Garrison in New Orleans had started his prosecution of the CIA backgrounds of the murder, the CIA published a memo to all its stations, suggesting the use of the term "conspiracy theorists" for everyone criticizing the Warren Report findings. Until then the press and the public mostly used the term "assassination theories" when it came to alternative views of the "lone nut" Lee Harvey Oswald. But with this memo this changed and very soon "conspiracy theories" became what it is until today: a term to smear, denounce and defame anyone who dares to speak about any crime committed by the state, military or intelligence services. Before Edward Snowden anyone claiming a kind of total surveillance of internet and phone traffic would have been named a conspiracy nut; today everyone knows better.

LS: What do you see as the prime motive(s) to get Kennedy killed?

MB: To make a long story, which I elaborate in the book, short: JFK had made definitive steps to end the cold war. He had denied the involvement of the army in the Bay of Pigs invasion, which he had inherited from his predecessor, he had solved the missile crisis in Cuba through direct and secret contact with the Soviet-leader Khrushchev, he had ensured a nuclear test-stop with the Soviets, and he had ordered the withdrawal from Vietnam. All this against the will of the military, the CIA, and even against many members of his own administration.

LS: If one looks at the crime from the perspective of "motive, means, opportunity," which groups are the most likely culprits? Some of the usual suspects may have had a motive, but neither the means nor the opportunity, right?

MB: Yes. This is a crucial point with many JFK theories. A lot of people had motives, be it the hardcore commies in Russia, China, Cuba, be it the Israelis because of JFKs dismissal of nukes in Israel, be it the Federal Reserve because of his idea for a new US dollar backed by silver, the mob because of his dismissal to invade Cuba to get their casinos and brothels back, the racist Southerners because of his engagement for civil rights… but no one of them had the means and opportunity for the murder and above all the means to cover it up over the years.

LS: Which party had the necessary components of "means and opportunity" available?

MB: Only the CIA and the military – and the FBI and the Johnson administration for the cover-up. A moment after the shootings, a policeman ran up to the grassy knoll, his gun pulled out, and stopped a man there, asking for his ID. The man showed a Secret Service card and the cop let him go. Several other men on Dealey Plaza also showed genuine looking Secret Service IDs when asked by cops – but there were no real Secret Service men placed on the knoll and the plaza this day.

These IDs were fakes but the FBI and the Warren Commission didn't investigate this at all. Only in the 80s it came out who was responsible for the printing of Secret Service IDs and passes at that time: it was the CIAs Technical Division, headed by Sydney Gottlieb of "MK Ultra" fame. This fact alone rules out that the mob or the Russians, Cubans, Chinese or some other autonomous killers did this on their own bill. And even if these groups would have been able to fake genuine looking Secret Service IDs – the fact that this deception was not investigated, immediately brings Hoover's FBI into a top-position of suspects.

LS: One crucial point regarding the cover up of the crime is the false autopsy report – also in connection to "means and opportunity". Please elaborate.

MB: The ARRB (Assassination Records Review Board) established beyond any doubt that the autopsy and x-rays, which are in the National Archives, were doctored. No mobster, bankster or Cuban would have been able to do this. These fakes were done at the Bethseda military hospital, where JFKs autopsy was supervised by Curtis LeMay, the Joint Air Force Chíef and one of JFKs keenest enemies. He was at a fishing vacation when the Dallas shooting happened and flew to Washington immediately – not for any military emergency but to sit in the autopsy room – and smoking a cigar! The faked pictures and x-rays, which were presented to every investigator since then, are a main reason why the crazy magic bullet theory could hold for so long. Only the military, where these pics and x-rays were taken, was able to arrange these fakes and place them in the archives.

LS: Another important point is the tampering with the so called "Zapruder film". Why so?

MB: Also thanks to the ARRB there is a lot of evidence that the film was tampered with on the day after the assassination. However, even the existing "original" seems to show clearly a shot from the front, the grassy knoll – so the fake wasn't perfect. That the Warren Commission was shown only a bad black/white copy indicates that the perpetrators were aware of that. That the Zapruder film was bought by the Time/Life publishers – and kept secret to the public for years; as the Nix-film bought by UPI and disappeared – indicates the guiltiness of the media in the cover-up.

LS: Coming back to the CIA, do you think that the CIA had separated itself from governmental oversight during the 1950s and 1960s, or would it be more correct to suggest that the Agency actually was a ploy of financial interests from the outset? Or more bluntly spoken: was democratic oversight ever intended?

MB: In general, democracy and intelligence services are antagonists; democracy depends on transparency and intelligence services on the opposite. So the democratic / congressional / governmental oversight is always a quite rotten compromise. The CIA's camouflage from the beginning was that it is a service to gather intelligence – and centralize the intelligence gathering of the different other services – to keep the president informed. The main job of the CIA were and are covert operations, and because such operations depend on "plausible deniability," it was usual from the beginning to inform the president – if at all – only minimally. Since the CIA's "father" Allen Dulles was a Wall Street lawyer and his brother John Foster ran the foreign policy, covert operations were a family business done by the Dulles-Brothers and their clients on Wall Street. This is what JFK tried to finish and what marked him to death.

LS: You´re citing investigative journalist Joseph Trento, saying about former CIA director Allen Dulles: "Dulles had decided not to leave the future of the Agency to Congress or the President." What made Dulles powerful enough to risk such a decision?

MB: Dulles' clients were bankers and big corporations, who were in big business with Nazi-Germany in the 30s and even during the war. Some of them, like Prescott Bush – George W.'s grandfather – were indicted for "dealing with the enemy", and Allen Dulles, head of the OSS in Switzerland during the war, arranged a lot of these dealings. He arranged the secret integration of Nazi spy chief Reinhard Gehlen and some hundreds of his SS officers into the US army and the building-up of the CIA apparatus. Between 1945 when the OSS was dismantled and 1947 when the CIA was founded he did this privately – without any official position – from his office at the "Council on Foreign Relations."

LS: Would it have been more appropriate if Dulles would have been interrogated with regard to Kennedy's death, instead of having been the mastermind behind the Warren Commission?

MB: It's a perfect irony, or better: huge cynism, by the puppet of Texas-oilmen, Lyndon B. Johnson, to have Dulles masterminding the Commission. But since it worked out so well they tried it again, this time unsuccessful, to have "Bloody Henry" Kissinger masterminding the 9/11 Commission. In my opinion Dulles is one of the main suspects in the Kennedy murder and should have been prosecuted immediately.

LS: How did both the CIA and the FBI mislead the Warren Commission in various ways?

MB: The result of the Commission was clear from the beginning, the Commission didn't do any investigations at all, and it depended on the data given by the FBI. Hoover knew about the many fingerprints of the CIA in the case, he knew that they had brought up fake evidence of Oswald's visits in Mexico to blame him as a communist – and concluded only two days after the shooting that there was only the lone shooter LHO.

Hoover hated the Kennedys, especially his boss Robert F Kennedy, and was the main evildoer in the framing of Oswald and the cover-up of the case. The CIA arranged the false evidence for what Peter Dale Scott ("Deep Politics and the Death of JFK") called Phase 1 of the cover-up – the "communist"-connection, which enabled Johnson – screaming of the dangers of a nuclear war – to press the commission members to take part, and to make sure Phase 2 of the cover-up and the result of their pseudo-investigation: the deranged lone nut Oswald.

LS: One usual suspect in the "JFK conspiracy literature" is the mob. In your book you're writing that it doesn't always make sense to distinguish between organized crime and the CIA. How did you come to this conclusion?

MB: From the "Luciano Project" in 1943 – the help of the imprisoned mob-boss Lucky Luciano with the invasion of Sicily – the mob became the tool of choice for covert CIA-operations and generating black money from the drug business. Where ever the US-military set their boots in or the CIA is doing "regime changes," drug money is essential for financing these operations, from South East Asia in the 60s till today in Afghanistan. And since Langley can't sell the stuff directly over their counter, they need the mobsters to do this – and get its share to finance warlords / freedom fighters / terrorists…

LS: May I ask you to talk a bit in that regard about Permindex (Permanent Industrial Exposition), please?

MB: Permindex was a front-company for CIA, MI-6 and Mossad and a straw for their money-laundering and weapons-business. They worked together with Meyer Lansky's bank in Switzerland, which was run by Tibor Rosenbaum, who did most of the weapons-business of the Mossad.

LS: Was Jim Garrison in general heading into the right direction?

MB: He was, because Clay Shaw, the owner of the New Orleans International Trade Mart and one of the directors of Permindex, was clearly working with the CIA. That's why Garrison's case was sabotaged by the Washington Establishment right from the beginning.

LS: Why is it remarkable that CIA had a 201 file on Lee Harvey Oswald?

MB: John Newman ("Oswald and the CIA") has done remarkable research on how the CIA manipulated its files on Oswald and faked a 201 personal file to present it to the Warren Commission, showing that they had virtually nothing on him before 1962. This is clearly impossible after Oswald's defection to the USSR in 1959. The most likely cause for this manipulation is that Oswald was part of the false defector program headed by JJ Angelton, the counterintelligence chief.

LS: You are arguing if Lee Harvey Oswald would have been indeed solely responsible for Kennedy's death that the case would have been solved beyond a reasonable doubt. Why so?

MB: From all crimes, murder is the one with the most cases solved by courts. There would have been no need for all the cover-ups since 50 years, if LHO indeed was a lone nut.

LS: Moreover, you're arguing that Oswald would have been acquitted of the charge of having killed Kennedy, if he would have survived. Why so?

MB: Even Gerald Posener, the author of "Case Closed" – the apology of the Warren Commission's findings -, meanwhile is saying that. There is no hard evidence that Oswald was on the 5th floor when the shooting took place; there is no evidence that the "Mannlicher"-gun, that he had mail-ordered, was fired that day; there is no hard evidence that he killed Officer Tippit, because witnesses saw two men shooting at him… and so on. Oswald would have left the court room as a free man.

LS: Why was it necessary that Jack Ruby killed Oswald? And furthermore, did they know each other?

MB: They knew each other well, and since Oswald was an asset of FBI and CIA, he had to be silenced before he could talk.

LS: There was not just one plot to kill Kennedy in Dallas, but there was at least one more planned for a visit of Kennedy to Chicago, right?

MB: Yes, there was a plot planned in Chicago with clear parallels to what happened in Dallas – with an ex-Marine as the prepared patsy, who got a job on a high rise building on the route that the motorcade was planned to take some weeks before, and who had trained with exile-Cubans like Oswald. By chance the sharp-shooters were detected by an hotelier and the Chicago visit was cancelled.

LS: Why did JFK die on November 22, 1963?

MB: JFK had made a radical change while president, from a classic cold warrior to a policy of reconciliation and peace. He had made angry enemies in the military and the CIA and when he announced to end the cold war in his speech on June 10th 1963 he finally was marked to death.

LS: Can you tell us something about the role of the Secret Service and the U.S. military in the assassination?

MB: The Secret Service men were mostly Southerners, who deeply dismissed JFKs civil rights politics. They did a very lax security in Dallas and there is a probability that some of these men were sweetened to do so. The memories of Abraham Bolden, the first Afro-American brought to the Secret Service by JFK in 1961, tells that when he tried to contact the Warren Commission to talk about the supremacist, racist attitude of his colleagues, he was indicted by corrupted false witnesses and brought to prison.

The military played a crucial role in the false autopsy & x-ray-pictures made at the Bethseda hospital in Washington DC and the testimony of the doctors. General Curtis LeMay, Joint Chief of the Air Force and one of the harshest opponents of JFKs peace politics, was present in the autopsy room in Bethseda, smoking a cigar! I think his presence was not by chance.

The military intelligence also played a crucial role in Dallas – the first interviews of Marina Oswald was not by Dallas Police but by officers of the military intelligence, which also arranged a dubious translator for her testimonies, which helped to frame Oswald in the first place.

LS: Where did the funding for the coup come from?

MB: The Texas oilmen and billionaires H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison are the most probable financiers, even if there is no hard evidence for it. They paid for the ad in the Dallas paper the day before the visit, naming Kennedy a communist and a traitor. They hated JFK to the bones and they had LBJ in their pocket, their insurance that everything would be covered up properly.

LS: How many people lost their lives over the years related to the Kennedy assassination?

MB: A well-researched new book by Richard Belzer ("Hit List") lists 1.400 persons with a connection to the murder and in the first three years after the assassination 33 of them came to death on unnatural causes. The probability that this happened by chance is 1: 137 billion.

LS: Was it basically the right-wing / fascist and racist mindset in the U.S. that won the coup d'etat on November 22, 1963?

MB: Yes. And in Dallas, Texas these right-wing fascists, who called themselves "patriots," had a home game.

LS: What would the history of the "Cold War" have been if the nuclear arms race had ended in Kennedy's second term? Would the Berlin Wall have come down sooner?

MB: After the nuclear test stop, JFK announced to his confidants that he would go to Moscow after the re-election to negotiate a peace treaty. In public he had already announced to stop the arms race in order to end the cold war. In a National Action Security Memorandum he had called for a co-operation with the Russians in space. After the exchange of secret letters with Khrushchev, which ended the missile crisis, he was on good terms with the Soviet leader, who in the Kremlin also had called for disarmament. The death of JFK encouraged the Soviet hardliners to get rid of him. With Kennedy alive, Khrushchev would have stood in power and the cold war could have been ended in the 60s.

LS: Why does the death of JFK still matter?

MB: It's the most important crime in the second half of the 20th century, it is still unsolved and it marked in a way the end of the American Republic. Since then the financial-military-industrial complex rules and no president after JFK had the balls to challenge that. There is, in the words of Gore Vidal, "a one-party-system with two right-wings"; there are corporate media brainwashing the population 24/7 and propagating wars for global imperial dominance; there are covert operations all over the world to ensure this dominance – and this will go on and on as long the truth about the covert operation, the coup d' état, against JFKs presidency is kept hidden.

LS: Thank you very much for taking your time, Mr. Broeckers!

Reprinted with permission from GlobalResearch.ca.

School of Assassins Guns, Greed, and Globalization by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Roy Bourgeois

Amazon.com

A Customer

SOA/WHISC- not an issue of the past December 20, 2001

Jack Neslon-Pallmeyer's new book, School of Assassins: Guns Greed and Globalization, brings the history and development of the School of the Americas, including its recent name change to The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, into perspective along with the developments of the global and national economies and militaries.

In a time when the role of the SOA/WHISC is being seriously and persistently challenged, the name change and other cosmetic alterations represent a need to continue to build and strengthen the thoughtfulness and articulation of the movement and voices that are calling for the school's closure. This book ties together many of the critical issues at play in the debate over the SOA/WHISC and puts it in the context of the role it has in the world today, as well as how it has developed and changed with the changing world and economy in which we all live. One of the key points stressed in this book is that the SOA/WHISC's role has never been stagnant or unaltered, but rather that it has and continues to change along with the goals of the United States foreign policy. The purpose and role that the SOA/WHISC fulfilled at its inception is not the same as the purpose it is serving today. The US foreign policy, beginning around the time the SOA was opened in Panama, has evolved throughout different stages, each trying to maintain a different balance between military and economic strategies and tactics to enforce and implement its goals:

  1. Beginning in a period of major military domination, the SOA was created at a time when military repression and power was the main way of enforcing and achieving the US foreign policy goals.
  2. However, economic tools and leverage, such as those achieved by the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank, began to gain momentum and strength as efficient ways of implementing foreign policy. The second stage of US foreign policy was thus a balance between the growing use of economic leverage and the lessening of the need for military repression.
  3. During the third stage that the SOA/WHISC functioned in, economic power implemented through the afore mentioned institutions and their programs (such as Structural Adjustment Programs), took the front line in US foreign policy. The decreasing role of the need for military and violent repression in this stage had a great impact. It threatened and concerned those in the military to seek ways to maintain the immense budget and importance of the military at a time when it was not really being used or was as necessary.
  4. This "military industrial complex" is another key issues at stake in Nelson-Pallmeyer's book, and plays a large role in the remilitarization that characterizes the fourth stage of US foreign policy. The SOA/WHISC's role in the present day is greatly founded on this remilitarization as an important tool in order to achieve the goals and stability desired by the US foreign policy.

The new name given to the SOA represents a face lift, as many refer to it, which attempts to make the goals of the SOA/WHISC seem worthy of the absurd amount of money the US government budget allots the military.

Nelson-Pallmeyer makes a point that the

" `any means necessary' foreign policy is possible when advocates are convinced that the means they employ, whether the torturer's hand or the banker's rules, are justified because they promote the common good or protect particular interests they represent" (98).

Changing the name of the SOA to WHISC, along with the other cosmetic curriculum changes, is attempting to do just this; to create a new image of the school that is one promoting `security cooperation' and human rights. As this book states, however, these changes do not represent any sense of remorse, accountability, or separation from the past policies and deeds that a truly new institution would need to be based on.

The impact of corporate-led globalization is another key issue in The School of Assassins: Guns Greed and Globalization; and likewise, is a factor that plays into the remilitarization that characterizes stage four of US foreign policy. Although globalization, as stated by Nelson-Pallmeyer, is a reality, corporate-led globalization is not inevitable and is furthermore, undesirable. Corporate-led globalization undermines democracy, aggravates problems rooted in inequality, and is altogether destabilizing. This destabilization in turn becomes a reason for remilitarization, and a problem to be handled through military repression rather than systematic, economic, and global changes. Corporate-led globalization is not the beneficial development or progress that the myths make it out to be.

Finally, the debate and struggle around the SOA/WHISC is but a glimpse at the greater picture, the tip of an immense iceberg. Nelson-Pallmeyer states that "the SOA is a window through which US foreign policy can be seen clearly" (xvii). The struggle and movement to close the SOA/WHISC is also fighting against many of the greater issues at stake in our foreign policy and international involvement and is only one of many battles to be fought. Closure of the SOA/WHISC will not appease or end the movement, just allow it to move on to the next battle. Many of the aspects of the US foreign policy that break down the false image of the benevolent superpower are brought in to focus through connections and impacts on the SOA/WHISC. The SOA/WHISC is like a case study of the many components and factors of US foreign policy and its goals. In exposing oneself to the SOA/WHISC debate, history, and struggle, it is inevitable to come to some greater understanding of the US's involvement and true goals in its foreign policy and international affairs. This book is atriculate, thought provoking, and worth reading.

A Little 2nd Amendment Night Humor

01/22/2013 | Tyler Durden

On occasion, truth is stranger than fiction; and in the somewhat surreal world in which we now inhabit, The Onion's perfect parody of where we are headed could have been lifted from any mainstream media front-page with little questioning from the majority of Americans. For your reading pleasure, the 62-year-old with a gun that is the last man standing between the American people and full-scale totalitarian government takeover.

Russia Accuses West Of Arming Mali "Al-Qaeda" Rebels

Tyler Durden on 01/23/2013 - 13:04

Define irony? Here is one, or rather two, tries. Back in the 1970s, it was none other than the US that armed the Taliban "freedom fighters" fighting against the USSR in the Soviet-Afghanistan war, only to see these same freedom fighters eventually and furiously turn against the same US that provided them with arms and money, with what ended up being very catastrophic consequences, culminating with September 11. Fast forward some 30 years and it is again the US which, under the guise of dreams and hopes of democracy and the end of a "dictatorial reign of terror", armed local insurgents in the Libyan war of "liberation" to overthrow the existing regime (and in the process liberate just a bit of Libya's oil) - the same Libya where shortly thereafter these same insurgents rose against their former sponsor, and killed the US ambassador in what has now become an epic foreign policy Snafu. But it doesn't end there as according to Russia, it is the same US weapons that were provided to these Libyan "freedom fighters" that are now being used in what is rapidly becoming a war in Mali, involving not only assorted French regiments, but extensive US flip flops and boots on the ground. "This will be a time bomb for decades ahead."

2013/01/29 | nytimes

Senator Hagel, you have said that no president in 20 years – since George H. W. Bush – has fully exercised his powers over the military in his role as commander in chief. Why is that? How can civilian commanders reassert their constitutional authority over the uniformed military?

You call yourself an Eisenhower Republican. Ike famously warned Americans about the political and economic costs of "the military-industrial complex." Do you see that threat today? If so, how do you define it? Is there a single major weapons system in the American arsenal that you would eliminate on the basis of its cost and effectiveness?

Can you rein in the generals and their spending? Is the future to be feared or seized in Afghanistan and Iran?

President Obama has said: "War is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly." By that standard, how do you judge the American military experience in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade?

Continued

[Oct 12, 2015] Could The Syrian Conflict Change Global Geopolitics

naked capitalism

Few meetings ever started with dimmer prospects for success than the recent meeting between Presidents Obama and Putin.

The real call for the meeting stemmed from the EU refugee crisis. With a human catastrophe brewing in Europe and the Middle East, EU leaders are urgently demanding that the U.S. and Russia set aside their differences and begin to work together in an effort to resolve the Syrian conflict, the major cause of the massive movement of people seeking sanctuary.

Now, U.S./EU leaders are no longer insisting on the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from office as a pre-condition to negotiations over a new government, although the U.S. continues to insist that al-Assad's removal become part of any final settlement.

But how can such fundamental differences be set aside when the two sides can't even agree on the enemy they're fighting? The U.S. and its allies have defined the Syrian conflict as a civil war against a despotic regime. The Russians define the conflict as an invasion by foreign Islamic radicals, paid and supported by U.S.' Middle Eastern allies.

The EU has made its demands clear: solve the problem, we don't particularly care how, but it has to be done quickly. From that point of view, the U.S. and Russian leaders have little choice but to answer the call.

Russia is attempting to form and lead a UN authorized coalition against ISIL, the radical jihadists' adversaries that conquered large parts of Syria and Iraq, while threatening to engulf the entire region.

Obama has stated publicly that he welcomes help from Russia and Iran in the fight against radical jihadists, ISIL, in Syria, while still insisting that al-Assad must go. On their side, the Russians have made no secret of their strong objections to NATO-led regime change, citing the results of failed states in Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.

In a recent New York Times article, an Administration insider stated that the President believes Syria is a lost cause, one that U.S. military presence could only worsen.

Obama has also shown little reluctance to lead from behind, when supporting NATO partners, particularly with a U.S. public largely opposed to America's military engagement in any further Mideast wars.

But Russia is not NATO, and it's clear that the U.S. has no intention of following the Kremlin's lead in Syria, as its veto of the Russian coalition proposal at the UN Security Council clearly shows. Adding to that was the United States'strong condemnation of the Russian air attack on its first day of operations in Syria.

The urgency of the moment favors cooperation, while geography gives Russia major advantages in leading the fight. Russia's relationship with Iran, already fighting on the ground in Iraq, with its ally Hezbollah fighting in Syria, provides Russia with a readymade army to complement its air attacks.

With the Russians initiating air strikes against ISIL in Syria, the great fear of world leaders is that an accidental collision between opposing U.S. and Russian forces raises the risks of war between the two nuclear powers.

While both sides deny any intent at military collaboration or sharing of military intelligence in Syria, the two Presidents have agreed to meetings of their military leaders, ostensibly aimed at reducing the risk of accidental conflicts between them. How that can be done without shared military intelligence about troop movements, and planned air attacks remains a mystery.

Adding to the confusion is the increasingly cordial meetings between Russian and Saudi leaders.

Many believe that the Saudis, and their Gulf Kingdom partners, hold the key to resolving the conflict, as the major backers of the 'moderate Islamic' rebels fighting the Syrian Government forces.

The Saudis have largely refrained from criticizing the Russian military buildup in Syria, even though it bolsters the Assad regime, and the Kingdom continues to hold its cards close to its vest regarding their position on the new Russian military initiative in Syria.

At the same time, there were conflicting signals in regards to the relationship between Iran and Russia. Reports surfaced in late September that the two countries, along with Syria and Iraq, were coordinating military efforts against the ISIL. But at the UN meeting, Iran's President Rouhani made the surprising statement that Iran saw no need to coordinate military efforts in Syria, with the Russian goal to support its embattled ally in Syria, while Iran's goal is eradicate ISIL.

It's widely recognized that since the Iran nuclear deal, Iran and the U.S. have sought to move closer in other important areas. Still, Rouhani's UN statement seemed to belie the recent agreements between Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria to build an information center in Baghdad to share battlefield reconnaissance against ISIL.

That also falls in line with the new agreement with Iran, Iraq, and Syria to provide an air corridor for Russian military flyovers to Syria for Russian fighter planes and transport aircraft.

To observers, these agreements certainly smack of military coordination with Russia. Iran's need to distance itself from Russia seems to be made with an eye on the U.S., where hardline Presidential candidates threaten to tear up the nuclear agreement.

The highly charged political atmosphere in the U.S., in the midst of a Presidential election, only adds to the fog of war in Syria, forcing public denials and secret agreements where there needs to be utmost clarity, making military cooperation in Syria almost impossible, while raising the risks of accidental conflicts between so-called partners.

What then of western sanctions against Russia? In the eyes of the west, the Syrian conflict is beginning to eclipse Ukraine in importance. The U.S. seems satisfied to leave the Ukraine issue to Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine for settlement.

The EU is most likely to be the first mover to ease sanctions, realizing, as a number of EU leaders have stated, that it is fundamentally incompatible to rely on Russia's military might while starving the Russian economy.

In January, the EU sanctions are set to expire, requiring a unanimous vote of all member states for extension. The odds are rising that the EU will allow sanctions to expire.

If so, major global business will once again flock to Russia. That would include the return of major western energy companies that have played a critical part in Russian energy development. Once that starts, it will become far more difficult to reverse the momentum or re-impose sanctions.

Given the political atmosphere in Washington, it's clear the U.S. will leave its sanctions in place.


Sam Kanu, October 7, 2015 at 5:31 am

Given the political atmosphere in Washington, it's clear the U.S. will leave its sanctions in place.

Here you mean "Given the political instructions to Washington from Tel Aviv". I don't see any general feeling in the American people that demands ongoing conflict with Iran. This is not politics at all – just pure old tail wagging the dog.

JeffC -> Sam Kanu, October 7, 2015 at 11:18 am

Sanctions against Russia, not Iran.

Older & Wiser, October 7, 2015 at 6:48 am

The un-named 1800 lb Mr. and Mrs. Gorilla couple in the room are oil & gas.
Pipelines anyone ?

Massinissa, October 7, 2015 at 2:56 pm

Are there really pipelines in Syria? I thought it was through Iraq and Turkey.

ambrit, October 7, 2015 at 7:13 am

Given Russias' long term relationship with Syria, I'm bemused that any Neo of any stripe could with a straight face suggest that the Russians would abandon the Syrian Government to a bunch of Western backed wreckers.

Maintaining a foothold in the Middle East is basic Grand Strategy. America does it with Israel, so Russia does it with Syria.

In the long run, the Middle East is beginning a shake up. The post WW1 borders were incompatible with the ethnic groupings of the region. Now those old 'drawn on a map' borders are being broken apart and the pieces reassembled. This process can take years or decades to work out. The time frame depends on how 'responsible' the Great Powers are in dealing with the realignment process.

Do notice the framing of the issue in the MSM. "Irresponsible Russia" and "Assad Must Go" are everywhere proclaimed. Like the magicians they are, the MSMs rely on misdirection to try to pull off the 'trick.' While the West tries to browbeat the Russians, the Russians are persistently acting in their, and in the Syrian Governments, perceived best interests.

On the air front, the Russian "incursions" look to be standard battlefield intelligence work. Send a plane or two 'over the border' and see what sorts of anti air radars 'lock on' to your aircraft. This is something any competent air commander would want to discover. This is also a thinly veiled threat to the West; "Look! Anyone can play this game!" The basic point being; there is no such thing as a 'no fly zone,' if you are willing to fight.

The Russian message is basic; "Put up, or shut up."

NotTimothyGeithner, October 7, 2015 at 9:05 am

The post WWI borders are fairly similar to Ottoman administrative districts. The Kuwait city-state answered to the governor of Baghdad within their framework. The issue has been foreign powers using sectarian ties to divide the little people from cooperation which was achievable under the Sultan for 500 years. Even Hussein found the Shiites to be exceptionally loyal during the Iran-Iraq War.

The rise of the Saudis, allowing the Israelis to knock over Lebanon and run an apartheid state, and supporting oppressive regimes which would have fallen or reformed (pretty much all the Gulf states which also have ancient borders) are major issues. There have always been states centered around the modern cities (Ur and Babylon were replaced by Baghdad) or provinces. I believe the creative borders argument was always a "White Man's Burden" excuse to justify control. "Professor Scott, why do they fight in the Middle East?" Excuses about unfortunate cartography sound better than "I needed to build a railroad and did the want to pay the locals, so I cooked up a rape story in one village, handed out guns, and slaughtered the adult males in the other village."

On the other hand, Africa was carved up bizarrely based on rail and ship movements.

todde, October 7, 2015 at 8:11 am

KSA claims Assad must go and I doubt they will support Russia.

Who is supporting IS? I find it hard to believe they can maintain armed conflict on several fronts without a state backer.

Where are the 10s of billions of dollars in turkeys central bank in accounts called unknown foreign sources and errors and adjustments?

Iran will support Assad regardless of American actions.

blert, October 7, 2015 at 5:54 pm

Two factors.

Iran was using Turkey as a front, Ankara collected its 'cut.' Turkey was laundering monies from the Gulf, too, probably Golden Chain funding for the fanatics in Syria. Erdogan has more side action than Rick's Cafe American.

Eureka Springs, October 7, 2015 at 9:02 am

Madness R U.S. US, Saudi, Turks and Israeli's must be held at bay at the very least. It's (Russia, Iran, Syria) who are the only entities resembling a possible humanitarian, rule of law base of action now or possibly working towards that kind of end game.

That's how low we are, R or D, … the creators and perpetrators of al Q and all of their newly named lackeys doing our dirty work continuously since the 1980's. It's not impossible to know who we are and what we have long done… Reading Obama's words and Putin's it is clear Putin is being far more honest and consistent in both action and words.

Maybe we should stop blowing up hospitals and imprison leaders who order or even allow it to happen. Nah, there are too many unarmed citizens in wheelchairs who must be shot.

blert, October 7, 2015 at 6:02 pm

Bin Laden has gone on record - time and time, again - denouncing your thesis. He never needed American funding - ever. He would never, ever, grovel to the kafir.

It's only recently that 0bama started funding AQ's front organs, al Nusrah inparticular. BOTH ISIS and al Nusrah are joined at the hip and are al Qaeda fronts. They only had a falling out, circa 2011.

The FSA is a total fiction. It's a Western media construct. Syria is a fight between brutal Assad and two feral al Qaeda fronts… that can't be controlled. The UK, US and Jordan trained most of ISIS' cadres in the Jordanian desert back in 2011-12. They then went rogue. That (mostly Jordanian) force is still the dominant core of ISIS. Our crass media is complicit in covering up a reality that the rest of the planet is hip to.

Eureka Springs , October 7, 2015 at 8:07 pm

Agree with you after your first three lines. I guess those shoulder fired missiles which al Q used to take out Russian helicopters in Afghanistan during the '80's were Costa Rican made and supplied.

Massinissa, October 7, 2015 at 8:29 pm

So Bin Laden was actually giving money and guns to Zbigniew Brzezinski instead of the other way around?

You have seen that famous photo of Bin Laden and Zbigniew Brzezinski right? Just google it.

Stephen V, October 7, 2015 at 10:44 am

Never expected to hear this re: Iran– https://www.rt.com/shows/watching-the-hawks/317844-oily-mess-tax-us/

A retired Army Colonel who served under Colin Powell actually says he's afraid of a future Israeli false-flag operation that will start a US war with Iran
– move the cursor to 15 mins...

Steven, October 7, 2015 at 11:10 am

Somewhere I remember reading an analysis of the Syrian conflict along the following lines:

  1. It does indeed involve geopolitics – with the aim being to replace Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas with that from U.S. Middle-eastern 'allies'. To do that it is necessary to build a pipeline across Syria – and insure the Syrian government is firmly in the pocket of the U.S. and its allies.
  2. Without wishing to denigrate the influence of AIPAC, this conflict has far more to do with preserving and possibly extending US global hegemony (with a continuing full-employment program for the country's Congressional military-industrial complex) than it does Israel's inordinate control over US foreign policy. All the blather about democracy vs. dictatorship and/or Sunni vs. Shia vs. Sunni is just offal fed to the cannon fodder used by powers great and small to get it to sacrifice itself for their ambitions.
  3. Like ambrit said, this is just "basic Grand Strategy". It is way past time for US 'leaders' to recognize the full spectrum dominance they enjoyed in the aftermath of WWII was (charitably) an accident of history and come to terms with a multi-polar world and the concept of collective security to which they gave so much word of mouth to a population disgusted with the carnage and destruction of the second "war to end all wars".

Hespeler1, October 7, 2015 at 4:19 pm

Steven, Pepe Escobar has written extensively about the "pipeline wars" ("pipelinestan"), the Empire is trying to starve Russia's finances in part by bypassing Russia's pipelines. Greece was pressured into refusing to be the Turkish Stream's terminus and distribution hub for Southern Europe. We all know how much they needed the revenue from that, but TPTB said no. Grand Strategy=break up Russia, steal her resources, put pressure on China. I fear that the Empire won't stop until they accomplish this, or are buried.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL, October 7, 2015 at 12:11 pm

Sometimes things are just so obvious. US "veto of the Russian coalition proposal at the UN Security Council". Could be because the US wants to lead a bigger, better coalition, maybe ours will include Samoa or something. Or, um, duh, could be because US doesn't really want to fight ISIS since that's our dog in this fight. Funny how a few days bombing by Russia has had a real impact on actual ISIS fighters…whereas US bombing tends to be on stuff like bridges and power plants and hospitals that hurt Assad more than they hurt ISIS.

I mean how bleeding obvious when we get John McCain high fiving ISIS…and our grand plan was to find "moderate" maniacs that would do our bidding. "OK everybody, form a line, if you're an extremist take the T-shirt on the left, if you're a moderate take a T-shirt on the right". That strategy has worked out so well for us in the past, we spent $500M and trained precisely "4 or 5" guys.

Yankee go home.

sid_finster, October 7, 2015 at 12:32 pm

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-07/russian-warships-launch-missile-attack-syrian-targets-clearing-way-iran-ground-invas

Is it not most edifying that Iraq is now apparently allowing Russian cruise missiles to fly over its territory, or at least not objecting? (Not that Iraq could do much about it…)

Harry, October 7, 2015 at 5:20 pm

Iraq is part of the Russian coalition as well as China and you probably do know that Iraqi prime-minister already made a statement that he would not object against Russians decimating ISIS on the Iraqi territory. And look, oil prices are already going up – that's what Putin really needed and this is one of the eight reasons why he started a war in the Middle East.

NotTimothyGeithner, October 7, 2015 at 8:52 pm

Started a war? You do realize training a day arming rebels is an act of war even if Congress hides the funding in the classified budget or if it's done by the CIA instead of corporate approved soldiers. The U.S. government has started numerous wars without Congressional approval, mostly because Congress is still afraid of elections. Russia is allied with Syria. If anything Putin has shown remarkable constraint.

Synoia, October 7, 2015 at 1:06 pm

There are three sides to Syria:

1. New Caliphate – Includes Turkey & Saudi Arabia – Look at a map and think contiguous empire -ISIS is their tool.

2. US dislike of Assad, and allied with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, but dislikes New Caliphate and ISIS.

3. Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah etc, dislike New Calipahe, becue of potential threat to Russia from Muslim arc from Iran through to China (the Stans).

Which leaves the US's allies in direct opposition to the US' goals, and leads to lies, deceit and deception from parties (1) and (2).

The role of ISIS is to destabilize Syria and Iran, to create an opportunity for Turkish Troops (500,000 man army), and Saudi money to enter, the region "to keep the peace," thus furthering their imperial ambitions.

The US is trying to eliminate Assad, but not enable a new Caliphate, and undermine Russia's and Iran's influence in the area, because Oil and exceptionalism (for exceptionalism see collective ego, or stunning arragance).

Russia and Iran see the solution to a New Caliphate as Assad in power, and a weakening of US influence.

aka: Quagmire

NotTimothyGeithner -> Synoia, October 7, 2015 at 8:56 pm

The U.S. government's side* is childish at best. The only real plan was Sunni elements of the army would assume power when Assad was removed from power with a little Saber rattling much like Libya with the GNC. Obama's ego prevents him from recognizing what a stupid idea this was and how radically different types Assad a day Gaddafi's power bases were.

*They are hiding behind the war powers act and approval from post 9/11 legislation. Congress an otherwise President are too cowardly to call our actions acts of war which is what they are.

washunate, October 7, 2015 at 1:40 pm

No.

But seriously, it is interesting seeing what the Oilprice guys think their audience wants to hear. They are clearly inside the MSM echo chamber. You have everything from dichotomous balance (because truth has two sides) to the charged political atmosphere (which sadly forces otherwise honest and transparent leaders to engage in secrecy and deception against their will).

I particularly love how casual the author is with the notion that the President of the United States has an explicit policy goal of deposing the leader of a sovereign nation. Ho hum, just another head of state that must go.

susan the other, October 7, 2015 at 2:15 pm

This summary by Berke also reflects my puzzled observations. It wasn't that long ago that we worried about a fundamentalist insurrection in SA and so we politely made ourselves scarce to help the Saudis out.

There's probably now a pre-arranged trade off for the Saudis and Iran: SA gets to take over Yemen; Iran gets to create a corridor through Syria. Who knows. I thought the meeting at the UN between Obama and Putin was such thinly disguised cooperation that surely some MSM would comment – but none did.

And the EU has stated (above) that sanctions against Russia are incompatible because the EU is "relying on Russia's military might" and shouldn't therefore starve the Russian economy. Wow, let's hear the story on that please.

So did Holland send in the French bombers to help out Russia? Maybe SA and RU are chummy because Russia is going to get the contract to build the new pipeline from the Gulf to Europe.

blert, October 7, 2015 at 6:08 pm

Actually all of the load growth, for OPEC, is towards India and points east. American fracking has released a glut of oil into the Atlantic Ocean market space.
Nigeria essentially lost North America as a customer - all together. If Libya and Venezuela get their act together, the glut becomes even more pronounced. Then toss in Brazil's new out put.

Brian M, October 7, 2015 at 8:10 pm

many of the fracked wells will fail amazingly quickly. So, this may not be true for long...

skippy, October 7, 2015 at 8:14 pm

A giddy operator with the rights to a gas-rich parcel of land can't just drill willy-nilly. Well design considerations are very complex and attention to detail must span the construction, testing phase, and decommissioning of the well post-production. Moreover, drilling wells are often constructed uniquely with regard to the geology and geography of the specific location. For instance, because much of the shale formation in Pennsylvania lies beneath a shallower gas formation, it is easier for the shallower gas to escape during the initial drilling process. This in turn has made it difficult for drillers to design failproof wells that can be sealed off from the younger deposits completely.

http://frackwire.com/well-casing-failure/

Jim, October 7, 2015 at 2:26 pm

At this point in the Syrian crisis it appears that the national security network (several hundred high-level military, intelligence, diplomatic and law enforcement agencies) are still debating among themselves what the U.S. response will be to Russian military initiatives in Syria and potentially Iraq.

For all Bernie Sanders supporters, it will be interesting to see what his stance on Syria will be. Will he break( at least rhetorically) with these national security elites( who since WWII have basically dictated Presidential moves in the national security arena) or will he cave to this present structure of networked power despite his "democratic socialist" credentials.

Will Sanders maintain this continuity of American foreign policy that so shocked Obama supporters?

Will the United State continue on its path of greater centralization, less accountability and emergent autocracy despite whoever wins the increasingly powerless Presidencyj?

RUKidding, October 7, 2015 at 2:33 pm

Here's my bet for the answer to your last 2 Q:

1. Yes
2. Yes

James Levy, October 7, 2015 at 3:00 pm

Unfortunately, I concur.

The amazing thing is watching the utter horror and confusion of the MSM and the Talking Heads as the Russians do things (bombing ISIS! Firing cruise missiles!!!) that the US does just about every other Tuesday, as if these things are some kind of massive breach of the peace on the order of Hitler invading Poland. The lack of any self-awareness is stunning.

Oregoncharles, October 7, 2015 at 2:55 pm

"Russia is attempting to form and lead a UN authorized coalition against ISIL"

The obvious solution, especially if it does not include the US. I'm anti-interventionist in general, but ISIL poses us the problem the Nazis did: this cannot be allowed to stand. They're actually taking us back to the 7th Century, morally, and for that matter doing things Mohammed probably wouldn't have stood for. Except in degree, most of their actions are not unprecedented, even in modern times; what's unprecedented is their extreme openness about it. Hypocrisy is an acknowledgment of morality; these people are trying to CHANGE morality, reversing hundreds of years of hard-won progress. They're a kind of monster we thought we were rid of. And they've been successful enough militarily, at least in that deeply destabilized region, to present a real threat.

Ultimately, they will have to be suppressed; it won't be easy or bloodless. The Russians' proposal may be self-interested, but it's the only approach likely to work. American bombing certainly won't.

ISIL's PR skills bother me on another level: they're extremely convenient for the interventionists. They've even got me going. And there are real connections between it and the US authorities, especially in Iraq, to say nothing of the Saudis. I can't help but wonder whether it's a CIA operation, either run amok or conceivably still under control. (If you aren't paranoid, you aren't paying attention.)

Steven, October 7, 2015 at 4:17 pm

I keep wondering how much of what goes on here in the commentariat of Naked Capitalism is just preaching to the choir and how much represents (well deserved) contempt for the official government / MSM (but I repeat myself) line among the population at large. That contempt – if it exists – is in my humble opinion – a national security issue / crisis.

JTMcPhee, October 7, 2015 at 7:46 pm

Quoting the captain of the Titanic, "More steam! Full speed ahead! We gotta show the world what this baby will do!"

[Oct 12, 2015] Paul Craig Roberts: A Decisive Shift In The Power Balance Has Occurred

... my former CSIS colleague, Zbigniew Brzezinski, normally a sensible if sometimes misguided person, has written in the Financial Times that Washington should deliver an ultimatum to Russia to "cease and desist from military actions that directly affect American assets." By "American assets," Brzezinski means the jihadist forces that Washington has sicced on Syria.

Brzezinski's claim that "Russia must work with, not against, the US in Syria" is false. The fact of the matter is that "the US must work with, not against Russia in Syria," as Russia controls the situation, is in accordance with international law, and is doing the right thing.

Ash Carter, the US Secretary for War, repeats Brzezinski's demand. He declared that Washington is not prepared to cooperate with Russia's "tragically flawed" and "mistaken strategy" that frustrates Washington's illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government with military violence.

Washington's position is that only Washington decides and that Washington intends to unleash yet more chaos on the world in the hope that it reaches Russia.

... ... ...

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence organization, said that Washington needs to understand that "Russia also has foreign policy; Russia also has a national security strategy" and stop crossing Russia's "red lines." Gen. Flynn thus joins with Patrick J. Buchanan as two voices of sense and sensibility in Washington. Together they stand against the arrogance and hubris that will destroy us.

Several commentators, such as Mike Whitney and Stephen Lendman, have concluded, correctly, that there is nothing that Washington can do about Russian actions against the Islamic State. The neoconservatives' plan for a UN no-fly zone over Syria in order to push out the Russians is a pipedream. No such resolution will come out of the UN. Indeed, the Russians have already established a de facto no-fly zone.

Putin, without issuing any verbal threats or engaging in any name-calling, has decisively shifted the power balance, and the world knows it.

... ... ...

worbsid

It is completely impossible for Obama to admit he is wrong. Note the 60 Min interview.

Mini-Me

Wondering which host the neocons will attach themselves to after having sucked the US dry. A parasite should never kill its host.

A Lunatic

Following advice from the likes of Brzezinski is a large part of the problem......

BarnacleBill

I've posted this before, but... we can't ask the question too often: Who sold ISIS all those Toyotas? ISIS didn't buy them themselves out of some Texas showroom, custom-built for desert warfare! Right?

http://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2014/10/who-sold-isis-all-those-toyotas.html

johmack2

I must admit this certainly seems like a wild BEAST in action. Wreakless, seemingly unpredictable causing mass chaos in its wake


Chad_the_short_...

Why don't they want to hit israel? I thought all muslims wanted a piece of Israel.

Macon Richardson

Do you really have to ask?

Reaper

ISIS are the nutured harpies of Barack, McCain and the neo-cons, which inflict death and mayhem upon their targets. ISIS's evil is Barack's, McCain's and the neo-con" projected evil.

In US law, they are called principles and as such deserve equal punishment. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2 ISIS's acts are war crimes. The principles abetting ISIS are as guilty as ISIS. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441

War crimes text (Geneva Convention): "To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

a)violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

b)taking of hostages;

c)outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and de-grading treatment." https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf


Salah

Anyone making these bullshit comments about ISIS being the USA's extra-military arm (or Israel's) has obviously NEVER BEEN IN THE MILITARY. Ditto any of the alphabet covert services.

ISIS is the enemy, period. They cleverly arose in a vacuum, and disperse at the first sign of military opposition that has its shit together.

Yeah, go out there and tell some US special ops his buddy's death, maybe at the hands of ISIS, was his own govt's doing.

Go do it you insulated fucks...I dare you. And see what happens. First rule in clandestine warfare; don't shit in your own mess tent.

SgtShaftoe

I was in the military, enlisted and officer corps. I lost a few of good friends from my unit in Iraq II. ISIS is absolutely a creation of CIA/DoD (at a distance, like planting seeds and watering them), just as so many other tragedies have the blood squarely on the hands of the same. I've seen it with my own eyes. Sorry dude, you're fucking wrong. When military people see shit they shouldn't have seen, they're either brought in, or they accidentally fall out of the sky. That's just the way it is.

Winston Smith 2009

"ISIS is the enemy, period."

Absolutely.

"They cleverly arose in a vacuum"

And what created that vacuum? The lack of the only thing, apparently, that can keep these religious fanatics absolutely infesting that area of the world in line: a dictator. Who foolishly removed the dictator in Iraq? These ignorant, arrogant assholes:

-----

In his book, "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End," Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his "Axis of Evil" speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq's first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!"

"From the president and the vice president down through the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, there was a belief that Iraq was a blank slate on which the United States could impose its vision of a pluralistic democratic society," said Galbraith. "The arrogance came in the form of a belief that this could be accomplished with minimal effort and planning by the United States and that it was not important to know something about Iraq."

-----

"Yeah, go out there and tell some US special ops his buddy's death, maybe at the hands of ISIS, was his own govt's doing."

Only indirectly, but the astoundingly arrogant stupidity at the highest levels of his government unnecessarily caused the conditions that led to it. It was and is their absolutely clueless meddling that is the problem.

And don't get the idea that I'm a pacifist. Far from it. Geopolitical gaming including the use of military force has been and always will be the way the world works. There's nothing I or anyone else can do or ever will be able to do about that. Since that is the case, I want the "coaches" of my "team" to be smart. They aren't.

They're f'ing bumbling idiots!

Dre4dwolf

I would agree it is in bad taste to go tell someone who is active military that they are fighting an enemy their own govt created.

But

When something is hard to say, a lot of times its just the truth.

Now if the people listening aren't open minded to the possibility, well . . . there exists the potential to get decked in the face by a marine.

Also, ISIS is not a direct branch of U.S. forces, its a group the U.S. funded, created to perpetuate a war so that the U.S. can spill into borders outside of current combat zones .... the scenario is sorta like well ..."O I know we attacked Iraq, but there is this new boogieman and he is called Isis and BTW hes living in your garage so I have to invade your land now... "and so on and on new invasion one after the other into new areas all blamed on the spread of isis ISIS IS HERE, WE NEED TO INVADE, ISIS IS THERE WE NEED TO INVADE,

ISIS IS EVERYWHERE ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO U.S.

Thats probably what the strategy was, and it failed horribly when Russia exposed the hypocrisy when it directly decided to engage and terminate the ISIS group , it revealed that the U.S. has no intention of squelching ISIS, and now you have proof that the U.S. govt is just para-dropping weapons in random locations all around the middle east..... they dont even care who gets the weapons, they just want a bunch of pissed off people armed to the teeth . . .

The greatest hypocrisy of all is the fact that while the U.S. govt is dropping weapons all over the place (its a weapons free-for-all bonanza ) right now, they are pushing Gun Control and Confiscation here at home....

What does that say about your govt? when it is actively caught red handed arming terrorists, while pushing gun confiscation domestically ??? lol its not that far of a stretch to connect the dots... cmon

SuperRay

Salah you sure are righteous. Like you've been in the deep shit. Maybe we should call you four leaf instead. What do you think?

Bullshitting a soldier who's risking his life for what he thinks is a noble cause, is unconscionable. You're saying - trust your leaders, they know best. I say, what planet on you on, you fucking moron? The neocon assholes who are guiding, or mis-guiding, policy in the middle east should be lined up and shot for treason. Why is Russia destroying ISIS at blistering speed? Because they want to destroy it. We could've done the same thing, but is we destroyed ISIS and 'won' the battle against terrorism, the defense contractors might not make tons of money this year. We always need an enemy. Get It? We've always been at war with Eurasia? There's no money for the Pentagon without war, so we have to always have an enemy. Duh

datura

I feel awful that Russia is now almost alone in this enormous fight:-(....We in the West won't help them. It feels like WWII again and Russians will have to bear the grunt alone again. Westerners don't seem to change. We are practically good for nothing cowards. Sorry to say, but it is so. And we even dare to judge them in any way??? We dare to judge their leader or their level of democracy? It just makes me sick.

These is how Russian ladies, who fought in WWII, looked like. These seemingly fragile creatures...more valiant than Western men at those times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kraFEWO7Z44

Dre4dwolf

They aren't alone, the U.S. is leaving care packages full of weapons and supplies all over the middle east for Russia to discover. Its like an easter egg hunt, except there is no easter because your in a Muslim shit-hole, and.... there are no bunnies, just pissed of Jihadis who want to shoot you.

Better find the eggs before they do.

Mike Masr

And the US regime change in Ukraine resurrected Frankensteins' monster Nazism!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJQW_0utHKY

The Indelicate ...

ISIS meaning CIA/Mossad.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islam...

I think the world is beginning to understand that the anglo-Zionist Banking and Warfare Empire can not be reasoned with.

[Oct 12, 2015] The Tragic Ending To Obama's Bay Of Pigs: CIA Hands Over Syria To Russia

One week ago, when summarizing the current state of play in Syria, we said that for Obama, "this is shaping up to be the most spectacular US foreign policy debacle since Vietnam." Yesterday, in tacit confirmation of this assessment, the Obama administration threw in the towel on one of the most contentious programs it has implemented in "fighting ISIS", when the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force.

But this, so far, partial admission of failure only takes care of one part of Obama's problem: there is the question of the "other" rebels supported by the US, those who are not part of the officially-disclosed public program with the fake goal of fighting ISIS; we are talking, of course, about the nearly 10,000 CIA-supported "other rebels", or technically mercenaries, whose only task is to take down Assad.

The same "rebels" whose fate the AP profiles today when it writes that the CIA began a covert operation in 2013 to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Assad. Over that time, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear.

The effort was separate from the one run by the military, which trained militants willing to promise to take on IS exclusively. That program was widely considered a failure, and on Friday, the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force, instead opting to equip established groups to fight IS.

It is this effort, too, that in the span of just one month Vladimir Putin has managed to render utterly useless, as it is officially "off the books" and thus the US can't formally support these thousands of "rebel-fighters" whose only real task was to repeat the "success" of Ukraine and overthrow Syria's legitimate president: something which runs counter to the US image of a dignified democracy not still resorting to 1960s tactics of government overthrow. That, and coupled with Russia and Iran set to take strategic control of Syria in the coming months, the US simply has no toehold any more in the critical mid-eastern nation.

And so another sad chapter in the CIA's book of failed government overthrows comes to a close, leaving the "rebels" that the CIA had supported for years, to fend for themselves.

From AP:

CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on President Bashar Assad's forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.

Over the past week, Russia has directed parts of its air campaign against U.S.-funded groups and other moderate opposition in a concerted effort to weaken them, the officials say. The Obama administration has few options to defend those it had secretly armed and trained.

The Russians "know their targets, and they have a sophisticated capacity to understand the battlefield situation," said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who serves on the House Intelligence Committee and was careful not to confirm a classified program. "They are bombing in locations that are not connected to the Islamic State" group.

... ... ..

Incidentally, this is just the beginning. Now that the U.S. has begun its pivot out of the middle-east, handing it over to Putin as Russia's latest sphere of influence on a silver platter, there will be staggering consequences for middle-east geopolitics. In out preview of things to come last week, we concluded by laying these out; we will do the same again:

The US, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, attempted to train and support Sunni extremists to overthrow the Assad regime. Some of those Sunni extremists ended up going crazy and declaring a Medeival caliphate putting the Pentagon and Langley in the hilarious position of being forced to classify al-Qaeda as "moderate." The situation spun out of control leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and when Washington finally decided to try and find real "moderates" to help contain the Frankenstein monster the CIA had created in ISIS (there were of course numerous other CIA efforts to arm and train anti-Assad fighters, see below for the fate of the most "successful" of those groups), the effort ended up being a complete embarrassment that culminated with the admission that only "four or five" remained and just days after that admission, those "four or five" were car jacked by al-Qaeda in what was perhaps the most under-reported piece of foreign policy comedy in history.

Meanwhile, Iran sensed an epic opportunity to capitalize on Washington's incompetence. Tehran then sent its most powerful general to Russia where a pitch was made to upend the Mid-East balance of power. The Kremlin loved the idea because after all, Moscow is stinging from Western economic sanctions and Vladimir Putin is keen on showing the West that, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia isn't set to back down. Thanks to the fact that the US chose extremists as its weapon of choice in Syria, Russia gets to frame its involvement as a "war on terror" and thanks to Russia's involvement, Iran gets to safely broadcast its military support for Assad just weeks after the nuclear deal was struck. Now, Russian airstrikes have debilitated the only group of CIA-backed fighters that had actually proven to be somewhat effective and Iran and Hezbollah are preparing a massive ground invasion under cover of Russian air support. Worse still, the entire on-the-ground effort is being coordinated by the Iranian general who is public enemy number one in Western intelligence circles and he's effectively operating at the behest of Putin, the man that Western media paints as the most dangerous person on the planet.

As incompetent as the US has proven to be throughout the entire debacle, it's still difficult to imagine that Washington, Riyadh, London, Doha, and Jerusalem are going to take this laying down and on that note, we close with our assessment from Thursday: "If Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night."

Which is not to say that the latest US failure to overthrow a mid-east government was a total failure. As Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma says "probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates."

Which is at least great news for the military-industrial complex. It means more "terrorist attacks" on U.S. "friends and allies", and perhaps even on U.S. soil - all courtesy of the US government supplying the weapons - are imminent.

BlueViolet

It's not a fiasco. It's a success. AlQaeda/ISIS created by Israel and financed by US.

Stackers

Never forget the first chapter of this story happened in 2011 Benghazi Libya when the Turkey brokered arms deal went bad, Obama admin abandoned them and one CIA op posing as an ambasador and his security detail were killed.

This thing has been a shit show from day one and involves scandal after scandal

The Indelicate ...

Video: Israeli forces open fire on Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza killing seven

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/10/israeli-palestinian-demonstrators

Paveway IV

There is no such thing as 10,000 CIA 'rebels' - that's only their on-line name.

There is a 10,000-man CIA assassination team or better still - mafia hit squad - in Syria. They're not rebels, they're not terrorists, they're not even mercs. They are paid criminal assassins, nothing more. My country hired them, so my country is guilty of racketeering and assassination. There are no degrees of separation here - the U.S. is directly responsible. Since the acts were perpetrated by people who are also violating the Constitution of the U.S., they are criminals and traitors.

We should do something about them... right after this season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

WTFRLY

White House still ignores murder of American reporter Serena Shim who filmed western aid to ISIS February 27, 2015

1 year almost since her death. Today would have been her 30th birthday.

SWRichmond

You and I (and perhaps others) wonder how 10,000 "moderate rebels" were vetted before being trained and equipped. I am guessing an interview with some commander-wannabee, who said "yes I am a moderate" and then CIA said "awesome, here's $500,000,000.00 and a boatload of sophisticated weapons. Go hire and train some more moderates." Or maybe CIA just asked McCain and took his word for it.

...but few believe the U.S. can protect its secret rebel allies

Some secret...

This kind of shit is what you get when the deep state breathes its own fumes.

Lore

Exactly. American hands are drenched in blood. It's not enough just to withdraw from Syria and leave a bunch of mercs and "assets" to burn, and it's not enough to go after the individuals behind specific atrocities like 911, the bombing of the hospital, or the weddings, or Abu Ghraib, or Benghazi, or, or... Nothing will be fixed or resolved until those responsible for drafting, approving and implementing the pathological policy behind all the loss of life over the past decade are prosecuted and brought to justice. Unless and until that happens, America has abandoned its moral foundation and is doomed as a nation. It's just a practical observation.

geno-econ

Neocons went a step too far with their marauder agenda in Ukraine and Syria. Now they have been silenced by Putin with a show of force exposing US weakness. Both Bush and Obama showed weakness in not controllling Neocon influence in Wash. and is now reflectrd in political party turmoil. EU should rejoice because US policy in Syria caused refugee problem which will subside with end of civil war in Syria. Kiev government now also realizes US will not support real confrontation with Russia and Russia will not give up Crimea. Neocon experiment in achieving growth through regime change has been a total failure and huge drain on US economy.

greenskeeper carl

I agree 100%. What I'm dreading is listening to all the republitards in the next debate trying to one up each other on the war mongering. The problem with 'let Russia have it' is that it will be talked about by the right as though that's a bad thing. It will be spun as an Obama fuck uo(which it is) not because of the simple fact that it was never any of our business in the first place. To them, EVERYTHING is our business, and they will be spending the next few weeks talking tough about how they will stand up to Putin.

RockyRacoon

You got it right, Carl. If they want to see Russia get its butt kicked, give them Syria, and Afghanistan, and Iraq and all the other crappy countries that the U. S. has managed to destabilize. Wish the Russians luck in putting that all back together. Better yet, encourage them to annex the whole shootin' match into the Russian alliance!

Hey, wait.... could this have been the long term plan all along? Hmmm.... Maybe them thar neocons are smarter than they look. Nah, never mind.

sp0rkovite

The article implies the CIA "lost" Syria. When did it ever "win" it? Total political propaganda.

datura

There are some risks, yes, dead Iranian general, perhaps soon some dead Russian soldiers. But unlike the USA, Iran is fighting for its existence here. They know if Syria falls, they could be next. As for Russia, it is very similar. As one expert said: "When the USA looks at Syria, they see pipelines, profit from weapons, money and power." But the first thing Putin sees, when looking at Syria, is Chechnya. Syria is very close to Russia, but very far from the USA. And that is a huge difference.

For example, yesterday, some ISIS fighters were arrested in Chechnya. Luckily, FSB discovered them before they could do some harm. Not even talking about those ISIS fighters, who came to Ukraine, to fight against the pro-Russian rebels!!! You can see, how close and how important is this to Russia and why Russia cannot give up here and has to go to all the extremes. Including the parked nuclear submarine near Syria.

I could say to the US lunatics: you shouldn't have kept poking the bear. You shouldn't have supported terrorists in Chechnya. You should have left Ukraine to Russia. As Putin said very clearly in Valdai: "Russia does not intend to take an active role in thwarting those who are still attempting to construct their New World Order-until their efforts start to impinge on Russia's key interests. Russia would prefer to stand by and watch them give themselves as many lumps as their poor heads can take. But those who manage to drag Russia into this process, through disregard for her interests, will be taught the true meaning of pain."


Bring the Gold

Do you have a link for that Putin statement?

JohninMK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdai_speech_of_Vladimir_Putin

agent default

House of Saud better be careful, because once Syria is taken care of, they will pay dearly for arming ISIS. If Russia wins in the ME Qatar and SA are up for regime change and the US cannot stop it.

Neil Patrick Harris

no no no. It's a about Israel seizing legal authority to drill for oil and nat gas in the Golan Heights/Southern Syria. The plan was to arm ISIS, help ISIS defeat Assad, let ISIS be terrible ISIS who will then threaten Israel, giving the Israelis a perfect excuse to invade Syria, defeat ISIS and look like a hero, then build a pipeline through Turkey, right in to Europe.

But thankfully Putin cockblocked those racist Zionists, and he is going to get all the oil and gas for himself. Poor ol' Bibi gets nothing. Checkmate.

Freddie


http://www.moonofalabama.org/

Moon of Alabama web site is saying the See Eye Aye and Pentagram are not giving up. If anything, they plan on ramping it up. How many more civilians do they want to kill? Sickening.

ThirdWorldDude

This shitshow is far from over. It might be just a coy in their efforts to improvise another Afghanistan.

"Saudi Arabia is ramping up its supplies of lethal weaponry to three different rebel groups in Syria in response to the Russian airstrikes on Syrian rebels, British media reported, citing a Saudi government official in Riyadh. He did not rule out supplying surface-to-air missiles to the rebels..."

techpreist

Given our military spending I think we actually could win an all-out war. We have enough nukes to glass the planet a dozen times after all.

However, bullies don't want to fight with someone who could actually fight back, and who could change the wars from this abstract thing that "creates jobs" and only hurts a few Americans (10k Americans = 0.003% of the population), to something that people actually might not want.

viahj

if this is framed as an Obama failure in foreign policy (it will) in the upcoming US political Presidential selection, the candidates will all be falling over themselves to come to the aide of our "ME Allies" to restore order. there will be a push to re-escalate US involvement in the ME especially with the pressure of Israel over their owned US politicians. a US retreat in the short term while fortunate for the American people, will not stand. the warmongers will be posturing themselves as to which will be the loudest in calling for re-engagement.

[Oct 11, 2015] MH17 crash report is set for release, but it is unlikely to offer closure by Luke Harding and Shaun Walker

Please compare Luke Harding and Shaun Walker article with Who Shot down Malaysian flight MH17? Guardian presstitutes failed to ask any of key questions and just play the case on emotional level. And for them, of course Russians are guilty by definition, despite absence of reliable evidence and the court verdict. Doubt is something that never visits those rascals of pen.
Oct 11, 2015 | The Guardian

Technical report on 2014 air disaster in Ukraine will avoid 'blame and culpability' – though its evidence may further bolster argument Russia was involved

The Kremlin's English-language network Russia Today ran a story on Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins describing him as an unqualified "clerk" whose evidence is dubious.

Almaz-Antey, the Russian defence conglomerate that manufactures Buk missile systems, says it will hold its own press conference on Tuesday. The company said it had performed an experiment in which it blew up a decommissioned Boeing, in an attempt to prove that a Russian Buk could not have been involved. Earlier, the company claimed its investigations showed the plane had been shot down by an old version of a system which the Ukrainian army has in its arsenal but which the Russian army does not

[Oct 07, 2015] US Ruling Circles Split On Use of Jihadists in Syria

"... Well, the United States and its allies are speaking gobbledygook, and Russia is speaking straight up plain international law truth. Theyve come to the aid of the recognized government of Syria, which is being attacked by proxies of other countries, the U.S., the Saudis, other Gulf states, and Turkey, in violation of international law. ..."
"... They are defending principles of international law. And the U.S. and its allies are violating international law, and the U.S. and its allies cannot draw some kind of red line around ISIS, the wayward jihadists that dont want to take orders, and expect the Russians to only discipline their little bad boys and leave the other jihadists alone. That only makes sense to idiots like the New York Times and CNN and the rest. ..."
"... in a way the Russian military intervention against the jihadists in Syria has given the Obama administration another chance to back off of that decades-long policy of using Islamic jihadists as footsoldiers for imperialism in the Muslim world. ..."
"... there was a growing split in the U.S. government in ruling circles, in the intelligence agencies, even three years ago. And there was a fear that the jihadists would have, were developing their own kind of agenda. And theres nothing that U.S. imperialists dislike more than people who have their own agenda. And we know now that in August of 2012, we know this because of a memo that came to light this year, that analysts for the Defense and Intelligence Agency were warning that the jihadists, the people who would become the Islamic State, were likely to declare their own caliphate. And that would mean that they would have their own policies and they would fight their own war, not the war that the United States wanted them to fight. ..."
"... And although that warning didnt cause the U.S. to reverse its long policy of supporting jihadists, it did I think make Obama much more cautious, and I think thats why he backed off from bombing Syria that same year. The same Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are now screaming that the top Pentagon brass are lying about the kinds of reports that theyve been given, reports about the growing strength of ISIS. And that argument in itself is signs of a real split in the intelligence agencies, a split in the U.S. military, a split in the Obama administration itself. A split that was evident when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. ..."
Oct 07, 2015 | therealnews.com
BALL: So what is going on here? It almost sounds like a neo-Cold War indirect conflict of superpowers vying for colonial control over their property, or a fight over whose anti-Assad allies should be supported. What is going on?

FORD: Well, the United States and its allies are speaking gobbledygook, and Russia is speaking straight up plain international law truth. They've come to the aid of the recognized government of Syria, which is being attacked by proxies of other countries, the U.S., the Saudis, other Gulf states, and Turkey, in violation of international law. And the Russians say that they are not just defending the government that they have had relations with for decades. They are defending principles of international law. And the U.S. and its allies are violating international law, and the U.S. and its allies cannot draw some kind of red line around ISIS, the wayward jihadists that don't want to take orders, and expect the Russians to only discipline their little bad boys and leave the other jihadists alone. That only makes sense to idiots like the New York Times and CNN and the rest.

BALL: But again, for those of us who have varying understandings of what's happening here, it would seem like the U.S. would not have a problem with Assad's territory being bombed, given that the U.S. and Obama's administration in particular is no fan of Bashar al-Assad and his leadership there in Syria. Why then are they having a problem with what Russia's doing, and to what extent are the problems that are claimed to be addressed there actually caused in their origin by the United States and its policies?

FORD: Well, the United States has, and Obama knows the United States has, problems that go beyond the Russian intervention. They have problems with their own policy, which has brought them to this state of affairs. And in a way the Russian military intervention against the jihadists in Syria has given the Obama administration another chance to back off of that decades-long policy of using Islamic jihadists as footsoldiers for imperialism in the Muslim world.

And the reason that I say another chance is because it was the Russians back in 2012 who gave President Obama a similar opportunity to re-think that jihadist 35-year-old policy when they proposed that the international community supervise the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. That was back in 2012. And that allowed President Obama to back off from his threat to attack Syria, to bomb the Syrian government. I think that President Obama backed off on that threat not because of domestic or international opposition. The United States acts unilaterally all the time, I think he could have gotten away with it. I think that Obama was genuinely afraid of what would happen if the Syrian government collapsed. And make no mistake about it, if the United States had attacked the Syrian government directly the dynamic of the situation would have compelled the United States to keep on attacking until that government was totally destroyed, just like they did to Col. Gaddafi's government in Libya only one year before.

But it is very clear, now quite clear in hindsight but I think it was visible back then, that there was a growing split in the U.S. government in ruling circles, in the intelligence agencies, even three years ago. And there was a fear that the jihadists would have, were developing their own kind of agenda. And there's nothing that U.S. imperialists dislike more than people who have their own agenda. And we know now that in August of 2012, we know this because of a memo that came to light this year, that analysts for the Defense and Intelligence Agency were warning that the jihadists, the people who would become the Islamic State, were likely to declare their own caliphate. And that would mean that they would have their own policies and they would fight their own war, not the war that the United States wanted them to fight.

And although that warning didn't cause the U.S. to reverse its long policy of supporting jihadists, it did I think make Obama much more cautious, and I think that's why he backed off from bombing Syria that same year. The same Defense Intelligence Agency analysts are now screaming that the top Pentagon brass are lying about the kinds of reports that they've been given, reports about the growing strength of ISIS. And that argument in itself is signs of a real split in the intelligence agencies, a split in the U.S. military, a split in the Obama administration itself. A split that was evident when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

So the Russian intervention is now forcing Obama's hand. He's going to have to decide if he's going to continue this policy with the jihadists, or if he's going to go for some kind of containment or stabilization of the battle lines in Syria. We know it's quite obvious that Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states wanted an all-out offensive to take out the Assad government once and for all, but that has been checked definitively by the Russians. And that gives Obama another chance to cooperate with the people in the region, with Syria and with Iran, and with the government of Iraq, as well as with the Russians. He has that chance again, if he takes it.

Doctors Without Borders: we received no advance warning of US airstrike

This is war crime.

The Guardian


Pat Driscoll -> Haynonnynonny 7 Oct 2015 19:32

Obviously Kunduz was not a safe place, was it? And perfectly reasonable when you are under deadly attack - particularly by a so-called "protector" - to complain about it.

Paul Lorenzini -> liberalexpat 7 Oct 2015 19:32

Kosher islamists?


Gerard White -> DontHaveDontSpend 7 Oct 2015 19:31

Well, do you actually believe anything the United States says? I mean, they created this whole "War on Terror", WMD BS, they created Islamic State, they committed similar atrocities in Fallujah. The US is a terrorist state.

Pat Driscoll -> Haynonnynonny 7 Oct 2015 19:31

What statistical reports? Let's start with the last 13 months in Syria shall we? The official U.S. statistical report for innocents killed reports a total of : ZERO. Why is that? Because the U.S. military hasn't kept track. Iraq? Well, until the Iraq government complained after numerous massacres, the U.S. military also DIDN'T KEEP RECORDS. Same with Afghanistan.

crankyyankee1945 -> smokinbluebear 7 Oct 2015 19:28

let's see:......exaggerating and contorting the initial information from a diverse and complicated command structure, falsely stating that the US has refused to cooperate with an international investigation which has not been convened or decided upon......isn't that what cynical propagandists who could care less about the suffering or solemnity of a situation except to reprehensibly frame it callously for maximum shallow indoctrination effect do?

Donkzilla -> donkeyshit 7 Oct 2015 19:25

the chances of this US attack on kunduz hospital having been a mistake is close to zero. the question therefore is and remains: why?

Chaos and mass murder is causing the biggest refugee crisis since WW II, that's why.

An apparent war of annihilation on the Taliban is actually a war of attrition on Russia for selling oil and gas in euros. Millions of refugees flooding into the EU may break the EU and destroy the euro, that's what the US are hoping for, there is no other logical reason I can see for the US murdering innocent civilians.

hadeze242 7 Oct 2015 19:22

the buck stops here. He is the Commander in Chief ... then, behave like one.

US Obama should return his Swedish Nobel Peace Prize. To keep it (and the European money attached to the prize) means to besmirch the Peace Prize & all other past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.


BrightSpots -> Alto Cumulus 7 Oct 2015 19:20

Have to say it, but I think the USA went native and turned terrorist quite some time back. They have dabbled in it continually and on every continent since WWII. But terrorism has become the USA's modus operandi in the last 14 years.

Every horror IS have committed, the US has committed tenfold in one shape or form.

Civilians to Military deaths have been at a rate of 1000's to 1 for a decade and a half.

Their rage since 9/11 has resulted in more refugees than WWII and phenomenal civilian rates. With circling drones terrorising people, killing sleeping children and firing again at neighbours who go to rescue their dying screaming neighbours children. You know you will be targeted if you help, so you have to listen to the kid's prolonged death and hate yourself for not going to help, because the fly boys in their bunker in Nevada will get you.

That's not war, that's not security. That's sadistic terrorism on a par with IS.

SocalAlex -> outkast1213 7 Oct 2015 19:14

We are far from a fascist police state

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Do you know, for example that - unreported anywhere except, briefly, in The Nation - the U.S. has no quietly changed the legal definition of "the border" to include everywhere within 100 miles of a coast or official land border ? And that this definition includes the places where 2/3 of Americans live, and includes entire states, among them Florida and Maine?

Why does this matter? Because, "on the border", the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies are free to do whatever they want, and normal laws don't apply. They can enter your home and search your things or even arrest and detain you with no probable cause and your other standard rights (including even the right to a lawyer) don't legally apply either! The ACLU has termed it "a Constitution-free zone", and that's no exaggeration!

And thanks to a minor wording change to an obscure law, 2/3 of Americans now live in this Constitution-free zone! This happened with no political debate whatsoever, and, given it was never reported, it's needless to say no public debate either!

Sorry, but to me that sounds very much like the tactics of "a fascist police state"...

CliftonSantiago -> Sam Ahmed 7 Oct 2015 19:13

No, you completely misread what I was saying. Which isn't surprising considering your crass profanities, which I suspect reveal a limited vocabulary and poor reading comprehension skills.

I was agreeing with your point in principle, but disagreeing with your solution, which is one of despair. Only through the pursuit of transparency will the US, UK and their middle-eastern allies be held accountable by the other nations of the world. Only by revealing their complete hypocrisy with irrefutable evidence will one be able to weaken their position. Just look at the damage that Wikileaks, Snowden, and Manning have done to the US propaganda machine.

Surrender is completely pointless. Why should one give up hope as you suggest? Do you live in Dostoevsky novel? Not me.


Federalist10 7 Oct 2015 19:11

There is some debate among lawyers about the extent to which an insurgency such as Afghanistan's technically constitutes an international armed conflict – and accordingly whether the duty to warn applies.

If we continue to willfully ignore this law, then we are as bad as the bad guys we had in mind when we first wrote it.

When did American Exceptionalism become an excuse for American Hubris?

SeanThorp -> charles47 7 Oct 2015 19:11

Are you deliberately misreading the article or merely missing the point?

I'm reading that different branches of the Afghan security services are saying that they were coming under fire and even that the Taliban were using the hospital as a base. Afaik only one building in the hospital came under fire not the 'whole hospital' as you have imagineered.

do try to keep up

Oh the irony.


Donkzilla DallasWilliams 7 Oct 2015 19:10

... you can continue this list for as long as you'd like. Enjoy!

The US is responsible for the chaos and mass murder behind the biggest refugee crisis since WW II, refuting that fact with a straw man list of conspiracy theories is a piss poor attempt at discrediting the conclusions I have drawn about US strategy.


Olorin 7 Oct 2015 19:07

Even if there were terrorists inside of hospital, even if Afghans were asking for bombing area of their choice THERE IS NO EXCUSE to bomb innocent civilians.

This is war crime. US Air Force should be careful even if ally ask for bombing their own territory they should check twice what is in targeted area. This is serious...


gossy -> Haynonnynonny 7 Oct 2015 19:06

When the last US troops go, the Afghan government will collapse pretty quickly and we'll see what a house of cards it really was, supported by US and EU grants, subsidy, and bribe money - that's all. Within 12 months of the US going the Taliban will be in Kabul and sitting down to govern. The next US president will then be faced with the usual McCain/Republican cry of being "weak on terror" - and so the BS goes on.


Alto Cumulus -> dusablon 7 Oct 2015 19:01

Continued: and that lie fails to explain why the hospital was pounded over and over despite desperate calls pleading for the US bombing to stop, and that lie fails to explain why we did not utilize our pinpoint accurate weaponry on the "area adjacent."


macmarco 7 Oct 2015 18:59

NYT says Obama is considering three different legal arguments on why the hospital attack was not a crime. My guess is that he and the DOD will claim that someone in or near the hospital was an imminent threat and had to be taken out to save lives. Obama used "imminent threat" excuse to assassinate two American citizens one a teenbage boy drinking tea. It sailed through both the media and legal community witout one objection.


hadeze242 -> Batleymuslim 7 Oct 2015 18:59

no ... even CNN (today) clearly states & shows the vidio the 30 min US bombing run on the MSF hospital (a white cross from above) was approved by US Control Centre 3 separate times. in google speak: can i hit it again ? yes, hit it. 2nd fly around: can I hit it a 2nd time? yes, go. 3rd fly around: hit is again? yes, do it again.


katiewm 7 Oct 2015 18:58

Why would a civilian hospital ever be considered a legitimate target for an air strike, regardless of whether "warning" was issued? This is shameful.

Alto Cumulus -> dusablon 7 Oct 2015 18:58

What? Weren't the taliban INSIDE the hospital dressed in scrubs? No.

Now yet ANOTHER revision: that the Taliban was "using area adjacent" to hospital.
Problems is, hospital staff has refuted that lie. And that lie fails to explain why the HOSPITAL ITSELF

Move on to your next lie.

DiggersAndDreamers -> Sal2011 7 Oct 2015 18:55

And in accepting that there is some sort of justification for it, we condone it,

I completely agree, it should be condemned in the strongest possible terms and those who are culpable should be brought to justice.


CliftonSantiago -> thatshowitgoes 7 Oct 2015 18:53

Your sarcasm aside, that is exactly what Americans think that means. Just look at the Republican party's website: https://www.gop.com/platform/american-exceptionalism/

Pretty scary actually...


CliftonSantiago DontHaveDontSpend 7 Oct 2015 18:49

You are obviously, and deliberately (american patriot?) ignorant of the articles of the Geneva Convention, of which the US is a signatory member (regardless of the Bush regime's attempts at redefining their obligations). https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter7_rule25


ExpatJohn22 7 Oct 2015 18:45

Doctors without borders, can you stop whinging, Really? just one bomb. We have to concentrate on demonizing Russia. You are spoiling the show.


[Oct 07, 2015] Putin Has Just Put An End to the Wolfowitz Doctrine

"... Syria ..."
"... Putin is trying to put an end to a doctrine that has caused 25 years of Bushist Crusader mayhem. Will he succeed is another question. ..."
"... But having got the ball rolling is a tipping moment and Humpty Dumpty of NWO is now a broken toy of a bygone age, especially as its created the destruction of Pax Americana's main hold on the world : Oil duopoly and monetary hegemony all gone down the shute in debt debasement folly. ..."
"... Just as the first Iraqi war was seminal in the fall of the Soviet Union IMHO when the world (and particularly the Soviet military analysts) were able to see the overwhelming technical superiority of the US smart weapons and the ease with with the US disposed of Saddam's huge standing army (breaking the illusion that the Soviet Union was a superpower on the par with the US), the move into Syria by Russia by the invitation of the legal government of Syria is in my opinion just as historic and seminal, the bell weather for a major sea-change in the the power structure of the world. ..."
"... the MSF hospital in Kunduz fiasco in juxtaposition with the well planned Russian strikes against ISIS (which the US supposedly has been attacking for 13 months), raises the question: if you needed someone to protect you, do you trust the Russian military or the US military? ..."
"... The above question is a fatal doubt intruding into the all powerful US paradigm - if the Saudis and other important players (Germany!) start to question US power and cozy up to the Russians, the US petrodollar is done for, and with it US dollar as WRC - the US as a nation will start an inevitable slide into third world status if that occurs. Imagine what happens for example if the US has to pay its military budget from actual assets or savings rather than just print dollars it needs to buy the hugely expensive F35 or send billions to Israel... ..."
"... The most rabid neocons may push the US into a poorly thought out confrontation, and get us all killed in the worst case. ..."
"... What has Putin proved? That the US desires not to destroy ISIL, but to empower ISIL. When has Assad ever attacked the US? Never. ..."
"... Everything the US government says is a lie. Everything the government's Ministry of Truth's media reports is a lie. With every lie the sheeple to emote for government. Barack is evil incarnate. The US is a tool of neo-cons and the exceptional American fools. Evil succeeds, when the American sheeple follow. ..."
"... Don't praise the day before the sunset. Imho, the more accurate statement would be: Putin has challenged the Wolfowitz doctrine. ..."
"... The neocons are not defeated until the truth about 9-11 if widely accepted, or, more properly, that which is untrue is widely rejected. it is their achilles' heel. The crime is too great, too evil and too poorly done to be explained away or ignored. once a growing majority of the nation sees through this lie (and the fraction is already larger than many imagine), new things become possible. this is not yesterday's news. There is no statute of limitations on treason or murder. The day will be won mind by mind. do your part. ..."
Oct 07, 2015 | Zero Hedge
4-Star General Wesley Clark noted:

In 1991, [powerful neocon and Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz] was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy – the number 3 position at the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a 1-Star General commanding the National Training Center.

***

And I said, "Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm."

And he said: "Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn't … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won't stop us. And we've got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us."

Crocodile

Putin has put an end to the Wolfowitz doctrine - end

Then Putin has found a cure for psychopathy; unlikely.

As you know, October is "Pink" month, the month they remind women of the deadly disease brought on women in which the big corporations are raping in billions and they would/will NEVER give you the cure, for their is no profit in a cure. Stupid is as stupid does.

Pinkwasher: (pink'-wah-sher) noun. A company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products that are linked to the disease.

Here are the results of those efforts: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/statistics/trends.htm (NONE from the disease perspective)

Minburi

This shit is from 2007? Wow... Just Wow!! It's only gotten worse since then!

Why is nothing being done?

Crocodile

The rich are getting richer and the middle class is being dismantled and you say "why is nothing being done?"

Johnny_Dangerously

So is the Greater Israel thing just a wild conspiracy theory? Along with the 3rd temple and "cleansing" the rest of Palestine?

Because I'd bet you my life savings that it is not a conspiracy theory as to Netanyahu and his ilk in Likud.

shutterbug

the USA people have some cleaning up to do, starting in the White House, every governmental agency and after that probably other federal departments...

BUT have you ever seen Walking Dead clean something up???

Icelandicsaga.....

Wolfowitz type thinking is spin off of Angl American establishment that grew out of Brtish empire/banking/trade ..some say reverts back to East India Trade cartel..but recent history, read for free online insider chronicler Georgetown U. Professor Carrol Quigley, who lays it out in Tragedy and Hope.http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X........ of his uotes: It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the United States has been attacking for years in the belief that they are attacking the Communists.

Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.

By the winter of 1945-1946, the Russian peoples were being warned of the dangers from the West.

In post Cold War guys like Harvards Samuel Huntington...discussed Anglo..American hegemony in Clash of Civilizations. Another who laid out the post Cold War game plan ..Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History. pentagon adviser Thomas Barnett laid out the countries to be taken sown in The Pentagons New Map. The guy is a wack job, but pentagon took him seriously.

Followed by PNAC..Project for a New American Century?..guys like Wolfowitz, Kagan, Kristol, Cheney et al first proposed invading Iraq a second time. But the genesis for fucked up US policy on steroids, was fall of Soviet Union. That is when elite, shadow govt and banking class from IMF TO World Bank to BIS came into their own. I recall this invade and bring democracy and KFC capitalism began in major policy journals in 1992..just about same time HW BUSH gave his ""new world order" speech at UN. It has been FUBAR evrr since.

Given what ""economic advisers" from US like Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Summers, Jonathan Hays caused in early days of new Russia, I do not blame them if they hate our guts. We have created chaos and destruction from Balkans ""war" to Ukraine ..Iraq..Libya..Syria. we have turned into a rabid stupid uncontrollable beast. Wolfowitz and his ilk were midwives. Enclosed pertinent links that may be helpful.

http://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civilizations-Remaking-World-Order/dp/145162......

and Francis Fukuyama...

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. Fukuyama is known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his subsequent book Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity (1995) modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics. Fukuyama is also associated with the rise of the neoconservative movement,[2] from which he has since distanced himself.[3]

Fukuyama has been a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy,

MSimon

No expense is too great to send a message. Until it is.

MEAN BUSINESS

False. What's your fucking problem?

MSimon

OK no expense is too great.

An estimate of what the war is costing Russia.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/countingthecost/2015/10/russia-econo...

Looking around I found out that Russia depends on Western companies for oil field eqpt. The war is causing it to defer projects.

On top of that Russia needs to balance its economy with more consumer manufacturing. The war is deferring some of that that.

War steals from the future. And then there is this bit of news. Propaganda or reality? Or a set up for a false flag attack?

FBI has foiled four plots by gangs to sell nuclear material to ISIS: Authorities working with federal agency stop criminals with Russian connections selling to terrorists

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3262821/FBI-foiled-four-attempts...

Johnny_Dangerously

"FBI has foiled four plots by gangs to sell nuclear material to ISIS:"

Sure they did.

And they *did not* assassinate that kid down in Florida for refusing to sign a confession.

Hell In A Ha...

"An estimate of what the war is costing Russia."

The cost of this bombing campaign against ISIS is costing Russia, there is no hiding from this fact, but the cost is also being burdened by Syria and Iran. Secondly, the Military Industrial Complex(MIC) does not have total control Iran, Syria and most importantly Russia, like it does over the U.S government. IE; The Russians have flown to date less than 100 sorties and have significantly downgraded ISIS, to the point western governments and media have been bitching about the loss of innocent civilian life(translated; U.S, U.K and allied special forces are being killed by Russian bombs). Conversely the U.S air-force have officially flown over 1800 sorties in an attempt to downgrade ISIS and have been unsuccessfu to datel. 1800 sorties and a lot of bombing achieving nothing, is a great payout for the MIC.

So an obvious question must be asked. The Russians have flown and bombed just 4% compared to the U.S air-force and have downgraded ISIS. Are the Yanks vastly inferior and incompetent than the Russians? And if the answer is no, then the only logical conclusion must be the Americans never really targeted ISIS and we the public are being fed a pack of lies and propaganda.

falak pema

Well said.

Putin is trying to put an end to a doctrine that has caused 25 years of Bushist Crusader mayhem. Will he succeed is another question.

But having got the ball rolling is a tipping moment and Humpty Dumpty of NWO is now a broken toy of a bygone age, especially as its created the destruction of Pax Americana's main hold on the world : Oil duopoly and monetary hegemony all gone down the shute in debt debasement folly.

Dear Henry's legacy to the Trilateral world now looking like Petrodollar's metamorphosis into Humpty Dumpty.

But where it leads to is a debatable question.

Quo Vadis.

flapdoodle

The *really* big problem with the US Deep State is the following:

1) The US Dollar as World Reserve Currency is based on, well, the fact that it is the WRC. The "faith" the rest of the world invests in the Dollar is only backed by momentum - and the perceived preeminence of the US armed forces.

2) Just as the first Iraqi war was seminal in the fall of the Soviet Union IMHO when the world (and particularly the Soviet military analysts) were able to see the overwhelming technical superiority of the US smart weapons and the ease with with the US disposed of Saddam's huge standing army (breaking the illusion that the Soviet Union was a superpower on the par with the US), the move into Syria by Russia by the invitation of the legal government of Syria is in my opinion just as historic and seminal, the bell weather for a major sea-change in the the power structure of the world.

3) Russia in Syria has, at least in its first appearances, greatly neutralized ISIS, which was touted as a huge almost invincible juggernaut, putting on a clinic of technical prowess and coordination almost comparable to the US effort in Iraq 1.

4) The paradigm of the all powerful US military has taken a big hit, if not by its lack of technical superiority (the F35 fiasco does not inspire confidence in US technical capability), but by its intentions, will, and competence. the MSF hospital in Kunduz fiasco in juxtaposition with the well planned Russian strikes against ISIS (which the US supposedly has been attacking for 13 months), raises the question: if you needed someone to protect you, do you trust the Russian military or the US military?

5) The above question is a fatal doubt intruding into the all powerful US paradigm - if the Saudis and other important players (Germany!) start to question US power and cozy up to the Russians, the US petrodollar is done for, and with it US dollar as WRC - the US as a nation will start an inevitable slide into third world status if that occurs. Imagine what happens for example if the US has to pay its military budget from actual assets or savings rather than just print dollars it needs to buy the hugely expensive F35 or send billions to Israel...

6) What gives pause are what the US might do about what has just happened in Syria. The most rabid neocons may push the US into a poorly thought out confrontation, and get us all killed in the worst case.

7) Whatever response the US tries will not change the death of the US Dollar as WRC. The only question is how soon it will be cast aside (and my gut tells me it will be relatively soon, regardless of how "oversubscribed" dollar denominated debt is to the actual number of dollars in circulation)

GMadScientist

Fuck off. Neocons can own their fucking mistake until the end of time. It was stupid. You did it (and elected the fucker TWICE!). So get the fuck over it.

falak pema

You are missing the point : Its PAX AMERICANA's mess; but it was the Wolfowitz doctrine of the BUSHES (father and son Incorporated along with Cheney) that started it.

Boy King is just a mouthpiece (reluctant now but gung-ho in Libya) of that same imperial game.

History is a bitch and you can't play King Canute with it !

NuYawkFrankie

re Putin Ends Wolfowitz Doctrine

Now we should do our part, and put an end - a permanent end -to Mastermind War-Criminal "Rat Face" Wolfowitz; then the demonic KAGAN KLAN.

The other NeoCON warmongers can be rounded-up shortly thereafter trying to board flights to Tel Aviv, Israel

dreadnaught

Seen on a wall in a bus station: "Kill a NeoCON for Christ"

WTFUD

Long time GW! Nice watching all dem US made Saudi bought weapons go up in smoke. Now that's what i call Change you can believe in. Go Vlad, some US base collateral damage in Baghdad would be equally welcome.

The Plan to keep Russia busy with Ukraine mischief is another multi-billion farce gone up in smoke.

Really nice watching the EU erupt in a burden of refugees, none of which was ear-marked in the austerity budgets of the poodle-piss vassal states.

Cat-Al-Loan-iA here i come, right back where we started from . . .

Reaper

Evil is power. What has Putin proved? That the US desires not to destroy ISIL, but to empower ISIL. When has Assad ever attacked the US? Never.

Everything the US government says is a lie. Everything the government's Ministry of Truth's media reports is a lie. With every lie the sheeple to emote for government. Barack is evil incarnate. The US is a tool of neo-cons and the exceptional American fools. Evil succeeds, when the American sheeple follow.

bunnyswanson

You leave out the most important detail. STATE CAPTURE

Share the insults with the nation who has trained our cops in methods used against Palestinians, beating the crap out of everyone who shows the least bit of hesitation to obey their orders.

Okeefe = Full page of videos explaining ISRAEL EXPANSION PROJECT Greater Israel.

Dead politicians, dead journalists and many dead business people, all strangely similar yet some nobody from nowhere is sent to prison, with wide eyed drugged look.

ISRAEL is the source of the evil so fucking remember that prickface.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=israel+expansion+project+o%...

gezley

The source of the evil is not Israel, at least not the political entity known as Israel in the Middle East. The source of the evil is something far deeper, a Power of Darkness that exists somewhere else, a Power that created this modern state of Israel in the first place. In my opinion, that power of darkness, the truly evil "Israel", occupies the City of London, otherwise known as the Jewish Vatican, the counterpoint in this world to the other square mile that matters, the Holy See.

That's where the problems for the US and the Middle East have their beginning, middle and end. Solve that problem and America and the Middle East will both wake up to a bright new future.

Luther van Theses

"Soviet client regimes?" Didn't it ever occur to this dummy they are countries in their own right, people live there, you can't just take their countries away from them?

Bismarck said 'God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.' We must be in good shape considering we've had fools like Wolfowitz and drunks like G.W Bush running the country.

opport.knocks

Let's not give too much credit to Paul Wolfowitz, and his "doctrine". It was just a restatement of Halford MacKinder's "Heatland Theory" and Zbigniew Brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halford_Mackinder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

jcdenton

Speaking of Ziggy, the guy just snapped ..

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/06/is-terrorists-may-blast-mosques-...

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/06/zbig2putin/

August

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/06/zbig2putin/

Decent article....i.e. better than aveage for veteranstoday. IMHO.

Ol' Zbigniew sez that he USA should "disarm" Russian forces in Syria.

Guess the US Police will have to use some flash-bangs on the Russkies, and shoot their dogs, too.

fleur de lis

Brzezh has been a psycho for a long time, and has harbored a seething hatred for the Russians that still spews poison to this day. He pushed the idiots in DC to support the serial killer Pol Pot who murdered more than a million Cambodians, and that was a long time ago. He was sly enough to get the Chinese to do the direct support. Still crazy after all these years.

The Cambodians were fightng with the Vietnamese who were allied with the Russians, so that was reason enough for him regardless of all the Cambodian deaths.. The Western powers had no good reason to be mixed up in Asia except as blood sport.

Jorgen

"Putin has put an end to the Wolfowitz doctrine."

Don't praise the day before the sunset. Imho, the more accurate statement would be: Putin has challenged the Wolfowitz doctrine.

jeff montanye

The neocons are not defeated until the truth about 9-11 if widely accepted, or, more properly, that which is untrue is widely rejected. it is their achilles' heel. The crime is too great, too evil and too poorly done to be explained away or ignored. once a growing majority of the nation sees through this lie (and the fraction is already larger than many imagine), new things become possible. this is not yesterday's news. There is no statute of limitations on treason or murder. The day will be won mind by mind. do your part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GNww9cmZPo

http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticl...

11b40

Here are some examples of people in senior government position who have Israeli citizenship. Will America ever wake up and end this idiocy, which was brought about in 1967 by a Supreme Court decision guided by Justice Abe Fortas, a prominent Jewish American. If some these names are not familiar, google them for a real surprise, or follow this link:

http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/Story-Dual_Citizenship_Loyal_T...

Jonathan Jay Pollard
Michael Mukasey
Michael Chertoff
Richard Perle\
Paul Wolfowitz
Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
Douglas Feith
Edward Luttwak.
Henry Kissinger
Dov Zakheim
Kenneth Adelman
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Robert Satloff
Elliott Abrams
Marc Grossman
Richard Haass
Robert Zoellick
Ari Fleischer
James Schlesinger
David Frum
Joshua Bolten
John Bolton
David Wurmser
Eliot Cohen
Mel Sembler
Steve Goldsmith
Adam Goldman
Joseph Gildenhorn
Christopher Gersten
Mark Weinberger
Samuel Bodman
Bonnie Cohen
Ruth Davis
Daniel Kurtzer
Cliff Sobel
Stuart Bernstein
Nancy Brinker
Frank Lavin
Ron Weiser
Mel Sembler
Martin Silverstein
Lincoln Bloomfield
Jay Lefkowitz
Ken Melman
Brad Blakeman

Beginning to see the problem?

OldPhart

Here's a full taste of Wolfowitz as he was interviewed by some metro-sexual I've never heard of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-wwFE_DaM

The faggot's got some solid points over Wolfowitz.

[Oct 07, 2015] Chris Hayes and Paul Wolfowitz, Amazing Interview

YouTube

OldPhart

Here's a full taste of Wolfowitz as he was interviewed by some metro-sexual I've never heard of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-wwFE_DaM

The faggot's got some solid points over Wolfowitz.

[Oct 05, 2015] Lawrence Wilkerson The American 'Empire' Is In Deep, Deep Trouble

Oct 05, 2015 | Zero Hedge
Former US army colonel and Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson unleashed a most prescient speech on the demise of the United States Empire.

As Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith notes, Wilkerson describes the path of empires in decline and shows how the US is following the classic trajectory. He contends that the US needs to make a transition to being one of many powers and focus more on strategies of international cooperation.

The video is full of rich historical detail and terrific, if sobering, nuggets, such as:

"History tells us we're probably finished.

The rest of of the world is awakening to the fact that the United States is 1) strategically inept and 2) not the power it used to be. And that the trend is to increase that."

Wilkerson includes in his talk not just the way that the US projects power abroad, but internal symptoms of decline, such as concentration of wealth and power, corruption and the disproportionate role of financial interests.

Wilkerson also says the odds of rapid collapse of the US as an empire is much greater is generally recognized. He also includes the issues of climate change and resource constraints, and points out how perverse it is that the Department of Defense is the agency that is taking climate change most seriously. He says that the worst cases scenario projected by scientists is that the world will have enough arable land to support 400 million people.

Further key excerpts include:

"Empires at the end concentrate on military force as the be all and end all of power… at the end they use more mercenary based forces than citizen based forces"

"Empires at the end…go ethically and morally bankrupt… they end up with bankers and financiers running the empire, sound familiar?"

"So they [empires] will go out for example, when an attack occurs on them by barbarians that kills 3000 of their citizens, mostly because of their negligence, they will go out and kill 300,000 people and spend 3 trillion dollars in order to counter that threat to the status quo. They will then proceed throughout the world to exacerbate that threat by their own actions, sound familiar?…This is what they [empires] do particularly when they are getting ready to collapse"

"This is what empires in decline do, they can't even in govern themselves"

Quoting a Chinese man who was a democrat, then a communist (under Mao) then, when he became disenchanted, a poet and writer…"You can sit around a table and talk about politics, about social issues, about anything and you can have a reasonable discussion with a reasonable person. But start talking about the mal-distribution of wealth and you better get your gun" …."that's where we are, in Europe and the United States".

pretty bird

America is going through a tough time right now. But she's been through tougher times. I wouldn't bet against her.

Manthong

Gee, might this be a Smedley Butler moment?

Crud.. looking at the Roman Empire, and Revolutionary France, you do not need to be a Phd in economics (theory, not science) or political science (?) er, NO.. theory.. to figure out where this is heading.

Oh regional Indian

It's pretty clear that the Empire dream is crumbling.

Which does not bode well for people on the INSIDE of the empires gates.

Perhaps more true for the west in general right now and to a lesser or greater extent, cultures world-wide that have been brought to their knees by the false (Jewish/Zio inspired and funded) libertarianism of freedom via sex drugs and rock and roll.....it's time to go inwards.

The next 4-5 years are going to be shocking hard in the west as everything you were brought up to believe in shows it's true, tattered colours of specious beginnings, ugly/lost individuals (Sanger, Kinsey, Steinem, Leary, Greatful Dead etc. etc. to name but a few) and a funding hand that showed it's biases early but a populace with their eyes on the TV, hands on their (or someone else's gentalia), beer and bad food...too far gone to rise in any manner of protest at all...

America is definitely sliding down a deep dark hole...

Not finger pointing, just reality...

Apathy is a cancer...

Everyone should give this a listen...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZSBFxanDAw

Handful of Dust

Did I read "Colin Powell"? The same Colin Powell who sold his country down the river into one of the most costly bloodiest wars in American history with a bareface lie about non-existent WMDs and a phantom threat from a cave-dwelling desert country of camel jocks?

THAT Colin Powell?

omniversling

"Chief of Staff for Colin Powell"...was it Wilko who prepped the vial of ANNNNTTHHHRRAAX for Powel to present to the world via the UN PROVING the WMD case for bombing Iraq back to the stoneage?

TAALR Swift

Nothing wrong with reading Machiavelli, but you're better off watching this YT 11 minute clip from a former CIA agent:

"Ex CIA agent explains how to delete the elite!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLr8ZvgURg0


luckylongshot

Great article. However while it exposes the cycle of power centralisation that leads to empires growing and collapsing it does not propose what needs to be done to stop this cycle occurring. This can be done by teaching the public to think critically, having a constitution that you stick to and decentralising power so different arms keep each other from becoming too powerful. Imagine if the NSA reported to the public and was tasked with ensuring politicians were not bribed and that businesses did not try to influence politics? In business the formula is decentralise power, treat people with respect and weed out the narcissists...and then enjoy large profits: This works wih nations and empires as well....why not try it.

Urban Redneck

The military and civil unrest threats due of climate change are not BS. What is BS are the contortions (both distortions and outright lies) and that the brass knob jockeys at the Pentagram will perform to receive moar funding for reducing competition for potentially much more scarce resources.

The larger threat isn't actually rising temperatures, but rather falling temperatures and changes in average precipitation. A single freeze in Florida can decimate citrus production, a wetter or drier than "Goldilocks" year can wreak havoc on production of various grains, and that is all without the .gov idiocy that is the People's Republic of Draughtifornia.

On a one-year timeline the weather costs are bad enough, but on a slightly longer climate timeline... not even the EBT equipped North American Land Whale has enough stored fat to wait out new McFodder if production has to migrated to follow climate change, which for some perennials (e.g the trees necessary for the all-American apple pie) means much more than a one year wait for first harvest.

So anyway... reducing competition... assuming you are a major power grand poobah (instead of a neo-Ethiopian Arab Spring despot), you can invade someone else to steal their food, invade someone else to reduce your domestic demand for food, or you can FEMA camp the useless eaters and put them on la dičte noir, (if you can't afford Zyklon B, and the infrastructure to properly deploy it). Regardless, this is Military Planning 101 level stuff.

AMPALANCE

Industrial farming it destroying top soil on a massive scale, we reached peak production years ago. Combine that with a decrease in biodiversity from unconstrianed Trojan Horse GMO's, and the prospect of a catastrophic food shock is very real. Don't forget peak Phosphorus is expected to be reached around 2030, and depleated in 50 to 100 years, it true would prove devastating for humanity.

Motasaurus

Reached peak production years ago?

Pleasr do explain then how all food crops have increased yield every year while reducing the amount of both land and fertilisers used to do so.

We're no-where near peak production, and the higher the atmospheric CO2 content climbs, and the milder the winters we have (from a warming atmosphere), the more food we will be able to produce. We're not even half way to the optimal atmospheric CO2 levels of 1000ppm for food crop growth yet.

techpreist

Here's a fun graphic from the journal Nature (Science and Nature being the two most prestigious journals in modern science):

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/fig_tab/461472a_F1.html#...

By mainstream academia's own numbers, industrial farming (the primary cause of nitrogen pollution is a far bigger problem than official global warming. But you never hear a peep about it because the main cause of this type of pollution is a combination of 1) subsidies and 2) GMOs which require much higher N input to get the growth that's possible from genetic modification. Since the solution is less control over farming, they have no problem driving the Earth off a cliff.

junction

Wilkerson has the freedom to travel and talk because he receives a fairly large military pension. What neither Wilkerson or any other critic of the current rulers of the United Staes will say is that the United States has no economic future anymore. The Wall Street looters have pillaged the country, first stealing the assets of corporate pension funds and now finishing off their brigandage by stealing all the future tax income of this country through the criminal use of derivatives. America is now a country with poisoned water supplies (fluoridation which causes heart disease), poisoned food (glyphosates and antbiotic contamination) and a poisoned electoral system where the top 0.1% chooses the winners.

The super-rich have their bolt holes outside the USA because they don't want to be around when this country, now a near Nazi state complete with death squads and Nazi People's Court-type hanging judges and prosecutors, completes its transformation by setting up concentration camps.


pachanguero

This asshole is part of the problem. Fuck him and his bullshit Glow-Ball warming scam. He should be in jail for the Iraq War along with Obama and Bush.

TheObsoleteMan

What do you expect from him, he is a CFR member and a CIA/NSA asset. No one ever retires from the CIA, you just aren't assigned projects and you are pensioned, but the only way you ever leave the CIA is in a box. He is not an American, he is a globalist. You have to be, or your not allowed into the CFR.


Dark Daze

Here's a fucking news flash for you Einstein. Your 'team' as you so quaintly put it has spent the last 250 years murdering, bombing, assassinating and fucking over 3/4's of the planet. Originally, just after the revolution, there was a period of say 20 years (just as Jefferson suggested) where the citizenry of the US was peacful and productive. Then, not long after the death of the last of the original Father's of the Revolution, the psychopaths arrived (General Hull at Fort Detroit) and started their crap with an attempted invasion of Canada (1812-14). That didn't work out so well, so you went south and fought with the Spanish, the Mexicans, every country in central and south america, declaring that the US had a god given right to control the entire area of North and South America (the Monroe doctrine). On the way you made sure you wiped out virtually every 'dirty injun' you could find, burned a few dozen 'witches' at the stake, invaded China and brought the opium/heroin trade to America (the Connecticut Yankees in their Clipper ships) and generally forced yourselves on an unwilling world. There are only two western democracies that have never engaged in empire, Australia and Canada. All the rest, the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, the Macedonians (greeks), France, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Hungary have all tried and failed at establishing empires, killing millions along the way. I read your Constitution a few years back (probably one of the most enlightened documents ever created), and I seem to remember a passage about 'not becoming entangled in foreign intrigues'. Too bad you didn't take that to heart. They left you a clear, easy to understand, definitive document on how to live and you fucking destroyed it, and yourselves in the process.

The rest of the history is available to anybody that cares to investigate, which means not very many Americans, who prefer to remain conveniently ignorant of your bloody history.

in4mayshun

News flash for YOU...All significant Governments throughout history have killed lots of people to remain in power. And FYI, Canada and Australia don't matter cause they're really just extensions of Europe, as they follow in lockstep.

The Old Man

Refernce France: 1790 through 1816. Sorry. But paper doesn't work unless you feed it war. When war is always an option, society fails in the common place. Reinvent society. I mean you got iPhones and all this crap. How hard is it to think this through?

Lyman54

Australia and Canada were just proxy extensions of the British Empire. Canadians served in the Napoleonic wars, Crimea, the Boer War, WW-1, WW-2 and Korea. It wasn't until Korea that the media would actually call Canadian troops Canadians.

Socratic Dog

Aussie eh. While I don't dispute anything you say, I have to suggest the Aussie government is even worse in that it slavishly follows the US lead in fucking EVERYTHING, including killing and maiming women and children in their millions in places far from its shores. I saw a couple of days ago in the SMH (once-great local rag) that Australia is waiting for US direction on how to respond to the Russian "provocation" in Syria. They're ready to go to war with russia to protect, err, not exactly sure what they're ready to protect, but it must be important. Israel maybe? Australia has become a pathetic lap dog, starting with Vietnam. And just like the USSA, the people support the government position in most anything.

conscious being

Mossad did 9-11. Terrerists come in a lot of shapes and sizes.

Memedada

Both Mr. Banzai and rbg81 are displaying a surprising (this forum taken into account) lack of insight into the power-structures of the US empire.

I thought it was obvious to all – who pays attention – that the 'electorate' (especially the president) are mere pawns of a hidden (not that well hidden) power-elite. The people actually ruling US are not named in MSM (the 0,01 % - and no, that's not anyone on the Forbes list). That US have a 'colored president' does not make any difference – his masters are the same.

Second: US have no real elections. An election requires an informed and educated population. US has the opposite. The medias are controlled by the 0,01%, the public education system have been eroded and made into an extension of the 0,01%'s propaganda-machine and there's no independent think tanks and/or institutions that can help the population get informed (the absolute majority of think tanks and research institutions in US are founded and funded by and for the 0.01%). Moreover, since you got 'Diebold' it doesn't matter – the votes are counted the way the 0,01% wants them to be counted.

Third: communist in what way? What's your definition of communism? If he – I don't listen to him – actually said anything that could be interpreted as communist it doesn't count (he speaks nothing but BS – distractions). What political actions has he taken that you would consider 'communist'?

+ who don't despise USA for what it has become today? US deserves nothing but contempt – and until there's a real revolt/revolution the US population deserves the same contempt.

IridiumRebel

My wife, who has been involved with Doctors Without Borders albeit briefly, asked about the errant strike that killed 19+. I stated what happened. After she gasped, I went on to say that our current leadership and trajectory as a nation has to be purposeful in its fuckery and stupidity. It's willful. They HAVE to be making these stupid decisions on purpose. There is no other possible answer. No way they could be making these decisions and think they will do anything but make us weaker and less trusted if it's even possible.

AmericanFUPAcabra

The GPS coordinates for that hospital had been given to the US months in advance. They knew it was there (probably helped build it with your money) In fact when the first bombs started falling phone calls were made to the US and NATO that they were hitting the wrong place- and guess what? The air strikes kept coming down for 30 minutes.

You can go on Youtube and watch Robert Ford (john negroponte's protege) making the news circuits lately blaming the people in the hospital for not having an evacuation plan. THEY DO NOT FUCKING CARE ABOUT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES. It has nothing to do with fucking up. A handful of Kissinger quotes come to mind.


Dark Daze

Well, it is very coincidental that less than 24 hours after 'the taliban' shot down a cargo plane carrying 'contractors' (CIA?), the hospital was bombed. There is more to this story than we know. Regardless, it still shows basially one thing which is that governments everywhere are out of control.

delacroix

a fuckup would be if they bombed the opium wharehouse.

Jorgen

"a fuckup would be if they bombed the opium wharehouse."

Yes, indeed, it would be...

Rumors Persist That the #CIA Helps Export #Opium from #Afghanistan http://t.co/yeihvYEvB3 pic.twitter.com/MYiDWqdPYV

- The Anti Media (@TheAntiMedia1) September 26, 2015

Paveway IV

"...No way they could be making these decisions and think they will do anything but make us weaker and less trusted if it's even possible..."

It would be most unhelpful to think of the actions of any branch of the U.S. government or military today as being in the interests of the people they serve. You can be certain that psychopaths running the U.S. (many groups with overlapping, occasionally competing but generally complementary interests) are in TOTAL control, and the organizations have morphed to serve ONLY psychopathic leaders, not normal ones. Arguing about which specific group of psychopaths is at the top of the heap or what their motivations are is also totally meaningless - it just doesn't matter. THAT isn't the problem.

The real problem is that the machinery of all of these government organizations has been fundamentally changed to serve only psychopathic leaders. They can no longer accomodate a 'normal' leader in any sense of the word. Replacing the heads of every one of these organizations today wouldn't work - the organizations themselves would reject a 'normal' person in charge and would oppose them at every turn or simply drive them out. It's well past the point of just getting 'the right' leaders in place.

The U.S. is on psychopath auto-pilot. There are no personal consequences for 'bad' decisions by those in charge of our government organizations. The leaders are making the exact same kind of decisions that every other failing empire has made during its decline since forever.

Perceptions of strength/weakness or trust/distrust are immaterial to the psychopaths in charge, as long as everybody seems to obey them. They're in a desperate scramble to maintain their OWN illusion of control before things go full-retard - they could care less what anyone else thinks of them or their decisions today.

o r c k

Agree, but just imagine living in most European Countries and knowing that the end of your ancient culture is only a few decades away due to the psychopathy of your "leaders".

Being surrounded by a warlike, mean-spirited and superstitious clan of early humans and NO way out whatsoever.

Jorgen

"They HAVE to be making these stupid decisions on purpose. There is no other possible answer."

Here is one theory on why the MSF hospital was bombed:

This is interesting... Did Obama Bomb Doctors Without Borders for Opposing TPP? http://t.co/2GEIbaQKyd

- AntiMedia UK (@AntiMediaUK) October 5, 2015

Flying Wombat

The Processes and Logic of The Deep State - Professor Peter Dale Scott

Unusually, just a single speaker this week: one two hour interview with the doyen of deep political research, Canadian Professor Peter Dale Scott. He provides not only a lot of details of the evolution of the post WW2 deep state in the USA, but also sketches out its guiding principles, some of the deeper patterns which allow one to understand the superficially confusing and contradictory actions of the US deep state.

Access show here: http://thenewsdoctors.com/?p=516544

SFopolis

Colin Powell has been treated as a great man for doing what? Semi-admitting that he knew we had it all wrong and everybody in power was (is) a war criminal?

In my opinion he is worse than all of the rest, because he had the platform and could have single handidly prevented this whole mess and exposed so many falshoods. Instead he did exactly what he knew was wrong. If he were a patriot and such a great man, he wouldn't have done what he did.

tool

WTF happen to him. Did he disappear into obscurity because of the extreme shame he felt for presenting that huge steaming pile of horse shit to the UN in front of the world .

I'm guessing not because people like that don't feel remorse or shame. They just get paid and live happily ever after!

conscious being

Colin proved himself to be a useful tool when he was brought in as the black face to do his part in covering up The Mai Lai Massacre in VietNam. His career took off after that.


[Oct 04, 2015] Saudis Mull Launch Of Regional War As Russia Pounds Targets In Syria For Fourth Day

Notable quotes:
"... Yes it is more about water rights than oil. ..."
"... Overthrowing Assad cuts Hezbollahs supply lines, which is THE point of the excercise. ..."
"... Now WATER and Israel. You are barking up the right tree. Much of all of this is about Greater Israel. If you were old like me, you would remember back when secular Arab states actually possed a real threat to Israel. All those state are now torn to pieces by US policy. So, see the connection? ..."
"... I maintain most of this is Israeli based. With the US doing Israeli bidding. ..."
"... You know most Americans are clueless as all they get is overwhelming propaganda from cradle to grave. It is the US policy makers that know they can use the American people's labor to continue with their nefarious plans. ..."
"... The neocons love death and killing, and it will come home. Ask Imperial Rome. The hubris is absolutely breathtaking." ..."
"... And once again we see who is driving American foreign policy in the Middle East -- our good friends the Royal family of Saudi Arabia. Putin really made a brilliant play on this one. Most Americans are cheering for him as he destroys the CIA created boggie man ISIS, and the CIA controlled US media doesn't know what the fuck to say about it because they've already convinced the public that ISIS is the real reason we're screwing around in Syria. Check mate unless the US decides to go full retard and start bombing the Russians based upon some false flag like the Russians bombing a hospital or something -- oops, can't really do that now either. ..."
"... The US has launched 6700 airstrikes on ISIS while the Russians have apparently degraded ISIS in just 60 airstrikes. ..."
"... The US and its allies have carried out 6700 airstrikes at an expense of nearly $4 billion in the year since President Barack Obama ordered a campaign against Islamic State. Yet the terror group shows no sign of defeat and has even expanded its reach. ..."
"... Sure a lot of ISIS fighters are probably true believers but those are the ones who will stand, fight, and be killed (blind pawns). However, seeing this is as much a covert operation as an overt operation then one has to think that the brains of the operation is made up of state operatives or mercenaries. These will not stand, fight, and die but run, re-arm, and redeploy elsewhere (Afghanistan->Stans->Russia or Afghanistan->China?). ..."
"... McCain is implicitly-and sections of the media are explicitly-pointing to a change in the Pentagon's rules of engagement in Syria announced by the Obama administration last spring that allows US forces to combat Syrian government forces or any other group or country that attacks US-backed "rebels." This is meant to put pressure on the White House to initiate attacks not only against Damascus, but also against Moscow. ..."
"... America's elites are as Trump says : a nation of neo-con elites whose mantra breeds --as incarnated by the NRA lobby --psychopathic mad shooters who have the genius of the devil. ..."
"... For some reason, nobody in the US-Saudi-Turkish-Israeli nexus thought Russia would actually intervene. I don't know why. Russia went to the mat over Syria a few years back when Obama, fresh off the triumph of turning Libya into a dumpster fire, shipped the same mercenaries who did the Gadhafi hit-job to Syria, freshly re-armed. Remember, those guys' presence was the real reason for the Benghazi fiasco; a fact HRC and the Obama Administration can't speak out loud and the GOP knows full well, making Benghazi the perfect political football. ..."
"... The US strategy of sparking and fueling a Sunni vs. Shi'a world sectarian war has taken a brutal hit. The Shi'a are in the extreme minority of Islam, but not in the Middle East, between Iran and the Mediterranean. ..."
"... But I'm keeping an eye on the Uighurs in China's Xinjiang Province, and the various -Stan nations. It will take a little while, but I'm guessing there will be "Mysterious", "Spontaneous" uprisings of extremist Sunni violence there. And "Mysterious" newcomers with beards and Saudi accents. ..."
"... Brilliantly, the Russians have stolen the "War on Terror" narrative. The US psychotics, psychopaths and megalomaniacs have proven incredibly stupid. Russia asks the US to join them in fighting the war on terror. Hilarious. ..."
Oct 04, 2015 | www.zerohedge.com

Looney

Lemme get it straight… Saudi Arabia and Qatar can't handle the Houtis in Yemen, but they think they can take on Russia? Oh, boy! I need a bigger popcorn bucket! ;-)

strannick

Like the US, these vile medieval "regional allies" try to frame their propaganda to show that this is about removing the dictator Assad, who actually is one of the most benign in that demented region. Its not.

They want him out because he opposed their pipeline, favoring instead the Iraqi Iran Shiite pipeline, which all three nations agreed to create. So much for national self determination. Otherwise they wouldnt give a shit what deranged lunatic ran Syria, or if Syria was ruled by some king as demented and tyranical and genocidal as they, -the Saudis and Qataris- are themselves.

Winston Churchill

Its not about an indefencible gas pipline at all.

By deception we wage war.

Its about potable water in south Lebanon.

Without that Israel is a failed desert state within ten years.

Go do the research yourself, all the data has been out there for nearly fifty years.

Hidden in plain sight.

swmnguy

Israel has to have the Litani river from source to outlet.

The pipeline from Qatar is a real project too, though.

Captain Debtcrash

Saudis' won't mess with Russia because they know the US probably wouldn't intervene on their behalf, we don't want to mess with Russia either and vice versa. It was already agreed we would let them do what they want and talk a good game in opposition.

That said, if I'm wrong, I don't think we will have to worry about low oil prices any more.

Oracle of Kypseli

Desal water is much more expensive than oil.

And... Yes it is more about water rights than oil. The Jordan river is now a small slow moving creek.

Winston Churchill

The Litani is part of the headwaters of the river Jordan.

The Golan overlooks the Jordan.Whick looks like a stream in comparison to what is was fifty ago, and a dried up mud hole relative to 150yrs ago. I wish I could post a photo from the 1860's I have of the Jordan, its a glass plate negative taken by my great grandfather.

Overthrowing Assad cuts Hezbollahs supply lines, which is THE point of the excercise.

If, as reported yesterday, Putin is going to supply Hezbollah direct with armaments, Putin will have a Israels balls in a vice, no wonder Nutjob is going apeshit..

Jack Burton

Good point Winston. I have always been dubious about the Pipeline argument. As you say, even if built, this pipeline would run through very hostile places, sure to be hit over and over again.

Now WATER and Israel. You are barking up the right tree. Much of all of this is about Greater Israel. If you were old like me, you would remember back when secular Arab states actually possed a real threat to Israel. All those state are now torn to pieces by US policy. So, see the connection?

Israel must, with in a decade take and hold souther Lebanon of perish. The only water left is there, Israel must have it. So they will take it, to hold it, they need Syria dead and Lebanon a failed stated.

I maintain most of this is Israeli based. With the US doing Israeli bidding.

The Indelicate ...

the Qatar pipeline argument never made any sense because:

1] you don't build a pipeline through chaos which will last years, which is precisely what Israel, most of all wants - a bloodletting that destroys another regional economic, and to an extent military rival.

2] Cost/benefit wise it doesn't make sense to spend this sort of money and time to go through Syria - look at a map.

3] Israel's Leviathan find, it's plans to ethnically cleanse the remainder of Palestine, and find/create pretexts to attack and invade more of Lebanon, Syria, and Sinai. It's plans to steal the gas that, if international law applied to the Jewish State, Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon.

Early Zionist Interest In Lebanon - Laura Zittrain Eisenberg
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/history/zionism.html

Israel Wants The Litani River Desperately
http://northerntruthseeker.blogspot.com/2010/08/israel-wants-litani-rive...

HOORAY FOR HEZBOLLAH!
http://www.tomatobubble.com/id775.html

flysofree

This is a load of crap. I lived in the Caribbean and our source of water was desalinization plant. It wasn't as expansive as you say, even the poorest locals could easily afford it. The problem with desalinization plants was that intake valves would clog up with seaweed during storms!

There is no evidence whatsoever that Israel is planning any aggression towards its neighbors. It's also no secret that ALL of Israel air strikes into Syria involved intercepts of weapons shipments from Iran; that's clearly stated in mainstream media reporting!

You must be a deluded old twig, if you even attempt to compare Nazi Germany Lebensraum policies of total liquidation of local populations to modern Israeli politics of settler land grab in the West Bank.

Winston Churchill

I'm old like you Jack, but travelled extensively throughout the MENA, a family tradition you could say, my great grandfather and grandfather were involved in opening up tourism/biz to a lot of the area.Long before oil was discovered. Have some 'wrong side of the blanket' relatives who I keep in contact with as well.

SWRichmond

Lemme get it straight… Saudi Arabia and Qatar can't handle the Houtis in Yemen, but they think they can take on Russia? Oh, boy! I need a bigger popcorn bucket! ;-)

Putin is confident in his backing at home. Russian people are, for lack of a better way to put it, accustomed to "doing without" while supporting the motherland. Saudi, on the other hand, has completely spoilt their home population with their temporary wealth (now in doubt), paying them just to live, making them soft and expectant, petulant, self indulgent (sound familiar?). Putin is quite obviously "going for it", pressing his position, because he believes he will prevail. The gloves are off. USA is broke, and Putin knows it. Petrodollar is on its death bed, and he knows it, and he is willing to overtly hasten its death.

Final question, for bonus points: how do nations traditionally finance wars?

Answer: BY DEBASING THEIR CURRENCIES.

PacOps

Didn't someone pull some kind of shit like that on the Soviet Union a few decades back? ;-)

Sun, 10/04/2015 - 11:48 | 6628206 swmnguy

The Russian people can feed themselves. Not lavishly; cabbage and "cole" vegetables; potatoes; a little meat, fish and poultry; cold-weather grains; but they can feed themselves. Not so much for the Saudis and Qataris etc. Also, the Russians make their own stuff. They don't have to import slaves who outnumber them.

Yes, if the luxury is suddenly removed from their lives, the Russian people wouldn't notice, never having had much in the first place. But the Saudis and Qataris can't survive in their current arrangements.

kananga

"So, millions of Saudi refugees invading Europe?"
More like, 100 Saudi Royals invading Monaco.

lincolnsteffens

You know most Americans are clueless as all they get is overwhelming propaganda from cradle to grave. It is the US policy makers that know they can use the American people's labor to continue with their nefarious plans.

Sir Edge

Yes...

Plus One Kabillion SWR... Perfectly Said...

"USA is preparing to rip itself apart. For some reason Americans believe they can foist death, destruction, mayhem and hopelessness upon the entire rest of the planet, while somehow remaining immune from it themselves. The neocons love death and killing, and it will come home. Ask Imperial Rome. The hubris is absolutely breathtaking."

strannick

Exactly.

How dare Russia and Iran tinker with America and Suadis bombed out, fucked up Shangrala that is their legacy in the Middle East.

researchfix

They know what´s coming. Iran and Russia will chase ISIS to the Saudi border. And then they stop the chase. And then the next chapter enfolds.

cosmyccowboy

Stick with the small bucket, I do not believe that the Saudi little boy lovers and women beaters sill last long against the Russians, Syrians and Iranians. Their mercenaries will flee from a real fighting force!

HowdyDoody

Saudi are being setup as Zion's stooges. If they win - ZIon gets lebensraum to the north of Israel, if they lose - lebensraum to the south. The inevitable public reason for the land grab - poor defenseless little Israel needs a buffer zone between it and the Muslims.

LetThemEatRand

And once again we see who is driving American foreign policy in the Middle East -- our good friends the Royal family of Saudi Arabia. Putin really made a brilliant play on this one. Most Americans are cheering for him as he destroys the CIA created boggie man ISIS, and the CIA controlled US media doesn't know what the fuck to say about it because they've already convinced the public that ISIS is the real reason we're screwing around in Syria. Check mate unless the US decides to go full retard and start bombing the Russians based upon some false flag like the Russians bombing a hospital or something -- oops, can't really do that now either.

Bendromeda Strain

And once again we see who is driving American foreign policy in the Middle East -- our good friends the Royal family of Saudi Arabia.

Do not fail to miss the "go to" interview with the demon worshipper at The European Council of Foreign Relations. Saudi Arabia's interest just happens to *currently* align with the globalists. Convenient for them - for now.

TheReplacement

I disagree. I think the drivers are unnamed and the royals of KSA are both a faction and a pawn. They would look at themselves and see a faction. When looked down upon by TPTB they are pawns (like 99.999999% of humanity).

I also do not see most Americans cheering for Putin. I see most Americans are absolutely ignorant and clueless as per usual. Some think they are informed and think evil Putin grasping at empire. I cannot speak to Putin's motives and I do hold suspicion of anybody who has maintained power like his as long as that man. Still, I have to ask them what exactly Putin has done.

"Invaded Ukraine."

Really? Show me pictures and video that isn't years old and taken from a completely different country while I show you pictures and video of the US State Department funding and fomenting a violent uprising by neo nazis against a constitutionally elected government (this is not to say that I disagree in any way with Ukrainians taking action of their own volition but that isn't what happened).

"Well, he shot down that jetliner."

Proof? The west has all the evidence and we have no proof. You do realize the official report only confirmed that the jet was in fact shotdown. They have presented no evidence that either confirms nor denies any particular faction did in fact shoot it down.

"He's invading Syria."

Putin was invited by the Syrian government because ISIS and their allies were starting to win the war despite our forces supposedly bombing them all year. If we were bombing and droning them, in addition to the fighting by the Iraqis, Syrians, and Kurds, then why were they still winning? If Russia, Syria, and Iran all want to defeat ISIS then who is it that wants ISIS to win - who is supporting the bad guys in black if all the other bad guys are trying to kill them?

"I don't know. You wanna watch the Redsox?"

JustObserving

The corrupt, criminal, cruel cabal that rules Saudi Arabia should have collapsed years ago. So let them start another war and collapse now. Karma is a bitch. Hope ISIS are pushed into Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The US has launched 6700 airstrikes on ISIS while the Russians have apparently degraded ISIS in just 60 airstrikes. Was the US dropping care packages and videos made in Langley?

The US and its allies have carried out 6700 airstrikes at an expense of nearly $4 billion in the year since President Barack Obama ordered a campaign against Islamic State. Yet the terror group shows no sign of defeat and has even expanded its reach.

http://www.rt.com/news/314885-isis-usa-anniversary-campaign/

TheReplacement

I question that narrative. Sure a lot of ISIS fighters are probably true believers but those are the ones who will stand, fight, and be killed (blind pawns). However, seeing this is as much a covert operation as an overt operation then one has to think that the brains of the operation is made up of state operatives or mercenaries. These will not stand, fight, and die but run, re-arm, and redeploy elsewhere (Afghanistan->Stans->Russia or Afghanistan->China?).

JustObserving

Does the Doomsday clock have a seconds hand ?

Does it have a nanosecond hand?

Threat of wider war mounts as Russia continues airstrikes in Syria

More prominent are voices calling for an even more reckless US policy of escalation against both Assad and Putin. They speak for powerful sections of the foreign policy and military-intelligence establishment that are implacably hostile to the nuclear deal with Iran and bent on war with Russia and China.

John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, spoke for this faction Wednesday. He declared from the Senate floor, "Into the wreckage of this administration's Middle East policy has now stepped Putin. As in Ukraine and elsewhere, he perceives the administration's inaction and caution as weakness, and he is taking advantage."

On Thursday, McCain told CNN that he could "absolutely confirm" that the initial Russian strikes were "against our Free Syrian Army or groups that have been armed and trained by the CIA…"

McCain is implicitly-and sections of the media are explicitly-pointing to a change in the Pentagon's rules of engagement in Syria announced by the Obama administration last spring that allows US forces to combat Syrian government forces or any other group or country that attacks US-backed "rebels." This is meant to put pressure on the White House to initiate attacks not only against Damascus, but also against Moscow.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/02/syri-o02.html

falak pema

That the Sunni clans find the Russian Iran entente a threat to their creationist minded ideology is understandable--to the extent that Turkey has reverted to obscurantist logic and effaced Ataturk's legacy from its current political inclination-- and that Saud and Qatar, as inheritors of the Pax Americana Oil protected legacy, have reverted to the same ideological stance in a regressional spiral that shocks the word-- is one thing ; that the West adheres to this same logic is another. The history of the wahhabist arabs monarchies is diametrically opposed to that of the West in terms of political priorities.

The latter trend, of regression to neo-feudal ideology, is a betrayal of western values that are the bedrocks of our society.

There is no excuse for this regression, now brought out to the open by a Shia theocracy aligned with a autocratic Russia, which make the so called democratic West look like the new Evil Empire.

We are now in a spiral in West that will bring down democracy and replace it by a neo-feudal autocracy that will have nothing to envy the most evil traits of the Spanish Inquisition.

America's elites are as Trump says : a nation of neo-con elites whose mantra breeds --as incarnated by the NRA lobby --psychopathic mad shooters who have the genius of the devil.

Even Putin and Khameini look like moderates!

ThroxxOfVron

Russia is not allied with Iran.

That both Russia and Iran perceive that it is in their individual interestes to intervene in Syria does not make them allies.

The only reason that Russia and Iran welcome the others intervention is that it temporarily relieves each of them of the full weight of the financing costs of their respective interventions which would be higher if undertaken alone, and relieves both of some amount of the international political pressures being manifest by the US/Zio powers opposed to their interventions.

Russia and Iran do not share the same goals and will not employ the same methods.

Any appearance of mutual support is tangenital and temporary. It will dissipate rapidly when their true divergent interests become apparent in due course and as their opportunities in the Trans-Syrian theater evolves.

Likely the two will immediately become opponents in Syria as other forces are ejected from the theater in much the same manner as Russia and the British/US did in Germany when Berlin fell at the end of the WW2.

What I do not think is being spoken of publicly is the fact that Iraq is effectively being carved up while the focus is on Syria.

I do not think Iraq will exist, or certainly will not exist with the same territorial boundaries, when the Trans-Syrian ( Great Sunni/Shia ) War is concluded.

swmnguy

I would guess Kurdish leaders are doing everything they can to get an audience in the Kremlin about now. This is their best chance ever at an independent Kurdistan, protected by Iran and Russia. There won't ever be a better moment for them. The US has been using them as we used the Hmong in Laos in the Vietnam War. Time for the Kurds to get out of the firing line and into an arrangement with local regional powers who will actually pay them in the coin of their choosing in return for their services.

swmnguy

I don't think Saudi Arabia can do anything more than transfer some ancient handheld anti-arcraft missiles to their Syrian proxies, through third-parties. I can't imagine the Saudis openly attacking the Russians. I doubt they'd ship anything directly traceable back to them.

For some reason, nobody in the US-Saudi-Turkish-Israeli nexus thought Russia would actually intervene. I don't know why. Russia went to the mat over Syria a few years back when Obama, fresh off the triumph of turning Libya into a dumpster fire, shipped the same mercenaries who did the Gadhafi hit-job to Syria, freshly re-armed. Remember, those guys' presence was the real reason for the Benghazi fiasco; a fact HRC and the Obama Administration can't speak out loud and the GOP knows full well, making Benghazi the perfect political football.

But if you look at the atlas, and at Russian behavior since the 1970s, it's pretty obvious why they aren't going to tolerate radical insane Sunni mercenary armies running around in their backyard. In Syria, different from Ukraine, the local recognized government can invite them in. Now it looks like the local recognized government in Iraq has invited them in, too.

The US strategy of sparking and fueling a Sunni vs. Shi'a world sectarian war has taken a brutal hit. The Shi'a are in the extreme minority of Islam, but not in the Middle East, between Iran and the Mediterranean.

The Saudis will whine and cry, but not do much. Israel is going to get real quiet. I'd guess the US will cut bait on their proxies. But I'm keeping an eye on the Uighurs in China's Xinjiang Province, and the various -Stan nations. It will take a little while, but I'm guessing there will be "Mysterious", "Spontaneous" uprisings of extremist Sunni violence there. And "Mysterious" newcomers with beards and Saudi accents.

45North1

All this crap really ramped up about the time Libya was destroyed by NATO. Civilian deaths certainly have soared from 2011 to now.

Not saying there is a coincidence with respect to Libya being destroyed , but I can't help but think there is some link between liberated Libyan weapon staches and the accelerated actions of the various iterations of Syrian Rebels and re-labeled Terrorists in Syria. Syrian People have subsequently suffered. Infrastructure has been destroyed, Syria risks a future as a failed state (ala Libya) if overrun. I am sure Syria can take some comfort in knowiing that Libya got a new Central Bank as NATO munitions were still landing.)

Hopefully Policies of other players in the Syrian mess don't adopt the in for a penny , in for a pound approach to this debacle.... but I have my doubts.

Islam needs to get itself together if there is ever to be peace in the Middle East.

Pigs will probably fly first.

Atticus Finch

Brilliantly, the Russians have stolen the "War on Terror" narrative. The US psychotics, psychopaths and megalomaniacs have proven incredibly stupid. Russia asks the US to join them in fighting the war on terror. Hilarious.

Paracelsus

Correct. Gaddafi would have had tons of munitions.These were transported with US help thru Turkey into Syria.With the Iraq war destabilizing the entire region,

The Kurds were able to establish there own mini-state with the bonus of oil in the ground. Turkey has always been the weak man in the area politically, and has always opposed an
independent Kurdish nation.

I am waiting for the first Russian warplane to be brought down and the pilot roasted in a cage (on video). I can't see where the Russkies would be very happy with the CIA/Mercs who provided the ManPads for this event. The Russkies are very good at the airpower thing. The Iranians are tough on the ground. The Russkies seem to want to get this over in months or less.

Funny how they don't seem to worry about any UN Security Council condemnation. Chinese Veto?

Well, death of the PetroDollar system. History in front of our eyes.. The only wildcard is the Israelis threat to use nukes if they don't get their way. Aside from the PetroDollar collapse, there exists a strong threat of China and others dumping Treasuries on the finance markets (if they are unhappy with US foreign policy).

"May you live in interesting times".....

Truly Inspiration

You really raise serious questions about just how "intelligent" US intelligence actually is??

Why shall US target their own people when the ISIS top commander is an AMERICAN! You don't believe it?

Nada a 19 year old woman just escaped from hell,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3253107/Is-ISIS-commander-AMERIC...


sudzee

SA worried that the "coalition of the good and honest" Russia/Syria/Iran and Iraq will corner ISIS and force them south thru western Iraq/eastern Jordan into Saudi Arabia itself. The Royal Family, beheaders in chief, will receive the goes around.

AlfredNeumann

Hillary Clinton : We created Al-Qaeda
Hillary Clinton : We created Al-Qaeda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqn0bm4E9yw

Gregor Samsa

This cartoon says it best: http://sputniknews.com/cartoons/20151002/1027919479/us-russia-syria-cart...

forgotten in th...

Here some social media statements by members of the "moderate islamic opposition" that Barack Obama and his two piece of shit (Cameron and Hollande) are supporting.

From wikipedia

In response to reports of Russian intervention, the Army of Conquest's Liwa al-Haqq commander Abu Abdullah Taftanaz posted a tweet addressing the "infidel Russians", inviting them to send troops to Syria and saying that "we have thousands like Khattab" who would "slaughter your pigs".[76][77] Abu Abdullah Taftanaz also tweeted Russian military terms for Syrian rebels to familiarize themselves with if they intercepted Russian radio chatter.[78][79][80][81][82] Reportedly Chechen and Caucasian foreign fighters have begun flocking to the coastal regions of Syria where the Russians are based in order to seek them out.[83]

Ahmad Eissa al-Sheikh, a commander in Turkish/Saudi-backed Ahrar ash-Sham,[84] threatened to bring upon "Russian hell in a Levantine flavor" if they encountered the Russians.[85][86] Harakat Fajr ash-Sham al-Islamiya leader Abu Abdullah ash-Shami tweeted about the "globalization" of the "Levantine Jihad".[87][88] He also tweeted that on the Russians and said that "The Levant will become their graveyard, with the permission of Allah".[89] The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front[90] has set a reward for the seizure of Russian soldiers of 2,500,000 Syrian pounds (approximately US$13,000).[91][92]

The Syria based, Al-Qaeda linked Saudi cleric Abdallah Muhammad Al-Muhaysini threatened that Syria would be a "tomb for its invaders" or "graveyard for invaders" in response to the Russian intervention and brought up the Soviet war in Afghanistan.[93][94][95]

AlfredNeumann
Syria Update# Air Duel between the Sukhoi Su - 30 Russian SM and Israeli F-15 Tags:
Six Russian fighter jets type Multirole Sukhoi SU - 30 SM have intercepted 4 Israeli McDonnell Douglas F-15's fighter bombers attempting to infiltrate the Syrian coast.The Israeli F 15 warplanes have been flying over Syrian airspace for months and in particular the coast of Latakia, which is now the bridgehead of the Russian forces in Syria.

The Israeli jets would generally follow a fairly complex flight plan and approach Latakia from the sea

On the night of 1 October 02, 2015, six Sukhoi SU-30 Russian SM fighters took off from the Syrian Hmimim airbase in the direction of Cyprus, before changing course and intercepting the four Israeli F-15 fighters off the coast of Syria, that were flying in attack formation.

Surprised by a situation as unexpected and probably not prepared for a dogfight with one of the best Russian multipurpose fighters, Israeli pilots have quickly turned back South at high speed over the Lebanon.

The mighty Israeli military doesn't do so well against opponents who can actually fight back! They'll probably bomb Gaza again so they can feel butch about themselves!

Read more: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED | The History The US Government HOPES You Never Learn! http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz3ncnOMUxV

Amun

"on November 2, 1917, British imperialism in Palestine began when Lord Balfour, the then British foreign secretary and former prime minister, sent a letter to Baron Rothschild, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement. This letter became known as the "Balfour Declaration".

In that letter, Balfour promised British support for the Zionist programme of establishing a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. This pledge of support was made without consulting the indigenous Christian and Muslim inhabitants of Palestine, the Palestinian people. And it was made before British troops had even conquered the land.

Balfour, on behalf of Britain, promised Palestine – over which Britain had no legal right – to a people who did not even live there (of the very small community of Palestinian Jews in Palestine in 1917, very few were Zionists). And he did so with the worst of intentions: to discourage Jewish immigration to Britain. No wonder Lord Montagu, the only Jewish member of the Cabinet, opposed the declaration.

And yet, just two years earlier, Britain had committed herself to assisting the Arab nations in achieving their independence from the Ottoman Empire. Arab fighters all over the region, including thousands of Palestinians, fought for their freedom, allowing Britain to establish her mandate in Palestine. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/9645925/Britain-must-atone-for-its-sins-in-Palestine.html

Abiesalba 1 Oct 2015 14:29

With respect to the total mess in Syria, to my knowledge there has been only one recent poll conducted across Syria (see below). The pollsters say that the poll is representative of the people of Syria. A similar poll was also conducted in Iraq. Both polls were conducted in June-July 2015:
-
82% of Syrians agree that ISIS was foreign-created by the US (17% disagree).

85% of Iraqis agree that ISIS was foreign-created by the US (10% disagree).
-
-
Among the warring sides in Syria, Assad has the highest (!) support – 47% of Syrians think he has a POSITIVE influence (50% negative) .

Compare to the groups which the US 'coalition' and the Anglo-Americans media claim we should all support:

Free Syrian Army – 35% positive, 63% negative

Syrian Opposition Coalition – 26% positive, 72% negative
-
Considering the polling results, anyone claiming that Assad should be removed is working AGAINST half of the Syrians. Putin is right – Assad has to be included in any solution to the war. Else, there will immediately a rebellion of half of Syrians against FOREIGN powers toppling Assad.

Assad will not come to the negotiating table without Putin.

Besides, it is clear that for Syrians (and Iraqis), the truly BAD guys are the Americans.
-
-
PUBLIC OPINION IN SYRIA
-
Fieldwork: June 10 to July 2

Respondents: 1,365 Syrians from all 14 governorates of the country
-
-
Thinking about the persons and the groups which are working now in Syria, Generally, do you think that their influence is negative or positive on the matters in Syria
-
Positive … Negative
-
47% … 50% … Bashar al-Asad
43% … 55% … Iran
37% … 55% … Arab Gulf Countries
35% … 63% … Nusra Front
35% … 63% … Free Syrian Army
26% … 72% … Syrian Opposition Coalition
21% … 76% … Islamic State
-
-
There are many reasons around to explain the presence of ISIL in Iraq/Syria, please tell me if strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or a strongly disagree for the reason that explains the presence of ISIL?
-
Agree … Disagree
-
82% … 17% … ISIL is foreign made by the US

59% … 40% … As a result of widespread sectarian politics in the Arab countries and in Turkey

55% … 44% …ISIL is made by some Arab regimes

50% … 48% … ISIL is created by foreign countries to find a balance with Iran

44% … 55% … Wrong policies pursued by the Syrian government

42% … 56% … Syrian regime made ISIL for marking the opposition to terrorism

39% … 57% … Iran is supporting this organization to weaken Iraq and take it under its control

22% … 76% … Sectarian congestion that has arisen in Syria
-
-
Do you support or oppose the international coalition airstrikes in Syria?
-
Support … Oppose

47% … 50%
-
-
According to your view, which of the following represent the best solution for the crisis which Syria is in today?
-
51% … Political solution
37% … Military solution
-
-
Note: The poll has a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.

Sources:

Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS (16 September 2015)

Full polling reports by the British ORB International (affiliate of WIN/Gallup International):

* Syria http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/syriadata.pdf

* Iraq http://www.opinion.co.uk/perch/resources/iraqdata.pdf

[Oct 04, 2015] Gulf states plan military response as Putin raises the stakes in Syria

Notable quotes:
"... The Russian intervention is a massive setback for those states backing the opposition, particularly within the region – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – and is likely to elicit a strong response in terms of a counter-escalation ..."
"... Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already embroiled in an expensive and bloody war in Yemen that may limit both their military and financial resources. ..."
Oct 04, 2015 | The Guardian

Regional powers have quietly, but effectively, channelled funds, weapons and other support to rebel groups making the biggest inroads against the forces from Damascus. In doing so, they are investing heavily in a conflict which they see as part of a wider regional struggle for influence with bitter rival Iran.

In a week when Russia made dozens of bombing raids, those countries have made it clear that they remain at least as committed to removing Assad as Moscow is to preserving him.

"There is no future for Assad in Syria," Saudi foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir warned, a few hours before the first Russian bombing sorties began. If that was not blunt enough, he spelled out that if the president did not step down as part of a political transition, his country would embrace a military option, "which also would end with the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power".

... ... ...

"The Russian intervention is a massive setback for those states backing the opposition, particularly within the region – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – and is likely to elicit a strong response in terms of a counter-escalation," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

... ... ...

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already embroiled in an expensive and bloody war in Yemen that may limit both their military and financial resources.

[Oct 04, 2015] My comprehensive plan for US policy on the Middle East

Crooked Timber

5566hh, 10.04.15 at 2:02 am

Seriously though, I think a non-plan isn't really that useful. Why not have an actual plan? Something like this:
  1. End all drone strikes
  2. Cut off all military aid to countries in the Middle East
  3. Cut off diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia
  4. End all CIA or other covert support for groups in the region
  5. Put sanctions on any state in the region that funds terrorist groups
  6. Abolish the CIA, or at least covert CIA political interventions (this would help to address a lot of other problems outside the region too)
  7. Withdraw all US forces from the Middle East
  8. Encourage Britain to abandon its plans for a base in Bahrain
  9. Provide development aid (non-military) to the region
  10. Put diplomatic pressure on repressive regimes in the region

Val, 10.04.15 at 3:12 am

A U.S. air strike killed 20 MSF workers and patients in Afghanistan. A U.S. spokesperson called it collateral damage

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/03/kunduz-charity-hospital-bombing-violates-international-law

It's bullshit. That's what contemporary warfare does – kills civilians. The vast majority of those who die in contemporary warfare are civilians. It's not collateral damage, it's what war does. I don't know (as I've written on my blog) how anyone can justify war these days.

Frank Wilhoit, 10.04.15 at 3:17 am

The United States has only one option left in the Middle East. That is to build a time machine, go back to 1911, and prevent Winston Churchill and Jacky Fisher from converting the British Navy from coal to oil. Admittedly, serious obstacles stand in the way of implementing this approach, but there is no alternative.

John Quiggin, 10.04.15 at 3:40 am

@5 This amounts to spelling out my plan

@8 Or, alternatively, set the time machine for 2015, when the US is virtually self-sufficient in oil, and the price is at a historic low (the supposed need to control ME oil was always nonsense, but it's nonsense on stilts now)

[Oct 03, 2015] The Tragedy of American Diplomacy by William Appleman Williams

J. Lindner, June 7, 2004

In the Tragedy of American Diplomacy, William Appleman Williams illustrates how America fails to honor its own principles when it approaches foreign policy. America believes in self-determination and the right to develop its own brand of democracy. Unfortunately, no other nation is afforded the luxury of self discovery. Other nations must conform to America's vision of democracy or face the terror of America?s military might. This, to Williams, is the tragedy.

Cuba is his first case. America wanted Cuba to adhere to American visions which meant wealth for the sugar planters and their American backers. When Cuba sought its own course and threw off a repressive regime, America objected. The rift has existed ever since as no American administration will ever acknowledge Cuba's right to govern its own affairs so long as Castro is in power.
Williams then systematically follows the years from 1898 through 1961 and paints a similar picture. It does not take the reader long to get the idea and carry the argument beyond Williams' parameters and show that everything from Grenada to Lebanon to Afghanistan to Iraq can be shown in the same light. American puppet governments are not granting freedom and democracy to their constituents as much as they are part of a ruling class dominated by the business interests that exploit their workforce and deny requests for reform until the entire population is ripe for rebellion (remember the Shah of Iran). One wonders if the Saudi government is the next great western ally to fall victim to a popular revolt of Muslim fundamentalists.

Williams is a master of detail and works his arguments creatively in an entertaining fashion. Neoconservatives of today will have the same objections as their predecessors from the 1950s in acknowledging Williams as a valid author. But Williams makes a strong case and if more people were exposed to his writing, our country might even find a way to avoid the same pitfalls. A Saudi revolution would disrupt oil markets and jeopardize world economies. Perhaps if some thought is put into policy such a scenario is avoidable and preventable. If people are willing to give Williams a chance American foreign policy might eventually reflect a broader American vision rather than the interests of a few.

Karun Mukherji, April 8, 2006

Erudite, splendidly crafted, fine piece of scholarhip

Williams book explores paradoxical nature of US Foreign Policy.

Firstly author refutes orthodox view that accidental, inadvertent turn of events transformed America into a global power. Williams has argued market forces unleashed by private free enterprise economy dictated the growth of American power; it has also molded country's foreign policy and continues to do so. To comprehend this fully one has to understand the intricacies of Capitalism.

It goes without saying that Capitalism carries within it the seed of self destruction. Late 19th century American economy was convulsed by frequent bouts of economic depression which led to wide spread social unrest. Home markets saturated with goods which people find difficult to absorb as they had only limited purchasing power. 'Frontier' had close down and country's leading intellectuals [William Jackson Turner ,Brooke Adams, Alfred Thayer Mahan] frantically called for overseas expansion avert an impending economic doom

Thus economic considerations compelled successive American Presidents [Grover Clevland, William Mckinley, Thedore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson] to remake the world in America's image. Unfortunately this policy boomeranged because Afro ,Asian, Latin American world refused to share American view.

Iniquitous, unfair trade practised by US helped Washington to enrich in detriment to welfare of latter economies. This was closely followed by American tendency to externalise evil. It posits the view that other nations have a stake in America's continued, prosperous existence. This preposterous notion, according to the author, has been the starting point America's troubles. Actually problem lay in fundamental nature of capitalist economy. Attempts to reverse this trend triggered counter revolutionary wars in Asia, Latin America. The above feature forms essence of this book; this idea continues to permeate the book.

Williams provide fresh interpretation on the onset of Cold War. He holds Truman administration accountable for the coming of iron curtain in Eastern Europe. Firstly in immediate postwar years US taking advantage of its economic might tried to extend its 'open door' policy into Eastern Europe. Further exploiting atomic monopoly the President tried to reverse political order which emerged in areas under Soviet control.

We may pause here try to establish reasons behind America's post war hostility toward Soviet Union. Unlike Britain which during the days of the empire could invest and dominate worldwide, America upon the end of World War II inherited a divided world.

Soviet economy with its emphasis on industrial self sufficiency apart from shutting the door US investment was in the process of curtailing imports substantially. With the success of Communist revolution 1/3rd of world's population had wrenched free from capitalist sphere influence. With so much production capacity lying idle, US by the end of World War II was haunted by a spectre of another depression. Challenge before America -- challenges her still-wheather market will shrink.

Marshall plan leading to massive post war reconstruction Western Europe must be seen from this angle. Rebuilding war-ravaged economies stimulated economic growth in US. Thus in my opinion Marshall plan must not be construed as a manifestation of American altruism; it was motivated by economic self interest.

Author's stress upon market forces dictating the American destiny broadly agrees with Marxian interpretation of History. Perhaps this was reason why Williams was dubbed Marxist, Stalinist by conservative, liberal elite of his country. This book deserves to be read by those who believe current anti American sentiment sweeping the world stems from sheer envy for American prosperity.

Tim, December 31, 2009

Creates a clear path through 20th century American history

The fact that this book has become a classic is hardly debatable. Williams' examination of American foreign policy is now in its fourth printing with this 50th anniversary edition. The book takes a detailed look at "The Open Door Policy" which evolved out The Open Door Notes of the late 19th century. It shows that, for better or worse, American Capitalism had to find and constantly expand into foreign markets in order for there to be freedom and prosperity at home.

Williams argues that not only American leaders but the general population internalized this belief so deeply that it was considered the very basis of morality in the world. Any other way of looking at society was believed to be simply wrong, and in fact, evil. Williams undoubtedly knew that this way of looking at Capitalism, and the world at large, coincided directly with the predictions of Marx concerning Capitalism's globalization. The Policy of the Open Door can be used to explain the objectives of every foreign military excursion we have undertaken since the end of the 1800's.

It continues to this day in our oil-hungry drive for control of the nations in the Middle East and South Asia. It creates real and imagined enemies that have accounted for the build up of America's military might over the years. Overall I found this examination of American foreign policy to be quite satisfactory and rational in explaining the successes and failures of American actions over the years. Where I would criticize Williams is in his characterization of America's leaders having a truly benevolent anti-colonial attitude towards the lesser nations in which America invested and set up "trade".

Williams argued repeatedly, and the commentators in the 50th anniversary edition did as well, that the government really believed they were benefiting mankind as a whole by not only exporting America's goods, but American values, and that the only "Tragedy" was the failure of these policies. I think it a bit uncritical to state this unequivocally. To argue that American leaders (both government and civilian) did NOT know that they were exploiting nations and purposely directing the trade to benefit Americans regardless of the effect on foreigners is quite bold. I believe that the greed of Americans and the drive that is inherent in Capitalistic countries meant that these leaders knew EXACTLY what they were doing, and that they had little true regard for the welfare of nations.

Our failure to see that there is more than one way for societies to organize themselves is certainly a problem of ignorance in American culture, and Williams is right to argue that blaming America's leaders becomes a scapegoat. Americans need to change themselves first and realize the error of their ways...that it will cause destruction at home and abroad...before we will see any change in leadership and our destructive policies.

However, the American empire is really not that different than others in history. The drive for power becomes all consuming, and ultimately leads to disregard for humanity...unless that humanity happens to be at the top of the American food chain.

[Oct 03, 2015] Germany to supply Ferguson insurgents in the US with weapons

"... Translator's note: I like satire: just change a few words, and this could be your newspaper, or some pages in the Congressional Record. Satire actually helps one realize what is going on. ..."
Oct 03, 2015 | fortruss.blogspot.be

October 1, 2015 | Fort Russ

Translated from German by Tom Winter

Translator's note: I like satire: just change a few words, and this could be your newspaper, or some pages in the Congressional Record. Satire actually helps one realize what is going on.

The Federal government of Germany wants to supply weapons to insurgents in the US.

"The red line has been crossed!" With these words, a visibly frayed Foreign Minister Steinmeier appeared this morning before the press. "With the murder of yet another black activist, the Obama regime once again shows its ugly head!". Background: On August 09, the totally unarmed black civil rights activists Michael Brown was shot by police. Now on August 19, another black activist in St. Louis, not far from Ferguson, has been shot in cold blood by white policemen.

"The world can not continue to stand idly by," Steinmeier stressed at the press conference. "Here are peaceful human rights activists protesting against heavily armed police in a profoundly racist apartheid regime."

Therefore, the point now been reached, "in which Germany, too, must take responsibility for the oppressed peoples of the world," said Steinmeier.

As several media have unanimously reported, the government is now considering supplying arms to the rebels.

Next comes consideration what to supply in support of the rebels in Ferguson: protective vests, helmets, and night vision devices, and light infantry weapons?

Many MPs in the government coalition feel this does not go far enough. Given that the police and National Guard are geared up with weapons of war like an army, several CDU MPs are calling for supplying the rebels with heavier munitions. "We are currently discussing the proposals," an unnamed deputy is quoted. "We cannot rule out that the weapons may end up falling into the wrong hands."

In view of these events in the US, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen will not rule out the use of Bundeswehr soldiers. However, out of sensitivity and respect for the local activists "only colored members of the Bundeswehr would participate in such a mission."

Mid-East Coup As Russia Pounds Militant Targets, Iran Readies Ground Invasions While Saudis Panic

Zero Hedge
Dutti

Congratulations to Russia and Iran to standing up [to neocons strategy], I hope their strategy will work.

Why can Saudi-Arabia with the approval of the western powers bomb a foreign country, Jemen, without Jemen having attacked Saudi? Of course Saudi claims they do it at the request of the president Hadi of Jemen who fled to Saudi. If that is accepted by western powers, then how would those western powers have reacted if Russia would have attacked and bombed the Ukraine, at the request of the democratically elected president Yanukovich who fled to Russia?

I think the house of Saud is setting itself up for real bad long-term Karma or, if you prefer, the Saudis create a lot of enemies for themselves by destroying the people and their neighboring country of Jemen. Reminds me of why Americans are often times not liked in many parts of the world.

Americans often claim that Assad is a Tyrant, a Murderer and a Dictator and that's why he must go. Why does the US not call the House of Saud by the same names and try to overthrow them? I guess because the House of Saud is an obedient servant of the US, and Assad is cooperating with a different power - Russia.

The western mainstream media treats the Saudi atrocities in Jemen as a sideshow, while blowing up the story about Assad and demonizing him. What's the alternative to Assad?

Let's see how other countries, Iraq and Libya, with worse Tyrants - Saddam Hussein and Ghaddafi have "developed", thanks to western intervention.

In addition, the US is always talking about the evil Iranians, and how they took American hostages back in 1979. You don't hear much about the fact that the US staged a coup in 1953, deposed the democratically elected president Mossadegh and installed the Shah, who, just like the House of Saud became a servant for US interests. After the Iranians were finally able to get rid of the Shah who had been in power for over 25 years they understandably did not have much love left for the US. The pendulum went to the other side.

If you look at all these facts in context, it's easy to see the hypocrisy of the US and it's western "allies".

Lost My Shorts

It sounds like -- we are covertly supporing ISIS while pretending to attack them, and getting huffy because Putin is really attacking them. Or wandering around like a headless chicken. Or just wasting money. Not sure.

Crash Overide

"Remind me ... WTF are we doing in Syria ?!"

Trying to profit from destruction and keep control on the US civilian population through fear of boogeyman terrorists.

Just remember, when they fail abroad, they will start chaos at home.

Lock and load my fellow countrymen... eyes open.

[Oct 03, 2015] The Mind of Mr. Putin By Patrick J. Buchanan

October 02, 2015 | Information Clearing House

...Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us.

  • Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are once again fighting Taliban forces for control of Kunduz. Only 10,000 U.S. troops still in that ravaged country prevent the Taliban's triumphal return to power.
  • A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar's capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us - to Tehran. The cost to Iraqis of their "liberation"? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.
  • How has Libya fared since we "liberated" that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist "Libya Dawn" in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt's dictator.
  • Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world. Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a "humanitarian catastrophe." "Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years," said the international head of the Red Cross on his return. On Monday, the wedding party of a Houthi fighter was struck by air-launched missiles with 130 guests dead. Did we help to produce that?

What does Putin see as the ideological root of these disasters?

"After the end of the Cold War, a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think they were strong and exceptional, they knew better."

Then, adopting policies "based on self-conceit and belief in one's exceptionality and impunity," this "single center of domination," the United States, began to export "so-called democratic" revolutions.

How did it all turn out? Says Putin:

"An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life."

Is Putin wrong in his depiction of what happened to the Middle East after we plunged in? Or does his summary of what American interventions have wrought echo the warnings made against them for years by American dissenters?

Putin concept of "state sovereignty" is this: "We are all different, and we should respect that. No one has to conform to a single development model that someone has once and for all recognized as the right one." The Soviet Union tried that way, said Putin, and failed. Now the Americans are trying the same thing, and they will reach the same end.

Unlike most U.N. speeches, Putin's merits study. For he not only identifies the U.S. mindset that helped to produce the new world disorder, he identifies a primary cause of the emerging second Cold War.

To Putin, the West's exploitation of its Cold War victory to move NATO onto Russia's doorstep caused the visceral Russian recoil. The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government led straight to the violent reaction in the pro-Russian Donbas.

What Putin seems to be saying to us is this: If America's elites continue to assert their right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations, to make them conform to a U.S. ideal of what is a good society and legitimate government, then we are headed for endless conflict. And, one day, this will inevitably result in war, as more and more nations resist America's moral imperialism.

Nations have a right to be themselves, Putin is saying. They have the right to reflect in their institutions their own histories, beliefs, values and traditions, even if that results in what Americans regard as illiberal democracies or authoritarian capitalism or even Muslim theocracies.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans had no problem with this, when Americans accepted a diversity of regimes abroad. Indeed, a belief in nonintervention abroad was once the very cornerstone of American foreign policy.

Wednesday and Thursday, Putin's forces in Syria bombed the camps of U.S.-backed rebels seeking to overthrow Assad. Putin is sending a signal: Russia is willing to ride the escalator up to a collision with the United States to prevent us and our Sunni Arab and Turkish allies from dumping over Assad, which could bring ISIS to power in Damascus.

Perhaps it is time to climb down off our ideological high horse and start respecting the vital interests of other sovereign nations, even as we protect and defend our own.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

[Oct 02, 2015] Showdown at the UN Corral

Antiwar.com
If there was any doubt that Washington has learned absolutely nothing since George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, then President Obama's address to the United Nations has confirmed the world's worst fears. It was an oration that combined the most egregious lies with the wooly-minded "idealism" that has been such a destructive force in world affairs since the days of Woodrow Wilson. First, the lies:

"The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians. These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood and landed in opposition neighborhoods. It's an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack."

The evidence is far from "overwhelming," and the only insult to human reason is the dogmatic repetition of this American talking point. As Seymour Hersh pointed out in the London Review of Books:

"Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country's civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad."

And this isn't the only time this President hasn't told the whole story when it comes to the findings of US intelligence agencies: that's why fifty intelligence analysts are in open revolt at his cherry-picking of intelligence in order to show we're making progress in the fight against the Islamic State. And now we have former CIA chief David Petraeus, who was forced to resign, openly coming out with a proposal that we ally with the al-Nusra Front in order to overthrow Assad and edge out the Islamic State. Shouldn't that arouse suspicion that Washington has been covertly cooperating with al-Nusra – the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda – all along, and that Petraeus merely wants to formalize his deal with the Islamist Devil?

Here's another lie:

"[I]n Libya, when the Security Council provided a mandate to protect civilians, America joined a coalition that took action. Because of what we did there, countless lives were saved and a tyrant could not kill his way back to power.

"I know that some now criticize the action in Libya as an object lesson, that point to the problem that the country now confronts, a democratically elected government struggling to provide security, armed groups in some places, extremists ruling parts of the fractured land. And so these critics argue that any intervention to protect civilians is doomed to fail. Look at Libya.

"And no one's more mindful of these problems than I am, for they resulted in the death of four outstanding U.S. citizens who were committed to the Libyan people, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, a man whose courageous efforts helped save the city of Benghazi.

"But does anyone truly believe that the situation in Libya would be better, if Gadhafi had been allowed to kill, imprison or brutalize his people into submission? It's far more likely that without international action, Libya would now be engulfed in civil war and bloodshed."

It is beyond embarrassing that the President of the United States is going before the world assembly of nations proclaiming that he and his allies prevented Libya from being "engulfed in civil war and bloodshed." What does he think is happening there at this very moment?

The reality is that the intelligence did not show a "genocide" was in the making. Officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency – the same agency now being accused by its analysts of "cooking" intelligence to suit the administration's political agenda – could provide no empirical evidence for the assertions made by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Col. Moammar Gaddafi was planning on slaughtering civilians en masse.

The claims made by the Obama administration that intervention was the only alternative to "genocide" were contested, at the time, by Alan J. Kuperman, writing in the Boston Globe:

"The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially – including Zawiya, Misurata, and Ajdabiya, which together have a population greater than Benghazi."

"It is hard to know," Kuperman continues, "whether the White House was duped by the rebels or conspired with them to pursue regime-change on bogus humanitarian grounds." With the truth-challenged Hillary Clinton at the helm of this misbegotten misadventure, it isn't at all hard to draw the conclusion that the "genocide" claim was an outright lie perpetrated by the administration and its Libyan Islamist allies.

That these brazen falsehoods are coupled with phrases oozing with liberal "idealism," calls for "international cooperation," and proclamations that all Washington desires is "peace" throughout the Middle East and the world makes for a toxic and particularly nauseating cocktail. Bashar al-Assad is a "tyrant," but the regime of Gen. Abdel al-Sisi, which overthrew the democratically elected government, is merely guilty of making "decisions inconsistent with inclusive democracy."

Speaking of Assad, Obama's focus wasn't on the spread of the Islamic State but on the Syrian strongman, who is barely holding on to power by his fingernails. He cited Washington's support for the so-called "moderate" rebels, but complained that – for some unspecified reason – "extremist groups have still taken root to exploit the crisis." What he didn't mention – although Putin did – is that these alleged "moderates" have gone over to the extremists in droves, raising the question: were these US-funded Good Guys always Bad Guys in an ill-fitting disguise?

[Editorial note: This is the first part of a two-part column contrasting President Obama's UN speech to the address delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The second part, dealing with Putin's remarks, will be published on Friday.]

[Sep 30, 2015] Obama, Putin need steady nerves & stout hearts in Syria by M.K. Bhadrakumar

September 30, 2015 | Asia Times

The best thing about the ninety-minute meeting between the US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in New York on Monday was that they agreed there was not going to be any recourse to rhetoric. Putin, accordingly, handled the media himself and the White House refrained from releasing the customary readout.

A senior US official said the talks were "productive" and he calmed down the American media, explaining "this was not a situation where either one of them [Obama or Putin] was seeking to score points". Putin's interaction with the Russian media conveyed the impression that he too was satisfied with the outcome of the meeting.

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had previously met US Secretary of State John Kerry and handed over to him a 'flow chart' on the implementation of the Minsk agreements on Ukraine. Indeed, Putin also used an interview with Charlie Rose at CBS to speak without diplomatese on the Kremlin thinking regarding Syria and Ukraine.

In remarks to Russian media, Putin described his talks with Obama as "very useful and what is particularly pleasant, it was very sincere". He struck a positive tone, saying the American side explained their position "quite clearly" and "indeed, surprising as it may seem, we have many coinciding points and opinions".

Putin acknowledged the differences, but refused to be drawn into them – except on the central issue that the air strikes in Syria by the US-led coalition are incompatible with international law.

... ... ...

Obama could not have agreed with the line of Russian thinking on strengthening "al-Assad's army" – at least, not yet openly. But an increasingly wider audience in the West has learnt to live with that thought. Putin simply drew satisfaction for the moment that despite differences, "we have agreed to work together".

However, a senior US official maintained separately that the two sides fundamentally disagreed on the role that President Bashar al-Assad will play in resolving the civil conflict in Syria. The official explained that while Moscow sees Assad as a bulwark against the extremists, the Americans see him as continuing to fan the flames of a sectarian conflict in Syria.

Of course, Putin insists that the future of al-Assad is not for outsiders to propose but is the exclusive business of Syrian citizens. The principle is unquestionable. The US faces an acute dilemma here insofar as in a democratic election, Assad's re-election as president still remains a strong possibility, since secular-minded Syrians cutting across religious sects or ethnic divides would still see him as the best bet against an extremist takeover.

... ... ...


The discussions relating to Syria and the Islamic State apparently marginalized the Ukraine crisis, but tensions are not so acute on that front lately. Putin hinted that the US is now putting its weight behind the Normandy Format (comprising the leaderships of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine), allowing it to spearhead the conflict resolution in Ukraine. A Normandy Format summit meeting is due to take place Friday in Paris.

... ... ...

[Sep 30, 2015] Obama Re-Defines Democracy – A Country that Supports U.S. Policy naked capitalism by Michael Hudson

September 29, 2015

In his Orwellian September 28, 2015 speech to the United Nations, President Obama said that if democracy had existed in Syria, there never would have been a revolt against Assad. By that, he meant ISIL. Where there is democracy, he said, there is no violence of revolution.

This was his threat to promote revolution, coups and violence against any country not deemed a "democracy." In making this hardly veiled threat, he redefined the word in the international political vocabulary. Democracy is the CIA's overthrow of Mossedegh in Iran to install the Shah. Democracy is the overthrow of Afghanistan's secular government by the Taliban against Russia. Democracy is the Ukrainian coup behind Yats and Poroshenko. Democracy is Pinochet. It is "our bastards," as Lyndon Johnson said with regard to the Latin American dictators installed by U.S. foreign policy.

A century ago the word "democracy" referred to a nation whose policies were formed by elected representatives. Ever since ancient Athens, democracy was contrasted to oligarchy and aristocracy. But since the Cold War and its aftermath, that is not how U.S. politicians have used the term. When an American president uses the word "democracy," he means a pro-American country following U.S. neoliberal policies. No matter if a country is a military dictatorship or the government was brought in by a coup (euphemized as a Color Revolution) as in Georgia or Ukraine. A "democratic" government has been re-defined simply as one supporting the Washington Consensus, NATO and the IMF. It is a government that shifts policy-making out of the hands of elected representatives to an "independent" central bank, whose policies are dictated by the oligarchy centered in Wall Street, the City of London and Frankfurt.

Given this American re-definition of the political vocabulary, when President Obama says that such countries will not suffer coups, violent revolution or terrorism, he means that countries safely within the U.S. diplomatic orbit will be free of destabilization sponsored by the U.S. State Department, Defense Department and Treasury. Countries whose voters democratically elect a government or regime that acts independently (or even that simply seeks the power to act independently of U.S. directives) will be destabilized, Syria style, Ukraine style or Chile style under General Pinochet. As Henry Kissinger said, just because a country votes in communists doesn't mean that we have to accept it. It is the style of "color revolutions" sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy.

In his United Nations reply, Russian President Putin warned against the "export of democratic revolution," meaning by the United States in support of its local factotums. ISIL is armed with U.S. weapons and its soldiers were trained by U.S. armed forces. In case there was any doubt, President Obama reiterated before the United Nations that until Syrian President Assad was removed in favor of one more submissive to U.S. oil and military policy, Assad was the major enemy, not ISIL.

"It is impossible to tolerate the present situation any longer," President Putin responded. Likewise in Ukraine. "What I believe is absolutely unacceptable," he said in his CBS interview on 60 Minutes, "is the resolution of internal political issues in the former USSR Republics, through "color revolutions," through coup d'états, through unconstitutional removal of power. That is totally unacceptable. Our partners in the United States have supported those who ousted Yanukovych. … We know who and where, when, who exactly met with someone and worked with those who ousted Yanukovych, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which countries, and who those instructors were. We know everything."

Where does this leave U.S.-Russian relations? I hoped for a moment that perhaps Obama's harsh anti-Russian talk was to provide protective coloration for an agreement with Putin in their 5 o'clock meeting. Speak one way so as to enable oneself to act in another has always been his modus operandi, as it is for many politicians. But Obama remains in the hands of the neocons.

Where will this lead? There are many ways to think outside the box. What if Putin proposes to air-lift or ship Syrian refugees – up to a third of the population – to Europe, landing them in Holland and England, obliged under the Shengen rules to accept them?

Or what if he brings the best computer specialists and other skilled labor for which Syria is renowned to Russia, supplementing the flood of immigration from "democratic" Ukraine?

What if the joint plans announced on Sunday between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Russia to jointly fight ISIS – a coalition that US/NATO has refrained from joining – comes up against U.S. troops or even the main funder of ISIL, Saudi Arabia?

The game is out of America's hands now. All it is able to do is wield the threat of "democracy" as a weapon of coups to turn recalcitrant countries into Libyas, Iraqs and Syrias.

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "KILLING THE HOST: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy."

nippersdad, September 29, 2015 at 10:22 am

"We know who and where, when, who exactly met with someone and worked with those who ousted Yanukovich, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which countries, and who those instructors were. We know everything."

That sounds like a pretty clear threat to the Democratic front runner for the Presidency to come to terms, or else. While it is good to see someone threatening accountability, it would be nice if it didn't have to come from Russia.

ifthethunderdontgetya™ł˛®©

September 29, 2015 at 11:49 am

Accountability will not come from an Administration that made Victoria Nuland an Assistant Secretary of State in the first place.

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/

nippersdad, September 29, 2015 at 1:41 pm

No doubt, but I was kind of hoping that the progressive caucuses might make more of a fuss than they did over our "the king is dead, long live the king", foreign policy. That is, after all, what got many of them elected. It never ceases to amaze me how fast candidates become coopted by the establishment once elected.

Synoia, September 29, 2015 at 2:03 pm

The establishment has files on them. Hudson's piece reads as a prelude to war.

Nick, September 29, 2015 at 10:38 am

This post is nothing but tinfoil-hattery. I can assure you, the US is shedding no tears for the pain Russia is about to inflict on itself by putting Russian boots on the ground in Damascus.

OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 11:10 am

Did a latter-day Charlie Wilson tell you that? I have no doubt that the stuck-in-the-past meatheads in DC have a wet dream over just such a scenario. I also have no doubt that Russia (as well as China and Iran) have no intention of falling into such a trap. The ongoing peeling-off of Euro/NATO lemmings is as clear indication as any that the US will end up either backing off or try to go it alone. The latter is a recipe for disaster, as even Obama realizes. So right now it's all posturing for domestic consumption, behind the scenes things are a bit different as certain recent incidents would seem to indicate. But hey, we can dream the Russophobic/Slavophobic dreams, amiright?


lylo, September 29, 2015 at 12:05 pm

Yeah, my reading too.

I also have to point out how ironic it is that a country stuck in several unresolved conflicts that continue to drain resources and produce instability years later is hoping that, somehow, their opponents get suckered into a quagmire in a country they are already stuck in.

So, sure, I guess that's what they're hoping for. Makes about as much sense as anything else they've come up with recently (including direct confrontation with Russia just to enrich a few ME and corporate pals.)

And "tinfoil hattery" is generally used as things not accepted and proven. Which part of this isn't proven? US toppling democracies and installing dictators who we then call democratic? That we have less pull on the international stage than anytime in our lives? That the other bloc has a serious advantage in this conflict, and going forward? These are all facts…


washunate, September 30, 2015 at 12:10 pm

Give Nick a little credit now; there is a shred of cleverness to the comment(!). He's trying to plant a big lie inside of the framing – namely, that the rise of IS is a legitimate rebellion within Syria.

When of course the truth is the opposite. It's IS that is the foreign invader; Russian boots on the ground would be working with the recognized government, not against it. Indeed, the comparison might inadvertently be quite apt. Syria looks more and more like a marker on the road from Pax Americana to a multipolar world. Just like the Soviet-Afghan war was a marker on the road from the Cold War to Pax Americana.

Perhaps another incident is a better comparison. Maybe Syria is our Suez moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

Thure Meyer, September 29, 2015 at 11:15 am

Nick,

Tinfoil-hattery, interesting choice of words. So who's conspiracy are you talking about?

As to your assurance; well it would be a bit more convincing if you were to unveil your identity so that I know who speaks for all of us (US)...

readerOfTeaLeaves, September 29, 2015 at 2:32 pm

Oh, crikey Nick.
What codswaddle!

As near as I can tell, the US Foreign Policy establishment is driven by think tanks that are funded by oil companies, Saudis, Israelis, and others for whom 'putting America first' means covering their own asses and letting the US military (and well-compensated military contractors) do all the heavy lifting.

As if that weren't bad enough, we also have the R2Pers ("responsibility to protect"), whose hypocrisy could gag a maggot - the R2Pers seem to think it is urgent to solve every other nation's (and corporations) problems - indeed, so very urgent that kids from Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho, etc should all be sent into harm's way in distant lands, whose languages the R2Pers don't happen to speak, whose histories the R2Pers are ignorant about, and whose cultural nuances are unknown to the R2Pers.

IOW, Washington DC appears to be awash in egoism and careerism.

I think that Russians have managed to figure that out.

washunate, September 30, 2015 at 11:54 am

I find it rather amusing that this is the best the Democratic establishment can throw at posts pointing out the idiocy of imperialism. How the Obots have fallen.

steelhead23, September 29, 2015 at 10:56 am

It isn't just the lies and abject stupidity that keeps the U.S. constantly at war, it is our alliances with repressive dictators, like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is leading the U.S. toward confrontation with civilization, and Russia. Not so much a leader, the U.S. has become the militant vassal of KSA. The undying irony is that it was wealthy Saudis who started the most recent mess on 9/11/01. This will not end until the U.S. turns its back on the KSA.

Sufferin' Succotash, September 29, 2015 at 11:15 am

Or KSA self-destructs.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/collapse-saudi-arabia-inevitable-1895380679

Ranger Rick, September 29, 2015 at 11:00 am

Russia has always maintained that the Ukrainian revolution was CIA-backed if not -instigated. It's a shrewd move given the US's track record with regime change. No one will ever be sure if the new Ukrainian government is entirely legitimate or not.

What really gets terrifying is when you take a step back and realize that the 1800s imperialist regime never really changed. When you start talking about "superpower" or "regional power" you are no longer talking about power in the military or economic sense. These countries regularly meddle in, if not directly control, the politics in other countries. It honestly does not matter to the United States or Russia or any other country what your government chooses to do as long as it does what the other country wants.

NotTimothyGeithner, September 29, 2015 at 11:48 am

The Kiev rump failed to meet constitutional standards for impeachment even with the threats of the mob, and with elections just three or four months away in September following the Maidan event, there was no practical reason for a forceful removal of the government. Third party or not, the Kiev rump government has the same legality as the Confederacy. The "separatists" and the Crimeans saw their country dissolved by a mob, not an election with a regularly scheduled one on the horizon. The Ukraine was not a case where they would be waiting four years under a tyrant. If they had made it to September with electioneering issues, then the situation would be different, but as the current cabal didn't do that, they are akin to Jefferson Davis just with a better hand.

Americans as celebrators of the Declaration of Independence should note it is not legitimate to change established governing customs because your side might lose there has to be a litany of grievances with no possibility of redress. By Mr. Jefferson's standards, this country should have nothing to do with the Kiev government until the concerns of the separatists have been addressed. Unfortunately the use of law doesn't exist in this country.

Eureka Springs, September 29, 2015 at 11:11 am

Obamacrats rhetoric and behavior (policy) are both reminiscent and escalation of Bushco in so many ways.

Wasn't it Bush Jr. who said something along the line of "Democracies don't attack each other"?

NotTimothyGeithner, September 29, 2015 at 12:03 pm

It's just the old Democratic peace theory. It's utter garbage. I'm sure 43 said it because he repeated the last thing he heard anyway. World War I is pitched as a battle between old world tyrannical such as Germany (with universal male suffrage for its power base) versus shining beacons of democracy such as the UK and France which weren't quite democracies yet. Hitler sort of won a national election. Churchill was selected in a secret meeting when Chamberlain had to step down. So where is the democratic line? It's always been subjective test.

Of course, all governments rule by the consent of the governed.

JerseyJeffersonian, September 29, 2015 at 5:37 pm

Actually, Leander, the vaunted "independence" of the central banks of the US, Great Britain, and Deutschland is largely a fiction. And this very fiction has the effect of hyper-empowering both the financial sector and the oligarchs with whom the financial sector exists in a symbiotic relationship; in point of fact, these "independent" central banks are largely mere creatures of the financial sector and the symbiont oligarchs. The carefully cultivated appearance of independence is a sham under whose cover the truth about how central bank policies cater slavishly to the interests of the financial sector and oligarchs remains unrecognized.

Careerist movement back and forth between the central banks and the financial sector (along with the academic and think tank communities in which neo-liberalism reigns supreme as the only accepted school of economics) facilitates the group-think that culminates in the intellectual capture of the "independent" central banks. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Welcome to Naked Capitalism; our hosts provide us with a rich spread of knowledge and analysis, rather as Col. Lang does at his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, at which I have also read your posts.

MaroonBulldog, September 29, 2015 at 11:13 pm

In United States administrative law, the word "independent" has an interesting meaning: it refers to an executive regulatory agency that is "independent of the president," in the sense that the president cannot easily remove the head of the agency. The Fed is independent in this sense: the president cannot easily fire Chair Yellen or any other member of the Fed's board of governors.

An agency can be "independent" in this sense and still completely captured by the industry it purports to regulate.

Yves Smith, September 30, 2015 at 3:42 am

*Sigh*

The Fed is NOT owned by banks.

Banks hold shares of non-voting preferred stock in regional Feds. The Board of Governors, which approves the hiring of all regional Fed presidents, is most assuredly part of the Federal government. The regional Feds are more like a nasty public-private partnership with a bad governance structure (as in the regional Fed boards on which banks have some, and I stress some, director seats, cannot hire or fire ANYONE at a regional Fed, they do not approve budgets or other policy actions. Their role is strictly advisory, although the regional Feds, being more than a little captured cognitively, give that advice a fair bit of weight.

To give an idea how much power those banks you incorrectly deem to be owners have: Congress is looking at passing a bill to cut the dividends of the all but small banks how hold shares in the Fed by 75%. Pray tell, can Congress tell a private company to cut its dividends?

TedWa, September 30, 2015 at 10:21 am

Hi Yves : I don't see any Fed "independence" in action and haven't for quite some time.


Max, September 29, 2015 at 11:40 am

Ah yes, the notoriously secular and definitely legitimate PDPA government of Afghanistan 'overthrown' by the US. Is that a joke? Has Michael Hudson ever read a book about the Afghan civil war, a highly complex, decade-plus asymmetrical conflict with constantly shifting actors and allegiances? Reducing it to a narrative about US imperialism is intellectually dishonest on its own (there is no evidence that the US ever provided material support to the Taliban – everything from HRW to internal US documents to the academic consensus to journalistic accounts such as Ahmed Rashid's Taliban (2001?) contradicts that claim), nevermind that the Khalqi-Parcham government was a Soviet puppet government and an imperial construct in its own right. Check out any works by Barnett Rubin (U Nebraska?) or Thomas Barfield (B.U.)

The Mujahideen debacle (Which is both a separable and conjoined issue to the rise of the Taliban depending on time frame) was a result of poor US oversight of Pakistan, an internal US policy failure (no accountability or human intelligence on the ground) and of course intimately tied to the USSR's campaign of genocide in Afghanistan. Yes, the CIA gave the ISI $2-3bil in loose change to funnel into the Mujahideen (which were not united in any meaningful sense at any point in time, and frequently factionalized over pork-barrel / ethnic / tribal issues), however, the US policy at the time was hands-off with regard to how that money was spent, and if you read Peter Tomsen's book about his time as HW's special envoy it becomes quite clear that the blinders were on in Washington with regard to what was actually happening there on the ground.

Here's a quick and outdated overview for anyone who would like to educate themselves about this conflict: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/Afghan0701-02.htm

I understand that the Russophilia on this blog runs strongly but the inhumane destruction visited upon the Afghan people by the USSR's geopolitics is and was sickening, imperialistic and functionally a genocide. How am I supposed to take any of this polemic seriously when the author can't even be bothered to read about a conflict? This is a prime example of ideology driving discourse. There are plenty of fair-game examples to call out the US's short-sighted and globally destructive foreign policy. I do not see the point in allowing ideology to cover for misinformation and misrepresentation of historical facts – that's the playbook of neoliberal hustlers.

Faroukh Bulsara, September 29, 2015 at 2:53 pm

"…the notoriously secular and definitely legitimate PDPA government of Afghanistan 'overthrown' by the US. Is that a joke?"

Umm, Max buddy, where in this article did Hudson say such a thing? Right, he didn't. But thanks for the Afghan history lesson anyway.

Max, September 29, 2015 at 3:13 pm

"Democracy is the overthrow of Afghanistan's secular government by the Taliban against Russia."

It's right there in the opening paragraph, and the accusation is rather explicit.

juliania, September 29, 2015 at 8:53 pm

That's an awkward sentence to be sure, Max – I puzzled over that one myself. I'm more in favor of this extract from Putin's speech at the UN:

". . .We should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we remember examples from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress. . ."

Sort of 'puts paid' to trying to equate the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union, doesn't it?

OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 3:15 pm

Is that the same HRW that can't find evidence of Kiev purposefully targeting and killing civilians? The same HRW that has never said a thing about the US support for murderous regimes in Latin America? Or about US war crimes? Yeah OK, I will take their word on how Afghanistan went down, over the US' proven track record of destroying any and all left-leaning Third World governments from 1950 onward.

Max, September 29, 2015 at 3:38 pm

Attack one of my sources, fine – the others still exist in far greater numbers. Barnett Rubin is my favorite, his book "Blood on the Doorstep" is excellent.

Is everything part of the US capitalist plot or is there some verifiable source that you will accept without dismissing out of hand? You didn't even attempt to read the source.

The Afghan government was left leaning in the sense that it was more socially progressive than the population living outside of Kabul, all 80% of the country that the government did not control in fact; and their authoritarian approach to instituting gender equality and abolishing Islam had a disastrous effect on the government's popularity and tribal credit, which was and is necessary to gain the support of the rural population. Other than that it was your typical post-Stalinist tankie failed experiment in land redistribution and Party education apparatus that only served to create a new class of insular elites & alienating/disenfranchising the majority of the population while hamstringing developmental progress made by actual Afghans in the decades before the Soviets (and eventually Pakistan and the US) got their hands in the pot.

OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 3:55 pm

IOW, the Soviets and the US were like peas in a pod. Funny that the "accomplishments" cited by Empire apologists also used to include gender equality and the creation of insular elites. So what's your point, that the Soviets tried to prop-up their flunkies by force? Pot calling the kettle black, much like 0bama's speech yesterday. And HRW has often acted in concert with the US to cover up its crimes while hypocritically calling out those who weren't "our sonzofbiatches."

likbez, September 30, 2015 at 9:23 pm

The Afghan government was left leaning in the sense that it was more socially progressive than the population living outside of Kabul, all 80% of the country that the government did not control in fact; and their authoritarian approach to instituting gender equality and abolishing Islam had a disastrous effect on the government's popularity and tribal credit, which was and is necessary to gain the support of the rural population. Other than that it was your typical post-Stalinist tankie failed experiment in land redistribution and Party education apparatus that only served to create a new class of insular elites & alienating/disenfranchising the majority of the population while hamstringing developmental progress made by actual Afghans in the decades before the Soviets (and eventually Pakistan and the US) got their hands in the pot.

That's plain vanilla propaganda. Or more charitably you are oversimplifying the issue and try to embellish the USA behavior. Which was a horrible crime. Soviets were not that simplistic and attempts to abolish Islam were not supported by Soviets. They tried to create a secular country that's right but with Islam as a dominant religion.

See http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=afghanwar_tmln&afghanwar_tmln_soviet_occupation_of_afghanistan=afghanwar_tmln_us_aid_to_islamist_mujaheddin

And how many years Afghan government survived after the USSR dissolved and financial and technical aid disappeared. You need to shred your post and eat it with borsch. It's a shame.


fajensen, September 30, 2015 at 5:35 am

Ah, but: "A man is known by the company he keeps".

Whatever Putin is besides, he is *not* a friend, ally and global protector of Saudi Arabic Wahhabism!

With friends like that, it is clear o everyone else that you people are circling pretty close to the drain already and we non-USA-nian un-people prefer to not be sucked into your decline via TTIP et cetera.

Michael Hudson, September 29, 2015 at 11:17 pm

Max, your comment does not make sense.

All I can say is that this blog is NOT Russiaphilia. That's name calling. It is not Russiaphilia to note the effect of U.S. foreign policy on bolstering the most right-wing fundamentalist Islamic groups, Latin American right-wing kleptocracies or other dictatorships.

Whatever Soviet oppression was in Afghanistan, it did not back religious extremism. Just the opposite.

OIFVet, September 29, 2015 at 11:38 pm

Nick was probably one of those who screamed about cheese-eating surrender monkeys while stuffing themselves with supersized freedom fries orders.

September 29, 2015 at 3:47 pm


Ahem. Egypt. Egypt had a brief democracy.

Iran had a very real and true democracy (1955) but it was wiped out by the US.

Lot's of countries actually have democratic elections but when the people elect someone the US disapproves of, that democracy has to go and is ALWAYS replaced by a dictatorship.

Obama's a corrupt idiot. Syria is a mess only because the US made it that way, NOT because Assad is a meanie.

Reply ↓

cwaltz

September 30, 2015 at 2:50 am


It's possible that Assad is a meanie AND that Syria is a mess because as usual we half assed support people who are just as horrible as him. It isn't like Saddam wasn't our great friend before we declared him horrible, terrible awful leader.

Reply ↓

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL, September 29, 2015 at 5:39 pm

The words in their respective UN speeches were very clear. Obomba: "I believe that what is true for America is true for virtually all mature democracies". Putin: "No one is obliged to conform to a single development model that is considered by someone else as the right one".
Ask yourself which statement the Founding Fathers of the U.S. would agree with. Yankee go home.

bh2, September 29, 2015 at 10:40 pm

"Hope and change", baby! The long arc of history bends toward despotism.

Knute Rife, September 29, 2015 at 11:25 pm

This has been a favorite US tactic since the Marines hit Tripoli (anti-piracy myths notwithstanding), took off with the Spanish-American War, went through the roof when the Latin American interventions started in earnest in the 20s, and became our peculiar and cherished institution with the Cold War. Obama is just continuing the tradition.

cwaltz , September 30, 2015 at 2:37 am

I'll give him this- it's as close to being transparent on our foreign policy as I've seen any of his predecessors come.

At least, he's admitting that our end game has always been first and foremost about our own interests. Now if he'll only admit that THIS is why the world really hates us. Being selfish and protecting only your own interests at the cost of others is never going to be a winning plan to encourage people to like you or trust you(particularly when you collude behind closed doors to carry out those interests.)

*Sigh* We're America. We set the bar low when it comes to caring about how others wish to govern themselves, our only criteria is that your leader always consider US interests first(nevermind that they aren't actually a US leader and should be putting their own inhabitants first.)


[Sep 28, 2015] Assange on 'US Empire', Assad govt overthrow plans & new book 'The WikiLeaks Files' (EXCLUSIVE) - YouTube

Afshin Rattansi goes underground with the world's most wanted publisher - the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. He has just co-authored a book - the WikiLeaks Files, and it paints a picture of systemic US torture and killing as well as the destruction of the lives and livelihoods of billions of people right around the world.

[Sep 28, 2015] Origins of ISIS – Special Coverage

Mar 5, 2015 | YouTube

In a special report, RT America examines the origins, power and expansion of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS). RT's Ben Swann delves into the roots of the organization while Ameera David explains how the group amasses the millions of dollars it requires to operate. Finally, Manuel Rapalo explores how the Iraqi army fell apart despite benefiting from billions of dollars of US money – and military hardware – meant to ensure security.

Camilo Garcia Benitez

ISIS Mercenaries were pay to fight in Libia to overthrown Gadhafi.
The weapons from Libia, were taken in NATO Ships to Turkey and in to Syria and Iraq.
ISIS were heavily armed, plus many Mercenaries officers from UK and USA controlling it all.
ISIS is a Needed Evil to the USA and NATO, to create and maintain tensions in the areaThe owner of the dog, is responsible of the Dogs doings.

DallasHammster

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney created ISIS... and some reports suggest their profits came close to forty billion dollars. This is why Jeb Bush must never become President.

Szygyify

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, US, UK, France, Sweden, Canada, fund support ISIS to destroy Russia's allies in the Middle East. Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad's Shia Alawites in Syria, Southern Iraq's Shia majority and the Shia government of Iran.

Ansar al-salami

Origins of ISIS? Sunnis that got their asses kicked in Iraq by the Americans, with nowhere to go until Assad started bombing his own people. Then al-Baghdadi found Raqqa, a place that the Assads didn't want to defend. So the Iraqi Sunnis found a home. The rest is history...........

Twinny1011

How do the most technologically, advanced military and intelligence apparatus on the planet get stumped by untrained (or little trained) militia forces in 3rd world countries?!?!?!? THEY DON'T!!!!!!! All the world's a stage and the general population is stupid beyond belief! This is an orchestrated crock of shit!

Follow The Sun

The whole mess is a god dam direct result of US military backing the Corporations like Exxon and BP. If the profits of corporations were to be affected then the US would go back and clean up the mess but since the Corps are not affected the war will rage on and refugees will be pouring into Europe and wrecking havoc there. It's a mess alright, one created by greed and it will continue until the state is separated from the corporation.

John Byrne

What has happened in Iraq was very predictable, so predictable in fact even I saw it coming. Sectarian violence was always going to be the long term outcome of unseating Hussein, and the Americans knew that. Maybe the American people didn't and the soldiers didn't, but the strategists did, because that was the strategy.

If you have the temerity to assert your nation's right to self determination in the face of the hegemon, the hegemon will crush you and turn your country to shit. It's not a mistake or an error of judgement. It's quite deliberate. The Military Industrial Complex lap it up. The banksters love it most of all because the United States hegemony is above all a banking one. Why? Because power equals wealth. If you're not a client state, a vassal, you're a potential rival in the making, just as Saddam and Ghaddafi were.

The marine interviewed is wrong to characterise the last 12 years of US foreign policy as a mistake or error of judgement. Chaos and perpetual war were but two of the goals.

Khalid Kana'an 10 hours ago (edited)

The USA can end those mofos in 10 days and they don't even need to put the life of any soldier in danger, they can use satellites and drones to Determines their location, then target them with stealth jets.

But why would they do such a thing, why would they destroy the Israeli secret intelligence service --> (I.S.I.S) that's serving them, they don't need drones, satellites or stealth jets they don't even need to worry about this war, they can just let those retard fucks kill and end one another then make Israel expand it's territory and invade more land.

Brane Storm

Man, this ISIS is a pretty organized group for appearing to be nothing more than a rag tag outfit at best. They can make elaborate blue screened video's and now they can fill up tanker trucks with Oil and ship them to some "mystery buyer" for cash? What would ISIS do with "cash" in desert warfare? Go to the local "Bombs 'R Us, or "Warmart" for a fun day of shopping?

Almost every surrounding Country are against ISIS, so who is "buying" this Oil? I wonder where those trucks are going...probably North into the Oil Fields controlled by Exxon or BP in exchange for weapons to fight Assad. Those weapons are then classified as the "weaponry left behind" so they can cover up more lies on who really funds ISIS.

Robert Dahlgren

It is important to understand that the so called "american war machine" is not run by some idiots who keeps making the same "misstakes"... All this is done on purpose! They have a plan with all this. They want to destabilize the middle east, and with that follows mass immigration to Europe (mainly) which in time will profoundly change european society.

Out of chaos comes order, THEIR order, the New World Order... and that's a whole new chapter, but I tell you, it's not pretty. What we see now in the middle east is just the beginning, if you are not happy with this, stop voting for ANYONE! It doesn't matter who you vote for, anyone who comes to power in Europe and US will push the NWO agenda. Wake up!!!

Frodojack

This RT story is inaccurate about the origin of ISIS. It started with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (later Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad) in 1999. Al-Zarqawi and his group's first goal was to overthrow the kingdom of Jordan and may have assassinated the American ambassador to Jordan in 2002. He also planned (along with bin Laden and Al Qaeda) the Millenium plots of January 1, 2000, where he planned to bomb four sites in Jordan, the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), and the USS The Sullivans. Their plan failed.

He apparently moved to Iraq in 2001, after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. In 2003 his group became officially affiliated with Al-Qaeda (although Al-Zarqawi met with Osama bin-Laden in 1999 and told him how he wanted to kill all Jews and Shiites) and moved to northern Iraq where it started doing what it does best, atrocities. Al-Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in 2006 and it got new leadership and renamed itself Islamic State in Iraq.

In 2011 it moved into Syria to take part in its civil war against Assad and renamed itself again, as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant then Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (Syria), later it just became the Islamic State and named Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as its caliph. So it started before Bush invaded Iraq, and started its bomb attacks there in August 2003, five months after the invasion.

Juan Olivier

ISIS is a USA puppet to take down Assad.

The Terminator

ISIS is a Saudi Arabian invention. The Saudis hate the Assad government and are funding ISIS with oil and money.

Oliver Green

So America is all about "maintaining stability" yet its their unwavering support for Saudi Arabia and its refusal to condemn any of its attacks and policies on its neighbours in the Arab world that allows these atrocities -like most recently the 27 day non stop bombing of Yemen killing 2500 + and surpassing Israels most recent war on Gazas ( also supported by USA) deaths of civilians -to happen. One of our original guises of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan was most notably weapons of mass destruction and retaliation for "911" but also more morally important was our humanitarian intervention against taliban / all quaeda ( created by USA to fight Russia's Afghanistan invasion) in Afghan and against Saddam's treatment of non shias and other minorities.

how hypocritical is it for us to not just stand by and fund sunni extemist rebels in Syria to topple Assad but also to stand by for 13 days of bombardment on mostly shia- civilians consisting of ancient tribes by Saudi Arabia and on top of that " topping" the Saudi regimes military capabilities in Yemen with radar and satellite over guidance and technical support, why are we supporting sectarian warfare in the middle east when it was our publicly identified motivation of going over there in the first place? Something is wrong with USA moral compass.

John Somebody

Who trained ISIS fighters in the use of those vast supplies of U.S. weapons ?

Luigi Capoti

power always have use regular and iregular armys to achieve its ends.

before hitler, SS; before ISIS Al Qaeda in afganistan Yugoslavia libia,.. even narco can be included (remember Iran-Contras)

Guardias blancas or Autodefensas in Colombia, etc they acomplish with justification to aid or attack governments. maybe the term mercenary fit in general, but the difference is that they don't need to be conscious who create and uses them.

Larry-three "Larry-3"

Summary: ISIL was created in 2003 in Iraq, but at that time they were nobodies. They eventually moved into Syria to recruit and steal weapons. As soon as that happened, they became a worldwide threat.

ISIL has murdered Christians and caused pain to many souls. I want the U.S. to strangle them until their whole faction destabilizes and ceases to exist.

Bruce Campbell

Great show. US imperialism is like all bullying, it has consequences. Isis is a good distraction to take attention from the war crimes committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Why isn't Israel afraid? Maybe because ISIS arose out of the concerted effort to destabilize President Assad.. Syria has the misfortune of being next door to expansionist Israel. Zionism is so served by the power vacuum and chaos.

Currently the USA is also allied with Saudi interests. Saudi Arabia, the bombers of 9/11 are currently waging an aggressive campaign in Yemen. Imperialism and Zionism are cults of death. Wahhabi Islam is little different. I pray for the dead and those who will die. Likely ISIS is the authority in that religion of the world we will have to deal with them in the future. Or we can keep supporting our military and intelligence infrastructure which took us from surplus to debt and created other Frankenstein monsters


[Sep 27, 2015] US On The Ropes China To Join Russian Military In Syria While Iraq Strikes Intel Deal With Moscow, Tehran

Sep 27, 2015 | Zero Hedge
What appears to have happened here is this: Vladimir Putin has exploited both the fight against ISIS and Iran's need to preserve the regional balance of power on the way to enhancing Russia's influence over Mid-East affairs which in turn helps to ensure that Gazprom's interests are protected going forward.

Thanks to the awkward position the US has gotten itself in by covertly allying itself with various Sunni extremist groups, Washington is for all intents and purposes powerless to stop Putin lest the public should suddenly get wise to the fact that combating Russia's resurgence and preventing Iran from expanding its interests are more important than fighting terror.

In short, Washington gambled on a dangerous game of geopolitical chess, lost, and now faces two rather terrifyingly disastrous outcomes: 1) China establishing a presence in the Mid-East in concert with Russia and Iran, and 2) seeing Iraq effectively ceded to the Quds Force and ultimately, to the Russian army.

[Sep 27, 2015] Putin's deceptive pause What are Russia's n4ext steps in Ukraine

"... Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine and the New Cold War ..."
Sep 27, 2015 | www.brookings.edu

Sep 1, 2015 | Brookings Institution4

Ukraine is no longer the top priority for American diplomats. They are understandably absorbed with selling the Iran nuclear deal to a reluctant Congress. But, if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is to be believed, there are a number of senior officials who have also been sending signals to Russia suggesting that President Obama wants to turn a page and improve his frosty relations with President Vladimir Putin. "We are already getting such signals from the Americans," Lavrov said, "though for now not very clear." Would Russia be open to better relations? Russia, responded the foreign minister, would "consider constructively" any such possibility.

... ... ...

Though Russia is not the Soviet Union, it still remains the boss of Eastern Europe. When it sneezes, as we have learned, Ukraine can catch a bad cold. These days, everything in and around Ukraine seems to be in what one journalist called "managed instability." Putin can bring the crisis closer to a possible solution or he can widen the war. Or, more simply, he can "freeze" it. The key question is: What does Putin have in mind? What are his plans, assuming that he has plans, and is not winging the crisis day by day?

... ... ...

With respect to Ukraine, Putin's position is hardly ideal, but it is still manageable. He now owns Crimea and controls two rebellious provinces in the southeast Donbas region. He knows Ukraine faces the possibility of economic collapse, even though it has made some progress. The more it slips toward the abyss, the better his chances, he thinks, of keeping Ukraine out of the Western orbit, which has always been one of his principal goals. Putin has the assets to throw Ukraine into further chaos at any time.

Marvin Kalb is a nonresident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and senior advisor at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He focuses on the impact of media on public policy and politics, and is also an expert in national security, with a focus on U.S. relations with Russia, Europe and the Middle East. His new book, scheduled for September 2015 publication, is Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine and the New Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2015).

[Sep 27, 2015] Is it too late to get the civil engineers in to change the plate on Yatsenyuk's door to "Saakashvili"?

"... "Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, President Petro Poroshenko's chief of staff Borys Lozhkin and an ally of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov have been targeted by investigators and whistleblowers in Ukraine and abroad this week." ..."
Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

marknesop, September 26, 2015 at 10:30 pm

Oh, oh!! Is it too late to get the civil engineers in to change the plate on Yatsenyuk's door to "Saakashvili"?

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/yatsenyuk-allies-of-poroshenko-avakov-targeted-by-corruption-investigations-398743.html

Yeah, we're going to need a stronger Barcalounger. One with more width between the arms, too.

"Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, President Petro Poroshenko's chief of staff Borys Lozhkin and an ally of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov have been targeted by investigators and whistleblowers in Ukraine and abroad this week."

yalensis, September 27, 2015 at 4:58 am
I like that boy, Oleg Sukhov. I don't agree with his political views, but I have to say, of all the "journalists" on KyivPost staff, he is maybe the only one who looks and smells like an actual journalist. He is a good muck-raker, and I think he has a future, even after Ukraine goes down the tubes.

[Sep 27, 2015] Analysis – EU 'ring of friends' turns into ring of fire

"... The European Union's dream of building "a ring of friends" from the Caucasus to the Sahara has turned into a nightmare as conflicts beyond its borders send refugees teeming into Europe. ..."
"... Ian Bond, a former British ambassador now at the Centre for European Reform, called the current policy a "mess of inconsistency and wishful thinking". .. ..."
"... "In contrast to the success of its eastward enlargement drive that transformed former communist countries into thriving market democracies, the European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 has been a spectacular flop…" ..."
Sep 27, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al, September 27, 2015 at 2:41 am

Neuters: Analysis – EU 'ring of friends' turns into ring of fire
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/09/27/uk-europe-migrants-neighbourhood-analysi-idUKKCN0RR09820150927?

The European Union's dream of building "a ring of friends" from the Caucasus to the Sahara has turned into a nightmare as conflicts beyond its borders send refugees teeming into Europe.

In contrast to the success of its eastward enlargement drive that transformed former communist countries into thriving market democracies, the European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 has been a spectacular flop…

…The failure to stabilise or democratise the EU's surroundings was partly due to forces beyond Brussels' control: Russian resentment over the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as political and sectarian strife in the Middle East.

Five of the six Eastern Partnership countries – Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – are weakened by unresolved "frozen conflicts" in which Moscow has a hand. The sixth, Belarus, is so authoritarian that it is subject to EU sanctions and has eschewed the offer of a free trade deal.

EU officials now acknowledge that the framework designed to engage and transform the bloc's neighbours was flawed from the outset due to a mixture of arrogance and naivety.

"The idea was to have a ring of friends who would integrate with us but not become EU members. That was rather patronizing, with the European Union telling everyone what to do because we believed they wanted to be like us," said Christian Danielsson, head of the European Commission department for neighborhood policy and enlargement.

…Now the EU neighborhood policy is undergoing a fundamental rethink, with a more modest, flexible and differentiated approach due to be unveiled on Nov. 17.

Whether it will prove more effective remains to be seen.

Ian Bond, a former British ambassador now at the Centre for European Reform, called the current policy a "mess of inconsistency and wishful thinking". ..

…EU officials talk of the need for a new realism, putting the pursuit of common interests with partners ahead of lecturing them on human rights and democracy.

But the European Parliament and member states such as Germany and the Nordic countries will be loath to soft-pedal promoting such values….

…Michael Leigh, a senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund think-tank and former head of the EU's enlargement department, said Brussels had responded to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings by offering a "top-heavy, long, cumbersome, demanding" DCFTA process rather than swift but limited market access. …

####

Wise after the fact as usual. Too late mofos. For Stollenberg, its not the clever clever strategy being wrong, its always Russia. F/wit. I'm still waiting for van Rompuy to admit he has blood on his hands for the Ukraine.

What they allude to but don't make a point of is that they wholly dismissed Russia from their calculations as if it was just going to become the EU's cuddly toy, a larger version of Serbia. No mention either that Russia is 'part of the solution' and cooperation with Russia is essential.

It looks like some have got past anger and denial and have moved on to bargaining & depression.

marknesop, September 27, 2015 at 9:45 am
"In contrast to the success of its eastward enlargement drive that transformed former communist countries into thriving market democracies, the European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 has been a spectacular flop…"

Umm…say what?? I thought we had already looked at the Baltics as examples, and determined their populations peaked just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and their subsequent snatching by NATO, at which point they commenced a slide which was the mirror image of their ascent. Why are citizens fleeing a thriving market democracy?

I agree with your analysis – too late. However, the recent article linked which revealed Europe was just covering itself when it pretended to oppose the Gulf War has added another layer of cynicism to my hide, and I don't interpret this as the scales falling from anyone's eyes at all. They're not wiser, simply acknowledging that a ploy to get their own way did not work out as planned. There's no remorse, at all. They'll just try something else.

I particularly loved the line,

"The failure to stabilise or democratise the EU's surroundings was partly due to forces beyond Brussels' control: Russian resentment over the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as political and sectarian strife in the Middle East."

I see. So the angst of Russians missing Stalin wafted in the air over the borders of Europe's neighbors, and caused them to make irrational decisions and, against all common sense, to bite the soft pink European hand extended to them? Let me ask another – is there to be no limit of silliness and self-pity beyond which Europe will not go?

[Sep 27, 2015] Yay for Irredentism! Victoria Nuland Promises Yaltas Return to Ukraine

Sep 27, 2015 | sputniknews.com

Speaking at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kiev on Saturday, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland raised quite a stir among Ukraine's irredentist politicians, saying that the city of Yalta would one day return to Kiev's control.

... ... ...

Nuland's remarks featured rhetoric on stopping Russian aggression, praise for the Ukrainian leadership's great successes in reforming Ukraine's economy and tackling corruption, and promises that the US would continue to assist Ukraine, including its armed forces.

"You have stopped the Novorossiya project in its tracks, stabilized the financial system and created a new police force…Many challenges remain ahead. There will be losses in the fight against corruption. But there should be no tolerance for the oligarchs," Nuland noted, cited by Ukrainian newspaper LB.ua. "We are providing Ukraine with continuous assistance. The United States, more than any other country, has supported the Ukrainian army. This is part of the reason why Ukraine has been able to stop the offensive in the east."

But the remarks which caused the most excitement among Ukrainian officials and foreign hawks alike was a statement Nuland made at the beginning of her speech about the Yalta European Strategy forum one day returning to its home city of Yalta, Russia.

The forum's official Twitter account proudly tweeted the statement, reading "#victorianuland one day you will return to that great #Ukrainian city #Yalta" and "#victorianuland happy you didn't change name of this conference – it is the Yalta European Strategy conference."

... ... ...

Nuland's commentary kept up with the vaguely belligerent and occasionally downright absurd tone of the conference, with speakers bragging about the important successes of Ukraine has seen in its programs of economic and anti-corruption reforms, ramping up the rhetoric about Russian aggression, calling on Moscow to free suspected murderer Nadiya Savchenko, etc.

... ... ...

Founded by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk in 2004, the Yalta European Strategy forum has served to promote Ukraine's membership in the European Union, featuring high-level talks between Ukrainian and EU officials.

[Sep 26, 2015] Standing Before Congress, Pope Francis Calls Out the Industry of Death

Sep 26, 2015 | original.antiwar.com
Sep 26, 2015 | Antiwar.com

Pope Francis' address to Congress was almost certainly not what John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and other congressional leaders had in mind when they invited the pope to speak.

It probably wasn't what they were all thinking about during the last standing ovations. But here was Pope Francis, revered as the People's Pope, calling out war profiteers and demanding an end to the arms trade. Just as simple and as powerful as that.

... ... ...

"Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world," the pope said. Then he asked the critical question: "Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?"

He answered it himself: "Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade."

Stop the arms trade. What a simple, clear call.

That means the ending things like the $60 billion arms deal the US made a few years back with Saudi Arabia, where those weapons are, in the pope's words, "inflicting untold suffering on individuals and society," especially in Syria and Yemen. It means ending things like the $45 billion in new military aid – mostly in the form of advanced new weapons – the Israeli government has requested from Washington between now and 2028. It means ending the provision of new arms to scores of unaccountable militias in Syria, where even the White House admits a nonmilitary solution is needed. And it means ending things like the $1.1 billion in arms sales the United States has made to Mexico this year alone.

And, of course, it means no longer diverting at least 54 cents of every discretionary taxpayer dollar in the federal budget to the US military.

Actually, members of Congress – so many of whom rely on huge campaign donations from arms manufacturers, and so many of whom refuse to vote against military procurement because often just a few dozen jobs connected to it might be in their district – really should have expected the pope to say exactly what he did.

It was only last May, after all, that Pope Francis told a group of schoolchildren visiting the Vatican that the arms trade is the "industry of death." When a kid asked why so many powerful people don't want peace, the pope answered simply, "because they live off wars!" Francis explained how people become rich by producing and selling weapons. "And this is why so many people do not want peace. They make more money with the war!"

The pope's speech to Congress was quite extraordinary on a number of fronts.

... ... ...

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the forthcoming Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer. Manuel Perez-Rocha is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy In Focus.

[Sep 24, 2015] Corbyn Says ISIS Partly Created by Western Interven4tion

September 23, 2015 | theantimedia.org
Michaela Whitton

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom - Jeremy Corbyn delivered his uncompromising stance on Western warmongering from the back of a London taxi last week. As the cab raced through the streets of the capital, the new Labour leader revealed his vision for an ethical foreign policy in his 17-minute interview with Middle East Eye.

Asked how he would deal with ISIS, the anti-war campaigner was uncompromising. "ISIS didn't come from nowhere, they've got a lot of money that's come from somewhere. They have a huge supply of arms that have come from somewhere and they are, not in total but in part, a creation of western interventions in the region," he said.

According to Corbyn, he would deal with the terror group by economically isolating its members. He says he would attempt to unite other groups in the region and stressed the importance of supporting autonomy for Kurdish groups. On the rise of ISIS, he pointed to the vast amount of arms that Britain sells, particularly to Saudi Arabia, declaring they must have ended up somewhere and are now being used.

Corbyn was vehemently opposed to the 2013 Parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria and remains adamant that bombing the country now would create more mayhem. He told Middle East Eye it would be very unclear who the alliances would be with.

On the region in general, he referred to Israel and Palestine as a massive issue. Unlike his British counterparts, he expressed grave concern at the illegal Israeli settlements, military occupation of the West Bank, and lack of reconstruction in Gaza.

Praising the recent agreement with Iran, he said he wished it had included the issue of human rights, and when asked if he would have invited Egyptian leader Abdel al-Sisi to the U.K., he was clear:

"No, I would not, because of my concerns over the use of the death penalty in Egypt, the treatment of people who were part of the former government, and the continued imprisonment of President Morsi." He went on to clarify that his statement wasn't passing judgement on different parties, but on the meaning of democracy.

On Britain's relationship with Saudi Arabia, Corbyn expressed concern on what he referred to as a "huge number of issues," naming the treatment of women, the frequent use of the death penalty - including public beheadings - and the treatment of migrant workers.

At a recent Parliamentary debate, Corbyn raised the question of whether British arms sales to Saudi Arabia are more important than genuine concerns about human rights. Most of us already know the answer to this question.

"We need to be a constant irritant on human rights," he said.

Asked how Britain can make itself safer, both at home and abroad, Corbyn was frank:

"We make ourselves safer by not being part of U.S. foreign policy at every single turn. And we become a force for human rights rather than military intervention."

Asked why he has such good judgement compared with other MPs, Corbyn admitted that he reads a lot, travels a lot, and learns from people wherever he goes. "The issue is the ability to listen to people," he said.

Describing what an ethical foreign policy under a Corbyn-lead British government would look like, he said, "My basis would be that I want to see the protection and preservation of human rights around the world, deal with issues of global hunger and global inequality, and the environmental disaster that is facing this planet."

He added, "I think that should be the basis rather than what it is at the moment which seems to be to see what the White House wants, and how we can deliver it for them."


This article (Corbyn Says ISIS Partly Created by Western Intervention) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email [email protected].

[Sep 21, 2015] Blame America ? No, Blame Neocons!

"... If aggressive US policy in the Middle East – for example in Iraq – results in the creation of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda in Iraq, is pointing out the unintended consequences of bad policy blaming America? Is it "blaming America" to point out that blowback – like we saw on 9/11 – can be the result of unwise US foreign policy actions like stationing US troops in Saudi Arabia? ..."
"... the current refugee crisis is largely caused by bad US foreign policy actions. The US government decides on regime change for a particular country – in this case, Syria – destabilizes the government, causes social chaos, and destroys the economy, and we are supposed to be surprised that so many people are desperate to leave? Is pointing this out blaming America, or is it blaming that part of the US government that makes such foolish policies? ..."
"... they never explain why the troops were removed from Iraq: the US demanded complete immunity for troops and contractors and the Iraqi government refused. ..."
"... As soon as the US stopped paying the Sunnis not to attack the Iraqi government, they started attacking the Iraqi government. Why? Because the US attack on Iraq led to a government that was closely allied to Iran and the Sunnis could not live with that! ..."
"... The same is true with US regime change policy toward Syria. How many Syrians were streaming out of Syria before US support for Islamist rebels there made the country unlivable? ..."
"... I don't blame America. I am America, you are America. I don't blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion - that they have to promote American goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people. ..."
"... In short, I don't blame America; I blame neocons. ..."
Sep 21, 2015 | www.ronpaulinstitute.org
Sep 20, 2015 | Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
Is the current refugee crisis gripping the European Union "all America's fault"? That is how my critique of US foreign policy was characterized in a recent interview on the Fox Business Channel. I do not blame the host for making this claim, but I think it is important to clarify the point.

It has become common to discount any criticism of US foreign policy as "blaming America first." It is a convenient way of avoiding a real discussion. If aggressive US policy in the Middle East – for example in Iraq – results in the creation of terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda in Iraq, is pointing out the unintended consequences of bad policy blaming America? Is it "blaming America" to point out that blowback – like we saw on 9/11 – can be the result of unwise US foreign policy actions like stationing US troops in Saudi Arabia?

In the Fox interview I pointed out that the current refugee crisis is largely caused by bad US foreign policy actions. The US government decides on regime change for a particular country – in this case, Syria – destabilizes the government, causes social chaos, and destroys the economy, and we are supposed to be surprised that so many people are desperate to leave? Is pointing this out blaming America, or is it blaming that part of the US government that makes such foolish policies?

Accusing those who criticize US foreign policy of "blaming America" is pretty selective, however. Such accusations are never leveled at those who criticize a US pullback. For example, most neocons argue that the current crisis in Iraq is all Obama's fault for pulling US troops out of the country. Are they "blaming America first" for the mess? No one ever says that. Just like they never explain why the troops were removed from Iraq: the US demanded complete immunity for troops and contractors and the Iraqi government refused.

Iraq was not a stable country when the US withdrew its troops anyway. As soon as the US stopped paying the Sunnis not to attack the Iraqi government, they started attacking the Iraqi government. Why? Because the US attack on Iraq led to a government that was closely allied to Iran and the Sunnis could not live with that! It was not the US withdrawal from Iraq that created the current instability but the invasion. The same is true with US regime change policy toward Syria. How many Syrians were streaming out of Syria before US support for Islamist rebels there made the country unlivable? Is pointing out this consequence of bad US policy also blaming America first?

Last year I was asked by another Fox program whether I was not "blaming America" when I criticized the increasingly confrontational US stand toward Russia. Here's how I put it then:

I don't blame America. I am America, you are America. I don't blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion - that they have to promote American goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people.

In short, I don't blame America; I blame neocons.

Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity

[Sep 19, 2015] Clock Ticks On US Syria Strategy As Assad Pounds ISIS Targets, Russia Sends Fighter Jets

Suddenly the hypocrite-fiends of Western Europe wanted the conflict in Syria over.
"...Putin had literally called Washington's bluff, forcing The White House to either admit that this isn't about ISIS at all, or else join Russia in fighting them. "
"... Economic destruction followed by political stability exploited for regime change. The most damaging of those sanctions (and the easiest for the U.S. financial bully to enforce) are banking sanctions. Those are also easiest to ram through the tratiorous little bitches in congress with the least amount of hand-wringing and public outcry. No bad PR from Twitter pictures of dead babies or mutilated kids and destroyed homes, but destruction of the 'target' just the same."
"...Yet another neocon fiasco. Uncounted billions gone, Syriah shattered forever, oh, and our dearest allies in Europe overrun with filthy penniless refugees. Way to go Team America!"
Sep 19, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Note that this is a bitter defeat for Washington. Moscow, realizing that instead of undertaking an earnest effort to fight terror in Syria, the US had simply adopted a containment strategy for ISIS while holding the group up to the public as the boogeyman par excellence, publicly invited Washington to join Russia in a once-and-for-all push to wipe Islamic State from the face of the earth. Of course The Kremlin knew the US wanted no such thing until Assad was gone, but by extending the invitation, Putin had literally called Washington's bluff, forcing The White House to either admit that this isn't about ISIS at all, or else join Russia in fighting them.

... ... ...

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the man some suspect of masterminding the entire effort to restore the Assad regime, Quds commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, seems to understand the US strategy all too well - we close with the following from Iran's PressTV:

Commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Qassem Soleimani said Wednesday that the policy of the US with regards to Daesh and other Takfiri groups operating in the region is to only have them under control and not eliminate them.

nnnnnn

don't forget who's creating this so called "terrorists"?

Motasaurus

It's entirely possible to forget though, since there's so many.

There's Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, London, the USA, France, Australia, and NATO. I'm probably still missing some.

Stackers

Assad is still stuck with the same big problem. He does not have the infantry numbers to defeat ISIS.

You can see prime example of this on YouTube clips of Syrian T-72 tanks doing close quarters street fighting and getting taken out by RPG's because they have no supporting infantry to sweep out the enemy infantry. Heavy tactical equipment like artillary, tanks and fighter aircraft is fine, but at the end of the day you have to be able to sweep through with enough boots to control the area.

At best Assad can wage a holding stalemate until the Russians actually deploy 10's of thousands of ground troops.

Latina Lover

Not true. Cut off the supply lines and cash funnel, and ISIS will fall apart. When the USSA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia figure out the game is over, they will cut off money.

Money Counterfeiter

Someone needs to tell Putin Israel is right next door to the south. Why let a crisis go o waste?

Manthong

Now that the Rooskies have changed the battlescape from US State's obsession to displace secular Assad with some Muslim Arab terrorist pipeline puppet to solving the US/Saudi/NATO/ISIS chaos problem, maybe the ISIS terror mercenaries will finally get a taste of their own medicine.

Everyday Europeans should be rooting for Russia and Assad if they want to solve the root cause of their Islamic invasion problem.

Manthong

Those ISIS shills really had it made for a while.. like, where else could you get money, training, military bases, unused armor and weapons parachute delivered to your doorstep?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NzFJxX8yoY

sun tzu

Yes, against that vaunted American ISIS mercenary fighting force that is known for its military prowess LOL. Your fearsome ISIS with full US military training, weapons, and air support can't even defeat Assad's little military force with 40 year old tanks.

They're good at chopping off heads of unarmed people and that's about it. Most are foreign jihadist idiots born and raised in Western nations under rap and hiphop MTV music. Unlike the Taliban and in Iraq, they are not fighting for their homeland. The western mercs leading the ISIS forces are also a bunch of cowards. Once they face death from air attacks, the paycheck no longer means anything. Those mercs are good at overthrowing third world countries. They didn't sign up to be attacked by cruise missiles.

847328_3527

I remember when George Bush said, "God talked to him."

wtf?!

You would a thought Americans would have wised up at least after THAT!

The Indelicate Genius

ISIS Leader Admits to Being Funded by the US
http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-admits-to-being-funded-by-the-u...

Now, who knows how reliable that site it - but who still thinks that whatever makes it into the NY Times is reliable?

two hoots

News:

Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian conflict:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34298826

nope-1004

Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian embarrassment:

fify

Clearly the US could wipe ISIS if they wanted to, but since ISIS is a USA asset, used to destabilize the region so "democracy" can be forced once "humanitarian problems arise", it will be kept until no longer useful.

The origins of ISIS are quite interesting. The flow of supplies are rather obvious. .GOV is the worlds largest terrorist if you follow the dots.

After being caught red-handed shipping USA vehicles for ISIS militants, .gov has come out saying that the image was doctored. LMFAO!!!! The propaganda is mind blowing.

This photo, taken from a propaganda video, shows a near identical scene featuring a different truck, raising questions as to the authenticity of the photo featuring Mr Oberholtzer's truck

"Raising questions....". From whom?

Fascism. It's obvious.

shovelhead

Wait until ISIS has some Truly Nolan trucks...

http://www.trulynolen.com/images/locations/service-tabs/commercial-pc-ba...

trulz4lulz's picture

How anyone could down vote that is beyond me, but one thing is for certain, Murikistan still wouldnt be able to find them with their hundreds of billions of dollars worth of satelites raoming the lower atmosphere of Earth.

Fractal Parasite

Kerry in UK to push for end to Syrian calamity.

Oh, now that the State Dept's takfiris are getting their asses whipped, suddenly Horse Face wants a negotiated peace.

Mr al-Assad has been offering talks for four years.

Freddie

Just like the Ukraine. The NovoRussians (DPR and LPR) get the Ukie Army in a cauldron (surrounded) and we have Minsk 1 then they get surrounded again and Minsk 2. There were probably mercs and Spec Ops in those cauldrons. they sue for peace when they are losing.

Kudos to the Ukie soldiers who quit and surrendered knowing they were being used by Kiev and kudos for the NovoRussians for treating the Ukies humanely when they surrendered.

PM Zakarchenko of DPR has said there will be no Minsk 3.

johngaltfla

BigK spot on. And once they are bottled up there, it becomes a Saudi problem again. Because what is left of the "rebels" in Syria will be ashes and incinerated bodies. The Syrian AF is doing this without the Russian AF; wait until the Russians start dropping their bombs at altitude and square blocks of terrorists begin to get vaporized.

Zero Point

A bit like how they pushed the Mujahadeen out of Afghanistan? Wait... what?

NeedtoSecede

"We are only going to arm the moderate rebels."

From the second that phrase came out of .gov's piehole I know this was going to turn into a cluster fuck of epic proportions. What a fucking joke...

Kayman

"moderate rebels"

But first we are going to round up some Unicorns for transportation.

"Christmas Greetings to the Fatherland from your brave and successful army in Stalingrad."

The Indelicate ...

The Jesuits are about 2500 old men. Apart from a few colleges and on campus mansions with well-stocked bars - they don't control dick.

I see this notion all over CNN and youtube comments, like it is an organized effort.

Lots of valid criticisms to offer about the RCC - but controlling the world smacks of obvious gatekeeping for the usual suspects

... ... ...

PacOps

Good interview: al-Assad and Russian media.

http://sana.sy/en/?p=54857

President al-Assad to Russian media outlets.. We cannot implement anything unless we defeat the terrorism.. The army is the most important symbol for any society.

Carpenter1

Here's Putin paying homage to the Pope and Vatican.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/26/article-2513236-19A3B6AA000005...

When will you stupid fucks figure this out??

misnomer

No. He chose to kiss the book and NOT the Pope's ring because Orthodox Christian's do not believe the Pope should be venerated or exalted as Christ. It is very telling that he chose to kiss the Bible instead.

Fractal Parasite

Here it is on youtube. All in English (mostly dubbed).

40-minute RT interview with Bashar al-Assad by a Russian delegation in Damascus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wELCDCPsw6M

Blankone

Re comment by Publicus:

"Russia is showing the world the correct way to deal with terrorists. EXTERMINATION."

BUT Russia is not doing any fighting. None. Putin still has not fired a shot.

What has happened is that Syria now has some accurate weapons. Finally! Which begs the question.

Why was Syria not supplied accurate weapons before now. They have been fighting and losing and dieing for several years. Much of Syria is destroyed, cities destroyed and the people killed or refugees in other countries. And it appears Putin was not suppling Russia's better quality weapons. I am not even talking about suppling the S-300, as was contracted for in 2007, but rocket launchers, decent air to ground missiles for air strikes and accurate artillery. What kind of support is it when you refuse to sell those types of weapons to an "allie' who is under attack?

Putin/Russia has not fired a shot, flown a mission or put people in the field. Russia has finally supplied some weapons that might help Assad punish the insurgents who hold much of northern Syria. If the west ups the stakes in their support will Russia finally take a direct role in flying missions or launching real missiles?

And why is Putin trying to negotiate a political agreement that includes the removal of Assad? How is that being supportive or is that just being opportunistic to do regime change using a new Russian puppet?

Fractal Parasite

Reasonable questions. Re-read the article for the answers. It explains how Emperor Washington & co have been exposed as without clothes after a year of off-target "air strikes against ISIS in Syria" while Russia steps in and gets the job done in a week.

Pity Ľ millions Syrians got killed before then, but who did that?

The claim that Putin is negotiating Assad's removal is bullcrap.

Blankone

You need to re read the article. Russia did not fly any missions or fire a single shot. Nothing.

Also, read who got killed. Seems most were civilians. But those here seem to think it is ok when their side kills the innocent.

Putin held negotiations with the leaders of the insurgents and even hosted them as his guests recently in Russia. Why do you think he flew them to Russia, to drink vodka? It was reported that Putin wanted some figure head role for Assad and the insurgents want him dead.

Lurk Skywatcher

Where does that BBC article say "civilians"?

You have as much evidence for them being civilians as I do for them being US/UK handlers and "trainers".

Why hasn't he supported Assad until now? Why did he fly insurgent leaders to Russia for talks? Why are you confused and critical of everything he has done?

Because constantly you try to squeeze Putins opaque actions into your own flawed concept of statesmanship, and assume to understand completely what is happening. Constantly you read things into events that suit your own bias.

He knows what he is doing - twice in as many years he has deftly avoided a trap set to mire Russia in war.

If he had acted as you critisize him for not acting, he would have been long caught in the first one.

And that shows exactly how worthless and wrong your opinion is.

Crash Overide

There are a lot of people that should be in jail... start 1, 2, 3 wars! no problem, get promoted.

Being a veteran that fought in so called wars and smokes pot for PTSD, you will be shot in your own home and arrested.

Amerika!

General Wesley Clark:

Because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" - meaning the Secretary of Defense's office - "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw

indygo55

I know the puppet masters are very good but sorry, I think Putin is the real deal. I think the puppet masters are NOT in total control of the world and Russia and China are really not going for the murder criminal cabal that does control the West.

I-am-not-one-of-them

"Russia and the US serve the same master"

Boris Yeltsin ain't President anymore

Motasaurus

It's a proxy war. For at least the last three years Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting each other tooth and nail all over the Middle East. Sauid Arabia through their Islamist irregulars and Iran through their regular army (though in the case of Yemen the roles are reversed), brough in by Iraq and Syria to fight them off.

But now that the U.S. and her allies have openly entered the proxy war (remember, the U.S. has been bombing Syria for a couple of weeks now) it released Russia to do the same.

The proxy is a whole lot more direct now, and it looks like the U.S. will blink first. She doesn't like being met by capable oponents that she has to confront directly - despite all the military spending.

Carpenter1

Look at all the fools here, thinking Russia is actually against the US.

Russia has a central bank, therefore it attends the BIS meetings in Switzerland and is a major part of the globalist agenda.

indygo55

There is a break in the force. Putin may break away this year from The London based Rothschild central bank system. He needs and now has a reason (need) to do so:

http://yournewswire.com/putin-to-nationalise-rothschild-central-bank/

Fractal Parasite

Russia's central bank was established under Yeltsin, the drunkard puppet who 'invited' advisors from Washington to write Russia's laws after the USSR was surrendered dismembered to the victorious hegemon in 1991.

As soon as the pathetic legislating cretins in the Duma grow a pair and take some action to reform the Central Bank Law and undo the subordination to BIS, then the people can have their country back.

Paveway IV

"...It's a proxy war. For at least the last three years Iran and Saudi Arabia have been fighting each other tooth and nail all over the Middle East...."

I agree in part, Motasaurus. This is a huge part of what's happening that's often relegated to a footnote of 'causes'. But the situation is far more complex. Years of European and American empire-building, Oil interests, ZATO's Russian 'containment' attempt, religious extremism, Israel land-grabbing and Turkish criminal clownfuckery are all rolled into one here. Every one is needed to trace the path that ended us up here.

"...Sauid Arabia through their Islamist irregulars and Iran through their regular army (though in the case of Yemen the roles are reversed), brough in by Iraq and Syria to fight them off."

That's a part of it, but I will offer an alternative: this is a banker war between Saudi Arabia/Qatar and Iran/Iraq/Syria, with the U.S. squarely backing the Saudi Arabia/Qatar side, cheered on by Israel and ZATO.

The neocon/Kagan/ISW noise about armed intervention is kind of the after-show for Syria. How did all their wars start? Iraq started with sanctions. Iran started with sanctions. Syria started with sanctions. Economic destruction followed by political stability exploited for regime change. The most damaging of those sanctions (and the easiest for the U.S. financial bully to enforce) are banking sanctions. Those are also easiest to ram through the tratiorous little bitches in congress with the least amount of hand-wringing and public outcry. No bad PR from Twitter pictures of dead babies or mutilated kids and destroyed homes, but destruction of the 'target' just the same.

Case in point [from Kenneth Rijock's Financial Crime Blog]:

Adam Szubin, formerly the Director of OFAC, and now the Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes, at his confirmation hearing, asserted that, should any Iranian bank, released from sanctions, due to the comprehensive nuclear agreement, re-offend, meaning conducting any transactions with Hezbollah or the IRGC Quds Force, American sanctions will be reimposed forthwith.

So if this guy is going to be the Terrorism and Financial Crimes guy, why was he silent about the same sanction threat for Saudi Arabia and Qatar? They regularly use the banking system to move massive amounts of money to finance their terrorist war in both Syria and Iraq. Where's the outrage there? How many Americans have already died (and will die) because dual-citizen israeli-firster Szubin (his two predecessors in the job were the same) pees his pants about any Iranian funds going to 'enemies of Israel' but he - just like his predecessors - will completely ignore ANY of the widely-known money transfer mechanisms the Saudis and Qatar use to fund terrorists?

The joke in all this is that the U.S. is the first to employ sanctions when it suits Israel's whims, but refuses to even acknowledge the river of money flowing to ISIS, al Nusra and the dozens of other head-chopper clans that the Saudis and Qatar fund. Why? Because to Israel (and their little bitches in the U.S. congress) any dime spent on terrorists that oppose Iran or any of their allies is not terrorist funding - it's democracy building. Ever heard of a Saudi or Qatar bank sanctioned? Ever hear of a U.S. or European bank sanctioned for moving terrorist payrolls every week to ISIS? ISIS steals and extorts a lot of money from it's imprisoned populations, but they hardly have the financial wherewithal to fund a damn global war. ISIS isn't running a cash war with suitcases of fiat - they have to use banks like everyone else for the big stuff.

Russia knows this. It wasn't going to feed it's soldiers into a meatgrinder again (like Afghanistan) funded by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.. Putin supports Assad, but would not take Russia down merely to defend Syria. All Putin had to do was wait until enough corruption and theft corroded the terrorism financing pipeline. Now it doesn't matter how much money goes in - very little gets to the terrorists on the front lines. The head-choppers are starving. Let's just say Putin has some experience on both sides of the fence dealing with corrupt psychopaths and their criminal regimes' amazing ability to self-destruct from rot.

Turkey got greedy and took too much skim from the terrorist logistics network. The jihadis themselves have been robbing ISIS and al Nusra blind of everything - weapons, radios, cash. Mostly to support their two biggest habits: food and ampehtamines. Although they continue to fund the terrorists, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have to be convinced by now that it's like storing water in a sieve (but maybe I give them too much credit here).

ISIS and al Nusra are on their financial death-bed from corruption. Good at head-chopping, not so good handling money. Putin merely has to get Assad to kick a few pegs out from under them to hasten the collapse. There will be no mass influx of Russian troops because it's unnecessary. Russia is not trying to annihilate ISIS in a war of attrition - they're letting it rot on the hoof, and giving it an occasional well-placed kick. Back-door Turkish-ISIS deals for oil? Bomb the f'king oil wells - no more oil sales. U.S.-ZATO intelligence via scrambled SATCOM links? Take out the ground stations - six months to get the new crap there which Russia will direct Assad to take out again. Takfiri payday? Smoke the al Raqqa branch of the ISIS/ZATO central bank. Next up: main branch in Mosul.

Russia has no desire, and Putin just has enough common sense not to fight ZATO terrorists on their (or the Kagan's) terms: rivers of blood and money. Russia has neither to waste and has demonstrated over and over again that they won't fall for ZATO's usual tricks. They let the ZATO terrorists in Syria bleed out by self-inflicted cuts, and will merely direct Assad where to inflict the final set of wounds to finish them off.

In the mean time, ISW and the Kagans are still trying to decide if there's some other way they can get the sieve to hold water. As of late, the strategy seems to be to send Kerry to negotiate something based on the premise that the sieve is still holding water. It's kind of pathetic when you think about it.

chunga

I'd like to see a stinging rebuke that causes the Murikans to reel in their policy of maliciously fucking with everybody's shit all over the world. The trouble is, in order to preserve the petro dollar and reserve status the military must maintain it's aura of invincibility because everything else is coming into question.

Therefore it seems likely they'll do something very stupid to antagonize nuclear armed Russia. Unlike China or other countries, Russian nukes are not in the experimental phase of development and every ICBM they launch is likely to perform flawlessly.

sandhillexit

U.S. leadership abdicated and let Bibi and Nuland take the Syria fight to Russia's door, using the cousins...nearly everyone in Israel still has a cousin in Ukraine. Russia was not supposed to respond like this was a existential threat, but they did. First he locked down the Crimea. Despite hardship, the country is rallying behind Putin. You won't starve on red beets and chicken, in fact you'll be pretty healthy...that is, the Russians can outlast the French and Italian farmers who have lost their market. And the Russians understand that the same Chechen mercs who blow up their trains and schools....and are on the Saudi payroll.....are running training camps now in Syria.

There might be a deeper "game." It is highly plausible that the City of London looked around twenty years ago for someone competent, not a klepto and backed the Putin horse to protect their investments in Russia. Not a bad choice. The British foreign service is so much more competent than ours. And they have just reopened their embassy in Teheran, having turned Basra over to the Iranians before they pulled troops out. USA is so badly served.

The definitive book on Russian & Jewish relations was written by Solzynitzin. It's called "200 Years Together" and it has not been translated/published in English. You can't buy it at Amazon. THINK about that.

But that isn't so important right now. At the level of families living or dying, 2000-year old Christian treasures being obliterated by ISIS Bolsheviks, he is the only thing that stands up to Bibi's lunacy. The Germans seem to be making the same calculus. They think the US has lost the plot.

Remember Bibi is expendable. All it takes is a vote of no-confidence by the military. Livni could step up. BHO isn't going to reach out ot help a 'friend' because...well...

AmericanFUPAcabra

The people of Crimea voted on a referendum to join Russia and 95+% voted in favor of doing so. Other than that nice post @@

My Days Are Getting Fewer

Excellent summary here:

http://www.vho.org/tr/2004/3/Strauss342-351.html

Read the last sentence...

godiva chocolate

The US is neither free nor a democracy itself. How dare it spread its oligarchy onto other countries.

FireBrander

The USA in 2015 is the end result of a "Free Market"...it is what happens when the concentration of wealth/power goes unchecked...even ecouraged....Corporate Crony Capitalism...where the bulk of the "profits" fall into the hands of th e few...That is America today.

Show me someone that thinks "Socialism" has brought us to this point, and I'll show you a complete fucken Rightwing moron.

max2205

The killing fields. Putin helping EU to stop the mass exodus as well

researchfix

But they will blame him nonetheless.

Usurious

They always doooooooo............

world map of US military installations........

http://empire.is/

Spiritof42

It's Russian payback time for Afghanistan.

It's not that I'm rooting for the Russians and Syrians. I don't give a shit who stuffs the USSA, NATO and Israel, as long as it's done.

withglee

may have turned the tide in the country's four-year civil war.

This is a propaganda marker. Syria is not having a "civil" war. They are under attack by the USA CIA and Israel Mossad.

NoWayJose

I have always wondered how ISIS continues to operate tanks and Humvees across open desert without any coalition air strikes. They have training camps and barracks and offices without worrying about air strikes. They have parades and convoys of vehicles without fear. They operate oilfields and refineries at will, and transport and sell the output. The U.S. is allowing this. Putin will not.

The U.S. wants to track my $10,000 withdrawal, freeze Iranian money, seize Russian billionaire's funds, peek into Swiss bank accounts -- yet cannot track ISIS oil revenues and huge financial transactions?

But at least we will have an openly gay Secretary of the Army!

NeoRandian

Also seems a little strange that ISIS can openly recruit people through Twitter and Facebook. Would anything remotely similar ever be permitted on any other site?

Keep an eye on the Joshua Goldberg story; I bet the CIA offers him a job after he is debriefed by the FBI.

bthunder

You, ZeroHedgers, never seem to learn from history: "checkmate, courtesy of The Kremlin. " - SERIOUSLY?

35 years ago the CIA lured USSR into Afghanistan, and when the oil prices dropped in the mid-1980s, the USSR was no more.

Oil prices are already down (son to go down even more thanks to Iran.) The Chinese already refuse to pay prices they agreed to just 8 months ago, and Gazprom is offering Ukraine 50% discounts!), Russia is already is involved in Ukraine, and now it's getting itself stuck in the sandbox in Syria.

How is it different from Afghanistan in 1980s? And while the USSR could hide the dead in 60000 zinc coffins, do you think in the age of Twitter and Facebook they'll be able to do that? You think that Russian people are sheepple just like the americans?

Seems to me it's checkmate to Putin, courtesy of the CIA and the Saudis.

P.S. When evryone keeps telling a dictator how great and brilliant he is, he starts believing that shit. Even as state revenues drop by 50%, even as his newest missiles explode at launch and the only target they hit are passenger jets. His pride takes over and he sends his best forces into the "sandbox" to defend his ally, a palce where every great army has been defeated. Checkmate, indeed.

P.P.S. Since the reports of Russians in Syria has surfaced, there's unusual "quietness" in Eastern Ukraine. Could it be that Russia cannot conduct war on 2 fronts? I can't wait until the CIA tests that theory, gives Ukes some of the new weaponry to "probe" russkies closer to thir homeland.

BendGuyhere

Jaw-dropping inanity.

"35 years ago the CIA lured USSR into Afghanistan, and when the oil prices dropped in the mid-1980s, the USSR was no more."

Yes, the brilliant CIA created the TALIBAN, which WE just spent 12 years fighting with 4 TRILLION$ and thousands DEAD, maimed. WAY TO FUCKING GO USA! OH, and now our home-grown USA SHALE OIL 'MIRACLE' has been destroyed by said engineered low oil prices. DUH. Blowback's a bitch.

bthunder

USA is still here, where's USSR?

USA (or USSA) is in deep sh*t, but Russia is waaaayyyy deeper.

Indeed, CIA was brilliant in using the Taliban to defeat USSR. It was Dick 'the Dick" Cheney who caused 12 years of fighting and spent $4T.

Just let the CIA do their thing and in no time China and USA will be dividing siberian oil amoung themselves, with Putin looking through jail window.

rejected

"How is it different from Afghanistan in 1980s? "

In 1980 the usa debt was 980 billion. Today the ussa debt is 18 trillion dollars (what they admit to) and growing exponentially.

In 1980 the usa was a manufacturing giant of quality merchandise. Now all the ussa produces is fiat and the tools of war.

In 1980 the usa had robust economy with much opportunity. Today the ussa has no work, no economy and no opportunity unless you call playing in the stock casino's opportunity.

In 1980 the usa had individual privacy and still could depend on the constitution. Today the ussa spies on everyone, and has totally eviscerated the constitution.

In 1980 the usa was at war with no one, for a change. Today the ussa is at war with half the world.

In 1980 the usa had a space program. Today the ussa depends on China and Russia to get people into space.

In 1980 the usa had a president. Today the ussa has a dictatorial executive.

In 1980 Afghanistan was eradicating the opium crop. Today the ussa armed forces guards and ships the bumper crops.

Comparing 1980 to now is like comparing Day to Night. On September 11, 2001 a darkness descended on the usa which gave birth to the ussa

MeBizarro

This has nothing to due with Afghanistan. As for the US economy in '80, it was pretty crappy and the only reason we weren't officially at war was because of Carter in the White House. Plenty on the Hill and in the DOD were pushing for a fight in Central America, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

I would agree though on several point and since 9-11 we have been a scared, scitterish, anxiety-ridden mess on the whole.

Anunnaki

Terrific article. Superb narrative. Essentially Obama can no longer bleed Assad through ISIS. And he will have to coordinate with Putin or it looks mightily suspicious to Europe overwhelmed by refugees

And this aggressive Syrian air force display makes a No Fly Zone moot

Obama and Kerry come off as sore losers. Give Hezbollah all the small arms they need and tell Netanyahoo to gack to murdering Gazan children which is all he is good at

Admittedly, I am a Putin supprter, but he just caught Obama with his pants down.

Wait till Putin's speech before the UN General Assembly. America will go apoplectic over being on the brunt end of a scolding

I had been impatient with Putin over Syria. I should have had faith that he would not fold

Obama by telling Carter to callShoigu means he lost his nerve

BendGuyhere

Yet another neocon fiasco. Uncounted billions gone, Syriah shattered forever, oh, and our dearest allies in Europe overrun with filthy penniless refugees. Way to go Team America!

falak pema

the russian axis now in place.

Obama cedes Syria to Putin and thus allows an Iranian initiative also which will have repercussions in Lebanon (Hezbollah), in Yemen (Houthi) and Palestine (Hamas).

A major shift in the ME power structure now seems in the making as the Lausanne Deal between US/IRan has changed the game.

What will Saud do now?

And watch the French and Germans try and win some contracts both in Iran and in Saud...when alliances fold new ambitions are born.

Pax Americana...wither now?

litemine

Like the Americans in control say.........."American Interests" are what the Military fight for....Right or wrong, Obama said.....We have No Friends, only Opportunities".

That being said, and the dumbed down General American Population with an Army pumped on Roids think thier shit doesn't stink. Wrap the stars and stripes around you and die for your freedom......Well now, How did that work out?

The Congress is bought, the army is Mercinary and the financial system controls. The Biggest lobby group is Israel...who profits from this? Not mainsteet. They own you. If you don't have a problem with that.....Carry On .


[Sep 18, 2015] They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America's Wars: The Untold Story

At 73, having spent years focusing on the civilian toll from Washington's Afghan War, Ann Jones embedded on an American forward operating base to experience what that war was like for the U.S. troops in the field. The next year, she began following grievously wounded American soldiers from the moment they came off the battlefield all the way back home. Her journey proved to be nothing short of an odyssey. Despite all the talk in this country about our "wounded warriors," no other book gives us a more powerful sense of the genuine cost of war to Americans.

[Sep 18, 2015] The Russians are Coming! by Graham E. Fuller

"...A remarkably sound analysis by Graham Fuller on Russia and Syria: http://grahamefuller.com/the-russians-are-coming/
Despite his CIA pedigree and the Tsarnaev connection, Fuller has moments of lucidity occasionally – he published a book in the 1990s arguing that Iran under the ayatollahs was nowhere near as totalitarian as the Western groupthink suggested, and in some ways outpaced Israel, 'the-only-democracy-in-the-midlle-east', in terms of societal openness."
"...The overthrow of Asad seemed a simple task in 2011 as the Arab Spring sparked early uprisings against him. The US readily supported that goal, as did Turkey along with Saudi Arabia and others. As the Asad regime began to demonstrate serious signs of resilience, however, the US and Turkey stepped up support to nominally moderate and secular armed opposition against Damascus, thereby extending the brutal civil war."
"...For similar reasons Iran's long-time open challenge against American ability act with impunity in the Middle East has always constituted a deep source of American strategic anger-viscerally surpassing the more Israel-driven nuclear issue."
"...In my view, the fall of Asad will not bring peace but will instead guarantee deadly massive long-term civil conflict in Syria among contending successors in which radical jihadi forces are likely to predominate-unless the west commits major ground forces to impose and supervise a peace. We've been there once before in the Iraq scenario. A replay of Iraq surely is not what the West wants."
"...What Russia will not accept in the Middle East is another unilateral US (or "NATO") fait accompli in "regime change" that does not carry full UN support. (China's interests are identical to Russia's in most respects here.)"
"...It is essential that the US not extend its new Cold War with Russia into the Middle East where shared interests are fairly broad - unless one rejects that very supposition on ideological grounds. The same goes for Iran."
September 14, 2015 | grahamefuller.com

Washington has been wrapped in confusion and indecision for years now in trying to sort out just what its real objectives are in Syria. Its obsessive, and ultimately failed goal of denying Iran influence in the Middle East has notably receded with Obama's admirable success in reaching a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue and gradual normalization of Iran's place in the world.

But while the Israel lobby and its Republican allies failed to block Obama's painstaking work in reaching that agreement, they now seem determined to hobble its implementation in any way possible. This is utterly self-defeating: unable to block Iran's re-emergence they seem determined to deny themselves any of the key payoffs of the agreement-the chance to work with Iran selectively on several important common strategic goals: the isolation and defeat of ISIS, a settlement in Syria that denies a jihadi takeover, the rollback of sectarianism as a driving force in the region, a peaceful settlement in Iran's neighbor Afghanistan, and the freeing up of energy/pipeline options across Asia.

But let's address this Syrian issue. There's a new development here-stepped up Russian involvement-that poses new challenge to the American neocon strategic vision. So here is where Washington needs to sort out what it really wants in Syria. Is the main goal still to erode Iranian influence in the region by taking out Iran's ally in Damascus? Or does it want to check Russian influence in the Middle East wherever possible in order to maintain America's (fast becoming illusory) dominant influence? These two goals had seemed to weigh more heavily in Washington's calculus than Syrian domestic considerations. In other words, Asad is a proxy target.

There are two major countries in the world at this point capable of exerting serious influence over Damascus-Russia and Iran. Not surprisingly, they possess that influence precisely because they both enjoy long-time good ties with Damascus; Asad obviously is far more likely to listen to tested allies than heed the plans of enemies dedicated to his overthrow.

The overthrow of Asad seemed a simple task in 2011 as the Arab Spring sparked early uprisings against him. The US readily supported that goal, as did Turkey along with Saudi Arabia and others. As the Asad regime began to demonstrate serious signs of resilience, however, the US and Turkey stepped up support to nominally moderate and secular armed opposition against Damascus, thereby extending the brutal civil war.

That calculus began to change when radical jihadi groups linked either to al-Qaeda or to ISIS (the "Islamic State") began to overshadow moderate opposition forces. As ruthless as Asad had been in crushing domestic opposition, it became clear that any likely successor government would almost surely be dominated by such radical jihadi forces-who simply fight more effectively than the West's preferred moderate and secular groups who never got their act together.

Enter Russia. Moscow had already intervened swiftly and effectively in 2013 to head off a planned US airstrike on Damascus to take out chemical weapons by convincing Damascus to freely yield up its chemical weapons; the plan actually succeeded. This event helped overcome at least Obama's earlier reluctance to recognize the potential benefits of Russian influence in the Middle East to positively serve broader western interests in the region as well.

Russia is of course no late-comer to the region: Russian tsars long acted as the protector of Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Middle East in the nineteenth century; the Russians had been diplomatic players in the geopolitical game in the region long before the creation of the Soviet Union. During the West's Cold War with the Soviet Union the two camps often strategically supported opposite sides of regional conflicts: Moscow supported revolutionary Arab dictators while the West supported pro-western dictators. Russia has had dominant military influence in Syria for over five decades through weapons sales, diplomatic support, and its naval base in Tartus.

With the collapse of the USSR in 1991 Russian influence in the area sharply declined for the first time as the new Russia sorted itself out. America then began declaring itself the "world's sole superpower," allegedly now free to shape the world strategically as it saw fit. And the significant neoconservative and liberal interventionist factions in Washington still nourish the same mentality today-predicated on the belief that the US can continue to maintain primacy around the world-economic, military, and diplomatic. In this sense, any acknowledgment of Russian influence in the Middle East (or elsewhere) represents an affront, even "a threat" to US dominance and prestige.

For similar reasons Iran's long-time open challenge against American ability act with impunity in the Middle East has always constituted a deep source of American strategic anger-viscerally surpassing the more Israel-driven nuclear issue.

Today the combination of Russia and Iran (whose interests do not fully coincide either) exert major influence over the weakening Asad regime.

If we are truly concerned about ISIS we must recognize that restoration of a modicum of peace in Syria and Iraq are essential prerequisites to the ultimate elimination of ISIS that feeds off of the chaos.

Russia appears now to be unilaterally introducing new military forces, stepped up weapons deliveries, and possibly including limited troop numbers into Syria specifically to back the Asad regime's staying power. Washington appears dismayed at this turn of events, and has yet to make up its mind whether it would rather get rid of Asad, or get rid of ISIS. It is folly to think that both goals can be achieved militarily.

In my view, the fall of Asad will not bring peace but will instead guarantee deadly massive long-term civil conflict in Syria among contending successors in which radical jihadi forces are likely to predominate-unless the west commits major ground forces to impose and supervise a peace. We've been there once before in the Iraq scenario. A replay of Iraq surely is not what the West wants.

So just how much of a "threat" is an enhanced Russian military presence in Syria? It is simplistic to view this as some zero-sum game in which any Russian gain is an American loss. The West lived with a Soviet naval base in Syria for many decades; meanwhile the US itself has dozens of military bases in the Middle East. (To many observers, these may indeed represent part of the problem.)

Even were Syria to become completely subservient to Russia, US general interests in the region would not seriously suffer (unless one considers maintenance of unchallenged unilateral power to be the main US interest there. I don't.) The West has lived with such a Syrian regime before. Russia, with its large and restive Muslim population and especially Chechens, is more fearful of jihadi Islam than is even the US. If Russia were to end up putting combat troops on the ground against ISIS (unlikely) it would represent a net gain for the West. Russia is far less hated by populations in the Middle East than is the US (although Moscow is quite hated by many Muslims of the former Soviet Union.) Russia is likely to be able to undertake military operations against jihadis from bases within Syria. Indeed, it will certainly shore up Damascus militarily-rather than allowing Syria to collapse into warring jihadi factions.

What Russia will not accept in the Middle East is another unilateral US (or "NATO") fait accompli in "regime change" that does not carry full UN support. (China's interests are identical to Russia's in most respects here.)

We are entering a new era in which the US is increasingly no longer able to call the shots in shaping the international order. Surely it is in the (enlightened) self-interest of the US to see an end to the conflict in Syria with all its cross-border sectarian viciousness in Iraq. Russia is probably better positioned than any other world player to exert influence over Asad. The US should be able to comfortably live even with a Russian-dominated Syria if it can bring an end to the conflict-especially when Washington meanwhile is allied with virtually every one of Syria's neighbors. (How long Asad himself stays would be subject to negotiation; his personal presence is not essential to 'Alawi power in Syria.)

What can Russia do to the West from its long-term dominant position in Syria? Take Syria's (virtually non-existent) oil? Draw on the wealth of this impoverished country? Increase arms sales to the region (no match for US arms sales)? Threaten Israel? Russia already has close ties with Israel and probably up to a quarter of Israel's population are Russian Jews.

Bottom line: Washington does not have the luxury of playing dog in the manger in "managing" the Middle East, especially after two decades or more of massive and destructive policy failure on virtually all fronts.

It is essential that the US not extend its new Cold War with Russia into the Middle East where shared interests are fairly broad-unless one rejects that very supposition on ideological grounds. The same goes for Iran.

We have to start someplace.

Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is "Breaking Faith: A novel of espionage and an American's crisis of conscience in Pakistan." (Amazon, Kindle) grahamefuller.com

[Sep 16, 2015] U.S. Rejected Offers by Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria to Surrender … and Proceeded to Wage War

"...There's no money in PEACE.."
Sep 16, 2015 | Zero Hedge

Submitted by George Washington on 09/16/2015 00:42 -0400

The Daily Mail reported last year:

A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that [Gaddafi offered to abdicate as leader of Libya.]

'Gaddafi wasn't a good guy, but he was being marginalized,' [Retired Rear Admiral Chuck ] Kubic recalled. 'Gaddafi actually offered to abdicate' shortly after the beginning of a 2011 rebellion.

'But the U.S. ignored his calls for a truce,' the commission wrote, ultimately backing the horse that would later help kill a U.S. ambassador.

Kubic said that the effort at truce talks fell apart when the White House declined to let the Pentagon pursue it seriously.

'We had a leader who had won the Nobel Peace Prize,' Kubic said, 'but who was unwilling to give peace a chance for 72 hours.'

The Washington Times wrote in January:

"I have been contacted by an intermediary in Libya who has indicated that President Muammar Gadhafi is willing to negotiate an end to the conflict under conditions which would seem to favor Administration policy," [former U.S. Congressman Dennis] Kucinich wrote on Aug. 24.

***

Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gadhafi's son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution, the secret recordings reveal.

A day later, on March 18, Gadhafi called for a cease-fire, another action the administration dismissed.

***

"Everything I am getting from the State Department is that they do not care about being part of this. Secretary Clinton does not want to negotiate at all," the Pentagon intelligence asset told Seif Gadhafi and his adviser on the recordings.

Communication was so torn between the Libyan regime and the State Department that they had no point of contact within the department to even communicate whether they were willing to accept the U.N.'s mandates, former Libyan officials said.

***

"The decision to invade [Libya] had already been made, so everything coming out of the State Department at that time was to reinforce that decision," the official explained, speaking only on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

***

"The Libyans would stop all combat operations and withdraw all military forces to the outskirts of the cities and assume a defensive posture. Then to insure the credibility with the international community, the Libyans would accept recipients from the African Union to make sure the truce was honored," Mr. Kubic said, describing the offers.

"[Gadhafi] came back and said he was willing to step down and permit a transition government, but he had two conditions," Mr. Kubic said. "First was to insure there was a military force left over after he left Libya capable to go after al Qaeda. Secondly, he wanted to have the sanctions against him and his family and those loyal to him lifted and free passage. At that point in time, everybody thought that was reasonable."

But not the State Department.

Gen. Ham was ordered to stand down two days after the negotiation began, Mr. Kubic said. The orders were given at the behest of the State Department, according to those familiar with the plan in the Pentagon. Gen. Ham declined to comment when questioned by The Times.

"If their goal was to get Gadhafi out of power, then why not give a 72-hour truce a try?" Mr. Kubic asked. "It wasn't enough to get him out of power; they wanted him dead."

Similarly, Saddam Hussein allegedly offered to let weapons inspectors in the country and to hold new elections. As the Guardian reported in 2003:

In the few weeks before its fall, Iraq's Ba'athist regime made a series of increasingly desperate peace offers to Washington, promising to hold elections and even to allow US troops to search for banned weapons. But the advances were all rejected by the Bush administration, according to intermediaries involved in the talks.

Moreover, Saddam allegedly offered to leave Iraq:

"Fearing defeat, Saddam was prepared to go peacefully in return for Ł500million ($1billion)".

"The extraordinary offer was revealed yesterday in a transcript of talks in February 2003 between George Bush and the then Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at the President's Texas ranch."

"The White House refused to comment on the report last night. But, if verified, it is certain to raise questions in Washington and London over whether the costly four-year war could have been averted."

According to the tapes, Bush told Aznar that whether Saddam was still in Iraq or not, "We'll be in Baghdad by the end of March." See also this and this.

Susan Lindauer (after reading an earlier version of this essay by Washington's Blog) wrote:

That's absolutely true about Saddam's frantic officers to retire to a Villa in Tikrit before the invasion. Except he never demanded $1 BILLION (or $500 MILLION). He only asked for a private brigade of the Iraqi National Guard, which he compared to President Clinton's Secret Service detail for life throughout retirement. I know that for a fact, because I myself was the back channel to the Iraqi Embassy at the U.N. in New York, who carried the message to Washington AND the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. Kofi Annan was very much aware of it. So was Spain's President Asnar. Those historical details were redacted from the history books when George Bush ordered my arrest on the Patriot Act as an "Iraqi Agent"– a political farce with no supporting evidence, except my passionate anti-war activism and urgent warnings that War in Iraq would uncover no WMDs, would fire up a violent and bloody counter-insurgency, and would result in Iran's rise as a regional power. In 2007, the Senate Intelligence Committee hailed my warnings in Jan. 2003 (as the Chief Human Intelligence covering Iraq at the U.N.) to be one of the only bright spots in Pre-War Intelligence. Nevertheless, in 2005 and again in 2008, I was declared "incompetent to stand trial," and threatened with "indefinite detention up to 10 years" on Carswell Air Force Base, in order to protect the cover up of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence.

(The New York Times has covered Lindauer at least 5 times, including here and here.)

On October 14, 2001, the Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted bombing if the Taliban were given evidence of Bin Laden's involvement in 9/11.

Specifically, the Guardian noted in 2001:

Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty" …

Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

"If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.

However, as the Guardian subsequently pointed out:

A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night.

For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan's military leadership said.

And the Guardian reports today:

Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.

Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world's gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.

Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the opposition.

But he said that the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal.

***

"There was no question because I went back and asked him a second time," he said, noting that Churkin had just returned from a trip to Moscow and there seemed little doubt he was raising the proposal on behalf of the Kremlin.

Ahtisaari said he passed on the message to the American, British and French missions at the UN, but he said: "Nothing happened because I think all these, and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything."

Similarly, Bloomberg reported in 2012:

As Syria slides toward civil war, Russia is signaling that it no longer views President Bashar al-Assad's position as tenable and is working with the U.S. to seek an orderly transition.

***

After meeting with French President Francois Hollande, among the most adamant of Western leaders demanding Assad's departure, Putin said Russia was not invested in Assad staying.

***

"We aren't for Assad or for his opponents," Putin told reporters in Paris on June 1. "We want to achieve a situation in which violence ends and a full-scale civil war is avoided."

And yet, as with Gaddaffi, Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, the U.S. turned down the offer and has instead prosecuted war. See this and this.

Postscript: An offer by Russia for Assad to leave is not the same as an offer by Assad himself. However, because the Syrian government would have long ago fallen without Russia's help, the distinction is not really that meaningful.

demur

What the USSA is doing is pure evil. At least Germany had a logical reason for aggressions. The treaty of Versailles unfairly took German lands. Germany wanted them back. It wasn't till Poland resisted that Germany let loose.

The USSA destroys leaders seeking a truce and does so in the name of peace. Then it rams its immoral, family destroying sterilizing geo-political socio economic system down traditional pious soverigns throats.

sidiji

so this make us what? the evil emipire? officially the bad guys?

honestann

I don't call them the predators-that-be for nothing.

Sudden Debt

Why did we go to war in the first place?

War industry, they run shit.

And sure they did it so they could steal all the money in the world.

That's why we're broke and half the world is at war.

That can never be ended.

tstraus

This is far from a new phenomena, we did the same against Spain until we took the Philippines, Wilson and House were against a settlement of the then still European War until the US had shed its blood on European soil, which clearly would have resulted in a pre-hostilities border settlement and maintained political structures instead of unconditional surrender.

All the blood, misery and human carnage that could have been subsequently avoided had we just stuck to the principles of the nations founders.

But capital requires war, war for profits, war to cull excess supply of capital, war to rebuild and war to dominate.

Power and money forged with American myth has been a potent mixture that directly and indirectly has murdered 100's of millions of innocent lives. And we are to destroy the cultural heritage of nations because one boy died on the beaches escaping a war that we initiated and fostered?

yellowsub

"War is Peace", why do you think they didn't negotiate?

Turdy Brown

Admiral Kubic is a good friend of mine. I was in Libya and Afghanistan with him. He is one of the smartest, bravest men that I have ever met.

In fact a quick story about him. We were both working on a project at the US Embassy in Kabul in 2011. I had just landed in the morning and as soon as I got to the Embassy, a group of Taliban started lobbing rocket towards the Embassy. Anyhow, it was a 24 hour ordeal but Kubic was the only person that I saw that grabbed an AK from a Ghurka guard (btw Ghurkas are cowards!), and rushed towards the attackers! Most people, including security personell were running away from the fire. Not Kubic: he was charging the Taliban! Never seen anything like it in my life!

I also have personal knowledge of what he has said in this article. ALL TRUE!

pFXTim

wouldn't be the first time...

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945:

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 329, Chapter 26) . . . [Nimitz also stated: "The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . ."]

http://www.doug-long.com/guide1.htm

somewhat different than the widely accepted official narrative.

SUNKNIGHT2010

Saddam Hussein switched from using the US dollar to the euro in selling Iraqi oil. The same with Libya, they were friends with the USA until plans were established to set up a currency (Dinar) backed by gold .for the USA's economy to survive, it MUST maintain world currency reserve status --

ANYTHING that threatens this position WILL be neutralized, irregardless of what it takes -- When Iraq started selling oil using the euro, Saddam Hussein signed his death warrant, as did Libya -- The true reason for all this conflict is to maintain & support the US dollar & economy, namely all the wealthy of Wall Street & Washington DC .

But for some weird reason ALOT of people here seem to think Israel is responsible for everything bad that has or will ever happen !

Sad how in 2015 , people are still so racist -- How far humanity has advanced in technology but how primitive an foolish the human race still is in MANY ways !

Reaper

There is glory in military victories. Exceptional trained sheeple die for that glory. Does the sheeple's god reward them for their stupidity? Do the gods praise as exceptional those whom they'll destroy?

11b40

Wall Street controls Washington.

Who controls Wall Street?

(if you don't know, I'm sure someone here could help you find out)

Motasaurus

London controls Wall Street. And Riyadh. And Tel-Aviv. Not England, London. And the Bankers who control that city, control the world.

RagnarRedux

Yep, sounds just like ethno-oligarch subverted Western nations, nothing has changed.

What the World Rejected

Hitler's Peace Offers, 1933- 1939

http://ihr.org/other/what-the-world-rejected.html

http://www.tomatobubble.com/id570.html

BullyBearish

There's no money in PEACE..

Max Steel

Why is the West reporting this NOW? It is a negotiating ploy. They know they have lost. Now they are trying to see if this old offer could still be put on the table.

silverer

No, the US leadership is a bunch of sore losers. That's what US voters wanted, prayed for, hoped for, and then mandated with an election. US leaders can't admit defeat, so next is probably a nuclear escalation, because they've convinced themselves that they have dug their protection deep enough into a number of mountains at taxpayer expense so that they will win and then survive.

In Russia, they built billions of dollars worth of fallout shelters over the last 20 years for the ordinary Russian. Every citizen in Moscow is within three minutes of a fallout shelter. The Russian leadership knows the US leadership better than the US voters do. In the US, they haven't built anything at all to protect the general population, and apparently consider everyone expendable.

This way, if the US calls it all wrong and totally screws it up, they won't have to answer to anyone who voted for them when they walk out of their fallout shelters a year after it's all over.


OpTwoMistic

Do not confuse America with its leadership.

Motasaurus

So long as the leadership remains in power and not dangling by their necks from the White House balcony, America and the leadership are the same.

SmittyinLA

The US didn't want an election, Kaddaffi would have won, he was loved by his people, Libyans wouldn't vote for their own liquidation, Libya had the highest living standards in Africa, Libyan citizenship was a valuable commodity -- like US citizenship.

Libya was looted in an international war crime.

To Hell In A Handbasket

Looted is the understatement of the year.

The narrative by the MSM was Gaddaffi is a dictator and the people need freedom and democracy. What the MSM ommitted was a background history of the country, Libya's achievments under Gaddaffi vs the total plunder of Libya under our puppet leader King Idris(who was overthrown by Gaddaffi), who were the Libyian National Transitional Council (NTC), what was the price of French(NATO) intervention for the treasonous (NTC)? (Mining rights to 35% of Libya's hydro carbons)

On 3 April a letter was sent by Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) to a coalition partner, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, which mentioned that France would take "35 percent of crude oil...in exchange for its total and permanent support" of the NTC. France's Liberation daily reported on Thursday that it had a copy of the letter, which stated that the NTC's Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam, would negotiate the deal with France. In 2010 France was the second purchaser of Libyan oil after Italy, with over 15 percent of its "oil" imported from Tripoli.

But that's not all as we must apply logic. Who was the first country to recognise the NTC? Which was the only country Gaddaffi broke off diplomatic ties? Which country was the first to bomb? The answer is France, to all 3 of those questions, but there is more the MSM avoided talking about and the biggest mystery is WHERE IS LIBYA'S 148 METRIC TONNS OF GOLD? Western leaders are not interested in peace, but in conquest and plunder for their paymasters.. Even the doubters who believed in freedom and humanitarian intervention, had to sit up, pause and think, when the NTC before they had even reached Trippoli and was losing the ground offensive, created their own central bank that was recognised by the NATO coalition inside of 2 days.. Case closed.

OpenThePodBayDoorHAL

Gaddafi had loaned Unicredito multiple billions in 2009 and they didn't feel like paying it back. Follow the money.

Bankster Kibble

We don't trust elections in our client states. When the Iraqis had their first election after the fall of Saddam, they elected some mullah we didn't like so we made them hold another election. "Do it again until you do it right!"

rsnoble

There's no profit in peace. Or not nearly as much I should say. A little dribble just won't cut it, steal the whole fucking enchilada at once. Get to test weapons. Get to play with cool toys like drones. See people get blown to pieces for the sick-minded. Move closer to world domination, etc. All ideas of crazy people. The only problem is, since this is human nature, if the US wasn't doing it or preventing others, would others step in with the same crazy ass plan? I would venture to guess yes.

GRDguy

Whatever is of benefit to peaceful citizens is not profitable to the financial sociopaths. Hence, fighting increases. Your real enemy hides in financial institutions, surrounded by minions and voracious lawyers.

BurnUnit

Do you think the white collar crime of Wall Steet and the Federal Reserve is bad ?

For more crimes against humanity go to www.firecrusade.com and see Free Document page and click link A Crime Against Humanity

The very gov agencies that are supposed to be protecting the public from dangers of fire and hazardous products, CPSC and NFPA as well as the non gov testing facility UL which often tests products on the governments behalf, have been covering up a deadly conspiracy to commit fraud that has resulted in the deaths of 10's of 1000's and horrible, often times, disfiguring injuries of 100's of 1000's of unsuspecting consumers over last 5 decades.

These agencies have all been in the back pocket of ionized alarm manufactures for over 50 years , which was exposed back in 1976 by a Fire Protection Engineer, Richard Patton. Mr. Patton revealed that the government funded Dunes Test which tested smoke alarms, was not only rigged so ionized alarms would pass the smoldering smoke stage of test but the data was falsified so that ionized detectors could keep the UL stamp of approval, while the superior, safer and more reliable heat detector technologies were deliberately set up to fail the tests.

With each day that passes and the CSPC fails to make a mandatory recall of ion alarms , many more victims will either be killed and or suffer serious injuries as the ionized alarm manufactures flooded the market with ion alarms and it is estimated that over 90% of all homes and habitable structures have these deadly devices, providing the public with a false sense of security.

Buyer beware -- These deaths and injuries have been and are preventable, as the safer more reliable photoelectric / heat smoke alarms have been available for over 40 years. The ion manufactures are fully aware of the problem and have been sued multiple times and paid $10's of millions in damages and the UL has been sued as well. Manufactures, in one lawsuit back in 2001 were ordered to provide disclosure on ion alarm packaging which ended up being a watered down disclosure / recommendation to use both photoelectric and ionized alarms. Being ion alarms are less expensive and majority of consumers do not read fine print on packaging which omits the actual dangers / death / injury factors, consumers assume a smoke detector is a smoke detector, and most people still opt to buy the less expensive and dangerous ion alarms.

Most everyone you know is at risk and should be made aware of these deadly devices as the government agencies will continue to cover up the fraud from the public until such a time a civil lawsuit and verdict is reached to force CPSC to execute a mandatory recall which could take several years. Please post this message on your facebook and twitter sites and forward to as many others as possible. More information and 60 minutes segment / news videos that have covered this issue can be found on www.smokealarmwarning.org

rwe2late

and in Ukraine,

Poroshenko (the elected guy who didn't want the IMF-NATO offer for Ukraine),

had agreed in a EU brokered deal to hold early elections and step down.

Guess who said "Fuck the EU" and instead backed a coup by jackbooted jingoists?

rwe2late

nor should we forget the US-led attack on Yugoslavia, in complete violation of the UN charter, a devastating bombing campaign destroying the civilian infrastructure, done with the hypocritical alleged motive to prevent "human rights violations".

In that case, Yugoslavia's refusal to accept a non-negotiable ultimatum to surrender sovereignty of its territory (Kosovo) to the Mafia-run KLA was falsely depicted as Yugoslavia's refusal to negotiate.

http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/22_rambo.htm

http://iacenter.org/warcrime/2_kla.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Kosovo

Sandmann

Now Turkey destabilises Western Europe by funnelling refugees into the EU in an invasion force. Germany takes in 1,000,000 in 2015 which exceeds its own birth rate. Won't be long before Europe disintegrates into civil war and regional conflicts like so much of its history. Soon the US will have created global chaos and it will not be able to restore order anywhere because it dare not put "boots on the ground" and it will need 4-5 million soldiers to restore order the way things are going.

When the Ukrainian refugees start towards Western Europe it should be clear the EU has destroyed peace in Europe for generations

SgtShaftoe

It seems that the US "leaders" have made it a game to violate every law of the Geneva conventions.

A. Bean-Counter

All those kids who were taking, like, loads of drugs in the '70's, those kids are now running US foreign policy - and still taking the drugs.

SixIsNinE

the "kids" who Turned On went into music, computing, design, family, travel, and more ...

but yeah, those alcoholic kids did go on to run foreign policy, i give you that ...

mc225

...coke heads too, but less likely the potheads...

Usurious

Global Geopolitical Chessboard:
Psychopathic Players and Cynical Moves
Guarantee a Future of Perpetual War "From the Black Sea to the Baltic"

Explosive Presentation Hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Reveals

What No Government Official, No Political Representative, No NGO Executive

and No Think Tank Director Has Ever Said Before in Public

http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=22223

rita

When will the American people demand that Cheney, Bush Hillary and Obama face justice for war crimes committed against humanity. Hopefully in 2016 Americans remember the crimes these people have committed and vote for somehing with not such a past.

Pancho de Villa

Are you Dreaming Amigo? Los Gringos will Never admit what they Refuse to Believe! Bush and Cheney will go to their graves as Heroes in their eyes! Otherwise Intelligent Peoples Refuse to Entertain what They Consider to be "Treasonous" Notions. I have Three Brother-in-Laws that work in Govt Related Fields. I get along with them all just fine now that I have learned what Topics to Avoid in Conversation!

Buen Suenos, Amigo

aleph0

http://libyasos.blogspot.de/p/gaddafi.html

With the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, a very poor desert country became a very rich little western protectorate. US and European companies had huge stakes in the extremely lucrative petroleum and banking sectors, but these were soon nationalized by Gaddafi. Thus Libya overnightjoined the list of US 'enemy' or 'rogue' states that sought autonomy and self-determination outside the expanding sphere of western Empire. Further cementing western hatred of the new regime, Libya played a leading role of the 1973 oil embargo against the US and maintained cooperative relations with the Soviet Union. Gaddafi also reportedly channeled early oil wealth into national free health care and education.

Life in Libya with Leader Gaddafi:

1. Electricity for household use is free,

2. interest-free loans

3. during the study, government give to every student 2 300 dolars/month

4. receives the average salary for this profession if you do not find a job after graduation,

5. the state has paid for to work in the profession,

6. every unemployed person receives social assistance 15,000 $/year,

7. for marriage state pays first apartment or house (150m2),

8. buying cars at factory prices,

9. LIBYA not owe anyone a cent,

10. free higher education abroad,

11. 25% of highly educated,

12. 40 loaves of bread costs $ 0.15,

13. water in the middle of the desert, drinking water,

14. 8 dinars per liter of oil (0.08 EUR),

15. 6% poor people,

16. for each infant, the couple received $ 5,000 for their needs.

etc.
etc.

sleigher

"9. LIBYA not owe anyone a cent,"

That's the problem right there...

SixIsNinE

and i didn't see any mention of the golden Squid in the article, so more obfuscation still ....

HamRove

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, and Condoleeza Rice among many others all need to spend a better portion of their earthly existence in an 8x8 cell watching the rest of us enjoying their sudden departure.

steelhead23

That's a rather incomplete list, but it's a start.

f16hoser

Don't forget Blair...

Motasaurus

What's that? The UK and their US and NATO puppets weren't at all interested in peaceful solutions to the middle-east conflicts? It's almost exactly like the way Israel targetted assasinations against the moderate Palistinian politicians for the express purpose of making the radicals powerful, meaning that no peace would be possible.

One would think that the aim has been to kill as many people as possible, and not regime change at all.

TheRideNeverEnds

Yes that and in many of these countries in the end its all about the physical gold they hold, a new leader doesn't matter we need to go there kill whoever and take their shit.

Saddam had lots and lots of gold, I think Ghadaffi had more.

Many of these places we end up going had loads of gold all of which now belongs to us aka the west aka the bankers aka the tribe. So in the end maybe we are all doing gods work just by being part of that system.

HowdyDoody

We also had to get the results of the effects of nukes on undamaged cities and their inhabitants - a magnificently evil medical experiment.

[Sep 14, 2015] Putin shifts fronts in Syria and Ukraine

Neocon Diehl has the audacity to use WashPost editorial page to attacks Secretary of State John Kerry. Promoting what is essentially Nuland's jingoistic policies... so despite blunder after blunder neocons are not yet done.
.
"...Diehl seems to think that the US has or should have a free hand to do what it wants wherever and whenever it wants, and gets all twitchy when he discovers that the 'end of history' hasn't arrived just yet. He forgets that Russia was in Crimea and Syria long before the US showed up with its solutions in hand."
.
"...Or best idea yet -- Send these WaPo neocons (Diehl and Hiatt) packing. "
Sep 14, 2015 | The Washington Post

Over the summer, while Washington was preoccupied with the Iran nuclear deal, U.S. and European diplomats quietly leaned on the democratically elected, pro-Western Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko. In Sochi, Kerry had offered full-throated U.S. support for the implementation of an accord known as Minsk 2 - a deal hastily brokered by Germany and France in February, at a moment when regular Russian troops were cutting the Ukrainian army to ribbons. The bargain is a terrible one for Kiev: It stipulates that Ukraine must adopt a constitutional reform granting extraordinary powers to the Russian-occupied regions, and that the reforms must satisfy Moscow's proxies. That gives Putin a de facto veto over Ukraine's governing structure.

Dryly 41

First, the instability in the Middle East is a direct result of the disaster caused the Bush II-Cheney administration's war against Iraq to fine Weapons of Mass Destruction. There were none. Any normal person would conclude that it would have been much cheaper and saner to have let the United Nations Monitoring and Verification Inspection Commission inspectors continue their inspections and find there were no WMD than to start a Pre-emptive War. Jackson is not a normal person as he supported the Bush II-Cheney war.

Second, Bush II-Cheney administration's war against Iraq at a time Iraq posed no military threat to the U.S. or any other nation did enormous damage to the standing, stature and prestige of the United States of America. How can the United States argue that it is fine for the us to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq if we want to but Russia cannot invade Ukraine?

Stranger9

Putin is extremely articulate on the subject of international ethics and law. Sure, he's corrupt as the day is long, but he seems to believe in certain basic Judeo-Christian-based tenets of international conduct. The West seems tied to Islamic jihad tenets, so the United States and its allies don't believe in the most basic rules. Thus, the moral high ground goes to Putin.

Whizdom

Diehl wants us to tie up our military assets trying to take down Hezbollah and Iran, while China is free to consolidate in the South China Sea

Whizdom

Iran is unlikely to be a Russian client, but strategic cooperation is likely.
Diehl and the Neocons over reached in trying to pry Ukraine out of Russians orbit before the time was right, and also massive fail in Syria A naive and stupid strategy.

Luke W

Putin has a right to conduct a foreign policy without the permission of the United States.

American statecraft and military performance in the region as been abysmal and is the font for much of the chaos now evident in Iraq and Syria thus, its credibility is in tatters.

Russia can certainly do no worse than what we have accomplish.

Livin_in_MD

Please, let us do all we can to entangle Russia into Syria's civil war. Let them bleed slowly their national treasure and the blood of their soliders. Let it become their NEXT Afghanistan. And while they're at it, please allow them to incite Muslims across the Middle East because they are helping the Butcher Assad.

You don't think they're Muslims in Russia who would like to strike back at Putin for this?

Obama, playing the long game, is going to give just enough rope to let the Russians hang themselves.

Whizdom

Let Russia be the magnet for Islamic terror instead of us? That's a concept.

Whizdom

Russia just wants its naval base and its hand on the valves of new Friendship pipeline that will cross Syria from Iran's Pars fields. Putin doesn't care if it Is Assad or some other stooge.

mike-sey

Who is in whose face depends on which side of the border one sits. Diehl seems to think that the US has or should have a free hand to do what it wants wherever and whenever it wants, and gets all twitchy when he discovers that the 'end of history' hasn't arrived just yet. He forgets that Russia was in Crimea and Syria long before the US showed up with its solutions in hand.

Stranger9

"Putin is meddling in the Middle East out of desperation because his bid for Ukraine has failed."

Putin's "bid for Ukraine"? His bid is not for all of Ukraine, as this statement implies; it is to keep Crimea within the orbit of Russia, since the great majority of its denizens are Russian by choice, history and culture. The word "Crimea" is not once mentioned.

Then there's this: "Putin has an agenda as clear as it is noxious. He wants to block any attempt by the West and its allies to engineer the removal of Bashar al-Assad ..."

Noxious? What's noxious is the West's and Israel's unfounded claim on Assad's regime.

danram

It take a real Putin boot-licker to defend Bashir Assad. Congratulations.

And if Putin is only concerned with Crimea, then why are his forces in southeastern Ukraine?

Oh yeah, that's right ... They really aren't. Got it.

Stranger9

An international code of conduct must be maintained. It cannot be broken by engineering coups and installing unelected leaders, as was done in Ukraine. The same applies In Syria. You simply cannot take over a sovereign country simply because you can. There are rules that even the U.S. -- "exceptional" though it claims to be -- must abide by.

MyCountry2

Syria will [be] Russia's second Afghanistan.

Whizdom

Do we get to arm the Islamists again?

IWH_rus

Why? did you stop it already? When?

jack406

Where's Reagan when we need him?
Didn't he build Al Quaida?

Michael DeStefano

We can dress Yatsenyuk up like Osama. His days in Ukraine are numbered anyway and he's about the right height. Not quite as handsome but the beard will cover most of that.

-shiloh-

The flood of refugees into Europe will continue until somebody stops the source of the flood. Does anybody really care who's fingers are in the dike? The only way to end the refugee crisis is to end the civil war(s) and insurgencies in the region. A cooperative effort among Europe, Russia, and Iran with the assistance of the US is preferable to the status quo. Ports, pipelines, and political ideologies are incidental issues.

Whizdom

So Russia and Iran are moving to crush ISIS and restore stability in Syria, which will ease the refugee crisis. And Diehl is unhappy? Syria has been a client of Russia's for a half century. Ending that relationship is a neocon goal, but does it even make sense now? Worth the price?

Forest Webb

What's the big deal? the editor makes this sound if this is some brilliant strategy on the part of Putin. If the Russians want to throw away their sons in the Mid-east quagmire let them.

It's a complicated stew and Putin has easier choices in the arena than the U.S. For Putin he simply supports Assad.

For the U.S. we want Assad out, so we cannot support him. We cannot support ISIL, half or the other opposition is supported by al Qaeda, the Kurds would just as soon fight the Turks our erstwhile Nato ally rather than fight the Assad regime. A complicated messy stew, we should try to keep our spoons out of.

Let Putin send his Russian boys to Syria, and let's count how many weeks pass before the terrorists take the war to Russian soil.

Michael Cook

Putin won in Ukraine. He has the Crimea back and has secured an overland gas pipeline corridor from Mother Russia to the peninsula, which was his objective. All it really cost him was dozens of scoldings from Obama.

Obama already scolds and threatens Vladimir Putin about Syria. The problem is that Moscow is absolutely right---if someone does not step in and rescue Syria RIGHT NOW the country will fall to ISIS before the end of the year. Assad's forces are exhausted.

Iran, of course, besides Russia is Bashar al Assad's other ally. The interesting point about that is that neither Russia nor Iran had much money available to make war.

Until last week. Now that Obama is freeing up frozen Iranian funds ($50-150 Billion!) suddenly the militant mullahs in Tehran have plenty of money for war making.

Can anyone smell a win-win for Putin? He gets to be the only leader of a major nation around to have the guts and intelligence to realize that allowing Syria to fall to ISIS would be a global catastrophe of the first magnitude. Better yet, Putin gets to sell lots and lots of Russian weapons, which helps his own struggling economy! Has Putin studied "The Art of the Deal?"

SELL weapons for cash money! Courtesy of Obama! Now that is worth putting up with more of these tiresome tongue-lashings that POTUS likes to dole out when he is clueless about what is going on. Since Obama is clueless all the time, Putin just has to put up with the noise.

Michael DeStefano

Putin's objective was to secure a gas pipeline corridor across the Kerch Strait?

So he could what, erect one of those ancient Greek fire breathing dragon flame throwers on the Crimean coast?

Not everything's about gas, Mr. Cook.

Ethernum

Russian airstrike in Syria won't perform better than the US (with a more advanced technology) against the Islamic state.

Can Putin engage a ground assault in Syria with regular/irregular troops the way he did in Ukraine ?

He can try but the result won't be the same, there's some wealthy countries supporting the Islamic State and they will provide them a lot of money, weapons and soldiers coming from everywhere to beat the Russian army, Putin will be unable to veto this support to the Islamic state, and it will restart what the US army experienced in Iraq, with permanent IED and kamikazes, while there will be no target for planes and drones....

IWH_rus

How many countries should be invaded and ravaged before USA became appeased?

simon7382

Nice try, no cigar....The US invasion of Iraq was a grave mistake, BUT it does not justify Putin's naked aggression in Georgia, in Ukraine or now in Syria in any way.

IWH_rus

Iraq is all you know about? Right now you involved in seven wars. And you never stop to invade all the last century. With all your history USA have only 21 year of peace, all the time invading, conquering, overthrowing legal governments to replace it with puppets. As it YOU made in Georgia, and Ukraine, and try to in Syria.

r2rnot

Putin is like a shark in the water, detecting blood around him. With the appeasers in our current administration, he has nothing to be worried about. He knows that Obama will do nothing but fire more drones and try to find some targets for bombs, as long is no non-combat person is in the area.

Michael DeStefano

If Putin's like a shark in water, McCain and Nudelman were like hyenas going after Ukraine's carcass,

SG2118

Refugees from Syria are a welcome relief to the Assad regime. It's hundreds of thousands of people who they need no longer worry about. Good riddance is Assad's feeling on the matter. Same holds for those from Iraq and Afghanistan. Rebels and those opposed to the government are leaving in droves and the regime couldn't be happier.

Russian troops in Syria? Russian warplanes and drones? They're going to be busom-buddies with the Iranian Quds Force which has been there for years, alongside Hezbollah fighters who are there to ensure the supply lines from Teheran remain open and aid, money and weapons continue to flow into the Bekaa Valley.

The Fall of Assad would be a cataclysm to Iranian hopes and dreams for the Middle East. They will not give up without a serious fight. Russia is there now, like in Vietnam 50 years ago, to "advise" and "train" local "militias" to "resist aggression".

choppy1

And if Putin's plan is to make himself look significant by "confronting" the U.S., he has succeeded, at least with Jackson Diehl. The question isn't whether Russia is pushing the U.S. around, it's whether U.S. national interests are involved. The U.S. has lived with the Assad regime for 45 years. Is it really so crucial that we get rid of it now? Ukraine is hardly a linchpin of Europe. Sure, it would be nice if it were free and western. But it has historic ties to Russia, is more important to Russia than to us, and has not shown laser-like focus on becoming a serious western democracy. Meanwhile Putin presides over an economy that's shrinking 5% a year, with a population that's also shrinking. And he made the choice to keep power for himself and his cronies rather than modernize. No matter what he does abroad, Russia itself is on a decline that he will only exacerbate. He's dangerous, not because he's strong, but because he's weak. We should not let his actions fool us into losing sight of where our core interests lie.

IWH_rus

While world sleeps, Putin moves stars with his finger, to disrupt NATO's operations and disturb dreams.

Greyhounds

Right. Because NATO is operating in Syria?

IWH_rus

NATO is a theatre of one actor. And this multifaced actor is operating in Syria, arming terrorists.

RealChoices

If anything, Russian aid to Assad should be encouraged. We may find Assad too repulsive to aid, but given a choice between Assad and ISIS, he is definitely the lesser of two evils. It's time to dispense with a notion of a "moderate pro-Western rebel force", it was always wishful thinking.

Greyhounds

There's this little thing called "human rights" and another little thing called "the Leahy Ammendment" that prevent us from providing aid to terrorists like Assad or even giving a nod to Putin to do so.

Michael DeStefano

But you seem to be all hunky dory with Poroshenko and our Saudi and Israeli allies bombing civilians into oblivion. Funny how that 'human rights' business pops up and down on demand.

Slava Besser

So Assad is a terrorist, but Poroshenko is allowed to bomb Donetsk at willSmile Saudi Arabia is allowed to bomb Yemen with cluster munitions we provide because they don't like the revolution there, but Russia should not provide aid to Donetsk despite the fact that people that came to power in Ukraine illegally and are blatantly anti-Russian are using air-force, tanks and artillery against civilian population that happens to have pro-Russian views?

Michael Cook

Spot On! Assad's forces are exhausted and extremely weak. If Russia doesn't come in and save the day, Syria will fall to ISIS with all the slaughter of minorities and hate crimes against archeology that entails.

I can't believe that the Obama administration is playing this like it is more important to uphold fictional political straw men than to actually stop ISIS from scoring their most important strategic victory ever!

SG2118

Iran is deeply involved in propping up Assad. It is through Syria that Iranian supplies reach their proxy lap-dog Hezbollah. Without that vital lifeline open, Hezbollah is cut off from their patron, and cannot be used against Iranian enemies (i.e. Israel). The Iranian Quds Force is in Syria now doing front-line fighting. Hezbollah too is deeply engaged. Without that level of aid, Assad's control would shrink dramatically, if not topple over altogether.

SG2118

News of the day. Iranian special forces moved into Syria to help Russians. Source - Israeli intelligence.

Slava Besser

I'm a Jew, are you implying that it is better for Israel if ISIS comes to power in Syria?

nativeson7

I would respectfully suggest that Russia's participation in the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts are different means to accomplish the identical objective, the undermining, if not outright dismemberment, of the EU and NATO.

While the Ukrainian gambit failed, taking the Russian economy with it, the "Syrian play" shows far more promise in its early stages and at the very least is likely to erode the unanimous support required for an extension of the EU's economic sanctions against Russia.

Merkel's misguided response to the initial flood of Syrian refugees has transformed the matter into an existential crisis in the minds of many Europeans and "right wing" parties throughout the continent.

There has been a notably unified and pronounced response from the Slavic Eastern European states in particular. Slovakia has declared it will accept only Christian refugees, Hungary has erected a fence along its southern border with Serbia and Bulgaria has done the same along its border with Turkey. Poland has agreed to take only 2000 Christian refugees rather than the 12,000 requested by the EU and in the Baltics protests have arisen over projected Syrian resettlement figures numbered in the hundreds.
Russia's military support will not only breathe new life into the Assad regime it will assure a continuing flood of migrants from Syria, into Europe, which will serve as a catalyst to create a "Pan-Slavic Europe" with a political, religious and cultural unity that could well transcend Eastern Europeans view of themselves as "European".

Michael DeStefano

Jeez, what a nefarious plot. Flood Europe with immigrants until it bursts at the seams. I knew that Putin was no good. What a Svengali-Machiavelli hybrid.

Why just today I heard on Meet the Press that they're all running from Assad and really upset that he's just being really mean with ISIS and not letting them distribute food and chocolates to the masses.

IWH_rus

Look at the map of "Arab spring". These lands make a belt from Atlantica to Indian Ocean, blocking Eurasia from Africa. It is clearly the geopolitical project of the power, which wins situation, while EU, Russia, China loose. Who is greatest and faithfull supporter of chaos in Middle East? USA.

Assad is unimportant. No matter who rule there, Syria is the target. If you destroy Syria - lots of military staff and arms will be left abandoned, and go to search new destiny. How ISIS was created? Jobless soldiers, cheap weapons. That's the target. Putin, Assad, just a decorations. You are blind, if unable to see it, or you do it consciously, as the autor of article. He is not as stupid, as try hard to look.

Michael DeStefano

Well it looks like, if Russia is 'pivoting' to Syria, then Germany has just decided to pivot with them. They didn't exactly call our approach feckless and wrongheaded but I suspect they may have had something along those lines in mind.

Syrien Deutschland bricht aus US-Allianz gegen Russland aus Nachrichten – DEUTSCHE WIRTSCHAFTS NACHRICHTEN

Germany surprisingly left the alliance formed together with the United States which intended to block Russia's entry into the Syrian conflict.

Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen told Der Spiegel that she welcomed president Putin's intentions of joining the fight against the extremist organization "Islamic State". It would be a matter of mutual interests, she said.

A speaker of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs added, Germany would welcome additional efforts of Russia in the fight against IS. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even announced the starting of a joint venture between him, Russian foreign minister Lavrov and their French colleague Laurent Fabius with the aim of bringing the Syrian civil war to an end. Lavrov and Fabius are expected to arrive in Berlin this Saturday.

moore_te

BIll Maher said it this weekend: There are five million troops in the Gulf States vs some 30,000 ISIS fighters... Where are they? Why don't the ME nations take in any refugees? (Of course, who would want to live in any of them given a choice?)

Taking out Saddam and Gaddafi worked so well, so of course we need to repeat the procedure in Syria!

Forget about the assurances we gave Russia that the West would leave a buffer between it and Russia. So what if we renege on our agreements, it's all for a good cause, right? After all, look how Bush stood up to them in Georgia. (He didn't.)

Or best idea yet -- Send these WaPo neocons (Diehl and Hiatt) packing.

Whizdom

There is a Syria peace deal in the works. naturally, NeoCons are gonna hate it. I wonder if Syria will get the Golan Heights back.

Chortling_Heel

It is always a pleasure to receive the NeanderCon musings and misdirection of Jackson Diehl.

Rootin' Tootin' Putin and his hand puppet, Bashar al-Assad, are trying to run out the clock before their nations implode even further --- taking each down with them.

[Sep 14, 2015] US War Theories Target Dissenters

Information Clearing House - ICH
... ... ...

Dissent as Treason

Since the Vietnam War, the belief that the media and other critics of government policies act as fifth columnists has become commonplace in military-oriented journals and with the American authoritarian-oriented political class, expressed in articles such as William Bradford's attack on "treasonous professors."

To the question "how a scholar pushing these ideas" did not raise a red flag, that might best be asked of the National Security Law Journal's previous editorial board. It is worth noting however that the editors who chose to publish Bradford's article are not neophytes in national security issues or strangers to the military or government.

As described on the NSLJ website, the Editor-in-Chief from 2014-2015 has broad experience in homeland and national security programs from work at both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security and currently serves (at the time of publication of Bradford's article) as the Deputy Director for the Office of Preparedness Integration and Coordination at FEMA. A U.S. government official in other words.

The "Articles Selection Editor" is described as "a family physician with thirty years of experience in the foreign affairs and intelligence communities." Websites online suggest his experience may have been acquired as a CIA employee. The executive editor appears to be a serving Marine Corps officer who attended law school as a military-funded student.

Significantly; Bradford was articulating precepts of the "U.S. common law of war" promoted by Chief Prosecutor Mark Martins because nothing Bradford advocated was inconsistent with William Whiting's guidance to Union Generals. Except Whiting went even further and advised that judges in the Union states who "impeded" the military in any way by challenging their detentions were even greater "public enemies" than Confederate soldiers were.

This "U.S. common law of war" is a prosecution fabrication created by legal expediency in the absence of legitimate legal precedent for what the United States was doing with prisoners captured globally after 9/11. This legal invention came about when military commission prosecutors failed to prove that the offense of Material Support for Terrorism was an international law of war crime. So prosecutors dreamed up a "domestic common law of war." This in fact is simply following the pattern of totalitarian states of the Twentieth Century.

Government-Media-Academic-Complex

The logic of Bradford's argument is the same as that of the Defense Department in declaring that journalists may be deemed "unprivileged belligerents." As quoted above, George H. Aldrich had observed that in Vietnam, both sides had as their goal "the destruction of the will to continue the struggle."

Bradford argued that Islamists must overcome Americans' support for the current war to prevail, and "it is the 'informational dimension' which is their main combat effort because it is U.S. political will which must be destroyed for them to win." But he says Islamists lack skill "to navigate the information battlespace, employ PSYOPs, and beguile Americans into hostile judgments regarding the legitimacy of their cause."

Therefore, according to Bradford, Islamists have identified "force multipliers with cultural knowledge of, social proximity to, and institutional capacity to attrit American political will. These critical nodes form an interconnected 'government-media-academic complex' ('GMAC') of public officials, media, and academics who mould mass opinion on legal and security issues . . . ."

Consequently, Bradford argues, within this triumvirate, "it is the wielders of combat power within these nodes - journalists, officials, and law professors - who possess the ideological power to defend or destroy American political will."

While Bradford reserves special vituperation for his one-time fellow law professors, he states the "most transparent example of this power to shape popular opinion as to the legitimacy of U.S. participation in wars is the media."

As proof, Bradford explained how this "disloyalty" of the media worked during the Vietnam War. He wrote: "During the Vietnam War, despite an unbroken series of U.S. battlefield victories, the media first surrendered itself over to a foreign enemy for use as a psychological weapon against Americans, not only expressing criticism of U.S. purpose and conduct but adopting an 'antagonistic attitude toward everything America was and represented' and 'spinning' U.S. military success to convince Americans that they were losing, and should quit, the war. Journalistic alchemists converted victory into defeat simply by pronouncing it."

Space does not permit showing in how many ways this "stab in the back" myth is false. But this belief in the disloyalty of the media in Bradford's view remains today. He wrote: "Defeatism, instinctive antipathy to war, and empathy for American adversaries persist within media."

Targeting Journalists

The right-wing militarist Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), with mostly retired U.S. military officers serving as advisers, has advocated targeting journalists with military attacks. Writing in The Journal of International Security Affairs in 2009, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters wrote:

"Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media . . . . Future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media." (Emphasis in original.)

The rationale for that deranged thinking was first propounded by Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp and other authoritarian-minded officers after the Vietnam War. Sharp explained, our "will" was eroded because "we were subjected to a skillfully waged subversive propaganda campaign, aided and abetted by the media's bombardment of sensationalism, rumors and half-truths about the Vietnam affair - a campaign that destroyed our national unity." William C. Bradford apparently adopted and internalized this belief, as have many other military officers.

That "stab in the back" myth was propagated by a number of U.S. military officers as well as President Richard Nixon (as explained here). It was more comfortable to believe that than that the military architects of the war did not understand what they were doing. So they shifted blame onto members of the media who were astute enough to recognize and report on the military's failure and war crimes, such as My Lai.

But those "critical" journalists, along with critics at home, were only recognizing what smarter Generals such as General Frederick Weyand recognized from the beginning. That is, the war was unwinnable by the U.S. because it was maintaining in power its despotic corrupt ally, the South Vietnamese government, against its own people. Whether or not what came later was worse for the Vietnamese people was unforeseeable by the majority of the people. What was in front of their eyes was the military oppression of American and South Vietnamese forces and secret police.

Information Warfare Today

In 1999, the Rand Corporation published a collection of articles in Strategic Appraisal: The Changing Role of Information in Warfare. The volume was edited by Zalmay Khalilzad, the alleged author of the Defense Department's 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, which was drafted when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary and Paul Wolfowitz was Under Secretary of Defense – and promulgated a theory of permanent U.S. global dominance.

One chapter of Rand's Strategic Appraisal was written by Jeremy Shapiro, now a special adviser at the U.S. State Department, according to Wikipedia. Shapiro wrote that the inability to control information flows was widely cited as playing an essential role in the downfall of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

He stated that perception management was "the vogue term for psychological operations or propaganda directed at the public." As he expressed it, many observers worried that potential foes could use techniques of perception management with asymmetric strategies with their effect on public opinion to "destroy the will of the United States to wage war."

Consequently, "Warfare in this new political environment consists largely of the battle to shape the political context of the war and the meaning of victory."

Another chapter on Ethics and Information Warfare by John Arquilla makes clear that information warfare must be understood as "a true form of war." The range of information warfare operations, according to Arquilla, extends "from the battlefield to the enemy home front." Information warfare is designed "to strike directly at the will and logistical support of an opponent."

This notion of information warfare, that it can be pursued without a need to defeat an adversary's armed forces, is an area of particular interest, according to Arquilla. What he means is that it necessitates counter measures when it is seen as directed at the U.S. as now provided for in the new LOW Manual.

Important to note, according to Arquilla, is that there is an inherent blurriness with defining "combatants" and "acts of war." Equating information warfare to guerrilla warfare in which civilians often engage in the fighting, Arquilla states "in information warfare, almost anyone can engage in the fighting."

Consequently, the ability to engage in this form of conflict is now in the hands of small groups and individuals, offering up "the prospect of potentially quite large numbers of information warfare-capable combatants emerging, often pursuing their own, as opposed to some state's policies," Arquilla wrote.

Therefore, a "concern" for information warfare at the time of the Rand study in 1999 was the problem of maintaining "noncombatant immunity." That's because the "civilian-oriented target set is huge and likely to be more vulnerable than the related set of military infrastructures . . . . Since a significant aspect of information warfare is aimed at civilian and civilian-oriented targets, despite its negligible lethality, it nonetheless violates the principle of noncombatant immunity, given that civilian economic or other assets are deliberately targeted."

What Arquillo is saying is that civilians who are alleged to engage in information warfare, such as professors and journalists, lose their "noncombatant immunity" and can be attacked. The "blurriness" of defining "combatants" and "acts of war" was removed after 9/11 with the invention of the "unlawful combatant" designation, later renamed "unprivileged belligerent" to mimic language in the Geneva Conventions.

Then it was just a matter of adding the similarly invented "U.S. domestic common law of war" with its martial law precedents and a framework has been built for seeing critical journalists and law professors as "unprivileged belligerents," as Bradford indiscreetly wrote.

Arquilla claims that information warfare operations extend to the "home front" and are designed "to strike directly at the will and logistical support of an opponent." That is to equate what is deemed information warfare to sabotage of the population's psychological will to fight a war, and dissidents to saboteurs.

Perpetual War

But this is a perpetual war driven by U.S. operations, according to a chapter written by Stephen T. Hosmer on psychological effects of information warfare. Here, it is stated that "the expanding options for reaching audiences in countries and groups that could become future U.S. adversaries make it important that the United States begin its psychological conditioning in peacetime." Thus, it is necessary "to begin to soften the fighting will of the potential adversary's armed forces in the event conflict does occur."

As information warfare is held to be "true war," this means that the U.S. is perpetually committing acts of war against those deemed "potential" adversaries. Little wonder that Vladimir Putin sees Russia as under assault by the United States and attempts to counter U.S. information warfare.

This same logic is applied to counter-insurgency. The 2014 COIN Manual, FM 3-24, defines "Information Operations" as information-related capabilities "to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decisionmaking of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own."

Those we "protect ourselves from" can logically be seen as the internal enemy, as William Bradford saw it, such as critical law professors and journalists, just as Augusto Pinochet did in Chile with dissidents.

With the totalitarian logic of information-warfare theorists, internalized now throughout much of the U.S. government counter-terrorism community, it should be apparent to all but the most obtuse why the DOD deems a journalist who writes critically of U.S. government war policy an "unprivileged belligerent," an enemy, as in the Law of War manual. William C. Bradford obviously absorbed this doctrine but was indiscreet enough to articulate it fully.

It Has Happened Here!

That's the only conclusion one can draw from reading the transcript of the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit. In that lawsuit, plaintiffs, including journalists and political activists, challenged the authority provided under Sec. 1021 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization for removal out from under the protection of the Constitution of those deemed unprivileged belligerents. That is, civilians suspected of lending any "support" to anyone whom the U.S. government might deem as having something to do with terrorism.

"Support" can be as William Whiting described it in 1862 and as what is seen as "information warfare" by the U.S. military today: a sentiment of hostility to the government "to undermine confidence in its capacity or its integrity, to diminish, demoralize . . . its armies, to break down confidence in those who are intrusted with its military operations in the field."

Reminiscent of the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can't Happen Here where those accused of crimes against the government are tried by military judges as in the U.S. Military Commissions, a Justice Department attorney arguing on behalf of the United States epitomized the legal reasoning that one would see in a totalitarian state in arguing why the draconian "Law of War" is a substitute for the Constitution.

The Court asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Torrance if he would agree, "as a principled matter, that the President can't, in the name of the national security of the United States, just decide to detain whomever he believes it is important to detain or necessary to detain to prevent a terrorist act within the United States?"

Rather than giving a straight affirmative answer to a fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution, Torrance dissembled, only agreeing that that description would seem "quite broad," especially if citizens. But he added disingenuously that it was the practice of the government "not to keep people apprehended in the U.S."

Which is true, it is known that people detained by the U.S. military and CIA have been placed everywhere but in the U.S. so that Constitutional rights could not attach. Under Section 1021, that "inconvenience" to the government would not be necessary.

When asked by the Court if he, the Justice Department attorney, would agree that a different administration could change its mind with respect to whether or not Sec. 1021 would be applied in any way to American citizens, he dissembled again, answering: "Is that possible? Yes, but it is speculative and conjecture and that cannot be the basis for an injury in fact."

So U.S. citizens or anyone else are left to understand that they have no rights remaining under the Constitution. If a supposed "right" is contingent upon who is President, it is not a right and the U.S. is no longer under the rule of law.

In discussing whether activist and journalist Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a citizen of Iceland, could be subject to U.S. military detention or trial by military commission, Assistant U.S. Attorney Torrance would only disingenuously answer that "her activities as she alleges them, do not implicate this." Disingenuous because he knew based upon the answer he previously gave that the law of war is arbitrary and its interpretation contingent upon a military commander, whoever that may be, at present or in the future.

What could happen to Ms. Jónsdóttir would be completely out of her control should the U.S. government decide to deem her an "unprivileged belligerent," regardless of whether her expressive activities changed positively or negatively, or remained the same. Her risk of detention per the Justice Department is entirely at the sufferance of whatever administration may be in place at any given moment.

Any doubt that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, along with Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, is believed by the U.S. Executive Branch to give it the untrammeled power that Article 48 of the Weimar Germany constitution gave to the German President in 1933 was settled by the arguments made by the Justice Department attorney in Hedges v. Obama.

Setting First Amendment Aside

One does not need to speculate that the U.S. government no longer sees First Amendment activities as protected. Government arguments, which were made in the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit, revealed that the Justice Department, speaking for the Executive Branch, considers protection of the Bill of Rights subordinate to the claim of "war powers" by the Executive. One can only be willfully blind to fail to see this.

By the Justice Department's court arguments and filings, the protections afforded by the U.S. Bill of Rights are no more secure today than they were to Japanese-Americans when Western District military commander General DeWitt decided to remove them from their homes on the West Coast and intern them in what were initially called, "concentration camps."

The American Bar Association Journal reported in 2014 that Justice Antonin Scalia told students in Hawaii that "the Supreme Court's Korematsu decision upholding the internment of Japanese Americans was wrong, but it could happen again in war time." But contrary to Scalia stating that Korematsu had been repudiated, Korematsu has never been overruled.

The court could get a chance to do so, the ABA article stated, in the Hedges v. Obama case "involving the military detention without trial of people accused of aiding terrorism." But that opportunity has passed.

A U.S. District Court issued a permanent injunction blocking the law's indefinite detention powers but that ruling was overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. A petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asked the justices to overturn Sec. 1021, the federal law authorizing such detentions and stated the justices should consider overruling Korematsu. But the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2014, leaving the Appeals Court's ruling intact.

The Supreme Court's decision to not overturn Korematsu allows General DeWitt's World War II decision to intern Japanese-Americans in concentration camps to stand as a shining example of what Brig. General Marks Martins proudly holds up to the world as the "U.S. domestic common law of war."

Todd E. Pierce retired as a Major in the U.S. 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. In the course of that assignment, he researched and reviewed the complete records of military commissions held during the Civil War and stored at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

[Sep 13, 2015] The workings of the Bush administration by Professor David Gries

"By their deeds shall you know them."

Introduction

I am concerned with the way this administration operates. I am not talking about policy -whether we should be at war, or who is right about the economy. Instead, the focus is on what the administration does and how it does it.

The actions of this administration have run counter to Bush's statements of April 2000 and have divided this country as no other administration has done in recent memory.

"I will set a different tone. I will restore civility and respect to our national politics. ... I will work with Republicans and reach out to Democrats ... I will treat the other party with respect, and when we make progress, I will share the credit. ... I will unite our nation, not divide it. I will bring Americans together." George Bush, April 2000

In August 2004, I created the website www.howbushoperates.info , describing the Bush Administration as I saw it, hoping that enough people would read the website and not vote for Bush again. I was alarmed at what the Bush administration had done in 2001 to 2004, and I was even more alarmed at what another 4 years of Bush would do to the US and the world. I did my best, through this website, to help. But not enough people looked at it to make any difference. Perhaps I should have blogged, or something like that.

(You can see the original website on the Wayback machine.)

My worst fears have been realized. Four more years of this administration has ruined the economy not only of the US but of the world. This administration has taken steps to harm, rather than help, the environment. Through its bullying tactics and its actual approval of torture, the US has lost any of its moral authority, and we have lost the US the respect of the world. Its lack of respect for our Constitution, its suppression of and manipulation of information, its lies, its incompetence in handling the Iraq war, its complete lack of planning for the Iraw war and the aftermath --all of these have hurt the United States tremendously. And we, the people, are now paying for it.

This website is the original website www.howbushoperates.info, with a few minor changes. It will remain as long as I have a website. I don't want people to forget how bad this administration has been.

I have had to change some links because, over the years, some links have been broken. In order to compensate for further loss of links, on most articles, I have copied the original webpage onto this website, and it appears as a "local version".

Read this site and weep at the fact that the American People knew what this administration was like four years ago but still allowed him to take over the Presidency a second time. We have ourselves to blame.

I am concerned with the administration's:

  1. Lack of honesty, which has brought about lack of trust.
  2. Manipulation of information to further its goals.
  3. Secrecy, which has kept the American public and Congress from making sound judgements.
  4. Conflict of interest.
  5. Lack of respect for others.
  6. Lack of reasoning and compromise -the administration's way of responding to differing views seems to be to ridicule rather than reason.
  7. Belligerent and arrogant attitude and mode of operation, which has cost our country the respect and compassion of the rest of the world.

I do want an administration that is forceful and strong. But that strong administration has to be:

  1. Honest, trustworthy, ethical.
  2. Respectful of all people and all nations.
  3. Able to engage in dialogue and make decisions based on reason.
  4. Without conflict of interest.
  5. A Uniting force, rather than one that divides.

Everyone - Democrat, Republican, Green, independent, etc. - should be alarmed at what this administration has done and what it may do in the future, if re-elected. A resounding defeat in November is the only way to let the world know that the United States people do not tolerate such an administration.

The links in the left column are to short discussions that back up my opinions. Again, remember that it is not the policies and programs that are at issue here, although I have problems with some of them. Rather, the issue is the way this government has operated, in a self-serving, untrustworthy, unethical, disrespectful, and even nasty, manner.

United we stand. If we stay as divided as we have been divided by this administration, we fall.

If an administration has integrity, ethics, and character, then policies will fall into place, for the administration will be guided by the good of the country and will engage in open, honest, and meaningful dialogue with the whole nation. If an administration has no integrity, ethics, and character, then the nation better beware.

Ethics and family values

The actions of this administration display a disregard for the values which Bush speaks of. Its actions have lost the administration the respect and trust of half the nation. The world is even less trustful and respectful. Below, I give some examples of this. "These are universal values, values we share in all our diversity: Respect, tolerance, responsibility, honesty, self-restraint, family commitment, civic duty, fairness and compassion." George Bush. White House Conference on Character and Community, June 2002.

1. The administration lied to us about the need for going to war in Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and there was no link between Al Quaeda and Iraq. Iraq simply was not the terrorist country that we were told it was. I discuss it here.

The issue is not the war itself; it is the way the administration misled and lied to Congress and the people about why we should be in the war.

2. The Bush campaigns have repeatedly resorted to slander and inuendo. I discuss it here.

3. The Bush-Cheney campaign in Pennsylvania asked their volunteers to obtain the names and addresses of the members of their churches. This is not only unethical; a church involved in such an action would be in danger of losing their status as a tax-exempt religious organization. Some conservative church leaders have denounced this action, but the Bush-Cheney campaign defended it. I discuss it here.

4. The administration withheld information or doctored information in order to sway people and the Congress to their side. Click on "Secrecy" and "Wide-spread misuse of science" in the left column for some examples.

I cannot vote for an administration that has such disdain for ethics and values, that has so little respect for the people that it is supposed to be representing. I would feel better if more people felt this way, for the character of an administration is of utmost importance.

Lies about the need for war

The issue at hand is not whether we should be at war or not. It is the behavior of the administration in getting us into war -the lies that got us into the war and lost us the respect and trust of the world. "Some people think it's inappropriate to draw a moral line. Not me. For our children to have the lives we want for them, they must learn to say yes to responsibility . . . yes to honesty." George W. Bush, June 12, 1999

The administration got us into war with Iraq for three reasons, they say:

  1. To eliminate Saddam Hussein's WMD. It is clear that he had no WMD, and it is also clear that the administration knew it. In fact, in 2001, both Powell and Condoleezza Rice stated publicly that there were no WMD; two years later, they and the administration told a different story.
  2. To diminish the threat of international terrorism. There was no such threat. It was known that there were no connections between Hussein and Al Qaeda.
  3. To promote democracy in Iraq and surrounding areas. This is hypocrisy. In the 1980s, members of the administration, like Cheney and Rumsfeld, were quite happy to embrace Hussein and Iraq. At that time, even though they knew that Iraq was using chemical weapons against its own people, Cheney and Rumsfeld did not speak out or suggest that the U.S. discontinue its support of Hussein. Instead, they embraced Hussein and Iraq.

Rep. Henry Waxman has released a report of the U.S. House of Representatives (16 March 2004) that identifies 237 misleading statements about Iraq made by President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in 125 public appearances. How can you trust the administration? . Here is the report (pdf file). This webpage contains a search engine that allows you to view all the misleading statements (and see why it is misleading). These are official items from the U.S. House of Representatives.

This website (here it is as text only) shows ten lies made by the administration regarding why we went to war. With each statement, facts are given to prove that it was a lie. You can find hundreds of websites with the same theme.

Whether we should be at war now is a complex issue, and I don't address it. For me, what matters is that the administration lied to get its way. Such behaviour in such a serious context means that the administration cannot be trusted, and an administration that cannot be trusted is a danger to us all.

Dishonest politics

One expects the administration to be honest and open in dealing with Congress and in presenting its case to the people, and Bush said he would be.

But the behavior of this administration has been just the opposite. Besides its misrepresentations and lies about Iraq, here are some examples.

"And together we will create and America that is open .... I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation. ... Whether you voted for me or not, I will do my best to serve your interests and I will work to earn your respect. I will be guided by President Jefferson's sense of purpose, to stand for principle, to be reasonable in manner, and above all, to do great good for the cause of freedom and harmony." George Bush, Acceptance Speech, 13 Dec 2000
  1. The Medicare bill. In November 2003, the House of Representatives passed a medical bill. Because of the rising deficit, they were worried about cost. Bush promised that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But the administration's own analysis in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had told the administration that it would cost over $550 billion. The bill would not have passed had the truth been known. Chief actuary Richard S. Foster was told he would be fired if he revealed the figures to lawmakers. Read about it here. Public Citizen has information on how drug companies and HMOs led an army of nearly 1,000 lobbyists to promote this misguided legislation, spending almost $141 million.
  2. Misuse of science. Click on the link on misuse of science on the left to see just how much this administration has attempted to use politics, hiding of facts, and misrepresentation of facts for its political gain.
  3. Hiding poverty numbers. The number of people living in poverty rose by 1.3 million in 2003. The Census Bureau Report on such things comes out in September. But the Bush administration had it appear in August instead, well before the Republican Convention and when people generally take vacations. Read about it here (here is a local version)
  4. Leaking news. Bush promised to do everything he could to fight the war on terror. Yet, in August, for their own political gain, the administration leaked the fact that alleged terrorist Kahn had been apprehended. Kahn was a key intelligence source, and the leak allowed several terrorists to escape. Read about it here (here is a local version).
  5. Ashcroft repeatedly lied to Congress about the administration's counter-terrorism effort. He told them terrorism had been his number 1 priority before 9/11; records show that he did not include it as one of the department's 7 goals, putting it as a subgoal beneath gun violence and drugs. He said that his predecessor's (Reno) plan did not mention counterterrorism, which was false. He lied about the amount of money that the FBI requested and that the administration gave the FBI. Read about it here (here is a local version).
  6. Condoleezza Rice repeatedly lied to 9/11 Commission. She made over ten false claims. For example, she said that the Bush Administration has been committed to the "transformation of the FBI into an agency dedicated to fighting terror." The truth is that before 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft de-emphasized counterterrorism at the FBI. Moreover, in the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI. Read about it here (here is a local version).

Suppression of rights

Bush says he is for freedom and democracy, but his administration has not acted that way. The administration has held secret --and illegal-- deportation hearings. People have been hindered --sometimes illegally-- from voicing quiet protests at Bush appearances. And others have been investigated for no valid reason --partly because of the Patriot Act.

Many people in the US are really afraid of the suppressive tone of this administration.

"Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil. There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides." John Stuart Mill.

"Restriction on free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." William O. Douglas.

"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

Secret courts suppression of protesters Unwarranted investigations
Search the internet and you can find many more examples of unwarranted investigations and suppression of protestors.

1. Secret Visa courts are illegal. (Article ( local version) in Guardian Newspapers, 27 Aug 2002). The Bush administration held hundreds of deportation proceedings in secret. A federal appeal court found them to be illegal. Judge Damon Keith wrote in his ruling that, "Democracies die behind closed doors." The ruling describes the secrecy surrounding the government's response as "profoundly undemocratic". The ruling concludes that, "The executive branch seeks to uproot people's lives outside the public eye and behind a closed door."

2. Suppression of protest at Bush appearances. A number of people have been hindered or stopped from appearing at Bush evenets, even when these appearances were on public grounds. Some people have been arrested, with the case thrown out of court later. Others have not been allowed into Bush events, even though they were doing nothing wrong. In several situations, dissenters are expected to stay in a restricted zone, away from Bush or his motorcade, while non-dissenters are allowed to approach much more closeley. This kind of suppressionof free speech is frightening. Here are just a few examples, some of which go back to 2002.

Nicole and Jeff Rank (local version) were arrested in Charleston; the judge threw out the charges. Nicole was immediately fired from her job with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but later reinstated with an apology. The City of Charleston said they should not have been arrested.

Daniel Finsel (local version) was arrested simply for carrying a sign at a Bush event.

Nelson (local version), an elected County supervisor in Wisconsin, was kicked out of Bush event for wearing a hidden Kerry shirt (the shirt was not showing, but someone had seen him in it earlier).

20 of 37 members (local version) of a Peace Action group were not allowed to fly from Milwaulkee to a protest in Washington because there names were on a "No fly" list. No one will say how their names got on it.

Anti-Bush students (local version) were completely silenced at their Ohio State Graduation when Bush came to speak.

Bill Neel (local version) was arrested in Butler, Pennsylvania; the district Justice threw the case out and returned his protest sign to him.

Jan Lentz, Sonja Haught, and Mauricio Rosas (local version) two grandmothers and a gay activist, were arrested for displaying dissenting opinions; others with pro-Bush signs were not. All charges were dropped.

3. Unwarranted investigations. Some people have been detained or investigated simply because they spoke out. Others, for what seems to be no reason at all. Here are some examples.

The Kjars were visited by the US Secret Service because they had a bumper sticker "KING GEORGE-Off With His Head".

Barry Reingold (local version) was visited by the FBI for speaking his mind about Bush, terrorism, and Afghanistan at a gymn.

Daniel Muller (local version) asked for 4,000 stamps without the American Flag on them. The police were called, and Muller was interrogated. He didn't get the stamps until the next day, and only after an interrogation by a federal postal inspector.

Incompetence

Suppression of dissent by the Bush administration is mentioned in several places of this website. Judging by what I read about the Iraq war, I conclude that the administration's lack of desire to listen seriously to dissenting opinions -basically their suppression of them- is responsible for his incompetence in leading the war. "I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward

Yes, I mean incompetence. Although the troops have performed admirably, this war has not been led well. Bush may boast loudly about his war on terror, but his actions show incompetence. Do you remember 1 May 2003 (local version; the event used to be mentioned on the WhiteHouse website but was removed) when Bush flew onto the carrier, with a giant sign "Mission Accomplished" on it, and told us that "major combat operations have ended" and that we have prevailed --implying the war was won? Did that show any understanding of the situation? (Six months later, Bush disavowed any connection with that sign, but the White House later said that the White House asked a private vendor to produce it. See this article (local version)) And two weeks before, on 16 April 2003, Gen. Tommy Franks was telling commanders in Baghdad that it was time to make plans to pull forces out of Iraq. They simply did not understand the situation. (See this article (local version).)

Below are some points about the war. Some of them show that the Bush administration did not listen to advice. Others show that the Bush administration did not care about important issues and that they simply did not plan properly.

No plans for rebuilding Iraq Warnings about preventing looting ignored Inadequate planning, wrong expectations
Disbanding the Iraqi army the worst mistake Inadequate troop support Rumsfeld doesn't act on advice
Abu Ghraib fiasco 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives missing since April 2003 Washington Post cites Bush's failure to follow advice
Republican and Democrat Senators accuse Bush administration of incompetence in rebuilding Iraq

1. No plan for rebuilding Iraq. This article (local version)says that post-war planning was non-existent. It talks about a meeting of war planners and intelligence planners in March 2003 (the month the Iraq war started) in which a lieutenant colonol who was giving a briefing on the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war could say only, "To Be Provided".

A veteran State Department officer involved directly in Iraq policy said, "We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory." The report was, "based on official documents and on interviews with more than three dozen current and former civilian and military officials who participated directly in planning for the war and its aftermath." Search the web, and you will find many articles reporting that there was no plan for rebuilding Iraq. To top of page

2. Warnings about preventing looting ignored. After the US troops took Baghdad, the looting began (local version). Hospitals, schools, university buildings, and more were targets. The worst looting was at the Iraq Museum, which contained the largest collection of Near East artifacts in the world. For two days, the looting went on, with no one trying to stop them. Not only the collection but computers, furniture supplies -everything was taken. This looting of so many places showed complete lack of planning by the Bush administration.

The Bush administration was warned about looting! This site (local version)says that archeologists and others spoke repeatedly to the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Pentagon about the need to protect musuems. Further, the U.S. is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, which makes clear that the protection of mseums, hospitals, etc., are the responsibility of the occupying force.

This website (local version) says that the only sites that the US Forces guarded were the Ministry of Oil, the Ministry of Interior, and oil fields. The Bush administration respected and protected oil, but not the Geneva Convention or the people of Iraq. To top of page

3. Inadequate planning, wrong expectations. The administration did not expect the Iraq war to last this long. Remember when Bush landed on a carrier and declared victory, saying, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."? (From his speech on 2 May 2003) Paul Bremer said (local version), "There was planning, but planning for a situation that didn't arise." The Bush administration simply did not forsee what would happen.

On 1 April 2003, Rumsfeld sharply rebuked (local version) a senior battlefield commander for telling reporters that Pentagon planners failed to anticipate the fierce level of Iraqi resistance, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Myers complained that remarks by retired generals on TV was not helpful. These people were voicing rational but dissenting opinions, which the Bush administration did not want to hear.

In November 2003, John McCain criticized the Bush administration's conduct of the war and challenged Rumfeld's assertion that the 132,000 American troops in Iraq can defeat the insurgency in Iraq. "The simple truth is that we do not have sufficient forces in Iraq to meet our military objectives," said McCain.

An article in the Antagonist says that, "Prior to the war, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, said publicly that he thought the invasion plan lacked sufficient manpower, and he was slapped down by the Pentagon's civilian leadership for saying so," and that "During the war, concerns about troop strength expressed by retired generals also provoked angry denunciations by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government, has also said that there were not enough troops in May 2003.

The above paragraphs reinforce my opinion that this administration does not take criticism of its views easily and is swayed more by their ideology than by reason. To top of page

4. Disbanding the Iraqi army the worst mistake. In May 2003, a month or so into the war, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army. The order was reversed a month later, but then it was too late. Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni called the move the Bush administration's "worst mistake" in postwar Iraq. This mistake left a vaccuum. It left hundreds of soldiers with no work. This article looks at the poor planning and follow-through that caused this mistake. To top of page

5. Inadequate troop support. An article in washingtonpost.com says that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez wrote to the pentagon in winter 2004 that "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low." He complained about lack of spare parts for helicopters and tanks. Also, "his soldiers still needed protective inserts to upgrade 36,000 sets of body armor but that their delivery had been postponed twice in the month before he was writing."

This comes on the heels of reports that a group of soldiers refused to go on a mission because their vehicles were dangerously out of repair and didn't have proper armour on them.

On 1 October 2004, Bush said (local version), "When America puts our troops in harm's way, I believe they deserve the best training, the best equipment, and the whole-hearted support of our government. " His actions are not consistent with his words. To top of page

6. Rumsfeld doesn't act on advice. This 30 September 2004 (local version) says that a study commisioned by Rumsfeld says that "the military doesn't have enough people for its current pace of missions." But Rumsfeld is not acting on the commissions recommendations. What is more important, having enough troops to carry out all missions or postponing any such actions until after the election? To top of page

7. The Abu Graib fiasco. We have all seen horrible pictures of Abu Graib, and we know that prisoners were tortured and humiliated. I don't know whether officers were involved or whether orders came from the top to torture in this manner. But at the least, this fiasco shows incompetence at all levels. We storm Iraq as "liberators"; why weren't there procedures in place to ensure that prisoners would be treated properly, so that the Iraqis would see us as friends and not enemies? Why weren't all soldiers and civilians told to respect all Iraqis and their customs, even prisoners? How do you expect to be viewed as friendly liberators if you don't treat people respectfully?

The blame for this fiasco, in my mind, falls squarely on the Bush administration for not preparing soldiers and civilians properly.

See this article (local version) for a good discussion of this issue. To top of page

8. 380 tons of explosives missing. We are just learning (late October 2004) that 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives have been missing since April 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq. A NY Times article (local version) of 25 October 2004 says that the facility was supposed to be under U.S. military control but is now a no-man's land. The U.S. was warned about this stockpile of explosives before the war. Only incompetent planning could have led to such a fiasco, which puts the whole world in danger. To top of page

9. Washington Post cites Bush's failure to listen to advice. On 24 October, the Washington Post Editorial (local version) endorsed Kerry for President. The Editorial found good and bad things to say about both Bush and Kerry. But the Editorial says essentially the same thing I do: Bush's character and ethics did not let him listen to advice, in particular, in planning for postwar reconstruction. The Editorial, says that, "the damage caused by that willful indifference is incalculable." The Editorial also says that "the administration repeatedly rebuffed advice to commit sufficient troops. Its disregard for the Geneva Conventions led to a prison-torture scandal ...."

Bush talks a good game; he has everyone believing that only he can handle the terrorists. However, the facts say that he has been incompetent in leading the war effort.

10. Republican and Democrat Senators accuse Bush administration of incompetence. An article in USA Today (local version), 16 Sept. 2004, says that several Senators, including the two top Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, accuse the Bush administration of incompetence in its efforts to rebuild Iraq. Of $13 billion pledged by other countries to rebuild Iraq, only $1.2 billion had been spent. The article goes into more details.

Transferring full sovereignty. On 24May 2004, Bush said that (local version), "The first of these steps will occur next month, when our coalition will transfer full sovereignty to a government of Iraqi citizens ...." It was a lie, and everyone knew it. He knew he could not transfer full sovereignty, and he has not done so. Why does he lie so purposely? And it was not an error, for he repeated it at least in one other instance.

Flaunting and tampering with the regulatory process

Agencies issue rules and regulations to flesh out and implement laws passed by Congress. Agencies must go through an open and transparent process in making regulations, including obtaining comments from the public and justifying what they do in a written record.

The Bush administration has tampered with this process, sometimes illegally, and has made widespread misuse of this process. In many cases, its use of the regulatory process has not been in the interests of the public.

"Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Harry S. Truman

"I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward

Below, we outline some of the things this administration has done to the regulatory process and give you details on some specific cases. Some of this material (but not all) is culled from a Report by OMB Watch (pdf file), a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and advocacy center founded in 1983 that "promotes an open, accountable government responsive to community needs". We urge you to read it to see the extent of what this administration is doing. Many of these points can be found in other places on the internet.

1. Illegally freezing the regulatory process 2. Postponing regulations until after the election 3. Forbidding public release of data
4. Tuberculosis testing: an example of increasing secrecy 5. Protecting coal workers 6. Subtle changes

1. Freezing the regulatory process. On inauguration day 2001, the Bush administration issued a directive to stop the processing of all regulations until it had reviewed them. Some of these regulations had already been published and were to go into affect some time later, and their postponement was illegal. Under governing law, an agency may not adopt a proposal to change a rule's effective date, but the directive suggested that agencies not seek public comment. This one directive illustrates the lack of respect this administration would have for the public throughout its tenure.

Hundreds of regulations, some of which had been in the process of development for years and years were stopped in their tracks. No other administration had ever issued such a blanket statement.

A report of the Majority Staff of the U.S. Senate (pdf file), ordered by Senator Lieberman, discusses this freezing. This report also goes into detail on three regulations that had already been issued and whose suspension was done without the required justification: (1) A rule concerning roadless forests. (2) A rule regulating hardrock mining on public lands. (3) A rule to lower allowable arsenic content in water. Two of these regulations were significantly weakened; the third was adopted only after a long struggle, mainly because the Bush administration could not find the scientific data to back up its case. To top of page

2. Postponing rules until after the election. A NY Times article on 27 September 2004 reports that the administration is postponing the adoption of regulations because of heavy lobbying by industry. One regulation would sharply restict what can be in cattle feed. The article says that the National Cattlemen's Beef Association broke its nonpartisan tradition and endorsed President Bush for re-election after the postponement. Other postponements have to do with prescription coverage under Medicare, healthcare, the environment, and telecommunication. The message is that big business takes preference over the needs and safety of the public. To top of page

3. Forbidding public release of data and other business-pleasing changes. A NY Times article from 27 August 2004 says that a new regulation forbids public release of data relating to unsafe motor vehicles. The article goes on to say that the adminsitration has been quietly changing health rules, environmental initiatives, and safety standards in ways that please business but dismay interest groups that represent the public.

4. Tuberculosis testing: an example of increasing secrecy. This item is from an article in WashingtonPost.com. Since 1993, regulations for dealing with tuberculosis prevention have been under developed. The Bush administration stopped the process when it ame into office. Then, on 31 December 2003, it canceled the process completely.

The article says that this is just one of many example of how the Bush administration ahs been using the regulatory process to redirect government out of the public eye. Bush has canceled more regulatory processes that he inherited than he has completed, and many of them have been canceled after years and years of work. The regulatory process has been changed profoundly, and it is has been at the expense of openness and public scrutiny. top of page

5. Protecting coal workers. An article in the NY Times on 9 August 2004 discusses how the administration is weakening and removing safety regulations for mining coal. One proposal to update technology to better protect workers in two-story-high trucks was scrapped in 2001; since then, 16 miners have been killed in hauling accidents. To top of page

6. Subtle changes. An article in WashingtonPost.com from 17 August 2004 discusses subtle, almost unnoticed changes in regulations that have profound effects. With regard to mountain-top removal to get at coal, a change reclassifying the debris from objectionable "waste" to legally acceptable "fill" makes it easier to dump mining debris into explicitly protected streambeds. One proposal would scale back the federal government's legal obligation to police state mining agencie, by reclassifying certain duties from "nondiscretionary" to "discretionary".

The Haliburton affair: conflict of interest at its worst

The issue of the company Haliburton represents the worst, in terms of conflict of interest and even corruption. It shows how much people in this government can do for their own self-interest and the interest of their friends if not held in check. "There is a fundamental difference of opinion in Washington, and it starts with folks in Washington forgetting whose money we're spending. All that money is not the government's money; it's the working people's money." George Bush, 3 September 2001

The White House would rather you not know about the Haliburton affair. Even though Cheney was CEO of Haliburton for five years before becoming Vice President, this is not mentioned in the White House biography of Cheney (as of 7 August 2004) --see http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/. (In case the White House changes this page, here is what it looked like, without the images, on 7 August 2004).

Below, we give a brief history of Haliburton. But first we note that Haliburton favoritism has been going on (local version) in spite of the Corps of Engineers' chief contracting officer objecting to it. She refused to sign the contract. Her signature is required, but they let it go through with her assistant's signature. She was threatened with demotion after raising the issue. This information has just come to light in the last few weeks. See also this article (local version).

Brief history of Haliburton:

1. Early 1990s. Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, gives contracts to Halliburton to rebuild facilities in Kuwait that had been destroyed in the first Persian Gulf war.

2. Early 1990 to 1993. Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, commissions Halliburton to do a classified (secret) study concerning replacing the U.S. military's logistics by work done by private companies. Halliburton says, yes, a company can do the work. In August 1992, with essentially no bidding, Halliburton is selected by the US Army Corps of Engineers to do all work needed to support the military for the next five years! Thereafter, Halliburton (or its subsidiary KBR) and its military logistics business escalated rapidly. In the ten years thereafter revenues totaled $2.5 billion.

3. 1995-2000. Cheney is CEO of Halliburton. Under Cheney, Halliburton increases its offshore tax havens from 9 to 44, cutting its taxes from $302 million in 1998 to an $85 million refund in 1999. That's almost $400 million they took from taxpayers in one year.

4. During Cheney's tenure at Haliburton, Halliburton did business with countries like Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Iran, and Nigeria even though the US had imposed strict sanctions on them. They skirted sanctions, and they lobbied against sanctions. Some of this business was illegal, and Halliburton was fined for it.

5. Spring 2000. Cheney heads Bush's Vice-Presidential Search committee --while continuing as CEO of Halliburton. He ends up picking himself as Vice President.

6. July 2000. Cheney is asked whether Halliburton or its subsidaries were trying to do business with Iraq. He says no; he had a firm policy that they wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even if it was legal. This was a blatant lie: subsidiaries sold over $73 million in oil-production parts to Iraq.

7. 2000. As CEO of Halliburton, Cheney clears $20 million in one year, after taxes.

8. July 2000. Cheney's severance package from Halliburton (as CEO) is far and above what other company officers got when they left --some say it is as high as $62 million in stocks and stock options.

9. December 2001. KBR (Halliburton subsidiary) is granted an open-ended contract for Army troops supply and Navy construction, wherever U.S. troops go, for the next 10 years (so far, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq). This unique contract has no ceiling on cost. KBR is reimbursed for every dollar spent plus a base fee of 1 percent, which guarantees profit. Plus, they can get a bonus as a percentage of company costs.

10. January 2003. Bush sends a letter to Congress exercising his authority, as president, to waive section 9007, thus removing sanctions and allowing assistance to oil-rich Azerbaijan (see point 4). This administration invites the head of Azerbaijan to the White House, even though this person was the main reason for earlier sanctions against Azerbaijan. Reason? Azerbaijan has oil.

11. September 2003. Cheney states that when he became Vice President, he severed all ties with Halliburton, as required by law. This was a lie. Government accounting offices said that the compensation he continues to receive is a conflict of interest.

12. Dec 2003. Halliburton, without competitive bidding, is given a contract to restore the Iraqi oil sector. It is billed initially as a contract for putting out oil-well fires, something in which Halliburton has little expertise. It turns out that the contract is really for the full restoration of the oil business in Iraq. It is kept secret because of the "emergency conditions". It is one of the highest military logistics contracts in history.

13. June 2004. Cheney has said all along that he had no contact with government officials who coordinated Halliburtons many contracts with the military. A March 2003 Pentagon email refutes this claim. It says that action on a no-bid Halliburton contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. This has to do with a no-bid contract given to Halliburton for rebuilding Iraq.

14. August 2004. The SEC (Security Exchange Comission) levies a fine of $7.5 million on Halliburton for illegal accounting changes in 1998, when Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. Some people think that politics may have shielded Cheney and others from being held more accountable.


Serious doubts remain about whether a company with a record like Halliburton's should even be eligible to receive government contracts in the first place. This company has been accused of cost overruns, tax avoidance, and cooking the books and has a history of doing business in government-sanctioned countries like Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Many of Halliburton's no-bid contracts are allowed because of waivers by the Bush administration that allow government agencies to handpick companies for Iraqi

World opinion

We live in an increasingly smaller -and dangerous- world, and all countries must work together to solve all the problems. The United States, as the one remaining "superpower", bears a special responsibility to use its strength for the good of the world. This requires a president who has the trust and respect of leaders around the world. We had that with Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton.

"But in the international online media, the vast majority of commentators are harshly critical of President George W. Bush. On every continent pundits are faulting Bush for his persona as well as his policies. Most dislike his conduct of the war in Iraq. Many say his attitude toward the rest of the world is contemptuous, misinformed and dangerous." Jefferson Morley, WashingtonPost .com (local version), 30 Aug 2004.

But, through his belligerent, arrogant, uncompromising, extremist attitude, Bush has lost all trust and respect. The message that this administration has sent to the world is (to quote Carl Bernstein), "the imperialist states can do what they want; the semi-colonial states must do what they are told." The support after 9/11 has given way to the vision of the United States as an imperial power of the worst kind. We are now simply an arrogant bully.

Condoleezza Rice sends the message when she defends the administration's refusal to join with all other countries in supporting an international war crimes court. She said, "The United States is special because it is a bigger target with forces all over the world. So maybe there is some difference in interests there." So, we are special. You little guys go work together; we'll save the world on our own.

Jimmy Carter, at the Democratic Convention in summer 2004, said, "Unilateral acts and demands have isolated the United States from the very nations we need to join us in combating terrorism." In just 34 months, he said, "all the goodwill [after 9/11] was squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and calculations."

Being strong does not mean you have to lose respect. John Kennedy was strong, but he had everyone's respect.

To see the opinion the world has, type in "opinion bush world" into the search engine google and read the articles that are found. The bottom of this page contains links to a few such articles.

The administration shows no sign of changing its operations and attitudes toward the rest of the world. Re-election would be a disaster.

Some facts

  1. The table on the left is from a newly released poll (9 September 2004) (local version) taken over the summer.
  2. An opinion poll (local version) by CBSNEWS.com (4 March 2004) reported these percentages of people who had a negative view of Bush: Britain, 66%; Canada, 66%; Spain, 75%; France, 80%; Germany, 80%, Mexico, over 50%, Italy, over 50%.
  3. In June 2003 (local version), a poll showed that nearly 2/3 of the British had an unfavourable opinion of Bush. Asked who is more dangerous to world peace and stability, United States was rated higher than al-Qaeda by respondents in both Jordan (71%) and Indonesia (66%). The US was rated more dangerous than Iran by people in Jordan, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil and more dangerous than Syria by respondents all the countries polled, except for Australia, Israel, and the United States.
  4. This page (local version) contains information on a number of polls like the ones mentioned above.

Do these polls matter? A leader leads with trust and respect. It is obvious that the Bush administration can no longer lead the world.

The isolationist, extremist attitude of the administration

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor, said in June 2004, "It is not only the Iraq policy of the Bush administration that has caused this [the opinion of the world to turn against the United States]. The Bush administration is the first administration since the onset of the Cold War 50 years ago not to place itself in the political mainstream, not to reflect moderation, not to practice at least de facto bipartisanship, but to embrace extremist principles. Inevitably, extremism produces recklessness." The administration has become increasingly isolated from the world, due to its attitudes and its refusal to engage with other countries.

Below is a list of examples. Taken one at a time, one might find valid reasons for it. Taken together, one gets the feeling that this administration feels that it can do everything by itself. It is not leading, it is bullying.

  1. Started the War on Iraq without UN sanction for it.
  2. Refused to join with other countries in the international war crimes court.
  3. Refused to sign agreement on limiting the transfer of small weapons.
  4. Walked out of a biological weapons convention agreed to by 143 nations.
  5. Refused to sign treaty barring anti-personnel land mines.
  6. Withdrew from anti-ballistic missile treaty.
  7. Refused to sign the Kyoto agreement.

Links to a few articles

1. World opinion moves against Bush. Article (local version) by Simon Tisdall in the Guardian unlimited, 23 January 2003.

2. Bush withdraws from the world. Article (local version) by Ronald Asmus in The Age, 21 August 2004.

3. Foreign views of US darken after Sept 11. Article (local version) in the NY Times.

4. Bush turns Europe's consensus on its head. Article (no longer available; obtained from Wayback machine) in the Telegraph [UK], 20 September 2003.

5. Billionaire Soros blasts Bush, calls on President to honor world opinion. article (local version) in Post-gazette.com, 28 February 2003.

6. Mr. Bush is abusing both the UN and international law. Article (local version) by Jonathan Power in New War on Terror, 14 October 2001.

7. World opinion is more hostile to America than at any time in our history. Article (local version) in NPQ by Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1 June 2004.

8. History lesson: GOP must stop Bush. Article (local version) by Carl Bernstein in USA Today, 23 May 2004.

9. Bush demeanor fuels dissent. Article (local version) by Vijay Ramanavarapu in The Lantern, 10 March 2003.

10. Bush at the UN: Washington's war ultimatum to the world. Article (local version) by Editorial board, World Socialist Web Site, 13 September 2002.

11. Bush's unilateralism aggravates world's problems. Article (local version) by Robert F. Drinan, National Catholic Reporter, 10 January 2003.

12. BBC News: World wants Kerry as President, 9/7/2004. Article. (Here's a local, text copy)

Secrecy

The Bush administration would have you believe that it is a government for the people and by the people. The way the government operates suggests just the opposite. It is secretive and manipulative, attempting to show us only what it wants us to see. Below are examples. For more, see this website (local version). "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Harry S. Truman

"I'm the Commander, see ... I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President... [I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." George Bush. See "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward

1. Undermining laws that promote public access 2. Curtailing freedom of information 3. Dept. of Justice hides its skeletons
4. Hiding presidential papers 5. Hiding energy task force info 6. Altering an EPA report
7. Blocking an EPA warning 8. Hiding cuts in National Park Services 9. Altering 9/11 facts
10. Opposing the 9/11 commission 11. Censoring the Supreme Court 12. Ending the viewing of coffins
13. Suppressing info on snowmobiles 14. Auto safety info no longer public 15. No protection for federal whistleblowers

1. The Henry Waxman report. An extensive report released by Rep. Henry Waxman shows that the Bush administration has consistently undermined the laws that promote public access to government records while systematically expanding the laws that authorize secret government operations. Here is an official report (pdf file) of the U.S. House of Representatives. Below, I show just a few of the items that I collected before finding this report. To top of page

2. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). When the FOIA was enacted in 1966, President Johnson said, "No one should be able to pull curtains of secrecy around decisions that can be revealed without injury to the public interest." The Clinton memorandum (pdf file) told his government about the importance of the FOIA and instructed them to follow it in letter and spirit. The Ashcroft memorandum (pdf file) does the opposite: it expressly encourages agencies to look for reason to deny access to information. To top of page

3. The U.S. Dept. of Justice. After disregarding requests for more than a year for a consultant's study about the department's efforts to ensure diversity, the department released the 186-page document-with many lines and pages blacked out. It took more effort to get the whole document. It looks like the administration's policies on FOIA (see pt. 1) were being followed. Here are some of the sentences that had been blacked out:

  1. Minorities are substantially more likely to leave the Department than whites.
  2. Minorities are significantly under-represented in management ranks.
  3. Minorities perceive unfairness in a number of human resources practices, such as hiring and promotion.

Here is the blacked-out report (pdf file) and the real report (pdf file). Read about it here (local version). To top of page

4. Presidential papers and executive privilege. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 makes presidential records public property and requires that the records be made public 12 years after a presidency has ended. Therefore, the Reagan-Bush papers should have been made public when Bush, Jr. became president. But Bush immediately signed an excutive order keeping them hidden, and potentially indefinitely. What doesn't Bush want you to see? A coalition has filed suit in federal court, but the case has not yet been settled. Read about it here (local version). To top of page

5. Who was on the energy task force? In January 2001, Bush created an energy task force, under the direction of Cheney. This task force met and submitted recommendations to Congress. Congress asked to see the list of task-force members. The Bush administration refused, and the case is now in the courts. Why shouldn't we all be able to know who was on the committee? Wouldn't you like to know who is making energy policy for the nation? Why the secrecy? To top of page

6. Altering an EPA Report. The White House forced (local version) the Environmental Protection Agency to remove from its 2003 report on the state of the environment large sections that talked about the risks of global warming. For more examples of such actions, click on "Widespread misuse of science" in the left column. To top of page

7. Blocking an EPA Warning. The White House blocked a nationwide alert by the EPA about the danger of a certain kind of insulation that contained a dangerous asbestos for over a year. St. Louis Dispatch, December 29, 2003. (pdf file) To top of page

8. Hiding cuts in National Parks Services. In Spring 2004, the Interior Department was criticized for making cuts in visitors services and then trying to hide the cuts from the public. According to the memo, "the majority of Northeast Region Parks are beginning this fiscal year with fewer operating dollars than in FY03. Additionally, the absorption of pay costs, necessary assessments and other rising, fixed costs have further eroded operating dollars." The memo suggested using the term "service level adjustment" instead of "cut". The memo also said,

We will need to be sure that adjustments are taken from as many areas as is possible so that it won't cause public or political controversy. ...

and

A statement about cutting 10 seasonal positions does tells us how that affects the visitor so you must put it into words that describe service level adjustments to visitors, resource protection, facility operations, etc.

Here is the memo (pdf file). Here is an article about it (local version). To top of page

9. Altering facts during 9/11. Directly after 9/11, the White House forced (local version) the EPA to change its statements about public health risks in NY to make them sound less alarming. To top of page

10. The 9/11 Commission. Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 commission, whose purpose (local version) was to find out how the goverment dealt with terror that morning. He gave in to pressure, and it was created. The administration stalled (local version) in letting the Commission read crucial documents, and the Commission had to ask for an extension of time as well as more funds. These were given only after pressure from Congress and the press. The administration tried to place (article no longer accessible) all sorts of restrictions on who could read certain documents and what they could do with them. To top of page

The administration refused to let anyone from the administration testify before the Commission. Again, only after pressure, did Bush himself and Condoleezza Rice testify, and only under certain conditions. This website (local pdf version) outlines how the administration sought to obstruct and discredit the 9/11 investigation. To top of page

11. Censoring the Supreme Court. In documentation for a case concerning the ACLU and the Patriot Act, the Justice Department blacked out passages that it felt should not be publically released, ostensibly for national security reasons. Here is one passage that was blacked out-not for security reasons but in order to stifle dissent:

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

As the webpage (local version) from which we got this says, this is a blatant misuse of power. To top of page

12. Ending media coverage of returning coffins. The administration banned the filming of coffins with killed soldiers arriving from Iraq. The reason, most people admit, is that it hurt the administration's image. Here's an article on it (local version). To top of page

13. Snowmobiles in Yellowstone. The administration touted the use of "quieter" snowmobiles in Yellowstone, even though they knew months earlier that the new snowmobiles were actually much louder. They simply suppressed the information (local version). To top of page

14. Auto safety data no longer public. A two-paragraph decision buried deep in the Federal Register makes previously public information relating to unsafe automobiles or defective parts unavailable to the public. Few people knew about this act, but awareness is growing. Here's a blog on it (local version) from 18 August 2004. To top of page

15. Bush administration doesn't want whistleblowers. (Article (local version) in the NY Times, 3 Oct 2004.) Whistleblowers are people who report fraud, waste, or wrongdoing when their employers dismiss their concerns. Whistleblowers are acting in the interests of the public, and they need protection. A bill before Congress would increase the very poor protections for federal employees, but the Bush administration doesn't want the new law.

On 15 March 2004 (pdf file), four Congressmen wrote to Bush, asking him and his administration not to retaliate against a Medicare official who came out with the fact that administration officials told him he would be severely reprimanded if he gave certain information to Congress. They cited two recent cases where the Whitehouse had tried to discredit whistleblowers.

Here are examples of what has happened to federal worker whistleblowers under this administration:

  • Two Border Patrol agents, Mark Hall and Robert Lindemann, were disciplined after they disclosed weaknesses in security along the Canadian border.
  • Teresa C. Chambers was dismissed from her job as chief of the US Park Police after she said the agency did not have enough money or personnel to protect parks and monuments in the Washington area.
  • The top Medicare official threatened to fire Richard S. Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, if he provided data to Congress showing the cost of the new Medicare law, which exceeded White House estimates.
  • Airport baggage screeners say they have been penalized for raising concerns about aviation security. But in August, an independent federal agency, the Merit Systems Protection Board, ruled that they had none of the whistleblower rights available to other federal employees. The government, it said, can "hire, discipline and terminate screeners without regard to any other law.''
  • Bunny Greenhouse, the chief contracting officer of the Corps of Engineers, refused to sign a Haliburton contract, citing violations. She was threatened with demotion. See this website (local version). To top of page
Misuse of science
The Union of Concerned Scientists investigated the misuse of science by the Bush administration. So far, over 5300 scientists have signed a statement supporting the resulting report (March 2004), including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors, and university chairs and presidents. "Science, like any field of endeavor, relies on freedom of inquiry; and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS research to genetic engineering to food additives, government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance." President George H.W. Bush, 1990

Here are the findings of the investigation:

1. There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being.

2. There is strong documentation of a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda.

3. There is evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about "sensitive" topics.

4. There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration are unprecedented.

The investigation found not one or two incidences but a widespread practice of abuse, ranging from deleting material in reports to undermining the quality and integrity of the appointment process. The report says that,

This behavior by the administration violates the central premise of the scientific method, and is therefore of particularly grave concern to the scientific community. But it should also concern the American public, which has every right to expect its government to formulate policy on the basis of objective scientific knowledge in policies that affect the health, well-being and safety of its citizens.

Here is the executive summary (as a pdf file), and here is the full report (as a pdf file). If you are a scientist, please take the time to read the discussion and the report and, if you are so inclined, sign the statement of support.

What they do counts, not what they say

If the administration has integrity, ethics, and character, then policies will fall into place,
for the administration will be guided by the good of the country, and
it will engage in open, honest, and meaningful dialog with the whole nation.

If an administration has no integrity, ethics, and character, then the nation better beware.

Politicians may promise something but don't always deliver. They may say one thing but do another.

We tend to get our information from TV, in small messages, political ads, and speeches that are designed to sway us rather than to give us information. In this sense, TV has been the worst thing for politics, for it emphasizes show and entertainment rather than content.

Today, it is best to go by what people do rather than what they say.

"This television image can have its disadvantages. One of the most prevalent drawbacks is that it shifts the electorate's - and the candidate's - attention from his policy to his image. People will judge the candidate on looks rather than ideas." John Gans

"Television inherently simplifies complex ideas into emotional, self-oriented moral and political impulses." Jeffrey Scheur

"His [Kerry's] very skill in oratory may be his undoing, because in the political arena, the era of oratory is over. We live in the moment of the sound bite." Allan Metcalf

I suggest:

  1. Don't be swayed by political ads and speeches.
  2. Use discrimination, and compare what people say with what they do.

We can only estimate what a Kerry administration will do because he has not been president. But he has been a Senator for 20 years, and we can go look at his record there. There have been some issues of his honesty in campaigning again Weld in 1996, and there is talk of his and his wife's money, but I do not find the large patterns of secrecy, lies, abuse of power, and conflict of interest that I see with the Bush administration.

Consequently, I would expect a Kerry presidency to exhibit far more integrity, honesty, and openness -qualities that the Bush administration has lacked. For me, the character of the administration is far more important than its policies. With a good character, the policies will take care of themselves. This administration, through its actions, as discussed in the links to the left, have shown a complete lack of character and integrity.

If you are a scientist (or engineer) and you support the investigative report of the Union of Concerned Scientists, then please sign the statement of support.

And, if you agree in general with this website, tell your friends about it.

Websites

  • Bushsecrecy.org. A project of Public Citizen, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1971 to to represent consumer interests (that means your interests) in Congress, the executive branch and the courts.
  • Center for American Progress. Contains articles on all sorts of topics, e.g. Environment to the Iraq War to the Bush Administration's conflict with the 9/11 Commission.
  • Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Helps Americans use the justice system to shine a light on those who betray public trust.
  • Common Cause. Founded in 1970 by John Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. A non-partisan citizen's lobbying group.
  • MoveOn PAC. MoveOnPAC's campaign contributions provide financial support to congressional candidates who embrace moderate to progressive principles of national government.
  • People for the American Way. "An energetic advocate for the values and institutions that sustain a diverse democratic society"..

This website is not written lightly. I am a computer scientist. I have been teaching and researching for over 35 years. I generally have little to do with politics, and I do not belong to a political party. No one is paying me to do this. I have no agenda except to see the people of the U.S. work together, in harmony and peace, for the good of everyone in the country and the world.

I believe that the statements in this website are based on facts.

[Sep 09, 2015] They don't call it the Empire of Chaos for nothing

"...My impression is that the West is content with creating chaos if it can not readily control a country – they don't call it the Empire of Chaos for nothing. By that measure, Libya was a smashing success and Iraq is getting there."
.
"...But really it is just self serving BS where the western crusaders are always morally superior and justified in their imperial adventures while the barbarians are inferior in every way and need to be pacified. This syndrome has been afflicting the west for more than 1000 years and shows no evidence of going away in spite of all the cultural progress."
.
"...True. But at least it affirms that, when Russia "invades", or intervenes, it puts in place an alternative to the chaos so typical of western intervention. The West has to learn that when you trash a country, the West's rivals and enemies are just as likely to benefit as any of our friends."
Jeremn, September 8, 2015 at 7:42 am
Interesting analysis of Russian strategy in Ukraine, and beyond. Concludes the strategy is "low cost" and effective, at least compared to recent US adventures:

"What most discussions of a possible Russian invasion of the Baltics share in common is their inability to explain what is in it for the Russians. Exactly why Russia would risk war against the most powerful military alliance in the world led by the United States in order to seize something in the Baltics remains an analytical quandary. Russia's cautious and measured approach against a relatively weak, incapable, and non-aligned Ukraine offers little support to the notion that it would risk war with NATO."

http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/putin-is-a-far-better-strategist-than-you-think/

marknesop, September 8, 2015 at 8:16 am
The trouble is, it assumes – as does every western assessment, without exception – that Russia is engaging in "limited conventional war" in Ukraine; that is, Russia is present in a state military capacity, uniformed soldiers, organized military formations, the lot. And nobody has been able to provide any proof of that at all. It is inconceivable that could be going on in one of the most heavy-surveillance areas on the globe and nobody would see it. You know the USA would provide proof if they actually had it – that "we have plenty of evidence" line is just bunk.
Jeremn, September 8, 2015 at 8:23 am
True. But at least it affirms that, when Russia "invades", or intervenes, it puts in place an alternative to the chaos so typical of western intervention. The West has to learn that when you trash a country, the West's rivals and enemies are just as likely to benefit as any of our friends.

As per Iran, and how after we defeated Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran's two major competitors, we were magically presented with a more powerful Iran – which seemed to appear out of nowhere.

marknesop, September 8, 2015 at 9:31 am

Yes, that's an excellent point. It still irks me, however, that the general public in the Anglosphere is so accepting of major allegations – Russia has battalions of soldiers and heavy armor in Ukraine, but you can't see them although it is largely open fields; Russia shot down MH-17 – without any demonstrated evidence at all. It's as if anything we'd like to believe is no longer off limits just because there's no evidence it is true.

kirill, September 8, 2015 at 12:23 pm

What has disappeared from the NATO propaganda wankfest if it ever even existed is any consideration for motive. Why would Russia deliberately shoot down MH-17? To prove how evil it is? This is beyond ridiculous and points to serious collective cognitive deficiency in NATO mainstream thought. But really it is just self serving BS where the western crusaders are always morally superior and justified in their imperial adventures while the barbarians are inferior in every way and need to be pacified. This syndrome has been afflicting the west for more than 1000 years and shows no evidence of going away in spite of all the cultural progress.

Patient Observer, September 8, 2015 at 5:13 pm

My impression is that the West is content with creating chaos if it can not readily control a country – they don't call it the Empire of Chaos for nothing. By that measure, Libya was a smashing success and Iraq is getting there.

[Sep 08, 2015] Empire Files with Abby Martin Launches First Show

In teleSUR's new show, Abby Martin traces the history of the U.S. empire and the growing presence of military bases around the globe - September 5, 2015

markodochartaigh

General Butler's " War is a Racket " is available free online. A great read which should be mandatory reading in high school.

Bruce DeLaney > markodochartaigh

Count on it, no school teacher is going to bring up Butler's name in a classroom. Hell, most high school teachers don't even know who he was.

markodochartaigh > Bruce DeLaney

If an instructor did assign the book in class almost certainly some brainwashed little student would report it to his equally brainwashed parents and the instructor would never work again.

[Sep 04, 2015] Narrative And Reality Of The U.S. War On Syria

"...The US media knows nothing and cares less, it is anything goes, they just sell media consumption / clicks on the intertubes / TV watching, etc. / advertising / Gvmt. propanganda, all of which which changes day by day… the more ppl are confused, the better"
.
"...The sophisticated propaganda apparatus that we enjoy (NOT!) today is a mix of half-truths, false narratives and (falser) counter-narratives. (Some counter-narratives, I think, are from well-meaning people who distrust government and are trying to interpret what is really happening thru the lens of their own (often limited) experience.)"
.
"...Interesting too, that the Ukraine situation is hotting up. Maybe the thinking is that Putin could not handle multiple crises? "
.
"...Bhadrakumar is always the best. But, I think it's realistic to take a step further Flynn's admission about the US "knowing about ISIL" (but not knowing its name) back in 2012. Wouldn't it be more realistic to guess that the US also knew about Saudi defense/intelligence ministry plans to create and fund 'ISIL' from the beginning? Does anyone here think _anything_ going on at a high level in Saudi escapes US intelligence?
.
And then, a step further, you would think US experts would be helpfully guiding the Saudis as to where best to insert ISIL forces, how best to fund/supply them, and so on. Saudi royal family cronies are not the most competent or hardworking administrators, and they're not privy to the intel and experience the US has in the 'our terrorism' specialty, and so it's natural to expect they'd ask for and receive US help with this stuff."
Aug 14, 2015 | M of A

The Washington Post "It Never Happened" piece on Syria documented yesterday is far from the only one that avoids to mention the intimate U.S. involvement in waging war on Syria.

A New York Times piece today falsely claims:

The United States avoided intervening in the civil war between rebels and the government of Mr. Assad until the jihadist group took advantage of the chaos to seize territory in Syria and Iraq.

McClatchy, which is usual better, currently has two pieces by Hannah Allam looking into U.S. involvement in the war on Syria. Unfortunately these are also full of false narratives and unchecked administration propaganda. Obama administration still predicts 'Assad's days are numbered' is a take of what administration officials now claim about their early believes of the war on Syria. It also includes this whoopers:

The Americans were determined to keep the United States out of an armed conflict in Syria, but turned a blind eye as Persian Gulf allies sent weapons to hardline factions with ties to al Qaida.

Years ago the NYT and several other outlets reported that the CIA was the entity which organized the weapon transfers, thousands of tons, for the Saudis and other Gulf countries. The U.S. did not turn a blind eye. It was actively organizing the whole war from the very beginning.

In The 'magic words:' How a simple phrase enmeshed the U.S. in Syria's crisis Hannah Allam lets the former ambassador to Syria Ford claim that the administration never really wanted to ouster Assad but was pressed into it:

Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria at the time, said he initially opposed calling for Assad's ouster for two reasons: it was clear to him that sanctions were the only punishment the White House was willing to use, and that such a call would kill his efforts to start a dialogue with the regime.

Ford said he was up against the same outside pressures other officials listed – influential Republicans, a few senior Democrats, the "very loud" Syrian-American community and foreign governments – but he added one force that's often overlooked.

"To be very frank, the press, the media, was baiting us. It's not like the media was impartial in this," Ford said. "Because once the Republicans started saying he has no legitimacy, the question then became at press conferences every day: Do you think he has legitimacy? What are we supposed to say? Yes, he does?"

Hogwash. Ford was one of the first to press for the ouster of Assad. He even organized the early demonstration and the media training for the "peaceful demonstrators" who were early on killing policemen and soldiers. One of the "revolutionaries" reacts to Ford's claims:

The 47th
Out of all ppl, Robert Ford is talking about Syrians being mislead by the magic words? Ford "promised" us Syrians full support in 2011.

The 47th
In private meetings In damascus, Robert Ford promised his syrian oppo friends full U.S. Support and encouraged Syrians to go on.

The 47th
He even went to fucking Hama, during the biggest protest in Syria's modern history youtu.be/AP1vGBJM4NU

The 47th
I wdnt talk abt ppl misinterpreting U.S public statements, U were ur Admin's amb, say the truth: u promised Syrians the moon, gave them shit

All these media pieces, yesterday's WaPo piece, today's false NYT claims, the McClatchy pieces, are part of the Obama strategy to play as if it was/is doing "nothing" or "just something" while at the time time running a full fledged proxy war against the Syrian government.

Joel Veldkamp lays out and analyses that strategy:

Why does the U.S. only have sixty fighters to show for its $500 million, year-old training program? Because it reinforces the narrative – nurtured by a raft of previous hopelessly inadequate, publicly-announced and -debated programs to support the opposition – of the U.S. as a helpless bystander to the killing in Syria, and of President Obama as a prudent statesman reluctant to get involved. While the Senate berates the Pentagon chief over the program's poor results, the U.S. is meanwhile outsourcing the real fight in Syria to allies with no qualms about supporting al Qaeda against their geopolitical opponents – unless the U.S. is, as before, cooperating directly or indirectly in that support.

Once it is recognized that the "helpless bystander" narrative is false, and that the U.S. has been deeply involved in the armed conflict almost from the start, it becomes both possible and necessary to question that involvement.

What I find astonishing is that the U.S. media are able to have it both ways on Syria. Every other day there is a piece with the false narrative that the U.S. is not and has not been involved in Syria while at the same time the very same media, NYT, WaPo, McClatchy, publish other pieces about the massive "secret" military effort with thousands of tons of weapon shipments and billions of dollars the Obama administration pushes into Syria to wage war against the Syrian people.

The media know that the "helpless bystander" narrative is false. But Joel Veldkamp's hope that this would make it "possible and necessary to question that involvement" is not coming true. Besides in fringe blogs like this one there is no such public discussion at all.

Noirette | Aug 14, 2015 1:19:32 PM | 2

Re. Syria (others...) the US is divided.

Perpetual violent war-mongers (McCain, his acolytes, neo-cons, neo-libs) facing a more 'realistic' foreign policy - Obama and Kerry, see Iran deal.

These parties are fighting amongst each other and pursuing different agendas. Ex.: Ukraine, where the ones are gingerly, half-heartedly, supporting the Minsk 2 agreement and want to get rid of the 'distraction' and leave it for now to the EU and/or Russia to pay for the mess.

The other camp, going for all out-war against Russia, with boots on the ground / powerful arms / bombing / other, in Ukr., attacking Russia through a proxy. - Ukr. can't manage on its own as has now been conclusively demonstrated.

Now that might be good cop-bad cop routine, but overall it explains the 'frozen-for-now conflict' (deathly as it is and not frozen) in Ukraine. Along with the fact that Putin wants nothing to do with this mess and imho? stops the separatists from conquering more territory.

Failed states, characteristics.

... Being open to outside soft take-over and influence. The PTB hob-nob, submit to outsiders (who have some sorta power), and make contradictory alliances in function of interest groups. A failed state cannot truly defend itself, so it deploys what might it can to intimidate, always with allies, proxies, buddies, etc. It agresses militarily only the weak and easily vanquished (nobody objects to that) but gains no advantages from it. On it goes, squandering its ressources.

The destruction of Syria has worked fine. But Assad can't be removed. Now the plan is he is to stay but be 'wound down' or whatever.

The US media knows nothing and cares less, it is anything goes, they just sell media consumption / clicks on the intertubes / TV watching, etc. / advertising / Gvmt. propanganda, all of which which changes day by day… the more ppl are confused, the better!

Jackrabbit | Aug 14, 2015 3:05:34 PM | 6

As b points out, the cat is out of the bag. So this is not about plausible deniability.

The sophisticated propaganda apparatus that we enjoy (NOT!) today is a mix of half-truths, false narratives and (falser) counter-narratives. (Some counter-narratives, I think, are from well-meaning people who distrust government and are trying to interpret what is really happening thru the lens of their own (often limited) experience.)

The "helpless bystander" narrative is complemented by the "ruthless tyrant" narrative. A recent CBS news segment about the demise of the small American armed and trained anti-ISIL force related how hundreds of potential fighters had dropped out. Why? Because they thought *ASSAD* was a worse problem than ISIL!

The propaganda push, coming after recent developments like USA saying it will attack any force that attacks USA-supported militants, leads me to wonder if we're being prepared for a surprise! that forces USA involvement.

Interesting too, that the Ukraine situation is hotting up. Maybe the thinking is that Putin could not handle multiple crises?

Mina | Aug 14, 2015 1:54:29 PM | 5

http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2015/08/10/us-took-willful-decision-to-create-islamic-state/
Bhadhrakumar

harry law | Aug 14, 2015 3:49:52 PM | 8

Putin is well aware of US duplicity, and the West promises to protect the Libya minority, which morphed into Regime change. Iran is even more aware of the US game in Syria, it is for that reason both countries be on their guard in the event that the US, or their proxies, intervene in Syria, which I am sure they would like to do.

I hope it is the case that Assad has things in hand, and that he does not need the help of Iran's military manpower, in the event that he did, I am sure the military alliance between the two would provide such assistance if called for by Assad, this would be entirely within International law, after all the Saudis and Turks have been facilitating the influx of thousands of head chopping fanatics into Syria in breach of International law in their attempt to topple the legitimate Syrian Government.

Joe Tedesky | Aug 14, 2015 11:58:56 PM | 17

Someone please give Zbigniew a call, and ask him how to spin the narrative on Syria. This whole mess the U.S. is squirming around in is a result of it's own doing. For a long time the U.S. has attempted to live two lives. One life as a democracy warrior, the other as a master of deception. Brzezinski went big back in the seventies, when he convinced Jimmy Carter to back the Mujaheddin against Russia.

Smart move, except now every Gulf nation has their personal mercenaries at their disposal. This is going on at the same time that every Joe-Bob in America thinks it's those crazy Muslims. So savage mercenaries they are not, but savage Muslims they must be.

So finally now when people in the White House wake up to the fact that this isn't 1978 they are struck with an epiphany to suddenly change their tune. This shouldn't surprise anyone. This is what they do. No one ever said they do it well. Well, maybe some will say that, but then again this is how it gets done. My one hope is that all people, whether Syrian, Iraqi, Ukrainian, or just down right anyone may live in peace. Why, is this so hard?

plantman | Aug 15, 2015 12:50:20 AM | 18

This is from the WSWS: developments on the ground (in Syria) are underscoring that any diplomatic settlement over Syria will be implemented through a militarized carve-up of the country, spearheaded by the Pentagon and its regional partners and proxy forces.

As part of a deal reached in July between Ankara and Washington, Turkish President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) government leader Erdogan gained US backing for the imposition of a militarized "buffer zone" encompassing hundreds of square miles in northern Syria. The new zone would be occupied by Syrian opposition fighters and reinforced by the US and Turkish air forces, with US forces having been cleared to operate from Turkish bases as part of the agreement.

Once established, the military zone would serve as a staging area for US-backed rebel forces fighting against the Assad government.

Despite their public confidence in Putin's readiness to accept a deal, the Turkish government is clearly preparing its own large-scale military intervention into areas of northern Syria." http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/14/syri-a14.html

Yes, Putin wants a deal, so Turkey and Jordan are positioning themselves to steal parts of Syria before the agreement is made.

But what about the US? The US won't want the Russian deal because they won't be able to install their own stooge in Damascus. So the fighting goes on, Iran gets more involved, and Putin has to decide whether to send troops to avoid another Libya.

What a mess!

fairleft | Aug 15, 2015 4:14:03 AM | 19

Mina @5

Thanks. Bhadrakumar is always the best.

But, I think it's realistic to take a step further Flynn's admission about the US "knowing about ISIL" (but not knowing its name) back in 2012. Wouldn't it be more realistic to guess that the US also knew about Saudi defense/intelligence ministry plans to create and fund 'ISIL' from the beginning? Does anyone here think _anything_ going on at a high level in Saudi escapes US intelligence?

And then, a step further, you would think US experts would be helpfully guiding the Saudis as to where best to insert ISIL forces, how best to fund/supply them, and so on. Saudi royal family cronies are not the most competent or hardworking administrators, and they're not privy to the intel and experience the US has in the 'our terrorism' specialty, and so it's natural to expect they'd ask for and receive US help with this stuff.

fairleft | Aug 15, 2015 5:07:16 AM | 21

Bhadrakumar's piece ends very strong, especially the final paragraph:

The specious plea being advanced by Washington currently is that the US wants to turn Afghanistan into a regional hub to wage a war against the IS - a war by the US and its partners, which, in the opinion of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could last not less than a generation.

This Dempsey guy is a smart general, isn't it? It was under his watch that the IS was finessed and deployed as the instrument of US regional policy to overthrow the established government in Syria and to force Baghdad to allow the return of American troops to Iraq – and now he pops up in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's office in Kabul one fine day two weeks ago to make the proposition that Washington might need an open-ended military presence in Afghanistan for another 15-20 years to wage the global war against the IS.

It will take another Gen Flynn to tell us another time circa 2025 that the IS that subsequently overthrew the established governments in Central Asia, bled white the regions of Xinjiang and North Caucasus and Kashmir, destroyed the Pakistani state and led to that country's disintegration, and kept Iran bogged down in the sheer preservation of its plural society (which is an ethnic mosaic) was actually incubated in the American military bases in Afghanistan.

El Sid | Aug 15, 2015 9:12:34 AM | 23

part 1 of 2
Polar Reorientation In the Mideast (US-Iran)?
Fri, Aug 14, 2015
By Andrew KORYBKO
http://orientalreview.org/2015/08/14/polar-reorientation-in-the-mideast-us-iran-i/

Posted by: okie farmer | Aug 15, 2015 7:22:04 AM | 22

El Sid | Aug 15, 2015 9:12:34 AM | 23

http://thesaker.is/the-saker-interviews-general-ret-amine-htaite-of-the-lebanese-armed-forces/

The Saker has a great interview with Gnl Amine Htaite of the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Good to get an Orientalist point of view these days.

jfl | Aug 15, 2015 9:34:27 AM | 24

@18

Turkish nationalists reject minority government in blow to Erdogan

Hard to tell if the good guys are going to increase their representation or the bad guys ... but I hope to see the hind side of this particular turkey. Looks like the Turks of every species are grousing at Erdogan at every opportunity.


@21

' This Dempsey guy is a smart general, isn't it? It was under his watch that the IS was finessed and deployed as the instrument of US regional policy to overthrow the established government in Syria and to force Baghdad to allow the return of American troops to Iraq – and now he pops up in Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's office in Kabul one fine day two weeks ago to make the proposition that Washington might need an open-ended military presence in Afghanistan for another 15-20 years to wage the global war against the IS. '

Dempsey is getting ready for his personal revolution ... through the revolving door to the pot of gold as the end of the rainbow. The US armed forces are now committing to losing wars for ... as long as they can. Afghanistan is one of their major profit centers.

rufus magister | Aug 15, 2015 10:12:34 AM | 26

Plantman at 18 --

You're right to call it a hot mess. The Ukraine, Libya, Iraq and More! Collect and trade them all! Everyone will want a complete set of the "Most Wanted" cards, naturally.

Mike Whitney at Counterpunch is always a good read on the economy. He turns his talents here to Syria, asking the musical question, Is Putin Planning to Sell-Out Assad? He doesn't think so.

Forget about ISIS and Syrian President Bashar al Assad for a minute and, instead, focus on the terms "autonomous zones", "creation of …sanctuaries", "safe zones" and "a confederal Syria."

All of these strongly suggest that the primary aim of US policy is to break Syria up into smaller units that pose no threat to US-Israeli regional hegemony. This is the US gameplan in a nutshell.

In contrast, Russia does not want a divided Syria. Aside from the fact that Moscow and Damascus are long-term allies (and Russia has a critical naval facility in Tartus, Syria), a balkanized Syria poses serious threats for Russia...."

Amongst them, "the probable emergence of a jihadi base of operations" with some of those ops targeting the Russian Federation, and a legitimizing a whole array of bad practices in international relations.

The under-reported diplomacy by Putin, Whitney writes, is aimed at implementation of the Geneva accord of 2012.

Geneva does not resolve the central issue, which is: "Does Assad stay or go?" That question is not answered definitively. It all depends of composition of the "transitional governing body" and the outcome of future elections....

Here's how Lavrov summed it up two days ago:

"I have already said, Russia and Saudi Arabia support all principles of the June 30, 2012 Geneva communique, in particular, the need to preserve government institutions, including the Syrian army. I believe its participation in the effective struggle against terrorists is truly essential."

Whitney allows, "Some will... say that Putin is 'selling out a friend and ally', but that's not entirely true. He's trying to balance two opposing things at the same time." Keep the back of an ally, but get Saudi help to end the jihadi war in Syria.

And even if Assad is removed, the process (Geneva) is such that the next president is not going to be a hand-picked US stooge, but someone who is supported by the majority of the Syrian people. Needless to say, Washington doesn't like that idea.

Some "moderate jihadi" riding in on a Humvee is more to DC's taste.

In as much as Assad the Younger, former London optometrist, is more of a figurehead and less an autocrat than his late father, Ba'ath Party institutions should prove suitably robust and cohesive to have a significant impact on any future government.

Whitney points to the Turkmen militias earlier under discussion [see the "Turkey Invades" thread] and concludes, time is short for Putin to pull off another diplomatic victory and prevent America from crossing another "red line" in its efforts to destroy Syria.

jfl at 24

I'd like to see Erdogan out, but I would note he's survived numerous rounds of substantial discontent. See the links in my nr. 84 in Turkey Invades if you're curious about his political calculations; sadly, he may be correct. He will not see this rejection as a blow, but will welcome it.

And to all you Barflies, I keep saying -- it's not about ISIS, or even Assad. It's all about the PKK and the Kurds. That's the real story, not the official narrative.

Noirette | Aug 15, 2015 11:12:00 AM | 30

As Narrative is in the title….When the protests in Syria broke out, and war began, I awarded the label 'genuine' to some of the early protests, which nobody agreed with iirc. I related these protests to catastrophic drought (which is well documented, > goog) and the unwillingness / incapacity / blindness of the Assad Gvmt in addressing the matter in any way at all.

One major problem was that the drought coincided with liberal moves by Assad - cutting bread subsidies (2008! - food prices R O S E by astonishing %), fuel subsididies for farmers (others too), opening up the banking sector, and totally mismanaging water -> …all done to please the W and 'modernise'.

Which lead to massive destruction of the farming community (very consequent at the time) and ppl flocking to the towns where they could not earn a living. The MSM has recently (March 2015) discovered this, e.g. the NYT - http://tinyurl.com/k5asy5h - which states that 1.5 million ppl moved to cities (idk about that no., seems low, but more were displaced and fell into poverty in other ways. Or fled, leading to further disorganisation and damage. At some point a threshold or tipping point is reached.) The article also mentions refugees from Iraq - a separate issue.

It is natural to be polarised on human decisions, influence, plots, but I really think one should take climate change into account. Note the 'liberalisation moves' were the usual, and Assad agreed but took it very slow - he faced opposition from various quarters, incl. his minister of Economy. Now we see similar but far more radical measures imposed on Greece, Ukraine, like a speeded-up movie.

academic paper, cautious and wordy. mentions the diff. topics

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1

news from 2010, 2-3 million ppl thrown into extreme poverty in Syria

http://www.irinnews.org/report/90442/syria-drought-pushing-millions-into-poverty

Oui | Aug 17, 2015 12:21:18 PM | 49

Erdogan preempted the snap elactions by a snap diktat ...

Erdoğan's declaration of 'system change' outrages Turkey's opposition | Hürriyet Daily News |

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's declaration of a de facto shift in Turkey's administrative system to a presidential system has infuriated opposition leaders, who say the declaration indicates "rule by diktat."

In remarks delivered in his hometown, the Black Sea province of Rize, on Aug. 14, Erdoğan said Turkey had witnessed a change in the president's new role and asked for the constitution to be updated to recognize his de facto deployment of enhanced powers.

"There is a president with de facto power in the country, not a symbolic one. The president should conduct his duties for the nation directly, but within his authority. Whether one accepts it or not, Turkey's administrative system has changed. Now, what should be done is to update this de facto situation in the legal framework of the constitution," he said.

Posted to my diary - Israel Ready to Join the Sunni Alliance Against Assad, Syria.

guest77 | Aug 17, 2015 10:49:49 PM | 51

There is only one history of the Syrian War so far as I am concerned, and the is b's: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/09/a-short-history-of-the-war-on-syria-2006-2014.html

I would suggest that you keep that post updated as we go, though of course maybe it isn't your blogging style. But it's a brilliant piece.

[Sep 03, 2015] Sorry, General, but the title greatest "purveyors of radical Islam" does not belong to the Iranians. Not even close. That belongs to our putative ally Saudi Arabia. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said... Our Radical Islamic BFF, Saudi Arabia
http://nyti.ms/1LTh6K6
NYT - Thomas L. Friedman - Sep 2

The Washington Post ran a story last week about some 200 retired generals and admirals who sent a letter to Congress "urging lawmakers to reject the Iran nuclear agreement, which they say threatens national security." There are legitimate arguments for and against this deal, but there was one argument expressed in this story that was so dangerously wrongheaded about the real threats to America from the Middle East, it needs to be called out.

Retired generals and admirals urge Congress to
reject Iran nuclear deal http://wapo.st/1JjkfNm
Washington Post - August 26

That argument was from Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, the retired former vice commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, who said of the nuclear accord: "What I don't like about this is, the number one leading radical Islamic group in the world is the Iranians. They are purveyors of radical Islam throughout the region and throughout the world. And we are going to enable them to get nuclear weapons."

Sorry, General, but the title greatest "purveyors of radical Islam" does not belong to the Iranians. Not even close. That belongs to our putative ally Saudi Arabia. ...

[Sep 03, 2015] The Inevitability of a War President by Lucy Steigerwald by Lucy Steigerwald

Sep 03, 2015 | Antiwar.com
In April, former president George W. Bush told a group of supporters that he wanted to sit out of his brother's campaign because voters have an aversion to the Oval Office becoming a family affair. On September 10, W. will be the man in charge at a fundraiser for Jeb in New York City.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush being assisted by George W. Bush is just one sign that the new class of would-be presidents is shamelessly, painfully close to what we have seen before. And this includes their stance on keeping American empire strong.

Indeed, there's a reason the Bushes have done so well in politics. Back in 2013, Barbara Bush said that she didn't want to see another member of the clan as president. The country, she said, had had enough Bushes. Back then, this seemed like a refreshing acceptance that yes, maybe a father and son should be the limit, and we didn't need to add a brother with the same damned name to the Oval Office. But Mrs. Bush backed off these comments two years later – presumably once she got the memo that Jeb was serious.

Never mind that. The novelty of Bushes paying lip service to the danger of dynasty is long gone. Bush W. and Jeb have managed to sound nuanced and even self-deprecating when they talk about their family's hunger for power. A flicker of self-awareness means only more savvy campaigning. Oh, I know you're all sick of Bushes! This isn't a dynasty! But gosh, I just have so many swell ideas, how could I not run?!

That same name is bad enough. But Bush palling around with his brother's foreign policy buddies – including none other than Paul Wolfowitz – is enough to make him a truly frightening candidate. And no, being browbeaten into admitting the War in Iraq was not wise does not count as knowing such an endeavor was inherently disastrous. This progress is particularly underwhelming when you consider the fact that W. is also one of Jeb's foreign policy advisers.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to her exceedingly arguable credit, doesn't pull that card of shucks, I know you don't want another Clinton, but…. Nor do her supporters. For them it is "her turn" and her family tie to a former president is nothing but a win. Her warmongering bonafides are already well-established, however that does not matter to her fans. Anyone dying for a Hillary Clinton presidency is a straw liberal who cares about power quotas for oppressed minorities such as rich, well-educated, white American women. Never mind the real oppressed minorities being bombed abroad, it's time for a woman president!

In the face of a potential choice between a Bush and a Clinton, no wonder the lunatic, xenophobic populist train of Donald Trump's candidacy has pulled out of the station and is chugging along so fiercely. In an alternate universe, Trump is a ballsy businessman who never supported the war in Iraq, and wants to have a powerful military that is never used. In reality, he's a principle-less, self-aggrandizing cipher who clearly says whatever comes to mind. No matter his occasional flashes of what appears to be sense, is there anyone who believes President Trump would be restrained, and would stress diplomacy over war? The man thinks absurd, walrus-faced hawk John Bolton, the former UN ambassador, is a good foreign policy adviser.

Rounding out the GOP class are happy interventionists such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, former Gov. Scott Walker, and neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Many of these candidates have no chance, but regardless of differences in focus, all of them are painfully pro-Israel, and all are willing to use military force against ISIS. No Republican candidate is for the deal with Iran. Almost none of them have expressed the slightest desire to have a less aggressive foreign policy. Rand Paul is the obvious exception there, and he still seems a bit less gung-ho about war-making than the rest of them. Still, he's gone appallingly hawkish during the last few months. Besides, enthusiastic or "regretful" war-making is most often just an aesthetic choice. Are you going to make sad faces after bombing, or are you going to act like a cowboy? It may not matter so much in the end, not unless a president – and a Congress, and a country – is truly dead set on avoiding war.

(Oddly, the completely ignored, polling at less-than-one-percent Lincoln Chafee has the positive legacy of being the only Republican senator to vote against the war in Iraq. His campaign website even says he "will end drone strikes, torture of prisoners, and warrantless wiretaps." He switched parties, however, making him even more of a dub to partisans.)

Now, Bernie Sanders is one feasible candidate who has a promising, if slightly underwhelming anti-interventionist history. He does not, however, seem terribly interested in making anti-interventionism a prominent point of his campaign. When I asked former Rep. Ron Paul about this in an interview which went up on the site last week, Paul qualified some of Sanders' antiwar bonafides, but admitted that the man had some good principles. Unfortunately for folks such as Ron Paul, Sanders is a democratic socialist who has subsequently alarming policy goals to anyone interested in a smaller government all around.

So, those are our choices if we're looking for even a scrap of antiwar feeling. A demagogue with nightmare hair who claims he won't use the military much, but changes his mind on issues every other day (except for xenophobia). A socialist who also hates open borders. A chip off the old block but not enough, who seems to have taken a neocon turn. The third Bush in 30 years, who can be successfully pushed into halfway admitting that his brother made a mistake when he began a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and destabilized an entire region. An antiwar Democrat with no chance in hell. It's going to be a long election.

Lucy Steigerwald is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and a columnist for VICE.com. She previously worked as an Associate Editor for Reason magazine. She is most angry about police, prisons, and wars. Steigerwald blogs at www.thestagblog.com.

[Sep 03, 2015] Who Is Listening to Dick Cheney by Lucy Steigerwald

"...So yes, Cheney should be mocked, disrespected, and condemned for now. His ideas should be ripped to pieces. But it isn't entirely about him, or whether any of the 2016 GOPers want to explicitly tout his ideas for the world. Cheney is not subtle. Republicans and Democrats today, at this moment, have to be more coy about their imperial ambitions. Often, the only real difference is the honesty. Forget this dangerous notion that warmongering is so last decade. It is part of our daily life. Forget the idea that since we all boo and hiss when Cheney's name appears in a byline, the threat of him is long gone. It isn't. When the leading candidate with antiwar credentials says he supports a limited drone war, you can be assured that the problem is bigger than Cheney, and bigger than the neocons. "
Antiwar.com

Who Is Listening to Dick Cheney?

by Lucy Steigerwald, September 03, 2015

Print This | Share This

Dick Cheney is a former vice president who had an enormous effect on public policy, and therefore on history. He should be interviewed by media outlets. He should be asked tough questions about every single aspect of his tenure in the White House. We cannot pretend that Cheney does not belong in history books, or that he will vanish if we just wish hard enough.

But the line should be firmly drawn. Cheney is part of history, and there he should stay. But not so much that we pretend he is toothless and apolitical. He should not be steered out as a fun toy, the way Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright and other, shall we say, controversial politicians have been on stunt-cast on shows ranging from Gilmore Girls to The Colbert Report.

Most importantly, Dick Cheney's new attention-grabbing attempts should be ignored. The man was given a much longer leash than most VPs to wreck the world. He's done. Unfortunately, Dick doesn't think so himself.

George W. Bush has been unfairly praised for mostly keeping his nose out of President Obama's business. But Obama has had his own wars in Libya, and all over the MIddle East via drone. He doesn't really need the advice of any warmongers beyond his own cabinet.

The question now is who among the 2016 contenders might be the most eager to learn from Cheney. Because Cheney and his daughter Liz do have lots of opinions to share. A whole book of them, in fact. It is called Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. Last week, The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt.

It seems Cheney and Lil Cheney know that it's "more than likely" a nuclear weapon will be not just acquired by Iran, but that someone will use one due to catastrophic effects of the Iran deal.

Forget Obama's claim on the word. Audacity thy name is Cheney. Not only is he shamelessly happy to defend the war he started, he is also ready to tell the whole world how America should act. Best of all, he is ready to predict the long-term effects of foreign policy decisions. He is practically a seer, as long as you ignore his incessant refrain that Saddam Hussein was tied in some way to 9/11.

Government is magic like that. But few people are quite as bold as Cheney when it comes to defending a 1.7 trillion-dollar boondoggle that killed hundreds of thousands.

Some people aren't worried about this nostalgia for 2003. The Washington Post's Paul Waldman look at CheneySquared's bid for attention and remained unperturbed. Waldman seems to think that the class of 2016 is not going to give the Cheney spirit attention, so why worry? After all, nearly every candidate – including Jeb Bush! – has suggested that the Iraq war was a mistake as it was fought. Cheney stands almost entirely alone as a national politician in his conviction that it was a good war.

So what?

Pardon my pessimism, but the price of allowing Dick Cheney's freedom is eternal vigilance. His special brand of warmongering may not be in fashion at this precise moment, and neither is the 2003 war he championed, but it can always return in force. Just about every GOP candidate for the nomination has suggested or implied that Obama is a foreign policy wuss. That is, we need a more aggressive policy than the one practiced by the man who claims the right to assassinate anyone – including American citizens – and has waged a robotic, undeclared war that has left thousands of casualties.

It feels so easy now to assume the neocons are ancient history. W. left office with historically low approval ratings. We've heard and made ten thousand jokes about supervillain Cheney. His heart is weak, and he's out of power. In short, we're all superior to our 2003 selves, and would never again tolerate such an aggressive, arrogant war.

We would, if we were pushed. The American people have a low stamina for long wars, but a strong appetite for starting a new one when they are told it is essential. The idea that the official summary of the Iraq war as a "mistake" means we can relax is a dangerous one. Nobody running with a shot in hell believes that in any substantial way. They believe they have to say it was a mistake, because the popular winds now blow that way. Their war, if they felt they needed to fight one, would be different. Your war is always different.

If the hawks are smart, they will keep going to war by fits and starts. Then they can remake the world the way they wish to. Drone wars are "better" than boots on the ground in Iraq, so not Obama or Bernie Sanders can say anything about them. The cheaper drones get, the easier it will be to keep a constant, psychologically traumatizing presence in countries with which we cannot even be bothered to declare war.

Perhaps ISIS will be met with full military force, perhaps the Iran-hawks will gain an upper hand, but not necessarily. It's easier to just send a few more advisers and troops back into Iraq. Make your allies bomb instead. Regardless, as The Nation noted this week, the civilian casualties that result from these engagements will remain minor news. Civilian casualties are boring. Keep that war on the backburner, and after a few more years, 2003 will be a thousand years ago, and then maybe the Cheney crowd will come back.

So yes, Cheney should be mocked, disrespected, and condemned for now. His ideas should be ripped to pieces. But it isn't entirely about him, or whether any of the 2016 GOPers want to explicitly tout his ideas for the world. Cheney is not subtle. Republicans and Democrats today, at this moment, have to be more coy about their imperial ambitions. Often, the only real difference is the honesty.

Forget this dangerous notion that warmongering is so last decade. It is part of our daily life. Forget the idea that since we all boo and hiss when Cheney's name appears in a byline, the threat of him is long gone. It isn't. When the leading candidate with antiwar credentials says he supports a limited drone war, you can be assured that the problem is bigger than Cheney, and bigger than the neocons.

Lucy Steigerwald is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and a columnist for VICE.com. She previously worked as an Associate Editor for Reason magazine. She is most angry about police, prisons, and wars. Steigerwald blogs at www.thestagblog.com.

[Aug 29, 2015] So Wrong for So Long

"...For starters, neoconservatives think balance-of-power politics doesn't really work in international affairs and that states are strongly inclined to "bandwagon" instead. In other words, they think weaker states are easy to bully and never stand up to powerful adversaries. Their faulty logic follows that other states will do whatever Washington dictates provided we demonstrate how strong and tough we are. This belief led them to conclude that toppling Saddam would send a powerful message and cause other states in the Middle East to kowtow to us. If we kept up the pressure, our vast military power would quickly transform the region into a sea of docile pro-American democracies."
.
"...Moreover, neocons believe military force is a supple tool that can be turned on and off like a spigot. If the United States uses force and things go badly, they seem to think the nation can just pull out quickly and live to fight another day. But that's not how things work in the real world of politics: Once forces are committed, the military brass will demand the chance to win a clear victory, and politicians will worry about the nation's prestige and their own political fortunes. The conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia should remind us that it's a lot easier to get into wars than it is to get out of them, but that lesson has been lost on most neoconservatives."
.
"...They claim their main goal is spreading freedom and democracy (except for Palestinians, of course), but they have no theory to explain how this will happen or how toppling a foreign government with military force will magically cause democracy to emerge. Instead, they believe the desire to live in freedom is hardwired into human DNA, and all one has to do is remove the bad guys at the top. Once they are gone, the now-liberated population will forget past grievances, form political parties, embrace tolerance, line up for orderly elections, accept the resulting outcomes willingly, and offer grateful thanks to Uncle Sam."
Aug 21, 2015 | Foreign Policy

Over the past few weeks, proponents of the nuclear deal with Iran - from President Barack Obama on down - have marshaled a powerful attack on some of the deal's most prominent opponents. Specifically, they've been pointing out an indisputable fact: Many of the individuals and organizations that are most actively lobbying and speaking out against the deal helped dream up the idea of invading Iraq or worked hard to convince Congress and the American people to go along with the idea. The logic of the pro-deal camp is simple: Given that the opponents were so catastrophically wrong about the Iraq War, no one should listen to their advice today.

I agree with this basic argument, of course, but opponents of the deal do have one line of defense against the "Wrong on Iraq, Wrong on Iran" meme. It is possible someone could have been dead wrong about the wisdom of invading Iraq in 2003, but nonetheless be correct to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran today. None of us is infallible, and it is at least conceivable that Bill Kristol, Elliott Abrams, James Woolsey, Fred Hiatt, Max Boot, et al. could have blown it big-time in 2002 - but be absolutely right this time around.

Conceivable, I suppose, but highly unlikely. Why? Because their views in 2002 aren't independent from the views they're expressing today. On the contrary, their earlier support for the Iraq War and their opposition to the Iran deal stem from the basic neoconservative worldview that informs their entire approach to foreign policy.

To be more specific, the problem isn't that these people just happened to be embarrassingly wrong about Iraq. After all, plenty of other people were equally misguided back then, including many people who now support the deal today. Nor is the problem the neocons' stubborn and morally dubious refusal to admit they were wrong and take responsibility for the lives and money they squandered.

No, the real problem is that the neoconservative worldview - one that still informs the thinking of many of the groups and individuals who are most vocal in opposing the Iran deal - is fundamentally flawed. Getting Iraq wrong wasn't just an unfortunate miscalculation, it happened because their theories of world politics were dubious and their understanding of how the world works was goofy.

When your strategic software is riddled with bugs, you should expect a lot of error messages.

What are the main flaws that consistently lead neoconservatives astray?

  1. For starters, neoconservatives think balance-of-power politics doesn't really work in international affairs and that states are strongly inclined to "bandwagon" instead. In other words, they think weaker states are easy to bully and never stand up to powerful adversaries. Their faulty logic follows that other states will do whatever Washington dictates provided we demonstrate how strong and tough we are. This belief led them to conclude that toppling Saddam would send a powerful message and cause other states in the Middle East to kowtow to us. If we kept up the pressure, our vast military power would quickly transform the region into a sea of docile pro-American democracies.

    What happened, alas, was that the various states we were threatening didn't jump on our bandwagon. Instead, they balanced and then took steps to make sure we faced significant and growing resistance. In particular, Syria and Iran (the next two states on the neocons' target list), cooperated even further with each other and helped aid the anti-American insurgency in Iraq itself. Neocons were outraged by this behavior, but it shouldn't have surprised anyone who understood Realism 101. At the same time, long-standing U.S. allies were upset by our actions and distanced themselves from us or else they took advantage of our excesses and free-rode at our expense. In short, the neoconservatives' belief that the United States could browbeat and intimidate others into doing our bidding was dead wrong.

    Today, of course, opposition to the Iran deal reflects a similar belief that forceful resolve would enable Washington to dictate whatever terms it wants. As I've written before, this idea is the myth of a "better deal." Because neocons assume states are attracted to strength and easy to intimidate, they think rejecting the deal, ratcheting up sanctions, and threatening war will cause Iran's government to finally cave in and dismantle its entire enrichment program. On the contrary, walking away from the deal will stiffen Iran's resolve, strengthen its hard-liners, increase its interest in perhaps actually acquiring a nuclear weapon someday, and cause the other members of the P5+1 to part company with the United States.

  2. The neoconservative worldview also exaggerates the efficacy of military force and downplays the value of diplomacy. Military force is an essential component of national power, of course, but neocons tend to see it as a magical tool that can accomplish all sorts of wonderful things (such as the creation of workable democracies) for which it is not really designed. In reality, military force is a crude instrument whose effects are hard to foresee and one which almost always produces unintended consequences (see under: Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc.). So it was in Iraq, and the results of a direct military conflict with Iran would be equally unpredictable.

    Moreover, neocons believe military force is a supple tool that can be turned on and off like a spigot. If the United States uses force and things go badly, they seem to think the nation can just pull out quickly and live to fight another day. But that's not how things work in the real world of politics: Once forces are committed, the military brass will demand the chance to win a clear victory, and politicians will worry about the nation's prestige and their own political fortunes. The conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia should remind us that it's a lot easier to get into wars than it is to get out of them, but that lesson has been lost on most neoconservatives.

  3. Third, the neoconservatives have a simplistic and ahistorical view of democracy itself. They claim their main goal is spreading freedom and democracy (except for Palestinians, of course), but they have no theory to explain how this will happen or how toppling a foreign government with military force will magically cause democracy to emerge. Instead, they believe the desire to live in freedom is hardwired into human DNA, and all one has to do is remove the bad guys at the top. Once they are gone, the now-liberated population will forget past grievances, form political parties, embrace tolerance, line up for orderly elections, accept the resulting outcomes willingly, and offer grateful thanks to Uncle Sam.

    It would be nice if that Pollyannaish scenario were accurate, but such views betray near-total ignorance of the prerequisites for meaningful democracy and the actual history of democratic growth in the West itself. In fact, the development of liberal democracy was a long, contentious, imperfect, and often violent process in Western Europe and North America, and anyone familiar with that history would have known the neocons' formula for democratic change was doomed from the start.

  4. Fourth, as befits a group of armchair ideologues whose primary goal has been winning power inside the Beltway, neoconservatives are often surprisingly ignorant about the actual conditions of the countries whose politics and society they want to transform. Hardly any neoconservatives knew very much about Iraq before the United States invaded - if they had, they might have reconsidered the whole scheme - and their characterizations of Iran today consist of scary caricatures bearing little resemblance to Iran's complicated political and social reality. In addition to flawed theories, in short, the neoconservative worldview also depends on an inaccurate reading of the facts on the ground.

  5. Last but not least, the neoconservatives' prescriptions for U.S. foreign policy are perennially distorted by a strong attachment to Israel, which Max Boot (and others) have described as a "key tenet" of the entire movement. There's nothing wrong with such attachments per se, of course, but it has crippled their ability to give sensible policy advice to U.S. politicians. In particular, neoconservatives tend to believe that what's good for Israel is good for the United States - and vice versa - which is why they see no conflict between their attachment to Israel and their loyalty to the United States. But no two states have identical interests all the time, and when the interests of two countries conflict, people who feel strongly about both are forced to decide which of these feelings is going to take priority.

Over the past few weeks, some proponents of the deal have pointed out - correctly - that some opponents don't like the deal because they think it is bad for Israel and because the Netanyahu government is dead set against it. As one might expect, pointing out these obvious facts has led some opponents of the deal to accuse proponents (including President Obama) of anti-Semitism. But as Lara Friedman, J.J. Goldberg, and Peter Beinart have made clear, this charge is absurd, even laughable. Among other things, it appears a majority of American Jews support the deal - and so do plenty of distinguished figures in Israel's own national security establishment. If anything, it is Netanyahu's efforts to persuade American Jews that it is their duty to support him, rather than their own president, that echoes those hateful anti-Semitic canards about "dual loyalty."

Instead of being a serious criticism, this familiar smear is really just a way to change the subject and to put proponents of the deal on the defensive for pointing out the obvious. Fortunately, in this case the charge just doesn't seem to be sticking, and its appearance is just another sign that opponents don't have rational arguments or solid evidence to justify their opposition.

The bottom line: The fact that the neoconservatives, AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents, and other groups in the Israel lobby were wrong about the Iraq War does not by itself mean that they are necessarily wrong about the Iran deal. But when you examine their basic views on world politics and their consistent approach to U.S. Middle East policy, it becomes clear this is not a coincidence at all. Support for the Iraq War and opposition to the Iran deal flow from the same flawed premises, and that's why following their advice today would be as foolish as it was back in 2003.

Choices2014

I take a much narrower view as to what motivates neocons-it definitely is not ideology. They have infiltrated most of the "think" tanks, they have infiltrated many of the cabinet level departments, and have infiltrated all levels of political activity. To me, that indicates a hunger for power and money and it has been very successful. Huge sums of money support these people and their constant push for war. Finally, it is all orchestrated my Netanyahu and the Likuds. The neocons and their AIPAC, WaPo, et al take their script from Netanyahu and because of the money and their positioning in the Foreign Policy establishment, it seems impossible to counteract. Indeed, depressing and tragic for the United States.
Lost in america
I think it is a mistake to throw all of these positions and policies altogether. Actually, opposition to the treaty may seem bipolar because of the political marketing by the Administration. But there are varied rationales: Some people are against the deal deal because they do not trust Iran under any circumstances. Some are against the deal because we could have negotiated a better deal. Some want more compensation for past Iranian transgressions. Some believe that the treaty is too open ended and allows nuclear development too soon. Some Americans do not believe that you should make a treaty with a nation unless they release your hostages. Some see that Iran has problems and we should not let them off the hook so easily. The best argument for the treaty is that sanctions are weakening anyway. To believe that the treaty will make Iran a better citizen is similar to the belief if you make Iraq a democracy, this will lead to a better world. The Neocons are similar to the people who support the treaty. They are idealistic and probably making the world worse.
exMod 27
Why does everyone expect the US to carry the weight? What is in our National Interest? Israel and the Sunni Arab/Turks want a weaker Persia/Shia/Iran so they can dominate the region. A weak Iran means a weak Syria and a weaker Shia presence in the region. (looking at you Hizbollah). That is why a good number of Arabs and Jews oppose the deal. They don't want ANY deal that lifts sanctions on Iran. So, where does that leave the US? 10 years ago, with oil prices sky high, we would have to back the Sauds. 30 years ago, with the Great Bear still running around, we would have to backed the Israelis. Today? Oil is flowing and Putin is driving Russia into a ditch. What is in our National Interest? Commerce. I don't understand today's Republican party. Led by fools.
WilliamSantiago
BDL2010 is correct: "You could say the same thing about liberals." My bet is that Prof Walt would have supported any deal coming out the Obama Administration. So I challenge him to state exactly what the minimum deal with Iran would have been that he would find unacceptable.

I note 2 points of logic: (i) The notion of "the myth of a better deal" is a contrary-to-fact conditional. There is no way to know if Prof. Walt is correct especially has he has provided no evidence that a better deal could not have been or could not be forthcoming. (ii) It's simply name calling to label an opposing point of view a "myth," then define what strawman necons believe as that myth, then knock down the strawman (with little evidence even for this poor task).

Further, I note an interesting aspect of the deal that even the most neophyte negotiator would have avoided. We gave away for certain the only lever we had (the sanctions) in return for a promise to be fulfilled in the future. And we found out this week that a major portion of the promise will be verified by our opponent in the negotiation. "This used car is in fine shape. Buy it now and I'll come over tomorrow and verify that there isn't sawdust in the transmission."

Prof. Walt is entitled to his opinion. But intellectual honesty requires that he pressure test his opinion by finding the best, not the worst or vaguest arguments against his conclusion instead of setting up strawmen and knocking them down. Unfortunately, setting up strawmen is a favorite tactic of our commander in chief.

bdl2010
More political BS. You could say the same thing about liberals. Case in point, how is Libya going? How about Syria? Right now there is a major refugee crisis due to instability in both of these nations. In one we took action and in the other we failed to. So if you want to pen an article about how neo-cons are always wrong then you need to follow it up with how liberals are not always right either. I'd hope that at some point in the future we would start to realize that we need a foreign policy that transcends political parties. When other nations look at our policies they see that it is America that is enacting it. They do not see Republicans or Democrats to blame. It's due time for us all to grow the hell up and get our act together.
samamerco
I disagree in one main point. While most politicians consider the results of the war in Iraq to be negative, neocons see the same results as positive. It removed a major threat to Israel (Saddam) and caused unending social upheaval in the countries surrounding it that continues today. The neocons also see a similar result of war with Iran as positive from the Israeli point view. Who really cares about the interests of the United States?
Xenophon
@samamerco Well stated and right on the mark.
Mark Thomason
This is a wonderfully clear explanation of a very complex subject, a real tour de force.

I'd add two smaller points.

One, it is hard to get out once we start a war, even when we win. WW2 was as overwhelming a win, unconditional surrender, as one could ever hope to get. Yet after all these years, we are still in Germany, Italy, and Japan, and we are in them because of WW2 and how we ended it. Once in, we couldn't get out even by total victory.

Two, while come neocons may believe in spreading democracy, they did not act as if that was their goal when they had the chance. They imposed government, and supervised the "election" of puppets. It was more like lip service cover for another goal we know was close to the heart of the leaders: make the Middle East safe for Israel no matter what it does, even for continued expansion and a Greater Israel. American power was misused to do that, and it failed as completely as did the excuse of bringing democracy.

Jinzo
Most people that oppose this deal have legitimate reasons for doing so, obviously there are some that just don't want a deal full stop for selfish reasons. Obama and Kerry have not come even close at all to a deal of any resemblance to what they initially set out to achieve for the American people. Despite Obamas rhetoric about "its this deal or war", I doubt anyone can seriously contemplate Obama of all people starting a war with Iran and the next president will be faced with the fact that Iran is no feable Iraq, not that Iraq itself have been a walk in the park. The talk that "if this deal is rejected that our European allies will ease sanctions unilaterally" totally overlooks the fact they these same allies applied sanctions on Russia which is much more costly to them then the Iran sanctions are. Lifting the UN restrictions on military equipment and missile technology has to be changed, this should only happen if Iran proves it has stopped their state sponsorship of terrorism, also Iran been allowed to provide their own samples to the international inspectors to verify that they haven't been cheating in the past is just unbelievable, mind boggling, how could anyone think this is acceptable? Imagine an athlete that was suspended for taking drugs being allowed to provide his own urine samples to the sports league. Imagine a criminal in the court of law being the only person to submit evidence of his own guilt or innocence. Imagine if the police pullied over a intoxicated driver, only to let him go cause he said "he hadn't been drinking", but you don't have to imagine something so ridiculous cause this kind of circus act is exactly what's now playing out between Iran and the IAEA. There has to be a better deal then this poor excuse of a 'deal'.
Mark Thomason
@Jinzo "Most people that oppose this deal have legitimate reasons for doing so"

No, they don't.

Negotiators rarely get all of their initial demands. Anyway, "what they set out to achieve" is here defined as what Netanyahu dreamed of getting, not Obama's real goals.

Toot Sweet
They are wrong so often because they are ideologues. And like all ideologues, they are dogmatic and care little for facts, criticism, or compromise. For them, the ends justify the means which explains why they distort and dissemble with great ease, and never apologize.
Anise
So, neo-cons are ignorant bullies who are killing the rest of us. How do we stop them?
Ggee
This piece is just like the neo-cons: sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

In the end, though, it always comes down to straining for the opportunity to lambaste Israel. Even when the President flips out and attacks his detractors as war-mongers in league with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard; when hordes of pro-deal lobbyists representing every P5+1nation descend on Capital Hill (as is their right); when virtually every western nation already has sent representatives in the last few weeks to negotiate commercial deals with Tehran even before the mullahs have demonstrated good faith; even as morally neutered "realist" academics spout off while drenched with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Syrian and other innocents but continue to sit in judgment of their inferiors -- even with all that and so much more, it's always the right time to attack Israel.

The writer is always very busy telling us not only that Israel is a big drag on the U.S., but now offers psychological analysis that Israel's supporters are clinically incapable of having well considered opinions that differ from his own, notwithstanding abundant proof of his own impenetrable bias. Which is to say, what a load of crap.

bpuharic -> Ggee
You didn't read the article. What he said was the right has a power fetish. That's why neocons get it wrong
ozziem
@Ggee

RE:

In the end, though, it always comes down to straining for the opportunity to lambaste Israel.

It seems abundantly obvious that your are among the people who places Israel's interests ahead of those of the United States. Why don't you just move there?

Chris F

"The logic of the pro-deal camp is simple: Given that the opponents were so catastrophically wrong about the Iraq War, no one should listen to their advice today." Mr. Walt, this is a logical fallacy and you should have been done with it when you admitted so. Though you acknowledge the fallacy, you still go on to defend it. You never got specific on how "these people just happened to be embarrassingly wrong about Iraq" but I guess you mean the WMD. True, no nukes were found, but lots and lots of other weapons, including chemical weapons, were found. The New York Times did a huge report on this.

So, your assertion that we shouldn't listen to opponents of the deal because they were wrong on Iraq is highly debatable, and if that's what support for the Iran deal rests on, the case is very weak indeed.

As for the neo-con worldview question, occupation has worked pretty well in Japan, South Korea, Germany and others in the long run, so one could be forgiven for looking at the long line of overall successes and thinking it would work in Iraq if we were honest and clear about what we were going to do with Iraq - that is undertake a multi-generational transformation of Iraqi society through occupation. It should also be remembered that there was a lot of support for the US enforcing UN resolutions as part of the Iraq invasion. If the neo-cons were so wrong and we can't listen to them now, then ditto for the Democrats who supported the war and the countries in the UN who also supported it.

"This belief led them to conclude that toppling Saddam would send a powerful message and cause other states in the Middle East to kowtow to us." Also debatable. Qaddafi saw what happened in Iraq and gave up his weapons program. Even Kim Jong Il was reportedly freaked out as he watched the invasion. We'll never know how things could have been shaped if the US was consistent in its mission.

"Among other things, it appears a majority of American Jews support the deal - and so do plenty of distinguished figures in Israel's own national security establishment." Of course, there will be some people on both sides. But this is a rare moment when the Israeli left and right, Jew and Arab, are in overwhelming agreement over how bad the deal is. That is no small feat. As for American Jews, I was at the well attended anti-deal rally in Los Angeles last month and judging by how many different groups showed up, your assertion here is also incorrect. Jews, Arabs, Christians, Democrats, Republicans, Palestinians, Israelis and gay activists all showed up and all were against the deal. This is LA, the biggest home of liberal Jews outside of NYC.

I also saw Ted Cruz speak at one of the largest Persian Jewish synagogues in LA (maybe the country) last month. The place was over capacity and the fire marshal showed up. The subject was the Iran deal and Cruz got multiple standing ovations. Again, we're talking about liberal Jewish LA. So, you may have read a few articles by Jews who support the deal, but I have seen up close thousands of American Jews in liberal LA, many of them Iranian, who are disgusted with this deal.

[Aug 23, 2015] Netanyahu pressed for Iran attacks, but was denied: ex-defense chief

Looks like Bibi is a certified warmonger. Something like George Bush of Israel
Aug 23, 2015 | Reuters
... ... ..

In interviews to his biographers aired late on Friday by Israel's Channel Two, Barak said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had wanted military operations against Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

... ... ...

  • In 2010, the Israeli leadership wanted an attack but the military said it did not have "operational capability," said Barak, defense minister between 2007 and 2013, and prime minister in 1999-2001.
  • In 2011, two ministers in a top security forum convened to discuss an attack changed their mind and decided against it, Barak said.
  • In 2012 the timing coincided with a joint military exercise with the United States. "We intended to carry it out," Barak said, but going ahead with an attack on Iran while U.S. forces were conducting the exercise would have been bad timing. "You're asking and demanding America to respect your sovereignty when making a decision to do it even if America objects and it's against her interests, you can't go in the opposite direction and force America in when they're here on a drill that was known ahead of time," Barak said.

Netanyahu's spokesman could not be reached for comment.

[Aug 22, 2015] The Riddle of Obama's Foreign Policy by Robert Parry

his vision is more ideological than strategic
"...My view of Obama is somewhat different. It strikes me that Obama is what you might call a "closet realist." He understands the limits of American power and wants to avoid costly military entanglements. But he also doesn't want to challenge the neocon/liberal-hawk dominance of Official Washington.
In other words, he's a timid opportunist when it comes to reshaping the parameters of the prevailing "group think." He's afraid of being cast as the "outsider," so he only occasionally tests the limits of what the neocon/liberal-hawk "big thinkers" will permit, as with Cuba and Iran."
"...An elitist would keep the public in the dark while letting the hasty initial judgments stand, which is what Obama has done."
"...Kissinger: "To me, yes. It means that breaking Russia has become an objective; the long-range purpose should be to integrate it.""
"...But Obama the Timid Soul – afraid of being ostracized by all the well-connected neocons and liberal hawks of Official Washington – doesn't dare challenge the "group think," what everybody knows to be true even if he knows it to be false. In the end, Obama the Elitist won't trust the American people with the facts, so these international crises will continue drifting toward a potential Armageddon."
August 22, 2015 | therealnews.com | 0 Comments

By Robert Parry. This article was first published on Consortium News.

For nearly seven years of his presidency, Barack Obama has zigzagged from military interventionist to pragmatic negotiator, leaving little sense of what he truly believes. Yet, there may be some consistent threads to his inconsistencies, writes Robert Parry.

Nearing the last year of his presidency, Barack Obama and his foreign policy remain an enigma. At times, he seems to be the "realist," working constructively with other nations to achieve positive solutions, as with the Iran nuclear deal and his rapprochement with Cuba. Other times, he slides into line with the neocons and liberal hawks, provoking ugly crises, such as his "regime change" tactics in Honduras (2009), Libya (2011), Syria (over several years) and Ukraine (2014).

Yet, even in some of those "regime change" scenarios, Obama pulls back from the crazier "tough guy/gal" ideas and recognizes the catastrophes such schemes could create. In 2013, he called off a planned bombing campaign against the Syrian military (which could have led to a victory for Al Qaeda or the Islamic State), and in 2014, he resisted a full-scale escalation of Ukraine's war against ethnic Russian rebels resisting the new U.S.-backed political order in Kiev (which could have pushed the world to the brink of a nuclear war).

Yet, Obama also won't stand up to the neocons and liberal hawks by sharing crucial information with the American people that could undermine pro-intervention narratives.

For instance, Obama has held back the latest U.S. intelligence analysis describing who was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack that almost precipitated the U.S. war on the Syrian military, and he won't release the intelligence assessment on who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014, the tragedy which ratcheted up the crisis with Russia over Ukraine.

In both cases, I'm told U.S. intelligence analysts have backed off early rushes to judgment blaming the Syrian government for the sarin attack, which killed hundreds, and the Russian-backed eastern Ukrainian rebels for the MH-17 crash, which killed 298 people. But Obama has left standing the earlier propaganda themes blaming the Syrian and Russian governments, all the better to apply American "soft power" pressure against Damascus and Moscow.

Thus, Obama's foreign policy has a decidedly zigzag nature to it. Or as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently described Obama: "On the prudential level he's a realist. But his vision is more ideological than strategic," a typically cryptic Kissingerian phrasing that I interpret to mean that Obama is a prudent realist when it comes to major military actions but – short of all-out war – ideologically embraces neocon/liberal-hawk interventionism.

My view of Obama is somewhat different. It strikes me that Obama is what you might call a "closet realist." He understands the limits of American power and wants to avoid costly military entanglements. But he also doesn't want to challenge the neocon/liberal-hawk dominance of Official Washington.

In other words, he's a timid opportunist when it comes to reshaping the parameters of the prevailing "group think." He's afraid of being cast as the "outsider," so he only occasionally tests the limits of what the neocon/liberal-hawk "big thinkers" will permit, as with Cuba and Iran.

Obama is also fundamentally an elitist who believes more in manipulating the American people than in leveling with them. For instance, a leader who truly trusted in democracy would order the maximum declassification of what the U.S. intelligence community knows about the pivotal events in Syria and Ukraine, including the sarin attack and the MH-17 shoot-down.

An elitist would keep the public in the dark while letting the hasty initial judgments stand, which is what Obama has done.

Redirecting Conventional Wisdom

Obama never trusts the people to help him rewrite the narratives of these crises, which could create more space for reasonable compromises and solutions. Instead, he leaves the American public ignorant, which empowers his fellow "smart people" of Official Washington to manage national perceptions, all aided and abetted by the complicit mainstream U.S. media which simply reinforces the misguided "conventional wisdom."

Despite his power to do so, Obama won't shatter the frame of Official Washington's fun-house mirror of reality. That's why his attempt to invoke the memory of President John F. Kennedy's famous "we all inhabit this small planet" speech at American University in 1963 fell so flat earlier this month when Obama went to AU and offered a pedestrian, point-by-point defense of the Iran nuclear deal without any of Kennedy's soaring, universal rhetoric.

Presumably Obama feared that he would be cast as a starry-eyed idealist if he explained to the American people the potential for using the Iran agreement as a way to begin constructing a more peaceful Middle East. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's Pragmatic Appeal for Iran Peace."]

These limitations in Obama's personality and world view have probably doomed his legacy to be viewed as an overall failure to reshape America's approach to the world, away from a costly and confrontational strategy of seeking endless dominance to one favoring a more respectful and pragmatic approach toward the sensitivities and needs of other nations.

I realize some Obama critics feel that he is simply a tool of American imperialism putting a slightly less offensive face on the same interventionist policies. And no doubt he has served that role in many instances. He even boasted during his Iran speech that "I've ordered military action in seven countries." If some other world leader – say, Russian President Vladimir Putin – had made that claim, we would be hearing demands that he be dragged before the World Court as a war criminal.

But there is also the Obama whom Kissinger described as "on the prudential level he's a realist." And there is significant value in sidestepping the maximalist catastrophes that would be caused by policies favored by the neocons and liberal hawks, such as U.S. bombing to destroy the Syrian military (and open the gates of Damascus to a reign of Sunni terrorism) or a U.S. military escalation of the Ukraine crisis (to the point of a nuclear showdown with Russia).

While Obama's modicum of "realism" may seem like a modest thing, it isn't when you recognize that Official Washington's favored choices could contribute to the mass executions of Syria's Christians, Shiites, Alawites and other minorities under the swords of the Islamic State or could provoke a thermonuclear war with Russia that could end all life on the planet.

That acknowledgement aside, however, Obama has fallen far short of any profile in courage as he's allowed dangerously false narratives to develop around these and other international conflicts. The most hazardous of all is the Putin-bashing storyline about Ukraine, which holds that the entire ugly civil war was part of some nefarious scheme cooked up in the Kremlin to recreate the Russian Empire.

Though this notion that the Ukraine crisis was simply a case of "Russian aggression" is held by virtually every important person in Washington's current power circles, it was never true. The crisis was provoked by a U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, which overthrew Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Putin reacted to that provocation; he didn't instigate it.

Kissinger's Take on Ukraine

And if you don't believe me, perhaps you might listen to Henry Kissinger who explained the reality in a July interview with National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn, who noted: "we have witnessed a return, at least in Washington, DC, of neoconservatives and liberal hawks who are determined to break the back of the Russian government."

Kissinger: "Until they face the consequences. The trouble with America's wars since the end of the Second World War has been the failure to relate strategy to what is possible domestically. The five wars we've fought since the end of World War II were all started with great enthusiasm. But the hawks did not prevail at the end. At the end, they were in a minority. We should not engage in international conflicts if, at the beginning, we cannot describe an end, and if we're not willing to sustain the effort needed to achieve that end. …"

Heilbrunn: "How do you think the United States can extricate itself from the Ukraine impasse - the United States and Europe, obviously?"

Kissinger: "The issue is not to extricate the United States from the Ukrainian impasse but to solve it in a way conducive to international order. A number of things need to be recognized. One, the relationship between Ukraine and Russia will always have a special character in the Russian mind. It can never be limited to a relationship of two traditional sovereign states, not from the Russian point of view, maybe not even from Ukraine's.

"So, what happens in Ukraine cannot be put into a simple formula of applying principles that worked in Western Europe, not that close to Stalingrad and Moscow. In that context, one has to analyze how the Ukraine crisis occurred. It is not conceivable that Putin spends 60 billion euros on turning a summer resort into a winter Olympic village in order to start a military crisis the week after a concluding ceremony that depicted Russia as a part of Western civilization.

"So then, one has to ask: How did that happen? I saw Putin at the end of November 2013. He raised a lot of issues; Ukraine he listed at the end as an economic problem that Russia would handle via tariffs and oil prices.

"The first mistake was the inadvertent conduct of the European Union. They did not understand the implications of some of their own conditions. Ukrainian domestic politics made it look impossible for Yanukovych to accept the EU terms [for an association agreement] and be reelected or for Russia to view them as purely economic. …

"Each side acted sort of rationally based on its misconception of the other, while Ukraine slid into the Maidan uprising right in the middle of what Putin had spent ten years building as a recognition of Russia's status. No doubt in Moscow this looked as if the West was exploiting what had been conceived as a Russian festival to move Ukraine out of the Russian orbit. …

"If we treat Russia seriously as a great power, we need at an early stage to determine whether their concerns can be reconciled with our necessities. We should explore the possibilities of a status of nonmilitary grouping on the territory between Russia and the existing frontiers of NATO.

"The West hesitates to take on the economic recovery of Greece; it's surely not going to take on Ukraine as a unilateral project. So one should at least examine the possibility of some cooperation between the West and Russia in a militarily nonaligned Ukraine. The Ukraine crisis is turning into a tragedy because it is confusing the long-range interests of global order with the immediate need of restoring Ukrainian identity. …

"When you read now that Muslim units are fighting on behalf of Ukraine, then the sense of proportion has been lost." [For more on this reference, see Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists."]

Heilbrunn: "That's a disaster, obviously."

Kissinger: "To me, yes. It means that breaking Russia has become an objective; the long-range purpose should be to integrate it."

When Kissinger Makes Sense

It may be a little scary when Henry Kissinger makes relative sense, but that's only in contrast to the current dominant neocon/liberal-hawk "big thinkers" of Official Washington.

For Obama the Realist, the most practical way to begin moving toward a pragmatic resolution of the Ukraine crisis would be to stop the endless propaganda emanating from the U.S. State Department and repeated by the mainstream media and start telling the public the full truth – how the crisis really began, why the mantra "Russian aggression" is false, what on earth the U.S. government thinks it's doing collaborating with neo-Nazis and Islamic jihadists in killing thousands of ethnic Russian Ukrainians, and who was responsible for the key escalating moment, the shoot-down of MH-17.

But Obama the Timid Soul – afraid of being ostracized by all the well-connected neocons and liberal hawks of Official Washington – doesn't dare challenge the "group think," what everybody knows to be true even if he knows it to be false. In the end, Obama the Elitist won't trust the American people with the facts, so these international crises will continue drifting toward a potential Armageddon.

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.

[Aug 21, 2015] Redneck Engineering at its finest

OldPhart
TM31-200-1 Department of the Army Technical Manual, Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques, References

Redneck Engineering at its finest.

http://www.amazon.com/Unconventional-Warfare-Techniques-References-31-200-1/dp/0975900978

Jorgen

It's available for free at these links:

http://www.ganino.com/military_manuals

or

https://archive.org/details/military-manuals?&sort=-downloads&page=1

[Aug 16, 2015] The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Republicans Cant Face the Truth About Iraq

"...For Cheney and his oil pals, conquering Iraq would secure the Arab world's biggest oil reserves for Uncle Sam and offer a central military base in the region. For Washington's bloodthirsty neocons, pulverizing Iraq would remove one of Israel's most determined enemies, crush the only Arab nation that might challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly, and cost Israel nothing. Invading Iraq produced the slow disintegration of the Mideast so long sought by militant Zionists."
.
"...It all worked brilliantly, at least from Israel's viewpoint. Not, however for the US. Bush's invasion shattered Iraq, led to al-Qaida and ISIS, and left Washington saddled with a $1 trillion-dollar bill instead of the $60 million cost estimated by Wolfowitz. The Mideast is in a tailspin, Palestinians are totally isolated, and Egypt, the region's key nation, is run by an Arab-fascist military dictatorship."
August 15, 2015 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Gov. Jeb Bush repeated one of the biggest falsehoods of our time during the recent presidential candidate debate: "we were misled (into the Iraq War) by faulty intelligence."

US intelligence was not "misled." It was ordered by the real, de facto president, Dick Cheney, to provide excuses for a war of aggression against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

PM Tony Blair, forced British intelligence services to "sex up" reports that Iraq had nuclear weapons; he purged the government and the venerable broadcaster BBC of journalists who failed to amplify Blair's lies. Bush and Blair reportedly discussed painting a US Air Force plane in UN colors and getting it to buzz Iraqi anti-aircraft sites in hope the Iraqis would fire on it. Bush told Blair that after conquering Iraq, he intended to invade Iran, Syria, Libya and Pakistan.

In fact, Iraq had no "weapons of mass destruction," save some rusty barrels of mustard and nerve gas that had been supplied by the US and Britain for use against Iran. I broke this story from Baghdad back in late 1990.

Tyler Drumheller, who died last week, was the former chief of CIA's European division. He was the highest-ranking intelligence officer to go public and accuse the Bush administration of hyping fabricated evidence to justify invading Iraq.

Drumheller was particularly forceful in denouncing the Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball," whose ludicrous claims about mobile Iraqi germ laboratories were trumpeted before the UN by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. "Curveball's" claims were outright lies and Powell, whose career was ruined by parroting these absurd allegations, should have known better.

"Curveball" was an 'agent provocateur' clearly sent by a neighbor of Iraq to help promote a US attack on that nation. Whether it was Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Israel that sent Curveball," we still don't know. All three fabricated "evidence" against Iraq and passed it to Washington. That is where US intelligence was indeed misled. But that's only a minor part of the story.

A Washington cabal of pro-Israel neocons, oil men, and old-fashioned imperialists joined to promote a grossly illegal invasion of oil-rich Iraq. One of its senior members, former Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, admitted that weapons of mass destruction was chosen as the most convenient and emotive pretext for war. Orders went out to CIA and NSA to find information linking Iraq to 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction.

Some of the worst torture inflicted on suspects kidnapped by CIA's action teams was designed to make them admit to a link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was, of course, none. But administration officials, like the odious Condoleeza Rice, kept broadly hinting at a nuclear threat to America.

Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, polls showed a majority of Americans believed Iraq was threatening the US with nuclear attack and was behind 9/11. Amazingly, a poll taken of self-professed evangelical Christians just before the US attacked Iraq showed that over 80% supported war against Iraq. So much for turning the other cheek.

Most of the US media, notably the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, amplified the lies of the Bush administration. TV networks were ordered never to show American military casualties or civilian dead. Those, like this writer, who questioned the rational for war, or who wouldn't go along with the party line, were blanked out from print and TV.

For example, I was immediately dropped from a major TV network after daring mention that Israel supported the 2003 Iraq war and would benefit from it. I was blacklisted by another major US TV network at the direct demand of the Bush White House for repeatedly insisting that Iraq had no nuclear capability.

Very few analysts, journalists, or politicians took time to ask: even if Iraq had nuclear weapons, how could they be delivered to North America? Iraq had no long-range bombers and no missiles with range greater than 100kms. Perhaps by FedEx? No one asked, why would Iraq invite national suicide by trying to hit the US with a nuclear weapon?

The most original answer came from George W. Bush: nefarious Iraqi freighters were lurking in the North Atlantic carrying "drones of death" that would attack sleeping America. This hallucination was based on a single report that the bumbling Iraqis were working a children's model airplane that, in the end, broke and never flew. What inspired such a phantasmagoria? Pot, too much bourbon, LSD, or thundering orders from Dick Cheney to find a damned good excuse for invading Iraq.

For Cheney and his oil pals, conquering Iraq would secure the Arab world's biggest oil reserves for Uncle Sam and offer a central military base in the region. For Washington's bloodthirsty neocons, pulverizing Iraq would remove one of Israel's most determined enemies, crush the only Arab nation that might challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly, and cost Israel nothing. Invading Iraq produced the slow disintegration of the Mideast so long sought by militant Zionists.

It all worked brilliantly, at least from Israel's viewpoint. Not, however for the US. Bush's invasion shattered Iraq, led to al-Qaida and ISIS, and left Washington saddled with a $1 trillion-dollar bill instead of the $60 million cost estimated by Wolfowitz. The Mideast is in a tailspin, Palestinians are totally isolated, and Egypt, the region's key nation, is run by an Arab-fascist military dictatorship.

Tyler Drumheller was the only senior CIA officer to stand up and tell Americans they were lied into an unnecessary, illegal war. Today, we have Iraqi déjŕ vu anew as the lie factories and fear mongers work overtime to promote war with Iran.

Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.

[Aug 10, 2015]Naryshkin: the US wants to grab the natural resources of other countries

For this purpose, according to the speaker, America and leads the sanctions against Russia. The United States plans not only to maintain the dollar as the sole world currency, but I want to get as close to the economic resources of other countries in the world, according to the Chairman of the state Duma Sergey Naryshkin.

"Actually, because of that, the U.S. has now published a new list of Russian organizations and individuals, giving instructions to their banks (and with them European) to work with our structures and look for any and all reasons," he said in his article published in "Rossiyskaya Gazeta".

Naryshkin believes that America "stops to help even the existence of global "printing press". "Do not save and complete control over NATO, wiretapping and blackmail "League" of European Union. The colonizers "model of the XXI century" - all this is not enough. The main goal is to assign to American jurisdiction global monopolies, and to maintain his influence on the financial system of the world, to stay here the only Potentate," said Naryshkin.

[Aug 08, 2015]About the value of top secret documents

Yves Smith August 8, 2015 at 1:40 am

No, you are wrong on this. It's more complicated than you think. Henry Kissinger sought out Daniel Ellsberg as one of his top priority meetings as a new government official . Ellsberg was highly respected as a world-reknown decision theorist, and as one of the most insightful people on Vietnam, having spend substantial time on the ground (as opposed to cloistered in Saigon) on behalf of the DoD and State. Ellsberg's description of that encounter from his book Secrets:

"Henry, there's something I would like to tell you, for what it's worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You've been a consultant for a long time, and you've dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you're about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.

"I've had a number of these myself, and I've known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn't previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.

"First, you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all - so much! incredible! - suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn't, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn't even guess. In particular, you'll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn't know about and didn't know they had, and you'll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.

"You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you've started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn't have it, and you'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't….and that all those other people are fools.

"Over a longer period of time - not too long, but a matter of two or three years - you'll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn't tell you, it's often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn.

"In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. Because you'll be thinking as you listen to them: 'What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?' And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I've seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself.

"You will deal with a person who doesn't have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you'll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You'll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you'll become something like a moron. You'll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours."

Kurt Sperry August 8, 2015 at 4:32 pm

That doesn't really read to me as any sort of refutation of my skeptical assessment. This above top secret stuff is in Ellsberg's words "often inaccurate" and can thus lead or be used to lead the target away from more correct analyses by its inflated putative authority. As the sources for this in all likelihood cannot be fact checked or held accountable in any immediate way, it will tend to become an ad hoc vector for the deliberate injection of misinformation or highly biased analyses into the highest levels of policy decision making processes that can be used to influence policy outcomes in a completely opaque and unaccountable way. To cite the most obvious example, the entire Iraq War II was built around a false set of these "above top secret" assertions of fact that were fed to the highest levels of the executive, and in hindsight these could have been pretty easily debunked entirely using open sources. This "above top secret" intelligence turned out to be complete garbage and a major war was launched based on this garbage, which clearly says to me that "The stuff the spooks/deep staters/whatever tell the POTUS is probably in large measure just scaremongering bullshit tailored to elicit or lead the target towards a self serving set of policy choices."

Given this, it just feels "foily" to me to uncritically accept that there is a large body of highly secret and objective facts that top level decision makers have access to. If that stuff went through any real vetting or rigorous fact checking processes, Iraq War II would never have even happened. History says clearly and unambiguously that a system to do that fact checking isn't in place and thus the notion of a 'large body of highly secret and objective facts' is at best a distortion and probably often a complete fiction.

Neocons/ /media_military /nulandgate. Fighting_russo*/ Neoliberalism/ Neocolon*/ /color_revolutions. /deep_state. /predator_state.

[Aug 08, 2015] Tyler Drumheller, CIA officer who exposed U.S. reliance on discredited Iraq source 'Curveball,' dies at 63

Aug 06, 2015 | The Washington Pos

Tyler S. Drumheller, a high-level CIA officer who publicly battled agency leaders over one of the most outlandish claims in the U.S. case for war with Iraq, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Fairfax County. He was 63.

The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Linda Drumheller.

Mr. Drumheller held posts in Africa and Europe over a 26-year career during which the CIA's focus shifted from the Cold War to terrorist threats. He rose to prominent positions at CIA headquarters, serving as chief of the European division at a time when the agency was abducting al-Qaeda suspects on the continent and U.S. allies there faced a wave of terrorist plots.

But he was best known publicly for his role in exposing the extent to which a key part of the administration's case for war with Iraq had been built on the claims of an Iraqi defector and serial fabricator with the fitting code name "Curveball."

In contrast to Hollywood's depiction of spies as impossibly elegant and acrobatic, Mr. Drumheller was a bulky, rumpled figure who often seemed oblivious to the tufts of dog hair on his clothes.


"I always thought of him as an overfed George Smiley," said Bill Murray, a former CIA colleague, referring to the character in John le Carré spy novels known for his espionage acumen but unassuming appearance.

Mr. Drumheller spent the bulk of his career as an undercover officer seeking to avoid public attention. But after retiring in 2005, he emerged as a vocal critic of the George W. Bush administration's use of deeply flawed intelligence to build support for its decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Curveball, who had defected to Germany in the late 1990s, was the primary source behind the administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq had developed biological weapons laboratories - lethal germ factories supposedly built on wheels or rails to evade detection.

The claim was included in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech as well as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations designed to marshal international support for intervention in Iraq.

"We had failed," he wrote. "It was bad enough that we had not prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and we were being blamed for that. Now the nation was about to embark on a war based on intelligence I knew was false, and we would surely be blamed for that, too."

A scathing 2005 report on the intelligence failures in Iraq did not mention Mr. Drumheller by name but concluded that officials in the agency's European division had "expressed serious concerns about Curveball's reliability to senior officials at the CIA," and that the warnings were inexplicably dismissed.

The allegation touched off a bitter feud. When then-CIA Director George J. Tenet denied that he had ever been warned about Curveball, Mr. Drumheller fought back in public, saying that "everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening."

Mr. Drumheller was widely quoted in news accounts and appeared on the CBS program "60 Minutes."

No mobile germ warfare labs were found, and the defector, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, has since admitted that the story was a fiction he fed to German intelligence while seeking asylum.

The blow-up over Curveball coincided with Mr. Drumheller's retirement from the CIA "I think he was really proud of standing up against the war," Linda Drumheller said in an interview. "That was his personal greatest achievement."

The son of an Air Force chaplain, Tyler Scott Drumheller was born in Biloxi, Miss., on April 12, 1952. He spent part of his childhood in Germany before attending the University of Virginia. He graduated in 1974 with a history degree and did postgraduate work in Chinese at Georgetown University before being hired by the CIA in 1979.

He met Linda Blocher while she was working at the spy agency as a secretary in the Africa division, and proposed to her in a stairwell at CIA headquarters after learning that he would soon be sent to Zambia. It was the first in a series of stops for the couple that would also include South Africa, Portugal, Germany and Austria. Two and sometimes three pet dogs accompanied every move.

Besides his wife, of Vienna, Va., survivors include a daughter, Livia Phillips of Great Falls, Va.; a sister, Alecia Ball of Chester, Va.; and a grandson.

Mr. Drumheller's affable manner made it easy for him to form lasting connections with people throughout his career, Linda Drumheller said. He also had a prodigious memory, she said, that enabled him to keep track of cryptonyms, children's birthdays and Detroit Tigers statistics.

Mr. Drumheller "understood human nature," Murray said. "Beneath that pleasant and fun kind of personality, he understood exactly what people were and what he was dealing with. Good or bad."

Mr. Drumheller had retained a young CIA recruit's enthusiasm for much of his career. But he seemed to grow tired of the internal conflicts after the Sept. 11 attacks. In his memoir, he wrote that in retirement he asked to have his Distinguished Career Intelligence medal delivered by mail rather than returning to headquarters for a ceremony.

When the envelope arrived, he wrote, "I opened it up and fell into a bit of a reverie, reflecting on my career and the years past, the successes and the friends gained, the colleagues lost and the mistakes made."

Juceam, 5:10 PM EDT

Drumheller's preoccupation with Curveball apparently did not allow him to uncover the real motivator for the Bush decision to invade Iraq.

The US invaded Iraq for Israeli national security interests, not those of the US. Iraq with WMD posed no threat to the US. They posed a potential threat to Israel.

In their book, The Israel Lobby, John Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt argue that among the more important impetuses for George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the Israel lobby. Important evidence for this allegation was the central role played in propagandizing for the war by Israel lobby Neoconservative figures such as:

Richard Perle-was chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.
Paul Wolfowitz -Deputy Defense Secretary, and member of Perle's Defense Policy Board.
Douglas Feith-Under Secretary of Defense and Policy Advisor.
David Wurmser-Special Assistant to the under-secretary for arms control and international security.
Lewis (Scooter) Libby -Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff.
John Hannah- National Security aide to Dick Cheney.
Douglas Feith established in the Pentagon the Office of Special Projects (OSP).

The OSP forged close ties to an ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon's office in Israel. The purpose of the unit was to provide key people in the Bush administration "with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorize." Thus, the OSP was getting cooked intelligence not only from its own intelligence unit, but also from an Israeli cell.

the3sattlers, 8/7/2015 10:24 AM EDT

"Sidney Blumenthal, a confidant who was paid by the Clinton Foundation, told the Select Committee on Benghazi Tuesday that the information he supplied the sitting Secretary of State came from a "respected former high-ranking CIA official," ...Sources close to the Benghazi investigation identified the official as Tyler Drumheller, a 25-year veteran of the CIA who retired from the agency in 2005 and has since worked in private consulting." Was it purposeful by WAPO to ignore this? Unimportant? Better to remember Iraq than more recent events? Tyler Drumheller RIP.

Even WAPO obits are biased and disgraceful. Great work, Miller.

jfschumaker, 8/6/2015 8:53 PM EDT

It's a great pity that Mr. Drumheller's doubts about "Curveball" were not more widely shared. It might have saved the country from a disastrous mistake, the invasion of Iraq.

That said, it's pretty clear that the political decision to launch the war was already made, and the intelligence was just gathered up to provide support for the idea, not to vet it.

It's also interesting that the Washington Post obit does not contain any information on Mr. Drumheller's most recent claim to fame, that he was reportedly Sidney Blumenthal's source for information provided to Secretary Clinton on Libya. I'm sure there must be a reason for that, but it escapes me. Washington is, after all, still "This Town." http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tyler-drumheller-ma...


[Aug 08, 2015]Keeping Ukraine whole

"...It does make a lot of sense from a psychopathic point of view. Psychopaths do not suffer from the effects of cognitive dissonance that we do. When faced with contradictions, hypocrisy and lies, we normal human beings suffer physiological discomfort and mental confusion. Psychopaths know that it weakens us and use the reversal of reality (if you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one) as a weapon against us. "
marknesop, August 6, 2015 at 9:51 am
I see. No goal should be so sacred as the one of "keeping Ukraine whole". But in dozens upon dozens of other examples, the USA has been enthusiastically behind the breakup of countries which resulted in the carving out of pro-western enclaves, and in fact hopes for Russia that it will be broken up into ethnic states. Yep, I believe that.

And I actually would have expected better from Nancy Pelosi – just as Kirill suggested, she is propagating the myth that Russia vetoing the tribunal means there will not be an investigation that leads to the truth. I personally think that is hopeless now anyway, the west is determined to whitewash Ukraine's role in it, but such investigations as there are going to be are proceeding unimpeded. How could anyone say anything so blatantly stupid in public? Russia simply refused to agree to accept the UN's verdict and the UN's awarding of punishment for it. After being told by the UN to quit whining after the attack on its Embassy in Kiev by Ukrainians, I think Russia is quite realistic on the issue of what it might expect in the way of fair treatment from the UN.

yalensis, August 6, 2015 at 3:16 pm
This doesn't make any sense!
American State Department accuses Russia of not doing enough to help them (='Muricans) fight Islamic state (IGIL=ISIS=ISIL=whatever).
State Department spokesperson Mark Toner, who looks like a barely-resuscitated zombie IMHO, chides Russia for not being engaged enough in the struggle against Islamic extremism.

[yalensis: If I was Russian government, I would respond thusly: "Jesus H. Christ what do you want from me? You want me to fight YOU? What is this, the fight club? I should fight YOU and bleed so that YOU can get your rocks off? You creepy zombie-looking fellow…. and by the way, this is highly illogical….."]

james@wpc, August 6, 2015 at 3:59 pm
It does make a lot of sense from a psychopathic point of view. Psychopaths do not suffer from the effects of cognitive dissonance that we do. When faced with contradictions, hypocrisy and lies, we normal human beings suffer physiological discomfort and mental confusion. Psychopaths know that it weakens us and use the reversal of reality (if you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one) as a weapon against us.

This is especially effective when they know that we know that they are lying. When they can get a response like Yalensis' above, they laugh because they have direct evidence that they are causing internal distress. Mission Accomplished.

To observe this in action, watch RT's Crosstalk when Peter Lavelle has a neocon think tank representative on. He (and it is usually a 'he') will reverse the truth without batting an eyelid. This then sends Peter and the other guests into animated protests. Meanwhile, the neocon sits there placidly and you may even detect a little smile – read smirk – on his face, confident that the others do not understand how he is controlling them.

Of course, once you see that the 'big lie' and the hypocrisy are signs of psychopathy and you know what psychopathy involves, they can no longer control you.

marknesop, August 6, 2015 at 4:15 pm
Incredible. The USA assumes unto itself the freedom to break any law so long as doing so allows it to achieve its objective. Having been frustrated in its desire to simply go in and bomb Syria until Assad submitted, it created an armed opposition to the armed opposition it had already created against Assad, then announced smugly that it would defend the opposition from the opposition, and if government forces got in the way, well, that'd just be too bad for them. Pilots do not know shit about what's going on on the ground, they just bomb targets they are told to bomb, so the people who always wanted to get Assad and remove him are in charge of assigning bombing targets in Syria. How is this in any way legal? It's not, is the short answer, but the USA has gone completely rogue and recognizes no authority but its own needs and desires.

Russia should announce that it will be delivering the S-400 system to Syria so that Syria can "defend itself", and that anyone who fires upon those delivering the systems will receive return fire, while once the system is in place, anyone who attacks government forces may be shot down. Assad has a marked advantage in this conflict, in that everybody is the enemy. He doesn't have any identification problems.

[Aug 08, 2015] What language are these people speaking?

"...One of the first thoughts that struck me when I listened to the infamous Nuland/Pyatt tape (Vicky's f**k the EU moment) was 'what language are these people speaking?' There was barely a coherent utterance from either party. Reading the comments above from Marc Veasey and Nancy Pelosi, it seems the US Congress must select its Ukraine 'specialists' by excluding anyone who can form sentences. "
yalensis, August 6, 2015 at 2:50 am
Members of U.S. Congress in Kiev today, expressing their fervent support for the Kiev junta, while not forgetting to mix metaphors as much as humanly possible.

Congressman Marc Veasey of Texas, a member of the Armed Services Committee:

Congressman Veasey.

Well, obviously, we want to see Ukraine push back the separatists. We believe that we want them to be successful in Crimea obviously and want to be supportive as much as we possibly can. On this trip we met with officials here in our U.S. Embassy. We also met with government officials and it's very important to us. We want to see Ukraine whole.

Q: What are the next steps to support Ukraine for the International Tribunal, [MH]17 air crash investigation?

[Demoratic Party] Leader [Nancy] Pelosi. Well, I think it was said very well when they said – when Russia vetoed the U.N. Security Council resolution that it was – that would make one suspicious or ask the question 'why?' Why would there not be the interest of everyone on an organization called the Security Council of the United Nations to have an investigation that would lead to the truth? And that's what people need to hear: the truth. And that's what's so important – taking us back to here. This is about shedding light about the angels, the heroes and the Heavenly Hundred – identified in so many ways for their courage to shed light on the need for more transparency and more light here.

Fern, August 6, 2015 at 6:01 am
One of the first thoughts that struck me when I listened to the infamous Nuland/Pyatt tape (Vicky's f**k the EU moment) was 'what language are these people speaking?' There was barely a coherent utterance from either party. Reading the comments above from Marc Veasey and Nancy Pelosi, it seems the US Congress must select its Ukraine 'specialists' by excluding anyone who can form sentences.

[Aug 08, 2015]Can the United States Stop a War With Russia?

"...America is heading for war with Russia. Some call the current situation "an increase of hostility" or "Cold War II." There are two sides to this story. I believe that American journalists from all political persuasions are not offering critical analysis. Understanding the Russian side and taking their arguments seriously can help prevent serious consequences."
.
"...Russia sees the US as the aggressor, surrounding Russia with military bases in Eastern Europe at every opportunity since the collapse of the Soviet Union."
observer.com

America is heading for war with Russia. Some call the current situation "an increase of hostility" or "Cold War II." There are two sides to this story. I believe that American journalists from all political persuasions are not offering critical analysis. Understanding the Russian side and taking their arguments seriously can help prevent serious consequences.

Americans believe that Russians are fed propaganda by the state-controlled media. If Russians only could hear the truth, the thinking goes, they would welcome the US position. This is not so. There are more than 300 TV stations available in Moscow. Only 6 are state-controlled. The truth is that Russians prefer hearing the news from the state rather than the Internet or other sources. This is different from almost any other country. It is not North Korea where the news is censored. Each night during the Crimea crisis, anyone could watch CNN or the BBC bash Russia.

With regard to Ukraine, Russia has drawn a red line: It will never allow Ukraine to be part of NATO. Russia sees the US as the aggressor, surrounding Russia with military bases in Eastern Europe at every opportunity since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US sees Russia as the aggressor against its neighbors. A small misstep could lead to war. This time the war will not be "over there." The Russian bombers flying off the California coast on July 4th clearly demonstrate this point. Russians understand that the US has not fought a war on its soil since the civil war. If new hostilities start, Russia will not let the war be a proxy war where the US supplies weapons and advisors and lets others do the "boots on the ground" combat. Russia will take the war to the US. How did we reach this critical point in such a short time?

Russia sees the US as the aggressor, surrounding Russia with military bases in Eastern Europe at every opportunity since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US sees Russia as the aggressor against its neighbors.

First, some background. I moved to Moscow two and a half years ago. I went to Russia to build a non-government funded news channel with editorial views consistent with the Russian Orthodox Church. I have completed that task and returned to the west. I see both sides of this escalating conflict and unless there is a change in thinking, the result will be catastrophic. When I first arrived, the relationship between the US and Russia seemed normal. As an American, my ideas were welcomed, even sought after. At the time, Mr. Obama planned to attack Assad's army in Syria for crossing the "red line" for a chemical weapon attack. Russia intervened and persuaded Syria to destroy its chemical weapons. Mr. Putin had helped Mr. Obama save face and not make a major blunder in Syria. Shortly after, Mr. Putin wrote an editorial published in the New York Times, which was generally well-received. Relations appeared to be on the right course. There was cooperation in the Middle East and Russia phobia was easing.

Then Russia passed a law that prevented sexual propaganda to minors. This was the start of tensions. The LGBT lobby in the West saw this law as anti-gay. I did not. The law was a direct copy of English law and was intended to prevent pedophilia, not consenting relationships between adults. Gay relations in Russia are not illegal (although not accepted by the majority of the public). Regarding gay protests, they were restricted from view of children. I saw this in the same way that we in America restrict children from seeing "R" rated films. The punishment for breaking this law is a fine of less than $100. Double-parking a car in Moscow carries a heavier fine of $150. Nonetheless the reaction was overwhelming against Russia.

The boycott of the Sochi Olympics was the West's way of discrediting Russia. Russia saw this boycott as an aggressive act by the West to interfere with its internal politics and to embarrass Russia. Sochi was for Russians a great source of national pride and had nothing to do with politics. For the West, this was the first step in creating the narrative that Russia was the old repressive Soviet Union and Russia must be stopped.

Then came the color revolution in the Ukraine. When the president of Ukraine was overthrown, from a Russian viewpoint this was a Western organized coup. The overthrow of a democratically elected president signaled that the West was interested in an expansion of power, not democratic values. The leaked recorded conversations of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt suggested that the US was actively involved in regime change in the Ukraine. For Russia, the Ukrainians are their brothers, much more than any other group. The languages are similar; they are linked culturally and religiously. Kiev played a central role in the Christianization of Russia. Many Russians have family members in Ukraine. For Russians, this special relationship was destroyed by outside forces. Imagine if Canada suddenly aligned itself with Russia or China. The US would surely see that as a threat on its border and act decisively.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, from an American viewpoint, the borders of Eastern Europe were frozen. However in the late 1990s, the borders of Yugoslavia changed, breaking that country apart. Russians had accepted Kiev's rule of Crimea since 1954 as a trusted brother might watch a family property. But when that brother no longer is a part of the family, Russia wanted Crimea back. Crimea also wanted Russia back. Crimeans speak Russian and are closely tied to their 300-year Russian heritage. From the Russian point of view, this was a family matter and of no concern to the West, The sanctions imposed were seen as aggression by the West to keep Russia in its place.

Sanctions are driving Russia away from the West and toward China. Chinese tourism in Russia is at record levels. More transactions are now settled directly between Rubles and Yuan, with the US dollar's role as middleman being limited. Although the dollar remains strong now, this is deceptive. China has created the AIIB bank to directly compete against the IMF for world banking power and the US is having trouble preventing its allies from joining. This is the first crack in US financial domination as a direct result of sanctions.

We are moving closer and closer to a real war. Republicans and Democrats talk tough on foreign policy towards Russia. When all politicians are in agreement, there is no discussion of alternative approaches. Any alternative to complete isolation of Russia and a NATO build up on Russia's borders is a sign of weakness. Any alternative to this military build up is criticized as "appeasement," likened to the failed foreign policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain toward Nazi Germany between 1937 and 1939.

Liberal Democrats historically are anti-war, but not this time. In the Czech Republic, there was the start of an anti-war movement when NATO paraded its military along its borders. "Tanks but no thanks" became a rallying cry. Czechs became uncomfortable with a muscle flexing approach to the standoff. Only a lone libertarian, Ron Paul raises a critique of the wisdom of this military build up.

The mistake that will cost America dearly is the assumption that Russia has the same ambitions as the Soviet Union. The cold war strategy used against the Soviet Union cannot be repeated with the same result. The Soviet Union was communist and atheistic. Modern Russia has returned to its Christian roots. There is a revival in Russian Orthodoxy with over 25,000 new churches built in Russia after the fall of Communism. On any Sunday, the churches are packed. Over 70% of the population identifies themselves as Orthodox Christians. Combine this religious revival with renewed Nationalism and Russia is growing in self-confidence.

A war with Russia cannot be won economically. Russia has oil and an abundance of natural resources. It occupies the largest landmass in the world.

The Marxist ideology followed by the Soviet Union was evangelistic. Only when the whole world became communist will Marxist principles be realized. When collective farms missed their goals, it was because the whole world wasn't communist yet, not because the ideology destroyed individual initiative. For this reason, the Soviet Union needed to dominate the whole world. For modern Russia, world domination is not its goal. Russia wants to keep its Russian identity and not lose it to outside forces.

Russian history is filled with invaders trying to conquer Russia. Napoléon and Hitler are only the latest examples. Russia has always prevailed. Driving in from the airport, you can see exactly how close Hitler came to Moscow. You are also reminded that it was here that he was stopped. Russia is sure that they will repel the newest invader NATO.

A war with Russia cannot be won economically. Russia has oil and an abundance of natural resources. It occupies the largest landmass in the world. It is growing in its ability to replace goods restricted from the west. A proxy war using the Ukrainian army will not solve the problem.

There is still time to make a deal. More sanctions, and more isolation from the West are not the way to resolve differences. The US flexing its military muscle will not solve the problems. War is not the answer but too often in history becomes the only solution when two sides refuse to see the other's point of view.

Jack Hanick recently completed the development of a state of the art television network in Moscow, built without government funding. Its evening news program broadcasts to 65 million homes in Russia across eight time zones. Previously Jack was a TV director, where he won the New York Emmy in 1994 for best director. His biography of Desmond Tutu also won a New York Emmy. Currently Jack is Chairman of the Board of HellasNet, a group of TV stations in Greece.

[Aug 07, 2015]What Lindsey Graham Fails to Understand About a War Against Iran

Earlier this week, Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican from South Carolina, used a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to stage a theatrical display of his disdain for the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran.

The most telling part of his time in the spotlight came when he pressed Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to declare who would win if the United States and Iran fought a war:

Here's a transcript of the relevant part:

Graham: Could we win a war with Iran? Who wins the war between us and Iran? Who wins? Do you have any doubt who wins?

Carter: No. The United States.

Graham: We. Win.

Little more than a decade ago, when Senator Graham urged the invasion of Iraq, he may well have asked a general, "Could we win a war against Saddam Hussein? Who wins?" The answer would've been the same: "The United States." And the U.S. did rout Hussein's army. It drove the dictator into a hole, and he was executed by the government that the United States installed. And yet, the fact that the Iraqi government of 2002 lost the Iraq War didn't turn out to mean that the U.S. won it. It incurred trillions in costs; thousands of dead Americans; thousands more with missing limbs and post-traumatic stress disorder and years of deployments away from spouses and children; and in the end, a broken Iraq with large swaths of its territory controlled by ISIS, a force the Iraqis cannot seem to defeat. That's what happened last time a Lindsey Graham-backed war was waged.

Recommended: What ISIS Really Wants

But one needn't be an opponent of the Iraq war to glean its basic lessons.

Hawkish pols have a tendency to harken back to the late 1930s exclusively, but one need only look to the eve of World War I (to the Czar in Russia and the German Kaiser, say) to see that two countries can and do fight wars that both end up losing.

A war against the U.S. would likely be a disaster for Iran. And rigorous attempts to game out such a conflict suggest that it could be very bad for the U.S. as well.

My colleague Peter Beinart has written about this:

Robert Gates, who led the CIA under George H.W. Bush before becoming George W. Bush and Barack Obama's defense secretary, has said bombing Iran could prove a "catastrophe," and that Iran's "capacity to wage a series of terror attacks across the Middle East aimed at us and our friends, and dramatically worsen the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere is hard to overestimate."

Meir Dagan, who led Israel's external spy service, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has warned that an attack on Iran "would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program." In the aftermath of a military strike, he added, "The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible."

Says Jeffrey Goldberg, another colleague, "War against Iran over its nuclear program would not guarantee that Iran is kept forever away from a bomb. It would pretty much guarantee that Iran unleashes its terrorist armies against American targets."

In 2004, my colleague James Fallows observed an Iran war game led by Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who spent more than two decades conducting war games at the National War College and other military institutions––and whose prescience about aspects of the Iraq War, derived from simulations, came far closer to what happened than anything Senator Graham predicted.

Recommended: The Case for Reparations

Said Fallows:

The most important hidden problem, exposed in the war-game discussions, was that a full assault would require such drawn-out preparations that the Iranian government would know months in advance what was coming. Its leaders would have every incentive to strike pre-emptively in their own defense. Unlike Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a threatened Iran would have many ways to harm America and its interests.

Apart from cross-border disruptions in Iraq, it might form an outright alliance with al-Qaeda to support major new attacks within the United States. It could work with other oil producers to punish America economically. It could, as Hammes warned, apply the logic of "asymmetric," or "fourth-generation," warfare, in which a superficially weak adversary avoids a direct challenge to U.S. military power and instead strikes the most vulnerable points in American civilian society, as al-Qaeda did on 9/11. If it thought that the U.S. goal was to install a wholly new regime rather than to change the current regime's behavior, it would have no incentive for restraint.

What about a pre-emptive strike of our own, like the Osirak raid? The problem is that Iran's nuclear program is now much more advanced than Iraq's was at the time of the raid. Already the U.S. government has no way of knowing exactly how many sites Iran has, or how many it would be able to destroy, or how much time it would buy in doing so. Worse, it would have no way of predicting the long-term strategic impact of such a strike. A strike might delay by three years Iran's attainment of its goal-but at the cost of further embittering the regime and its people. Iran's intentions when it did get the bomb would be all the more hostile.

Here the United States faces what the military refers to as a "branches and sequels" decision-that is, an assessment of best and second-best outcomes. It would prefer that Iran never obtain nuclear weapons. But if Iran does, America would like Iran to see itself more or less as India does-as a regional power whose nuclear status symbolizes its strength relative to regional rivals, but whose very attainment of this position makes it more committed to defending the status quo. The United States would prefer, of course, that Iran not reach a new level of power with a vendetta against America. One of our panelists thought that a strike would help the United States, simply by buying time. The rest disagreed.

Iran would rebuild after a strike, and from that point on it would be much more reluctant to be talked or bargained out of pursuing its goals-and it would have far more reason, once armed, to use nuclear weapons to America's detriment.

Lindsey Graham's notion that the question of war between America and Iran is coherently reducible to "we win" or "they win" is facile, dangerous, and especially galling from a man who ought to have learned better from the last war he urged. Even the most severe Iranian losses would not necessarily mean that "we win."

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/what-lindsey-graham-elides-about-a-war-against-iran/400148/?UTM_SOURCE=yahoo

Read more from The Atlantic

An Introverted Writer's Lament

My Outrage Is Better Than Your Outrage

Si

One thing these war mongers do not realize is; by America getting involved in these small regional fights all around the world is making us weaker not stronger. An old bear who fights multiple fights with small bears, receives multiple scars and finally is overtaken by competing bears. Russia and China are just waiting on side lines for this opportunity. Let's not foreign entities, like AIPAC get us involved in these local wars. America's interest should be set at higher and moral goals.

Ronald Mayle

For one. If we were not war mongers we would be speaking German or French right now. We would still be kissing the rear end of a queen. Russian banks are failing and China's economy is tied into ours. We fight that is who we are

Elizabeth A

Many Americans were speaking German before the world wars. It's time to quit the Chamberlain, Pearl Harbor, Holocaust, deranged John Wayne Brain Cold Warrior nonsense! Germany could not handle an invasion across the English Channel, 20 miles and not the 3,500 across the Atlantic Ocean. Germany was roughly the size of Ohio. Japan was roughly the size of California. Neither had the population or production or ability to invade, beat or defeat us over here or over there. So, save it because we are no longer scared! Are the commies gonna still get us too?

thomas

Si, you are absolutely correct. We are squandering our resources all around the globe fighting bush wars on behalf of others while the two nations that are actual existential threats to the US build their military assets for the confrontation both have openly acknowledged that they foresee coming down the road. Both Great Britain and Rome in their empire days fell for this trap of over extension and military exhaustion.

TruTH

If victory is defined as who can kill more opposing soldiers, then the US has won all the wars its been part of since WWII.
However, if we look at the objective of any war being completed then we've lost all the wars since WWII (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq).
So to answer Lindsey Graham - we will win by killing more opposing soldiers but lose because our objectives would not be completed.

Brad

My political beliefs, ideas, and my opinion on this deal put aside... that was just absolutely ridiculous. To talk about War, middle east politics and lives and future of millions of people as if we are talking about a UFC fight ( who would win? IDK, who won the Iraq war? what about the Afghanistan war? or Vietnam? or Korean war? can we honestly say that we "won" those wars? what did we win exactly?) that is just absolutely infuriating!! I tell you who would win a war with Iran, NOBODY WINS ANYTHING! WE ALL LOSE!

Sam Spade

The Iranians do not understand the nature of Satan's brothel. It is all about the money honey! Senator Lindsey Graham, like most American politicians, sides with those who bribe him. Sweet nothings whispered in the ear are not enough! You got to shell out some of them shekels to get some of that orgasmic bliss. The Iranians should get smart and start showering our political prostitutes with gold and silver. If they shell out love gifts, they will surely get some of that passionate love and affection (multiple ovations and ejaculations) which are now exclusively reserved for those handsome circumcised dashing gentlemen at AIPAC/Zionist/Israel.

Rudy t. Miller

Bernie Sanders: "While much more work remains to be done this framework is an important step forward. It is imperative that Iran not get a nuclear weapon. It also is imperative that we do everything we can to reach a diplomatic solution and avoid never-ending war in the Middle East. I look forward to examining the details of this agreement and making sure that it is effective ‎and strong."

Sanders vehemently OPPOSED the war in Iraq, one of the few in Congress who did. NO MORE CLINTONS OR BUSHES IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
Bernie Sanders for President, 2016!

[Aug 01, 2015] Ron Paul: All Wars Are Paid For Through Debasing The Currency

Zero Hedge
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

And at some point, all empires crumble on their own excess, stretched to the breaking point by over-extending a military industrial complex with sophisticated equipment, hundreds of bases in as many countries, and never-ending wars that wrack up mind boggling levels of debt. This cost has been magnified by the relationship it shares with the money system, who have common owners and shareholders behind the scenes.

As the hidden costs of war and the enormity of the black budget swell to record levels, the true total of its price comes in the form of the distortion it has caused in other dimensions of life; the numbers have been so thoroughly fudged for so long now, as Wall Street banks offset laundering activities and indulge in derivatives and quasi-official market rigging, the Federal Reserve policy holds the noble lie together.

Ron Paul told RT

Seen from the proper angle, the dollar is revealed to be a paper thin instrument of warfare, a ripple effect on the people, a twisted illusion, a weaponized money now engaged in a covert economic warfare that threatens their very livelihood.

The former Congressman and presidential candidate explained:

Almost all wars have been paid for through inflation… the practice always ends badly as currency becomes debased leading to upward pressure on prices.

"Almost all wars, in a hundred years or so, have been paid for through inflation, that is debasing the currency," he said, adding that this has been going on "for hundreds, if not thousands of years."

"I don't know if we ever had a war paid though tax payers. The only thing where they must have been literally paid for, was when they depended on the looting. They would go in and take over a country, and they would loot and take their gold, and they would pay for the war."

As inflation has debased the currency, other shady Wall Street tactics have driven Americans into a corner, overwhelmed with debt, and gamed by rigged markets in which Americans must make a living. The economic prosperity, adjusted for the kind of reality that doesn't factor into government reports, can't match the costs of a military industrial complex that has transformed society into a domestic police state, and slapped Americans with the bill for their own enslavement.

Dr. Paul notes the mutual interest in keeping the lie going for as long as the public can stand it… and as long as the gravy keeps rolling in:

They're going to continue to finance all these warmongering, and letting the military industrial complex to make a lot of money, before it's admitted that it doesn't work, and the whole system comes down because of the debt burden, which would be unsustainable."

Unsustainable might be putting it lightly. The entire thing is in shambles from the second the coyote looks down and sees that he's run out over a cliff.

[Jul 24, 2015] Ron Paul Iran Agreement Boosts Peace, Defeats Neocons

"...I was so impressed when travel personality Rick Steves traveled to Iran in 2009 to show that the US media and government demonization of Iranians was a lie, and that travel and human contact can help defeat the warmongers because it humanizes those who are supposed to be dehumanized."
Jul 20, 2015 | ronpaul.com

The agreement has reduced the chance of a US attack on Iran, which is a great development. But the interventionists will not give up so easily. Already they are organizing media and lobbying efforts to defeat the agreement in Congress. Will they have enough votes to over-ride a presidential veto of their rejection of the deal? It is unlikely, but at this point if the neocons can force the US out of the deal it may not make much difference. Which of our allies, who are now facing the prospect of mutually-beneficial trade with Iran, will be enthusiastic about going back to the days of a trade embargo? Which will support an attack on an Iran that has proven to be an important trading partner and has also proven reasonable in allowing intrusive inspections of its nuclear energy program?

However, what is most important about this agreement is not that US government officials have conducted talks with Iranian government officials. It is that the elimination of sanctions, which are an act of war, will open up opportunities for trade with Iran. Government-to-government relations are one thing, but real diplomacy is people-to-people: business ventures, tourism, and student exchanges.

I was so impressed when travel personality Rick Steves traveled to Iran in 2009 to show that the US media and government demonization of Iranians was a lie, and that travel and human contact can help defeat the warmongers because it humanizes those who are supposed to be dehumanized.

As I write in my new book, Swords into Plowshares:

Our unwise policy with Iran is a perfect example of what the interventionists have given us-60 years of needless conflict and fear for no justifiable reason. This obsession with Iran is bewildering. If the people knew the truth, they would strongly favor a different way to interact with Iran.

Let's not forget that the Iran crisis started not 31 years ago when the Iran Sanctions Act was signed into law, not 35 years ago when Iranians overthrew the US-installed Shah, but rather 52 years ago when the US CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian leader Mossadegh and put a brutal dictator into power. Our relations with the Iranians are marked by nearly six decades of blowback.

When the Cold War was winding down and the military-industrial complex needed a new enemy to justify enormous military spending, it was decided that Iran should be the latest "threat" to the US. That's when sanctions really picked up steam. But as we know from our own CIA National Intelligence Estimate of 2007, the stories about Iran building a nuclear weapon were all lies. Though those lies continue to be repeated to this day.

It is unfortunate that Iran was forced to give up some of its sovereignty to allow restrictions on a nuclear energy program that was never found to be in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But if the net result is the end of sanctions and at least a temporary reprieve from the constant neocon demands for attack, there is much to cheer in the agreement. Peace and prosperity arise from friendly relations and trade – and especially when governments get out of the way.

This column was published by the Ron Paul Institute.

[Jul 23, 2015]First Thoughts About The Iran Deal

"...BUT, since when has American opinion against war ever mattered? 1848? 1898? 1916-17? 1938-1941? 2001 and subsequently? When our oligarchs want war, we end up with a black flag, or backdoor to war ... and always go blindly off to war. And, it is always the 'exceptional/indispensable' us against the evil them!"
.
"...Diplomats also came up with unusual procedure to "snap back" the sanctions against Iran if an eight-member panel determines that Tehran is violating the nuclear provisions. The members of the panel are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, the European Union and Iran itself. A majority vote is required, meaning that Russia, China and Iran could not collectively block action."
.
"...The Iran deal will allow oil to flow to Europe. It is a temporary measure to try and keep Russia out of business with the EU. The ultimate fear of the Atlanticists is collaboration between Russia and Germany."
Jul 14, 2015 | M of A

The deal itself is a major infringement on Iran's sovereignty extorted though a manufactured crisis about an Iranian nuclear weapons program that does not and did not ever exist. To see the hypocrisy of it just count the nukes:

... ... ...

The U.S. has a bad record of sticking to international deals it made. North Korea was promised two civil nuclear electricity plants to be build by the United States for stopping its nuclear activities. None was build and North Korea restarted its weapon program. Libya agreed to give up the tiny preliminary nuclear program it had and the U.S. destroyed the state.

Netanyahoo's puppets in the U.S. congress will do their best to blockade the current deal. Should they not be able to do so attempts will be made to press the next U.S. president into breaking the agreement.

Iran must now be very careful to not get trapped into more concessions or even a war.

Tom Murphy | Jul 14, 2015 7:14:13 AM | 1

But recall how ruthless the actions against Iran have been.
See video mentioning terrorist attacks against Iran: Iran Deal Reached on Peaceful Nuclear Program

okie farmer | Jul 14, 2015 9:59:25 AM | 5

I wonder how many nukes are aimed right at Iran

None. Why bother, everyone knows Iran has NO nukes. This is all about Israel's hegemony in the region which includes their best ally KSA.

harry law | Jul 14, 2015 10:45:31 AM | 8

In some respects the Iranians can claim a victory [of sorts] since they never intended to produce a nuclear weapon in the first place, all the concessions made by them only put them into the same position as before. They can still enrich uranium, as much as they need to fuel their reactors and for medical isotopes, and, in theory, can look to grow rich by selling its vast reserves of oil and gas to the West and open up its lucrative home market to investors from all over the world. Possibly a win win for Iran, to the consternation of Israel and the Saudi perverts. As our host rightly say's the devil is in the detail, and many people will try and distort the interpretation of the text. The bottom line in my opinion is the US electorate do not want another war in the middle east. That much was made clear when the warmongers received condemnation from ordinary Americans when strikes against Syria were proposed. Now the Iranians can concentrate on helping Syria and Hezbollah eliminate the anti-human Jihadis.

DamascusFalling | Jul 14, 2015 11:19:18 AM | 10

The bottom line in my opinion is the US electorate do not want another war in the middle east. That much was made clear when the warmongers received condemnation from ordinary Americans when strikes against Syria were proposed. Now the Iranians can concentrate on helping Syria and Hezbollah eliminate the anti-human Jihadis.
-----------------------
Public opinion clearly means little, voting might account for even less. We'll soon have a new presidential regime that can decide whatever they want to do, and the public will just follow along, or at least the media substitutes that represent the 'national discussion' will anyway

okie farmer | Jul 14, 2015 12:57:12 PM | 16

http://tass.ru/en/world/808492
Moscow expects Washington to drop missile defense shield plans

Lavrov stressed that Russia expects Washington's move towards giving up plans on creating the missile defense shield in Europe after the deal on Iran's nuclear program has been reached.

Speaking on the deal in a "broader context," Lavrov reminded that US President Barack Obama said in 2009 in Prague that there would be no more need to create a European segment of the missile shield should a solution be found to Iran's nuclear issue.
"That's why we drew the attention of our American colleagues to this fact today and we will expect a reaction," Lavrov stressed.

ToivoS | Jul 14, 2015 1:28:04 PM | 17

In general this looks like a very good deal for the Iranians. It is also a good deal for the US since it will reduce the chances of war. There a two points that are problematical however.

One is that the arms embargo will continue for 5 years. Iran is still threatened by an air attack by Israel. Does this mean Russia will not be able to deliver the S-300 antiaircraft missiles they already ordered and paid for? This sounds like a major concession.

Two concerns the inspection of Iran's conventional military sites. Iran rejected the demand for "unfettered" access to their military sites. However they agreed to this:

Iran will allow UN inspectors to enter sites, including military sites, when the inspectors have grounds to believe undeclared nuclear activity is being carried out there. It can object but a multinational commission can override any objections by majority vote. After that Iran will have three days to comply. Inspectors will only come from countries with diplomatic relations with Iran, so no Americans.

"Inspectors have ground to believe" leaves many opportunities for Israel to fabricate some documents and send them to the "inspectors" which I presume will be IAEC personnel. Under Amano the IAEC has been a tool of the US. Israel has been sending fabricated documents to that agency for some time.

Mike Maloney | Jul 14, 2015 4:01:45 PM | 28

Virgile @ 25 says, with some understatement that "One of their [KSA's] option left is to weaken Iran by creating troubles in countries where Iran has influence: Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. Yet until now this strategy has shown to be inefficient and dangerous."

The Kingdom will not change its strategy. Its takfiri proxies have been very successful so far. The blowback is going to be a shattered EU, as more displaced persons arrive on Greek beaches. Member states will fight among each other. Greece is already on its way to being another Serbia. Marine Le Pen should do quite well. A Brexit will probably make a lot of sense to the English in another two years.

okie farmer | Jul 14, 2015 5:50:33 PM | 33

TRNN
Col Wilkerson on the Iran deal
https://youtu.be/uOfr9OuCv6E

Rg an LG | Jul 15, 2015 1:38:26 AM | 35

The alleged 'deal' is way over my head. So, no comment ...

BUT, since when has American opinion against war ever mattered? 1848? 1898? 1916-17? 1938-1941? 2001 and subsequently?

When our oligarchs want war, we end up with a black flag, or backdoor to war ... and always go blindly off to war. And, it is always the 'exceptional/indispensable' us against the evil them!

Does that mean war with Iran? I have no idea, but if our owners want the US at war, we will find a way ... no matter who the enemy might be. Living near Texas, maybe even the 7 states of Jade Helm 15?

Do have a day ... whatever flavor it may be.

Harry | Jul 15, 2015 3:16:31 AM | 36

The deal is a bit better than I expected, Iran did an amazing job of withstanding an insane pressure from the West. Iran had to make some big concessions, but they are non-essential. Countries' economy will boom and Iran would become a legit region superpower, this naturally created a hysteria in Israel and Saudi.

The main problem, US has reneged on every single agreement with Iran before, and they can easily do it with current deal. Consider two points:

"Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency had "entered into an agreement to address all questions" about Iran's past actions within three months, and that completing this task was "fundamental for sanctions relief.""

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-deal-is-reached-after-long-negotiations.html

Amano will do as US says, and if US wants for IAEA to not give a green light, thats what he'll do. Amano has been doing it for years.

Diplomats also came up with unusual procedure to "snap back" the sanctions against Iran if an eight-member panel determines that Tehran is violating the nuclear provisions. The members of the panel are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, the European Union and Iran itself. A majority vote is required, meaning that Russia, China and Iran could not collectively block action.

So if anyone says "Obama wont allow this deal to be tanked", so what? Next president will be able to, at will. Under any bogus pretext of Iran's non-compliance, US with its minions will be able to re-start sanctions and there is nothing Iran, Russia or China can do about that.

Granted, EU by that time will have invested tens of billions in Iran, mass flowing of goods, and more importantly - EU is desperate for alternative to Russia's oil/gas, and Iran is a perfect choice. Therefore if US wants to sanction Iran again, it will face serious intransigence from EU, nonetheless US is still superpower with a lot of clout over minions, so they'll have to comply. Just like EU doesnt want to pay for US proxy-war in Ukraine, but are forced to. Just like they were forced to even initiate sanctions on Iran before and lose hundreds of billions in the process.

zingaro | Jul 15, 2015 5:12:35 AM | 38

"US will face serious intransigence from EU"...

huh, EU from which planet ? last time I checked they pretty much all insisted on committing suicide on US-demanded sanctions (while US laughed and evaded pretty much these same sanctions at will)...

dahoit | Jul 15, 2015 1:06:24 PM | 55

I forgot;The Zionist neocon warmongers at the NYTS and Wapo, of course, say Iran is untrustworthy.
The ultimate pot kettle remark.

linda amick | Jul 15, 2015 2:13:32 PM | 56

The Iran deal will allow oil to flow to Europe. It is a temporary measure to try and keep Russia out of business with the EU. The ultimate fear of the Atlanticists is collaboration between Russia and Germany.

Johnboy | Jul 15, 2015 11:06:56 PM | 66

@36 "Amano will do as US says, and if US wants for IAEA to not give a green light, thats what he'll do."

Absolutely. The IAEA will be *the* litmus test for how genuine the USA is regarding this agreement, precisely because Amano does as he is told.

So if he reports that the Iranians have answered all questions regarding "PMD" to the IAEA's satisfaction then, well, heck, everyone can conclude that Obama really is serious about this agreement, because Amano would have been told by the USA to reach that conclusion.

Alternatively, if Amano can't be satisfied No Matter What then you know for a certainty that he is being obstinate on the orders of Obama. Which means that the USA has no intention of ever allowing Iran to re-engage with the rest of the world.

Amano's inability to act independently makes him the perfect yardstick for judging the USA's real intentions.

We could spend years dissecting *this* statement or *that* complaint from various Notable Americans. We can then argue for/against where that official's true loyalties are, and it's all totally unnecessary.

Just keep your eye on the puppet over at the IAEA, because it is abundantly clear that
(a) he doesn't think for himself, and
(b) he answers to only one master.

So what he says on any issue will be a true, unadulterated representation of what the USA really, truly, means, precisely because he will mouth words without any considerations of petty politics or the need to jerk off the critics.


[Jul 23, 2015]Iran Deal Heads Toward Showdown With Adelson's GOP

Jul 15, 2015 | LobeLog

The Iran nuclear deal announced in Vienna yesterday means that the tough international negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran are finally over. But now attention shifts to the 60-day period during which Congress has the option of voting to approve or disapprove the agreement or doing nothing at all. A resolution of disapproval, as Obama most recently warned yesterday, will provoke a presidential veto. At that point, the question will be whether the opponents can muster the necessary two-thirds of members in both chambers of Congress to override, effectively killing by far the most promising development in U.S.-Iranian relations since the 1979 revolution.

This process not only represents a key test of Obama's ability to deliver his most significant foreign-policy achievement to date. It also sets up a major showdown between the GOP's single biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, and the president of the United States.

Adelson is a big supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and finances Israel's largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, often referred to as "Bibiton," or Bibi's paper. He makes no secret either of his hawkish views toward Iran or his animosity toward the Obama administration. Adelson has proposed launching a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran as a negotiating tactic and was treated as a guest of honor during Netanyahu's controversial speech before Congress last March. (A number of pundits speculated about Adelson's role in securing Netanyahu's invitation from Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).)

Adelson and the Republicans

The casino magnate, whose net wealth is estimated by Forbes at $29.4 billion, and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam Adelson, are heavily invested in the current GOP members of the House and Senate.

In the 2014 election cycle, Adelson was the biggest single donor to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC closely tied to Boehner and dedicated to electing Republicans to the House, according to public filings. He contributed $5 million-or nearly 40%–of the Fund's $12.6 million in total contributions. Boehner's Super PAC's second largest contributor, and only other seven-figure donor, was Chevron. It contributed a mere $1 million.

The loyalty of Republican senators to the Las Vegas-based multi-billionaire may run even deeper. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson reportedly contributed up to $100 million to help the GOP retake the Senate last year.

Adelson's close relationship with Netanyahu is well documented, but his influence in Congress will soon be tested.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) already pledged to Netanyahu that he would "follow your lead" before a January vote on the Kirk-Menendez sanctions legislation. Graham joked about having the "first all-Jewish Cabinet in America [if elected president] because of the pro-Israel funding," an apparent reference to the critical role played by campaign contributions by Adelson and other wealthy supporters of Israel-a number of whom are on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition-in making or breaking Republican presidential candidacies. (The Adelsons' generosity in 2012 virtually singlehandedly kept alive the presidential candidacy of former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who told NBC that Israel's survival was "the central value of [Adelson's] life.")

Yesterday, Graham declared that the Iran deal was "akin to declaring war on Israel and the Sunni Arabs." Not to be outdone, other GOP candidates, most of whom, no doubt, are also seeking Adelson's endorsement and financial support, slammed the deal.

Jeb Bush, for instance, denounced the agreement as "appeasement." Having received a bitter complaint from Adelson, Bush had earlier distanced himself from his father's secretary of state after James Baker publicly criticized Netanyahu at a J Street conference earlier this year. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), reportedly an Adelson favorite, blasted the accord as "undermin[ing] our national security," while Gov. Scott Walker characterized it as "one of the biggest disasters of the Obama-Clinton doctrine." And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) described it as "a fundamental betrayal of the security of the United States and of our closest allies, first and foremost Israel."

All of these candidates may, of course, truly believe what they are saying (no doubt having personally studied the 100-plus-page agreement in detail). But Adelson's largesse may also have played a role in their summary rejections of a deal that has been negotiated over more than three years and that has been endorsed by Washington's most important NATO allies, not to mention the overwhelming majority of recognized U.S. non-proliferation, nuclear policy, Iran, and national security experts.

GOP Reservations about Adelson

But other Republicans, including those who don't necessarily harbor the national ambitions that require raising tens of millions of dollars from wealthy donors, may feel some reservations about the growing influence Adelson exercises over their party's leadership. Indeed, a closer look at Adelson, beginning with the way his gambling interests may not precisely align with the values of the party's social conservatives, suggests a degree of disconnect between the man and a core Republican constituency.

Adelson's interests in China, which many Republicans believe poses the greatest long-term threat to U.S. national security, may also be cause for concern. After all, in order to run his highly profitable Macau-based casinos, Adelson would presumably require some friendly relations, or guanxi, with the Communist government in Beijing. Indeed, reports that Adelson played a key role-at the personal behest of Beijing's mayor-in scuttling a proposed House resolution opposing China's bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics on human-rights grounds should give pause to some elements in the party, including both China hawks and neoconservatives who profess a devotion to democracy. The fact that Adelson also faces accusations of ties to Chinese organized crime groups at his Macau properties and that a former Sands executive charged him with personally approving a "prostitution strategy" at his properties should raise a few questions in the minds of some Republicans. Adelson has rejected all these charges, which may soon be tested in court.

And despite having personally promoted the use of U.S. military (and nuclear) forces against Iran and funded a number of hawkish groups, including the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, that have similarly advocated the threat or use of U.S. military force, Adelson appears at least ambivalent about his own service in the U.S. armed forces.

Speaking to a group in Israel, in July 2010, Adelson said:

I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF … our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he'll come back– his hobby is shooting - and he'll come back and be a sniper for the IDF. … All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart.

With a deal now reached in Vienna, Adelson is undoubtedly placing calls to the GOP leadership in Congress urging them to vote down a nuclear accord supported by an overwhelming number of experts in the relevant fields, as well as a majority of Americans, according to the latest polls. How they respond will tell us a great deal not only about Adelson's influence in the Republican party, but also about the impact of enormously wealthy, highly focused, one-issue donors on U.S. foreign policy and national security.

Image: DonkeyHotey via Flickr

[Jul 20, 2015] The Dangerously Vague Romance of War by Shane Smith

July 20, 2015 | original.antiwar.com
Which sounds better, to "die for your government", or "give your life for your country"? The first could be interpreted, after a mountain of bodies pile up, as a mistake. As something that would seem to require scrutiny, admissions of having been wrong, of blame to be placed. Dying for a government, or more precisely, dying for a select group of political figures at a certain moment in time for very specific reasons, doesn't hide behind a fluttering flag quite as well as "dying for country". Which is why we never hear it. War, in the mind of the Middle America that still thinks on it, is shrouded in a sepia-toned composite of images and sounds, stories of soldiers, duty to country, service, songs, movies, and myth that give politicians far more leverage than they would otherwise have, when executing another war. No, "service to country" is the emotional and moral narcotic we administer to ourselves, almost automatically, at the inception of a new war. War is all wrapped up in our American Mythos so tight that it seems astonishing that we haven't descended utterly into a pure American-style fascism. Maybe a few more 9/11-style attacks and the transformation would be complete. 9/11 was an unparalleled opportunity for the explosion of government growth, and as much as "war is the health of the State", so are foreign attacks on the home State, attacks that can be perfectly molded so as to stoke the maximum amount of nationalist rage from the citizens. Those attacks were a godsend for a government that had been starved of an actual threat for far too long. And they took full advantage of the opportunity. Fourteen years later, the Warfare State is petering out from the evaporating fumes of 9/11, and their looking for a new fix.

But what of those who lied the country into igniting a regional dumpster fire after 9/11? Once the war hysteria evaporates, where are What would it really take to hold any one politician for a military disaster halfway around the world? It is blindingly obvious that there will never be a reckoning for those who hustled us into the Iraq war. What about Libya? Syria? How bad does it have to get for there to be something resembling accountability? War atrocities seem to have become less of a chance for justice and lessons learned than as a new precedent that the progenitors of the next war can point to when their war goes bad. And creators of war did learn a few things from Iraq and Afghanistan. They learned that flag-draped coffins do focus the attention of the citizenry. And drone strikes don't, really.

That hazy collage of feel-good nationalism is trotted out every election year, and every candidate engages in it to one degree or another. Peace is a hard sell next to the belligerent effusions of a Donald Trump. His crazed rantings against immigrants, his bizarre fantasies as to how he would handle world leaders via telephone call, as well as his boorishness in general, has thousands flocking to hear him speak. But what they're cheering is an avatar of a blood-soaked ideology, one that cloaks itself in the native symbols and culture, breeding hate and intolerance, until the bilious nationalism reaches just the right temperature and then boils over into lawless fascism. As Jeffrey Tucker points out, Trump is nothing new. The graveyard of twentieth century tyrannies is a testament to just how much death and destruction can be induced by a charismatic parasite bellowing the tenets of a flag-wrapped tyranny. Most of what we hear coming from leaders today is fascism to a greater or lesser extent. If what we mean by fascism to be a Religion of the State, a militant nationalism taken to its logical conclusion, then every leader engages in it, because it ignites something primitive and sinister in the minds of voters.

We understand war theoretically, and distantly, but what of those who are forced to carry out the fever dreams of politicians? Blindly thanking veterans for their service, we feel a sense of duty discharged, and never think to look more deeply into their traumas, or the scheme they were tricked into executing. Military recruiters, the unscrupulous peddlers of military slavery, are treated as a benign influence on young people today. Their pushy, overindulgent attitude toward our 18-year olds should piss us off more than it does, since what they are conning the young into is becoming the expendable plaything for the whims of the current Administration.

War is the pith of total government. The source of all its power, war and the threat of war provide the excuse for every injustice, every outrage, every restriction of liberty or further bilking of the citizen-hosts. As the Warfare State trots out the familiar sermons of threats from abroad, potential greatness at home, and wars to be fought, one would do well to reflect that war enriches the State at the expense of the rest of us. It consumes our lives, our liberty, our wallets, and the future of our children and grandchildren. The current crop of candidates who peddle military greatness are the enemy of peace and prosperity, and when they so openly declaim their lust for war, we should frankly believe what they say. And after hearing them, we should recognize the would-be tyrant in our midst, hawking hyper-militarism under the guise of national greatness, and treat them like the vermin they clearly are.

Shane Smith lives in Norman, Oklahoma and writes for Red Dirt Report.

Read more by Shane Smith

[Jul 13, 2015]International Court Judge Dick Cheney Will Face Trial for War Crimes

Sputnik International
A former judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said former US Vice President Dick Cheney should – and eventually will – stand trial for war crimes for his role in the Iraq War.

"Some of us have long thought that Cheney and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes should appear before the" International Criminal Court (ICC), Thomas Buergenthal said in an interview with Newsweek.

Buergenthal, 81, served as a judge at the ICJ – the main judicial arm of the United Nations – for 10 years before retiring in 2010.

The ICJ, unlike the ICC, has no jurisdiction to try individuals accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. As the ICJ is not a criminal court, it does not have a prosecutor able to initiate such proceedings.

Buergenthal was born in the former Czechoslovakia and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a boy. He is now a US citizen and a professor of law at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

"We (in the United States) could have tried them ourselves," Buergenthal said of Cheney and others. "I voted for Obama, but I think he made a great mistake when he decided not to instigate legal proceedings against some of these people. I think – yes – that it will happen."

As for Cheney's superior for eight years, Buergenthal dismissed former president George W. Bush as "an ignorant person who wanted to show his mother he could do things his father couldn't."

Buergenthal said Richard Nixon, whose administration Cheney served in during the 1970s, was "more intelligent. I don't think Nixon would have got involved in Iraq."

Federal Court: Top Bush-Era Officials Can be Sued for Post-9/11 Detentions

[Jul 12, 2015] 'One of the largest human experiments in history' was conducted on unsuspecting residents of San Francisco by Kevin Loria

Jul. 9, 2015 | Business Insider

San Francisco's fog is famous, especially in the summer, when weather conditions combine to create the characteristic cooling blanket that sits over the Bay Area.

But one fact many may not know about San Francisco's fog is that in 1950, the US military conducted a test to see whether it could be used to help spread a biological weapon in a "simulated germ-warfare attack." This was just the start of many such tests around the country that would go on in secret for years.

The test was a success, as Rebecca Kreston explains over at Discover Magazine, and "one of the largest human experiments in history."

But, as she writes, it was also "one of the largest offenses of the Nuremberg Code since its inception."

The code stipulates that "voluntary, informed consent" is required for research participants, and that experiments that might lead to death or disabling injury are unacceptable.

The unsuspecting residents of San Francisco certainly could not consent to the military's germ-warfare test, and there's good evidence that it could have caused the death of at least one resident of the city, Edward Nevin, and hospitalized 10 others.

This is a crazy story; one that seems like it must be a conspiracy theory. An internet search will reveal plenty of misinformation and unbelievable conjecture about these experiments. But the core of this incredible tale is documented and true.

'A successful biological warfare attack'

It all began in late September 1950, when over a few days, a Navy vessel used giant hoses to spray a fog of two kinds of bacteria, Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii - both believed at the time to be harmless - out into the fog, where they disappeared and spread over the city.

"It was noted that a successful BW [biological warfare] attack on this area can be launched from the sea, and that effective dosages can be produced over relatively large areas," concluded a later-declassified military report, cited by the Wall Street Journal.

Successful indeed, according to Leonard Cole, the director of the Terror Medicine and Security Program at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. His book, "Clouds of Secrecy," documents the military's secret bioweapon tests over populated areas. Cole wrote:

Nearly all of San Francisco received 500 particle minutes per liter. In other words, nearly every one of the 800,000 people in San Francisco exposed to the cloud at normal breathing rate (10 liters per minute) inhaled 5,000 or more particles per minute during the several hours that they remained airborne.

This was among the first but far from the last of these sorts of tests.

Tests included the large-scale releases of bacteria in the New York City subway system, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and in National Airport.

Over the next 20 years, the military would conduct 239 "germ-warfare" tests over populated areas, according to news reports from the 1970s (after the secret tests had been revealed) in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Associated Press, and other publications (via Lexis-Nexis), and also detailed in congressional testimony from the 1970s.

These tests included the large-scale releases of bacteria in the New York City subway system, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and in National Airport just outside Washington, DC.

In a 1994 congressional testimony, Cole said that none of this had been revealed to the public until a 1976 newspaper story revealed the story of a few of the first experiments - though at least a Senate subcommittee had heard testimony about experiments in New York City in 1975, according to a 1995 Newsday report.

[Jul 10, 2015] US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 collusion

"...Fascism is well understood, its not just a perjorative buzzword. I think its definition is a bit out of date -- instead of a nationalist, militaristic political ideology mobilizing corporations and the population as an expression of national will it looks more like corporatism enlisting the trappings of extreme nationalism and militarism to further its agenda."
Jul 10, 2015 | The Guardian

Littlemissv -> norecovery 10 Jul 2015 18:51

Here is a comment from JCDavis with some important information:

Russ Tice revealed that the NSA was spying on Obama as early as 2004 at the behest of Dick Cheney, who had already convinced the NSA's director Hayden to break the law and spy on everyone with power.

It can't be any coincidence that President Obama went (or was sent) to Bill "Cheney is the best Republican" Kristol to get his foreign policy validated, and Kristol congratulated him on it, calling him a "born-again neocon."

And it is no coincidence that Obama has the Cheney protegee Victoria Nuland in his administration, right in the center of his new cold war with Russia. And no coincidence that she is the wife of neocon Robert Kagan, who with Bill Kristol founded PNAC. PNAC counts neocon Paul Wolfowitz as a member, who saw Russia as our main obstacle to world empire.

It's a nest of neocons running Obama as a puppet and pushing us into a confrontation with Russia while smashing all the Russian allies according to the Wolfowitz doctrine.

norecovery 10 Jul 2015 17:34

Many of the Neocon criminals that promoted and started that awful war are still in power behind the scenes in the Obama administration, and they are still doing their dirty deeds throughout the MENA and in Ukraine.


martinusher TickleMyFancy 10 Jul 2015 17:20

Fascism is well understood, its not just a perjorative buzzword. I think its definition is a bit out of date -- instead of a nationalist, militaristic political ideology mobilizing corporations and the population as an expression of national will it looks more like corporatism enlisting the trappings of extreme nationalism and militarism to further its agenda.

(The distinction is a bit subtle, come to think of it. Maybe its easier to just stick to slinging names about....)


reptile0000 Cornelis Davids 10 Jul 2015 16:50

Yeh thats what i said American war is Global. Their leaders repeatedly say it over and over again. Nothings surprising about their doctors torturing people kidnapped from all over the world. Brutal empire that's what it is for many around the world


[Jul 08, 2015]Are we the fascists now?

Jul 03, 2015 | OffGuardian
thanks-4-kit-mum

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

To initiate a war of aggression…," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Libya

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.

In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten".

The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a "rebel" bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: "We came, we saw, he died." His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew… that if we waited one more day," said President Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato's inferno, described by David Cameron as a "humanitarian intervention".

Secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS, many of the "rebels" would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by Nato bombers.

For Obama, David Cameron and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi's true crime was Libya's economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa's greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships".

Following Nato's attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu…

confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency".

The Balkans

The "humanitarian war" against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent Nato to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing "genocide" against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59″ might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War". The West's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the Nato bombing over, and much of Serbia's infrastructure in ruins, along with schools, hospitals, monasteries and the national TV station, international forensic teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume evidence of the "holocaust". The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". A year later, a United Nations tribunal on Yugoslavia announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA.

There was no genocide. The "holocaust" was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.

Behind the lie, there was serious purpose. Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent, multi-ethnic federation that had stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. Most of its utilities and major manufacturing was publicly owned. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to capture its "natural market" in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991 to lay their plans for the disastrous eurozone, a secret deal had been struck; Germany would recognise Croatia. Yugoslavia was doomed.

In Washington, the US saw that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans. Nato, then an almost defunct Cold War relic, was reinvented as imperial enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in Rambouillet, in France, the Serbs were subjected to the enforcer's duplicitous tactics. The Rambouillet accord included a secret Annex B, which the US delegation inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia – a country with bitter memories of the Nazi occupation – and the implementation of a "free-market economy" and the privatisation of all government assets. No sovereign state could sign this. Punishment followed swiftly; Nato bombs fell on a defenceless country. It was the precursor to the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria and Libya, and Ukraine.

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America's modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as "sanctions". The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.

Afghanistan

Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over."

These were opening words of Obama's 2015 State of the Union address. In fact, some 10,000 troops and 20,000 military contractors (mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan on indefinite assignment. "The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion," said Obama. In fact, more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2014 than in any year since the UN took records.

The majority have been killed – civilians and soldiers – during Obama's time as president.

The tragedy of Afghanistan rivals the epic crime in Indochina. In his lauded and much quoted book 'The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives', Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of US policies from Afghanistan to the present day, writes that if America is to control Eurasia and dominate the world, it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion… Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilisation." He is right. As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then President Carter's National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by dealing a death blow to Afghanistan's first and only democracy. Who knows this vital history?

In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, eventually overthrowing the vestiges of the aristocratic regime in 1978. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) formed a government and declared a reform programme that included the abolition of feudalism, freedom for all religions, equal rights for women and social justice for the ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

The new government introduced free medical care for the poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan's doctors, a third of civil servants and the majority of teachers. "Every girl," recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon, "could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest music. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the people the West supported."

The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet Union, even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later admitted, "there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution]". Alarmed by the growing confidence of liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan was to succeed under the PDPA, its independence and progress would offer the "threat of a promising example".

On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorised support for tribal "fundamentalist" groups known as the mujaheddin, a program that grew to over $500 million a year in U.S. arms and other assistance. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan's first secular, reformist government. In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that "the United States' larger interests… would be served by the demise of [the PDPA government], despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan." The italics are mine.

The mujaheddin were the forebears of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. They included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received tens of millions of dollars in cash from the CIA Hekmatyar's specialty was trafficking in opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. Invited to London, he was lauded by Prime Minister Thatcher as a "freedom fighter".

Such fanatics might have remained in their tribal world had Brzezinski not launched an international movement to promote Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and so undermine secular political liberation and "destabilise" the Soviet Union, creating, as he wrote in his autobiography, "a few stirred up Muslims". His grand plan coincided with the ambitions of the Pakistani dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, to dominate the region. In 1986, the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, began to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. The Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden was one of them. Operatives who would eventually join the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were recruited at an Islamic college in Brooklyn, New York, and given paramilitary training at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called "Operation Cyclone". Its success was celebrated in 1996 when the last PDPA president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah – who had gone before the UN General Assembly to plead for help – was hanged from a streetlight by the Taliban.

The "blowback" of Operation Cyclone and its "few stirred up Muslims" was September 11, 2001. Operation Cyclone became the "war on terror", in which countless men, women and children would lose their lives across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. The enforcer's message was and remains: "You are with us or against us."

The common thread is mass murder

The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its "free fire zones", "body counts" and "collateral damage". In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians ("gooks") were murdered by the US; yet only one massacre, at My Lai, is remembered. In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot.

Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each "hit" is registered on a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat".

"For goose-steppers," wrote the historian Norman Pollack, "substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manque, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while."

Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being," said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, "The sovereign is he who decides the exception." This sums up Americanism, the world's dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture. I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, US losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this.

The difference now is that cinema audiences are invited to wring their hands at the "tragedy" of American psychopaths having to kill people in distant places – just as the President himself kills them. The embodiment of Hollywood's violence, the actor and director Clint Eastwood, was nominated for an Oscar this year for his movie, 'American Sniper', which is about a licensed murderer and nutcase. The New York Times described it as a "patriotic, pro-family picture which broke all attendance records in its opening days".

There are no heroic movies about America's embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens – as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America. Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the US; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the "father" of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the US space programme.

Ukraine

In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of Nato, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its "new wave" hailed by the enforcer as "nationalists".

This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government. The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. On February 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington get "the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry". If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia.

No western leader has spoken up about the revival of fascism in the heart of Europe – with the exception of Vladimir Putin, whose people lost 22 million to a Nazi invasion that came through the borderland of Ukraine. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, ranted abuse about European leaders for opposing the US arming of the Kiev regime. She referred to the German Defence Minister as "the minister for defeatism". It was Nuland who masterminded the coup in Kiev. The wife of Robert D. Kagan, a leading "neo-con" luminary and co-founder of the extreme right wing Project for a New American Century, she was foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney.

Nuland's coup did not go to plan. Nato was prevented from seizing Russia's historic, legitimate, warm-water naval base in Crimea. The mostly Russian population of Crimea – illegally annexed to Ukraine by Nikita Krushchev in 1954 – voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia, as they had done in the 1990s. The referendum was voluntary, popular and internationally observed. There was no invasion.

At the same time, the Kiev regime turned on the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic cleansing. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social security and pensions. More than a million refugees fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople escaping "the violence" caused by the "Russian invasion". The Nato commander, General Breedlove – whose name and actions might have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove – announced that 40,000 Russian troops were "massing". In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none.

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people of Ukraine – a third of the population – have long sought a federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are not "separatists" but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev. Their revolt and establishment of autonomous "states" are a reaction to Kiev's attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western audiences.

On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as "another bright day in our national history". In the American and British media, this was reported as a "murky tragedy" resulting from "clashes" between "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) and "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

The New York Times buried the story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims – "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Obama congratulated the junta for its "restraint".

If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is invading Ukraine. On January 29, Ukraine's top military commander, General Viktor Muzhemko, almost inadvertently dismissed the very basis for US and EU sanctions on Russia when he told a news conference emphatically: "The Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian Army". There were "individual citizens" who were members of "illegal armed groups", but there was no Russian invasion. This was not news. Vadym Prystaiko, Kiev's Deputy Foreign Minister, has called for "full scale war" with nuclear-armed Russia.

On February 21, US Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, introduced a bill that would authorise American arms for the Kiev regime. In his Senate presentation, Inhofe used photographs he claimed were of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, which have long been exposed as fakes. It was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's fake pictures of a Soviet installation in Nicaragua, and Colin Powell's fake evidence to the UN of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The intensity of the smear campaign against Russia and the portrayal of its president as a pantomime villain is unlike anything I have known as a reporter. Robert Parry, one of America's most distinguished investigative journalists, who revealed the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote recently, "No European government, since Adolf Hitler's Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet across the West's media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established… If you wonder how the world could stumble into world war three – much as it did into world war one a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness over Ukraine that has proved impervious to facts or reason."

In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack… In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons." In the Guardian on February 2, Timothy Garton-Ash called, in effect, for a world war. "Putin must be stopped," said the headline. "And sometimes only guns can stop guns." He conceded that the threat of war might "nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement"; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that "America has the best kit".

In 2003, Garton-Ash, an Oxford professor, repeated the propaganda that led to the slaughter in Iraq. Saddam Hussein, he wrote, "has, as [Colin] Powell documented, stockpiled large quantities of horrifying chemical and biological weapons, and is hiding what remains of them. He is still trying to get nuclear ones." He lauded Blair as a "Gladstonian, Christian liberal interventionist". In 2006, he wrote, "Now we face the next big test of the West after Iraq: Iran."

The outbursts – or as Garton-Ash prefers, his "tortured liberal ambivalence" – are not untypical of those in the transatlantic liberal elite who have struck a Faustian deal. The war criminal Blair is their lost leader. The Guardian, in which Garton-Ash's piece appeared, published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the Lockheed Martin monster were the words: "The F-35. GREAT For Britain". This American "kit" will cost British taxpayers Ł1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered across the world. In tune with its advertiser, a Guardian editorial has demanded an increase in military spending.

Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev's new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas "investment". She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship. They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden's son is on the board of Ukraine's biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine's rich farming soil.

Above all, they want Ukraine's mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia's long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country's economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.

The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilisation to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons.

[Jul 05, 2015] Patriotism Begins With Localism

Jul 05, 2015 | The American Conservative

Responses to Patriotism Begins With Localism


Apolitical, July 3, 2015 at 9:50 am

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 suggest getting another advisor and thesis.

Suggested topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

JEinCA, July 4, 2015 at 3:16 am

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.

[Jul 03, 2015] Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners

"...So, to recap: corrupt German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy German weapons. And then a German chancellor presses for austerity on the Greek people to pay back the loans they took out (with Germans banks) at massive interest, for the weapons they bought off them in the first place. "
"...Debt and war are constant partners."
"...And the reason the USA dominated the world after WW2 was they had stayed out of both wars for the first 2 years and made fortunes lending and selling arms to Britain (and some to the Axis). It was the Jewish moneylenders of the Middle Ages who financed the various internal European wars, created the first banks, and along with a Scot formed the Bank of England."
Jul 03, 2015 | The Guardian

omewhere in a Greek jail, the former defence minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, watches the financial crisis unfold. I wonder how partly responsible he feels? In 2013, Akis (as he is popularly known) went down for 20 years, finally succumbing to the waves of financial scandal to which his name had long been associated. For alongside the lavish spending, the houses and the dodgy tax returns, there was bribery, and it was the €8m appreciation he received from the German arms dealer, Ferrostaal, for the Greek government's purchase of Type 214 submarines, that sent him to prison.

There is this idea that the Greeks got themselves into this current mess because they paid themselves too much for doing too little. Well, maybe. But it's not the complete picture. For the Greeks also got themselves into debt for the oldest reason in the book – one might even argue, for the very reason that public debt itself was first invented – to raise and support an army. The state's need for quick money to raise an army is how industrial-scale money lending comes into business (in the face of the church's historic opposition to usury). Indeed, in the west, one might even stretch to say that large-scale public debt began as a way to finance military intervention in the Middle East – ie the crusades. And just as rescuing Jerusalem from the Turks was the justification for massive military spending in the middle ages, so the fear of Turkey has been the reason given for recent Greek spending. Along with German subs, the Greeks have bought French frigates, US F16s and German Leopard 2 tanks. In the 1980s, for example, the Greeks spent an average of 6.2% of their GDP on defence compared with a European average of 2.9%. In the years following their EU entry, the Greeks were the world's fourth-highest spenders on conventional weaponry.

So, to recap: corrupt German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy German weapons. And then a German chancellor presses for austerity on the Greek people to pay back the loans they took out (with Germans banks) at massive interest, for the weapons they bought off them in the first place. Is this an unfair characterisation? A bit. It wasn't just Germany. And there were many other factors at play in the escalation of Greek debt. But the postwar difference between the Germans and the Greeks is not the tired stereotype that the former are hardworking and the latter are lazy, but rather that, among other things, the Germans have, for obvious reasons, been restricted in their military spending. And they have benefited massively from that.

Debt and war are constant partners. "The global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the war," wrote Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, calculating the cost of the US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, pre-financial crash, to have been $3tn. Indeed, it was only this year, back in March, that the UK taxpayer finally paid off the money we borrowed to fight the first world war. "This is a moment for Britain to be proud of," said George Osborne, as he paid the final instalment of Ł1.9bn. Really?

The phrase "military-industrial complex" is one of those cliches of 70s leftwing radicalism, but it was Dwight D Eisenhower, a five-star general no less, who warned against its creeping power in his final speech as president. "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government … we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society." Ike was right.

This week, Church House, C of E HQ, hosted a conference sponsored by the arms dealers Lockheed Martin and MBDA Missile Systems. We preach about turning swords into ploughs yet help normalise an industry that turns them back again. The archbishop of Canterbury has been pretty solid on Wonga and trying to put legal loan sharks out of business. Now the church needs to take this up a level. For the debts that cripple entire countries come mostly from spending on war, not on pensions. And we don't say this nearly enough.
@giles_fraser

marsCubed, 3 Jul 2015 12:21

Syriza's position has been stated in this Huffington Post article.

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Tuesday, Yiannis Bournous, the head of international affairs for Greece's ruling Syriza party, heartily endorsed defense cuts as a way to meet the fiscal targets of Greece's international creditors.

"We already proposed a 200 million euro cut in the defense budget," Bournous said at an event hosted by the Center for Economic Policy and Research and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, referring to cuts in Syriza's most recent proposal to its creditors. "We are willing to make it even bigger -- it is a pleasure for us."

Europe Offered Greece A Deal To Meet Its Obligations By Cutting Military Spending. The IMF Said No Way.

If the report is correct, ideology is playing just as much of a role as arithmetic in preventing a resolution. The IMF's refusal to consider a plan that would lessen pension cuts is consistent with itshistorically neoliberal political philosophy.


Giftedbutlazee 3 Jul 2015 11:52

we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.

Still as relevant now, 54 years after Eisenhower said it.


BritCol 3 Jul 2015 11:39

And the reason the USA dominated the world after WW2 was they had stayed out of both wars for the first 2 years and made fortunes lending and selling arms to Britain (and some to the Axis). It was the Jewish moneylenders of the Middle Ages who financed the various internal European wars, created the first banks, and along with a Scot formed the Bank of England.

The moral? War makes money for profiteers, and puts those of us not killed or displaced in debt for generations. Yet we morons keep waving flags every time a prime minister wants to send us into another conflict.


barry1947brewster 3 Jul 2015 11:39

28 May 2014 The Royal United Services Institute estimated that since the Berlin Wall fell the UK has spent Ł35 billion on wars. Now it is suggested that we bomb IS in Syria. Instead of printing "Paid for by the Taxpayer" on medicines provided by the NHS we should have a daily costing of our expenditure on bombs etc used in anger.


real tic 3 Jul 2015 11:23

Finally someone at Graun looks at this obvious contradiction present in the Greek governments opposition to cut in defense spending (when they apparently accept cuts to pensions, healthcare and other social services)! Well done Giles, but what's wrong with your colleagues in CIF, or even in the glass bubbled editorial offices? Why has it taken so long to examine this aspect of Greek debt?

Defense expenditure is also one reason some actors in creditor nations are content to keep Greece in debt, even as far as to see its debts deepen, as long as it keeps on buying. while within Greece, nationalism within the military has long been a way of containing far right tendencies.

It is notable but unsurprising that the current Minister of Defense in Greece is a far right politician, allied to Tsipiras in the Syriza coalition.


Pollik 3 Jul 2015 11:03

"Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners"

...and someone always makes a profit.

[Jul 03, 2015] Europe's leaders must end this reckless standoff with Greece by Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium

"...Neoliberal politicians are well-paid traitors to their own countries and peoples - how much empathy can be expected of them for anyone else?"
"...When I see expressions like "hard-working" and "sustainable", I stop reading. It is as Orwell said: ready made plastic expressions rushing in to smother all possibility of an original individual thought. All this dolt needed to include were "inclusive", "sensitive", "globalised", "aspirational", "stakeholders", and he would be done."
"...You are quite right about Golden Dawn but I don't think the Troika actually care about that so much. Its beyond obvious that the Troika care nothing for the Greek population and I think they would be content with a fascist dictatorship as long as it signs up to austerity."
"...That would not be a bad thing, but I don't think the Euro is seen as an error or a mistake at all. As Germany has discovered, it is an extremely useful tool in assuring the triumph of greed: keeping populations poor, unemployed and fearful, so they are more willing to accept the lash of the markets and agree to bank bailouts, low wages, a diminished social safety-net, trade treaties, etc., etc."
Jul 03, 2015 | The Guardian

The possibility of a Greek exit from the eurozone has never been more likely. We shouldn't be under any illusions – this would be a catastrophe for Greece's eurozone creditors, the Greek state and the European Union.

Like it or not, we are all in this together. If we continue on our current trajectory, everyone stands to lose from what now resembles a reckless, self-destructive standoff. The Greek economy is on the verge of complete collapse. This would not only be devastating for the people of Greece, it will guarantee that creditors never see their money again. We must remember that Germany has lent approximately €80bn. This is an astonishing figure, close to a quarter of Greece's budget for 2016. Yet the sad irony is, the longer the current impasse continues, the greater pressure Angela Merkel will face within her own party to reject any solution that is accepted by the Greek government.

But much more is at stake than euros. The world will consider a "Grexit" as a devastating blow for EU monetary cooperation and the European project. A destabilising Grexit will only be welcomed by the likes of China, Russia and those who are most threatened by a strong, united European Union. If Greece is to stay within the eurozone, we need to secure a massive de-escalation of the tensions, rhetoric and threats from both sides – and fast. It is time for Greece's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and the political leaders of the eurozone to come to their senses and bring this crisis back from the brink.


Prodisestab -> HolyInsurgent 3 Jul 2015 18:26

Neoliberal politicians are well-paid traitors to their own countries and peoples - how much empathy can be expected of them for anyone else?


Panagiotis Theodoropoulos Gjenganger 3 Jul 2015 19:20

Agreed to a good extent. However, when the discussions broke off Friday night, the two sides were very close regarding the measures that were needed. I believe that they were off by 60 million euros only. Their differences were mostly about the types of measures to be taken with the Greek government wanting more taxes on businesses and the creditors wanting more to be paid by ordinary people. The problem that I have and that a lot of observers have with that is the fact that the Greek government did compromize quite a lot while the creditors refused to budge from their inflexible position despite the fact that implementation of their policies during the last five years has put the country into a depression. A basic premise of "negotiation" is that both sides make compromises in order to arrive at a mutually beneficial solution. In this case the creditors demonstrated total lack of flexibility, which clearly indicates alterior motives at least on the part of some of the creditors. In Germany they have fed their people with all the hate against "lazy Greeks" etc that clearly shows up in these messages and in that sense they have themselves created a very negative environment. I believe that about 90% or so of all the loans that have been given to Greece went back to the creditors. Greece is not looking for handouts here. This must be understood.

This is a debt crisis that has been mishandled and that has span out of control as a result. Economic terrorism is not justified under any conditions and particularly within the EZ.

LiveitOut 3 Jul 2015 21:45

When I see expressions like "hard-working" and "sustainable", I stop reading.

It is as Orwell said: ready made plastic expressions rushing in to smother all possibility of an original individual thought.

All this dolt needed to include were "inclusive", "sensitive", "globalised", "aspirational", "stakeholders", and he would be done.

How odd all this stuff about hardworking families when we are all being screwed to kingdom come by hard whoring banking gangsters who have never done a second of useful work in their effing lives --

Optymystic, 3 Jul 2015 12:55

The Greek economy is on the verge of complete collapse. This would not only be devastating for the people of Greece, it will guarantee that creditors never see their money again.

The debt has been known to be unpayable for a long time. It has nothing to do with current events in Greece. It should have been written off.

No one believes anything Alexis Tsipras says anymore, and this is why a yes vote on Sunday is crucial. But it's also clear eurozone leaders have made mistakes with Greece.

But despite their nonsenses the latter group somehow, mysteriously, retain credibility. It was not the antics of Tsiparis that brought about this mess but the behaviour of his 'credible' opponents.

Greece and its creditors agree a three-month window to develop a long-term reform programme combined with an investment package to turn Greece's ailing economy around.

Now you are getting close to the Syriza position.

Let us use this crisis to deliver real, sustainable change by drawing up a settlement in the next three months in which the Greek state, its government and its administration are paying back the debts, instead of forcing hard-working citizens to pay the bill.

Is that before or after the twenty-year moratorium on debt implied by the IMF?

From the burning embers of two world wars, we have created a single market with free movement of people, goods, services and capital.

And the freedom to avoid taxes.

PaleMan -> jonbryce 3 Jul 2015 12:59

You are quite right about Golden Dawn but I don't think the Troika actually care about that so much.

Its beyond obvious that the Troika care nothing for the Greek population and I think they would be content with a fascist dictatorship as long as it signs up to austerity.

Danny Sheahan 3 Jul 2015 12:59

No one believes the ECB or the EU leadership anymore.

If they were serious about the Euro as a strong functional currency this mess would not be so big.

They would not have had to flush out private German and French bad debt in the 2nd bailout by putting it on the tax payer, or those countries would have had to step in to hep their banks and political careers would have been over.

The ECB has become a political football and it cannot maintain stability in its currency region. It is a failed central bank.

Vilos_Cohaagen 3 Jul 2015 12:58

"The Greek economy is on the verge of complete collapse. This would not only be devastating for the people of Greece, it will guarantee that creditors never see their money again."

The problem is that there's no scenario where the creditors do get paid back. So, why (for a start) "lend" them 60 billion more Euros? Wiping the debt completely out just means that the Greeks can start accumulating new "debt" they'll have no intention to re-pay and will be defaulting on a few years down the line.

BusinessWriter 3 Jul 2015 12:52

it will guarantee that creditors never see their money again.

Crazy - this Guy actually thinks the creditors have any chance of seeing their money again - what planet is he on.
As for his idea that the Greek state (or any state for that matter that doesn't control its own currency) can pay of its debt independent of the taxpaying public - it's deluded nonsense.

Where is the Greek state supposed to get the billions of euro from? The only source of revenue it has is taxes or selling assets that it holds on behalf of the citizens of Greece.

Equally, the idea that the clientelist state is somehow a separate thing to the majority of the Greek people is nonsense. So many of them are either employed by the state or in professions protected from competition by the state or in companies that only serve the state. Identifying anyone who doesn't benefit in some way from the current clientelist state would be like looking for an ATM in Athens with cash in it on Monday morning.

This Guy is just another symptom of the problem - he offers no sustainable solution - and what he does offer is incoherent and too late.

fullgrill -> elliot2511 3 Jul 2015 12:51

That would not be a bad thing, but I don't think the Euro is seen as an error or a mistake at all. As Germany has discovered, it is an extremely useful tool in assuring the triumph of greed: keeping populations poor, unemployed and fearful, so they are more willing to accept the lash of the markets and agree to bank bailouts, low wages, a diminished social safety-net, trade treaties, etc., etc.

whichone 3 Jul 2015 12:50

"Syriza's game is up. No one believes anything Alexis Tsipras says anymore"

well 1) it looks like 50% of the Greeks believe him

2) The IMF (and Merkel in leaked notes) have acknowledged that the debt is unsustainable even if Greece accept all conditions imposed by the Troika.

Varoufakis has been saying this since the start. So lets no longer pretend that this is all about getting the money back or that Greece wants to avoid its responsibility to its creditors : again will say Varoufakis has said the Greek government does not want to do this. The point is he and many other knowledgeable people (not politicians) know that it can not be paid back , but with the conditions in place to allow the economy to start to grow then Greece has a chance to pay some of it back. This is about bringing a Government to heel. I wish the Guardian , having continually reported on this crisis and knows what has been said allows a contributor to use the paper as propaganda.

And I hope that all those people who purposely said that a 'NO' vote means a no to Greece in the Euro and EU after a 'NO' result and surprise surprise Greece is still in the Euro, get thrown to the Wolves.

The same is goes with the comments about Varoufakis playing Game theory. He denied this basically saying that those who say this obviously don't know the first thing about Game Theory.

badluc TheSighingDutchman 3 Jul 2015 12:48

Genuine question: correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the electorates of Germany, Netherlands, Finland etc been consistently fed by most of their politicians (and newspapers) a completely mistaken "morality tale" about what the root causes of the problems are, blaming inefficient and corrupt governments who borrowed too much, without mentioning either the reckless lenders (mainly German, French, Dutch etc banks), were silent about the shifting of the burden of bad lending from the banks to the EU taxpayers (did they ever acknowledge that clearly?!?), describing the solution as a punitive austerity which would somehow bring moribund economies back from the abyss, etc? Politicians have a duty to be frank and sincere with their electorate, sharing with them all the relevant data they have on a given problem. If they have been feeding them misguided rhetoric, they have only themselves to blame if the chickens now come home to roost. In other words, if the electorate would now revolt against the inevitable, don't the politicians of those countries who have most strongly supported and advocated austerity have only themselves to blame?

SouthSeas 3 Jul 2015 12:48

Germany has lent 80bn to Greece to pay back loans from German banks

RudolphS 3 Jul 2015 12:47

While Verhofstadt calls for a cooling-off period he at the same time claims 'Syriza's game is up' and is urging the Greek people to vote 'yes' next sunday. With the latter he shows his true colours as just another Brussels eurocrat, and is only fuelling debate instead of cooling-off.

Dear Mr. Verhofstadt, why the hell do you think the Greek voted en masse for a party like Syriza? Because they are sick and tired of people like you.

And yes, there much more at stake than a debt. Putin must be watching this whole spectacle with total bewilderment how the EU is crippling itself from the inside.


Rainborough 3 Jul 2015 12:47

Anyone who is in danger of being impressed by conservative politician Guy Verhofstadt's perspective on Greek problems might like to bear in mknd that among his numerous other highly lucrative financial interests is his position on the board of the multi-billion Belgian investment company Sofina, whose interests include a stake in the highly controversial planned privatization of the Thessaloniki water utility.


hatewarmongers OscarD 3 Jul 2015 12:46

The neoliberal elite don't


SHappens 3 Jul 2015 12:17

In a democracy people can chose their fate by voting or through referendum. That's the way it goes but not in Europe where referendum are seen as a danger to the establishment. Tsipras, as soon as he came to power through a democratic vote was seen as a danger. He was ostracized and considered a pariah, Greece became a pariah state and they can as well die from hunger.

The EU, and institutions have behaved like the little bullies they are, just like they did with Switzerland after the vote on immigration, they threat, blackmail everyone who dare think different.

For the sake of democracy, the Greeks have to vote no, there is no other decent alternatives especially after all the bashing and disrespect they have been under. Nobody in EU and US (since they have their say in european affairs) want to see Greece walking away, nor Russia or China for that matter. But Tsipras had the opportunity to see where his real allies stand, and it is not within Europe. He might not forget this in the future.


mfederighi 3 Jul 2015 12:09

You are entirely right in suggesting that the only sustainable solution is a far-reaching reform programme for the Greek state and the reek economy. However, when you say that:

Greece's people must be at the centre of such a settlement. They did not cause this crisis and remain the victims of successive Greek governments, who have protected vested interests and the Greek clientelist system at their expense.

You seem to think that vested interest and the reek clientelist system are distinct from the Greek people. There is, I am afraid, a substantial overlap - that is, quite a few people benefit from clientelism and are part of vested interests. Not recognising this is disingenuous.

After all, corrupt and inefficient governments have been elected again and again - by whom?

jimmywalter 3 Jul 2015 12:06

The Banks solution is no solution - it means poverty and no taxes to pay to repay. The Banks want a Treaty of Versailles. We all know of a certain Austrian that rose up to end the German economic collapse. We all know how that ended. I don't want that again. People revolt over economics. Spain, Italy, and Greece have huge numbers of unemployeed who did nothing to create this crisis. The Banks did. Who should pay? Anyway, leave the Euro, stay in the EU!

[Jul 02, 2015]Global Deaths in Conflict Since the Year 1400

"...As U.S.-operated drones rain down Hellfire (missiles) on brown-skinned folks not named Smith, Jones or Thomas, you have to grasp that this too will change. How long can that technology remain under the exclusive control and purview of the US military "intelligence"?! Maybe a decade, at most? Then what shall those military death figures look like?
.
During the post-Berlin Wall "peace dividend" era, our country has spent infinitely more blood, treasure and prestige on advancing our ability to kill, destroy and incarcerate lives than we have in saving and improving lives. IMHO, it is nearly inevitable that this misspent era will come home to roost in unpredictable ways over the next 20-30 years. We can always pivot and change course, but that may have little or no bearing on what others will do."
June 30, 2015 | ritholtz.com

Source: Our World In Data

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

9 Responses to "Global Deaths in Conflict Since the Year 1400"

CD4P says:

June 30, 2015 at 7:45 pm

Saw much of the "Apocalypse WWI" show on The American Heroes Channel recently. 10 million soldiers killed, 20 million wounded. And then there was the major flu influenza which killed another 30 million in 1918 around the world.

RiverboatGambler says:

June 30, 2015 at 7:50 pm

The most interesting thing here is not that we are on all time lows but rather the length of the current downtrend.

We are now going on 70 years of downtrend post WWII. The next closest looks like about 40 years from 1640 – 1680.

What has fundamentally changed that could make this not be an outlier? Lifespan?

Very interesting in the context of cycle theories like The Fourth Turning.

kaleberg says:

    June 30, 2015 at 11:52 pm

    RiverboatGambler: The Thirty Year's War ended in 1648. My guess is that everyone was so disgusted with the war and its effects that it took a while to work up steam for the next fight. Until fairly late in the 20th century you'd hear Germans say that something in miserable shape "was just something the Swedes left." The war was ended when Queen Christina in Sweden decided it had gone on long enough. She later abdicated and retired to the Vatican, probably concerned for her sole.

    World Wars I and II were pretty horrific. The Europeans were pretty damned sick of war by 1945. The whole EU, political and economic flow from the European revulsion with those two wars.

formerlawyer says:

bear_in_mind says:

    July 2, 2015 at 12:45 am

    Dear Riverboat Gambler: You might want to pull out a magnifying glass because the military deaths are climbing sharply and that's with the latest, greatest (pretty incredible really) medical advances saving lives that would have been lost just a decade ago. Between that and the apparent secular nature of these trends seem to fly squarely in the face of your rose-colored perspective. Care to expound?

Lyle says:

June 30, 2015 at 11:02 pm

Note that the web site that this chart comes from has many other interesting charts Here is a link to the root of the site: http://ourworldindata.org/ It provides the charts bundled into a set of presentations. Including ones looking at longer term issues of violet death rates and the like.

Whammer says:

July 1, 2015 at 1:42 am

Interesting how the civilian death rate has dropped to the point where it is minimal compared to the military death rate.

NoKidding says:

July 1, 2015 at 8:51 am

Nuclear weapons, the easy way to destroy far away enemies, has been avoided because the various costs are so very high.

Large scale conventional bombing suffers from inefficiency and bad optics.

Targeted drone assualts make killing foreigners efficient and inexpensive. For example, one human in the Western world kills one or more specific humans in the not-Western world from across the globe using radio controlled weapons. No radiation, no flattened obstetricians, increasing efficiency, and falling cost of technology.

In combination with recent federalization of decision making power, particularly domestic spying and the non-criminalization of the US government killing its own wayward overseas citizens, I see a wonderous new era on the horizon.

bear_in_mind says:

    July 2, 2015 at 1:44 am

    @nokidding: Your thoughts on the deterrent power associated with nuclear weapons assumes a fairly rational world populated with fairly rational homo sapien actors. Sounds like science-fiction to my eyes and ears. I'd welcome you to conduct a 5-10 minute foray using Google or DuckDuckGo on the topic of nuclear near-misses, accidents, live (untriggered) nuclear warheads falling from military aircraft, and take your thesis for another spin.

    As U.S.-operated drones rain down Hellfire (missiles) on brown-skinned folks not named Smith, Jones or Thomas, you have to grasp that this too will change. How long can that technology remain under the exclusive control and purview of the US military "intelligence"?! Maybe a decade, at most? Then what shall those military death figures look like?

    During the post-Berlin Wall "peace dividend" era, our country has spent infinitely more blood, treasure and prestige on advancing our ability to kill, destroy and incarcerate lives than we have in saving and improving lives. IMHO, it is nearly inevitable that this misspent era will come home to roost in unpredictable ways over the next 20-30 years. We can always pivot and change course, but that may have little or no bearing on what others will do.

[Jul 01, 2015] A Short History: The Neocon Clean Break Grand Design The Regime Change Disasters It Has Fostered

zerohedge.com

Submitted by Dan Sanchez via AntiWar.com,

To understand today's crises in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere, one must grasp their shared Lebanese connection. This assertion may seem odd. After all, what is the big deal about Lebanon? That little country hasn't had top headlines since Israel deigned to bomb and invade it in 2006. Yet, to a large extent, the roots of the bloody tangle now enmeshing the Middle East lie in Lebanon: or to be more precise, in the Lebanon policy of Israel.

Rewind to the era before the War on Terror. In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's "dovish" Prime Minister, was assassinated by a right-wing zealot. This precipitated an early election in which Rabin's Labor Party was defeated by the ultra-hawkish Likud, lifting hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu to his first Premiership in 1996.

That year, an elite study group produced a policy document for the incipient administration titled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." The membership of the Clean Break study group is highly significant, as it included American neoconservatives who would later hold high offices in the Bush Administration and play driving roles in its Middle East policy.

"A Clean Break" advised that the new Likud administration adopt a "shake it off" attitude toward the policy of the old Labor administration which, as the authors claimed, assumed national "exhaustion" and allowed national "retreat." This was the "clean break" from the past that "A Clean Break" envisioned. Regarding Israel's international policy, this meant:

"…a clean break from the slogan, 'comprehensive peace' to a traditional concept of strategy based on balance of power."

Pursuit of comprehensive peace with all of Israel's neighbors was to be abandoned for selective peace with some neighbors (namely Jordan and Turkey) and implacable antagonism toward others (namely Iraq, Syria, and Iran). The weight of its strategic allies would tip the balance of power in favor of Israel, which could then use that leverage to topple the regimes of its strategic adversaries by using covertly managed "proxy forces" and "the principle of preemption." Through such a "redrawing of the map of the Middle East," Israel will "shape the regional environment," and thus, "Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them."

"A Clean Break" was to Israel (and ultimately to the US) what Otto von Bismarck's "Blood and Iron" speech was to Germany. As he set the German Empire on a warpath that would ultimately set Europe ablaze, Bismarck said:

"Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided?-?that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849?-?but by iron and blood."

Before setting Israel and the US on a warpath that would ultimately set the Middle East ablaze, the Clean Break authors were basically saying: Not through peace accords will the great questions of the day be decided?-?that was the great mistake of 1978 (at Camp David) and 1993 (at Oslo)?-?but by "divide and conquer" and regime change. By wars both aggressive ("preemptive") and "dirty" (covert and proxy).


"A Clean Break" slated Saddam Hussein's Iraq as first up for regime change. This is highly significant, especially since several members of the Clean Break study group played decisive roles in steering and deceiving the United States into invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam seven years later.

Perle-Richard-AEI

The Clean Break study group's leader, Richard Perle, led the call for Iraqi regime change beginning in the 90s from his perch at the Project for a New American Century and other neocon think tanks. And while serving as chairman of a high level Pentagon advisory committee, Perle helped coordinate the neoconservative takeover of foreign policy in the Bush administration and the final push for war in Iraq.

douglas_feith

Another Clean Breaker, Douglas Feith, was a Perle protege and a key player in that neocon coup. After 9/11, as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Feith created two secret Pentagon offices tasked with cherry-picking, distorting, and repackaging CIA and Pentagon intelligence to help make the case for war.

Feith's "Office of Special Plans" manipulated intelligence to promote the falsehood that Saddam had a secret weapons of mass destruction program that posed an imminent chemical, biological, and even nuclear threat. This lie was the main justification used by the Bush administration for the Iraq War.

Feith's "Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group" trawled through the CIA's intelligence trash to stitch together far-fetched conspiracy theories linking Saddam Hussein's Iraq with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, among other bizarre pairings. Perle put the Group into contact with Ahmed Chalabi, a dodgy anti-Saddam Iraqi exile who would spin even more yarn of this sort.

news-graphics-2007-_647148a

Much of the Group's grunt work was performed by David Wurmser, another Perle protege and the primary author of "A Clean Break." Wurmser would go on to serve as an advisor to two key Iraq War proponents in the Bush administration: John Bolton at the State Department and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The foregone conclusions generated by these Clean Breaker-led projects faced angry but ineffectual resistance from the Intelligence Community, and are now widely considered scandalously discredited. But they succeeded in helping, perhaps decisively, to overcome both bureaucratic and public resistance to the march to war.

On the second night of war against Iraq, bombs fall on government buildings located in the heart of Baghdad along the Tigris River.  Multiple bombs left several buildings in flames and others completely destroyed.

The Iraq War that followed put the Clean Break into action by grafting it onto America. The War accomplished the Clean Break objective of regime change in Iraq, thus beginning the "redrawing of the map of the Middle East." And the attendant "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive war accomplished the Clean Break objective of "reestablishing the principle of preemption"


But why did the Netanyahu/Bush Clean Breakers want to regime change Iraq in the first place? While reference is often made to "A Clean Break" as a prologue to the Iraq War, it is often forgotten that the document proposed regime change in Iraq primarily as a "means" of "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." Overthrowing Saddam in Iraq was merely a stepping stone to "foiling" and ultimately overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria. As Pat Buchanan put it:

"In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel's enemy remains Syria, but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad."

Exactly how this was to work is baffling. As the document admitted, although both were Baathist regimes, Assad and Saddam were far more enemies than allies. "A Clean Break" floated a convoluted pipe dream involving a restored Hashemite monarchy in Iraq (the same US-backed, pro-Israel dynasty that rules Jordan) using its sway over an Iraqi cleric to turn his co-religionists in Syria against Assad. Instead, the neocons ended up settling for a different pipe(line) dream, sold to them by that con-man Chalabi, involving a pro-Israel, Chalabi-dominated Iraq building a pipeline from Mosul to Haifa. One only wonders why he didn't sweeten the deal by including the Brooklyn Bridge in the sale.

As incoherent as it may have been, getting at Syria through Iraq is what the neocons wanted. And this is also highly significant for us today, because the US has now fully embraced the objective of regime change in Syria, even with Barack Obama inhabiting the White House instead of George W. Bush.

Washington is pursuing that objective by partnering with Turkey, Jordan, and the Gulf States in supporting the anti-Assad insurgency in Syria's bloody civil war, and thereby majorly abetting the bin Ladenites (Syrian Al Qaeda and ISIS) leading that insurgency. Obama has virtually become an honorary Clean Breaker by pursuing a Clean Break objective ("rolling back Syria") using Clean Break strategy ("balance of power" alliances with select Muslim states) and Clean Break tactics (a covert and proxy "dirty war"). Of course the neocons are the loudest voices calling for the continuance and escalation of this policy. And Israel is even directly involving itself by providing medical assistance to Syrian insurgents, including Al Qaeda fighters.


Another target identified by "A Clean Break" was Iran. This is highly significant, since while the neocons were still riding high in the Bush administration's saddle, they came within an inch of launching a US war on Iran over yet another manufactured and phony WMD crisis. While the Obama administration seems on the verge of finalizing a nuclear/peace deal with the Iranian government in Tehran, the neocons and Netanyahu himself (now Prime Minister once again) have pulled out all the stops to scupper it and put the US and Iran back on a collision course.

The neocons are also championing ongoing American support for Saudi Arabia's brutal war in Yemen to restore that country's US-backed former dictator. Simply because the "Houthi" rebels that overthrew him and took the capital city of Sanaa are Shiites, they are assumed to be a proxy of the Shiite Iranians, and so this is seen by neocons and Saudi theocons alike as a war against Iranian expansion.

Baghdad is a pit stop on the road to Damascus, and Sanaa is a pit stop on the road to Tehran. But, according to the Clean Breakers, Damascus and Tehran are themselves merely pit stops on the road to Beirut.

According to "A Clean Break," Israel's main beef with Assad is that:

"Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil."

And its great grief with the Ayatollah is that Iran, like Syria, is one of the:

"…principal agents of aggression in Lebanon…"


All regime change roads lead to Lebanon, it would seem. So this brings us back to our original question. What is the big deal about Lebanon?

The answer to this question goes back to Israel's very beginnings. Its Zionist founding fathers established the bulk of Israel's territory by dispossessing and ethnically cleansing three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs in 1948. Hundreds of thousands of these were driven (sometimes literally in trucks, sometimes force marched with gunshots fired over their heads) into Lebanon, where they were gathered in miserable refugee camps.

In Lebanon the Palestinians who had fled suffered an apartheid state almost as rigid as the one Israel imposed on those who stayed behind, because the dominant Maronite Christians there were so protective of their political and economic privileges in Lebanon's confessional system.

In a 1967 war of aggression, Israel conquered the rest of formerly-British Palestine, annexing the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and placing the Palestinians there (many of whom fled there seeking refuge after their homes were taken by the Israelis in 1948) under a brutal, permanent military occupation characterized by continuing dispossession and punctuated by paroxysms of mass murder.

This compounding of their tragedy drove the Palestinians to despair and radicalization, and they subsequently lifted Yasser Arafat and his fedayeen (guerrilla) movement to the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), then headquartered in Jordan.

When the king of Jordan massacred and drove out the PLO, Arafat and the remaining members relocated to Lebanon. There they waged cross-border guerrilla warfare to try to drive Israel out of the occupied territories. The PLO drew heavily from the refugee camps in Lebanon for recruits.

This drew Israel deeply into Lebanese affairs. In 1976, Israel started militarily supporting the Maronite Christians, helping to fuel a sectarian civil war that had recently begun and would rage until 1990. That same year, Syrian forces entered Lebanon, partook in the war, and began a military occupation of the country.

In 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon to drive the PLO back and to recruit a proxy army called the "South Lebanon Army" (SLA).

1101820816_400

In 1982 Israel launched a full scale war in Lebanon, fighting both Syria and the PLO. Osama bin Laden later claimed that it was seeing the wreckage of tall buildings in Beirut toppled by Israel's "total war" tactics that inspired him to destroy American buildings like the Twin Towers.

In this war, Israel tried to install a group of Christian Fascists called the Phalange in power over Lebanon. This failed when the new Phalangist ruler was assassinated. As a reprisal, the Phalange perpetrated, with Israeli connivance, the massacre of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese Shiites. (See Murray Rothbard's moving contemporary coverage of the atrocity.)

60

Israel's 1982 war succeeded in driving the PLO out of Lebanon, although not in destroying it. And of course hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees still linger in Lebanon's camps, yearning for their right of return: a fact that cannot have escaped Israel's notice.

The Lebanese Shiites were either ambivalent or welcoming toward being rid of the PLO. But Israel rapidly squandered whatever patience the Shiites had for it by brutally occupying southern Lebanon for years. This led to the creation of Hezbollah, a Shiite militia not particularly concerned with the plight of the Sunni Palestinian refugees, but staunchly dedicated to driving Israel and its proxies (the SLA) completely out of Lebanon.

Aided by Syria and Iran, though not nearly to the extent Israel would have us believe, Hezbollah became the chief defensive force directly frustrating Israel's efforts to dominate and exploit its northern neighbor. In 1993 and again in 1996 (the year of "A Clean Break"), Israel launched still more major military operations in Lebanon, chiefly against Hezbollah, but also bombing Lebanon's general population and infrastructure, trying to use terrorism to motivate the people and the central government to crack down on Hezbollah.

This is the context of "A Clean Break": Israel's obsession with crushing Hezbollah and dominating Lebanon, even if it means turning most of the Middle East upside down (regime changing Syria, Iran, and Iraq) to do it.


9/11 paved the way for realizing the Clean Break, using the United States as a gigantic proxy, thanks to the Israel Lobby's massive influence in Congress and the neocons' newly won dominance in the Bush Administration.

Much to their chagrin, however, its first phase (the Iraq War) did not turn out so well for the Clean Breakers. The blundering American grunts ended up installing the most vehemently pro-Iran Shiite faction in power in Baghdad, and now Iranian troops are even stationed and fighting inside Iraq. Oops. And as it turns out, Chalabi may have been an Iranian agent all along. (But don't worry, Mr. Perle, I'm sure he'll eventually come through with that pipeline.)

This disastrous outcome has given both Israel and Saudi Arabia nightmares about an emerging "Shia Crescent" arcing from Iran through Iraq into Syria. And now the new Shiite "star" in Yemen completes this menacing "Star and Crescent" picture. The fears of the Sunni Saudis are partially based on sectarianism. But what Israel sees in this picture is a huge potential regional support network for its nemesis Hezbollah.

060731_DOMCNNL1R1

Israel would have none of it. In 2006, it launched its second full scale war in Lebanon, only to be driven back once again by that damned Hezbollah. It was time to start thinking big and regional again. As mentioned above, the Bush war on Iran didn't pan out. (This was largely because the CIA got its revenge on the neocons by releasing a report stating plainly that Iran was not anything close to a nuclear threat.) So instead the neocons and the Saudis drew the US into what Seymour Hersh called "the Redirection" in 2007, which involved clandestine "dirty war" support for Sunni jihadists to counter Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.

When the 2011 Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings spread to Syria, the Redirection was put into overdrive. The subsequent US-led dirty war discussed above had the added bonus of drawing Hezbollah into the bloody quagmire to try to save Assad, whose regime now finally seems on the verge of collapse.

The Clean Break is back, baby! Assad is going, Saddam is gone, and who knows: the Ayatollah may never get his nuclear deal anyway. But most importantly for "securing the realm," Hezbollah is on the ropes.

shocking-images-iraq-war-001 3.23.13

And so what if the Clean Break was rather messy and broke so many bodies and buildings along the way? Maybe it's like what Lenin said about omelets and eggs: you just can't make a Clean Break without breaking a few million Arabs and a few thousand Americans. And what about all those fanatics now running rampant throughout large swaths of the world thanks to the Clean Break wars, mass-executing Muslim "apostates" and Christian "infidels" and carrying out terrorist attacks on westerners? Again, the Clean Breakers must remind themselves, keep your eye on the omelet and forget the eggs.

Well, dear reader, you and I are the eggs. And if we don't want to see our world broken any further by the imperial clique of murderers in Washington for the sake of the petty regional ambitions of a tiny clique of murderers in Tel Aviv, we must insist on American politics making a clean break from the neocons, and US foreign policy making a clean break from Israel.

[Jun 29, 2015]Could Armenia Be The Next Ukraine

Jun 29, 2015 | finance.yahoo.com

...As in other former Soviet countries, the energy behemoth ENA remains a heavily mismanaged enterprise. This was confirmed by a recent probe, in which the energy regulator has found that suppliers and traders often use shady intermediaries to push energy managers to inflate procurement costs or steal electricity. This has led to more than EUR 70 million in losses for the company in just the last three years, according to the energy ministry.

The company's overall debt has reached $250 million. Initially, ENA has suggested a 40 percent increase in electricity tariffs in order to cover its obligations. The government of the pro-Russian president Serge Sargsyan and the quasi-independent energy regulator initially refused but ultimately had to accept a 16.7 percent rise after a series of high-level visits from Moscow. Although the government has confirmed the results of the regulator's investigation, it has decided to look the other way.

Even after the hike, power tariffs would still be just EUR 0.11 cents/kWh, or about half of what average EU households pay. At purchasing power parity, though, their impact on household budgets is much greater. According to a World Bank study, Armenians spend around 8% of their income on energy use, while consuming three times less energy per capita than people in Central and Eastern Europe, also a region where energy poverty is a widespread phenomenon.

In addition, if accepted, this would be the third consecutive power price hike in two years at a time when the economy is facing slow growth and high unemployment rate. The Armenian economy, which is heavily dependent on Russia, has faced a major downturn since the start of economic troubles for its powerful neighbor to the north. Russia is the key destination for labor migrants, who contributed more than 20% of the national income in the form of remittances in 2013 and 11 percent in 2014. In the first five months of 2015, cash transfers have halved.

The economic link with Russia is most profound in the energy sector. Apart from ENA, the Russian state, through Gazprom, owns 100 percent of the country's wholesale gas supplying company. The bulk of FDI inflows also have Russian origin, and 40 percent of them are targeting the energy sector.

In addition, Armenia imports almost all of its gas from Russia and natural gas imports comprise around 80 percent of all energy imports. Furthermore, 60 percent of the country's total primary energy supply is derived from natural gas, which is responsible for the majority of residential energy use, especially in big cities.

However, the increase in gas import prices in 2010 and the subsequent 40 percent hike in household gas tariffs pushed some urban residents to switch from natural gas to electricity for heating, which became comparatively cheaper (about one-fifth of Armenia's electricity is generated from natural gas, with the rest supplied by a number of hydro power plants and a nuclear power plant, which is currently being modernized). Hence, when power prices began to increase, the outrage in the capital, Yerevan, was easy to understand.

According to the protest leaders, the rallies are not anti-Russian in nature and the main demand of the people is a reversal to the government's power price decision. President Sargsyan seemed have backed down after he told senior officials on 26 June that the government will cover the difference between the old and the new price with budget subsidies until the end of a comprehensive audit of the ENA's activities.

Protesters, however, seem determined to stay on the streets. Deep-seated mistrust in the government's ability to implement reforms could trigger an impulse for a regime change. This is the biggest fear in Moscow, which sees the current Armenian government as an important ally in its natural backyard. Russia has been able to preserve its influence in the small Caucasian state by expanding its control over key economic sectors. This was done by recruiting senior government officials, who used Russia's influence to limit outside competition and preserve the dominant position of Russian companies in the energy sector.

If there is a change of guard in Yerevan, the established connections that have served Moscow so well, could crumble. Not surprisingly, similar to the aftermath of Ukraine's Maidan rally in early 2014, Moscow's propaganda has presented the street protests in Yerevan as a Western plot to contain Russia's influence.

In a sign of full support, Moscow provided the government with $200 million in military aid on 26 June. Armenia relies for its security on the 3,000 Russian troops stationed in the country, which have so far deterred efforts by Azerbaijan to try to reclaim the separatist republic of Nagorno Karabakh, occupied by Armenia during a bloody five-year war in the early 1990s.

Paradoxically, Russia's attempts to secure its influence and, more importantly, its energy interests in the neighborhood could backfire. While Armenian demonstrators have largely limited, domestic aims, the Russian insistence on turning the protests into an East-West clash could incite protesters to demand that the Armenian government take a sharp turn away from Moscow.

Faced with such a choice, president Sargsyan might have to abandon his close ties with Kremlin in an attempt to stay in power. This is likely to lead to economic retaliation from Russia such as gas supply cuts. The alternative, though, may be to follow the path of Ukraine's former president, Victor Yanukovych.

By Martin Vladimirov for Oilprice.com

[Jun 28, 2015] US Department of Imperial Expansion

Deeper down the rabbit hole of US-backed color revolutions.
by Tony Cartalucci

Believe it or not, the US State Department's mission statement actually says the following:

"Advance freedom for the benefit of the American people and the international community by helping to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world composed of well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people, reduce widespread poverty, and act responsibly within the international system."

A far and treasonous cry from the original purpose of the State Department - which was to maintain communications and formal relations with foreign countries - and a radical departure from historical norms that have defined foreign ministries throughout the world, it could just as well now be called the "Department of Imperial Expansion." Because indeed, that is its primary purpose now, the expansion of Anglo-American corporate hegemony worldwide under the guise of "democracy" and "human rights."

That a US government department should state its goal as to build a world of "well-governed states" within the "international system" betrays not only America's sovereignty but the sovereignty of all nations entangled by this offensive mission statement and its execution.

Image: While the US State Department's mission statement sounds benign or even progressive, when the term "international system" or "world order" is used, it is referring to a concept commonly referred to by the actual policy makers that hand politicians their talking points, that involves modern day empire. Kagan's quote came from a 1997 policy paper describing a policy to contain China with.

....


The illegitimacy of the current US State Department fits in well with the overall Constitution-circumventing empire that the American Republic has degenerated into. The current Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, gives a daily affirmation of this illegitimacy every time she bellies up to the podium to make a statement.

Recently she issued a dangerously irresponsible "warning" to Venezuela and Bolivia regarding their stately relations with Iran. While America has the right to mediate its own associations with foreign nations, one is confounded trying to understand what gives America the right to dictate such associations to other sovereign nations. Of course, the self-declared imperial mandate the US State Department bestowed upon itself brings such "warnings" into perspective with the realization that the globalists view no nation as sovereign and all nations beholden to their unipolar "international system."

It's hard to deny the US State Department is not behind the
"color revolutions" sweeping the world when the Secretary of
State herself phones in during the youth movement confabs
her department sponsors on a yearly basis.

If only the US State Department's meddling was confined to hubris-filled statements given behind podiums attempting to fulfill outlandish mission statements, we could all rest easier. However, the US State Department actively bolsters its meddling rhetoric with very real measures. The centerpiece of this meddling is the vast and ever-expanding network being built to recruit, train, and support various "color revolutions" worldwide. While the corporate owned media attempts to portray the various revolutions consuming Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and now Northern Africa and the Middle East as indigenous, spontaneous, and organic, the reality is that these protesters represent what may be considered a "fifth-branch" of US power projection.

CANVAS: Freedom House, IRI, Soros funded Serbian color revolution
college behind the Orange, Rose, Tunisian, Burmese, and Egyptian protests
and has trained protesters from 50 other countries.


As with the army and CIA that fulfilled this role before, the US State Department's "fifth-branch" runs a recruiting and coordinating center known as the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM). Hardly a secretive operation, its website, Movements.org proudly lists the details of its annual summits which began in 2008 and featured astro-turf cannon fodder from Venezuela to Iran, and even the April 6 Youth Movement from Egypt. The summits, activities, and coordination AYM provides is but a nexus. Other training arms include the US created and funded CANVAS of Serbia, which in turn trained color-coup leaders from the Ukraine and Georgia, to Tunisia and Egypt, including the previously mentioned April 6 Movement. There is also the Albert Einstein Institute which produced the very curriculum and techniques employed by CANVAS.

2008 New York City Summit (included Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement)
2009 Mexico City Summit
2010 London Summit

As previously noted, these organizations are now retroactively trying to obfuscate their connections to the State Department and the Fortune 500 corporations that use them to achieve their goals of expansion overseas. CANVAS has renamed and moved their list of supporters and partners while AYM has oafishly changed their "partnerships" to "past partnerships."

Before & After: Oafish attempts to downplay US State Department's extra-legal
meddling and subterfuge in foreign affairs. Other attempts are covered here.

Funding all of this is the tax payers' money funneled through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House. George Soros' Open Society foundation also promotes various NGOs which in turn support the revolutionary rabble on the ground. In Egypt, after the State Department's youth brigades played their role, Soros and NED funded NGOs began work on drafting Egypt's new constitution.

It should be noted that while George Soros is portrayed as being "left," and the overall function of these pro-democracy, pro-human rights organizations appears to be "left-leaning," a vast number of notorious "Neo-Cons" also constitute the commanding ranks and determine the overall agenda of this color revolution army.

Then there are legislative acts of Congress that overtly fund the subversive objectives of the US State Department. In support of regime change in Iran, the Iran Freedom and Support Act was passed in 2006. More recently in 2011, to see the US-staged color revolution in Egypt through to the end, money was appropriated to "support" favored Egyptian opposition groups ahead of national elections.

Then of course there is the State Department's propaganda machines. While organizations like NED and Freedom House produce volumes of talking points in support for their various on-going operations, the specific outlets currently used by the State Department fall under the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). They include Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Alhurra, and Radio Sawa. Interestingly enough, the current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sits on the board of governors herself, along side a shameful collection of representatives from the Fortune 500, the corporate owned media, and various agencies within the US government.

Hillary Clinton: color revolutionary field marshal & propagandist,
two current roles that defy her duties as Secretary of State in any
rational sense or interpretation.


Judging from Radio Free Europe's latest headlines, such as "Lieberman: The West's Policy Toward Belarus Has 'Failed Miserably' " and "Azerbaijani Youth Activist 'Jailed For One Month,'" it appears that hope is still pinned on inciting color revolutions in Belarus and Azerbaijan to continue on with NATO's creep and the encirclement of Russia. Belarus in particular was recently one of the subjects covered at the Globsec 2011 conference, where it was considered a threat to both the EU and NATO, having turned down NATO in favor of closer ties with Moscow.

Getting back to Hillary Clinton's illegitimate threat regarding Venezuela's associations with Iran, no one should be surprised to find out an extensive effort to foment a color revolution to oust Hugo Chavez has been long underway by AYM, Freedom House, NED, and the rest of this "fifth-branch" of globalist power projection. In fact, Hugo Chavez had already weathered an attempted military coup overtly orchestrated by the United States under Bush in 2002.

Upon digging into the characters behind Chavez' ousting in 2002, it
appears that this documentary sorely understates US involvement.

The same forces of corporatism, privatization, and free-trade that led the 2002 coup against Chavez are trying to gain ground once again. Under the leadership of Harvard trained globalist minion Leopoldo Lopez, witless youth are taking the place of 2002's generals and tank columns in an attempt to match globalist minion Mohamed ElBaradei's success in Egypt.

Unsurprisingly, the US State Department's AYM is pro-Venezuelan opposition, and describes in great detail their campaign to "educate" the youth and get them politically active. Dismayed by Chavez' moves to consolidate his power and strangely repulsed by his "rule by decree," -something that Washington itself has set the standard for- AYM laments over the difficulties their meddling "civil society" faces.

Chavez' government recognized the US State Department's meddling recently in regards to a student hunger strike and the US's insistence that the Inter-American Human Rights Commission be allowed to "inspect" alleged violations under the Chavez government. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro even went as far as saying, "It looks like they (U.S.) want to start a virtual Egypt."

The "Fifth-Branch" Invasion: Click for larger image.


Understanding this "fifth-branch" invasion of astro-turf cannon fodder and the role it is playing in overturning foreign governments and despoiling nation sovereignty on a global scale is an essential step in ceasing the Anglo-American imperial machine. And of course, as always, boycotting and replacing the corporations behind the creation and expansion of these color-revolutions hinders not only the spread of their empire overseas, but releases the stranglehold of dominion they possess at home in the United States. Perhaps then the US State Department can once again go back to representing the American Republic and its people to the rest of the world as a responsible nation that respects real human rights and sovereignty both at home and abroad.

Editor's Note: This article has been edited and updated October 26, 2012.

[Jun 28, 2015] John McCain The Russia-Ukraine cease-fire is a fiction

Looks like there was no US war or color revolution Senator McCain did not like. Doe he tries to position himself to the right of Dick Cheney ;-), I like his statement that "might does not make right":
"...We face the reality of a challenge that many assumed was resigned to the history books: a strong, militarily capable state that is hostile to our interests and our values and seeks to overturn the rules-based international order that American leaders of both parties have sought to maintain since World War II. Among the core principles of that order is the conviction that might does not make right, that the strong should not be allowed to dominate the weak and that wars of aggression should be relegated to the bloody past. "
What a bloody hypocrite he is... He probably forgot Vietnam, Chili, Nicaragua, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria military adventures due to old age senility. And it was actually State Department and personally Victoria Nuland of "nulnadgate (aka F*ck EU") fame, who was the key instigator of civil war in Ukraine. So this is a classic "The pot calling the kettle black" situation.
Jun 28, 2015 | The Washington Post

Last weekend, I traveled with Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to eastern Ukraine to meet with the courageous men and women fighting there for their country's freedom and future. I arrived on a solemn day as Ukrainian volunteers grieved the loss of two young comrades killed by Russian artillery the day before. They had lost another comrade a few days before that, and four more the previous week. Their message to me was clear: The cease-fire with Russia is fiction, and U.S. assistance is vital to deterring further Russian aggression.

Along the front lines, separatist forces backed by Russia violate the cease-fire every day with heavy artillery barrages and tank attacks. Gunbattles are a daily routine, and communities at the front bear the brunt of constant sniper fire and nightly skirmishes.

Yet while these low-level cease-fire violations have occurred regularly since the Minsk agreement was signed in February, Ukrainian battalion commanders said the number of Grad rocket strikes and incidents of intense artillery shelling are increasing. Their reports suggest that the separatists have moved their heavy weapons and equipment back to the front lines hoping to escalate the situation. So far, Ukrainian armed forces supported by volunteer battalions have been able to hold their ground, and they have done so largely without the support of Ukrainian artillery and tanks that have been pulled back from the front as stipulated by the Minsk agreement. How long can we expect these brave Ukrainians to abide by an agreement that Russia has clearly ignored?

It is time that the United States and our European allies recognize the failure of the Minsk agreement and respond with more than empty rhetoric. Ukraine's leaders describe Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy as a game of "Pac-Man" - taking bite after bite out of Ukraine in small enough portions that it does not trigger a large-scale international response. But at this point it should be clear to all that Putin does not want a diplomatic solution to the conflict. He wants to dominate Ukraine, along with Russia's other neighbors.

No one in the West wants a return to the Cold War. But we must recognize that we are confronting a Russian ruler who seeks exactly that. It is time for U.S. strategy to adjust to the reality of a revanchist Russia with a modernized military that is willing to use force not as a last resort, but as a primary tool to achieve its neo-imperial objectives. We must do more to deter Russia by increasing the military costs of its aggression, starting with the immediate provision of the defensive weapons and other assistance the Ukrainians desperately need.

President Obama has wrongly argued that providing Ukraine with the assistance and equipment it needs to defend itself would only provoke Russia. Putin needed no provocation to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea. Rather, it is the weakness of the collective U.S. and European response that provokes the very aggression we seek to avoid. Of course, there is no military solution in Ukraine, but there is a clear military dimension to achieving a political solution. If Ukrainians are given the assistance they need and the military cost is raised for the Russian forces that have invaded their country, Putin will be forced to determine how long he can sustain a war he tells his people is not happening.

I urge anyone who sees Ukraine's fight against a more advanced Russian military as hopeless to travel to meet those fighting and dying to protect their homeland. These men and women have not backed down, and they will continue to fight for their country with or without the U.S. support they need and deserve.

During my trip, the Ukrainians never asked for the United States to send troops to do their fighting. Ukrainians only hope that the United States will once again open the arsenal of democracy that has allowed free people to defend themselves so many times before.

How we respond to Putin's brazen aggression will have repercussions far beyond Ukraine. We face the reality of a challenge that many assumed was resigned to the history books: a strong, militarily capable state that is hostile to our interests and our values and seeks to overturn the rules-based international order that American leaders of both parties have sought to maintain since World War II. Among the core principles of that order is the conviction that might does not make right, that the strong should not be allowed to dominate the weak and that wars of aggression should be relegated to the bloody past.

Around the world, friend and foe alike are watching to see whether the United States will once again summon its power and influence to defend the international system that has kept the peace for decades. We must not fail this test.

[Jun 28, 2015] Fuck the US Imperialism -- Top German Politician Blasts Nuland Carter

Jun 28, 2015 | Zero Hedge

With intra-Europe relations hitting a new all-time low; and, having already been busted spying on Merkel, Obama got caught with his hand in Hollande's cookie jar this week, the following exultation from one of Germany's top politicians will hardly help Washington-Brussells relations. As Russia Insider notes, Oskar Lafontaine is a major force in German politics so it caught people's attention when he excoriated Ash Carter and Victoria Nuland on his Facebook page yesterday... "Nuland says 'F*ck the EU'. We need need an EU foreign policy that stops warmongering US imperialism... F*ck US imperialism!"

Here is the Facebook post (in German):

Lafontaine has been an outsized figure in German politics since the mid-70s. He was chairman of the SPD (one of Germany's two main parties) for four years, the SPD's candidate for chancellor in 1990, minister of finance for two years, and then chairman of the Left party in the 2000s. He is married to Sarah Wagenknecht, political heavyweight, who is currently co-chairman of Left party.

Lafontaine's outburst came a day after his wife, Sarah Wagenknecht, blasted Merkel's Russia policy in an interview on RT.

Here is the full translation of the post:

"The US 'Defense' secretary, i.e., war minister is in Berlin. He called on Europe to counter Russian 'aggression'. But in fact, it is US aggression which Europeans should be opposing.

"The Grandmaster of US diplomacy, George Kennan described the eastward expansion of NATO as the biggest US foreign policy mistake since WW2, because it will lead to a new cold war.

"The US diplomat Victoria Nuland said we have spent $5 billion to destabilize the Ukraine. They stoke the flames ever higher, and Europe pays for it with lower trade and lost jobs.

"Nuland says 'F*ck the EU'. We need need an EU foreign policy that stops warmongering US imperialism.

"F*ck US imperialism!"

* * *

When he comes out swinging this way, you know something is changing.

* * *

America - making friends and influencing people for 238 years...

remain calm

I see the CIA creating a little muslim terrorism in Europe to teach them the meaning of respect.

BlowsAgainstthe...

"But in fact, it is US aggression which Europeans should be opposing."

So good, it should be required reading . . .

"Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault

The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin"

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukrain...

Latina Lover

To date, the USSA adventurism in the Ukraine has hurt Germany financially and politically, with more losses to follow.

Instead of integrating more closely with Russia, and becoming a key part of the New Silk Road, Germany is blocked by the USSA, against her better interests. The USSA is creating a new berlin style wall of lies and propaganda between Russia and Germany claiming that Russia plans to invade the baltics, poland, moldova, blah, blah, blah.

Fortunately, most Germans are not anti intellectuals, and see through the lies, unlike the average american shlub (30% of whom cannot name the current VP but know all of the names of the Kardashians). Eventually, Merkel will get the boot, and be replaced by a more businesslike leader.

Not Too Important

30% is pretty generous, don't you think? More like 3%.

Even an aborigine in the middle of Africa with a cell phone knows more about the world than 97% of Americans.

Tall Tom

Fuck American Imperialism?

Actually it is GERMAN Imperialism over the nation states of Europe, using the European Union as a subterfuge, is that which needs be quashed.

Fuck GERMAN Imperialism and the European Union as it serves as a tool for the advancement of Germany's Imperialistic ambitions..

saveandsound

Oscar Lafontaine is member of the party "The Left". He used to be member of the "Social Democratic Party of Germany".

Both parties are of rather marginal significance, since Merkel's CDU rules them all. ;-)

Anyway, "the Left" has been opposing US Imperialism ever since, so there is not much new to see here.

datura

that won't help and no more false flags will help either. The latest poll showed that only 19% of Germans would fight Russians in case Russia attacked any NATO country. I repeat: if Russia attacked first. You can wonder, what would be the percentage of them willing to fight Russia just for the sake of Ukraine. Close to zero, I think. The USA overstepped all boundaries, when it began pushing EU countries into a military conflict with Russia. Continental Europeans are not Anglo-Saxons, they think differently. They will bow down to any USA pressure, except for a military conflict with Russia! Thats a big no no. Many of them still remember (especially Germans), what it was like to fight wild-spirited Russians, who never surrender no matter what. These constant talks about "Russian agression" by the USA politicians make Germans feel like a cornered animal with nothing to loose. Such animal cannot be subdued anymore, when your existence and life is so directly threatened, you bite. Or another example: try to force your slave to step on a rattlesnake. He may be forced to do many things, but this time he will turn against you. I already said it before: no war against Russia and Europe is possible, because even if the USA somehow forces us to any such war, huge amounts of people will be so angry that they will flee to the side of Russia. We are already discussing this openly. This is already happening in Ukraine. Already 10 000 Ukranian soldiers defected to the other side (to fight Kiev), plus one Ukrainian general, some members of the Ukranian intelligence service and about one and half million Ukrainians fled to Russia to avoid draft. I saw a video where three entire units of soldiers sent from Kiev to Donetsk (with tanks) changed side, threw out Ukrainian flags and put on Russian flags on their tanks under loud cheers from the brave people of Donbass. There are certain very natural limits to what you can force people to do, which bankers do not seem to understand. Yes, you can send many people to war, but they simply will not fight, unless you give them something to fight for. For example Hitler gave people something to fight for. But all bankers give us is chaos, no strong leader, no ideology strong enough....I think they hoped that Putin would invade Ukraine and that would be the reason for war (they provoked Hitler in a similar way). However, Putin is no Hitler, he is way too intelligent to play these silly games. And it is impossible to repeat exactly what was once so successful, because times change, people are different....you cant win with using old outdated strategies over and over. That is why all empires fall in the end. They get stuck in using the same tricks over and over, until they stop working. Even the old color revolutions are not as efficient now as they were in the past and the same goes for those silly false flags.

cherry picker

He is absolutely correct. US is surrounded by two oceans and the North and South neighbor have no intentions of invading the USA, so can anyone explain this war time nuclear, wmd, too many carriers and so forth military and paranoia.

Can't uncle Sam keep his huge nose out of everyone's business?

Can't America just enjoy what is theirs and leave others alone?

Who needs a CIA except for Nazi types.

Fuck Nuland is a good start.

Albertarocks

And the neighbors to the north and south are non-too-pleased with the USA either. We know WTF the USA is doing, although more and more are waking up to the fact that the USA is only being used as the war branch of the banking mafia. Because of this we hold nothing against American people.

In fact, up north we now probably feel more kinship with "the people" of the USA more than ever before. Because we are learning how all this works. It is the global banking monsters and the fascist corporations, the military industrial complex that is in bed with the fucking bankers. It is those assholes who are causing every damned war in the world... not "the USA" as such. Putin is a saint by comparison... not to mention the only sane leader of a superpower left on earth. He is admirable, even from this side of the pond.

Mexicans might present a problem, I don't know. Mexicans never bother Canadians so we just don't seem to have an opinion. Canadians are pretty calm, but fuck when we get mad there can be one hell of a bar fight. I don't know how all this works out but it isn't going in the right direction. I think 98% of Canadians would agree with Mr. Lafontaine. US Imperialism has got to come to an end. Or the world will. And by "US", I mean "banker".

BI2

If only our politicians could understand what that man is really saying. It is for our own good.

https://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/warmongering-vs-econ...

Dodgy Geezer

We need need an EU foreign policy that stops warmongering US imperialism... F*ck US imperialism!"

You know what the problem is?

It's not particularly the US, though they are the biggest players at the moment. It's the result of the end of the Cold War.

Ever since WW2 the power blocs both had a big military and supporting intelligence service. When the Berlin Wall came down, the Russians collapsed theirs. The West did not. And ever since then it has been looking for a job. That's the reason we have had so much disruption. When your major arm of government is a multi-trillion dollar armed forces, every problem looks like an excuse for a war.

The Delicate Genius

It is not US imperialism

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/09/anglozionist-short-primer-for-...

It is the imperialism of the Anglo-Zionist cabal which has hijacked the American treasury and military.

Neocons, Interventionist "realists" and other assorted militarist scum.

Their control of the MSM is sound {they even acquired VICE News as that got too popular, and Orwellized it, beginning with the Zionist sent to fake stories out of Ukraine}...

but not the internet. As younger people grow up, post comments and articles, this cleft between the pre-internet and internet informed grows more and more obvious.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that expects aggressive moves against intent content.

We've seen some attacks on free speech already in the Fast Track bill - but it will take time to really see how bad the TPP itself is in practice.

But it does seem clear that .gov is hoping to make an end run around various Constitutional niceties by "treaty."

and no - treaties do not and can not over-ride the Constitution. Only amendment, not treaty, can change the constitution.

PrayingMantis

... US imperialism plus US exceptionalism is analogous to this >>> http://rt.com/usa/270268-falcon-launch-space-fail/

... and while the US forces the other NATO members to apply more sanctions to Russia, US hypocrisy rears its ugly head by 'allowing' products from sanctioned Russia that would benefit them ... check this out

>>> http://rt.com/usa/270220-us-space-russian-engine/

pupdog1

Gotta love a guy who knows how to define a problem.

Fuck Noodleberg.

HTZMR

As someone who actually lives in Germany i can tell you that Lafontaine is an absolute has-been and he plays no role in German politics, nor has he for years. His influence came to an end when Schroeder kicked him out of his government over 15 years ago. To claim he is a heavyweight is simply dead wrong.

Wagenknecht does play a certain role, but the Left is a pure protest party full of fundamentalist hardline social democrats and former East German communists. The Left has no say on federal government matters such as foreign policy. This post is pure alarmism.

Wild E Coyote

Actually US and Soviet Union both went bankrupt by Cold War.
Soviet Union accepted their fate.
USA still refuse to accept theirs.

Renfield

Upvoted, but I think technically it was Vietnam that bankrupted the US.

Then again, you could argue that it was the First World War, or the 1929 market crash -- although its bankruptcy wasn't admitted until 1933.

[Jun 28, 2015] Thousands in Armenia protest steep hikes in electricity rates

WaPo reported initial events using standard "color revolution" template used in Ukraine.
.
"..."The society is very polarized. The power is very weak, in terms of its legitimacy. And a significant number of people are not satisfied with the political system," said Alexander Iskandaryan, a political expert and director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan. "They are expressing their dissatisfaction, making statements against the president, against the police, against the ruling Republican Party. But in general, this entire complex reveals the total lack of trust in the political system.""
.
"...Some Armenian opposition politicians supported the protesters Tuesday. Activists in Russia and Ukraine also cheered the rallies via social media, lauding them as the next generation of demonstrators against Russian President Vladimir Putin's post­-Soviet order. Some Russian media reports seemed to support that view, citing experts warning that the "hands of the USA" were behind the Armenian protests, which had the makings of a "color revolution." "
June 23, 2015 | The Washington Post

Thousands of protesters returned to a main thoroughfare of downtown Yerevan, Armenia, on Tuesday evening, facing down riot police to protest steep electricity price increases planned in the economically strapped country.

Protesters in the capital city marched toward the presidential palace on Marshal Baghramyan Avenue just hours after police had unleashed water cannons to disperse a peaceful overnight sit-in that had taken place in the same spot earlier in the day, detaining more than 230 demonstrators and journalists in the process. The protests, which have been growing over several days, are the most widespread public demonstrations in the Armenian capital since opposition activists rallied thousands against President Serzh Sargsyan's reelection in 2013.

The demonstrations against electricity prices are less structured than the post-election protests, but they still could resonate widely in the current political climate.

Armenia's unrest comes as the country is reeling from the protracted effects of the economic crisis that has gripped Russia's economy over the past year - and, in turn, affected the economies of former Soviet states that depend on Russian markets and the value of the ruble. Russia's economic troubles were complicated by pressure from Western sanctions imposed in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and involvement in eastern Ukraine, punitive measures that the European Union voted Monday to extend for six months.

Armenia receives more than 20 percent of its national income from Russian remittances and joined the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union earlier this year. It is especially dependent on the ebbs and flows of the Russian economy, and its currency, the dram, has suffered for it.

The Russia connection is even more acute in the energy sector.

Armenia's power grid is controlled by the Armenian Electricity Network, a subsidiary of the Russian company Inter RAO UES, whose major shareholders include Russian state-controlled entities. Last month, the Armenian subsidiary announced plans to raise the price of electricity by more than 16 percent beginning in August. The move was described as necessary because of the depreciation of the national currency, but protesters say the increase would be too much for regular people to afford.

"Spread the word, fill the streets and don't pay your electric bill," one organizer told the crowd gathered in Yerevan's Liberty Square on Tuesday. "If we all don't pay our electric bills, they can't do anything about it."

But the protests may not have gathered strength absent general dissatisfaction with the economic and political situation in the country.

"The society is very polarized. The power is very weak, in terms of its legitimacy. And a significant number of people are not satisfied with the political system," said Alexander Iskandaryan, a political expert and director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan. "They are expressing their dissatisfaction, making statements against the president, against the police, against the ruling Republican Party. But in general, this entire complex reveals the total lack of trust in the political system."

Tuesday's protesters were mostly young adults, and word of the demonstrations spread through social media instead of through the political opposition parties. The main group behind the past several days of protests is a civic group called No to Plunder.

Iskandaryan said it is difficult to predict how the protests will develop, given how relatively decentralized and underfunded they are. The demonstrations could continue, they could fizzle or the government could meet the demonstrators' demands.

"But whatever scenario will come to be, it will not solve the main problem. The main problems will remain," Iskandaryan said. "And then it will be possible to find another excuse for another rally."

How the Yerevan protests proceed depends in part on the state's response. Foreign diplomats expressed concern over how police detained journalists Tuesday morning, while angry protesters were likely galvanized by the use of violence and water cannons to quell and disperse the crowd.

Yerevan police seemed to be restraining themselves Tuesday night. Deputy police chief Valery Osipyan frequently warned protesters to control potential "provocateurs" who might start a confrontation, but he never called out the water cannons.

What happens next will depend on whether interest groups seize the moment created by the demonstrations.

Some Armenian opposition politicians supported the protesters Tuesday. Activists in Russia and Ukraine also cheered the rallies via social media, lauding them as the next generation of demonstrators against Russian President Vladimir Putin's post­-Soviet order.

Some Russian media reports seemed to support that view, citing experts warning that the "hands of the USA" were behind the Armenian protests, which had the makings of a "color revolution."

But the demonstrations largely avoided any overt political message about aligning with the East vs. the West, and most anti-Russian vitriol was reserved for Yevgeny Bibin, the chief executive of the electricity company instituting the price increases

Johnny Canuck, 6/25/2015 4:27 PM EDT

Take at look inside the real Russia outside the Kremlin region. This is what you will find.

The Kremlin needs money so they, like the USSR they will use whatever means are available to get funds into the Kremlin's Treasury.

According to data gathered by Bloomberg, the Kremlin has sufficient funds to keep the government budget and financial system relatively stable through 2015. However disagreements over future government spending will continue to divide Russia's elite.

This year Moscow will have to pay $52.9 billion to the Pension Fund of Russia to cover the shortfall.

Evidence shows that the government has taken $12.5 billion from the fund, using it for projects such as the construction of the Yamal liquefied natural gas facility and for economic development of Crimea.

Rosneft, has proposed that the government use the fund to extend credit to replace the company's Western financing, most of which has been cut off because of sanctions.

Throughout 2015 the Russian Government had numerous discussions, as Russia needs to resolve strong disagreements within its political elite over issues affecting important areas, such as pensions, raising the retirement age from 55 to 65, the defense sector, large firms and regional government spending on medical care, education and infrastructure.

Russia can draw from the total $508 billion in Reserves, that according to the IMF it stockpiled since 2000. So far this year it had drawn down $100 billion from its Reserve Fund.

Johnny Canuck, 6/25/2015 4:25 PM EDT

In the opinion many insiders, the current Kremlin debates have intensified over specific government spending on issues such as taxes, pension, retirement age, defense spending and medical and education expenses. Like most political disagreements between insiders over the divisions of budgets on spending – Putin and his loyal buddies, financial experts and the Federal Security Service – can switch their loyalties in response to both political and economic circumstances.

Russia's total spending on its military budgets, which includes not only Interior Military Forces but also all military spending, which is more that 45% of its GDP. The Kremlin must now face cuts in spending for the new T-14 Armata tank, defense spending on military exercises along its borders and naval shipbuilding and its space program.

Russia's regional governments are demanding that more regional revenues stay in the regions. Only 37 percent of the income generated in any given region is required to stay in each region, with the rest going to the federal budget. However the central government never returns more than 20 percent. Over the past 25 years these shortfalls have accumulated into 100 trillion rubbles, which negatively impacted regional health care, education and infrastructure needs. Low wages have forced households into more barter trading for survival.

The Kremlin knows that regional stability is crucial to the stability of the federal government and the Russian Federation as a whole. The last thing that the Federal Government needs is regional insurrections. This has many Putin supporters worried.

Axel Rea, 6/25/2015 9:30 AM EDT

hey washington post why you start the article with the word "Moscow", this is about the Armenia. If you do not have the sufficient knowledge please do not write the article. Armenia is a sovereign country, it dose not even have any border with russia.

LeonVav, 6/24/2015 6:03 AM EDT

A group of people on capital's street and THE WHOLE COUNTRY IS UNSTABLE NOW. That's silly. Maybe they're unsatisfied with what their politicians do, but why to tack Russia on this? It's Putin who refuses to give them free electricity? He is guilty again?

nanari123, 6/23/2015 9:39 PM EDT

I just don't like it when western media looks at everything wearing this black and white glasses. This is really not about Russia vs US or EU, Armenia's foreign policy has always been the most balanced in the entire post soviet region. Officially it is against the electricity price hike, but in reality, people are trying to show their dissatisfaction with politicians and especially the ruling republican party which has failed to fix the economy as a result of mismanagement and corruption. People there really don't give a hoot about Putin or Obama.

ANTIPINDOS, 6/23/2015 8:58 PM EDT

Armenians what are you doing?
Doesn't allow to manipulate itself
You want to repeat a mistake of Ukraine?
The USA prepare orange revolution against you

[Jun 28, 2015]Signs of color revolution observed in Armenia's unrest

Jun 28, 2015 | en.trend.az

Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the international committee of the Federation Council of Russia, considers the unrest in Armenia as the signs of "color revolution", RIA Novosti reported.

"At present, the external situation resembles as a conflict of people dissatisfied with their socio-economic well-being," Kosachev said June 24.

"But there is no need to delude ourselves," he said. "All "color revolutions" developed according to the same scenario. And Armenia is not insured against this."

The rally began in the Liberty Square in Yerevan June 19. It turned into a procession to the presidential residence June 22 evening. The police dispersed the demonstrators with rubber truncheons and water cannons June 23 morning.

Almost 240 people, including journalists, were taken to the police stations. The medical assistance was rendered to 25 people.

The deputy head of Yerevan's police said that all detained protesters have been already released.

On June 23, the Armenian police broke up a rally in the center of the country's capital. The rally was held in protest against increased electricity tariffs. The protests in the streets resulted in use of water cannons against people. Over 230 people were arrested as a result of violent crackdown, including journalists of Gala TV, the Radio Liberty's Armenian office, the Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper, the Hetq, News.am, Panarmenian.net news agencies.

On June 17, Armenia's Public Services Regulatory Commission, considering a request from the distribution company, Electric Networks of Armenia, which is a subsidiary of the Inter RAO UES, raised the electricity tariffs by 6.93 Armenian drams (about $0.015). This caused discontent among the population that believes the rise in the cost of electricity will lead to higher prices for essential goods and many services.

[Jun 28, 2015] Is a "color revolution" underway in Armenia

"Electric Yerevan" is Sliding Out of Control

by Andrew Korybko for Sputink

Armenians have taken to the streets to protest a planned 17-22% increase in their utility bills, initiated by the Armenian Electricity Network due to the Armenian dram's dramatic depreciation over the past year (about equal in percentage to the price hike itself). While it's understandable that some in the economically struggling country would be upset by the $85 or so cumulative increase in payments each year, many find it troubling that some individuals have resorted to arming themselves and aggressively attacking the police, and it's confusing that the participants would reject government appeals to negotiate if all they were really after was to repeal the electricity rate increase. After hundreds of arrests over the past few days for hooligan activity, groups of individuals are now blockading the capital's main avenue and have threatened to march on the Presidential Palace, eerily following in the footsteps of their EuroMaidan predecessors. More and more, what may have begun as a legitimate protest movement appears to have been hijacked into a Color Revolution attempt.

The Situation So Far

Opposition to the electricity rate increase had been brewing since May, but it was only on Monday that the "No to Plunder" initiative was able to bring thousands to the streets in protest. They gathered on Freedom Square, in the city's center, and demanded that the hike be reversed. President Serzh Sargsyan suggested that they choose five representatives to speak to him about it, but the mob refused. Later that night, internal provocateurs pushed the crowd into marching on the Presidential Palace, and when they refused law enforcement's repeated pleas to disperse their illegal manifestation, the riot police were forced to resort to water cannons and mass arrests to restore public order. The resulting tumult injured 11 police officers and 7 protesters, and some of the 237 who were arrested were reported to have been equipped with knives, knuckle dusters, batons, and metal rods.

The protests swelled the next day to 15,000 people, and the mob once more rejected President Sargsyan second request to negotiate. They may have felt emboldened by the US' official statement on the matter, which in a style reminiscent of its early response to EuroMaidan, stated that:

"…we are concerned about reports of excessive police use of force to disperse the crowd on the morning of June 23, as well as several reports of abuse while in police custody. In addition, we are troubled by reports that journalists and their equipment were specifically targeted during the operation. It is imperative that the Government conduct a full and transparent investigation of reports of the excessive use of force by the police to the full extent of Armenian law."

Just like in Ukraine, when the US supports an anti-government movement (which is what has essentially formed in Armenia), it completely opposes any attempt by the authorities to assert law and order in responding to their proxies' illegal provocations. The implicit statement of support for the disorderly activity was a signal to the Yerevan organizers to stage an occupation movement on Baghramyan Avenue, the central street leading to the Presidential Palace, and block it with a combination of garbage cans and a "living wall" on Wednesday. The Minister of Education and a few opposition MPs physically partook in this activity, indicating an emerging split within the government. The individuals behind the destabilization have since branded their movement 'Electric Yerevan', and this was a sign for their affiliated anti-government cells all across the country to simultaneously 'come out' and transform the capital's protests into a nationwide rebellion……

……Like all Color Revolutions, the backers of 'Electric Yerevan' are motivated by concrete geopolitical interests. They want to install an anti-Russian government that would withdraw Armenia from the Eurasian Economic Union and break the historical friendship between both states, following the model spearheaded by EuroMaidan's post-coup authorities. Pashinyan is highly critical of all aspects of Armenia's special relationship with Russia and has experience with anti-government organizing, hence his present designation as de-facto leader of the Color Revolution. The US also wants to drag Russia into a renewed military conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, using post-coup newly installed nationalists like Pashinyan to aggravate the situation with Azerbaijan to the point of open warfare, which Russia, with its Collective Security Treaty Organization obligations to Armenia and its 102nd military base in Gyumri, would inevitably be sucked into. The US failed to coax a disastrous Afghan-esque military intervention out of Russia in Ukraine after the EuroMaidan events, but it doesn't mean that it won't try to do the same thing in the Caucasus after a potentially successful 'Electric Yerevan'.

http://rt.com/politics/269392-russian-senator-armenia-unrest/

"So far the situation appears to be developing as a conflict among people who are unhappy with their socio-economic well-being. But we should not deceive ourselves, all color revolutions developed in similar scenarios. Armenia is not guaranteed from such outcome," Kosachev said in comments with RIA Novosti.

The senior Russian senator also drew the reporters attention to the fact that about a hundred of various non-government groups were working with Armenian public opinion trying to incline it towards the pro-Western way of development. He noted that the very suggestion of a choice between East and West was an imposed move that could only lead to conflict.

"This is an absolutely artificial choice, a dishonest and unappealing political gamble," he noted.

Russia currently lists color revolution as a major threat to the national stability and international peace. In March this year the chairman of the Security Council and a former head of the Federal Security Service, Nikolai Patrushev, said that this body would develop a detailed plan aimed at preventing color revolutions or any other attempts of forceful change of lawfully elected authorities through mass street protest.

[Jun 28, 2015] The USA tries to stage a color revolution in Armenia

Jun 28, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Fern, June 27, 2015 at 8:22 pm

A very interesting article on the situation in Armenia. I don't agree with everything the writer says but much of it is spot-on:

Novices to political science and political activism may be lured by the spectre and spectacle of the Color Revolution method that has characterized ostensible movements for radical social change in the last generation. The symbols have become iconic and clichéd: the tent city, the die-in, the girl placing flowers in the gendarme's gun barrels, water cannons and tear-gas, the fist flag.

What is missing of course from this view is an understanding of the real social forces in a society, class and economic forces. For forty years, genuine activism, labor union militancy, has been marginalized. In place of direct action against the ruling class at the very places that make their wealth, is a strange simulation of late 1960's student activism; shown to us on a never-ending film reel loop.

http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/electric-yerevan-and-lessons-on-color.html

Many of the analysts I've read on Armenia – including those quoted above – seem to think it unlikely that this new Maidan will succeed. I'm not so sure. Once it has its hooks into a country, the US is loathe to let go.

marknesop, June 27, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Like sanctions, the colour revolutions depend on momentum – getting it, and maintaining it by incremental pressure until the government folds up like a lawn chair. Governments have learned from the Orange Revolution not to let a revolutionary camp get established, and as soon as they see tents they get torn down; if people do not have shelter in which to sleep so they can stay on location, they quickly fragment and drift away.

But no colour revolution ever again reached the intensity of the Orange Revolution. It was up to the western media to create the appearance of momentum by injecting fake news about the government meeting with rebel leaders and filming the crowds from angles and frames which suggest they were much bigger than they actually are.

Yanukovych at Maidan is probably the worst possible example, and it gave the west unfounded confidence, because he capitulated in whole in less time than it takes to say it, folding like a steamed tortilla and giving the self-appointed leaders everything they asked for without even putting up a fight.

In retrospect, they probably could have sent Tetyana Chornovol in alone to beat him up until he wept for mercy and saved a great deal of effort and expense. But other leaders are tougher and smarter than Yanukovych, and are expecting to be colour-revolutioned. The secret is not to lose your head and start bargaining, because that's what the model is calculated to make you do.

ucgsblog. June 27, 2015 at 11:22 pm
There's also Russia releasing all of the tactics used in the Orange Revolution for every country's government to study. I doubt that they're will be a repeat, especially in Armenia.
yalensis , June 28, 2015 at 3:43 am
The Flores piece that Fern posted makes a really good point, about the difference between REAL activism (e.g., trade union strikes) and fake activism (e.g., student protests, hippie flower children, etc.)

When a trade union wins a bitter strike and gets a measly raise of, say, $.50 per hour, it is still a significant victory, because the money comes directly out (and in place of) of the capitalist's profits. As Flores notes, this is "direct action" at the very fountain of where wealth is created. As opposed to student protests, which do nothing to change anything at the base of the economic system.

But it IS notable that the current bunch of goons in charge of the U.S. government – people like Clinton, Nuland, etc., spent some of their student years in the 1960's doing various hippie-dippie protests, and the like. So, they are familiar with this method of protest, and use it as a cover for the actual big-power subversion, which they are doing behind the scenes. Subconsciously, they might even believe that "it's all good", because they have such fond memories of their own student years spent supporting various "good causes".

Oh, and another reason these "hippie-dippie" type protests are popular with a certain type of gilded youth, is because it allows them to indulge in their own physical narcisissm:
They get to paint their faces, wear funny costumes, show of their "creativity", preen in front of cameras, etc.
The sort of thing that many teenagers enjoy doing, but especially the more narcissistic types.

Fern, June 28, 2015 at 4:56 am
yalensis, yes, I think that's a really key point – the difference between activism that fundamentally changes or challenges economic relationships in a society and these so-called 'revolutions' which is nearly every state have led to the embrace of neo-liberal policies and worsening of the economic situation of many of its citizens. And, of course, it's a point that's completely missing from any western MSM analysis of what's taken place in Ukraine, Georgia and all the other places with colour or flower 'revolutions'. No questioning at all of why, exactly, the leaders of western countries such as the US or UK are so enthusiastic in supporting these movements abroad when they have done everything possible to destroy or marginalise agents for real change at home.
yalensis , June 28, 2015 at 3:31 am
It makes sense that U.S. is targeting Armenian government with color revolution.
Probably to punish Armenia for joining Eurasian Economic Union.
Jen, June 28, 2015 at 5:20 am
There could be many reasons and Armenia's entry into the Eurasian Union could be one of them. The US wouldn't initiate a colour revolution unless it presents an opportunity to kill several birds with one stone. A colour revolution leading to instability or an extremely nationalist government that reignites the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute with Azerbaijan would (supposedly) draw in Russia, to supply Armenia with aid or weapons, and that would open the door to greater US military investment in Azerbaijan on the pretext that Azerbaijan is being threatened. This gives the US an opportunity to go to the next step which would be to plan an invasion of or another Green revolution in Iran next door, or start colour revolutions in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Also 2016 is the start of a new election cycle in the US and Washington probably needs to get some action going against Russia and/or Iran to defect public attention away from an uninspiring field of presidential candidates and their lack of meaningful policies.

yalensis, June 28, 2015 at 4:34 am
As per the Gene Sharp handbook, Armenian demonstrators are starting to hint at violence, in the next phase or protests. Armenian media caughts shots of some demonstrators starting to wave wooden clubs.

Yerevan police chief Valery Osipian communicated, that the police have pictures of the people with the wooden clubs, and intend to find them, as this is illegal.

Osipian also communicated, that the protesters attempts to set up tents and food service have been thwarted. Setting up food and cooking, in particular, requires permits.

Is perfectly clear that Armenian authorities know exactly what is happening, and what is going to happen next. Probably the next phase is violence. There were some reports of Ukrainian neo-Nazis being flown in, but possibly there are also violent groups within Armenia who could be used as the shock troops.

But police seem to be savvy, and know what to do. Ukrainian police (=Berkut) were defeated only, because Yanukovych lost his nerve and would not allow them to win.

Jen , June 28, 2015 at 5:49 am
Perhaps if the Armenian government declared that anyone attending the demonstrations would not receive any results from end-of-term or end-of-year exams at school or college, and threaten to order educational authorities to withhold school or university graduation certificates and ceremonies as well, the protests might shrink to just the ringleaders and their more fanatical followers.

The reason that the Umbrella Revolution faltered in Hong Kong last year was that universities had just reopened after term break and exams were about to start, and the Hong Kong authorities only had to wait out the protests.

likbez , June 28, 2015 at 7:30 am
Don't be naďve. As Euromaidan had shown University professors, deans, etc themselves are an important part of fifth column supporting the protests. Departments of Economics and similar "social" departments are especially easy and cheap to seduce by grants, foreign trips, etc. and they have natural neoliberal leanings. In case of Euromaidan it was they who, if not asked students to go to the street, at least granted them "amnesty" from missing the classes. And they operated within the larger framework of staging color revolution, being just one element of complex infrastructure. The same was true in Hong Cong: certain professors actively encouraged the events and served as catalyst for students.

The start of color revolution means just a switch to active stage of of multifaceted, well prepared ongoing intelligence operation using the accumulated in embassies cash and well organized assets in the country such as NGO, journalists, fifth column within the government, etc. Operation which was prepared for long time..

Those extras that show up on the streets are mostly a stage for public consumption. Real events of infiltration that make color revolution possible happen on higher level and are hidden from the view. The goal is always to paralyze and neutralize both government and law enforcement by finding people who can be bought, coerced into supporting the coup d'état or at least profess neutrality. And without "breakthrough" in this direction the active stage on which protesters suddenly and en mass appear of the streets is never started.

Nuland and company probably made serious progress in creating the "color revolution infrastructure" and fifth column within the county elite. They probably are now keeping of short leash some corrupt officials both in law enforcement and government. Cash is now dispensed continuously to grease the wheels. "Militant protestor" in Kiev got around $30- $35 a night. Of course some radical nationalist elements participated "for free" but a lot of extras were paid.

So start of active phase first of all means the level of maturity and readiness of already formed fifth column within the government to topple the current government. In case of Ukraine it was Lyovochkin and elements within SBU and police (remnants from Yushchenko government), Also Nuland kept Yanukovich by the balls be threating to confiscate his assets in the West. I suspect that in some form this is also true the case in Armenia.

In other words the key feature of color revolution is the "elite betrayal" component. That's why often the actions of the government in "self-defense" are contradictory and inefficient..

[Jun 25, 2015] Russia experience in 1991 and Armenian color revolution

Russian neoliberal revolution of 1991 was possible because the current system "of developed socialism" was rotten to the core and elite of the country decided switched sides to find an exist from the dismal economic situation. Moreover communism as an ideology became dead after the WWII and existed in zombie state since then: even "poor" Western countries manage to provide higher standard of living for thier people then Central European countries which were at approximately the same starting level of economic development. Completion in technology was irrevocable lost. Science in the USSR fossilized with real scientists displaced by 'scientific bureaucrats" and ruthless careerists, despite some bright sport (mainly connected with military industrial complex). Backwardness in computer technology was noticeable to everybody. The same with software. Power of the West played the role (drop of oil priced was engineered by Reagan administration; also the USSR got into Afghanistan trap with gentle encouragement of Kissinger and friends) Without that all those attempts by CIA and other Western three letter agencies to distribute money and form fifth column would end with "dissidents" exited and money confiscated. So it was conscious decision of KGB brass that the current system has no chances and the country need to adopt neoliberal model instead. That advantages of socialism over capitalism as an economic system are a myth.

Many complaining about Yerevan color revolution do not understand that we ourselves live in the country of victorious neoliberal color revolution on 1991?

Which day in the media and blogs - the perplexity and dissatisfaction of the Maidan in Armenia. People are annoyed: Why the Armenians do not see that they are manipulated? Then dubious persond like in Kiev are handing out cookies/lovasik. They just sweep the area. Read the Sharp's book( p. 33): "In places of demonstrations you should behave complementary to local residents to be careful and smiling". And the same attempt to play thr dystnfsr color revolution card : "children beaten by police" (as in the photo of the girl from Yerevan).

Still. Some Armenians became blind. Even the local scientist told me that in Yerevan there are hundreds of American NGOs, now blinkered: "That's the people's protest." No American influence, no?.

And were we not eaully blong in 1991? Aren't we now spitting at our own mirror? How many people understand that we live in a country of victorious neoliberal color revolution of 1991?

Then also everything was staged exactly like prescribed in Sharp textbook. Five-year plan the preparation of public consciousness (1985-1991), the decomposition and bribering with hard currency of the ruling class rod (In the USSR "everything is rotten" memo became popular), then a reason. In Armenia the reason could be the increase of tariffs and poverty; in Ukraine - cancel signing something with the EU and instillation of hatred for Russia (instillation of hatred for Russia was their key method of preparation of the public consciousness, the decomposition of will to resist to color revolution)... And in Moscow the was infamous putsch.

Pitiful attempt of the old regime to stop already speeding the train of the collapse of the USSR.

Vasya, you need to strike first

Instantly out of nowhere, "peaceful" barricades near the White house, and grandmothers wore tea, Yes, and machines with pies, and the drugs, and the flowers on the tanks (love bombing, sectarian trick: make friends with the men of law, then they couldn't batons you , plus work on the photo, the frame of Western agencies, textbook Sharpe, p. 56).

And sacred lamps: three boys who perished under the tank tracks....

And gynatic tricolor flags with the length in Manezhnaya square, which were carried at their funeral? Well, nobody asked the question where it came from. Of course, this symbolism was not prepared in advance for us by our forends from the USa State Department.

We chanted: "RA-si-ya! RA-si-ya!", - and let's monument to Dzerzhinsky fell. And Ukrainians are such fools. Those fools tried to push Lenin statues from the postaments. We were smarter then them ;-).

And then American advisers sat on the sixth floor of the Ministry of Finance, and the budget was approved at the IMF. And then agreements on division of production for multinations, when our natural resources were simply given as a present to forein multinatins. And lice started crawling in the grandmother of Yeltsin home, in the village Booth, and all of grandmother's family eat on one grandma's pension, and Yeltsin was shaking hands with the incarnation of Christ Myung moon in the Kremlin, and of the sects became proligic in the the country without any control: "Jesus-us! Appeared to me-e!" (said in a singsong voice, twitching on the stage, the microphone and with an American accent).

Oh... And books with Nazi crosses was freely displayed on the stalls in the center of Moscow, and strormtroopers of RNE were wandering along the streets. Yes exactly like in Ukraine. Please give me pop-corn. Ukraine is just re-incarnation of our ghosts of 90th...

As it is obvious that all color revolution are done with huge support from the foreign powers. Let's remember Lenin in the sealed train... Looks like marriages are made in heaven, but color revolutions are made from the outside. Amen.

...Then, of course, the USA burned with Napalm most of Russian industry in 90s. And only then started forming new anti-Us vertical of power, and the rebuilding of order and the country started in full force, and even later started the defense of our interests in the international arena. which in understanding of puppeteers of color revolutions was counterrevolution. anti-Maydan.

But, frankly, we manage to correct and eliminated not everything that foreign power brought into the country in and stuck us in 1991. "Liberators" managed to burn our territory with the democracy to the extent that it will take for us a half a century or more to recover. Such is the power of one successful color revolution. after one such fire, nothing grows on the ground for a long, long time.

MEANWHILE

Rebels in Yerevan to the correspondent of "KP": "Please say to the Russians that we are not against them"

Yeah they us got! Just got! Raised again the price of electricity - that why people rebelled! 'says the taxi driver who takes me from the airport to the street of Marshal Baghramyan Avenue in Yerevan, where already the fourth day of rioting crowd of about five thousand people. Officially - against rising electricity tariffs. "There's the street blocked off, there you should go (details)

SEE ALSO

When the "electroMaydan" wins, Yerevan will host Makarevich

Our columnist tries to understand the causes of the riots in Armenia (details)

AND HERE WAS A CASE

Paul Craig Roberts: "If Victoria Nuland visited Armenia, then Armenia will have a coup!"

This is how this winter warned the Armenian American journalist, economist, one of the principal architects of the "Reagan economic miracle" (details)

Guest No. 5057, 26.06.2015, 7:01

Well, I remember that articles about how good is that fact that the Soros Foundation reached out and provides the aid to Russia. And how that ended with promotion of prostitution among young girls and lads for boys. In Russian Newspapers by Russian journalists! It is interesting to me still, is they have any moral consciences and is not what they did bothering any of the those Newspapers presstitutes fed by Soros money for feeding people with all this sh**t on the silver spoon?

[Jun 25, 2015]Europe's Enlightened Order

"...The central insight that animated the Congress of Vienna is that order, like liberty, is fragile. It is contingent on political institutions and social norms and cultural prejudices and a hundred other variables that, if undermined, lead to chaos. Order is easy to break, yet hard to build. But if peace depends on it, then a politics grounded in prudence, caution, and realism is necessary. To live through the traumatic experience of state failure-as all of the Congress's authors did, and as many in the Middle East and North Africa do today-is to recognize that, in comparison to the anarchy and chaos of a civil war, order is an enlightened principle too."
Jun 25, 2015 | The American Conservative

...The Congress of Vienna reminds us that not one but two traditions of cosmopolitan thought trace their roots back to the 18th-century Enlightenment. One is a moralizing, militant worldview that seeks peace by toppling despotic regimes in the name of liberty. It supposes that a new world order, underwritten by an enlightened hegemon, can be crafted in the wake of these conquests. This was the dream of the French revolutionaries, of Napoleon, of Woodrow Wilson. And to a large extent, it remains the dream of today's foreign-policy establishment in Washington. In the past few decades America has "liberated," in Napoleon's sense of the term, countries across the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. Whether through the hard power of military force (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) or the soft power of moral cajoling and economic pressure (Egypt, Syria, Ukraine), our hope has been that regime change will produce stable liberal democracies and lead to peace. But as the litany of failed states in our wake suggests, this approach tends to undermine the very order it seeks to moralize.

The second legacy of Enlightenment, the one witnessed in 1815, is more promising. It recognizes that if peace depends on order and order on stability, then the moralizing power of a hegemon will not of itself lead to a peaceful world. The central insight that animated the Congress of Vienna is that order, like liberty, is fragile. It is contingent on political institutions and social norms and cultural prejudices and a hundred other variables that, if undermined, lead to chaos. Order is easy to break, yet hard to build. But if peace depends on it, then a politics grounded in prudence, caution, and realism is necessary. To live through the traumatic experience of state failure-as all of the Congress's authors did, and as many in the Middle East and North Africa do today-is to recognize that, in comparison to the anarchy and chaos of a civil war, order is an enlightened principle too.

Jonathan Green is a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge.

[Jun 24, 2015] So The Spy Services Are The Real Internet Trolls

"...Let's just call it what it is. Mind rape."
.
"...'The more these services grow and their methods proliferate the less possible will it become to have reasonable online discussions.' Which is the exact purpose of trolling, ever since the internet became an alternate way of communication to gain awareness about issues TPTB/MSM would prefer to bury, hide, distort, confuse, manipulate, lie, detract, deflect, digress, warp or deviate. GCHQ/NSA/Mossad et al have elevated trolling to a professional level, with special budgets and official programs attached to MILINT and foreign offices working 24/7 to advance their plans and take advantage of people's ignorance and naivete about the internet world. It's the hasbara operatives multiplied exponentially to perpetuate ignorance and confusion among the masses. "
.
"...It is unlikely that the British GHCQ is the only secret service using these tactics. Other government as well as private interests can be assumed to use similar means.
.
To "deny, disrupt, degrade/denigrate, delay, deceive, discredit, dissuade or deter" is exactly what Internet trolls are doing in the comment sections of blogs and news sites. Usually though on a smaller scale than the GHCQ and alike. The more these services grow and their methods proliferate the less possible will it become to have reasonable online discussions."
.
"...In the paranoid world of the web it is a badge of honor to claim you are being targeted by the PTB. Sites that don't pose much threat to the status quo feel left out and have to create hidden enemies so anyone who resists the dogma and groupthink must be branded as paid trolls. "
moonofalabama.org

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept provides new material from the Snowden stash.

The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) includes a "Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group" which "provides most of GCHQ's cyber effects and online HUMINT capability. It currently lies at the leading edge of cyber influence practice and expertise." In 2011 the JTRIG had 120 people on its staff.

Here are some of its methods, used in support of British policies like for regime change in Syria and Zimbabwe:

All of JTRIG's operations are conducted using cyber technology. Staff described a range of methods/techniques that have been used to-date for conducting effects operations. These included:
  • Uploading YouTube videos containing "persuasive" communications (to discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deter, delay or disrupt)
  • Setting up Facebook groups, forums, blogs and Twitter accounts that encourage and monitor discussion on a topic (to discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deter, delay or disrupt)
  • Establishing online aliases/personalities who support the communications or messages in YouTube videos, Facebook groups, forums, blogs etc
  • Establishing online aliases/personalities who support other aliases
  • Sending spoof e-mails and text messages from a fake person or mimicking a real person (to discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deceive, deter, delay or disrupt)
  • Providing spoof online resources such as magazines and books that provide inaccurate information (to disrupt, delay, deceive, discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deter or denigrate/degrade)
  • Providing online access to uncensored material (to disrupt)
  • Sending instant messages to specific individuals giving them instructions for accessing uncensored websites
  • Setting up spoof trade sites (or sellers) that may take a customer's money and/or send customers degraded or spoof products (to deny, disrupt, degrade/denigrate, delay, deceive, discredit, dissuade or deter)
  • Interrupting (i.e., filtering, deleting, creating or modifying) communications between real customers and traders (to deny, disrupt, delay, deceive, dissuade or deter)
  • Taking over control of online websites (to deny, disrupt, discredit or delay)
  • Denial of telephone and computer service (to deny, delay or disrupt)
  • Hosting targets' online communications/websites for collecting SIGINT (to disrupt, delay, deter or deny)
  • Contacting host websites asking them to remove material (to deny, disrupt, delay, dissuade or deter)

It is unlikely that the British GHCQ is the only secret service using these tactics. Other government as well as private interests can be assumed to use similar means.

To "deny, disrupt, degrade/denigrate, delay, deceive, discredit, dissuade or deter" is exactly what Internet trolls are doing in the comment sections of blogs and news sites. Usually though on a smaller scale than the GHCQ and alike. The more these services grow and their methods proliferate the less possible will it become to have reasonable online discussions.

Posted by b at 10:56 AM | Comments (42)

Colinjames | Jun 22, 2015 12:08:02 PM | 1

Let's just call it what it is. Mind rape.

Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 22, 2015 12:31:07 PM | 2

Fortunately, much of what they do is so ham-fisted and amateurish that only the gullible are gulled (which pretty much explains why ALL of the patsies convicted in ter'rism frame-ups are dimwits or cretins). Those pathetic cut & paste YouTube clips of NATO's "rebels" in Syria, swinging briefly from behind some cover and firing (in a frenzy) at unseen targets or empty streets are beyond ludicrous on many levels.

I'm unaware of any school of firearms use and techniques which encourages the firing of a weapon merely because the bearer has plenty of spare ammo.

Lone Wolf | Jun 22, 2015 12:58:23 PM | 3

@b

The more these services grow and their methods proliferate the less possible will it become to have reasonable online discussions.

Which is the exact purpose of trolling, ever since the internet became an alternate way of communication to gain awareness about issues TPTB/MSM would prefer to bury, hide, distort, confuse, manipulate, lie, detract, deflect, digress, warp or deviate. GCHQ/NSA/Mossad et al have elevated trolling to a professional level, with special budgets and official programs attached to MILINT and foreign offices working 24/7 to advance their plans and take advantage of people's ignorance and naivete about the internet world. It's the hasbara operatives multiplied exponentially to perpetuate ignorance and confusion among the masses.

Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 22, 2015 1:23:26 PM | 4

And don't forget that US/UK/NATO's Imperial Ambitions are rooted in greed and cowardice. Cowards can never successfully project courage and resolve. Their over-compensation for ingrained cultural short-comings always shows through.

NATO, for example, has yet to appoint a "Leader" whose demeanor doesn't resemble the un-charismatic behaviour of a 6th Form Prefect at a Girl's College.

Watching these sissies strutting around their (private) stage, pretending to be Tough Guys is funnier than Laurel & Hardy + the Three Stooges.
And the sincerity ... Tony Bliar where are you?

harry law | Jun 22, 2015 1:25:40 PM | 5

I still think it is possible to have online discussions, I agree with Hoarsewhisperer thinking political types cannot be influenced [to any significant degree] by trolls. The only way they can win is if you forget this golden rule "Never argue with stupid people trolls, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
― Mark Twain

Lone Wolf | Jun 22, 2015 4:59:18 PM | 12

And talking about hasbara, there is a petition requesting a billion dollars for "putting lipstick on the pig" as a poster accurately described it above. No matter how much money zionazis allow for hasbara trolls, a zionazi pig will always be a zionazi pig (my apologies to the animal kingdom for the comparison.)

To PM Netanyahu: We demand that you vastly increase Israel's hasbara budget.

(...)Readers will recall that I have criticized the abysmal performance of Israeli public diplomacy (PD) and its failure to present its case assertively and articulately to the world.

To recap briefly

I likened the effects of this failure to those of the HIV virus that destroys the nation's immune system, leaving it unable to resist any outside pressures no matter how outlandish or outrageous. Given the gravity of the threat, I prescribed that, as prime minister, my first order of business would be to assign adequate resources to address the dangers precipitated by this failure.

To this end I stipulated that up to $1 billion should be allotted for the war on the PD front, and demonstrated that this sum was eminently within Israel's ability to raise, comprising less than 0.5 percent of GDP and under 1 percent of the state budget(...)

jfl | Jun 22, 2015 6:23:56 PM | 15

To "deny, disrupt, degrade/denigrate, delay, deceive, discredit, dissuade or deter" communications on the internet is the cyber equivalent of the US/UK's 'real world' policy of death, devastation and destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen and 'austerity' at home in the US/UK/EU.

The 5-eyes and their European vassals, under control of the 5-eyed 5th column comprising the government of the EU, are the largest single source of negativity on earth.

And their fantastically expensive pursuit of all these openly negative outcomes has come at the cost of actually addressing any of our world's myriad real problems. Grillions in defense of the perceived interests of the 1%, not a cent for the interests of the planet and humanity.

Anonymous | Jun 22, 2015 6:44:36 PM | 16

Wow! It's as if no one ever heard of psyops before, not to mention Cointelpro. The only new wrinkle, though certainly worth noting, is that computers are now targeted. But seriously, who really believed the imperialists would *not* be doing shit like this?

ToivoS | Jun 23, 2015 1:50:22 AM | 21

Possibly relevant to b's current topic is the comments sections at Russia Today. Those comments have always looked to me as a real snake pit. There has always been some very ugly antisemitic comments there. I noticed in the last week that their stories on crime in America have been deluged with some of the worst white racist- antiblack comments. I kept wondering -- why would stories in the Russian press attract such virulent anti (American) black comments? It seems the most likely reason is that some outside agency is trying to discredit RT by showing only American racist read it.

Almand | Jun 23, 2015 2:04:04 AM | 22

@TovioS

To be fair, a lot of real American nutjobs do frequent the RT comment section, since in the good old USA, RT is treated as an "alternative" news source akin to Alex Jones' "Prison Planet". And there is still a ton of ugly, virulent racism in the comments section of the New York Times, WaPo, Fox News (especially)... they just seem to have bigger vocabularies.

Harry | Jun 23, 2015 2:16:31 AM | 23

@ ToivoS | 20

It seems the most likely reason is that some outside agency is trying to discredit RT by showing only American racist read it.

You got it. While this topic is about UK and their spies trying to disrupt, deceive, discredit, etc. etc., but US and Israel are doing it for longer and on much greater scale. They took manipulation of masses to such level (mass and social media, (mis)education, misusing science, etc), that even Goebbels could only have dreamed about it.

Speaking of social media, there were reports in recent years of US having ten of thousands employees focusing exclusively on social media. Each using software which helps to maintain x10 unique poster profiles. I think b' wrote about it as well. Therefore just US has 100.000+ of daily "posters" all around the World, trying to push US agenda. Who knows what is total number of Western propaganda trolls, and I bet the number is ever increasing.

bassalt | Jun 23, 2015 7:21:01 AM | 31

more from Greenwald- a psychologist on Board at GCHQ to make sure their 'work' is effective.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/06/22/behavioural-science-support-jtrig/

Surprised not to see mention made here of the new 2,000 strong 'Chindit brigade' tasked with pretty much the same duties

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-warriors-77th-brigade

This is surely going to render a lot of the new media ineffective in terms of obtaining fast and accurate information. How the hell are we going to stop these bastards?

lysias | Jun 23, 2015 11:03:31 AM | 33

Let us remember that it was Obama staffer and adviser Cass Sunstein (Samantha Power's husband) who advised "cognitive infiltration" of the Internet by the government.

Wayoutwest | Jun 23, 2015 11:50:46 AM | 35

In the paranoid world of the web it is a badge of honor to claim you are being targeted by the PTB. Sites that don't pose much threat to the status quo feel left out and have to create hidden enemies so anyone who resists the dogma and groupthink must be branded as paid trolls.

I've witnessed a number of apparent operatives exposed on other blogs and they are usually easy to identify but some are clever and they rarely return once they see people are watching and know the difference between disagreement and deception.

Noirette | Jun 23, 2015 3:51:43 PM | 38

Some signs of the paid troll:

Inconsistency. This may seem counter-intuitive, but they argue in the here-and-now, against some other, usually only one, fact(s) / opinion / general trend from the past half hour. In this way they sometimes contradict themselves or mix things up, or use arguments that couldn't co-exist.

Impersonality. One more, counter-intuitive (specially as a common tactic is ad hominems, insults, etc. to disrupt no matter what.) They are not involved in the discussion and probably doing something else at the same time. This also means they don't answer questions (or only rarely), don't quote sources (much), never agree with any another poster, and never raise issues or ask genuine questions. (Any questions usually contain a pre-supposition, such as 'did the captain beat his wife today?')

Persistence. An ordinary person appalled and frightened by crazed conspiracy theorists tends to check out quickly.

Ad hominems bis. Brow-beating, authority card (sometimes some fake expertise is pulled in, like being a pilot, worked in finance), because there is nothing other left to do…

Posting during the same time each day, posting a similar amount of posts / words. Acceptable sentence structure and OK spelling with a flat, pedestrian, vocabulary. It is paid work, after all, quite similar to 'customer service for the complaints'…(and note the cuteness of all words beginning with D…lame…)

Being male and aged around 20+ - 36, maybe 40, that is presenting a persona in that age range. Men are still much more respected than women on the intertubes, and afaik women are asked to adopt a male persona and be 'aggressive' (Paul pilot, not Paula florist..)

I don't think all this is too effective, except in the sense of polarisation, getting ppl to hysterically takes sides, create divisions, and so on. As a propaganda tool it is pretty much a failure. The pay is low (no nos. does anyone know?)… For now there is no Union of 'trolls', as they are supposed to act sub rosa.

:) They should get together (from all sides) and set up a troll Union as 'propaganda agents' and apply for membership in the ITUC!

>

[Jun 24, 2015] M of A - So The Spy Services Are The Real Internet Trolls

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept provides new material from the Snowden stash.

The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) includes a "Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group" which "provides most of GCHQ's cyber effects and online HUMINT capability. It currently lies at the leading edge of cyber influence practice and expertise." In 2011 the JTRIG had 120 people on its staff.

Here are some of its methods, used in support of British policies like for regime change in Syria and Zimbabwe:

All of JTRIG's operations are conducted using cyber technology. Staff described a range of methods/techniques that have been used to-date for conducting effects operations. These included:
  • Uploading YouTube videos containing "persuasive" communications (to discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deter, delay or disrupt)
  • Setting up Facebook groups, forums, blogs and Twitter accounts that encourage and monitor discussion on a topic (to discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deter, delay or disrupt)
  • Establishing online aliases/personalities who support the communications or messages in YouTube videos, Facebook groups, forums, blogs etc
  • Establishing online aliases/personalities who support other aliases
  • Sending spoof e-mails and text messages from a fake person or mimicking a real person (to discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deceive, deter, delay or disrupt)
  • Providing spoof online resources such as magazines and books that provide inaccurate information (to disrupt, delay, deceive, discredit, promote distrust, dissuade, deter or denigrate/degrade)
  • Providing online access to uncensored material (to disrupt)
  • Sending instant messages to specific individuals giving them instructions for accessing uncensored websites
  • Setting up spoof trade sites (or sellers) that may take a customer's money and/or send customers degraded or spoof products (to deny, disrupt, degrade/denigrate, delay, deceive, discredit, dissuade or deter)
  • Interrupting (i.e., filtering, deleting, creating or modifying) communications between real customers and traders (to deny, disrupt, delay, deceive, dissuade or deter)
  • Taking over control of online websites (to deny, disrupt, discredit or delay)
  • Denial of telephone and computer service (to deny, delay or disrupt)
  • Hosting targets' online communications/websites for collecting SIGINT (to disrupt, delay, deter or deny)
  • Contacting host websites asking them to remove material (to deny, disrupt, delay, dissuade or deter)

It is unlikely that the British GHCQ is the only secret service using these tactics. Other government as well as private interests can be assumed to use similar means.

To "deny, disrupt, degrade/denigrate, delay, deceive, discredit, dissuade or deter" is exactly what Internet trolls are doing in the comment sections of blogs and news sites. Usually though on a smaller scale than the GHCQ and alike. The more these services grow and their methods proliferate the less possible will it become to have reasonable online discussions.

Posted by b at 10:56 AM | Comments (42)

[Jun 22, 2015] The Boomerang Effect: Sanctions on Russia Hit German Economy Hard

nationalinterest.org
Moscow Exile, June 22, 2015 at 10:36 am
Hasn't even registered on European economies.

Können Sie Deutsch?

Sanktionen kosten Europa bis zu 100 Milliarden Euro, Freitag, 19.06.2015, 10:09

Russlands Wirtschaftskrise hat verheerende Folgen für Europa. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine Studie aus Österreich. Besonders betroffen ist Deutschland. Die Krise könnte das Land mittelfristig eine halbe Million Arbeitsplätze und Milliarden Euro an Wertschöpfung kosten.
Die Wirtschaftskrise in Russland hat weitaus schlimmere Konsequenzen für die Länder der Europäischen Union (EU) und die Schweiz als bislang erwartet. Nach einer Berechnung des Österreichischen Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung (Wifo), die der europäischen Zeitungsallianz "Lena" exklusiv vorliegt, sind europaweit weit mehr als zwei Millionen Arbeitsplätze und rund 100 Milliarden Euro an Wertschöpfung in Gefahr.

Moscow Exile, June 22, 2015 at 10:44 am
The Boomerang Effect: Sanctions on Russia Hit German Economy Hard – Der Spiegel, July 21, 2014
Moscow Exile, June 22, 2015 at 11:32 am
No, it's not what I maintain, it's what these people report is happening:

German businesses suffer fallout as Russia sanctions bite (Financial Times)

http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/9a620f0c-73fc-11e4-82a6-00144feabdc0.img

German Businesses Urge Halt on Sanctions Against Russia – Wall Street Journal

In most countries, it would be highly unusual for corporate executives to inject themselves into geopolitics and matters of national security with the forcefulness that a number of German business leaders have. But many of Germany's largest companies have substantial Russian operations, built in some cases over decades, and worry that tough economic sanctions would rob them of a key growth market when their home market-Europe-is stagnant.

Germany's economy hit by trade sanctions on Russia – FT

The sanctions being placed on Russia by Europe are having a negative impact on the bloc, experts have said.

European countries have implemented a series of trade embargoes as a punishment for Russia's moves to annex Crimea and for its ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Rowan Dartington Signature's Guy Stephens said the eurozone had been "rife" with weak economic data and one of the biggest concerns was Germany because of its relationship with Russia.

"Sanctions against key trading partner Russia, coupled with declining demand from China, have begun to take their toll on Europe's largest economy," he said.

"Business confidence is also waning and GDP growth for next year has been downgraded to just 0.8 per cent, well below the government's forecast of 1.3 per cent. All in all, the decline of Europe's powerhouse could just turn out to be the ammunition that European Central Bank president Mario Draghi needs to begin a prolonged quantitative-easing campaign."

Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said Europe's share of global profits had "collapsed".

"And complicating the immediate path of liquidity and corporate earnings in Europe is the ongoing collapse in the Russian rouble," he said.

[Jun 22, 2015] Pope Francis says those in weapons industry cant call themselves Christian

"..."It makes me think of ... people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit of distrust, doesn't it?" he said to applause."
Jun 22, 2015 | theguardian.com

At rally of young people in Turin, Francis issues his toughest condemnation to date of the weapons industry, criticizing investors as well as workers

People who manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian, Pope Francis said on Sunday.

Duplicity is the currency of today ... they say one thing and do another -- -- Pope Francis

Francis issued his toughest condemnation to date of the weapons industry at a rally of thousands of young people at the end of the first day of his trip to the Italian city of Turin. "If you trust only men you have lost," he told the young people in a long commentary about war, trust and politics, after putting aside his prepared address.

"It makes me think of ... people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit of distrust, doesn't it?" he said to applause.

He also criticized those who invest in weapons industries, saying "duplicity is the currency of today ... they say one thing and do another."

Francis also built on comments he has made in the past about events during the first and second world wars. He spoke of the "tragedy of the Shoah", using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

"The great powers had the pictures of the railway lines that brought the trains to the concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, homosexuals, everybody. Why didn't they bomb (the railway lines)?"

Discussing the first world war, he spoke of "the great tragedy of Armenia", but did not use the word "genocide". Francis sparked a diplomatic row in April, calling the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians 100 years ago "the first genocide of the 20th century", prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador to the Vatican.

[Jun 20, 2015]Jeb Bush - Profile

"...No Republican will enjoy credibility as a deficit hawk unless he or she acknowledges that George W. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited. "
.
"...The National Review piece went on: "Adelson sent word to Bush's camp in Miami: Bush, he said, should tell Baker to cancel the speech. When Bush refused, a source describes Adelson as "rips***"; another says Adelson sent word that the move cost the Florida governor 'a lot of money.'" (At around the same time the rupture with Adelson was reported, Bush publicly disavowed Baker, saying that he would not be a part of his foreign policy team.)"
.
"...In March 2014, Bush and several other potential candidates were also received by Adelson at a Republican Jewish Coalition gathering at a Las Vegas hangar owned by Adelson's Sands Corporation, which papers dubbed the "Adelson primary." According to attendees, Bush gave a speech largely focused on domestic issues but also criticized the Obama administration's foreign policy-a key issue for Adelson, who is fiercely "pro-Israel." In his foreign policy remarks, Bush warned about the dangers of "American passivity" and, according to Time, "cautioned the Republican party against 'neo-isolationism' … a line universally understood as a shot at [libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand] Paul. Bush also pushed back on Democratic attacks that whenever a Republican calls for a more activist foreign policy that they are 'warmongering.'"
Jun 20, 2015 | Right Web - Institute for Policy Studies
Foreign Policy Views and Clues

Although he rarely comments on foreign policy, Bush has appeared to embrace neoconservatives who supported his brother's administration, inviting them to serve as his advisers, parroting their complaints about the Obama administration, promoting their current policy objectives, and defending many of their past debacles, like the Iraq War.

He has said that he does not think that "the military option should ever be taken off the table" with respect to Iran and that Obama administration policies on Iran had "empower[ed] bad behavior in Tehran."[8]

Bush has repeatedly defended the decision to invade Iraq. He told CNN in March 2013: "A lot of things in history change over time. I think people will respect the resolve that my brother showed, both in defending the country and the war in Iraq."[9]

More recently, in May 2015, when asked by Fox News pundit Megyn Kelly if he would have authorized the Iraq War "knowing what we know now," Bush replied: "I would have [authorized the invasion], and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."[10] This statement spurred widespread criticism, including among conservatives. Radio host Laura Ingram, arguing that Bush's weakness on this issue could be exploited by an election opponent, quipped: "We can't stay in this re-litigating the Bush years again. You have to have someone who says look I'm a Republican, but I'm not stupid." She added: "You can't still think that going into Iraq, now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to do. If you do, there has to be something wrong with you," she added.[11]

Many writers have argued that Bush's national ambitions will inevitably suffer from his association with his brother, whom Jeb has pointedly refused to criticize. Saying he didn't believe "there's any Bush baggage at all," Jeb Bush predicted in March 2013 that "history will be kind to George W. Bush." This led The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart to quip, "Unfortunately for Jeb, history is written by historians," who have generally given the Bush administration poor reviews. "That's why Jeb Bush will never seriously challenge for the presidency," Beinart concluded, "because to seriously challenge for the presidency, a Republican will have to pointedly distance himself from Jeb's older brother. No Republican will enjoy credibility as a deficit hawk unless he or she acknowledges that George W. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited. No Republican will be able to promise foreign-policy competence unless he or she acknowledges the Bush administration's disastrous mismanagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. … Jeb Bush would find that excruciatingly hard even if he wanted to."[12]

Bush has made several explicit gestures indicating his commitment to continue his brother's track record, particularly on foreign policy. In February 2015, his campaign announced 21 foreign policy experts who will guide him on foreign policy issues. The vast majority were veterans of the George W. Bush administration, like Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Michael Chertoff, John Negroponte, Otto Reich, and [13] George W. Bush Deputy National Security Adviser Meghan O'Sullivan has been mentioned as a possible "top foreign-policy aide."[14]

"Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush … is seeking to distinguish his views on foreign policy from those of his father and brother, two former presidents," reported the Washington Post, "but he's getting most of his ideas from nearly two dozen people, most of whom previously worked for George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush."[15]

Many observers have surmised that Bush's emphatic support for his brother is the result of him attempting to win the support of Sheldon Adelson. Bush is believed to have received the ire of Adelson after he included in his list of foreign policy advisers former Secretary of State James Baker, a realist who has been critical of Israel on several occasions.

"The bad blood between Bush and Adelson is relatively recent," wrote the conservative National Review in May 2015, "and it deepened with the news that former secretary of state James Baker, a member of Bush's foreign-policy advisory team, was set to address J Street, a left-wing pro-Israel organization founded to serve as the antithesis to the hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)."[16]

The National Review piece went on: "Adelson sent word to Bush's camp in Miami: Bush, he said, should tell Baker to cancel the speech. When Bush refused, a source describes Adelson as "rips***"; another says Adelson sent word that the move cost the Florida governor 'a lot of money.'"[17] (At around the same time the rupture with Adelson was reported, Bush publicly disavowed Baker, saying that he would not be a part of his foreign policy team.[18])

During the April 2015 Republican Jewish Coalition-hosted "Adelson primary" in Las Vegas, Salon reported, Adelson "devoted a night to honoring Bush's brother George W. for all he'd done for Israel and the Middle East." Salon added: "The Las Vegas mogul and Israel hawk thus took Bush's biggest political problem-his brother-and made him an asset."[19]

In May 2015, at a meeting with wealthy investors hosted by "pro-Israel" billionaire Paul Singer, Bush unequivocally expressed his attention to follow his brother's advice on issues related to Israel and the Middle East. "If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it's him," Bush said at the event.[20]

In March 2014, Bush and several other potential candidates were also received by Adelson at a Republican Jewish Coalition gathering at a Las Vegas hangar owned by Adelson's Sands Corporation, which papers dubbed the "Adelson primary." According to attendees, Bush gave a speech largely focused on domestic issues but also criticized the Obama administration's foreign policy-a key issue for Adelson, who is fiercely "pro-Israel." In his foreign policy remarks, Bush warned about the dangers of "American passivity" and, according to Time, "cautioned the Republican party against 'neo-isolationism' … a line universally understood as a shot at [libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand] Paul. Bush also pushed back on Democratic attacks that whenever a Republican calls for a more activist foreign policy that they are 'warmongering.'"[21]

The remarks-which the Washington Post described as "muscular if generic"[22]-appeared to be well received by the attendees and seemed to demonstrate that Bush identified more with the party's interventionist wing than with its rising libertarian faction on foreign policy.[23]

At one point in the late 1990s, Bush seemed to have been considered a potentially more influential political ally than his brother by the neoconservatives who founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Commenting on the signatories to PNAC's 1997 founding statement of principles, Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn wrote: "Ironically, virtually the only signatory who has not played a leading role since the letter was released has been Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who in 1997 apparently looked to [William] Kristol and [Robert] Kagan more presidential than his brother George."[24]

[Jun 20, 2015]Charleston and the National-Security State

"...Why should Americans have their pretty little heads bothered with such unpleasantries? Just leave "national security" to us, U.S. officials say, and we'll do whatever is necessary to "keep you safe" from all those scary creatures out there who want to come and get you and take you away. Oh, and be sure to keep all those trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars flooding into our "defense" coffers."
Jun 19, 2015 | The Future of Freedom Foundation

... Ever since 9/11, the American people have operated under the quaint notion that all the violence that the Pentagon and the CIA have been inflicting on people in foreign nations has an adverse effect only over there. The idea has been that as long as all the death, torture, assassinations, bombings, shootings, and mayhem were in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, Americans could go pleasantly on with their lives, going to work, church, and fun sporting events where everyone could praise and pray for the troops for "defending our freedoms" and "keeping us safe."

Through it all, the national-security state, with the cooperation of the mainstream media, has done its best to immunize Americans from all the violence, death, and mayhem that they've been wreaking on people over there.

  • Don't show the American people photographs of wedding parties in which brides and grooms and flower girls have been blown to bits by a U.S. bomb or missile.
  • Hide those torture records at Abu Ghraib. Lock them away in a secret vault forever.
  • Destroy those torture videos and redact that torture report.
  • And above all, don't even think of keeping count of the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Anything and everything to keep the American people from having to confront, assimilate, and process the ongoing culture of violence that the national-security state has brought to people in other parts of the world.

Why should Americans have their pretty little heads bothered with such unpleasantries? Just leave "national security" to us, U.S. officials say, and we'll do whatever is necessary to "keep you safe" from all those scary creatures out there who want to come and get you and take you away. Oh, and be sure to keep all those trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars flooding into our "defense" coffers.

As an aside, have you ever noticed that Switzerland, which is one of the most armed societies in the world, is not besieged by a "war on terrorism" and by gun massacres? I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the Swiss government isn't involved in an ongoing crusade to violently remake the world in its image.

Ask any American whether all that death and destruction at the hands of the military and the CIA is necessary, and he's likely to say, "Well, of course it is. People all over the world hate us for our freedom and values. We've got to kill them over there before they come over here to kill us. The war on terrorism goes on forever. I'm a patriot! Praise the troops!"

The thought that the entire scheme of ongoing violence is just one great big racket just doesn't even occur to them. That's what a mindset of deference to authority does to people.

All that ongoing violence that has formed the foundation of America's governmental structure since the totalitarian structure known as the national-security state came into existence after World War II is at the core of the national sickness to which Rand Paul alludes.

And so is the extreme deference to authority paid to the national-security establishment by all too many Americans who have converted the Pentagon and the CIA into their god - one who can do no wrong as it stomps around the world killing, torturing, bombing, shooting, invading, maiming, and occupying, all in the name of "national security," a ridiculous term if there ever was one, a term not even found in the U.S. Constitution.

As I have long written, the national-security establishment has warped and perverted the values, morals, and principles of the American people. This totalitarian structure that was grafted onto our governmental system after World War II to oppose America's World War II partner and ally the Soviet Union has stultified the consciences of the American people, causing them to subordinate themselves to the will and judgment of the military (including the NSA) and the CIA and, of course, to surrender their fundamental God-given rights to liberty and privacy in the quest to be "kept safe" from whoever happens to be the official enemy of the day.

The discomforting fact is that the American people have not been spared the horrific consequences of the ongoing culture of violence that the U.S. national-security establishment has brought to foreign lands. The ongoing culture of violence that forms the foundation of the national security state - killing untold numbers of people on a perpetual basis - has been a rotting and corrosive cancer that has been destroying America from within and that continues to do so.

It's that ongoing culture of violence that brings out the crazies and the loonies, who see nothing wrong with killing people for no good reason at all. In ordinary societies, the crazies and the loonies usually just stay below the radar screen and live out their lives in a fairly abnormal but peaceful manner. But in dysfunctional societies, such as ones where the government is based on killing, torturing, maiming, and destroying people on a constant basis, the crazies and the loonies come onto the radar screen and commit their crazy and loony acts of violence.

... ... ...

[Jun 19, 2015] The Undiplomatic Diplomat

Since the fall of the Soviet Union liberated Americans from our fear of nuclear Armageddon, the foreign policy of the United States has come to rely almost exclusively on economic sanctions, military deterrence, and the use of force. Coercion replaced diplomacy and for some reason several female psychopaths was selected to implement this policy. all of them were single trick ponies: "my way or highway" was the only method they have in their arsenal. For a while it produced results because dominance of the USA after 1991, but since 2008 with crisis of neoliberalism, it started to produce the level hate which became a became factor limiting possibilities of the USA to conduct foreign policy. As the result, as Chas Freena noted in The American Conservative, "The United States has forfeited its capacity to pursue American interests through negotiated solutions." Andrew Bacevich promoted the same thesis even earlier in his book The Limits of Power The End of American Exceptionalism
"...This significant level of autonomy has led her interlocutors to fixate on her as a driving force of hawkishness within the Obama administration, whether fairly or not."
"..."Many Europeans, and certainly Moscow, hate Nuland, which is just one more reason why her political base on Capitol Hill adores her," said a congressional aide familiar with the issue."
"...While policy differences like this one account for some of the bad blood between Nuland and her European counterparts, her tough style clearly plays a role as well."
Jun 19, 2015 | Foreign Policy

...In interviews with Foreign Policy, her European colleagues have described her as "brash," "direct," "forceful," "blunt," "crude," and occasionally, "undiplomatic." But they also stressed that genuine policy differences account for their frustrations with her - in particular, her support for sending arms to Ukraine as the country fends off a Russian-backed rebellion, a policy not supported by the White House.

"She doesn't engage like most diplomats," said a European official. "She comes off as rather ideological."

While European complaints about Nuland's diplomatic style are genuine and fairly ubiquitous, she has also been dealt an incredibly difficult hand.

Nuland frequently meets with senior European leaders who outrank her and delivers messages they often don't want to hear.

In a crisis of this magnitude, many of these delicate tasks would traditionally get kicked up to Nuland's boss, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman. But Sherman has been saddled with the momentous job of leading the U.S. negotiating team in the Iran nuclear talks, giving Nuland an unusual degree of latitude and influence for an assistant secretary.

This significant level of autonomy has led her interlocutors to fixate on her as a driving force of hawkishness within the Obama administration, whether fairly or not.

"Many Europeans, and certainly Moscow, hate Nuland, which is just one more reason why her political base on Capitol Hill adores her," said a congressional aide familiar with the issue.

In Europe, Nuland is widely presumed to be the leading advocate for shipping weapons to Kiev - a proposal bitterly opposed by the Germans, Hungarians, Italians, and Greeks who fear setting off a wider conflict with Moscow.

The White House has also argued against providing lethal assistance to Kiev because Moscow enjoys what's known as "escalation dominance," or the ability to outmatch and overwhelm Ukrainian forces regardless of the type of assistance the United States would provide.

Nuland is not the only Obama administration official who has supported arming Ukraine, but in Europe, she has become the face of this policy, thanks to a pivotal event that occurred in February during the annual Munich Security Conference.

At the outset of the forum, Nuland and Gen. Philip Breedlove delivered an off-the-record briefing to the visiting U.S. delegation, which included about a dozen U.S. lawmakers in the House and Senate. Unbeknownst to Nuland and Breedlove, a reporter from the German newspaper Bild snuck into the briefing room and published a report that reverberated across Germany but gained little to no traction in English-language media.

The report said Nuland and Breedlove were pressing U.S. lawmakers to support the shipment of defensive weapons to Ukraine and belittling the diplomatic efforts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande were making in Russia.

"We would not be in the position to supply so many weapons that Ukraine could defeat Russia. That is not our goal," Breedlove was quoted as saying. "But we must try to raise the price for Putin on the battlefield."

Nuland reportedly added, "I would like to urge you to use the word 'defensive system' to describe what we would be delivering against Putin's offensive systems," according to a translation.

... ... ...

In December, Democrats and Republicans in Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation authorizing the president to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, including ammunition, troop-operated surveillance drones, and antitank weapons. The president agreed to sign the legislation only because it did not require him to provide the aid, which he has yet to do. Trying a new tactic this week, the Senate included a provision in its military policy bill that would withhold half of the $300 million for Ukrainian security assistance until 20 percent of the funds is spent on lethal weaponry for Kiev. The provision is opposed by the White House for fear that lethal assistance would only serve to escalate the bloodshed in Ukraine and hand Putin an excuse for further violent transgressions.

While policy differences like this one account for some of the bad blood between Nuland and her European counterparts, her tough style clearly plays a role as well.

"Some tend to perceive Nuland's assertiveness as a bit too over the edge, at least for the muffled European diplomatic environment," said Federiga Bindi, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

... ... ...

Despite the fact that Nuland is not outside the mainstream of many State Department views on the Ukraine crisis, her reputation as the most pugnacious of hawks isn't likely to subside in the minds of Europeans anytime soon. In many ways, that's because she'll never live down the moment that made her famous: the leaking of a private phone call of her disparaging the European Union in 2014 as the political standoff between the Ukrainian opposition and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych unfurled.

[Jun 18, 2015] Torture is a war crime the government treats like a policy debate

"...Torture is and has been illegal in the US, so no new law is needed. Prosecute to the full extent anyone who authorized, implemented or has or is covering up these grave crimes. Starting at the Very Top on down. Now. "
.
"...Obama appears to see as his primary goal greasing the skids of American decline. Washington has lost all credibility as presiding over a democracy governed by the rule of law, what with this two-tiered justice system. Celebrate the betrayers of the constitution and punish those who blow the whistle on them. While it's five years old, Alfred McCoy's article on the US decline was cited twice last week, reminding me of how hard-hitting McCoy's argument is. It can be found at TomDispatch"
.
"...The routine use of torture by Savak may well have contributed heavily to the failure of the Shah, particularly considering that these people were probably concentrated in the cities where most of the action took place."
Jun 17, 2015 | The Guardian
Torture architects are television pundits and given enormous book contracts while Guantanamo detainees still can't discuss what happened to them

GUANTANAMO
Prisoners haven't been allowed to talk about what happened to them here. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Wednesday 17 June 2015 07.15 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 17 June 2015 13.35 EDT

Torture is and has been illegal in the US, so no new law is needed. Prosecute to the full extent anyone who authorized, implemented or has or is covering up these grave crimes. Starting at the Very Top on down. Now.

CraigSummers, 17 Jun 2015 16:16)

  • The evidence that torture doesn't work is overwhelming.
  • http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/senate-committee-cia-torture-does-not-work
  • http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/08/world/does-torture-work-the-cias-claims-and-what-the-committee-found.html?_r=0
  • http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/cia-torture-report-released
  • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11283082/Does-the-use-of-torture-ever-work.html
  • http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/09/dick-cheney-defends-torture-al-qaida
  • capatriot -> CraigSummers 17 Jun 2015 16:12

    The president's oath is to obey the law, the constitution, not to "keep Americans safe." Torture is illegal for good and proper reasons. It cannot be used and, if used, must be prosecuted and punished.

    It is immaterial if it "works" ... this is not Dirty Harry or Jack Bauer; this is real governance: a govt of laws, not men.

    bloggod 17 Jun 2015 16:07

    "The only reason a host of current and former CIA officials aren't already in jail is because of cowardice on the Obama administration," says Timm
    ________

    An emphatic collusion of many more complicit parties would seem to suggest the world is not run by Obama...

    ID8667623 17 Jun 2015 15:30

    Obama appears to see as his primary goal greasing the skids of American decline. Washington has lost all credibility as presiding over a democracy governed by the rule of law, what with this two-tiered justice system. Celebrate the betrayers of the constitution and punish those who blow the whistle on them.

    While it's five years old, Alfred McCoy's article on the US decline was cited twice last week, reminding me of how hard-hitting McCoy's argument is. It can be found at TomDispatch:

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175327/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_taking_down_america

    gbob5366 -> outkast1213 17 Jun 2015 14:54

    I, being a US citizen, feel that it is up to us to stand up to US imperialism.
    Until we, in the US, stand up and say "Enough", this country will continue it's attack upon the world.

    Wake up America --

    PS. You see that the war has come home... just look at the military armament being used by the police. And, we need to stand up all together! Please, Mr. Policeman, don't shoot us. Protect us against the 1%.

    JimHorn 17 Jun 2015 11:20

    In the run up to the Iranian Revolution, I worked with an Iranian woman in a restaurant. She wore the same short sleeve blouse as the others, and her skirt was only an inch or two longer. Her husband was a grad student at the university. Obviously thoroughly westernized. I took the opportunity to ask an actual Iranian about the events that were happening in her homeland.

    She told me that her brother, a student, had been picked up and tortured by Savak, the Shah's secret police. She said

    "No one in my family, my father, my brothers, my uncles, my cousins, - will support the Shah. We hate Khomeini, but we also hate the Shah. We will let Khomeini overthrow the Shah and then we will overthrow Khomeini."

    These were people who should have been on the side of the westernizing Shah but sat on the sidelines. Some reports say that Savak may have treated up to 100,000 people like this woman's brother. Allowing for ten adult relatives per victim, we get a million westernized Iranians. The population at the time was about 30 million. The routine use of torture by Savak may well have contributed heavily to the failure of the Shah, particularly considering that these people were probably concentrated in the cities where most of the action took place.

    Note that Savak, sadly, trained by our CIA, was intent on preventing a communist takeover and concentrated on those who wished to westernize government as well as the economy. They utterly failed to deal with the threat from religious conservatives.

    [Jun 17, 2015] Washington Prepares to Fight for Donetsk

    "...There are valid arguments on both sides but you don't get to walk this back. Once we have done this we become a belligerent party in a proxy war with Russia, the only country on earth that can destroy the United States. That's why this is a big deal." "
    Jun 17, 2015 | The American Conservative
    Washington Prepares to Fight for Donetsk (and Ignore Baltimore) The American Conservative

    Jacob Heilbrunn has an extremely suggestive article in the latest National Interest which reminds readers that neoconservatives essentially began as critics of Great Society liberalism and elite reluctance to defend bourgeois standards and law and order in the 1960s. Heilbrunn has written one of the finest books about neoconservatism, and is generally a nuanced critic of the group. But one need not go full bore with Norman Podhoretz-type linkages between homosexuality, cultural decay, and Munich to recognize that the neocons were right about many things, and law and order in American cities was one of them. In any case, Heilbrunn reminds us that Bill Kristol (son of Irving, founder of The Public Interest, a magazine devoted to domestic policy) tweeted out in the aftermath of the Ferguson riots (the second set, not the first) that it felt like 1968 all over again and some politician would do well to speak, a la Richard Nixon, for the silent American majority which was not anti-cop. In this case, Kristol was probably right.

    It is also is apparent that no major politician right, center, or left has yet risen to take the bait. Of course they all want to be "tough"-but always somewhere else in the world. Neoconservatism has prevailed, but only in foreign policy. Today the target is Vladimir Putin and Russia, and everyone in Washington agrees he needs to be taught a lesson. Congress voted last week voted to compel the administration to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, including offensive weapons-against the administration's judgment. The Times story noted that the arms shipments would open a rift between the Washington and France and Germany, which are hesitant about any measure which would escalate the fighting. It would seem that Congress has bought whole hog into the Wolfowitz doctrine, widely derided as extremist when it was leaked in 1992, according to which the United States should maintain dominance in every region of the world, and that no other nation should aspire to a greater role, even in its own geographic area.

    Major European governments are now doing their best to circumvent anti-Russian sanctions which they themselves instituted. European publics make it clear that they are not willing to fight Russia over the disposition of the territories of the former Soviet Union. The cease-fire between Ukraine and its rebellious Russian-backed eastern provinces that was negotiated last February has been violated repeatedly, and Putin has called openly for the West to persuade Ukraine's central government to follow its provisions. It's not clear how many American congressmen voting for giving Ukraine offensive weapons understand the implications of their weapons policy, which were spelled out by the Kennan Institute's Matthew Rojansky:

    There are valid arguments on both sides but you don't get to walk this back. Once we have done this we become a belligerent party in a proxy war with Russia, the only country on earth that can destroy the United States. That's why this is a big deal.

    A proxy war with Russia, over Russian borderlands not one American in a hundred could locate on a map-it's really the full triumph of Wolfowitz. Not to be outdone by Congress, the Obama administration is now floating plans to deliver tanks and other heavy weapons, along with token numbers of American troops, to several of our new NATO "allies," the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Those governments will inevitably conclude that Washington has their back in any conflict with Russia and act accordingly. See Georgia, 2008, for an example of how this might play out.

    There is something about Ukraine and the other Russian border regions which Europeans seem to understand and Americans don't. Much of the "Maidan Revolution" was driven by ethnic Ukrainian nationalists with deep hatred for Russia; while it's not a universal sentiment, many Ukrainians despise all things Russian, including their own compatriots who identify with Russia. They want nothing more than to draw the West into a war against their ancestral enemy. The newly minted anti-Russian regime in Kiev is the fruit of American "pro-democracy" meddling involving billions of dollars of payouts to private groups and individuals, the kind of thing the CIA used to do during the Cold War. Of course because of its proximity to an unsettled region, the new Ukrainian government can find endless ways to keep the pot boiling–shelling their own civilians in Donetsk, or instituting a blockade against Transnistria , a pro-Russian breakaway province of Moldova. The average American may not know much about Transnistria-or indeed likely has never heard of it at all-but you can be assured that Putin does care about keeping the small Russian garrison stationed there supplied.

    This is neoconservatism's triumph: the creation of an entire Beltway industry, honeycombed through Congress and largely bipartisan, which finds political life not worth living without the prospect of confrontation with a distant enemy. The notion of treating Russia as a great power, acknowledging that Russia has serious security interests on its borders and treating those interests respectfully, does not occur to its members. Detente for them is a dirty word, akin to appeasement.

    [Jun 16, 2015] Hillary Clinton ducks questions on trade deals during New Hampshire visit

    Notable quotes:
    "... But, listen, lets review the rules. Heres how it works: the president makes decisions. Hes the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction! ..."
    "... The media is still a bunch of stenographers for the WH and even now the WH candidates. ..."
    "... She was part of the Obama/Biden administration that expanded Afghanistan war, attacked Libya, intervened in Syria and Yemen, relaunched the Iraq war, used Ukraine to provoke Russia and is being provocative with China by interfering in South China Sea. ..."
    "... Lets face it. Wall Street and the military industrial complex control BOTH parties, and are especially bonded with and beholding to Hillary Clinton. ..."
    "... You have to remember that to the financial elites who are backing Republicans - and Obama - middle class means anyone whos in the top 5% of the economic pyramid but hasnt made it into the top 1% because theyre too damned lazy. ..."
    Jun 15, 2015 | The Guardian

    FugitiveColors 15 Jun 2015 23:52

    She can talk til her pantsuit turns blue.
    I have already decided that my ballot will have Bernie Sanders on it one way or another.
    I don't believe her. I don't like her, and I damn sure won't vote for her.
    She is a blue corporate stooge and not much different than a red corporate stooge.
    Bernie is honest and after all of those years in politics, he is not rich.
    You can't say that about a single other candidate.


    libbyliberal -> Timothy Everton 15 Jun 2015 23:47

    Yo, Timothy, Paul Street recently reminded his readers of part of Colbert's speech at the Correspondents' Dinner way back in 2006 (time flies while we're sinking into fascism):

    "But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!"

    Timothy Everton -> enlightenedgirl 15 Jun 2015 22:36

    Sorry Not-so-enlightenedgirl. WE don't elect government officials, and we don't pay them for "not putting the screws to us". They get elected, paid, and influenced by lobbyists for the wealthy one percent, and by the corporations, who both fund their campaigns for future favors rendered. Those with the most funding for the prettiest and most abundant campaign ads are those elected. And yes, they DO put the screws to us, the American public. This woman is more a puppet for those interests than some Republicans.

    Timothy Everton -> libbyliberal 15 Jun 2015 22:11

    "The media is still a bunch of stenographers for the WH and even now the WH candidates."

    Sorry libby, I don't see them crowding around Bernie Sanders, the only viable candidate FOR the AVERAGE American. In fact, I believe he had more "press time" before he became a candidate.

    That is the way it goes here though. Get an honest candidate who speaks her/his mind, and you get no press coverage - way too dangerous for those who actually control our government through lobbyists.


    libbyliberal 15 Jun 2015 21:42

    What is this business about Hillary NOT "taking the bait" of a reporter's questions? Hillary needs to be challenged and not be the one in control with her gobsmackingly well-funded pr info-mercial steamrolling her presidential challenge.

    The media is still a bunch of stenographers for the WH and even now the WH candidates. This is what THEY say their policy is and will be. Not critical thinking of the journalist, no connecting of the dots, to be applied?

    Their talk sure is cheap and seductive. Obama gave us major lessons in that in 2008 and again in 2012. More nicey-nice sounding bull-sh*t that is vague or downright mendacious to the realpolitik agenda.

    Hillary wants to talk about what is convenient and safe for her. Identity politics. Generalized populist feel-good rhetoric. Nothing substantial with the globalized and corporatized trade deals OR the massive violent US-sponsored or direct militarism around the globe.

    Hillary's NYC Four Freedoms Park speech: lack of mention of foreign policy except for some threats on China, Russia, N. Korea and Iran. No mention of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Afghanistan. No mention of drone warfare. No mention of NSA surveillance. No mention of police violence.

    She was part of the Obama/Biden administration that expanded Afghanistan war, attacked Libya, intervened in Syria and Yemen, relaunched the Iraq war, used Ukraine to provoke Russia and is being provocative with China by interfering in South China Sea.

    Hillary skipped addressing the inconvenient and the media and her fan base had no problem with such gobsmacking omissions. Hillary decides that the US citizenry doesn't want to focus on foreign policy and she ramps up vague populist rhetoric like Obama did back in 2008 to convince the citizenry she is their champion even though she personally has amassed over $100 million from her financial elite cronies over the decades and if you think that fortune has no influence on who she is championing there's a bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn you should look into buying.

    Let's face it. Wall Street and the military industrial complex control BOTH parties, and are especially bonded with and beholding to Hillary Clinton.


    Vladimir Makarenko -> enlightenedgirl 15 Jun 2015 19:19

    "diplomacy so badly needed after the disastrous term of Bush and Cheney and their destruction of the Middle East." If anything she extended B & Ch policies by destroying Libya and turning it in a murderous breeding ground for Islamic ultras. She was at helm of arming Syrian "opposition" better known today as ISIS.

    Her record as a Secretary is dismal - line by line no achievements, no solved problems but disaster by disaster.

    talenttruth 15 Jun 2015 18:34

    If the Democratic party nominates the "inevitable" Hillary Clinton, rather than someone real who ACTUALLY represents the middle class, tells the truth and is NOT part of the "corporately bought-and-sold" insider group, then it will be heads-or-tails whether she wins or one of the totally insane, whack-job Republi-saur candidates wins.

    If she keeps on doing what she's been doing, she will LOOK just like those arrogant "insiders" the Republicans claim her to be (despite the fact that they are FAR FAR FAR worse, but much better at lying about that than any Democrat). Hillary is a VERY VERY WEAK candidate, because the huge "middle" of decent Americans is looking for real change, and not -- as well -- a Republican change WAY for the worse.

    This Election is the Democratic Party's to LOSE. Hillary could make that happen (no matter how much worse ANY Republican victor will likely be). What a choice.

    sour_mash -> goatrider 15 Jun 2015 18:09

    "...why doesn't the disgusting American media ask the Republicans who support it to explain themselves too. Why are they so eager to join Obama in destroying the American middle class?"

    After +6 years of the then Republican Party, now known as the Christian Jihad Party or CJP, making Obama a one term president it smells to high heaven that they now agree on this single issue.

    Yes, where are the questions.

    Whitt 15 Jun 2015 18:03

    Because they're not "destroying the American middle class". You have to remember that to the financial elites who are backing Republicans - and Obama - "middle class" means anyone who's in the top 5% of the economic pyramid but hasn't made it into the top 1% because they're too damned lazy.

    [Jun 16, 2015] Jeb Bush's campaign debut: protester showdown met with chants of 'USA'

    Notable quotes:
    "... sandra oconnor is actually on record saying that she would do anything to get bush elected. ..."
    "... All candidates are promising change and yet are funded by those who dont want change. All candidates are promising defeat of ISIS and yet voted for or presided over or agreed with military aggression in the ME and tactics that helped create the instability in Iraq that led to ISIS. All candidates are promising to strengthen the middle classes and yet support tax cuts (benefiting the rich), trade agreements (benefiting the rich), deregulation (benefiting the rich), and are funded by industries that impoverish the working and middle classes and keep wages stagnant. ..."
    "... Most Americans are addicted , with help from the media, to those who like to drag them to wars and fuck their economy for the sake of the rich and powerful. And the sad truth is that there is not much difference between Democrats such as Clinton and the GOP bunch that have announced their presidential intentions. There is no hope as long as big money is involved in choosing leadership for a country that boasts about democracy and democratic values while its institutions are under assault by corrupt rich and powerful. ..."
    "... The right-wing is incredibly stupid if Bush is their nominee. ..."
    "... Bush may speak Spanish and come across as Latino friendly, but the reality is that hes the son of one of the most powerful families in the US. As a conservative Republican, his first priority is to the powerful elite. ..."
    Jun 15, 2015 | The Guardian

    eileen1 -> mabcalif 15 Jun 2015 23:48

    Neither a Bush nor a Clinton. They're both poisonous in different ways.

    eileen1 -> WMDMIA 15 Jun 2015 23:47

    There is no difference between Bush and Obama, except Obama is smarter and more devious.

    redbanana33 -> mabcalif 15 Jun 2015 23:27

    "are you really suggesting we forget this piece of history simply because bush won by corruption and connivance?"

    No, I never said I believed there was corruption and connivance. Those are your words. Your personal opinion. MY words were that if more voters had wanted Gore as their president, he would have won. As it was, he couldn't even carry his home state. Sometimes the truth is hard to face and so we make excuses for what we perceive as injustice, when, in reality, more people just didn't think like you did in that election. But blame the court (bet you can't even clearly state what the case points they were asked to consider, without googling it) and blame the Clintons and even blame poor Ralph for your guy's lack of popularity. If it makes you feel better, go for it. It won't change the past.

    And, speaking of presidents winning by a hair's breadth, shall we talk about how Joe Kennedy bribed his way to electing his son? Hmmmm? Except that even the crook Nixon had enough class to concede rather than drag the country through months of misery like your hero did.

    mabcalif -> redbanana33 15 Jun 2015 22:50

    there have been more than one excellent president who's won that office only by a hair's breadth.

    are you really suggesting we forget this piece of history simply because bush won by corruption and connivance? particularly when the outcome was so disastrous for the country and the world?

    it wasn't a question of being more popular, it's a question of being overwhelmed by the clinton scandal, a brother governor willing to throw the state's votes and by a supreme court that was arrayed against him (sandra o'connor is actually on record saying that she would do anything to get bush elected.) not to mention a quixotic exercise in third party politics with a manifestly inadequate candidate that had no foreign policy experience

    Otuocha11 -> redbanana33 15 Jun 2015 22:43

    Yes some people need to be reminded, especially about the falsification/lies completing the 2009 voter-registration form.

    bishoppeter4 15 Jun 2015 22:39

    Jeb and his father and brother ought to be in jail !

    Otuocha11 -> redbanana33 15 Jun 2015 22:38

    His point is that "No more president with the name BUSH" in the White House. He can change his name to something like Moron or Terrone. Let him drop that name because Americans have NOT and will NOT recover from the regime of the last Bush.

    redbanana33 -> Con Mc Cusker 15 Jun 2015 22:30

    Then (respectfully) the rest of the world needs to grow some balls, get up off their asses, define their vision, and strike out on their own as controllers of their own destinies.

    After that, you'll have the right to criticize my country. Right now you don't have that right. Get off the wagon and help pull it.

    ponderwell -> Peter Ciurczak 15 Jun 2015 22:25

    Politics is about maneuvering to get your own way. In Jebya speak it means whatever will
    lead to power. Hillary sounds trite and poorly staged.

    Jeez, now Trump wants more attention...a big yawn.

    WMDMIA 15 Jun 2015 22:24

    His brother should be in prison for war crimes and crimes against Humanity. Jeb violated election laws to put his brother in office so he is also responsible for turning this nation into a terrorist country.

    ExcaliburDefender -> Zenit2 15 Jun 2015 22:03

    No $hit $herlock, he met his wife when they were both 17, in MEXICO. Jeb has a degree in Latin Studies too.

    Just vote, the Tea Party always does.

    :<)

    ExcaliburDefender 15 Jun 2015 22:01

    Jeb may very well be the most qualified of the GOP, and he can speak intelligently on immigration, if his campaign/RNC would allow it.

    Too bad we don't have other GOPers like Huntsman and even Steve Forbes, yes I enjoyed Forbes being part of the debates in 96, even voted for him in the primary. And not because I thought he would win, but I wanted him to be heard.

    Debates will be interesting, Trump is jumping in for the 4th time.

    #allvotesmatter

    fflambeau 15 Jun 2015 22:00

    The USA presidential campaign looks very much like a world wrestling match (one of those fake ones). Only the wrestlers are more intelligent.

    MisterMeaner 15 Jun 2015 21:59

    Jebya. Whoopty Goddam Doo.

    ponderwell 15 Jun 2015 21:52

    Jebby exclaimed: 'The country is going in the wrong direction'. Omitting the direction W Bush sent the U.S. into with false info. and willful intention to bomb Iraq for the sake of an egotistical purpose.

    And, the insane numerous disasters W sponsored. The incorrigible Bush Clan !

    benluk 15 Jun 2015 21:49

    Jeb Bush, "In this country of ours, most improbable things can happen," Jeb Bush

    But not as improbable as letting another war mongering Bush in the White House.

    gilbertratchet -> BehrHunter 15 Jun 2015 21:42

    Indeed, and it seems that Bush III thinks it's a virtue not a problem:

    "In this country of ours, most improbable things can happen," began Bush. "And that's from the guy who met his first president on the day he was born and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital..."

    No Jeb, that would be improbable for me. For you it was a normal childhood day. But it's strange you're pushing the "born to rule" angle. I guess it's those highly paid consultants who tell you that you have to own the issue before it defines you.

    Guess what... No amount of spin will change your last name.

    gorianin 15 Jun 2015 21:35

    Jeb Bush already fixed one election. Now he's looking to "fix" the country.

    seasonedsenior 15 Jun 2015 21:29

    Stop calling him Jeb. Sounds folksy and everyman like. His name is John E. Bush. And he's from a family of billionaires. Don't let him pull a what's-her-name in Spokane. He was a rich baby, child, young man, Governor ...on and on and is completely out of touch with the common man.

    He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and his sensibilities are built of money gained off the backs of the workers of this country. He is big oil to his core.

    Caesar Ol 15 Jun 2015 21:27

    Jeb is the dumbest of all the Bushes. Therefore the most dangerous as someone will manipulate him the way that Cheney did with Bush.

    ChelsieGreen 15 Jun 2015 21:27

    Interesting thing is that Bush is old school Republican, spend big, be the power to the world.

    Since his brother/father left office the party moved on, Tea Party may have faded slightly but they are not big spenders, they are small government. Jeb will have trouble making a mark in the early states to be the nominee, he is considered center-right.

    The right wing of the party thinks where they slipped up was not nominating someone right-wing enough, they will portray him as weak on immigration and chew him up.


    Brookstone1 15 Jun 2015 21:11

    America has been wounded badly by the reckless and stupidity of the Republicans under the leadership of G. W. Bush. And now it would be a DEADLY MISTAKE to even ponder about voting Republican again, let alone voting for another Bush! The Bush family has nothing in common with ordinary Americans!

    NO MORE BUSH!!!

    nubwaxer 15 Jun 2015 21:03

    i heard his punchlines about "fixing" america to get us back to free enterprise and freedom. dear jeb, we know what you mean and free enterprise is code for corporatism run wild and repeal of regulations. similarly when you say freedom you mean that for rich white males and right to work laws, union busting, repeal of minimum wage laws, no paid vacation or maternity leave and especially the freedom to go bankrupt, suffer, and die for lack of health care insurance. more like freedumb.

    Xoxarle -> sitarlun 15 Jun 2015 20:33

    All candidates are promising change and yet are funded by those who don't want change.

    All candidates are promising defeat of ISIS and yet voted for or presided over or agreed with military aggression in the ME and tactics that helped create the instability in Iraq that led to ISIS.

    All candidates are promising to strengthen the middle classes and yet support tax cuts (benefiting the rich), trade agreements (benefiting the rich), deregulation (benefiting the rich), and are funded by industries that impoverish the working and middle classes and keep wages stagnant.

    All candidates are promising bipartisanship and yet are part of the dysfunction in DC, pandering to special interests or extreme factions that reject compromise.

    ID6995146 15 Jun 2015 20:33

    Another Saudi hand-holder and arse licker.


    OlavVI -> catch18 15 Jun 2015 20:24

    And he's already got Wolfowitz, one of the worst war mongers (ala Cheney) in US history as an adviser. Probably dreaming up several wars for Halliburton, et al., to rake up billions of $$$$ from the poor (the rich pretty much get off in the US).

    concious 15 Jun 2015 20:20

    USA chant is Nationalism, not Patriotism. Is this John Ellis Bush really going to get votes?

    sitarlun 15 Jun 2015 20:02

    Most Americans are addicted , with help from the media, to those who like to drag them to wars and fuck their economy for the sake of the rich and powerful.

    And the sad truth is that there is not much difference between Democrats such as Clinton and the GOP bunch that have announced their presidential intentions.

    There is no hope as long as big money is involved in choosing leadership for a country that boasts about democracy and democratic values while it's institutions are under assault by corrupt rich and powerful.

    OurPlanet -> briteblonde1 15 Jun 2015 19:34

    He's a great "fixer" Him and his tribe in Florida certainly fixed those chads for his brother's election success in 2000. A truly rich family of oilmen . What could be better? Possibly facing if inaugerated as the GOP nominee to face the possibly successful Democrat nominee Clinton. So the choice of 2016 menu for American election year is 2 Fish that stink. Welcome to the American Plutocracy.

    Sam Ahmed 15 Jun 2015 19:23

    I wonder if the state of Florida will try "Fix" the vote count for Jeb as they did for Georgie. I wonder if the Republicans can "Fix" their own party. You know what, I don't want the Republican party to think I'm bashing them, so I'll request a major tune up for Hillary Clinton too. Smiles all around! =)

    Cyan Eyed 15 Jun 2015 18:48

    A family linked to weapons manufacturers through Harriman.
    A family linked to weapons dealing through Carlyle.
    A family linked to the formation of terrorist networks (including Al Qaeda).
    A family linked to an attempted coup on America.
    The right-wing is incredibly stupid if Bush is their nominee.

    davshev 15 Jun 2015 18:43

    Bush may speak Spanish and come across as Latino friendly, but the reality is that he's the son of one of the most powerful families in the US. As a conservative Republican, his first priority is to the powerful elite.

    [Jun 14, 2015] Bush and Hawkish Magical Thinking

    Notable quotes:
    "... t's usually not clear what hawks think would have discouraged Russian interference and intervention in Ukraine under the circumstances, but they seem to think that if only the U.S. had somehow been more assertive and more meddlesome there or in some other part of the world that the conflict would not have occurred or would not be as severe as it is. ..."
    Jun 14, 2015 | The American Conservative
    Jeb Bush made a familiar assertion during his visit to Poland:

    Bush seemed to suggest he would endorse a more muscular foreign policy, saying the perception of American retreat from the global stage in recent years had emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to commit aggression in Ukraine.

    "When there's doubt, when there's uncertainty, when we pull back, it creates less chance of a more peaceful world," Bush told reporters. "You're seeing the impact of that in Ukraine right now."

    Bush's remarks are what we expect from hawks, but they are useful in showing how they indulge in a sort of magical thinking when it comes to the U.S. role in the world. They take for granted that an activist and meddlesome U.S. foreign policy is stabilizing and contributes to peace and security, and so whenever there is conflict or upheaval somewhere it is attributed to insufficient U.S. meddling or to so-called "retreat." According to this view, the conflict in Ukraine didn't happen because the Ukrainian government was overthrown in an uprising and Russia then illegally seized territory in response, but because the U.S. was perceived to be "retreating" and this "emboldened" Russia. It's usually not clear what hawks think would have discouraged Russian interference and intervention in Ukraine under the circumstances, but they seem to think that if only the U.S. had somehow been more assertive and more meddlesome there or in some other part of the world that the conflict would not have occurred or would not be as severe as it is.

    This both greatly overrates the power and influence that the U.S. has over the events in other parts of the world, and it tries to reduce every foreign crisis or conflict to how it relates to others' perceptions of U.S. "leadership." Hawks always dismiss claims that other states are responding to past and present U.S. actions, but they are absolutely certain that other states' actions are invited by U.S. "inaction" or "retreat," even when the evidence for said "retreat" is completely lacking. The possibility that assertive U.S. actions may have made a conflict more likely or worse than it would otherwise be is simply never admitted. The idea that the U.S. role in the world had little or nothing to do with a conflict seems to be almost inconceivable to them.

    One of the many flaws with this way of looking at the world is that it holds the U.S. most responsible for conflicts that it did not magically prevent while refusing to accept any responsibility for the consequences of things that the U.S. has actually done. Viewing the world this way inevitably fails to take local conditions into account, it ignores the agency of the local actors, and it imagines that the U.S. possesses a degree of control over the rest of the world that it doesn't and can't have. Unsurprisingly, this distorted view of the world reliably produces very poor policy choices.

    [Jun 14, 2015] An Inconvenient Truth The Bush Administration Was a Disaster

    Jun 14, 2015 | The American Conservative

    Most Americans remember the Bush years as a period of expanding government, ruinous war, and economic collapse. They voted for Obama the first time as a repudiation of those developments. Many did so a second time because most Republicans continue to pretend that they never happened.

    [Jun 09, 2015] Looking for Robots That Will Cooperate, Not Terminate By John Markoff

    June 8, 2015 | blogs.nytimes.com

    That is the world imagined by government officials and technologists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the American military organization that is charged with the mission of avoiding a Sputnik-style technology threat to national security. Last weekend at the sprawling Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, Darpa concluded the Robotics Challenge, a two-year-long effort to jump start this next generation of smart and presumably helpful robots by offering a cash prize for the designers of a machine that could work in concert with human controllers in a hazardous environment.

    The $3.5 million competition was won by a South Korean team from KAIST, formerly the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

    The technology may still seem far-fetched, but betting against the agency that has had a remarkably far-reaching effect on the modern world - from funding the work that led to both the personal computer and the Internet, to setting expectations that self-driving vehicles are only a matter of years away - might be a mistake.

    Darpa officials have taken pains to assure anyone who would listen that it was not primarily interested in designing Terminators, or killer robots. The agency is an arm of the Pentagon, and its futuristic robots are an example of what is described as a "dual use" technology that will have both military and civilian uses.

    Darpa, which is also known for pioneering the Internet surveillance system that was exposed last year by Edward J. Snowden, has, under its current director, Arati Prabhakar, expanded its watchfulness over the potential effect of the technologies it helps foster.

    In introducing a workshop for discussion on the effect of robotics held at the end of the challenge competition on Sunday, Dr. Prabhakar described the agency as being committed to a broader mission: "We work together to build the future of robots that can help extend the capabilities that we have and build the technologies that will aid humanity in the future.

    That has been become something of a personal cause for Gill Pratt, the roboticist who has overseen the Robotics Challenge. A former Massachusetts Inst itute of Technology and Olin College engineering professor, Dr. Pratt gave an impassioned speech about the positive potential for humanoid robots.

    "You would assume that all the people who watched these machines would be filled with fear and anxiety because after all, all we hear about in the news is people saying robots are going to take over the world, they are going to kill all of us, we should run away," he said. "There is a new discovery that we made here besides all the technology. That discovery is that there is some new untapped affinity between people and robots that we saw really for the first time today."

    Under Tony Tether, who was Darpa's director from June 2001 to February 2009, there was less concern at the agency about questions of societal impact. Dr. Tether oversaw the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004, which had a narrower goal of helping meet a congressional mandate that one-third of the military's land vehicles would become autonomous by 2015.

    While that goal remains far off, the earlier contest has had an effect on the world's automakers after Google hired Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor who led the original winning team in 2005, to begin a self-driving car research project. Since then, virtually all of the world's major automobile makers have set up research laboratories in Silicon Valley.

    In a similar fashion, it now appears that the new Robotics Challenge may have a direct role in jump starting an imaginative new commercial industry making mobile humanoid and even more flexible robots.

    "You won't go in and replace all these people all at once with robots," said Rodney Brooks, who has founded several robotics companies including iRobot and Rethink Robotics. "We'll see robots creep into our lives, getting the robots to do a few of the tasks at a time."

    [Jun 09, 2015] Ex-US Intelligence Officials Confirm Secret Pentagon Report Proves US Complicity In Creation Of ISIS

    "...declassified Pentagon report confirms that the West accelerated support to extremist rebels in Syria, despite knowing full well the strategy would pave the way for the emergence of the 'Islamic State' (ISIS)."
    "..."They were not only as they claimed supporting moderate groups, who were losing members to the more extremist groups, but that they were directly supporting the extremist groups. And they were predicting that this support would result in an Islamic State organization, an ISIS or ISIL… "
    "..."It's kind of a deal that the Saudis will support various Islamic extremists, all around the world, and the deal is that they [extremists] will not try to overthrow the corrupt, alcohol-drinking clique in Saudi Arabia.""
    "...
    The RAND report even confirmed (p. 113) that its "divide and rule" strategy was already being executed in Iraq at the time: "Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used a tactical level, as the United States now forms temporary alliances with nationalist insurgent groups that it had been fighting for four years… providing carrots in the form of weapons and cash. In the past, these nationalists have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces."
    Jun 09, 2015 | Zero Hedge

    Two weeks ago, courtesy of the investigative work of Nafeez Ahmed whose deep dig through a recently declassified and formertly Pentagon documents released earlier by Judicial Watch FOIA, we learned that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. In his words:

    "According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the 'Islamic State' as a direct consequence of the strategy, but described this outcome as a strategic opportunity to "isolate the Syrian regime."

    Now, in a follow up piece to his stunning original investigative report titled "Secret Pentagon report reveals West saw ISIS as strategic asset Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to 'isolate' Assad, rollback 'Shia expansion", Nafeez Ahmed reveals that according to leading American and British intelligence experts, the previously declassified Pentagon report confirms that the West accelerated support to extremist rebels in Syria, despite knowing full well the strategy would pave the way for the emergence of the 'Islamic State' (ISIS).

    The experts who have spoken out include renowned government whistleblowers such as the Pentagon's Daniel Ellsberg, the NSA's Thomas Drake, and the FBI's Coleen Rowley, among others.

    Their remarks demonstrate the fraudulent nature of claims by two other former officials, the CIA's Michael Morell and the NSA's John Schindler, both of whom attempt to absolve the Obama administration of responsibility for the policy failures exposed by the DIA documents.

    This is Nafeez Ahmed's follow up story, originally posted in Medium

    Ex-intel officials: Pentagon report proves US complicity in ISIS

    Renowned government whistleblowers weigh in on debate over controversial declassified documen

    Foreseeing ISIS

    As I reported on May 22nd, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document obtained by Judicial Watch under Freedom of Information confirms that the US intelligence community foresaw the rise of ISIS three years ago, as a direct consequence of the support to extremist rebels in Syria.

    The August 2012 'Information Intelligence Report' (IIR) reveals that the overwhelming core of the Syrian insurgency at that time was dominated by a range of Islamist militant groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). It warned that the "supporting powers" to the insurgency?-?identified in the document as the West, Gulf states, and Turkey -?wanted to see the emergence of a "Salafist Principality" in eastern Syria to "isolate" the Assad regime.

    The document also provided an extraordinarily prescient prediction that such an Islamist quasi-statelet, backed by the region's Sunni states, would amplify the risk of the declaration of an "Islamic State" across Iraq and Syria. The DIA report even anticipated the fall of Mosul and Ramadi.

    Divide and rule

    Last week, legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the former career Pentagon officer and US military analyst who leaked Pentagon papers exposing White House lies about the Vietnam War, described my Insurge report on the DIA document as "a very important story."

    In an extensive podcast interview, he said that the DIA document provided compelling evidence that the West's Syria strategy created ISIS. The DIA, he said, "in 2012, was asserting that Western powers were supporting extremist Islamic groups in Syria that were opposing Assad…

    "They were not only as they claimed supporting moderate groups, who were losing members to the more extremist groups, but that they were directly supporting the extremist groups. And they were predicting that this support would result in an Islamic State organization, an ISIS or ISIL… They were encouraging it, regarding it as a positive development, because it was anti-Assad, Assad being supported by Russia, but also interestingly China… and Iran… So we have China, Russia and Iran backing Assad, and the US, starting out saying Assad must go… What he [Nafeez Ahmed] is talking about, the DIA report, is extremely significant. It fits into a general framework that I'm aware of, and sounds plausible to me."

    Ellsberg also noted that "it's pretty well known" in the intelligence community that Saudi Arabia sponsors Islamist terrorists to this day:

    "It's kind of a deal that the Saudis will support various Islamic extremists, all around the world, and the deal is that they [extremists] will not try to overthrow the corrupt, alcohol-drinking clique in Saudi Arabia."

    Ellsberg, who was a former senior analyst at RAND Corp, also agreed with the relevance of a 2008 US Army-commissioned RAND report, quoted in my Insurge story, and also examined in-depth for Middle East Eye.

    The US Army-funded RAND report advocated a range of policy scenarios for the Middle East, including a "divide and rule" strategy to play off Sunni and Shi'a factions against each other, which Ellsberg describes as "standard imperial policy" for the US.

    The RAND report even confirmed (p. 113) that its "divide and rule" strategy was already being executed in Iraq at the time:

    "Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used a tactical level, as the United States now forms temporary alliances with nationalist insurgent groups that it had been fighting for four years… providing carrots in the form of weapons and cash. In the past, these nationalists have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces."

    The confirmed activation of this divide-and-rule strategy perhaps explains why the self-defeating US approach in Syria is fanning the flames of both sides: simultaneously allying with states like Turkey who have continued to covertly sponsor ISIS, while working with Assad through the Russians to fight ISIS. Ellsberg added:

    "As Assad is the main opponent of ISIS, we are covertly coordinating our airstrikes against ISIS with Assad. So are we against Assad, or not? It's ambivalent… I think that Obama and everybody around him is clear that they do not any longer as they've been saying want Assad to leave power. I don't believe that that is their intention anymore, as they believe anyone who succeeds Assad would be far worse."

    If true, Ellsberg's analysis exposes the deep-rooted hypocrisy of the previous campaign against Assad, the current campaign against ISIS, and why both appear destined for failure.

    Frankenstein script

    Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Special Agent described my report on the DIA document as "excellent."

    Rowley, who was selected as TIME 'Person of the Year' in 2002 after revealing how pre-9/11 intelligence was ignored by superiors at the FBI, said of the document:

    "It's like the mad power-hungry doctor who created Frankenstein, only to have his monster turn against him. It's hard to feel sorry when the insane doctor gets his due. But in our case, that script is constantly repeating. The quest for 'full spectrum dominance' and blindness of exceptionalism seems to mean we are doomed to keep repeating the 'Charlie Wilson's Frankenstein War' script… The various neocon warmongers and military industrial complex, most of them inept Peter Principles, just don't care."

    Also commenting on the declassified Pentagon report, former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake?-?the whistleblower who inspired Edward Snowden?-?condemned "the West's role in ISIS and threat of 'violent extremists', justifying surveillance and libercide at home."

    Wedge strategy

    Alastair Crooke, a former senior MI6 officer who spent three decades at the agency, said yesterday that the DIA document provides clear corroboration that the US was covertly pursuing a strategy to drive an extremist Salafi "wedge" between Iran and its Arab allies.

    The strategy was, Crooke confirms, standard thinking in the Western intelligence establishment for about a decade.

    "The idea of breaking up the large Arab states into ethnic or sectarian enclaves is an old Ben Gurion 'canard,' and splitting Iraq along sectarian lines has been Vice President Biden's recipe since the Iraq war," wrote Crooke, who had coordinated British assistance to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s. After his long MI6 stint, he became Middle East advisor to the European Union's foreign policy chief (1997–2003).

    "But the idea of driving a Sunni 'wedge' into the landline linking Iran to Syria and to Hezbollah in Lebanon became established Western group think in the wake of the 2006 war, in which Israel failed to de-fang Hezbollah," continued Crooke. "The response to 2006, it seemed to Western powers, was to cut off Hezbollah from its sources of weapons supply from Iran…

    "… In short, the DIA assessment indicates that the 'wedge' concept was being given new life by the desire to pressure Assad in the wake of the 2011 insurgency launched against the Syrian state. 'Supporting powers' effectively wanted to inject hydraulic fracturing fluid into eastern Syria (radical Salafists) in order to fracture the bridge between Iran and its Arab allies, even at the cost of this 'fracking' opening fissures right down inside Iraq to Ramadi. (Intelligence assessments purpose is to provide 'a view'?-?not to describe or prescribe policy. But it is clear that the DIA reports' 'warnings' were widely circulated and would have been meshed into the policy consideration.)

    "But this 'view' has exactly come about. It is fact. One might conclude then that in the policy debate, the notion of isolating Hezbollah from Iran, and of weakening and pressurizing President Assad, simply trumped the common sense judgment that when you pump highly toxic and dangerous fracturing substances into geological formations, you can never entirely know or control the consequences… So, when the GCC demanded a 'price' for any Iran deal (i.e. massing 'fracking' forces close to Aleppo), the pass had been already partially been sold by the US by 2012, when it did not object to what the 'supporting powers' wanted."

    Intel shills

    Crooke's analysis of the DIA report shows that it is irrelevant whether or not "the West" should be included in the "supporting powers" described by the report as specifically wanting a "Salafist Principality" in eastern Syria. Either way, the report groups "the West, Gulf countries and Turkey" as supporting the Syrian insurgency together?-?highlighting that the Gulf states and Turkey operated in alliance with the US, Britain, and other Western powers.

    The observations of intelligence experts Ellsberg, Rowley, and Drake add further weight to Crooke's analysis. They come in addition to comments I had previously received on the DIA document from former MI5 counter-terrorism officer, Annie Machon, and former counter-terrorism intelligence officer, Charles Shoebridge.

    The comments undermine the recent claims of disgraced US national security commentator, John Schindler, a retired NSA intelligence officer, to the effect that the August 2012 DIA report is "almost incomprehensible," "so heavily redacted that its difficult to say much meaningful about it," "Nothing special here, not one bit," "routine," "a single data point," and so on.

    Schindler cites the DIA's use of 'Curveball'?-?the Iraqi informant who fabricated claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?-?as evidence of the agency's "less than stellar reputation." But this misrepresents the fact noted by the CIA's Valerie Plame Wilson that "it was widely known [in the intelligence community] that CURVEBALL was not a credible source and that there were serious problems with his reporting."

    As I've documented elsewhere, the WMD threat mythology was not the outcome of an 'intelligence failure', as Schindler and his ilk like to claim, but a consequence of the corruption and politicization of intelligence under the influence of dubious vested interests.

    Also contrary to Schindler's misinformation, an IIR provides raw intelligence data from human sources (HUMINT), not simply rumour, gossip or opinion. Before wider distribution, the IIR is vetted to determine whether it is worthy of dissemination to the intelligence community. IIRs then provide a source basis for evaluation, interpretation, analysis and integration with other information.

    Far from justifying the dismissal of the relevance of the declassified DIA documents, this shows that urgent questions must be asked:

    What happened to this raw intelligence data, described by six US UK intelligence experts as providing damning confirmation of how Western strategy led to the rise of ISIS?

    And why did it not lead to a change in policy, despite DIA analysts' clear warning of the outgrowth of an ISIS-entity from Western allies' desire to see a 'Salafist Principality' in the region?-?a warning which was, in hindsight, quite accurate?

    Are intel critics traitors?

    Schindler previously characterized NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a traitor and "pawn… of America's adversaries."

    He now declares that those who cite the DIA report as proof the intelligence community "knew more about the rise of the Islamic State than they let on" are at best "fools; at worst, they're deceivers who have lied to the American people."

    On the contrary, six decorated former senior US and British intelligence officials, many with direct experience of IIRs and their function, agree that the DIA report provides significant insight into the kind of intelligence available to the US intelligence community at the time.

    Yet for Schindler, it seems, Ellsberg, Drake, Rowley, Crooke, Machon and Shoebridge are all, effectively, traitors simply for lending their expertise to public understanding of the newly declassified documents.

    As Marcy Wheeler points out in Salon, the large corpus of secret DIA documents obtained by Judicial Watch demonstrates, at the least, that:

    "The Intelligence Community (IC) knew that AQI had ties to the rebels in Syria; they knew our Gulf and Turkish allies were happy to strengthen Islamic extremists in a bid to oust Assad; and CIA officers in Benghazi (at a minimum) watched as our allies armed rebels using weapons from Libya. And the IC knew that a surging AQI might lead to the collapse of Iraq. That's not the same thing as creating ISIS. But it does amount to doing little or nothing while our allies had a hand in creating ISIS. All of which ought to raise real questions about why we're still allied with countries willfully empowering terrorist groups then, and how seriously they plan to fight those terrorist groups now. Because while the CIA may not have deliberately created ISIS, it sure seems to have watched impassively as our allies helped to do so."

    However, Wheeler overlooks that the reliance on foreign allies is a standard proxy war strategy?-?as Ellsberg explained in his interview?-?used by the covert operations arm of the US government to guarantee 'plausible deniability.'

    As I noted in my Middle East Eye analysis of the DIA document, there is extensive evidence against which to contextualize the DIA report's assertions. This evidence shows that the CIA did not merely watch "impassively" as the Gulf states and Turkey supported violent extremists in Syria, but actively supervised, facilitated and accelerated this policy.

    The August 2012 DIA document further corroborates this by repeatedly pointing out that the support to the Syrian insurgency from its allies was itself backed by "the West"?-?despite awareness of their intent to establish an extremist Salafi political entity.

    While the DIA document was, indeed, just one data-point, analyzing it in context with the other DIA reports along with incontrovertible facts in the public record, establishes that the Pentagon was complicit in its allies' support of Islamist terrorists, despite recognizing this could create an "Islamic State" in Iraq and Syria.

    These revelations show that the real traitors are not the courageous whistleblowers who sacrifice everything to speak out on behalf of the public interest, but shameless shills like Schindler and Morell who willfully sanitize a dysfunctional and dangerous 'national security' system from legitimate public scrutiny.


    Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the 'System Shift' column for VICE's Motherboard, and is also a columnist for Middle East Eye. He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the 'Alternative Pulitzer Prize', for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was selected in the Evening Standard's 'Power 1,000' most globally influential Londoners.

    Nafeez has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others. He is the author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner's Inquest.

    Captain Debtcrash

    With all the so called conspiracy theories that have become conspiracy fact,, you'd think that the term conspiracy theory wouldn't carry such a stigma.

    [Jun 05, 2015]What to Be Afraid Of

    "...Some politicians are all fear, all the time. The Cheneys, father Dick and daughter Liz, are deeply, darkly, desperately afraid, and think we should be, too. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the latest why-not-me candidates for president, seems to live in a hyperbaric chamber of imaginary nightmares. He famously said we needed to send troops to Syria - now! - "before we all get killed back here at home." "
    .
    "...The "fear-industrial complex" fuels increased spending on our military-industrial complex..."
    .
    "..."The fear-industrial complex." Thank you for putting a label on the conservatives' favorite tool. "
    .
    "...Scared people are easy to manipulate. You can point to the "other" as the cause of whatever they're afraid of, thereby dividing what should be allies and encouraging people to vote against their economic interests in order to vote for what they feel is "protecting their way of life". "
    NYTimes.com

    Some time ago, a friend of mine was hit by a bus in New York, one of almost 5,000 pedestrians killed in traffic every year. I also lost a nephew to gun violence - one of more than 11,000 Americans slain by firearms in this country. And I fell out of a tree that I was trying to prune in my backyard. I was O.K. But the guy next to me in the trauma ward was paralyzed from his fall. He was taking down his Christmas lights.

    So it goes. Life is full of risk. Every day brings a minor calculation with the possibility of mortality: cross the street on red, get on a plane, jog in the heat.

    It was encouraging, then, to watch the congressional debate this week over the Patriot Act, and realize that we are learning how to be afraid. At least, we're starting to put the infinitesimal risk of being killed by a terrorist in perspective.

    Though a majority of Americans are still worried about an imminent terrorist attack in this country, the number of people who think such an assault will happen in their home area has dropped to the lowest figure in the post-9/11 period - 16 percent.

    This is a good start. But the fear-industrial complex continues to dominate national priorities. Over the last 14 years, the enormous apparatus that has been built up to combat terrorism - huge structural changes in American society, and a lock-hold on the federal budget - has grown only more outsize and out of proportion to the actual threat.

    You've heard it before, but it bears repeating: You are much more likely to be struck dead by lightning, choke on a chicken bone or drown in the bathtub than be killed by a terrorist. Any number of well-known diseases - cancer, diabetes, the flu - take the lives of far, far more people. Yet, by one estimate, the United States spends $500 million per victim of terrorism, and a piddling $10,000 per cancer death.

    Since the 9/11 attacks, taxpayers have squandered about $1.6 trillion in the so-called global war on terror - which doesn't include money for the feckless Department of Homeland Security.

    Most of us are going to live to the actuarial average of 78, and never experience terrorism as anything other than the energy drink that keeps Wolf Blitzer going in the absence of real news. (This week, he was breathless over an apparent hoax, while "Breaking News: Airline threats not credible" flashed on the screen, contradicting his reason for doing the story.)

    Consider the various threats to life. The sun, for starters. The incidence of melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer, has doubled in the last 30 years. More than 9,000 Americans now die every year from this common cancer. I also lost a friend - 30 years old, father of two - to malignant melanoma.

    Cancer is the second leading cause of death, just behind heart disease. Together, they kill more than a million people in this country, followed by respiratory diseases, accidents and strokes. Then comes Alzheimer's, which kills 84,000 Americans a year. And yet, total federal research money on Alzheimer's through the National Institutes of Health was $562 million last year.

    To put that in perspective, we spent almost 20 times that amount - somewhere around $10 billion - on the National Security Agency, the electronic snoops who monitor everyday phone records. For the rough equivalent of funding a breakthrough in Alzheimer's, the government has not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a 2014 report on the telephone-gathering colossus at the N.S.A.

    People who text and drive are certainly a lethal threat. Every day, nine Americans are killed and 1,153 are injured by distracted drivers, though not all of them are checking their smartphones. If Wolf Blitzer spent a week on each of those victims, the rush of politicians calling for reform would be a stampede.

    Food is a mortal menace. Every year, one in six Americans gets sick, and 3,000 die from food-borne illness. Your burger is a bigger threat than radical Islam.

    You can blame the media, particularly cable news, for misplaced fear and budgets. CNN is the worst. Politicians do whatever they can to get cable time, and complaining about the paltry amount of money given to Parkinson's disease ($139 million a year) will not get you in the "Situation Room."

    Some politicians are all fear, all the time. The Cheneys, father Dick and daughter Liz, are deeply, darkly, desperately afraid, and think we should be, too. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the latest why-not-me candidates for president, seems to live in a hyperbaric chamber of imaginary nightmares. He famously said we needed to send troops to Syria - now! - "before we all get killed back here at home."

    Don't get me wrong: Radical Islam is a serious threat, a poison on the globe. Hats off to the police in Boston for tracking the latest religiously infected potential killer. But we should put the threat in perspective: This is not World War II. Our entire democracy does not teeter on the outcome.

    So what should you be afraid of? Are you sitting down? Get up - you shouldn't be. Sitting for more than three hours a day can shave life expectancy by two years, through increased risk of heart disease or Type 2 diabetes. "A lot of doctors think sitting is the new cancer," said Tim Cook, the Apple C.E.O.

    It was an overstatement, and he probably meant to compare sitting to smoking, not cancer. But still, the War on Sitting would be welcome, if for no other reason than to give some legitimate fears a chance.

    XY, NYC

    Obviously it is all about the money. The terrorists are the perfect enemy. Infinitely better than the former Soviet Union. Unlike the Soviets, the terrorists pose no real threat; they can't really hurt us; but they can never be defeated. It makes me sick.

    Even the threat of the Soviets was over blown, all the better to divert trillions of dollars to the military industrial complex.

    JO, CO

    FEAR is one of the oldest selling points for tyranny (which, to be clear, is usually voted into office, at least initially). First comes "Be afraid," followed by, "We will protect you" with expanded police powers, from NSA to your local pistol-packin' PD.

    False claims of enemies, from within or without, are a particular hallmark of the right (but not exclusively). When fears are fed, coaxed, and encouraged until they grow up into paranoia, extremism is a common result of irrationality. Remember "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice?"

    Examples abound: Texans who insist everyone has the right -- and, by implication, would all be safer if they exercised the right -- to carry pistols in holsters on their hips while on college campuses, on freeways, in bars, in Walmarts and in church ... did I hear nursery schools on the list? To quote one leading Texas politician repeatedly elected to high state office: "There are three things I advise everyone to do: 1. pack a pistol; 2. Take it out of its holster upon provocation; and 3., well, I can't remember the third thing just now ... but I advise everyone to do it."

    craig geary, redlands, fl

    To hear Dick Cheney, Lindsay Graham and Oops Perry pimp perpetual war is a bad joke. Their qualifications?

    Cheney is a Viet Nam draft dodging coward.

    Graham, the warrior lawyer, able to kill platoons of ISIS with a single writ, will or divorce petition.

    Perry, a literal guy cheerleader, exactly like Reagan, Boy George, Willard Mitty, who hid out in ROTC to expressly avoid Viet Nam, to dodge going to war, exactly like Reagan, Boy George and Willard Mitty.

    The leading cheerleaders for perpetual war. Not one of whom has been in a war. But lusting to play tough guys by sending other people's children to suffer and die at something they are too cowardly to do themselves.

    Despicable human beings.

    Ralph, Wherever

    Thank you Mr. Egan!!! Ten years ago, no one would have dared to write this column. The fact that you can write this tells me that the post 911 hysteria has started to pass.

    Yesterday, Lyndsey Graham asserted that ISIS is a major threat to America. That is an absurd statement designed to exploit the fears of the nation. ISIS has about 31 thousand troops ( consider that Syria has about 300,000 troops ). It only survives in failed states like Iraq, Syria and Libya. Despite it's shocking brutality, ISIS has a very limited ability to launch attacks in America.

    Yet, we will spend Billions of dollars in response to the hysteria. Politicians manipulate public fear for their own advantage. Thank you for sticking a pin in the fear balloon.

    Mary Scott, is a trusted commenter NY 14 hours ago

    The "fear-industrial complex" fuels increased spending on our military-industrial complex, which now claims a whopping 50% of ALL discretionary spending. Keeping Americans in a constant state of fear is also an effective way of diverting their attention from our crumbling infrastructure, income inequality and every other problem that affects the lives of millions of Americans every year.

    Many pundits are predicting the 2016 presidential election will be more about foreign policy than anything else. Expect to be terrorized by the politicians and the MSM in the weeks and months ahead. Fear wins elections and keeps the press/media flush with cash.

    Socrates, Verona, N.J. 12 hours ago

    Fear, paranoia, propaganda and moneyed 'speech' is the entire Republican electoral strategy.

    Without those precious ingredients to disrupt the neurotransmissions of its Republican voter base, no one except the Kochs, Donald Trump, Sheldon Adelson and a few white supremacists would vote Republican.

    The only thing the Republican Party fears is a lack of fear in the American voter.... and the elimination of money as 'speech'.

    JFR, Yardley

    I was in middle school (~50 yrs ago), fond of parroting my father's conservative view of Vietnam (bomb them out of existence) and mocking the timid left when I read an essay pointing out that it was the right that was fearful (or exploited fear) - communism, militant blacks, liberal ideas ... - and the left that was essentially unworried about those threats (they had others, of course). That was an epiphany for me. Evolution has given us the ability to be fearful, but it overdid it - we can be too easily manipulated by our fears, and people, businesses, and governments do so to advantage themselves. If someone tells you to be afraid, you must ask how they themselves benefit.

    ctflyfisher, Danbury, CT

    As a psychotherapist, I couldn't agree with you more. There are some things to fear in our world, but terrorism is among the minor threats. We have much more to fear from how technology is the tail wagging the dog, and not something we decide. We have a rapidly disappearing middle class, an unpredictable path to succeed in being financially independent, an infrastructure that is crumbling all around us, a Congress that is insulated from the American people, and a political process that is about buying votes not democracy.

    Rob Porter, PA 13 hours ago

    "The fear-industrial complex." Thank you for putting a label on the conservatives' favorite tool.

    For decades it was the "commies" we had to fear and overfund an endless war against. Remember how that morphed immediately into the "war on drugs" in the mid-80s when it became clear that the "commies" were even worse at running a country than Republicans? Lots of money funneled into that war. Lots of fear generated. Now the drums beat out their anxious rumble against "terrorism" despite its killing fewer Americans than falling down stairs (1200/yr).

    And I have complete certainty that the Republicans will have a new fear ready to unleash when this one wears out its welcome. I don't know what it will be, but I do know it will keep the money flowing and the herd clumped in a fearful bunch, voting to keep the snarling sheepdogs circling, chasing away phantoms.

    AT, media, pa

    Scared people are easy to manipulate.

    You can point to the "other" as the cause of whatever they're afraid of, thereby dividing what should be allies and encouraging people to vote against their economic interests in order to vote for what they feel is "protecting their way of life". You can come up with highly intrusive and military type programs to "keep people safe" so that those people thank you for taking away their civil liberties. You can pump up ratings with "breaking news" about something, anything that could possibly imperil the public so you can increase your ad rates. You can provide personal protection services and sell survivalist food packages and gold to those who ready themselves for the coming collapse of society- people who will buy $1000 worth of dehydrated soup to keep in their basement but will complain bitterly about having to pay $100 a month to have health insurance.

    Sadly, since so much of the fear merchants' power and money depend on the American public being afraid all the time, there's no incentive to tell people the truth or to educate them as to how to find the truth themselves.

    [Jun 05, 2015]Edward Snowden The World Says No to Surveillance

    "...Metadata revealing the personal associations and interests of ordinary Internet users is still being intercepted and monitored on a scale unprecedented in history: As you read this online, the United States government makes a note."
    .
    "...A democracy cannot abandon it's responsibility to consider the rights and freedom of it's citizens as the highest purpose of law. When an agency assumes to protect with secrets and monitor the very people it has been paid and entrusted, to protect, the contract with the public is broken. Mass surveillance is a tool of the totalitarian state and does not belong in a free society, it's effectiveness is not the issue."
    .
    "...Privacy is something that is often ignored, treated as a right but without having true value. The true value is only appreciated when it has gone.
    The surveillance society has not gone away, indeed, it will only progress as technology becomes more adapt at tracking us, detecting the softest of footprints, both in the real world and online. However, at least we're talking about it now."
    .
    "... Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
    June 4, 2015 | NYTimes.com

    MOSCOW - TWO years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong.

    Within days, the United States government responded by bringing charges against me under World War I-era espionage laws. The journalists were advised by lawyers that they risked arrest or subpoena if they returned to the United States. Politicians raced to condemn our efforts as un-American, even treasonous.

    Privately, there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged lives at risk for nothing - that the public would react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations.

    Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.

    Two years on, the difference is profound. In a single month, the N.S.A.'s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and disowned by Congress. After a White House-appointed oversight board investigation found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist attack, even the president who once defended its propriety and criticized its disclosure has now ordered it terminated.

    This is the power of an informed public.

    Ending the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen, but it is only the latest product of a change in global awareness. Since 2013, institutions across Europe have ruled similar laws and operations illegal and imposed new restrictions on future activities. The United Nations declared mass surveillance an unambiguous violation of human rights. In Latin America, the efforts of citizens in Brazil led to the Marco Civil, an Internet Bill of Rights. Recognizing the critical role of informed citizens in correcting the excesses of government, the Council of Europe called for new laws to protect whistle-blowers.

    Beyond the frontiers of law, progress has come even more quickly. Technologists have worked tirelessly to re-engineer the security of the devices that surround us, along with the language of the Internet itself. Secret flaws in critical infrastructure that had been exploited by governments to facilitate mass surveillance have been detected and corrected. Basic technical safeguards such as encryption - once considered esoteric and unnecessary - are now enabled by default in the products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that even if your phone is stolen, your private life remains private. Such structural technological changes can ensure access to basic privacies beyond borders, insulating ordinary citizens from the arbitrary passage of anti-privacy laws, such as those now descending upon Russia.

    Though we have come a long way, the right to privacy - the foundation of the freedoms enshrined in the United States Bill of Rights - remains under threat. Some of the world's most popular online services have been enlisted as partners in the N.S.A.'s mass surveillance programs, and technology companies are being pressured by governments around the world to work against their customers rather than for them. Billions of cellphone location records are still being intercepted without regard for the guilt or innocence of those affected. We have learned that our government intentionally weakens the fundamental security of the Internet with "back doors" that transform private lives into open books. Metadata revealing the personal associations and interests of ordinary Internet users is still being intercepted and monitored on a scale unprecedented in history: As you read this online, the United States government makes a note.

    Spymasters in Australia, Canada and France have exploited recent tragedies to seek intrusive new powers despite evidence such programs would not have prevented attacks. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain recently mused, "Do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?" He soon found his answer, proclaiming that "for too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: As long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone."

    At the turning of the millennium, few imagined that citizens of developed democracies would soon be required to defend the concept of an open society against their own leaders.

    Yet the balance of power is beginning to shift. We are witnessing the emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a worldview defined by a singular tragedy. For the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we see the outline of a politics that turns away from reaction and fear in favor of resilience and reason. With each court victory, with every change in the law, we demonstrate facts are more convincing than fear. As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.

    Edward J. Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and National Security Agency contractor, is a director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

    Dan Whittet, New England

    A democracy cannot abandon it's responsibility to consider the rights and freedom of it's citizens as the highest purpose of law. When an agency assumes to protect with secrets and monitor the very people it has been paid and entrusted, to protect, the contract with the public is broken. Mass surveillance is a tool of the totalitarian state and does not belong in a free society, it's effectiveness is not the issue.

    Greg Day, New Zealand

    Privacy is something that is often ignored, treated as a right but without having true value. The true value is only appreciated when it has gone.

    The surveillance society has not gone away, indeed, it will only progress as technology becomes more adapt at tracking us, detecting the softest of footprints, both in the real world and online. However, at least we're talking about it now.

    I'm not sure how the US views you Edward, but I at least consider you have done a service to humanity. Thank you.

    MCS, New York 18 hours ago

    Mr. Snowden, you've been called a man without a country. But you're more accurately a man without a generation. Your generation who voluntarily live their lives tapping senseless bits of information about their self inflated lives onto apps for the world to own. All this while people go to war, people suffer, innocent people are killed, fundamental human dignities are abused. Yet, hardly a blip of a response at all from this anti-activist generation. It is the generation of people in their 40's and 50's that are demanding change.

    The Facebook generation aren't socially nor politically active. They're self absorbed group of anti-intellects in a race to the bottom. In fact, I find it hypocritical that anyone from that generation should be outraged over government intrusion when a mass of them are positively hooked on social media, posting every excruciatingly boring detail of their lives, details that seem to know no boundaries.

    We have a growing problem on our hand, a divide not only between haves and have nots, but secular and religious societies respectively. The admirable beliefs you stand by, beliefs that changed the course of your life, don't offer an answer to what to do about a multiplying population of angry extremists raised in countries that guarantee no freedoms at all for its citizens. They will exploit our demands for privacy to cause great harm one day. A balance in your theories, not extreme suspicion of government is what's needed here.

    Anne Hills, Portland, Maine 14 hours ago

    I'd argue that Snowden's best quote is: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

    I feel that the NRA has perhaps been the most effective organization in history at convincing their members that a "slippery slope" is to be feared above all things, and that the loss of even the smallest gun rights for the most worthwhile of reasons, is in fact unacceptable.

    We need their kind of effectiveness in spreading understanding to all Americans who don't get it yet - that there is in fact a dangerous slippery slope when fundamental freedoms are truly lost. Your right to private letters, private conversations is not about hiding criminal acts, it's about preventing people in positions of authority from being able to manipulate you or the person you would elect or the person you have already elected. An all-knowing government has historically been oppressive. Why oh why do people fail to see that it could happen to us? It's the "it happens to others but not me" mentality.

    Thank you so very much Mr. Snowden. Unless President Obama is being threatened by the NSA not to, let's hope that he will pardon Mr. Snowden. I can't think of anyone in American history more deserving due to service to his countrymen.

    Arthur Layton, Mattapoisett, MA 18 hours ago

    The idea that we can live private lives is absurd. If you use a cell phone, someone knows where you are (or have been) and records who you called. If you use a credit card, there is a permanent record of the date, time and location of your purchase. And video cameras are everywhere, from bank lobbies to grocery store, gas stations and office buildings.

    If you want privacy today, stop using your cell phone. Pay cash for your purchases, "unregister" to vote and don't renew your driver's license.


    [Jun 05, 2015]A story from the past shows why neocons are dangerous for the global peace and security

    Jun 02, 2015 | the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

    Nixon's and Kissinger's dangerous games in the Vietnam War – The Madman strategy

    Recent documents show that the hardcore branch of the US policy during the Vietnam war, was playing dangerous games with North Vietnam and the Soviets, in order to drag the other side to negotiations.

    We see today a similar game played by the neocons in Ukraine and Asia-Pacific. In the new Cold War, neocons are playing more dangerous games with Russia and China, as they try to persuade that they will not hesitate to proceed in a nuclear strike against both their rivals, because they see that the Sino-Russian bloc threatens the US global sovereignty.

    From National Security Archive:

    "Nixon's and Kissinger's Madman strategy during the Vietnam War included veiled nuclear threats intended to intimidate Hanoi and its patrons in Moscow. The story is recounted in a new book, Nixon's Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War, co-authored by Jeffrey Kimball, Miami University professor emeritus, and William Burr, who directs the Archive's Nuclear History Documentation Project. Research for the book, which uncovers the inside story of White House Vietnam policymaking during Nixon's first year in office, drew on hundreds of formerly top secret and secret records obtained by the authors as well as interviews with former government officials."

    "With Madman diplomacy, Nixon and Kissinger strove to end the Vietnam War on the most favorable terms possible in the shortest period of time practicable, an effort that culminated in a secret global nuclear alert in October of that year. Nixon's Nuclear Specter provides the most comprehensive account to date of the origins, inception, policy context, and execution of 'JCS Readiness Test' -the equivalent of a worldwide nuclear alert that was intended to signal Washington's anger at Moscow's support of North Vietnam and to jar the Soviet leadership into using their leverage to induce Hanoi to make diplomatic concessions. Carried out between 13 and 30 October 1969, it involved military operations around the world, the continental United States, Western Europe, the Middle East, the Atlantic, Pacific, and the Sea of Japan. The operations included strategic bombers, tactical air, and a variety of naval operations, from movements of aircraft carriers and ballistic missile submarines to the shadowing of Soviet merchant ships heading toward Haiphong."

    "The authors also recount secret military operations that were part of the lead-up to the global alert, including a top secret mining readiness test that took place during the spring and summer of 1969. This mining readiness test was a ruse intended to signal Hanoi that the US was preparing to mine Haiphong harbor and the coast of North Vietnam. It is revealed for the first time in this book."

    "Another revelation has to do with the fabled DUCK HOOK operation, a plan for which was initially drafted in July 1969 as a mining-only operation. It soon evolved into a mining-and-bombing, shock-and-awe plan scheduled to be launched in early November, but which Nixon aborted in October, substituting the global nuclear alert in its place. The failure of Nixon's and Kissinger's 1969 Madman diplomacy marked a turning point in their initial exit strategy of winning a favorable armistice agreement by the end of the year 1969. Subsequently, they would follow a so-called long-route strategy of withdrawing U.S. troops while attempting to strengthen South Vietnam's armed forces, although not necessarily counting on Saigon's long-term survival."

    "In 1969, the Nixon's administrations long-term goal was to provide President Nguyen Van Thieus government in Saigon with a decent chance of surviving for a reasonable interval of two to five years following the sought-after mutual exit of US and North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnam. They would have preferred that President Thieu and South Vietnam survive indefinitely, and they would do what they could to maintain South Vietnam as a separate political entity. But they were realistic enough to appreciate that such a goal was unlikely and beyond their power to achieve by a military victory on the ground or from the air in Vietnam."

    "Giving Thieu a decent chance to survive, even for just a decent interval, however, rested primarily on persuading Hanoi to withdraw its troops from the South or, if that failed, prolonging the war in order to give time for Vietnamization to take hold in order to enable Thieu to fight the war on his own for a reasonable period of time after the US exited Indochina. In 1969, Nixon and Kissinger hoped that their Madman threat strategy, coupled with linkage diplomacy, could persuade Hanoi to agree to mutual withdrawal at the negotiating table or lever Moscows cooperation in persuading Hanoi to do so. In this respect, Nixon's Nuclear Specter is an attempt to contribute to better understanding of Nixon and Kissinger's Vietnam diplomacy as a whole."

    http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb517-Nixon-Kissinger-and-the-Madman-Strategy-during-Vietnam-War/

    These materials are reproduced from www.nsarchive.org with the permission of the National Security Archive.

    [Jun 04, 2015] March of the Imperial Senators

    "...His partner in this long-running routine, Sen. Lindsey Graham, also reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove's Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!" "
    .
    "...It's a deadly fandango that places national security in the balance, while lawmakers play rhetorical games, often crossing, if not leaping, the usual boundaries of diplomatic propriety and control."
    May 29, 2015 | http://www.theamericanconservative.com

    John McCain and Lindsey Graham try to rewrite history to vindicate the Iraq war, and blame Obama for ISIS.

    ...McCain's widely known and tolerated flair for the dramatic now places an "episode" that most Americans could not rightly pin down, much less explain without the aid of Google, alongside slavery, the Trail of Tears, the federal crackdown on World War I-era Bonus Marchers, and the entire Vietnam War.

    His partner in this long-running routine, Sen. Lindsey Graham, also reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove's Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!", laid out the latest talking points in an interview about the ISIS takeover of Ramadi in Iraq this month:

    It's a predictable outcome of withdrawing all forces back in 2011…The military advised [Obama] to leave 10,000 troops. When he refused to take their advice, everything you see before you is a result of that big mistake.

    Graham, McCain, and their fellow Republican hawks, energized by an election over a year away, are once again using foreign policy overseas to bludgeon Obama, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and by extension, the whole Democratic Party in the arena of domestic politics here at home. It's a deadly fandango that places national security in the balance, while lawmakers play rhetorical games, often crossing, if not leaping, the usual boundaries of diplomatic propriety and control.

    "Imperial senators, basically that's what they are … playing this real life version of Risk," said Matthew Hoh, an Iraq War veteran, referring to the strategy board game in an interview with TAC. Hoh was the highest U.S. official to resign in protest of the Afghanistan war policy when he quit his State Department post in 2009.

    Hoh says playing "real life Risk" is all about deception, and in the case of Iraq, a larder of revisionist history, which, as McCain and Graham have demonstrated, involves an elaborate tweaking of the story of how the U.S. withdrew from Iraq in 2011, and why. It also requires the ambitious assumption that a) American forces had every right and opportunity to stay there indefinitely, and b) there would be no consequences if they did so

    ...Negotiations reportedly wore on until the eleventh hour, but finally broke down when Maliki could not promise criminal immunity for U.S. troops there. "Frankly, given that less than 20 percent of the Iraqi public wanted American troops to stay, and given the great resentment in the Iraqi population …there wasn't much sympathy to grant Americans full legal immunities in the Iraqi parliament," said former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey in 2014. The withdrawal was complete in 2011.

    Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter and TAC contributing editor. Follow her on Twitter.

    [Jun 04, 2015] How to succeed in Iran: lessons from Russia and China by Tehran Bureau correspondent

    Notable quotes:
    "...Money money money, grab grab grab. The opening up of Iran is all about western companies making money and peace may be a fortunate side effect."
    "...But maybe it's just reputation. The USA has been partying in the Middle East for decades, so people there already know who Americans are and what to expect from them. Russians and Chinese are involved too, but ways they use to achieve an agreement are not so... insolent, I'd say."
    "...Against crippling sanctions they've achieved what the vast majority of countries in the region could only have dreamt of"
    "...Resistance against what? Oh, you must mean the Western steam roller that crushes all life in countries that wish to follow their own destiny. Why would Iran want to join the 'Also Rans' who are only allowed the scraps thrown from the Western Oligarch Table?"
    "...I'm not sure why state ownership of certain assets and industries is presented as a bad thing, in Guardian of all places. This is how governments pay for high standard of education, healthcare and strong defence. This is how governments avoid the debt trap and compounded interest charges creeping into the tax bill"
    "...Wow, you must think that the rest of the world is truly as gullible as those in Canada and Australia when the USA once again stirs the shit at the bottom of the West Ukrainian pond."
    "...They also have 81% home ownership as against The US and UK on about 65%. Education is valued and they have a high rate of women accessing tertiary education."
    "...It's this kind: we, the westerners, are the most advanced civilization! The proof: our economies are all privatized, not government-run! The Iranians Russian, and Chinese are still savages! They have a long way to go to achieve our advanced level of civilization! "
    "...US expert don't really understand that state capitalism is not a communist theory. Majority of Asian nations had practiced state capitalism.

    Even British regime do practiced state capitalism till private liberalization been pushed by Margaret Thatcher."

    Jun 04, 2015 | The Guardian

    bcnteacher 4 Jun 2015 08:17

    Money money money, grab grab grab. The opening up of Iran is all about western companies making money and peace may be a fortunate side effect.

    BabyLyon 4 Jun 2015 08:14

    Russia and China are more eastern, than western. It's easier for Iran to communicate with them, I think this may be a reason too.

    But maybe it's just reputation. The USA has been partying in the Middle East for decades, so people there already know who Americans are and what to expect from them. Russians and Chinese are involved too, but ways they use to achieve an agreement are not so... insolent, I'd say.

    abdur razzak 4 Jun 2015 07:38

    Good, more power to them. This is a much more efficient way to use resources for the benefit of the whole population than anything the west ever tried.
    http://www.latestdatabase.com/

    1DrSigmundFraud -> JoePope 4 Jun 2015 07:22

    The US probably won't be doing business there for obvious reasons. Iran wants to protect it's industries if sanctions are lifted for obvious reasons. You only need to look at the UK for reasons as to what happens if you don't while the US for instance now has only 3 levels of classes

    • Poor
    • Extremely poor
    • Extremely wealthy

    Iran does have a healthy middle class one the downtrodden US labor force would die for. Their Oil wealth has been put to good use check out the Tehran Metro for instance

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tehran+metro+images&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=8jJwVYu9GOqt7Aas5IHoBw&ved=0CCQQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=667

    Or their Ski Resorts

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ski+resorts+iran+images&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=QTNwVarOC-HC7gbUwYDYCQ&ved=0CCEQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=667

    Top Hotels

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=top+hotels+in+iran+images&es_sm=93&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=fDNwVeoNxZruBtLngvgI&ved=0CCAQsAQ

    Education one of the better Middle east countries

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Iran

    Against crippling sanctions they've achieved what the vast majority of countries in the region could only have dreampt of

    normankirk -> LoungeSuite 4 Jun 2015 06:47

    And neo liberalism delivers such a great standard of living for ALL Americans and Brits does it?

    HollyOldDog -> LoungeSuite 4 Jun 2015 06:27

    Resistance against what? Oh, you must mean the Western steam roller that crushes all life in countries that wish to follow their own destiny. Why would Iran want to join the 'Also Rans' who are only allowed the scraps thrown from the Western Oligarch Table?

    MaoChengJi -> LoungeSuite 4 Jun 2015 06:21

    Sort of like in Putin's Russia.

    Yeah, exactly. Like Putin's Russia compared to Yeltsin's Russia. Like China.

    LoungeSuite -> MaoChengJi 4 Jun 2015 06:08

    Neoliberalism will fail soon, but state-controlled economies will survive,

    Sort of like in Putin's Russia. And now in Venezuela. Oh. And the Cuban is a supreme example of socialism. (Gone wrong of course. Somehow, it always goes wrong. Oh! And America is to blame. Standard Guardian discourse).


    HollyOldDog -> Luminaire 4 Jun 2015 06:01

    Swimming against the tide again is your speciality. Plus you just love throwing nonsense around. I have noticed that the Far Right Ukrainian punishers are up to their nasty tricks again just before a G7 meeting.

    Wow, you must think that the rest of the world is truly as gullible as those in Canada and Australia when the USA once again stirs the shit at the bottom of the West Ukrainian pond.

    HollyOldDog -> normankirk 4 Jun 2015 05:48

    It's a pity that successive British Governments were not better disposed to hanging on to British State assets rather than selling off the family jewels.

    JoePope 4 Jun 2015 05:15

    I'm not sure why state ownership of certain assets and industries is presented as a bad thing, in Guardian of all places. This is how governments pay for high standard of education, healthcare and strong defence. This is how governments avoid the debt trap and compounded interest charges creeping into the tax bill -- it is difficult to support the welfare system in any populous country purely through tax collection. One would have to have perfect conditions of natural resources/reserves, high technology, innovation and diversification, favourable geopolitical environment & export ability, stable and predictable population levels AND the lack of short term electioneering and corruption to achieve that. Even then, it is debatable whether private ownership and capital especially foreign capital in the case of strategic assets (energy, defence) is justified or needed.

    Of course a fully centrally planned economy has been proven to be inefficient and uncompetitive when met with open/free markets -- the "greed is good" mantra, profit seeking motive and consumerism trumps the desire to empower and care for the wider population and more worryingly the need to maintain social cohesion, independence and security. Therefore, a balance should be sought through bilateral or regional deals with economies which are at a similar developmental level, to ensure healthy competition exists and drives improvements in labour productivity, product quality and technology.

    This analysis gives some interesting information on Iran but reads as sour grapes and profiteering attempt by western investment funds and corporations. I hope Iranians keep the family jewels in their hands and allow external trade and investment only on terms favorable to their people and their economy.

    normankirk -> MaoChengJi 4 Jun 2015 04:13

    Good shit, I agree. Must be how come they can afford a good public health system, their primary health care network is acclaimed. They also have 81% home ownership as against The US and UK on about 65%. Education is valued and they have a high rate of women accessing tertiary education.

    All of the above is how they have been so resilient in the face of pretty brutal sanctions.

    But of course these days, having national assets is akin to being a dictatorship in the eyes of corporatocracies.

    MaoChengJi Dmitry Berezhnov 4 Jun 2015 03:26

    It's this kind: we, the westerners, are the most advanced civilization! The proof: our economies are all privatized, not government-run! The Iranians Russian, and Chinese are still savages! They have a long way to go to achieve our advanced level of civilization!

    Yes, you can make money trading and making deals with savages, but you need to understand their savagery ways and be careful.

    allowmetosayuarefool 4 Jun 2015 02:50

    US expert don't really understand that state capitalism is not a communist theory. Majority of Asian nations had practiced state capitalism.

    Even British regime do practiced state capitalism till private liberalization been pushed by Margaret Thatcher. Private liberation had its own disadvantages.

    look at HK economic - largely been controlled by few family of tycoon. Today, UK election result had been determined by UK BANKER.

    MaoChengJi 4 Jun 2015 02:42

    The economy in the Islamic republic is still largely state-owned, with much of its 'privatised' capital in the hands of regime-affiliated organizations

    Good, more power to them. This is a much more efficient way to use resources for the benefit of the whole population than anything the west ever tried.

    Neoliberalism will fail soon, but state-controlled economies will survive, if they are isolated enough from the failing neoliberal environment. Sounds like the Iranian economy is, and good for them.

    Dmitry Berezhnov 4 Jun 2015 00:14

    Could not figure what kind of article that is, either:

    - In case we are not going to sign a nuclear deal, please note that there's no democracy and we will have to invade them.

    or:

    - Iran is kind of not bad for investments, look how China and Russia make money on cooperation while we cannot due to sanctions implied by ourself.

    [Jun 03, 2015] US Congress passes surveillance reform in vindication for Edward Snowden

    Jun 02, 2015 | The Guardian

    Joe Stanil -> awoolf14 2 Jun 2015 21:27

    Poor deluded child. You still believe that the POTUS runs the show? He's merely the MC of a long running cabaret act called "US Politics". He reads the script, you applaud - or else!

    SamIamgreeneggsanham 2 Jun 2015 21:27

    So this is great, but what about the man who sacrificed his life so that we could have this information? Surely if this passage is a vindication of his actions, then the conversation needs to move towards allowing him to return to the US (if he wishes to) or at least not make him a wanted criminal...?


    EdChamp -> russmi 2 Jun 2015 21:22

    I guess to most of his supporters this is one instance where "the results justify the means."

    Actually, we don't have to argue that the end justify the means. The end was that we were all aware of what had been kept secret from us, culminating in the failure to renew metadata collection. The means to that was the illegal distribution of classified information. I applaud both the ends and the means, it might have been better if he had not been required to break the law, but in this case, I applaud his doing so.

    He should return home and accept the legal consequences of his actions. Someone who truly felt he or she was in the right would do so.

    Nonsense, but how nice of you to easily volunteer that he give up his freedom. Where is it written that we must be prepared to spend the rest of our lives in prison to make known a secret program, effecting every American, violating the constitution, and subsequently ruled illegal by the courts?


    Joe Stanil -> osprey1957 2 Jun 2015 21:21

    Remind me. Who said "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"? Ah, yes, Dr Johnson.


    Joe Stanil 2 Jun 2015 21:17

    Does anyone honestly believe that passing a little law will stop the NSA from continuing its collection of data? Like, it's against the law to steal, that's why there aren't any thieves. Wake up children. This whole game, starting with Snowden, was a calculated "limited hangout" operation, ie show a bit of naughtiness, get the public used to it, then go back under cover. Now the real spying begins.

    James Saint-Amour 2 Jun 2015 21:06

    Pardon Edward Snowden! He's a patriot just like the Founding Fathers, who were also considered criminals when they stood up for freedom. It's interesting that our government doesn't see that side of the story (but then again, who am I kidding to think they would?)

    Nyarlat -> russmi 2 Jun 2015 21:04

    Snowden is so baaaad!
    The CIA and NSA is soooo trustworthy!
    (Of course they helped Pinochet dispose of Allende and also killed thousands of Vietcong with black ops death squads etc.)

    osprey1957 2 Jun 2015 21:04

    Whatever happens, know that Snowden is, was, and always will be a great patriot. he may be a deluded libertarian...but his patriotism can never be questioned.


    shininhstars122 2 Jun 2015 21:01

    >>>>New Mexico senator Martin Heinrich, another Democrat on the intelligence committee, praised the bill's passage on Tuesday, saying: "Ben Franklin would have been proud of this outcome."

    HAH! What altered universe is the Ben Franklin from that the Senator from the Land of Enchantment is referring to?

    Ben Franklin would have said this sir.

    "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

    Waterdown liberty is what the USA Freedom Act is plain and simple.

    awoolf14 -> TeamAmerica2015 2 Jun 2015 20:58

    Come out of the 1950's for 10 seconds and you might notice that there is no longer any difference whatsoever between the vested interests of either Party other than the window dressing... Wake up.

    russmi 2 Jun 2015 20:54

    Personally I'm tired of Snowdon. He still stole and illegally distributed classified info. I guess to most of his supporters this is one instance where "the results justify the means." But how often do they let others get away with that excuse? He should return home and accept the legal consequences of his actions. Someone who truly felt he or she was in the right would do so.


    awoolf14 2 Jun 2015 20:53

    Its great to know that we're all being 'protected' and are 'safe' in the hands of Obamas exorbitantly expensive "national security professionals."
    .
    ...Professionals like The TSA, who recently failed 95% of a 'Red Team' national airport security infiltration test, including but not limited to failing to notice a team member walking by them, with a fake bomb taped to his back (face-palms).

    Or The NSA, who have just been forced by their own Govornment to shut down a 4 year multi million dollar bulk surveillance program that- er- didn't actually catch any 'terrorists,' because they don't make a point of sending open emails or telephone calls to each other to discuss their evil plans (something an 8 year old could figure out).

    Please, please lets get somebody sane into the White House this time- because the only job these people are doing, is making all of us look like complete fools.

    et_tu_brute -> Oneiricist 2 Jun 2015 20:44

    Yeh... the surveilance worked so well, that they didn't see the 'Boston Bombers' coming. People have every right to question the NSA's self-given right to delve into peoples lives, all without any independent oversight, no checks and balances, no transparency. No wonder people don't trust them.

    et_tu_brute -> BradBenson 2 Jun 2015 20:38

    You are absolutely correct, however the o/p is a member of a tribe that choses to believe Snowden was a traitor, no matter what facts were presented or are revealed by his actions.

    et_tu_brute -> delphinia 2 Jun 2015 20:35

    Yeh, I remember that. Bush & Cheney promoting the looney neo-con cause by creating the fiction of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Now look at the mess left behind by these stupid idiots who were intent on creating a new mess by trading up on the goodwill they received internationally that backed the US in their quest to go into Afghanstan after 9/11.


    et_tu_brute -> MtnClimber 2 Jun 2015 20:29

    There has been no evidence that that ever happened. What did happen though was Snowden leaking embarrassing information which gave cause to his fellow citizens to wake up and smell the flowers, that they were being illegally 'spied upon', collectively, through the bulk collection of telecommunications data, without legal authority to do so.

    Now go back to looking for commies or jihardists lurking around the corner. I guess you are just a simple victim of politicians' rhetoric that promotes 'fear, uncertainty & doubt' within the community, a.k.a. 'The F.U.D. principle'.

    Gary M. Wilson -> Nicholas_Stone 2 Jun 2015 20:28

    THE MAN IN THE ARENA:

    "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
    Theodore Roosevelt

    Posh_Guardianista -> JohnDavidFletcher 2 Jun 2015 20:28

    Do you know who controls them, who governs the use of the data, what happens to it? That's a bigger danger to your freedom than the NSA.

    Key difference being that you can block them. You can't block the NSA surveillance.

    et_tu_brute -> shortcircuit299 2 Jun 2015 20:19

    Unfortunately, I suspect this won't curtail the NSA's nefarious activities, just change the goal posts. No doubt 'Plan B' had already been devised a long while ago and would come into play in such a contingency. The lack of independent oversight and transparency of the activities of the NSA will mean that another 'whistle-blower', if they are game enough, would be needed to come forward to further expose wrong-doing. Most, if not all members of Congress and the Senate still haven't got a clue about any of this, and most never will.

    Leondeinos 2 Jun 2015 20:18

    This so-called reform is very limited: as he "praised" the passage of this bill, Obama said he will "work expeditiously to ensure our national security professionals again have the full set of vital tools they need to continue protecting the country." You bet! That means he'll set the NSA and the other "competent organs" to work on new ways to gobble up even more useless data. He will also continue telling lies, repressing revelation of truth throughout the government, and driving war all over the planet.

    Senators Sanders and Paul are right about the USA Freedumb Act.


    TiredOfTheLies 2 Jun 2015 20:11

    McConnell should be ashamed of himself. The bulk collection of cell phone data was a stalker's candy store, and there are just as many predators on the inside of government as on the outside. The Republicans were well aware of problem agents, some even suspected of abduction, rape, and murder. As if the founding fathers didn't know about rape, and the problem with abusers of all kind having too much information on innocent peoples' lives.

    Search warrants are there for a reason. They leave a paper trail. If the only thing that missing women have in common are search warrants by the same agent or group of agents, then police have the suspect list that they need. When they don't have search warrants, you're likely to find bodies all over the country with no idea of how they got there, which is what the US has now.

    And by the way, that beloved program of theirs was of no use for solving those crimes because criminals are smart enough not to leave phone record evidence. The only people who leave a trail that can be found this way are the innocent (read: victims), and the stupidest criminals on earth.


    redbanana33 2 Jun 2015 20:05

    "US Congress passes surveillance reform in vindication for Edward Snowden"

    Those are the headlines on this Guardian story.

    To vindicate, my dictionary says, means to clear of blame or suspicion.

    Well, then, COME ON HOME, ED!!

    No? You won't? Well,..... why? Then why would the Guardian say you are vindicated by the passage of this stupid half-bill in the U.S. Congress?

    Someday soon, though.

    Sydneyfl -> Nicholas_Stone 2 Jun 2015 19:57

    Traitor to WHAT? Oppression? Spying? Conjured up enemies? The military industrial complex, financed by the bankers, cabal? Hooray for Snowdon!

    MKB1234 2 Jun 2015 19:54

    Mitch "The Party of Smaller Government" McConnell destroying America from the inside.

    Lesm -> Happy Fella 2 Jun 2015 19:51

    No his refusal to do so shows he recognises the complete and utter failure of the US legal system, as is evidenced almost daily by the revelations emerging about the mass torture, incarceration without trial and sometimes death of innocent people whose only sin was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    Lesm -> Happy Fella 2 Jun 2015 19:51

    No his refusal to do so shows he recognises the complete and utter failure of the US legal system, as is evidenced almost daily by the revelations emerging about the mass torture, incarceration without trial and sometimes death of innocent people whose only sin was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    Posh_Guardianista -> FoolsDream 2 Jun 2015 19:51

    You should read the entire article.

    NSA "reform" is essentially a reset - existing legislation has passed, reorganisation will now take place and the mass surveillance will still continue as before.

    Make no mistake, PRISM, mass surveillance of the world, XKEYSCORE, widespread backdoors in routers and computer equipment; compulsory sharing of data (whether for security or corporate gain, as with Petronas) with the US Government - will still continue. If you think otherwise, then it is you who is deluded.

    FoolsDream -> JohnDavidFletcher 2 Jun 2015 19:49

    Only if you assume we visit this page unprotected my friend. Besides, the argument of they do it so it's not a problem if the others do it, is a poor argument.

    Lesm 2 Jun 2015 19:48

    It would be nice if all the troglodytes who bagged Snowden for his act of conscience would recognise the courage that he showed in doing so, but that is about as likely to happen as Hell freezing over. These loons, who spend hours every day blogging about the State trying to take away their freedoms have the capacity that Orwell talked about as "doublespeak" and doublethink" where you can hold two completely conflicting ideas in your head at the same time and believe both, as they see Snowden as a traitor for revealing the traducing of the American people by their own government.


    Washington_Irving SteB1 2 Jun 2015 19:44

    Unfortunately, the NPP committee consists of discarded politicians. And when it comes to standing up to Uncle Sam, Norwegian politicians are – as a general rule – a bunch of despicable cowards.

    Snowden was awarded a Ł12500 freedom of expression prize earlier today (well, yesterday), and the chances of him being allowed to accept it in person in September are virtually non-existent.


    FoolsDream Happy Fella 2 Jun 2015 19:44

    You'd have been great back in the witch-hunting days. "If you drown, you're a witch and we'll burn you. If you live, you're a witch.. and guess what?.. yep, burned."


    kowalli 2 Jun 2015 19:41

    future
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy7FVXERKFE&feature=youtu.be


    JohnDavidFletcher SpeakFreely 2 Jun 2015 19:39

    Know these chaps?

    Audience Science
    Facebook Social Graph
    Google Dynamic Remarketing
    Krux Digital
    NetRatings SiteCensus
    Outbrain
    PointRoll
    ScoreCard Research Beacon
    Twitter Badge

    That's the 9 companies/organisations tracking you on this very page. They will then record where you go next, what you do on this page, the frequency of these visits, what links you click on your emails etc.

    Do you know who controls them, who governs the use of the data, what happens to it? That's a bigger danger to your freedom than the NSA.


    Happy Fella 2 Jun 2015 19:38

    If Mr. Snowden has been, as The Guardian says, "vindicated", will he now be returning to the U.S. to receive whatever apologies, honors and rewards are bestowed on those who have been "vindicated"? Or, alternatively, will he continue to reside in Russia, remaining a fugitive from justice in the U.S.? And, if he chooses to do the latter (which I predict he will do--anybody want to make a bet?), in what sense has he been "vindicated".

    The passage of this legislation doesn't change the fact that Snowden has been charged with multiple violations of U.S. law regarding confidential, secret information, and his refusal to stand trial is powerful evidence that those charges are well-founded.

    awoolf14 2 Jun 2015 19:36

    Re Obama: "work expeditiously to ensure our national security professionals again have the full set of vital tools they need to continue protecting the country".

    - Ah yes, the famous 'National Security Professionals." That would be Star Trek fan Kieth Alexander, who had the command center of the NSA converted into a full scale replica of the bridge of the 'USS Enterprise,' complete with whooshing doors and a Captain Kirk chair for him to sit in, and his 'Mr Spock' James Clapper (oddly unretired) who lied to Congress during the NSA hearings, then absolved himself by saying he'd given the "least untruthful answer."

    - "Professional?' What on earth is Obsms talking about, these people are obviously stark raving bonkers!


    bodicca 2 Jun 2015 19:23

    Orwell lives on! What is this "Freedom" that government intrusion into our lives and activities is protecting? Is it the freedom to work harder and longer than people in other developed countries for less access to advanced education, healthcare and free time than those people?

    Or is it the freedom to pay excessive salaries and benefits beyond our imagination to CEOs of corporations? Or the freedom to exist with a crumbling infrastructure while funds for repairs are diverted? Or the freedom to pay for bribes (er lobbying) for legislators elected by us, so that they will pass laws that oppose the wishes of the people. How long will we tolerate being lied to? Freedom, indeed!

    Jim Mansberger 2 Jun 2015 19:20

    It is the military and intelligence agencies that do not want to drop all criminal charges against Snowden, and rather do the right and just thing, which is to recognize him as a US Government whistleblower and protect him.

    Wharfat9 2 Jun 2015 19:12

    On cutting out the bulk surveillance ...

    This makes one a little uneasy - this, so they say - stopping of bulk data collection. Look here: you got that big ´ol facility out at Bluffdale, Utah. A huge mongramamous caw that can take in all the e-mails, phone this and that and every other thing - including, probably, the kitchen sink - and don´t tell me that they gonna just put all those huge gears and terabytes and fans and flywheels and nobs and buttons and doodlygooks on idle?

    Idle? A ´sweet machine´ like that?

    No way, José.


    Sydneyfl 2 Jun 2015 19:10

    America no longer has a press. Foreigners and Neocons have used the international banksters to finance their buying up of 99% of our newspapers, book publishers, TV content, magazines, radio, etc.,.. and who they didn't buy out ...they try to bribe or muzzle with the threat of job loss. Snowdon had no choice. Remember we are the "huddled masses yearning to BREATHE FREE". We will keep chipping away until we get our God Given country back. Snowdon risked himself to help us do just that. He had no choice!! Some people can't be bought!!


    Dugan222 Edward Frederick Ezell 2 Jun 2015 19:08

    The advantage is that this third party is a NSA front operation. :) Do you know what it means??? Every night, all the data being stored by this company are being transferred and backed up by the NSA. Hehehehehhee......

    The NSA still keeps all the data but the public won't assume the NSA has the data since we are supposed to think that the NSA is no longer storing out phone data..... No one talks about who is running this third party company...


    Edward Frederick Ezell 2 Jun 2015 19:07

    Since users of communications services will be required by the private providers to agree to the recording of their communications, this procedure nicely sidesteps the limitations placed on the government by the Constitution.

    Although it seems quite clever it is in effect a conspiracy between the government and providers to facilitate government violation of the constitution.


    WadeLovell 2 Jun 2015 18:49

    ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer says, "This is the most important surveillance reform bill since 1978, and its passage is an indication that Americans are no longer willing to give the intelligence agencies a blank check." I don't see this as vindication. OTOH, I don't believe it would have passed without the lingering bitter taste of overzealous government and the people like Snowden who helped expose it.


    Dugan222 2 Jun 2015 18:41

    Sigh...I am not convinced. The NSA would go after where the data is. If they are in the hands of the phone company, they would have operatives working there. Worst, the phone company would outsource the data management retention to a third party, NSA front company. Here, on the surface, the NSA may appear to have no connections and responsibilities for storing the phone data. Again, who is policing the phone company. And who is policing this "third party."

    vr13vr 2 Jun 2015 18:08

    Why does the Congress have to name laws with such fanfare? Freedom Act, Patriot Act, and so on? Just to sound self righteous? Or to make sure that whoever does not agree with it could be viewed as a unpatriotic and against freedom?

    Would that be much better, and practical as well, not to over-hype laws but give them reasonable and descriptive names?


    sbabcock 2 Jun 2015 18:07

    Seems to me the difference is the NSA has to actually go to the phone companies and plug in to their server to vacuum up the data instead of having it delivered on a silver platter. Let's face it, there are loop-holes galore in the "Freedom" Act. This is the Senate pretending to do their jobs. "Hey, you pretend to be against this to save face. We'll pretend to pass something that is 'different' and then we'll go on vacation again. People will think we 'do' stuff. Problems solved." But it's simply re-shuffling the paperwork, something the House, headed by the Orange Man, are experts at.

    There's another story here today about FBI planes, registered under fake business identities, using Sting-Ray to scoop up all kinds of phone data from above... so... look over here! so you don't see what's going on over there! smfh

    mcstowy DerekHaines 2 Jun 2015 18:07

    During the McCarthy hearings, the easiest way to come under suspicion was to be "prematurely anti-fascist." You see "good Americans" (meaning the right-wing corporate elite) supported Hitler and Mussolini.

    ID9492736 2 Jun 2015 17:50

    The Most Transparent Administration In American History.

    Even the sponges and mollusks are fainting from too much laughter.

    Barry D. Lauterwasser wardropper 2 Jun 2015 17:29

    It's amazing how a few people, and the internet can make such a difference. Throughout the annals of history, many have sacrificed much, even their lives, for the good of the nation. Like you, I'd like to see him come home and pardoned, but I'm sure his safety would be in jeopardy due to the fanaticals here. Someday, history will hopefully judge these brave souls that came forward to shed light on the things government does under the guise of "security." Time will tell...

    madamefifi 2 Jun 2015 17:11

    Not a week goes by without my thoughts (and I am just an ordinary joe with no political connections whatsoever) turning to Edward Snowden and the gross injustice he has and still is suffering. Please watch Citizenfour if you have not already done so, to understand the full magnitude of this injustice. I hope I will live to see this injustice corrected and hope this is a step forward in an inhumanely long process. Edward Snowden is one of the world's true heroes. I believe he deserves the Nobel peace prize or some other worldwide recognition for his sacrifice but sadly no prizes or freedoms are within my remit and never will be. Mr Snowden, this is all I can do and it might not count for much, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart.


    TrueCopy 2 Jun 2015 16:59

    USA Freedom act is not what it is made to be. It has so many loopholes that makes it essentially irrelevant. For example to get records a subpoena need to be issued, but the subpoena doesn't need to be for one number or one individual, or even a roaming individual, they can issue a subpoena for Verizon and another for AT&T and another for Sprint and T-mobile, and pretty cover everyone. This is pretty much the same as what they were doing, but a little more cumbersome, which can be overcome by a few software applications. Rand Paul wanted to limit the subpoena to an individual living and breathing person or persons, rather than a telecom company which failed. So you know where this is going, the lawyers at NSA can argue because that amendment failed, the intent of congress was to allow them to subpoena phone company records.


    Jbons990 2 Jun 2015 16:36

    Fantastic. The fact that the mass collection of telecommunication data was hidden from the public (and would have remained hidden were it not for a certain whistle blower) just demonstrates that the NSA and GCHQ will never tell us the truth. This shiny new surveillance reform is one giant metaphorical rug, for the NSA to sweep all attention underneath, before proceeding to collect everybody information again. Because that's America. And that's democracy. *cough* Bureaucracy.


    freeandfair tbv954 2 Jun 2015 16:34

    Yep, the CIA were caught hacking into White House computers (about 6 months ago ? ) in order to see the information on torture. Anything happened after they were caught red-handed and lies about being caught under oath?

    Nope. Just business as usual in the self-proclaimed shining city on the hill, the most democratic country on Earth.

    [Jun 02, 2015]The Current Overproduction Crisis And War

    Ian Welsh makes Fourteen Points on the World Economy as the US GDP Drops .7 Percent. He believes that the economy is again turning towards a global recession. This recession comes even as there has not been a real recovery from the last global economic crisis:

    Let me put this another way: The developed world is in depression. It has been in depression since 2007. It never left depression. Within that depression, there is still a business cycle: There are expansions, and recessions, and so on. Better times and worse times.

    The business cycle is again turning down and is doing so sharply. Not only in the U.S. but also in Europe and Asia.

    Every central bank has been throwing money at the local economies but that money finds no productive use. Why would a company invest even at 0% interests when nobody will buy the additional products for a profitable price? How could consumers buy more when wages are stagnant and they are already overburdened with debt taken up in the last expansion cycle? The central banks are pushing on a string while distorting normal market relations. This intensifies the original crisis.

    My believe is that the global crisis we see is one of overproduction, an excess or glut of supplies and on the other side a lack of consumption. The exceptional cheap money created by the central banks makes investment in machines preferable over employment of a human workforce. The result: Manufacturing hub starts work on first zero-labor factory

    Chen predicted that instead of 2,000 workers, the current strength of the workforce, the company will require only 200 to operate software system and backstage management.

    The (Central) bank gave Mr. Chen cheap money and at an interest rate of 0% a complete automation of his company may indeed be profitable. It is unlikely though that he would make the same move at an interest rate of 10%. But on the larger macro economic scale Mr Chen needs to ask this question: "How will the 1,800 laid off workers be able to buy the products my company makes?" Some of the laid off people may find marginal "service" job but the money they will make from those will likely be just enough to keep them alive. And over time flipping burgers will also be automated. And then?

    Karl Marx described such overproduction crises. Their cause is a rising share of an economy's profits going to an ever smaller class of "owners" while the growing class of marginal "workers" gets less and less of the total pie. In the last decades this phenomenon can be observed all over the developed world. The other side of the overproduction crisis is an underconsumption crisis. People can no longer buy for lack of income.

    While a realignment of central bank interest rates to historical averages, say some 6%, would help to slow the negative process it would not solve the current problem. Income inequality and overproduction would still increase though at a lesser pace. The historic imperialist remedy for local overproduction, capturing new markets, is no longer available. Global trade is already high. There is little land left to colonize and to widen the markets for ones products.

    There are then two solutions to such an crisis.

    One is to tackle the underconsumption side and to change the distribution of an economy's profits with a much larger share going to "workers" and a smaller share going to "owners". This could be achieved through higher taxes on "owners" and redistribution by the state but also through empowerment of labor unions and like means. But with governments all over the world more and more captured by the "owners" the chance that this solution will be chosen seem low.

    The other solution for a capitalist society to a crisis of overproduction is the forced destruction of (global) production capabilities through a big war. War also helps to increase control over the people and to get rid of "surplus workers".

    The U.S. was the big economic winner of World War I and II. Production capacities elsewhere got destroyed through the wars and a huge number of global "surplus workers" were killed. For the U.S. the wars were, overall, very profitable. Other countries have distinct different experiences with wars. In likely no other country than the U.S. would one find a major newspaper that arguing that wars make us safer and richer.

    I am therefore concerned that the intensifying crisis of overproduction and its seemingly casual preference for war will, in years to come, push the U.S. into starting a new global cataclysmic conflict.

    Neoconservatives like Victoria Nuland tried to goad Russia and the EU into a big war over Ukraine. The top lobbyist of the military industrial complex, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is trying to instigate a war between China and its neighbors over some atolls in the South China Sea. The U.S. is at least complicit in the rise of the Islamic State which will leave the Middle East at war for the foreseeable future.

    Are these already, conscious or by chance, attempts by the U.S. to solve the problem of global overproduction in its favor?

    Posted by: [email protected] | Jun 1, 2015 2:05:50 PM | 2

    Marx's early writings, including the Communist Manifesto, did indeed focus on crises of overproduction. But, in Capital, he explained that falling rates of profit are the key dynamic. For a popular blog on these issues, see Michael Roberts:

    https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/

    Of course, there is plenty of debate on these matters within Marxian political economy. The best academic source is the journal, Historical Materialism:

    http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/1569206x

    Posted by: Mike Maloney | Jun 1, 2015 2:38:15 PM | 5

    I think you're right, b. The U.S. will not allow regional hegemons who are not clients let alone a global one to challenge its unipolar world. That's why we're seeing all these wars in various stages -- hot in the Middle East; hot and cold in Ukraine; cold in Southeast Asia. The U.S. prefers smashed failed states to anything remotely challenging its full-spectrum dominance.

    The neoliberal prescription for low growth/no growth is the complete cannibalization of the state. Privatized health care is being exported to Europe, while in the U.S. public education is being devoured by corporations.

    Posted by: VietnamVet | Jun 1, 2015 3:01:36 PM | 7

    Since the subject is blacked out by corporate media, we have to decipher the news to try to figure what is actually happening. The only stimulus acceptable to the elite and their politicians is war. 2,300 Humvees seized by Islamic State. Instead of containment, ship thousands of anti-tank missiles to Baghdad; more money in the pocket of the Military Complex.

    The problem is that it is psychotic. The Islamic State's end game is Mecca. The shutoff of 11% of the world's oil supply will collapse the world economy. Yet, this is not an aberration.

    A civil war was started in Ukraine right on Russia's border; a nuclear power who has said they will use them if there is a shooting war with NATO.

    The Greeks are being pillaged to pay debts that cannot ever be paid back. Unless the debt is written off, the Eurozone will splinter asunder.

    The only description for this is greed. Get rich today; the hell with tomorrow and the rest of mankind.

    Posted by: Mike Maloney | Jun 1, 2015 3:57:03 PM | 9

    The good news is that this U.S.-led neoliberal hegemony (what Tariq Ali calls the "Radical Center") is rapidly losing any popular legitimacy. Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Sinn Fein in Ireland, SNP in the UK, even Bernie Sanders in the U.S. His first day of campaigning last week in Iowa 700 hundred people showed up to hear him speak, compared to 50 for Martin O'Malley, another corporate shill.

    Sanders is no antiwar crusader, but his basic ideas -- cutting military spending, breaking up the big banks, raising marginal tax rates on the wealthy, creating jobs by investing in infrastructure -- have proven the most popular, at least based on turnout, in Iowa of any candidate, Republican or Democrat, so far.

    Posted by: tom | Jun 1, 2015 4:17:23 PM | 10

    We have to look at the perspective of the class war too, where the corporate and elite class have growing contempt for the lower/middle classes more than they already do. So, how can one grow the economy, when the elite and corporate class are exploiting, growing inequality, and hate for us even more ?

    Posted by: Bill | Jun 1, 2015 5:15:09 PM | 12

    The prime vote holder of the IMF himself states the IMF has "served US National and economic interests" since it's inception, across Latin America, Europe and the world, and that "US Leadership" in the IMF is "critical".

    http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Sobel_Testimony.pdf

    The ideas behind the institutions that came out of Bretton Woods were already in the mind of FDR and Keynes long before the conference. One of FDR's key advisors was James Warburg whose father had funded Hitler as well as the USSR, and founded the Federal Reserve Bank.

    https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_Hitler.pdf
    https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-5.pdf

    US financiers funded Russian manufactured trucks which went to the North Vietnamese forces, and today BP hold stakes in Russian energy firms while Hilary Clinton sells Russia the US Uranium supply.

    As Major General Smedley Butler said in 1935 "War is a Racket". All that has changed is the quality of the supporting propaganda.

    Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jun 1, 2015 5:50:10 PM | 16

    I think that it is not "overproduction", but the result of improved transportation, communication and more free trade. What is the advantage of paying wages in USA or Western Europe if you can put all labor consuming operations in China, where there is good infrastructure, or in countries where infrastructure is not as good but the labor much cheaper, like Bangladesh? The answer is that while some advantages do exists, there are less and less frequent. Even automation can be performed elsewhere.

    Historically, in 16-th century The Netherlands were the chief European center of non-agricultural production, international trade and banking, and afterwards there was less and less production, but the country retained for a while its position in trade and banking. That cycle affected northern Italy earlier, and England, later. I think that one part of the solution would be a moderate, and yet effective, policy supportive of domestic production and domestic employment.

    But there is also a bit of overproduction. Average American could perfectly well live in a smaller home, drive a smaller vehicle, buy fewer gadgets etc. with hardly decreasing the quality of life. Those below the average income can be out of luck, but they do not consume much anyway. Additionally, there is an excessive gap between "micro-economic" and "macro-economic" optimum behavior.

    Most American household has so little savings that the suffer a crisis very easily, so it would be better for them to spend less, e.g. by cooking more and eating out less, cutting down impulse buying etc. However, the cut in demand is recessionary on a macro-scale. It would be sensible to have policies that would concentrate not on "growth" but on satisfaction of needs.

    Posted by: PokeTheTruth | Jun 1, 2015 6:11:12 PM | 18

    America is drowning in the sewer of the national political system. There is no candidate or incumbent in Washington, DC who serves the country. These elitists rape our liberties, steal our wealth, entice our grandchildren into killing people in foreign lands and subject the future of the nation to be slaves to the debt masters.

    The American people must exercise the only peaceful option left to restore the federal republic which is rapidly being transformed into a unitary style government like much of Europe. On November 8, 2016, the nation must stay home and not give its consent to continue being abused by the plutocracy of puppets bribed by the global bankers, multinational corporations and foreign state lobbyists.

    Abstinence is not benign as some would believe, it is a very powerful check on government when it becomes so infested with opportunists who pursue their own self-serving aggrandizement through the passage of law and regulation to benefit themselves and their criminal syndicate. Without a democratic mandate the cabal cannot hold power and therefore the legislative function of law making is extinguished. The bureaucracy remains in place until the fiscal budget ends in October of the following year which means social security payments will still be made, Medicare claims will still be processed and other central government functions will continue. During those 10 months, the people must demand from the governors of each of their respective States new elections with candidates who are independent of the two-party dogma that has corrupted Washington, DC.

    An implied vote of 'No Confidence" or "None of the Above" is the only sensible way to end this long running nightmare of tyrannical fascism and nationalism that is destroying the country.

    The motto of new liberty must be, "Dissolve it, start over!"

    Posted by: chuckvw | Jun 1, 2015 7:26:53 PM | 19

    So much for the surplus value of labor... All surplus and no labor... The global capitalist system has become bulimic.

    Posted by: Tom Murphy | Jun 1, 2015 8:59:08 PM | 20

    I remember in school in the early 1980's a teacher said something really disgusting to the class: "want to boost an economy, have a war" (clearly the powers that be have made sure that there propaganda gets fed to the public) another ugly thing a teacher tried to push was the notion that WWII's economic effect was some sort of special boost yet at the same time trying to obscure the basic fact that it was government spending that took us out of the depression so war was not needed at all. A lot of work has gone into pushing the manipulative propaganda which is meant to manipulate and sell the agenda of the powerful.

    How it was presented was "FDR tried the New Deal but it took WWII to get us out of the Great Depression." The framing of it that way is intentionally manipulative in order to obscure the role government spending had in getting us out of the depression and it is phrased that way to sell war.

    Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 1, 2015 9:08:58 PM | 21

    in re 14 --

    Nor did they suffer from overproduction of T-34's,, even though they cut cost and production time in half. But they still had sufficient to defeat Hitler, thank Ford! The Space Station is in trouble if there are shortages of Proton rockets. And the Federation is still enjoying some Union leftovers in education and healthcare, see Lisa Marie White's accounting of why American liberals are wrong about Russia.

    For an artistic take on overproduction in capitalism, see Brave New World. Ending is better than mending!

    Whatever happened to waste not, want not? Just a throwaway line....

    Posted by: Copeland | Jun 1, 2015 9:12:41 PM | 22

    Piotyr Berman @ 16

    I think you're on the right track. Before capitalism ran amok and metastasized into a global zombie, there were guilds. I believe the Netherlands had a rich history of those organizations. These were created to protect the rights and privileges of members (to be sure); but they also preserved and improved the skills, and passed these on through apprenticeship. The obsession in consumerism is about having something brand new, and also relies on planned obsolescence, which needs to produce shoddy goods such as plastic footwear, that will be discarded as junk in a few months. Having things made which are durable enough to go through several cycles of repair, would moderate the overheated production.

    If labor is expunged by automation-crazed corporations; then war or revolution, or even both at once, is possible. The cataclysmic outcome that b sketched out is then possible. Of course it's all very short-sighted; but I once read somewhere that at the onset of the 1930s Great Depression, the capitalists examined the option of reducing working hours for everyone so that workers might still muddle through.

    On closer examination, capitalists calculated that dumping workers into the trash heap would add a few dollars more to the corporate bottom line, and be more agreeable to shareholders.

    Posted by: Lone Wolf | Jun 1, 2015 9:46:47 PM | 23

    @b

    Since you mentioned Karl Marx, the exclusion of a very valid third option, revolutionary war/class struggle, makes itself evident. From the trend we witnessed after WWII, we cannot expect as you correctly noted, a redistribution of wealth out of the greedy and gluttonous transatlantic empire and its minions, since concentration, centralization and consolidation of capital has been the order of the day ever since. The other major trend after WWII has been imperial wars, either by proxy or direct intervention, fought against countries that followed the path to independence from colonial powers by means of revolutionary wars, in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The potential for another period of revolutionary war is real, given the abject misery of the wretched of the earth, which have been left with nothing to lose but their chains. The main obstacle they face is the lack of a scientific tool to interpret their current predicament, and at the same time provide them with a vision of the social paradigm they aspire at, out of the ruins left of their societies. With its inherent limitations given by dogma, Marxism was that tool for Mao, Lumumba, Ben-Bella, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, and many other African, Asian and Latin American leaders who took upon their shoulders to shake their peripheral dependency. Many of them were successful in their revolutionary endeavors, and were able to trace an independent path for their societies, even if burdened with all the problems typical of the "third world." Nevertheless, even before the fall of the Soviet Union, Marx and Marxism were thrown under a pile of dead dogs, even more after the fall, which was attributed to the utter failure of Marxism as a social science.

    Marx and Marxism were part of the "end of history," a thing of the past, a post-Hegelian utopian philosophy whose ultimate results were the creation of dystopian societies…until the crisis of 2007, when suddenly everybody wanted to understand WTF is a cyclical crisis, and why do they happen. Das Kapital became a best seller in Germany and beyond; becoming a model for new works tailored after Marx's statistically saturated magnus opus, e.g. Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century, " and others. Despite all the intellectually gifted resisters to the empire, and the vast expansion of knowledge of the digital age, no new revolutionary theory has appeared, able to inspire the masses of dispossessed as Marxism did at the turn of the XIX c., one that changed the course of history forever during the XX c.

    It is in this vacuum, a modern epistemological crisis, that the neocons, bastard children of Trotskyism, took ownership of Trotsky's "Theory of Permanent Revolution," and turned it into a counterrevolutionary instrument for their nefarious global domination purposes. Hence revolutions became bastardized, categorized by "colors" or "seasons" according to the whims of the vulgar ruling elites, and lost their power to change societies from the bottom up. This crisis of knowledge of their own socio-economic/political conditions are having a profound effect on the masses worldwide, who in many instances rise up against their oppressors, e.g. Egypt/Arab "Spring," without a leadership, without a clear vision of their goals, without a social agenda that guides their movements, and they end up getting crushed or coopted by the new rulers, toys for the empire games of regime change. These are the "Twitter" and "Facebook" so-called "revolutions," mass movements with no direction, no aim, and no strategy for social change. What kind of society did the Egyptians, Tunisians, et al want? Did they have a program for the society they wanted to build? Was there a clear strategy and tactics to achieve their goals? "Crisis," say Gramsci, that giant of Italian Marxism, "is when the old has not died and the new has not been born." Humanity is now facing an epistemological crisis of galactic proportions, in serious need of a new revolutionary theory that, like Marxism in the XIX/XX c., gives the masses a vision of a future to build with their own hands, and hope there is a better world other than sweat-shops, slavery, toiling without rewards, exploitation, misery, crime, and an ever-growing gap between the ruling elites and the working masses.

    Posted by: Nana2007 | Jun 1, 2015 10:11:44 PM | 24

    There could be a helicopter drop ala Ben Bernanke.

    I like Gail Tverberg on diminishing returns/oversupply.

    I like Andrew Kliman on the declining rate of profit.

    Thanks for connecting the dots on this B.

    Posted by: ruralito | Jun 1, 2015 10:11:54 PM | 25

    @12, Sutton is an ass. He pushes the theory that Communism and Fascism are equally bad and what is needed is some mystical third way: Libertarians with their squirrel rifles hunkerin down behind cotton bales. So Wall St. offered Lenin free cash, and he took it! Well, duh!

    Posted by: Nana2007 | Jun 1, 2015 10:19:49 PM | 26

    The motto of new liberty must be, "Dissolve it, start over!"

    PokeTheTruth@18- I tend to agree, with the caveat that plenty people need to be held accountable.

    Texas might be getting that idea.

    Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 1, 2015 10:44:18 PM | 27

    PB @ 16, Copeland at 22

    Historians of the United Provinces point out that Holland and her allied provinces lacked a sufficient population base to administer and defend the holdings she gained in her revolt against Spain ("The Eighty Years War"). With the loss of revenue, croqetten and circuses became less affordable. The House of Orange were elevated from elected Statholders to Kings, the thinking being a monarchy would better keep the lower classes down than a republic. This environment proved conducive to the spread of revolutionary ideas in the Low Countries after 1789.

    Historian of the later Renaissance attribute the decline of the urban republics to several factors. The prevailing aristocratic values induced merchant families to move their capital from commercial and industrial operations to urban and rural real estate -- especially country tracts that came with patents of nobility. Failing that, you could, like the Medici, subvert the Republic with wealth and buy a title from the Papacy or Holy Roman Emperor. And a more mundane factor -- they ran out of good shipbuilding timber.

    England for her part had a large population. It had plenty of timber -- North America was a shipwright's wet dream, and before this, measures prioritized available timber for maritime uses.

    When elites think protecting domestic markets and workers will add to their bottom line, they will. But if the see money to be made in "outsourcing" and "off-shoring", well, away the factories, jobs, salaries, and purchases from suppliers go.

    England began to lose her superiority in textiles and iron and steel to cheaper American and German production. And these two rivals took advantage of what Gershenkron has called "the advantage of the latecomer." The major industrial expansions of both took place in the Second Industrial Revolution, where steel, chemicals, and electrics were the new driving technologies, and both were leaders in these fields. After a rearguard action up to World War II, they accepted de-industrialization whole-hearted under Thatcher.

    PTT at 18 -- The elite will be totally fine with abstention. Less voters to bribe. Not only will things continue as they were, we'll have to endure fools like David Brooks lecturing us on our lack of civic engagement.

    Go to the polls. If you can't bring yourself to vote for the left(over) parties down the ballot, write in you favorite choice -- "none of the above" will do. And not just for President, do it for all the races. The rightists will bring more of the same, only with more Pharisee-style false piety or boring Ayn Rand novels. Friends don't let friends vote Tea Party.

    Lone Wolf at 23 -- Time permits me only to say -- Gramsci Rules!

    Posted by: meofios | Jun 1, 2015 10:55:26 PM | 28

    I think the over-production we see is caused by zombie companies all around the world, that don't generate any profit, sustained by zero interest rate loans, over produce goods, causing a glut of products, and cause price deflation.

    Posted by: Wayoutwest | Jun 1, 2015 11:58:39 PM | 29

    RM@27

    The 'elites' spend billions of dollars every election cycle to encourage or frighten people into the voting booth. Without that 'consent of the people' their minions have no mandate or legal right to rule over us. Throwing your vote away by voting for or against someone or even writing FU on the ballot is still supporting the corrupt system that they will continue to use to rule and if voting could change anything, it would be illegal.

    This doesn't mean that elections and voting may not someday be useful again but there is no possibility they can now be used to change our corrupt system.

    Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 2, 2015 1:32:21 AM | 30


    Posted by: Wayoutwest | Jun 1, 2015 11:58:39 PM | 29

    I agree with that.
    Lone Wolf @ #23's Gramisci perspective is on the money.

    Russell Brand, my favourite non-revolutionary revolutionary, makes the (laboured) point that a govt elected by less than 50% of eligible voters cannot claim legitimacy.

    But Gramisci was righter than everyone else in pointing out that "Crisis is when the old has not died and the new has not been born."

    It should be obvious to everyone, by now, that Twitter and Facebook "revolutions" aren't revolutions, or journeys, and have no useful or coherent destination.

    Posted by: Chipnik | Jun 2, 2015 7:25:37 AM | 31

    b

    This is the 'atto-fox problem' in biology, addressed by the Lotka-Volterra equation in Brauer, F. and Castillo-Chavez, C., Mathematical Models in Population Biology and Epidemiology, Springer-Verlag, (2000), and many others, the bifurcation relationship allowing two mutually independent steady-state solutions, one with higher predation and lower prey population used to justify higher resource extraction rates, ...but it remains just a theory and requires a rigorous definition of who is the 'prey'.

    Is the prey the poor and downtrodden? No, those are the losers.

    We can all agree the 'prey' is ultimately the energy needed to continue surviving for another day, not the staid pedantic 19thC Marxist 'Das Kapital', but just the 'real' value of evolutionary currency and trade. We've transferred the value of energy into gold, then fiat paper today 1's and 0's, and now there's too many of them. They'really part of a non-viable fractional-reserve usury-based ecosystem that's running out of balance, Koyaanisqatsi.

    The rich prey on the energy developed by the poor through usury and credit, but also, the socialist state preys upon the destitute as a source of $Bs public program, using public tax extraction to generate private wealth in much the same way as usury and credit. More rice tents!!

    If we de-anthropomorphize the Marxist class-struggle dialectic, and the rabbinical Maker-Taker meme, the answer pops right out like a jujube: not overproduction, not QEn, not oligarchs and monopolies, but usury and taxes.

    Wah-lah. Usury. Taxes. Same as it ever was. Que sera, sera.

    Posted by: rufus magister | Jun 2, 2015 8:16:58 AM | 32

    Wayout at 29 --

    The standard line of us reds is that participation in elections is a useful tool for educating the masses and marshaling and mobilizing progressive forces. And that mass action, e.g., the general strike, is the real means of social change.

    Bhagavan Chippy at 31 --

    I'd stick to physics and Eastern mysticism.

    Predation occurs between, not within species. Socialism is about the workers controlling the means of production that they service. Social welfare capitalism bought their birthright for "a mess of pottage" (Gen. 25: 29-34). But austerity is taking that off the table.

    I find the overtones of the "rabbinical meme" and the emphasis on usury and taxes disturbing. See this handy comparative chart; fascism is "Strongly against international financial markets and usury." The Abolition of Income Tax and Usury Party is recent spawn of that brood.

    Our own home-grown TeaBaggers don't feel too good about it either.

    You might consider a clarification or restatement of your position.

    Posted by: paulmeli | Jun 2, 2015 8:28:43 AM | 33

    "We've transferred the value of energy into gold, then fiat paper today 1's and 0's, and now there's too many of them"

    Well, there's too much savings (accumulated financial wealth) but not enough spending. We know this because we have too much unemployment. Properly targeted spending cures unemployment.

    Spending is a function mainly of money printing, existing money (previously created) mostly just earns interest and so is parasitic to the system in the net (economic rent), which leads to a paradox.

    In the old days in the U.S. between 1933 and the mid-1960's the top marginal tax rate remained around 90% and then around 70% until Reagan was elected.

    This maintained some sort of balance between money printing and saving. Now, money creation just piles up at the top which creates huge inequalities of power.

    Posted by: geoff29 | Jun 2, 2015 9:24:35 AM | 34

    It's simple to conclude that the "ruling class" and their spokes-people are if not absolutely greedy and mendacious, then at least criminally stupid.

    But I think that's short-sighted. The financial crisis could be resolved in a moment's notice, since money is more or less an "imaginary" construct, especially now that it's just 1s and 0s, as was mentioned. The population is clamoring for "higher wages," but if we here were the small ruling class, we must know that "higher wages" means more mouths to feed from a growing population. Or, it means more disgruntled minions crying for "revolution" carrying pitch forks to the very gates of the gated communities and wilderness tracts where the very wealthy keep themselves concealed, when calamity strikes and food is scarce.

    And the "ruling class" despite their equivocations, surely discusses amongst themselves the growing unsustainability of the ever encroaching environmental calamities, and dwindling resources, etc. What wars are being threatened between great powers, are are not about the resolution of world wide perils in terms of repairing the global over indulgence in carbon based technologies, in fact they seem to be based on increasing their use and further extracting scarce resources and more rapidly burning down the house.

    Intelligent discussions are conducted here at MOA, it would be foolish to conclude that some semblance of intelligent discussions are not also held in the upper rooms and chambers of power, stripped of pretense and falsehood. If so, if one of us were sitting with those chosen few, I'm sure we would come to the conclusion that we were in a serious fix. And our backs are up against the wall. "Austerity" would be pushed to its extremities to decrease productivity and reduce the population through Urie's principle of immiseration.

    Put yourself in the shoes of this ruling class, our primary MO would no doubt be self-preservation from the encroaching revolutions and chaos, and destruction, and a preservation of some kind of status quo. Otherwise, all that we had, were we sitting on the porch overlooking our estate, would be gone.

    If nothing else works like the current financial immiseration to reduce the current state of affairs to a simpler and more manageable system where our ruling class rank and stature in society remained permanent and secure (because really our whole being has been reduced to measuring ourselves by our imagined sense of self-worth determined by our wealth, etc.) but the elimination of so many annoying minions through some kind of controlled burn, like a war, then certainly we would go about that?

    I'm sure nothing pleases these folks more but for us to deride them constantly and poke fun at their ineptitude and call them all sorts of "evil," because that would just be so much more grist for the mill.

    ===

    Posted by: ralphieboy | Jun 2, 2015 10:25:43 AM | 36

    There is a famous anecdote about a General Motors executive showing off their newest automated assembly line to a United Auto Workers Union boss and remarking "Not one of them is a union member!"

    To which the UAW boss replied, "And not one of them is a GM customer, either."

    Posted by: Willy2 | Jun 2, 2015 11:15:49 AM | 40

    There's a lack of demand worldwide because since say 1981 workers/employees have received wage increases below inflation. In that regard workers have seen their purchasing power being reduced for over 30 years. No wonder, households/workers aren't able or willing spend lots of money.

    From 1981 up to 2008 households/workers were willing to increase their debtload. By going deeper into debt those households were able to keep their spending at a reasonable level.

    But since 2008 households are reluctant to go deeper into debt and that has weakened the worldwide economy.

    As long as workers don't get wage increases at or above inflation (levels) or are willing increase their debtloads (again) there's no chance for a economic recovery.

    Posted by: HnH | Jun 2, 2015 11:23:22 AM | 41

    b,

    you normally publish highly insightful analyses and information nuggets that I have trouble finding elsewhere. On this topic, however, you jumped short.

    Yes, we are struggling with overproduction and lack of consumption, but it is important to know where this development comes from. If you look at historical data, then you might realize that the purchasing power of people in the Western World started decreasing at the start of the 80s last century. The *growth* in purchasing power decreased since the 1960s. And debt is a significant, but small, part of it. The average growth in GDP has been consistently shrinking since the 1960s. Can you even remember a time, when the economy in one of the Western countries has been growing by more than 4% YoY? I don't. For Germany you have to go back to before the 70s oil crisis to find two years with a consecutive growth of 4% for more than one year. I wasn't even born then.

    The main problem is this: We have to invest more and more energy to pump the same amount of oil, mine the same amount of ores and produce the same amount of food. And there are more and more people living right now.

    This main problem, the diminishing returns, makes it that people have to spend more and more to afford the basic necessities. Corporations and enterprises react to their diminishing sales by cutting their costs to pay their loans. The easiest way to cutting costs is letting go of workers.

    Since 2008, the crash happened after the crash of the oil price, Western Central Banks needed to keep their interest rates a 0%, because there was no growth. If they are ever crazy enough to raise interest rates, they will be blamed for the worst market crash in human history.

    The reason is that we have reached the limits to growth. There is no more growth to be had for the industrialized civilization. That is over. For good. Unless we find an unlimited energy source that is very, very cheap. None is on the horizon so far.

    Currently, a country can only produce growth, for a very short time, at the expense of others. That too will stop. Then, in a few years at the latest, global GDP will start to shrink. That is when the wars will start in earnest. That is when the killing and dying will start in earnest.

    That killing and dying will not stop, until the world will have found a means to reduce its energy consumption to the physical and geological realities out there. That will take a while, and I have no clue how the world will look like.


    Best wishes,
    HnH

    Posted by: ǝn⇂ɔ | Jun 2, 2015 11:38:36 AM | 43

    Sorry, but I again disagree.

    First of all, the robots in the example are there because there the Chinese labor pool has been growing slower than the economy for years now.

    Secondly, robots need to be made by somebody. They cost lots of money. They have to be maintained and often upgraded. The physical operation of the plant might take 90% less workers, but the remaining workers are paid as much or more as the previous entire work force.

    Thirdly, the production noted in the article isn't for China - at least, not yet. It is for the 1st world. Thus the "replacement" of the worker is a dynamic of cheaper labor elsewhere rather than actual replacement with mechanization.

    As for economics: an entire series of fallacies.

    a) Overproduction. While I will certainly agree that the 1st world can do with less, this is irrelevant. Every labor saving device ever created has ultimately had the labor savings spent on higher standards of living. There is nothing to indicate any change in this dynamic. Thus while we no longer have tens and hundreds of thousands of workers making automobiles, we now have tens and hundreds of thousands of workers doing other things like fracking oil and natural gas, servicing the cars via a nationwide array of repair, refueling, and upkeep (car washes, etc). Equally, we don't drive Model T's anymore. Ford used to be nearly entirely self sufficient outside of the metals - this is no longer true. Ford doesn't make computer chips or any of hundreds of parts in present day Fords.

    b) Labor isn't the problem - consumption is. In terms of overall productivity, Americans as a whole are producing more than ever before. Hours worked has been inching down, but hours of work isn't what dictates the actual output - it is a function of productivity times hours worked, and that product continues to increase overall.

    The primary difference between today and post World War II is that of the economic rewards. Americans who aren't in the managerial class get paid a smaller percentage of the overall production created than ever before. This also has been decreasing for decades.

    Thus the problem isn't one of too much productivity or too much automation - the problem is one where the rich get all the money.

    Posted by: Lone Wolf | Jun 2, 2015 12:08:31 PM | 44

    Right on cue...

    Why America's color revolution strategy of global domination is doomed to fail: the case of Egypt

    Posted by: paulmeli | Jun 2, 2015 12:16:13 PM | 45

    "The main problem is this: We have to invest more and more energy to pump the same amount of oil, mine the same amount of ores and produce the same amount of food."

    This may well be true, but if one looks at the history of spending growth (or more accurately public investment) by the U.S. federal government one will see that spending growth suddenly dropped by 1/3rd in the early 1980's (around the beginning of Ronald Reagan's presidency). This can be observed visually very easily by looking at the FRED series FGEXPND on a log scale…the breakpoint is obvious and so is the one at around 2010.

    U.S. federal spending has averaged 7% since WWII overall…about 9% through 1985 dropping to about 5% thereafter. Since 2010 growth has been an anemic 1.6%.

    It's no wonder GDP growth has been on decline since the 80's, and it's no wonder we are experiencing a slowdown now.

    Posted by: james | Jun 2, 2015 12:34:50 PM | 46

    @43 ǝn⇂ɔ quote.. "Thus the problem isn't one of too much productivity or too much automation - the problem is one where the rich get all the money."

    who is buying the produce ǝn⇂ɔ ?

    Posted by: dh | Jun 2, 2015 12:38:22 PM | 47

    @46 A lot of money goes into remodelling. Look at the proliferation of home improvement stores.

    Posted by: james | Jun 2, 2015 1:22:48 PM | 48

    @47 dh.. the big money is in the mic/fic complex... chump change in most other areas relatively speaking.. i think the big money is coming from gov't spending.. it is a self sustaining vicious circle for everyone.. that's my simplistic rendition of it! who pays for those orange jump suits anyway?

    Posted by: dh | Jun 2, 2015 1:33:19 PM | 49

    @48 Not everybody in the US is in jail or on food stamps. There is a lot of disposable income in the US. People buy new vehicles, improve their homes, upgrade their entertainment systems, send kids to college, go on trips. The trick is to keep interest rates low and keep printing money. So far it seems to be working.

    Posted by: Lone Wolf | Jun 2, 2015 3:09:14 PM | 52

    @geoff29 @34

    And the "ruling class" despite their equivocations, surely discusses amongst themselves the growing unsustainability of the ever encroaching environmental calamities, and dwindling resources, etc.

    I am sure they discuss those and many other subjects under heaven, problem starts with their conclusions. Ever heard of the "smart idiot effect"?

    (...)Buried in the Pew report was a little chart showing the relationship between one's political party affiliation, one's acceptance that humans are causing global warming, and one's level of education. And here's the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college degree didn't appear to make one any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college-educated Republicans.

    For Democrats and Independents, the opposite was the case. More education correlated with being more accepting of climate science-among Democrats, dramatically so. The difference in acceptance between more and less educated Democrats was 23 percentage points.

    This was my first encounter with what I now like to call the "smart idiots" effect: The fact that politically sophisticated or knowledgeable people are often more biased, and less persuadable, than the ignorant. It's a reality that generates endless frustration for many scientists-and indeed, for many well-educated, reasonable people.(...)

    I'm sure nothing pleases these folks more but for us to deride them constantly and poke fun at their ineptitude and call them all sorts of "evil," because that would just be so much more grist for the mill.

    Well, their lack of awareness is legendary, and their indifference to their damage on the planet and the suffering of others is their trademark. They might laugh all the way to the bank, in total ignorance of the legacy their greed and possessiveness are leaving in their wake.

    Posted by: Lone Wolf | Jun 2, 2015 3:52:00 PM | 53

    From Cooperation to Competition -
    The Future of U.S.-Russian Relations


    May 2015

    A Report on an Interdisciplinary Wargame conducted by the
    U.S. Army War College

    Carlisle, Pennsylvania

    Posted by: james | Jun 2, 2015 4:04:04 PM | 54


    @49 dh.. i know that but thanks for the reminder..almost zero interest rates is the name of the game and has been for some time.. if people had a different interest rate on their line of credit - the jig would be up.. for now it is 'free money' with anyone silly enough to not 'invest' in the wall st casino, or is in any way pragmatic financially - will watch what money they have devalue quicker then you can say 'quicksand'..and, i am always reminded of the racial divide when i think of the states - food stamps verses big brand new automobiles.. what a weird culture.. canada isn't a lot different in some regards.. it is and it isn't..

    Posted by: okie farmer | Jun 2, 2015 4:13:02 PM | 55

    http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/karl_marx_was_right_20150531
    by Chris Hedges

    Karl Marx exposed the peculiar dynamics of capitalism, or what he called "the bourgeois mode of production." He foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies-think neoliberalism-were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites, since "the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production" and "the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships … the relationships which make one class the ruling one." He saw that there would come a day when capitalism would exhaust its potential and collapse.
    ~~~
    The final stages of capitalism, Marx wrote, would be marked by developments that are intimately familiar to most of us. Unable to expand and generate profits at past levels, the capitalist system would begin to consume the structures that sustained it. It would prey upon, in the name of austerity, the working class and the poor, driving them ever deeper into debt and poverty and diminishing the capacity of the state to serve the needs of ordinary citizens.
    ~~~
    The corporations that own the media have worked overtime to sell to a bewildered public the fiction that we are enjoying a recovery. Employment figures, through a variety of gimmicks, including erasing those who are unemployed for over a year from unemployment rolls, are a lie, as is nearly every other financial indicator pumped out for public consumption. We live, rather, in the twilight stages of global capitalism, which may be surprisingly more resilient than we expect, but which is ultimately terminal. Marx knew that once the market mechanism became the sole determining factor for the fate of the nation-state, as well as the natural world, both would be demolished. No one knows when this will happen. But that it will happen, perhaps within our lifetime, seems certain.

    "The old is dying, the new struggles to be born, and in the interregnum there are many morbid symptoms," Antonio Gramsci wrote.

    What comes next is up to us.

    Posted by: ToivoS | Jun 2, 2015 8:18:47 PM | 57

    lonewolf #52

    Your comment reminds me of something once said by a retired law professor. "We spend considerable effort looking for bright young students for admittance into law school. Then we spend the next three years beating out their common sense".

    Having been involved in graduate school education during my career that statement also applies to grad student education in English and Social Science departments.

    [Jun 02, 2015]The Delusional World Of Imperial Washington

    Notable quotes:
    .
    "... What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance? This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, "We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower Lives Here,' no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe." "
    .
    "...The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed "imperial overstretch." As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which "the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country's power to defend all of them simultaneously.""
    .
    dir="ltr">"...But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower -- and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it's already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality."
    Zero Hedge
    Submitted by Michael Klare via TomDispatch.com,

    Think of this as a little imperial folly update -- and here's the backstory.

    In the years after invading Iraq and disbanding Saddam Hussein's military, the U.S. sunk about $25 billion into "standing up" a new Iraqi army. By June 2014, however, that army, filled with at least 50,000 "ghost soldiers," was only standing in the imaginations of its generals and perhaps Washington. When relatively small numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants swept into northern Iraq, it collapsed, abandoning four cities -- including Mosul, the country's second largest -- and leaving behind enormous stores of U.S. weaponry, ranging from tanks and Humvees to artillery and rifles. In essence, the U.S. was now standing up its future enemy in a style to which it was unaccustomed and, unlike the imploded Iraqi military, the forces of the Islamic State proved quite capable of using that weaponry without a foreign trainer or adviser in sight.

    In response, the Obama administration dispatched thousands of new advisers and trainers and began shipping in piles of new weaponry to re-equip the Iraqi army. It also filled Iraqi skies with U.S. planes armed with their own munitions to destroy, among other things, some of that captured U.S. weaponry. Then it set to work standing up a smaller version of the Iraqi army. Now, skip nearly a year ahead and on a somewhat lesser scale the whole process has just happened again. Less than two weeks ago, Islamic State militants took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. Iraqi army units, including the elite American-trained Golden Division, broke and fled, leaving behind -- you'll undoubtedly be shocked to hear -- yet another huge cache of weaponry and equipment, including tanks, more than 100 Humvees and other vehicles, artillery, and so on.

    The Obama administration reacted in a thoroughly novel way: it immediately began shipping in new stocks of weaponry, starting with 1,000 antitank weapons, so that the reconstituted Iraqi military could take out future "massive suicide vehicle bombs" (some of which, assumedly, will be those captured vehicles from Ramadi). Meanwhile, American planes began roaming the skies over that city, trying to destroy some of the equipment IS militants had captured.

    Notice anything repetitive in all this -- other than another a bonanza for U.S. weapons makers? Logically, it would prove less expensive for the Obama administration to simply arm the Islamic State directly before sending in the air strikes. In any case, what a microcosm of U.S. imperial hubris and folly in the twenty-first century all this training and equipping of the Iraqi military has proved to be. Start with the post-invasion decision of the Bush administration to totally disband Saddam's army and instantly eject hundreds of thousands of unemployed Sunni military men and a full officer corps into the chaos of the "new" Iraq and you have an instant formula for creating a Sunni resistance movement. Then, add in a little extra "training" at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison in Iraq, for key unemployed officers, and -- Voilŕ! -- you've helped set up the petri dish in which the leadership of the Islamic State movement will grow. Multiply such stunning tactical finesse many times over globally and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, you have what might be called the folly of the "sole superpower" writ large.

    Delusionary Thinking in Washington

    The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower

    Take a look around the world and it's hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington's dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance?

    This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, "We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower Lives Here,' no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe."

    Imperial Overstretch Hits Washington

    Strategically, in the Cold War years, Washington's power brokers assumed that there would always be two superpowers perpetually battling for world dominance. In the wake of the utterly unexpected Soviet collapse, American strategists began to envision a world of just one, of a "sole superpower" (aka Rome on the Potomac). In line with this new outlook, the administration of George H.W. Bush soon adopted a long-range plan intended to preserve that status indefinitely. Known as the Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 1994-99, it declared: "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union."

    H.W.'s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999. If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top goal would be "to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity -- given few nations in history -- to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America's peaceful influence not just across the world, but across the years."

    For Bush, of course, "extending the peace" would turn out to mean invading Iraq and igniting a devastating regional conflagration that only continues to grow and spread to this day. Even after it began, he did not doubt -- nor (despite the reputed wisdom offered by hindsight) does he today -- that this was the price that had to be paid for the U.S. to retain its vaunted status as the world's sole superpower.

    The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed "imperial overstretch." As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which "the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country's power to defend all of them simultaneously."

    Indeed, Washington finds itself in exactly that dilemma today. What's curious, however, is just how quickly such overstretch engulfed a country that, barely a decade ago, was being hailed as the planet's first "hyperpower," a status even more exalted than superpower. But that was before George W.'s miscalculation in Iraq and other missteps left the U.S. to face a war-ravaged Middle East with an exhausted military and a depleted treasury. At the same time, major and regional powers like China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been building up their economic and military capabilities and, recognizing the weakness that accompanies imperial overstretch, are beginning to challenge U.S. dominance in many areas of the globe. The Obama administration has been trying, in one fashion or another, to respond in all of those areas -- among them Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the South China Sea -- but without, it turns out, the capacity to prevail in any of them.

    Nonetheless, despite a range of setbacks, no one in Washington's power elite -- Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders being the exceptions that prove the rule -- seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way. President Obama, who is clearly all too aware of the country's strategic limitations, has been typical in his unwillingness to retreat from such a supremacist vision. "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation," he told graduating cadets at West Point in May 2014. "That has been true for the century past and it will be true for the century to come."

    How, then, to reconcile the reality of superpower overreach and decline with an unbending commitment to global supremacy?

    The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act. It involves the constant juggling of America's capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration. Call it the Obama Doctrine.

    After concluding, for instance, that China had taken advantage of U.S. entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan to advance its own strategic interests in Southeast Asia, Obama and his top advisers decided to downgrade the U.S. presence in the Middle East and free up resources for a more robust one in the western Pacific. Announcing this shift in 2011 -- it would first be called a "pivot to Asia" and then a "rebalancing" there -- the president made no secret of the juggling act involved.

    "After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region," he told members of the Australian Parliament that November. "As we end today's wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority. As a result, reductions in U.S. defense spending will not -- I repeat, will not -- come at the expense of the Asia Pacific."

    Then, of course, the new Islamic State launched its offensive in Iraq in June 2014 and the American-trained army there collapsed with the loss of four northern cities. Videoed beheadings of American hostages followed, along with a looming threat to the U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad. Once again, President Obama found himself pivoting -- this time sending thousands of U.S. military advisers back to that country, putting American air power into its skies, and laying the groundwork for another major conflict there.

    Meanwhile, Republican critics of the president, who claim he's doing too little in a losing effort in Iraq (and Syria), have also taken him to task for not doing enough to implement the pivot to Asia. In reality, as his juggling act that satisfies no one continues in Iraq and the Pacific, he's had a hard time finding the wherewithal to effectively confront Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the various militias fighting for power in fragmenting Libya, and so on.

    The Party of Utter Denialism

    Clearly, in the face of multiplying threats, juggling has not proven to be a viable strategy. Sooner or later, the "balls" will simply go flying and the whole system will threaten to fall apart. But however risky juggling may prove, it is not nearly as dangerous as the other strategic response to superpower decline in Washington: utter denial.

    For those who adhere to this outlook, it's not America's global stature that's eroding, but its will -- that is, its willingness to talk and act tough. If Washington were simply to speak more loudly, so this argument goes, and brandish bigger sticks, all these challenges would simply melt away. Of course, such an approach can only work if you're prepared to back up your threats with actual force, or "hard power," as some like to call it.

    Among the most vocal of those touting this line is Senator John McCain, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a persistent critic of President Obama. "For five years, Americans have been told that 'the tide of war is receding,' that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values," he typically wrote in March 2014 in a New York Times op-ed. "This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative." The only way to prevent aggressive behavior by Russia and other adversaries, he stated, is "to restore the credibility of the United States as a world leader." This means, among other things, arming the Ukrainians and anti-Assad Syrians, bolstering the NATO presence in Eastern Europe, combating "the larger strategic challenge that Iran poses," and playing a "more robust" role (think: more "boots" on more ground) in the war against ISIS.

    Above all, of course, it means a willingness to employ military force. "When aggressive rulers or violent fanatics threaten our ideals, our interests, our allies, and us," he declared last November, "what ultimately makes the difference… is the capability, credibility, and global reach of American hard power."

    A similar approach -- in some cases even more bellicose -- is being articulated by the bevy of Republican candidates now in the race for president, Rand Paul again excepted. At a recent "Freedom Summit" in the early primary state of South Carolina, the various contenders sought to out-hard-power each other. Florida Senator Marco Rubio was loudly cheered for promising to make the U.S. "the strongest military power in the world." Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker received a standing ovation for pledging to further escalate the war on international terrorists: "I want a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us."

    In this overheated environment, the 2016 presidential campaign is certain to be dominated by calls for increased military spending, a tougher stance toward Moscow and Beijing, and an expanded military presence in the Middle East. Whatever her personal views, Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic candidate, will be forced to demonstrate her backbone by embracing similar positions. In other words, whoever enters the Oval Office in January 2017 will be expected to wield a far bigger stick on a significantly less stable planet. As a result, despite the last decade and a half of interventionary disasters, we're likely to see an even more interventionist foreign policy with an even greater impulse to use military force.

    However initially gratifying such a stance is likely to prove for John McCain and the growing body of war hawks in Congress, it will undoubtedly prove disastrous in practice. Anyone who believes that the clock can now be turned back to 2002, when U.S. strength was at its zenith and the Iraq invasion had not yet depleted American wealth and vigor, is undoubtedly suffering from delusional thinking. China is far more powerful than it was 13 years ago, Russia has largely recovered from its post-Cold War slump, Iran has replaced the U.S. as the dominant foreign actor in Iraq, and other powers have acquired significantly greater freedom of action in an unsettled world. Under these circumstances, aggressive muscle-flexing in Washington is likely to result only in calamity or humiliation.

    Time to Stop Pretending

    Back, then, to our original question: What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of this predicament?

    Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop pretending to be what it's not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.

    If strategic juggling and massive denial were not so embedded in the political life of this country's "war capital," this would not be an impossibly difficult strategy to pursue, as others have suggested. In 2010, for example, Christopher Layne of the George H.W. Bush School at Texas A&M argued in the American Conservative that the U.S. could no longer sustain its global superpower status and, "rather than having this adjustment forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis… should get ahead of the curve by shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion." Layne and others have spelled out what this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.

    But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower -- and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it's already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.

    [Jun 02, 2015] A constructive ban-the-bomb movement

    Whether we like it or not but current nuclear weapon provide the only guarantee against the US attack on the country...
    Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists


    Nelson Betancourt

    The nuclear weapons states have for far too long put the survival of humanity in danger. They have not lived up to their agreement to abolish these weapons. Therefore, it is now imperative and necessary to ban these weapons--whether the US likes it or not. I think it's been way too long that non-weapons states have stood by and let this happen, but now it's time and it must be done with great energy, decisiveness and moral aplumb. Stop all this wishy-washy talk about accomodating the US, we must shame and hold accountable nuclear weapons states for holding the world hostage to potential genocide.

    "Necessarily such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effects is almost one of genocide...A desirable peace cannot come from such an inhuman application of force...It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light." --Enrico Fermi and I.I. Rabi (From a report by two leading scientists of the Manhattan Project rejecting the development of hydrogen bombs and what it would mean to humanity)

    Greg Mello

    This strange article confuses U.S. propaganda with actual U.S. policies and paternally advises "the movement" to do likewise. To be "constructive" the authors should first start from facts. Of course this confusion is so common in U.S. arms controllers one suspects it is required.

    These authors confuse feelings with facts more broadly, as in advising "the movement" to "help more activist states channel their frustrations in a constructive manner," which is defined as keeping them "involved in the NPT process." This sounds more like advice about teenagers, not states with their own interests. The real problem for these authors is that not all states are subservient to U.S. interests.

    Asking the movement against nuclear weapons to become pawns in the U.S. hybrid and proxy war against Russia is a true dumb idea and needs to be seen for what it is.

    What does come across quite clearly in the article is fear of a nuclear weapons ban. The authors evidently do not think such a ban would be constructive unless it can be created in a discriminatory manner, and specifically in a way which protects U.S. nuclear policies and broader geopolitical interests, which are vast.

    "The NPT" as it is used in this article refers to more than just a treaty (to which the nuclear weapon states are not adhering). These authors refer to the treaty regime and its processes as a euphemism for the present ordering of international nuclear affairs as a whole, in which the U.S., like the other four NPT nuclear states, has a veto over any and all binding actions (Article VIII).

    This article can be read as a cry against changing this present ordering. Indeed it will change. The hope expressed here is that these changes can be controlled and guided toward U.S. interests. This is the core of this fundamentally chauvinistic, indeed imperial, article.

    Alex Cox

    The authors are living in another world from the one I inhabit. Only one nation has used nuclear weapons in war and threatened repeatedly to use them again. That nation is the United States.

    There is no need to "put pressure" on Russia -- Russia is already feeling intense pressure from the US and NATO, with nuclear war a more-than-possible outcome. For non-nuclear nations to pursue a total ban on nuclear weapons, and to declare the possession of nukes an international crime, would be beneficial.

    It would not persuade the US or Russia to disarm, but it would point out the totally irresponsible nature of US policy, and might encourage the tag-along nuke states - Britain, France, Israel, China, India, Pakistan and N. Korea - to draw back from the abyss.

    [Jun 02, 2015] Britain's Trident, and the need to support nuclear personnel

    "...All of the reports, both official and unofficial, suggest a lack of morale and vigilance within the nuclear weapons infrastructure"
    "...While the weapons themselves garner a great deal of attention, the people working on them are neglected and deprived of the tools they need to succeed-"tools" being quite literal in some cases..."
    "...Nuclear weapons will never be safe. They aren't supposed to be safe."
    Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

    Nuclear weapons have a people problem. In May a 25-year-old submariner in Great Britain's Royal Navy, able seaman William McNeilly, published an 18-page statement online that listed dozens of safety and security risks he observed in his time working on the HMS Victorious from January to April 2015.

    His allegations have caused a great stir among politicians and the press. In fact, though, the kind of nuclear security breaches he cites are neither new nor surprising. In 2009, British and French nuclear submarines collided with one another in the course of conducting routine patrols in the Atlantic Ocean. In 2011, Britain's Ministry of Defence issued a report saying that submarines' nuclear reactors were "potentially vulnerable." In 2013, a crew member committed suicide on board a nuclear submarine, and in 2014, a government watchdog found that the Atomic Weapons Establishment had mishandled nuclear waste. And that's just in the United Kingdom.

    McNeilly's anecdotes also recall a series of recent personnel issues in the US Air Force, including cheating on exams, misconduct by senior leadership, and a 2007 incident in which active nuclear weapons were flown across the United States. These events prompted a 2014 independent review of the US nuclear establishment, which found serious workload issues due to mismanagement and lack of staff. The report also suggested a distrust of leadership for having promised investments but never delivered. And investigative journalist Eric Schlosser detailed a long list of dangerous near-misses within the US nuclear complex in his 2013 book Command and Control.

    McNeilly's report covered topics as mundane as food hygiene, a flooded toilet, and enforcement of minor restrictions, such as those on e-cigarettes and personal shavers. He also cited breaches as serious as officers cheating on exams, failure to check security passes, alarms being muted, and fires in missile compartments. He said that he acquired much of his information by violating security regulations himself.

    Most of the problems cited in these accounts have one thing in common, and it has nothing to do with nuclear technology itself. Rather, they are all personnel issues. All of the reports, both official and unofficial, suggest a lack of morale and vigilance within the nuclear weapons infrastructure. They also highlight some underlying reasons for this state of affairs, specifically, a lack of political and financial support; micromanagement that actually results in heightened risk; and a lack of advancement opportunities and incentives. While the weapons themselves garner a great deal of attention, the people working on them are neglected and deprived of the tools they need to succeed-"tools" being quite literal in some cases...

    ... ... ...

    The answer to this paradox is multi-faceted. It will require fostering a culture of responsibility and trust. It will require the military establishment to improve working conditions and provide people with the resources necessary to do their jobs, by rethinking the wisdom of 24-hour shifts, repairing security fences and cameras, and buying more wrenches, for a start. The armed services should also provide more incentives to work on nuclear weapons, such as opportunities for professional development and career progression. While making these kinds of investments, governments also need to make tangible shifts in nuclear policy and posture, for example by taking nuclear weapons off of high alert and quick-launch status, and pursuing further arms control or perhaps even unilateral reductions. To be sure, this is not an easy balance to strike.

    Greg Mello

    What the author proposes is mostly what has been done for decades. The prescription boils down to "do what you have been doing, only do it more successfully."

    There is an assumption that there is not enough money. Our experience in the US is that there is too much money. Idle hands and all that. Thousands of weapons scientists make twice what top federal employees make each year; overhead accounts siphon most of the money from programs and construction projects and spin it around the labs like clothes in a laundromat dryer.

    The author notes a "puzzle" between safety investments and "working toward disarmament." The puzzle is solved by dropping the stylistically problematic "working toward" phrase. That was also the problem in the Four Horseman essays. Anyone can "work toward" something without doing anything at all. I think the phrase "working toward disarmament" has no meaning. It works best as propaganda that way of course.

    There is no special "need to invest in the people behind the nuclear weapons in order to reduce those risks." That's yesterday's cliche. They are being trained, being paid, and so on. My friends who work in nuclear weapons production tell me a major problem is that nobody ever gets fired, no matter what they do. How do you suppose that affects morale?

    How to you "foster a culture of responsibility and trust" when it is your job to blow up the world on demand? I mean, we need some logic here.

    There are easily a half dozen other statements in this article which make no sense or are just theoretical.

    But above all, the prescriptions are contradictory. Disarmament will occur when nuclear weapons are devalued. Devaluing nuclear weapons means devaluing modernization and deployment and therefore the careers involved in them. You can't have it both ways.

    Nuclear weapons will never be safe. They aren't supposed to be safe.

    Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group

    [May 30, 2015]Why is Obama Goading China

    The point is, Washington doesn't give a hoot about the Spratly Islands; it's just a pretext to slap China around and show them who's running the show in their own backyard. Carter even admits as much in his statement above when he says that the US plans to be "the principal security power in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come." China knows what that means. It means "This is our planet, so you'd better shape up or you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt." That's exactly what it means.
    May 30, 2015 | counterpunch.org

    US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is willing to risk a war with China in order to defend "freedom of navigation" in the South China Sea. Speaking in Honolulu, Hawaii on Wednesday, Carter issued his "most forceful" warning yet, demanding "an immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation" by China in the disputed Spratly Islands.

    Carter said:

    "There should be no mistake: The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world." He also added that the United States intended to remain "the principal security power in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come."

    In order to show Chinese leaders "who's the boss", Carter has threatened to deploy US warships and surveillance aircraft to within twelve miles of the islands that China claims are within their territorial waters. Not surprisingly, the US is challenging China under the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a document the US has stubbornly refused to ratify. But that's neither here nor there for the bellicose Carter whose insatiable appetite for confrontation makes him the most reckless Sec-Def since Donald Rumsfeld.

    So what's this really all about? Why does Washington care so much about a couple hundred yards of sand piled up on reefs reefs in the South China Sea? What danger does that pose to US national security? And, haven't Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines all engaged in similar "land reclamation" activities without raising hackles in DC?

    Of course, they have. The whole thing is a joke. Just like Carter's claim that he's defending the lofty principal of "freedom of navigation" is a joke. China has never blocked shipping lanes or seized boats sailing in international waters. Never. The same cannot be said of the United States that just recently blocked an Iranian ship loaded with humanitarian relief–food, water and critical medical supplies–headed to starving refugees in Yemen. Of course, when the US does it, it's okay.

    The point is, Washington doesn't give a hoot about the Spratly Islands; it's just a pretext to slap China around and show them who's running the show in their own backyard. Carter even admits as much in his statement above when he says that the US plans to be "the principal security power in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come." China knows what that means. It means "This is our planet, so you'd better shape up or you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt." That's exactly what it means.

    So let's cut to the chase and try to explain what's really going on, because pretty soon no one is going to be talking about Ukraine, Syria or Yemen because all eyes are going to be focused on...

    [May 30, 2015]Dare to say NATO no

    May 27, 2015 | Aftonbladet

    ...Politicians and editors look for opportunities to step up its campaign for the accession to NATO, and in the spring of 2016, the parliament is expected to approve a host-country agreements that make it easier for NATO to with Swedish permission to use our territory as a base for military activities, "including the attack", "in peace, emergencies, crisis and conflict or international tensions".

    Everything appears to be – and sold – as a speedy response to Russian aggression. Sweden and other countries are prepared after the end of the cold war in the belief that European peace was secured. But the president saw in our kindness as a weakness and took the opportunity to obtain tear up a security order that has prevailed for decades.

    The story goes is repeated again and again every day in our media. Vladimir Putin, with the annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine have shown "that he does not respect the European order that had been in place since the second world war and statutes that borders cannot be changed by force", writes, for example, the Daily News, in an editorial on January 12.

    Such an argument is a deliberate memory gap. MSM presstitutes push the button "forget" and suddenly a decade of war in the former Yugoslavia erased from the public consciousness.

    We can argue about reasons and circumstances of intervention, but it is undeniable that the USA, NATO and EU countries intervened using military force to redraw the map of the Balkans. The leadership in Moscow has thus set a precedent to cite. Putin reiterates at the conflicts with Georgia and Ukraine, word-for-word the reasons the western powers claimed for the bombing of Serbia and the recognition of cessation of Kosovo.

    But the right to put himself above the principles of the inviolability of borders and non-interference in other countries ' internal affairs is in our official propaganda worldview a privilege reserved for the "international community", which is in reality the United States and its entourage of small and medium-sized European satellites. International law applies to all other states, but not for the United States, NATO and the EU.

    NATO expanded in 1999 their mutual defense obligations to include global dangers such as terrorism and the "disruption of the flow of vital resources", and in 2003, the EU adopted its first security strategy, inspired by the Bush doctrine on the right to preventive war against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction: "With the new threats the first line of defense will often be abroad ... We need to develop a strategic culture that fosters early, rapid, and when necessary, robust intervention."

    It was the doctrine of the first line of defense – not the dreams of peace, who guided the Swedish defense military industrial complex. Territorial defense was abandoned at the end of the 1990s, literally send to the junkyard. What was left was prestigious military projects in industry and the individual units of professional soldiers trained for NATO operations in foreign countries. The restructuring was led by a consulting firm from the united states, closely tied to the Pentagon, the NSA and the CIA The armed forces would prepare for "global action - especially in the continents of the world in which Sweden has a vital economic and/or political interests," the consultants wrote in a secret report.

    "Sweden's role as a regional power in the Baltic sea changed from neutrality to leadership", was said. Now for some reason "koalitionskrigföring and Sweden's ability to operate in collaboration with organizations such as NATO ... get a new and greater significance". This was written in 1998, long before the war in Ukraine.

    When the U.S. interest in the Arctic and the north flank, now rising to the fore the plans. Sweden becomes a bridgehead in the quest to penetrate back to Russia. Gotland will again be anchored, Russian submarines tops the news and B-52 bombers taking over the sky.

    The major powers have never hesitated to tramp the UN-principles, but with the doctrine of the preventive intervention there is nothing left of the respect of all the member states' sovereignty. If NATO considers itself have the right to place a first line of defense in Afghanistan or Libya, then does not Russia the same rights in Ukraine?

    The Russian leadership will see in the western privilege for preemptive interventions a precedent. Europe is sinking into a black hole that draws misfortune of countries and people.

    Several politicians, editors, and the military now proclaim that that we should jump in, leave the last of the neutrality and comply with NATO going directly into the black hole. Multiyear efforts of dragging the country into the the alliance, shall result in the membership.

    We should do the opposite. Pull us out. Keep us away. Say yes to the exclusion.

    It reduces the risk that our own government or the foreign power will drag us into the war. But not only that. Swedish neutrality is also an opening for the people in eastern Europe who are looking for a rescue out of the tug-of-war between the Russian oil and gas barons, domestic oligarchs and western financial oligarchs.

    Being outside zone of US protectorate, we can jointly deal with the social issues.

    More can be read about the NATO mutual försvarsförpliktelser in "The Alliance's Strategic Concept, Approved by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Washington, D. C., 990424".

    The text was written in 1998 is available in the "SAIC: Perspective Study Dominant? Awareness 2020", Final Report, September 2, 1998, For The Swedish High Command, p. 5, 7

    [May 29, 2015] Michael Klare Delusional Thinking in Washington, The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower naked capitalism

    May 29, 2015 | nakedcapitalism.com

    By Michael T. Klare, a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What's Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mklare1. Originally published at TomDispatch

    Take a look around the world and it's hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington's dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance?

    This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, "We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower Lives Here,' no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe."

    Imperial Overstretch Hits Washington

    Strategically, in the Cold War years, Washington's power brokers assumed that there would always be two superpowers perpetually battling for world dominance. In the wake of the utterly unexpected Soviet collapse, American strategists began to envision a world of just one, of a "sole superpower" (aka Rome on the Potomac). In line with this new outlook, the administration of George H.W. Bush soon adopted a long-range plan intended to preserve that status indefinitely. Known as the Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 1994-99, it declared: "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union."

    H.W.'s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999. If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top goal would be

    "to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity - given few nations in history - to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America's peaceful influence not just across the world, but across the years."

    For Bush, of course, "extending the peace" would turn out to mean invading Iraq and igniting a devastating regional conflagration that only continues to grow and spread to this day. Even after it began, he did not doubt - nor (despite the reputed wisdom offered by hindsight) does he today - that this was the price that had to be paid for the U.S. to retain its vaunted status as the world's sole superpower.

    The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed "imperial overstretch." As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which "the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country's power to defend all of them simultaneously."

    Indeed, Washington finds itself in exactly that dilemma today. What's curious, however, is just how quickly such overstretch engulfed a country that, barely a decade ago, was being hailed as the planet's first "hyperpower," a status even more exalted than superpower. But that was before George W.'s miscalculation in Iraq and other missteps left the U.S. to face a war-ravaged Middle East with an exhausted military and a depleted treasury. At the same time, major and regional powers like China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been building up their economic and military capabilities and, recognizing the weakness that accompanies imperial overstretch, are beginning to challenge U.S. dominance in many areas of the globe. The Obama administration has been trying, in one fashion or another, to respond in all of those areas - among them Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the South China Sea - but without, it turns out, the capacity to prevail in any of them.

    Nonetheless, despite a range of setbacks, no one in Washington's power elite - Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders being the exceptions that prove the rule - seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way. President Obama, who is clearly all too aware of the country's strategic limitations, has been typical in his unwillingness to retreat from such a supremacist vision. "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation," he told graduating cadets at West Point in May 2014. "That has been true for the century past and it will be true for the century to come."

    How, then, to reconcile the reality of superpower overreach and decline with an unbending commitment to global supremacy?

    The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act. It involves the constant juggling of America's capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration. Call it the Obama Doctrine.

    After concluding, for instance, that China had taken advantage of U.S. entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan to advance its own strategic interests in Southeast Asia, Obama and his top advisers decided to downgrade the U.S. presence in the Middle East and free up resources for a more robust one in the western Pacific. Announcing this shift in 2011 - it would first be called a "pivot to Asia" and then a "rebalancing" there - the president made no secret of the juggling act involved.

    "After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region," he told members of the Australian Parliament that November. "As we end today's wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority. As a result, reductions in U.S. defense spending will not - I repeat, will not - come at the expense of the Asia Pacific."

    Then, of course, the new Islamic State launched its offensive in Iraq in June 2014 and the American-trained army there collapsed with the loss of four northern cities. Videoed beheadings of American hostages followed, along with a looming threat to the U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad. Once again, President Obama found himself pivoting - this time sending thousands of U.S. military advisers back to that country, putting American air power into its skies, and laying the groundwork for another major conflict there.

    ... ... ...

    But however risky juggling may prove, it is not nearly as dangerous as the other strategic response to superpower decline in Washington: utter denial.

    For those who adhere to this outlook, it's not America's global stature that's eroding, but its will - that is, its willingness to talk and act tough. If Washington were simply to speak more loudly, so this argument goes, and brandish bigger sticks, all these challenges would simply melt away. Of course, such an approach can only work if you're prepared to back up your threats with actual force, or "hard power," as some like to call it.

    Among the most vocal of those touting this line is Senator John McCain, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a persistent critic of President Obama. "For five years, Americans have been told that 'the tide of war is receding,' that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values," he typically wrote in March 2014 in a New York Times op-ed. "This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative." The only way to prevent aggressive behavior by Russia and other adversaries, he stated, is "to restore the credibility of the United States as a world leader." This means, among other things, arming the Ukrainians and anti-Assad Syrians, bolstering the NATO presence in Eastern Europe, combating "the larger strategic challenge that Iran poses," and playing a "more robust" role (think: more "boots" on more ground) in the war against ISIS.

    Above all, of course, it means a willingness to employ military force. "When aggressive rulers or violent fanatics threaten our ideals, our interests, our allies, and us," he declared last November, "what ultimately makes the difference… is the capability, credibility, and global reach of American hard power."

    A similar approach - in some cases even more bellicose - is being articulated by the bevy of Republican candidates now in the race for president, Rand Paul again excepted.

    ... ... ...

    However initially gratifying such a stance is likely to prove for John McCain and the growing body of war hawks in Congress, it will undoubtedly prove disastrous in practice. Anyone who believes that the clock can now be turned back to 2002, when U.S. strength was at its zenith and the Iraq invasion had not yet depleted American wealth and vigor, is undoubtedly suffering from delusional thinking. China is far more powerful than it was 13 years ago, Russia has largely recovered from its post-Cold War slump, Iran has replaced the U.S. as the dominant foreign actor in Iraq, and other powers have acquired significantly greater freedom of action in an unsettled world. Under these circumstances, aggressive muscle-flexing in Washington is likely to result only in calamity or humiliation.

    Time to Stop Pretending

    Back, then, to our original question: What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of this predicament?

    Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop pretending to be what it's not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers - none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers - Russia, China, and Iran among them - and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.

    If strategic juggling and massive denial were not so embedded in the political life of this country's "war capital," this would not be an impossibly difficult strategy to pursue, as others have suggested. In 2010, for example, Christopher Layne of the George H.W. Bush School at Texas A&M argued in the American Conservative that the U.S. could no longer sustain its global superpower status and, "rather than having this adjustment forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis… should get ahead of the curve by shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion." Layne and others have spelled out what this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.

    But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower - and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it's already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.


    voxhumana, May 29, 2015 at 4:58 am

    An interesting read. Would have been far better without the Democratic partisanship:

    "Whatever her personal views, Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic candidate, will be forced to demonstrate her backbone by embracing similar positions."

    forced?

    "American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower - and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow."

    oh, I see… only certain Republican candidates' political aspirations are premised on war and global hegemony but poor Hillary "we came, we saw, he died" Clinton will be "forced" to go along if she wants to be elected.

    Klare makes many good points but suggesting that Hillary Clinton will be forced to be a war monger, forced to promote her well established neocon foreign policy bona fides, is absurd


    Katniss Everdeen, May 29, 2015 at 6:36 am

    My thoughts exactly.

    And just as bogus as the knee-jerk, neanderthal "republicans bad, democrats good" grunting is the characterization of gwb's middle east policies as "missteps" and "miscalculations."

    They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew how it would turn out. It made a few people tremendously wealthy, and justified the apparatus of population surveillance and control which is fast becoming necessary for maintaining the illusion that the us is anything more than a shadow of its former self.

    weinerdog43, May 29, 2015 at 8:33 am

    Seriously? Please show me exactly where 'republicans bad; democrats good' is located. The reason it looks bad if you are a republican partisan, is because most of the problem lies there. Yes, Obama has been a colossal disappointment, but he campaigned as a Liberal but has governed as a moderate/conservative republican.

    To this day, over 60% of republicans think the Iraq war was a good thing. While I'll agree that the 'power elite' in Washington love them some war, to argue that democrats in the street think the same is grossly unfair.

    lylo, May 29, 2015 at 10:54 am

    I would object to the idea that he has governed as a Republican.
    I mean, prior to the more recent Republican presidents, it wasn't that bad of a party: they didn't like to spend money on anything, represented small towns and business owners. Which went pretty well with the Democrats prior to our more recent crop: they liked to spend on the people and represented the more urban populations. See? This is a decent argument worth having. And the one that the "people on the street" represent, both sides.

    Recent Republican presidents are neoconservatives–they love war and enriching the elite, preferring to represent big finance and corporations. Recent Democrat presidents are neoliberals–they love war and enriching the elite, preferring to represent big finance and corporations.

    Unsurprisingly, Obama is a neoliberal. (BTW: it's all just code for fascist!)

    You've roped yourself hard into the very paradigm that the guy was lamenting, and in a way, proved his point. You seem to imply that average democrats are so much less tribal and more enlightened, yet the majority of democrats polled support our actions in Libya.
    You seem to think the problem is republicans, and it's not: it's fascism and blind party loyalty.


    steviefinn, May 29, 2015 at 6:20 am

    Not to mention that the US appears to be rotting from within in terms of debt, corruption etc, within a world where resources that supported an earlier lifestyle are becoming ever scarcer. I seem to remember that the decline of Rome was similar in some details with this, but at least you guys don't have millions of desperate Huns, Visigoths etc threatening your Northern border.

    I remember at a pretty rough school I once attended how the long ruling school yard bully ended up being abandoned by his cohorts & losing his power. As was his habit he picked on a much smaller new kid who just happened to be a southpaw who also just happened to know how to deliver a single very effective liver punch.

    Doug, May 29, 2015 at 6:40 am

    Klare's assessment is correct that US super power delusions outstrip US resources (not to mention woefully ignorant yet arrogant office holders in both parties). However, he misses the mark in naming the counter parties with whom the US government must deal.

    Finding a path forward has far more to do with reclaiming hegemony over the likes of Halliburton, JPMorganChase, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, and so on than it does with diplomacy etc respecting Russia, China, Iran and any number of other so-called nations that, in turn - like the US - are mere partners/puppets serving the corporations - the real superpowers in a world of 'free markets'.

    Carla, May 29, 2015 at 6:57 am

    Agreed. Wonder if you have read "National Security and Double Government" by Michael J. Glennon. Or for that matter, if Klare has.

    MikeNY, May 29, 2015 at 7:03 am

    It would mean accepting that "American Exceptionalism" is and always has been a fiction. We are neither humble nor wise enough to do that.

    Jim Haygood, May 29, 2015 at 9:17 am

    'No one in Washington's power elite seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way,' writes Klare.

    Down the road, this means that the vast value-subtraction scheme of U.S. global supremacy will fold the same way the gold-backed dollar did in 1971: with an anticlimactic, out-of-the-blue weekend executive order announcing 'we're done with all that.'

    To paraphrase Emperor Hirohito's surrender speech, 'the global supremacy situation has developed not necessarily to America's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interests.'

    Why do bad things happen to good superpowers?

    Whine Country, May 29, 2015 at 10:20 am

    "good superpowers"…add that to George Carlin's list of famous oxymorons. How about right next to "military intelligence"?

    TedWa, May 29, 2015 at 12:11 pm

    As soon as Obomba said that I had to laugh. If you have to tell everyone you're cool – as soon as you say it, you're not. If you have to tell everyone that you're the best at something, as soon as you say it, you're not. It's that moment of claiming in public what everyone knew in secret that makes it not true, and a good joke in the making. It's taking serious respect in private and turning it into something else (pride maybe) that's deserving of open ridicule.

    American exceptionalism is a joke and Obomba's playing checkers. We're no different than anyone else in this world.

    Nick, May 29, 2015 at 7:41 am

    In the post-globalized world we now find ourselves in, the US may not be the supreme actor it once was, rather it will lead the world's democracies in a grand coalition – this is perhaps Obama's greatest legacy. It's particularly odd India is classified as an adversary, as they are not only the largest democracy on the planet, but a newly minted key US trade partner. Similarly, Saudi Arabia has finally grown up, after decades of reliance on the US for military protection; however they are still indisputable American allies.

    Things can change very quickly, Syria is on the brink of collapse and an Iran deal is within sight. China's economy is fragile, while the US economy is stabilizing. Even given DC disorganization, this is much too pessimistic I'd say, the next few decades will see many unimagined positive developments for the US (forefront of renewable energy, breadbasket of the world, 3D printing revolution, resurgence of domestic space industry, energy independence, cutting edge drones and AI, to name but a few).

    Ignim Brites, May 29, 2015 at 8:33 am

    Leader of a grand coalition of the world's democracies is the essence of the neo-con vision of the US "universal" and indispensable role. Obama pays lip service to this idea but his intention is to destroy it and he is succeeding. It's all over now baby blue.

    OIFVet, May 29, 2015 at 12:18 pm

    "it will lead the world's democracies in a grand coalition – this is perhaps Obama's greatest legacy."

    Step away from the blue pill, Nick. What "democracies" are these where the governments go against popular will to impose austerity, where corruption in the form of campaign fundraising and lobbying is legalized, and where the government of lesser members of the "grand coalition" get their marching orders from Washington, often against the best interest of the nation and the will of its people? Obama helped to expose the meaningless of the term, to a greater extent than even Bush did, because he managed to bring Bush's "Old Europe" to heel too – quite a legacy indeed. The less "freedom and democracy" there is the more and louder the US and its "allies" shout it from the mountaintops. It's a sham.

    As for your second paragraph: wow! Some questions: For whom is "America's economy" stabilizing? How does one survive in this stabilized economy of crappy McJobs? Have you asked the considerable FF lobby about whether it will permit a move to the "forefront of renewable energy"? How do you square the imagined lead in renewables with the very real strategy of energy independence based on fossils, particularly fracked fossils? "Will America be the "breadbasket of the world" after Monsanto grabs Ukraine's chernozem or before? In either case, is it even possible to be the breadbasket given less water in California to water the Inland Empire? I can go on, the point is, your entire comment was a rah-rah USA!USA! cheer that relies on wishful thinking. And that's pretty much America's problem: cheerleading has replaced sober thinking. We have cheerleaders for politicians, cheerleader press, and cheerleader Nicks.

    It's effing scary to the rest of us that the entire strategy seems to be wishful thinking firmly rooted in exceptionalism and delusions about what is freedom and democracy, with the latter having been reduced to a competition of who amongst corporate-sponsored candidates can offer more exceptionalism and promise to drop more bombs someplace we don't like so that General Dynamics can either increase its stock dividends or do some stock buy backs.

    sleepy, May 29, 2015 at 1:29 pm

    @hatti552

    Since the drive for US global hegemony probably had more advocates among postwar dem internationalists–many of whom were New Deal holdovers–as it did among the traditionally isolationist repubs, I'm not sure if your neat little left/right dichotomy works.

    In any case, aside from labeling, do you care to give any reasons for your support of US global hegemony? Do you think it's not working because Obama hasn't tried hard enough (basically the repub position) and you favor doubling down a'la McCain?

    Jesper, May 29, 2015 at 8:58 am

    My take is that if there had been a long-term strategy for the US good that its government was following/implementing then it is almost impossible to detect and decipher for people outside of the power-centers in DC. And if there is no long-term strategy, be it to keep the US as the sole superpower or to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, then the explanation must be something different.

    Maybe another angle might help in describing the situation?

    Is the US government (and the power-brokers in DC) acting to keep the US strong or to keep themselves (personally) powerful?

    NotTimothyGeithner, May 29, 2015 at 10:36 am

    The U.S. government needs a powerful figurehead/central authority to control the bureaucracy and to wrestle control, the Federalist papers made note of this even before the imperial presidency, but there hasn't been a powerful democrat since LBJ. Obama, Clinton, and Carter were right wing leaders of nominally lefty parties, and the result was they spent much of their Administrations browbeating their own party to maintain control or push their legislation instead of cleaning the Pentagon or Wall Street. Obama's ideas and personality don't control members of Congress. It's Wall Street money. If a popular Obama walked into a random state and ignored an incumbent Senator in favor of a challenger, the incumbent would never r have the money to overcome one soundbite which would be carried by the news as a free spectacle. The result is an open season for everyone else's pet project because no one can stop them and two they might get lost or fired when the next strong center arrives.

    The U.S. government is responding to every mouth at the trough. Gore couldn't have invaded Iraq not because he wouldn't have but because he wouldn't have the political support from his own party to shutdown other pet projects to prepare the MIC and population for it. Dubya didn't fight his party back benchers until 2005. After he moved on SS, Dubya became irrelevant because he was no longer popular enough to be feared.

    It's not just Goldman Sachs. It's everyone who works in Nuland's office. They don't want to be part of a failed program or a public embarrassment. Because Obama is weak, he can't move on obvious stains such as Nuland because she represents a supporter in DC. Without many of these clowns, he would be alone because he's lost much of his popularity, did nothing for down ticket races, and threatened many members into submission.

    While a person is popular, they can walk in and tell the baron class how things will be or they won't be barons. If they align themselves with the barons, they cease to be popular and rely on the barons who more autonomy and options than the 99% and have to acquiesce. Not every baron has the exact same goal. If they get too uppity, the king will act, but they can get away with a great deal if the king irritates the masses because his strength comes from above not below. It's really that simple. If the Obots had made demands of Obama, every other article in print would be why can't he have a third term. Republican Presidential candidates would be terrified of his successor instead of racing to sign up supporters.

    Ignoring the GOP and long term problems with Team Blue recruitment, much of the Obama mess goes tend his own standing goes back to his decision to be President on TV and rely on experts from the previous two administration's who had just been rejected. Hillary in '08 never discussed Bill's record because it would hurt her with her more ignorant supporters who projected onto Hillary.

    DJG, May 29, 2015 at 9:14 am

    The symptoms have been in evidence for a long time, and it isn't clear to me that we have reached the moment when collapse will happen or when even John McCain will recognize that something has gone wrong. McCain and Obama, being all tactics and no strategy, have yet to figure out that U.S. supply lines for the military and for our decadent corporations are way overstretched. Has either proposed closing a military base? Has either advised food purveyors to stop importing garlic (garlic!) from China?

    Not even the evidence of continuing U.S. defeats–in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya–elicits an appropriate response from the elites. So they venture into Ukraine, the next failure.

    Unlike Rome, though, I'd venture to say that the USA has chosen some particularly pernicious "allies," such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and England (soon to be detached from Scotland). Each of these so-called allies is more than self-serving. The U.S. elites, though, rather than showing any skepticism, have been craven in dealing with the big four. Our relation to England seems to be to conduct their foreign policy and protect the illegality of the City of London in exchange for some nostalgia about Toad in a Hole.

    hemeantwell, May 29, 2015 at 9:31 am

    Klare, whose work over the years has been largely useful, is a lazy writer when it comes to the Cold War. To simplistically talk about it as "resisting Soviet expansionism around the world" ignores how US expansionism, aka imperialism, conditioned Soviet policy. As a professor of peace studies he must certainly be familiar with the substantial body of work by authors such as Williams, Alperovitz, Cohen and others who show that the US did nothing to allay Soviet security concerns and instead adopted an offensive posture that, to the Soviets, recommended ensuring friendly neighbors by whatever means necessary. What is disgusting about Klare now is that, by casually repeating formulaic ideological themes, he only adds to the ignorance regarding the current mess in the Ukraine, a mess that in my view basically reprises the late 1940s. Sure, he does talk about "sharing the planet with other powers," but he seems unwilling to say what that means. In that sense this professor of peace falls behind murderers like Kissinger, who has been critical of NATO efforts to turn the Ukraine into a launchpad on Russia's doorstep.

    OIFVet, May 29, 2015 at 12:21 pm

    +100

    sufferin'succotash, May 29, 2015 at 9:40 am

    HW Bush's pronouncement that "the American Way of Life is non-negotiable" around the time of the Gulf War more or less let the cat out of the bag.

    Neocon delusions of grandeur aside, much of the US interventionism over the past several decades has been driven by the need to keep the Cheap Oil flowing in. That is, if one assumes that the AWL depends on cheap oil.

    knowbuddhau, May 29, 2015 at 11:45 am

    Thanks to the others who take Klare to task for lazy rhetorical shortcuts that only serve to further bury the truth of our times. I agree that we're in a period of imperial decline. But "missteps"?! "Miscalculations"?! The phrase you're looking for, professor, is "war crimes." Calling our wars of aggression by their true name is still a step too far, eh?

    One measure of our hubris is the inability of "serious" and "respectable" critics to openly proclaim that we've been serial war criminals since the days of the Indian Wars. Our continental empire was built by making treaties at gun point, without much intent to honor them, as a means to grab the land. (ISTM General Sherman made remarks to that effect, but I can't find the quote.) Our global empire hasn't been much different.

    I suppose Indian Removal and wiping out the buffalo, and the continuing efforts to undermine tribal sovereignty today, were, and are, likewise "missteps" and "miscalculations" we can somehow blame on Republicans exclusively.

    NotTimothyGeithner, May 29, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    I think you may be thinking of Grant not Sherman, but both would be denounced by Team Blue as pinko commies. One of Grant's SOTU's included a call for universal, public education and not one dollar for sectarian schools. The charter movement would be appalled.

    Amazingly enough, Grant and Sherman are oozing intelligent sound bites which proves the modern Democrats don't have a messaging problem as much as a message problem.

    OIFVet, May 29, 2015 at 12:27 pm

    I suppose Indian Removal and wiping out the buffalo, and the continuing efforts to undermine tribal sovereignty today, were, and are, likewise "missteps" and "miscalculations" we can somehow blame on Republicans exclusively

    Of course not! Stalin! Golodomor! Outside enemies and justifications are the norm, it's just that from time to time we have to engage in intramural squabbling just to perpetuate the myth that there is a qualitative difference between the two wings of the Corporate Party and thus we have a democracy with a real choice of parties and ideas.

    Code Name D, May 29, 2015 at 1:35 pm

    One who makes no mistakes is incapable of learning from them.

    Steven, May 29, 2015 at 1:54 pm

    (I can't seem to manage a concise response to Naked Capitalism's postings. What follows is just the last couple of paragraphs of what I hope will be a (mercifully) short posting on OpEdNews.)

    Klare needs to take that last step. It isn't about 'peak oil' or 'peak everything' so much as 'peak debt' or 'peak money', i.e. a world awash in money and in mad pursuit of ever more of it. There are indeed physical limits. But with a little luck the world (of humans) may still have the resources to right-size itself to fit within them. However that won't happen until the greed of the world's plutocracy and the ambitions of their psychopathic servants in the political class are controlled.

    80 years ago the Nobel Prize winning chemist explained where oil DOES come into the picture:

    Though it was not understood a century ago, and though as yet the applications of the knowledge to the economics of life are not generally realised, life in its physical aspect is fundamentally a struggle for energy, …

    Soddy, Frederick M.A., F.R.S.. Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt (Kindle Locations 1089-1091). Distributed Proofreaders Canada.

    The 'backing' for the petrodollar now includes the monetized value of Chinese and third world labor and natural resources as well as OPEC oil. But controlling the outcome of life's "struggle for energy" is still the crumbling cornerstone of both US foreign and domestic economic policies:

    • control the world's access to energy and it has no choice but submitting to the hegemon's will

    • the U.S. political system is now owned lock, stock and barrel by a financial / military industrial / fossil fuels complex (am I forgetting anybody?). The powers that be are trying to preserve the existing status quo by insuring that life remains a "struggle for energy".

    The denizens of Wall Street and Washington can perhaps be forgiven for believing they were the "masters of the universe" at the conclusion of WWII. What they can NOT be forgiven is their belief – then or now – is that "the end of history" had arrived (unless they cause it).

    fresno dan, May 29, 2015 at 1:54 pm

    I don't know if I buy the premise that the US was ever as powerful as it proclaims itself to be. I remember when guys in black pajamas, with no navy or air force defeated the "most powerful nation on earth"

    Fifty years later, when the US is supposedly the "Sole superpower" on earth, a bunch of guys with no air force or navy defeated us in Afghanistan….

    I will concede we did no "lose" in Iraq….although I will NOT concede that we won either…
    and I will say we won unequivocally in Grenada.

    Am I seeing a pattern?

    sleepy, May 29, 2015 at 2:32 pm

    At least in Vietnam, it was the policy that lost. As far as I recall, the military won every battle.

    I think the same can be said, more or less, about Iraq and Afghanistan. It's difficult for the military to sustain and fulfill stupid policy.

    They all show the limits of military force in the pursuit of idiocy. Garbage in, garbage out.

    If the US wants to hang on to some sort of international influence, it needs to hone up on its diplomatic skills and downplay its sabre-rattling.

    NotTimothyGeithner, May 29, 2015 at 3:12 pm

    The military won every battle based on our count. Cornwallis won every battle against continentals, but he was forced to flee because he couldn't supply his army without splitting it and letting his baggage train and foraging parties come under fire. The whole we won every battle mantra is propaganda to avoid holding many of the generals and the MIC accountable for their lies and mistakes. When a platoon was massacred on patrol, it wasn't a "battle." I guess there was no honor in shooting guys in the back unlike say a drone strike. When the military was in a position to launch a massive aerial counter attack, then we won and temporarily planted a flag while the position grew weaker. But hey we won the battle. Did we have a great record without the air power which limited how the various enemies could move troops?

    Air power made battles impossible in many ways. The Tet Offensive was everywhere all at once which means there were no reserves or occupation forces ready. The goal was to spur uprisings and force the Americans to redeploy which is what happened, and the costs of defending urban areas skyrocketed as the Vietcong and North Vietnamese forced the U.S. and it's puppets out of the country side. Oh sure, the enemy was forced to flee the cities they attacked, but they didn't bring the forces needed to occupy or destroy the U.S. and South Vietnam forces. Did we win that battle? No, they were completely unprepared for a multi-city assault. It was beneath the notice of the Pentagon brass, so they cooked up an excuse to call it a win.

    sleepy, May 29, 2015 at 3:48 pm

    So, we just need to beef up our military, retrain the troops, have smarter generals, and our empire can continue on into the indefinite future, policy be damned!

    The US public ultimately saw Vietnam as a complete policy failure preserving a corrupt local government, and the US withdrew. There was no Dien Bien Phu. Domestic opposition forced the US out.

    As soon-to-be-disciplined General Shinseki said to Congress prior to the invasion of Iraq, that the Iraqis would not welcome us with flowers and it would take 500,000 troops to occupy the nation for years for the policy to be successful.

    susan the other, May 29, 2015 at 2:46 pm

    If the TPP is just an attempt to make the ASEAN countries militaristic enough to give us some breathing room, then that's pretty interesting. They can come together under the TPP umbrella and form a quiet military coalition to relieve the world's only superpower. Think of us as a senile superpower. John Foster Dulles wanted the ASEAN countries to all have the bomb. Why should we be the only bomb droppers? The only totally absurd country. The greater question has evolved finally. Why can't we all function rationally? And with a dedication to the environment.

    I've been wondering how we were going to pay Russia for helping us thru this mess. Crimea was one payment. But Russia has given us much more than we have given her, so other payments might include some of our bases around the world. A great gift to an almost superpower. And an agreement that we will only bluster about China's islands in the South China Sea but we won't really do anything. Bluster is how you wind down from being a super killer because you got too old and fat.

    [May 28, 2015] Ukraine financial catastrophe of 2014 2015

    Notable quotes:
    "... According to UN standards a person lives below the poverty line, if one spends life and food less than 5 USD a day, or less than $150 a month . The subsistence minimum in Ukraine today is defined in 1176 UAH, i.e. about 50 dollars a month - less than two dollars a day. ..."
    "... So the Ukrainians in poverty are already close to residents of African countries, which spend an average of 1.25 per day US dollars, was heard on "Radio Liberty". ..."
    "... "What is subsistence? It's not just food, it and public transportation, and household services, and utilities, and clothing. Overlooked in the subsistence minimum medical services and education. If we analyze these factors, we can understand that Ukrainians are below the threshold of absolute poverty," ..."
    "... Today more than 80% of Ukrainians live below the poverty line, the UN data show. In 2012, according to the world organization, only 15% of Ukrainian citizens existed on 5 dollars a day. ..."
    foreignpolicy.com

    According to UN standards a person lives below the poverty line, if one spends life and food less than 5 USD a day, or less than $150 a month . The subsistence minimum in Ukraine today is defined in 1176 UAH, i.e. about 50 dollars a month - less than two dollars a day.

    So the Ukrainians in poverty are already close to residents of African countries, which spend an average of 1.25 per day US dollars, was heard on "Radio Liberty".

    "What is subsistence? It's not just food, it and public transportation, and household services, and utilities, and clothing. Overlooked in the subsistence minimum medical services and education. If we analyze these factors, we can understand that Ukrainians are below the threshold of absolute poverty," stressed Shipko.

    According to the Deputy, the minimum wage in Ukraine at the current exchange rate of the national Bank should be approximately 3750 UAH - the only way the Ukrainians will be able at least get requred $5 a day.

    Today more than 80% of Ukrainians live below the poverty line, the UN data show. In 2012, according to the world organization, only 15% of Ukrainian citizens existed on 5 dollars a day.

    Ukrainian women do not want to bear children through insecurity and inability to pay for the hospital and diaper.

    [May 27, 2015] Ukraine is now problem for both Russian and West, but West managed to score several points against Russia and do it relatively cheaply

    The West scored major geopolitical victory against Russia: As Paul said (see below): "My limited knowledge of the situation inside the Ukraine is that a lot of Ukrainians do blame Russia. Why not? That is what the TV says. It is very hard to get someone to admit he made a mistake."
    Poor Ukrainian citizen. Poor Ukrainian pensioners existing on a $1 a day or less (with exchange rate around 26.5 hrivna per dollar, pension around 900 hrivna is around $1 per day. Some pensioners get less then that ( miserable 1500 hrivna per month considered to be "decent" pension and monthly salary 4000 hrivna is a "good" salary by Ukrainian standards).
    The last thing EU wants is an additional stream of refugees from Ukraine escaping miserable salaries and lack of decently paying jobs and pressure of Ukrainian migrant workers on unqualified job market positions.... So far the main hit for this was not in Western but in Russian job market, but that may change. At the same time making the Ukraine enemy of Russia is a definitive geopolitical victory, achieved with relatively modest financial infusions (USA estimate is 5 billions, the EU is probably a half of that) and indirect support of Western Ukrainian nationalists.
    One year ago there was a hope the Donetsk problem will be solved. Now in 2016 this civil war entered the third year -- Kiev government can't squash unrecognized Donetsk Republic with military force and it does not want to switch to federal state to accommodate their pretty modest demands: initially use of Russian language and reverse of "creeping cultural colonization" of this region by Western Ukraine. Initially the official language question was the one of the most important and Kiev Provisional government rejected Canadian variant of using the same language as its powerful, dominant neighbor and unleashed a civil war (with full blessing of the USA, which pursue "divide and conquer strategy in this region from the moment of dissolution of the USSR). Now after so much bloodshed the positions are hardened... Imagine that the Quebec nationalists came to power in Canada by French supported and financed coup, and instantly outlawed the English language for official usage and in schools and universities.
    Notable quotes:
    "... If you made a list of perhaps ten goals that powerful Western groups may have had in this Ukrainian project, how many have been achieved? ..."
    "... That has surely been largely achieved. ..."
    "... That has largely happened, as the TV says Russia stole the Crimea and is sending terrorists and bandits into the country. Look at all the banditry in the LPR. ..."
    "... Finally, the bankruptcy and transfer of the country from Ukrainian oligarchs to Western corporations is about to begin. ..."
    "... They surely screwed things up in the Ukraine over the last ten years. ..."
    "... I'm afraid the West would like to start wars in multiple fronts at the same time making it very hard for Russia to respond. ..."
    "... If the West could pull all this through at the same time Russia would be forced to either capitulate on most fronts or start a major war. Russia could not answer to these threats with conventional ways so the options for Russia would be to use nuclear weapons or accept a major geopolitical defeat. ..."
    "... Georgia and Azerbaijan are not likely to cooperate, Ukraine's offensive capability is minimal, the Americans are not any more eager to attack Syria than they were two years ago, and the Islamist threat to Central Asia is presently contained. ..."
    "... It has without doubt caused problems and will affect some Russian military effectiveness in the short term, but no. For example, though some products were actually made in the Ukraine, many of those businesses contracted out the production of components to Russia. ..."
    "... True, but again a very short term achievement. ..."
    "... NATO is not going to do anything apart from make as much noise and fearmaking as possible ..."
    "... The American military industrial complex has screwed itself in a bid to make more money! Their space programs are not exactly brilliant either. ..."
    "... [The transfer of property to Western corporations is] Almost inevitable, but there are several factors at play here. Western investors will have to deliver rather than just asset strip and run; domestic political repercussions will be huge at least in the medium to long term. ..."
    "... Either way it is the West to whom the Ukrainian citizen will pay tribute, for a long long long time. ..."
    "... All Russia needs to do is be fair and reasonable and step in at the right moment. ..."
    "... As to Moscow screwing up the Ukraine over the last ten years, I think that may be a bit harsh. Sometimes the best option is to keep your hand out of the viper's nest and do nothing as much as possible, only intervening when critical. ..."
    "... To be honest, Western foreign policy has rarely been panicked, but is always exploitative. If the opportunity arises, it will jump in having prepared the PPNN to scream that something must be done. ..."
    "... No panic here. Just my opinion that the Kremlin needs to study how the ex-Soviet sphere has played out and deal with things like NGOs and educational, cultural, and media matters. ..."
    "... As for my view that NATO wants to stress Russia, well, I suppose it comes down to your Weltanschauung. I think the US has to take Russia down to some degree, even if it is just smashing Syria. You aren't a superpower if someone can get away with things like grabbing the Crimea without paying a cost. Plus, Russia provides China with protection till China can develop a decent military. So the US has a limited amount of time before locking things up. Call it the Wolfowitz Doctrine if that is your preferred way of looking at it. ..."
    "... If I am right that the US has to tie Russia up, the logical way is to create as many problems on the periphery as possible. ..."
    "... I wouldn't take the problems with certain fighters to mean the US hasn't got great technology in its black projects. ..."
    "... As for Ukrainians losing their anti-Russian religion, well, perhaps. But as long as Russia occupies the Crimea, that could take a long time. My bet is the anti-Russian sentiment will last a lot longer than the Ukraine does. ..."
    "... Regardless of the think tanks, one thing the US can no longer ignore is their pocket. That's where to hit them. Even Osama Bin Laden understood this and was his primary goal to cause the US to over-extend itself politically & financially. ..."
    "... The US want to do more but it can't do it the old expensive way – it has less means but it wants to achieve more. Something has to give. The US has barely started addressing the problem. That's even before we consider the move of some oil trading out of the US dollar. ..."
    "... And what of the growing number of home grown jihadists that all NATO's wars have created? For all their support by western foreign policy to undermine Russia, it's a monster that will bite anyone and is increasingly looking at the West. As others have written before me, does the West want a reliable partner in Russia whilst it is under threat of jihadism or another big problem on their plate they can't quite manage? ..."
    "... Western corporations will only plunder the country if they can get a return on their investment, and except in the case of what they can strip from it – like the black earth – and take away, that does not seem very likely to me. However, I would agree, and have done since some time ago, that the west's biggest success was turning Ukraine and Russia into enemies. ..."
    "... NATO has not quite given up trying to turn Ukraine into a prosperous western democracy within its own orbit, but the enormity of the task and the hidden factors that make it so is beginning to dawn and enthusiasm in Europe is well on the wane, remaining strong only in Washington which does not have to do much of anything but manage. ..."
    "... I think it is clear to Brussels and Washington that Moscow will see Ukraine destroyed and a failed state before it will allow it to be a NATO satellite snuggled up against its southwestern borders. ..."
    "... NATO is running a steady propaganda campaign about Russian aggression, but I don't know how well that is actually selling outside Galicia, while it must be clear to a lot of Ukrainians what a failure the promise of western largesse was. ..."
    "... My limited knowledge of the situation inside the Ukraine is that a lot of Ukrainians do blame Russia. Why not? That is what the TV says. It is very hard to get someone to admit he made a mistake. ..."
    "... My main point in rubbing the west's nose around in it is not that they have conclusively lost, because it is indeed early days to make such a judgement, but that it has not won easily as it bragged it would do. ..."
    "... The west does a poor job of managing expectations generally, and it has done abysmally this time around. It has no intention of curbing oligarchs in Ukraine and little interest beyond lip service in genuine reform in Ukraine. For their part, Europe should proceed cautiously with plans to integrate Ukraine more closely, because it is plain that the interest of Ukraine's oligarchs in such a course is to broaden their opportunities for stealing and increasing their wealth. ..."
    "... There are plenty of opportunities for the west to steal Ukraine blind, but few that involve a product or entity that the west can buy, remove and sell somewhere else. ..."
    "... The Trade Union Building on maidan square was found to be full of the burned remains of Berkut prisoners chained to the batteries and pipes after right sector set the building on fire. The Berkut were burned alive, left to their fate in the very two floors that right sector called their own during the maidan debacle. ..."
    "... The Trade Union Building in Odessa also had people burned alive, the total death toll there was almost 300. The sub basement was a charnel house of corpses including women and children ..."
    "... Over 200 citizens were killed in Mariupol the following weekend, shot down or burned to death in Militsiya HQ. In this incident at least a few of the perpetrators were destroyed in an ambush by Opolchensya as Opelchensya were leaving the city, ordered out as they were too few to defend the berg. ..."
    "... To expand on the documentations a tiny bit, do you think all those artillerists who when captured to a man scream that they did not know they were bombarding and killing thousands of our civilians are believed? Not hardly. They knowingly committed crimes and they will pay for their crimes. ..."
    "... Auslander is living in a denial. The perps of these crimes will never face any punishment because there is nobody to carry out such punishments. Novorossiya is a tiny portion of Ukraine and the rest is ruled by the Kiev thugs. Novorossiya can never reach the criminals there. ..."
    "... Well, in their lifetime anyway. Russia will not invade and Novorossiya is currently limited to defending their land against Kiev attacks unable to even liberate Sloviasnk and Mariupol. And it would be against the nature of Russia (or NAF) to send partizans to kill the perps in Kiev or Lvov. Russians simply do not behave that way nowadays. ..."
    "... I wonder if he has any substantiation for those numbers. Some sources have always said that hundreds more died in the Trade Unions building in Odessa than were ever officially acknowledged, but I don't recall hearing about anyone dying in the Trade Unions building on Maidan, and I thought the death toll in Mariupol was just a few police (not to make it sound like that's nothing) rather than hundreds. And I follow the situation in Ukraine fairly closely – this would not even register on those who get all their news from CNN. ..."
    "... Actually it was my net-acquaintances from Serbia and Bulgaria who were arguing with each other who is more deserving the title of "niggers of Europe". Serbian guy was winning, using the ultimate proof that Tupak is alive in Serbia ..."
    "... The election of Poland's new president spells big problems for Ukraine. The issue is "de-heroization" of OUN-UPA militants whom Ukraine just recently granted the status of the liberators of Europe from fascism. But unlike Komorowski, who forgave the Ukrainian heroes the Volhyn Massacre in which the Banderites slaughtered over 200 thousand Poles, the conservative Duda does not intend to sacrifice his principles. ..."
    "... This is so. A state must have myth and Ukraine has already rejected the Soviet myth. Junk the Bandera myth as well, and what is left? 'Slava Ukraini' hasn't been brilliantly effective in motivating Ukrainians to fight, but would they have done better with a slogan like 'for the preservation of ill-gotten capital!'? ..."
    May 26, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    Paul, May 25, 2015 at 11:49 pm

    The premise that the West must be losing is a bit simplistic. If you made a list of perhaps ten goals that powerful Western groups may have had in this Ukrainian project, how many have been achieved?
    • For example, one goal was to destroy businesses (and the military-industrial complex) that were oriented towards Russia. That has surely been largely achieved.
    • Another goal was to radicalize the Ukrainian population against Russia. That has largely happened, as the TV says Russia stole the Crimea and is sending terrorists and bandits into the country. Look at all the banditry in the LPR.
    • Another goal was to stress the Russian military with having to respond to too many problems in a short period of time, which may be relevant if and when the West hits on several fronts at once.
    • Finally, the bankruptcy and transfer of the country from Ukrainian oligarchs to Western corporations is about to begin. Doubt Russia can stop that.

    Not denying that Putin and his circle have survived, and that the Russian economy is in better shape than most expected, but we should try to think long and hard about the pros and cons of the Kremlin's approaches.

    They surely screwed things up in the Ukraine over the last ten years. Approximately zero soft power in a place that it should have been straightforward to create.

    People have been writing novels and articles for a long time about how the West could gin up a war in the Ukraine to start an attack on Russia or otherwise break the establishment in Moscow. It was fairly obvious.

    karl1haushofer, May 26, 2015 at 2:02 am
    I'm afraid the West would like to start wars in multiple fronts at the same time making it very hard for Russia to respond.
    • Kiev would start a major offensive against Donetsk and Lugansk.
    • Transdnistria is currently blockaded by Moldova and Ukraine with no food supplies allowed to pass. Moldovan military operation might follow and Russia would be mostly unable to respond by other means than missile strikes against Moldova – which Russia under extremely cautious Putin would never do.
    • Azerbaijan would launch an offensive against Armenia in Nagarno-Karabakh. Russia lacks common border with Armenia so Russia's options would again be limited.
    • Albanian proxies, supported and trained by the West, would start military and terrorist attacks against Macedonian authorities.
    • NATO would start to bomb Syrian military and capital to oust and kill Assad.
    • Georgia might start another military operation against South Ossetia in parallel with others if it thinks Russia is too preoccupied to respond.
    • NATO-funded and -trained Islamic militants would attack authorities in Central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

    If the West could pull all this through at the same time Russia would be forced to either capitulate on most fronts or start a major war. Russia could not answer to these threats with conventional ways so the options for Russia would be to use nuclear weapons or accept a major geopolitical defeat.

    Pavlo Svolochenko, May 26, 2015 at 2:17 am
    Yes, 'If'.
    • Georgia and Azerbaijan are not likely to cooperate, Ukraine's offensive capability is minimal, the Americans are not any more eager to attack Syria than they were two years ago, and the Islamist threat to Central Asia is presently contained.
    • The Moldovan army is not capable of defeating Transdnistria by itself, so victory would require NATO troops to join in the attack. And if it comes to the point where NATO is willing to directly assault Russian forces, then there's no reason to hold back anyway.
    et Al , May 26, 2015 at 6:12 am
    Here's my take for what it is worth:

    The West plays the short game, so initially it may look like they have achieved much, much like their foreign policy successes at first, which then turn out to be disasters with the West reduced to firefighting.

    1: ..destroy businesses (and the military-industrial complex) that were oriented towards Russia. This has not succeeded. It has without doubt caused problems and will affect some Russian military effectiveness in the short term, but no. For example, though some products were actually made in the Ukraine, many of those businesses contracted out the production of components to Russia.

    2: ..radicalize the Ukrainian population against Russia. True, but again a very short term achievement. Food on plates and jobs don't grow on trees. What we do have is the ones in the middle who gravitated to the traditional Russophobes, aka swing voters, but things are only going to get worse in the Ukraine and the Nazi junta cannot deliver. Those swing voter will swing the other way, not a Russia love in, but a pragmatic middle ground. That is where they started.

    3: Another goal was to stress the Russian military..What evidence is there of this? Apart from quite a number of massive snap military exercises that Russia has pulled off and impressed even the Russo-skeptic military crowd at RUSI and other MIX fronts, it is quite efficient to fly 50 year old Tu-95 bombers around Europe wearing out expensive western military equipment that will need to be replaced much sooner now than later. All those austerity plans that call for holding off on major defense spending in Europe are messed up. Money going in to weapons is money going away from jobs and the economy. Ukraine's rocket cooperation with Brazil is dead (now switched to Russia) and also with other partners. So far the US has not actively banned commercial satellites from being launched from Russian rockets, but the US cannot get its billion dollar spy sats in to space without Russian rocket engines. No-one has yet pulled the plug

    NATO is not going to do anything apart from make as much noise and fearmaking as possible. It's one thing to scream and shout, its another to drop their trousers. It is quite the paper tiger. The USAF is set to rapidly shrink according to their own admission. The F-35 is designed to replace 5 aircraft – hubris or what? The F-15, F16, AV-8B, A-10 & the F-18. It's a pig of an aircraft that will perform those missions worse, in most cases, than those designed in the late 1960s early 1970s. The American military industrial complex has screwed itself in a bid to make more money! Their space programs are not exactly brilliant either.

    4: the bankruptcy and transfer of the country from Ukrainian oligarchs to Western corporations is about to begin. [The transfer of property to Western corporations is] Almost inevitable, but there are several factors at play here. Western investors will have to deliver rather than just asset strip and run; domestic political repercussions will be huge at least in the medium to long term.

    This is exactly what almost happened to Russia and then look how things turned out. Ukraine is of course a different case and the West will certainly try and manage it to their advantage, but it won't work if it is not for sustained profit. Either way it is the West to whom the Ukrainian citizen will pay tribute, for a long long long time. This is long before we throw any legal questions in to the mix. Whoever is in power now will pay the political price in future sooner or later. All Russia needs to do is be fair and reasonable and step in at the right moment.

    As to Moscow screwing up the Ukraine over the last ten years, I think that may be a bit harsh. Sometimes the best option is to keep your hand out of the viper's nest and do nothing as much as possible, only intervening when critical.

    Part of the problem with western politics and the Pork Pie News Networks of the last 25 years is the we must do something now mentality. Let's put it this way, you go in to hospital for a non-critical undiagnosed condition. Would you a) want to have the tests done and the best course of action chosen with your consent, or b) panic & be rushed to the operating theater so that they can just have a look around?

    To be honest, Western foreign policy has rarely been panicked, but is always exploitative. If the opportunity arises, it will jump in having prepared the PPNN to scream that something must be done.

    In short, as it is written on the cover of the good book, DON'T PANIC!

    Paul, May 26, 2015 at 8:37 am
    No panic here. Just my opinion that the Kremlin needs to study how the ex-Soviet sphere has played out and deal with things like NGOs and educational, cultural, and media matters. The science of mind manipulation has made great progress over the last century. It is a big mistake to just deal on an oligarchic level. Ukrainians have a legitimate gripe that their country is insanely corrupt and they can easily blame Moscow. That being the case, measures needed to be taken. And not creating any semblance of a pro-Russian political or intellectual class was similarly stupid.

    As for my view that NATO wants to stress Russia, well, I suppose it comes down to your Weltanschauung. I think the US has to take Russia down to some degree, even if it is just smashing Syria. You aren't a superpower if someone can get away with things like grabbing the Crimea without paying a cost. Plus, Russia provides China with protection till China can develop a decent military. So the US has a limited amount of time before locking things up. Call it the Wolfowitz Doctrine if that is your preferred way of looking at it.

    If I am right that the US has to tie Russia up, the logical way is to create as many problems on the periphery as possible. Could be Georgia; could be Central Asia; could be Transnistria. What would be your advice to those in US think tanks who are trying to keep domination of the world? What would be a good strategy? And, for what it is worth, I wouldn't take the problems with certain fighters to mean the US hasn't got great technology in its black projects. That is where all the money and technology have gone for the last 30 years. Do you really think the US would struggle to get to the Moon now and did it in 1969? Be serious – all technology is tremendously better today.

    As for Ukrainians losing their anti-Russian religion, well, perhaps. But as long as Russia occupies the Crimea, that could take a long time. My bet is the anti-Russian sentiment will last a lot longer than the Ukraine does.

    et Al, May 26, 2015 at 9:35 am
    Regardless of the think tanks, one thing the US can no longer ignore is their pocket. That's where to hit them. Even Osama Bin Laden understood this and was his primary goal to cause the US to over-extend itself politically & financially.

    The US want to do more but it can't do it the old expensive way – it has less means but it wants to achieve more. Something has to give. The US has barely started addressing the problem. That's even before we consider the move of some oil trading out of the US dollar.

    And what of the growing number of home grown jihadists that all NATO's wars have created? For all their support by western foreign policy to undermine Russia, it's a monster that will bite anyone and is increasingly looking at the West. As others have written before me, does the West want a reliable partner in Russia whilst it is under threat of jihadism or another big problem on their plate they can't quite manage?

    I have no doubt that the US has been trying to tie up Russia, but it is just more frenetic than before, the main planks of NATO enlargement (and weakening) resolved, but the rest has gone a bit wrong. The West is growing increasingly desperate and is trying all sorts of things to undermine Russia, but it could be much, much worse from a sanctions point of view. Level heads in the West understand that trying to pull the rug out completely from under Russia is a massive risk and one they are very careful in making.

    As for their wonder-weapons, the US cannot afford enough of them or make them cheap enough for their allies to buy in sufficient numbers. It is much easier and cheaper to upgrade the sensors and missiles on a SAM system than to design and bring to production standard a brand new wonder-weapon. The old days of easily blinding air-defenses are almost over when you can have a lot of cheap distributed sensors providing the information, passively & actively. The countermeasure is a lot cheaper.

    In al, Money Money Money – and every passing day the US has less to leverage and has to spread it far and wide:

    marknesop, May 26, 2015 at 7:38 am
    Western corporations will only plunder the country if they can get a return on their investment, and except in the case of what they can strip from it – like the black earth – and take away, that does not seem very likely to me. However, I would agree, and have done since some time ago, that the west's biggest success was turning Ukraine and Russia into enemies.

    NATO has not quite given up trying to turn Ukraine into a prosperous western democracy within its own orbit, but the enormity of the task and the hidden factors that make it so is beginning to dawn and enthusiasm in Europe is well on the wane, remaining strong only in Washington which does not have to do much of anything but manage.

    I think it is clear to Brussels and Washington that Moscow will see Ukraine destroyed and a failed state before it will allow it to be a NATO satellite snuggled up against its southwestern borders. The part that NATO is having trouble with is getting Russia to destroy it, so that it will be in the minds of Ukrainians for generations who did this to them.

    NATO is running a steady propaganda campaign about Russian aggression, but I don't know how well that is actually selling outside Galicia, while it must be clear to a lot of Ukrainians what a failure the promise of western largesse was.

    Paul, May 26, 2015 at 8:20 am
    That's all reasonable, though it is hard to believe that there isn't a lot more than just some black earth to expropriate.

    My limited knowledge of the situation inside the Ukraine is that a lot of Ukrainians do blame Russia. Why not? That is what the TV says. It is very hard to get someone to admit he made a mistake.

    marknesop, May 26, 2015 at 10:17 am
    That's true enough, and it appears there has always been a certain amount of hostility to Russia west of the Dneipr, so they perhaps did not need too much coaxing. My main point in rubbing the west's nose around in it is not that they have conclusively lost, because it is indeed early days to make such a judgement, but that it has not won easily as it bragged it would do.

    The country it said it would confidently bat aside in its confident stroll to victory has not only weathered western attempts to crush its economy and put in place safeguards which will hurt western business opportunities in future, it has strengthened a powerful alliance with Asia and garnered considerable international sympathy, which implies increased hostility toward the west. Meanwhile, the country the west bragged it would snatch from Russia's orbit and make a model of a prosperous western democracy is miserable, poor and angry.

    The west does a poor job of managing expectations generally, and it has done abysmally this time around. It has no intention of curbing oligarchs in Ukraine and little interest beyond lip service in genuine reform in Ukraine. For their part, Europe should proceed cautiously with plans to integrate Ukraine more closely, because it is plain that the interest of Ukraine's oligarchs in such a course is to broaden their opportunities for stealing and increasing their wealth.

    There are plenty of opportunities for the west to steal Ukraine blind, but few that involve a product or entity that the west can buy, remove and sell somewhere else. Many such opportunities rely on western interests taking over Ukrainian businesses and asset-stripping them like crazy; however, the main buyer in many cases would be Russia, which has no interest in making western businesses rich, or other western buyers who would have to take over and run a Ukrainian business in a very uncertain environment in which its biggest market is Russia.

    Pavlo Svolochenko, May 26, 2015 at 1:57 am

    A copypaste from Auslander (formelry of MPnet), originally from Saker's blog:

    "This is not the first time such atrocities [the mutilated rebel prisoner] have happened in this conflict and it will not be the last.

    The Trade Union Building on maidan square was found to be full of the burned remains of Berkut prisoners chained to the batteries and pipes after right sector set the building on fire. The Berkut were burned alive, left to their fate in the very two floors that right sector called their own during the maidan debacle.

    The Trade Union Building in Odessa also had people burned alive, the total death toll there was almost 300. The sub basement was a charnel house of corpses including women and children. I know the official death toll and I know the real death toll. We also lost a friend in that atrocity, not in the building but at the far end of the square, beaten to death because he was walking home from work at the wrong place and the wrong time. Why was he beaten to death? He had a speech impediment and when he got nervous he literally could not talk. Since he could not say 'salo yucrane' 5 right sector boys beat him to death in broad daylight.

    Over 200 citizens were killed in Mariupol the following weekend, shot down or burned to death in Militsiya HQ. In this incident at least a few of the perpetrators were destroyed in an ambush by Opolchensya as Opelchensya were leaving the city, ordered out as they were too few to defend the berg.

    The killings of innocents and not so innocents have been ongoing since the beginning and well before the beginning of the conflict that let to what is now Novorossiya. One can not morally justify killing all the UAF because of the acts of a relative few, but you can rest assured that documentations are being kept for all who can be identified as committing either individual or mass atrocities.

    To expand on the documentations a tiny bit, do you think all those artillerists who when captured to a man scream that they did not know they were bombarding and killing thousands of our civilians are believed? Not hardly. They knowingly committed crimes and they will pay for their crimes. Do you think all those 'people' who commit atrocities and then post photos of the atrocities and openly brag about them on social media will walk away unscathed? Again, no hardly. Do you think we don't know who was and is abducting young women and even
    girl children for their use and then killed and discarded them like less than animals? They are known.

    I can go on for reams but you get the idea. These are crimes being committed by a relative few of UAF, and for the record anyone fighting for Ukraine against Novorossiya is a member of UAF, their military unit does not matter. In the end justice will be done, by the law and with due legal process where possible. Where not possible, justice will still be done. Justice, like revenge, is a dish best served cold.

    As for those few of you who are still aghast at the total and deafening silence from USEU over these ongoing atrocities and crimes, I urge you to forget any chance of anything being said about we untermenschen being slaughtered by those civilized denizens of USEU. It is not going to happen so stop complaining about it. Never forget, never forgive, always remember, but don't complain, it's useless."

    karl1haushofer, May 26, 2015 at 2:07 am
    Auslander is living in a denial. The perps of these crimes will never face any punishment because there is nobody to carry out such punishments. Novorossiya is a tiny portion of Ukraine and the rest is ruled by the Kiev thugs. Novorossiya can never reach the criminals there.
    Pavlo Svolochenko, May 26, 2015 at 2:11 am
    Never is a strong word.
    karl1haushofer , May 26, 2015 at 2:22 am
    Well, in their lifetime anyway. Russia will not invade and Novorossiya is currently limited to defending their land against Kiev attacks unable to even liberate Sloviasnk and Mariupol. And it would be against the nature of Russia (or NAF) to send partizans to kill the perps in Kiev or Lvov. Russians simply do not behave that way nowadays.
    kat kan, May 26, 2015 at 4:54 am
    He says "In the end justice will be done, by the law and with due legal process where possible. Where not possible, justice will still be done. Justice, like revenge, is a dish best served cold."

    I do believe various people involved in Odessa have disappeared – or turned up. Dead. Some have had to go to ground. Some have "died" under unbelievable circumstances, but their new name will probably still have the same face. The biggest obstacle will be all this wearing of masks, but with more recent atrocities, where they are garrisoned in the cities for months, they'd be known anyway..

    The spirit of Novorossiya will be expanding (not yet). Things may slowly go back towards normal. But fully normal it can never be, while murderers and torturers walk free by the hundreds. It is going to be a very long headache for Ukraine.

    marknesop , May 26, 2015 at 7:45 am
    I wonder if he has any substantiation for those numbers. Some sources have always said that hundreds more died in the Trade Unions building in Odessa than were ever officially acknowledged, but I don't recall hearing about anyone dying in the Trade Unions building on Maidan, and I thought the death toll in Mariupol was just a few police (not to make it sound like that's nothing) rather than hundreds. And I follow the situation in Ukraine fairly closely – this would not even register on those who get all their news from CNN.
    Moscow Exile, May 26, 2015 at 6:02 am
    From the Brain-Dead Centre of the International Community:

    Some comments:

    • – russians are very friendly people this story is all fake
    • – Yeah! And we'll kill anyone who disagrees!
    • – Russians ARE the blacks of europe. (no offense to russians, blacks, or eurpeans ofc)
    • – The scariest white people are Americans who make fictional Russian accents
    Lyttenburgh, May 26, 2015 at 12:27 pm
    Actually it was my net-acquaintances from Serbia and Bulgaria who were arguing with each other who is more deserving the title of "niggers of Europe". Serbian guy was winning, using the ultimate proof that Tupak is alive in Serbia
    Tim Owen, May 26, 2015 at 2:03 pm
    Yeah that's laughable. On the other hand

    The election of Poland's new president spells big problems for Ukraine. The issue is "de-heroization" of OUN-UPA militants whom Ukraine just recently granted the status of the liberators of Europe from fascism. But unlike Komorowski, who forgave the Ukrainian heroes the Volhyn Massacre in which the Banderites slaughtered over 200 thousand Poles, the conservative Duda does not intend to sacrifice his principles.

    http://fortruss.blogspot.ca/2015/05/polands-new-president-demands-ukraine.html

    Of course J Hawk's take is probably on the money. J.Hawk's Comment:

    Not so fast. I'm not so sure that Duda wants to do any of the things described above. One of the major reasons Duda won is the defection of the rural voters, whose average income declined by 14% in 2014 in large measure due to Russian food embargo. Since Duda knows on which side his bread is buttered (no pun intended), deep down he also realizes the importance of that embargo lifting. His UPA criticism may well be only an excuse, a pretext to allow himself to maneuver out of his election campaign pro-Ukraine position while saving face. Because, ultimately, what is the likelihood that the Rada will actually pass a law that "de-heroizes" UPA to a sufficient degree? And even if it does, will Bandera monuments start disappearing from Lvov and other parts of Western Ukraine?

    Pavlo Svolochenko, May 26, 2015 at 2:19 pm
    This is so. A state must have myth and Ukraine has already rejected the Soviet myth. Junk the Bandera myth as well, and what is left? 'Slava Ukraini' hasn't been brilliantly effective in motivating Ukrainians to fight, but would they have done better with a slogan like 'for the preservation of ill-gotten capital!'?

    [May 27, 2015] American Militarism And Its Short- And Long-Term Implications by Taj Hashmi

    The author predicted the current war in Middle East. Quote: "Rising Saudi defense budget, $46 billion in 2011, is likely to further polarize the Middle East between pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian forces. American client states in the Arab World are likely to join the fray. Direct confrontation and even a prolonged war between Sunni Gulf states and Iran under Saudi leadership with American support and instigation is another most likely scenario in the coming years.
    August 23 , 2012 | Countercurrents.org

    "Truth is treason in the empire of lies …. There is an alternative to national bankruptcy, a bigger police state, trillion-dollar wars, and a government that draws ever more parasitically on the productive energies of the American people."

    Ron Paul, US Presidential Candidate (2008 & 2012)

    "Washington's empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power…. That is how the American Empire functions."

    -- Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of Treasury (1981-82)

    American duplicities, arm-twisting diplomacy and overpowering influence of the Military-Industrial Complex have already undermine American values leading us to decades of devastating warfare in almost every continent. Meanwhile, as an Iranian "insider" Hossein Mousavian believes, if attacked by Israel or the US, the already nervous and estranged Iran would definitely go for the nuclear option by withdrawing from the NPT. Now, in view of the growing nuclear buildup in Pakistan and Iran's potential to become a nuclear power, how the US is likely to react to these developments is anybody's guess. Since America is fast moving towards "The Golden Age of Special Operations", drone operations or "wars by remote" on a massive scale by abandoning the "boots-on-the-ground" policy, will be the new way of fighting America's new wars in the coming years, and mostly in the Muslim World.

    It appears that by the 2020s the "unipolar world" having America, as the global superpower will nearly disappear. The newly emerging democracies in the Arab World, including Egypt and Iraq; and possibly, an assertively pro-Muslim Turkey with very loose to non-existent ties with NATO and Israel; and possibly a nuclear-armed Iran in league with avowedly anti-American Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the long run will challenge American hegemony in the greater Middle East, South and Central Asia. By then the centers of economic development will further drift from the West to Asia, mainly to China and India. China is most likely to emerge as the main patron of this conglomerate of oil-rich and nuclear-armed nations. On the other hand, in view of the growing Russian influence in the region – as reflected in its veto against any UN-led invasion of Syria in early 2012 (China also vetoed against the proposal) – Russia is also expected to join the anti-American / anti-NATO conglomerate. As losing face or losing global hegemony is least desirable to American hawks and imperialists, they will try to reverse the process through major wars, first against some "manageable foes" like Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and then possibly against Pakistan and others. Rising Saudi defense budget, $46 billion in 2011, is likely to further polarize the Middle East between pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian forces. American client states in the Arab World are likely to join the fray. Direct confrontation and even a prolonged war between Sunni Gulf states and Iran under Saudi leadership with American support and instigation is another most likely scenario in the coming years.

    Meanwhile, America has made total mess of Iraq and Afghanistan, albeit to the advantage of the Military-Industrial Complex who made most of the "trillion-dollar-profit" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As we know, America started messing up with Iraq since the 1950s. Saddam Hussein was in CIA's payroll up to the early 1960s and later he was in the best of terms with Reagan and Bush Sr. until he was duped into invading Kuwait in 1990 by the US Ambassador. During the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988), America provided intelligence and logistics to Saddam Hussein against Iran. The whole world watched Donald Rumsfeld meeting Saddam Hussein in Baghdad during the War. However, soon after the end of the Iraq-Iran war in a stalemate, America clipped the wing of Saddam Hussein after he had become "menacingly powerful" to the detriment of its allies in the Middle East. American Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie on purpose misled Saddam Hussein, and sort of, gave him the green signal. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 led to the American-led invasion of Iraq, the "Operation Desert Storm", in early 1991, which Saddam Hussein classified as the "Mother of All Battles". The US ambassador is said to have told Saddam Hussein, it appears, only to encourage him to invade Kuwait:

    But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 1960s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi (Chedli Klibi, Secretary General of the Arab League) or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly.

    We all know how preposterous was the American argument in favor of the second US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although many Americans still believe that there was an "intelligence failure" on part of the CIA – it misread and thought Saddam Hussein had the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and was building nuclear bombs – from Bush Jr. to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and almost every big wig in the US administration deliberately lied to the Americans and the whole world about the so-called WMD. We also know the real motive behind the invasion, giving the most powerful lobbies in America, Britain, Italy, Spain, Australia and other allied powers the opportunity to make billions as "profits" or "dividends" of the war. We also know that directly or indirectly the invaders killed more than a million Iraqis and the country is in total mess. It is, however, an irony that the "liberated" Iraq (and Afghanistan) is very close to Iran, America's main nemesis in the Middle East. It is only a question of time when Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Afghan, Pakistani, Arab and Central Asian Shiites will come closer to each other to threaten American interests in the Middle East, South and Central Asia.

    Finally, one may re-iterate the following positions in the light of the foregoing discussion on the nature and extent of American imperialism; if the Empire is likely to hit again on a massive scale to prolong the ongoing conflicts; and if there is a way out of a devastatingly destabilizing future in the coming decades. We know nothing in particular has all of a sudden gone wrong with Islam, and so many things seem to be going wrong with America (since 1492), we need an understanding of the factors –people, events and ideas – that have turned the richest country into the most hated empire in our times. Thanks to Reagan's Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts's succinct definition of the American Empire, we already know that the Empire " extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power ". He also tells us that the empire-builders have modified the US Constitution in the name of national security in such a manner that "Americans' incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent". Craig Roberts' appraisal is a good follow up of what President Eisenhower singled out in 1961 as the main perpetrator of all modern wars that America participated in after the Second World War, America's Military-Industrial-Congressional Lobby.

    The foregoing discussion leads us to the conclusion that we are fast entering the post-terrorist phase of history where state-terrorism and state-sponsored violence in the name of global peace, freedom, democracy, religion and sovereignty have been destabilizing the world. Several millions have already fell victims to state-sponsored violence, from Hiroshima to Vietnam, Rwanda-Burundi to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And many more are likely to follow them in the coming decades, mostly from the Muslim World. Now, one may raise the question: Is there a way out of the foreseeable mega wars in the names of the "War on Terror" or "Islam-in-Danger"? We know the answer, which might sound very sophomoric, that is the American people should force their government to restrain the Military-Industrial Complex from promoting wars and conflicts; make the Israeli Lobby accountable to US laws and regulations; and America should help resolve inter-state conflicts, especially over disputed territories (such as the Palestine, Taiwan and Kashmir problems) by simply not exercising its veto power in the UN and by not supporting either of the parties with money, arms or troops. America should also withdraw support from autocracies, especially in the Muslim World, as lack of democracy and freedom proliferates extremism and terrorism. Last but not least, there is no reason to assume that the ongoing Hundred-Year-War will remain confined to the asymmetric wars between the Empire and smaller states and non-state actors in the Muslim World. If not addressed, the conflicts would proliferate to engulf many more countries, including superpowers like China and Russia. One must always keep in mind that apparently insignificant event, such as the Sarajevo Incident, led to World War I and Hitler's invasion of Poland to World War II. Unfortunately, we have already crossed the threshold of many more similar events, including 9/11 and unlawful invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. How America behaves with regard to Iran and Syria will be the most important catalysts in this regard.

    It is time American civil societies, veterans and their family members, and common people take pro-active measures to demilitarize the American psyche for the sake of global peace and justice. They should know – as Eisenhower pointed out – American Military Industrial Complex is at the roots of all major wars America has fought since 1945. They should all take General Wesley Clark (ret) seriously, who revealed the US secret plan to invade seven countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Iran even before it invaded Afghanistan. The plan was revealed to the General ten days after 9/11 by some top brasses at the Pentagon. As General Clark reveals, what is most worrisome is that the US loves to use the hammer (its military) to fix whatever it thinks has gone wrong anywhere in the world. The US loves to invade countries because its military is great "to take down governments". The American Congress (Eisenhower's "Congressional Lobby") and policy makers at the State Department (Senator Fulbright's "Voodoo Magicians") are too powerful and manipulative to be restrained by half-hearted peace initiatives by Americans. Last but not least, the bulk of Americans are so naďve, politically inert and indifferent that they hardly raise any question about their country's foreign policy and invasions of one country after another (America wages a major war almost after every ten years) in the name of freedom and security of America. Again, Americans are too "patriotic" to question the justifications for the wars their country initiates in distant lands, or the ones their leaders are contemplating to wage in the near future.

    Taj Hashmi teaches at Austin Peay State University Clarksville, Tennessee

    [May 23, 2015] Ukraines Bloody Civil War No End in Sight

    Notable quotes:
    "... is a civil war between two groups with diametrically opposed visions for the future of their country. It is a civil war that also-given that each side has enormously powerful supporters-poses a genuinely grave risk to global security. ..."
    Mar 31, 2015 | The National Interest

    The OSCE reported that the main railway station in the city was shelled on March 25, and a visit to it the day after showed that to be so. Rebel tanks could be seen participating in exercises on the rural outskirts of Donetsk on the 26th. The sound of sporadic artillery fire could be heard in the city's centrally located Leninsky District well into the early hours of the 27th.


    The mood among many in Donetsk-noncombatants as well as rebel fighters who comprise what is known as the Army of Novorossiya-indicates little interest in a rapprochement with Kiev. This is, given the conditions of the city after nearly a full year of war, rather understandable. Many bitterly complain of Kiev's chosen moniker for the military campaign it is waging against the separatist fighters, the "Anti-Terrorist Operation." Ordinary citizens and combatants alike view it as an attempt to dehumanize them as a whole by grouping the entire population of the region in with likes of ISIS.

    Interactions with several rebel rank-and-files and a briefing from two rebel officers reveal even less of an appetite for a way back into the Ukrainian fold. As one senior officer put it: "Ukraine is dead. It was killed on May 2 in Odessa." Questions regarding Russian involvement were met with scoffs-though one did admit that "[their] Russian brothers" did provide food supplies to the area.

    ... ... ...

    Interestingly, the rebels seem to have a similar mindset to those U.S. Congressmen who overwhelmingly voted to supply Kiev with lethal military aid last week: that the remilitarization of the conflict is simply inevitable. One rebel commander said that he expects Kiev to launch a new major offensive "within a week" and added, matter-of-factly: "We are ready." And ready, he claims, for the long haul.

    ... ... ...

    Yet it seems that the Washington establishment's (though, interestingly, it seems not the president's) preferred policy choice is to send lethal aid to Kiev because it is believed, no doubt sincerely, that a supply of javelin anti-tank missiles will somehow increase the number of Russian fatalities to such an extent that public opinion would turn against Putin-thereby forcing him to back down.

    This is nothing more than a fantasy dressed up as a strategy because it attributes little to no agency on the part of the rebel fighters or, for that matter, the area's noncombatants. The simple, undeniable fact is that even if Russia was to be persuaded-via sanctions or via a significant uptick in military casualties - to wash its hands of the region, there is almost no chance that the indigenous military forces in the region would simply melt away. What is continuing to unfold in the Donbass - despite repeated protestations from Kiev's representatives in Washington - is a civil war between two groups with diametrically opposed visions for the future of their country. It is a civil war that also-given that each side has enormously powerful supporters-poses a genuinely grave risk to global security.

    James Carden is a contributing editor for The National Interest.

    Igor

    Wow! Who is allowed to publish this article in the Western free press? Who allowed the journalist of National Interest go to Moscow and to Donetsk!? And what about the story about invisible Russian army? :-))) James Carden is real hero! :-))) Western press need 1 year for understanding of simple things...

    Imba > Igor

    Psst, don't scare them with your sarcasm. I'm sure author feels like a pioneer on Wild West, while writing such articles. You can scare him away and we will have to read again dull and boring articles about invasions, annexation, tattered economy, moscovites eating hedgehogs and so on.
    Please respect him ;)

    Dima Lauri > Imba

    I am sure authors who does not accept the version of Washington will be soon labeled by "Putin troll", "Payed KGB agent", "Drunk/Stupid" or whatever verbal distortion.

    folktruther

    a good article for a change. the Ukraine coup engineered by Washington was the worst event of Obama's administration, and may perhaps turn out to be worse that Bush jr's invasion of Iraq. Washington simply wants a war, cold or hot, to disconnect Europe from Russia. hopefully Europe, especially Germany and france, will rebel against Washington policy like they did the Chinese bank, averting a war among nuclear powers. but the issue is currently in doubt.

    [May 23, 2015] Ukraines Bloody Civil War No End in Sight

    Notable quotes:
    "... is a civil war between two groups with diametrically opposed visions for the future of their country. It is a civil war that also-given that each side has enormously powerful supporters-poses a genuinely grave risk to global security. ..."
    Mar 31, 2015 | The National Interest

    The OSCE reported that the main railway station in the city was shelled on March 25, and a visit to it the day after showed that to be so. Rebel tanks could be seen participating in exercises on the rural outskirts of Donetsk on the 26th. The sound of sporadic artillery fire could be heard in the city's centrally located Leninsky District well into the early hours of the 27th.


    The mood among many in Donetsk-noncombatants as well as rebel fighters who comprise what is known as the Army of Novorossiya-indicates little interest in a rapprochement with Kiev. This is, given the conditions of the city after nearly a full year of war, rather understandable. Many bitterly complain of Kiev's chosen moniker for the military campaign it is waging against the separatist fighters, the "Anti-Terrorist Operation." Ordinary citizens and combatants alike view it as an attempt to dehumanize them as a whole by grouping the entire population of the region in with likes of ISIS.

    Interactions with several rebel rank-and-files and a briefing from two rebel officers reveal even less of an appetite for a way back into the Ukrainian fold. As one senior officer put it: "Ukraine is dead. It was killed on May 2 in Odessa." Questions regarding Russian involvement were met with scoffs-though one did admit that "[their] Russian brothers" did provide food supplies to the area.

    ... ... ...

    Interestingly, the rebels seem to have a similar mindset to those U.S. Congressmen who overwhelmingly voted to supply Kiev with lethal military aid last week: that the remilitarization of the conflict is simply inevitable. One rebel commander said that he expects Kiev to launch a new major offensive "within a week" and added, matter-of-factly: "We are ready." And ready, he claims, for the long haul.

    ... ... ...

    Yet it seems that the Washington establishment's (though, interestingly, it seems not the president's) preferred policy choice is to send lethal aid to Kiev because it is believed, no doubt sincerely, that a supply of javelin anti-tank missiles will somehow increase the number of Russian fatalities to such an extent that public opinion would turn against Putin-thereby forcing him to back down.

    This is nothing more than a fantasy dressed up as a strategy because it attributes little to no agency on the part of the rebel fighters or, for that matter, the area's noncombatants. The simple, undeniable fact is that even if Russia was to be persuaded-via sanctions or via a significant uptick in military casualties - to wash its hands of the region, there is almost no chance that the indigenous military forces in the region would simply melt away. What is continuing to unfold in the Donbass - despite repeated protestations from Kiev's representatives in Washington - is a civil war between two groups with diametrically opposed visions for the future of their country. It is a civil war that also-given that each side has enormously powerful supporters-poses a genuinely grave risk to global security.

    James Carden is a contributing editor for The National Interest.

    Igor

    Wow! Who is allowed to publish this article in the Western free press? Who allowed the journalist of National Interest go to Moscow and to Donetsk!? And what about the story about invisible Russian army? :-))) James Carden is real hero! :-))) Western press need 1 year for understanding of simple things...

    Imba > Igor

    Psst, don't scare them with your sarcasm. I'm sure author feels like a pioneer on Wild West, while writing such articles. You can scare him away and we will have to read again dull and boring articles about invasions, annexation, tattered economy, moscovites eating hedgehogs and so on.
    Please respect him ;)

    Dima Lauri > Imba

    I am sure authors who does not accept the version of Washington will be soon labeled by "Putin troll", "Payed KGB agent", "Drunk/Stupid" or whatever verbal distortion.

    folktruther

    a good article for a change. the Ukraine coup engineered by Washington was the worst event of Obama's administration, and may perhaps turn out to be worse that Bush jr's invasion of Iraq. Washington simply wants a war, cold or hot, to disconnect Europe from Russia. hopefully Europe, especially Germany and france, will rebel against Washington policy like they did the Chinese bank, averting a war among nuclear powers. but the issue is currently in doubt.

    [May 23, 2015] George W. Bush didnt just lie about the Iraq War. What he did was much worse.

    May 20, 2015 | theweek.com

    None of the conservatives running for president want to be associated with the last Republican president - not even his brother (for whom stepping away is rather complicated). After all, George W. Bush left office with an approval rating hovering in the low 30s, and his grandest project was the gigantic catastrophe of the Iraq War, which we're still dealing with and still debating. If you're a Republican right now you're no doubt wishing we could talk about something else, but failing that, you'd like the issue framed in a particular way: The war was an honest mistake, nobody lied to the public, and anything bad that's happening now is Barack Obama's fault.

    For the moment I want to focus on the part about the lies. I've found over the years that conservatives who supported the war get particularly angry at the assertion that Bush lied us into war. No, they'll insist, it wasn't his fault: There was mistaken intelligence, he took that intelligence in good faith, and presented what he believed to be true at the time. It's the George Costanza defense: It's not a lie if you believe it.

    Here's the problem, though. It might be possible, with some incredibly narrow definition of the word "lie," to say that Bush told only a few outright lies on Iraq. Most of what he said in order to sell the public on the war could be said to have some basis in something somebody thought or something somebody alleged (Bush was slightly more careful than Dick Cheney, who lied without hesitation or remorse). But if we reduce the question of Bush's guilt and responsibility to how many lies we can count, we miss the bigger picture.

    What the Bush administration launched in 2002 and 2003 may have been the most comprehensive, sophisticated, and misleading campaign of government propaganda in American history. Spend too much time in the weeds, and you risk missing the hysterical tenor of the whole campaign.

    That's not to say there aren't plenty of weeds. In 2008, the Center for Public Integrity completed a project in which they went over the public statements by eight top Bush administration officials on the topic of Iraq, and found that no fewer than 935 were false, including 260 statements by President Bush himself. But the theory on which the White House operated was that whether or not you could fool all of the people some of the time, you could certainly scare them out of their wits. That's what was truly diabolical about their campaign.

    And it was a campaign. In the summer of 2002, the administration established something called the White House Iraq Group, through which Karl Rove and other communication strategists like Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin coordinated with policy officials to sell the public on the threat from Iraq in order to justify war. "The script had been finalized with great care over the summer," White House press secretary Scott McClellan later wrote, for a "campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary."

    In that campaign, intelligence wasn't something to be understood and assessed by the administration in making their decisions, it was a propaganda tool to lead the public to the conclusion that the administration wanted. Again and again we saw a similar pattern: An allegation would bubble up from somewhere, some in the intelligence community would say that it could be true but others would say it was either speculation or outright baloney, but before you knew it the president or someone else was presenting it to the public as settled fact.

    And each and every time the message was the same: If we didn't wage war, Iraq was going to attack the United States homeland with its enormous arsenal of ghastly weapons, and who knows how many Americans would perish. When you actually spell it out like that it sounds almost comical, but that was the Bush administration's assertion, repeated hundreds upon hundreds of time to a public still skittish in the wake of September 11. (Remember, the campaign for the war began less than a year after the September 11 attacks.)

    Sometimes this message was imparted with specific false claims, sometimes with dark insinuation, and sometimes with speculation about the horrors to come ("We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Bush and others when asked about the thinness of much of their evidence). Yet the conclusion was always the same: The only alternative to invading Iraq was waiting around to be killed. I could pick out any of a thousand quotes, but here's just one, from a radio address Bush gave on September 28, 2002:

    The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.

    What wasn't utterly false in that statement was disingenuous at best. But if there was anything that marked the campaign, it was its certainty. There was seldom any doubt expressed or admitted, seldom any hint that the information we had was incomplete, speculative, and the matter of fevered debate amongst intelligence officials. But that's what was going on beneath the administration's sales job.

    The intelligence wasn't "mistaken," as the Bush administration's defenders would have us believe today. The intelligence was a mass of contradictions and differing interpretations. The administration picked out the parts that they wanted - supported, unsupported, plausible, absurd, it didn't matter - and used them in their campaign to turn up Americans' fear.

    This is one of the many sins for which Bush and those who supported him ought to spend a lifetime atoning. He looked out at the American public and decided that the way to get what he wanted was to terrify them. If he could convince them that any day now their children would die a horrible death, that they and everything they knew would be turned to radioactive ash, and that the only chance of averting this fate was to say yes to him, then he could have his war. Lies were of no less value than truth, so long as they both created enough fear.

    And it worked.

    [May 23, 2015] The Failures of Putin's Ukraine Strategy

    Neocons are always neocons... They are becoming more reckless with time. The key problem for Washington with Russia position (which is no doubt pretty costly for Russia itself) is that it enable and encourage to say No to Washington's demands other countries making geopolitical domination for the USA a lot more costly. Something like small scale revolt against the USA post-war domination. It also catalyze economic ties of Russia and China (and by extension other BRICs members), making the situation with dollar as world reserve currency and status of IMF more fuzzy...
    May 23, 2015 | The American Interest
    Nevertheless, Russia failed to deliver the knockout blow last spring, allowing Kyiv to recover and establish firm control throughout most of the country, even its Russophone portions. Moscow retains the military upper hand as the two countries settle into a protracted stalemate in the Donbass, but the Kremlin's strategy must take into account a number of factors that bode ill for Russia in the longer run.

    Ukraine has stumbled upon a most improbable ally-Saudi Arabia. In a stark example of the law of unintended consequences, the Russian economy has sustained heavy collateral damage from the Saudi campaign against North American shale-oil production (and secondarily, against Iran). The war of attrition in the Donbass is in large measure hostage to the economic war of attrition in the Bakken formation. This situation, unanticipated by Russia (or anyone else, to be fair) when it invaded Ukraine, appears likely to depress energy prices for years to come, sapping the strength of Russia's economy and hence the country's ability to wage war. A major cataclysm in the Middle East could turn energy prices around, of course, but it is instructive that oil prices have plummeted even in the face of Islamist depredations in Iraq and chronic chaos in Libya-and the loosening of sanctions on Iran would bring even more oil and gas onto the market.

    If the Saudi factor was unforeseeable, the Western response to the invasion of Ukraine appears to represent an actual miscalculation by Moscow. The Kremlin no doubt expected something akin to the reaction over Georgia in 2008-some harsh Western rhetoric, a few pro forma sanctions, and, six months later, a proffered reset button and the resumption of business as usual. Instead, Western governments have imposed fairly extensive sanctions and have thus far stuck to them. Sanctions against individuals are largely symbolic, but restrictions on lending are a genuine hardship to Russian companies, especially in the current economic downturn.

    The Kremlin has naturally responded with a variety of tactics to undermine Western unity and determination. Above all, Moscow has tried to demonize the United States and present Europe as a co-victim of sanctions imposed by Washington. The Maidan, in the Kremlin's creative retelling, was not about Ukrainian disgust with corruption or a yearning for European standards, but was just cynical American manipulation in order to strike a blow against Russia. The Russian narrative about the U.S. puppet master, of course, glosses over the enormous role played by Europeans in nurturing Ukrainian institutions and civil society over the years, and the influence on Ukrainians of the sheer example set by the transformation of Ukraine's erstwhile socialist neighbors. If Poles, Balts and Romanians can enjoy a modicum of prosperity and good governance by joining Europe, then why shouldn't Ukrainians move in the same direction?

    ... ... ...

    Besides vilifying Washington as the bogeyman, Moscow is understandably hard at work mobilizing any and all European governments and groups that can be used to undermine sanctions. Putin has found a worthy acolyte in Hungary's Viktor Orbán, the man who would be Magyarbashi, and can count on a degree of sympathy from a variety of European leaders ranging from Slovakia's Robert Fico to the new Syriza government in Greece. However, Putin has struck out completely with the individual who matters more than any other: Angela Merkel. If there were any question about the impact of individuals on the course of history, one need only ponder how different the European reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine would be if Gerhard Schröder were sitting in the German chancellor's office rather than on the board of Gazprom.

    Besides working sympathetic European leaders, Moscow has also cultivated a motley array of right- and left-wing extremists, people often of diametrically opposed political orientations united only by their hatred of Washington and Brussels. However, even where such groups attract a stable portion of their national electorates and can reasonably aspire to enter governing coalitions, they tend to have only a marginal influence on policy, particularly foreign policy. Electoral surprises can happen, of course, but Moscow is unlikely to see much return on its investment in these European groups.

    ... ... ...

    [May 21, 2015] Militarization Is More Than Tanks Rifles It's a Cultural Disease, Acclimating Citizens To Life In A Police State

    May 21, 2015 | Zero Hedge
    Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    "If we're training cops as soldiers, giving them equipment like soldiers, dressing them up as soldiers, when are they going to pick up the mentality of soldiers? If you look at the police department, their creed is to protect and to serve. A soldier's mission is to engage his enemy in close combat and kill him. Do we want police officers to have that mentality? Of course not."

    - Arthur Rizer, former civilian police officer and member of the military

    Talk about poor timing. Then again, perhaps it's brilliant timing.

    Only now-after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces, after police agencies have been trained in the fine art of war, after SWAT team raids have swelled in number to more than 80,000 a year, after it has become second nature for local police to look and act like soldiers, after communities have become acclimated to the presence of militarized police patrolling their streets, after Americans have been taught compliance at the end of a police gun or taser, after lower income neighborhoods have been transformed into war zones, after hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Americans have lost their lives at the hands of police who shoot first and ask questions later, after a whole generation of young Americans has learned to march in lockstep with the government's dictates-only now does President Obama lift a hand to limit the number of military weapons being passed along to local police departments.

    Not all, mind you, just some.

    Talk about too little, too late.

    Months after the White House defended a federal program that distributed $18 billion worth of military equipment to local police, Obama has announced that he will ban the federal government from providing local police departments with tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms and large-caliber firearms.

    Obama also indicated that less heavy-duty equipment (armored vehicles, tactical vehicles, riot gear and specialized firearms and ammunition) will reportedly be subject to more regulations such as local government approval, and police being required to undergo more training and collect data on the equipment's use. Perhaps hoping to sweeten the deal, the Obama administration is also offering $163 million in taxpayer-funded grants to "incentivize police departments to adopt the report's recommendations."

    While this is a grossly overdue first step of sorts, it is nevertheless a first step from an administration that has been utterly complicit in accelerating the transformation of America's police forces into extensions of the military. Indeed, as investigative journalist Radley Balko points out, while the Obama administration has said all the right things about the need to scale back on a battlefield mindset, it has done all the wrong things to perpetuate the problem:

    • distributed equipment designed for use on the battlefield to local police departments,
    • provided private grants to communities to incentivize SWAT team raids,
    • redefined "community policing" to reflect aggressive police tactics and funding a nationwide COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program that has contributed to dramatic rise in SWAT teams,
    • encouraged the distribution of DHS anti-terror grants and the growth of "contractors that now cater to police agencies looking to cash DHS checks in exchange for battle-grade gear,"
    • ramped up the use of military-style raids to crack down on immigration laws and target "medical marijuana growers, shops, and dispensaries in states that have legalized the drug,"
    • defended as "reasonable" aggressive, militaristic police tactics in cases where police raided a guitar shop in defense of an obscure environmental law, raided a home looking for a woman who had defaulted on her student loans, and terrorized young children during a raid on the wrong house based on a mistaken license plate,
    • and ushered in an era of outright highway robbery in which asset forfeiture laws have been used to swindle Americans out of cash, cars, houses, or other property that government agents can "accuse" of being connected to a crime.

    It remains to be seen whether this overture on Obama's part, coming in the midst of heightened tensions between the nation's police forces and the populace they're supposed to protect, opens the door to actual reform or is merely a political gambit to appease the masses all the while further acclimating the populace to life in a police state.

    Certainly, on its face, it does nothing to ease the misery of the police state that has been foisted upon us. In fact, Obama's belated gesture of concern does little to roll back the deadly menace of overzealous police agencies corrupted by money, power and institutional immunity. And it certainly fails to recognize the terrible toll that has been inflicted on our communities, our fragile ecosystem of a democracy, and our freedoms as a result of the government's determination to bring the war home.

    Will the young black man guilty of nothing more than running away from brutish police officers be any safer in the wake of Obama's edict? It's unlikely.

    Will the old man reaching for his cane have a lesser chance of being shot? It's doubtful.

    Will the little girl asleep under her princess blanket live to see adulthood when a SWAT team crashes through her door? I wouldn't count on it.

    It's a safe bet that our little worlds will be no safer following Obama's pronouncement and the release of his "Task Force on 21st Century Policing" report. In fact, there is a very good chance that life in the American police state will become even more perilous.

    Among the report's 50-page list of recommendations is a call for more police officer boots on the ground, training for police "on the importance of de-escalation of force," and "positive non-enforcement activities" in high-crime communities to promote trust in the police such as sending an ice cream truck across the city.

    Curiously, nowhere in the entire 120-page report is there a mention of the Fourth Amendment, which demands that the government respect citizen privacy and bodily integrity. The Constitution is referenced once, in the Appendix, in relation to Obama's authority as president. And while the word "constitutional" is used 15 times within the body of the report, its use provides little assurance that the Obama administration actually understands the clear prohibitions against government overreach as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

    For instance, in the section of the report on the use of technology and social media, the report notes: "Though all constitutional guidelines must be maintained in the performance of law enforcement duties, the legal framework (warrants, etc.) should continue to protect law enforcement access to data obtained from cell phones, social media, GPS, and other sources, allowing officers to detect, prevent, or respond to crime."

    Translation: as I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the new face of policing in America is about to shift from waging its war on the American people using primarily the weapons of the battlefield to the evermore-sophisticated technology of the battlefield where government surveillance of our everyday activities will be even more invasive.

    This emphasis on technology, surveillance and social media is nothing new. In much the same way the federal government used taxpayer-funded grants to "gift" local police agencies with military weapons and equipment, it is also funding the distribution of technology aimed at making it easier for police to monitor, track and spy on Americans. For instance, license plate readers, stingray devices and fusion centers are all funded by grants from the DHS. Funding for drones at the state and local levels also comes from the federal government, which in turn accesses the data acquired by the drones for its own uses.

    If you're noticing a pattern here, it is one in which the federal government is not merely transforming local police agencies into extensions of itself but is in fact federalizing them, turning them into a national police force that answers not to "we the people" but to the Commander in Chief. Yet the American police force is not supposed to be a branch of the military, nor is it a private security force for the reigning political faction. It is supposed to be an aggregation of the countless local civilian units that exist for a sole purpose: to serve and protect the citizens of each and every American community.

    So where does that leave us?

    There's certainly no harm in embarking on a national dialogue on the dangers of militarized police, but if that's all it amounts to-words that sound good on paper and in the press but do little to actually respect our rights and restore our freedoms-then we're just playing at politics with no intention of actually bringing about reform.

    Despite the Obama Administration's lofty claims of wanting to "ensure that public safety becomes more than the absence of crime, that it must also include the presence of justice," this is the reality we must contend with right now:

    Americans still have no real protection against police abuse. Americans still have no right to self-defense in the face of SWAT teams mistakenly crashing through our doors, or police officers who shoot faster than they can reason. Americans are still no longer innocent until proven guilty. Americans still don't have a right to private property. Americans are still powerless in the face of militarized police. Americans still don't have a right to bodily integrity. Americans still don't have a right to the expectation of privacy. Americans are still being acclimated to a police state through the steady use and sight of military drills domestically, a heavy militarized police presence in public places and in the schools, and a taxpayer-funded propaganda campaign aimed at reassuring the public that the police are our "friends." And to top it all off, Americans still can't rely on the courts, Congress or the White House to mete out justice when our rights are violated by police.

    To sum it all up: the problems we're grappling with have been building for more than 40 years. They're not going to go away overnight, and they certainly will not be resolved by a report that instructs the police to simply adopt different tactics to accomplish the same results-i.e., maintain the government's power, control and wealth at all costs.

    This is the sad reality of life in the American police state.

    [May 19, 2015]The New Lie About Iraq

    May 19, 2015 | The American Conservative
    The newest lie about the Iraq war is that the truth about Iraq was not known before the American attack in 2003. One needs only to search for "lies about Iraq" to see all the many links explaining evidence from before the war started that showed the Bush/Cheney/neoconservative claims to be false.

    That false narrative is important to know because many of the same people are now promoting war with Iran, as they were before with Syria. Republican candidates are also stumbling over the question of whether they would have invaded Iraq because it undermines their present, ongoing promotion of an interventionist foreign policy.

    Take just one example of such a false claim, which even reached Bush's 2003 State of the Union address to Congress: "Saddam has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." It was a lie from the beginning. Bush had been informed that the Department of Energy and State Department intelligence had analyzed the tubes and found them to be useless for a nuclear program, rather being for conventional rockets.

    I was very active in reporting on the lies, writing at the time for Antiwar.com, which every day had articles, news reports, and analyses exposing the misinformation. An article I wrote in 2002, well before the war started, "Eight Washington Lies About Iraq," was at the top of a Google search for lies for 7 years. Even today it explains, with links, many of the lies made.

    Iraq's weaknesses were in fact easy to comprehend after nearly nine years of U.S. economic blockade following the First Gulf War. Iraq had been decimated by American bombing of its electricity, sanitation, irrigation, and transportation systems. Almost every bridge was destroyed. A half-million Iraqi children had died of starvation and disease. It was also subject to United Nations (read American) inspectors going all over the country to verify that it was conforming to earlier UN demands for destruction of its nuclear and chemical warfare facilities.

    All Americans should be reminded again and again that recent wars were based on lies. The First Gulf War was sold to Americans on the basis of the murder of "incubator babies" and an imaginary Iraqi threat to invade Saudi Arabia, including the assertion that satellite photographs showed the Iraqi Army massed on the Saudi border. The "classified" photos never existed. The Kosovo War was based on reports that 100,000 Kosovan Albanians had been murdered by Serbs, so America had to attack so as to stop the mass killing. It was also a lie.

    Today, when all the Republican candidates are being pressured by right-wing media and neoconservative money men to sound (and be) hawkish, Americans should recall how most of Washington's establishment lied to promote past wars. Wars mean billions of dollars for key congressional districts' arms producers, millions of rapt viewers for 24-7 cable news, lots of TV time for think-tank chicken hawks,, new jobs for "contractors," more growth for the "surveillance state." There's also the Israel Lobby and Christian Zionists. All In all that is a pretty formidable force for war.

    All Americans should be aware and suspicious of again being panicked into supporting more wars.

    Jake, May 19, 2015 at 1:43 pm

    I read your article 'Eight Washington Lies About Iraq' when it was first posted. I sent the link to several 'conservative' friends who wanted war, not because they were Christian Zionists (I felt that grouyp was hopeless on the subject), but because they feared what 9/11 meant and knew only what TV news and the hakcs leading the parties told them.

    None of them changed their minds about being for a war to kill Saddam Hussien and remake the Middle East. A couple of them gloated when the victory seemed so easy. Not one of them has told me that I was correct all along.

    The crowd that wants to land trooops in Syria and Iran will tel any lie to get its wish. It knows that the people hodwinked before will tend to flal for another snow job, because they do not want to havce been wrong the first time.


    JohnG, May 19, 2015 at 2:26 pm

    Thank you for this refreshing and to-the-point article, this combination of intelligence, competence, and integrity is why I support TAC. Sadly, when it comes to our foreign policy "elites" (of course, the term is a stretch), precisely the opposite is the case, a stunning combination of stupidity, ignorance, and crookedness wherever one looks.

    May I just add that the lies stretch to before the Kosovo war in the Balkans? The persistent demonizing and periodic bombings of the Serbs (in what are now Croatia and Bosnia) probably ended up giving us Putin in Kremlin and a region that will probably keep exploding in the future. And, by the way, watch out for what is about to happen in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

    I believe that the unique historical opportunity for a more just, democratic, and peaceful world was actually squandered under Bill Clinton, with all the nonsense that was done in the Balkans and the de facto preparation of the confrontation with Iraq (remember Madeleine Albright's famous statement?). George Bush's war was just a continuation, and WMDs just an excuse that the cakewalk crowd thought would be irrelevant/forgotten as soon as the Iraqis started to throw flowers on American tanks.

    The war was a gambit by a political class believing that it could use its powerful military to rule the world by controlling its supply of oil. And, gee, they discovered that it's a pretty big & messy world out there, surprise! They can't rule Afghanistan alone, anyone half-familiar with the history of that region could have told them that. So now we are busy talking about "what we knew" and "based on what we knew" hypothetical nonsense just to cover some dumb, arrogant, and dishonest asses rather than simply firing them all, from the media, State Dept., etc.

    Fran Macadam, May 19, 2015 at 4:16 pm

    On TAC there is much handwringing about the decline of Christian influence in America and the loss of faith generally. President Bush was the poster boy for evangelical Christianity, yet both lied and was manipulated by the unscrupulous, ordering torture and assassination. So the wars turned out badly for average folk, though those allied with Cheney of whatever political stripe profited handsomely. We lose, they win. The neocons are immune to loss of public faith, rather they enjoy full support of donorist elites who buy our democratically unaccountable politicians and get just the wars they continue to want.

    As in Europe after the huge losses of World War I, which almost every church supported, there was a great loss of faith. American churchianity, as Dwight Eisenhower put it, is a thoroughly civil religion that supports state aims. He explained that it was built on faith and it mattered not at all which one it was. When the church allies itself with disreputable state actors, some of them Christians in retrospect so obviously dunderheaded, what evaluation will a disillusioned public make of the church's credibility? It won't be disbelief in the miracles that causes the falling away, but the mendacious and supplicating justifications that had no resemblance whatsoever to "Just War" and were in reality against every teaching of Jesus. Thus the church's prophetic role of speaking truth to power in America died.


    [May 19, 2015]Why Soldiers Lie

    May 18, 2015 | The American Conservative
    Since the year began I have had opportunities to visit several American military units and schools. What I found was encouraging. A growing number of officers and staff NCOs accept the painful fact that we have lost two wars. They know we need to change if we are not to lose more. Finally, they have come to understand that their services' senior leaders, their top generals, do not much care about winning or losing. To them, military defeat is irrelevant because the money keeps flowing. The only war the generals care about is the budget war.

    The senior military leadership is facing a crisis of legitimacy and does not know it. As one Marine officer put it to me, the generals seem divorced from reality, powerless, and risk-averse. The problem is less what they do than what they do not do, namely address the reasons for our defeats. The dissatisfaction with the senior leadership is coming not only from junior officers. I found it now goes up to the ranks of lieutenant colonel and even colonel.

    Nor is the evidence merely anecdotal. The U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute in February published a study by two of its faculty members, Leonard Wong and Stephen J. Gerras, Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession. Its conclusion, that many Army officers routinely lie to "the system," is no surprise to anyone who knows our military. (The phenomenon runs across service lines.) What is more interesting is the study's finding as to the cause of institutionalized lying: "the suffocating amount of mandatory requirements imposed upon units and commanders."

    Who imposes this burden? Mostly the generals, who appear neither to know nor to care that they are laying on more training and reporting requirements than there is time to meet. Their only concern is covering their own rears. Unable to do as ordered and unwilling to risk their careers by telling their superiors the truth, officers deal with the problem by lying.

    The study's authors do not mince words:

    The Army as a profession speaks of values, integrity, and honor. The Army as an organization practices zero defects, pencil-whipping, and checking the box. Army leaders are situated between the two identities-parroting the talking points of the latest Army Profession Campaign while placating the Army bureaucracy or civilian overseers by telling them what they want to hear. As a result, Army leaders learn to talk of one world while living in another. A major described the current trend:

    'It's getting to the point where you're almost rewarded for being somebody you're not. That's a dangerous situation especially now as we downsize. We're creating an environment where everything is too rosy because everyone is afraid to paint the true picture. You just wonder when it will break, when it will fall apart.'

    The larger problem, again, is less what the generals do than what they do not do. They preside smugly over a cluster of institutional disasters, like so many Soviet industrial managers-which is what most of them are.

    Angry officers demanding change provide one wing of a potential new military-reform movement, one that might succeed where that of the 1970s and '80s failed. But success requires tying demands for reform to the services' budgets, which is all the senior generals care about. The earlier reform movement got generals interested in Third Generation maneuver warfare because senators and congressmen who voted on the defense budget were talking about it on the House and Senate floors. Whence might come this second arm of a political pincer movement under today's conditions?

    Far more than was true 35 years ago, legislation is now for sale, for the legalized bribes we call "campaign contributions." Business as usual in defense has vast amounts of money to give to members of Congress. Military reform can offer none. That usually means "end of story" on Capitol Hill.

    But there is one possibility. The House now has a number of members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Having seen today's military from the inside, some of them will know its weaknesses. They might put loyalty to their former comrades above payoffs. If they were to reach out to those still serving who are tired of losing, they could create the "inside/outside" nexus that made the earlier reform movement powerful for a time.

    Money may still win in the end. If so, our problem will be larger than more lost cabinet wars. A republic whose government is for sale will not be a republic much longer. Or, perhaps, a state.

    William S. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook and director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation.

    [May 19, 2015] US Taxpayer On The Hook As Ukraine Prepares Moratorium On Debt Repayments, Increases Military Spending

    Zero Hedge
    It appears, thanks to the generous backing of US taxpayers, Ukraine is about to get its cake and eat it too. On the same day as Ukraine's government unleashes a bill enabling a moratorium on foreign debt repayments - implicitly meaning default "in case of an attack from dishonest lenders" - the defense ministry unveils a plan to increase military spending by 17 billion hryvnia this year statuing that will "make efforts to find possibilities to finance needs" to secure country's defense. Ukraine bonds are tumbling.

    Military Spending is set to surge...

    10 agencies, including Defense Ministry, that oversee defense and law enforcement asked Finance Ministry to increase defense spending by 17b hryvnia this yr, ministry in Kiev says on its website.

    Finance Ministry will "make efforts to find possibilities to finance needs" to secure country's defense.

    Higher spending is needed because of increased army personnel.

    But foreign debtors are set to lose... (as RT reports)

    Ukraine's government has submitted to parliament a bill that allows the introduction of a moratorium on foreign debt payments. The moratorium is to protect the assets of the state and the state sector in case of an "attack" from dishonest lenders.

    "To protect the interests of the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian government today has introduced to the Rada a bill that would give the government the right to suspend payment on Ukraine's external debts and publicly guaranteed debts. In case of an attack from dishonest lenders on Ukraine this moratorium will protect the assets of the state and the state sector," a statement on the Cabinet website said Tuesday.

    The moratorium "will not affect domestic payments and will not affect the stability of the banking system," the UNIAN news agency said citing s source. In also said the moratorium does not include debt to the IMF, the EBRD and other institutional creditors.

    The Cabinet said the moratorium will not affect the bilateral and multilateral obligations of Kiev.

    And Ukraine bonds are tumbling...

    Specifcally (as Bloomberg reports),

    The eastern European nation is seeking permission to hold off on paying coupons, the first of which coming due is a May 21 payment of $33 million on a $1 billion note maturing in November 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Ukraine said cutting its debt burden is a question of justice, according to an e-mailed statement on Tuesday.

    "This is a logical next step to show people they are serious," Dray Simpson, the London-based managing director of emerging markets at Cantor Fitzgerald Europe, said by e-mail on Tuesday. "Up to now there has been a lot of talk and very little action and any confrontations have been won by creditors. If Ukraine are going to reverse that trend they need to be firm."

    Time is running out for the country and its bondholders to reach an agreement as a June 15 International Monetary Fund deadline for the restructuring approaches. Failure to strike a deal puts the next tranche of a $17.5 billion IMF loan at risk for Ukraine as it struggles to keep the economy afloat following a yearlong conflict with pro-Russian separatists in the nation's east.

    STP

    Funny, Nuland actually in Russia!

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/18/us-russia-usa-nuland-idUSKBN0O30RQ20150518

    "A visit to Moscow by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is a sign that relations between Russia and the United States may be improving, the Kremlin said on Monday.

    Nuland's trip comes days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

    Asked if Nuland's visit was a sign of improving ties, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: "Yes, when President Putin was meeting with Minister Lavrov and Secretary of State Kerry ... it was mentioned that a closer dialogue ... was needed."

    Nuland, who was holding talks in Moscow with two Russian deputy foreign ministers, has been strongly criticized in Russia in the past over her support for pro-democracy activists in Kiev during mass street protests that toppled Ukraine's pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovich in February 2014.

    Nuland was expected to explore ways of bolstering a fragile ceasefire in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists and of implementing other aspects of a peace agreement forged in Minsk several months ago.

    Russia blames the crisis in Ukraine on what it sees as heavy-handed meddling by the United States in a region Moscow has traditionally seen as its sphere of influence.

    The West, in turn, accuses Russia of backing the separatists with weapons and troops, charges Moscow denies. More than 6,100 people have been killed in the conflict since April 2014.

    The Ukraine crisis has plunged relations between Russia and the West into their worst crisis since the end of the Cold War, but the United States needs Russian cooperation to tackle a host of other global issues including Iran and the Syrian conflict."

    Maybe she brought some cookies with her too.

    farflungstar
    I bet she feels like a fat stupid cunt with egg on her face. I wonder if the Russians could keep from laughing at her. Another AmeriKan fantasist, operating from the playbook in her head, where reality only intrudes sporadically, usually with the aid of a monster vibrator ya gotta kickstart.

    Looks like a bunch of sissy twats saw the V-Day parade in Moscow and realized the Russians weren't fucking around.

    HowdyDoody
    Yet another source of victimhood for Nudelman.
    Freddie
    Oh this is also Soros, Crown-Krinsky, Bloomturd, the Neo Cons like McCain and Neo Liberals like Schumer.

    The US Govt is totally Z-evil and Z-owed.


    Anglo Hondo

    "moratorium on foreign debt repayments". Is this what Greece should be doing? And why not?

    mog

    It is also holding two Russian ex military who are apparently being brutally tortured.

    It has reneged on Minsk 2.

    It has resumed shelling on Denesk civilans killing anf injuring.

    Where is the outrage in the Western media?

    The west has now lost any moral authority it may ever have had.

    Its a bully, a liar, murderous and thieving, pouring out propaganda and poison.

    That we have sunk to that?

    Most of the third world is better than this.

    Winston of Oceania

    Funny they did not mention quitting the Russian special forces when questioned and are being visited by the Red Cross...

    http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-ukraine-russia-soldiers-captur...

    HowdyDoody

    Russian special forces using a rifle? Sure.

    oudinot

    ZH is behind on this: the US has given up on their Ukranian military adventure.

    http://rinf.com/alt-news/featured/obama-gave-up-on-ukraine-press-simply-...

    Mike Masr

    Thanks to "Fuck the EU" Nuland and Obama's neocon pals, in the Ukraine we have another Iraq and Libya on our hands! This time ISIS hasn't taken over but Banderist Nazi's. And this time we are openly committing US tax dollars to fund the evil fucking jerks.

    On February 22nd, 2014, Euromaidan kicked out not only a democratically-elected president, but a democratically-elected government. It waited three months before holding elections for a new president and 8 months for parliamentary elections. By that time the extremist Dmitry Yarosh Nazi element had already taken a stake way beyond electoral control – neo-Nazi Svoboda Party, despite scoring less than 5% in the parliamentary elections sits in the Ukraine's parliament and regularly sends fighters to the front. The leader of the neo-Nazi terrorist group Pravy Sektor Dmitry Yarosh who polled less than 1% in the presidential election and on Interpol's wanted list is now an official aide to to the Ukrainian military.

    The Ukraine is DEAD and there is absolutely nothing that the US Government can do to change this.

    http://novorossia.today/10-reasons-ukraine-is-dead/

    And, we are now doing a rerun of Ukraine's Maidan in Macedonia to stop Gazprom's Turkish Stream project! More US Tax dollars hard at work!!!

    http://rt.com/op-edge/259541-macedonia-unrest-west-russia-pipeline/


    Freddie

    Donetsk heroes victory parade with Motorola (1:20) and Givi (at 2:09). Zakarchenko was there as well.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwAhyBJiag8

    Compare thesse heroes to NeoCons like McCain who with his dad killed more American sailors on the USS Forrestal and USS Liberty than the Russians ever did. The Russians were the first to arrive on scene to try to save dying sailors on the USS Liberty. McCain's old man and zip LBJ told F4 Phantoms to return to carriers and sailed SLOW to the aid of the USS Liberty hoping all survivors were dead.

    My only complaint with Donetsk (DPR), LPR and Russia - get rid of that Stalin and communist imagery. Stalin was a mass murderer Georgian and stooge along with Lenin. They both worked for the Bolsheviks of the New York City, london and German bankster red sheild zios plus American elites who back ed the commies and nazis for $$$$$ and power.

    oudinot

    Well reasoned Mike Masr, thank you.

    HowdyDoody

    Borislav Bereza, a leader of the Far right neo-nazi Pravi Sektor is Jewish and proud of it.

    http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/187217/borislav-bereza

    gcjohns1971

    When Obama said, "Yes we can" he proposed that as an answer to many questions...

    Like "Can we end corporate welfare?", "Can we end foreign wars?", "Can we close Guantanamo and once again respect human rights?"

    Not surprisingly they were all lies.

    Of course, being politicians, there are always the unspoken, yet constant, eternal questions that apply:

    "Can we extinguish your retirement on Hookers and Blow?"

    Yes we can.

    "Can we fool you stupid fuckers one more time with outrageous claims of Nirvana following our election?"

    Yes we can.

    "Can we buy ourselves international money, power, and influence with your children's milk money?"

    Yes we can.

    Winston of Oceania

    Because Russian taxpayers are financing the Russian's slow invasion of Ukraine...

    http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-ukraine-russia-soldiers-captur...

    Mike Masr

    Russia's invasion of the Ukraine is laughable. What about the regime change orchestrated by Washington?

    If I lived in Donetsk and spoke Russian why would I want to be controlled by the illegal, U.S.-funded junta in Kiev, instituted by political organizations given five billion dollars by Washington, as revealed by "fuck the EU" Victoria Nuland.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_GShyGv3o

    Ukraine was broke, and political parties and organizations were vastly financed by foreign nations, (US & EU) which then encouraged them to foment a coup.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&x-yt-ts=1422503916...

    The junta in Kiev then illegally deposed the democratic president, and then illegally deposed all of its governors.

    Russia's slow invasion of Ukraine is a joke. It's Russian speaking Ukrainian people in Eastern Ukraine not wanting any part of the Junta in Kiev!

    farflungstar
    It's so laughable. The NPR slurping idiots always seem to forget that convenient fact when they sputter about the USSA being "obligated" by treaty to keep the Ukrainian "territorial integrity" intact.

    Once you violently chase the democratically elected President from office and put on a show election with your puppets who glorify people like Bandera, threaten to nuke the Eastern Moscals and take out Russian as one of the main languages, all bets are off.

    And if Russia REALLY invaded the Ukraine, we would all know about it without MSM gossipy bullshit:

    Top Ten Telltale Signs Russia Has Invaded the Ukraine

    http://cluborlov.blogspot.ru/2014/08/how-can-you-tell-whether-russia-has...

    farflungstar

    Reasonable, considering what the US and her EU pups are doing on the other side. AmeriKan arms and trainers, foreign mercenaries filling out the ranks of Ukrainian army because everyone else is leaving the country to avoid conscription.

    The Ukraine - overhyped and grabby fascist faggots with no economy. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian junta shells civilian areas and where is the LA Times then? One-sided lying MSM pukes. Drugs aplenty to make people think the Ukraine would be allowed to evict the Russian navy from Crimea, or join NATO and threaten Russia from the Black Sea. More Obama-inspired wishful thinking: We do not see things as they are, but how we wish them to be.

    Enjoy your debt colony.

    Youri Carma

    U.S. provides $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine
    18 May 2015, by Greg Robb - Washington (MarketWatch)
    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-provides-1-billion-in-loan-guarantees-to-ukraine-2015-05-18

    The United States on Monday gave the green light to a new $1 billion loan guarantee agreement for Ukraine.

    In a statement, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that Ukraine continues along the path of economic reform and that the loan deal is designed to support the war-torn country.

    "Ukraine has taken critical reforms already, and its commitment to making a decisive break with the corruption and stagnation of the past is clear," Lew said.


    Mike Masr

    MORE U.S. MONEY TO FLUSH DOWN THE TOILET

    The Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, are never returning. The ragtag Ukrainian forces using antiquated Soviet hardware haven't taken back any territory since July of 2014, they've only lost a lot of personnel and territory. DPR and LPR forces have consolidated lines, and if there is movement, it will only be to take more of Donbass – currently they have around 1/3 of the region which once produced 80% of all Ukraine's coal, but from which the DPR and LPR do not supply to Ukraine any more, while industrial production in the rest of the former industrial heartland of Donbass has mostly ground to a halt. Ukraine's debt is over $80 billion – soon set to hit $100 billion, and with a sinking GDP. An agreed recent IMF bailout programme of $17.5 billion would only scratch the surface. By conservative estimates Ukraine's economy shrunk by 7.5% in 2014. Estimates for this year range from 6% to over 20%. European governments pledge support, meanwhile European businesses withdraw en mass, hundreds have already left the Ukrainian market, most of the 600 German firms operating in Ukraine are conducting an audit to decide on withdrawing from the market. Russia's trade with the country which was Ukraine's leading export and import parter is understandably decimated, Ukraine's economy is stricken, and will only go down the toilet. 1 Billion in loan guarantees is too little and too late!

    Normal life is almost impossible in Ukraine. Inflation in Ukraine is at a whopping 272%, the hryvnia's value is now less than 40% of what it was. Inflation has skyrocketed, salaries have collapsed, businesses across Ukraine have closed. In short, people don't have any money in Ukraine anymore – sales of new cars are down 67% on the year – production of cars down 96%, 46 banks declared insolvency in the last year.

    As for the eternal thorn in Ukraine's side, corruption, which apparently was so pressing an issue and one of the defining aims of Maidan – is even worse now than it was before.

    Greg Robb - Washington (MarketWatch) story suggests that Jacob Lew must have drank too much of Obama's Kool Aid and released news written by Kiev's government propagandists!!!

    oudinot

    I agree with you Mike but I do think, cynically, that Washington's policy worked out.

    This whole thing started when the Ukraine rejected a free trade deal with the EU. Russia was their best choice for trade for mostly practical reasons as Russia is their biggest trading partner(don't forget the EU wanted the Ukraine to meet EU standards before exporting which meant costly re tooling which the Ukranians couldn't afford but the US and Germany could buy in at 5 cents on the dollar, I mean Hryzinia or whatever)when all hell broke loose.

    Yes, the US putting in the Ukranian political roster and calling the plays from the sidelines where the Ukraine fought two offensivse and are now econmically, politically, morally and militarily defeated.

    Then the US hangs them out to dry.

    Why not?

    The US and its allies demolished the Ukranian economy so that it hurt trade with Russia, got sanctions against Russia which further withered the trade with EU and the US grabbed 33 tons of Ukranian gold reserves that disappeared in the NY and reappeared in Belgium while US left a pile of dung on Putin's doorstep.

    Shit happens.

    Good thing all the Clinton donors traded their US Fiat loans for real stuff

    [May 19, 2015] The Worrying Rise of Anti-China Discourse in the US By Dingding Chen

    May 16, 2015 | The Diplomat

    Forget U.S. patrols in the South China Sea. This is the real threat to U.S.-China relations.

    There is no doubt that U.S.-China relations are entering a new period of tensions given reports that the United States is considering the possibility of sending naval ships and planes to challenge China's sovereignty in the South China Sea. This U.S. move, if realized, is certainly provocative and has the potential to lead to a clash with Chinese ships and planes.

    So far a lot of analysis has focused on the possible motivations behind the U.S. move and the possible consequences thereof for China-U.S. relations and Asian security. Almost all would agree that this move, whether right or wrong, is a risky one and worrying indeed.

    To better understand this particular military move, one has to understand the larger background for all of the current developments in China-U.S. relations. This larger background is the new, rising anti-China discourse in various circles of the United States, including the government, academic, policy, and certainly military spheres. Three types of anti-China discourses stand out.

    • First, there is the new 'China collapse' theory. This theory is not totally new and largely came to the fore after Gordon Chang popularized it in his 2001 book. This new round of 'China collapse' discourse, however, is led by an influential China expert, David Shambaugh of George Washington University. In his March article published in the Wall Street Journal, Shambaugh predicted that the end game of the Chinese Communist Party has already begun. What is most interesting about Shambaugh's new prediction is his past praise of the CCP and China as a resilient power. Later, Shambaugh argued that he was disappointed by a series of CCP moves, particularly under Xi Jinping's leadership. He was expecting a more liberal and democratic China, but he obviously does not think that is possible anymore. Of course, there are other types of 'China collapse' theory, focusing on different aspects of China's pressing problems such as social grievances, environmental pollution, inequality, corruption, and so on.
    • Second, there is lots of talk about China as a regional bully and how China is trying to push the United States out of East Asia. As a big country, it is natural for China to be viewed as a big bully in Asia in the eyes of smaller nations. And China's territorial disputes with some of them certainly do not help. All these concerns on the part of smaller nations are understandable. Although the U.S. has repeatedly emphasized that it maintains a neutral position with regard to the territorial disputes, China does not buy it. And despite China's repeated pledge that it is not trying to push the U.S. out of Asia, the U.S. simply remains unconvinced. This is truly unfortunate - the lack of trust between the two has prevented them from assuming the best of each other. From the U.S. perspective, a growing China and a stable authoritarian regime cannot be a good thing for U.S. leadership in Asia. Many U.S. policymakers simply do not believe that an authoritarian regime can maintain peace and stability; worse, an authoritarian China might be an expansionist power after all.
    • The third and most disturbing new discourse is the 'punishing China' discourse. It comes in various forms. One recent report from the Council of Foreign Relations argues that China needs to be balanced. Perhaps the message is that China, after all, is just another Soviet Union and it is now time for the U.S. to face the reality by firmly balancing China. Otherwise, China will dominate Asia one day. Another more radical report by two right-wing leaning scholars calls for a new 'peaceful evolution' approach to China. These scholars Dan Blumenthal and William Inboden, argue that the U.S. should actively assist those Chinese people who fight for democracy and freedom and in so doing the CCP would be brought down - hence, peace and stability for Asia.

    One can debate how much real policy influence such radical discourses have on U.S. government policy toward China. Judging by recent tough comments by U.S. military officials, things do not look good. Maybe this is indeed a 'tipping point' for China-U.S. relations, after more than 30 years of engagement. Is the U.S. adopting a containment strategy toward China now? One cannot say that with confidence. But if this radical anti-China discourse is allowed to grow, we might enter a new era of containment politics in China-U.S. relations. That, as John Mearsheimer famously put it, is indeed a tragedy in great power politics.

    Liars N. Fools

    I occasionally attend academic conferences in which there are Chinese participants. And usually some if not all of the theories about China -- collapse, Asia for Asians, balancing, punishing-- are discussed. One feature has been free wheeling, transparent discussions by all non-Chinese participants and only rigid presentations by the Chinese.

    My advice to Chinese participants in international conferences is that if you do not want to be laughed at, do not make laughable arguments. "The nine dashed line is a valid assertion of sovereignty because nobody objected when it was published by the Republic of China. There is no need for discussion because it is our territorial sea, reflecting our presence since time immemorial." Puh-leez. Low quality argumentation is low quality argumentation and becomes worse when China acts provocatively on its dubious claim. China makes America a lot more friends when China acts this way and its scholars look like stooges when most are in fact pretty smart people.

    Then there is the ASEAN-related code of conduct in the South China Sea. China agreed to it before, but does not like it now. What is the explanation? From Chinese scholars, one gets prevarication and avoidance. This is hardly a stance that raises China's credibility as a rule abider. What about a multilateral approach to disputed territory? China once said that was OK but now says that all such issues are bilateral only. When parties want to invoke international legal mechanisms, China becomes belligerent and threatening. Does this attitude enhance its reputation as a promoter of the commons or does it paint China as a bully? We are not a bully, says China's hapless conference participants only to then recite a bully's argument of principled core interests.

    Xia > Alexandre Charron-trudel

    Let's not forget that it was the ROC under KMT that introduced the dash lines in South China Sea, and back in the days of Roosevelt proposing the "Four Policemen" it was still 11 dash lines. If the CCP fails to project itself in front of the Chinese public as a power that is capable of defending the Chinese territory that the ROC once held, then it would loose out popularity to the KMT on Taiwan and see its grassroots support base threatened.

    ltlee1 > James Sword

    Actually, the more they know, they more they realize Western democracy is an inferior good. You could ask me for details.

    Mishmael > James Sword

    Oh good.

    "We are right because the people who disagree with us are not capable of being right."

    Ive always suspected Americans of limited argumentative skills, and here is the proof.

    Malaysian Expat > James Sword • a day ago

    Not all of them went abroad get enlightened.

    In fact, the process of self radicalization to Han Chauvinism happens to many overseas born Chinese.

    A Chinese > Alexandre Charron-trudel

    Chinese puts the American hypocrisy into test as every nation with integrity and critical thinking should do by pointing out the obvious of the American fallacies.

    It is shameful that Canadian is flattering American megalomaniac and suppressing the freedom of speech, it demonstrates Canada is a USA lackey that is proud of licking USA's behind by ignoring freedom of speech and democracy, Canada is not trustworthy and a warmonger accomplice,

    The world despise Canada's hypocrisy, and they exclude Canada from UNSC for the last thirty years as punishment; the world should also exclude Canada from any meaningful international forums for good, the world does not need such lackey to pollute the freedom of speech environment that dares to expose the ugly face of the Empire of Chaos and shame it publicly like the Chinese did.


    [May 19, 2015]Military Bureaucracy

    October 26, 2009 | outsidethebeltway.com

    Two separate reviews of The Fourth Star, a new book by David Cloud and Greg Jaffee, touch on a theme that has fascinated me since I wrote a dissertation on the subject.

    NYT foreign correspondent Dexter Filkins (via SWJ):

    "The Fourth Star" paints wonderfully dramatic portraits of the four senior officers highlighted here, but at its heart it's a story about bureaucracy. As an institution, the United States Army has much more in common with, say, a giant corporation like General Motors than with a professional sports team like the New York Giants. You can't cut players who don't perform, and it's hard to fire your head coach. Like General Motors, the Army changes very slowly, and once it does, it's hard to turn it around again.

    Actually, it's arguably easier to "cut" bad soldiers than bad football players nowadays, since the latter often have huge signing bonuses and hold teams hostage in a salary cap era. But, otherwise, Filkins is right. While the military is relatively efficient, it's not only a bureaucracy but the very thing bureaucracy was modeled after. Which makes it amusing when conservatives simultaneously rant about the inefficiency of bureaucracy while extolling the virtues of military efficiency. (The military, along with their brethren in the intelligence community and foreign service, does tend to be more motivated and obedient to orders from above than your average bureaucracy.)

    New Kings of War blogger "Captain Hyphen."

    One of the most trenchant discussions of these wrong "lessons learned" post-Vietnam is General David Petraeus' PhD dissertation, which the review of The Fourth Star mentions tangentially. While Petraeus might have "irritated many of his fellow officers on his way up," he also identified an important bureaucratic reality, noting it in his dissertation: any serving officer who writes a PhD dissertation critical of the US Army as an institution and publishes it as a book will not rise to the ranks of the general officer corps. Petraeus, of course, heeded his own advice, as his dissertation remained safely tucked away in the Princeton library (until the age of scanning and posting to the Internet; h/t to Paula Broadwell for sharing the link). He was able to continue his upward trajectory, unlike such recent soldier-scholars as Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) John Nagl, whose Oxford DPhil became Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, arguably a self-inflicted career wound as an Army officer because of its coherent, incisive critique of the Army's failures as a learning organization.

    Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, however, is the exception that proves the rule, because it was only the patronage of General Petraeus that made him a general officer after twice being passed over for promotion from colonel to brigadier general. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty was the oft-cited, seldom-read mantra of senior officers in the last decade and appeared to be part of the hold-up for his advancement. Further compounding the delay, his successful counterinsurgency campaign as the commander of an armored cavalry regiment in Tall Afar made his conventionally-minded brigade commander peers look bad (or at least that's one interpretation of how it was viewed within the Army).

    How a bureaucracy without lateral entry promotes and selects its leaders is a vital issue with implications measured in decades, dollars, and lives. I look forward to reading how Cloud and Jaffe capture this dynamic in the US Army today.

    One could argue McMaster exemplifies, rather than serving as an exception, to the rule. Generally, being passed over - let alone twice - for promotion pretty much indicates that you're done.

    Certainly as a prospective general officer. Conversely - and I don't claim to have any inside scoop here - Nagl certainly seemed to be an officer on a fast track who left the Army voluntarily to 1) so his family could settle down and 2) to take advantage of a flood of opportunities to apply his expertise in the think tank arena. It seemingly proved a wise choice, as he soon wound up as president of CNAS.

    [May 19, 2015] Americas Warfare State Revolution

    Apr 05, 2015 | Zero Hedge
    Submitted by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    It is impossible to overstate the magnitude of the warfare-state revolution that transformed the federal government and American society after World War II. The roots of America's foreign-policy crises today, along with the massive infringements on civil liberties and privacy and the federal government's program of secret indefinite incarceration, torture, assassination, and extra-judicial executions can all be traced to the grafting of a national-security apparatus onto America's federal governmental system in the 1940s.

    Certainly, the seeds for what happened in the post-WWII era were sown prior to that time, specifically in the move toward empire, which, interestingly enough, occurred during the same period of time that Progressives were inducing Americans to abandon their system of economic liberty and free markets in favor of socialism and interventionism in the form of a welfare state and regulated economy.

    I'm referring to the year 1898, when the U.S. government intervened in the Spanish American War, with the ostensible aim of helping the Cuban and Filipino people win their independence. It was a false and fraudulent intervention, one that was actually designed to place Cuba and the Philippines under the control of the U.S. government. The result was a brutal war in the Philippines between U.S. forces and the Filipino people, along with a never-ending obsession to control Cuba, one that would ending up becoming a central focus of the national-security state.

    A national-security state and an empire certainly weren't among the founding principles of the United States. In fact, the revolution in 1776 was against an empire that the British colonists in America no longer wanted to be part of. They were sick and tired of the endless wars and ever-increasing taxes, regulations, and oppression that come with empire and overgrown military establishments.

    In fact, there was a deep antipathy toward standing armies among the Founding Fathers. The words of James Madison, the father of the Constitution, reflect the mindset of our American ancestors:

    A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

    What about foreign interventionism? The speech that John Quincy Adams delivered to Congress on the 4th of July, 1821, entitled "In Search of Monsters to Destroy," expressed the sentiments of our predecessors. Adams pointed out that there were lots of bad things in the world, things like tyranny, oppression, famines, and the like. He said though that America would not send troops to slay these monsters. Instead, America would build a model society of freedom right here at home for the people of the world. In fact, if America ever became a military empire that would engage in foreign interventionism, Adams predicted, it would fundamentally change the character of American society, one that would look more like a society under dictatorial rule.

    That's not to say that 19th-century America was a libertarian paradise with respect to warfare, any more than it was a libertarian paradise in general, as I pointed out in my article "America's Welfare-State Revolution." But the fact is that there was no overgrown military establishment, no CIA, no NSA, no conscription, no foreign interventionism, and no foreign aid (and no income tax, IRS, Federal Reserve, and fiat money to fund such things).

    There was a basic military force but in relative terms it wasn't very large. There were also wars, such as the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the Mexican War, and many military skirmishes, but with the exception of the Civil War, the casualties were relatively low, especially compared with such foreign wars as World War I and World War II.

    Moreover, it was an established practice to demobilize after each war. That is, a permanent war machine and perpetual war were not built into the system. War and military interventionism were the exception, not the rule.

    That all changed with the embrace of a national-security establishment after World War II. In his Farewell Address in 1961, President Eisenhower observed that the national-security state - or what he called the military-industrial complex - constituted an entirely new way of life for the American people, one that entailed what amounted to a new, permanent warfare-state branch of the federal government, consisting of an overgrown military establishment, a CIA, and an NSA, along with an army of private-sector contractors and subcontractors who were feeding at the public trough on a permanent basis.

    Most significantly, Ike pointed out that this national-security apparatus constituted a grave threat to the liberties and democratic processes of the American people.

    This revolutionary transformation was justified in the name of "national security," which have become the two most important words in the American lexicon, notwithstanding the fact that no one has ever been able to define the term. The warfare-state revolution would be characterized by an endless array of threats to national security, beginning with communism and communists, the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and others, and later morphing into Saddam Hussein, terrorism, terrorists, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, the Taliban, and even the Muslims.

    In the process, Adams proved right. By grafting a totalitarian-like structure onto America's federal governmental system, the United States began displaying the characteristics of a dictatorial society.

    Assassination, torture, rendition, secret prisons, medical experiments on unsuspecting Americans, the hiring of Nazis, indefinite detention, partnerships with criminal organizations and foreign dictators, coups, sanctions, embargoes, invasions, undeclared wars, wars of aggression, and extra-judicial executions. When any of those types of things occurred in the 19th century, they were considered exceptions to the system. Now they have become permanent parts of the system.

    And look at the results of this gigantic warfare-state transformation: ever-increasing infringements on liberty and privacy, ever-increasing spending, debt, and taxes, and ever-increasing anger and hatred toward our country. Yes, all the things that characterized the British Empire that British colonists revolted against in 1776. How's that for irony?

    Meanwhile, like the welfare state, modern-day Americans continue to remain convinced that their system of government has never changed in a fundamental way. They continue to play like their governmental system is founded on the same constitutional principles as when the country was founded. It is a supreme act of self-deception.

    The truth is that America has now had two different governmental systems: One without a national-security apparatus and one with it. It seems to me that it's a no-brainer as to who was right and which system was better in terms of freedom, privacy, peace, prosperity, and harmony.

    Thin_Ice

    This! You should see the faces on people when I try to explain to them that we're not supposed to have an ever present military. They call me unpatriotic and a hater of our verterans. WTF?!?! I try explaining to them we shouldn't have "veterans", that many of the conflicts they were part of should never have happened. Still, I'm the bad guy despite the fact that the country's ideals have drifted so far off course. I'm reluctantly getting more and more used to the deer in the headlights response from people, which is sad.


    El Vaquero

    Calm down, don't get angry, and use the Socratic method with them. The cognitive dissonance will still fight back, but ask them about why we were in Vietnam and Iraq. Lead them to the conclusion that those wars never should have been fought. Unplugging from the matrix is very, very difficult and very, very uncomfortable. You want them to understand your point of view so that it is much harder for them to condemn you for it. You are dealing with deeply ingrained cultural values that they have never questioned.

    And be nice to the troops. Most of them were duped into believing that they were doing good. You want them to turn on their masters if their masters turn on us.

    q99x2

    There is no America. There's parts of the globe that are labeled United States but the Banks and Corporations have more money and power than nations. They control the land mass that people refer to as America. They control the military that wears American uniforms and they control the nuclear weapons that used to be American weapons. That is why nuclear weapons can be removed from the US without prosecution or military intervention. Deal with it bitchez.

    Chupacabra-322

    The biggest dilemma facing today's younger Generation is the lack of a point of reference. 911 & other False Flag / PsyOp's have diluted their minds full of lies & deception.

    A former KGB Agent interviewed by G. Edward Griffen explained that for a propaganda campaign to be truly effective it has to cross over generations or be "Generational."

    We"re well into the second decade of the biggest PsyOp ever conducted over the masses on a Global Scale, 911. The Social Engineers / Revisionists have been very busy rewriting history.

    "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the future controls the past."
    -George Orwell.

    Fun Facts

    The mightiest nation on earth is run exclusively for the benefit of the mightiest banks on earth.

    Too big to fail, too big to bail, too big to jail.

    The politico are the puppet class.

    The people [at the very bottom of the pyramid] are the serf class with no money, no voice, no power.

    All as intended. Follow the money. Read the protocols for more detail.

    Pitiful

    If it were so easy. Unfortunately there are people who want control, for who knows what reason. I always wondered myself why anyone would want more than they need but I have never been able to come up with a clear answer that makes any logical sense. I can give a prime example: I had a friend in college who was very wealthy and frugal, so frugal they went to a community college with me. He was always telling me he needed more money (he already had an eight figure stash) and one day I asked him why he needed more. The only response he could come up with was: Becuase I want it. Again, I asked what for and he couldn't ever come up with a reasonable explanation other than he wanted it. I don't know about anyone else here but I can say for sure that if I was able to scrounge seven figures in my savings, I would be done saving with no need for any more. But I'm a simple, realistic person and I would expect that my children (not that I will ever have any) pave their own road like I did and I would leave nothing for them or anyone else and expect them to do the same. My money will all be spent and recycled back into the economy when I'm gone. There is no use for it after death. I'm a firm believer that if you can't survive on your own, you don't deserve to survive at all. The animals have already figured this out and humans knew it at one point to. Leave the weak to die or be dragged down with them.

    If I ever had the opportunity to ask one of the banksters who has some "end-game" plan for power and control over others I would only have one question: How is that going to improve your life and why would you do that anyway? You already have everything you could possibly need for the next 100 generations of your family. What is the fucking point?

    TacticalZen

    We are Rome and will follow their pattern of decline, although vastly accelerated given our modern communications and banking.

    Herdee

    Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a former Treasury Official in Ronald Reagan's Administration puts it pretty bluntly in what he's telling Americans.Americans reading this need to wake up to what a right wing neo-fascist government is doing to their society.

    http://thenewsdoctors.com/can-evil-be-defeated-dr-paul-craig-roberts/

    All religious Americans especially need to pay heed to his insights.It's no joke,it's what's happening right now.Can evil be defeated?The founding fathers warned you about it.

    Amish Hacker

    The MIC will always need a credible boogeyman to justify its existence. For years this role was played by the Soviet Union. We were told to be afraid of commies in Moscow, in the State Department, in Hollywood, and under every bed. Then, suddenly, came the end of Ivan, and the MIC was threatened with irrelevance, even dissolution. We the People were beginning to wonder aloud about a "peace dividend." Obviously, this could not be allowed.

    The MIC solution was to replace the Soviet menace with the terrorist menace. Really, you have to admire the psychopathic brilliance of this move, since terrorism is a conceptual boogeyman that will never expire or be deposed. Multiple, ongoing wars are now our new normal, and saddest of all, we seem to be getting used to it.

    Jack Burton

    This post somehow brings to mind a High School Class Reunion I attented 5 years ago. We are all old enough now to have been set in our careers for 30 years. So when you talk to people you can get a good insight into how they all made their livings after High School. My town School was small, my class was 145 students.

    What amazed me was what we all ended up talking about. It was the Military. Because as Americans THIS was the common bond we men share. Over half of the men there were veterans, me included, but even more than that, there was our lives after military service, and those who went direct to college. The college kids grew up and from those I talked to, there we many who work for the big defense industries in the Minneapolis Metro Area. Plus we had students who went west and worked for giant defense industries out there. Our conversations revolved around missiles, torpedoes, radars, air craft and high explosives. I met a class mate who designed the explosives for Bunker Busters and other High Energy weapons. One class mate helped build the guidance for the type of torpedoes my ship used. One class mate knew the type of detection gear I operated in the Navy, as his father designed much of it. On and On it went.

    By the end of the night, it seems half of our class was employed in military design and construction, the other half of average guys were all vets. Yes, Middle America, out where I live, is a totally militarized entity. It really hit home when you talk to a group you have known all your life.

    Monetas

    If we ever had an Empire .... it was a Moral Empire .... and it needs to be regained, improved and expanded .... it's called American Exceptionalism .... and I'm not impressed with the pretenders to our throne .... nor their bootlicking lackeys .... a bunch of chickens .... cackling in the Barnyard of Life !

    [May 19, 2015] Paul Krugman Errors and Lies

    May 18, 2015 | Economist's View

    Paul Krugman: Errors and Lies "The Iraq war wasn't an innocent mistake":

    Errors and Lies, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Surprise! It turns out that there's something to be said for having the brother of a failed president make his own run for the White House. Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago

    The Iraq war wasn't an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.

    This was, in short, a war the White House wanted, and all of the supposed mistakes that, as Jeb puts it, "were made" by someone unnamed actually flowed from this underlying desire.

    Now, you can understand why many political and media figures would prefer not to talk about any of this. Some of them may have fallen for the obvious lies, which doesn't say much about their judgment. More, I suspect, were complicit: they realized that the official case for war was a pretext, but had their own reasons for wanting a war, or, alternatively, allowed themselves to be intimidated into going along.

    On top of these personal motives, our news media in general have a hard time coping with policy dishonesty. Reporters are reluctant to call politicians on their lies, even when these involve mundane issues like budget numbers, for fear of seeming partisan. In fact, the bigger the lie, the clearer it is that major political figures are engaged in outright fraud, the more hesitant the reporting. And it doesn't get much bigger - indeed, more or less criminal - than lying America into war.

    But truth matters, and not just because those who refuse to learn from history are doomed in some general sense to repeat it. The campaign of lies that took us into Iraq was recent enough that it's still important to hold the guilty individuals accountable. Never mind Jeb Bush's verbal stumbles. Think, instead, about his foreign-policy team, led by people who were directly involved in concocting a false case for war.

    So let's get the Iraq story right. Yes, from a national point of view the invasion was a mistake. But (with apologies to Talleyrand) it was worse than a mistake, it was a crime.

    pgl said

    George W. Bush and Dick Cheney knew all along what the real deal in Iraq was when they went in. General Zinni knew too and he said this would be a disaster. Bush pretends he listened to his generals. Really> Zinni warned us not to go in back in 2002. So yea - Jeb and his advisers would have invaded knowing what we know today as they knew all of this back then. But hey - it worked to get Bush-Cheney reelected in 2004!

    ilsm said in reply to pgl

    Most of the generals (I was in the business of buying) saw Iraq as business development, a fine little war to get the budgets up.

    It has been fine at getting the budgets up.

    The GOP move to raise the pentagon limits over the sequestration depends on more crazed activity in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. While rattling the saber at Russia over the CIA's mistake in Kiev. Since 2003 I tried to (really retire, I was double dipping) retire twice both times my phone rings with more "work" at great compensation.

    mulp said in reply to pgl

    We the People who vote in all elections voted to invade Iraq in 2002.

    The declaration of war if Bush wants it was voted on before the 2002 november election. Almost five hundred members of Congress were subject to being popular referendum on that vote and on their votes for job killing tax cuts.

    Republicans won on the basis of their wars and job killing tax cuts, and Democrats lost 2 Senate seats and 8 House seats.

    We the People who vote in all elections love the free lunch economics and politics of the neoconservative Republican party.

    It is neoconservative because conservatives decided to merge the hatred of taxes with the "spend" of liberal "tax and spend". Redefine American Exceptionalism and now you have free lunch tax cuts that pay for more spending on entitlements and wars that generate a profit.

    We the People who vote in all elections seem to be in the "you can fool some of the people all the time" They are the free lunch economic conservatives who believe that sacrifice is what happens to other people. If they suffer, its the fault of liberals. But they know that they can gain disproportionate power by being We the People who vote in every election.

    Opponents are those who vote only for dictator every 4 years, without realizing that neoconservatives call the president dictator to rally their faithful to vote in every damn election.

    The verdict on the Iraq mistake was rendered November 2002, not in 2004, and the verdict was We the People who care about the US voted to support the stupid Iraq war. Those who opposed the war did not give a damn and did not vote in 2002, believing the power is in the dictator.

    DrDick said in reply to mulp
    What do you mean, "we", Kimosabe? I have never voted for a Republican and have opposed ever war or military intervention war since Vietnam. A large number of people did so, but those who did not and vocally opposed it share none of the blame.

    cawley said in reply to DrDick

    Ditto.

    Plus many of the people who did vote, did so on the basis of lies.

    PK is absolutely correct that shrub, et al, knew that it was a lie. Even though many of us that followed the AUMF and stove piping closely knew that a lot of it was fabricated, for John Q Public depending on network news it was all "he said, she said", suitcase dirty bombs and crop dusters spreading anthrax.

    When the electorate is being intentionally mislead by the Administration - from the President, down - and the news media, it's a little disingenuous to drop all the blame on the voters.

    Julio said in reply to DrDick

    Not the blame, perhaps, but some of the responsibility.
    We live in a representative republic. These things are done in our collective name.
    pgl said in reply to mulp
    Yea - did we vote to train wreck Social Security in 2004? Don't think so. BTW - I did vote in 2002 for people who were opposed to the war.
    ilsm said
    Jeb was caught speaking in the open things he was supposed to say only in closed sessions with war profiteer PAC's and other exploiters of the 90%.aff. He's already made a Mitten gaff.

    PNAC is alive and well, undercover in the GOP.

    They want to keep Iraq whole, but the Saudi royals do not want Iraq run by Shiites who are 67% of the population. hey need to resurrect Saddam!T

    ISIS goes nowhere without Sunni support, Ramadi falling is example.

    W and PNAC were invading Iraq for the money, oil was the least corrupt motive, the most corrupt is the trillions squandered since 2003. Trillions that were taken away from US productivity and kill social security.

    The matter of US casualties is another grave sin .

    mulp said in reply to ilsm
    We the People who vote in all elections have the power, not PNAC.
    ilsm said in reply to mulp
    "We the MISLEAD People who vote,"

    Faux News, we the mislead, aggravated to hate those people and misbelieve war mongering experts.

    JohnH said
    Twenty-twenty hindsight is often pretty good. But it's hard to understand what prompted Krugman to write this piece now. Maybe he's trying the "get" Jeb (a positive.) Or maybe he's trying to help clear a space for Hillary to "get it," a decade too late, and offer her excuses and mea culpas. In any case, the last thing we need is another President with such poor judgement.

    What's particularly disturbing about the Iraq experience is that almost no lessons have been learned, other than perhaps it's better to use drones instead of boots on the ground for fighting pointless and futile foreign wars. Pelosi won a mandate in 2006 to end the war but never challenged Bush on it. Harry Reid even held "surge" hearings on 9-11-2007, the best day possible to garner support for yet more war.

    What kept USA from attacking Iran was not Democrats in Congress or public opposition. Rather, it was a report issued by US intelligence services, a consensus opinion that Iran had no nuclear program. They had learned lessons from being manipulated on Iraq intelligence and wanted restore their credibility.

    Moreover, the Iraq experience in no way prevented Obama from pursuing the destruction and resulting chaos in Afghanistan or Libya, or from thwarting self-determination with coups in Haiti, Honduras, and Paraguay.

    What Krugman is missing here is the urgent need for opinion leaders to exercise critical thinking and judgement before these tragedies occur. By 2007, Bush was known to be a notorious liar. Nonetheless, few questioned his intention to attack Iran, even with the consensus report of the intelligence services that destroyed the pretexts for it.

    By January, 2003 I had compiled enough evidence of Bush's phony intelligence to come out publicly against the war, much to the dismay and horror of most people, including my bosses. All it took was looking for the right information and connecting the dots. My point here is not to be self congratulatory, but to show that it can be done.

    What really needs discussion now is how to get American people to see through the stream of BS emanating from Washington and their megaphones in the news media and to use their powers of critical thinking and judgement and to preserve their personal integrity by acting to stop stupid wars and promote the common good. That could start at Ivy League schools like the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where Krugman teaches.

    pgl said in reply to JohnH
    I guess you are the most ignorant person ever. Krugman was against this stupid war in 2002. And cover for Hillary who voted to support Bush for whatever reasoning she now gives.

    Krugman is not leading Hillary campaign. But you still have a perfect record - for getting everything wrong.

    pgl said in reply to JohnH
    I guess the Google Master classes taught for Chicken Hawks like you are designed to filter out anything that does not support the Chicken Hawk agenda. Krugman was called the Shrill One back in 2002 for his tirades against Bush Cheney. But maybe you don't know this as you are: (1) stupid; and (2) trained by the Bush-Cheney Chicken Hawk school of neo-McCarthyism.

    Say hello to Scooter Libby for us!

    JohnH said in reply to pgl
    You insist on my misinterpreting my point: more important than debating Iraq is to make sure that we don't allow ourselves to be misled again. Pulling out the long knives on Iraq means nothing if no lessons are learned about the folly of most wars. And so far none have been learned, at least in the Obama administration. One of the most important places for this to happen is at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, which would be more aptly named the Wilson School for Warmongers.

    pgl said in reply to JohnH
    "By January, 2003 I had compiled enough evidence of Bush's phony intelligence to come out publicly against the war, much to the dismay and horror of most people, including my bosses. All it took was looking for the right information and connecting the dots. My point here is not to be self congratulatory, but to show that it can be done."

    Your bosses? Who gave you a job? A lot of people had tons of evidence to come out against the war by then. One was General Anthony Zinni whose opposition to the planned invasion was made loud and clear.

    Why don't you share with us a link to the evidence you made public? That's right - I'm calling you on this as you have lied so many times before. But please prove me wrong on this one.

    JohnH said in reply to pgl
    One piece that confirmed my thinking was a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) Memorandum. It was published on Common Dreams. The link is no longer available but its message is summarized but not quoted verbatim at many other sources.

    Second Piece: "In October 1998, just before Saddam kicked U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq [actually, they were withdrawn], the IAEA laid out a case opposite of Mr. Bush's Sept. 7 [2002] declaration: "There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance," IAEA Director-General Mohammed Elbaradei wrote in a report to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. (.http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020927-500715.htm.).

    pgl said in reply to JohnH
    There was tons of the counter information. A lot of it was put up by people like Paul Krugman. No one paying attention in early 2003 believed a word from Bush or Cheney.
    don said
    My own take - an important cause of the war was the fact that one of Saddam's minions tried to kill W's father after he had left office. It was pretty obvious to me that the war was brought on by pretexts, and especially that any ties to 9-11 were spurious. (I recall especially a snippet from a broadcast by a British news agency, which I overheard as I was walking around the ellipse across from the White House. The announcer was saying "

    and our polls indicate that the strategy appears to be working 80% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the events of 9/11 ") Colin Powell, to his credit, was such a poor liar that it was blatantly obvious. From accounts I read of Saddam's behavior as the invasion became imminent, I am reminded of a scene in Robocop, where Saddam would be in the position of the hapless employee who is asked to pick up a gun and threaten a prototype robot cop, which then malfunctions (not that Saddam has any pity coming). Yet Hillary voted for the war.

    The disconnect between truth and news seems to have grown during and since W's time, or perhaps it is just things I noticed. Bush shirks Vietnam, yet the issue goes against veteran Kerry (who is attacked by the 'swift boats' propaganda). Repeal of the 'death tax' gets popular support. Despite almost $4 trillion in official reserves, China is not, and has never been a currency manipulator

    JohnH said in reply to don
    Kerry left everything he learned in Vietnam on the altar of political opportunism. Now he's just another member of the committee of warmongers running foreign policy
    pgl said in reply to JohnH
    You could not carry Kerry's shoes when he in the navy. You can't carry them now. Stick to what you know - shilling for right wing liars like Cameron.
    Robert Hill said
    I wonder what the USA and UK arms industry would do if world peace were suddenly to break out.

    [May 18, 2015] Dueck's "Conservative Realism" and The Obama Doctrine

    This is a Neoconservatism, not so much realism...
    May 18, 2015 | The American Conservative
    Frank Hoffman reviews Colin Dueck's The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today:

    The author proposes an alternative strategy called conservative American realism. It is designed to appeal to the center mass of today's conservatives by triangulating the three factions. This strategy seeks to counter the perceived retrenchment of the last six years, and explicitly embraces American primacy. Primacy, to Dueck, is "a circumstance and an interest, not a strategy." Conservative American realism emphasizes reassuring allies that the United States seeks to remain a key player in the international arena by expanding forward presence and bolstering deterrence. Dueck details U.S. fundamental interests, and defines the specific adversaries that must be countered. These include state competitors (China and Russia), rogue states like North Korea, and jihadi terrorists. To deal with the latter, the author chides Mr. Obama for half-hearted approaches, and suggests these implacable foes require solutions that are "appropriately Carthaginian." One wonders how far Dueck would really take that historical analogy - enslave Muslims or salt their lands?

    Based on the description of Dueck's "conservative American realism" in the review, it is debatable whether the proposed strategy qualifies as either conservative or realist. It would appear to commit the U.S. in too many places to bear burdens that our allies and clients should be taking on for themselves, and it does so out of a misguided concern that the U.S. has not been activist enough during the Obama presidency. I don't know what Dueck means by "appropriately Carthaginian" solutions, but the implication that the U.S. should be seeking to ruin and dominate other nations in such a fashion is disturbing in itself. It is not at all clear that the U.S. should be doing more "reassure" allies and clients. Most of them are already too dependent on the U.S. for their security and should be expected to do more to provide for themselves, and their endless demands for "reassurance" are attempts to get the U.S. to give them extra support they don't need or that the U.S. has no interest in giving them. The U.S. currently has too many commitments overseas and hardly needs to expand the presence that it already has.

    Dueck places great emphasis on applying coercive measures against various states, but there doesn't seem to much attention paid to the costs that applying these measures can have on the U.S. and its allies. Imposing costs and intensifying pressure on other states aren't ends in themselves, and they have proven time and again to be ineffective tools for changing the behavior of recalcitrant and hostile regimes. Coercive measures can backfire and can have effects that their advocates don't anticipate, and they can provoke the targeted state to pursue more hostile and dangerous policies than there would have been otherwise. Dueck's interest in relying on coercive measures seems to be little more than a reaction against the perceived laxity of the Obama administration, which has itself been too reliant on imposing sanctions as an all-purpose response to the undesirable behavior of other governments. If Obama failed to apply enough pressure, Dueck's thinking appears to be that more pressure must be the answer. Missing from all of this is any explanation of why the U.S. needs to be cajoling and pressuring these states in the first place. To what end?

    Dueck also wants to throw more money at the military by insisting on setting the military budget at 4% of GDP. As Hoffman notes, tying the military budget to an arbitrary figure like this represents the absence of strategy:

    The basis for this amount appears aspirational, and I have previously written on why such general goals are astrategic if not tied to specific requirements and threats. More importantly, details about how he would employ the additional $170 billion per year in defense spending are lacking.

    If one wants huge increases in military spending and the pursuit of pointlessly confrontational policies against both major authoritarian powers, Dueck's book would appear to offer the desired guidance. What it has to do with either realism or conservatism remains a mystery.

    [May 18, 2015] New Military Spending Bill Expands Empire But Forbids Debate on War

    May 17, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

    On Friday the House passed a massive National Defense Authorization for 2016 that will guarantee US involvement in more wars and overseas interventions for years to come. The Republican majority resorted to trickery to evade the meager spending limitations imposed by the 2011 budget control act – limitations that did not, as often reported, cut military spending but only slowed its growth.

    But not even slower growth is enough when you have an empire to maintain worldwide, so the House majority slipped into the military spending bill an extra $89 billion for an emergency war fund. Such "emergency" spending is not addressed in the growth caps placed on the military under the 2011 budget control act. It is a loophole filled by Congress with Fed-printed money.

    Ironically, a good deal of this "emergency" money will go to President Obama's war on ISIS even though neither the House nor the Senate has debated – let alone authorized – that war! Although House leadership allowed 135 amendments to the defense bill – with many on minor issues like regulations on fire hoses – an effort by a small group of Representatives to introduce an amendment to debate the current US war in Iraq and Syria was rejected.

    While squashing debate on ongoing but unauthorized wars, the bill also pushed the administration toward new conflicts. Despite the president's unwise decision to send hundreds of US military trainers to Ukraine, a move that threatens the current shaky ceasefire, Congress wants even more US involvement in Ukraine's internal affairs. The military spending bill included $300 million to directly arm the Ukrainian government even as Ukrainian leaders threaten to again attack the breakaway regions in the east. Does Congress really think US-supplied weapons killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine is a good idea?

    The defense authorization bill also seeks to send yet more weapons into Iraq. This time the House wants to send weapons directly to the Kurds in northern Iraq without the approval of the Iraqi government. Although these weapons are supposed to be used to fight ISIS, we know from too many prior examples that they often find their way into the hands of the very people we are fighting. Also, arming an ethnic group seeking to break away from Baghdad and form a new state is an unwise infringement of the sovereignty of Iraq. It is one thing to endorse the idea of secession as a way to reduce the possibility of violence, but it is quite something else to arm one side and implicitly back its demands.

    While the neocons keep pushing the lie that the military budget is shrinking under the Obama Administration, the opposite is true. As the CATO Institute pointed out recently, President George W. Bush's average defense budget was $601 billion, while during the Obama administration the average has been $687 billion. This bill is just another example of this unhealthy trend.

    Next year's military spending plan keeps the US on track toward destruction of its economy at home while provoking new resentment over US interventionism overseas. It is a recipe for disaster. Let's hope for either a presidential veto, or that on final passage Congress rejects this bad bill.


    Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
    Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute

    [May 18, 2015] Open thread for night owls The empire strikes back

    May 17, 2015 | | Daily Kos News

    Hersh's latest is a ten thousand-word piece in the London Review of Books in which he explains that everything the government told you about the killing of Osama bin Laden is a lie. A few of the highlights are: (1) The government of Pakistan knew exactly where Bin Laden was, (2) Saudi Arabia was paying Pakistan to keep Bin Laden in his safe house compound, (3) America found out where Bin Laden was not by tracking an Al Qaeda courier or by torturing people, but because a disgruntled Pakistani intelligence officer wanted to claim the $25 million dollar reward, (4) America was going to make it appear as if Bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike, but switched courses at the last minute after one of the SEAL's helicopters crashed, (5) The American and Pakistani government colluded to lie to the public about how Bin Laden was found and killed.

    Predictably, many in the media have rushed to the government's defense. Hersh's anonymous sources rankle them. The story itself, which is so far removed from the official narrative and implicates corruption at the highest levels of government, has a dreamlike aura. Never mind that the account the government gave has been deteriorating from the start, and the glaring contradictions between the official versions as related by the Pakistani and American governments. Put aside the fact that someone else using different sources reported a version of Hersh's story in 2011, or that NBC, within a day, had already confirmed a key point of Hersh's narrative. If Hersh's critics actually did submerge themselves in a detailed re-reporting of his allegations, the process would subjugate the American ruling class to deeper scrutiny than usual. [...]

    [May 17, 2015]US Empire: American Exceptionalism Is No Shining City On a Hill

    May 15, 2015 | informationclearinghouse.info

    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.

    [May 17, 2015] The Emperor Lies

    If Hersh is right, the SEALs murdered an unarmed and powerless invalid, held by Pakistan, under orders from Obama when they could have brought him to trial. Seymour Hersh essentially stated the Obama Administration's version of the killing of Osama bin Laden was like something out of Wag The Dog -- totally fabricated.
    May 16, 2015 "Information Clearing House"

    Four years ago the late great journalist Alexander Cockburn wrote, "Alas, the actual story of 'our history' is an unrelenting ability to lie about everything, while simultaneously claiming America's superior moral worth."

    It so happens he wrote that sentence in closing a column on President Obama's elaborate story about the Navy SEALs' May 2, 2011, assassination of Osama bin Laden. Cockburn wrote,

    There was scarcely a sentence in the President's Sunday night address, or in the subsequent briefing by John Brennan, his chief counter-terrorism coordinator, that has not been subsequently retracted by CIA director Leon Panetta or the White House press spokesman, Jay Carney, or by various documentary records.

    The official "back story" released Sunday night by Obama is that US intelligence learned of the Abbottabad compound only last August and spent the following months watching the place, following Osama's trusted couriers and concluding that it was highly likely, though not certain, that Osama was there. Cockburn's column was based on reporting that undermined key details of the official narrative. For example:

    This is bunk. The three-storey house has been a well-known feature of Abbottabad. Shaukat Qadir, a well-connected Pakistan Army officer, reported to CounterPunch from Pakistan: "For the record, this house has been under ISI [Pakistani intelligence] surveillance while it was under construction."

    Now renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has published a long article in the London Review of Books, "The Killing of Osama bin Laden," that appears further to demolish Obama's politically motivated tale. Hersh, whose major scoops include the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, opens his piece:

    Hersh says that his "major source … is a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad." Use of an unnamed source has provoked criticism of Hersh, but one detects a double standard. Many good scoops have depended on unnamed sources, and Hersh says he confirmed what his major source told him. Often that's the only way to get sensitive information about what the government is up to.

    The article also has set off a firestorm about its particulars, with the administration, other members of the war party, and media cheerleaders dismissing Hersh's "conspiracy theory." But others defend Hersh. The New York Times' Carlotta Gall, author of The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan 2001-2004, while not accepting every detail, writes:

    Among other things, Hersh contends that the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Pakistan's military-intelligence agency, held Bin Laden prisoner in the Abbottabad compound since 2006, and that "the CIA did not learn of Bin Laden's whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the U.S."

    On this count, my own reporting tracks with Hersh's.

    Gall points out that the existence of the informant has been confirmed by NBC and a newspaper in Pakistan: "This development is hugely important-it is the strongest indication to date that the Pakistani military knew of Bin Laden's whereabouts...."

    Hersh's investigation is also important regarding Saudi Arabia and its connection with bin Laden, who was a Saudi. Is this why bin Laden couldn't be taken alive?

    If Hersh is right, the SEALs murdered an unarmed and powerless invalid, held by Pakistan, under orders from Obama when they could have brought him to trial.

    What's most important is this: if one understands the danger inherent in government secrecy, one must oppose the empire. Politicians can lie about domestic matters, but foreign intervention offers irresistible opportunities for really big lies-the kind that get people killed. Do people still need to be persuaded about that?

    If for no other reason than transparency, the empire must be liquidated.

    [May 17, 2015]U.S. Wakes Up to New (Silk) World Order

    Neocons got what they saw -- teeth of Chinese dragon...
    May 16, 2015 | Information Clearing House
    The real Masters of the Universe in the U.S. are no weathermen, but arguably they're starting to feel which way the wind is blowing.

    History may signal it all started with this week's trip to Sochi, led by their paperboy, Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Foreign Minister Lavrov and then with President Putin.

    Arguably, a visual reminder clicked the bells for the real Masters of the Universe; the PLA marching in Red Square on Victory Day side by side with the Russian military. Even under the Stalin-Mao alliance Chinese troops did not march in Red Square.

    As a screamer, that rivals the Russian S-500 missile systems. Adults in the Beltway may have done the math and concluded Moscow and Beijing may be on the verge of signing secret military protocols as in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The new game of musical chairs is surely bound to leave Eurasian-obsessed Dr. Zbig "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski apoplectic.

    And suddenly, instead of relentless demonization and NATO spewing out "Russian aggression!" every ten seconds, we have Kerry saying that respecting Minsk-2 is the only way out in Ukraine, and that he would strongly caution vassal Poroshenko against his bragging on bombing Donetsk airport and environs back into Ukrainian "democracy".

    ... ... ....

    Thus what was really discussed – but not leaked – out of Sochi is how the Obama administration can get some sort of face-saving exit out of the Russian western borderland geopolitical mess it invited on itself in the first place.

    About those missiles…

    Ukraine is a failed state now fully converted into an IMF colony. The EU will never accept it as a member, or pay its astronomic bills. The real action, for both Washington and Moscow, is Iran. Not accidentally, the extremely dodgy Wendy Sherman - who has been the chief U.S. negotiator in the P5+1 nuclear talks - was part of Kerry's entourage. A comprehensive deal with Iran cannot be clinched without Moscow's essential collaboration on everything from the disposal of spent nuclear fuel to the swift end of UN sanctions.

    ... ... ...

    The real Masters of the Universe may have also noted the very close discussions between Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the deputy chairman of the Central Military Council of China, Gen. Fan Changlong. Russia and China will conduct naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Japan and will give top priority to their common position regarding U.S. global missile defense.

    There's the not-so-negligible matter of the Pentagon "discovering" China has up to 60 silo-based ICBMs – the CSS-4 – capable of targeting almost the whole U.S., except Florida.

    And last but not least, there's the Russian rollout of the ultra-sophisticated S-500 defensive missile system - which will conclusively protect Russia from a U.S. Prompt Global Strike (PGS). Each S-500 missile can intercept ten ICBMs at speeds up to 15,480 miles an hour, altitudes of 115 miles and horizontal range of 2,174 miles. Moscow insists the system will only be operational in 2017. If Russia is able to rollout 10,000 S-500 missiles, they can intercept 100,000 American ICBMs by the time the U.S. has a new White House tenant.

    [May 15, 2015] Our Next Mideast War - Syria by Patrick J. Buchanan

    15th May 2015 | The Burning Platform | 1 comment | Economy |Social Issues | Iran, Pat Buchanan, Syria, war
    Our Next Mideast War - Syria

    Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

    Jeb Bush has spent the week debating with himself over whether he would have started the war his brother launched on Iraq.

    When he figures it out, hopefully, our would-be president will focus in on the campaign to drag us into yet another Mideast war - this time to bring down Bashar Assad's regime in Syria.

    While few would mourn the passing of the Assad dynasty, there is a problem: If Assad falls, a slaughter of Christians will follow and the battle for control of Damascus will be between the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, the Nusra Front, and the crazed terrorists of the Islamic State.

    Victory for either would be a disaster for America.

    Where is the evidence of an unholy alliance to bring this about?

    Turkey, which turned a blind eye to ISIS volunteers slipping into Syria, has aided the Nusra Front in setting up its own capital in Idlib, near the Turkish border, to rival the ISIS capital of Raqqa.

    In the fall of Idlib, said Bashar Assad, "the main factor was the huge support that came through Turkey; logistic support, and military support, and of course financial support that came through Saudi Arabia and Qatar."

    Why would Turks, Saudis and Qataris collude with Sunni jihadists?

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan detests Assad. The Saudis and Gulf Arabs are terrified of Shiite Iran and see any ally of Tehran, such as Assad, as their mortal enemy.

    This also explains the seven weeks of savage Saudi bombing of the Houthi rebels, who dumped over a U.S.-Saudi puppet in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, then seized the second and third cities of Taiz and Aden.

    But while the Houthis bear no love for us, they have been fighting al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Thus, the Saudi bombing has given AQAP, the most dangerous terrorist foe we face, freedom to create sanctuaries and liberate hundreds of fellow terrorists from prison.

    The Israelis seem to be in on the game as well. While they have taken in rebels wounded on the Golan Heights and returned them to their units, there are reports of Israel aiding the Nusra Front with intelligence and even air strikes.

    This week, an Israeli official bluntly warned that Hezbollah has amassed 100,000 short-range rockets capable of striking northern Israel, thousands of which could hit Tel Aviv. The rockets are said to be hidden in Shiite villages in southern Lebanon.

    Israel is preparing, writes The New York Times' Isabel Kershner, "for what it sees as an almost inevitable next battle with Hezbollah."

    As Hezbollah has been the most effective fighting ally of Assad, an Israeli war on Hezbollah could help bring Assad down.

    But, again, who rises if Assad falls? And who else, besides Christians and Alawites, starts digging their graves?

    As one might expect, Sen. Lindsey Graham is all in. Late in April, he declared, "Assad has to go. … We're going to have to send some of our soldiers back into the Middle East."

    Graham is willing to commit 10,000 U.S. ground troops.

    "I would integrate our forces within a regional army. There is no other way to defend this nation than some of us being on the ground over there doing the fighting."

    Wednesday, The Washington Post laid out the game plan for war on Syria. While we cannot create a NATO with kings, emirs, sheiks, and sultans, says the Post,

    "[T]here is a way that Mr. Obama could serve both the U.S. interests and those of the Gulf allies: by attacking the Middle East's most toxic, and destabilizing force, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Syria's dictatorship is Iran's closest ally in the region, and its barbarity opened the way for the rise of the Islamic State. Recently, it has suffered battlefield reverses, in part because of increased Gulf aid to rebel forces.

    "If Mr. Obama were to … create safe zones in northern and southern Syria for the rebels, the balance could be tipped against Damascus and Tehran - and U.S. allies would have tangible reason to recommit to U.S. leadership."

    Consider what is being recommended here.

    The Post wants Obama to bomb a Syrian nation that has not attacked us, without congressional authorization - to aid rebels whose most effective fighters are al-Qaida and ISIS terrorists.

    And we're to fight this war - to nullify ultra-rich but unhappy Gulf Arabs?

    Obama must also "do more about Iranian aggression," says the Post.

    But against whom is Iran committing aggression?

    In Syria, Iran is backing a regime we recognized until a few years ago, that is under attack by terrorist rebels we detest. In Iraq, Iran is backing the government we support, against ISIS rebels we detest.

    Bottom line: A U.S. attack on Syria is being pushed by the War Party to propel us into a confrontation with Iran, and thereby torpedo any U.S. nuclear deal with Iran.

    Cui bono? For whose benefit?

    [May 15, 2015] JEB & JR.

    The Burning Platform

    [May 14, 2015]War-Crazed Western Propaganda Machine Rages at Its Growing Insignificance

    russia-insider.com

    Atlantic Alliance media apparatus lashing out like a dying demon at the reality of being successfully confronted by the truth

    This article originally appeared at CounterPunch

    In mid-April, hundreds of U.S. paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade arrived in western Ukraine to provide training for government troops. The UK had already started its troop-training mission there, sending 75 troops to Kiev in March. [1] On April 14, the Canadian government announced that Canada will send 200 soldiers to Kiev, contributing to a military build-up on Russia's doorstep while a fragile truce is in place in eastern Ukraine.

    The Russian Embassy in Ottawa called the decision "counterproductive and deplorable," stating that the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine have "called for enhanced intra-Ukrainian political dialogue," as agreed upon in the Minsk-2 accords in February, and that it would be "much more reasonable to concentrate on diplomacy…" [2]

    That viewpoint is shared by many, especially in Europe where few are eager for a "hot" war in the region. Nor are most people enamoured of the fact that more billions are being spent on a new arms-race, while "austerity" is preached by the 1 Per Cent.

    But in the Anglo-American corridors of power (also called the Atlantic Alliance), such views are seen to be the result of diabolical propaganda spread through the Internet by Russia's "secret army." On April 15, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Ed Royce (R-Calif.), held a hearing entitled "Confronting Russia's Weaponization of Information," with Royce claiming that Russian propaganda threatens "to destabilize NATO members, impacting our security commitments." [3]

    The Committee heard from three witnesses: Elizabeth Wahl, former anchor for the news agency Russia Today (RT) who gained her moment of fame by resigning on camera in March 2014; Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute (a right-wing UK think-tank); and Helle C. Dale, Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy at The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing U.S. think-tank. [4] The Foreign Affairs Committee website contains video clips of the first two witnesses – well worth watching if you enjoy Orwellian rhetoric passionately delivered.

    The day before the hearing, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Royce wrote,

    "Vladimir Putin has a secret army. It's an army of thousands of 'trolls,' TV anchors and others who work day and night spreading anti-American propaganda on the Internet, airwaves and newspapers throughout Russia and the world. Mr. Putin uses these misinformation warriors to destabilize his neighbors and control parts of Ukraine. This force may be more dangerous than any military, because no artillery can stop their lies from spreading and undermining U.S. security interests in Europe." [5]

    In her formal (printed) submission, Ms. Wahl referred to the Internet's "population of paranoid skeptics" and wrote: "The paranoia extends to believing that Western media is not only complicit, but instrumental in ensuring Western dominance."

    Helle C. Dale warned of "a new kind of propaganda, aimed at sowing doubt about anything having to do with the U.S. and the West, and in a number of countries, unsophisticated audiences are eating it up."

    Peter Pomerantsev claimed that Russia's goal is "to trash the information space with so much disinformation so that a conversation based on actual facts would become impossible." He added, "Throughout Europe conspiracy theories are on the rise and in the US trust in the media has declined. The Kremlin may not always have initiated these phenomena, but it is fanning them…Democracies are singularly ill equipped to deal with this type of warfare. For all of its military might, NATO cannot fight an information war. The openness of democracies, the very quality that is meant to make them more competitive than authoritarian models, becomes a vulnerability."

    Chairman Royce called for "clarifying" the mission of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. federal agency whose networks include Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti). [6]

    The BBG is apparently in disarray. According to Helle Dale's submission, on March 4, 2015, Andrew Lack, the newly hired CEO of BBG's International Broadcasting, left the position after only six weeks on the job. On April 7, the Director of Voice of America, David Ensor, announced that he was leaving.

    Andrew Lack was formerly the president of NBC News. As Paul Craig Roberts has recently noted, Lack's first official statement as CEO of the BBG

    "compared RT, Russia Today, the Russian-based news agency, with the Islamic State and Boko Haram. In other words, Mr. Lack brands RT as a terrorist organization. The purpose of Andrew Lack's absurd comparison is to strike fear at RT that the news organization will be expelled from US media markets. Andrew Lack's message to RT is: 'lie for us or we are going to expel you from our air waves.' The British already did this to Iran's Press TV. In the United States the attack on Internet independent media is proceeding on several fronts." [7]

    Ironically, however, it's likely that one of the biggest threats (especially in Europe) to Anglo-American media credibility about Ukraine and other issues is coming from a very old-fashioned medium – a book.

    Udo Ulfkotte's bestseller Bought Journalists has been a sensation in Germany since its publication last autumn. The journalist and former editor of one of Germany's largest newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, revealed that he was for years secretly on the payroll of the CIA and was spinning the news to favour U.S. interests. Moreover he alleges that some major media are nothing more than propaganda outlets for international think-tanks, intelligence agencies, and corporate high-finance.

    "We're talking about puppets on a string," he says, "journalists who write or say whatever their masters tell them to say or write. If you see how the mainstream media is reporting about the Ukraine conflict and if you know what's really going on, you get the picture. The masters in the background are pushing for war with Russia and western journalists are putting on their helmets." [8]

    In another interview, Ulfkotte said: "The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say…it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe." [9]

    With the credibility of the corporate media tanking, Eric Zuesse recently wrote, "Since Germany is central to the Western Alliance – and especially to the American aristocracy's control over the European Union, over the IMF, over the World Bank, and over NATO – such a turn away from the American Government [narrative] threatens the dominance of America's aristocrats (who control our Government). A breakup of America's [Atlantic] 'Alliance' might be in the offing, if Germans continue to turn away from being just America's richest 'banana republic'." [10]

    No wonder the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on April 15 had such urgent rhetoric, especially from Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute – a London-based international think-tank whose motto is "Prosperity Through Revitalizing Capitalism and Democracy" and whose stated mission is "promoting prosperity through individual liberty, free enterprise and entrepreneurship, character and values."

    At the end of March, Conservative London mayor Boris Johnson (named as a potential successor to David Cameron) helped launch the Legatum Institute's "Vision of Capitalism" speakers' series, whose rallying cry is "It's time for friends of capitalism to fight back." [11] The sponsor of the event was the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), whose membership comprises "more than 500 influential firms, including over 230 private equity and venture capital houses, as well as institutional investors, professional advisers, service providers and international associations." It is not clear whether the BVCA is also sponsoring the Legatum Institute's "Vision of Capitalism" series.

    The Legatum Institute was founded by billionaire Christopher Chandler's Legatum Ltd. – a private investment firm headquartered in Dubai. According to The Legatum Institute's website, its executives and fellows write for an impressive number of major media outlets, including the Washington Post, Slate, the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, New Republic, the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the London Review of Books, the Atlantic, and the Financial Times.

    Nonetheless, the Legatum Institute's Peter Pomeranzev told the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs that "Russia has launched an information war against the West – and we are losing."
    Chairperson Ed Royce noted during the hearing that if certain things are repeated over and over, a "conspiracy theory" takes on momentum and a life of its own.

    Pomeranzev said the Kremlin is "pushing out more conspiracy" and he explained, "What is conspiracy – sort of a linguistic sabotage on the infrastructure of reason. I mean you can't have a reality-based discussion when everything becomes conspiracy. In Russia, the whole discourse is conspiracy. Everything is conspiracy." He added, "Our global order is based on reality-based politics. If that reality base is destroyed, then you can't have international institutions, international dialogue." Lying, he said, "makes a reality-based politics impossible" and he called it "a very insidious trend."

    Apparently, Pomeranzev has forgotten that important October 2004 article by Ron Suskind published in the New York Times Magazine during the second war in Iraq (which, like the first, was based on a widely disseminated lie). Suskind quoted one of George W. Bush's aides (probably Karl Rove): "The aide said that guys like me [journalists, writers, historians] were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality…That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. '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'." [12]

    It's a rather succinct description of Orwellian spin and secrecy in a media-saturated Empire, where discerning the truth becomes ever more difficult.

    That is why people believe someone like Udo Ulfkotte, who is physically ill, says he has only a few years left to live, and told an interviewer, "I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don't like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too…We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war…I don't want this anymore, I'm fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom…" [13]

    Recently, as Mike Whitney has pointed out in CounterPunch (March 10), Germany's newsmagazine Der Spiegel dared to challenge the fabrications of NATO's top commander in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, for spreading "dangerous propaganda" that is misleading the public about Russian "troop advances" and making "flat-out inaccurate statements" about Russian aggression.

    Whitney asks, "Why this sudden willingness to share the truth? It's because they no longer support Washington's policy, that's why. No one in Europe wants the US to arm and train the Ukrainian army. No wants them to deploy 600 paratroopers to Kiev and increase U.S. logistical support. No one wants further escalation, because no wants a war with Russia. It's that simple." [14] Whitney argued that "the real purpose of the Spiegel piece is to warn Washington that EU leaders will not support a policy of military confrontation with Moscow."

    So now we know the reason for the timing of the April 15 U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, "Confronting Russia's Weaponization of Information." Literally while U.S. paratroopers were en route to Kiev, the hawks in Washington (and London) knew it was time to crank up the rhetoric. The three witnesses were most eager to oblige.

    [May 13, 2015] How Russias opposition united to finish Nemtsovs report on Ukraine

    May 13, 2015 | The Guardian


    MaoChengJi -> kolf 13 May 2015 10:37

    note was supported by hundreds of thousands - that is not a coup, but a revolution

    Aside from the fact that in a 40 million people nation 'hundreds of thousands' is very far from a majority, it's the protests that were supported by hundreds of thousands.

    Feb 21 Yanuk signs the agreement with the opposition, negotiated and guaranteed by European politicians. Stipulating early elections, amnesties, rollback of some laws, investigations of the police abuses, etc. It was accepted and signed by the opposition, i.e. those representing these hundreds of thousands you're taking about.

    Had this agreement been implemented, everything would've probably worked out somehow.

    Instead, a few ultra-nationalist militants, a fringe, refuse to accept the agreement. They take over the government. And the opposition politicians play along and become figureheads, puppets. And that's what's been going on there since: militant ultra-nationalist fringe is controlling the regime from the inside, and the US and EU from the outside, supplying them with money, weapons, propaganda, and diplomatic support. What a shame.

    Babeouf 13 May 2015 08:57

    Look Kerry went to see Putin to sell off an unwanted collection of Ukrainian Fascists. Apparently the Fascists had disappointed their US owners. And afterwards the invariable accompaniment of the brush off Kerry phoned Kyiv but didn't stop off on his way home. Today Yats is in Paris and the Choc Soldier is in Germany.

    Their survival now depends on Germany and France. So this sad collection of non entities now have to cut a deal with Putin, on Russia's terms. I 'm not surprised that the US public repudiation of the previous US policy of isolating 'Russia' is not noticed by the Guardian.

    As for the Russian opposition their identification with the 'invader at the Gates' has finished them off for a generation at least.

    entirely pro-government now, apart from one radio station Ekho Moskvy, and one TV station Dozhd

    MaoChengJi -> kolf, 13 May 2015 07:01

    That's precisely NOT entirely. Besides, kommersant is a newspaper, not broadcast media. There are plenty of opposition newspapers. Also, when the government is popular, the media, naturally, reflects that - there's nothing sinister about it. And murdering people is a crime, where they are journalists or not.

    it is rather like the soldiers that have to "resign" before they patriotically "volunteer" in Donbass, when instructed to do so - a mere technicality

    Perhaps. But we don't know that. I understand the suspicion, but not the certainty. Strelkov, in particular, gives the impression of very much anti-government character. A right-wing government opponent. Personally, I see absolutely no reason to believe that he was sent or controlled by the RF government. I'd be surprised.

    The violent takeovers in Donbass were carried out initially by small Russian-sponsored groups, with the support of special forces from Russia, who carried out a range of criminal and paramilitary activity including abduction, intimidation, murders, attacks on Ukrainian military bases, and destroying military Ukrainian aircraft on the ground


    This is a bunch of lies. The protests in Donetsk started the next day after the coup, I saw videos. Gubarev became the 'people's governor'. He was arrested - protests became more violent. I watched videos with old ladies blocking roads to stop the regime's troops carriers.

    was installed by the Rada after the previous president fled

    Oh, god. President fleeing and the majority party decimated (their offices burned) is the definition of a coup d'etat. He didn't resign, he didn't die, and he wasn't even impeached - they tried but they didn't have the votes.

    Can anyone in the right mind and not being disingenuous still insist that it wasn't a coup? I don't think so. So, go ahead, have your last word.

    Dmitry Berezhnov -> Botswana61 13 May 2015 04:06

    RFE is US propaganda bullhorn, of course I believe them in anything they say about Russia.

    MaoChengJi -> kolf 13 May 2015 04:05

    even Russian media acknowledges it

    you appear to be under the impression that Russian media are all pro-government. This completely disproves your statement that you "know the difference between propaganda and journalism". A large portion of the Russian media is rabidly anti-government. If you knew the difference between propaganda and journalism, you would've known it.

    All that "clearly" is just your impression, based on anti-Russian propaganda, on the stories you read and believe. What's clear to you isn't clear to others, if they read different stories. In fact, exactly the opposite can be clear to them. It's important for you to understand that your stories are not at all better than their stories.

    Also, "war started by Russian intelligence officers like Strelkov and Borodai" is all wrong, objectively. Strelkov and Borodai are not Russian intelligence officers. The Kiev regime attacked Donbas, Donbas did not attack Kiev. If Kiev acknowledged the referendum, there would've been no war. The important thing to understand here is that the Kiev regime was NOT at that time - without any doubt - a legitimate government, even if you believe that the current government is legitimate (I don't).

    Kiev had a revolution, and then Donetsk had a revolution. Then Kiev attacked Donetsk. It didn't have to, but it did. Blaming this on Russia is disinformation and a manifestation of russophobia.

    lionarslan Botswana61 13 May 2015 03:45

    Mr. Lavrov never denied that there's Russian citizens in Ukraine. Do you know the difference between soldiers (people who signed obligatory military contract and take a vow to serve their country) and volunteers (people who consciously decided to do something or to go somewhere)? People from Russia, Germany, Spain, Netherlands comes to Donbass to fight for freedom of people of Donbass. They volunteered, no one forced them. And that is what Sergey Lavrov "admitted".

    I read that report, that's really science-ficton. All so-called proofs are quotes without context which someone can understand in more than one way. The text itself is clear anti-Putin propaganda. It was really boring to read that text. It's like watching "Glee" only Glee has wonderful songs and some of actors are really good in their play.

    Russian self-named opposition's report is much more boring and have so much realism as tv-series "Glee".

    lionarslan -> freedomcry 13 May 2015 03:21

    Nationalists in Russia was never decent and sober-minded people. In time of Russian empire they were terrorists, in modern Russia they are still the same. Moreover, if you are sentient being you wouldn't support ideas of nationalists in any possible way. Do you forgot what nationalists did in Germany and then in half of the world in last century?

    Agatha_appears -> freedomcry 13 May 2015 01:53

    it is not opposition. This is a group of people who, like Yashin, have never worked, never done anything useful. They found a job paid by the US State Dep-t. Their responsibility is to play against official Russia according to US scenario. They buy luxurious cars, apartments, go to expensive resorts. Their main audience is the western media. There is a small group of Russia haters inside the country who notice them.

    There are nationalists who oppose the Kremlin. They are radicals. Some of them are in prison. They represent larger part of Russian society than so to say "liberals". Their views are similar to Ukranian nazi who are in power in Kiev. Putin tries to maintain balance and does not let them come to power, speak publicly, because nationalism is infection desease ( see what is going on in Ukraine). And Russian nationalism can be as awful as Ukrainian. It is close to fascism.


    Dmitry Berezhnov -> Tepluken
    13 May 2015 01:05

    Funny enough to see fairytales about Savushkina st. Once I have decided to waste some time and watched a video about a "troll lair", well, small office with like 10-12 people there. Do you really call that a HQ of Evil Russain Propaganda Machine?

    Let's just mention that:

    1. UK officially annouced creation of cybersquad with unmentioned budget for delivering a propaganda.

    2. US spending over 1 bln in 2014 for Russian opposition NGO sponssorship and declaring a war on "Russian propaganda" with it's own propaganda via BBG and state controlled media throughour Europe with gazillion bucks budget.

    3. Ukraine creating a Truth Ministry and Ukranian Information Army with up to this very moment over 40 000! volunteers, not mentioning a full-time staff.

    And we do not know about other countries trolls. In my humble opinion, Savushkina with it's 20 people tops looks very very faintly.

    Colin Robinson 13 May 2015 00:31

    Claims about Russian forces covertly entering the Donbas region, even if true, cannot explain the conflict there.

    It would hardly be possible for Russian tanks to move across the border, without being shot at or even photographed, unless the local population had previously rejected the Kiev régime and removed its border guards.

    This is conflict between two constituencies within Ukraine itself, not between a supposedly united Ukraine and a supposedly ambitious president of Russia.


    normankirk -> Botswana61 12 May 2015 23:36

    What do you mean he's just admitted it, he's never denied it. I would be disgusted if no help had been given to eastern Ukrainian civilians, HRW and Amnesty intern. have both recorded use of illegal weapons against civilians by the Ukrainian army.

    If ever there was a reason for humanitarian intervention you need go no further than protecting unarmed civilians from cluster bombs

    MichaPalkin -> bcnteacher 12 May 2015 23:08

    If they had found the slightest evidence it was indeed rebels' BUK, froth-at the mouth anti-Russian hysteria would have been filling the free press for months now. THE FACT IS THEY CAN'T. And since the Dutch keep remarkably quiet about it, what they v. probably have is the evidence to the contrary. When someone from the investigation tried to make the findings public a few weeks ago - he was immediately silenced and fired. This is called cover-up. It shouldn't be that difficult to tell BUK from air-to-air missile really. So this investigation will either go on into the plus infinity or they'll say some evasive bs, no media outlet would ever mention it and that would be the end of it. Ok?

    BorninUkraine -> Chirographer 12 May 2015 22:46

    There is real opposition in Russia. If I lived there, I'd be one of them. But those are the people who do not sell their country to foreign interests, never touch Western money, and therefore are not promoted by Western media owned by the same interests that purchase third-rate opposition figures in Russia.

    To give you a few examples, Eduard Limonov, Boris Kagarlitsky (who even spent some time in jail in Soviet period), and others like them are opposition, but they are not bought and paid for traitors. That's why they are not rich.

    Unlike Nemtsiov, they cannot afford to pay for the abortion of a whore in Switzerland. You are welcome to ask your supervisor to find out who they are.

    BorninUkraine -> nnedjo 12 May 2015 21:45

    The "government" in Kyiv absolutely needs this alleged Russia aggression.

    How else can they explain that they ran into the ground a reasonably decent country so quickly: from solid third world to total shit in a bit over a year.

    If Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk, and Co acknowledge how much they steal and how incompetent they are, their puppeteers might start looking for better puppets, and that would never do.

    BorninUkraine -> Paul Moore 12 May 2015 21:36

    Oh, yes. Military officials in Sweden have already been looking very hard for a Russian submarine. As soon as they achieved what they wanted, an increase in the military budget, they acknowledged that no submarine ever existed.

    Apparently someone in Finland also wants a bigger military budget. How creative, wouldn't you say?

    Sergey A Gimranov 12 May 2015 21:33

    Good science-fiction report. The highlight of the presentation was "We don't have any actual evidence but we know troops were there". I could not believe they said that. Lame and fake! Shocking discovery from the "book" Russian troops were in Crimea on Russian military bases. Oh my God! Standards are lower and lower with each and every article. Where are the reporters? Why they cannot go there and report it? I guess narrative would change drastically.

    Roodan 12 May 2015 20:57

    But I do agree the government in Kiev does not represent the political will of all of its people and hence the civil war. That there is external support for each side in this war form special forces or otherwise be they NATO or Russian that this is not the cause of the war . I do not my self understand the relevance of the article, it states the obvious. Only a regional settlement between the waring parties will end the war. A ettlement in which all of the aspiration of the people in the Ukrainian, have representation perhaps a federation or Union like the EU .

    I don't think there is any value in supporting one side against the other to impose a system of government with out the support of the people . That is a dictatorship and I don't support dictatorships by any military alliance NATO or Russian federation, they result in perpetual war in which only the powerless suffer.

    Chirographer -> Walter Potocki 12 May 2015 20:55

    You seem to very concerned about who paid for the report. Why? That doesn't address the content of the report at all.

    And wouldn't there be more money and a lot safer life for this Yashin character if he'd published a book supporting the government's narrative?

    Walter Potocki 12 May 2015 20:18

    there were never CIA operatives in Ukraine, it is not true that Maiden was a western agencies. Just few masked people gathered on the square with clubs and firearms to have a fun

    Walter Potocki 12 May 2015 20:13

    Hi Tom, did you ask Russian opposition how much this report cost? You did not have to ask who paid, the same sponsored paid for your piece. Nice propaganda.

    nnedjo -> nnedjo 12 May 2015 19:21

    And to add one more thing. If I'd lived in the southeast of Ukraine and if my government would abolish my salary, and, on the other hand, if I would have known that soldiers receive 90,000 rubles per month, that would be an extra motivation for me to join the rebel army. So, in that case there would be no need at all for the arrival of troops from Russia, because the Ukrainian government itself supports the recruitment in the Donbas, in a way that stopped the economic support to the region.

    nnedjo -> Solongmariane 12 May 2015 19:11

    It is ridiculous to speculate about it at all, because it is clear that Russia pays not only all the fighters in the southeast of Ukraine, but also all other citizens. Because how else they would survive, considering that the Ukrainian government has abolished them all salaries and pensions, and closed all the banks, and prevent the use of payment cards.

    Thus, considering that the Ukrainian government itself agreed that someone else should pay these people, or more precisely, that Russia should pay them, then why do they complain about it now?

    ID5868758 12 May 2015 18:26

    You know, we're supposed to buy this narrative that Nemtsov was a credible political threat to Putin. But I remember seeing a video of a Russian TV station catching Nemtsov sneaking out of the side door of the American embassy in Moscow, and he was not a happy camper when he was caught.

    Now, reverse that, and imagine an American politician being caught sneaking out of the side door of the Russian embassy in DC. How much credibility do you suppose that politician would have left with the American public?

    Russians aren't really that different from Americans after all, and Nemtsov was no threat to Putin at all.

    Puttepoju -> Kaiama 12 May 2015 18:06

    Dear Kaiama.

    Russian journalists are clever and wise. They are better than the entire US satellite system. They have "common sense".I like Russia and Russians --- but what I like most -- is to be honest. My best greetings. Puttepoju

    Falloe7 12 May 2015 18:00

    more PROPAGANDA and the media of the West naturally believes it -because they want to believe it if you are in opposition in anything you will make up stories about your opponent just like this past Election there was enough Lies by the parties about each other hoping the voters will believe it (and they did) and the same about Russia. the papers are well known for printing Lies or make up stories

    Kaiama 12 May 2015 17:44

    So how come 10 Russian journalist claim to find something that the entire US satellite system can't find? It comes as no surprise that Russian volunteers have been killed in Ukraine fighting alongside their relatives.

    What is more telling is the 100,000+ Kiev draft evaders and 800,000+ displaced citizens - all in Russia (defected to the enemy? or simply more astute than their government in Kiev?

    Solongmariane 12 May 2015 17:38

    Some bizarre figures, I find ;
    a) 53 bln Rubles is just around 1 Bln $. Isn't ? Not so much money, for a war with 40.000-50.000 fighters.
    b) If the average of wages of 60.000 - 90.000 rubles is correct, It is around an army of 1.500 soldiers during 10 months.
    Are my calculations correct ? Please, check it !

    BorninUkraine -> bcnteacher 12 May 2015 17:32

    I don't have anything except my brains, but that's enough to have a pretty prestigious job in the US.

    Russia apparently has a lot to make self-appointed masters of the Universe in the US hysterical, and their European poodles even more so. Not to mention small-change commenters here paid very little (to match pathetic quality of their comments).
    The three things that immediately come to mind regarding Russia are nukes, natural resources, and fighting spirit. Each of these would be enough to scare the opponents. For example, the opposition in Iraq and Afghanistan only has fighting spirit, and this was sufficient to make NATO retreat with its tail between its legs. Or, in 1940 France had an army at least as strong as Hitler's, but due to lack of fighting spirit it disgracefully surrendered in no time.

    So, I can only express my sincerest condolences to the servants of humiliatingly hysterical masters.

    nnedjo -> Metronome151 12 May 2015 17:22

    Perhaps you are confused with suspicious arrest and detention of a female Ukranian pilot and Estonian security officer by the FSB. Must be he effect of those drugs you refer to.

    Actually, in the event that you mentions use of the drug is excluded because the pilot Savchenko was very defiant during the examination before the cameras, which is why she has acquired the status of a national hero in Ukraine, and in the absence she is elected to parliament.

    It is also interesting that the example of the pilot Savchenko is the first proven case of "a soldier on leave," who fought on the Ukrainian front. Because it is known that she left the regular Ukrainian army to join the volunteer battalion Aidar. So I do not see what is the problem that Russian troops also take leave and go to help the brothers in Ukraine.

    However, Ms. Savchenko has one big problem. If she had been released from the Russian prison now, she would not have anywhere to return because her Aidar battalion was disbanded by the Ukrainian authorities.

    Kiev Claims Is Disbanding Notorious Aidar Volunteer Battalion

    KIEV, March 2, (TASS) - Ukraine's Defense Ministry is disbanding an armed militia group blamed for abuse during recent months of regional conflict, said to be out of control and with a splinter faction planning unrest in the capital...
    The move follows the arrest of former Aidar battalion fighters said by Luhansk regional administration head Gennady Moskal to be preparing transfer of weapons from the Ukraine's restive Donbas region in a bid to promote social upheaval in Kiev.

    "Part of this unit long ago defected from Aidar and was engaged in looting, robbery, racketeering, auto theft and other crimes in regions controlled by the Ukrainian side," Moskal's website said.

    Moskal added that an attempt had been prevented to take an arsenal of weapons from the area of combat operations in Donbas to Kiev. The arms were meant for "destabilizing the situation" in the capital.

    Babeouf 12 May 2015 17:11

    So the opposition united to produce a monster /blockbuster report ,you say , well when there is a report I shall force myself to read it to see what evidence it actually contains. I seen no evidence open source or otherwise just assertions based on claims made by person or persons unknown. This battle over Russian troops is itself a proxy war between the supporters of the US and the rest of the world.

    MichaPalkin -> alpamysh 12 May 2015 17:09

    What's truly outstanding is how lame you are and inept Kiev regime is. And quit blubbering gibberish. It simply kills me how low RFE standards sunk. You're trained very badly, klopets.

    nnedjo -> alpamysh 12 May 2015 16:28

    Gosh, you seem to have a lot of them--and you said all we had to do was just watch ONE
    I am talking here about a group of 10 soldiers who were captured by the Ukrainian Security Service last year.

    Yes, there are several of these videos, and from each of them, it is clear that the soldiers recite a prepared text directly into the camera.

    VladimirM -> SoloLoMejor 12 May 2015 16:28

    He is not, I think. But I did, actually, it is in Russian on the Dozhd website. I had an impression of reading some of the articles here in the Guardian but in Russian. Or even some posters, which is weird. The report is incoherent, includes many topics, just one chapter is about the Russian troops in Donbas. You may read anything here in the Guardian to get some idea of what the report is like. The article "Invisible army…" will do, I think. In my view, the report is utter rubbish and does not live up to expectations.

    nnedjo 12 May 2015 15:56

    As I saw in another article this report mentions the examination of Russian soldiers caught in Ukraine. We all remember this event in the summer of last year. Internet was flooded with videos with "examination" of Russian "prisoners of war" who were actually recited a prepared text that was placed somewhere in front of them and behind the camera. I think it was clear to everyone at the first viewing of the video.

    As an example, look at examination of the imprisoned soldier Alexei Generalov. This guy almost three minutes talking without interruption and without pauses, with a view strictly focused at one point, probably in some text that he reads somewhere on the left side of the camera. In one moment the examiner asks him something, and he looked at him, then to the right side of the camera.

    A particular problem is the fact that these soldiers were arrested somewhere near the border under very suspicious circumstances. According to the official Ukrainian version, that the soldiers also recited in the camera, they were caught about twenty kilometers inside the Ukrainian territory. However, it is very possible that they were in fact kidnapped by Ukrainian special forces on the Russian side of the border.
    You can say that this is my very bold assumption. But, one can easily notice that during examination these soldiers were very disoriented. I would not be surprised if this is the result of a drug that has been deliberately given to captives in order to weaken their will, but I still stand by my first assumption that they were kidnapped.
    For example, another captured soldier to the question of where he is, he replies: "I am now located in Ukraine, the city of Ukraine."

    Thus, it is clear that this soldier has no idea what his exact location, and that he is completely disoriented, although they examined him in a tent (ie in a tent in the "city of Ukraine"), which should be somewhere near the scene of his capture. Here you can watch, from 0:59 onwards of this video:

    Interrogation of Russian Soldier #3 Captured in Ukraine on August 25. English.

    henrihenri 12 May 2015 15:45

    `And he will NEVER risk an open confrontation with the West`.

    Oh, this is the main mistake. The Western politician think that Putin doesn`t attack Ukraine because he`s afraid of the NATO, West, etc. No, he doesn`t. He just grants the West with a good chanceopportunity to go home without shame. Why to fight Ukraine if it sooner or later crawls back? It will, it will due to many objective reasons. No, Putin won`t send troops there until Ukrainians ask him. Russia does not need any war.

    normankirk -> alpamysh 12 May 2015 15:45

    Poroshenko still wants the Donetsk airport. Why are they breaking the ceasefire to try and get it back off the anti-govt fighters?

    Madness to throw so many lives away

    Noes Vencia -> alpamysh 12 May 2015 15:41

    So 140 were given compensation to keep silence and 70 were not?!

    1) Given compensation to keep silence will work in a couple of instance, never in dozens!

    2) For sure it will never work, if then you don't give compensation to others.

    3) Lets do some math; if Ukraine have 200,000 troops of which some 2500 died, at that rate if there are 210 dead Russian soldiers send by Moscow, that means Russia has send 16,800 troops! Trust me, you cannot send 1000 soldiers anywhere without being highly noticeable, the logistics are immense! Let alone 17000!.

    4) What percentage does Kiev says of Russian troops are combating against? Because looking at the media seems that all are Russians. if so, that is a slap on the face to their own army that they cannot win an "army" of 12 times less soldiers with the same weaponry capabilities. If, however Russians are a small portion of the Revels, why 100% of focus on Russians so?

    Again, I do believe Russia has personnel in there, but limited to advising and intelligence gathering. I highly doubt there are troops fighting because 1st, they don't need it (enough supply with the residents) and 2nd it would not have got better outcomes for their own safety or economy.

    I feel sad that Ukrainians felt for antagonizing their biggest trading partner for the dream of UE. EU will not accept Ukraine in decades, enough we have with bankrupt tiny Greece, let alone 10 times bigger corrupted Ukraine. Nor will the French farmers will be happy with Ukrainian ones. Ukraine should had approached EU while maintained trade with Russia and assuring Russia that no NATO membership. That is what Finland choose even though of past severe confrontations with Russia; that pragmatism made of it a prosperous country.

    [May 12, 2015] Merkel-Ferkel yesterday in the Kremlin

    Quote: Thanks for the hour of duelling histories. Made me realise what a great agitprop resource history is for those who would like to "shape" current narratives.
    You have the white-hat / bad-hat lust for an – ideally, ego-stroking – answer multiplied by the my-eyes-glaze-over factor. Result: maximum impact.
    Best, this can all be deployed while seeming judicious and balanced to those not checking "facts-not-mentioned."
    Moscow Exile , May 11, 2015 at 3:02 am

    Merkel-Ferkel yesterday in the Kremlin:

    I have arrived in Moscow today during a difficult situation for German-Russian relations. It was important for me, together with President Putin, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of world war II to honour those who died. I have laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and thus I want to say to the Russian people, that I, as German Chancellor, kneel in front of the millions of victims of a war that was unleashed by Nazi Germany. We shall be constantly aware of the fact that the share of the peoples of the former Soviet Union and Red Army soldiers accounted for the majority of casualties in that war. I remind you that the war in the East was carried out as a brutal race war and a war of extermination, and that it brought untold suffering to millions of people.

    The occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end WWII is on August 15, 2015.

    The occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of the German-Soviet War was on the day before her arrival in Moscow.

    She could not be in Moscow on 9 May because she had been told not to attend the celebrations.

    Putin should have said to his "partner": Fick dich, Arschloch!
    :-(

    Tim Owen says:

    May 11, 2015 at 3:49 am

    Stalin offered in 1939 to send 1 mln troops to stop Hitler if Britain, France agreed to anti-Nazi pact; they refused http://t.co/46cwbt0x7y

    - exiledonline.com (@exiledonline) May 10, 2015

    "Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance.

    Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler's pact with Stalin which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany's other neighbours."

    Pavlo Svolochenko, May 11, 2015 at 4:01 am

    A forlorn hope, since the Ango-French idea of an alliance was that the USSR would do the fighting while the western allies made sympathetic noises and gathered up the spoils afterward.

    Tim Owen, May 11, 2015 at 5:16 am

    Get a load of this: The Body Language of a Liar http://t.co/mtHCnFCNu3

    - Joel Harding (@Joel_Harding) May 11, 2015

    Erika, May 11, 2015 at 6:47 am

    What countries signed treaties with Hitler but they only tell you about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact? #Victory70 … Héctor A. on Twitter What countries signed treaties with Hitler but they only tell you about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

    - Héctor A. (@GrinchEtor) May 6, 2015

    marknesop, May 11, 2015 at 9:59 am

    That's a pretty good rundown. A handy list to keep for reference.

    Tim Owen, May 11, 2015 at 9:55 pm

    "Sympathetic noises" is a great phrase. An emotional gesture without any underlying meaning or commitment. It therefore also has a charge of implied violence to it.

    I admire your cynicism.

    Warren, May 11, 2015 at 5:20 am

    Listen to Michael Parenti's lecture on the real causes of WW2:

    http://noliesradio.org/archives/32286

    Warren, May 11, 2015 at 7:56 am

    If you want the official Western version on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact listen to this:

    As Putin defends the Nazi-Soviet pact, here's our podcast interview on "The Devils' Alliance" http://t.co/EesRFkuQQr Matt Lewis on Twitter As Putin defends the Nazi-Soviet pact, here's our podcast interview on The Devils' Alliance http--t. (pic.twitter.com/Q32RMOfl4I)

    - Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) May 11, 2015

    cartman , May 11, 2015 at 9:28 am

    I see the UK is on the list above, making a "Devils' Alliance"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_potato_(game)

    Moscow Exile, May 11, 2015 at 9:49 am

    The UK made that Naval Treaty with Nazi Germany behind of France's back. The Frogs were none too pleased at the time.

    Max, May 11, 2015 at 3:41 pm

    prima facia nonsense because Stalingrad.

    Tim Owen, May 11, 2015 at 9:46 pm

    Thanks for the hour of duelling histories. Made me realise what a great agitprop resource history is for those who would like to "shape" current narratives.

    You have the white-hat / bad-hat lust for an – ideally, ego-stroking – answer multiplied by the my-eyes-glaze-over factor. Result: maximum impact.

    Best, this can all be deployed while seeming judicious and balanced to those not checking "facts-not-mentioned."

    Warren, May 11, 2015 at 7:49 am

    Neocon Writer Anne Applebaum Covers up the Role West Played in Looting Russia http://t.co/6ekZbQFkdm #ColdWar pic.twitter.com/V4akXBUeIE

    - Russia Insider (@RussiaInsider) May 11, 2015

    astabada, May 11, 2015 at 8:46 pm

    Has an American or British political dissident, opposed to the policies of his own government, ever won a Nobel Prize?

    I don't know whether you can consider Pintor a political dissident. However he certainly did not approve the policies of his own government, as clearly stated in his beautiful Nobel Prize lecture.

    The trick there was the usual one, namely not to silence dissent but to drown it in noise.

    marknesop , May 11, 2015 at 9:46 pm

    Great find; I had never heard of Harold Pinter – shows what an uncultured Philistine I am. The lecture is indeed a thing of beauty, and one paragraph of it may be perfect for my next post, which is in the works. Thanks!!

    [May 12, 2015] Kerry set to meet Putin in first visit to Russia since start of Ukraine crisis

    The problem that West and first of all the USA and Germany face now is that Ukraine is another Greece. To keep it afloat financially requires tremendous and continues investment. 40 billions from IMF is only a start. Economic ties with Russia are destroyed. And without tens of billions of annual aid that means death sentence. Allowing it to fail with shake Western financial system and we do not know how many derivatives were written on Ukrainian debt and who holds them.
    .
    Looks like MentalToo was on duty for this article with support of usual gang. There was even some backlash against "Hillary bots", specifically against alphamysh.
    May 12, 2015 | The Guardian

    Beckow -> StrategicVoice213 11 May 2015 22:26

    By paying a price I clearly meant the very expensive support for Ukraine that EU has to provide, about 40 billion so far. The Ukraine's economy is down about 14% from just three years ago - this is going to get very, very expensive.

    If you want to compare Russia's and EU's losses due to sanctions, they have been very substantial for both. EU has so far lost about 10 billion in exports and in the long run it is not clear who will end up losing more. Russia's GNP will drop by 3% after years of high growth (more than double in 10 years). EU has been largely stagnant and many countries there are still below where they were in '09 (Italy, Spain, ...).

    Finally, militarily all that matters is who has local superiority. Russia has it in eastern Ukraine. You can squirm, hallucinate, cry all you want, there is no f...ing way that Nato can defeat Russia there.

    They know it, thus the coming deal.

    Dannycraig007 -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 21:34

    You would prefer I use the corrupt and obviously biased mainstream Western media as sources I assume, rather than first person video accounts from the victims themselves? Award winning war correspondent and Guardian journalist John Pilger has a few words for you. http://www.discussionist.com/101459708 This is a must watch video about how the Western media operate from a man who was once a part of the establishment here at the Guardian.

    Standupwoman -> Captain_Underpants 11 May 2015 17:08

    Yep. I think my own Pollyanna moment is already beginning to seep away.

    But the stakes are so high! NATO's revival of the 'hotline' has unilaterally put us back on a Cold War footing, and at a time when the Doomsday clock is already set at 3 minutes to midnight. Putin has shown incredible restraint so far, but if the provocations don't stop then I'm genuinely worried about what might happen.

    Bosula -> samanthajsutton 11 May 2015 20:43

    Neither side is very open about what support it provides.

    Russia says openly it doesn't stop volunteers from Russia, often family, cross the border to fight with the East Ukrainians. They are also probably supplying weapons, but we don't really know. And no Russian troops have been captured despite the huge battles. To capture a Russian soldier in a fighting zone would be worth gold in terms of PR value.

    The Eastern Ukrainian are having difficulties training all their volunteers (just too many) with a million refugees, many based in camps in Russia, providing a fertile source of volunteers. The West provides no humanitarian help - a short sighted strategic decision, maybe?

    The US and their allies are also pretty secret about what support they provide - best estimates are around 1,500 advisers, trainers - and 'volunteers' fighting alongside privately funded far right militias and the Ukrainian army.

    The US are not really in a position to take the self- righteous moral high ground in a civil war tens of thousands of kilometres from their home.

    nnedjo -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 20:17

    What little influence US has on events in Ukraine is irrelevant.

    Because of this "little influence" the whole Ukrainian government has become irrelevant. You know, the fact that you do not see the strings that move their limbs does not mean that they are not puppets on the strings. And that guys from Washington hold the ends of the strings, that's probably clear to everyone after the cookies of Victoria Nuland. Or Toria, as poster Dipset called her.:-)))

    Funny guy that Dipset, wonder why he is not here yet.

    Standupwoman 11 May 2015 20:09

    'Although the 300 US trainers are operating in the west of the country'

    Are we really sure of this? Yes, Kiev has predictably denied Russian claims that American troops have been spotted in the Donbass, but the odd thing is that several pro-Kiev supporters have uploaded this footage of American training under the following description:

    In Severodonetsk, Luhansk region instructors from Georgia, Israel and the US carried out military exercises with the soldiers of the special units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine

    Luhansk is in the ATO region - and Severodonetsk is very, very near to the front line.

    geedeesee -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 20:05

    Irrelevant ...?

    Just the CIA advisers, military trainers, $billions of dollars, political cover, a propaganda machine.

    geedeesee -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:59

    Not proper interviews, are they? Just clips of sentences without knowing the question that is being answered. They wrap narrative around the comment. Not one of those nine soldiers admits to fighting in Ukraine, and the claim of written evidence from NGOs is negated towards the end of the article with the caveat that 'Ukraine' wasn't actually mentioned in the NGO's documentary evidence.

    You're easily duped by propaganda.

    Standupwoman -> ID5868758 11 May 2015 19:50

    Understood. If governments had to actually fight the wars they started, the world would be a very different place...


    Dannycraig007 -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:35

    If your still doubtful about what the Kiev regime do to people who post unflattering information online, I present to you them demonstrating firsthand what happens when people step out of line. Graphic warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXnNDbJ7r0k&feature=youtu.be

    geedeesee -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:31

    "What about the guys in military uniforms with weapons, mortars, mines, grenades, anti-tank weapons..."

    What about them? They're defending themselves - the self-defence activists - after the Kiev regime sent tanks and aircraft to attack the protesters in what they called an Anti-Terror Operation as this example shows (see all four videos)..

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27035196


    Dannycraig007 -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:30

    Your question answers itself, in that the Kiev Regime have been tracking down people who post videos on the internet and in social media that criticize the regime, hence the lack of video out of Slavyansk now.

    Watch this Ukrainian parliamentarian call for the genocide of Ukrainians of ethnic Russian origin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNQ2CVz2Cyk

    Of course, there's also this tidbit from last summer.

    http://slavyangrad.org/2014/08/14/residents-of-slavyansk-have-disappeared-the-town-is-being-re-populated-with-migrants-from-western-ukraine/

    The Residents of Slavyansk have disappeared; the town is being re-populated with migrants from Western Ukraine.
    POSTED BY S. NAYLOR ⋅ AUGUST 14, 2014 ⋅ 27 COMMENTS
    In Slavyansk, occupied by Ukrainian troops, the local residents have practically disappeared. The town is being inundated with migrants speaking in a foreign dialect, who take over the housing of those who left to escape the Ukrainian bombing campaign.

    This is reported by one of very few residents of Slavyansk who, trusting Ukrainian official propaganda, made the decision to return to his native city. The picture that he saw is terrifying. He realized that the information about residents of Slavyansk returning home is nothing but a vile lie.

    "Please, heed our plea! The people have disappeared from Slavyansk!

    "I am a native of Slavyansk, residing here already for twenty-seven years. Or better to say 'I was residing', having left the town three months ago, when it was becoming dangerous to stay. During this time I found refuge with relatives in Odessa. I made a decision to return when all the Ukrainian media started saying that everything in Slavyansk was back to normal, that over sixty percent of residents have come back.

    "In the three months of my absence my apartment remained untouched by shells from the junta's bombardment or by its marauding thugs. I had already started to unpack when I heard the sound of my neighbour's doors opening across the hallway. I thought it must have been my neighbour, Sergey Ivanovich, but then I saw a young man unknown to me. To my question about his identity he replied that he was Sergey Ivanovich's son.


    geedeesee -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:27

    Here's an example:

    Slaviansk: 10 self-defense activists and some 30 unarmed civilians killed

    http://rt.com/news/156584-right-sector-deaths-ukraine/

    Notice in the video some places look pretty deserted.


    nnedjo -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:25

    ... in Slavyansk since it was liberated by Ukrainian forces...
    You mean, liberated like Odessa:
    Occupation of Russian Hero-City Odessa 2014-2015 | Eng Subs
    ,or liberated like Kharkiv
    Kharkiv Welcomes May: Army Patrols, BTRs, Machine guns, etc

    And, speaking of Slavyansk , it is also interesting. In "liberated" Slavyansk it seems that nobody believes "liberators".

    Slavyansk residents trust Putin and not Poroshenko - Ukraine Hromadske TV March 2015


    Bosula -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:10

    Can you tell us how many people have been killed in Slayvansk?

    Dannycraig007 -> mlubiank 11 May 2015 19:06

    Here's another video for you that proves the Kiev regime are Nazis as it shows them marching through Kiev in uniform holding the Waffen SS Wolfsangel flag and was filmed by Poroshenkos very own Chanel 5 TV outlet.

    The rest of the hour and a half long video is a bloodbath showing them killing hundreds of innocent civilians. Get back to me after you've cleaned your conscience.

    Ukraine Crisis: Death and destruction continues in Eastern Ukraine / [ENG SUB]
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b10_1417842060#e1hSYTkJlw3TQgXs.99


    mlubiank -> ID5868758 11 May 2015 19:06

    Is Reuters good enough for you or is that all lies?
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/10/us-ukraine-crisis-soldiers-specialreport-idUSKBN0NV06Q20150510


    Dannycraig007 11 May 2015 18:57

    Investors, such as Franklin Templeton and George Soros' Foundation, who planned to make blood money and placed their bets off of the inside information right before the coup back in November 2013, have a combined $7 billion at stake in Ukraine.

    The IMF is trying to convince them to take a haircut on the massive amount and get put on the back burner for the time being, but Russia put it's $3 billion loan in strict terms back in 2012 and has payback priority.

    Those human flesh eating Western sharks want their money. This makes those 1%ers and their IMF vassals very upset as they didn't actually expect to lose money......they thought they were gonna double their billions with the rape of Ukraine. Now it's hard earned.


    Standupwoman ID5868758 11 May 2015 18:41

    I completely understand that. It's a very sensitive subject, and must be far more so for those with personal experience.

    Part of the problem is the difference between what we knew then and what we know now. At the time, as you say, we all thought My-Lai was a 'one-off' by a few bad apples, but now so much material has been declassified a very different picture has emerged.

    BUT there's still a world of difference between 'a lot' and 'all', and we must never allow those war crimes to taint the reputation of the good soldiers, or to belittle what they endured. It is indeed wrong to apply excessively broad brush-strokes, and I want to apologize to you personally, because I think in my post I was guilty of doing just that.


    SoloLoMejor -> geedeesee 11 May 2015 18:40

    Yep all good points and there's definitely some push back from Merkel and Hollande. I just don't think the US can relinquish control of our military or monetary systems as would happen if Europe developed independently and naturally became close to European Russia. This is a superpower making sure that it stays a superpower. That said, this is Europe & Russia, not the under developed middle East so they may not get it all their own way but 6000 lives so far is tolerable collateral damage for them


    Beckow -> Alderbaran 11 May 2015 18:37

    There are 1,000 American, British, Polish and Canadian troops in Ukraine. Officially. Plus endless civilian advisors, agents, private security companies, etc...

    Maybe Russians have more people there, but it is after all on their border.

    "given control of Ukraine's border back to Ukraine, in contravention of the Minsk II agreement"

    No. The Minsk II specifically says that the border will be returned to Kiev control AFTER the Donbass area gets autonomy. Where is the "autonomy"? You can't cherry-pick from an agreement.

    If Nato steps over the line in Ukraine, as they are about to do, the nuclear option will be on the table. It is absolutely horrible, but that's where we are heading. Try to get your head out of your behind to understand what is going on there - it is playing with a huge fire on the border of a nuclear power that said they will not allow Nato missiles 400 km from Moscow. You want to test them?


    nnedjo -> Tattyana 11 May 2015 18:32

    I believe there is no need in any meetings for any further escalation as well.
    That's right, Tattyana, that's exactly what I said. My only criticism was related to Miss Marie Harf, who apparently recited a prepared statement, which aims only to reduce the importance of the visit of John Kerry to Russia.
    By the way, a true pleasure for me is to watch the exchange of opinions between US spokeswoman Marie Harf and her favorite "reporter", Matt Lee, at the State Department press conferences.
    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Marie+Harf+Matt+Lee

    Standupwoman -> geedeesee 11 May 2015 18:23

    Yes, that all makes good sense - but I still think personal integrity can have an (admittedly tiny) role to play. Carter is a case in point.

    I'm even (don't laugh!) inclined to extend that to Obama. Yes, he's technically responsible for this mess, and he must have supported Nuland and Pyatt in the original coup, but I still think things would be very much worse if either Biden or HRC had been at the helm.

    Obama (like Putin) has hawks screaming at him for being weak, but the fact he's holding out suggests there's a little shred of integrity still there.

    It's not much, but it's all we've got. Sometimes it feels as if the whole world is screaming for war, and in the centre is this little patch of stillness where two men are holding firm against the madness. If anything happens to either Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin then I think we really are sunk.

    geedeesee -> SoloLoMejor 11 May 2015 18:22

    Yes, there clearly is a strategic plan being played out, though I don't think it has gone to plan for the Americans. The release of the Nuland/Hyatt phone call obviously came from Russian intelligence, which was an embarrassment for US. I suspect this is all a prelude to the coming clash for stakes in Arctic oil. There are a number of competing nations but US probably wants to minimise Russian access.

    However, there is a lot of strain within the EU at the moment, and we know the views of EU leaders were disregarded by Nuland last year ("Fvck the EU").

    It's possible the whole thing has gone far enough for EU leaders (see link below to comments identifying reasons) and they're pushing back on US behind the scenes to cool it down now.

    See the original post by Beckow and replies. Link direct to individual comment number:

    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/11/john-kerry-meet-russian-foreign-minister-talks--ukraine-syria-yemen#comment-51974992


    nnedjo 11 May 2015 18:04

    Although the 300 US trainers are operating in the west of the country, well away from the conflict zone, Russia has questioned their purpose.

    So I do not see how it could be otherwise. Had the US sent their "trainers" in the conflict zone in the east of Ukraine, it is possible that in that case Russia would not complain at all.

    In that case, Russia would also send their "trainers" who would soon be found "in the west of the country [Ukraine], well away from the conflict zone".:-)))


    normankirk -> MaoChengJi 11 May 2015 18:04

    and the German gold still locked up in US vaults


    Popeyes 11 May 2015 17:53

    Once again on Saturday Putin completely outclassed the West, and the decision by Western leaders to stay away in the end showed their total irrelevance.

    Closer ties between China and Russia is Washington's worst nightmare, and a very different new World Order is emerging from the rubble of the post-Cold War period. Today Russia proposed that Greece become the 6th member of a new Development Bank set up by the BRINCS, and with some European leaders desperate to end sanctions things are not going as planned for the empire.


    Dannycraig007 -> Bradtweeters 11 May 2015 17:52

    Oh, I'm an 'authentic' Guardian reader alright. i'm on my 20th account after being constantly banned this past year for posting the truth about Ukraine. And when they bane me again I'll be right back. True Brits don't give up so easily.


    ID5868758 -> Dannycraig007 11 May 2015 17:51

    Well, it's printed in English only, given away free in places like the Metro and coffee houses, so it's not like it's the Russian equivalent of the New York Times, to begin with. My son says it's read mostly by ex-pats in Russia, tourists, that kind of audience, it's certainly not anything that Russians read on a regular basis.

    ID5868758 -> salthouse 11 May 2015 17:45

    Good grief, what fiction. Vladimir Putin's only problem is that he is not Boris Yeltsin, opening the door to the international banks and the multinational corporations to continue their rape of the assets and resources of the Russian people. He is slowly but surely returning Russia to Russians. Contrast that to Ukraine, going in the opposite direction, with the privatization of the assets and resources of the people just beginning, and the predators like Monsanto, Cargill, Chevron, banging at the gate.

    normankirk -> salthouse 11 May 2015 17:44

    Oh I know! its his nature! He can't help it! And vindictively, at home, he's raised the standard of living and life expectancy! the bastard, only a lunatic would do so.And when he walks among the people he's forcing them ... at gunpoint!.... to put on forced smiles you can tell by looking. he.s a maniac! getting Assad to give up his chemical stores! crazy!


    Kaiama -> BMWAlbert 11 May 2015 17:43

    There was some indication that the ships could not be sold without the explicit permission of the Russians - probably because they provided the middle part of the hull and if they were feeling bad have the right to ask for it to be cut out and given back to them.


    nnedjo 11 May 2015 17:42

    "This trip is part of our ongoing effort to maintain direct lines of communication with senior Russian officials and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed," state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement.

    I do not see what it was unclear so far in the views of the State Department at the Ukrainian crisis. I mean, if John Kerry is going to Sochi to repeat the usual accusations against Russia, which US officials have said so far, then there's really no need for him to go to Russia only because of this, nor Putin is interested to hear it one more time.
    Thus, rather it will be some other reason behind this visit, about which we can now only guess. And none of us is so naive to believe that the Ukrainian crisis can be resolved without direct negotiations between the United States and Russia. So, either to make a deal, or to enter a further escalation of the military conflict.
    I am inclined to believe that the latter, less predictable solution, is not in anyone's interest.


    Kaiama -> Metronome151 11 May 2015 17:41

    Maybe, but if the US did cut Russia off of SWIFT for instance, the Russians have already said that they would regard it as a declaration of "war". The US might start it but the Russians will definitely finish it.


    MichaPalkin -> salthouse 11 May 2015 17:40

    It finally happened: A REAL nutjob.

    Now why don't you put your money where you mouth is, you pos and go join the fight against Putin yourself um?.. See? Told ya.


    geedeesee -> Standupwoman 11 May 2015 17:31

    On the glimmer of hope, I think you maybe right, though its early days. History books on 20th century show that when there's been a stand-off for sometime an intermediary, or unofficial envoy, is often sent to explore the basis for talks. And the history books also show confidence-building measures are used, such as making an announcement via the media acknowledging part of the grievance of the other side which can use for domestic purposes.

    This happened with the IRA talks, for example, both in 1970s and 1990s. Last week Jimmy Carter visited Putin in Moscow, not on its own remarkable, but what suggested this wasn't an initiative of his own volition was the interview he gave to Voice of America (official US Gov. channel) immediately after the meeting in Moscow - indicating they'd travelled with him.

    The narrative is for the press and the accompanying 45 second video of Carter saying all the right things for the Russians can be used by Russian TV/media in news reports.

    Narrative:
    http://www.voanews.com/content/carter-pleased-with-russia-embrace-of-minsk-agreement/2743389.html

    45 second Carter video:
    http://www.voanews.com/media/video/2743506.html

    You'll be disappointed if you look for integrity with the players at this level, because it doesn't exist. They have their plans and self-interests; integrity doesn't come into it.


    Dannycraig007 -> dmitryfrommoscow 11 May 2015 17:30

    The Moscow Times is actually operated out of Scandinavia and their readership has been dropping due to the obvious anti-Russian propaganda.


    ID5868758 -> Standupwoman 11 May 2015 17:27

    Well, My-Lai was, of course, just a horrific example of evil behavior on the part of a few of our troops, but Kerry came home and, without personal knowledge, painted the entire military with the same broad brush, made up stories, and just so disgraced himself with this nation that he would never have won a Senate seat if he had not run in Massachusetts.

    I still to this day cannot listen to him speak for more than a few minutes at a time, his betrayal of the men who were fighting and dying in the hellhole that was Vietnam will stay with me forever.


    dmitryfrommoscow -> Havingalavrov 11 May 2015 17:26

    The Moscow Times is one of those pro-Washington mouthpieces which, according to the claims by Putin's critics, have been ruthlessly wiped out of the scene.


    SoloLoMejor 11 May 2015 17:15

    I saw the Merkel Putin press conference in full. Merkel fully acknowledged and apologised for the horrors inflicted on the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, and quite rightly.

    When asked specifically about what she still blamed Russia for with respect to Minsk she became a lot less clear and rambling and very non specific. I couldn't make out what her beef was although I really wanted to know.

    She's going to need some very clear reasons to reinstate EU sanctions on Russia and the phrase Shaun Walker regurgitates in virtually every piece he writes, "mounting evidence" of Russian involvement (but without producing any) won't be enough this time round.


    MichaPalkin -> alpamysh 11 May 2015 17:15

    l though I find your comments stupid, and what is absolutely amazing is that guests such as you have had zero effect on anything.

    Some fascist parties did once praise you and still do, ahem, "purely for the funding you was willing to give". Some grammar problems here eh.

    But this has had no effect on nothing, or the policy of the EU in general.

    One does not even see you loonies demonstrating in the street, shouting "hail" to Poro & Co."

    Poro's only real "western" base of support comes from RFE and probably Guardian. Even Americans begin having their reservations now.

    Period

    Indeed, we may well have all your clownish incompetence to thank for your highly unsuccessful trolling.

    OK, klopets?


    John Smith -> Alderbaran 11 May 2015 17:06

    You can forget about Crimea.

    Nothing will come out from this talks because the US will not let off their 'great prize'
    as the NED head called it. Unfortunately for Ukrainians.

    ID5868758 -> Standupwoman 11 May 2015 16:31

    Standupwoman, I rarely disagree with you, but as an American who lived through Vietnam as the wife of a Marine Corps officer, and the sister of a brother in country as a cryptologist, may I just tell you that John Kerry's actions in front of Congress were not seen by most as heroic at all, not borne of courage and integrity, especially since he had spent only a very short time in country, and had awarded himself 2 or 3 purple hearts, but strangely enough, has no scars of those wounds remaining today. He lied, it was a performance that caused much of America to shun him even today, and that's the truth.

    Igor1980 -> GoodOldBoy1967 11 May 2015 16:29

    I am in Sochi now, a navy ship is patrolling the area of the Residence and many police cars can be seen. It is not surprising . I was surprised by the number of cars with Ukrainian license plates. The hosts say that many Ukrainian citizens moved to the area on the coast with their money.


    Standupwoman -> cabaret1993 11 May 2015 16:22

    I agree. If this were HRC rather than Kerry I'd think we were doomed. Do you remember her hilariously rabble-rousing claim that Putin had no soul - 'He's KGB, it's a given!' - and Putin's dry response? That woman ought never to have been allowed within a hundred miles of foreign affairs, and if she ever becomes President then it'll be time to start stocking up on the potassium iodide...


    Igor1980 -> Beckow 11 May 2015 16:12

    Great and sober analysis. The reality is harsh for both parties and very painful for the USA: the people in the West are not ready to die for the cause of the American dominance.

    It is easy to hate Putin, it is difficult to sacrifice your lives in a war to punish Russia for a little border change in the most unpleasant part of Eastern Europe.


    MaoChengJi -> DogsLivesMatter 11 May 2015 16:11

    state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement

    That's just standard bs. What do you expect them to say.


    Standupwoman 11 May 2015 16:06

    Maybe I'm having a Pollyanna moment, but I wonder if there isn't just the littlest, tiniest glimmer of hope in this. The fact the US is prepared to talk to Russia on its own ground is definitely a step in the right direction, and the fact it's John Kerry is even better.

    Because Kerry was once an honest man. Back in 1971 he testified to Congress about American war crimes in Vietnam, and showed the kind of courage and integrity it's almost impossible to mention in the same sentence as 'politician'. He talked openly about the everyday reality of rapes, torture, desecration of the dead, and killing civilians for fun – the American toolbox we're all familiar with in Afghanistan and Iraq, but which in 1971 was genuinely shocking news. Nationalists hated him, but I think he showed genuine American patriotism when he explained: 'We feel that because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it - not the Reds, not redcoats, but the crimes which we're committing are what threaten it – and we have to speak out.'

    OK, he's a politician now, and his words have frequently been used against him to show the hypocrisy of his support for America's current wars, but deep down he's still in some way the same man he was then. He and Lavrov certainly used to have a good relationship until he made that unbelievably stupid remark about Russians 'lying to his face'.

    That kind of populist rudeness plays well with the 'Murica, F*ck yeah!' mob, but grown-up countries tend to choose a calmer, more courteous approach when it comes to negotiations which could lead to the threat of nuclear war. Kerry will need to apologize for that (even if only in private) if he hopes to get in the same room as President Putin.

    But maybe he will. Maybe he'll even confound the words of that Psaki-Manqué Harf and actually listen as well as talk. If he does, and if there's any integrity left in him, then maybe, just maybe, there'll really be a chance of peace.


    PlatonKuzin -> oleteo 11 May 2015 16:03

    The Ukies think that the US and EU do them gifts for granted. And they were very suprised as they knew that, for example, in Poland, an organization named "Restitution of Kresy" was established that in the nearest future will expropriate, from Ukraine, the property belonging to the Poles.

    And more than 100,000 such Poles are now ready to start proceedings to return their property from there.


    Dannycraig007 -> PlatonKuzin 11 May 2015 15:57

    Agreed on the 50,000. I am just citing the US/MSM 'official' number. I have been keeping up with the real numbers also. Petri Krohn has done a great job establishing a proper count of the dead form various events and battles. The majority of those 50,000 dead are Ukrainian conscripts and Kievs Baghdad Bob intentionally played the numbers way down in order to not have to pay dead soldiers families and hide the truth of the war, which the US and EU media simply parroted with no investigation whatsoever. Here's a link to the numbers:

    http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Ukraine_war_casualties

    His site is an amazing geo-political resource. Lots of really interesting MH-17 material there too. http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Special:AllPages


    greatwhitehunter -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 15:55

    The US could have prevented all this by keeping there nose out of Ukraine . In the words of Obama we brokered the change of government in Ukraine.

    Now their are 6000 plus people dead . east of Ukraine destroyed, Crimea gone never to return.

    Only the US could imagine you could get away with this.\


    Beckow -> Alderbaran 11 May 2015 15:54

    Hmmm...don't fool yourself, he meant the Maidan crowd in Kiev. The problem Kiev government has is that as economy gets worse, the large cities like Kharkov, Odessa, etc... will become ungovernable. Except through brute force.

    How do you "join EU" if you have to be suppressing large portion of your population? I am sure EU would love to look the other way, but the cognitive dissonance might get too much, with YouTube, refugees, etc...


    Captain_Underpants 11 May 2015 15:52

    Kerry will offer to swap Ukraine for Assad's head + no S300 missiles to Iran + sanction relief.

    Putin and Lavrov will tell Kerry to stick the offer where the sun don't shine and then it's back to square one.

    Obumbler won't be involved, he's too busy on the golf course, watching the NBA playoffs, and making hollow speeches filled with platitudes about race issues and police violence.

    Meanwhile back in the increasingly irrelevant Euroweenie land, the NSA-compromised Frau Merckel has a desk and a phone and will do as told by her masters

    Dannycraig007 -> DIPSET 11 May 2015 15:47

    I'd still like to see what those US spy satellites saw the day MH-17 was shot down. They first said they had proof Russia did it, then they went quiet, then they relied on social media BS, then they said they had a drunk Ukrainian that made a confession that the rebel put on Ukrainain uniforms, then they stayed quiet. All the while they had ships in the Black Sea monitoring that airspace and they had AWACS flying over Europe.

    They obviously know what really happened but they have chosen no to show that 'evidence'....there can only be one reason.......because it implicates the Kiev regime...and thereby....themselves.


    geedeesee -> MentalToo 11 May 2015 15:42

    "...the army of Ukraine is not at war with "protesters"."

    Yes they are, they called it an Anti-Terror Operation and not war against an army. The facts are against you. Hard luck. ;-)


    Dannycraig007 -> MaoChengJi 11 May 2015 15:40

    Many people have no idea that Merkels father was in the Hitler youth. Sad but true fact. Hence, maybe that partly explains her allegiance to Ukraine.

    Horst Kasner
    Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Kasner
    Kasner was born as Horst Kaźmierczak in 1926, the son of a policeman in the Pankow suburb of Berlin, where he was brought up. His father Ludwig Kaźmierczak (born 1896 in Posen, German Empire) - died 1959 in Berlin) was born out of wedlock to Anna Kazmierczak and Ludwik Wojciechowski.[1] Ludwig was mobilised into the German army in 1915 and sent to France, where he was taken prisoner of war and joined the Polish Haller's Army fighting on the side of Entente.[2] Together with the army he returned to Poland to fight in Polish-Ukrainian war and Polish-Soviet war.[3] After Posen had become part of Poland, Ludwig moved with his wife in 1923 to Berlin, where he served as a policeman, and changed his family name to Kasner in 1930.

    Little is known about Horst Kasner's wartime service, and he was held as a prisoner of war at the age of 19. During his high school years he was a member of the Hitler Youth, with the last service position of a troop leader.[citation needed] From 1948 he studied theology, first in Heidelberg then in Hamburg. He married Herlind Jentzsch, an English and Latin teacher, born on 8 July 1928 in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) as the daughter of Danzig politician Willi Jentzsch, and their daughter Angela was born in 1954.

    PlatonKuzin -> Kaiama 11 May 2015 15:38

    There is another side of this medal: Novorussia said that, if Ukraine violates the ceasefire one more time, the Army of Novorussia will make no stops any longer and will free Kiev.


    Beckow -> MichaPalkin 11 May 2015 15:35

    Threats are simply a part of making deals. When one threatens, there is an implicit understanding of what the alternatives are. It is how countries negotiate.

    Look at it from Russia's point of view: they prefer to deal with useless twats. Putin has been smart to keep all his threats, options and deals to himself. He speaks very diplomatically and applies pressure on the ground. There is a Russian saying: "let the punishment tell" - that's what Russia is doing and it drives the likes of Kerry crazy.

    Unless US escalates into a nuclear confrontation, Russia has the upper hand in the long run. That was obvious from the beginning. So the question is why did Peace Price Winner do this? Why did he start? Is he and people around him that stupid or that desperate? I hope, it is just stupidity.

    "Poro & Co would be applying for the political asylum in the US" - that's going to happen anyway, but I think Canada will take the bulk of them...


    Beckow -> Alderbaran 11 May 2015 15:24

    Let's be clear: Kerry is flying in with a proposal to review with Lavrov. If Russia accepts, Kerry will meet Putin. If not, we will know that sh..t is about to escalate - on both sides.

    Regarding "military involvement": both sides are heavily militarily involved with arms, training, "advisors" of all kinds, intelligence, logistics. And both sides downplay it ("lie", if you prefer). Why is that even an issue? Or "news"?

    It is infantile to discuss it. In a war there is always "military involvement". And this is a war, has been for about a year, this is the way wars are fought now (see Syria, Libya, etc...).

    And yes, of course Putin can change weather. Anyone with enough nukes can.


    BMWAlbert 11 May 2015 15:15

    Looks like India's participation in the Moscow parade is also paralleled by the cutting of 80% of the French fighter order (remembering that the govt. in New Delhi stated several months ago that its confidence in France as a supplier would be related to its vulnerability to political pressuring vis a vis the RU ships that will end-up being scrapped or bought by by a third party, and it might be that said party, if also participating in said parade, might sell in turn to RU for a 'cut'). IDK if this is related, big new orders from India for SU's:

    https://www.ibcworldnews.com/2015/04/20/why-the-brahmos-armed-sukhoi-is-bad-news-for-indias-enemies/

    These cannot be made in Russia, in any event, as Russia is entirely isolated.


    Dannycraig007 11 May 2015 15:09

    The US has really hurt itself with the WW2 remembrance ceremony snub. Russia won't be soon forgetting what the US has been doing in Ukraine and Europe either. After all the 7,000 people killed by the Kiev regime that came to power through the US backed coup were all ethnic Russian Ukrainian civilians. So many lives could have been saved if only the US would have allowed federalization of the obviously ethnically diverse regions of the country.

    For those that missed it, here's link to the amazing WW2 Red Square commemoration concert. It truly was a sight to behold.

    Absolutely Stunning! The Entire Russian "Road To Victory" Concert Spectacle -2015 Epic Masterpiece Rivals Olympic Ceremonies
    Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9c1_1431271822#esjFeSXyZqIlzoY8.99


    SonnyTuckson 11 May 2015 14:15

    Turn Ukraine into a federation. Of a rich pro western part that is member of the EU and a poor pro Russian part that is member of the Eurasian Union.

    In ten years time the East Ukrainians will have had enough of their Russian propaganda-ridden life without a decent standard of living. We will then have another Euromaidan, but this time in Donbass.

    History always discloses propaganda lies. In the end the people of Donbass will understand they have been used by Russia for its geopolitical games. And chose for a prosperous future in Europe as well.


    Beckow -> geedeesee 11 May 2015 14:14

    Yes, there are huge problems.

    But if US accepts a de facto defeat in Ukraine, they are done in many other places too. My guess is that they will try to weasel out of it by offering a deal to Russia:

    - US backs down, Kiev goes back in the box (over time), things quiet down, BUT no victory speeches or remarks by Russia. US has to be able to maintain that they "won".

    It is a disease for insecure people. They fear being seen as losers more than anything else. Thus we might still see the fire-works if Russia refuses to oblige.


    vr13vr 11 May 2015 14:09

    "Unfairly blaming Russia for the crisis in Ukraine, which was actually in the main provoked by the US itself, Obama's administration in 2014 went down the road of ruining bilateral links, announced a policy of 'isolating' our country on the international stage, and demanded support for its confrontational steps from the countries that traditionally follow Washington."

    Why does the press want us feel so amazed about this quote? What part of it isn't true?

    1. US did and does blame Russia for crisis in Ukraine.
    2. US did provoke the crisis.
    3. US did go down the road of ruining bilateral links.
    4. It did announced a policy of "isolation."
    5. And it did demand support for its steps from other countries in Europe.

    Putin actually appears to be a straight talker.


    vr13vr -> caliento 11 May 2015 14:05

    "The first question asked should be... "

    Kerry doesn't get to ask questions as if he were running a deposition. He can talk politely and be nice. Outside of the US police TV show and court drama, nobody in the world allows anyone to speak like this, especially in the diplomatic talks with Russia.


    vr13vr 11 May 2015 14:03

    "Russia believes that the US is meddling in Ukraine..."

    No, it's not just Russia believes. It is a fact. And everyone knows it, not just Russia.


    geedeesee -> Beckow 11 May 2015 13:46

    Add to your list:

    EU unity under considerable strain. Divisive issues on it's plate include Greece and Grexit, UK referendum and possible Brexit, UK Human rights exit, unresolved Eurozone crisis, migrant quotas, all made worse by further US spying revelations and German betrayal of EU businesses to the benefit of US companies.

    Putin now supporting/funding anti-EU parties in Europe.

    MH17 report and voice recorder info, clearly delayed for political reasons, is due this summer.

    Obama administration needs cooperation at UNSC on Iran nuclear deal.

    Putin supplying arms to Iran is giving Obama more problems from Netanyahu.

    If Obama has plans for a last attempt at cracking Israel/palestine then he'll need as much international support as he can muster.

    Russia opening spying and military bases in Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.


    BunglyPete 11 May 2015 13:46

    Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I've seen since the very height of the cold war,

    That suggests that it is equivalent to the RFE/RL campaigns of the Cold War.

    The reports they produced in 1984 relating to showing the Ukrainian nationalists in a good light were described by Richard Pipes as "blatant anti-semitic propaganda". Not my words, the words of Richard Pipes.

    These same reports are reprinted today in the Guardian and if you disagree you are a "Putin propagandist". Even though Richard Pipes agrees that it is distasteful propaganda.

    Other activities involved sending millions of balloons across eastern Europe, campaigns in the US to ask for "Truth Dollars" to fund said balloon campaigns, leaflets pretending to come from a fictional resistance organisation intended to militarise citizens against their governments, and much much more. There are many books and articles on the subject.

    Senator Royce said in May 2014, in an instruction to Victoria Nuland at a senate subcommitee hearing, he wants them "producing the stuff they did years ago". Indeed they granted more money than they did during the cold war to BBG campaigns.

    In comparison to the rather pathetic RT, the US campaigns are far more serious in scope and effects.


    madeiranlotuseater 11 May 2015 13:27

    and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed," state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement

    In other words, do as the USA says or we shall continue to hound you.

    "Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I've seen since the very height of the cold war," Kerry said in February. "And they have been persisting in their misrepresentations, lies, whatever you want to call them, about their activities to my face, to the face of others, on many different occasions."

    There speaks the nation that admits to being involved in forcing regime changes all over the world since 1947. To arm twisting and invading Iraq on the basis of a known lie. If Mr Kerry believes he has been lied to he should present his evidence. We can all relax then. But he doesn't. He says to trust him to tell the truth. Why should we. The USA is a massive war machine intent on ruling the world. China and Russia are not interested in being bullied.


    Beckow -> deathbydemocracy 11 May 2015 12:53

    I see that even indirect criticism of the media coverage is not allowed. Interesting, but somehow understandable.


    DIPSET 11 May 2015 12:31

    First when they thought they thought they were "winning" they did not want to talk and instead, instructed their media to do the talking for them.

    Okay.

    Then reality happened hahaha

    As a consequence, we now have all sorts of chatter coming out of Washington and the urgent need to talk to Russia. So now it's......

    Let's "talk" about East Ukraine
    Let's "talk about Iraq
    Let's "talk" about Syria
    Let's "talk" about Yemen
    Let's "talk about Iran
    Lets "talk" about Latin America

    Funny how seeing China and Russia stand next to each other has sharpened some minds across the Atlantic.

    Pity they could not "talk" before Crimea was 'liberated' right in front of the American satellites circling in space lol

    ;-)

    Fascinating times


    Ilja NB 11 May 2015 12:28

    Which mounting evidence ??? I haven't seen a single one provided ?

    **The Russian foreign ministry said: "We continue to underline that we are ready for cooperation with the US on the basis of equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and that Russian interests are taken into account without attempting to exert pressure on us."**

    Of-course USA will never agree with it, since USA wants to put it's nose in everyone's affairs.


    BMWAlbert -> BunglyPete 11 May 2015 11:55

    Mr. Semenchenko is clearly referring to Greater Ukraine here that extends east into the Kuban, including some buffer areas around the mount Elbrus region (intruded upon on this 2008 occasion) to the south, and north to the Middle Don and Upper Donets basins, to include Beograd and steppe lands east of Voronezh.

    Beckow -> miceonparade 11 May 2015 11:40

    Kerry is going to make a deal. Probably surrender after one more chest-beating threat. If Putin doesn't meet him (also possible), we will have a very hot summer in Ukraine. And maybe elsewhere.

    Beckow 11 May 2015 11:34

    Kerry is going for a reason, and it is not to restate US views. The reality is:

    • - Ukraine cannot win the war in its east
    • - Ukraine is going bankrupt
    • - EU has just basically said no to Ukraine in EU for foreseeable future (decades?)
    • - EU denied visa-free access for Ukrainians
    • - the whole f...ing adventure in Kiev is getting really, really expensive
    • - time is on Russia's side, they can sit and watch Kiev collapse or West spending billions to prop it up
    • - EU cannot currently survive without Russia's gas. Russia has deals with China and Turkey, in 3 years EU will be screwed or pay a lot, lot more

    These realities on the ground drive US crazy. They don't like to deal with reality, it is too hard. They prefer the fantasy play world where US is god-like, others are scared and geography, resources and other realities are wished away. Infantile. Stupid. Self-defeating. Russia is actually doing US a favor by bringing them back to the real word.

    I feel sorry for the Ukrainians; they will suffer for years enormously. They rebelled against a miserable life, were used by a few hustlers from Washington, Berlin and a few Polish ultra-nationalists, now they will pay for it all. Those are the wages of naivete...

    emb27516 miceonparade 11 May 2015 11:32

    Yes, especially if they wrestle.

    BunglyPete 11 May 2015 11:32

    "Mr Putin, look at these images provided to our Senator Inhofe, from Mr Semenchenko of Ukraine's official government designation to Washington.

    As you can see, these images from Georgia in 2008 clearly show you invaded Ukraine last year. We feel these images prove the invasion so strongly, Senator Inhofe wrote a bill authorising arms to Ukraine, and we passed this quite easily.

    What, Mr Putin, will you do about this? If you continue to send tanks to Georgia in 2008 then we will assume you have no interest in fulfilling the terms of Minsk accord and will enact necessary measures to ensure the stability of Ukraine."

    alsojusticeseeker Jeremn 11 May 2015 11:27

    "He may be a son of a b..., but he is our son of a b...". Just another typical example of US hypocrisy.

    BMWAlbert 11 May 2015 11:25

    If only his brain were as big as his hair (obviously, not the bald one).

    warehouse_guy 11 May 2015 11:25

    "Western leaders mainly boycotted the parade in protest at Russia's actions in Ukraine."

    Aka people's will in Crimea, and Russian people's will to help Donbass, they are not exactly hiding it there are donation kiosks all over the country almost in every major city. Not on government level though. There are no on duty Russian troops in Ukraine.

    RudolphS 11 May 2015 11:24

    So, Barry is too chickenshit to go to Russia himself?

    Jeremn 11 May 2015 11:19

    Americans should be asking why their government is supporting a Ukrainian governmnet which honours veterans of an insurgency which massacred Poles, Jews and Russians across Ukraine in 1943 and 1944.

    Here they are, members of the UPA-OUN. Rehabilitated by Poroshenko's governmnet. It was an organisation which formed the Nachtigall Battalion, in German service, and tasked with clearing the Lvov ghetto, and which took men from SS auxiliaries (Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201), which cleared Belarus of partisans and Jews.

    Most notoriously, the UPA ran a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Poles in Ukraine, killing some 100,000 of them (mostly women and children).

    So there are the veterans, in Ukraine's parliament. Here's a history of one of their massacres.

    America, you should know.

    Steve Ennever 11 May 2015 11:15

    "The US has placed several rounds of sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine"

    It has indeed. And badgered Europe into sanctioning Russia further. All of which has affected the US little but has been an immense pain economically for it's "allies."
    Strangely though, in 2014, business between the US & Russia actually increased by 7%.

    Honestly, you get taken for a ride as recently as Iraq & Libya & you still don't learn a thing.

    StatusFoe11 May 2015 11:08

    "This trip is part of our ongoing effort to maintain direct lines of communication with senior Russian officials and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed,"

    i.e. "If you don't do what we say and submit to our will there'll be more costs."

    warehouse_guy 11 May 2015 11:00

    "While Washington has pointed to mounting evidence of Russian military involvement in the east of the country."

    Yet unable to provide any concrete evidence for over a year...

    [May 11, 2015] Why Ukraine Still Cant Break Ties With Russian Aggressor State by Simon Shuster

    Already Ukraine is approaching that point. With most of its scarce resources focused on fighting Russia's proxies in the east, Ukraine's leaders have watched their economy fall off a cliff, surviving only by the grace of massive loans from Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which approved another $17.5 billion last month to be disbursed over the next four years. But that assistance has not stopped the national currency of Ukraine from losing two-thirds of its value since last winter. In the last three months of 2014, the size of the economy contracted almost 15%, inflation shot up to 40%, and unemployment approached double digits.
    Notable quotes:
    "... "Personally, I do not consider Russia to be an aggressor," he said, looking down at his lap. ..."
    "... Its economy cannot survive, he says, unless trade and cooperation with the "aggressor state" continue, regardless how much Russia has done in the past year to sow conflict in Ukraine. ..."
    "... Already Ukraine is approaching that point. With most of its scarce resources focused on fighting Russia's proxies in the east, Ukraine's leaders have watched their economy fall off a cliff, surviving only by the grace of massive loans from Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which approved another $17.5 billion last month to be disbursed over the next four years. But that assistance has not stopped the national currency of Ukraine from losing two-thirds of its value since last winter. In the last three months of 2014, the size of the economy contracted almost 15%, inflation shot up to 40%, and unemployment approached double digits. ..."
    "... About 40% of its orders normally come from Russia, which relies on Turboatom for most of the turbines that run its nuclear power stations. ..."
    "... So for all the aid coming from the state-backed institutions in the U.S. and Europe, Cherkassky says, "those markets haven't exactly met us with open arms." ..."
    Apr 13, 2015 | TIME

    Having survived an assassin's bullet, a revolution and a war, Gennady Kernes now faces a fight over Ukraine's constitution

    One afternoon in late February, Gennady Kernes, the mayor of Kharkov, Ukraine's second largest city, pushed his wheelchair away from the podium at city hall and, with a wince of discomfort, allowed his bodyguards to help him off the stage. The day's session of the city council had lasted several hours, and the mayor's pain medication had begun to wear off. It was clear from the grimace on his face how much he still hurt from the sniper's bullet that nearly killed him last spring. But he collected himself, adjusted his tie and rolled down the aisle to the back of the hall, where the press was waiting to grill him.

    "Gennady Adolfovich," one of the local journalists began, politely addressing the mayor by his name and patronymic. "Do you consider Russia to be an aggressor?" He had seen this loaded question coming. The previous month, Ukraine's parliament had unanimously voted to declare Russia an "aggressor state," moving the two nations closer to a formal state of war after nearly a year of armed conflict. Kernes, long known as a shrewd political survivor, was among the only prominent officials in Ukraine to oppose this decision, even though he knew he could be branded a traitor for it. "Personally, I do not consider Russia to be an aggressor," he said, looking down at his lap.

    It was a sign of his allegiance in the new phase of Ukraine's war. Since February, when a fragile ceasefire began to take hold, the question of the country's survival has turned to a debate over its reconstitution. Under the conditions of the truce, Russia has demanded that Ukraine embrace "federalization," a sweeping set of constitutional reforms that would take power away from the capital and redistribute it to the regions. Ukraine now has to decide how to meet this demand without letting its eastern provinces fall deeper into Russia's grasp.

    The state council charged with making this decision convened for the first time on April 6, and President Petro Poroshenko gave it strict instructions. Some autonomy would have to be granted to the regions, he said, but Russia's idea of federalization was a red line he wouldn't cross. "It is like an infection, a biological weapon, which is being imposed on Ukraine from abroad," the President said. "Its bacteria are trying to infect Ukraine and destroy our unity."

    Kernes sees it differently. His city of 1.4 million people is a sprawling industrial powerhouse, a traditional center of trade and culture whose suburbs touch the Russian border. Its economy cannot survive, he says, unless trade and cooperation with the "aggressor state" continue, regardless how much Russia has done in the past year to sow conflict in Ukraine.

    "That's how the Soviet Union built things," Kernes explains in his office at the mayoralty, which is decorated with an odd collection of gifts and trinkets, such as a stuffed lion, a robotic-looking sculpture of a scorpion, and a statuette of Kernes in the guise of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. "That's how our factories were set up back in the day," he continues. "It's a fact of life. And what will we do if Russia, our main customer, stops buying?" To answer his own question, he uses an old provincialism: "It'll be cat soup for all of us then," he said.

    Already Ukraine is approaching that point. With most of its scarce resources focused on fighting Russia's proxies in the east, Ukraine's leaders have watched their economy fall off a cliff, surviving only by the grace of massive loans from Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which approved another $17.5 billion last month to be disbursed over the next four years. But that assistance has not stopped the national currency of Ukraine from losing two-thirds of its value since last winter. In the last three months of 2014, the size of the economy contracted almost 15%, inflation shot up to 40%, and unemployment approached double digits.

    But that pain will be just the beginning, says Kernes, unless Ukraine allows its eastern regions to develop economic ties with Russia. As proof he points to the fate of Turboatom, his city's biggest factory, which produces turbines for both Russian and Ukrainian power stations. Its campus takes up more than five square kilometers near the center of Kharkov, like a city within a city, complete with dormitories and bathhouses for its 6,000 employees. On a recent evening, its deputy director, Alexei Cherkassky, was looking over the factory's sales list as though it were a dire medical prognosis. About 40% of its orders normally come from Russia, which relies on Turboatom for most of the turbines that run its nuclear power stations.

    "Unfortunately, all of our major industries are intertwined with Russia in this way," Cherkassky says. "So we shouldn't fool ourselves in thinking we can be independent from Russia. We are totally interdependent." Over the past year, Russia has started cutting back on orders from Turboatom as part of its broader effort to starve Ukraine's economy, and the factory has been forced as a result to cut shifts, scrap overtime and push hundreds of workers into retirement.

    At least in the foreseeable future, it does not have the option of shifting sales to Europe. "Turbines aren't iPhones," says Cherkassky. "You don't switch them out every few months." And the ones produced at Turboatom, like nearly all of Ukraine's heavy industry, still use Soviet means of production that don't meet the needs of most Western countries. So for all the aid coming from the state-backed institutions in the U.S. and Europe, Cherkassky says, "those markets haven't exactly met us with open arms."

    Russia knows this. For decades it has used the Soviet legacy of interdependence as leverage in eastern Ukraine. The idea of its "federalization" derives in part from this reality. For two decades, one of the leading proponents of this vision has been the Russian politician Konstantin Zatulin, who heads the Kremlin-connected institute in charge of integrating the former Soviet space. Since at least 2004, he has been trying to turn southeastern Ukraine into a zone of Russian influence – an effort that got him banned from entering the country between 2006 and 2010.

    His political plan for controlling Ukraine was put on hold last year, as Russia began using military means to achieve the same ends. But the current ceasefire has brought his vision back to the fore. "If Ukraine accepts federalization, we would have no need to tear Ukraine apart," Zatulin says in his office in Moscow, which is cluttered with antique weapons and other military bric-a-brac. Russia could simply build ties with the regions of eastern Ukraine that "share the Russian point of view on all the big issues," he says. "Russia would have its own soloists in the great Ukrainian choir, and they would sing for us. This would be our compromise."

    It is a compromise that Kernes seems prepared to accept, despite everything he has suffered in the past year of political turmoil. Early on in the conflict with Russia, he admits that he flirted with ideas of separatism himself, and he fiercely resisted the revolution that brought Poroshenko's government to power last winter. In one of its first decisions, that government even brought charges against Kernes for allegedly abducting, threatening and torturing supporters of the revolution in Kharkov. After that, recalls Zatulin, the mayor "simply chickened out." Facing a long term in prison, Kernes accepted Ukraine's new leaders and turned his back on the separatist cause, refusing to allow his city to hold a referendum on secession from Ukraine.

    "And you know what I got for that," Kernes says. "I got a bullet." On April 28, while he was exercising near a city park, an unidentified sniper shot Kernes in the back with a high-caliber rifle. The bullet pierced his lung and shredded part of his liver, but it also seemed to shore up his bona fides as a supporter of Ukrainian unity. The state dropped its charges against him soon after, and he was able to return to his post.

    It wasn't the first time he made such an incredible comeback. In 2007, while he was serving as adviser to his friend and predecessor, Mikhail Dobkin, a video of them trying to film a campaign ad was leaked to the press. It contained such a hilarious mix of bumbling incompetence and backalley obscenity that both of their careers seemed sure to be over. Kernes not only survived that scandal but was elected mayor a few years later.

    Now the fight over Ukraine's federalization is shaping up to be his last. In late March, as he continued demanding more autonomy for Ukraine's eastern regions, the state re-opened its case against him for alleged kidnapping and torture, which he has always denied. The charges, he says, are part of a campaign against all politicians in Ukraine who support the restoration of civil ties with Russia. "They don't want to listen to reason," he says.

    But one way or another, the country will still have to let its eastern regions to do business with the enemy next door, "because that's where the money is," Kernes says. No matter how much aid Ukraine gets from the IMF and other Western backers, it will not be enough to keep the factories of Kharkov alive. "They'll just be left to rot without our steady clients in Russia." Never mind that those clients may have other plans for Ukraine in mind.

    [May 11, 2015]Anglo-American Bankers Organized World War II

    May 11, 2015 | Voltaire Network

    To mark the 70th anniversary of the Victory against Nazism, we publish a study of Valentin Katasonov on financing of the NSDAP and the rearmament of the Third Reich. The author deals with new documents that confirm the organization of the Second World War by US and UK Bankers, covered by President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in the hope of destroying the USSR. This study raises new questions that will be addressed in a future article.

    The war was not unleashed by frenzied Fuhrer who happened to be ruling Germany at the time. WWII is a project created by world oligarchy or Anglo-American "money owners". Using such instruments as the US Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England they started to prepare for the next world conflict of global scale right after WWI. The USSR was the target.

    The Dawes and Young Plans, the creation of Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the Germany's suspension of reparations payments it had to pay according to Paris Peace Treaty and the acquiescence of Russia's former allies in this decision, large-scale foreign investments into the economy of Third Reich, the militarization of German economy and the breaches of Paris Treaty provisions – they all were important milestones on the way of preparing the war.

    There were key figures behind the plot: the Rockefellers, the Morgans, Lord Montagu Norman (the Governor of the Bank of England), Hjalmar Schacht (President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics in the Hitler's government). The strategic plan of Rockefellers and Morgans was to subjugate Europe economically, saturate Germany with foreign investments and credits and make it deliver a crushing blow against the Soviet Russia so that it would be returned into the world capitalist system as a colony.

    Montagu Norman (1871 - 1950) played an important role of go-between to keep up a dialogue between American financial circles and Germany's business leaders. Hjalmar Schacht organized the revival of Germany's defense sector of economy. The operation conducted by "money owners" was covered up by such politicians as Franklin Roosevelt, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. In Germany the plans were carried out by Hitler and Hjalmar Schacht. Some historians say Hjalmar Schacht played a more important role than Hitler. Simply Schacht kept away from spotlight.

    The Dawes Plan was an attempt following World War I for the Triple Entente to compromise and collect war reparations debt from Germany. The Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was an attempt in 1924 to solve the reparations problem, which had bedeviled international politics following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles (France was reluctant to accept it got over 50% of reparations). In 1924-1929 Germany got $2, 5 billion from the United States and $ 1, 5 billion from Great Britain, according to Dawes Plan. In today's prices the sum is huge, it is equal to $1 trillion of US dollars. Hjalmar Schacht played an active role in the implementation of Dawes Plan. In 1929 he summed up the results, saying that in 5 years Germany got more foreign loans that the United States in the 40 years preceding WWI. As a result, in 1929 Germany became the world's second largest industrial nation leaving Great Britain behind.

    In the 1930s the process of feeding Germany with investments and credits continued. The Young Plan was a program for settling German reparations debts after World War I written in 1929 and formally adopted in 1930. It was presented by the committee headed (1929–30) by American industrialist Owen D. Young, creator and ex-first chairman of Radio Corporation of America (RCA), who, at the time, concurrently served at board of trustees of Rockefeller Foundation, and also had been one of representatives involved in previous war reparations restructuring arrangement – Dawes Plan of 1924. According to the plan, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) was created in 1930 to make Germany pay reparations to victors. In reality the money flows went in quite a different direction - from the United States and Great Britain to Germany. The majority of strategically important German companies belonged to American capital or were partly under its control. Some of them belonged to British investors. German oil refinery and coal liquefaction sectors of economy belonged to Standard Oil (the Rockefellers). Farbenindustrie AG, chemical industry major was moved under the control of the Morgan Group. 40% of telephone network and 30% of Focke Wulf shares belonged to American ITT. Radio and AEG, Siemens, Osram electrical industry majors moved under the control of American General Electric. ITT and General Electric were part of the Morgan's empire. At least 100% of the Volkswagen shares belonged to American Ford. By the time Hitler came to power the US financial capital practically controlled all strategically important sectors of German industry: oil refining, synthetic fuel production, chemistry, car building, aviation, electrical engineering, radio industry, and a large part of machine-building (totally 278 companies). The leading German banks - Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Donat Bank and some others - were under US control.

    ***

    On January 30, 1933 Hitler was named the Chancellor of Germany. Before that his candidacy had been thoroughly studied by American bankers. Hjalmar Schacht went to the United States in the autumn of 1930 to discuss the nomination with American colleagues. The Hitler's appointment was finally approved at a secret meeting of financiers in the United States. He spent the whole 1932 trying to convince the German bankers that Hitler was the right person for the position. He achieved the goal. In mid-November 1932 17 German largest bankers and industrialists sent a letter to President Hindenburg expressing their demand to make Hitler the Chancellor of Germany. The last working meeting of German financiers before the election was held on January 4, 1933 in Kölnat the home of banker Kurt von Schröder. After that the National Socialist Party came to power. As a result, the financial and economic ties of Germany with Anglo-Saxons elevated to a higher level.

    Hitler immediately made an announcement that he refused to pay postwar reparations. It put into doubt the ability of England and France to pay off WWI debts to the United States. Washington did not object to the Hitler's announcement. In May 1933 Hjalmar Schacht paid another visit to the United States. There he met with President Franklin Roosevelt and big bankers to reach a $1 billion credit deal.In June the same year Hjalmar Schacht visited London to hold talks with Montagu Norman. It all went down smoothly. The British agreed to grant a $2 billion loan. The British offered no objections related to the Germany's decision to suspend debt payments.

    Some historians say the American and British bankers were pliant because by 1932 the Soviet Union had fulfilled the 5-year economic development plan to make it achieve new heights as an industrial power. A few thousand enterprises were built, especially in the sector of heavy industry. The dependence of USSR on import of engineering production has greatly dwindled. The chances to strangle the Soviet Union economically were practically reduced to zero. They decided to rely on war and launched the runaway militarization of Germany.

    It was easy for Germany to get American credits. By and large, Hitler came to power in his country at the same time as Franklin Roosevelt took office in the United States. The very same bankers who supported Hitler in 1931 supported Roosevelt at the presidential election. The newly elect President could not but endorse large credits to Germany. By the way, many noticed that there was a big similarity between the Roosevelt's "New Deal Policy" and the economic policy of the German Third Reich. No wonder. The very same people worked out and consulted the both governments at the time. They mainly represented US financial circles.

    The Roosevelt's New Deal soon started to stumble on the way. In 1937 America plunged into the quagmire of economic crisis. In 1939 the US economy operated at 33% of its industrial capacity (it was 19% in the heat of the 1929-1933 crisis).

    Rexford G. Tugwell, an economist who became part of Franklin Roosevelt's first "Brain, a group of Columbia University academics who helped develop policy recommendations leading up to Roosevelt's New Deal,wrote that in 1939 the government failed to reach any success.There was an open seatill the day Hitler invaded Poland.Only the mighty wind of war could dissipate the fog. Any other measures Roosevelt could take were doomed to failure. [1] Only the world war could save the US capitalism. In 1939 the money owners used all leverage at their disposal to put pressure of Hitler and make him unleash a big war in the east.

    ***

    The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) played an important role during the Second World War. It was created as an outpost of American interests in Europe and a link between Anglo-American and German businesses, a kind of offshore zone for cosmopolitan capital providing a shelter from political processes, wars, sanctions and other things. The Bank was created as a public commercial entity, it's immunity from government interference and such things as taxes collection was guaranteed by international agreement signed in the Hague in 1930.

    The bankers of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who were close to the Morgans, Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, German financiers: Hjalmar Schacht (President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics in the Hitler's government), Walther Funk (who later replaced Hjalmar Schacht as President of the Reichsbank) and EmilPuhl – all of them played an important role in the efforts to establish the Bank. The central banks of Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium and some private banks were among the founders. The Federal Bank of New York did its best to establish the BIS, but it was not listed as a founder. The US was represented by the private First National Bank of New York, J.P. Morgan and Company, the First National Bank of Chicago – all parts of the Morgan's empire. Japan was also represented by private banks. In 1931-1932 19 European central banks joined the Bank of International Settlements. Gates W. McGarrah, a banker of Rockefeller's clan, was the first BIS chairman of the board. He was replaced by Leon Fraser, who represented the clan of Morgans. US citizen Thomas H. McKittrick was President of the Bankduring the war years.

    A lot has already been written about the BIS activities serving the interests of Third Reich. The Bank was involved in deals with different countries, including those Germany was at war with. Ever since Pearl Harbor the Bank of International Settlements has been a correspondent bank for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It was under Nazi control during the war years, no matter American Thomas Huntington McKittrick was the Bank's President. Soldiers were dying on the battlefields while the leadership of BIS held meetings in Basel with the bankers of Germany, Japan, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain and the United States. There, in the Swiss offshore zone, it was all peaceful, the representatives of belligerents quietly worked in the atmosphere of mutual understanding.

    Switzerland became the place where gold seized by Germany in different corners of Europe was transported to for storage. In the March of 1938, when Hitler captured Vienna, part of Austrian gold was transferred to BIS vaults. The same thing happened with the gold of Czech National Bank (48 million USD). As the war started, the flows of gold poured into the Bank of International Settlements. Germany got it from concentration camps and as a result of plundering the wealth of occupied countries (including whatever belonged to civilians: jewels, gold crowns, cigarette cases, utensils…). It was called the Nazi Gold. The metal was processed into ingots to be stored in the Bank of International Settlements, Switzerland, or outside Europe. Charles Higham in his Trading With The Enemy: An Expose of The Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949 wrote that during the war Nazi transferred $378 million into the accounts of Bank of International Settlements.

    A few words about the Czech gold. The details surfaced when after the Bank of England's archives were declassified in 2012. [2] In the March of 1939 Germany captured Prague. Nazi demanded $48 million of national gold reserves. They were told that the sum had already been transferred to the Bank of International Settlements. Later it became known that the gold was transferred from Basel to the vaults of Bank of England. Upon the command from Berlin the gold was transferred to the ReichsbankBIS account. Then the Bank of England was involved in transactions done upon the orders of Reichsbank given to the Bank of International settlements. The commands were retransmitted to London. There was collusion between German Reichsbank, the Bank of International Settlements and the Bank of England. In 1939 a scandal broke out in Great Britain because the Bank of England executed the transactions with Czech gold upon the commands coming from Berlin and Basel, not the Czech government. For instance, in the June of 1939, three months before the war between Great Britain and Germany started, the Bank of England helped Germans to get into their accounts the amount of gold equal to 440 thousand pounds sterling and transfer some gold to New York (Germany was sure that in case of German intervention into Poland the United States would not declare war).

    The illegal transactions with Czech gold were implemented with tacit approval of the government of Great Britain which was aware of what was going on. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon and other top officials did their best to hide the truth, including outright lies (the gold was returned to the lawful owner or had never been transferred to Reichsbank). The recently declassified materials of Bank of England reveal the truth and show that the government officials lied to cover up themselves and the activities of the Bank of England and the Bank of International Settlements. It was easy to coordinate the joint criminal activities because Montagu Norman, the head of Bank of England, served as the chairman of the board of Bank of International Settlements. He never made secret of his sympathy for fascists.

    The Bretton Woods Conference, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the United States, to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II. The conference was held from 1 to 22 July 1944. All of a sudden the issue of the Bank of International Settlements hit the agenda. It was reported that the bank collaborated with fascist Germany. Leaving many details aside, I'd only mention that with great difficulty (some US delegates opposed the motion) the delegates reached an agreement to close the BIS. The decision of international conference has never been enacted. All the discreditable information related to the BIS wartime activities was classified. Today it helps to falsify the history of the Second World War.

    Finally, a few words about Hjalmar Schacht (1877-1970) who served as President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics in the fascist Germany's government. He was a key figure controlling the economic machine of Third Reich, an extraordinary and plenipotentiaryambassador representing Anglo-American capital in Germany. In 1945 Schacht was tried at Nuremberg to be acquitted on October 1, 1946. He got away with murder. The same way it happened to Hitler. For some unexplained reasons he was not in the 1945 leading wartime criminals list. More to it, Schacht returned to his profession like if nothing happened and founded Schacht GmbH in Düsseldorf. This detail may go unnoticed, though it serves as another testimony to the fact that Anglo-American "money owners" and their plenipotentiary representatives in Germany prepared and, to some extent, influenced the outcome of the Second World War. The "money owners" want to rewrite the history of the war and change its results.

    Valentin Katasonov

    Source
    Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia)

    [1] P.Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt, A Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, New York, 1957, p 477.

    [2] http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/arch...


    Source : "Anglo-American Money Owners Organized World War II", by Valentin Katasonov, Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia), Voltaire Network, 7 May 2015, www.voltairenet.org/article187508.html

    Valentin Katasonov Professor, Department of Moscow State Institute of International Finance, doctor of economic sciences, corresponding member of the Academy of Economics and Commerce. He was consultant of the United Nations (1991-1993), member of the Advisory Council to the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (1993-1996), head of the Department of international monetary relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Russia (2001-11).

    [May 11, 2015] The Choice Before Europe

    May 05, 2015 | Information Clearing House

    Washington continues to drive Europe toward one or the other of the two most likely outcomes of the orchestrated conflict with Russia. Either Europe or some European Union member government will break from Washington over the issue of Russian sanctions, thereby forcing the EU off of the path of conflict with Russia, or Europe will be pushed into military conflict with Russia.

    In June the Russian sanctions expire unless each member government of the EU votes to continue the sanctions. Several governments have spoken against a continuation. For example, the governments of the Czech Republic and Greece have expressed dissatisfaction with the sanctions.

    US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged growing opposition to the sanctions among some European governments. Employing the three tools of US foreign policy–threats, bribery, and coercion–he warned Europe to renew the sanctions or there would be retribution. We will see in June if Washington's threat has quelled the rebellion.

    Europe has to consider the strength of Washington's threat of retribution against the cost of a continuing and worsening conflict with Russia. This conflict is not in Europe's economic or political interest, and the conflict has the risk of breaking out into war that would destroy Europe.

    Since the end of World War II Europeans have been accustomed to following Washington's lead. For awhile France went her own way, and there were some political parties in Germany and Italy that considered Washington to be as much of a threat to European independence as the Soviet Union. Over time, using money and false flag operations, such as Operation Gladio, Washington marginalized politicians and political parties that did not follow Washington's lead.

    The specter of a military conflict with Russia that Washington is creating could erode Washington's hold over Europe. By hyping a "Russian threat," Washington is hoping to keep Europe under Washington's protective wing. However, the "threat" is being over-hyped to the point that some Europeans have understood that Europe is being driven down a path toward war.

    Belligerent talk from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from John McCain, from the neoconservatives, and from NATO commander Philip Breedlove is unnerving Europeans. In a recent love-fest between Breedlove and the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by John McCain, Breedlove supported arming the Ukrainian military, the backbone of which appears to be the Nazi militias, with heavy US weapons in order to change "the decision calculus on the ground" and bring an end to the break-away republics that oppose Washington's puppet government in Kiev.

    Breedlove told the Senate committee that his forces were insufficient to withstand Russian aggression and that he needed more forces on Russia's borders in order to "reassure allies."

    Europeans have to decide whether the threat is Russia or Washington. The European press, which Udo Ulfkotte reports in his book, Bought Journalists, consists of CIA assets, has been working hard to convince Europeans that there is a "revanchist Russia" on the prowl that seeks to recover the Soviet Empire. Washington's coup in Ukraine has disappeared. In its place Washington has substituted a "Russian invasion," hyped as Putin's first step in restoring the Soviet empire.

    Just as there is no evidence of the Russian military in Ukraine, there is no evidence of Russian forces threatening Europe or any discussion or advocacy of restoring the Soviet empire among Russian political and military leaders.

    In contrast Washington has the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which is explicitly directed at Russia, and now the Council on Foreign Relations has added China as a target of the Wolfowitz doctrine. http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf

    The CFR report says that China is a rising power and thereby a threat to US world hegemony. China's rise must be contained so that Washington can remain the boss in the Asian Pacific. What it comes down to is this: China is a threat because China will not prevent its own rise. This makes China a threat to "the International Order." "The International Order," of course, is the order determined by Washington. In other words, just as there must be no Russian sphere of influence, there must be no Chinese sphere of influence. The CFR report calls this keeping the world "free of hegemonic control" except by the US.

    Just as General Breedlove demands more military spending in order to counter "the Russian threat," the CFR wants more military spending in order to counter "the Chinese threat." The report concludes: "Congress should remove sequestration caps and substantially increase the U.S. defense budget."

    Clearly, Washington has no intention of moderating its position as the sole imperial power. In defense of this power, Washington will take the world to nuclear war. Europe can prevent this war by asserting its independence and departing the empire.

    Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

    [May 11, 2015]CIA leaker Jeffrey Sterling sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for Espionage Act violations

    May 11, 2015 | RT USA

    CIA leaker Jeffrey Sterling sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for Espionage Act violations


    Convicted CIA leaker Jeffrey Sterling was sentenced to 42 months in prison under the Espionage Act. He was found guilty of nine counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information about a covert operation and other related charges.

    Sterling was given an additional two years of supervised release after he finishes his time in jail. The government had sought a prison term of more than 20 years for Sterling, but the judge told prosecutors at the sentencing that was too harsh a punishment, according to the New York Times' Matt Apuzzo.

    ... ... ...

    The former CIA officer, who was fired in the early 2000s, was charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information about a mission meant to slow Iran's nuclear program to New York Times reporter James Risen, who then wrote about the CIA's Iranian plot "Operation Merlin" in his 2006 book, 'State of War'. The plan was designed to project a negative image of Iran's nuclear program, learn more about it program and impair its progress. Flawed nuclear weapon schematics were reportedly funneled to the Iranians via a Russian scientist with the codename "Merlin."

    Risen was also critical of Operation Merlin in his book, saying it could have inadvertently helped Iran if they were able to identify what was wrong with the blueprints.

    ... ... ...

    In remarks of his own, US District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema mentioned the punishments meted out against other government whistleblowers, including Gen. David Petraeus, who was sentenced to two years probation for leaking documents to his biographer, a woman who was also his mistress, as well as that of John Kiriakou, Rapalo said.

    [May 10, 2015] Battle Tested, Ukraine Troops Now Get U.S. Basic Training

    May 09, 2015 | NYTimes.com

    YAVORIV, Ukraine - The exercise, one of the most fundamental in the military handbook, came off without a hitch. A soldier carrying a length of rope and a grappling hook ran to within 20 feet or so of a coil of concertina wire and stopped.

    For a moment, he twirled the rope in his hands like a lasso, then threw the hook over the wire, and tugged hard, testing for explosives.

    When nothing happened he signaled two comrades, who ran up and started snipping the wire with cutters.

    Although this was a typical training exercise for raw recruits in an elemental soldierly skill, there was nothing typical about the scene. Far from enlistees, these soldiers were regulars in the Ukrainian National Guard, presumably battle-hardened after months on the front lines in eastern Ukraine. And the trainer was an American military instructor, drilling troops for battle with the United States' former Cold War foe, Russia, and Russian-backed separatists.

    ... ... ...

    The training included simulations of a suspect's detention. Credit Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

    The course on cutting wire is one of 63 classes of remedial military instruction being provided by 300 United States Army trainers in three consecutive two-month courses.

    Here in western Ukraine, they are far from the fighting, and their job is to instill some basic military know-how in Ukrainian soldiers, who the trainers have discovered are woefully unprepared. The largely unschooled troops are learning such basic skills as how to use an encrypted walkie-talkie; how to break open a door with a sledgehammer and a crowbar; and how to drag a wounded colleague across a field while holding a rifle at the ready.

    ... ... ...

    The United States is also providing advanced courses for military professionals known as forward observers - the ones who call in targets - to improve the accuracy of artillery fire, making it more lethal for the enemy and less so for civilians.

    Photo

    The training also included simulations of a home raid. Credit Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

    Oleksandr I. Leshchenko, the deputy director for training in the National Guard, was somewhat skeptical about the value of the training, saying that "99 percent" of the men in the course had already been in combat.

    ... ... ...

    American officers described the course work as equivalent to the latter months of basic training in the United States. The courses will train 705 Ukrainian soldiers at a cost of $19 million over six months. The Ukrainian National Guard is rotating from the front what units it can spare for the training. American instructors intend to recommend top performers to serve as trainers within other Ukrainian units, and in this way spread the instruction more broadly.

    ... ... ...

    [May 10, 2015] The New York Times does its government s bidding Here s what you re not being told about US troops in Ukraine

    Notable quotes:
    "... American soldiers in Ukraine, American media not saying much about it. Two facts. ..."
    "... Americans are being led blindfolded very near the brink of war with Russia. ..."
    "... Don't need a war to get what done, Mr. President? This is our question. Then this one: Washington is going to stop at exactly what as it manipulates its latest set of puppets in disadvantaged countries, this time pretending there is absolutely nothing thoughtless or miscalculated about doing so on Russia's historically sensitive western border? ..."
    "... And our policy cliques are willing to go all the way to war for this? As of mid-April, when the 173rd Airborne Brigade started arriving in Ukraine, it looks as if we are on notice in this respect. ..."
    "... Take a deep breath and consider that 1,000 American folks, as Obama will surely get around to calling them, are conducting military drills with troops drawn partly from Nazi and crypto-Nazi paramilitary groups . Sorry, I cannot add anything more to this paragraph. Speechless. ..."
    "... Part of me still thinks war with Russia seems a far-fetched proposition. But here's the thing: It is even more far-fetched to deny the gravity of this moment for all its horrific, playing-with-fire potential. ..."
    "... Last December, John Pilger, the noted Australian journalist now in London, said in a speech that the Ukraine crisis had become the most extreme news blackout he had seen his entire career. I agree and now need no more proof as to whether it is a matter of intent or ineptitude. (Now that I think of it, it is both in many cases.) ..."
    "... In the sixth paragraph we get this: "Last week, Russia charged that a modest program to train Ukraine's national guard that 300 American troops are carrying out in western Ukraine could 'destabilize the situation.'" Apoplectically speaking: Goddamn it, there is nothing modest about U.S. troops operating on Ukrainian soil, and it is self-evidently destabilizing. It is an obvious provocation, a point the policy cliques in Washington cannot have missed. ..."
    "... The Poroshenko government contrives to assign Russia the blame, but one can safely ignore this. Extreme right members of parliament have been more to the point. After a prominent editor named Oles Buzyna was fatally shot outside his home several weeks ago, a lawmaker named Boris Filatov told colleagues, "One more piece of shit has been eliminated." From another named Irina Farion, this: Death will neutralize the dirt this shit has spilled. Such people go to history's sewers." ..."
    "... He was a vigorous opponent of American adventurism abroad, consistent and reasoned even as resistance to both grew in his later years. By the time he was finished he was published and read far more outside America than in it. ..."
    May 09, 2015 | NYTimes.com

    Reprinted from May 07, 2015 article at Salon.com

    As of mid-April, when a Pentagon flack announced it in Kiev, and as barely reported in American media, U.S. troops are now operating openly in Ukraine.

    Now there is a lead I have long dreaded writing but suspected from the first that one day I would. Do not take a moment to think about this. Take many moments. We all need to. We find ourselves in grave circumstances this spring.

    At first I thought I had written what newspaper people call a double-barreled lead: American soldiers in Ukraine, American media not saying much about it. Two facts.

    Wrong. There is one fact now, and it is this: Americans are being led blindfolded very near the brink of war with Russia.

    One cannot predict there will be one. And, of course, right-thinking people hope things will never come to one. In March, President Obama dismissed any such idea as if to suggest it was silly. "They're not interested in a military confrontation with us," Obama said of the Russians-wisely. Then he added, unwisely: "We don't need a war."

    Don't need a war to get what done, Mr. President? This is our question. Then this one: Washington is going to stop at exactly what as it manipulates its latest set of puppets in disadvantaged countries, this time pretending there is absolutely nothing thoughtless or miscalculated about doing so on Russia's historically sensitive western border?

    The pose of American innocence, tatty and tiresome in the best of times, is getting dangerous once again.

    The source of worry now is that we do not have an answer to the second question. The project is plain: Advance NATO the rest of the way through Eastern Europe, probably with the intent of eventually destabilizing Moscow. The stooges now installed in Kiev are getting everything ready for the corporations eager to exploit Ukrainian resources and labor.

    And our policy cliques are willing to go all the way to war for this? As of mid-April, when the 173rd Airborne Brigade started arriving in Ukraine, it looks as if we are on notice in this respect.

    In the past there were a few vague mentions of an American military presence in Ukraine that was to be in place by this spring, if I recall correctly. These would have been last autumn. By then, there were also reports, unconfirmed, that some troops and a lot of spooks were already there as advisers but not acknowledged.

    Then in mid-March President Poroshenko introduced a bill authorizing-as required by law-foreign troops to operate on Ukrainian soil. There was revealing detail, according to Russia Insider, a free-standing website in Moscow founded and run by Charles Bausman, an American with an uncanny ability to gather and publish pertinent information.

    "According to the draft law, Ukraine plans three Ukrainian-American command post exercises, Fearless Guardian 2015, Sea Breeze 2015 and Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident 2015," the publication reported, "and two Ukrainian-Polish exercises, Secure Skies 2015, and Law and Order 2015, for this year."

    This is a lot of dry-run maneuvering, if you ask me. Poroshenko's law allows for up to 1,000 American troops to participate in each of these exercises, alongside an equal number of Ukrainian "National Guardsmen," and we will insist on the quotation marks when referring to this gruesome lot, about whom more in a minute.

    Take a deep breath and consider that 1,000 American folks, as Obama will surely get around to calling them, are conducting military drills with troops drawn partly from Nazi and crypto-Nazi paramilitary groups . Sorry, I cannot add anything more to this paragraph. Speechless.

    It was a month to the day after Poroshenko's bill went to parliament that the Pentagon spokesman in Kiev announced-to a room empty of American correspondents, we are to assume-that troops from the 173rd Airborne were just then arriving to train none other than "National Guardsmen." This training includes "classes in war-fighting functions," as the operations officer, Maj. Jose Mendez, blandly put it at the time.

    The spokesman's number was "about 300," and I never like "about" when these people are describing deployments. This is how it always begins, we will all recall. The American presence in Vietnam began with a handful of advisers who arrived in September 1950. (Remember MAAG, the Military Assistance Advisory Group?)

    Part of me still thinks war with Russia seems a far-fetched proposition. But here's the thing: It is even more far-fetched to deny the gravity of this moment for all its horrific, playing-with-fire potential.

    I am getting on to apoplectic as to the American media's abject irresponsibility in not covering this stuff adequately. To leave these events unreported is outright lying by omission. Nobody's news judgment can be so bad as to argue this is not a story.

    Last December, John Pilger, the noted Australian journalist now in London, said in a speech that the Ukraine crisis had become the most extreme news blackout he had seen his entire career. I agree and now need no more proof as to whether it is a matter of intent or ineptitude. (Now that I think of it, it is both in many cases.)

    To cross the "i"s and dot the "t"s, as I prefer to do, the Times did make two mentions of the American troops. One was the day of the announcement, a brief piece on an inside page, datelined Washington. Here we get our code word for this caper: It will be "modest" in every mention.

    The second was in an April 23 story by Michael Gordon, the State Department correspondent. The head was, "Putin Bolsters His Forces Near Ukraine, U.S. Says." Read the thing here.

    The story line is a doozy: Putin-not "the Russians" or "Moscow," of course-is again behaving aggressively by amassing troops-how many, exactly where and how we know is never explained-along his border with Ukraine. Inside his border, that is. This is the story. This is what we mean by aggression these days.

    In the sixth paragraph we get this: "Last week, Russia charged that a modest program to train Ukraine's national guard that 300 American troops are carrying out in western Ukraine could 'destabilize the situation.'" Apoplectically speaking: Goddamn it, there is nothing modest about U.S. troops operating on Ukrainian soil, and it is self-evidently destabilizing. It is an obvious provocation, a point the policy cliques in Washington cannot have missed.

    At this point, I do not see how anyone can stand against the argument-mine for some time-that Putin has shown exemplary restraint in this crisis. In a reversal of roles and hemispheres, Washington would have a lot more than air defense systems and troops of whatever number on the border in question.

    The Times coverage of Ukraine, to continue briefly in this line, starts to remind me of something I.F. Stone once said about the Washington Post: The fun of reading it, the honored man observed, is that you never know where you'll find a page one story.

    In the Times' case, you never know if you will find it at all.

    Have you read much about the wave of political assassinations that erupted in Kiev in mid-April? Worry not. No one else has either-not in American media. Not a word in the Times.

    The number my sources give me, and I cannot confirm it, is a dozen so far-12 to 13 to be precise. On the record, we have 10 who can be named and identified as political allies of Viktor Yanukovych, the president ousted last year, opponents of a drastic rupture in Ukraine's historic relations to Russia, people who favored marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of the Nazis-death-deserving idea, this-and critics of the new regime's corruptions and dependence on violent far-right extremists.

    These were all highly visible politicians, parliamentarians and journalists. They have been murdered by small groups of these extremists, according to reports readily available in non-American media. In my read, the killers may have the same semi-official ties to government that the paramilitary death squads in 1970s Argentina-famously recognizable in their Ford Falcons-had with Videla and the colonels.

    The Poroshenko government contrives to assign Russia the blame, but one can safely ignore this. Extreme right members of parliament have been more to the point. After a prominent editor named Oles Buzyna was fatally shot outside his home several weeks ago, a lawmaker named Boris Filatov told colleagues, "One more piece of shit has been eliminated." From another named Irina Farion, this: Death will neutralize the dirt this shit has spilled. Such people go to history's sewers."

    Kindly place, Kiev's parliament under this new crowd. Washington must be proud, having backed yet another right-wing, anti-democratic, rights-trampling regime that does what it says.

    And our media must be silent, of course. It can be no other way. Gutless hacks: You bet I am angry.

    * * *

    I end this week's column with a tribute.

    A moment of observance, any kind, for William Pfaff, who died at 86 in Paris late last week. The appreciative obituary by the Times' Marlise Simons is here.

    Pfaff was the most sophisticated foreign affairs commentator of the 20th century's second half and the first 15 years of this one. He was a great influence among colleagues (myself included) and put countless readers in a lot of places in the picture over many decades. He was a vigorous opponent of American adventurism abroad, consistent and reasoned even as resistance to both grew in his later years. By the time he was finished he was published and read far more outside America than in it.

    Pfaff was a conservative man in some respects, which is not uncommon among America's American critics. In this I put him in the file with Henry Steele Commager, C. Vann Woodward, William Appleman Williams, and among those writing now, Andrew Bacevich. He was not a scholar, as these writers were or are, supporting a point I have long made: Not all intellectuals are scholars, and not all scholars are intellectuals.

    Pfaff's books will live on and I commend them: "Barbarian Sentiments," "The Wrath of Nations," "The Bullet's Song," and his last, "The Irony of Manifest Destiny," are the ones on my shelf.

    Farewell from a friend, Bill.

    Patrick Smith is the author of "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century." He was the International Herald Tribune's bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote "Letter from Tokyo" for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @thefloutist. More Patrick L. Smith.

    [May 10, 2015] Obama s Petulant WWII Snub of Russia by Ray McGovern

    Notable quotes:
    "... Though designed to isolate Russia because it had the audacity to object to the Western-engineered coup d'état in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, this snub of Russia's President Vladimir Putin – like the economic sanctions against Russia – is likely to backfire on the U.S. ..."
    "... Obama's boycott is part of a crass attempt to belittle Russia and to cram history itself into an anti-Putin, anti-Russian alternative narrative. ..."
    "... Even George Friedman, the president of the Washington-Establishment-friendly think-tank STRATFOR, has said publicly in late 2014: "Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d'état organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history." ..."
    "... So there! Gotcha! Russian aggression! But what the Post neglected to remind readers was that the U.S.-backed coup had occurred on Feb. 22 and that Putin has consistently said that a key factor in his actions toward Crimea came from Russian fears that NATO would claim the historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, representing a strategic threat to his country. ..."
    "... Last fall, John Mearsheimer, a pre-eminent political science professor at the University of Chicago, stunned those who had been misled by the anti-Russian propaganda when he placed an article in the Very-Establishment journal Foreign Affairs entitled "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault." ..."
    "... Much of this American tendency to disdain other nations' concerns, fears and points of pride go back to the Washington Establishment's dogma that special rules or (perhaps more accurately) no rules govern U.S. behavior abroad – American exceptionalism. This arrogant concept, which puts the United States above all other nations like some Olympic god looking down on mere mortals, is often invoked by Obama and other leading U.S. politicians. ..."
    "... Putin added, though, "I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism," adding: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." ..."
    May 09, 2015 | antiwar.com
    President Barack Obama's decision to join other Western leaders in snubbing Russia's weekend celebration of the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe looks more like pouting than statesmanship, especially in the context of the U.S. mainstream media's recent anti-historical effort to downplay Russia's crucial role in defeating Nazism.

    Though designed to isolate Russia because it had the audacity to object to the Western-engineered coup d'état in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, this snub of Russia's President Vladimir Putin – like the economic sanctions against Russia – is likely to backfire on the U.S. and its European allies by strengthening ties between Russia and the emerging Asian giants of China and India.

    Notably, the dignitaries who will show up at this important commemoration include the presidents of China and India, representing a huge chunk of humanity, who came to show respect for the time seven decades ago when the inhumanity of the Nazi regime was defeated – largely by Russia's stanching the advance of Hitler's armies, at a cost of 20 to 30 million lives.

    Obama's boycott is part of a crass attempt to belittle Russia and to cram history itself into an anti-Putin, anti-Russian alternative narrative. It is difficult to see how Obama and his friends could have come up with a pettier and more gratuitous insult to the Russian people.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel – caught between Washington's demand to "isolate" Russia over the Ukraine crisis and her country's historic guilt in the slaughter of so many Russians – plans to show up a day late to place a wreath at a memorial for the war dead.

    But Obama, in his childish display of temper, will look rather small to those who know the history of the Allied victory in World War II. If it were not for the Red Army's costly victories against the German invaders, particularly the tide-turning battle at Stalingrad in 1943-1944, the prospects for the later D-Day victory in Normandy in June 1944 and the subsequent defeat of Adolf Hitler would have been much more difficult if not impossible.

    Yet, the current Russia-bashing in Washington and the mainstream U.S. media overrides these historical truths. For instance, a New York Times article by Neil MacFarquhar on Friday begins: "The Russian version of Hitler's defeat emphasizes the enormous, unrivaled sacrifices made by the Soviet people to end World War II " But that's not the "Russian version"; that's the history.

    For its part, the Washington Post chose to run an Associated Press story out of Moscow reporting: "A state-of-the-art Russian tank on Thursday ground to a halt during the final Victory Day rehearsal. After an attempt to tow it failed, the T-14 rolled away under its own steam 15 minutes later." (Subtext: Ha, ha! Russia's newest tank gets stuck on Red Square! Ha, ha!).

    This juvenile approach to pretty much everything that's important - not just U.S.-Russia relations - has now become the rule. From the U.S. government to the major U.S. media, it's as if the "cool kids" line up in matching fashions creating a gauntlet to demean and ridicule whoever the outcast of the day is. And anyone who doesn't go along becomes an additional target of abuse.

    That has been the storyline for the Ukraine crisis throughout 2014 and into 2015. Everyone must agree that Putin provoked all the trouble as part of some Hitler-like ambition to conquer much of eastern Europe and rebuild a Russian empire. If you don't make the obligatory denunciations of "Russian aggression," you are called a "Putin apologist" or "Putin bootlicker."

    Distorting the History

    So, the evidence-based history of the Western-sponsored coup in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, must be forgotten or covered up. Indeed, about a year after the events, the New York Times published a major "investigative" article that ignored all the facts of a U.S.-backed coup in declaring there was no coup.

    The Times didn't even mention the notorious, intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in early February 2014 in which Nuland was handpicking the future leaders, including her remark "Yats is the guy," a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who – after the coup – quickly became prime minister. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine."]

    Even George Friedman, the president of the Washington-Establishment-friendly think-tank STRATFOR, has said publicly in late 2014: "Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d'état organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history."

    Beyond simply ignoring facts, the U.S. mainstream media has juggled the time line to make Putin's reaction to the coup – and the threat it posed to the Russian naval base in Crimea – appear to be, instead, evidence of his instigation of the already unfolding conflict.

    For example, in a "we-told-you-so" headline on March 9, the Washington Post declared: "Putin had early plan to annex Crimea." Then, quoting AP, the Post reported that Putin himself had just disclosed "a secret meeting with officials in February 2014 Putin said that after the meeting he told the security chiefs that they would be 'obliged to start working to return Crimea to Russia.' He said the meeting was held Feb. 23, 2014, almost a month before a referendum in Crimea that Moscow has said was the basis for annexing the region."

    So there! Gotcha! Russian aggression! But what the Post neglected to remind readers was that the U.S.-backed coup had occurred on Feb. 22 and that Putin has consistently said that a key factor in his actions toward Crimea came from Russian fears that NATO would claim the historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, representing a strategic threat to his country.

    Putin also knew from opinion polls that most of the people of Crimea favored reunification with Russia, a reality that was underscored by the March referendum in which some 96 percent voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia.

    But there was not one scintilla of reliable evidence that Putin intended to annex Crimea before he felt his hand forced by the putsch in Kiev. The political reality was that no Russian leader could afford to take the risk that Russia's only warm-water naval base might switch to new NATO management. If top U.S. officials did not realize that when they were pushing the coup in early 2014, they know little about Russian strategic concerns – or simply didn't care.

    Last fall, John Mearsheimer, a pre-eminent political science professor at the University of Chicago, stunned those who had been misled by the anti-Russian propaganda when he placed an article in the Very-Establishment journal Foreign Affairs entitled "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault."

    You did not know that such an article was published? Chalk that up to the fact that the mainstream media pretty much ignored it. Mearsheimer said this was the first time he encountered such widespread media silence on an article of such importance.

    The Sole Indispensable Country

    Much of this American tendency to disdain other nations' concerns, fears and points of pride go back to the Washington Establishment's dogma that special rules or (perhaps more accurately) no rules govern U.S. behavior abroad – American exceptionalism. This arrogant concept, which puts the United States above all other nations like some Olympic god looking down on mere mortals, is often invoked by Obama and other leading U.S. politicians.

    That off-putting point has not been missed by Putin even as he has sought to cooperate with Obama and the United States. On Sept. 11, 2013, a week after Putin bailed Obama out, enabling him to avoid a new war on Syria by persuading Syria to surrender its chemical weapons, Putin wrote in an op-ed published by the New York Times that he appreciated the fact that "My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust."

    Putin added, though, "I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism," adding: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

    More recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov drove home this point in the context of World War II. This week, addressing a meeting to mark the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe, Lavrov included a pointed warning: "Today as never before it is important not to forget the lessons of that catastrophe and the terrible consequences that spring from faith in one's own exceptionalism."

    The irony is that as the cameras pan the various world leaders in the Red Square reviewing stand on Saturday, Obama's absence will send a message that the United States has little appreciation for the sacrifice of the Russian people in bearing the brunt – and breaking the back – of Hitler's conquering armies. It is as if Obama is saying that the "exceptional" United States didn't need anyone's help to win World War II.

    President Franklin Roosevelt was much wiser, understanding that it took extraordinary teamwork to defeat Nazism in the 1940s, which is why he considered the Soviet Union a most important military ally. President Obama is sending a very different message, a haughty disdain for the kind of global cooperation which succeeded in ridding the world of Adolf Hitler.

    Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern served for considerable periods in all four of CIA's main directorates.

    [May 10, 2015] The New York Times does its government s bidding Here s what you re not being told about US troops in Ukraine

    Notable quotes:
    "... American soldiers in Ukraine, American media not saying much about it. Two facts. ..."
    "... Americans are being led blindfolded very near the brink of war with Russia. ..."
    "... Don't need a war to get what done, Mr. President? This is our question. Then this one: Washington is going to stop at exactly what as it manipulates its latest set of puppets in disadvantaged countries, this time pretending there is absolutely nothing thoughtless or miscalculated about doing so on Russia's historically sensitive western border? ..."
    "... And our policy cliques are willing to go all the way to war for this? As of mid-April, when the 173rd Airborne Brigade started arriving in Ukraine, it looks as if we are on notice in this respect. ..."
    "... Take a deep breath and consider that 1,000 American folks, as Obama will surely get around to calling them, are conducting military drills with troops drawn partly from Nazi and crypto-Nazi paramilitary groups . Sorry, I cannot add anything more to this paragraph. Speechless. ..."
    "... Part of me still thinks war with Russia seems a far-fetched proposition. But here's the thing: It is even more far-fetched to deny the gravity of this moment for all its horrific, playing-with-fire potential. ..."
    "... Last December, John Pilger, the noted Australian journalist now in London, said in a speech that the Ukraine crisis had become the most extreme news blackout he had seen his entire career. I agree and now need no more proof as to whether it is a matter of intent or ineptitude. (Now that I think of it, it is both in many cases.) ..."
    "... In the sixth paragraph we get this: "Last week, Russia charged that a modest program to train Ukraine's national guard that 300 American troops are carrying out in western Ukraine could 'destabilize the situation.'" Apoplectically speaking: Goddamn it, there is nothing modest about U.S. troops operating on Ukrainian soil, and it is self-evidently destabilizing. It is an obvious provocation, a point the policy cliques in Washington cannot have missed. ..."
    "... The Poroshenko government contrives to assign Russia the blame, but one can safely ignore this. Extreme right members of parliament have been more to the point. After a prominent editor named Oles Buzyna was fatally shot outside his home several weeks ago, a lawmaker named Boris Filatov told colleagues, "One more piece of shit has been eliminated." From another named Irina Farion, this: Death will neutralize the dirt this shit has spilled. Such people go to history's sewers." ..."
    "... He was a vigorous opponent of American adventurism abroad, consistent and reasoned even as resistance to both grew in his later years. By the time he was finished he was published and read far more outside America than in it. ..."
    May 09, 2015 | NYTimes.com

    Reprinted from May 07, 2015 article at Salon.com

    As of mid-April, when a Pentagon flack announced it in Kiev, and as barely reported in American media, U.S. troops are now operating openly in Ukraine.

    Now there is a lead I have long dreaded writing but suspected from the first that one day I would. Do not take a moment to think about this. Take many moments. We all need to. We find ourselves in grave circumstances this spring.

    At first I thought I had written what newspaper people call a double-barreled lead: American soldiers in Ukraine, American media not saying much about it. Two facts.

    Wrong. There is one fact now, and it is this: Americans are being led blindfolded very near the brink of war with Russia.

    One cannot predict there will be one. And, of course, right-thinking people hope things will never come to one. In March, President Obama dismissed any such idea as if to suggest it was silly. "They're not interested in a military confrontation with us," Obama said of the Russians-wisely. Then he added, unwisely: "We don't need a war."

    Don't need a war to get what done, Mr. President? This is our question. Then this one: Washington is going to stop at exactly what as it manipulates its latest set of puppets in disadvantaged countries, this time pretending there is absolutely nothing thoughtless or miscalculated about doing so on Russia's historically sensitive western border?

    The pose of American innocence, tatty and tiresome in the best of times, is getting dangerous once again.

    The source of worry now is that we do not have an answer to the second question. The project is plain: Advance NATO the rest of the way through Eastern Europe, probably with the intent of eventually destabilizing Moscow. The stooges now installed in Kiev are getting everything ready for the corporations eager to exploit Ukrainian resources and labor.

    And our policy cliques are willing to go all the way to war for this? As of mid-April, when the 173rd Airborne Brigade started arriving in Ukraine, it looks as if we are on notice in this respect.

    In the past there were a few vague mentions of an American military presence in Ukraine that was to be in place by this spring, if I recall correctly. These would have been last autumn. By then, there were also reports, unconfirmed, that some troops and a lot of spooks were already there as advisers but not acknowledged.

    Then in mid-March President Poroshenko introduced a bill authorizing-as required by law-foreign troops to operate on Ukrainian soil. There was revealing detail, according to Russia Insider, a free-standing website in Moscow founded and run by Charles Bausman, an American with an uncanny ability to gather and publish pertinent information.

    "According to the draft law, Ukraine plans three Ukrainian-American command post exercises, Fearless Guardian 2015, Sea Breeze 2015 and Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident 2015," the publication reported, "and two Ukrainian-Polish exercises, Secure Skies 2015, and Law and Order 2015, for this year."

    This is a lot of dry-run maneuvering, if you ask me. Poroshenko's law allows for up to 1,000 American troops to participate in each of these exercises, alongside an equal number of Ukrainian "National Guardsmen," and we will insist on the quotation marks when referring to this gruesome lot, about whom more in a minute.

    Take a deep breath and consider that 1,000 American folks, as Obama will surely get around to calling them, are conducting military drills with troops drawn partly from Nazi and crypto-Nazi paramilitary groups . Sorry, I cannot add anything more to this paragraph. Speechless.

    It was a month to the day after Poroshenko's bill went to parliament that the Pentagon spokesman in Kiev announced-to a room empty of American correspondents, we are to assume-that troops from the 173rd Airborne were just then arriving to train none other than "National Guardsmen." This training includes "classes in war-fighting functions," as the operations officer, Maj. Jose Mendez, blandly put it at the time.

    The spokesman's number was "about 300," and I never like "about" when these people are describing deployments. This is how it always begins, we will all recall. The American presence in Vietnam began with a handful of advisers who arrived in September 1950. (Remember MAAG, the Military Assistance Advisory Group?)

    Part of me still thinks war with Russia seems a far-fetched proposition. But here's the thing: It is even more far-fetched to deny the gravity of this moment for all its horrific, playing-with-fire potential.

    I am getting on to apoplectic as to the American media's abject irresponsibility in not covering this stuff adequately. To leave these events unreported is outright lying by omission. Nobody's news judgment can be so bad as to argue this is not a story.

    Last December, John Pilger, the noted Australian journalist now in London, said in a speech that the Ukraine crisis had become the most extreme news blackout he had seen his entire career. I agree and now need no more proof as to whether it is a matter of intent or ineptitude. (Now that I think of it, it is both in many cases.)

    To cross the "i"s and dot the "t"s, as I prefer to do, the Times did make two mentions of the American troops. One was the day of the announcement, a brief piece on an inside page, datelined Washington. Here we get our code word for this caper: It will be "modest" in every mention.

    The second was in an April 23 story by Michael Gordon, the State Department correspondent. The head was, "Putin Bolsters His Forces Near Ukraine, U.S. Says." Read the thing here.

    The story line is a doozy: Putin-not "the Russians" or "Moscow," of course-is again behaving aggressively by amassing troops-how many, exactly where and how we know is never explained-along his border with Ukraine. Inside his border, that is. This is the story. This is what we mean by aggression these days.

    In the sixth paragraph we get this: "Last week, Russia charged that a modest program to train Ukraine's national guard that 300 American troops are carrying out in western Ukraine could 'destabilize the situation.'" Apoplectically speaking: Goddamn it, there is nothing modest about U.S. troops operating on Ukrainian soil, and it is self-evidently destabilizing. It is an obvious provocation, a point the policy cliques in Washington cannot have missed.

    At this point, I do not see how anyone can stand against the argument-mine for some time-that Putin has shown exemplary restraint in this crisis. In a reversal of roles and hemispheres, Washington would have a lot more than air defense systems and troops of whatever number on the border in question.

    The Times coverage of Ukraine, to continue briefly in this line, starts to remind me of something I.F. Stone once said about the Washington Post: The fun of reading it, the honored man observed, is that you never know where you'll find a page one story.

    In the Times' case, you never know if you will find it at all.

    Have you read much about the wave of political assassinations that erupted in Kiev in mid-April? Worry not. No one else has either-not in American media. Not a word in the Times.

    The number my sources give me, and I cannot confirm it, is a dozen so far-12 to 13 to be precise. On the record, we have 10 who can be named and identified as political allies of Viktor Yanukovych, the president ousted last year, opponents of a drastic rupture in Ukraine's historic relations to Russia, people who favored marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of the Nazis-death-deserving idea, this-and critics of the new regime's corruptions and dependence on violent far-right extremists.

    These were all highly visible politicians, parliamentarians and journalists. They have been murdered by small groups of these extremists, according to reports readily available in non-American media. In my read, the killers may have the same semi-official ties to government that the paramilitary death squads in 1970s Argentina-famously recognizable in their Ford Falcons-had with Videla and the colonels.

    The Poroshenko government contrives to assign Russia the blame, but one can safely ignore this. Extreme right members of parliament have been more to the point. After a prominent editor named Oles Buzyna was fatally shot outside his home several weeks ago, a lawmaker named Boris Filatov told colleagues, "One more piece of shit has been eliminated." From another named Irina Farion, this: Death will neutralize the dirt this shit has spilled. Such people go to history's sewers."

    Kindly place, Kiev's parliament under this new crowd. Washington must be proud, having backed yet another right-wing, anti-democratic, rights-trampling regime that does what it says.

    And our media must be silent, of course. It can be no other way. Gutless hacks: You bet I am angry.

    * * *

    I end this week's column with a tribute.

    A moment of observance, any kind, for William Pfaff, who died at 86 in Paris late last week. The appreciative obituary by the Times' Marlise Simons is here.

    Pfaff was the most sophisticated foreign affairs commentator of the 20th century's second half and the first 15 years of this one. He was a great influence among colleagues (myself included) and put countless readers in a lot of places in the picture over many decades. He was a vigorous opponent of American adventurism abroad, consistent and reasoned even as resistance to both grew in his later years. By the time he was finished he was published and read far more outside America than in it.

    Pfaff was a conservative man in some respects, which is not uncommon among America's American critics. In this I put him in the file with Henry Steele Commager, C. Vann Woodward, William Appleman Williams, and among those writing now, Andrew Bacevich. He was not a scholar, as these writers were or are, supporting a point I have long made: Not all intellectuals are scholars, and not all scholars are intellectuals.

    Pfaff's books will live on and I commend them: "Barbarian Sentiments," "The Wrath of Nations," "The Bullet's Song," and his last, "The Irony of Manifest Destiny," are the ones on my shelf.

    Farewell from a friend, Bill.

    Patrick Smith is the author of "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century." He was the International Herald Tribune's bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote "Letter from Tokyo" for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @thefloutist. More Patrick L. Smith.

    [May 10, 2015] After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. tried to help Russians

    More correctly Clinton administration vigorously tried to help Russia to became a vassal state...
    April 15, 2015 | antiwar.com
    May 07, 2015 | The Washington Post

    PRESIDENT VLADIMIR Putin recently was interviewed for a fawning Russian television documentary on his decade and a half in power. Putin expressed the view that the West would like Russia to be down at the heels. He said, "I sometimes I get the impression that they love us when they need to send us humanitarian aid. . . . [T]he so-called ruling circles, elites - political and economic - of those countries, they love us when we are impoverished, poor and when we come hat in hand. As soon as we start declaring some interests of our own, they feel that there is some element of geopolitical rivalry."

    Earlier, in March, speaking to leaders of the Federal Security Service, which he once led, Mr. Putin warned that "Western special services continue their attempts at using public, nongovernmental and politicized organizations to pursue their own objectives, primarily to discredit the authorities and destabilize the internal situation in Russia."

    Mr. Putin's remarks reflect a deep-seated paranoia. It would be easy to dismiss this kind of rhetoric as intended for domestic consumption, an attempt to whip up support for his war adventure in Ukraine. In part, it is that. But Mr. Putin's assertion that the West has been acting out of a desire to sunder Russia's power and influence is a willful untruth.

    The fact is that thousands of Americans went to Russia hoping to help its people attain a better life. The American and Western effort over the last 25 years - to which the United States and Europe devoted billions of dollars - was aimed at helping Russia overcome the horrid legacy of Soviet communism, which left the country on its knees in 1991. It was not about conquering Russia but rather about saving it, offering the proven tools of market capitalism and democracy, which were not imposed but welcomed. The United States also spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make Russia safer from loose nukes and joined a fruitful collaboration in outer space. Avid volunteers came to Russia and donated endless hours to imparting the lessons of how to hold jury trials, build a free press, design equity markets, carry out political campaigning and a host of other components of an open, prosperous society. The Americans came for the best of reasons.

    Certainly, the Western effort was flawed. Markets were distorted by crony and oligarchic capitalism; democratic practice often faltered; many Russians genuinely felt a sense of defeat, humiliation and exhaustion. There's much to regret but not the central fact that a generous hand was extended to post-Soviet Russia, offering the best of Western values and know-how. The Russian people benefit from this benevolence even now, and, above Mr. Putin's self-serving hysterics, they ought to hear the truth: The United States did not come to bury you.

    Vatnik, 5/7/2015 2:33 PM EDT [Edited]


    I think, that everyoune in US must to know. As i wrote below

    "we think that Navalny & Co paid by the west. they ususally call themselves "opposiotion", and one of them (Nemtsov) was frieinds with McCain (as i realized after reading McCain twitter, after Nemtsov was killed)."

    "we think that our real opposition are these political parties: CPRF, LDPR. We believe them."

    i write it, because i think, that when we talk that our(russian) opposition is bad and paid from the west, you think that we talk about our politic parties. but it is wrong, we talk about Navalny & Co.

    MeriJ, 5/7/2015 3:08 PM EDT [Edited]

    Thanks. That is a useful clarification. But I still find it odd that you would consider a member of your nation's opposition a traitor or "tool" simply because they have friends in the West.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but the main difference between people like Navalny versus the CPRF/LDPR is that Navalny thinks the current system is corrupt. Whereas individuals and political parties currently benefiting from the current system think it's fine.

    Those are not the thoughts of a traitor. To get to that conclusion you would need to define the current system and those who currently benefit as being "Russia." Oppose them and you oppose the Motherland.

    But Putin and his new-generation oligarchs and his deputies at the Kremlin are not Russia. They are a bunch of guys who currently run things there.

    Vatnik, 5/7/2015 3:47 PM EDT [Edited]

    "Correct me if I'm wrong, but the main difference between people like Navalny versus the CPRF/LDPR is that Navalny thinks the current system is corrupt."

    CPRF and LPDR know about corruption, and even they think that our non-systemic opposition (Navlny & Co) are traitors. And they (CPRF , LDPR) talk about corruption and another bad things of our gov even in Duma. for example, this is what said the leader of LDPR on one tv show

    "коррупцию создала советская власть, кпсс, единая россия плавно подобрала у нее все инструменты коррупции и сегодня эта страстная болезнь поразила все органы и всю структуру"
    google translated it:
    "Corruption established Soviet power, the Communist Party, United Russia gently picked her all the tools of corruption and now this passionate disease struck all the organs and the whole structure"
    and
    "у вас фракция половина бизнесмены, воры, жулики, грабители, вся остальная половина агенты спецслужб"
    google translated:
    "you have a fraction of a half businessmen, thieves, swindlers, robbers, the rest of the half secret service agents"
    he adressed it to our main politic party in Duma, "United Russia"

    I can find more than one video where he talk about falsifications of elections, right in Duma.

    but these are just examples.

    P.S. oh, and here i found video, specially for you(americans) where our non-systemic opposition visited US Embassy in Moscow in July 4th.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE-54U6V-Bc

    Baranovsly71, 5/7/2015 12:11 PM EDT [Edited]

    BTW, this is not true that "Americans were not in charge". I red memoirs of Eltsyn's ministers (Korzhakov, Burbulis, you can read memoirs of deputy secretary of state of that time Strobe Talbott in English, the same is there), and it's clear that in 90s Russia de facto was American colony.

    For example, ministers in Russian government could not be assigned without US State Department approval. Even Russian TV anchors were instructed by US representatives.

    Skeviz, 5/7/2015 12:05 PM EDT

    MeriJ
    6:42 PM GMT+0300 [Edited]
    Putin has convinced you...


    USA had popularity in Russia in 1990 more than Putin now, but to 1999 when Putin became prime-minister USA had less than 20% approve. It was not Putin who destroyed USA's popularity, reverse your policy created Putin.

    You very often replay this your phrase, but it is lie. Did Putin created NATO, did Putin used Russia's weakness and increased NATO, did Putin bomb Kosovo, did Putin violated agreements that was done after WWII and separated Kosovo from Serbia, did Putin destroyed Russia's democracy in 1996 and in 1993, did Putin paid Chechnya terrorists to kill Russians, did Putin pressure Chechens create Islamic State (prototype of ISIL) in Chechnya, did Putin in any article said that it will be great if terrorists will created their own state (and after that will be do permanent wars against Russia)? NO, you did it before there appeared Putin.

    Skeviz, 5/7/2015 12:14 PM EDT

    MeriJ
    5:48 PM GMT+0300
    Much of the aid they are referring to was not lending but grants to help build civil society -- independent media, health organizations and the like. No strings attached.

    You did not created Russia's civil society, you destroyed it when you created did all what was possible to lure high educated Russians in West countries. You falsified Russia's election in 1996 (and all international observers under pressure of USA supported it). You in 1993 supported Yeltsin's military operation in Moscow. You paid Chechnya terrorists to kill Russians and destabilize Russia's society. Is it civil society???

    "independent media"??? Not, they was created by our oligarchs, not by you, and you payed only for those media who represented USA's point of view as your propaganda did in time Cold War. It was the continuing Cold War, not help.

    " health organizations" ??????????????

    USSR's health organizations was significantly better than USA, and infinity better than current Russia's organizations.

    There was not "and like" we ceased Cold War, we by free will dismantled all "USSR's Empire", we by free will destroyed ideology, we ceased war, but you continued it, you continued the war all last 25 years, and NATO is the best example of it.

    MeriJ, 5/7/2015 12:24 PM EDT

    We lured well-educated Russians to the West? Seriously?

    This is the nature of free markets and open borders. Your response should be to compete to lure them back. Give them something to come home for. Most people long to go home.

    Instead you talk about anyone who doesn't hate the West as if they were traitors. Why would any well-educated Russian ex-pat want to come home now?

    Skeviz, 5/7/2015 12:48 PM EDT

    Seriously. Your government created very comfortable ways for engineers (and for some another categories of USSR's people), to take them on West. You are economist, so I suppose you know the reception: lure good manager from another company, it will increase your power, and it decrease power of your competitor.

    MeriJ, 5/7/2015 12:51 PM EDT [Edited]

    By "seriously?" I didn't mean I disagreed with your facts. I disagree that this was surprising or hostile. That is the nature of open markets -- if you see excellence, you try to recruit it.

    There are only two responses I know of: Close your borders and your markets; or compete more effectively.


    MeriJ, 5/7/2015 12:20 PM EDT

    You are truly incorrect, my friend, and it saddens me that you see it this way.

    The antagonistic relationship you describe is more true at the moment, due to the events of the last year, but not true back in the decades before that. During the Cold War, we were indeed enemies, so such motivations then were a given.

    Skeviz, 5/7/2015 12:24 PM EDT

    Ok, then try to explain, why USA had more 80% [popularity in polls] in Russia in 1990 and less than 20% in 1999. There was not Putin, how can you explain it?

    Volkovolk, 5/7/2015 12:27 PM EDT [Edited]

    He is correct. One can say that Cold War never ended - it just took place for some decades on our land in form of guerilla war. After Gorbachev and Yeltsin abandoned all interests of USSR and Russia you decided to press the advantage and to take Russia of the board [permanently]. Is it so big surprise that we are angry about it?

    Joseph Volgin, 5/7/2015 11:01 AM EDT

    Alert! Attention, danger! Putin trolls get into American journalism:

    "...Or, as a Fred Hiatt of the 1870s might have commented about Native Americans who resisted the well-intentioned Bureau of Indian Affairs and didn't appreciate the gentleness of the U.S. Army or the benevolence of life on the reservations: "Above Sitting Bull's self-serving hysterics, Indians ought to hear the truth: The white man did not come to exterminate you."

    Baranovsly71, 5/7/2015 8:22 AM EDT

    Thank you, but I lived in Russia in 90s and remember very well Americans who started to come at that time - arrogant money-grabbers the only thing they were interested in is how to make money - on everything, from oil to export of Russian children to US. They stole billions from Russians and continue to do so.

    Please, Americans, don't help us - go away and take your democracy with you.

    Bob Bobo, 5/7/2015 7:51 AM EDT

    Russia help? Yes like that Khodorkovsky Yukos submitted on a silver platter Rothschild. It would Americans like it if they can plunder the Russian mineral resources. But when Putin to allow such a persona non grata.

    Larysa Mahal, 5/7/2015 6:30 AM EDT

    The best article for those who do not know history and events in Russia. I think a lot of people feel a tears of emotion when they read this article. Bravo!

    When author quotes Putin's speech "they love us when we are impoverished, poor and when we come hat in hand." he has forgotten to say that after these words Putin thanked all those who helped to Russia in its difficult time. Author has forgotten to give example about free help "devoted billions of dollars". Nothing was free and Russia had to pay if not money then the disadvantages agreements or concessions. But oh well it. Talk about a paranoia. Author calls the leader of the biggest country "paranoid". But this man has stood up Russia from knees during 15 years only. Think about it 15 years only! Author calls "paranoid" the man who are supported by 75 % population in Russia. The man who was addressed Crimea, insisting on joining with Russia. Are all of these people paranoid like Putin?

    Then you can say about President of Poland who sad that the Victory Parade in Moscow is a threaten to all Europe. What is it, paranoia in a cube? But author does not see that because for him to write articles is a work but to know truth is for domestic use only.

    I want to ask everybody to see around and say how many prosperous, beautiful countries in Europe face before a threaten to be section, detached some parts like UK, Italy. But to Russia with her "paranoid" leader want and join huge territories with huge amount of people. Think about it. In last year one man standing in a long queue on the sea crossing from Crimea to Russia sad that they are willing to endure all the inconveniences because the main thing is they are with Russia. Think about it.

    Lucky_Barker, 5/7/2015 5:45 AM EDT [Edited]

    The United States supported the destruction and burning of the parliament in Moscow, the murder of civilians in 1993, the bombing of Grozny in 1994-1995-m, and the killing of civilians in Chechnya. All crimes Yeltsin was American influence and American advices.

    It's very like the oficial America. Manu people call "Yeltsin era" as "Time of Americans" or "Time of Prostitutes".

    Restoration of parliamentary democracy, Mr. Putin did not like top US.
    Putin's war in Chechnya without massive bombing did not like owners of US newspapers and US parties.

    The Chechens believe that the Americans supported Yeltsin genocide Chechen civilians in 1nd Chechen war and strongly resent and hate peace in Chechnya after the 2nd Chechen war.

    Tsarnaev was prepared in US as a terrorist for Syria or Chechnya - but was shot too early.

    We must always remember that Al Qaeda and الدّولة الإسلاميّة at an early stage was the US-Saudi projects.

    Volkovolk, 5/7/2015 5:24 AM EDT [

    What a hipocrisity.
    Your "volunters" with their "proven tools" provoked desolation of russian economy and defolt. The results of their actions were nothing short of economical genocide. The so-called free press you build are just a puppets of yours, instruments of your influence and of your lies. Your advises in building of democracy led to anarchy and to the brink of collapse of Russia. Yes, you tried to bury us. Guess what? You failed. And we will never forgive you.

    Danila Ivanov, 5/7/2015 5:19 AM EDT

    But past wrongs do not matter... now Russia and the USA on the brink of war... the war is already at a distance of 600 kilometers from Moscow, the American puppets killed thousands of ethnic Russians.

    Russia is a nuclear power, such action is suicide. We all have to prevent needless and stupid war... I ask you to help.

    Danila Ivanov, 5/7/2015 4:56 AM EDT

    4) Let the author will call the name of at least one program, which spent a billion dollars... which would have improved the lives of ordinary Russians. At least one program (I don't know, although he lived in Russia at that time). All American billion were used to purchase depreciating assets industry of the USSR ("privatization"), actually looting people.

    5) "Thousands of activists and volunteers" were actually thousands of Yeltsin's advisers... it was on the advice of these advisers was launched economic programme "shock therapy" (economic Holocaust). When Federal employees and the military is not specifically paid a salary (although the money was) ... a few years (to reduce the money supply), the economy was dead, just do not have the money, the base rate of the Central Bank was 2000% (I'm not kidding)... people were hungry... you know what hunger is? I know... The country was falling apart, if not for Putin.
    6) Free press this is the press... which is verbatim from CNN, BBC, Foxnews? What is its "freedom" of this media?

    7) the Oligarchs, corrupt officials... and who brought them to power, who collaborated with them, who gave them money to purchase assets? American corporations...

    P. S. I don't know why the author is lying, but I would never wish the Americans in the US... to experience the poverty and hopelessness... you have experienced the Russians in the 90-ies in Russia, when the US "gave us a hand"...

    Danila Ivanov, 5/7/2015 4:26 AM EDT

    I accuse the author of lying... and paid propaganda.
    1) Russia is satisfied with the U.S. government only when it is weak. In 1993 Boris Yeltsin ordered to shoot from tanks to the Parliament (similar to the U.S. Congress) killed many people-elected deputies, and unarmed people in the square who came to support the deputies, they were killed at close range with machine guns. Hundreds of corpses.... NO ONE representative of the United States, has condemned the event. Nobody. Everything is fine, democracy!!!
    The author of the article is lying. Putin is telling the truth.
    2) Almost all non-governmental organizations of Russia officially get the money of US taxpayers. Their leaders defiantly go to the American Embassy. (in other 196 embassies of the countries of the world don't go)... and declare that their goal is "revolution and overthrow the President." Opposition leaders Russia (Navalny, Nemtsov, Kasparov, Chirikov, Ponomarev) was trained in the U.S. and regularly travel to the USA... (for example ... Imagine the leaders of "Occupy Wall Street" would have officially get money from the Russians, and walked to the Russian Embassy. Presented? ) The author is lying, Putin is not lying.
    3) There is No "military adventure in Ukraine." Lies about "Russian aggression" hides that Ukraine is a civil war and the destruction and arrests of thousands of unarmed ethnic Russians (they inhabit the East of Ukraine)... who disagree with an armed overthrow of the President. Near the border of Russia (31 km) is a major Ukrainian city Kharkiv... it unguarded, why in Kharkov there are no "hordes of Russian troops or the rebels?... If Putin attacked the Ukraine and began a military adventure"?
    The author lied again.

    Owan Skirlan, 5/7/2015 3:20 AM EDT

    Okay, dear Americans, thanks for fish and sort of that, but, really - Make Your Own Buisness! Somethere between US borders, not out

    Brekotin, 5/7/2015 1:07 AM EDT

    Very funny article. Washington PRAVDA!
    to author: please check the graph of GDP in Russia and the United States 1985-2015.
    Clearly shows how redistribute wealth of the USSR was reditributed.

    P.S.: teach macroeconomics and history.

    Andrey Belov, 5/7/2015 12:39 AM EDT

    I by the way I wonder what is so wrong left Russia communism? Developed industry and agriculture, United state, connected in the common economic space, a powerful culture and the arts, advanced science, the successful solution of social problems. And against that you have spent billions to destroy all? Lord you Americans really believe that we should be grateful for assistance in the destruction of our country?

    Skeviz, 5/6/2015 11:48 PM EDT

    "After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. tried to help Russians"
    Really???
    - USA in 1990 had popularity 80%, but to 1999 (before Putin) USA had popularity 20% in Russia, is it because USA had tried help Russia? (De facto USA did all what was possible to create politician like Putin).
    - USSR had dismissed Warsaw pact by free will (and USSR dismissed USSR by free will), USSR destroyed all what was linked to Cold War, did USA the same? Did USA dismissed NATO?
    - USA used Russia's weakness and increased NATO (now hypocrite Americans say that it was done by will of those countries, interesting enough do they really believe in the BS? USSR could also said that E. Europe's countries became ally of USSR because they was afraid Germany).
    - USA used Russia's weakness and attacked Serbia the Russia's ally (hypocrite Americans said that there was ethnic cleansing, BUT USA killed more men there than Milosevic did, moreover after war created by USA there was new ethnic cleansing and Albanians killed Serbians, why hypocrite Americans closed eyes about it?). In day when USA began war against Kosovo they loss all support that had between youth.
    - USA payed Chechnya terrorists and USA do great media support to Chechnya terrorists (after 11 September 2001 it was ceased but to the time was killed many Russia's humans including children, now hypocrite Americans prefer do not remember which media support they did for creation Islamic State on Russia's south border, it was prototype of ISIL).
    - USA used Russia's weakness and dismissed all agreements that interfere create anti-missile system.
    - USA destroyed Russia's democracy when supported falsification of election 1996 in Russia, because USA was afraid communists in Russia, and preferred support Yeltsin. USA violated election and supported Yeltsin, who had destroying Russia.
    - USA paid for many color revolutions on Russia's borders.

    Skeviz, 5/6/2015 11:59 PM EDT

    • - USA instead to help Russia create new economy preferred create more easy way to emigration high educated Russians in USA and another Europe's countries.
    • - USA separated Kosovo (and destroyed all system of agreements that existed after WWII, now hypocrite Americans try show that it was did in Crimea, but really Russia did nothing that USA had not make in Serbia).
    • - When Putin began pressure Russia's oligarchs to pay salaries and taxes, USA began media war against Putin.

    I could continue the list very long, but I have not time now.
    So all USA's sayings about "trying to help Russia" is hypocrite lie from alpha to omega. All what wanted USA destroy country that they had afraid half century. USA didn't use Russians free will and trying end Cold War, USA continued it and I can suppose it will be great problem for USA in future. Certainly Russia is weak country now, but Russia can give very significant help to China, especially in military question (if China will be need use power, but do not show that they use power).

    Irene Guy, 5/6/2015 9:34 PM EDT

    "For fifty years, our policy was to fence in the Soviet Union while its own internal contradictions undermined it. For thirty years, our policy has been to draw out the People's Republic of China. As a result, the China of today is simply not the Soviet Union of the late 1940s"
    Robert B. Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State
    Remarks to National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
    New York City
    September 21, 2005"
    Enough said...

    [May 10, 2015] Obama s Petulant WWII Snub of Russia by Ray McGovern

    Notable quotes:
    "... Though designed to isolate Russia because it had the audacity to object to the Western-engineered coup d'état in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, this snub of Russia's President Vladimir Putin – like the economic sanctions against Russia – is likely to backfire on the U.S. ..."
    "... Obama's boycott is part of a crass attempt to belittle Russia and to cram history itself into an anti-Putin, anti-Russian alternative narrative. ..."
    "... Even George Friedman, the president of the Washington-Establishment-friendly think-tank STRATFOR, has said publicly in late 2014: "Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d'état organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history." ..."
    "... So there! Gotcha! Russian aggression! But what the Post neglected to remind readers was that the U.S.-backed coup had occurred on Feb. 22 and that Putin has consistently said that a key factor in his actions toward Crimea came from Russian fears that NATO would claim the historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, representing a strategic threat to his country. ..."
    "... Last fall, John Mearsheimer, a pre-eminent political science professor at the University of Chicago, stunned those who had been misled by the anti-Russian propaganda when he placed an article in the Very-Establishment journal Foreign Affairs entitled "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault." ..."
    "... Much of this American tendency to disdain other nations' concerns, fears and points of pride go back to the Washington Establishment's dogma that special rules or (perhaps more accurately) no rules govern U.S. behavior abroad – American exceptionalism. This arrogant concept, which puts the United States above all other nations like some Olympic god looking down on mere mortals, is often invoked by Obama and other leading U.S. politicians. ..."
    "... Putin added, though, "I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism," adding: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." ..."
    May 09, 2015 | antiwar.com
    President Barack Obama's decision to join other Western leaders in snubbing Russia's weekend celebration of the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe looks more like pouting than statesmanship, especially in the context of the U.S. mainstream media's recent anti-historical effort to downplay Russia's crucial role in defeating Nazism.

    Though designed to isolate Russia because it had the audacity to object to the Western-engineered coup d'état in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, this snub of Russia's President Vladimir Putin – like the economic sanctions against Russia – is likely to backfire on the U.S. and its European allies by strengthening ties between Russia and the emerging Asian giants of China and India.

    Notably, the dignitaries who will show up at this important commemoration include the presidents of China and India, representing a huge chunk of humanity, who came to show respect for the time seven decades ago when the inhumanity of the Nazi regime was defeated – largely by Russia's stanching the advance of Hitler's armies, at a cost of 20 to 30 million lives.

    Obama's boycott is part of a crass attempt to belittle Russia and to cram history itself into an anti-Putin, anti-Russian alternative narrative. It is difficult to see how Obama and his friends could have come up with a pettier and more gratuitous insult to the Russian people.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel – caught between Washington's demand to "isolate" Russia over the Ukraine crisis and her country's historic guilt in the slaughter of so many Russians – plans to show up a day late to place a wreath at a memorial for the war dead.

    But Obama, in his childish display of temper, will look rather small to those who know the history of the Allied victory in World War II. If it were not for the Red Army's costly victories against the German invaders, particularly the tide-turning battle at Stalingrad in 1943-1944, the prospects for the later D-Day victory in Normandy in June 1944 and the subsequent defeat of Adolf Hitler would have been much more difficult if not impossible.

    Yet, the current Russia-bashing in Washington and the mainstream U.S. media overrides these historical truths. For instance, a New York Times article by Neil MacFarquhar on Friday begins: "The Russian version of Hitler's defeat emphasizes the enormous, unrivaled sacrifices made by the Soviet people to end World War II " But that's not the "Russian version"; that's the history.

    For its part, the Washington Post chose to run an Associated Press story out of Moscow reporting: "A state-of-the-art Russian tank on Thursday ground to a halt during the final Victory Day rehearsal. After an attempt to tow it failed, the T-14 rolled away under its own steam 15 minutes later." (Subtext: Ha, ha! Russia's newest tank gets stuck on Red Square! Ha, ha!).

    This juvenile approach to pretty much everything that's important - not just U.S.-Russia relations - has now become the rule. From the U.S. government to the major U.S. media, it's as if the "cool kids" line up in matching fashions creating a gauntlet to demean and ridicule whoever the outcast of the day is. And anyone who doesn't go along becomes an additional target of abuse.

    That has been the storyline for the Ukraine crisis throughout 2014 and into 2015. Everyone must agree that Putin provoked all the trouble as part of some Hitler-like ambition to conquer much of eastern Europe and rebuild a Russian empire. If you don't make the obligatory denunciations of "Russian aggression," you are called a "Putin apologist" or "Putin bootlicker."

    Distorting the History

    So, the evidence-based history of the Western-sponsored coup in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, must be forgotten or covered up. Indeed, about a year after the events, the New York Times published a major "investigative" article that ignored all the facts of a U.S.-backed coup in declaring there was no coup.

    The Times didn't even mention the notorious, intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in early February 2014 in which Nuland was handpicking the future leaders, including her remark "Yats is the guy," a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who – after the coup – quickly became prime minister. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine."]

    Even George Friedman, the president of the Washington-Establishment-friendly think-tank STRATFOR, has said publicly in late 2014: "Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d'état organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history."

    Beyond simply ignoring facts, the U.S. mainstream media has juggled the time line to make Putin's reaction to the coup – and the threat it posed to the Russian naval base in Crimea – appear to be, instead, evidence of his instigation of the already unfolding conflict.

    For example, in a "we-told-you-so" headline on March 9, the Washington Post declared: "Putin had early plan to annex Crimea." Then, quoting AP, the Post reported that Putin himself had just disclosed "a secret meeting with officials in February 2014 Putin said that after the meeting he told the security chiefs that they would be 'obliged to start working to return Crimea to Russia.' He said the meeting was held Feb. 23, 2014, almost a month before a referendum in Crimea that Moscow has said was the basis for annexing the region."

    So there! Gotcha! Russian aggression! But what the Post neglected to remind readers was that the U.S.-backed coup had occurred on Feb. 22 and that Putin has consistently said that a key factor in his actions toward Crimea came from Russian fears that NATO would claim the historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, representing a strategic threat to his country.

    Putin also knew from opinion polls that most of the people of Crimea favored reunification with Russia, a reality that was underscored by the March referendum in which some 96 percent voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia.

    But there was not one scintilla of reliable evidence that Putin intended to annex Crimea before he felt his hand forced by the putsch in Kiev. The political reality was that no Russian leader could afford to take the risk that Russia's only warm-water naval base might switch to new NATO management. If top U.S. officials did not realize that when they were pushing the coup in early 2014, they know little about Russian strategic concerns – or simply didn't care.

    Last fall, John Mearsheimer, a pre-eminent political science professor at the University of Chicago, stunned those who had been misled by the anti-Russian propaganda when he placed an article in the Very-Establishment journal Foreign Affairs entitled "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault."

    You did not know that such an article was published? Chalk that up to the fact that the mainstream media pretty much ignored it. Mearsheimer said this was the first time he encountered such widespread media silence on an article of such importance.

    The Sole Indispensable Country

    Much of this American tendency to disdain other nations' concerns, fears and points of pride go back to the Washington Establishment's dogma that special rules or (perhaps more accurately) no rules govern U.S. behavior abroad – American exceptionalism. This arrogant concept, which puts the United States above all other nations like some Olympic god looking down on mere mortals, is often invoked by Obama and other leading U.S. politicians.

    That off-putting point has not been missed by Putin even as he has sought to cooperate with Obama and the United States. On Sept. 11, 2013, a week after Putin bailed Obama out, enabling him to avoid a new war on Syria by persuading Syria to surrender its chemical weapons, Putin wrote in an op-ed published by the New York Times that he appreciated the fact that "My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust."

    Putin added, though, "I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism," adding: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

    More recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov drove home this point in the context of World War II. This week, addressing a meeting to mark the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe, Lavrov included a pointed warning: "Today as never before it is important not to forget the lessons of that catastrophe and the terrible consequences that spring from faith in one's own exceptionalism."

    The irony is that as the cameras pan the various world leaders in the Red Square reviewing stand on Saturday, Obama's absence will send a message that the United States has little appreciation for the sacrifice of the Russian people in bearing the brunt – and breaking the back – of Hitler's conquering armies. It is as if Obama is saying that the "exceptional" United States didn't need anyone's help to win World War II.

    President Franklin Roosevelt was much wiser, understanding that it took extraordinary teamwork to defeat Nazism in the 1940s, which is why he considered the Soviet Union a most important military ally. President Obama is sending a very different message, a haughty disdain for the kind of global cooperation which succeeded in ridding the world of Adolf Hitler.

    Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern served for considerable periods in all four of CIA's main directorates.

    [May 10, 2015] Putin voices grievances as huge parade marks 70th anniversary of victory

    Now we have new forces that push the world to the war much like in 30th of XX century. One of the key problem of modern world is the USA elite attempt to maintain world hegemony. The post WWII security architecture was dismantled by the USA and its allies and after the collapse of the USSR. Instead the regime of unconditional domination of the USA was put in place by Clinton's government. This switch was signified by the attack on Serbia and treatment of Russia (as well as other xUSSR countries) after the dissolution of the USSR. Russia as all other xUSSR countries were mercilessly economically raped, which provided to the USA (and EU) another 10 years of economic expansion and only in 2001 crisis hit again. And it never ended with the second wave of the same crisis coming in 2008 and the third wave being in the wings right now (whether it'll materialize in 2016 or 20120 is an open question). With the current level of world debt and, especially, the USA debt the situation changed, Also the USA economy is smaller in comparison with other world economies then ever before (Germany and Japan economies fully recovered from WWII, and China became a new world economic power). This create a drive against the US hegemony and "dollar regime" (with EU and euro as one such development). Recent US adventures in Iraq, Libya and Syria were met with understandable resistance which due to decline of the US manufacturing base threatens the current US domination in world affairs. Only in Ukraine they managed to secure a victory by using nationalists as a Trojan horse for establishing full hegemony over the country (but at the expense of partitioning the country). Due to those threats and instability of world financial system "audacious oligarchy" that rules the USA is becoming more and more reckless. Neocons continue dominate the State Department and we have a chance of neocon becoming the next US president (not the Clinton., Bush II or Obama were substantially different in this respect). Which provoked rearmament of Russia and armament of China making the world again more dangerous. Putin took a "independence" stand (may be prematurely, failing to wait for the time when Russia would be ready, forced by the events in Ukraine) which now greatly complicates US geopolitical position and expantion of its neoliberal empire (which come to the screeching end in any case because the Earth is a finite size) . Troubles with cheap oil availability ("plato oil" or "end of cheap oil") were just the straw that broke the camel back. And without continues expansion of markets neoliberalism enters deep crisis. Understandably no love left between the US elite and Russia and Ukraine was only a pretext to put Russia "in place". The USA and EU desperately need to acquire the control over Russian energy sector, but with Putin in power this is not possible.
    .
    All is fine in Guardian Russian-Ukrainian forums. Alpamysh, GreatMountainEagle, jezzam, Botswana61, Metronome151 and company perform their usual roles. We have some newcomers such as some1here
    May 10, 2015 | The Guardian

    freedomcry -> some1here 10 May 2015 10:36

    An apologist is not necessarily a supporter. The bottom line is, you're repeating the exact things Hitler's propaganda used to justify the invasion of the USSR which were contradicted both later, in the way the Nazis behaved on occupied territories, and earlier in Mein Kampf where Hitler had laid out quite bluntly the Lebensraum argument for colonising Russia and Ukraine.

    Aneesia 10 May 2015 10:36

    The behavior of the West was childish in this matter. They are looking for a fight to keep their economies growing...and will do all they can to provoke one.....like the spoiled brat in a sandbox. Russia was by far the most mature.


    Abiesalba -> Carly435 10 May 2015 10:33

    And what percentage of Western Europeans are neo-fascists, in your opinion?

    If you define Nazi-fascist ideology for what it really is, namely 'us against them' and 'superior' vs 'inferior' nations, then I think at least 10% of the population, if not more.

    It is now acceptable for parties with such ideologies to even run in elections, e.g. Wilders, Le Pen, Farage etc., and they get rather high support.

    This dangerous 'us and them' ideology has different forms and undertones with respect to the local context. For example, here is Slovenia I would count among such divisive and potentially very dangerous parties the party which won 20% in our 2014 elections (their main target for discrimination are the 'Southerners' = immigrants from other Yugoslav nations).

    I think it is very dangerous that Europe is largely turning a blind eye. They also did not confront neither Hitler, nor Mussolini, and more recently nor Milošević until it was too late.

    Freedom of speech is not unlimited; it is limited by the rights of others. The right of individuals and groups to human dignity and to not be discriminated against on any grounds has a priority over the right to freedom of expression. In other words, hate speech should be unacceptable, yet parties with hate ideologies are making it to European national parliaments and to the EU parliament. Very worrying.

    I suppose that Slovenes are very sensitive to such developments. We have been oppressed by the Austrians/Germans for more than a thousand years. After WWI, Slovenes in Italy were the first nation in Europe to experience the Nazi-fascist terror, so Slovene writers and poets had very early premonitions of a new, even more sinister war coming (which indeed happened - WWII). See for example Srečko Kosovel's poem Ecstasy of Death about the death of western Europe in a sea of scorching blood. Kosovel published this poem in 1925, when he was 21 (and this was 15 years before WWII, and before Hitler rose to power).

    Kosovel died at the age of 21, but he was a true European visionary. He stood for Europe of peace and brotherhood of nations. I suspect he would be horrified by the recent developments in Europe if he were alive today. Maybe he would write the Ecstasy of Death all over again.

    Vladimir Makarenko -> alpamysh 10 May 2015 10:28

    this is what is called "black agitprop" or in a lay man talk - lies.

    Vladimir Makarenko -> Metronome151 10 May 2015 10:27

    Since when you started to be heartbroken about Russian interests?

    CoastalBrake1 -> Abiesalba 10 May 2015 10:24

    "With all due respect to the US, the US role is not even remotely comparable to the sacrifice in the Soviet Union. The Red Army was by far the decisive power in defeating Nazi Germany" No shlt, because the Red Army had no other choice under the thumb of one of the most vicious and ignorant military leaders in history.

    Yes, Russia clearly paid the biggest price for victory, but many of The Red Army casualties were simply a result of their own military strategies and the fact they had way more troops in the first place compared to other allied powers.

    freedomcry -> Carly435 10 May 2015 10:23

    Russians are loath to reflect too deeply on the meanings of that war.

    That is one big filthy lie. I can see how a certain amount of intelligence went into its making: the fact that the Russian predicament during the war was more about survival than almost anyone else's, creates the possibility that the war impressed itself as something that's more about defeating the invader than understanding what had made them into what they were. And once you have that possibility, you go ahead and just blurt out the claim - it being the nature of ubiquitous Russophobia that any judgement of the Russians automatically rings true.

    But seriously, it's so completely false, so diametrically the opposite of how we actually see the war that I'm reeling a little. And I thought I'd heard every insult of Russians out there, from the crudest to the most intricate.

    Vladimir Makarenko -> GreatMountainEagle 10 May 2015 10:22

    Hm all complaints please to greedy sharks which draw the Versaille treaty. As those with brains can see the WWII started the moment it was signed.

    Metronome151 -> Popeyes 10 May 2015 10:22

    Indeed it is a win win situation for China at Russia's expense.

    Botswana61 -> BeatonTheDonis 10 May 2015 10:21

    [stalin]"took the Soviet Union from a devastated agrarian economy to an industrial power that defeated Nazi Germany and was able to compete with the USA and Western Europe."

    Soviet Union has never been able to compete economically, industrially with the Western Europe, let alone the U$A.

    It collapsed not only because it had an insane political system, but also because it had a lunatic economic system which could not produce any quality products (especially consumer goods) for its populace.

    Btw. Putinesque Russia still cannot.

    [have you seen any Russian 4G cell phones, laptops, tablets, supercomputers, video cameras, HDTV large screens, modern-wide-body passenger planes or even attractive passenger cars sold anywhere in the world?]

    alpamysh -> FraidyMan 10 May 2015 10:18

    I think that Merkel's actions, as usual, have been the best.

    Boycotting the military parade sends a clear message.

    And a German chancellor honouring fallen Russians the next day sends one just as powerful...

    Popeyes 10 May 2015 10:17

    I hope the Russia/China agreements and the pacts they have made between themselves work out and just maybe the U.S. will climb back into its box. The alliance between Russia/China is Washington's worst nightmare. Russia with the world's largest land mass, richest natural resources and it would seem the most advanced technology together with China who has the world's largest population, and the largest producer and exporter of manufactured goods.


    bailliegillies ID5868758 10 May 2015 10:15

    We haven't and are fully aware of its consequences. Chamberlain's problem was that Britain was not yet ready to face the might of an emerging Germany. Home Chain was nowhere near ready, nor was Fighter Command, it had plenty of Hurricanes but the Spitfire squadrons were still being formed as was the integrated defence system that the RAF relied on in 1940. Chamberlain and others in government knew that when the war came the main threat that Britain was going to face was from the air. Chamberlain bought the country the time needed to prepare. All the same Munich is not something the country is proud off.

    MyFriendWillPay -> sztubacki 10 May 2015 10:14

    Murdering their own people when they should be killing other people?

    Here is a more human ideal, currently practiced by "you know who"!

    * Get agents provocateur to let off a few bombs to create civilian casualties.

    * Pin the blame on people you want to get rid of.

    * Apply to UN for no-fly zone to protect the civilians.

    * Bomb the shit out of anything that moves anywhere in the country.

    * Fly in local exiles from US with geologists and lawyers to secure mineral rights

    * Conclude regime change

    * Escape ensuing chaos to plan next regime change.

    * Have your President nominated for Nobel Peace Prize!

    Botswana61 -> ijustwant2say 10 May 2015 10:14

    One huge difference between UK and RF.

    UK has reconciled itself to the loss of the (huge) British Empire after WWII;
    never looked back, but moved forward, today being more successul economically than many other EU member states.

    [Modern Turkey has also reconciled itself to the loss of its huge Ottoman Empire]

    But Russia has not. It still dwells in the past, relieves its past 'glories' and yearns for return of times when everybody feared it.

    While still unable to transform itself into a modern, democratic, prosperous country which could have a meaningful, successful future.


    Vladimir Makarenko -> dyst1111 10 May 2015 10:12

    Hm, what is then the point of NATO expansion in the time when Russia was making drastic reduction in its weapons and army size?

    Ukraine coup d'etat? Or should it be called what it is - a highway robbery of Russia's most important trade market?

    Well, Russians successfully made it a EU disaster.

    As to new generations of weapons - Russians do feel better, they know that for sure Western Europe or whoever will not repeat the 1941 mistake.

    kraljevic -> MiltonWiltmellow 10 May 2015 10:10

    The Russian power elites are no more pernicious than the American ones. The supposed anti-red, anti-commie Republicans are now the most vocal defenders of Big Commie himself Lenin's perverse internal borders. Lenin arrived at those borders not through democratic legitimacy but through the "blood" of millions of Russian patriots who wanted to preserve the unity of their nation and fought against his monstrous tyranny.

    Although supposedly ideological enemies the likes of Breedlove and McCain on one side and Lenin and Trotsky on the other are in perfect harmony when it comes to rigging borders so that the Russian people come away with as little as possible and become the big losers!

    The sudden devotion of the American right wing establishment to Lenin's "unitary" Ukraine is motivated purely by the anti-Russian nature of the new Government in Kiev and the damage and shelling and killing it can inflict on the pro-Russian population in the east!

    MyFriendWillPay -> MahsaKaerra 10 May 2015 10:07

    "A series of UN mandates that Russia deemed so threatening that they either voted in favor of the military interventions or didn't bother to express an opinion one way or the other. For all the US's military actions there have been zero Russian vetoes."

    That's because the Yanks are so disingenuous;

    * Get agents provocateur to let off a few bombs to create civilian casualties.
    * Pin the blame on people you want to get rid of.
    * Apply to UN for no-fly zone to protect the civilians.
    * Bomb the shit out of anything that moves anywhere in the country.
    * Fly in local exiles from US with geologists and lawyers to secure mineral rights
    * Conclude regime change
    * Escape ensuing chaos to plan next regime change.
    * Have your President nominated for Nobel Peace Prize!

    Abiesalba -> sztubacki 10 May 2015 10:04

    It was estimated about half a million of American soldiers casualties to conquer Japan.

    The Soviet Union lost about 10 million soldiers and 15 million civilians.

    About 1.6 million German soldiers were killed in WWII, of which 1.1 million in the Eastern (Soviet) front. So out of 10 dead German soldiers, 7 died fighting the Red Army.

    In Europe, 9 in 10 Jews were killed.

    In Poland, 1 in 5 people were killed, many civilians.

    In my country Slovenia, 1 in 10 were killed, many civilians. And about 10% is among the highest national death rates in WWII.

    With all due respect to the US, the US role is not even remotely comparable to the sacrifice in the Soviet Union. The Red Army was by far the decisive power in defeating Nazi Germany.

    And it is highly hypocritical and disrespectful that the 'west' ignored the celebration of the end of WWII in Europe in Moscow.

    Was perhaps the role of the US and the UK in WWII ignored by everybody due to the recent illegal and catastrophic US/UK Iraq invasion? I thought not. There were also no sanctions etc.

    Carly435 -> Nat1978 10 May 2015 10:03

    Though I'm not a fan of what-aboutism, the horrific scale of German war crimes against Russian POWs has never gained the attention it deserves in the West.

    BeatonTheDonis -> alpamysh 10 May 2015 10:00

    Luckily for them he is back "on brand" with his latest book, about two-thirds of which is devoted to the Eastern Front, which Beevor believes redresses the balance of previous histories of the Second World War. "Ninety per cent of all Wehrmacht losses were on the Eastern Front. As far as the Germans were concerned, we were a sideshow. But each country sees the war from its own perspective and memories."

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11093344/Antony-Beevor-I-deserved-to-fail-history.-I-was-bolshie....html

    WayneB1 10 May 2015 09:53

    Unfortunately the West (i.e., the America and its key European allies) refuse to recognise the realities as far as the Russians are concerned. it was understood - blatantly - that Russia did not want countries on its doorstep, including Ukraine, made members of NATO. Yet the West and Ukraine itself persist.

    As for WWII. It is callous for the everyman Russian to hear that the country's then leaders - by initially siding with the Nazis and also annihilating their own people - were accountable for so many of the losses they suffered. But regardless of any and all of this, the West should have attended this commemoration in full force. Sanctions, snubbings and petty political manoeuvring is not the way to move forward. The West screwed up royally with Ukraine (and Crimea) and should accept and amend the fact that it is an insensitive behemoth guilty of the utmost arrogance and pushing for the 'unipolar world' suggested by Mr. Putin.

    The only thing that will change this is Russia (and other nations) pushing back. Indeed, with the likes of Russia and China establishing relations with South America, it will only be a matter of time that America might find itself the the 'enemy' at its doorsteps.

    sodtheproles -> Vijay Raghavan 10 May 2015 09:47

    How dare you!? How dare you dishonour and disfigure the memory of British and American exploitation of colonised peoples, and, above all, on a day like this!? Don't you realise how lucky they were to be given the chance of dying for democracy, a chance which was simply not open to them in their home countries!? How the very dare you, Mr Raghavan!?

    Eugene Weixel -> Roguing 10 May 2015 09:51

    Had Neville Chamberlain and company not given Czechoslovakia to Hitler and nudged him eastward there would have been no pact between the USSR and Hitler. This pact was a response to the Dr facto Hitler Chamberlain accord.

    kraljevic -> dyst1111 10 May 2015 09:50

    Since the majority of the Balkan peoples are eagerly allowing their territories to be used as forward bases for NATO and American attempts to contain and encircle Russia I wouldn't have wasted a single Russian bullet freeing them from Nazi rule! Many of them schemed with Hitler and took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union with great enthusiasm!They are definitely no angels and since most of them were hostile to the Russian presence and the Americans wouldn't have been in any great hurry to free them if it meant costing them lives there was little reason for the Russians to come to their rescue!

    MyFriendWillPay -> Rudeboy1 10 May 2015 09:43

    If you unscrambled your comment, it would be more readable but just as wrong.

    When the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union (SU) on 22 June 1941, three million German soldiers and almost 700,000 allies of Nazi Germany crossed the border, and their equipment consisted of 600,000 motor vehicles, 3,648 tanks, more than 2.700 planes, and just over 7,000 pieces of artillery.[

    The Nazis expected their blitzkrieg to bring total collapse of the SU within two months, and British Intelligence assessed the timescale as 8 - 10 weeks.

    However, events unfoulded rather differently as, within the first 3 4 weeks of the campaign, Admiral Canaris, head of German Military Intelligence, confided to a German general on the easter front, that everything about the campaign now looked "black". Even Goebells at that time wrote entries in his diary about how bad German progress was in the first month.

    By mid October 1941 - six weeks after the scheduled Nazi victory over the SU - various agencies, from the Swiss Secret Service to the Vatican, predicted that the Nazis would lose the war.

    By the start of December 1941, when the Germans ground to a halt just 20 miles from the Kremlin - exhausted, frozen and with over-extended supply lines - the Soviets prepared to strike. Their offensive began on 5 December and it pushed the Nazis back 60 - 170 miles, whereupon Hitler postponed the assault on Moscow until Spring 1942. Significantly, the success of this Soviet offensive prompted the German Armaments Minister to suggest to Hitler that a negotiated peace might be sought. Hitler was not prepared to negotiate, although his inner circle and Hitler himself, evidently realized that the war was lost.

    The Nazis fought on, hoping to seize the oilfields in the southeast, but this dream ended with the surrender of their army at Stalingrad in early 1942 and the long retreat to Berlin. During the retreat, a new dream emerged as the Nazis hoped to make peace with the western allies, and then turn their combined forceas against the Soviets. However, that was not to be, and the war ended in berlin on 9 May 1945.

    In summary, the Soviets were always going to win this war after Operation Barbarossa failed to crush them during the Summer of 1941. The Nazis had failed to seize Soviet materiel - from food to oil - and, unlike the Soviets, they were not able to go on replacing casualties with high quality manpower. Also, importantly, the Soviets were not merely fighting for freedom as their western allies were doing, they were fighting for their very survival as a people, hence their monumental sacrifices.

    The die for the outcome of this war was cast before the first shipments of material support to the Soviets, welcome as they were, and almost three years before the Normandy landings. But the cost to the SU was enormous: vast destruction of infrastructure, and the loss of fighters and civilians killed at 30 times higher than the combined losses of the British Empire and the United States!

    That is why the western WW2 allies' boycott of the Memorial Parade was churlish.

    Eugene Weixel -> Abiesalba 10 May 2015 09:43

    UZ troops had their way with destitute women in Germany and Italy the price of a candy bar for years.

    Abiesalba -> Carly435 10 May 2015 09:40

    Russians and Russian history textbooks gloss over what was at stake in WWII. For them, it's all about defeating an enemy

    Americans and Britons completely fail to understand the difference between having the territory of your own nation occupied and sending soldiers and/or planes to fight in another country.

    Having the enemy on your doorstep in terrible. And having Nazi-fascists on your doorstep was much worse in Slavic countries than in the occupied western European nations, becuase Hitler, Mussolini and allies waged ethnic cleansing of 'inferior' Slavs. On the other hand, the Aryan people of the occupied western Europe were spared this horror.

    I am from Slovenia, which was brutally occupied in WWII by Germany, Italy and Hungary. For two decades before WWII, Italian fascists pursued ethnic cleansing in western Slovene territory. This ethnic cleansing only intensified in WWII.

    For Slovenes, WWII meant having to choose between fear and courage every day.

    We had a very strong resistance movement, including the guarilla partisan fighters.

    But members of the resistance knew how brutal the revenge of the occupiers against their families and Slovenes can be. When the father joined the partisans, the mother and the children had to go underground. The occupiers frequently shout 10 civilian hostages for every of their soldiers killed by the resistance. They burnt down whole villages on suspicion that they support the partisans. Oh, and the use of the Slovene language was prohibited. And Slovenes were tortured, sent to concentration camps etc.

    In fact, our strong resistance drove the occupiers crazy. Italians encircled the capital of Slovenia, Ljublana, with 35 km of barbed wire and bunkers, hoping that they will defeat the resistance. In essence, they converted Ljubljana to the largest concentration camp in Europe. But people still strongly fought back, including the increasingly strong partisan units.

    The people of the Soviet Union faced a similar dilemma. They fought incredibly heroically for every inch of their homeland. In fact, they largely defeated Nazi Germany themselves. The Eastern Front was the largest military combat in history.

    And while the people of the Soviet Union, Slovenia and other occupied nations fought for their very existence, it seems to me, with all due respect, that the resistance in the occupied western countries was very weak, and often their regimes in effect sided with Germany.

    Now, what would you do if you had the enemy on your doorstep? Would you chose fear or courage?

    It is a tough personal choice and a tough decision for a nation. But under such circumstances, the true spirit of the nation shines through.

    freedomcry -> lizgiag 10 May 2015 09:39

    The anti-Russian feelings you encounter are really the product of decades of anti-Soviet propaganda.

    It's much older than that, I'm afraid. Anti-Soviet propaganda was a continuation of an already well-established prejudice against Russians. And the sad thing is, notwithstanding the West's present obsession with fighting stereotypes and hate speech, many a Westerner nowadays would read Rudyard Kipling's ridiculous The Man Who Was and find it entirely convincing because those are the exact same cardboard Russians with horns and tails that their media and Hollywood keep showing them.

    Laudig 10 May 2015 09:38

    Compare the situation in the Crimea and the situation in Hawaii. The vote was held promptly in Crimea. 3 or 4 generations later in Hawaii. The USG has no moral standing to complain. It is an empire that needs to collapse so the country can exist.

    Vijay Raghavan 10 May 2015 09:38

    I think the President of Russia & President of China being very powerful should ask the exceptional president of America to pay pension dues for war veterans of second world war.They should take this matter up in security council & discuss this promptly.If the British & Americans claim that their values are exceptional then how come they have not paid the pensions for millions of war veterans for 70 years.

    I think the exceptional president should ask his federal printing press to print a little more dollars & send it to all countries who have been paying pensions on their behalf.

    BBC can do like this instead of wasting their time on silly documentaries they should produce documentaries on their war veterans & ask the moral question are they responsible for paying war veterans pensions or not.

    lizgiag -> MiltonWiltmellow 10 May 2015 09:37

    Great rant! But if you take a look at any country's history you will find the same - Britain, Spain, France, Germany - bloody wars instigated everywhere all for the glory of empire & resources.

    Now its the turn of the EU & USA - these empires are re-branded, they no longer call themselves empires, but the outcome is the same - a geo-political land & resource grab!

    Be in NO DOUBT the populace comes way down on the list of concerns - look at what is happening the world over, the middle east is in a mess because of the involvement of the West recently but also for decades past.

    Do not be fooled, the New American Century is upon us...google it!


    freedomcry -> Botswana61 10 May 2015 09:25

    And it probably originates with Nazi propaganda about the advancing barbarous subhuman Russian hordes.

    This is not to be taken as a denial that the Red Army committed any rapes at all. Rather, I'm pointing to the fact that mass rapes are just the sort of thing that specifically Russian soldiers were likely to be accused of, whether they did it or not. And the core of that prejudice still survives more or less intact.

    Vijay Raghavan -> GreatMountainEagle 10 May 2015 09:16

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/World-War-II-pensioners-get-pittance-from-government/articleshow/4741980.cms

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/World-War-II-veterans-get-only-Rs-1000-pension/articleshow/19923091.cms

    http://www.deccanherald.com/content/102212/govt-directed-reconsider-pension-world.html

    Those who fought for the British only got a middle finger.BBC has been so callous it does not even put in a word to British government to reimburse pension for those who fought for them.....that has been their attitude.

    The total number of people for whom the British government has not paid pension is 1.5MM people for their 2nd world war.Indian governemnt had to pay their pensions & they have been paying with all courts saying it is India's responsibility.The cost per year would be 1.Billion for 60 years we had paid 60Billion dollars that is just your world war 2....add another 30 Billion for your world war 1.I think the Guardian and BBC should write a article about that and ensure British Government promptly repays back 100Billion dollars to India.If we add up Nepal that will also be huge claim on British government.

    We can do a deal like this you can pay 50% for our schools & another 50% for the roads & hospitals.or May be you can give a interest free loan to Nepal for 100 billion against pension amount payable to India as they need that money badly for fixing their country after earth quake.

    Standupwoman -> MentalToo 10 May 2015 09:15

    'Rapes committed by western allies ground troops against German civilians are not, for the very good reason nothing like that happened.'

    That is not true. There is considerable evidence to suggest the majority of rapes were committed by the Red Army (whose own civilian population had suffered in a way ours never had) but the other Allies were guilty of a lot of it too - one estimate quoting a figure of 11,040 for the Americans alone. Don't forget the Australian journalist who accompanied the American army and claimed:

    I know for a fact that many women were raped by white Americans. No action was taken against the culprits. In one sector a report went round that a certain very distinguished army commander made the wisecrack, 'Copulation without conversation does not constitute fraternisation'.

    Rape is always wrong, and even if the Red Army had considerably more provocation than we did, that still doesn't excuse them. But neither does it give us the right to lie about them, or about our own share in the atrocities. Can't we at least show some integrity about that?

    BeatonTheDonis -> ijustwant2say 10 May 2015 09:14

    The history on Churchill's role in the Bengal Famine and Allied torture and murder of German and Japanese POWs is quite recent, so you must be pretty young if you covered it at school.

    You haven't provided any evidence for Putin's revisionism affecting Russian schools. From what Putin has said, it seems he acknowledges Stalin's crimes but places them in the context of the challenges Stalin faced and he compares Stalin to other historical figures whose crimes against humanity haven't seen them completely written off as monsters - Oliver Cromwell, for example.

    Stalin was a murderer who terrified his populace into submission. But he was also in power for 30 years and took the Soviet Union from a devastated agrarian economy to an industrial power that defeated Nazi Germany and was able to compete with the USA and Western Europe. Life expectancy in the USSR when he died had increased to 63 for men and 69 for women.

    After the fall of the USSR, life expectancy for men fell to under 60 - that is the context which sees Putin lauded by many Russians.

    Tattyana -> Carly435 10 May 2015 09:13

    It is easy. We can not find any single point your ideology is ever better.

    You insist our media keep to lie? You think so because YOUR media told you so? I can read both - yours and ours. I can read Ukrainian as well. And I can compare. Can you?

    I can continue, but unlike you I do aware, there are some bad pages in history of every country or people. And I never start to talk with any of Germany people from the point "Do you remember that Hitler killed millions of Russians?"

    Though here is much more truth than in your points which should blow hatred to Russians.

    Abiesalba -> Barkywoof 10 May 2015 09:10

    Was nothing learned from that awful war ?

    Unfortunatelly, not much. Except that it is now not politically correct in western Europe to specifically target the Jews.

    However, it is very popular to specifically target the horrible 'Eastern and Central European' immigrants. The term 'Eastern and Central European' immigrants predominantly means the Slavs.

    According to the Nazi ideology, Slavs were at the very bottom of the race hierarchy, below the Jews. And oppression of 'inferior' Slavs by the 'Aryan' race has more than a thousand years of history. Hitler planned a genocide of Slaves, and the Nazis killed many millions of Slavs due to their 'inferior' ethnicity.

    I find it very disturbing that in the 21st century in nations which Hilter declared to be the Aryan superior race, targeting the Slavs is acceptable. Take Wilders in the Netherlands or Farage in the UK, or neo-Nazis in Austria and neo-fascists in Italy, etc.

    moongibbon Carly435 10 May 2015 09:09

    This is the spectacle presented in the Western media and it's not representative of Russians at all, for whom today is about remembering those who died in WWII to save their country from destruction.

    Lafcadio1944 10 May 2015 09:08

    The Guardian's "coverage" of Russia is pathetic. Anyone could have written this article far from Moscow by just watching TV. It is really disgraceful propagandist "reporting" just throw up some insult and scary warning about evil Putin/Russia and go home - well done.

    There are huge - some even positive - things going on in Russia, China and India which count for a huge % of the global population and China is the 2nd largest economy and has launched one of the biggest global trade initiatives of modern times yet not a word about it.

    The Guardian just regurgitates propaganda about these nations written by the CIA or US State Department it has no reporters in these places and just ignores any positive developments. Thu leaving its readers fearful of the "mysterious" East - purposely.

    Dimmus -> Isanybodyouthere 10 May 2015 09:06

    "like claims to Russian speaking populations being endangered " - everything depends on the point of view of course. Even when pro-Russian people in Ukraine were burned alive they were not endangered from the point of view of anti-Russian nationalists.

    When many russian journalists were killed in Ukraine - it is not much mentioned, it is not interesting.

    When one US journalist killed somewhere - country is bombed and all the media for long time are full of discussions and moaning.

    When pro-Russian people (Ossetians) in Georgia were bombed by heavy artillery by order of Georgian president it was not endangering of those people because the president was a US-friendly president.

    And there are many more examples of western nationalizm. Just believe, that there are many people around the world who are really feel endangered by nationalists, including western nationalism.

    Eugene Weixel -> raffine 10 May 2015 09:06

    Had the West not awarded Czechoslovakia to Hitler and nudged him eastward three never would have been that pact, and many fewer on all sides would have suffered and died.

    teurin_hgada -> GreatMountainEagle 10 May 2015 09:05

    Rotenberg is jew. TimchenKO is ukrainian. Those evil nazi russians!!

    teurin_hgada -> Metronome151 10 May 2015 09:03

    Poland invaded Russia somedays before that. That was revenge. 'Who will come with us with a sword will dye from a sword' very old russian proverb. Chingiskhan, Napoleon, and Hitler knew that. Obobo still dont know

    kraljevic -> sztubacki 10 May 2015 09:02

    Facts speak for themselves Russia emerged the victor in WW2 but its an irony that if anyone sticks up for the Russians they are accused of being a fascist!Many eastern European nations especially western leaning ones look down on Russians as oriental savages and there's no doubt many of them hated their Russian liberators more than they did the Germans even though the latter treated them like scum! That's why the Russians should have stopped when they liberated their own territories and let the Eastern Europeans stew in their in their own juices and liberate themselves.Why should a Russian mother lose her precious son to free a Pole or Czech or Hungarian who hates him with a passion and would stab him in the back first chance he got!

    freedomcry nobblehobble 10 May 2015 08:58

    Like I said: Russian neo-Nazis exist. Your links tell a lot about the level of attention they get from Western media (who happily follow the old trope of "take an issue that's hot in the West and make it look like it's much worse in Russia" - never fails to sell well) than about the actual scale of the problem. Did you even know Tesak is in jail now? Or that Belov (if you even know who that is) is under house arrest?

    Do you know what phrase famously, and ridiculously, landed Konstantin Krylov a conviction for hate speech in 2013? Did you know last year's Russian March was pro-Ukrainian? No? Then leave me alone.

    No; apologise for the paid troll libel, then leave me alone.

    Eugene Weixel -> bumcyk 10 May 2015 08:51

    Russia is being demonized and confronted by the West as though it was the USSR. It is in Russia and some former Soviet republics that the victory over Nazism is unambiguously seen as something positive.

    Barkywoof 10 May 2015 08:58

    There are a bunch of psychos always at the ready on all sides if allowed to take the reins. The Russians did terrible things. The Nazis did terrible things. Then the USA killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese women and children with a new and horrifying weapon.

    I don't think it's a case of 'We Are Good... They are Bad.'
    Was nothing learned from that awful war ?

    teurin_hgada -> Roguing 10 May 2015 08:58

    Half of Europr and Japan were Hitler allies. Ask them. And USSR just signed pact of no attack with Hitler. It is not the same that to be allies

    sodtheproles -> Isanybodyouthere 10 May 2015 08:57

    So what should be done when Russian speaking populations who see themselves as Russian are 'endangered', and that's 'endangered' in the sense of raped, bludgeoned, shot, beaten and burnt to death 'endangered'

    Eugene Weixel -> nonanon1 10 May 2015 08:56

    Good enough reason as Putin underlines the fact that his name is not Manuel Noriega.

    sodtheproles -> ID5868758 10 May 2015 08:53

    It's Shaun of all credibility journalism

    Eugene Weixel -> Koppen616 10 May 2015 08:53

    A necessary show of force, determination and support by the world's largest nation's, and many others as well.

    Vladimir Makarenko -> ChristineH 10 May 2015 08:51

    Hm, "dinosaur era" is marked by destroying countries by choice and then walking away cursing "f*ck, it is again didn't work..."

    Military parade commemorating staggering sacrifice is internal matter of Russia and for Russia, outsiders are welcome to watch and think twice.

    oAEONo -> Nolens 10 May 2015 08:50

    What "well documented fact" are you talking about, can you please give me a link?

    Books by Noam Chomsky would provide you with a huge amount of carefully documented facts. Some are even mentioned on this thread alone. That you missed them up until now simply beggars belief. Makes me wonder if you are interested in facts at all.

    SHappens 10 May 2015 08:50

    "We have seen attempts to create a unipolar world, and we see how forced bloc thinking is becoming more common."

    Because of the attitude of the United States, but also because of the cowardice of European leaders, this May 9, 2015 has confirmed the division of the world in two. It symbolizes the opposition of an "old world", the Atlantic Basin and this new world emerging around Asia, which constantly attracts to itself new countries.

    During his speech in Munich in 2007, Putin talked about a multipolar world. Because even the most powerful and richest country cannot alone ensure the stability of the world. The US project exceeds the US forces. But instead of listening, since this speech there was an acceleration of the US demonization of Putin.

    It is important to break this dynamic of the political blocs to return towards a dynamic of a multipolar world. Beyond the shame and anger we feel for the attitude of the western leaders, beyond the disgust we feel for the insult not only to the Russian people but also to Chinese and Indian people, as well as to all others who came to Moscow on 9 May, we must realize that by calculation or cowardice, Western leaders, by abdicating their natural role, are helping to plunge the world towards a future of wars and conflicts.

    It is a mistake- as we know from Talleyrand - the policy mistakes are worse than crimes.

    Standupwoman , 10 May 2015 08:47
    Are YOU remembering the massacre of Poles at Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by Ukraine's own newly celebrated UPA? Where estimates of the dead vary between 60,000 and 100,000?

    Russia has at least admitted Soviet responsibility for the Katyn massacre - and officially condemned Stalin for it. Ukraine, on the other hand, has just declared Roman Shukhevych a Hero, and prohibited 'disrespect' for the UPA.

    No country should be denied honour for genuinely heroic deeds, no matter what else it's done. As long as that country also admits and is sorry for its crimes, then it is also worthy our respect. Unlike Ukraine under its current regime, Russia merits

    Michael A -> sztubacki 10 May 2015 08:46

    Thank you for sharing MIKHAIL SHISHKIN's honest, candid and insightful words. I share his morality. He is correct in his assumptions and conclusions and he mirrors my felling about the hypocrisy that has shaped too much of my American lifetime.

    The shame of the disintegration of relations between our two spheres is not the goals sought but the myopic way both sides have gone about achieving them.

    Unfortunately the old American saw that our children grow up with, "it matters not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game", is almost inevitably and totally reversed in adulthood to, "it matters whether you win or lose, not how you played the game". The idealism and honesty of youth is replaced with greed and shortsightedness as age creeps in.

    I thank the Russian people for the horrible sacrifices they made on behalf of victory over fascism. I also thank my American, British, French, etc, etc brothers and sisters for the their sacrifice. Sacrifice is to be commended not by degree but by intent. Thank you all.

    Goodthanx -> Metronome151 10 May 2015 08:42

    The number of Poles who died due to Soviet repressions in the period 1939-1941 is estimated as at least 150,000

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_citizens_(1939%E2%80%9346)

    Ukrainian nationalists[edit]
    Main article: Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
    Ukrainian nationalists organized massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during which (according to Grzegorz Motyka) approximately 80,000-100,000 Poles were killed.[5]

    An OUN order from early 1944 stated: "Liquidate all Polish traces. Destroy all walls in the Catholic Church and other Polish prayer houses. Destroy orchards and trees in the courtyards so that there will be no trace that someone lived there... Pay attention to the fact that when something remains that is Polish, then the Poles will have pretensions to our land"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Poles_from_the_USSR

    And these are now your friends???
    says a lot.

    MiltonWiltmellow kraljevic 10 May 2015 08:41

    Its a sad reflection of today's selfish blinkered and short sighted world that the usual Russophobes and closet Nazis are given so much space and airtime to spread their pernicious ideology which consists of almost exclusively denigrating everything Russian.

    Where are the thundering armies of the Tsar trampling the upstart Napoleon at Borodino?

    Where are the Tsar's great Cossacks rousting quiet villages to pay the Tsar's new taxes during the Balybostock Pogram (1906) while terrified Russians fled into the night, onto the steppes, into the ocean...

    And, as I'm a bit of an ettymologitst, where did the term "pogram" actually originate.

    Where are the murderers of the Tsar's family whose blood spattered the cellar of a small estate? Who was Pavel Medevedev?

    There's one Russian truth. Not this glorious past upon which Putin attempts to rebuild a lost and imperious empire, but a series of killings in the night of the Russian people by those waving saber and lance against defenseless people.

    Exhortations like this this belong in the history books of Germany, Imperial Russia, and many of the religiously motivated wars that has turned Europe's soil a deep, rich crimson from which has arisen -- like a virginal saint roused from slumber-- as kingmakers and various petty tyrants lick their bloody wolf lips.

    Nobility in war is about as common women and children left unmoslested by maurading troops.

    Go badk to your Tolstoy ... or is it your pastiche writer Sholokov? ... to find your vanished glory, because there's little glory in Russian History. It's mostly a history of endurance and suffering.

    Says Kasparov:

    Arguably the world's best chess player ever, Garry Kasparov is on a new mission. He hopes to convince the world that the biggest threat to global unrest is not the Islamic State, al-Qaida or North Korea. Instead it is Vladimir Putin, Russia's president from 2000 to 2008 and then again from 2012 to today. [http://news.yahoo.com/bianna-golodryga-interviews-garry-kasparov-093317385.html]

    mrkhawaja1944 -> Roguing 10 May 2015 08:41

    Ask the Russians they will give you better answer but I am not talking about invaders Russians or no Russians but do you know any country invaded America I know of one and they are very good friends now but give you list of countries invaded and occupied by America and Europe I do not think you can name any country in present days world not invaded by so called western powers.

    But I was taking about Russian who died in millions defending the country not invading other countries.

    Vladimir Makarenko -> Debreceni 10 May 2015 08:36

    Let's make some sorting of apples from oranges: not "Ukrainians" but Western Ukrainians or how they called themselves "Galicians". Galicia never was a part of Russia but divided between Hungary and Poland. Its pro independence movement made alliance with German Nazis in the beginning of 30-ties.

    When Nazis made a call for SS division "Galicia" more than 100,000 volunteered, 27,000 were admitted. Their training was in first turn anti guerilla actions. Their fate was sealed during three days battle of Brody with regular experienced Soviet troops which without particular difficulty eliminated this bunch wannabe warriors. The remnants (about 7,000) escaped and ended up in Italy and after war across the pond, mostly to Canada. (Hence Canada attitude to Russia today).

    This explains why there will be no peace between Donbass and Eastern Ukraine (which was a center of resistance then as it is today) and pro Galician (today) Kiev.

    itsanevolvething 10 May 2015 08:36

    A serious lack of respect and error of judgment by scameron and other western nations to not recognise the sacrifice of the Red Army in WW2 and send representation to this event. There is zero wisdom out there right now..just battle lines being drawn up.

    nnedjo -> Omniscience 10 May 2015 08:33

    Not sure, hope that wouldn't clash with the Victory over Czechoslovakia celebrations.

    Czech President Milos Zeman met with Putin yesterday and, among other things, said the following:
    President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman (in Russian):

    Thank you, Mr President.

    You know, politics are like the weather: it cools off and then it gets warmer. A person is happy when it warms up after a cool-down. This is one thing.

    The other is that I have stated several times in public that I am here primarily to pay tribute not only to those soldiers who died on the territory of the Czech Republic, but to all the 20, or some say 27 million Soviet citizens, both soldiers and civilians, who died during the Great Patriotic War. This was the first purpose of my visit.

    Abiesalba -> J00l3z 10 May 2015 08:32

    He would do as well to remember that Stalin consigned a great number of the returning servicemen who had seen the west to death in Gulags. And that Russia exterminated more of her own people than Hitler did in concentration camps. Shmoozing despots says a lot about the nasty party !

    The UK and all other imperial powers would do well to remember how many countries they forcefully occupied and then ruthlessly exploited their hunam and natural resources for centuries, including slavery. The UK and others had colonies well after WWII.

    How many dead people from the activities of these most glorious empires based on Nazi-like ideologies of the 'superior' nation vs the 'inferior' nation?

    And did these most democratic western powers ever pay reparations to their former colonies for the huge damage they have caused?

    johhnybgood 10 May 2015 08:29

    In the US the population knows nothing about the Russian involvement in the war.

    Even in Europe only 13% of the population know the real story. This of course is because the history has been rewritten. If you watched the ceremony in Moscow, you realised just how deep feelings still run throughout the whole population. Few families escaped without loss.

    This is why the West is playing with fire through its NATO encroachment provocation. The West's foreign policy regarding Russia is totally self defeating. Only the politicians are responsible -- the general populations have no desire for war with Russia - quite the reverse, Russia and China represent the future of global trade.

    mrkhawaja1944 10 May 2015 08:18

    Shameful act of revenge by western leaders not people by not attending ceremony in Russia as if their dead were better then Russians who lost millions.

    They did not attend just because they do not like one man happened to be president making excuse of Ukrainian problem but who started it paid demonstrators by CIA known fact like the Arab spring where no flowers bur rubbles pile up in middle east spread to Europe thanks to American freedom loving policies.

    Russians who died in millions deserver to be remembered with respect like the one in western countries who's leaders absence is disgraceful act.

    Abiesalba -> HHeLiBe 10 May 2015 08:12

    Sad that the hallmarks of expansionism and extreme nationalism are now most evident in Russia.

    How about the illegal US/UK Iraq invasion?

    How about the US relationships with its neighbours? A Berlin Wall along its border with Mexico. Decades of embarge against their neighbour Cuba. Cuba is, however, good enough for the US to have its Guantanamo concentration camp there. Oh, and how about racism in the US, and the status of the native Indians.

    The UK financially supported the rise to power of Mussolini and his fascists in Italy who pursued brutal policies of ethnic cleansing of 'inferior' races long before Hitler rose to power in Germany. After WWII, the UK prevented extradition of 1,200 Italian fascists accused of war crimes to Yugoslavia, Greece and Ethiopia. These war criminals were never put to trial, and the UK kept supporting Italian pro-fascist politicians after WWII. The general acceptance of Italian fascism in the UK was also reflected in the English football team Sunderland appointing the Italian extreme Mussolini fan and self-declared fascist Paolo Di Canio as the manager in 2013.

    Meanwhile, Italy keeps denying its WWII atrocities and neo-fascism is very alive. Every year, in Italy people march to celebrate the anniversary of Mussolini's march on Rome, which led to Mussolini's fascist regime taking the power in Italy (video of the march in 2014 here.) The most democratic 'western' states do not protest about it and the western media just avoid this scandal.

    And there is much more. For example, in February 2015 (three months ago), the Italian GOVERNMENT (!) gave medals of honour to 300 Mussolini's fascists, including 6 accused of war crimes.

    And neo-Nazism is alive and well also in Austria. Surely the EU members demanded in 2002 that neo-Nazi Jörg Haider is expelled from the Austrian government. But after that happened, nobody cared about the fact that Haider went on to be the elected (!) governor of the Carinthia region of Austria until 2008 (he was not voted out; he died in a reckless car crash) where he pursued apartheid-like policies against the Slovene minority in Carinthia. Slovenes are Slavs, and according to Nazi and fascist ideology they are an 'inferior' race and should be eradicated. The Slovene minorities in Austria and Italy keep being oppressed and attacked by neo-fascists and neo-Nazis, often also via the attitudes of the Italian and the Austrian governments.

    Germany is the only Nazi-fascist country which fully admitted its war atrocities and apologized for them. Germany is now at least very watchful about neo-Nazis, and is trying to crack down on groups with neo-Nazi and similar ideologies. Even so, neo-Nazism is rising its ugly head also in Germany.

    Many other European states keep denying their involvement in Nazism and fascism. In these states (e.g. Austria, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, the Netherlands etc. etc.), the state of denial enables Nazi and fascist ideologies to thrive. In Hungary, the neo-fascist Jobbik party won 17% of the votes in the 2010 elections and 20% in 2014. In Slovakia, a neo-Nazi won regional elections in 2013. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' party is the third largest in the parliament. In the UK, UKIP just got 13% of the votes and is the third largest party by the number of votes.

    Besides, all western European states (including the UK) are collectively in denial about their centuries-long support of Nazi-like ideologies. The imperialistic Nazi-like ideology of 'superior' vs 'inferior' nations/races fuelled centuries of forceful occupation, oppression and exploitation of human and natural resources (including slavery) of many 'inferior' nations around the world.

    Across western Europe, there is rising discrimination against 'Eastern and Central European' immigrants. These unwanted immigrants are largely Slavs. The specific targeting of 'inferior' Slavs has a long history in Europe (over a thousand years) and was also reflected in Hitler's hierarchy of races, where the Slavs were at the very bottom of under-humans (below the Jews). Hitler had plans for extensive genocide of Slavs, and Nazis killed many millions of them (e.g. Poles, Ukarinians).

    In this historical context, I find the specific targeting of 'inferior' Slavs by various xenophobic groups in western Europe rather disturbing. This is nothing but re-painted Nazi-fascist ideology. Notably, such ideology thrives in particular in nations which Hitler declared to be the superior race = Herrenvolk = Aryan race: Germans, British, Irish, Dutch, Northern French, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes etc.

    It seems to me that it would not be acceptable in modern Europe to specifically target the Jews. On the other hand, it is very acceptable to specifically target the Slavs.

    Rudeboy1 -> Batleymuslim 10 May 2015 08:11

    The first rule of war is logistics, logistics , logistics...in that order.

    I don't underestmate the Russians, far from it. It's a realistic view on their real capabilities and re-equipment in recent years. They're running to stay still at present. They have block obsolescence on the horizon for most of their kit and can't afford to replace it at the required levels. The Russian Navy is a case in point, their latest SSN was actually laid down 15 years ago and has yet to enter service. For surface ships they're done for as they either don't have the skills or they no longer have powerplants for them (their marine GT's were all built in the Ukraine).

    The recent excitement over their new armour was a tad over the top. Have a look at them. The Kurganets? Is it as good as a German Puma? Bumerang? Is it really as good as a German Boxer? The Armata is an attempt to try and close the gap to western designs, but it's 25+ years too late. They'll never manage to build 2000 of them, they don't have the funds or the production capabilities.

    The point about the F22 and F35 is still valid. I'm not counting the F35's as they're yet to hit IOC. The West has done all this in an era of declining military spending, with next to no effort.

    In contract the Russians are spending increasing proportions on defence although they have announced some cuts recently). The Russian's simply aren't a military threat, and they know it. The last thing we need is an over-reaction. If the Armata is anything like previous Russian tanks once we get our hands on one we'll find that it was never all that anyway, still it keeps defence spending a little higher I suppose...

    nnedjo -> Bradtweeters 10 May 2015 08:05

    This is not a commemoration of the war dead. The commemoration of the war dead are being made at monuments to war victims. So, this is a celebration of the victory over fascism, and not any commemoration.

    But, anyway, Putin is not a priest, he is a politician, and from politicians are expected on such occasions to give a political message too. Especially, if he complains that there is not enough cooperation in the world. It should be the political agenda of all politicians in the world, and not only of Putin.

    lizgiag -> Natalia Volkova 10 May 2015 08:01

    Privet Natalia! The anti-Russian feelings you encounter are really the product of decades of anti-Soviet propaganda. For decades there was really nothing positive said about the Soviet Union, years and years of negativity (not just about the system but also the people) meant that it is a deeply rooted feeling which was very easy to resurrect in the past few years.

    Whilst this is not new, the more sinister side of this is the re-writing of history, so that the events of World War 2 are re-interpreted to the extent that the Soviet Union is now slowly being seen as the aggressor to fit in with the current narrative for the West's geo-political strategy.

    Frustrating as this is, it makes it even more important that Russia's point of view is put forward even if it seems futile.

    kraljevic 10 May 2015 07:59

    Its a sad reflection of today's selfish blinkered and short sighted world that the usual Russophobes and closet Nazis are given so much space and airtime to spread their pernicious ideology which consists of almost exclusively denigrating everything Russian.

    You could almost see some of them them practicing their Heil Hitler salutes in front of the mirror!

    But however many of them delude themselves into believing that victory was snatched from their grasp by a set of unlucky circumstances rather than relentless Russian resistance then they will continue to try to kid the world that Russia's victory was a fluke!

    The next step is to revive the myth that the SS and their allies stood for humane values and the defence of freedom and European civilization! But none of this relentless drivel will affect the attitude of the majority of people who continue to be inspired by the incredible, unimaginable and superhuman bravery and defiance of the Russian people in a life and death struggle unmatched in the annals of history!

    geedeesee -> airman23 10 May 2015 07:46

    "Crimea belongs to Ukraine"

    Things change, nothing is fixed forever. Scotland may leave the UK. The Declaration of Independence by the Republic of Crimea was in accord with the provisions in the UN Charter.

    Standupwoman -> sztubacki 10 May 2015 07:46

    I don't actually disagree with you about the leadership. Stalin (a Georgian, as you know) was a murderous tyrant in his own right, and the Russian people suffered as much as any other Soviet country under his rule.

    But Victory Day isn't about Stalin, except as a figurehead. It's about the ordinary men and women who fought and died and achieved the most incredible victory the world has ever seen. How could anyone want to take away from that?

    dyst1111 -> Manolo Torres 10 May 2015 07:42

    "Then we have the Royals that attended Nazi parties and married Nazis and even conspired against Britain with the Nazis."

    And what of this? Nothing. They had no power.

    Halifax was sidelined because of his attitude and Churchill made PM.

    Soviet Union worked with the Nazis AFTER the war had broken out. Worked closely on many levels.

    And there is one more aspect - what Britain and France did is regarded today with disdain as cowardly acts. What USSR did is desperately being whitewashed by Russia. So even if they acted more less the same, only Russia thinks it was OK.

    John Smith -> Omniscience 10 May 2015 07:33

    The US companies had some 500 mln$ investments in German war industries.

    Standard Oil, General Motors, General Electric, ITT, Ford...
    IG Farben ( Standard Oil) financed Hitler's rise to power.

    CaptTroyTempest -> Kaikoura 10 May 2015 07:31

    According to Wikileaks, Petro Walzmann (aka Poroschenko) has been in the pockets Washington's pocket since 2006. Probably just a coincidence.

    http://scgnews.com/leaked-documents-ukraines-new-president-works-for-the-us-state-department?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

    juster 10 May 2015 07:25

    Soviets may have won the war but they got pasted in the subsequent PR department.

    I've seen interesting public opinion polls in France that immediately after the war showed 80+% people said mostly SU won the war and 60 year on 80+% people said the US played that role.

    Because SU was branded the empire of evil and the US the force of good and people bought it ignoring the fact there is precious little difference. And still to this day Obama speaks of say the Vietnam war with praising the american troops for their righteous and good fight for freedom in the jungles. Clearly, he's never seen the Winter Soldier. The one from 1972 with testimonies of veterans that was and is de facto censored in the US for 40 years now, not the Cpt. America one.

    Manolo Torres -> Botswana61 10 May 2015 07:24

    Are you joking?!

    In a new international ranking, the United Kingdom ranks first, while the U.S. performs poorly across almost all health metrics.

    According to the world health organization you are second to 36 countries in 2000. Morocco, Singapore and Costa Rica have better healthsystem than you.

    teurin_hgada -> AlfredHerring 10 May 2015 07:21

    Your democrazy is nukong civilians in Japan after theirs capitulation. To kill Vietnam with WMD. Serbia, Syria, Lybia, Iraq.

    Do you know that democracy eas invited in Greece and means slavery. There are citizens in democracy, and there are slaves, which brings prosperity to citizens. We dont want to be slaves of successors of criminals from whole word which made genocide to indeans civilization 300 years ago

    Kaiama 10 May 2015 07:21

    Read and Enjoy (2/2)

    Dear friends,
    We welcome today all our foreign guests while expressing a particular gratitude to the representatives of the countries that fought against Nazism and Japanese militarism.
    Besides the Russian servicemen, parade units of ten other states will march through the Red Square as well. These include soldiers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Their forefathers fought shoulder to shoulder both at the front and in the rear.
    These also include servicemen from China, which, just like the Soviet Union, lost many millions of people in this war. China was also the main front in the fight against militarism in Asia.
    Indian soldiers fought courageously against the Nazis as well.
    Serbian troops also offered strong and relentless resistance to the fascists.
    Throughout the war our country received strong support from Mongolia.
    These parade ranks include grandsons and great-grandsons of the war generation. The Victory Day is our common holiday. The Great Patriotic War was in fact the battle for the future of the entire humanity.
    Our fathers and grandfathers lived through unbearable sufferings, hardships and losses. They worked till exhaustion, at the limit of human capacity. They fought even unto death. They proved the example of honour and true patriotism.
    We pay tribute to all those who fought to the bitter for every street, every house and every frontier of our Motherland. We bow to those who perished in severe battles near Moscow and Stalingrad, at the Kursk Bulge and on the Dnieper.
    We bow to those who died from famine and cold in the unconquered Leningrad, to those who were tortured to death in concentration camps, in captivity and under occupation.
    We bow in loving memory of sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, comrades-in-arms, relatives and friends – all those who never came back from war, all those who are no longer with us.
    A minute of silence is announced.

    Minute of silence.

    Dear veterans,
    You are the main heroes of the Great Victory Day. Your feat predestined peace and decent life for many generations. It made it possible for them to create and move forward fearlessly.
    And today your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren live up to the highest standards that you set. They work for the sake of their country's present and future. They serve their Fatherland with devotion. They respond to complex challenges of the time with honour. They guarantee the successful development, might and prosperity of our Motherland, our Russia!
    Long live the victorious people!
    Happy holiday!
    Congratulations on the Victory Day!
    Hooray!

    Kaiama 10 May 2015 07:20

    Read and Enjoy... (1/2)

    Fellow citizens of Russia,
    Dear veterans,
    Distinguished guests,
    Comrade soldiers and seamen, sergeants and sergeant majors, midshipmen and warrant officers, Comrade officers, generals and admirals,
    I congratulate you all on the 70th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War!
    Today, when we mark this sacred anniversary, we once again appreciate the enormous scale of Victory over Nazism. We are proud that it was our fathers and grandfathers who succeeded in prevailing over, smashing and destroying that dark force.
    Hitler's reckless adventure became a tough lesson for the entire world community. At that time, in the 1930s, the enlightened Europe failed to see the deadly threat in the Nazi ideology.
    Today, seventy years later, the history calls again to our wisdom and vigilance. We must not forget that the ideas of racial supremacy and exclusiveness had provoked the bloodiest war ever. The war affected almost 80 percent of the world population. Many European nations were enslaved and occupied.
    The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the enemy's attacks. The elite Nazi forces were brought to bear on it. All their military power was concentrated against it. And all major decisive battles of World War II, in terms of military power and equipment involved, had been waged there.
    And it is no surprise that it was the Red Army that, by taking Berlin in a crushing attack, hit the final blow to Hitler's Germany finishing the war.
    Our entire multi-ethnic nation rose to fight for our Motherland's freedom. Everyone bore the severe burden of the war. Together, our people made an immortal exploit to save the country. They predetermined the outcome of World War II. They liberated European nations from the Nazis.
    Veterans of the Great Patriotic War, wherever they live today, should know that here, in Russia, we highly value their fortitude, courage and dedication to frontline brotherhood.
    Dear friends,
    The Great Victory will always remain a heroic pinnacle in the history of our country. But we also pay tribute to our allies in the anti-Hitler coalition.
    We are grateful to the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the Victory. We are thankful to the anti-fascists of various countries who selflessly fought the enemy as guerrillas and members of the underground resistance, including in Germany itself.
    We remember the historical meeting on the Elbe, and the trust and unity that became our common legacy and an example of unification of peoples – for the sake of peace and stability.
    It is precisely these values that became the foundation of the post-war world order. The United Nations came into existence. And the system of the modern international law has emerged.
    These institutions have proved in practice their effectiveness in resolving disputes and conflicts.
    However, in the last decades, the basic principles of international cooperation have come to be increasingly ignored. These are the principles that have been hard won by mankind as a result of the ordeal of the war.
    We saw attempts to establish a unipolar world. We see the strong-arm block thinking gaining momentum. All that undermines sustainable global development.
    The creation of a system of equal security for all states should become our common task. Such system should be an adequate match to modern threats, and it should rest on a regional and global non-block basis. Only then will we be able to ensure peace and tranquility on the planet.

    Manolo Torres -> dyst1111 10 May 2015 07:19

    Lets see the other side as well then:

    Huge trade, far bigger, just the investment of GM in Nazi Germany was 25% of the total amount their trade with the Soviet Union, if we add Standard Oil and Ford it will probably be already much more, and we are not throwing in the bankers that are the ones that made the most profit.

    Then we have the Royals that attended Nazi parties and married Nazis and even conspired against Britain with the Nazis.

    Then we have France and Britain giving Hitler (and the Polish) parts of Czechoslovakia. Talking about congratulatory letters we know about one from British deputy prime minister:

    "Herr Chancellor, on behalf of the British Government I congratulate you on crushing communism in Germany and standing as a bulwark against Russia" (1a)

    - Lord Halifax then British Deputy Prime Minister (later Foreign Secretary) addressing Adolf Hitler, November 1937.

    Standupwoman 10 May 2015 07:17

    I'm having a hard time believing both the tone of this article and the venom in some of the comments. On Russia's own Victory Day? Really? Are we sunk as low as that?

    The only excuse I can find is that maybe some people simply don't know what this day really represents. This piece in The Hill, for example, actually states:

    The Soviet victory in World War II - also known as the "Great Patriotic War" in Russia - can in terms of mythological importance be compared to D-Day for Americans

    OK, this might be an unusually crass and insensitive writer, but could anybody with even a smattering of education make such a comparison? How could the events of one day in which 2,500 Americans died conceivably equate to the events of four years in which 27 million Soviet citizens were killed - nearly 14 million of them Russian? We know how Americans feel about 9/11, but even if they'd suffered a new 9/11 every day for four years, it would still be less than half what was done to Russia.

    Even the British struggle to comprehend that degree of loss. We too suffered from Nazi attack, we too saw women and children killed in their own homes, we too saw our great cities pulverized and our history smashed - like Coventry Cathedral, for a start. But the German army never set foot here, because we were saved by the English Channel, the best airforce in the world - and the fact that the Russians held out long enough to turn the tide.

    No-one in the West can really imagine what Russia went through, and there isn't space to say it here. Do some reading - or better still, watch the BBC's 'The World at War' and 'Nazis: A Warning from History'. The latter programme even interviews a former German soldier who describes how they treated the 'sub-human Slavs' of their occupied territories - 'We'd kill the children first in front of their mothers, and then the mothers.' Imagine it. Try. Imagine the desperate courage of that defence, at Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. Look again at the Victory Day footage, and note how young some of the veterans are - because even children took part in the sieges of their homes. At Sevastopol in 2011 I met one woman who'd been throwing Molotov cocktails against German tanks when she was seven years old.

    And they won. The tide was turned before the Americans even joined, and the momentous Battle of Kursk for the first time put the Germans on the run. Yes, we retook France and Italy, but it was the Red Army who drove the Germans back from the East all the way to Berlin. Britain has many victories of which she can be rightfully proud, but none on the scale of that one. No-one has.

    Of course they celebrate it - and so should we. Politics should never be allowed to rewrite history, and I'm utterly ashamed that my country chose this day to insult 27 million dead. God bless Russia, and I hope and pray they can forgive us some day. I'm not sure I ever can.

    Debreceni -> jezzam 10 May 2015 07:11

    What is the connection? There was apartheid in the American South in the 1930s and 1940s. Sill, you do not question or try to trivialize American contribution to the victory over Japan or Nazi Germany.

    The debate about dictatorhip, politial oppresion belong to a different page. You do not go to a funeral to bring up the widow's past.


    AlfredHerring veloboldie 10 May 2015 07:11

    If only Truman listened to Patton,

    Yep, we could have liberated Moscow within 6 months. Easy, just cut off all the lend lease crap and drop the big one on Moscow during that stupid parade of German prisoners that Stalin was watching and the whole thing would have been ripe for free elections. Thanks to the war a 'well regulated militia' was already in place, just would have had to hunt down those NKVD motherfuckers.


    Hants13 sztubacki 10 May 2015 07:10

    How many dictators do you know that are happily united in many multi-polar relationships with like minded nations?

    Over 85% of the people of Russia support their leader and Government and these are a few reasons why:

    Russia was bankrupt in 2000, when Putin first came to power. Since then:

    He sorted out the oligarchs.
    The average Russian lives an additional ten years since 2000.
    There is a rise in the middle class sector.
    Russia is now a creditor nation.
    Christian Orthodox Russia paid off the $45 billion debt of the Communist Soviet Union (including when the Bolsheviks and Lenin overthrew the Russian Empire).
    Russia paid off the $16.5 billion RF debt.
    Russia has the 12th largest currency reserves (around $420,000,000,000)
    Russia has the 5th largest gold reserves and can almost back the ruble with gold, rather than printers and paper.
    Russia has minimal debt (11% GDP Debt)
    Russia has control of her vast wealth of natural resources.

    How is the West, up until 2019 going to pay for Russian gas? Rubles or gold. After that, there are no contract with EU countries and much of the Russian gas will be going to China and no doubt India.

    No wonder Russia loves their President and his cabinet. Can any other Western Nation and the USA say the same?


    Mungobel samanthajsutton 10 May 2015 07:01

    I fully agree that the UK's failure to join in honouring the memory of the millions of Russians and other Soviet citizens who lost their lives in the struggle to resist the Nazi onslaught in WWII was a shaming thing. Worse still, while the Russians and others were preparing to celebrate the hard won end to that war, the UK joined with it's NATO friends in playing US-led war games on Russia's doorstep - as if intent on provoking yet another blood-letting across the globe.


    Reco1234 Hants13 10 May 2015 07:00

    The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it denies the value of personality in man, contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdraws from humanity the premise of its existence and its culture. As a foundation of the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any order intellectually conceivable to man. And as, in this greatest of all recognizable organisms, the result of an application of such a law could only be chaos, on earth it could only be destruction for the inhabitants of this planet.

    -Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf

    Hmmm, Hitler was a fan of the ideology of Karl Marx........nice one, moron.


    Hants13 MentalToo 10 May 2015 07:00

    You are aware that the Ukrainian Krushchev took Crimea from Russia in 1954?

    Using international law and self determination, the people of Crimea voted to return home to Russia in 2014. Aided by the words of the Ukrainian Presidential Candidates and what they wished to do to the 8,000,000 Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine did the same, but not to be ruled by Ukraine.

    The argument is explained in the 1970 United Nations Report, Self Determination and Territorial Integrity. In fact NATO used the same argument in their final report, Kosovo in an International Perspective: Self Determination, Territorial Integrity and the NATO Interpretation. Then if you study the foundations of the United Nations Charter, it was based around self determination.

    By the way, Russia leased Sevestopol (which NATO wanted) at a substantial cost and owing to the agreement, they were allowed 25,000 serving members of the military (no specifics on ranks, grades or trades). At the time that the people of Crimea voted to return home to Russia, there were only 20,000 out of the 25,000 little green men in Crimea.

    plumrose799999 10 May 2015 06:59

    The Observer(one of limited vision) is so obsessed with its Putin prodding that it fails to acknowledge Russia's part in winning the war which might not have been won by our side had it not been for the Russian people.

    I don't know whether Putin is as bad as the western media make out but thankfully their is one leader left in the world who is still capable of standing up to the USA and dictorial colonist aspirations.


    Liberator37 10 May 2015 06:57

    Without for a moment endorsing its bloodthirsty liquidation of more helpless civilians than Hitler killed, Eric Margolis has a crackerjack and fact-filled article out today in praise of the Soviet contribution to the WW-II victory. The Western boycott of Putin's celebrations is downright churlish.


    BunglyPete 10 May 2015 06:50

    Lets go back 31 years to 1984.

    RFE/RL was broadcasting into the USSR, what one of the most anti Russian US officials in history, Richard Pipes, called "blatant anti semitic propaganda".

    His concerns, which were echoed by other US officials, were based upon an RFE/RL report that painted the Ukrainian nationalists that fought alongside Hitler in a good light.

    Fast forward to 1984, sorry I mean 2015, and those messages are now reproduced in the Guardian and are enshrined in Ukrainian law and celebrations.

    If Richard Pipes thought it was an issue, can't you see Russia's concern when it leads to the downfall of Ukraine?


    MyFriendWillPay -> Amanda Katie Bromley 10 May 2015 06:48

    It's clear that those who have criticised your comment have done so from a position of ignorance.

    Operation Barbarossa, the German-led Blitzkrieg of 4 million men against the Soviet Union (SU), on 22 June 1941, was expected to bring SU defeat within weeks, which is why the Germans only stockpiled 2 months of supplies for the campaign, and even British Intelligence expected the SU to collapse within 8 - 10 weeks. However, within less than a month, the head of German Military Intelligence, Admiral Canaris, confided to a general on the eastern front that he could only see a "black outlook" for the war in the east. Even Goebells himself noted in diary entries in July 1941 of the allarming lack of progress towards victory.

    By mid October 1941, the previously euphoric Vatican had decided that Germany would lose the war in the east, as had the Swiss Secret Service and other neutral intelligence agencies.

    By the start of December 1941, with German forces less than 20 miles from the Kremlin, their campaign had ground to a halt due to troop exhaustion, the Russian winter and over-extended supply lines. Then, on 5 December 1941, the Soviets launched a massive attack that drove the Germans back 60 - 170 miles. Hitler then ordered the campaign to take Moscow delayed until the following Spring, although he then realised, apparently, that he would lose the war, and that was more than a year before the iconic Soviet victory at Stalingrad.

    Two imprtant points can be drawn from the initial weeks of Operation Barbarossa. Firstly, the US material support in war was going to the German side until it became apparent that they would not win. Most supplies of vital material, such as oil and rubber, came from the US via Spain and Vichy France. For example, 44% of Germany's vital engine oil came from the US in July 1941, and this rose to 94% in September 1941. This means that, important as subsequent western supplies were to the SU's war effort, they started arriving after it was recognised that the SU would defeat Germany and her allies. It was a fundamental issue of resources - manpower as well as materiel - that the SU had, and Germany didn't.

    Secondly, even accepting the destruction of Germany's heavy water facility, if Operation Barbarossa had succeded, Germany would have had four whole years to catch-up the US's possession of a few low-yield atomic bombs in August 1945. Taking Germany's rapid programme for the V1 & V2 rockets in the last months of the war as an example of her capability for technological development, few could seriously doubt her potential to produce the atomic bomb.

    As someone who lost a father in the west and a grandfather in the east - both during WW2 - I try to view history objectively. And, in this case, I regard the boycot by western wartime allies of Russia's celebration of WW2 victory over fascism as very disappointing indeed.

    [May 08, 2015] Obamas Real Motive Behind The Iran Deal A Backdoor Channel To Sell Weapons To Saudi Arabia

    Notable quotes:
    "... Cooperation and coordination between China and Russia are needed to maintain the international balance of power and preserve the post-war world order. The participation of the leaders of the two countries in mutual events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Victory in World War II indicates that Russia and China, as the largest countries in the world and members of the United Nations, intend to maintain international order. ..."
    May 06, 2015 | Zero Hedge
    For a long time there was confusion about the "quo" to the Saudi Arabian "quid" over its agreement to side with the US on the Iranian "nuclear deal" (which incidentally looks like it will never happen simply due to the Russian and Chinese UN vetoes).

    Then over the weekend we finally got the answer thanks to the the WSJ, which reported that "Gulf States want U.S. assurances and weapons in exchange for supporting Iran nuclear deal."

    The details are quite familiar to anyone who has seen the US Military-Industrial Complex in action: the US pretends to wage an aggressive diplomatic campaign of peace while behind the scenes it is just as actively selling weapons of war.

    Leading Persian Gulf states want major new weapons systems and security guarantees from the White House in exchange for backing a nuclear agreement with Iran, according to U.S. and Arab officials.

    The leaders of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, plan to use a high-stakes meeting with President Barack Obama next week to request additional fighter jets, missile batteries and surveillance equipment.

    They also intend to pressure Mr. Obama for new defense agreements between the U.S. and the Gulf nations that would outline terms and scenarios under which Washington would intervene if they are threatened by Iran, according to these officials.

    The Persian Gulf countries say they need more drones, surveillance equipment and missile-defense systems to combat an Iranian regime they see as committed to becoming the region's dominant power. The Gulf states also want upgraded fighter jets to contain the Iranian challenge, particularly the advanced F-35, known as the Joint Strike Fighter.

    A senior U.S. official played down chances that the administration would agree to sell advanced systems such as the F-35 fighter to those nations-though the planes will be sold to Israel and Turkey-because of concerns within the administration about altering the military balance in the Middle East.v

    There is much more but a question already emerges: why does the "Gulf Cooperation Council" need so many ultramodern weapons to "defend" against an Iran which is supposedly halting its nuclear program and is in the process of showing its allegiance to the west by endorsing a peace process.

    Unless it was all merely a ruse to arm the Middle East from the very beginning?

    And now the "end" is near because when it comes to matters of revenue and profitability for the US Military-Industrial complex, seek and ye shall find. According to Reuters, "Obama is expected to make a renewed U.S. push next week to help Gulf allies create a region-wide defense system to guard against Iranian missiles as he seeks to allay their anxieties over any nuclear deal with Tehran, according to U.S. sources."

    The offer could be accompanied by enhanced security commitments, new arms sales and more joint military exercises, U.S. officials say, as Obama tries to reassure Gulf Arab countries that Washington is not abandoning them.

    Not only is Obama not abandoning "them", but the entire Iran "negotiations" farce increasingly appears to have been produced from the very beginning to give the US a diplomatic loophole with which to arm the biggest oil exporter in the world. Sure enough:

    Gulf Arab neighbors, including key U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, worry that Iran will not be deterred from a nuclear bomb and will be flush with cash from unfrozen assets to fund proxies and expand its influence in countries such as Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

    U.S. officials with knowledge of the internal discussions concede that Obama is under pressure to calm Arab fears by offering strengthened commitments. "It's a time to see what things might be required to be formalized," a senior U.S. official said.

    All of this should come as a surprise to precisely nobody as the US takes advantage of its waning years as a global hegemon, and seeks to sell US weapons far and wide to the benefit of a select few Raytheon, General Dynamics and Lockheed shareholders.

    And yet something peculiar emerges: in the Reuters piece we read that "Obama is all but certain to stop short of a full security treaty with Saudi Arabia or other Gulf nations as that would require approval by the Republican-controlled Senate and risk stoking tensions with Washington's main Middle East ally Israel."

    Which brings up another interesting regional player: Israel. Because while we now know the real reason for Saudi's complicity in the Iran "nuclear deal", a key middle east player is none other than Israel, which under Netanyahu's control has puffed and huffed against the Iran deal, and yet has done nothing. Why? Here Bloomberg provides some very critical perspective which introduces yet another major player in the global military exports arena.

    Russia.

    Bloomberg has the details:

    Last month, when President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced plans to sell a powerful anti-missile system to Iran before the lifting of international sanctions, Israel was quick to join the U.S. in expressing shock and anger.

    But behind the public announcements is a little-known web of arms negotiations and secret diplomacy. In recent years, Israel and Russia have engaged in a complex dance, with Israel selling drones to Russia while remaining conspicuously neutral toward Ukraine and hoping to stave off Iranian military development. The dance may not be over.

    ...

    One of those issues is Israel's neutrality toward Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have waged war over the past year. Israel has held back from selling weapons to the government in Kiev, which is backed by the U.S. and European Union, in the hope of keeping Russia's S-300s away from Iran.... "Israel has come under a lot of pressure for not joining the all-Western consensus on the Ukrainian crisis," said Sarah Feinberg, a research fellow at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies. "It was a difficult decision for the Israeli government, which was concerned about possible Russian retaliatory moves in the Mideast - such as selling the S-300 to Iran."

    The issue at hand is the delivery of Israeli drones: whether to Ukraine, where such a deal was recently scuttled following internal dissent by opposition within the Israel government, or to Russia, which already has received Israel UAVs.

    Russia expressed interest in buying Israeli drones after coming up against them during the 2008 war with Georgia. In 2010 Russia concluded a deal to purchase 15 of them from IAI, and to set up a joint venture to produce drone technology.

    An Israeli familiar with the matter said the drone deal with Russia carried an unwritten quid pro quo: It would proceed only if the Kremlin suspended its announced S-300 sale to Iran. Now having gotten the Israeli technology, the Israeli said, that promise is no longer a factor in Russian considerations.

    In other words, now that Israel - which is the world's largest exporter of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - no longer has leverage over Russian military needs as Moscow has long ago reverse-engineered the Israeli technology, Israel may have no choice but to provoke Russia in the middle east.

    "Sending drones or other arms to Ukraine would be an ineffective, even inconsequential Israeli response to Russia selling the S-300s to Iran," said Feinberg. More effective, she said, would be for Israel to lift its political neutrality on the Ukrainian conflict, or take actions in the Middle East against Russian regional allies such as the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

    For now however, Israel's full on engagement in Syria (or Iran) appears to have been prevented: "On April 23 Russia did appear to backtrack somewhat on its earlier announcement of the S-300 sale to Iran, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov telling the Interfax news agency that delivery won't occur soon, and would only happen after political and legal issues were resolved. In his April 16 call-in show on Russian television, Putin acknowledged that Israeli objections had scuttled a potential S-300 sale to another Mideast nation, reportedly Syria."

    To attempt a summary: under the pretext of Iran negotiations for peace, the US is preparing to quietly arm virtually all Gulf states with the latest US military technology, even as Israel has given Russia some of its latest drone technology which means Russia may at any moment proceed to arm Iran and Syria with modern Surface to Air missiles, while Israel is contemplaring retaliation not only against Iran but Syria as well: the country which nearly led to a global proxy war in the mdidle east in the summer of 2013.

    In other words, we have, for the past few years, been on the edge of a razor thin Middle Eastern balance of power equilibrium which prevented any one nation or alliance from garnering an outsized influence of military power.

    All of that is about to change the moment the MIC figurehead known as president Obama greenlights the dispatch of billions of dollars in fighters, drones, missile batteries, and surveillance equipment to Saudi Arabia and its peers, in the process dramatically reshaping the balance of power status quo and almost certainly leading to yet another middle eastern war which will inevitably drag in not only Israel and Russia at least in a proxy capacity, but ultimately, the US as well.

    Just as the US military industrial complex wanted.

    Because as every Keynesian fanatic will tell you: in a world saturated by debt, and where organic growth is no longer possible, there is only one remaining option.

    War.

    * * *

    And just to assure the required outcome, moments ago John Kerry arrived in Riyadh to conclude the deal.

    Kerry arrives in Riyadh #Saudi Arabia.

    pic.twitter.com/2CPIP69Ut0

    - Conflict News (@rConflictNews) May 6, 2015

    Pool Shark

    Why do they need a 'backdoor,' when they've been selling arms to the Saudis through the front door since time began?...

    Skateboarder

    Barry insists there be a backdoor, for uh, personal reasons.

    Looney

    Reggie Love: Did I hear "Backdoor Channel"? ;-)

    weburke

    the real question is how does Israel view it. Netanyahu has not endorsed any of this. I would guess Israel has no friend in Obama and his controllers, and will soon take action of their own.

    What possible gain is it for Israel to have the fucking tyrant insane neighbors get all armed up? hello war.

    Oh regional Indian

    This is very good insight.

    Bastids...

    By the way, India is totally thumbing it's nose at the US led non-coalition of the unwilling in continuing to deal with Iran for all manner of goods and services. Big barter deals, gold payments via Turkey for oil...

    So there is that going on in Iran's Eastern flank. Iran, by the way, was rumored to have a "Perfect Plate" from the US mint via Henry Kissinger (or some spook) and during Shah of Iran time were the world's largest counterfeiters of the USD, only thing, they had a perfect Plate. Obviously CIA controlled.

    All that money, EuroDollars, Petrodollars....black money, drug dollars (Iran is a major heroine transit point).

    Nothing is as it seems...

    Sequence 15 for discerning ears ;-)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP4NGb8HJbk

    jdtexas

    Simply idiotic war propaganda

    Jumbotron

    Reagan just called from the grave. He wants his Iran Contra back.

    F0ster

    PetroDollar = Defending Saudi Arabia with US military.

    PetroDollar now collpasing thanks to Russia, China, Iran which forces Saudi Arabia to spend their USD's with the MIC to defend themselves.

    Endgame for the PetroDollar system.

    Mike Masr

    The backdoor, wasn't this the aircraft used to covertly bring all the Saudi's back home on 911 when all the other aircraft were grounded?

    TahoeBilly2012

    Anyone with a brain could guess the Iran deal was always a scam of some sort. Why? Well, because everything is a scam from these people and there is no peace, ever, not the goal. It amazes me the rest of the world even engages with the Zionist shitshow called the USA.

    Anunnaki

    President Peace Prize needs MOAR war in the Middle East before he "leaves" office. He is at proxy war (for now) with Russia. That was quite a feat so:

    Why not take on Iran while he is at it. Two birds with one big stone and all that.

    Bill of Rights

    Hmm is this like the Clinton China for Arms deal...Face it folks all US Politicians are scum of the earth, sum are just more scummy than the others.

    Kaiser Sousa

    Cooperation between Russia and China is necessary to maintain the balance of power in the world, China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cheng Guoping said Monday.

    The high-ranking Chinese diplomat said that Russian-Chinese relations had reached a new level of development and the forthcoming visit of Xi Jinping to Moscow would facilitate further cooperation between Beijing and Moscow. The Chinese president will pay a three-day visit to Moscow on May 8-10, attending the Victory Day Parade on May 9 at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Cooperation and coordination between China and Russia are needed to maintain the international balance of power and preserve the post-war world order. The participation of the leaders of the two countries in mutual events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Victory in World War II indicates that Russia and China, as the largest countries in the world and members of the United Nations, intend to maintain international order."

    http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150504/1021703550.html#ixzz3ZCuelpFm

    Farmer Joe in Brooklyn

    9/11 exposed the unholy alliance between the US and the Saudis (for anyone with enough intellectual curiosity to seek the truth). This true axis of evil has a symbiotic relationship that knows no moral bounds.

    Nothing new here...

    Monty Burns

    In 9/11 the Saudis provided the finance and the patsies. The event was organized by Mossad and Ziocons in the USA.


    juicy_bananas

    Just in time for next year's SOFEX, bitchez! The war economy has to get paper somehow. Peace Prizes for EVERYBODY!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_3Qg-SADY

    g'kar

    2010: "US Congress notified over $60bn arms sale to Saudi Arabia"

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/21/us-congress-notified-arms-s...

    They didn't backdoor that sale. Whatever President Jarret is trying to sell, it isn't to the Saudi's.


    Jacksons Ghost

    Anyone that thinks the House of Saud will go quietly is fooling themselves. We sell them out, how quickly will they pivot towards China and Russia. We abandon The House of Saud, you can guarentee that they will abandon the Dollar. Reserve Status of Dollar is most important to our money printers...

    falak pema

    No amount of US material will save the Sunni Kingdoms from their fate, as the bigger the Military spending becomes the bigger the millstone of its proliferation to its enemies grow.

    Iran will play the same game of attrition, feeding the enemies of their strategic enemy, and guerrilla warfare that Giap and Ho Chi Minh did.

    Remember Vietnam, USA, the cancer of opposition now runs deep in the region on all fronts and it will feed the instability of an ivory towered kingdom like poison ivy wrapping itself around the healthy tree.

    The spiral is now a sign of runaway MIC malinvestment of huge proportions. Those Sauds will never have an army to match their rivals, who are as hungry as the hounds of hell and fed by the kingdom's never-ending and obscurantist fed hubris. Guns didn't save South Vietnam.

    How do you avoid the same blowback that Nam has demonstrated?

    Same corruption, same endgame now being concocted in a region that goes from Paki to deep Africa?

    The kiss of the US MIC is the kiss of death to its allies.

    Saud at the cross roads-- cut and run-- or stay US suppot like Nam.

    g3h

    nyt

    Sale of U.S. Arms Fuels the Wars of Arab States

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/world/middleeast/sale-of-us-arms-fuels...

    One World Mafia

    You're leaving out two very important parts of the proxy war situation. Russia forced Syria to give up her chemical weapon defenses which led to the US & its brothers in the Brotherhood of Darkness Gulf Cooperation Council to use their proxy, ISIS, to pounce on Syria.

    Remember what happened with MINSK? The breakaway republics were pressured to give up their gains since September.

    Not very good for the balance of powers. The Brotherhood of Darkness won't need a real WW3 to get what they want.

    RichardParker

    These guys (MIC) are going to make a fucking killing. No pun intended. The whole video is excellent. Here are some highlights;

    [May 08, 2015] - It's Official The U.S. Collaborates With Al Qaeda

    May 6, 2015 | M of A

    The propaganda against Syria is milking the capture of Idlib city by Jabhat al-Nusra and assorted other Islamist groups. The general tone is "Assad is losing" illogically combined with a demand that the U.S. should now bomb the Syrian government troops. Why would that be necessary if the Syrian government were really losing control?

    A prime example comes via Foreign Policy from Charles Lister, an analyst from Brooking Doha, which is paid with Qatari money but often cooperating with the Obama administration. That headline declares that Assad is losing and the assault on Idlib is lauded in the highest tone. Then the piece admits that this small victory against retreating Syrian troops was only possible because AlQaeda was leading in the assault.

    The piece admits that the U.S. which wants to balance between AlQaeda and the Syrian government forces prolonging the conflict in the hope that both sides will lose, was behind that move:

    The involvement of FSA groups, in fact, reveals how the factions' backers have changed their tune regarding coordination with Islamists. Several commanders involved in leading recent Idlib operations confirmed to this author that the U.S.-led operations room in southern Turkey, which coordinates the provision of lethal and non-lethal support to vetted opposition groups, was instrumental in facilitating their involvement in the operation from early April onwards. That operations room - along with another in Jordan, which covers Syria's south - also appears to have dramatically increased its level of assistance and provision of intelligence to vetted groups in recent weeks.

    Whereas these multinational operations rooms have previously demanded that recipients of military assistance cease direct coordination with groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, recent dynamics in Idlib appear to have demonstrated something different. Not only were weapons shipments increased to the so-called "vetted groups," but the operations room specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.

    The U.S. led operations room encouraged cooperation between the Islamists of the so called Fee Syrian Army and AlQaeda. A U.S. drone, shot down over Latakia in March, was gathering intelligence for the AlQaeda attack on Idlib. More that 600 TOW U.S. anti-tank missiles have been used against Syrian troops in north Syria. These are part of the 14,000 the Saudis had ordered from the U.S. producer.

    Even if the U.S., as now admitted, would not officially urge its mercenaries to cooperate with Jabhat al-Nusra such cooperation was always obvious to anyone who dared to look:

    In southern Syria [..] factions that vowed to distance themselves from extremists like Jabhat al-Nusra in mid-April were seen cooperating with the group in Deraa only days later.

    The reality is that the directly U.S. supported, equipped and paid "moderate" Fee Syrian Army Jihadi mercenaries are just as hostile to other sects as the AlQaeda derivative Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State. They may not behead those who they declare to be unbelievers but they will kill them just as much.

    While the U.S. is nurturing AlQaeda in Syria, Turkey is taking care of the Islamic State. Tons of Ammonium Sulfate, used to make road side bombs, is "smuggled" from Turkey to the Islamic State under official eyes. Turkish recruiters incite Muslims from the Turkman Uighur people in west China and from Tajikistan to emigrate to the Islamic State. They give away Turkish passports to allow those people to travel to Turkey from where they reach Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile the Saudis bomb everyone and everything in Yemen except the cities and areas captured by AlQaeda in the Arab Peninsula.

    The U.S. and its allies are now in full support of violent Sunni Jihadists throughout the Middle East. At the same time they use the "threat of AlQaeda" to fearmonger and suppress opposition within their countries.

    Charles Lister and the other Brooking propagandists want the U.S. to bomb Syria to bring the Assad government to the table to negotiate. But who is the Syrian government to negotiate with? AlQaeda?

    Who would win should the Syrian government really lose the war or capitulate? The U.S. supported "moderate rebels" Islamist, who could not win against the Syrian government, would then take over and defeat AlQaeda and the Islamic State?

    Who comes up with such phantasies?

    Posted by b on May 6, 2015 at 03:37 AM | Permalink

    lacilir | May 6, 2015 4:06:19 AM | 2

    As Ed Husain stated back in 2012:

    The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized as they square off with the Assad regime's superior weaponry and professional army. Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.
    http://www.cfr.org/syria/al-qaedas-specter-syria/p28782

    The US seems to have fully embraced this reality.

    radiator | May 6, 2015 5:06:01 AM | 4

    To the US and other western governments in that area ;) it probably does not matter too much, who rules "Syria", as long as they don't own any serious military hardware.

    I'm not an expert ;) but looking at the past three years, my conclusion about the goals of the "west" would be: support the local militias just as much that they can destroy as many tanks, helis, air defence and aircraft as possible.

    Ideally, have them use up all the anti-tank weapons we give them, so, when they've "won", they're sitting on rubble with nothing but handguns.

    A second goal, maybe more of the regional enemies, would obviously be to drive out of the "former syrian territory" all non-sunni population. Severe the head of one, have 1000 flee to elsewhere...

    Lone Wolf | May 6, 2015 9:43:48 AM | 8

    Re: @Anonymous@5

    Well, that about does it. The U.S is completely deranged and there's no hope.

    There is always hope. Russia, China, and Iran know they come next in the list if they don't stop Al-Qaeda hydra in Syria/Iraq et al. Russian intelligence has declared ISIS a threat for Russia, the Chinese have been battling the Uighurs for long time now, and now they are being trained by the US to become a fifth-column on their return to China. Iran is in the surroundings, and have been preparing ever since the war with Iraq for a military maelstrom of gigantic proportions.

    Idlib was taken by a coalition of taqfiris renamed "Army of Conquest," the same coalition getting ready to fight Hezbollah in the Qalamoun barrens facing Lebanon, for control of the heights that open to the Bekaa Valley. Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah declared a couple of days ago the battle for Qalamoun has reached high noon, and its start won't be announced.

    On the taking of Idlib he stated any war is a pendulum with battles lost and won, and dismissed the propaganda war b has just denounced as part of the psy-op war. The onslaught suffering by Syria is flabbergasting, with US/Turkey training 15 thousand more taqfiris to throw into the war, the purpose, Nasrallah denounced, is to keep the Axis of Resistance, and in general the Arab war, in a 100 year war.

    What we are seeing now, the dismembering of Iraq, the war of attrition on Syria, the destruction of Libya, the bombing of Yemen, the attack on Lebanon, was planned long ago by the neocons as a strategy for Israel, in a paper called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." It is all there, the rest, like the dismemberment of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, etc., are perks that came as they unfolded the strategy for destruction of the Arab/Muslim world.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20140125123844/http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm">http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm">https://web.archive.org/web/20140125123844/http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

    ToivoS | May 6, 2015 1:39:12 PM | 16
    The most effective resistance against Israel consisted of broad coalitions consisting of Christian, secular and Islamic groups. These were the panArab organizations inspired by Nasser and given substance in the Palestinian resistance by the PLO. Israel knew this was a problem. That is why they supported Hamas in the late 1970s when it first appeared. They quite explicitly supported Hamas in order to undermine the PLO. That has proven very effective in splitting Palestinian resistance into two warring camps centered respectively in Gaza and the West Bank.

    The US has discovered this formula. That is why we continue to support the Islamist groups who are more interested in killing fellow Muslims rather than fighting against Israel. It is quite amazing that Al qaida, ISIS or whatever handle they carry these days has never attacked an Israeli target.

    As we all know Al nusra today in Southern Syria is being actively supported by the Israeli military in the form of medical, "humanitarian" aid and the occasional bombing raid against the Syrian army. US and Israeli support for these terrorist Islamic forces is so transparent that what is puzzling is why this has not been exposed in the western media.

    Editors and reporters must know this stuff and are deliberately avoiding these stories.

    okie farmer | May 6, 2015 2:03:18 PM | 17
    ToivoS, actually Hamas was created by Shin Bet. And you draw a very accurate picture The US has discovered this formula. Yep.
    g_h | May 6, 2015 2:28:26 PM | 18
    @8-@10:

    Doc 1: http://www.dougfeith.com/docs/Clean_Break.pdf

    Doc 2: http://zfacts.com/zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/1996_12_Wurmser_Crumbling_Iraq.pdf

    Andoheb | May 6, 2015 3:15:21 PM | 19
    Wonder if Harry Truman's comment after Hitler invaded Russia in 1941 applies to current US Mideast policies. To paraphrase if the Germans are winning we should help the Russians, if the Russians are winning we should help the Germans. That way let them kill as many as possible
    Lone Wolf | May 6, 2015 3:16:07 PM | 20 @g_h@18@
    Thanks! Those two are key documents to understand the current drive of the aptly baptized "Empire of Chaos" and its minions.
    Zico | May 6, 2015 3:53:36 PM | 21
    The word AL-CIADA's lost it's scary factor in the West.. It's almost become acceptable/mainstream word... These days, Western journos refer to them in different terms, depending on the circumstances and location. How times change!!!
    • In Syria they're referred to as "rebels", "militants","Assad's opponent" and the best one "moderate Islamists".
    • In Iraq, they're referred to as "Sunni rebels", "oppressed Sunni fighters" etc.
    • In Yemen AL_CIADA's knowns as "president" Hadi's forces, "Sunni rebels"

    It gets to to point where you just wonder if these people scripting the "news" must really think the rest of us simpletons are so stupid not to notice the contradictions...

    We now have Western journos doing free propaganda for AL-CIADA :)

    GoraDiva | May 6, 2015 4:02:56 PM | 22
    More NYT propaganda on Syria? Well, it's A. Barnard...

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/world/middleeast/syria-chemical-weapons.html

    john | May 6, 2015 4:08:06 PM | 23
    b says:

    Who would win should the Syrian government really lose the war or capitulate? The U.S. supported "moderate rebels" Islamist, who could not win against the Syrian government, would then take over and defeat AlQaeda and the Islamic State?

    Who comes up with such phantasies?

    the guys from General Electric, Honeywell, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumann, etc... and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    Luca K | May 6, 2015 4:22:13 PM | 24
    Good article by B. The following is nothing new, but adds more to what we already know, i.e, israeli cooperation with al-ciada terrorists.

    Article from 2 days ago. http://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-fuels-the-syrian-crisis-with-aid-to-al-qaida-rebels/205262/

    lysias | May 6, 2015 4:55:30 PM | 25
    Price of oil has been rising. FT: Dollar under pressure as oil keeps rising (subscription required).
    Christoph (German) | May 6, 2015 4:56:51 PM | 26
    Lone Wolf said: "What we are seeing now ... was planned long ago by the neocons as a strategy for Israel, in a paper called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." It is all there, the rest, like the dismemberment of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, etc., are perks that came as they unfolded the strategy for destruction of the Arab/Muslim world."

    It was also contemplated 140 years ago by Pike: "The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the "agentur" of the "Illuminati" between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other".

    http://www.threeworldwars.com/albert-pike2.htm

    I doubt that this old scheme to eliminate independent cultures will succeed - there is more awareness and heavenly input today than could be envisioned in the 19th century.

    [May 06, 2015] Clinton Cash: errors dog Bill and Hillary exposé – but is there any 'there' there? by Ed Pilkington

    May 05, 2015 | The Guardian

    In an interview with the sympathetic Fox News (owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Harper, the publisher of Clinton Cash) it was put to Schweizer that he hadn't "nailed" his thesis. "It's hard for any author to nail it – one of the strategies of the Clinton camp is to set a bar for me as an author that is impossible to meet," he replied.

    ... ... ...

    Certainly, pundits were warning about the problem of the large sums of money flowing into the Clinton Foundation's coffers even before Hillary Clinton took up her position as Obama's global emissary-in-chief. A month before she became secretary of state, the Washington Post warned in an editorial that her husband's fundraising activities were problematic. "Even if Ms Clinton is not influenced by gifts to her husband's charity, the appearance of conflict is unavoidable."

    Since the foundation was formed in 2001, some $2bn has been donated, mainly in big lump sums. Fully a third of the donors giving more than $1m, and more than a half of those handing over more than $5m, have been foreign governments, corporations or tycoons. (The foundation stresses that such largesse has been put to very good use – fighting obesity around the globe, combating climate change, helping millions of people with HIV/Aids obtain antiretroviral drugs at affordable prices.)

    Schweizer may have made mistakes about aspects of Bill Clinton's fees on the speaker circuit, but one of his main contentions – that the former president's rates skyrocketed after his wife became secretary of state – is correct. Politifact confirmed that since leaving the White House in 2001 and 2013, Bill Clinton made 13 speeches for which he commanded more than $500,000; all but two of those mega-money earners occurred in the period when Hillary was at the State Department.

    Though Schweizer has failed to prove actual corruption in the arrangement – at no point in the book does he produce evidence showing that Bill's exorbitant speaker fees were directly tied to policy concessions from Hillary – he does point to several glaring conflicts of interest. Bill Clinton did accept large speaker fees accumulating to more than $1m from TD Bank, a major shareholder in the Keystone XL pipeline, at precisely the time that the Obama administration, and Hillary Clinton within it, was wrestling with the vexed issue of whether to approve it.

    It is also true that large donations to the foundation from the chairman of Uranium One, Ian Telfer, at around the time of the Russian purchase of the company and while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, were never disclosed to the public. The multimillion sums were channeled through a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation, CGSCI, which did not reveal its individual donors.

    Such awkward collisions between Bill's fundraising activities and Hillary's public service have raised concerns not just among those who might be dismissed as part of a vast rightwing conspiracy. Take Zephyr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham university who has written extensively on political corruption in the US.

    Teachout, who last year stood against Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic party nomination for New York governor, points out that you don't have to be able to prove quid pro quo for alarm bells to ring. "Our whole system of rules is built upon the concept that you must prevent conflicts of interests if you are to resist corruption in its many forms. Conflicts like that can infect us in ways we don't even see."

    Teachout said that the Clintons presented the US political world with a totally new challenge. "We have never had somebody running for president whose spouse – himself a former president – is running around the world raising money in these vast sums."

    ... ... ...

    Though Bill Clinton insisted this week that his charity has done nothing "knowingly inappropriate", that is unlikely to satisfy the skeptics from left or right. They say that a family in which one member is vying for the most powerful office on Earth must avoid straying into even the unintentionally inappropriate.

    In the wake of Clinton Cash, the foundation has admitted that it made mistakes in disclosing some of its contributions. It has also implemented new rules that will see its financial reporting increase from once annually to four times a year, while large donations from foreign governments will be limited in future to six countries including the UK and Germany.

    But with Bill refusing doggedly to give up his speaker engagements – "I gotta pay our bills" – and foreign corporations and super-rich individuals still able to donate to the family charity, it looks like this controversy may run and run. Politically, too, Hillary Clinton is confronted with a potential credibility gap between her appeal to ordinary Americans on the presidential campaign trail and the millions that continue to flow to the foundation.

    "Is she going to be in touch with the needs and dreams of poor America when her spouse and daughter are working with the world's global elite?" said Dave Levinthal of the anti-corruption investigative organization, the Center for Public Integrity. "That's a question she will have to answer, every step of the way."

    mkenney63 5 May 2015 20:39
    It would be nice to know how much Saudi and Chinese money her "Foundation" has taken-in. I can tell you how much Bernie has taken - $0. Bernie, the only truly progressive in the race, raised $1.5 million in one day from ordinary working people like you and me who have the smarts to know who's really in their corner. When I look at Hillary I ask myself, do we really want parasitic people like this running our country? Is there anything she has ever touched that isn't tainted by a lust for money?
    foggy2 gixxerman006 5 May 2015 20:38
    I am in the process of reading the actual book. He does have actual sources for many things but what is missing is the information controlled by that now cleaned off server and the details of just who contributed to them, their foundation, and who hired them for those gold plated speeches. Those names never were made public and now the related tax forms are being "redone." Wonder how long that will take.

    The author was able to get pertinent data from the Canadian tax base information and that is important because some of the heavier hitters are Canadians who needed help in the US and other places to make piles of money on their investments. And many statements made by people are documented as are some cables sent TO the state department.

    AlfredHerring raffine 5 May 2015 20:33

    It's funny that free-market Tea Party Republicans criticize the Clintons

    There's a broad populist streak in the Tea Party. They may be social conservatives and opposed to government telling them they MUST buy health insurance from a private company (that's where it started) but on many issues they're part of the Teddy Roosevelt trust busting and Franklin Roosevelt New Deal traditions.

    [May 03, 2015] US Goes Ballistic Over Ukraine as Both Sides There Wage Peace By William Boardman,

    March 10, 2015 | readersupportednews.org

    US and UK deploy troops to Ukraine, but they're just "advisors"

    American combat troops deployed in Ukraine will soon number in the hundreds, at least, but US officials claim they're there only as "advisors" or "trainers," not as an in-place threat to Russia. Whatever advising or training they may do, they are also an in-place threat to Russia. US officials are also lobbying to arm Ukraine with "defensive" anti-tank rockets and other lethal weapons in hopes of escalating the fighting, maybe even killing some Russians. In other words, American brinksmanship continues to escalate slowly but recklessly on all fronts.

    To the dismay of the Pentagon, the White House war crowd, and the rest of the American bloviating class of chickenhawk hardliners, the warring sides in Ukraine are disengaging and the ceasefire has almost arrived (March 7 was the first day with no casualties). The government in Kievand the would-be governments of the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk have been acting as if they're not hell-bent on mutually assured destruction after all. They've exchanged prisoners. They've agreed to double the number of ceasefire monitors to 1,000. They've pulled back their heavy weapons. Both sides have stopped the random shelling that has caused "heavy civilian tolls of dead and wounded," according to theMarch 2 report from the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.

    The calmer heads of Europe, in Germany and France particularly, are presently prevailing over the fear-mongered countries closer to Russia who seem bewitched by US enthusiasm to subject Europe to yet another devastating war in which those near-Russia countries would be the first to feel the pain. But for now, most of Europe seems willing to accept the notion that the Russians have a rational view of their reasonable security needs, that the cost of further Russian advances outweighs any rational gain, and that all the mad babbling of bellicose Americans is just unprocessed cold war hysteria amplified by the need to deny decades of imperial defeats.

    What is it with exceptional American irrationalists' love of war?

    Still the manic American willingness to risk war with Russia, including nuclear war – over what, exactly? – keeps spinning out of Washington:

    • Ashton Carter, President Obama's choice as Secretary of Defense, assured senators during his confirmation hearing in February that he would push for more aggressive military action for the rest of Obama's term, that he favors lethal arms for Ukraine, and that he would not be pressured into faster release of innocent prisoners held in Guantanamo.
    • John Kerry, Secretary of State, advocated in early February in favor of sending arms to the Ukraine government. Since April 2014, Kerry has been demonizing Russia, blaming Russia for growing violence in eastern Ukraine even as Kiev militias were attacking the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists, calling them "terrorists." Kerry, the highest ranking American diplomat, recently and publicly accused the Russians of lying to his face.
    • James Clapper, director of national intelligence, has told the Council on Foreign Relations that he wants to give "lethal- defensive weapons" to the Kiev government to "bolster their resolve" and persuade them "that we're with them." Clapper was calling Russia one of the greatest threats to the US as early as 2011.
    • Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, jumped on the arm-Ukraine bandwagon March 3, saying "I think we should absolutely consider lethal aid." (He didn't add that the big danger of non-lethal aid is that it might help people settle differences without killing each other.)
    • Victoria Nuland, formerly security advisor to Dick Cheney, now an assistant secretary of state for European affairs, has long engaged in working for regime change in Russia. Nuland is famous for her "f-k the EU" attitude during the Maidan protests in 2014. On March 4 she became the first US official to call Russian actions in eastern Ukraine "an invasion." She claimed there were hundreds of Russian Tanks in eastern Ukraine, though no credible evidence supports the claim.

    "NATO now exists to manage the risks created by its existence."

    – Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine

    From the Russian perspective, NATO aggression has continued for the past 20 years. Secretary of State James Baker, under the first President Bush, explicitly promised the Russians that NATO would not expand eastward toward Russia. For the next two decades, at the behest of the US, NATO has expanded eastward to Russia's borders and put Ukrainian NATO membership in play. The unceasing madness of "US and NATO aggression in Ukraine" is argued forcefully by attorney Robert Roth in Counterpunch, who notes that US-sponsored sanctions on Russia are already, arguably, acts of war.

    NATO continues to maintain nuclear weapons bases around Russia's periphery while adding more anti-missile missile installations. Anti-missile missiles to intercept Russian missiles are generally understood to be part of the West's nuclear first strike capability.

    Then there's the months-old, expanding Operation Atlantic Resolve, an elaborate US-sponsored NATO show of force deploying thousands of troops to NATO countries that are also Russia's near-neighbors. Beginning in April 2014, Operation Atlantic Resolve started sending troops to Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland) that border Russia. Those troops remain, and Defense News reported that more US saber-rattling is coming:

    The US military's plans to send troops into Romania and Bulgaria as a deterrence to Russian aggression could expand to include Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia's southern neighbor, Georgia…. by the end of the summer, you could very well see an operation that stretches from the Baltics all the way down to the Black Sea….

    In the Black Sea itself, NATO forces continue to project force through "training exercises" involving the Navies of at least seven nations: US, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria. NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove complained in late February that Russia had deployed "air defense systems that reach nearly half of the Black Sea" – as if it were surprising that Russia would respond to hostile military activity close to one of its oldest and largest naval bases, Sevastopol, in Crimea. Breedlove admits that NATO naval forces have approached Crimea, provoking Russian naval responses. Breedlove's warmongering reportedly upsets German officials, but they don't object publicly to American lies.

    This pattern of provocation and response is familiar to those who know the Viet-Nam War, when similar US tactics provoked the so-called "Tonkin Gulf incident." That manipulated set of events, deceitfully described by the White House and dishonestly amplified by most American media, was used to gull a credulous and lazy Congress into passing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving the president authority to wage that disastrous, pointless war. Watch for the sequel coming to a Black Sea theatre of war near you.

    Congress is as eager for Ukraine War as it was for Iraq and Viet-Nam

    War mongering has a large, noisy cheering section in Congress. Eleven American lawmakers including House Speaker John Boehner have signeda bi-partisan letter to President Obama demanding in the shrillest tones ("defend against further aggression") that the US ship lethal arms to the Kiev government now. The eleven Congress members (8 predictable Republicans and three veteran, dimwit Democrats) write about Ukraine what they had never had the wit or courage to say about US aggression in Iraq. They assert with grotesque oversimplification and false premises about "the crisis in Ukraine" that:

    It is a grotesque violation of International law, a challenge to the west, and an assault on the international order established at such great cost in the wake of World War II.

    Fatuous warmongering. At the end of World War II, Crimea was indisputably part of Russia (within the USSR) and the anti-Russian military alliance of NATO did not exist, much less had it pushed its existential security threat to the Russian border. You want an all-out, unambiguous assault on international law, look to Iraq and all the "little Iraqs" that the American hegemon executes with impunity and nearly endless destructiveness to peace, order, and culture.

    The weak-kneed Democrats mindlessly signing on to this reflexive Republican rage to kill someone are: Eliot Engel of New York (Westchester County), lawyer – first elected in 1988, he's been a strong supporter of violence in Palestine, Kosovo, and Iraq (voting for the war in 2002); Adam Smith of Washington (Seattle), lawyer – first elected 1997, he's supported violence in Afghanistan and Iraq (voting for the war in 2001) and he sponsored a bill to allow the US government to lie to the people; and Adam Schiff of California (Burbank), lawyer – he's supported violence in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria (voting for the Iraq war in 2002). "Bi-partisanship" is pretty meaningless when the imperial warmaking ideology is monolithic, as in this basic lie also in the Boehner letter:

    We should not wait until Russian troops and their separatist proxies take Mariupol or Kharkiv before we act to bolster the Ukrainian government's ability to deter and defend against further aggression.

    The core of this lie is those "separatist proxies." That's an Orwellian phrase used to turn the roughly 5 million residents of the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk into un-persons. These 5 million people are predominantly Russian-speaking and ethnic-Russian. They have legitimate, longstanding grievances with Ukrainian-dominated governments in Kiev, especially with the current illegitimate one which is neo-Nazi-tinged and Russo-phobic.

    It is important for these 5 million people seeking self-determination to disappear from the American argument for war sooner rather than later. The American war justifiers require "Russian aggression" as a crediblecasus belli, but the would-be war makers offer no credible evidence to support that propaganda claim ("Remember the Maine!").

    The American news bubble distorts and excludes the world's realities

    The blandly mindless media repetition of the phrase "Russian aggression" is a reliable measure of how much the news reports the government propaganda, at the expense of something like real world complexity. Dissenting voices are few in America's media world, and seldom heard, especially those who ask: "What aggression?"

    Somehow, in the well-washed American collective brain, it's aggression when an oppressed minority declares its independence from its oppressors, the coup-installed Kiev government (and some of its predecessors). But that same scrubbed brain believes it's not aggression when another minority, aligned with foreign interests, carries out a violent overthrow of Ukraine's legitimately elected government.

    Newsweek has demonized Russian president Vladimir Putin for months now, including on a cover with the headline "The Pariah" over a picture showing Putin in dark glasses that seem to reflect two nuclear explosions. (This imagery worked with deceitful perfection in 2002 when President Bush and Condoleezza Rice terrified audiences with the possibility that the "smoking gun would be a mushroom cloud.") Newsweek has even called for regime change in Russia. Newsweek is hardly alone in demonizing Putin without considering the realities of his situation. Others, like CNN, simply resort to calling him "completely mad," even though Russian actions have been largely measured and limited, especially when considered in the context of two decades of western provocation.

    The New York Times got suckered by the Kiev government into running pictures "proving" Russian troops were in Ukraine, when they proved no such thing. This was not an anomaly among American media, according toRobert Parry in Consortium News:

    At pivotal moments in the crisis, such as the Feb. 20, 2014 sniper fire that killed both police and protesters and the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 killing 298 passengers and crew, the U.S. political/media establishment has immediately pinned the blame on Yanukovych, the ethnic Russian rebels who are resisting his ouster, or Putin. Then, when evidence emerged going in the opposite direction – toward "our side" – a studied silence followed, allowing the earlier propaganda to stay in place as part of the preferred storyline.

    When reality intrudes upon propaganda, reality must be discredited

    In a somewhat mocking story about Russia's denunciation of US troops arriving in Ukraine as a threat to Russia security, the Los Angeles Timesgive roughly equal time to a NATO commander denouncing the Russian denunciation. The casual reader who stops halfway through the story is easily left with the impression that the Russians are behaving badly again and maybe sending lethal weapons is a good idea. Only in the last two paragraphs does the Times, quite unusually, report some real things that matter about Ukraine:

    Ukraine, which proclaimed independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 as the communist-ruled federation was collapsing, had pledged to remain nonaligned, and in any case would need years to carry out reforms and assimilation of its armed forces with those of NATO before it could be inducted into the Western defense alliance.

    But since the Russian-backed insurgency began ripping Ukraine apart, Kiev authorities have renounced the nonalignment pledge and set their course for eventual NATO membership.

    The first of these two paragraphs is a partly reasonable explanation of why Russia would feel betrayed by the US and NATO. A nonaligned Ukraine remains an obvious possible alternative to the present conflict ignited by decades of NATO aggression.

    The second paragraph serves as a warning, packaged as a justification based on a lie. The lie is that it's a Russian-backed insurgency that's ripping Ukraine apart, when Ukraine has been ripping itself apart for years, a reality that led to the coup-government in Kiev. The explanation – which is false – is that the insurgency has forced the Kiev government's hand, even though the government took power with EU and NATO links obviously in mind. The warning is that Ukraine may just join NATO as soon as it can.

    Until Americans – and especially American policy makers – face fundamental realities in and about Ukraine, the risk that they will take the rest of us into an unjustified, stupid, and potentially catastrophic war will remain unacceptably high. One of the realities Americans need to face is that the Ukraine government is corrupt, as corrupt an some of the most corrupt governments in the world, and nothing the US has done is likely to change that any time soon. What any war would ultimately be about is: who gets to benefit from that corruption?

    Ukrainians know this and despair as, for example, Lilia Bigeyeva, 55, a violinist and composer did when she told her family's storyfrom Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine:

    I was born in Melitopol, raised in Zaporizhzhya, and have spent all of my adult life in Dnipropetrovsk. It hasn't been easy, this past year in Ukraine. The loss of Crimea is a tragedy, the war is a tragedy. And it's far from clear that our government and our people are really prepared to institute rule of law….

    The war is very close to us, here in Dnipropetrovsk. Every day there's bad news. But we continue to play music, my pupils and I. Culture and art, these are the things that have always helped us through frightening times.

    This was published in The Moscow Times on March 6, but it was originally recorded and distributed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In other words, there's no excuse, for anyone on any side, to say they didn't know what was happening to the Ukrainian people for the sake of geopolitical greed.

    END NOTE: HOW YOU CAN HELP THE WEST'S WAR EFFORT

    [Craigslist posting, edited, from Orange County, California, March 3, 2015.]

    Ukrainian/Russian Men Needed $19/Hr (Oceanside, CA)

    GTS (Glacier Technology Solutions LLC) – We are military contractors working directly with the US Marine Corps assisting them with their immersive simulation training program.

    Currently, we are looking for role players of Ukrainian and/or Russian ethnicity and language skills. Need MEN ranging 18-65 years of age.

    This is temporary, part time, on-call work based on need and availability.

    At the moment, we are staffing for an upcoming training to take place on: March 29-31, 2015. The scheduled hours will vary from 8-12 hours per working day.

    Compensation is $15.17/hr. plus another $4.02/hr. Health and Welfare benefit for up to 40 hours of work in a workweek. (Overtime rates will be paid if necessary). Register for work at: www.Shiftboard.com/wforce


    William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

    Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

    Activista 2015-03-10 13:22

    rt.com/op-edge/239205-baltic-states-us-military-troops/
    NATO uses 'Russia threat' as excuse to halt defense cuts ...
    these are make up threats to keep profit/militari sm/NATO going ...
    EU does not want to pay 2% GDP to NATO ...
    and US military expenditure and debt is growing ..
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures#mediaviewer/File:Top_ten_military_expenditures_in_$_in_2013.jpg.jpeg

    jdd 2015-03-10 18:52

    You have it backwards. While it may be less disturbing to believe that NATO exists merely to justify military spending, you have missed the point. NATO's was originally created as a military alliance against the Soviet Union, even though the Warsaw Pact was later dissolved, NATO was maintained and expanded to threaten and encircle Russia. Nuland, Carter and other believe that they can cause "regime change" in Russia, or alternatively win a "first strike" victory in a "limited nuclear war." Now, in response to the successful cease-fire, made possible by Putin's cooperation, we have EU Commissioner Juncker calling for an EU army to confront Russia. The response from a prominent Russian parliamentarian :

    "In a nuclear age, extra armies do not provide any additional security. But they surely can play a provocative role...One should presume that a European army is seen as an addendum to NATO...never, even in the darkest days of the Cold War, had anyone dared to make such a proposal." If only it were merely about military spending.

    and continue to provoke the Russians

    lorenbliss 2015-03-11 02:13

    If I did not know better, I would assume there is someone in the State Department channeling Hitler, someone in the Defense Department channeling Goering, someone at Homeland Security channeling Himmler and someone at the head of the media monopoly channeling Goebbels.

    And in their resurrected madness -- exactly as in 1941 -- they are forgetting the lessons the Scythians taught the Persians and the Scythians' Russian descendants taught the Teutonic Knights, the Mongols and Bonaparte, not to mention the lessons Hitler, Goering, Himmler and Goebbels were themselves taught by the Russian "untermenschen."

    Such are the darkest times in our species' history...

    REDPILLED 2015-03-10 17:13

    The 11th COMMANDMENT:

    No nation shall DARE defy the United States and its Puppets by attempting to be truly independent! That right is reserved only for the God-chosen United States.

    wantrealdemocracy 2015-03-10 20:06

    Too bad the "God chosen United States" is not independent. Our nation is under the control of Israel. Israel wants this war against Russia, and all those wars in the Middle East, so that the Christians and Muslims will kill each other leaving Israel the winner. The state of Israel and the Zionists will then control the whole world. That is the 'New World Order' you have heard about.

    arquebus 2015-03-10 17:20

    NATO aggression? When you see NATO tanks rolling across the border in an armed attack against Russia, then come talk to me about aggression. Has not happened and is unlikely to happen.

    What we really have here is Putin and the Russians paranoia and inability to get over the German invasion of 1940...something that happened 75 years ago.

    skeeter 2015-03-10 19:07

    Quoting arquebus:
    NATO aggression? When you see NATO tanks rolling across the border in an armed attack against Russia, then come talk to me about aggression. Has not happened and is unlikely to happen.

    What we really have here is Putin and the Russians paranoia and inability to get over the German invasion of 1940...something that happened 75 years ago.

    Let's get real...the Europeans are threatening to bring Ukraine into NATO, a military alliance established and maintained to challenge the Soviet Union. No Russian leader in his right mind could stand by and let this happen. Imagine if the Soviets had approached Mexico or Canada a few years ago and tried to convince them to join the Warsaw Pact. The Russians paranoid...can you blame them?

    Agricanto 2015-03-10 19:23

    First I read the (very excellent) piece of journalism from people like William Boardman.

    Then I "scroll to the troll" and give the predictable right wing doublethink a thumbs down.

    Then I go to PayPal and give RSN 10bux all the while complaining that trolls don't pay to clog up important discussions on RSN. Penny a word from the troll factory is all I ask.

    Merlin 2015-03-10 21:05

    Agricanto 2015-03-10 19:23

    Spot on and well said!

    jsluka 2015-03-11 00:15

    If Russian troops began to maneuver on the US border, like US troops (NATO) are now doing on the Russian border, the US would go "ballistic." That's called "hypocrisy," by the way.

    MJnevetS 2015-03-13 14:52

    "Russia already did that and invaded killed people and are feeding a false insurgency that is being dubbed freedom fighters .. they even shot down a domestic airliner in the summer flying over that territory over the UKraine from Amsterdam. don't you know the news even on this subject"

    There is a sad lack of facts in these statements. NY Times had to retract the allegations of a 'Russian Invasion', as the evidence proved to be fabricated. The only 'false insurgency' was the coup initiated by the US and with regard to the shooting down of the commercial liner, show me one SINGLE piece of evidence that Russian backed rebels were involved. It was a false flag operation and when people demanded evidence over propaganda, the news story magically disappeared, as the evidence would show that it was a terrorist attack by the Nazis currently in control of Ukraine.

    jdd 2015-03-11 08:15

    When you "see NATO tanks rolling across the border in an armed attack against Russia" it will not be the time to converse with you, but rather then you may kiss your loved ones a final goodbye as that will be the beginning of a war of human extinction, all over within an hour.

    Thank goodness for Putin and s few sane voices in the West who are trying to avoid ever getting to that point while others in the West, such as the Newland gang, seem hell-bent on making it happen.

    Activista 2015-03-11 20:36

    ... see NATO bombers in Libya, Yugoslavia .. US troops in Kosovo US Sending 3,000 Troops To Latvia, Estonia ...
    www.ibtimes.com/ukraine-crisis-us-sending-...
    International Business Times
    2 days ago - An Abrams main battle tank, for U.S. troops deployed in the Baltics as part of NATO's Operation Atlantic Resolve, left the port in Riga, Latvia ....

    Trish42 2015-03-10 18:03

    When will Americans ever get their collective head out of their ass and start looking at the world from others' points of view? We have gotten sucked into the propaganda about Ukraine, never checking other sources or verifying what we "know" to see if there was any evidence that would support our intervention. Sound familiar? We've got to get the war-mongers out of DC!!

    Kev C 2015-03-10 21:19

    Allow me to explain why they won't. Education. The entire system is based on US centric thinking and behaviour. There is limited information available about the rest of the world and what there is is painting the US as the God Given Saviour of humanity. Hell they won the war after all. Single handed. They saved the UKs ass by coming to our rescue didn't they? Not!

    Until the vast majority of Really decent but hypnotized Americans get the real info they will continue to believe what they are told because there isn't really an alternative to the Faux news/MSN bullshit and the pre programmed education system. Its not the peoples fault. The system was rigged long before they were born.

    dsepeczi 2015-03-11 09:38

    Quoting Trish42:
    When will Americans ever get their collective head out of their ass and start looking at the world from others' points of view? We have gotten sucked into the propaganda about Ukraine, never checking other sources or verifying what we "know" to see if there was any evidence that would support our intervention. Sound familiar? We've got to get the war-mongers out of DC!!
    Sadly, I'm starting to believe the answer to your question is ... "Never". If Iraq wasn't a big enough, loud enough, and obvious enough mistake to wake up ALL Americans to the fact that our government lies to us and we should take everything they say with a grain of salt and request that they provide solid proof of their allegations against another nation ... I can't think of any event that will. :(

    pbbrodie 2015-03-11 09:45

    "get warmongers out of Washington."
    Yes, especially the complete idiots who are making insane comments about "limited nuclear war." There is no such thing as limited nuclear war. Once one is exploded, it is all over.

    Johnny 2015-03-10 18:15

    How soon we forget. The U.S. must punish Russia, and, more importantly, divert the attention of Russia from the Middle East, because Russia has supported Syria, which is an obstacle to open war against Iran, because Iran arms Hezbollah, and the last time the Zionists invaded Lebanon, Hezbollah chased them out. Hezbollah is an obstacle to annexation of the whole area by Israel. And now that the Zionists smell the opportunity to induce the U.S. to attack Iran, they are creating another front on which Russia must try to defend itself and its allies. The U.S. Congress is not the only part of the U.S. government that Jewish supremacist banksters have bought, lock, stock, and barrel. (Before some asshole starts to howl about anti-Semitism, let him explain why we should not criticize other proponents of racism, such as white supremacists; Zionism, after all, is merely warmed over Nazism, with a different "chosen" people and different victims.)

    dquandle 2015-03-10 20:05

    In fact, the neo-nazis now in control in the US/NATO supported Ukraine have been blatantly anti-semitic for decades, having supported the Nazis at that time and are even more egregious now.

    "For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism in the borderland through which Hitler's invading Nazis took millions of Russian lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre of Jews and Russians they called "vermin". The UPA is the historical inspiration of the present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelli ng Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left."

    Taken from

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/11/on-israel-ukraine-and-truth/

    And these, fully supported and paid for supported by the ostensibly "Jewish" Nuland and Obama's heinous State Department.

    See also e.g.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hughes/the-neo-nazi-question-in_b_4938747.html

    Radscal 2015-03-11 00:24

    In addition to Ms. Nuland and her PNAC founding husband, Robert Kagan, two of the three Democrats cited by Mr. Boardman as signees on the "arm Ukraine" letter are Jewish. In fact, Congressman Engel is of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry.

    As the "protests" in Ukraine grew in late 2013/early 2014, Ukrainian Jewish groups reported skyrocketing cases of anti-Semitic rhetoric and attacks. But those reports were buried by Zionist organizations who insisted that Russia was the real threat to Ukrainian Jews, not the frigging Nazis in Ukraine!

    At first, this sort of thing confused me, before I realized it wasn't a Jew against Jew thing. This is Zionist fascists supporting Nazi fascists.

    Vardoz 2015-03-10 22:23

    Sorry it just boils down to profits and power and any excuse to wage endless war for profits period end of story.

    L.S. 2015-03-10 20:06

    I do not agree with these conclusions. I don't believe that the U.S. and U.K. are invested in military action. Those troops are advisors and instructors. This interpretation is very cynical and pessimistic and I don't buy it.

    My background is International Relations and I am watching the chess pieces on the board and I challenge this interpretation and find it very unhelpful and in itself can be contributing towards War rather than supporting the diplomatic actions towards Peace.

    Merlin 2015-03-10 21:02

    L.S. 2015-03-10 20:06

    So talk to me about the advisors that Eisenhower put in Viet Nam. Then talk to me about Kennedy expanding on their number. Then talk to me about the Viet Nam War.

    You state:

    "My background is International Relations and I am watching the chess pieces on the board and I challenge this interpretation"

    I challenge YOU because either you a not what you claim or you sure did not learn very much.

    Kev C 2015-03-10 21:24

    If you don't see what is happening now then your a lousy chess player. Don't give up though. Practice makes perfect. However beware there are not many nations left that haven't been smeared then bombed by the US and we are running out nations and out of time before the US blow all our asses off the face of the planet for that self serving act of pathetic vanity which will be countersigned in hell with 'Property of The US Military.'

    jsluka 2015-03-11 00:17

    "Advisors and intructors" - Don't be naive. And what happens when some of them get killed? What is the likelihood or statistical probability of escalation after that? This is clearly provocative and dangerous and does absolutely nothing for "peace" or "security" of anyone.

    Radscal 2015-03-11 00:27

    L.S. "...I am watching the chess pieces on the board..."

    Does your use of that analogy imply that you read Ziggy Brzezenski's 1998 book, "The Grand Chessboard," in which he explains why the U.S. must take control of Ukraine as key to controlling Eurasian resources, and ultimately to conquer Russia and China?

    RODNOX 2015-03-11 05:14

    history has shown the USA always has some underhanded agenda--some self serving plan---and often plays BOTH sides of the problem--just to escalate it----WHEN WILL WE STOP THEM ????? THIS IS TRULY THE 1 % IN ACTION--WE--THE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM

    wrknight 2015-03-12 20:47

    Quoting L.S.:
    I do not agree with these conclusions. I don't believe that the U.S. and U.K. are invested in military action. Those troops are advisors and instructors.

    Like the advisors the U.S. sent to South Vietnam in the 1950's.

    Archie1954 2015-03-10 20:16

    Exceptional, indispensable? More like irrational, despicable! What we need is for Putin to call up Obama and tell him point blank that if the US doesn't get the hell out of Ukraine, Russia will make it! If you don't think it can, think again!

    jsluka 2015-03-11 00:20

    I appreciate your emotion here, but that would be really really scary because I imagine the US would respond with even greater belligerance and "justify" it by saying "Putin is threatening us" - even though, ironically, it is the US that is doing all the threatening.

    Vardoz 2015-03-10 21:17

    It's more like war madmen then warmongers and it's all very frightening. Putin is crazy too and we have no right getting involved so that the Fuking military can make profits!!!! Enough!!!!! Our military is out of control with a suicidal war agenda and they don't care about the consequences or the collateral damage. It's just war all around, kick out the jams no matter how many die- they don't give a damn. Seemed like Germany was making some constructive headway and Merkel should tell the US where to go. This is all so dirty and obscene and wrong.

    Radscal 2015-03-11 00:33

    You do know that the U.S. was not even invited to the peace talks, right?

    Similarly, it was EU members, Russia and then-president Yanukovych who signed the agreement with the Maidan Protest leaders on 2/21/14 in which Yanukovych acquiesced to every one of their demands.

    That was when Vickie Nuland's "Fuck the EU" plan went into action and the neo-nazis stormed the government buildings, including the Parliament and drove about 2 dozen Members of Parliament and the President to flee for their lives.

    And that, is why those who followed the events call it a "coup."

    jdd 2015-03-11 07:28

    The ceaae-fire came about because the "Normandy Four" excluded the US and UK, whose participation would have guaranteed failure. Now the efforts of all, but especially that of Putin have led to a fragile peace. The response from a disappointed Victoria Nuland crowd continues to speak of sending arms and "advisors" to Ukraine in order to throw gasoline on the embers.

    dsepeczi 2015-03-11 08:21

    Quoting ericlane:
    Another moronic article. Who do you think was behind the peace deal?
    Ummm. I believe the organizers of that peace deal were Europe, Ukraine and Russia. The US, wisely, was not invited to the table.

    jsluka 2015-03-11 00:13

    Is "US Goes Ballistic" a scary pun here? I.e., as in "nuclear armed ballistic missiles". Also, isn't that how it all started in the Vietnam War - with "advisors"? This is batcrap crazy, but then many people have now begun to realise that US politicians have become homocidally psychotic. It's "back to the future" and return of Dr. Strangelove.

    [email protected] 2015-03-11 06:22

    We have no business in Ukraine, we have no business antagonizing the Russians. We Slavs have been demonized, mocked and denigrated as imbeciles and barbarians by the West for centuries. Stay the hell away from us, already. We don't need to be like you.

    Buddha 2015-03-11 17:10

    "To the dismay of the Pentagon, the White House war crowd, and the rest of the American bloviating class of chickenhawk hardliners, the warring sides in Ukraine are disengaging and the ceasefire has almost arrived (March 7 was the first day with no casualties)."

    John McCain's dick just got limp again. Oh well, there is always ISIS and Iran to try to stoke up WWIII, right Uncle Fester?

    Kootenay Coyote 2015-03-16 10:12

    "Until Americans, and especially American policy maker, face fundamental realities in and about Ukraine….". Or any fundamental realities, for that matter: cf. Global Warming. The nearest thing to reality that's considered is that of the weapon makers & warmongers, & that's pretty meagre.

    [May 03, 2015] Hillary Clinton The International Neocon Warmonger, by Webster G. Tarpley

    April 13, 2015 | voltairenet.org

    As the National Journal reported in 2014, even the pathetically weak anti-war left is not ready to reconcile with Hillary given her warmongering as Secretary of State. And with good reason. Scratching just lightly beneath the surface of Hillary Clinton's career reveals the empirical evidence of her historic support for aggressive interventions around the globe.

    Beginning with Africa, Hillary defended the 1998 cruise missile strike on the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, destroying the largest producer of cheap medications for treating malaria and tuberculosis and provided over 60% of available medicine in Sudan. In 2006 she supported sending United Nations troops to Darfur with logistical and technical support provided by NATO forces. Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was outspoken in his condemnation of this intervention, claiming it was not committed out of concern for Sudanese people but "…for oil and for the return of colonialism to the African continent."

    This is the same leader who was murdered in the aftermath of the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya; an attack promoted and facilitated with the eager support of Mrs. Clinton. In an infamous CBS news interview, said regarding this international crime: "We came, we saw, he died." As Time magazine pointed out in 2011, the administration understood removing Qaddafi from power would allow the terrorist cells active in Libya to run rampant in the vacuum left behind. Just last month the New York Times reported that Libya has indeed become a terrorist safe haven and failed state- conducive for exporting radicals through "ratlines" to the conflict against Assad in Syria.

    Hillary made prompt use of the ratlines for conflicts in the Middle East. In the summer of 2012, Clinton privately worked with then CIA director and subversive bonapartist David Petraeus on a proposal for providing arms and training to death squads to be used to topple Syria just as in Libya. This proposal was ultimately struck down by Obama, reported the New York Times in 2013, but constituted one of the earliest attempts at open military support for the Syrian death squads.

    Her voting record on intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq is well known and she also has consistently called for attacking Iran. She even told Fareed Zakaria the State Department was involved "behind the scenes" in Iran's failed 2009 Green Revolution. More recently in Foreign Policy magazine David Rothkopf wrote on the subject of the Lausanne nuclear accord, predicting a "snap-back" in policy by the winner of the 2016 election to the foreign policy in place since the 1980s. The title of this article? "Hillary Clinton is the Real Iran Snap-Back." This makes Hillary the prime suspect for a return to the madcap Iranian policies that routinely threaten the world with a World War 3 scenario.

    Hillary Clinton is not only actively aggressing against Africa and the Middle East. She was one of the loudest proponents against her husband's hesitancy over the bombing of Kosovo, telling Lucina Frank: "I urged him to bomb," even if it was a unilateral action.

    While no Clinton spokesperson responded to a request by the Washington Free Beacon regarding her stance on Ukraine, in paid speeches she mentioned "putting more financial support into the Ukrainian government". When Crimea decided to choose the Russian Federation over Poroshenko's proto-fascist rump state, Hillary anachronistically called President Putin's actions like "what Hitler did in the '30s." As a leader of the bumbled "reset" policy towards Russia, Hillary undoubtedly harbors some animus against Putin and will continue the destabilization project ongoing in Ukraine.

    Not content with engaging in debacles in Eastern Europe, she has vocally argued for a more aggressive response to what she called the "rollback of democratic development and economic openness in parts of Latin America." This indicates her willingness to allow the continuation of CIA sponsored efforts at South American destabilization in the countries of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil.

    It is one of the proud prerogatives of the Tax Wall Street Party to push out into the light the Wall Street and foundation-funded Democrats. The final blow to Hillary's clumsy façade comes directly from arch-neocon Robert Kagan. Kagan worked as a foreign policy advisor to Hillary along with his wife, Ukraine madwoman Victoria Nuland, during Hillary's term as Secretary of State. He claimed in the New York Times that his view of American foreign policy is best represented in the "mainstream" by the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton; a foreign policy he obviously manipulated or outright crafted. Kagan stated: "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue…it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else." What further reason could any sane person need to refute Hillary? A vote for Hillary is a vote for the irrational return to war.

    The "Giant Sucking Sound": Clinton Gave US NAFTA and Other Free Trade Sellouts

    "There is no success story for workers to be found in North America 20 years after NAFTA," states AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. Unlike other failures of his Presidency, Bill Clinton can not run from NAFTA. It was Vice President Al Gore, not a veto-proof Republican congress, who lobbied to remove trade barriers with low-wage Mexico.

    The record of free trade is clear. Multinational corporations and Wall Street speculators realize incredible profits, wages remain stagnant in the US, poverty persists in the developing world, and the remaining industrial corporations in America and Canada are increasingly owned by Chinese, Indian and other foreign interests.

    America's free trade policy is upside down. Besides Canada, Australia and Korea, most of our "free" trade partners are low-wage sweatshop paradises like Mexico, Chile, Panama, Guatemala, Bahrain and Oman. The US does in fact apply tariffs on most goods and on most nations of origin – rates are set by the US International Trade Commission (USTIC), a quasi-public federal agency.

    Since a German- or Japanese-made automobile would under USITC's schedule be taxed 10% upon importation, Volkswagen and Toyota can circumvent taxation by simply building their auto assembly plants for the US market in Mexico. In Detroit, an auto assembly worker is paid between $14 and $28/hour, ($29,120-$58,240/yr); hard work for modest pay. In Mexico, the rate varies from $2-5/hour.

    In China, all automobile imports regardless of origin are tariffed as high as 25%. This allows the Chinese to attract joint ventures with Volkswagen and Toyota, and to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, "keep the jobs, the cars and the money."

    NAFTA-related job loss is not a question of productivity, currency manipulation, "fair trade," environmental standards, etc. While these issues are not trivial, free trade – as Lincoln's advisor Henry C. Carey proved – is a matter of simple accounting. Can an American family survive on $4,160/year ($2/hr)? If not, cars and their components will be built in Mexico. If we want cars built in the United States, the only solution is a general tariff (import tax) reflecting the difference between those wage standards, like the very tariffs repealed by Bill Clinton.

    In the United States the "runaway shop" under NAFTA and CAFTA has sent trade deficits and unemployment soaring while wages drop relative to the cost of living. Yet Mexico and other "partners" receive no benefit either. Many manufacturing sectors in Mexico pay wages lower than the equivalent sector in China. Mexico is now the world leader in illegal narcotics exportation and weapons importation. The poverty level between 1994 and 2009 remained virtually identical. (52.4% – 52.3%). The shipping of raw materials to Mexico comprise the majority of so called American "exports". The finished products from these exports are assembled and sold back to the United States at slave labor prices.

    Don't expect Hillary to behave differently with the coming "Trans-Pacific Partnership," which seeks to replace an ascendant China with less-developed Vietnam and Malaysia. Vietnam would overtake India-allied Bangladesh in the global apparel trade, and Malaysia has a high-tech manufacturing sector poised to rival China's. With America's manufacturing economy in shambles, the Clinton machine can now be redirected to geopolitical maneuvers.

    Article licensed under Creative Commons

    The articles on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided the source is cited, their integrity is respected and they are not used for commercial purposes (license CC BY-NC-ND).

    [May 02, 2015] radio C-SPAN

    Mar 10, 2015 | annbeaker
    Listened on the way to work the record of the meeting of the Senate Committee on Ukraine and anti-Russia. First, the names of speakers and respondents. Kornblum, Kantor, Nudelman and joined them boy Bobby Corker and others have wives from Ukraine, they said. Second, Putin is such a chronic incarnation of Satan that he looks larger them even the whole country. Now there are even concepts in his name, for example - "Putin's economy", what a beast it is unclear, but in the minds of American senators it's definitely evil. And just a bad person who alone lives in seven rooms and actively that fact that the members of the Congress did not like one bit and expressed strong desire to move him to something with less rooms. the third is that those gentlemen with the German-Yiddish surnames discussed the entire countries and territories as if they were just deserts, forests and steppes. As if there no population on this territories, who may have their own views on the subject, distinct from opinion by Committee members. Fourth, in some moments of the meeting, reminded the congregation in the local synagogue, and sometimes the PTA meeting which analyzed the behavior of poor students.

    Main memes and beliefs expressed at the meeting:

    1. Russia backward and unable to progress and development of the country.
    2. In Russia there is no infrastructure.
    3. Russia lives from the sale of oil and only.
    4. Russia is financing all and with all the oil revenue.
    5. Russia is very aggressive.
    6. She attacked Ukraine. The existence of civil war not only not denied, this concept is just not even considered by Committee members. That completely changes everything, not war within one nation, when brother rose up against brother, and external invasion of a neighbor!
    7. Russia is aggressive towards the Baltic States and the Baltic States should be armed.
    8. Tomorrow Russia will attack Estonia.
    9. America has vital interests in Ukraine.
    10. To return the Crimea to Ukraine is America's vital interests.
    11. Putin is enemy No. 1.

    There were suggestions from the field. For example, start to give Ukraine the money for one billion dollars a year for three consecutive years. This money, Ukraine will buy weapons from the USA and defend against Putin. We must begin to arm Estonia and to send battalions because there is a lot of Russians and Putin's aggression will be the first thing sent to Estonia. This was repeated several times and in different ways. I.e. looks like you have already decided to arrange provocations in Estonia. As this is done, he starts revealing to cut Russian compactly living in Narva or Estonia will satisfy the invasion by type Saakashvilis, only where? In Narva? He then tried to attack South Ossetia which was legally in Georgia, but not inhabited by the same nationality as the rest of the country and there was revolt. In Estonia like no no revolt. But it is clear that the next for some expensive and stupid military supplies is Estonia. Funny, Yes?

    [May 01, 2015] There was heroism and cruelty on both sides: the truth behind one of Ukraine s deadliest days by Howard Amos in Odessa

    Such an elaborate dance around facts. From comments: "It is so depressing when there is far more information in the comments section than in the article itself. It seems the new editor is keen to continue the traditions of her predecessor." This is one event about which there is quite a lot of information to see how Guardian presstitutes try to bent the truth. See Odessa Massacre of May 2, 2014
    Notable quotes:
    "... In a way, you are right, it was the US (via Vicky "f the EU" Nuland and mad John McCain) that pushed Ukraine over the cliff. As usual, the EU "leaders" (Merkel, etc) acted as US lackeys. However, equal blame goes to stupid and thieving Ukrainian elites, under whose "leadership" the country was on the edge of that cliff to begin with. ..."
    "... Western media are not simply mirror images of the fascist governments they support. Acting the way they do, these media prepare the public for a future war. ..."
    "... There are lies, there are blatant lies, and then there are reports of Western media. Sad, but true. ..."
    "... Kiev's solution has always been a military one and still is. ..."
    "... Recently Poroshenko who had the temerity to visit Odessa on the anniversary of the city' liberation from occupation was met with shouts "Fascism will not pass". ..."
    "... I remember the British army in Belfast actually running joint patrols in broad daylight with Loyalist terrorists through Catholic areas and that was the tip of the iceberg. ..."
    Apr 30, 2015 | The Guardian

    The emergency calls became increasingly desperate. "When are you coming? It's already burning and there are people inside," a woman told the fire brigade dispatcher. Minutes later, callers started describing how people were jumping from the upper floors. "Have you lost your minds?" one man asked, his voice breaking. "There are women and children in the building!" another man yelled.

    In one of the most deadly episodes in Ukraine's turbulent 2014 power transition, 48 people were killed and hundreds injured on 2 May last year in the Black Sea port of Odessa.

    Street battles culminated in a fatal fire at Soviet-era building where hundreds of pro-Russia activists were barricaded in.

    VengefulRevenant -> AlfredHerring 1 May 2015 17:24

    The victims are the ones who were raped, shot or burned to death in the massacre.

    The perpetrators are those protected by the NATO-backed regime which has failed to investigate the massacre.

    The apologists are the NATO-aligned media who blame the victims or assign blame equally to the killers and the dead along the lines of, 'There was heroism and cruelty on both sides.'

    normankirk -> Metronome151 1 May 2015 16:52

    Well isn't it wonderful to hear a diversity of views expressed on Russian TV. When all we hear is how all media is controlled by the Kremlin

    Kaiama Danram 1 May 2015 16:48

    So the dead Ukrainian children and women are Kremlin goons too? How simple your life must be to allow you to make such simplistic conclusions.

    vr13vr 1 May 2015 16:46

    Some nice whitewashing. Now it's fault of the victims and the heroism of the perpetrators, there hasn't been and there will be no investigation and the word massacre is no longer used. For those of you who still argue it was not a massacre but some mysterious suicide by 48 people who set themselves afire, here is footage again.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxcB0PI4ZLg

    Take a look at some of the pretty revealing moments:
    23 min mark - Ukrainians are entering the building, there was no resistance.
    24:20. A group of Ukrainians go upstairs, there is no fire yet.
    26:20 Some are coming returning. The stairs are being set on fire.
    27:50 A Ukrainian is firing gun at those trying to jump from the building.

    While in the building, Ukrainians were slaughtering people. And it wasn't a fight. Half of the victims were middle-aged. At least 10 of them - women.

    31min - 33min - the victims who got out have their faces and hands disfigured while the rest of their bodies don't have the same injuries. That's what happens if someone splashes fuel over someone's face and light it up. There are pictures of victims with only their heads and hands burned.

    33min - 35min - there were women among those trying to find safety in the building. Some of them are middle-aged. They were not fighters, as the article would imply.

    36min- 37min - Ukrainians were inside the building, setting it on fire and killing those whom they could find, a young woman in this specific frame.

    46min - a person was bludgeoned to death. The room doesn't have marks of fire but the blood is splattered all over the room.

    48min-50min - the same story, Ukrainians were slaughtering their victims.

    1h:00min - Ukrainians are entering the building again, this time from the make shift scaffolding.

    Any attempt to pretend there was a fight rather than a massacre is crazy. Any suggestion that somehow people inside were setting themselves on fire is ludicrous in light of evidence that the Ukis were inside the building. And the fact that Kiev doesn't even see it as murder makes me just angry.

    AbsolutelyFapulous -> PlatonKuzin 1 May 2015 16:43

    Odessa as well as the most Ukraine is a Russian soil.

    Donno why you are commenting here. You even don't seem to be able to read a map.

    BorninUkraine -> RonBuckley 1 May 2015 16:25

    In a way, you are right, it was the US (via Vicky "f the EU" Nuland and mad John McCain) that pushed Ukraine over the cliff. As usual, the EU "leaders" (Merkel, etc) acted as US lackeys.

    However, equal blame goes to stupid and thieving Ukrainian elites, under whose "leadership" the country was on the edge of that cliff to begin with.

    Current Ukrainian "leaders" keep stealing everything they can, including financial and material aid from the West. What else is new?

    MaoChengJi -> Goodthanx 1 May 2015 16:03

    Yeah. I'm convinced that they should've sent paratroopers and take Kiev right the next day after the coup d'etat; stop this whole unholy mess right then and there. That really would've saved tens of thousands of lives - if not millions, seeing how this thing seems to escalate, leading us to a nuclear war.

    Putin is a pussy, Medvedev got it right in Georgia in 2008. Well, frankly Medvedev is a pussy too. He should've taken Tbilisi, and put Saakashvili on trial.

    To teach the bastards a lesson.

    Instead, now we hear every day 'Russia will not fight Ukraine', 'Russia will not fight Ukraine', and the murdering Nazi bastards get bolder and bolder. What's the point of having all that military hardware if you're afraid to use it. They Yanks would've taken control of the place months ago, look at Grenada.

    RonBuckley -> BorninUkraine 1 May 2015 15:52

    Well said, man. Yes, Ukrainian politics have always been divisive, stupid, thievery and corrupt. That said they had neither brains nor money for a coup. So Ukraine should thank certain external powers for the deep shit it is in now.

    PlatonKuzin -> puttypants 1 May 2015 15:31

    Odessa as well as the most Ukraine is a Russian soil. That's the point. And the state of Ukraine is a temporary occupier of the Russian soil. So people living in Odessa don't have to go to Russian. They are right at their home. This is the state of Ukraine that has stayed on our Russian land for 23 years now. It's time for the quasi-state of Ukraine to leave.

    BorninUkraine -> puttypants 1 May 2015 15:16

    I was born in Lvov in Western Ukraine, I grew up in Lugansk in the East, I have friends and relatives all over, and I know exactly what is going on in Ukraine.

    Ukraine in 1991 was extremely heterogenous. In the area West of Carpatian mountains people speak Hungarian, Romanian, and Rusine (a form of old Russian, spoken in Kievan Rus).

    Galichina and Volynia in the West speak several dialects of Ukrainian. Many in Central Ukraine speak what is considered literary Ukrainian. In the South and East (historic Novorossia) and in Kharkov region (historic Slobozhanschina) the majority speaks "surgik", a mix of pidgin-Ukrainian and pidgin-Russian. Finally, in Crimea people speak Russian, Tatar, and very few speak Ukrainian. Crimea voted AGAINST Ukraine in 1991 referendum and got a chance to run away in 2014, when Ukraine committed suicide.

    If the leaders of Ukraine had any brains and loved their country, they would have followed the example of Switzerland and Singapore, having many official languages. However, all Ukrainian rulers from day one were thieves and idiots. They made Ukrainian the only official language and pushed it everywhere, so that while you could get school education in several languages, all colleges operated only in Ukrainian, putting people who spoke other languages at a disadvantage.

    That idiotic policy started this whole mess, which with a bit of US money, prodding, and now arms became a civil war. Not to mention that Galichina is the place that fought against Russia in WWI (as part of Austro-Hungarian empire, siding with Kaiser) and WWII (siding with Hitler). They supplied the troops that under Hitler's command murdered thousands of civilians in Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and Slovakia. Bandera, Shuhevich, and veterans of Waffen SS division Galichina, who are considered heroes by current puppets in Kiev, voluntarily served Hitler.

    80% of Ukrainian population hates these Bandera worshippers, so when external forces push them to power, it creates trouble. Personally I hate them for giving a bad name to everything Ukrainian.

    BorninUkraine -> AbsolutelyFapulous 1 May 2015 15:10

    Russia failed to send its troops to Donbass, and Ukrainian army killed thousands of civilians there, including women, children, elderly, and disabled veterans.

    Or is saying things explicitly beyond your pay grade?

    RonBuckley -> AbsolutelyFapulous 1 May 2015 15:06

    To Odessa Kiev sent a few hundred pro-Nazi thugs - 42 died.

    To Donetsk and Luhansk Kiev sent a few thousand pro-Nazi thugs plus the entire Ukrainian army - 6000 died.

    Get it now?

    Goodthanx -> Anette Mor 1 May 2015 15:04

    For me it was the silence... You are right! Seeing what i was seeing, with no commentry to convince me either way.. How could the worlds media be so silent?

    Then with MH, it was the complete opposite!! Immediately and with no investigation, MSM could not shut up about who they thought was responsible!!

    Both fail the logic test miserably. But try explaining common sense to those that haven't any.

    Goodthanx -> Chirographer 1 May 2015 14:48

    Those protesters were Ukrainian Pro Federalists! Not one Russian amongst them!

    Anette Mor -> Goodthanx 1 May 2015 14:46

    Good for you. It is impossible to hide truth with current state of technology. Only not showning. Any life reporting give the footage adding facts one by one and crwating a true picture eventually. Even this rather bias article contributes to true story because the lie in it sticks out of logic for anybody we is able to think for themselves.

    PlatonKuzin -> ID5868758 1 May 2015 14:42

    Western media are not simply mirror images of the fascist governments they support. Acting the way they do, these media prepare the public for a future war.

    Anette Mor -> vr13vr 1 May 2015 14:41

    It is poinless to try to install fear in these people. Need to look at the history of people's wars in Russia. Since 17 century they were able to resist occupation and unwanted rulers by people war. There wpuld not be a win against Napoleon and Hitler without people rising and forming resistance. Same in Odessa now. Just a matter of time.

    BunglyPete -> Chirographer 1 May 2015 14:35

    The explanation is very simple. Right Sector had free reign to terrorise pro Russians, so he took action. Kiev choose not to punish Right Sector both then and now. He said this in the same interview you constantly reference.

    Now can you explain why you think it is acceptable for Right Sector to terrorise the Donbass? If Strelkov wasnt allowed to defend them, who was?

    Anette Mor -> Jeff1000 1 May 2015 14:34

    Not sure why you call them pro-Russians. Odessa is multi-national city. These who were massacred are simply local people who disagreed with the violent coup which put to power by the west. Does it make them "pro-russian" and justify thier killing? Surely these who want own country to be coverned by own elected officials could not be pro- another country. If they trust Russian government care for them more then thier own coup, that only says how bad the coup rule is.

    Goodthanx -> Chirographer 1 May 2015 14:24

    Forget about the Russian government. The idea is justice for the victims and punishment for the perpetrators. Is it the ambition of the UN to be percieved as bias as so called Russuan investigators would be?

    Kaiama -> truk10 1 May 2015 14:22

    FFS there are enough links and analysis to demonstrate that pro-Kiev forces inflicted a massacre of civilians here. I don't see any pro-Ukraine links to additional information but an overwhelming deluge of links supporting the unvoiced version of events.

    ID5868758 1 May 2015 14:18

    Our western media have really become mirror images of the fascist governments they support. By publishing such whitewashing attempts as this, they only enable more such behavior in the future, behavior that leads to the deaths of more innocents, more civilians whose only desire is to live in freedom and peace.

    Kaiama 1 May 2015 14:13

    It is so depressing when there is far more information in the comments section than in the article itself. It seems the new editor is keen to continue the traditions of her predecessor.

    Goodthanx -> Chirographer 1 May 2015 14:09

    What kind of a teenage girl carries in their backpack petrol, empty bottles, rags and whatever else is required to make Molotov cocktails? What a coincidence... there is a group of them!!
    As for Right Sector? Chartered buses transported Right Sector militia which arrived early in the day. These were the people communicating with police from the start.

    MaoChengJi -> MaoChengJi 1 May 2015 13:51

    Speaking of the media... I've been reading this Odessa news website: http://timer-odessa.net/ , and it has been relatively informative (as much as Ukro-sites can be, these days). And today suddenly it's gone dark: "there is no Web site at this address".

    Does anyone know if it's gone for good? I really hope those who were running it are safe...


    Jean-François Guilbo -> truk10 1 May 2015 13:51

    So you didn't watch the video link in my comment did you?
    If you just take this article for granted to know on which side the Odessa police was, you won't learn much on what happened...
    Seems like the officier on the picture would have been recognised as a colonel from Odessa police, watch this link:

    http://orientalreview.org/2014/05/06/genocide-in-novorossiya-and-swan-song-of-ukrainian-statehood/

    And from these two links, these armed guys not afraid to shoot from the crowd, could have been agents provocateur...

    BorninUkraine -> IrishFred 1 May 2015 13:47

    Are you saying that Bandera, Shuhevich, and veterans of Waffen SS division Galichina never existed? If so, please state it explicitly.

    Are you saying all of the above did not serve Hitler voluntarily? If so, please state it explicitly.
    Are you saying all of the above are not guilty of mass murder and other crimes against humanity? If so, please state it explicitly.

    Are you saying that people who are murdering their opponents, politicians and journalists, are not Nazis? If so, please state it explicitly.

    As to Crimea, if you knew any history, you'd know that it was illegally annexed by Ukraine in 1991. Here is history 101, not necessarily for you, but for those who actually want to know the truth.

    Crimea voted AGAINST Ukraine in 1991 referendum. Ukraine illegally repealed Crimean 1992 constitution and cancelled Crimean autonomy against the wishes of Crimean population in 1994.
    BTW, several Western sources recently confirmed the results of Crimean referendum of 2014.
    Forbes magazine
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-after-russia-annexed-crimea-locals-prefer-moscow-to-kiev/

    German polling company GFK
    http://www.gfk.com/ua/Documents/Presentations/GFK_report_FreeCrimea.pdf

    Gallup
    http://www.bbg.gov/wp-content/media/2014/06/Ukraine-slide-deck.pdf

    Russia deployed its troops in Crimea, and nobody was killed there. Russia failed to send its troops to Donbass, and Ukrainian army killed thousands of civilians there, including women, children, elderly, and disabled veterans.

    As many Ukrainians joke now, "Crimeans are traitors: they ran away without us".
    Your next argument?

    Jeff1000 -> Chirographer 1 May 2015 13:45

    Don't display callous and willful ignorance and call it even-handedness. The Guardian's "credible" account offers no sources, agrees with none of the available pictorial or video evidence and is rampant apologism.

    I posted videos - including raw CCTV footage of the starting of the fire, further up the page.

    BunglyPete -> coffeegirl 1 May 2015 13:40

    I saw that guy's post it was fantastic, very well sourced and thorough. The comments on here were a different kettle of fish entirely back then.

    Jeff1000 1 May 2015 13:39

    The attempt to re-package this event as some awful conglomeration of circumstances spurred on by the cruelty of fate is sickening. We reduce the death of at least 50 people down so that calling it a "massacre" becomes needlessly emotive. We casually refer to the pro-Ukrainians as "football fans" to make it seem innocent - when Ukrainian football fans known as "Ultras" are famours for 2 things: Being neo-Nazis, and being violent thugs.

    Look at this video especially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAEcceedzCU

    It's really very simple - candid videos at the time made it clear.

    1. Pro-Russian groups were attacked by Ukrainian "ultras". They sought shelter in the Trade Union building.

    2. The building was set on fire when the Ultras threw molotovs through the windows. The doors were barred.

    3. People attempting to climb out of the windows were shot at, if they jumped they were beaten as they lay on the ground.

    4. Ukrainian nationalists deliberately blockaded the streets to inhibit the progress of ambulances and fire engines.

    5. The Police pretty much let all this happen.

    It's all in the videos - just go to youtube. Helping Kiev cover its backside is despicable.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKpJ1-ECpPg
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4dJRnI-X8Q
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec0mgpwW6_Y

    BunglyPete

    At entrance to underpass guys with baseball bats are asking passersby: "are you for Odessa or Moscow?" The right answer is Odessa. - @howardamos

    From the Guardian report on May 2 2014, by Howard Amos,

    "The aim is to completely clear Odessa [of pro-Russians]," said Dmitry Rogovsky, another activist from Right Sector

    According to the lady that setup the May 2 Group most victims had blunt trauma, and 30 had gunshot wounds.

    Ah the difference a year makes.

    coffeegirl -> coffeegirl 1 May 2015 13:33

    And more http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/05/ukraine-fatal-clashes-pro-russia-separatists-east#comment-35243539

    coffeegirl 1 May 2015 13:30

    Only a week after The Odessa Massacre an american CiFer, ex-marine, has gathered links, sieved through hours and hours of video - he, practically, has done what the journos were supposed to do, - to prove the Guardian, BBC and the rest were trying hard to whitewash the atrocity. Check his posts: Additional proof that the BBC and the mainstream Western press lied when they said both sides threw the molotov's.

    I looked for 5 hours searching for one video that showed anyone in the building throwing a molotov cocktail as the BBC first reported and the rest of the MSM went along with. I could not find a single one. They claimed a person named Sergei (what are the odds of that) told them a person threw the molotov inside the building and didn't realize the window was closed. This is absolutely ludicrous and an example of the pathetic reporting that passes for "news" these days.

    I did find the video of the third floor fire starting. It is at the following link and runs consecutively. You'll notice at exactly the 2 minute mark the camera zooms in on the window where the fire begins. You'll also notice that at the 2:02 mark you see an additional molotov cocktail just miss the window. This is strong evidence that the window was being targeted by individuals on the ground. Prior to this fire starting there is no other fire on the third floor, therefore this is most likely the cause of the third floor fire and lends credence to the fact that the violent youth below burned those people alive.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9AMjLBIliw#t=125

    Here's a link to the BBC article that quotes a random guy named Sergei and provides no evidence whatsoever to back up their story .http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27275383


    MaoChengJi -> Jeff1000 1 May 2015 13:24

    And not just "Russian state-owned media" - also most of the Russian privately owned media, and most of the world media (and even some of the western media).

    I believe I saw a chinadaily calling it Kristallnacht.

    Jeff1000 1 May 2015 13:16

    Russian state-owned media characterised the day's events as a "massacre" planned by "fascists" in Kiev, a narrative that has gained widespread traction.

    Mostly because it's a pretty fitting description of what happened.

    John Smith -> truk10 1 May 2015 13:15

    No, there are no nazis in Ukraine. All Kremlin lies.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDqk-uvYn4E

    Goodthanx -> truk10 1 May 2015 13:11

    Its not hard truk. Those red armbands that the so called pro Russian provocatores wore? Are actually the same red armbands Right sector militia was wearing during the most violent Maidan clashes. You can identify some of the same protagonists wearing the same armband in both Odesaa and Maidan!

    vr13vr -> truk10 1 May 2015 13:07

    Idiot. Nobody is laughing. Especially when 50 people died. Look at this video and see how Ukrainians entered the supposedly "heavily defended" building. You will see them operating inside, you will see them existing the building after it started burning from inside.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxcB0PI4ZLg

    Look at 23 min mark - they are entering the building with no resistance.
    24:20. A group of Ukrainians go upstairs, there is no fire yet.
    26:20 Some are coming returning. The stairs are being set on fire.
    27:50 A Ukrainian is firing gun at those trying to jump from the building.

    Yes, Ukrainians overrun the building, including the roof. The photographs suggest that people in the building where set afire while still alive.

    You must be an idiot to say someone is laughing at this.

    castorsia -> truk10 1 May 2015 13:02

    No. They burned them. Check the photographic evidence.

    PlatonKuzin -> vr13vr 1 May 2015 12:58

    Armored vehicles and special riot forces were brought today in Odessa to prevent possible unrest there.

    WHYNOPASSWORD12 -> Havingalavrov 1 May 2015 12:56

    Plenty of witnesses point out that these were pro-ukraine provacateurs sent up to stir up trouble. They are wearing the same red armbands worn by a group who started the skirmishes earlier in the town centre. They were part of the group bussed-in under the guise of football supporters.

    MaoChengJi -> truk10 1 May 2015 12:55

    Hi turk10,
    I understand your confusion. Luckily, Mr. Christof Lehmann investigated it all for you. Seek and ye shall find. Use google.

    vr13vr 1 May 2015 12:50

    Sure, Kiev views burning alive almost 50 people as a "victory." They even allowed to install fear in the city. Since then the city is totally subdued, people would be afraid to even discuss the events or think of any peaceful opposition as they are aware of the potential response from Kiev's supporters.

    Nice job Guardian trying to whitewash the events and justify the cold blooded murder by some street fights elsewhere in the city, events that were taking place all over the country those days.

    Jeremn -> oleteo 1 May 2015 12:40

    No greater cynics than western politicians, who certainly don't mourn this heavenly half-hundred, or come to lay flowers at the scene of their death.

    No greater cynic than the Czech envoy, Bartuska, who said:

    "Groups of civilians - including men, women and children - seize government buildings. Within two days they get arms and after that women and children disappear, leaving only the armed men. If they [independence supporters] are quickly resisted, as it was done in Odessa where they were simply burned to death, or Dnepropetrovsk, where they were simply killed and buried by the side of the road, everything will be calm. If this is not done, then there will be war. That's all."

    ID5868758 1 May 2015 12:18

    Another despicable attempt to paint a false equivalency, to assign blame for this massacre, for their own deaths, on those who perished. Take the Molotov cocktail throwing, for instance. I watched the videos of those Molotov cocktails being made, pretty little pro-Ukrainian girls sitting on the ground with their assembly line all set up, smiling as they made those instruments of death and handed them out, now just where did those supplies come from, who thought to bring bottles and rags and fuel to an event if it was innocent in nature?

    And where would those innocent victims chased inside the building get Molotov cocktails to throw from inside the building, when they were interested only in escaping the smoke and flames, saving their own lives? The narrative doesn't match the evidence, but neither does it pass the smell test, pretty SOP for western media reporting on Ukraine.

    StillHaveLinkYouHate -> MaoChengJi 1 May 2015 11:56

    The difference is that Nazis want to murder people for the accident of how they were born. Extreme natinalists will want to murder anybody who does not behave in the perverted way they feel a patriot should.

    That is the difference. Praviy sektor are nazis, incidentally.

    MaoChengJi 1 May 2015 11:55

    Here's another opinion:
    http://darussophile.com/2014/05/massacre-in-odessa/

    It makes the point already made below in this comment thread:

    I invite people to imagine how the British media would have reported this massacre if roles had been reversed and if it had been Maidan supporters who were burnt alive in the Trade Union building with an anti Maidan crowd filmed throwing Molotov cocktails into the building whilst baying for blood outside.

    Indeed.

    GreatCthulhu -> Metronome151 1 May 2015 11:45

    Many of them not locals.

    I thought the article was pretty clear that everyone on both sides were local. I speak, of course s an Irish man who doesn't regard hating Russians/ people who identify with Russia who aren't Russians but live nearby as a default position before beginning any debate.

    There are a small minority of Irish people, living in the Republic (I am not referring to the northern Unionist Community here), who identify with Britain often to the point that they express regret that Ireland ever left the UK. I don't agree with them, but I would not set them on fire in a building. For that matter, it is ARGUABLE (I am not saying whether that argument is right or wrong- just that you could put forward the thesis) that the N.I state-let is something of an Irish Donbass. No justification for Ireland shelling the crap out of it though... at all... that sort of stuff is kind of regarded as savagery here these days.


    MaoChengJi -> truk10 1 May 2015 11:43

    Hi turk10,
    what's wrong with calling them 'nazis'? The guardian piece identifies them as "extreme nationalists", and isn't it the same thing as 'neo-nazis' or 'nazis'?

    Is there some nuance I'm missing here? What would you call them?

    BorninUkraine -> truk10 1 May 2015 11:38

    So you object to calling a spade a spade? Typical pro-US position in Ukrainian crisis. What do you call the insignia of, for example, Azov battalion (see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion ). If that's not Nazi insignia, I don't know what is.
    I am simply saying that those who organized Odessa massacre, then Mariupol massacre, then fueled the war in Donbass, including Poroshenko, Turchinov, Yats, etc, are Nazis.

    The simple reason for that conclusion is, as the saying goes, "if it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it is a duck". If you prefer Christian version of the same thing, see Mathew 7:16 "you will know them by their fruits".

    To sum it up, if someone behaves like a Nazi, s/he is a Nazi. Is this clear enough?

    EugeneGur 1 May 2015 11:28

    A pro-Russia activist aims a pistol at supporters of the Kiev government during clashes in the streets of Odessa, 2 May 2014.

    How do we know that the guy is pro-Russian? Does the picture show what he is aiming at? Does he have a sign on his forehead burned in saying "I am pro-Russian and I am going to shoot that pro-Ukrainian bastard"? No, he does not. We are expected to assume that because the caption says so - but captions to pictures aren't evidence. Anybody can put any caption to any picture, and it's been done many a time.

    The head of the local pro-Ukraine Maidan self-defence group, Dmitry Gumenyuk, recalled the effect of the homemade grenades. . . they threw a grenade and it exploded under his bullet-proof vest and four nails entered his lungs," he said.

    Such peaceful people - going for a nice in the park walk in bullet-proof vests. They were going to destroy that camp and not on the agreement with the activists in that camp, as Guardian states (complete BS) but violently, which they did. Even if they were attacked, what did women in the camp have to do with it?
    Come on, people, even in the face of such a tragedy, is it so absolutely necessary to hush up the truth all the time?

    BorninUkraine -> caliento 1 May 2015 11:24

    There is a Ukrainian joke. Russians ask:
    - If you believe that Russia annexed Crimea, why don't you fight for it?
    - We aren't that stupid, there are Russian troops there.
    - But you say there are Russian troops in Donbass?
    - That's what we say, but in Crimea there really are Russian troops.

    castorsia 1 May 2015 11:21

    The Guardian continues to misrepresent the Odesa massacre by reporting claims by the official Ukrainian investigation and the Odesa governor created May 2 group that the deadly fire started when both sided were throwing Molotov cocktails. The videos and other evidence showing that the fire started after the Molotov cocktails and tires were thrown by the attackers are deliberately omitted.

    Open question to you all: What would be in the headlines if scores of "Pro-Ukrainian activists " were being burned, hacked, mauled, shot and raperd to death by Donetsk rebels or their supporters?

    BorninUkraine 1 May 2015 11:20

    There are lies, there are blatant lies, and then there are reports of Western media. Sad, but true.

    In this article Howard Amos pretends that he believes that both sides were to blame for the mass murder of anti-fascists by pro-Maidan thugs in Odessa on May 2, 2014. That's like saying that both the Nazis and the inmates of concentration camps were equally guilty.
    This lie is so outrageous, and so far from reality, that it does not even deserve an argument. The readers who want to know the truth can do Google search using "Odessa massacre 2014" and read for themselves.

    The lie that the Guardian repeats after Kyiv "government" looks even less plausible now, as Odessa massacre was followed by the massacre of civilians by Nazi thugs in Mariupol a few days later (change Odessa to Mariupol in your Google search), and the murder of thousands of civilians in Donbass, including women, children, elderly, and disabled veterans, by the Ukrainian army and Nazi battalions.

    I grew up in the USSR, but I have never read a lie so obvious and outrageous in the Soviet media. Congratulations on a new low!

    coffeegirl aussiereader4 1 May 2015 11:11

    Sounds like you know little about what happened in Odessa.

    The best compilation of any available material was done on May 8, 2014 by our fellow CiFer US ex-marine griffin alabama:

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/05/ukraine-fatal-clashes-pro-russia-separatists-east#comment-35243539

    EugeneGur Chirographer 1 May 2015 11:10

    You like to cite Strelkov, don't you, when it suits your purpose? If he is such an authority for you, why don't you cite everything he says? Among other things, he said that Maidan was not a popular uprising but a pure decoration for the coup organized by the right wing groups and funded by oligarchs together with the foreign agents? You can watch this here
    http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/02/must-watch-strelkov-vs-starikov-debate.html

    greatwhitehunter caliento 1 May 2015 11:08

    you would no if you followed events the idea of peace keepers was supported by Russia, the separatists and a good many other countries right from the start of the conflict . It was not however supported by the kiev government or the US. Peace keepers were offered to Ukraine right up until 4 days before the Minsk agreement.

    Kiev's solution has always been a military one and still is. There belated cries for peace keepers only came after getting an a*& kicking.

    kiev signed the minsk agreement which requires them to deal with the issues peace keepers would be a way out for them. Usa by their actions does not support the Minsk agreement.

    Poroshenko,s idea of peace keepers was a few kiev friendly states to send weapons and troups to bolster their ranks.

    An offer was made via the UN security council for a peace keeping force that included china and new zealand and poroshenko stated that ukraine didn't needed china and new Zealand's help, as it turned out they did.

    EugeneGur 1 May 2015 10:54

    Oh Guardian, Guardian. Both are to blame, heroism on both sides - in short, they burned themselves. We've heard that before. But then the article goes on and tells you that the movement they for some reason call "pro-Russian", although its not pro-Russia as much as it's anti-fascist, is essentially eliminated, with all leaders in jail or in exile. In contrast,

    None of the pro-Ukraine activists have been put on trial

    Kind of tells you what actually happened, doesn't it?

    Activists from both sides admit that the port city remains divided into two approximately matched camps

    No, they aren't matched. The Odessa residents are mostly anti-Maidan. The city is flooded with newcomers from the western Ukraine, and they the main supporters of Kiev. Otherwise, why would Kiev deploy half of the army to Odessa before the May holidays?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7firu0g4tU

    Recently Poroshenko who had the temerity to visit Odessa on the anniversary of the city' liberation from occupation was met with shouts "Fascism will not pass".

    So much for "matched camps". Of course, if you put everybody of the opposing view in jail of kill them, you can sort of achieve a "match".

    Elena Hodgson 1 May 2015 10:50

    This was a massacre. Period.

    Hanwell123 1 May 2015 10:48

    Ukraine is a gangster state where if activists aren't arrested then they are shot; 6 prominent figures shot this year alone. No arrests. It's supported to the hilt by the EU who shell out enormous sums to keep it from bankruptcy.


    nnedjo 1 May 2015 08:42

    This is the news from the Ukraine crisis Media Center:

    Odesa, April 27, 2015 – Vitaly Kozhukhar, coordinator of the Self-Defense of Odesa, Varvara Chernoivanenko, a spokesman for the Right Sector of Odesa held a briefing on the topic: "May 2 this year in Odesa. How a single headquarters of the patriotic forces preparing to hold a day of mourning for those killed in the city"...
    Varvara Chernoivanenko said that for all patriots of Ukraine is important that May 2 was peaceful day. Patriotic forces create patrols that will keep order in the area of ​​Cathedral Square, which will host a memorial meeting for all those, who died on 2 May. They will make every effort to ensure peace and order. Already, the city has operational headquarters of the patriotic forces. Their representatives will stop all provocations. At the same time, according to Varvara Chernoivanenko, on their part will not be any aggression.

    Thus, the "patriotic forces", which I suppose are responsible for burning people alive in the building of Trade Unions in Odessa, will now protect those who survived and who should hold the memorial service for their relatives and friends, victims of Odessa massacre. The only question is, from whom they should protect them?
    I mean, this lady from the Right Sector boasts that they organized patrols of its members all over the city. Well, you can bet that in these patrols will be at least some, if not all of those who threw Molotov cocktails at the building of trade unions, and beaten with clubs or even shot at those who tried to escape from the fire. Because, as this article shows, none of them has even been charged, let alone be convicted of that crime.
    So, can we then conclude that the executioners of the victims of the Odessa massacre will now provide protection to those who mourn the victims, which is a paradox of its kind.
    And how these patrols of "patriotic forces" operating in reality, you can watch in this video, which was filmed during the visit of Poroshenko in Odessa, on the day of the celebration of liberation of the city in WWII, 10 April. At the beginning of the film, the guys from "Patriotic patrol" argue with a group of anti-fascists, demanding that they reject one of their flag. And then at one point (0:31 of the video), one of these guys from patrol says:
    "Didn't burn enough of you, eh?"


    MaoChengJi 1 May 2015 07:45

    Ah, of course: both sides are to blame, because before the massacre an extreme nationalist militant died, under circumstanced unknown (shot in self-defense, perhaps? who knows).

    Nice.

    a pro-Ukraine member of the extreme nationalist organisation

    Even nicer: 'pro-Ukraine extreme nationalist'. Pro-Ukraine? Which kind of Ukraine?

    I find that one of the most misleading elements in these west-interpreted stories is "pro-Russian" and "pro-Ukrainian" labels.

    The so-called "pro-Russian" side is, in fact, pro-Ukraine and anti-fascist. Here's a photo (from wikipedia) of some of the people (or their comrades) who were massacred in Odessa a year ago:
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/RussianSpringOdessa20140420_08.JPG

    6i9vern 1 May 2015 07:43

    Truth? One doesn't look for truth in the Graun - the house journal of European Post-Democracy.

    The truth will occasionally slip out of one of the Post-Democrats - the Czech diplomat Vaclav Bartuska, for example:

    "Groups of civilians - including men, women and children - seize government buildings. Within two days they get arms and after that women and children disappear, leaving only the armed men. If they are quickly resisted, as it was done in Odessa where they were simply burned to death, or Dnepropetrovsk, where they were simply killed and buried by the side of the road, everything will be calm. If this is not done, then there will be war. That's all."

    The journos of the Graun who want to carry on attending their dinner parties and pretend to be liberal and decent folk have better sense than to state matters truthfully.


    6i9vern 1 May 2015 07:43

    Truth? One doesn't look for truth in the Graun - the house journal of European Post-Democracy.

    The truth will occasionally slip out of one of the Post-Democrats - the Czech diplomat Vaclav Bartuska, for example:

    "Groups of civilians - including men, women and children - seize government buildings. Within two days they get arms and after that women and children disappear, leaving only the armed men. If they are quickly resisted, as it was done in Odessa where they were simply burned to death, or Dnepropetrovsk, where they were simply killed and buried by the side of the road, everything will be calm. If this is not done, then there will be war. That's all."

    The journos of the Graun who want to carry on attending their dinner parties and pretend to be liberal and decent folk have better sense than to state matters truthfully.


    Vladimir Makarenko Celtiberico 1 May 2015 06:20

    They took it from Odessa being a symbol of Black Sea and a while ago a Russian poet said: Chernoe More - Vor na Vore.
    Black Sea - a thief by thief.

    normankirk 1 May 2015 06:14

    This is a shameless attempt to whitewash a massacre.There is plenty of evidence on you tube Every one has cell phones which can record events as they unfold. This is why the American police can no longer get away with murder. The European parliament held a hearing in Brussels to hear the Odessa survivors. there was a concerted effort from Maidan activists from Kiev to shut down the survivors testimony. A Europarliament deputy from the Czech republic Miroslav said "This is simply shocking. this is an evidence of fascism not being disappeared from European countries.He blamed Parubiy, co founder of far right Svoboda party and Kolomoisky, paymaster of neo nazi militia for the massacre at Odessa. All this is recorded. Ignorance can no longer be a defence


    ID075732 1 May 2015 05:53

    The US Holocaust Memorial Museum quotes the following, famous text by Pastor Martin Niemoller about the cowardice of intellectuals following the Nazis':

    First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-
    Because I was not a Socialist.
    Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-
    Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
    Because I was not a Jew.
    Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.

    It's time for the MSM to realise that the same is happening Ukraine - for which the Odessa massacre is a warning. It's time they stopped playing intellectual games to prop up what is a fascist regime in Kiev.


    BunglyPete 1 May 2015 05:48

    Just in case those involved in the production of this article do read or hear of these comments.. Do you not realise we have Google and Youtube now? You can verify anything within a few keystrokes.

    You do not need to rely on the evil Russian media, you can watch the eyewitness videos yourself.

    I mean this seriously, if you are going to attempt to prove something then at least realise that you will need to go to more lengths to do so. In the context of the greater 'propaganda war', articles like this are nonsensical, as you merely serve to discredit yourself, and encourage people to move to alternative media sources.

    If you want to discredit the Russian narrative then discredit it, don't write things that discredit your own narrative.

    You don't need to bill me for this advice it comes for free.


    SHappens 1 May 2015 04:30

    Many allege that investigators are dragging their feet for political reasons, possibly to cover up high-level complicity.

    At the beginning of the unrest, the most virulent reaction came from supporters of Ukrainian football clubs. But they were soon joined by a well-organized gang of self-defense that came in a column of about 100 people dressed in military fatigues and relatively well equipped.
    Members of the Ukrainian security forces withdrew from the scene allowing the rightwing radicals to block the exits and firebomb the building forcing many to jump from open windows to the pavement below where they died on impact. The few who survived the fall were savagely beaten with clubs and chains by the nearly 300 extremist thugs who had gathered on the street.

    Street fighting thugs don't typically waste their time barricading exits unless it is part of a plan, a plan to create a big-enough incident to change the narrative of what is going on in the country. None of the victims of the tragedy were armed.

    This isn't the first time the US has tried to pull something like this off. In 2006, the Bush administration used a similar tactic in Iraq. That's when Samarra's Golden Dome Mosque was blown up in an effort to change the public's perception of the conflict from an armed struggle against foreign occupation into a civil war.

    So who authorized the attack on Odessa's Trade Unions House? Could it be that the Ukrainian Security Services were supervised by some external mercenaries just like the Oluja blitzkrieg in Croatia back in 1995 when the Croatian National Guard was then supervised and managed by MPRI, an US SMP based in Virginia? Because in Kiev, dozens of specialists from the US CIA and FBI were advising the Ukrainian government helping Kiev end the rebellion in the east of Ukraine and set up a functioning security structure. (report, AFP).

    Whatever and if ever an inquiry succeeds, fact is that the government in Kiev bears direct responsibility, and is complicit in these criminal activities for they allowed extremists and radicals to burn unarmed people alive.

    warehouse_guy 1 May 2015 04:30

    Tatyana Gerasimova also says the case is getting killed off in court, put that on your headline.

    alpykog 1 May 2015 04:30

    Nothing unusual about police, army and terrorists working together. I remember the British army in Belfast actually running joint patrols in broad daylight with Loyalist terrorists through Catholic areas and that was the tip of the iceberg. Try not to feel "holier than thou" when you read this stuff.

    ID075732 1 May 2015 04:23

    Rumours swirl of a higher death toll, the use of poisonous gas and the body of a pregnant woman garrotted by pro-Ukraine fanatics.

    Clearly the author has not watched the footage filmed inside the building after the massacre - this was no "swirling rumour". Clearly the footage wasn't faked either. It showed may murdered victims with burns to their heads and arms with bodies and clothes unscorched, not caused by the actual fire.

    Also those that have studied the many videos available of the unfolding events saw a much more an orchestrated attack on the Trade Union building with fires breaking out in rooms further away from the seat of the original fire. Also two masked figures on the roof before the fire started in the building.

    Reports that the exits were blocked and a number of masked pro-Ukrainians were inside the building not just on the roof, don't figure in this report.

    ploughmanlunch 1 May 2015 03:41

    'While many pro-Ukraine activists helped the rescue effort, others punched, kicked and beat those who fled the burning building. "There was blood and water all over the courtyard," said Elena, who escaped via a fireman's ladder. "They were shouting 'on your knees, on your knees'."

    This sums up, in my opinion, the whole sordid mess that is present Ukraine.

    The majority of ordinary Ukrainians living under the authority of Kiev will broadly agree with their Government, but are civilised and are probably horrified by the violence perpetrated by both sides in the war.

    Unfortunately, however, there is a significant minority of extremist Ukrainian Nationalists that readily resort to violence and intimidation and revile Russian speaking 'separatists' in the Donbas ( and elsewhere ).

    Even more unfortunately, the fanatical far right have a disproportionate influence in the Kiev Parliament and even the Government; a fact conveniently overlooked by the incredibly indulgent Western powers. The present Kiev regime is blatantly anti-democratic and lacks any humanitarian concern for the desperate plight of citizens still living in Donbas, ( unpaid pensions, economic and humanitarian blockade ).

    This crisis still has a long way to go, and I believe has not yet reached it's nadir. A brighter future for all the people of Ukraine will require unbiased and honest involvement of the great powers, East and West.

    Geo kosmopolitenko 1 May 2015 03:22

    Some spin doctors in Washington would sarcastically smile if they ever read this sadly tragic article.

    Kiselev 1 May 2015 03:20

    Symbol of separated Ukrainian society...
    Whatever western Ukrainians told us.

    [May 01, 2015] A Return to the Peace Party by Rep. John J. Duncan Jr.

    "President Eisenhower, one of our greatest military leaders, was another "Peacenik" Republican. He knew the horrors of war, unlike many modern-day chickenhawks."

    The American Conservative

    A few weeks ago, I spoke to about 200 people at the famous Willard Hotel in Washington in a program put on by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. I had been told that this was a group of CEOs and owners of major companies in Southern California, obviously a very upper-income group.

    I got to a point in my speech where I said: "It is long past the time when we need to stop trying to run the whole world and start putting our own people and our own Country first once again."

    Much to my surprise, the audience broke into applause. Middle- and lower-income groups have applauded when I have said similar things in my district and around the country. But many upper-income people claim to be moderates, and, contrary to popular belief, conservatives lose most very wealthy areas two-to-one or worse.

    I have spoken to a very wide variety of groups in Washington, around the country, and in my district, and I have gotten an overwhelmingly positive response every time I have said that it has been a horrible mistake to spend trillions on unnecessary wars in the Middle East.

    When I was a teenager, I remember reading a publication from the Republican National Committee that said, "Democrats start wars, Republicans end them."

    There was a time, until recent years, that the Republican Party could make a legitimate claim to being the Peace Party.

    I sent my first paycheck as a bag boy at the A & P-$19 and some cents-as a contribution to the Barry Goldwater campaign. I have worked in Republican campaigns at the national state and local levels for over 50 years. And it saddens me to hear almost all the Republican candidates for President try to outdo each other in their hawkishness.

    Based on the response I have gotten, I think it is a recipe for defeat if my Republican party becomes known as a party favoring permanent, forever wars-war without end.

    All of our candidates try to convince people that they are like Ronald Reagan. President Reagan once wrote that we should follow these four principles:

    (1) The United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest;

    (2) If the decision is made to commit our forces to combat abroad, it must be done with the clear intent and support needed to win … and there must be clearly defined and realistic objectives;

    (3) Before we commit our troops to combat, there must be reasonable assurance that the cause we are fighting for and the actions we take will have the support of the American people and Congress, and

    (4) Even after all these other tests are met, our troops should be committed to combat abroad only as a last resort, when no other choice is available.

    Reagan was certainly no warmonger Republican, or a man eager to go to war.

    President Eisenhower, one of our greatest military leaders, was another "Peacenik" Republican. He knew the horrors of war, unlike many modern-day chickenhawks.

    He famously warned us at the end of his Presidency about the dangers of being controlled by a very powerful military-industrial complex. I think he would be shocked at how far we have gone down the road that he warned us against.

    In his book Ike's Bluff, Evan Thomas shared this story:

    When Defense Secretary Neil McElroy warned him that further budget cuts could harm national security, Eisenhower acerbically replied, 'If you go to any military installation in the world where the American flag is flying and tell the commander that Ike says he'll give him an extra star for his shoulder if he cuts his budget, there'll be such a rush to cut costs that you'll have to get out of the way.'

    Thomas added that Eisenhower "would periodically sigh to Andy Goodpaster, 'God help the Nation when it has a President who doesn't know as much about the military as I do.'"

    Pat Buchanan wrote in these pages on March 20, "In November 1956, President Eisenhower, enraged he had not been forewarned of their invasion of Egypt, ordered the British, French and Israelis to get out of Suez and Sinai. They did as told. How far we have fallen from the America of Ike…"

    Sen. Robert Taft, who was sometimes referred to as Mr. Republican in the 1940s and '50s, once said, "No foreign policy can be justified except a policy devoted… to the protection of the liberty of the American people, with war only as the last resort and only to preserve that liberty."

    Most of the Republican presidential candidates have attacked President Obama for acting in some ways that are unconstitutional, and he has. But where in our constitution does it give us the authority to run other countries as we have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, even making small business loans and training local police forces?

    My Republican party was always the party of fiscal conservatism. Yet with a national debt of over $18 trillion, how can we justify continually spending mega-billions in religious civil wars between Shia and Sunni?

    Some people and companies that make money off an interventionist foreign policy always very quickly fall back on the slur of isolationism.

    But I and probably almost all readers of The American Conservative believe in trade and tourism and cultural and educational exchange with other countries, and in helping out during humanitarian crises. We just don't believe in endless war.

    We are told that if we don't support an interventionist foreign policy, that this means we don't believe in American exceptionalism. But this nation did not become exceptional because we got involved in every little war around the globe. It became exceptional because of our great system of free enterprise and because we gave our people more individual freedom than any other country.

    I have said in thousands of speeches that we are blessed beyond belief to live in this country, and that the United States is without question the greatest country in the history of the world.

    But there was much less anti-Americanism around the world when we tried to mind our own business and take care of our own people. And this nation had more friends when we followed a policy of peace through strength, not one of peace through endless war.

    Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. represents the 2nd District of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

    [May 01, 2015] Anatol Lieven reviews 'The New American Militarism' by Andrew Bacevich · LRB 20 October 2005

    Amazingly insightful review !!!
    The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew Bacevich
    Oxford, 270 pp, Ł16.99, 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.


    Vol. 27 No. 20 · 20 October 2005 " Anatol Lieven " We do not deserve these people
    pages 11-12 | 3337 words

    [Apr 29, 2015] Book Review - Washington Rules - America's Path to Permanent War - By Andrew J. Bacevich

    NYTimes.com

    According to MIC theorists, prolonged international conflict after World War II produced high levels of military expenditure, creating powerful domestic interest groups that required a Cold War ideology to safeguard their power and prestige with in the state's political and economic structure. These interest groups, which arose among the military services, corporations, high government officials, members of Congress, labor unions, scientists and scholars, and defense societies (private organizations that combine industrialists, financiers, and business people involved in weapons production, acquisition, and the like and members of the armed forces), came to occupy powerful positions with in the state. They became mutually supportive, and, on defense-related matters, their influence exceeded that of any existing countervailing coalitions or interests. Theorists differed over whether civilians or the military dominated a MIC or whether they shared power. But most agreed that civilians could match and even surpass those in uniform in their dedication to military creeds. Most scholars pointed out that MIC operations constituted military Keynesianism, a means of stimulating the economy; others went further, proposing defense spending as an industrial policy, albeit a limited and economically distorting one. Some critics of vast and continued spending on the armed forces worried that military professionalism was under-mined by focusing inordinate attention on institutional growth and the advancement of careers instead of defending the nation.

    Since most MIC theorists regarded Cold War ideology as either false or exaggerated, they maintained that its adherents either deliberately engaged in deception in order to further their own interests or falsely believed themselves to be acting in broader public or national interests-or some combination of the two. Whatever the case, proponents of arms without end, so-called hawks, served to perpetuate Cold War ideological strains. The close connection between the MIC and U.S. Cold War ideology not with standing, some MIC theorists maintained that capitalism had no monopoly on defense and war complexes. The former Soviet Union, they argued, had its own complex, and the U.S. and Soviet MICs interacted to perpetuate a mutually advantageous but in fact enormously dangerous and ultimately destructive state of heightened competition.

    Opponents of MIC

    In 1947, Hanson W. Baldwin, the hawkish military correspondent of this newspaper, warned that the demands of preparing America for a possible war would "wrench and distort and twist the body politic and the body economic . . . prior to war." He wondered whether America could confront the Soviet Union "without becoming a 'garrison state' and destroying the very qualities and virtues and principles we originally set about to save."

    It is that same dread of a martial America that drives Andrew J. Bacevich today. Bacevich forcefully denounces the militarization that he says has already become a routine, unremarked-upon part of our daily lives - and will only get worse as America fights on in Afghanistan and beyond. He rips into what he calls a postwar American dogma "so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness as to have all but disappeared from view." "Washington Rules" is a tough-minded, bracing and intelligent polemic against some 60 years of American militarism.

    This outrage at a warlike America has special bite coming from Bacevich. No critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could have brighter conservative credentials. He is a blunt-talking Midwesterner, a West Point graduate who served for 23 years in the United States Army, a Vietnam veteran who retired as a colonel, and a sometime contributor to National Review. "By temperament and upbringing, I had always taken comfort in orthodoxy," he writes. But George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, Bacevich says, "pushed me fully into opposition. Claims that once seemed elementary - above all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes of American power - now appeared preposterous."

    From Harry S. Truman's presidency to today, Bacevich argues, Americans have trumpeted the credo that they alone must "lead, save, liberate and ultimately transform the world." That crusading mission is implemented by what Bacevich caustically calls "the sacred trinity": "U.S. military power, the Pentagon's global footprint and an American penchant for intervention." This threatening posture might have made some sense in 1945, he says, but it is catastrophic today. It relegates America to "a condition of permanent national security crisis."

    Bacevich has two main targets in his sights.

    • The first are the commissars of the national security establishment, who perpetuate these "Washington rules" of global dominance. By Washington, he means not just the federal government, but also a host of satraps who gain power, cash or prestige from this perpetual state of emergency: defense contractors, corporations, big banks, interest groups, think tanks, universities, television networks and The New York Times. He complains that an unthinking Washington consensus on global belligerence is just as strong among mainstream Democrats as among mainstream Republicans. Those who step outside this monolithic view, like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, are quickly dismissed as crackpots, Bacevich says. This leaves no serious checks or balances against the overweening national security state.
    • Bacevich's second target is the sleepwalking American public. He says that they notice foreign policy only in the depths of a disaster that, like Vietnam or Iraq, is too colossal to ignore. As he puts it, "The citizens of the United States have essentially forfeited any capacity to ask first-order questions about the fundamentals of national security policy."

    Bacevich is singularly withering on American public willingness to ignore those who do their fighting for them. He warns of "the evisceration of civic culture that results when a small praetorian guard shoulders the burden of waging perpetual war, while the great majority of citizens purport to revere its members, even as they ignore or profit from their service." Here he has a particular right to be heard: on May 13, 2007, his son Andrew J. Bacevich Jr., an Army first lieutenant, was killed on combat patrol in Iraq. Bacevich does not discuss his tragic loss here, but wrote devastatingly about it at the time in The Washington Post: "Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check."

    Bacevich is less interested in foreign policy here (he offers only cursory remarks about the objectives and capabilities of countries like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran) than in the way he thinks militarism has corrupted America. In his acid account of the inexorable growth of the national security state, he emphasizes not presidents, who come and go, but the architects of the system that envelops them: Allen W. Dulles, who built up the C.I.A., and Curtis E. LeMay, who did the same for the Strategic Air Command. Both of them, Bacevich says, would get memorials on the Mall in Washington if we were honest about how the capital really works.

    The mandarins thrived under John F. Kennedy, whose administration "was fixating on Fidel Castro with the same feverish intensity as the Bush administration exactly 40 years later was to fixate on Saddam Hussein - and with as little strategic logic." The Washington consensualists were thrown badly off balance by defeat in Vietnam but, Bacevich says, soon regained their stride under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton - setting the stage for George W. Bush. Barack Obama campaigned on change and getting out of Iraq, but when it comes to the war in Afghanistan or military budgets, he is, Bacevich insists, just another cat's-paw for the Washington establishment: "Obama would not challenge the tradition that Curtis LeMay and Allen Dulles had done so much to erect."

    Bacevich sometimes overdoes the high dudgeon. He writes, "The folly and hubris of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended 'global war on terror' without the foggiest notion of what victory would look like, how it would be won and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved only by slightly mad German warlords." Which slightly mad German warlords exactly? Bacevich, an erudite historian, could mean some princelings or perhaps Kaiser Wilhelm II, but the standard reading will be Hitler.

    And he underplays some of the ways in which Americans have resisted militarism. The all-volunteer force, for all its deep inequities, is a testament to American horror at conscription. He never mentions Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the great New York senator who fought government secrecy and quixotically tried to abolish the C.I.A. after the end of the cold war. Although Bacevich admires Dwight D. Eisenhower for his farewell address warning against the forces of the ­"military-industrial complex," he slams Eisenhower for enabling those same forces as president. Yet the political scientist Aaron L. Friedberg and other scholars credit Eisenhower for resisting demands for huge boosts in defense spending.

    Bacevich, in his own populist way, sees himself as updating a tradition - from George Washington and John Quincy Adams to J. William Fulbright and Martin Luther King Jr. - that calls on America to exemplify freedom but not actively to spread it. It isn't every American's tradition (and it offers pretty cold comfort to Poles, Rwandans and Congolese), but it's one that's necessary to keep the country from going off the rails. As foreign policy debates in the run-up to the November elections degenerate into Muslim-bashing bombast, the country is lucky to have a fierce, smart peacemonger like ­Bacevich.

    WASHINGTON RULES, America's Path to Permanent War By Andrew J. Bacevich 286 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $25

    [Apr 28, 2015] Military-Industrial Complex Facts, information

    Encyclopedia.com

    According to MIC theorists, prolonged international conflict after World War II produced high levels of military expenditure, creating powerful domestic interest groups that required a Cold War ideology to safeguard their power and prestige with in the state's political and economic structure. These interest groups, which arose among the military services, corporations, high government officials, members of Congress, labor unions, scientists and scholars, and defense societies (private organizations that combine industrialists, financiers, and business people involved in weapons production, acquisition, and the like and members of the armed forces), came to occupy powerful positions with in the state. They became mutually supportive, and, on defense-related matters, their influence exceeded that of any existing countervailing coalitions or interests. Theorists differed over whether civilians or the military dominated a MIC or whether they shared power. But most agreed that civilians could match and even surpass those in uniform in their dedication to military creeds. Most scholars pointed out that MIC operations constituted military Keynesianism, a means of stimulating the economy; others went further, proposing defense spending as an industrial policy, albeit a limited and economically distorting one. Some critics of vast and continued spending on the armed forces worried that military professionalism was under-mined by focusing inordinate attention on institutional growth and the advancement of careers instead of defending the nation.

    Since most MIC theorists regarded Cold War ideology as either false or exaggerated, they maintained that its adherents either deliberately engaged in deception in order to further their own interests or falsely believed themselves to be acting in broader public or national interests-or some combination of the two. Whatever the case, proponents of arms without end, so-called hawks, served to perpetuate Cold War ideological strains. The close connection between the MIC and U.S. Cold War ideology not with standing, some MIC theorists maintained that capitalism had no monopoly on defense and war complexes. The former Soviet Union, they argued, had its own complex, and the U.S. and Soviet MICs interacted to perpetuate a mutually advantageous but in fact enormously dangerous and ultimately destructive state of heightened competition.

    Opponents of MIC theory insisted that arms spending genuinely reflected, rather than in any way created, national security threats. The armed services and their weapons were essential, they argued, for deterring formidable and aggressive foes. Most analysts, however, believed that an accurate assessment of a MIC rests somewhere between the assessments of proponents and critics of MIC theory. Such a viewpoint asserted that, while national defense spending and the industrial and political interests associated with it can exacerbate tensions between the United States and its adversaries, they do not themselves cause these tensions, nor do they prevent their resolution. It is likely that much of the general population subscribed to this more measured view.

    Historical Background

    Cold War–era debate over a MIC actually obscured understanding of a critical subject by removing it from its proper historical context. Military spending has created special problems since the nation's origins. Vested interests made it exceptionally difficult to close down, consolidate, or move military and naval bases. Too often, national defense and armed forces' welfare were subordinated to economic and political purposes. These corrupting forces were kept under control principally by limiting-often drastically so-military expenditures during peacetime. Special circumstances began to alter that pattern at the end of the nineteenth century. As the United States began expanding abroad, it built a new navy starting in the 1880s of steel, steam, propeller, armor, and modern ordnance. To build this navy required assembling a production team of political leaders, naval officers, and industrialists. Here are to be found the origins of a MIC. Such teams, which continued to exist at the beginning of the twenty-first century, grew out of the need to apply modern science and technology to weaponry on a continuing basis. Private and public production teams were particularly important in the development and growth of aircraft between the two world wars and aerospace in the post–World War II period. And scientists, of course, were indispensable in nearly all nuclear developments.

    During World War I, the United States had to plan its economy to meet the massive and increasingly sophisticated supply demands of the armed services. That reality revealed the country's unique and complicated civil–military relations. Emergency conditions led private interests to combine their power with that of the military in order to influence, and even shape, national defense and war policies. In the absence of a higher civil service system, it fell upon business people, professionals, and others to devise methods of harnessing the economy for war. The ultimate result was the creation of the War Industries Board (WIB) in 1917. The board was staffed and directed largely by private industrialists serving the public for a token salary, while remaining on the payroll of their private firms. Organizing the supply side of economic mobilization, WIB could function properly only after the demand side, and especially the armed services, were integrated into it. Fearful of and unwilling to accept their dependence upon civilian institutions for the fulfillment of the military mission, the armed services resisted joining WIB. They did so only when threatened with losing control of supply operations entirely. Once industrial and military elements joined their operations in WIB, the board was able to maintain stable economic conditions in a planned wartime economy.

    Concerned about the military disruption of future economics of warfare, Congress in 1920 authorized the War Department to plan for procurement and economic mobilization. Carrying out these responsibilities with the Navy Department and under the guidance of industry, business, and finance, the army wrote and submitted for public review a series of industrial mobilization plans, the last and most important of which was published in 1939. Based principally on WIB, this plan outlined how the economy would be organized for World War II.

    The economics of World War II, however, became intensely controversial. Interwar developments had anticipated this controversy over the formalized alliance between the military and industrial interests. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and culminating in the Senate Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry (Nye Committee) in 1934–1936, antiwar critics insisted that modern warfare was creating an "unhealthy alliance" between economic and military groups that threatened both the peace and the country's economic future. During World War II, New Dealers, organized labor, small businesses, consumer advocates, and others constantly challenged the War Production Board (WPB), which, like its predecessors, was dominated by a conservative coalition made up principally of corporations and the military. These challenges met with little success, although they managed to make war mobilization exceptionally tumultuous. Overall, however, conservative mobilization patterns and wartime prosperity severely weakened New Deal reform instincts.

    MIC in Operation

    Except in the aircraft, shipbuilding, and machine tool industries, businessmen after World War II favored a return to the familiar American pattern of reducing military spending to minimal levels. Only after the administration of Harry Truman (1945–1953) developed its Cold War containment polices did Department of Defense (DOD) budgets, which had been declining steadily since 1945, begin dramatically rising in 1950. In the context of military expenditures running into the hundreds of billions of dollars, there emerged patterns associated with a full-blown MIC: defense firms such as Lockheed Aircraft Corporation wholly or significantly dependent upon DOD contracts; armed services committed to weapons systems in which military careers are at stake; states like California heavily tied to military spending; "think tanks" such as the Rand Corporation and university research projects funded by the DOD; a high percentage of scientific and engineering talent and research and development dollars devoted to weaponry; industrial executives and military officers circulating among government posts, defense contractors, and related institutions; charges of massive waste, duplication, cost overruns, useless and malfunctioning weapons, some so far as to be dangerous to their users; all while funding for health, education, welfare, and other civilian needs suffered by comparison. Nuclear weapons capable of destroying civilization and creating enormous problems of waste disposal and pollution greatly complicated all MIC problems. So, too, did the fact that the United States emerged as the world's principal exporter of arms, ranging from the simplest to the most sophisticated, and extended its reach throughout the globe. All of these trends raised grave problems for and led to intense disputes about the free flow of scientific information, academic freedom, and matters of loyalty, security, and secrecy in a democratic society.

    Although the Cold War ended, numerous experts insisted that the United States did not realistically adjust its defense mission accordingly; strong and entrenched interests tenaciously resist change. Hence, a relatively large military establishment and a vast nuclear arsenal continued to exist to cover the remote possibility of fighting two major regional wars simultaneously, while also engaging in peacemaking. At the same time, the United States pursued highly questionable antimissile defense systems that could end up costing trillions of dollars. Although the issue is no longer headline news, many contended that a military-industrial complex still existed, even thrived, despite the much less hospitable circumstances.

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    • Greider, William. Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace. New York: Public Affairs, 1998.
    • Koistinen, Paul A. C. The Military-Industrial Complex: A Historical Perspective. New York: Praeger, 1980.
    • Lowen, Rebecca S. Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
    • Markusen, Ann, and Joel Yudken. Dismantling the Cold War Economy. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
    • McNaugher, Thomas L. New Weapons, Old Politics: America's Military Procurement Muddle. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1989.
    • Schwartz, Stephen I., ed. Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998.
    • Waddell, Brian. The War against the New Deal: World War II and American Democracy. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001.

    Paul A. C.Koistinen

    See also Arms Race and Disarmament ; Defense, National ;

    [Apr 28, 2015] Masters of War Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire

    amazon.com

    Masters of War is a wide-ranging, coherent, and critical account of the 'war on terrorism' and post-9/11 foreign policy. It gives you the whole picture -- you get the war on Afghanistan, the weaponization of space, the quest for oil dominance, and the patriarchal militarization of culture, all placed in a larger imperial context. If you want to go beyond the headlines and the sound-bites, buy this book..

    –Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond and The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism

    This is an excellent collection of articles on the crucial question of U.S. militarism, its impact abroad and within the US itself, and its relationship to imperialism. Over the last several years it has become clear that the threat to peace and social justice lies not only in corporate globalization, but in the vastly disproportionate military and economic power of the U.S., and the willingness of a political elite to use that power ruthlessly. Despite the urgency of this question, little has been written on it. This collection begins to fill this gap. These articles address many facets of U.S. expansionism and militarism, and show how both undermine democracy here and abroad..

    –Barbara Epstein, History of Consciousness Department, UC-Santa Cruz and co-editor of Striking Terror: America's New War

    The main value of this book lies in its articulating a perspective on post September 11th America that is an important counter-weight to the usual views we get from the mainstream publications and pundits in this country.

    Journal of Psychohistory

    About the Author

    Carl Boggs is Professor of Social Sciences at National University in Los Angeles. He is the author of numerous publications including The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere.

    [Apr 26, 2015] State Crime Current Perspectives by Dawn Rothe & Christopher W. Mullins

    This is pretty interesting collection of articles. Some are available from Googlebooks preview...
    Google Books

    Pages: 368 , ISBN: 978-0813549019

    ... ... ...

    While the end of the cold war produced demands for a "peace dividend," economic and political elites linked to the military industrial-petroleum complex did not acquiesce to the reduction of their power that would have resulted from a realignment of American goals. Instead they were soon searching for new "enemies," and with them new justifications for continued imperial expansion. A sharp struggle soon emerged between rival factions over how to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the fall of the Soviet Union while deflecting threats presented by the possibility of a new isolationism. One group supported a globalist and internationalist approach typical of the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The other, which included hard-core nationalists and neoconservatives, argued for a more nationalist, unilaterist, and militarist revision of America's open door imperialism. In was this latter group that would, unsurprisingly, find itself in a position to shape America's imperial project for the twenty-first century.

    [Apr 26, 2015] The New American Exceptionalism - Donald E. Pease

    Google Books

    [Apr 25, 2015] The Military Industrial Complex At 50 - David Swanson

    Unfortunately all trump cards are in the hands of MIC and Wall Street and chances to change is are pretty remote, despite impoverishment of middle class in recent years...
    Google Books

    My major thing that I want to talk about this afternoon is the need for us all to, as American citizens, challenge our fellow citizens to reconsider this whole ideology of American exceptionalism which is one of the things that keeps the military industrial complex in power, that keeps us fearful that we might lose our special place in the world, and that we as five percent of humanity need to find a way to deal with the other ninety-fie percent on the basis of the equality of all human persons,

    [Apr 25, 2015] American Exceptionalism Revisited: The Military-Industrial Complex, Racial Tension, and the Underdeveloped Welfare State

    April 02, 2010 | American Sociological Review 75(2):185-204

    ABSTRACT We examine Democrats' decline in the House of Representatives from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s. Debates over American exceptionalism in the realm of social policy pay surprisingly little attention to a profound transformation that occurred during and after World War II: on the international stage, the United States emerged as the hegemon; at home, the Pentagon became the largest and most powerful agency in the federal bureaucracy. In modeling electoral losses suffered by Democrats, we show that World War II mobilization played an important role. First, Democrats lost ground in congressional districts where the nascent military-industrial complex was created, specifically in aircraft manufacturing centers. Second, the impact of aircraft manufacturing intersected with wartime in-migration of non-whites. Democrats suffered significantly greater losses where both non-white population and aircraft manufacturing employment increased. Our findings corroborate accounts of the social welfare state that stress partisan control and path dependence. Conservative congresses of the immediate postwar years left an imposing legacy, making it difficult to establish social welfare reforms for decades to come. Whereas most accounts of the rise and fall of the New Deal emphasize different aspects of domestic processes, we demonstrate that militarism and expansion of national security agencies undermined congressional support at a critical juncture. This intersection of wartime mobilization and social policy-and not an inherent and enduring institutional impediment to social welfare-contributed to under-development of the welfare state and abandonment of universal social welfare programs in the United States.

    [Apr 25, 2015] International relations expert to lecture on the end of American exceptionalism

    For more about Andrew Bacevich views on the subject see Andrew Bacevich on the New American Militarism
    October 03, 2014 | ASU News

    ... ... ...

    Bacevich sees the political, military and economic issues that face America as deeply interconnected. He suggests we can address these issues by respecting power and its limits, suppressing claims of American exceptionalism and by being skeptical of easy solutions, especially those involving force.

    In this lecture, Bacevich will discuss how various presidential administrations have led America on an increasingly unsustainable path, as well as the long term effects of the United States involvement in recent conflicts around the globe.

    "The Iraq War didn't end when the last U.S. troops departed in 2011. It just continued without American participation." Says Bacevich. "Now, the U.S. has resumed its role in this ongoing struggle. The question is why we have learned so little from our experience thus far."

    A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, Bacevich received his doctorate in American diplomatic history from Princeton University. With the U.S. Army, he served during the Vietnam War, held posts in Germany and the Persian Gulf, and retired with the rank of Colonel. Since retiring, Bacevich has taught at both West Point and Johns Hopkins, and he was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He has also held fellowships at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

    His books include "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War" and "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism." He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, among many other news outlets. His latest book, "Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country," is a critique of the gulf between America's soldiers and the society that sends them off to war.

    The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict is an interdisciplinary research unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences that examines the role of religion as a driving force in human affairs.

    The lecture is part of the center's "Alternative Visions" lecture series. The series brings nationally and internationally recognized experts such as Peter Bergen, Elaine Pagels and Reza Aslan to campus to address the sources of conflict and strategies for resolution.

    The series is supported by a grant from philanthropist John Whiteman. For more information or to register for the lecture, see the event page.

    Matt Correa, [email protected] Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict

    [Apr 25, 2015] LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment Military Industrial Complex

    http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/08/military-industrial-complex.html

    The War Business

    And so, for the private contractors that increasingly make up the infrastructure of our armed forces, fortune has arisen from tragedy. During the first Iraq war, in 1991, one in a hundred American personnel was employed by a private contractor. In the second Iraq war, that ratio is closer to one in ten. The Washing ton Post reports that as much as one third of the rapidly expanding cost of the Iraq war is going into private U.S. bank accounts.

    The original point of this massive outflow of federal dollars was to save money. In Donald Rumsfeld's vision, privatization would bring the unbending discipline of the marketplace to bear on war itself. In 1995, well before his return to Washington, Rumsfeld presented to America his "Thoughts from the Business World on Downsizing Government," a monograph informed by his experience as both a White House chief of staff and defense secretary (under Gerald Ford) and a CEO of two large American corporations (General Instrument Corp. and G. D. Searle). "Government programs are effectively insulated from the rigors of the marketplace, and therefore are denied the possibility of failure," he wrote. "Sometimes, nothing short of outright privatization can restore the discipline of a bottom line."

    Eisenhower's Farewell Warning Was Meant For Our Time

    To be sure, there isn't really such a corporation: the Omnivore Group, as it might be called. But if there were such a company-and, mind you, there isn't-it might look a lot like the largest government contractor you've never heard of: a company known simply by the nondescript initials SAIC (for Science Applications International Corporation), initials that are always spoken letter by letter rather than formed into a pronounceable acronym. SAIC maintains its headquarters in San Diego, but its center of gravity is in Washington, D.C. With a workforce of 44,000, it is the size of a full-fledged government agency-in fact, it is larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Its anonymous glass-and-steel Washington office-a gleaming corporate box like any other-lies in northern Virginia, not far from the headquarters of the C.I.A., whose byways it knows quite well. (More than half of SAIC's employees have security clearances.) SAIC has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. The contracts number not in the dozens or scores or hundreds but in the thousands: SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion. The company's annual revenues, almost all of which come from the federal government, approached $8 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, and they are continuing to climb. SAIC's goal is to reach as much as $12 billion in revenues by 2008. As for the financial yardstick that really gets Wall Street's attention-profitability-SAIC beats the S&P 500 average. Last year ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, posted a return on revenue of 11 percent. For SAIC the figure was 11.9 percent. If "contract backlog" is any measure-that is, contracts negotiated and pending-the future seems assured. The backlog stands at $13.6 billion. That's one and a half times more than the backlog at KBR Inc., a subsidiary of the far better known government contractor once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Halliburton Company.

    It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS. In Washington these companies go by the generic name "body shops"-they supply flesh-and-blood human beings to do the specialized work that government agencies no longer can. Often they do this work outside the public eye, and with little official oversight-even if it involves the most sensitive matters of national security. The Founding Fathers may have argued eloquently for a government of laws, not of men, but what we've got instead is a government of body shops.


    Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962

    The Military-Industrial Complex. The most spectacular and important creation of the authoritarian and oligopolistic structure of economic decision-making in America is the institution called "the military industrial complex" by former President Eisenhower, the powerful congruence of interest and structure among military and business elites which affects so much of our development and destiny. Not only is ours the first generation to live with the possibility of world-wide cataclysm -- it is the first to experience the actual social preparation for cataclysm, the general militarization of American society. In 1948 Congress established Universal Military Training, the first peacetime conscription. The military became a permanent institution. Four years earlier, General Motor's Charles E. Wilson had heralded the creation of what he called the "permanent war economy," the continuous use of military spending as a solution to economic problems unsolved before the post-war boom, most notably the problem of the seventeen million jobless after eight years of the New Deal. This has left a "hidden crisis" in the allocation of resources by the American economy.

    Since our childhood these two trends -- the rise of the military and the installation of a defense-based economy -- have grown fantastically. The Department of Defense, ironically the world's largest single organization, is worth $160 billion, owns 32 million acres of America and employs half the 7.5 million persons directly dependent on the military for subsistence, has an $11 billion payroll which is larger than the net annual income of all American corporations. Defense spending in the Eisenhower era totaled $350 billions and President Kennedy entered office pledged to go even beyond the present defense allocation of sixty cents from every public dollar spent. Except for a war-induced boom immediately after "our side" bombed Hiroshima, American economic prosperity has coincided with a growing dependence on military outlay -- from 1941 to 1959 America's Gross National Product of $5.25 trillion included $700 billion in goods and services purchased for the defense effort, about one-seventh of the accumulated GNP. This pattern has included the steady concentration of military spending among a few corporations. In 1961, 86 percent of Defense Department contracts were awarded without competition. The ordnance industry of 100,000 people is completely engaged in military work; in the aircraft industry, 94 percent of 750,000 workers are linked to the war economy; shipbuilding, radio and communications equipment industries commit forty percent of their work to defense; iron and steel, petroleum, metal-stamping and machine shop products, motors and generators, tools and hardware, copper, aluminum and machine tools industries all devote at least 10 percent of their work to the same cause.

    The intermingling of Big Military and Big Industry is evidenced in the 1,400 former officers working for the 100 corporations who received nearly all the $21 billion spent in procurement by the Defense Department in 1961. The overlap is most poignantly clear in the case of General Dynamics, the company which received the best 1961 contracts, employed the most retired officers (187), and is directed by a former Secretary of the Army. A Fortune magazine profile of General Dynamics said: "The unique group of men who run Dynamics are only incidentally in rivalry with other U.S. manufacturers, with many of whom they actually act in concert. Their chief competitor is the USSR. The core of General Dynamics corporate philosophy is the conviction that national defense is a more or less permanent business." Little has changed since Wilson's proud declaration of the Permanent War Economy back in the 1944 days when the top 200 corporations possessed 80 percent of all active prime war-supply contracts.

    [Apr 24, 2015] American Exceptionalism and the Politics of Foreign Policy

    The Globalist
    Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted that America's number one national security threat is debt. Rasmussen polls show that eight out of ten Americans believe that economic threats are greater than military ones. Two out of three voters want a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes. Four out of five voters think Americans are overtaxed.

    Only a third of Americans share the Republican view of exempting the military from budget reductions. The public only supports a dozen of the United States' standing commitments to defend 56 nations.

    Only 11% of Americans want to be "global policeman," 75% think no troops should be stationed overseas except for "vital national security interests," and only 28% want to keep troops in Europe. Most Americans favor "Protect America First" - rather than "Send Americans First."

    The Democratic and Republican parties serve different constituencies and identity groups, yet both are beholden to Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, AIPAC and other major special interests.

    The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protest the corruption of the two-party system. Campaign finance reform isn't popular with politicians whose job is raising money. The left feels betrayed by the Democratic Party. The right feels betrayed by the Republican Party. And the American people are betrayed by both parties.

    Democratic and Republican exceptionalism has failed the country. We are in the midst of the greatest constitutional crisis the nation has faced in 225 years. The imperial Presidency must be ended and the executive brought back into balance with Congress and the courts.

    Political competition has become a destructive zero-sum game for the nation. Democrats pay taxes for the welfare state, and are willing to raise taxes to pay for the warfare state. Republicans pay taxes for the warfare state, but refuse to pay more taxes for the welfare state. Trillion dollar annual deficits are covered through unsustainable borrowing. Republicans and Democrats compete to be fiscally irresponsible.

    With trillion-dollar annual deficits, the time is approaching fast when credit downgrades will force significant reductions in government expenditures. By not cutting spending, Republican and Democratic inaction sets the country on a path where annual borrowing costs will be the largest individual cost in the federal budget.

    In 2011, annual interest payments climbed to $400 billion. When all-time low interest rates (currently about 3%) move up, interest payments on cumulative federal debt will exceed the Pentagon's budget.

    America's financial crisis will redefine the meaning of "strong defense." The Founders were very clear on this subject. The Constitution doesn't require a large military to protect the nation. In fact, the Founders were afraid of the military. They believed that liberty and war were incompatible. They established constitutional government to make the state work for the individual. War, however, makes the individual subservient to the state.

    Since the Cold War ended, the United States has been at war two out of every three years. None of these wars were declared by Congress as required by the Constitution. Consequently, few Americans can name every war the President is fighting.

    The United States is currently engaged in many clandestine military operations around the globe. There is no end in sight, with war aims not clearly stated or understood. President Obama, as a war president, is no longer under the law, he is the law.

    A plague on both political houses! The glory of empire is taking false communal pride in telling other countries what to do. The glory of the Republic is each individual's opportunity to do what you want to do and become what you want to be.

    The price of the Republic is accepting personal risk and failure. The price of empire is the loss of personal freedom and the collective failure of the nation.

    The Founders believed that "strong defense" meant defending our borders and active diplomacy. America must not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy and must avoid entangling alliances. Global military dominance destroys constitutional government.

    So what can be done? A place to start is heeding the words of John Quincy Adams, in his famous address to Congress on July 4, 1821. Adams explained why the preservation of American individualism - the essence of American exceptionalism - demands a noninterventionist foreign policy:

    [America] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart… Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit… [America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty.

    This is the fourth and final part of The Globalist's "Thomas Paine" series "Death of American Exceptionalism." Previous parts can be found here:
    Part I: The Idea of American Exceptionalism
    Part II: Democratic and Republican Exceptionalism
    Part III: How We Lost American Exceptionalism

    [Apr 24, 2015] "American Exceptionalism" is the Marketing Slogan of the Military Industrial Complex

    trivisonno.com

    It looks like our conquest of Iraq didn't take. So, will we spend another trillion dollars, and thousands of lives to secure Iraq's oil fields for Big Oil? One way to tell if such a plan is in the works is if media shills start shrieking about "American Exceptionalism" which is the marketing slogan of the military industrial complex.

    Small wars, such as in Yemen, can be conducted with informing the American people. But larger wars still need to be sold, and as Eric Bernays taught us, wars are sold just like corn flakes or deodorant.

    "American Exceptionalism" ranks right up there with Tony The Tiger's "They're G-r-r-r-eat!" and "By Mennen."

    [Apr 19, 2015] 'We're not interested in a fair fight' – US army commander urges NATO to confront Russia

    Apr 19, 2015 | RT News

    US army commander in Europe says Russia is a "real threat" urging NATO to stay united. The alliance is not interested in a "fair fight with anyone" and wants to have "overmatch in all systems," Lieutenant-General Frederick "Ben" Hodges believes.

    "There is a Russian threat," Hodges told the Telegraph, maintaining that Russia is involved in ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

    A key objective for NATO is not to let Russia outreach it in terms of capabilities, the general said.

    "We're not interested in a fair fight with anyone," General Hodges stated. "We want to have overmatch in all systems. I don't think that we've fallen behind but Russia has closed the gap in certain capabilities. We don't want them to close that gap," he revealed.

    [Apr 19, 2015] Iraq 2.0 The REAL Reason Hawks Oppose the Iran Deal

    Apr 19, 2015 | The National Interest
    Let's be honest for a second: 90-plus percent of supporters of the Iran framework would have supported any framework the Obama administration produced (this author included). Close to 100 percent of the opponents of the framework would have opposed any framework it produced.

    What's going on here? Why are we having this kabuki debate about a deal whose battle lines were established before it even existed? At Brookings, Jeremy Shapiro suggests that "the Iranian nuclear program is not really what opponents and proponents of the recent deal are arguing about."

    Shapiro says the bigger question is about what to do regarding "Iran's challenge to U.S. leadership" in the countries surrounding Iran and whether to "integrate Iran into the regional order."

    Those terms are fuzzy enough to make me uncomfortable, especially if what we're trying to do is clarify the debate. In Shapiro's telling, deal proponents think it will help transform Iran's intentions, while opponents simply want to squeeze Iran as hard as possible as soon as possible. I think Shapiro is basically right about opponents, but misses something regarding supporters.

    First, consider the hawks. At the outset of the JPOA, they were pounding the table about imminent calamity. In 2013, former IAEA chief Olli Heinonen warned an Israel Project conference call that Iran was two weeks away from a bomb (Two weeks!). Lindsey Graham criticized the interim agreement, calling it a giveaway to Iran. Similarly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it "the deal of the century" for Iran.

    Now, those same people who were frantic about the ticking clock couldn't care less that it's been wound backward. Ten years with no Iranian bomb is treated like a dirty penny. For his part, Graham now says that the JPOA should be extended because it's preferable to the P5+1's framework agreement.

    In unguarded moments, many hawks concede they are against an agreement in principle. As Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's strategic affairs minister Yuval Steinitz admitted recently, "we are against a deal in general." Similarly, Senator Tom Cotton, author of the embarrassing letter imploring Iran's Supreme Leader to scuttle the deal, admitted to an audience at the Heritage Foundation before writing the letter:

    The end of these negotiations isn't an unintended consequence of Congressional action, it is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug, so to speak.

    So, despite their protests that what they're really after is a "better deal," their own words betray the truth: They oppose any deal. Vox's Max Fisher suggests that the reason is because their real desire is to change the Iranian regime by force, and a diplomatic deal makes that less likely. It's as plausible an explanation as I've heard.

    So what about us doves? Most of us would have supported any deal the Obama administration deemed good enough to get past Congress. Why? Because we recognize that international politics, and in particular dealing with Iran on this issue in 2015, is the realm of least-worst alternatives, not slam dunks.

    Jeffrey Lewis explains the logic of supporting the framework agreement:

    The thing is, there is no "good" deal. Any deal will be a compromise that leaves in place many dangers to Israel, as well as Iran's neighbors and the United States. The essential thing is to delay as long as possible an Iranian nuclear bomb. Almost any deal will buy more time than if talks were to collapse… [T]here is no good reason to believe that walking away from a deal now puts the United States in position to get a better one in a few years.

    The brutal fact is that there is no "good" solution to the Iranian nuclear program. As Lewis notes, we're not going to get to zero enrichment. The Iranians are going to be left with capabilities that cause us concern. The nature of negotiations is not getting everything that you want, and there seems to be little question that Dick Cheney and Co.'s "we don't negotiate with evil, we defeat it" posture was counterproductive to getting a better deal. To take one example, the Iranian bargaining chip went from a few hundred centrifuges to nearly 20,000 in the intervening decade.

    [Apr 17, 2015] Will Ukraine Push the US Into War

    As for question "What are the forces that have us "stumbling to war"?" the answer is chick hawks ("liberal interventionalists" which are indistinguishable from neocons) from current administration and military industrial complex.
    Apr 17, 2015 | The American Conservative
    "Could a U.S. response to Russia's action in Ukraine provoke a confrontation that leads to a U.S.-Russia War?" This jolting question is raised by Graham Allison and Dimitri Simes in the cover article of The National Interest.

    The answer the authors give, in "Countdown to War: The Coming U.S. Russia Conflict," is that the odds are shortening on a military collision between the world's largest nuclear powers. The cockpit of the conflict, should it come, will be Ukraine.

    What makes the article timely is the report that Canada will be sending 200 soldiers to western Ukraine to join 800 Americans and 75 Brits on a yearlong assignment to train the Ukrainian army.

    And train that army to fight whom? Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine whom Vladimir Putin has said will not be crushed, even if it requires Russian intervention. Says Putin, "We won't let it happen."

    What are the forces that have us "stumbling to war"?

    On our side there is President Obama who "enjoys attempting to humiliate Putin" and "repeatedly includes Russia in his list of current scourges alongside the Islamic State and Ebola." Then there is what TNI editor Jacob Heilbrunn calls the "truculent disposition" that has become the "main driver of Republican foreign policy." A "triumphalist camp," redolent of the "cakewalk war" crowd of Bush II, is ascendant and pushing us toward confrontation.

    This American mindset has its mirror image in Moscow.

    "Putin is not the hardest of the hard-liners in Russia," write the authors. "Russia's establishment falls into … a pragmatic camp, which is currently dominant thanks principally to Putin's support, and a hard-line camp" the one Putin adviser calls "the hotheads."

    The hotheads believe the way to respond to U.S. encroachments is to invoke the doctrine of Yuri Andropov, "challenge the main enemy," and brandish nuclear weapons to terrify Europe and split NATO. Russian public opinion is said to be moving toward the hotheads.

    Russian bombers have been intruding into NATO air space. Putin says he was ready to put nuclear forces on alert in the Crimea. Russia's ambassador has warned Copenhagen that if its ships join a NATO missile defense force, Denmark could be targeted with nukes.

    In coming war games, Russia will move Iskander missiles into the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad on Poland's northern border. "Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash," brays the director of the television network Rossiya Segodnya.

    As of now, the "pragmatists" represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov retain the upper hand. They believe Russia can still do business with the United States and Europe. "The 'hotheads' take the opposite view," the authors write, "they argue that NATO is determined to overthrow Putin, force Russia to its knees, and perhaps even dismember the country."

    In Ukraine, Putin has drawn two red lines. He will not permit Ukraine to join NATO. He will not allow the rebels to be crushed.

    Russia hard-liners are confident that should it come to war in Ukraine, Russia would have what Cold War strategists called "escalation dominance." This is what JFK had in the Cuban missile crisis-conventional and nuclear superiority on sea and land, and in the air around Cuba.

    With Ukraine easily accessible to Russian forces by road and rail, sea and air, and Russia's military just over the border while U.S. military might is a continent away, the hard-liners believe Russia would prevail in a war and America would face a choice-accept defeat in Ukraine or escalate to tactical atomic weapons.

    The Russians are talking of resorting to such weapons first.

    The decisive date for Putin to determine which way Russia will go would appear to be this summer. The authors write:

    Putin will attempt to exploit the expiration of EU sanctions, which are scheduled to expire in July. If that fails, however, and the European Union joins the United States in imposing additional economic sanctions such as excluding Moscow from the SWIFT financial clearing system, Putin would be tempted to respond, not by retreating, but by ending all cooperation with the West, and mobilizing his people against a new and 'apocalyptic' threat to 'Mother Russia.'

    As a leading Russian politician told us, 'We stood all alone against Napoleon and against Hitler.'

    As of now, the Minsk II cease-fire of February seems to be holding. The Ukrainian army and pro-Russian rebels have both moved their heavy weapons back from the truce lines, though there have been clashes and casualties.

    But as Ukraine's crisis is unresolved, these questions remain: Will the U.S. train the Ukrainian army and then greenlight an offensive to retake the rebel-held provinces? Would Russia intervene and rout that army? Would the Americans sit by if their Ukrainian trainees were defeated and more Ukrainian land was lost?

    Or would we start up the escalator to a war with Russia that few Europeans, but some Americans and Russians, might welcome today?

    Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority. Copyright 2015 Creators.com.

    [Apr 17, 2015] Graham Allison on World War I, Ukraine and Realism

    Apr 17, 2015 | The National Interest
    https://youtu.be/hR3HakDTlLo?list=UUgp3Ipjacu00pea4DD1bU_w

    Please Note: The following is a note from The National Interest's Editor, Jacob Heilbrunn.

    Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon professor of government and Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School and a member of the National Interest's Advisory Council, has enjoyed a long and distinguished career both in academia and government. His accomplishments include his landmark book Essence of Decision, a study of the Cuban missile crisis as well as serving as assistant secretary of defense for policy and plans in the Clinton administration. His approach to realism in foreign policy -- a habit of thought that he calls an "endangered species" -- is grounded in a practical and hardheaded understanding of international affairs. As he notes in this interview, it was Henry Kissinger who profoundly influenced his thinking. Other Harvard professors who helped shape his thinking include Samuel Huntington and Ernest May, both of whom were keen students of history and international relations.

    In his numerous essays and books, Allison focuses on statesmanship -- averting and ending crises. His most recent book, together with Robert D. Blackwill, consists of extended interviews with Lee Kuan Yew, the former leader of Singapore who, as Kissinger puts it in a foreword, is "not only one of the seminal leaders of our period, but also a thinker recognized for his strategic acumen."

    Currently, Allison is completing a book on what he calls the Thucydides Trap -- the moment when an established power is challenged by a rising one, as, for example, Wilhelmine Germany sought to surpass the British empire with calamitous results both for itself and the rest of Europe. Indeed, with a number of contributions to the National Interest web site, Allison has examined the legacy of World War I for contemporary events, asking whether the crisis in Ukraine might, as the Balkans once did, presage a larger and even more sanguinary conflict that could menace the very foundations of the Western world that has existed since the end of World War II. It's an unsettling thought. But then again, Allison is a provocative thinker who is rarely satisfied with what passes for conventional wisdom in Washington, DC or elsewhere.

    In the lively and engaging interview above, he discusses his understanding of how the past may shape the present, the deep impression left upon him by Kissinger, and what lessons World War I and the Cuban missile crisis may offer. Perhaps most provocatively, he dismisses the notion that President Obama has failed in foreign policy, withholding great praise for Obama but also noting that he disagrees with the prescriptions offered by leading neoconservatives. Nuanced, cogent, meditative -- these are all adjectives that might be appropriately applied to Allison, who knows that simple truculence cannot substitute for discerning diplomacy when conducting foreign affairs.

    Articles by Graham Allison

    Vladimir Putin's Dicey Dilemma: Russia Stands at a Fateful Fork in the Road

    Despite the Obama administration's narrative of a Russia that is not a player in global affairs -- Moscow matters. Yet, major challenges remain if the Ukraine crisis remains unresolved.

    Graham Allison Is America on the ISIS Hit List?

    "To whom does ISIS pose the most imminent and even existential threat?"

    Graham Allison Graham Allison on World War I, Ukraine and Realism

    TNI's editor speaks with Harvard's Graham Allison.

    Graham Allison How to Solve the Ukraine Crisis

    "If Ukraine is to have a chance to succeed as a modern nation, it will require a degree of acceptance and cooperation from Russia as well as its Western neighbors."

    Graham Allison Could the Ukraine Crisis Spark a World War?

    We should not forget that in 1914, the possibility that the assassination of an Archduke could produce a world war seemed almost inconceivable.

    Graham Allison Good News From Ukraine: It Doesn't Have Nukes

    Looking back at Kiev's risky, carefully negotiated decision to give up its nuclear weapons after it escaped the Soviet Union.

    Graham Allison A "Belgian Solution" for Ukraine?

    "Given the reality that is Ukraine today, an internationally-recognized neutral state within its current borders would be a victory for all."

    Graham Allison Putin's Olympic Gamble

    A report from Sochi.

    Graham Allison 2014: Good Year for a Great War?

    Prospects for peace seemed to be looking up in 1913, as in 2013. What are the chances we're wrong again?

    Graham Allison An Interview with Graham Allison

    A conversation on the Syria deal, Russia's power, the Iran overtures, and more.

    Graham Allison Lee Kuan Yew, Grand Master of Asia

    Singapore's éminence grise sees China rising and India falling.

    Robert D. Blackwill The Coming Clash Over Iran

    Relations between the United States and Israel may soon be dominated by disagreements about the Islamic Republic.

    Shai Feldman The Three 'Nos' Knows

    In the previous issue of The National Interest, John Mueller argued that the threats from nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war are exagger

    Graham Allison Apocalypse When?

    Graham AllisonJoseph CirincioneWilliam C. PotterJohn Mueller

    Churchill, Not Quite

    With America facing grave threats, the Bush Administration has failed to demonstrate a willingness to establish a hierarchy of priorities.

    Graham AllisonDimitri K. Simes In Brief: Thoughts on National Security

    Graham AllisonIan BremmerHarlan UllmanDerek Chollet Not If, but When: Imagining a Nuclear 9/11

    As unpleasant and as frightening as it may be, the United States must come to grips with the prospect of facing a terrorist strike using nuclear materials--a "nuclear 9/11"--within the coming decade.

    Graham Allison The New Containment

    Forging a U.S.-Russian alliance to prevent nuclear terrorism should be America's top priority in the post-September 11 world; here is a blueprint for one.

    [Apr 16, 2015] Chaos And Hegemony - How US Dollar Imperialism Dominates The World

    Quote: "However, when at the beginning of the 21st century the new economic giants China and India, with their almost inexhaustible hunger for energy, started organizing their own supply, the U.S.-dominated oil regime collapsed. The oil markets henceforth followed the pricing laws for exhaustible goods; oil prices therefore rose drastically and have subsequently been guided by market mechanisms."

    Apr 16, 2015 | Zero Hedge

    Submitted by Mohssen Massarat via CounterPunch.org,

    With last fall's U.S. Congressional elections, the Barack Obama 'era' has entered its final phase. Shortly before coming to power, the new U.S. president had sparked a massive uproar when he proclaimed a new 'Pacific century.' Since then, roughly two years before the end of his term in office, we can see more clearly. First and foremost, the proclamation of an allegedly new orientation towards the Pacific served the purpose to put Europe, and particularly Germany, under pressure so that they fill the allegedly emerging security gap. In reality, however, it is not the Pacific that forms the epicenter of U.S. geostrategic interests, neither – despite the Crimea crisis – is it the 'old (European) world,' but it is still the Middle East. For the latter's fate defines whether American hegemony stands or falls.

    America's interest in this region is as old as the discovery of enormous Mideast oil reserves – albeit not at the moment, as is generally but falsely suggested, because of her own domestic oil supply. Thanks to its immense domestic energy resources, historically the U.S. has since the dawn of the last century been independent from importing oil. And with the current widespread use of fracking technology, it is once again about to become self-sufficient. As the new hegemonic power in the wake of the Second World War, the U.S. quickly realized that it could make rivaling world powers dependent on it by way of controlling the Middle East with its tremendous reserves of oil – the global economy's fuel. Originally, the U.S., together with Saudi Arabia – its main ally in the region – established a global oil supply regime that could provide the West, China, and all BRICS countries with energy security. In this regime, Saudi Arabia arranged for constant overproduction. Thanks to this system that was politically controlled by the U.S., both its Western allies and its rivals enjoyed unimpeded oil supply at low prices – and all this despite great political turbulence raging during the entire second half of the last century. At the same time, the U.S. dollar, pegged to the oil price, acted as the global reserve currency.

    However, when at the beginning of the 21st century the new economic giants China and India, with their almost inexhaustible hunger for energy, started organizing their own supply, the U.S.-dominated oil regime collapsed. The oil markets henceforth followed the pricing laws for exhaustible goods; oil prices therefore rose drastically and have subsequently been guided by market mechanisms.

    The irony of history: Albeit the U.S. has lost the ability to steer the oil price – one of its central political leverages –, it has in another way been able to drastically strengthen its hegemony via the new prices set by the global market. For the high oil prices have multiplied the percentage share of oil trade within global trade, which caused massively higher demand for dollars and U.S. government bonds. As a result, for the foreseeable future the U.S. dollar will thereby remain the indisputable reserve currency.

    It is precisely here that we can identify the actual basis for U.S. dominance: By way of an unlimited creation of the dollar as the globe's reserve currency, the U.S. constitutes the only economy in the world that can finance several mega-projects at once – such as the bailing-out of banks and gigantic defense spending – through public debt and the issuing of government bonds. After the 2008 crash, no other national economy could have managed the banking crisis on its own without suffering any severe consequences. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), whose financial basis is essentially formed by the U.S Treasury's government bonds, provided the U.S. with the required capital. The FDIC is an institution specifically created by the U.S. Congress to promote "stability and public confidence in the nation's financial system." Thereby, in fact, in 2009 the United States successfully nationalized all ailing banks in order to dispose its debt, and subsequently privatized them again. Meanwhile, in the European Union the banking crisis turned into a sovereign debt crisis.

    Nonetheless, the global economic figures for the U.S. are anything but rosy: Its trade balance has witnessed deficits uninterruptedly since 1987, which until 2013 had led to an accumulated deficit of $9,627 billion. This is caused by the fact that the U.S. economy in parts, for a long time now, is no longer competitive vis-ŕ-vis its main competitors – the EU, China, and Japan. Moreover, the fiscal deficit has chronically been on the rise, as result of from drastically growing defense spending. For decades, various U.S. administrations have 'solved' both problems – the trade deficit and concomitantly the constantly rising fiscal deficit – by allocating government bonds and engaging in money creation.

    Technically, both objectives are being realized as follows: In order to conduct current government expenditures, the U.S. Treasury swaps government bonds with the FED in exchange for the latter's freshly printed dollars – in 2013 alone, $1,100 billion were thus brought into circulation. The FED in turn places those government bonds on the world market and thereby continuously channels new capital into the U.S. economy, which provides for the balancing of the trade deficit. The price for this policy of money creation is the gigantic U.S. public debt, which climbed from $6,731 billion in 2003 to $17,556 billion in 2013. In the same time period, the public spending ratio rose from 60% to 108% (in comparison that of the EU 'only' rose from 60% to 87%).

    No surprise then that such an economy suffering from trade as well as budgetary balance deficits has transformed into a consumptive surplus economy – amassing the largest national debt of all time. Between 2001 and 2013 only, these consumption surpluses accounted for a total of $11,550 billion. To put it plainly, per year an average $962.5 billion – capital corresponding with real economic performance – flowed from the rest of the world to the United States, while the latter confined itself to printing new money and bringing it into circulation.

    To make it even more clear: In 2012, the $1,250 billion that flowed into the U.S. made up 7.9% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). This additional capital stock flowing into the economy also explains why the saving rate in the U.S. had drastically sunk during that period. Americans consumed nearly the totality of the goods and services they produced, while the rest of the world paid for investments allowing the U.S. economy to keep going.

    Essentially, the U.S. has become to resemble Arab rentier states. Instead of oil, the U.S. uses the dollar – the international reserve currency – as leverage for appropriating its global purchasing power. While Saudi Arabia at least exports oil in exchange for other countries' goods and services, the U.S. merely pumps paper into the global cash cycle.

    The dollar as leverage

    Here is the reason why: The significantly largest part of world trade is still being processed in dollars. This is why international demand for dollars is enormous, and is rising in proportion to world trade. Therefore, with the assistance of FED, the U.S. can continuously inject dollars into circulation, thereby financing its trade balance and budgetary deficits (and ultimately its constantly growing government debt). Hence, Nobel economics laureate Roger B. Myerson does not bother too much about U.S. debt: "U.S. debts are in dollars and the U.S. can print dollars. […] We may have inflation. But we are sure we can pay back the debt."

    Yet, contrary to Myerson's contention, in reality the U.S. will never pay back its debt, which has already been clear in the 1970s to U.S. economist Michael Hudson:

    "To the extent that these Treasury IOUs are being built into the world's monetary base they will not have to be repaid, but are to be rolled over indefinitely. This feature is the essence of America's free financial ride, a tax imposed at the entire globe's expense."

    In truth, the U.S. can simply absorb the excess purchasing power that is created all over the world. All of this, however, only works as long as oil is being traded in dollars and the status of the U.S. currency is not being jeopardized by other potential reserve currencies, such as the euro or China's renminbi. After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1973, almost without anyone noticing, the gold standard got replaced by oil henceforth backing the dollar: oil was increasingly in demand by all countries – except for oil exporters; it is a homogeneous and scarce commodity with rising prices. As such, oil trade as a proportion of world trade continuously rose from 1.7% in 1970 to 6% in 2001, and to 12% in 2011 – resulting in a massively rising demand for dollars. Moreover, the 'oil standard' freed the U.S. from all shackles of the Bretton Woods agreement; it could henceforth accumulate new debt even more uninhibitedly than before.

    The military as instrument

    Yet, ensuring that the global oil trade will be carried out in dollars for decades to come requires a Middle East controlled by the U.S. as complete as possible. This can be done through regime changes wherever necessary in order to nip possible anti-dollar alliances in the bud. In this vein, the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was from the very start targeted towards such a direction, with its willingness to create a 'Greater Middle East' that ought to be subordinated to the U.S. to the greatest possible extent. In PNAC documents there is no mention of creating conditions for peace but instead for wars, for expanding military bases all around the world, for military superiority on land, in water and in the air, for nuclear defense shields in the earth's atmosphere, and above all for further increases in defense spending.

    Over the last decade, the U.S. with its annual defense budget of $500 billion to $800 billion has spent as much on armaments as the rest of the world combined. Any other national economy would have collapsed long ago under such tremendous unproductive spending. Indeed, the arms race during the Cold War did lead to the demise of the Soviet Union. In contrast, after the end of the bloc confrontation U.S. arms spending rose exponentially from $150 billion in 1990 to the astronomic sum of $739 billion in 2011. The share of military expenditure as a proportion of GDP is currently 4% in the U.S., more than twice that of other Western industrialized nations. The opposition, otherwise loudly opposing administration policies of increasing other budget items, refrains from criticizing military spending as a matter of principle, the exception being when an increase in military spending is deemed too low. Nor is this massive military spending subject to any substantial debate in the media or in society at large. But how can these enormous arms expenditures be explained and how are they justified to the people? Ultimately, this is done by the fact that the U.S. also covers its military spending by government debt and printing money. Instead, financing the costs of war via direct taxes would mobilize people against any war. Both World Wars were financed by public debt, not only by European but also all U.S. administrations. Through the continuity of wars, especially since the First World War, the U.S. public debt has continued to grow.

    The de facto monopoly over world money explains how a national economy like that of the U.S., which in many areas is simply not competitive and shows chronic trade balance deficits, can finance not only such mega-projects as the military-industrial complex and various quite expensive wars, but also has a relatively stable financial sector and a currency that attracts magnet-like surplus capital from all over the world.

    A world without order and chaos as opportunity – for the U.S.

    To maintain its hegemony, the U.S. must by all means prevent the emergence of rival powers and impede possible current as well as future threats that could emanate from oil states. The ideal condition for enforcing its own goals at a low cost would be the fragmentation of antagonistic power centers through ethnic and religious strife, civil wars, chaos and deep-seated mistrust in the Middle East – always following the well-known premise of 'divide and rule.' In this way, for decades to come no other power would be able to even consider trading oil in a currency other than dollars. In addition, as all the opponents need petrodollars to purchase weapons, the oil wells gush merrily on – as they currently do in Iraq despite daily acts of terror and chaos paralyzing the country.

    In fact, we are currently experiencing tremendous changes towards such a chaotic state of affairs. Meanwhile, there have been regime changes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In all these countries, discord and distrust, tribal conflicts, territorial separations among ethnic lines and mutual terror have been raging – particularly from Sunnis against Shi'ites. However, the regime change project has not ended here. Now, Syria and Iran have been put in crosshairs: U.S. neo-cons have spared no efforts to torpedo the nuclear negotiations with Iran. And Al-Qaeda – officially the main reason for the U.S. 'war on terror' – has in the meanwhile attained unprecedented strength. This prowess provides, in turn, the best basis of legitimacy for the U.S. military-industrial complex.

    The old military-industrial complex

    This way all the strands of 'dollar imperialism' come together: oil, dollars, and the military. The military-industrial complex is the main beneficiary of the 'new American century' of New Wars. Especially in the Middle East both a nuclear and a conventional arms race is taking place, which is increasingly putting the arms race of the 1970s that had led to three Gulf Wars in the shade. While the recycling of petrodollars for weapons has resulted in a dangerous vicious circle which could at any time trigger a conflagration across the whole region, the U.S. defense sector can remain confident: All U.S. administrations, regardless of their political persuasion, will continue with impunity the policy of public debt and thus keep on financing the military budget. Thanks to the rising demand for dollars and the FED's continued money printing (also under the new Board of Governors Chair, Janet Yellen), the U.S. banking system has such extensive money reserves that the politically dangerous U.S. military industry can be easily financed.

    However, 'dollar imperialism' is fundamentally a highly unstable construction, producing absurdities difficult to imagine.

    • On the one hand, it keeps alive a gigantic apparatus of violence in the U.S. – at the expense of (and ultimately financed by) the whole of humanity.
    • On the other, this construction is based on chaos, violence, and civil wars, particularly in the oil-rich regions that may therefore collapse at any time, plunging the world into serious crises.

    In short, what could be more absurd than the fact that money belonging to all of us helps finance an industrial sector whose ultimate survival depends on there never being peace on the planet? Even the NSA scandal – revealed thanks to Edward Snowden – appears in a new, very particular light when seen against the background of the prevailing dollar imperialism. For, of course, this highly unstable construction generates a seemingly limitless greed for the widest possible control of all communication channels, including spying on the heads of all foreign administrations, even those of friendly states. Despite worldwide outrage, in his January 2014 speech, Barack Obama emphasized that "[o]ur intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments [...] around the world."

    The massive U.S. security apparatus is being legitimized – today as in the past – exclusively on the grounds of national interests. When the NSA was founded in 1952, there was no talk of Al-Qaeda and '9/11,' rather of the benefits and interests of a then aspiring hegemonic power. Today, the NSA is above all concerned with recognizing in due time all the steps and movements in the world that could endanger the current status of the U.S. currency, and nipping them in the bud by any means necessary. It thus functions in the interest of the influential alliance between the military-industrial complex and the U.S. financial sector, which is dependent on such knowledge for its own survival.

    On the other hand, it has become clear that the NSA poses the biggest threat to democracy in the U.S. and in the West as a whole – and in a way in which President Dwight Eisenhower could not even imagine when he warned about the military-industrial complex in his farewell address on January 17, 1961: "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. […] In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

    Roughly 50 years after Eisenhower's warning, the U.S. has taken a major step 'forward.' This powerful complex has been struggling for its continued existence since the end of the bloc confrontation and has done everything possible to permanently consolidate American hegemony. It is indeed not the case, as was eagerly anticipated, that the world has become safer and more peaceful since 1989. On the contrary, it has become more insecure and warlike – as was the case at the dawn of the last century. This makes it even more urgent that the international community finally – and still perhaps just in time – defends itself against this highly dangerous development.

    The alternative: The global energy transition and the diversification of reserve currencies

    The question of democratizing the global economy by abolishing the U.S. monopoly over world money must definitely be placed on the global political agenda. In the long term, this goal can be most effectively attained by a global energy revolution – away from fossils and towards extensively expanding renewable energies. In the short term, a range of reserve currencies can and ought to be established, which would finally account for the real economic balance of forces.

    One such alternative would also serve the long-term interests of American citizens and would contribute to the U.S. finally offloading the parasitic and ultimately unproductive parts of its economy – namely, the alliance between finance and the military. On the other hand, the example of Barack Obama, who had to move away from nearly all his positive reform initiatives, shows that America on her own and using her own abilities is barely capable of pushing back this all-powerful alliance including the political forces sustaining it.

    This leads to Europe and Asia assuming responsibility: Only a new reserve currency – pushed forward by the EU and China – can help the U.S. leave its previous path of increasing prosperity through imperialist methods, to the benefit of its own immeasurable productive potentials. The BRICS countries' establishment in Brazil in July 2014 of an international development bank and a monetary fund could evolve into a serious competitor to the Bretton Woods system. You could imagine the dollar being no longer the only world currency, and necessarily losing its stability in a lively international competition involving the euro and renminbi. International excess capital would then be withdrawn, to a considerable extent, from the U.S. and invested in the euro or renminbi zone. The previous U.S. policy of public debt by issuing government bonds would stall, and the bipartisan taboo on tackling military spending would lose its validity. In order to reduce chronic budget deficits, U.S. administrations would then have no other choice but to drastically cut the disproportionately high military budget.

    How would such a new situation impact American hegemony? Inside the U.S. there would – finally – emerge a fierce debate over the sense and non-sense of military spending as well as its global military capacities (including over 800 bases) – with the prospect of the U.S. demilitarizing to a level corresponding to its actual economic weight. As such, the U.S. would no longer be the 'only remaining superpower,' but merely one among several world powers. Wholly new global power structures and balances of power would then become conceivable: Asia but also the Middle East, South America, Africa, and even Europe would have real opportunities to come together in cooperative and common-security regional architectures. At the same time, nationalistic and racist resentments and conflicts would strongly lose traction. Perhaps international cooperation would also finally shrink the financial sector to a reasonable level – in so doing also significantly increasing the possibility of an equitable distribution of income.

    In short, we would finally have the prospect of a world with more justice and less financial speculation – a more democratic and peaceful world. Yet, the losers of such a scenario would be the military-industrial complex, the financial sector and its beneficiaries, and above all the neoconservatives. This is why we must expect fierce resistance. However, in the interest of a more just and peaceful world, this fight is nothing less than inevitable.

    [Apr 14, 2015] ​Western ISIS adventurism, Israel behind Hamas - new Assange revelations

    Apr 14, 2015 | RT News
    Julian Assange has given an interview to an Argentinian paper from his Ecuadorian embassy asylum where he spent more than 1,000 days. He spoke about why US meddling in Ukraine led to civil war, how the West helped ISIS and Israel supported Hamas.

    US has long wanted to bring Ukraine to West

    The United States has spent "a lot of time trying to bring Ukraine to the West," the WikiLeaks founder said in an interview to Pagina/12, Argentinian newspaper on Monday.

    "If it cannot be with a NATO membership, at least it becomes independent from Moscow's sphere of influence, to reduce Russian industrial-military complex and its naval bases in Crimea."

    Kiev first step closer to NATO was in December 2014, when President Petro Poroshenko signed a law canceling the Ukraine' non-bloc status and promised to hold a national referendum on NATO accession in the next five to six years.

    In January, Kiev authorities announced that the Ukrainian army would take part in 11 international military drills in 2015 to bolster NATO standards in troops.

    One more attempt of US and Europe to 'bring Ukraine closer to the West' was spending "billions of dollars on the creation of NGOs," said Assange , adding that "through these institutions, the West promised to end corruption in Ukraine."

    ISIS -- result of Western adventurism

    Meddling of Western countries in the Middle East led to creation of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), an Islamist group that is currently gaining a massive following across the wider Middle East and Africa, Assange said.

    "The IS is a direct result of the adventurism of the West," Assange said.

    He says the "adventurism" of Western countries has already destroyed the Libyan and Syrian society and now is "destroying Iraq for oil and other geopolitical reasons."

    Many people know that arms are being transported to Syria, that there are attempts to reduce Iranian influence in postwar Iraq by supporting the Sunnis, he said. But "what we don't know is that in recent years in recent years Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have increased their power and managed to gain certain independence form the US."

    As a result, Washington ceased to be "the only geopolitical actor" pushing developments in the Middle East, believes Assange.

    Israel supported Hamas in its infancy

    The WikiLeaks founder accused Israeli authorities of supporting Hamas group at its early stages in order to divide the Palestinian resistance.

    "Our cables reveal that Israel supported Hamas in its infancy, that Hamas was used as an instrument to divide the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] and the Palestinian resistance," Assange told the paper.

    Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London while awaiting safe passage to the Central American country, where he has been granted asylum. Staking out the building, in case the Australian should leave the premises, has already cost British taxpayers a hefty Ł10 million, according to govwaste.co.uk.

    Assange has not been charged with a crime, but is wanted for questioning in Sweden regarding allegations of sexual misconduct brought against him in 2010.

    An arrest warrant was issued for Assange in 2010 in the of wake sexual assault allegations leveled against him by two Swedish women. He denied the allegations of sexual misconduct and rape and managed to avoid extradition to Sweden by seeking refuge in the embassy in 2012.

    He repeatedly announced that he is ready to answer all questions concerning his sexual assault allegations within the sanctity of the embassy. However, Swedish prosecutors were reluctant to do so until March this year.

    "If Assange gives his consent, the prosecutor will promptly submit a request for legal assistance to the British authorities to further continue the investigation," the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement.

    Assange's Swedish lawyer welcomed the Swedish prosecutors' request to interview Assange in London, but added that the whole process of questioning could take time.

    "We welcome [this] and see it also as a big victory ... for Julian Assange that what we have demanded is finally going to happen," Per Samuelson said.

    Assange supporters fear that if he is deported to Sweden he will likely face espionage charges in America over his role in publishing sensitive, classified US government documents.

    But even if Sweden drops the case, he faces arrest by UK police for jumping the bail granted while the British courts considered a European arrest warrant issued by Stockholm.

    In June 2014, 56 international human rights and free media organizations signed a letter addressed to US Attorney General Eric Holder calling upon the US government to end all criminal investigations into Assange's actions as editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, and to cease harassing the organization for publishing materials in the public interest.

    Read more:

    [Apr 14, 2015] Nuland Ensconced in Neocon Camp Who Believes in Noble Lie

    Mar 5, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
    RPI Director Daniel McAdams is interviewed on RT. Transcript below; video here.

    Victoria Nuland's anti-Russian rhetoric comes from the neocon camp of US politics, seeking to stir the Ukraine crisis, thrilled by the prospect of defense industry expansion and more arms sales, Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Peace Institute told RT.

    RT: World leaders and international monitors agree the situation in Ukraine is generally improving. Why are we still witnessing aggressive rhetoric from some US officials?

    Daniel McAdams: Because the US does not want peace to break out. The US is determined to see its project through. But unfortunately like all of its regime change projects this one is failing miserably. Victoria Nuland completely disregards the role of the US in starting the conflict in Ukraine. She completely glosses over the fact that the army supported by Kiev has been bombarding Eastern Ukraine, as if these independent fighters in the east are killing themselves and their own people. Victoria Nuland was an aid to Dick Cheney; she is firmly ensconced in the neocon camp. The neocons believe very strongly in lying, the noble lie… They lied us into the war in Iraq; they are lying now about Ukraine. Lying is what the neocons do.

    RT: Nuland listed a lot of hostile actions by Russia without providing any reliable proof. Do you think she can she be challenged on these topics?

    DM: Maybe she is right but the US hasn't provided one piece of proof, except for Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt's Rorschach tests he passes off as a satellite photo. Maybe they are true but we have to present some evidence because we've seen now the neocons have lied us into the war. This is much more serious than the attack on small Iraq. This has the potential for a global nuclear war. So I think they should be held to a higher level of scrutiny. Thus far they have not provided any. We do know however that the US is providing military aid. As the matter of fact this week hundreds of American troops are arriving in Ukraine. Why is that not an escalation? Why is it only an escalation when the opponents of the US government are involved?

    RT: How probable is that the Western nations ship lethal aid to Ukraine?

    DM: It is interesting because Victoria Nuland this week spent some time with Andriy Parubiy, one of the founders of the fascist party in Ukraine and I believe one of the founders of the Joseph Goebbels Institute. She met with him this week and had a photo taken with him. He came back to Ukraine and assured his comrades that the US will provide additional, non-lethal weapons - whatever that means - and felt pretty strongly that they would provide lethal weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey has been urging the US government to provide lethal weapons as has the new US defense secretary [Ashton Carter], both of whom come from the military industrial complex which is thrilled by prospect of a lot more arms to be sold.

    RT: Nuland has said the State Department is in talks with EU leaders for another round of sanctions on Russia. Do you think the EU will agree?

    DM: I think they will be pressured into agreeing. It is interesting that Nuland said that the new Rada, the new Ukrainian parliament, in this first four months has been a hive of activity. I was just watching some videos from the fights in the Ukrainian parliament. So that was one bit of unintentional humor probably in her speech. It looks like a fight club over there.
    Related

    [Apr 14, 2015] The New Militarism: Who Profits?

    Quote: "So who is the real enemy? The Russians? No, the real enemy is the taxpayer. The real enemy is the middle class and the productive sectors of the economy. We are the victims of this new runaway military spending. Every dollar or euro spent on a contrived threat is a dollar or euro taken out of the real economy and wasted on military Keynesianism. It is a dollar stolen from a small business owner that will not be invested in innovation, spent on research to combat disease, or even donated to charities that help the needy."
    Apr 12, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

    Militarism and military spending are everywhere on the rise, as the new Cold War propaganda seems to be paying off. The new "threats" that are being hyped bring big profits to military contractors and the network of think tanks they pay to produce pro-war propaganda.

    Here are just a few examples:

    The German government announced last week that it would purchase 100 more "Leopard" tanks – a 45 percent increase in the country's inventory. Germany had greatly reduced its inventory of tanks as the end of the Cold War meant the end of any threat of a Soviet ground invasion of Europe. The German government now claims these 100 new tanks, which may cost nearly half a billion dollars, are necessary to respond to the new Russian assertiveness in the region. Never mind that Russia has neither invaded nor threatened any country in the region, much less a NATO member country.

    The US Cold War-era nuclear bunker under Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, which was all but shut down in the 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is being brought back to life. The Pentagon has committed nearly a billion dollars to upgrading the facility to its previous Cold War-level of operations. US defense contractor Raytheon will be the prime beneficiary of this contract. Raytheon is a major financial sponsor of think tanks like the Institute for the Study of War, which continuously churn out pro-war propaganda. I am sure these big contracts are a good return on that investment.

    NATO, which I believe should have been shut down after the Cold War ended, is also getting its own massively expensive upgrade. The Alliance commissioned a new headquarters building in Brussels, Belgium, in 2010, which is supposed to be completed in 2016. The building looks like a hideous claw, and the final cost – if it is ever finished – will be well over one billion dollars. That is more than twice what was originally budgeted. What a boondoggle! Is it any surprise that NATO bureaucrats and generals continuously try to terrify us with tales of the new Russian threat? They need to justify their expansion plans!

    So who is the real enemy? The Russians?

    No, the real enemy is the taxpayer. The real enemy is the middle class and the productive sectors of the economy. We are the victims of this new runaway military spending. Every dollar or euro spent on a contrived threat is a dollar or euro taken out of the real economy and wasted on military Keynesianism. It is a dollar stolen from a small business owner that will not be invested in innovation, spent on research to combat disease, or even donated to charities that help the needy.

    One of the most pervasive and dangerous myths of our time is that military spending benefits an economy. This could not be further from the truth. Such spending benefits a thin layer of well-connected and well-paid elites. It diverts scarce resources from meeting the needs and desires of a population and channels them into manufacturing tools of destruction. The costs may be hidden by the money-printing of the central banks, but they are eventually realized in the steady destruction of a currency.

    The elites are terrified that peace may finally break out, which will be bad for their profits. That is why they are trying to scuttle the Iran deal, nix the Cuba thaw, and drum up a new "Red Scare" coming from Moscow. We must not be fooled into believing their lies.


    Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
    Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute Related

    [Apr 10, 2015] Mission Accomplished? ISIS Leaders Are All Ex-Saddam Hussein Army Officers

    Apr 06, 2015 | zerohedge.com
    Thirst Mutilator

    Not really... If you're a typical Chinese or Indian... You hardly ever hear about these fucking clowns...

    The only get 'REPORTAGE' time in Western culture [who are born, bred, & trained sychophants]...

    [Apr 09, 2015] Ukraine The Global Corporate Annexation

    Notable quotes:
    "... 'For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, It's a Gold Mine of Profits' ..."
    Apr 21, 2014 | Jesse's Café Américain
    "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

    George Orwell

    "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

    A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

    Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

    There is certainly a long established difference between a just war, a defensive war, and a war of adventure or aggression. No one understand this better than those who suffer loss in fighting them.

    Like quite a few people I found myself asking, 'Why the Ukraine? Why the sudden push there, risking conflict with Russia on their own doorstep?' Why are we suddenly risking all to support what was clearly an extra-legal coup d'état?'

    It is telling perhaps that one of the first things that happened after the coup d'état is that all of the Ukraine's gold was on a flight to New York, for the safekeeping by those same people who have managed to misplace a good portion of the German people's gold. It is the most transportable and fungible store of wealth, where the transfer of less portable assets by computerized digits may lag.

    Follow the money...

    GlobalResearch
    Ukraine: The Corporate Annexation
    'For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, It's a Gold Mine of Profits'
    by JP Sottile

    As the US and EU apply sanctions on Russia over its annexation' of Crimea, JP Sottile reveals the corporate annexation of Ukraine. For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, there's a gold mine of profits to be made from agri-business and energy exploitation.

    The potential here for agriculture / agribusiness is amazing production here could double Ukraine's agriculture could be a real gold mine.

    On 12th January 2014, a reported 50,000 "pro-Western" Ukrainians descended upon Kiev's Independence Square to protest against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych.

    Stoked in part by an attack on opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko, the protest marked the beginning of the end of Yanukovych's four year-long government.

    That same day, the Financial Times reported a major deal for US agribusiness titan Cargill.

    Business confidence never faltered

    Despite the turmoil within Ukrainian politics after Yanukovych rejected a major trade deal with the European Union just seven weeks earlier, Cargill was confident enough about the future to fork over $200 million to buy a stake in Ukraine's UkrLandFarming...

    Read the entire report here.

    [Apr 04, 2015] The majority of Maidan supporters are experiencing severe impoverishment instead of welfare bonanza from EU they expected

    Notable quotes:
    "... The vast majority of the Maidan supporters were expecting some sort of welfare bonanza "when they joined the EU" after signing the association agreement. Instead they are experiencing impoverishment. ..."
    "... I think there is a fair chance it will be the equivalent of an european Afghanistan. ..."
    marknesop.wordpress.com

    kirill, April 3, 2015 at 6:11 am

    Ukraine will be a consolidated fascist state without an economy. Right. It was mentioned elsewhere that the only thing keeping the regime in power is the war. It sure isn't the economy. But eventually the economic decline will break the bubble.

    The vast majority of the Maidan supporters were expecting some sort of welfare bonanza "when they joined the EU" after signing the association agreement. Instead they are experiencing impoverishment.

    So this ridiculous delusion is going to break down. But delusions are very resilient things.

    et Al, April 3, 2015 at 2:49 pm
    I think there is a fair chance it will be the equivalent of an european Afghanistan. In a sense it already is with various oligarchs controlling bits of territory and sort of cooperating in Kiev. Elections are not much more than a Afghan Jirga.

    Still, it is interesting to see Russia play the long game, the latest being a $285 three month gas contract with Kiev. When the Ukraine finally implodes, Russia can clearly point out how it could have pulled the plug at any time it wanted but it didn't because it has the best interests of its closest neighbor in mind. It also sets a benchmark for all the promises from the EU and US to be compared to, the latter far more likely to creatively reinterpret supposedly solid agreements than Russia especially if Kiev doesn't sing from the same hymnbook 200%. It is also a warning to Berlin and the EU – we pull the plug and it's all yours baby!

    marknesop, April 3, 2015 at 3:16 pm
    Yes, the people of Ukraine will never stand for this ridiculous substitution – a goose-stepping Nazi police state in place of the cushy streets-paved-with-gold paradise they were led to expect in exchange for their support for Maidan and the coup. They would probably put up with anything if it meant widespread prosperity, but they are indisputably much worse off now than they were prior to The Great Ukrainian Leap Forward and the trend is remorselessly downward for at least another year – even the IMF forecasts a considerably worse contraction of a further 10% rather than the 6% it forecast earlier. And that's with the most lipstick The New Atlanticist – a relentlessly pro-western publication whose current headlines include Wesley Clark's prediction of a Russian Spring offensive, the manifestly ridiculous contention that "Putin's war against Ukraine" has had the effect of uniting Ukrainians, and Russia's paranoid fantasies about the west representing a threat are all in its head – can put on it. Moreover, there is likely to be zero growth in 2016 as well. That assessment probably assumes certain realities that do not now exist, such as Kiev bringing the east back under its thumb, rather than it slipping further from its control and perhaps even expanding its territory.

    [Apr 03, 2015] Were not cattle Kiev protesters throw manure at US embassy

    Apr 03, 2015 | offguardian

    Life News reports:

    About two and a half thousand Ukrainians surrounded the US embassy in Kiev on the first of April. People who disagree with the appointment of foreigners to the Ukrainian government, as well as the intervention of the Americans and Europeans in the public administration of the country, holding banners saying "We are not cattle!" And they made sounds imitating animals.

    Besides the protesters braying and bleating, they were eating cabbage, which was distributed by the organizers of the protest.

    They also kept two-meter carrots with the symbols of the European Union. By the end of the demonstration of dissent Kiev residents pelted the US embassy with manure.

    It is noteworthy that the video from the protest was removed from all the Ukrainian sites and users were blocked. Local journalists hardly covered the event.

    [Apr 03, 2015] U.S. Trained Fascists To Storm Kiev

    Notable quotes:
    "... Enough baksheesh spread around this way, and you have built a nice local tier of warlord support. ..."
    Apr 01, 2015 | M of A

    barrisj | Apr 1, 2015 1:08:35 PM | 8

    It seems as though the Yanks have revived the notion behind "The School of the Americas" era, where American Special Forces operatives would train up various battalions of "security forces", National Guard, "Presidential Guards", whatever, expressly to support Latin American fascistic dictatorships and to keep their respective countries on-side in the "war against Communism" in the Western Hemisphere.

    So, today we have boatloads of Special Forces contingencies in the Middle East, in Africa, in South Asia, and now in Eastern Europe or in the former States of the Soviet Union (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, et al), all with the specific task of supporting autocrats and dictators against their own respective peoples.

    And the gullible US public is being sold this as "advancing the democratic agenda"...so blatant and so pathetic. This to promote US "leadership", and to create proxy military forces to advance US "strategic goals". Blowback, blowback, we don't see no steenkin' blowback!

    rufus magister | Apr 1, 2015 10:23:52 PM | 9

    Alberto at 6

    Germany was both Protestant and Catholic. The Catholic Centre Party opposed the Nazis; I believe you'll find the Lutheran state churches of northern Germany the most accepting of their regime. Lutheran Scandinavia produced generous nos. of collaborators and volunteers for the Waffen-SS "Viking" Division. Bulgaria and Romania both had collaborationist governments drawn from local fascists.

    en1c at 1

    I think they plan on using brute force to keep power. There are several reports at Fort Russ about about a purge and revamping at the SBU.

    Nalivaychenko, its leader, says it's going to be schooled in the Banderaist/OUN school of political repression. And here is a comprehensive guide to their methods.

    Meanwhile, searches at the Ministry of the Interior have begun.

    At Russia Insider, Rostislav Ishchenko argues that War in the East Is the Only Thing Preventing Ukraine Collapse. Which will not be pretty when it happens.

    There is nothing good in store for Ukraine. I think during this year it will sustain a military defeat and the disintegration of its army, another coup and the collapse of what is left of its government agencies, all-out chaos, the total destruction of the economy and the start of subsistence farming for survival.... Survivors will be set back a century in terms of living standards and civilization. This is why foreign intervention to restore law and order to Ukraine after the collapse of Project Ukraine will be inevitable.

    I hope he's exaggerating about that century thing.

    Some good news -- miners near Kharkov are fighting to be paid.

    Fete | Apr 1, 2015 11:39:02 PM | 10

    04/01/2015 23:59

    Russian Spring

    Eduard Basurin, the Deputy Commander in Chief of Donetsk Republic Defense, read out to journalists excerpts of an intelligence obtained plan of Ukrainian special operation, which, in particular designated "special mobile groups to assault key infrastructure objects and crowded places".

    Basurin said that this plan "of a special operation in sector B has been approved by the Ukrainian side and is being implemented". Therefore, the end of March intelligence about sending approximately thirty five Ukrainian subversion-reconnaissance group to areas of Shirokino and Donetsk to arrange provocations under disguise of combatants is confirmed.

    According to the presented documents, the subversives were also tasked with liquidation of Donetsk Republic leaders, spreading panic among locals, opening random mortar and small arms fire from Donetsk and the airport toward settlement Peski, where positions of the Ukrainian forces are installed.

    jfl | Apr 2, 2015 4:27:24 AM | 13

    @9
    The purge going on in Western Ukraine may be the sign that they have given up on war with the East ... that would have been their instruction from the CIA, in that case ... and are preparing to internalize the war. I'm probably quoting J Hawk or K Rus. Everything is so wrong in Ukraine ... and getting daily wronger ... that they desperately need some overarching threat to 'keep everyone's mind off the pain'. The poor, poor Ukrainians.

    I don't think the author at Russia Insider meant that the collapse of the Ukraine would last 100 years, 'just' that the 'lifestyle' of the Ukrainians would be more similar to their lifestyle 100 years ago than to their 21st century fantasies. The ground is the place to build up from. And slowly and thoughtfully, with an appreciation for what is real and what is not, is the way to go.

    It is not only the Ukrainians who will be in this position in the near future. I agree with Mike Maloney@7 ... "how can all this not end up becoming globalized total war?"

    ǝn⇂ɔ | Apr 2, 2015 9:19:48 AM | 16

    "US training" in practice seems more an economic outcome than a military one. Much like sourcing the F35 - US training of indigenous troops presents limitless opportunities for kickbacks, theft, and other means of securing payment for local warlords. Trainers have to be fed, housed, and protected - all activities which generate income. Trainees have to be furnished equipment - which can be stolen and sold. Training itself consumes resources: ammunition, food, etc which also can be stolen and sold.

    Enough baksheesh spread around this way, and you have built a nice local tier of warlord support.

    rufus magister | Apr 2, 2015 11:05:14 PM | 26
    It's Official – All Kiev's Investigations of Maidan Crimes Deadlocked

    "Council of Europe report finds that official Ukrainian investigations into crimes committed during the Maidan protests are a total shambles and are going nowhere."

    Harold | Apr 3, 2015 2:56:26 AM | 28

    As billmon predicted the Ukraine has called Russia's number -- for now: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/02/us-ukraine-crisis-gas-idUSKBN0MT0B420150402
    Richard Steven Hack | Apr 3, 2015 1:44:14 PM | 31

    Obama fully intends to get a war or at least threat of war started in the Ukraine between Russia and NATO in order to boost the military-industrial complex and the US military budget.

    The alleged intent of the Ukraine crisis was to make Ukraine into a NATO base on Russia's borders. But Russia will never stand for that. And it's not certain that everyone in the Beltway was ignorant of that. These people can read the articles that pointed out that Russia would not stand for that.

    But Russia didn't take the bait and invade Ukraine. Instead they merely supported the anti-Kiev forces in the east.

    So Obama has to up the ante. The only way to do that is to support the far-right neo-Nazi forces in the Ukraine and get them to take over the government. This is because Russia will never accept a Nazi-led Ukraine, either.

    The goal is to force Russia to deal militarily directly with Ukraine, thus justifying a NATO threat response, which will boost the Cold war and boost the US and EU military-industrial complex.

    Never forget that Obama is owned and operated by his masters in Chicago who are both Israel-Firsters and stock holders in the military-industrial complex.

    Demian | Apr 3, 2015 2:14:25 PM | 32

    Funny that this isn't showing up on Western news channels:

    offguardian: "We're not cattle": Kiev protesters throw manure at US embassy (with video)

    Note that unlike the EuroMaidan, this protest is peaceful.

    Demian | Apr 3, 2015 5:58:20 PM | 33

    Republicans see Obama as a greater threat to the US than Putin. For once, they are right.
    jfl | Apr 3, 2015 6:11:32 PM | 34

    @31,32
    Looks like the Ukrainians are finally beginning to understand just how badly they have been played. Maybe they will no longer stand for a Nazi-led Ukraine, either?

    I mean ... how have they benefited at all from NAZI rule?

    [Mar 31, 2015] Ukraine s Bloody Civil War No End in Sight

    It is very difficult to access the real situation in Donbass. there is a distinct Russian interference and the US interference in the conflict, so it is better to be viewed as a proxy war between the US and Russia. Somewhat similar to Syrian conflict. Where the Ukraine is just a victim of geopolitical games.
    Mar 31, 2015 | The National Interest

    After spending several days in and around Donetsk last week, I found it hard to escape the conclusion that the second Minsk ceasefire is rapidly unraveling. Nearly continuous artillery shelling and machine-gun fire could be heard for the better part of Thursday morning in the city's Oktyabrskaya neighborhood, not far from the airport, where fighting is said to have continued without surcease.

    The OSCE reported that the main railway station in the city was shelled on March 25, and a visit to it the day after showed that to be so. Rebel tanks could be seen participating in exercises on the rural outskirts of Donetsk on the 26th. The sound of sporadic artillery fire could be heard in the city's centrally located Leninsky District well into the early hours of the 27th.

    The mood among many in Donetsk-noncombatants as well as rebel fighters who comprise what is known as the Army of Novorossiya-indicates little interest in a rapprochement with Kiev. This is, given the conditions of the city after nearly a full year of war, rather understandable. Many bitterly complain of Kiev's chosen moniker for the military campaign it is waging against the separatist fighters, the "Anti-Terrorist Operation." Ordinary citizens and combatants alike view it as an attempt to dehumanize them as a whole by grouping the entire population of the region in with likes of ISIS.

    Interactions with several rebel rank-and-files and a briefing from two rebel officers reveal even less of an appetite for a way back into the Ukrainian fold. As one senior officer put it: "Ukraine is dead. It was killed on May 2 in Odessa." Questions regarding Russian involvement were met with scoffs-though one did admit that "[their] Russian brothers" did provide food supplies to the area.

    This is not to say Russia's support to the rebels is limited to nonlethal aid, just that it was quite obvious that all involved would be loath to admit it. In any event, despite repeated accusations of Russian malfeasance by Washington and Brussels, even the Chief of Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, admitted in late January that the "Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army."

    Interestingly, the rebels seem to have a similar mindset to those U.S. Congressmen who overwhelmingly voted to supply Kiev with lethal military aid last week: that the remilitarization of the conflict is simply inevitable. One rebel commander said that he expects Kiev to launch a new major offensive "within a week" and added, matter-of-factly: "We are ready." And ready, he claims, for the long haul.

    The separatist forces, according to this commander, are prepared to fight for the next five to seven years for "Russky Mir" (which he defined as "Russian culture") to rid all Ukraine of what he called "Nazis" and "fascists." Pressed for details, the commander said he did not wish to impose a "Russian world" on Ukraine, but rather that each province ought to hold a referendum to decide its fate, apparently in a fashion similar to the referendum that was held in Crimea. The commander claimed to have (but did not provide) intelligence showing that over $3 billion of the $5 billion tranche of IMF assistance that recently went to Kiev is being used to shore up its military. In short, it quickly became blindingly clear that these people are in no mood to settle; and the idea that Kiev will emerge victorious anytime soon after the twin military defeats it suffered at Debaltseve and at the Donetsk airport-with or without American lethal aid-borders on the preposterous.

    Yet it seems that the Washington establishment's (though, interestingly, it seems not the president's) preferred policy choice is to send lethal aid to Kiev because it is believed, no doubt sincerely, that a supply of javelin anti-tank missiles will somehow increase the number of Russian fatalities to such an extent that public opinion would turn against Putin-thereby forcing him to back down.

    This is nothing more than a fantasy dressed up as a strategy because it attributes little to no agency on the part of the rebel fighters or, for that matter, the area's noncombatants. The simple, undeniable fact is that even if Russia was to be persuaded-via sanctions or via a significant uptick in military casualties-to wash its hands of the region, there is almost no chance that the indigenous military forces in the region would simply melt away. What is continuing to unfold in the Donbass-despite repeated protestations from Kiev's representatives in Washington-is a civil war between two groups with diametrically opposed visions for the future of their country. It is a civil war that also-given that each side has enormously powerful supporters-poses a genuinely grave risk to global security.

    [Mar 31, 2015] Ukraine s Bloody Civil War No End in Sight

    It is very difficult to access the real situation in Donbass. there is a distinct Russian interference and the US interference in the conflict, so it is better to be viewed as a proxy war between the US and Russia. Somewhat similar to Syrian conflict. Where the Ukraine is just a victim of geopolitical games.
    Mar 31, 2015 | The National Interest

    After spending several days in and around Donetsk last week, I found it hard to escape the conclusion that the second Minsk ceasefire is rapidly unraveling. Nearly continuous artillery shelling and machine-gun fire could be heard for the better part of Thursday morning in the city's Oktyabrskaya neighborhood, not far from the airport, where fighting is said to have continued without surcease.

    The OSCE reported that the main railway station in the city was shelled on March 25, and a visit to it the day after showed that to be so. Rebel tanks could be seen participating in exercises on the rural outskirts of Donetsk on the 26th. The sound of sporadic artillery fire could be heard in the city's centrally located Leninsky District well into the early hours of the 27th.

    The mood among many in Donetsk-noncombatants as well as rebel fighters who comprise what is known as the Army of Novorossiya-indicates little interest in a rapprochement with Kiev. This is, given the conditions of the city after nearly a full year of war, rather understandable. Many bitterly complain of Kiev's chosen moniker for the military campaign it is waging against the separatist fighters, the "Anti-Terrorist Operation." Ordinary citizens and combatants alike view it as an attempt to dehumanize them as a whole by grouping the entire population of the region in with likes of ISIS.

    Interactions with several rebel rank-and-files and a briefing from two rebel officers reveal even less of an appetite for a way back into the Ukrainian fold. As one senior officer put it: "Ukraine is dead. It was killed on May 2 in Odessa." Questions regarding Russian involvement were met with scoffs-though one did admit that "[their] Russian brothers" did provide food supplies to the area.

    This is not to say Russia's support to the rebels is limited to nonlethal aid, just that it was quite obvious that all involved would be loath to admit it. In any event, despite repeated accusations of Russian malfeasance by Washington and Brussels, even the Chief of Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, admitted in late January that the "Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army."

    Interestingly, the rebels seem to have a similar mindset to those U.S. Congressmen who overwhelmingly voted to supply Kiev with lethal military aid last week: that the remilitarization of the conflict is simply inevitable. One rebel commander said that he expects Kiev to launch a new major offensive "within a week" and added, matter-of-factly: "We are ready." And ready, he claims, for the long haul.

    The separatist forces, according to this commander, are prepared to fight for the next five to seven years for "Russky Mir" (which he defined as "Russian culture") to rid all Ukraine of what he called "Nazis" and "fascists." Pressed for details, the commander said he did not wish to impose a "Russian world" on Ukraine, but rather that each province ought to hold a referendum to decide its fate, apparently in a fashion similar to the referendum that was held in Crimea. The commander claimed to have (but did not provide) intelligence showing that over $3 billion of the $5 billion tranche of IMF assistance that recently went to Kiev is being used to shore up its military. In short, it quickly became blindingly clear that these people are in no mood to settle; and the idea that Kiev will emerge victorious anytime soon after the twin military defeats it suffered at Debaltseve and at the Donetsk airport-with or without American lethal aid-borders on the preposterous.

    Yet it seems that the Washington establishment's (though, interestingly, it seems not the president's) preferred policy choice is to send lethal aid to Kiev because it is believed, no doubt sincerely, that a supply of javelin anti-tank missiles will somehow increase the number of Russian fatalities to such an extent that public opinion would turn against Putin-thereby forcing him to back down.

    This is nothing more than a fantasy dressed up as a strategy because it attributes little to no agency on the part of the rebel fighters or, for that matter, the area's noncombatants. The simple, undeniable fact is that even if Russia was to be persuaded-via sanctions or via a significant uptick in military casualties-to wash its hands of the region, there is almost no chance that the indigenous military forces in the region would simply melt away. What is continuing to unfold in the Donbass-despite repeated protestations from Kiev's representatives in Washington-is a civil war between two groups with diametrically opposed visions for the future of their country. It is a civil war that also-given that each side has enormously powerful supporters-poses a genuinely grave risk to global security.

    [Mar 28, 2015] Pentagon paid accused Chilean killer for years despite revoked visa National Security & Defense

    March 27, 2015 | McClatchy DC

    The Pentagon rebuffed efforts to remove a Chilean professor accused of torturing and murdering political prisoners, keeping him on the payroll of a prestigious U.S. military school for almost three years after the State Department revoked his visa because of the alleged human rights violations.

    Exploiting legal loopholes and inaction across several government agencies, the accused torturer was able to remain in the United States, renew his work contract twice and even travel widely despite his visa revocation, a McClatchy investigation reveals.

    The Pentagon now promises changes to its vetting process for foreign nationals working throughout its National Defense University, with an emphasis on accusations of human rights violations.

    Officials with the U.S. military school – the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies – knew by at least 2008 that Jaime Garcia Covarrubias had been accused of being part of Chile's brutal secret police and stood accused of torture and murder.

    Yet after the State Department revoked his Defense Department-sponsored visa on June 18, 2011, and a special U.S. human rights violator unit notified defense officials afterward, Garcia Covarrubias was paid sick leave and collected an annual salary in excess of $100,000 until February 2014.

    The compensation was paid despite recommendations from the U.S. Embassy in Chile that Garcia Covarrubias face deportation proceedings and potential removal from the United States because of the allegations.

    The handling of the matter, some critics say, casts doubt on the U.S. commitment to human rights. Multiple government sources, who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed that once the State Department revoked his visa, no one else moved aggressively against Garcia Covarrubias, partly in deference to the Defense Department.

    Garcia Covarrubias was not called in for a hearing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which reached out to the Defense Department. Pentagon lawyers shrugged off the visa revocation and said the school had no grounds to fire Garcia Covarrubias, even renewing his contract to teach after he took advantage of immigration laws to remain in the country.

    "This is extremely troubling. Someone has to be held accountable within the Obama administration and in the Defense Department," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group. "It's really hard to believe that it was just a lack of oversight by the Pentagon."

    The allegations against Garcia Covarrubias, reported in detail by McClatchy on March 12, sparked disagreement between the U.S. military and the diplomatic corps over how to deal with the case.

    U.S. immigration laws allow revocation of visas or expulsion from the United States over the accusation of being a human rights violator. The State Department usually makes this determination but the Department of Homeland Security has ultimate say.

    In Garcia Covarrubias' case, U.S. Embassy officials in Chile were struck by a compelling account from one of the alleged victims and early on recommended that the professor be subjected to deportation proceedings.

    "It was a very troubling, poignant and compelling rendition," said a former U.S. official with close knowledge of the case, having never discussed the accuser's account before with the media. The former official demanded anonymity because the Garcia Covarrubias affair remains an open legal matter in Chile.

    Despite the accusations, Defense Department lawyers repeatedly concluded that the school, part of the National Defense University, was not compelled to fire Garcia Covarrubias because he had not been convicted of a crime. And school officials thought highly of his teaching abilities and expertise in the transition from military to civilian rule in Latin America. Garcia Covarrubias was a military leader during Chile's dictatorship and in subsequent elected governments.

    "Termination of a faculty member for misconduct must be based on a determination that the allegations are substantiated, after the employee is provided due process," said a written response from the Pentagon to McClatchy's questions about the case, adding that "Dr. Garcia had not been found guilty in any case brought against him in the Chilean justice system."

    In a separate followup statement, the Pentagon noted human rights accusations sometimes occur decades after the fact, and an internal review underscored the need for a "stringent new process to scrutinize the background of new hires." This would include input from human rights groups.

    "To further support these checks, (the Pentagon) has developed formal guidance that specifically states all future foreign hires will undergo ongoing human rights vetting for the duration of their employment," the statement said.

    The burden of proof cited by the Defense Department for its inaction isn't necessary for the State Department, because many countries have weak justice systems that allow violators to escape any real consequences for their actions.

    In the Chilean professor's case, former school officials said he was hit by the State Department with a "provisional revocation." This type of action was ushered in following the 9/11 terror attacks and makes it easier for the government to quickly bar the holder of a revoked visa from re-entering the United States without a new visa.

    So how did an accused murderer and torturer remain in the United States with a revoked visa and was even permitted to travel abroad?

    Even though his visa was revoked, there were no deportation proceedings or even a notice to appear before an immigration judge. Garcia Covarrubias was actually entitled to remain in the United States until this revoked visa would have expired, on Jan. 30, 2012, current and former government officials confirmed.

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement had little room to move. His visa was sponsored by the Defense Department, limiting the ability to pursue criminal or immigration fraud charges. Defense officials were put on notice about the revocation and chose not to terminate his contract, even renewing it later.

    As a result, Garcia Covarrubias was able to apply on Nov. 14, 2011, for lawful permanent residency. He was granted what's called "advance parole," and he acquired related permission to work and to travel. Those actions trumped the visa revocation when, according to one former school official, Garcia Covarrubias returned to the United States on separate occasions from the Dominican Republic and Mexico and was screened and permitted back into the country by Customs and Border Protection supervisors.

    Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/03/27/261255/pentagon-paid-accused-chilean.html#storylink=cpy

    [Mar 27, 2015] Obama's Drone Policy Crashes and Burns BY Leonard C. Goodman

    But until we end the partnership between government and corporate power, three things will remain constant: Our foreign policy will be expensive for U.S. taxpayers, profitable for the war contractors and disastrous for everyday people.
    In These Times
    The unraveling of Yemen should be a wake-up call for Obama loyalists. Obama was elected in large part because of his opposition to the disastrous Iraq War and his promise of a smarter Middle East policy, one less reliant on invasion and occupation. Nevertheless, in office, Obama has supported the occupation of Afghanistan and the NATO-led overthrow of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, which led to chaos.

    Still, as Obama explained in a September 2014 foreign policy speech, the centerpiece of his strategy in the Middle East has been a more long-distance approach: "taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines." In other words: air strikes, drones and military aid. He touted the success of this strategy in Yemen and Somalia.

    Indeed, Yemen has been the poster child for Obama's Middle East strategy. Using the U.S. military bases that surround Yemen, we have propped up the corrupt and repressive regimes of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his successor, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi (i.e., our "partners on the front lines"). In exchange, they let us incinerate alleged militants. And when we slaughter innocents (like 35 women and children in a 2009 bombing, or 12 members of a wedding party in a 2014 drone strike), our partners help cover up our crimes, even jailing the Yemeni journalist who exposed the U.S. role in the 2009 attack.

    Of course, the cover-up was effective only in the United States, where most of our news comes from corporate sources that almost never challenge official pronouncements about military or CIA missions. The Yemeni people know all too well our criminal acts. Last September, 13-yearold Mohammed Tuaiman al-Jahmi told the Guardian that "he lived in constant fear of the 'death machines' in the sky that had already killed his father and brother" in 2011, as they were out herding the family's camels. In February, Mohammed himself was killed by a U.S. drone.

    The Obama "success story" in Yemen had already come to an end in January, when Houthi rebels took control of the presidential compound in Sanaa, ousting Hadi, his prime minister and his entire cabinet. The motto of the new leaders is "Death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam." On February 10, the State Department confirmed that it had closed the U.S. embassy in Yemen, the third in an Arab country since 2012.

    In truth, Obama's foreign policy is similar to George W. Bush's. The war contractors want to keep the rivers of taxpayer cash flowing into their coffers, while multinational energy firms want the U.S. to keep supporting brutal, undemocratic regimes that keep their boots on the necks of restive citizens who might object to foreign firms exploiting national resources. And as long as our laws permit corrupt ties between corporate interests and politicians, we will continue to see disastrous failure after failure of our foreign policy.

    In February, Obama led a three-day summit on countering violent extremism. The president's remarks at this summit, of course, made no mention of our odious drone policy. No citizens of Yemen or Pakistan were invited to speak about how living with the constant anxiety caused by armed drones buzzing in the sky drives residents to join anti-U.S. terror groups. Nor was there any talk of the blowback caused by the U.S. military bases which garrison the greater Middle East, or of the corrupt, repressive regimes that those U.S. bases support. Instead, leaders of some of those regimes attended the summit.

    Obama did offer empty rhetoric about how we are not at war with Islam. Such words are unlikely to impress Muslims outside the United States, who know that it's Muslims who populate Obama's kill list, who are indefinitely detained at Guantánamo without charges and whose systematic torture by the CIA was swept under the rug by Obama.

    Americans, who are ill-informed about our actions overseas, will hear Obama's empathetic rhetoric and quite rationally conclude that the reason we are losing in places like Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan is because Obama is too soft. Perhaps our next president will be someone who promises to get tougher on Muslim extremists.

    But until we end the partnership between government and corporate power, three things will remain constant: Our foreign policy will be expensive for U.S. taxpayers, profitable for the war contractors and disastrous for everyday people.

    [Mar 25, 2015] Congress Demands War in Ukraine! by Daniel McAdams

    March 23, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

    Just weeks after a European-brokered ceasefire greatly reduced the violence in Ukraine, the US House of Representatives today takes a big step toward re-igniting -- and expanding -- the bloody civil war.

    A Resolution, "Calling on the President to provide Ukraine with military assistance to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity," stealthily made its way to the House Floor today without having been debated in the relevant House Committees and without even being given a bill number before appearing on the Floor!

    Now titled H. Res. 162, the bill demands that President Obama send lethal military equipment to the US-backed government in Kiev and makes it clear that the weapons are to be used to take military action to return Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine to Kiev's rule.

    Congress wants a war in Ukraine and will not settle for a ceasefire!

    The real world effect of this Resolution must be made clear: The US Congress is giving Kiev the green light to begin a war with Russia, with the implicit guarantee of US backing. This is moral hazard on steroids and could well spark World War III.

    The Resolution conveniently ignores that the current crisis in Ukraine was ignited by the US-backed coup which overthrew the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. The secession of Crimea and eastern Ukraine were a reaction to the illegal coup engineered by US officials such as Victoria Nuland and Geoff Pyatt. Congress instead acts as if one morning the Russians woke up and decided to invade Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

    There is no mention at all of US backing for the coup -- or even that a coup took place!

    Indeed, a read of the Resolution shows it is revisionism par excellence:

    Whereas the Russian Federation under President Vladimir Putin has engaged in relentless political, economic, and military aggression to subvert the independence and violate the territorial integrity of Ukraine;
    ...

    Whereas Russian aggression against Ukraine is but the most visible and recent manifestation of a revisionist Kremlin strategy to redraw international borders and impose its will on its neighbors, including NATO allies;

    Shamefully, the resolution pins the blame for the thousands killed by Kiev's shelling of civilian centers in eastern Ukraine on Russia:
    Whereas this Russian aggression includes the establishment and control of violent separatist proxies in other areas of Ukraine, including arming them with lethal weapons and other materiel including tanks, artillery, and rockets that have enabled separatist militias to launch and sustain an insurrection that has resulted in over 6,000 dead, 15,000 wounded, and more than a million displaced persons;
    The Resolution goes even further, explicitly calling for the US to support regime change in Russia itself:
    Whereas the United States and its allies need a long-term strategy to expose and challenge Vladimir Putin's corruption and repression at home and his aggression abroad;
    "Expose and challenge" the elected Russian president at home.

    During the Floor debate on the Resolution, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) even compared Russian "action" in Ukraine to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia, demanding that this time the "Hitler" must be stopped before he goes further!

    Not a single Member of Congress took the Floor to oppose this dangerous Resolution.

    Passage of this Resolution should make it clear that the political leadership of the US will accept nothing short of war with Russia.

    Update: The Resolution passed in the House, 348-48.


    Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

    [Mar 24, 2015] The Deep State

    February 28, 2014 | theamericanconservative.com

    Steve Sailer links to this unsettling essay by former career Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren, who says the "deep state" - the Washington-Wall-Street-Silicon-Valley Establishment - is a far greater threat to liberty than you think. The partisan rancor and gridlock in Washington conceals a more fundamental and pervasive agreement. Excerpts:

    Excerpts:

    These are not isolated instances of a contradiction; they have been so pervasive that they tend to be disregarded as background noise. During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi's regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to French intervention there. At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit $115 million to keeping a civil war going in Syria and to pay at least Ł100m to the United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country's intelligence. Since 2007, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, one killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent $1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to allow the National Security Agency to store a yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined. A yottabyte is equal to 500 quintillion pages of text. They need that much storage to archive every single trace of your electronic life.

    Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an "establishment." All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State's protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.

    More:

    Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and threaten the status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests. The executives of the financial giants even have de facto criminal immunity. On March 6, 2013, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder stated the following: "I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy." This, from the chief law enforcement officer of a justice system that has practically abolished the constitutional right to trial for poorer defendants charged with certain crimes. It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice - certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee. [3]

    The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner and many others. Not all the traffic involves persons connected with the purely financial operations of the government: In 2013, General David Petraeus joined KKR (formerly Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) of 9 West 57th Street, New York, a private equity firm with $62.3 billion in assets. KKR specializes in management buyouts and leveraged finance. General Petraeus' expertise in these areas is unclear. His ability to peddle influence, however, is a known and valued commodity. Unlike Cincinnatus, the military commanders of the Deep State do not take up the plow once they lay down the sword. Petraeus also obtained a sinecure as a non-resident senior fellow at theBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Ivy League is, of course, the preferred bleaching tub and charm school of the American oligarchy.

    Lofgren goes on to say that Silicon Valley is a node of the Deep State too, and that despite the protestations of its chieftains against NSA spying, it's a vital part of the Deep State's apparatus. More:

    The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction. Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the sun as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or London may be term-limited by its overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said of Rome, to "live upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face."

    Read the whole thing. Steve Sailer says that the Shallow State is a complement to the Deep State. The Shallow State is, I think, another name for what the Neoreactionaries call "The Cathedral," defined thus:

    The Cathedral - The self-organizing consensus of Progressives and Progressive ideology represented by the universities, the media, and the civil service. A term coined by blogger Mencius Moldbug. The Cathedral has no central administrator, but represents a consensus acting as a coherent group that condemns other ideologies as evil. Community writers have enumerated the platform of Progressivism as women's suffrage, prohibition, abolition, federal income tax, democratic election of senators, labor laws, desegregation, popularization of drugs, destruction of traditional sexual norms, ethnic studies courses in colleges, decolonization, and gay marriage. A defining feature of Progressivism is that "you believe that morality has been essentially solved, and all that's left is to work out the details." Reactionaries see Republicans as Progressives, just lagging 10-20 years behind Democrats in their adoption of Progressive norms.

    You don't have to agree with the Neoreactionaries on what they condemn - women's suffrage? desegregation? labor laws? really?? - to acknowledge that they're onto something about the sacred consensus that all Right-Thinking People share. I would love to see a study comparing the press coverage from 9/11 leading up to the Iraq War with press coverage of the gay marriage issue from about 2006 till today. Specifically, I'd be curious to know about how thoroughly the media covered the cases against the policies that the Deep State and the Shallow State decided should prevail. I'm not suggesting a conspiracy here, not at all. I'm only thinking back to how it seemed so obvious to me in 2002 that we should go to war with Iraq, so perfectly clear that the only people who opposed it were fools or villains. The same consensus has emerged around same-sex marriage. I know how overwhelmingly the news media have believed this for some time, such that many American journalists simply cannot conceive that anyone against same-sex marriage is anything other than a fool or a villain. Again, this isn't a conspiracy; it's in the nature of the thing. Lofgren:

    Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called "groupthink," the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

    A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have planted yourself in your office chair for the 10,000th time. Government life is typically not some vignette from an Allen Drury novel about intrigue under the Capitol dome. Sitting and staring at the clock on the off-white office wall when it's 11:00 in the evening and you are vowing never, ever to eat another piece of takeout pizza in your life is not an experience that summons the higher literary instincts of a would-be memoirist. After a while, a functionary of the state begins to hear things that, in another context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply bounce off one's consciousness like pebbles off steel plate: "You mean the number of terrorist groups we are fighting is classified?" No wonder so few people are whistle-blowers, quite apart from the vicious retaliation whistle-blowing often provokes: Unless one is blessed with imagination and a fine sense of irony, growing immune to the curiousness of one's surroundings is easy. To paraphrase the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, I didn't know all that I knew, at least until I had had a couple of years away from the government to reflect upon it.

    When all you know is the people who surround you in your professional class bubble and your social circles, you can think the whole world agrees with you, or should. It's probably not a coincidence that the American media elite live, work, and socialize in New York and Washington, the two cities that were attacked on 9/11, and whose elites - political, military, financial - were so genuinely traumatized by the events.

    Anyway, that's just a small part of it, about how the elite media manufacture consent. Here's a final quote, one from the Moyers interview with Lofgren:

    BILL MOYERS: If, as you write, the ideology of the Deep State is not democrat or republican, not left or right, what is it?

    MIKE LOFGREN: It's an ideology. I just don't think we've named it. It's a kind of corporatism. Now, the actors in this drama tend to steer clear of social issues. They pretend to be merrily neutral servants of the state, giving the best advice possible on national security or financial matters. But they hold a very deep ideology of the Washington consensus at home, which is deregulation, outsourcing, de-industrialization and financialization. And they believe in American exceptionalism abroad, which is boots on the ground everywhere, it's our right to meddle everywhere in the world. And the result of that is perpetual war.

    This can't last. We'd better hope it can't last. And we'd better hope it unwinds peacefully.

    I, for one, remain glad that so many of us Americans are armed. When the Deep State collapses - and it will one day - it's not going to be a happy time.

    Questions to the room: Is a Gorbachev for the Deep State conceivable? That is, could you foresee a political leader emerging who could unwind the ideology and apparatus of the Deep State, and not only survive, but succeed? Or is it impossible for the Deep State to allow such a figure to thrive? Or is the Deep State, like the Soviet system Gorbachev failed to reform, too entrenched and too far gone to reform itself? If so, what then?

    [Mar 24, 2015] Regime Change America's Failing Weapon Of International Deception

    Zero Hedge
    Authored by Ben Tanosborn,

    For years, Winston Churchill's famous quote, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried," has served as Americans' last word in any political discussion which requires validation of the US government, no matter how corrupt or flawed in its behavior, as the best in the planet, comparatively or by default. Never mind the meaning that Mr. Churchill had intended back in 1947, or how the international political panorama has changed during the past seven decades.

    These remarks were made by Britain's prime minister before the House of Commons a few months before there was a changing of the guards in the "Anglo-Saxon Empire" as the Brits gave away their colonial hegemony in favor of the super-influential economic and military power represented by the United States. And that was symbolically marked by Britain's relinquishing its mandate in Palestine, and the creation of Israel.

    Such reference to democracy in the quote, explicitly defining it as a "government by the people," basically applied to Britain and the United States at the close of World War II; but such condition has deteriorated in the US to the point where the "common people" no longer have a say as to how the nation is run, either directly or through politicians elected with financial support provided by special interests, undoubtedly expecting their loyalty-vote. Yet, while this un-democratization period in our system of government was happening, there were many nations that were adopting a true code of democracy, their citizens having a greater say as to how their countries are governed. Recognizing such occurrence, however, is a seditious sin for an American mind still poisoned by the culture of exceptionalism and false pride in which it has been brainwashed.

    And that's where our empire, or sphere of influence, stands these days… fighting the windmills of the world, giants that we see menacing "American interests," and doing it under the banner of "for democracy and human rights." Such lofty empire aims appear to rationalize an obscene military budget almost twice as large as those of Russia, China, India and United Kingdom combined! Americans, representing less than 5 percent of the world's population, are footing a military bill almost twice as large as that expended by half of the world's population. If that isn't imperialistic and obscene, it's difficult to image what other societal behavior could be more detrimental to peace and harmony in this global village where we all try to co-exist.

    Empires and global powers of the past most often resorted to deposing of antagonistic foreign rulers by invading their countries and installing amicable/subservient puppet rulers. The United States and the United Kingdom, perhaps trying to find refuge, or an excuse, in their democratic tradition, have resorted to regime change "manipulations" to deal with adversary governments-nations. [Bush43's Iraq invasion stands as a critical exception by a mongrel government: half-criminal (Dick Cheney-as mentor), and half-moronic (George W. Bush-as mentee).]

    Regime change has served the United States well throughout much of the Americas from time immemorial; an endless litany of dictators attesting to shameless in-your-face puppetry… manipulations taking the form of sheer military force, or the fear of such force; bribery of those in power, or about to attain power – usually via military coup; or the promise of help from the Giant of the North (US) in improving economic growth, education and health. Kennedy's 1961 Alliance for Progress proved to be more political-PR than an honest, effective effort to help the people in Latin America… such program becoming stale and passé in Washington by decade's end; the focus shifting in a feverish attempt to counter the efforts by Castro's Cuba to awaken the revolutionary spirit of sister republics in Central and South America (Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua…).

    After almost two centuries of political and economic meddling in Latin America under the Monroe Doctrine (1823) banner, much of it involving regime change, the US is finally coming to terms with the reality that its influence has not just waned but disappeared. Not just in nations which may have adopted socialist politics, but other nations as well. US' recent attempt to get other regional republics to label Venezuela (Maduro's leftist government) as a security threat not only met with opposition from the twelve-country Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) but has brought in the end of an era. It's now highly unlikely that secretive efforts by the CIA to effect regime change in Latin America will find support; certainly not the support it had in the past.

    To Washington's despair, similar results, if for other reasons, are happening throughout North Africa and the extended Middle East; certainly not the results the US had hoped for or anticipated from the revolutionary wave in the Arab Spring, now entering its fifth year. It is no longer the flow of oil that keeps Washington committed to a very strong presence in the Middle East. It is America's Siamese relationship with Israel.

    But if regime change is no longer an effective weapon for the US in Latin America or the Middle East, the hope is still high that it might work in Eastern Europe, as America keeps corralling Russian defenses to within a holler of American missilery. Ukraine's year-old regime change is possibly the last hurrah in US-instigated regime changes… and it is still too early to determine its success; the US counting on its front-line European NATO partners to absorb the recoil in terms of both the economy and a confrontational status now replacing prior smooth relations.

    Somehow it is difficult to envision an outcome taking place in Ukraine which would allow the United States a foothold at the very doorsteps of Russia; something totally as inconceivable as if China or Russia were contemplating establishing military bases in Mexico or any part of Central America or the Caribbean.

    The era of using regime change as a weapon of mass deception may have already ended for the United States of America… and hopefully for the entire world.

    Mon, 03/23/2015 - 22:46 | 5920475 JustObserving

    America has always lied itself to war - few believe US lies now. Obama almost lied his way to a war with Syria about sarin:

    Lies: An Abbreviated History of U.S. Presidents Leading Us to War

    8. Vietnam (Kennedy, Johnson, 1964) -- Lies: Johnson said Vietnam attacked our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in August, 1964.Truth: The US didn't want to lose the southeast Asia region, and its oil and sea lanes, to China. This "attack" was convenient. Kennedy initiated the first major increase in US troops (over 500).

    9. Gulf War (G.H.W. Bush, 1991) -- Lies: To defend Kuwait from Iraq. Truth: Saddam was a threat to Israel, and we wanted his oil and land for bases.

    10. Balkans (Clinton, 1999) -- Lies: Prevent Serb killing of Bosnians. Truth: Get the Chinese out of Eastern Europe (remember the "accidental" bombing of their embassy in Belgrade?) so they could not get control of the oil in the Caspian region and Eastward. Control land for bases such as our huge Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, and for the proposed Trans-Balkan Oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea area to the Albanian port of Valona on the Adriatic Sea.

    11. Afghan (G.W. Bush, 2001) -- Lies: The Taliban were hiding Osama. Truth: To build a gas/oil pipeline from Turkmenistan and other northern 'xxstan' countries to a warm water (all year) port in the Arabian Sea near Karachi (same reason the Russians were there), plus land for bases.

    12. Iraq (G.W. Bush, 2003) -- Lies: Stop use of WMDs -- whoops, bring Democracy, or whatever.Truth: Oil, defense of Israel, land for permanent bases (we were kicked out of Saudi Arabia) to manage the greater Middle East, restore oil sales in USD (Saddam had changed to Euros)

    http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/13-lies-abbreviated-history-of-us.ht...

    Lies and Consequences in Our Past 15 Wars

    http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/9419-lies-and-consequences-in-our-pas...

    gdogus erectus

    Even articles like this erroneously refer to the US as a democracy. WTF. The programming runs deep.

    "A republic...if you can keep it."

    cornfritter

    Very poorly written article. Better to say that Andy Jackson was about the last bad ass to fight of the banksters and die a natural death, then Salmon Chase and his buddies passed the legal tender laws, and shortly thereafter (or possibly before) London dispatched the Fabian socialists with their patient gradualism. We were firmly back under the yoke of London banking cartel come 1913. And you are correct, a republic is an EXTREMELY limited form of democracy (not truly akin to traditional 51% takes it democratic concepts at all). The elected leader's function was supposed to be to guard the principles of the Constitution and the limited Republic, and history will remember that, despite this cruft of an article.

    In the eyes of many who founded this nation, it was only a stepping stone to a global government, the new Rome - but the new Rome will be the UN with a global bank, and the multinational corporations holding court, and then the end come.

    Then again, I may be wrong.

    negative rates

    What passes for gvt is silly these days, we are a legend in our own minds.

    suteibu

    "Governments would become political churches"

    Like in the Middle East? And you will counter by saying that people are forced to live under those governments and, yet, thousands are freely going there from around the world to join ISIS.

    Otherwise, such a system would work right up until one government church decided there wasn't enough room in the area for competitors (probably within a year, maybe six months). Let the political/religious tribal wars begin.

    anusocracy

    Bankers couldn't be banksters without government.

    Maybe it's the monopoly of force thingy you don't understand.

    |

    [Mar 21, 2015] The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton

    After Israeli elections and Ukrainian coup d'état the key question is "to what extent [...] the contemporary right [is] linked to classical fascism". And the picture is complex. As one reviewer of the book Fascism and Neofascism Critical Writings on the Radical Right in Europe noted "contrary to common perception, the Nazi movement was not repressive towards sex. In fact, it sneered at Christian morality much the same way that modern libertines and leftists do, and favored both premarital and extramarital sex. Attempts were made to discredit the Catholic Church by accusing priests in general of being homosexuals (sound familiar?). Much as modern feminists and other humanists, the Nazis accused Christianity of having a dislike for the human body and for showing disrespect towards women. This was supposed to be a carryover of "the Oriental attitude towards women." Similarly hate toward particular ethnic or racial group was never absolute: Among Nazi Germany fascist brass there were notable number of Jews. Also Italian fascism was quite different from German as well as the level of Social Darwinism adopted.
    Neofascism movement share with classic fascism the belief in the necessary of hierarchical (authoritarian) world with the dominant and subordinate groups, as well as ethos of masculine violence. It is deeply rooted in European culture with and as Adorno noted that "totality" is a mode of domination that lies implicit in the Enlightenment drive to de-mythologize the world. In this sense "totalitarism" in not unique to fascism and communism but also is inherent in "consumer capitalism", which, as such, represent a potent background for emerging neofascist groups and movements. Fascist myths were the means of constituting identity and as such not tat different form mass advertizing . That also entails deep similarities of Hollywood and Nazi films. At the same time, new radical right movement and groups are clearly distinct from fascist of the past. While fascism emerged partially as a reaction to brutalities and injustices of WWI, new radical right is in large part the result of unease with the neoliberalism. Several members of Western European far right groups fight in Donbass with Donbass militia as they consider Kiev junta to be Washington puppets promoting its globalization agenda. At the same time several members of white supremacist groups fight with Kiev junta para-military formations (death squads) which openly brandish Nazi symbols.
    Neofascist movements are using "invented historical context" or myths as a powerful means for making sense of human differences and organizing societies. Nationalism, based on however fictive consent of national identity, is powerful mean of organizing the society along of axis of domination and subordination, inclusion and exclusion. Racism and nationalism while not the same things are closely linked together. In a sense any political system that operate on the base of nationality of race is a neofascism in its essence. that includes Israel and Baltic states. In this sense neither the USA nor Russia can be classified as neofascist regimes became they do not adhere to the concept of "ingenious nationality" or white race supremacy. That does not exclude existence of groups that adhere to this mythology.
    It is extremely interesting those football fans, skinheads and hooligans, who often utilized the gesture of rebellition against the society to trigger predictable outrage against the general population were mobilized during EuroMaydan events. Behaviors once deemed antisocial and vandalistic were harnessed in the service of the nationalist discourse and the they served as a part of storm troopers for the coup of February 22, 2014. Ultimately like in Serbia before unruly football hooligans were recruited into paramilitary formations that played important role in civil was in Donbass (like Serbia paramilitary formation in wars of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo) and committed the most horrendous crimes against civil population. .
    Ukrainian events definitely correlated with disillusionment of the neoliberalism in specific form of crony capitalism of Yanukovich regime. In a way marginalization of extreme right from 1945 to 1991 was more exception the a rule Western societies, especially European, tend to generate powerful extreme right movements. In a few states neofascist have chances of coming to power (Ukraine is actually is not a good example as events here were externally driven).
    Amazon.com

    Panopticonman on May 1, 2004

    Whose Reich Is It Anyway?

    The Marquis de Morés, returning to 1890s Paris after his cattle ranching venture in North Dakota failed, recruited a gang of men from the Parisian cattle yards as muscle for his "national socialism" project -- a term Paxton credits Morés' contemporary Maurice Barres, a French nationalist author, with coining. Morés' project was potent and prophetic: his national socialism was a mixture of anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism. He clothed his men in what must have been the first fascist uniform in Europe -- ten-gallon hats and cowboy garb, frontier clothes he'd taken a shine to in the American West. (Author Paxton suggests the first ever fascist get-up was the KKKs white sheet and pointy hat). Morés killed a French Jewish officer in a duel during the Dreyfus affair and later was killed in the Sahara by his guides during his quest to unite France to Islam to Spain.

    Morés had earlier proclaimed: "Life is valuable only through action. So much the worse if the action is mortal."

    Here assembled together are all of the elements of what Paxton would classify as first stage fascism: "the creation of a movement." Most fascist movements stall in this first stage he notes -- think, for instance, of the skinheads, the American Nazi Party and Posse Comitatus.

    Paxton's other stages are

    1. the rooting of the movement in the political system;
    2. the seizure of power;
    3. the exercise of power; and
    4. the duration of power, during which the regime chooses either radicalization or entropy.

    He notes that although each stage

    "is a prerequisite for the next, nothing requires a fascist movement to complete all of them, or even to move in only one direction. The five stages permit plausible comparison between movements and regimes at equivalent degrees of development. It helps us see that fascism, far from static, was a succession of processes and choices: seeking a following, forming alliances, bidding for power, then exercising it. That is why the conceptual tools that illuminate one stage may not necessarily work equally well for others." pg. 23.

    Paxton also tentatively offers a definition of fascism, but only after tracing the rise of various movements from their beginnings in the 19th century through the present day. Other historians and philosophers, he suggests, have written brilliantly on fascism, but have failed to recognize that their analyses apply to only one stage or another. He also notes that often definitions of fascism are based on fascist writings; he maintains that fascist writings while valuable were often written as justification for the seizure of power, or the attempted seizure, and that what fascists actually did and do is more critical to understanding these movements. Indeed, the language of fascism has changed little since the days of the Marquis De Mores.

    He hesitates in offering both his definition and his analytical stages, saying that he knows by doing so he risks falling into the nominalism of the "bestiary." He demonstrates that this is a common failing of definitions of fascism which are often incomplete or muddled as they typically describe only one or two typically late stages.

    Other historians, for instance, split fascism into Nazism or Italian fascism, avoiding the problem of understanding their common elements by concentrating on their differences, insisting that they are incommensurable. Finally in the last pages, Paxton offers up this fairly comprehensive and useful definition:

    "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood 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."

    Paxton is particularly strong in showing how the circumstances in post WWI Germany and Italy -- the demobilized mobs of young soldiers, sent to war by elites who had no conception of the destruction and suffering they had unleashed upon the younger generation -- were ripe for fascism's appeals. For many, liberalism, conservatism and socialism all seemed equally complicit in the crack-up of Europe in the Great War. Fascism, rising from the ashes, employed the socialistic tools of mass marches, the military techniques of terror learned in the war, and as they gained power, the new tools of mass communication and propaganda developed in the US during WWI.

    Fascists also reacted astutely to public discomfort toward the mass migrations from southern and eastern Europe coming in the wake of political and economic distress in those regions, using that fear to increase their power through scapegoating and its attendant rhetoric of purity.

    Fascism is both charged and blurry word these days, used by both the left and the right to assail their critics and enemies.

    The Nazi remains the evildoer par excellence in popular and political culture, invoked for a thrill of fear or the disciplinary scare or emotional incitement. In this masterful synthesis of writings in politics, history, philosophy and sociology, Paxton untangles the vast literature fascism has generated, establishes some essential ground rules for coming to grips with its many expressions, stages, and manifestations, and clears a space for further, better focused research.

    Although academic in its orientation, it is well and clearly written. Finally, for the reader who is not familiar with modern European history, it is a very useful and informative text as it takes into its scope by necessity much of European and American history over the past one hundred years. Absolutely required reading.

    [Mar 21, 2015] Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror by George Washington

    Mar 18, 2015 | Zero Hedge

    There are many documented false flag attacks, where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.

    In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally or in writing:

    (1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the "Mukden Incident" or the "Manchurian Incident". The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: "Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the 'Incident' was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army …." And see this.

    (2) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

    (3) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

    (4) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union's Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the "Winter War" against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

    (5) The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and then falsely blamed it on the Nazis.

    (6) The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called "Defenders of Arab Palestine", and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).

    (7) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).

    (8) The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.

    (9) The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.

    (10) The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.

    (11) The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people's support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security" (and see this) (Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). And watch this BBC special. They also allegedly carried out terror attacks in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and other countries.

    False flag attacks carried out pursuant tho this program include – by way of example only:

    (12) In 1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that the U.S. launch "a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]".

    (13) Official State Department documents show that, in 1961, the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals.

    (14) As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

    (15) In 1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks on nations within the Organization of American States – such as Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica – and then falsely blaming them on Cuba.

    (16) The U.S. Department of Defense even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on Guantanamo."

    (17) The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 … manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war.

    (18) A U.S. Congressional committee admitted that – as part of its "Cointelpro" campaign – the FBI had used many provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists.

    (19) A top Turkish general admitted that Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and blamed it on their enemy. He explained: "In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque." In response to the surprised correspondent's incredulous look the general said, "I am giving an example".

    (20) The German government admitted (and see this) that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the outer wall of a prison and planted "escape tools" on a prisoner – a member of the Red Army Faction – which the secret service wished to frame the bombing on.

    (21) A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffi's compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist trasmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.

    (22) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him "to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident", thus framing the ANC for the bombing.

    (23) An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author).

    (24) The United States Army's 1994 publication Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces – updated in 2004 – recommends employing terrorists and using false flag operations to destabilize leftist regimes in Latin America. False flag terrorist attacks were carried out in Latin America and other regions as part of the CIA's "Dirty Wars". And see this.

    (25) Similarly, a CIA "psychological operations" manual prepared by a CIA contractor for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noted the value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a "martyr" for the cause. The manual was authenticated by the U.S. government. The manual received so much publicity from Associated Press, Washington Post and other news coverage that – during the 1984 presidential debate – President Reagan was confronted with the following question on national television:

    At this moment, we are confronted with the extraordinary story of a CIA guerrilla manual for the anti-Sandinista contras whom we are backing, which advocates not only assassinations of Sandinistas but the hiring of criminals to assassinate the guerrillas we are supporting in order to create martyrs.

    (26) An Indonesian fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that "elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked".

    (27) Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion).

    (28) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

    (29) The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.

    (30) As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror".

    (31) Senior police officials in Genoa, Italy admitted that – in July 2001, at the G8 summit in Genoa – planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer, in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters.

    (32) The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war. Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is "overwhelming" that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime, that Cheney "probably" had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not 'doing their homework' in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction. Despite previous "lone wolf" claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the state which backed the hijackers. (Many U.S. officials have alleged that 9/11 was a false flag operation by rogue elements of the U.S. government; but such a claim is beyond the scope of this discussion. The key point is that the U.S. falsely blamed it on Iraq, when it knew Iraq had nothing to do with it.).

    (33) Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country.

    (34) Police outside of a 2003 European Union summit in Greece were filmed planting Molotov cocktails on a peaceful protester

    (35) Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having "our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda's ranks, causing operatives to doubt others' identities and to question the validity of communications."

    (36) United Press International reported in June 2005:

    U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

    (37) Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians.

    (38) Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers (and see this).

    (39) At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence.

    (40) Egyptian politicians admitted (and see this) that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts in 2011 to try to discredit the protesters.

    (41) A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat.

    (42) The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – recently admitted that the Saudi government controls "Chechen" terrorists.

    (43) High-level American sources admitted that the Turkish government – a fellow NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government.

    (44) The Ukrainian security chief admits that the sniper attacks which started the Ukrainian coup were carried out in order to frame others. Ukrainian officials admit that the Ukrainian snipers fired on both sides, to create maximum chaos.

    (45) Britain's spy agency has admitted (and see this) that it carries out "digital false flag" attacks on targets, framing people by writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the target.

    (46) U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then "drop" automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants

    (47) Similarly, police frame innocent people for crimes they didn't commit. The practice is so well-known that the New York Times noted in 1981:

    In police jargon, a throwdown is a weapon planted on a victim.

    Newsweek reported in 1999:

    Perez, himself a former [Los Angeles Police Department] cop, was caught stealing eight pounds of cocaine from police evidence lockers. After pleading guilty in September, he bargained for a lighter sentence by telling an appalling story of attempted murder and a "throwdown"–police slang for a weapon planted by cops to make a shooting legally justifiable. Perez said he and his partner, Officer Nino Durden, shot an unarmed 18th Street Gang member named Javier Ovando, then planted a semiautomatic rifle on the unconscious suspect and claimed that Ovando had tried to shoot them during a stakeout.

    Wikipedia notes:

    As part of his plea bargain, Pérez implicated scores of officers from the Rampart Division's anti-gang unit, describing routinely beating gang members, planting evidence on suspects, falsifying reports and covering up unprovoked shootings.

    (As a side note – and while not technically false flag attacks – police have been busted framing innocent people in many other ways, as well.)

    So Common … There's a Name for It

    A former U.S. intelligence officer recently alleged:

    Most terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own security services.

    This might be an exaggeration (and – as shown above – the U.S. isn't the only one to play this terrible game). The point is that it is a very widespread strategy.

    Indeed, this form of deceit is so common that it was given a name hundreds of years ago.

    "False flag terrorism" is defined as a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames. Or as Wikipedia defines it:

    False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy's strategy of tension.

    The term comes from the old days of wooden ships, when one ship would hang the flag of its enemy before attacking another ship. Because the enemy's flag, instead of the flag of the real country of the attacking ship, was hung, it was called a "false flag" attack.

    Indeed, this concept is so well-accepted that rules of engagement for naval, air and land warfare all prohibit false flag attacks. Specifically, the rules of engagement state that a military force can fly the enemy's flag, imitate their markings, or dress in an enemy's clothes … but that the ruse has to be discarded before attacking.

    Why are the rules of engagement so specific? Obviously, because nations have been using false flag attacks for many centuries. And the rules of engagement are at least trying to limit false flag attacks so that they aren't used as a false justification for war.

    In other words, the rules of engagement themselves are an admission that false flag terrorism is a very common practice.

    Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the danger of false flags:

    "Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death".
    – Adolph Hitler

    "Why of course the people don't want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
    – Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

    "The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened".
    – Josef Stalin

    Reaper

    These false flags depend upon the trust of their underling sheeple in their leaders and media. Trust is an opiate of each nation's sheeple. Yes, fool, your government/king/media lie to you. Terrorist is word designed to elicit an emote from you Emoting prevents thinking. Power corrupts. Government power corrupts. Media power corrupts. Stupidity enslaves.

    "Cui bono" is thinking. Thinking negates blind obeying. There is no virtue, nor honor, nor self-respect in emoting to your leader's stimuli.

    I think; therefore I am. I emote; therefore I'm controlled.

    raywolf

    you missed out the London bombings in 2005, which are riddled with errors, mistakes and evidence of it being organised by military of Britain or perhaps CIA or Israel.... the train the attackers were meant to be on, was cancelled meaning they couldn't even get into London in time to do the bombings... it's all on CCTV and yet the 'official' report just skips over that part....

    George Washington

    There are scores of false flags I didn't address ... I only focused on the ones that were ADMITTED.

    [Mar 21, 2015] Germany riot targets new ECB headquarters in Frankfurt

    Quote: "Organisers were bringing a left-wing alliance of protesters from across Germany and the rest of Europe to voice their anger at the ECB's role in austerity measures in EU member states, most recently Greece. The bank, in charge of managing the euro, is also responsible for framing eurozone policy and, along with the IMF and European Commission is part of a troika which has set conditions for bailouts in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus. A spokesman for the Blockupy movement said the troika was responsible for austerity measures which have pushed many into poverty."
    BBC News

    Dozens of people have been hurt and some 350 people arrested as anti-austerity demonstrators clashed with police in the German city of Frankfurt.

    Police cars were set alight and stones were thrown in a protest against the opening of a new base for the European Central Bank (ECB).

    Violence broke out close to the city's Alte Oper concert hall hours before the ECB building's official opening.

    "Blockupy" activists are expected to attend a rally later on Wednesday.

    In earlier disturbances, police in riot gear used water cannon to clear hundreds of anti-capitalist protesters from the streets around the new ECB headquarters.

    Organisers were bringing a left-wing alliance of protesters from across Germany and the rest of Europe to voice their anger at the ECB's role in austerity measures in EU member states, most recently Greece.

    The bank, in charge of managing the euro, is also responsible for framing eurozone policy and, along with the IMF and European Commission is part of a troika which has set conditions for bailouts in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus.

    A spokesman for the Blockupy movement said the troika was responsible for austerity measures which have pushed many into poverty.

    Police set up a cordon of barbed wire outside the bank's new 185m (600ft) double-tower skyscraper, next to the River Main.

    But hopes of a peaceful rally were dashed as clashes began early on Wednesday.

    Tyres and rubbish bins were set alight and police responded with water cannon as firefighters complained they were unable to get to the fires to put them out. One fire engine appeared to have had its windscreen broken.

    Activists said many protesters had been hurt by police batons, water cannon and by pepper spray.

    Police said as many as 80 of their officers had been affected by pepper spray or an acidic liquid. Eight suffered injuries from stone-throwing protesters.

    Police spokeswoman Claudia Rogalski spoke of an "aggressive atmosphere" and the Frankfurt force tweeted images of a police van being attacked. They were braced for further violence as increasing numbers of activists arrived for the rally.

    Blockupy accused police of using kettling tactics to cordon off hundreds of protesters and appealed for supporters to press for their release.

    What is Blockupy?

    Europe-wide alliance of left-wing parties, unions and movements Vehemently against austerity polices of European Commission, ECB and IMF First Frankfurt protest attracted thousands in 2012 Activists from Greece's radical left governing party Syriza and Spain's anti-corruption Podemos are joining the rally
    Also includes Germany's Die Linke and Occupy Frankfurt

    Rallying call: "They want capitalism without democracy, we want democracy without capitalism"

    As the number of protesters grew in the streets away from the new ECB building, the bank's president, Mario Draghi, gave a speech marking its inauguration.

    Mr Draghi said that the it "may not be a fair charge" to label the ECB as the main perpetrator of unpopular austerity in Europe.

    "Our action has been aimed precisely at cushioning the shocks suffered by the economy," he said.

    "But as the central bank of the whole euro area, we must listen very carefully to what all our citizens are saying."

    The new headquarters, which had been due to open years earlier, cost an estimated €1.3bn (Ł930m; $1.4bn) to build and is the new home for thousands of central bankers.

    Blockupy activists said on their website that there was nothing to celebrate about the politics of austerity and increasing poverty.

    [Mar 18, 2015] Russia withdrew from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty

    marknesop , March 17, 2015 at 11:57 am
    Most here will be aware that Russia withdrew from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, effective about a week ago. But I wonder how many were aware of the lopsided balance of forces Russia was expected to accept in order to ratify the treaty.

    "When Russia ratified the adapted CFE Treaty, the agreement's weapons limit for NATO was three times that established for the Russian army. However, NATO required the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdnistria as a condition for the ratification of the treaty.

    "NATO countries were not in a hurry to ratify the adapted treaty," Alexei Arbatov said. "Although Russia had withdrawn almost all its troops, there remained some absolutely insignificant contingents and objects. The West sought to pursue its line. On the part of NATO, I think it was extremely short-sighted, it was a big mistake."

    In Arbatov's view, this decision by NATO was what "finished off" conventional arms control in Europe."

    So for Russia, it now no longer recognizes a balance of forces or limit on conventional arms it may deploy in reaction to what it considers NATO provocations. The temperature looks to be steadily rising.

    et Al, March 17, 2015 at 2:07 pm
    I advocated this as an option quite some time ago. The time is judged right by the Kremlin to do so. But, even the US has foreseen this:

    There was a very interesting article (which of course I cannot now find) from a day or two ago outlining the US military's response to the end of the CFE treaty. The underlining point was that the US could do quite a number of things that could make it more militarily threatening to Russia without breaching any CFE commitmets.

    Here's a few mil related stuff that is intersting:

    New Radars, IRST Strengthen Stealth-Detection Claims

    http://aviationweek.com/defense/new-radars-irst-strengthen-stealth-detection-claims

    Counterstealth technologies near service worldwide

    Counterstealth technologies, intended to reduce the effectiveness of radar cross-section (RCS) reduction measures, are proliferating worldwide. Since 2013, multiple new programs have been revealed, producers of radar and infrared search and track (IRST) systems have been more ready to claim counterstealth capability, and some operators-notably the U.S. Navy-have openly conceded that stealth technology is being challenged.

    These new systems are designed from the outset for sensor fusion-when different sensors detect and track the same target, the track and identification data are merged automatically. This is intended to overcome a critical problem in engaging stealth targets: Even if the target is detected, the "kill chain" by which a target is tracked, identified and engaged by a weapon can still be broken if any sensor in the chain cannot pick the target up….
    ####

    I think the point is that stealth has its place, but given the nature of 30 operational lives of aircraft, they are not going to keep their advantage for long. If you follow the tech news, the world is going through a sensor revolution. Price has massively dropped, capabilities have grown hugely, efficiency has significantly increase, its just the case of tying all the data together to make use of it 'data fusion' as they say in the article above. My camera has gps. In the pet shop I've seen gps cat collars not to mention video collars that can record all day or be set by sensor motion. It's only going to get better, cheaper and smaller and continue to reach the consumer in ever more imaginative ways.

    Another 'gift' from the Ukraine, except this time to I-ran (the other I mentioned in a previous post of Su-33 naval prototype sold to China that ended up as the J-11B copy no to mention the copies Su-27SKs):

    AW&ST: Iran Produces First Long-Range Missile

    http://aviationweek.com/defense/iran-produces-first-long-range-missile

    TEL-AVIV - Iran has unveiled a domestically produced long-range land attack cruise missile, dubbed Soumar.

    Based on the Russian Kh-55, the Soumar is believed to have a range of at least 2,000 km. "This missile represents a significant leap in the Middle East arms race," says Col. Aviram Hasson of Israel's Missile Defense Organization.

    "It positions Iran among the world's leaders in missile technology," a Western intelligence source adds….

    …Iran secretly received the missiles in the first half of 2001 and began reverse engineering work. But unlike its publicly displayed ballistic missile program, Iran did not admit to having a cruise missile program until 2012. …
    ###

    It's old, subsonic tech, but adds another arrow to the quiver that needs to be countered. Nor does it have a nuke warhead.

    Defense Update: France to invest €330 million upgrading 218 Leclerc Main Battle Tanks

    http://defense-update.com/20150312_leclerc-2.html

    The planned modernization work will enable Leclerc MBTs to employ its heavy, direct firepower and mobility as part of the future "SCORPION" joint tactical groups (GTIA). The contract provides for the delivery of 200 "upgraded Leclerc" tanks and 18 "Renovated DCL" recovery vehicles from 2020….
    ####

    Yup, from 2020. That's a lot of money for an extra reverse gear!

    kirill, March 17, 2015 at 2:41 pm
    "Even if the target is detected, the "kill chain" by which a target is tracked, identified and engaged by a weapon can still be broken if any sensor in the chain cannot pick the target up"

    Total rubbish claim. It perhaps could be true if the "sensor fusion" system consisted of a couple of obsolete radars, but it would not be true for a system consisting of three or more obsolete radars. American idiots ripped off the stealth concept and mathematics from the Soviets and now prance around like they dictate physical reality. American idiots will not see what hit them when people with actual appreciation and skill in physics and mathematics will face their toys.

    [Mar 18, 2015] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31921011

    bbc.co.uk

    Warren , March 17, 2015 at 12:50 pm

    France and Germany join UK in Asia bank membership

    France and Germany are to join the UK in becoming members of a Chinese-led Asian development bank.

    The finance ministries of both countries confirmed on Tuesday that they would be applying for membership of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

    Last week, the US issued a rare rebuke to the UK over its decision to become a member of the AIIB.

    The US considers the AIIB a rival to the Western-dominated World Bank.

    The UK was the first Western economy to apply for membership of the bank.

    But German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble confirmed on Tuesday that his country would also be applying for membership.

    France's finance ministry confirmed it would be joining the bank. It is believed Italy also intends to join.

    The US has questioned the governance standards at the new institution, which is seen as spreading Chinese "soft power".

    The AIIB, which was created in October by 21 countries, led by China, will fund Asian energy, transport and infrastructure projects.

    When asked about the US rebuke last week, a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said: "There will be times when we take a different approach."

    The UK insisted it would insist on the bank's adherence to strict banking and oversight procedures.

    "We think that it's in the UK's national interest," Mr Cameron's spokesperson added.

    'Not normal'

    Last week, Pippa Malmgren, a former economic adviser to US President George W Bush, told the BBC that the public chastisement from the US indicates the move might have come as a surprise.

    "It's not normal for the United States to be publicly scolding the British," she said, adding that the US's focus on domestic affairs at the moment could have led to the oversight.

    However, Mr Cameron's spokesperson said UK Chancellor George Osborne did discuss the measure with his US counterpart before announcing the move.

    Some 21 nations came together last year to sign a memorandum for the bank's establishment, including Singapore, India and Thailand.

    But in November last year, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott offered lukewarm support to the AIIB and said its actions must be transparent.

    US President Barack Obama, who met Mr Abbott on the sidelines of a Beijing summit last year, agreed the bank had to be transparent, accountable and truly multilateral.

    "Those are the same rules by which the World Bank or IMF [International Monetary Fund] or Asian Development Bank or any other international institution needs to abide by," Mr Obama said at the time.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31921011

    marknesop , March 17, 2015 at 3:11 pm
    The USA's grip on Europe, against all odds, is loosening. Who would have thought it would be over money, considering it went meekly along hand-in-hand with Washington in imposing sanctions which had an immediate and deleterious effect on its bottom line? I mean, isn't that money, too?

    "The UK insisted it would insist on the bank's adherence to strict banking and oversight procedures. 'We think that it's in the UK's national interest,' Mr Cameron's spokesperson added." Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah…Oh, 'pon my word, yes, m'lud. The UK would be everyone's first choice to monitor strict adherence to banking and oversight procedures, after the Ł2.7 Billion in fines handed the Bank of England for currency rigging – which also resulted in the dismissal of its senior foreign exchange dealer – just a few months ago. Or the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) scam, in which banks greedy for more profit conspired to rig the deck so that insurance which cost more and more stood less and less chance of ever having a successful claim levied against it. And let's not even mention Libor.

    I don't think there's too much about crooked banking the Chinese will be able to teach the British.

    james, March 17, 2015 at 3:59 pm
    there is a straight line that runs from the boe to the federal reserve… moon of alabama has a post up discussing some of the changes afloat which can be read here –

    http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/03/the-end-of-the-us-dominated-international-money-system.html#comments

    davidt, March 17, 2015 at 3:14 pm
    My favorite Czech, Vlad Sobell, has an new article "The opportunity cost of America's disastrous foreign policy", which most of us here would agree with:

    http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/17/4594

    He reminds us what could have been if Putin's vision for creating a huge harmonized economic area stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok had been realized. (George Friedman has already explained why this could not be allowed.)
    I don't think that anyone has mentioned an earlier article by Sobell that appeared as his contribution on the experts' panel on us-russia.org, His is the last contribution.

    http://us-russia.org/2982-why-the-minsk-2-settlement-of-the-ukrainian-crisis-will-hold.html

    If there were an award for clear thinking then Sobell would have to be a prime candidate.

    kat kan , March 17, 2015 at 5:14 pm
    Only problem is, this was written in February. And without regard for Poroshenko.

    The weapons withdrawals were more or less done. Nothing else was. The Special Status law proposal was based on September lines and not discussed with the Republics so is unacceptable to them. Not only was there no improvement of humanitarian access, but it has been tightened up, to the extent that virtually no medicines are getting through, and no food at all. Travel to and from the Republics involves permits that take 3 weeks to get. The gas got cut off once. No social payments have been made and no wages back-paid. All this is in Minsk2 and Kiev's actually gone backwards on these clauses.

    The reality is, Minsk2 will not succeed, because Kiev (and their masters) don't want it to. Poroshenko is carrying in like he can set conditions, as if HE HAD WON when in fact HE LOST.

    davidt , March 17, 2015 at 6:17 pm
    From memory, I think that Sobell would agree with your penultimate sentence- I don't think that he was very optimistic about Minsk2. (On the positive side, the gap between Europe and the US seems to have hardened.)

    [Mar 14, 2015] A Review of 'Frontline Ukraine' by Richard Sakwa

    Mar 05, 2015 | hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk

    You might have thought that a serious book on the Ukraine crisis, written by a distinguished academic in good clear English, and published by a reputable house, might have gained quite a bit of attention at a time when that country is at the centre of many people's concerns.

    But some readers here now understand that publishing, and especially the reviewing of books, are not the simple marketplaces of ideas which we would all wish them to be.

    And so, as far as I can discover, this book :

    'Frontline Ukraine : Crisis in the Borderlands , by Richard Sakwa. Published by I.B.Tauris

    …though it came out some months ago, has only been reviewed in one place in Britain, the Guardian newspaper, by Jonathan Steele, the first-rate foreign correspondent whose rigour and enterprise (when we were both stationed in Moscow) quite persuaded me to overlook his former sympathy for the left-wing cause (most notably expressed in a 1977 book 'Socialism with a German Face' about the old East Germany, which seemed to me at the time to be ah, excessively kind).

    Mr Steele's review can be read here

    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/19/frontline-ukraine-crisis-in-borderlands-richard-sakwa-review-account

    I have said elsewhere that I would myself be happier if the book were more hostile to my position on this conflict. Sometimes I feel that it is almost too good to be true, to have my own conclusions confirmed so powerfully, and I would certainly like to see the book reviewed by a knowledgeable proponent of the NATO neo-conservative position. Why hasn't it been?

    But even so I recommend it to any reader of mine who is remotely interested in disentangling the reality from the knotted nets of propaganda in which it is currently shrouded.

    Like George Friedman's interesting interview in the Moscow newspaper 'Kommersant' ( you can read it here http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/01/20/2561 ) , the book has shifted my own view.

    I have tended to see the *basic* dispute in Ukraine as being yet another outbreak of the old German push into the east, carried out under the new, nice flag of the EU, a liberal, federative empire in which the vassal states are tactfully allowed limited sovereignty as long as they don't challenge the fundamental politico-economic dominance of Germany. I still think this is a strong element in the EU's thrust in this direction.

    But I have tended to neglect another feature of the new Europe, also set out in Adam Tooze's brilliant 'The Deluge' – the firm determination of the USA to mould Europe in its own image (a determination these days expressed mainly through the EU and NATO).

    I should have paid more attention to the famous words 'F*** the EU!' spoken by the USA's Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, in a phone call publicised to the world by (presumably) Russian intelligence. The EU isn't half as enthusiastic about following the old eastern road as is the USA. Indeed, it's a bit of a foot-dragger.

    The driving force in this crisis is the USA, with the EU being reluctantly tugged along behind. And if Mr Friedman is right (and I think he is), the roots of it lie in Russia's decision to obstruct the West's intervention in Syria.

    Perhaps the key to the whole thing (rather dispiriting in that it shows the USA really hasn't learned anything important from the Iraq debacle) is the so-called 'Wolfowitz Doctrine' of 1992, named after the neo-con's neo-con, Paul Wolfowitz, and summed up by Professor Sakwa (p.211) thus: 'The doctrine asserted that the US should prevent "any country from dominating any region of the world that might be a springboard to threaten unipolar and exclusive US dominance"'.

    Note how neatly this meshes with what George Friedman says in his interview.

    Now, there are dozens of fascinating things in Professor Sakwa's book, and my copy is scored with annotations and references. I could spend a week summarising it for you. (By the way, the Professor himself is very familiar with this complex region, and might be expected, thanks to his Polish ancestry, to take a different line. His father was in the Polish Army in 1939, escaped to Hungary in the chaos of defeat, and ended up serving in Anders's Second Corps, fighting with the British Army at El Alamein, Benghazi, Tobruk and then through Italy via Monte Cassino. Then he was in exile during the years of Polish Communism. Like Vaclav Klaus, another critic of current western policy, Professor Sakwa can hardly be dismissed as a naif who doesn't understand about Russia, or accused of being a 'fellow-traveler' or 'useful idiot'.

    He is now concerned at 'how we created yet another crisis' (p xiii) .

    But I would much prefer that you read it for yourself, and so will have to limit my references quite sternly.

    There are good explanations of the undoubted anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies of some strands in Ukrainian politics. Similar nastiness, by the way, is to be found loose in some of the Baltic States. I mention this n because it justified classifying the whole movement as 'Neo-Nazi', which is obviously false, but because it tells us something very interesting about the nature of nationalism and Russophobia in this part of the world. No serious or fair description of the crisis can ignore it. Yet, in the portrayal of Russia as Mordor, and the Ukraine as Utopia, western media simply leave out almost everything about Ukraine that doesn't appeal to their audiences, the economic near collapse, the Judophobia and Russophobia (the derogatory word 'Moskal', for instance, in common use), the worship of the dubious (this word is very generous, I think) Stepan Bandera by many of the Western ultra-nationalists, the violence against dissenters from the Maidan view ( see http://rt.com/news/ukraine-presidential-candidates-attacked-516/). The survival and continued power of Ukraine's oligarchs after a revolution supposedly aimed at cleaning up the country is also never mentioned. We all know about Viktor Yanukovych;s tasteless mansion, but the book provides some interesting details on President Poroshenko's residence (it looks rather like the White House) , which I have not seen elsewhere.

    The detailed description of how and why the Association Agreement led to such trouble is excellent. I had not realised that, since the Lisbon Treaty, alignment with NATO is an essential part of EU membership (and association) – hence the unavoidable political and military clauses in the agreement.

    So is the filleting of the excuse-making and apologetics of those who still pretend that Yanukovych was lawfully removed from office: the explicit threat of violence from the Maidan, the failure to muster the requisite vote, the presence of armed men during the vote, the failure to follow the constitutional rules (set beside the available lawful deal, overridden by the Maidan, under which Yanukovych would have faced early elections and been forced to make constitutional changes) .

    Then here we have Ms Nuland again, boasting of the $5 billion (eat your heart out, the EU, with your paltry Ł300 million) http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2013/dec/218804.htm which the USA has 'invested in Ukraine. 'Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We've invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.

    It's worth noting that in this speech, in December 2013, she still envisages the supposedly intolerable Yanukovych as a possible partner.

    Other points well made are the strange effect of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, which has created the very tension against which it now seeks to reassure border nations, by encouraging them, too, to join, the non-binding nature of the much-trumpeted Budapest memorandum, the lack of coverage of the ghastly events in Odessa, the continuing lack of a proper independent investigation into the Kiev mass shootings in February 2014 .

    Also examined is the Russian fear of losing Sevastopol, an entirely justified fear given that President Yushchenko had chosen to say in Georgia, during the war of August 2008, that Russia's basing rights in the city would end in 2017. The 'disappearance; of the 'Right Sector' and 'Svoboda' vote in recent elections is explained by their transfer to the radical Party led by Oleh Lyashko.

    Professor Sakwa also explores Russia's behaviour in other border disputes , with Norway and China, in which it has been far from aggressive. And he points out that Ukraine's nationalists have made their country's life far more difficult by their rigid nationalist approach to the many citizens of that country who, while viewing themselves as Ukrainian, do not share the history or passions of the ultra-nationalists in the West.

    Likewise he warns simple-minded analysts that the conflict in the East of Ukraine is not desired by Russia's elite, which does not wish to be drawn into another foreign entanglement (all Russian strategists recall the disastrous result of the Afghan intervention). But it may be desired by Russian ultra-nationalists, not necessarily controllable.

    He points out that Russia has not, as it did in Crimea, intervened decisively in Eastern Ukraine to ensure secession. And he suggests that those Russian nationalists are acting in many cases independently of Moscow in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas. Putin seeks to control them and limit them, but fears them as well.

    In general, the book is an intelligent, well-researched and thoughtful attempt to explain the major crisis of our time. Anybody, whatever he or she might think of the issue, would benefit from reading it. It is shocking that it is not better known, and I can only assume that its obscurity, so far is caused by the fact that it does not fit the crude propaganda narrative of the 'Putin is Hitler' viewpoint.

    How odd that we should all have learned so little from the Iraq debacle. This time the 'WMD' are non-existent Russian plans to expand and/or attack the Baltic states. And of course the misrepresentation of both sides in the Ukrainian controversy is necessary for the portrayal of Putin as Hitler and his supporters as Nazis, and opponents of belligerence as Nazi fellow-travellers. The inconvenient fact , that if there are Nazis in this story , they tend to be on the 'good' side must be ignored. Let us hope the hysteria subsides before it carries us into another stupid war.

    March 5, 2015 Comments (54) Categories: Cold War , History , New Cold War , Russia , Ukraine | Permalink

    Comments

    LornaJean | 10 March 2015 at 09:00 AM

    There should be a proper inquiry into who really started this conflict I recall watching on TV as the boxer who was leading the Kiev mob came out of lengthy negotiations with the 3 EU ministers and the crowds booing and erupting The infamous Julia also appeared on the scene. this was of course after only a few hours previously that Obama announced that he had agreement with Putin to have a peaceful resolution and elections in 3 months.

    As I watched the eruption of the mob I Thought this will end badly and at that point the EU should have withdrawn. However the subsequent violence and the removal of the elected leader followed. All interviews with the people in the East and Crimea showed their distrust of the Kiev crowd and it was clear that the oligarchs on the East who had many workers and controlled the manufacturing would not support the East. Putin is a nasty man but to suggest that he deliberately caused this situation is a travesty.Russia with refugees pouring over the border reacted to the situation and who can blame them.? Now a less belligerent and frankly dishonest approach needs to be taken by the EU I can not see that the Kiev regime can ever win the loyalty of the East after this bitter war.the only solution is some sort of autonomous regios that allows the Esst of Ukraine to rule themselves.

    Bill Jones | 10 March 2015 at 01:28 AM

    This made me smile:

    " I would certainly like to see the book reviewed by a knowledgeable proponent of the NATO neo-conservative position. Why hasn't it been? "

    Because to be knowledgeable is not to be a Neo-conservative.

    Mr Rob | 09 March 2015 at 02:45 PM

    @Mike B

    "I haven't responded to your comments on McCain and Nuland because I thought that I had made it clear that I thought external interference from any quarter was undesirable and I accept that there has been such interference from both sides."

    Oh really? You do not remember writing this then?

    "It was Ukrainians, not the EU, who ousted Yanukovych. They should be allowed to deal with their internal disputes and decide their future alliances and associations."

    or this?

    "However, the EU, whatever its faults (and, believe me, it is not my "beloved" EU) did not organise his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an internal matter and, whatever the faults on either side, should have been left at that."

    And on this thread you had not even mentioned the USA involvement. You have been consistently dishonest by omission. Well, at least you're consistent.

    And now you manage the immortal words

    "I do maintain, though, that the interference of the EU and USA" [well done for mentioning them at last],"which cannot be denied" [but can, it seems, be ignored...] "and which was reflected in Russia's own behaviour cannot be compared with Russia's subsequent blatant military involvement in a sovereign country's internal conflict."

    So on the one hand the EU and the USA have interfered, but on the other it is an "internal conflict".

    Priceless.

    Roy Robinson | 08 March 2015 at 05:48 PM

    @Alan Thomas By my reading of certain facts I deduce there is a de facto alliance between Russia and China. These facts being that Russia trades arms to China but the USA will not trade arms to either. On May 8th Xi Jingping will attend the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow accompanied by his junk yard dog Kim Jong Un of North Korea. No Western leaders as far as I know will be in attendance. De facto alliances such as the one Britain had with France in 1914 are always hard to call because unlike formal ones such as Nato there is nothing in writing. I also suspect that one reason China has not tried to match America in nuclear weapons so far is because Russia already does so. North Korea is also very useful in that it can be used to threaten Japan without China appearing to be the aggressor.

    Mr Rob | 08 March 2015 at 11:16 AM

    @ Mike B

    I see you have ignored my request to answer the questions I posed to Hector (who has also yet to respond) about the US presence at the Maidan. Perhaps you needed to ignore my request in order to write this drivel with a straight face:

    Re Yanukovych: "However, the EU, whatever its faults (and, believe me, it is not my "beloved" EU) did not organise his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an internal matter and, whatever the faults on either side, should have been left at that."

    Some Ukrainians carried out the WW2 massacre at Khatyn (not Katyn) - does that mean that all Ukrainians are responsible for it, approved of it, or that it was carried out on behalf of Ukrainians? Of course not.

    You have also studiously avoided mention of the presence at the Maidan of US Senator McCain and US Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, and the latter's meetings with the Maidan leaders, co-ordinated with US Ambassador Pyatt.

    You have also somehow omitted to mention Yatseniuk's ("Yats") lightning visit to Washington days after the overthrow of Yanukovych, or the visit of CIA Director Brennan to Kiev.

    And just for the record, I have first-hand oral evidence of people in Minsk, Belarus, being offered money to go to the Maidan - so even that the Maidan crowd was completely Ukrainian is probably untrue.

    You accuse Mr Klimenko of bias, and yet you yourself give and repeat a dishonest account of what is known to have happened at the Maidan.

    Such behaviour has no place in proper debate.

    Ian | 08 March 2015 at 11:04 AM

    To Mike B and others...

    It's all very well to agonize about what Ukrainians may or may not want. We could all weep huge quantities of crocodile tears over Ukraine's thwarted "self determination", but the essential fact is that Ukrainians are not agreed about what they want. Some appear to want closer ties with the EU, some appear to want to maintain the status quo and some appear to want closer ties with the Russian Federation.

    All of which is "interesting" until different factions within Ukraine start calling on their preferred partners to back them up. It seems to me that the US and the EU have contributed more than one would reasonably expect to the discord in Ukraine and silly expectations in a great many Ukrainians. To describe this as "irresponsible" is something of an understatement.

    We are now in a situation where the "preferred partners" might come to blows over the confused and discordant expectations of Ukraine. In such a situation. it would be hard for me to care less about what Ukrainians want especially when some of Ukraine's politicians sound as though they would happily see the world burn if only it ensures "territorial Integrity" for Ukraine.

    It's a very old trick for which "socialists" should be famous. Describe a group as deserving, noble and disadvantaged... and use this supposed circumstance to justify the most ridiculous, regressive and destructive policy the human mind can invent. Of course, with our own "socialists", the all important thing is that they are not only well rewarded with a reputation for being "caring sharing human beings"... but also very well paid for the disasters they inflict on us.

    Edward Klimenko | 08 March 2015 at 10:50 AM

    @MikeB

    'did not organise his removal. It was carried out by, and on behalf of, Ukrainians. It was an internal matter'

    What the EU did was the equivalent of persuading one party in a Mexican stand-off to lower his weapon so that the other can shoot him safely. Yes, the EU most certainly organized Yanukovich's removal - the EU normally takes a dim view of governments established by putsch, but recognized this particular band of putschists almost immediately.

    And why was it not an internal matter when Ukrainian police were attempting to clear Maidan of the lawless occupying mob, but instead a human rights crisis demanding sanctions against everyone from the Prosecutor-General to Yanukovich's barber?

    'You should note, however, that he fled his country on the same day that he announced an agreement with his opponents.'

    You are mistaken, he did not flee the country the day the agreement was made. He left the city of Kiev for Kharkov, his motorcade coming under fire as he did so. As the putsch developed, he called a conference in Kharkov of regional governors still loyal to the rightful president, the participants agreeing to administer their own regions until lawful authority could be reestablished in the rest of the country.

    Two factors brought about the failure of this effort: the first was the success of Valentin Nalivaichenko's takeover of the SBU, and the second was the cowardly betrayal by Kharkov regional governor Mikhail Dobkin and Kharkov city mayor Gennady Kernes, who panicked and fled when they heard that the SBU was after them (both would later cut deals with the Maidan regime for their own survival). Fearing capture by the SBU and feeling unable to trust anybody, Yanukovich then departed for the Crimea.

    You might think this would be safe place for him to make his stand. You would be wrong - the mood in Crimea at the time was one of utter disgust for Yanukovich and the Regions Party on account of their utter failure to defend the state and the people, which only grew after it came to light that the scum Yanukovich had appointed as mayor of Sevastopol had been conspiring to surrender the city to the Right Sector. Crimea wanted out of the Ukraine, and had no interest in helping Yanukovich get his seat back. Out of options, he finally fled to the Russian mainland on or about February 26.

    As for the rest, I'll say it again: the 'Holodomor' is a fiction, an attempt to portray a famine that affected a vast swathe of the USSR as campaign against Ukrainians specifically, when in truth it most heavily affected the non-Ukrainian Donbass region. It is invoked by western Ukrainians whose ancestors did not experience it to justify their racial hatred for eastern Ukrainians whose ancestors did. You ought to be ashamed of spreading such rot, and you should stop trying to frame your own biases as 'objectivity'.

    Grant | 07 March 2015 at 08:32 PM

    I listened to that.

    Everything Peter said was spot on. That other bloke who was challenging you is a dangerous idiot. You pointed out to him that we do not call Chinese regime tyrants, or the Saudis, yet he immediately replies calling Putin a vile tyrant. Totally obvious to what you just told him like he is a brainwashed stuck record.

    NATO is now the armed wing of EU expansion. They intentionally sent Russia that message during the Kosovo war by including the Luftwaffe bombing in previous Russia spheres of influence.

    mikebarnes | 07 March 2015 at 07:13 PM

    @ Edward Klimenko

    If nothing else I like your style . Many contributors here think they know. And a few think you know more than them. I think on this subject you certainly know more than I . Whether your correct is unknown at least by me . But.

    Oh that our snot brained, could have need for the dentistry they so deserve.

    No matter whose in the right here , and I suspect neither are. Its their business and that of the federation they once belonged . Just as northern Island was our business . But Clinton poked his snout in .

    The compromise, killers and bombers running the country might well be repeated with a split country just like the many created since the chaos following WWII.

    Roy Robinson | 07 March 2015 at 05:42 PM

    @Alan Thomas The Eurasian hard men such as Putin, Erdogan , Modi and XI Jinping all seem to understand one another and are doing business together.

    They all lead countries which have been on the receiving of Western aggression over the last few centuries Modern Westerners with their naive PC outlook like to overlook this but the people in those countries have not forgotten from which direction the threat to them has usually come from and the past losses and humiliations which resulted.

    When someone sees themselves as a benefactor to mankind but others see as a thief with a violent history there is always going to be room for a big understanding.

    Alan Thomas | 07 March 2015 at 03:44 PM

    Roy Robinson

    Perhaps, when it comes to China, the 'west' cannot see a solution, in which case hurling - or even simply registering - criticism might be seen as a waste of time and effort. In any case, since when did it make sense to ignore lesser villains simply because one can't take on the bigger ones?

    Steve Jones | 07 March 2015 at 03:11 PM

    I suspect the neocons are now looking at the General Patton play of outsourcing a war against Russia to Germany.

    Germany should leave the EU together with France and the PIGS using the euro as an excuse. Their departure might shake out a few others like Croatia, Hungary and Austria plus a few more. Let the banks fail then go in with Russia and the other BRICS.

    Edward Klimenko | 07 March 2015 at 02:04 PM

    @MikeB

    ' Are you so sure that Ukrainians wanted their now ex-president?'

    Almost twelve and a half million Ukrainians voted for him in 2010, and that is a far better indicator of what Ukrainians wanted than the actions of around ten thousand Nazi terrorists in February 2014.

    ' It was Ukrainians, not the EU, who ousted Yanukovych'

    What a nonsensical and disingenuous remark. Yanukovich was the democratically -elected president(most likely the last that the Ukraine will ever have). EuroMaidan was an assembly of Nazi terrorists and their apologists. Europe used threats and blackmail to prevent Yanukovich from doing his duty and protecting the country from this violent mob. Europe then tricked him into signing a 'peace agreement' and pulling back the police from their positions, allowing the terrorist mob and its sponsors to rampage freely through Kiev and seize the institutions of the state.

    You will probably cite the lack of an immediate militant response to the putsch as proof that Ukrainians wanted this abomination of a government. Well, there we have democracy according to Mike! No need for elections, might makes right and proves the existence of an underlying consensus! Brilliant.

    Let's take your logic a bit further. The rebellion now rules in Donbass, and no armed movement has arisen there to demand the return of the region to Ukrainian rule. Do you accept this as evidence of the people's wish not to be ruled by the Maidan regime? If the rebels break the Ukrainian lines, and take control of the rest of the country, will you shrug and conclude that Ukrainians wanted to be with Russia after all?

    ' , I would prefer people to be aggressive with me by throwing money in my direction, rather than launching rockets,

    Throwing money at the Ukraine enables the Maidan regime to throw rockets at Ukrainian citizens. Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk have no legal authority to rule over anybody, yet your beloved EU insists that these putsch-installed thugs are the government of the Ukraine, and that all Ukrainians must obey them or die.

    ' Nothing the EU has done, though, justifies Russian military intervention in Ukraine'

    Everything the EU has done justifies everything Russia has done, and would justify a good deal more. The European officials who formulated European policy toward the Ukraine in the past year are responsible for the war and for all the crimes of the Maidan regime, and they should all face the death penalty - starting with Ashton.

    Think on this: if not for the Crimea operation, all the depravity that the Ukraine has heaped upon Donetsk would have been visited upon Crimea. You think that Crimeans would have been better off being shelled, shot, raped and tortured by the Ukrainian military? Go and tell them so!

    Just make sure that your health insurance covers reconstructive dentistry first.

    Paul Taylor | 07 March 2015 at 12:00 PM

    Hector. You clearly have no idea about Hitler and Germany in the late 1930s.Germany was just taking back land that was stolen in June 1919. Hitler had mass support from the Germanic people in those parts and in some areas such as parts of Austria he was even more popular than he was in Germany itself.

    It was madness that we went to war against Germany,we should have remained neutral like Spain or Switzerland and let Hitler defeat Stalin on his own.

    Paulus M | 07 March 2015 at 10:46 AM

    @ kevin 1

    "Personally, I have difficulty with this quote because I don't think facts do change, that's why they are called facts. New information may come to light but the facts though temporarily hidden from view remain constant. But that's just my opinion."

    It all depends on whether the facts/evidence supports the hypothesis. If they don't then no matter how erudite it appears - it's wrong. What our media don't want you to question or look at is who started this conflict. From day one, I've never been in doubt that Washington is the main driver and the EU the junior partner. The Nato alliance acts as a bind and a figleaf. Time and again the facts sindicates that the "west" is an aggressor bloc which tramples over sovereignty and makes a mockery of supposed international law.

    Mr Rob | 07 March 2015 at 10:08 AM

    Are you claiming that prior to the "removal" of Yanukovych

    US Senator McCain did not appear at the Maidan,

    and that US Assistant Secretary of State Nuland did not appear at the Maidan,

    and that she did not hold a series of meetings with its leaders,

    and that she and US Ambassador Pyatt did not co-ordinate these efforts with a clear aim as to who they wanted to see in power (our man "Yats"),

    and that only days after Yanukovych fled,

    Yatseniuk was not shaking hands with US President Obama at the White House

    and that US Director of the CIA Brennan was not in Kiev?

    Do you claim that the US was leaving Ukraine to "sort out it's [sic] own issues"?

    Please do respond rather than lapse into silence, I'd be fascinated to see how you have reached your conclusions in the face of the known facts.

    Kevin 1 | 07 March 2015 at 09:27 AM

    @ Ronnie

    I think you'll find that, in circumstances such as those you describe, PH tends to quote the famous retort attributed to Keynes, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" I'm just surprised that he hasn't done so (yet) in this instance.

    Personally, I have difficulty with this quote because I don't think facts do change, that's why they are called facts. New information may come to light but the facts though temporarily hidden from view remain constant. But that's just my opinion.

    N.Belcher | 07 March 2015 at 01:28 AM

    Dear Mr Hitchens

    In December 2011 The U.S Federal Reserve bailed out European banks to the
    tune of Billions of Dollars.
    It is reported that they tried to keep this bailout a secret at the time.

    Do you think that this , and the latest E.U initiative to have The Ukraine
    are linked ? i.e that it was a condition of the U.S bailout or expected of The
    E.U that they continue to expand into The Ukraine in return for these U.S Dollars?
    Yours N.Belcher.

    Roy Robinson | 07 March 2015 at 01:04 AM

    While the West obsesses about the supposed threat from Putin it seems totally oblivious to the rise of Xi Jinping a Chinese leader who looks like being of the magnitude of Mao.

    He has described himself as the leader of a party wedded to the ideology of Lenin, Stalin and Mao and is concentrating all the power in his own hands.

    There is no Western propaganda campaign against him yet although think about it, ten years ago there wasn't one against Putin.

    Xi has stated that he gets on well with Putin as they have similar personalities.

    Edward Klimenko | 06 March 2015 at 08:44 PM

    'Might there be the slightest chance of Ukrainians' wishes being given some consideration?'

    Capital idea. But you know what the Ukrainians wanted? They wanted Viktor Yanukovich as President and they wanted the Parliament they elected in 2012. What scant regard America and Europe gave their wishes!

    Bob | 06 March 2015 at 06:42 PM

    Ronnie that purported paper was presented in early Feb 2014 well after Maidan was underway, not exactly planned from day one. It was also Kiev at the behest of the US who started the ATO, resorting to violence away from the Franco-German and Russian negotiations.
    I might add the anti Russian propaganda in the media had started well before Sochi started. This was all planned a while back and not by Russia.

    Ian | 06 March 2015 at 03:49 PM

    It does not seem to me there is a "change of mind" or any inconsistency implied in Mr Hitchens's recommendation of Richard Sakwa's book. There may be a slight change of emphasis but it was always understood and mentioned that the US of A was an additional driving force to events in eastern Europe. It does not alter the validity of the view that the EU is "Germany by other means" and that the EU/Germany covets "lebensraum" in the east. So far as I can see, it can only be of academic interest whether the developing crisis is primarily EU or US led.

    Nor has Mr Hitchens ever attempted to exonerate President Putin or Russia, giving more than sufficient emphasis to "Russian interests" and "Russia's perceived sphere of influence" ... to crudely paraphrase. It does not matter if Russia is or is not entitled to these perceptions. That the perceptions exist should be a major consideration in the policy of any other "player" who would prefer a continued, peaceful existence.

    What is important is whether either side can afford to "back down" and which side is "most guilty" with regards creating this crisis. It seems fairly obvious that it is the US and the EU who can best afford to "back off"... and it is the US and the EU whose posturing and behavior have contributed most to the current situation.

    For those who adhere to the "bad Putin"/"Naughty Russia" model, rest assured that the US and the EU are unlikely to give up on this one. They are determined to give the big bad bear a spanking.

    I fear that they have got it badly wrong, seriously misjudged Russia's president and relied to heavily on dated intelligence about Russian capabilities.

    Posted by: Incognito | 06 March 2015 at 12:41 PM

    John,

    I think it's an oversight on PH's part (we're all human, right?) to have placed so much emphasis on Germany in his analysis of the the crisis, and, in so doing to have tacitly downplayed the role of the US. Plainly put Germany-although it is the de facto seat of power in the EU- doesn't have the brass to so flagrantly antagonise Russia without back-up.

    Moreover, if anyone doesn't think the EU is 'briefed' on foreign policy by the US state department, they are living in an alternate reality. America is a continuation of the British Empire by other means.

    Grant | 06 March 2015 at 12:23 PM

    Pat Davers "Indeed, I think that European leaders acted naively in aligning with the US, and were genuinely dismayed at the outcome of their tacit support for the coup in Ukraine"

    I do wish people would study the comments made by the EU leaders when initial proposals for third way consultations with the Russians was proposed, they said things like "the last people we would speak to over this would be the Russians".

    The EU leaders detest everything Russia stands for, as they are enlightened supra nationalists. It was precisely their arrogant and dismissive attitude that led to armed conflict and only after thousands had died did they come to meet Putin in Russia to seek a peace.

    Pat Davers | 06 March 2015 at 11:46 AM

    "Are we witnessing a Hitchens change of mind?"

    I think we are seeing a shift of opinion as to who has the been the main driver behind the Ukraine conflict; it was not so much EU (ie German-led) expansionism as NATO (ie US-led) imperialism that brought us where we are now, as of course many people have been saying all along.

    Indeed, I think that European leaders acted naively in aligning with the US, and were genuinely dismayed at the outcome of their tacit support for the coup in Ukraine, and are probably now regretting their actions. The fact that is was Merkel and Hollande who brokered the Minsk agreement without US involvement would seem to support this.

    Bob | 06 March 2015 at 10:51 AM

    Ronnie you have clearly have never done any scenario planning or read position papers, obviously the Kremlin would have several plans of action for the breakdown of the Ukraine. Regardless of the document's validity, the title is invalid. "Direct interstate relations" cannot exist between Moscow and regions annexed to Russia, the plan is obviously talking about a political breakup of Ukraine, not annexation. Even then though, i dont entirely believe it.

    If Russia's plan was to break up Ukraine into statelets, I see no reason why it still hasn't recognized the independence of LPR and DPR and instead continues to treat them, in both language and action, as regions of Ukraine seeking federalization. A federal and perhaps confederate Ukraine would obviously be to Russia's interest. Complete breakup of Ukraine -maybe but it's difficult to see how.

    Weak.

    Daniel | 06 March 2015 at 07:25 AM

    Dear Peter,

    Thank you for another thought-provoking article. It's nice to have some measured thinking amongst the media-mob's clamour.

    A little off the current topic but I was expecting to see a comment on the recent ACMD report in which the scientist's covering letter states: 'international evidence suggests many popular types of prevention activity are ineffective at changing behaviour, and a small number may even increase the risks for drug use' . Paradoxically, thought not unexpectedly, the report ends up stating the that the solution is more drugs education in schools.. Just thought it may be worth flagging as it reminded me of your previous posts regarding sex education and its supposed 'benefits'.

    S. Coleman | 05 March 2015 at 09:36 PM

    I would not be alone here in welcoming PH's recognition of the importance of the role of the US. I think Brian Meredith also expressed this view.

    Michael Hudson (the American economist) expresses it up pithily: the US is saying to Europe, 'Let's you and Russia fight' and Europe in going along with this invitation is damaging her own vital interests.

    Edward Klimenko | 05 March 2015 at 08:31 PM

    The Ukrainian Parliament has already moved 'Defender of the Fatherland Day' to October 14th - the official founding date of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. If anybody thinks that this is a coincidence, they haven't been paying attention.

    This very Thursday the Parliament of Ukraine reached a milestone - honoring with a minute's silence the memory of UPA genocidaire Roman Shukhevich. I won't bother listing in detail the depravities that Shukhevich organised in his capacity as a UPA commander - suffice it to say that women and children were favourite targets, and blades were generally preferred to bullets - but those not familiar with the subject are encouraged to look it up. In particular, search the name 'Zygmunt Rumel' to find out what comes of trying to negotiate with Ukrainian nationalists.

    The only consolation is that the Maidan project is less a political movement than organised mental illness, and that failure is written in its DNA.

    [Mar 10, 2015] The 17 Elements Of Martial Law

    Mar 09, 2015 | zerohedge.com

    The term "Martial Law" is thrown around with reckless disregard. "Is America under martial law?" is a question that is often discussed in the Independent Media.

    Martial law occurs when the prevailing regime feels threatened by the message being offered by the loyal opposition. When normal means of censorship and marginalization fail, despotic regimes resort to martial law with all intended brutality of a violent crackdown on all of those being perceived as the "enemy".

    Seventeen Martial Law Characteristics

    Most experts agree that hard core martial contains the following 17 essential elements:

    1-Mass roundup and/or execution of political dissidents

    2-Dusk to dawn curfews

    3-Rationing of essential resources

    4-The seizing of personal assets such as food and water

    5-Control over all food and water

    6-The prohibition of weapons of any kind including guns, knives or chemicals which can be turned into explosives

    7-The confiscation of property, homes and businesses

    8-Arrests without due process

    9-Massive "papers please" checkpoints with intrusive searches

    10-Forced relocation

    11-Forced conscription into various labor camps and even into the military

    12-Outlawing of free speech

    13-The installation of massive surveillance programs and the establishment of snitch programs

    14-The total control or elimination of religion

    15-Control of the media

    16-Executions without due process of law

    17-Total suspension of the Constitution

    Just how many of these intrusive government policies are in place in the following video?

    [Mar 07, 2015] Meet the Big Wallets Pushing Obama Towards a New Cold War By Christian Stork

    February 25, 2015 | Alternet
    As for those in the K Street elite pushing Uncle Sam to confront the bear, it isn't hard to see what they have to gain. There's a familiar ring to the U.S. calls to arm Ukraine's post-coup government. That's because the same big-money players who stand to benefit from belligerent relations with Russia haven't forgotten a favorite Cold War tune.

    President Obama has said that he won't rule out arming Ukraine if a recent truce, which has all but evaporated, fails like its predecessor. His comments echoed the advice of a report issued a week prior by three prominent U.S. think tanks: the Brookings Institute, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Atlantic Council. The report advocated sending $1 billion worth of "defensive" military assistance to Kiev's pro-Western government.

    If followed, those recommendations would bring the U.S. and Russia the closest to conflict since the heyday of the Cold War. Russia has said that it would "respond asymmetrically against Washington or its allies on other fronts" if the U.S. supplies weapons to Kiev.

    The powers with the most skin in the game -- France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine -- struck a deal on Feb. 12, which outlines the terms for a ceasefire between Kiev and the pro-Russian, breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine. It envisages a withdrawal of heavy weaponry followed by local elections and constitutional reform by the end of 2015, granting more autonomy to the eastern regions.

    But not all is quiet on the eastern front. The truce appears to be headed the route of a nearly identical compromise in September, which broke down immediately afterward.

    Moscow's national security interests are clear. Washington's are less so, unless you look at the bottom lines of defense contractors.

    As for those in the K Street elite pushing Uncle Sam to confront the bear, it isn't hard to see what they have to gain. Just take a look below at the blow-by-blow history of their Beltway-bandit benefactors:

    No Reds Means Seeing Red

    Following the end of the Cold War, defense cuts had presented bottom-line problems for America's military producers. The weapons dealers were told that they had to massively restructure or go bust.

    Luckily, carrots were offered. Norm Augustine, a former undersecretary of the Army, advised Defense Secretary William Perry to cover the costs of the industry mergers. Augustine was then the CEO of Martin Marietta -- soon to become the head of Lockheed Martin, thanks to the subsidies.

    Augustine was also chairman of a Pentagon advisory council on arms-export policy. In that capacity, he was able to secure yet more subsidy guarantees for NATO-compatible weapons sales to former Warsaw Pact countries.

    But in order to buy the types of expensive weapons that would stabilize the industry's books, those countries had to enter into an alliance with the U.S. And some members of Congress were still wary of shelling out money to expand a military alliance that had, on its face, no rationale to exist.

    Enter the NATO Expansion Squad

    Enter the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO. Formed in 1996, the Committee wined and dined elected officials to secure their support for NATO enlargement. Meanwhile, Lockheed buttressed its efforts by spending $1.58 million in federal contributions for the 1996 campaign cycle.

    The Committee's founder and neocon chairman, Bruce Jackson, was so principled in his desire to see freedom around the globe that he didn't even take a salary. He didn't have to; he was a vice president at Lockheed Martin.

    By Clinton's second term, everyone was on board. Ron Asmus, a former RAND Corporation analyst and the "intellectual progenitor" of NATO expansion (who would later co-chair the Committee to Expand NATO), ended what was left of the policy debate in the State Department. He worked with Clinton's diplomatic point man on Eastern Europe, Strobe Talbott.

    Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were all in NATO come 1999. The Baltic States would soon follow. By 2003, those initial inductees had arranged deals to buy just short of $5 billion in fighter jets from Lockheed.

    Bruce Jackson began running a new outfit in 2002. It was called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

    (36 F-16s are currently slated for delivery to Iraq at an estimated $3 billion.)

    Rivers of Cash

    Brookings is Washington's oldest think tank. For most of its existence, its research was funded by a large endowment and no-strings-attached grants. But all of that changed when Strobe Talbott took the reins.

    Strobe Talbott, President

    Talbott sought to bolster Brookings' coffers with aggressive corporate fundraising. He took it from annual revenues of $32 million in 2003 to $100 million by 2013. Though always corporate-friendly, Brookings has become little more than a pay-to-play research hub under Talbott's reign.

    Among the many corporate donors to Brookings are Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and cyber-defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.

    David M. Rubenstein, Co-Chairman of Board of Trustees

    Rubenstein is co-founder and co-CEO at the Carlyle Group, a massive private equity firm. Among the companies in which Carlyle has a controlling stake in is Booz Allen Hamilton -- a military and intelligence IT firm that is currently active in Ukraine.

    Booz, which both sells to and operates within the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, counts four former Carlyle executives among its directors. Ronald Sanders, a vice president at Booz, serves on the faculty of Brookings.

    Atlanticists

    The Atlantic Council was formed in 1961 as a "consolidation of the U.S. citizen groups supporting" NATO, according to its website.

    Stephen Hadley, Director

    A former national security advisor for George W. Bush, Hadley doubles as a director for Raytheon. He was also the driving force behind the creation of the U.S. Committee on NATO, on whose board he sat, and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

    Prior to joining the Bush White House, Hadley was a lawyer for Shea & Gardner, whose clients included Lockheed Martin.

    James Cartwright, Director

    A retired general and former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, James Cartwright has an active work life. He's "an advisor to defense and intelligence contractor TASC, defense consulting firm Accenture, and Enlightenment Capital, a private equity firm with defense investments," according to the Public Accountability Initiative. He's also on the board of Raytheon, which earned him $124,000 in 2012.

    Other notables include:

    Nicholas Burns – former diplomat and current senior counselor at The Cohen Group, which advises Lockheed Martin, among other defense companies

    James A. Baker III – Bush 41 Secretary of State and partner at law firm Baker Botts. Clients include a slew of defense companies

    Thomas R. Pickering – former senior vice president for Boeing

    Chi-town Chickenhawks

    Founded in 1922, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has since served as the premier voice of Midwest business leaders in American foreign policy. Jeb Bush recently made his "I am my own man" speech, outlining his foreign policy priorities, to the council:

    Lester Crown, Chairman

    The chair of Henry Crown & Co., the investment firm that handles the fortune started by his father, Henry Crown. Henry put the "dynamic" in General Dynamics, helping to turn it into the world's largest weapons manufacturer by the time Lester became its chairman in 1986. The defense behemoth remains the single largest source of the family's treasure; they're currently the 35th richest clan in America. General Dynamics produces all of the equipment types proposed for transfer to Ukraine in the think-tank report.

    Ivo Daalder, President

    A co-author of the report, Daalder is a former diplomat and staffer on Clinton's National Security Council. He later served on the Hart-Rudman Commission from 1998-2001. It was chartered by Defense Secretary William Cohen -- later to become a Lockheed consultant -- and tasked with outlining the major shifts in national security strategy for the 21st century. Among its commissioners was none other than Norm Augustine.

    The commission concluded that the Department of Defense and intelligence community should drastically reduce their infrastructure costs by outsourcing and privatizing key functions, especially in the field of information technology.

    The main beneficiaries have been America's major defense contractors: Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton and Lester Crown's outfit, General Dynamics.

    General Dynamics' revenue tripled between 2000 and 2010 as it acquired at least 11 smaller firms that specialized in exactly the sort of services recommended for outsourcing. Roughly one-third of GD's overall revenue in 2013, the same year that Daalder was appointed president of the Council by Crown, came from its Information Systems and Technology division.

    So even without a Cold War Bear to fuel spending, the re-imagining of that old foe is oiling the revolving door between the government and defense contractors.

    [Mar 04, 2015] Russia's actions in Ukraine conflict an 'invasion', says US official US news by Alan Yuhas

    The United States elite no longer bothers about limiting the conflict after color revolution and avioding civil war. It puts its cards on the table without fear and doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critics inside or outside the country, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a leash, the pathetic and supine Great Britain. (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html.)
    Quote: "Let's be clear; "US interests" aren't the interests of the American people, either. They're the interests of military careerists and contractors hoping to profit from yet another conflict. "
    Mar 04, 2015 | The Guardian

    Comment by Victoria Nusland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, might be the first time a senior official has used the term publicly

    piper909 -> Bud Peart 4 Mar 2015 22:08

    Mineral resources, industrial development, lots of fertile cropland, and proximity to the Black Sea and Near East are all reasons enough for the Ukraine to be a prize for any conqueror, from the days when it was the breadbasket of the Athenian Empire to the Second World War when Hitler's lust for it caused him to overreach his armies' capacities in 1941 and 1942 (and probably saved Moscow and/or Leningrad from capture).

    Now it's the Americans and NATO who want to control this territory, and complete the encirclement of Russia.

    piper909 4 Mar 2015 22:00

    This woman is an utter fraud. She's been actively promoting an agenda to orchestrate and control the entire Ukrainian revolution and aftermath. She is a paid tool of the not-so-secret US neo-con policy of encircling Russia with NATO puppets and doing anything possible to weaken Russia's ability to block American hegemonic interests or to court European allies. She has absolutely no credibility in this matter as any kind of spokesperson except as a known agent of the US state dept. and CIA if her tongue were any more forked it could be laid on the table next to a knife and spoon.

    irishmand 4 Mar 2015 21:55

    This is what Russians feel about all this (english subtitles available):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T65SwzHAbes

    AlexPeace 4 Mar 2015 21:52

    Russia set troops, Russia sent troops... Where are then Russian POWs? Ukraine failed to produce a single one for the entire year! All proofs of Russian involvement are coming from Facebook and other similar sources.

    US claimed that they have proofs, but would not show them because they are secret... How good is that? But still repeating their mantras-good only for complete f..wits

    Chirographer -> Bob Vavich 4 Mar 2015 21:51

    What about the Israeli PM speaking against Obama's policy in the US Congress? Should he have been arrested too?

    annamarinja -> irgun777 4 Mar 2015 21:30

    Would not it be better for humanity if Mrs. Nuland-Kagan were a bartender? Unfortunately for many, she pretends to be a diplomat, a person of knowledge and wisdom, whereas she is just a bad-mouth and a half-wit with poor manners and aggressive personality.

    Aris Tsihlis -> greven 4 Mar 2015 21:19

    Greven That's an extremely far stretch comparing Putin to Hitler! Me personally I haven't forgotten how things played out it started with a coup d'état sponsored by the US government!

    And if I look at the map NATO is on Putin doorstep not the other way around! Stop trying to spin the facts I heard the conversations the witch above was having on who they were going to place in charge! Sell it to somebody else I ain't buying your narrative of the story!

    BorninUkraine -> Metronome151 4 Mar 2015 21:18

    Ukrainian joke.
    Russians asks:
    - If you believe that Russia annexed Crimea, why don't you fight for it?
    - We aren't that stupid, there is Russian army there.
    - But you say there is Russian army in Donbass?
    - That's what we say, but in Crimea there really is Russian army.

    BorninUkraine -> DoyleSaylor 4 Mar 2015 21:08

    You are wrong, this was a success, although incomplete (NATO won't have a naval base in Crimea). The US stirred up s..t in Ukraine to force Europe to act against its interests and join the "sanctions". So, the US hit two birds, Russia and EU competitors, with one stone. If anyone was and still is dumb, it's Europeans following US orders.

    bagart -> Old_Donkey 4 Mar 2015 20:57

    Angela Merkel and this joker Hollande brokered only increased bloodletting and for a year opened Ukrainian border for Russia, like declaring inability of Ukraine to govern.

    This was scam not peace brokering. For what purpose border was left to be controlled by Russia, if Russia is officially not engaged in conflict?

    Aris Tsihlis -> bagart 4 Mar 2015 20:52

    The Russians are not in the Ukraine! Russia volunteers probably but there are a lot of other volunteers from other countries also! Serbs, Greeks of Ukrainian origin etc.etc.

    And do me a favor stop being a Neo-con apologist!

    Bud Peart 4 Mar 2015 20:46

    Yes Russia has sent troops and militias into Ukraine to support Eastern Ukrainians. I don't think many realistically deny this. Does it constitute and invasion? Probably yes.

    Does the Ukrainian government's 'anti terror' operation constitute ethnic cleansing and war crimes? Probably yes.

    Does Nuland's direct material support for the overthrow of an elected government in Ukraine constitute a coup? Probably Yes.

    Does the Ukrainian government use Neo Nazi militias including foreign fighters from Poland and Croatia in its ethnic cleansing. Probably yes.

    It would be nice if the 'liberal left' trendies at the Guardian could for once quit their pro establishment dribble and start providing objective analysis. This crisis has the potential to ignite a nuclear war and we need to start analyzing it without emoting Luke Harding style hysteria.


    Cynndara -> Aris Tsihlis 4 Mar 2015 20:36

    Let's be clear; "US interests" aren't the interests of the American people, either. They're the interests of military careerists and contractors hoping to profit from yet another conflict.

    Playing nuclear chicken is in nobody's interests, and people like Nuland who think they can continuously poke at Putin WITHOUT raising the possibility of nuclear war are arrogant idiots, the kind who always think they're too smart to make a mistake until they do. And people die from it.

    The NSA can add this comment to my copious file. Let me know when you're coming over, boys in black, and I'll bake a Devil's Food cake.

    [Mar 01, 2015] US Pushes For Escalation, Arms Kiev By Laundering Weapons Through Abu Dhabi

    Notable quotes:
    "... Vadym Prystaiko, who until last fall was Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, says the world must not be afraid of joining Ukraine in the fight against a nuclear power. ..."
    "... The U.S. will now disguise its arms-to-Kiev program by laundering it through its sponsored Middle East dictatorships: ..."
    "... The United Arab Emirates is not known as arms producer. But it buys lots of U.S. weapons. It will now forward those to Ukraine while the U.S. will claim that it does not arm Ukraine. Who do they think will believe them? ..."
    "... Not a peep from Merkel - her only disagreements with the Nobel Peace Prize winner about Ukraine are purely tactical. ..."
    "... Basically, Germany was to spearhead the EU's expansion to Ukraine, while the US role was to facilitate Ukraine's inclusion in Nato. ..."
    Mar 01, 2015 | moonofalabama.org

    The U.S. is circumventing its own proclaimed policy of not delivering weapons to Ukraine and is thereby, despite urgent misgivings from its European allies, increasing the chance of a wider catastrophic war in Europe.

    The Ukrainian coup president Poroshenko went to an international arms exhibition in Dubai. There he met the U.S. chief military weapon salesman.

    ABU DHABI – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is expected to meet with U.S. defense companies Tuesday during a major arms exhibition here even though the American government has not cleared the firms to sell Kiev lethal weapons.

    Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's acquisition executive is scheduled to meet with a Ukrainian delegation Monday evening, however Poroshenko is not expected to be there. Kendall, in an interview, said he will be bringing a message of support from the United States.

    "I expect the conversation will be about their needs," Kendall told Defense One a few hours before the meeting. "We're limited at this point in time in terms of what we're able to provide them, but where we can be supportive, we want to be."

    Poroshenko, urged on by his neocon U.S. sponsors, wants total war with Russia. Porosheko's deputy foreign minister, currently on a visit in Canada, relayed the message:

    Ukraine's deputy foreign minister says he is preparing for "full-scale war" against Russia and wants Canada to help by supplying lethal weapons and the training to use them.

    Vadym Prystaiko, who until last fall was Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, says the world must not be afraid of joining Ukraine in the fight against a nuclear power.

    In the mind of these folks waging a "full-scale war" against a nuclear superpower like Russia is nothing to be afraid of. These are truly lunatics.

    Russia says that U.S. weapons delivered to Ukraine would create real trouble. They mean it. To hint how Russia would counter such a move it just offered a spiced up S-300 missile defense system to Iran:

    Sergei Chemezov, chief executive of the Russian defense corporation Rostec, said Tehran is considering its offer to sell an Antey-2500 anti-ballistic air defense system,

    The Antey-2500 is a mobile surface-to-air missile system that offers enhanced combat capabilities, including the destruction of aircraft and ballistic missiles at a range of about 1,500 miles, according to its manufacturer, Almaz-Antey.

    The system was developed from a less advanced version -- the 1980s-generation S-300V system -- which has a 125-mile range. A 2007 contract to supply the S-300 system to Iran was canceled in 2010, after the U.S. and Israel lobbied against it, ...

    Such a system in Iran would, in case of a conflict, endanger every U.S. airplane in the Middle East.

    But that threat did not deter the U.S. As the U.S. arms dealer in Abu Dhabi said: "where we can be supportive, we want to be". The U.S. will now disguise its arms-to-Kiev program by laundering it through its sponsored Middle East dictatorships:

    Christopher Miller ‏@ChristopherJM

    Poroshenko, UAE agree on "delivery of certain types of armaments and military hardware to #Ukraine."

    The United Arab Emirates is not known as arms producer. But it buys lots of U.S. weapons. It will now forward those to Ukraine while the U.S. will claim that it does not arm Ukraine. Who do they think will believe them?

    This is again a dangerous escalation of the conflict in Ukraine by U.S. machinations. It comes at the same moment that Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine meet in Paris to push for faster implementation of the Minsk 2 accord for a ceasefire and for a political solution of the civil war in Ukraine:

    On Monday spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Yevhen Perebyinis said that during their Paris meeting, the foursome of foreign ministers will focus on the implementation of the Minsk agreements and withdrawal of heavy artillery in Donbas.

    The Ukrainian government has said that it will not withdraw its artillery as long as there are still skirmishes around a few flashpoints along the ceasefire line. In Shirokyne east of Mariupol the government aligned neo-nazi battalion Azov continues to attack the federalists. The Ukrainian propaganda claims that the federalists plan an immediate attack on Mariupol. That is nonsense and the federalist have denied any plans for further fighting. Unlike the Ukrainian government the federalist started to pull back their artillery and will continue to do so.

    The Ukrainian government is breaking the Minsk 2 agreement by not pulling back its heavy artillery from the ceasefire line. The U.S. is arming the Ukrainian army and will soon train its volunteer neo-nazi "national guard" forces.

    The major European powers, Germany, France and Russia, try to tame the conflict down. The U.S. and its poodles in Kiev continue to poor oil into the fire. If the Europeans do not succeed in pushing back against Washington the Ukraine with burn and Europe with it.

    In Further Escalation U.S. Delivery Of Weapons To Kiev Will Be Laundered Through Abu Dhabi

    Posted by b at 10:20 AM | Comments (53)

    Lone Wolf | Feb 24, 2015 11:20:39 AM | 1

    @b

    Thanks for a very good summary of the whole guacamole.

    Another reason not to withdraw the artillery, being also used by Kerry to crank up the "let's-give-weapons-to-Ukraine" line, is the mopping of the Debaltsevo pocket, which Ukraine & Co. decided to ignore from the beginning, to use it now as a justification not to fulfill Minsk 2.0. The false-flag attack in Kharkov was a prelude of the up and coming internal repression, which will drown in torture, suffering and blood the little resistance there is to the continuation of the war and the IV Mobilization.

    Whoever said that foreign policy is only an extension of domestic policy?

    gersen | Feb 24, 2015 12:24:12 PM | 3

    RE: Lone Wolf | Feb 24, 2015 11:20:39 AM | 1

    I commented about a week ago that the ceasefire might hold if both sides in Ukraine pulled back their artillery - unless Obama acted to sabotage it. Now he has done so - not withstanding the withdrawal of federalist ordinance - by offering to rearm the gun-crazy fascists of the Ukrainian gov't, with not even a fig leaf of "plausible deniability" to cover his assets.

    Not a peep from Merkel - her only disagreements with the Nobel Peace Prize winner about Ukraine are purely tactical.

    As for Poroshenko, he doubtless has a helicopter gassed and ready, and a nice little hidey hole in Switzerland all prepared, and conveniently close to his billions. That's why he sent his family out of the country, because when he has to get out - he has to get out fast.

    shargash | Feb 24, 2015 12:29:18 PM | 4

    Re: (2) IhaveLittleToAdd

    Like most criminal organizations, the US tries to take very good care of its agents that do what they're told and to be very brutal to those who don't. For examples of the former, check out all the South American criminals living in Miami as well as the perhaps more relevant example of Mikheil Saakashvili, who is strutting around Ukraine rather than being on trial in Georgia. For examples of the latter, check out Noriega, Saddam, or Bin Ladin.

    While I suspect Porky is wondering how he got himself into this mess, I don't think he has much choice but to stick it out to the end. At least his family will be well taken care of.

    sleepy | Feb 24, 2015 2:08:47 PM | 10

    Re: IHaveLittleToAdd no. 2

    Re: shargash no. 4

    I have read recently in an article on another blog that in 2012 Poroshenko was being politically groomed for his future role by Germany's Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung institute, a think-tank wing of Merkel's Christian Democrats, as was Vitali Klitschko the present mayor of Kiev in 2011.

    Basically, Germany was to spearhead the EU's expansion to Ukraine, while the US role was to facilitate Ukraine's inclusion in Nato.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/greece-dead-man-walking-2.html

    Lone Wolf | Feb 24, 2015 3:19:08 PM | 14

    @sid_finster@5

    "Ukraine will go to war in late March"--Zakharchenko


    ..."We are beginning the withdrawal of heavy equipment, while Ukraine is bringing it up from Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk. Seems to be there will be a provocation. Ukraine will go to war in late March or Early April. Ukraine needs war," Zakharchenko said during a Monday briefing.


    J.Hawk's Comment: ...Because, to my mind, there seems to be a pattern of Ukrainian conflict activity: it is most likely to escalate when it just received foreign financial aid, and is the most likely to seek peace just as it needs another tranche...

    sid_finster | Feb 24, 2015 8:42:45 PM | 22

    $350m is not going to buy you many US weapons, especially as Parashka's contract is for $2.4 billion, less delivery, middlemen, financing, etc..

    The IMF is another source, but that money hasn't arrived yet, and there are a lot of conditions attached. That's why the Fund is the lender of last resort.

    Since arms are invariably sold subject to strict limits on resales, I suspect that either:
    1. The sale is for domestic Ukrainian consumption, i.e Parashka's attempt to look like he is doing something;
    Or
    2.The US is secretly financing the sale, directly or indirectly. Such financing may be in the form of "we promise to aid your ISIS friends, or look the other way, if you 'sell' Ukraine these weapons and take a lenient attitude regarding repayment."

    Lone Wolf | Feb 24, 2015 9:20:09 PM | 23

    @Alberto@11

    This is not because they disagree with his politics, but because Saakashvili is wanted on a multitude of criminal charges.

    "Criminal charges?" Bingo! He fits the credentials for the job as Porky's "adviser." In reality, Saakashvili, a CIA crooked rat, is the CIA man in Ukraine, overseeing the entire anti-Russian effort, weapons needs, false-flag operations, internal repression, Ukinazi death squads, intel gathering and coordination, etc. Georgia's complaint to Ukraine was more of a wink to Saakashvili's newly found job, a show for domestic consumption, otherwise, Interpol would be looking for him, wouldn't it?

    ProsperousPeace | Feb 24, 2015 9:37:53 PM | 24

    Re: Isaakashvili sudden involvement with the "Ukrainian government": Kiev Snipers: Mystery Solved

    It was reported several weeks ago in Interpress News that four of the snipers in Kiev were in fact Georgian nationals. The source for this story was Georgian General Tristan Tsitelashvili (Titelashvili), who later confirmed this in an interview with Rossiya TV.

    Tsitelashvili claimed that at least four of the snipers shooting at people in Maidan Square were under the command of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is doing his best to destabilize his own country, and others if necessary, to find a way back into power.

    Piotr Berman | Feb 24, 2015 11:28:51 PM | 25

    How long did Saakashvili's war with Russia last? 48 hours? 72 hours? Good advisor to have.

    Posted by: Crest | Feb 24, 2015 8:34:15 PM | 20

    According to Wikipedia, the war started on Aug 8, minutes after midnight, and it definitely lasted at least 4 days. On fifth day, Georgians left a key city, Gori, and Russians entered on sixth day. On the other hand, the war was lost within 24 hours. The only chance of victory for heavily outnumbered Georgia was to surprise the Russians and Ossetians and take control of the only tunnel between South Ossetia and the Russian Federation (North Ossetia), which they did not. Thus Russian could retake all territory gained by Georgia on day one within two days, rather than a week. Georgia concentrated almost all forces against Ossetian, leaving the second border with good roads, with Abkhasia, practically undefended. Thus the only way to score a victory lasting more than one day was to risk loosing big majority of Georgian military in a cauldron -- Georgian forces in Ossetian mountain valleys would have Russian forces behind them, as only police checkpoints were delaying Russian advance from Abkhasia, (posting detours, issuing tickets for parking violations, violation of weight limits on bridges for tanks etc.???).

    As a history buff, I have hard time finding a strategic plan of equal stupidity. To give the creator of that plan a key advising position seems suicidal. An anti-Russian Georgian owns a large (??? impressive web site) newspaper in Kiev.

    Demian | Feb 25, 2015 3:02:07 AM | 28

    Foreign Affairs poll of experts about whether the US should arm Ukraine:

    4 strongly agree
    5 agree
    0 are neutral [they're experts, after all]
    8 disagree
    10 strongly disagree

    brian | Feb 26, 2015 4:59:48 AM | 52

    You can read the whole article for free if you register. You get two free articles per month. FA should be of interest to MoA readers.

    By George Galloway. a great discussion about the Russian_Western struggle; its history and recent development.;
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNaSGdYxm8M

    guest77 | Feb 26, 2015 1:47:24 PM | 53

    @52 Thanks for the Galloway show. His al Mayadeen show has always been difficult for me to find - and it is considerably better, I feel, than both Sputnik and Comment (which are fine shows themselves).

    [Feb 25, 2015] Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands by Richard Sakwa review – an unrivalled account

    Notable quotes:
    "... It also requires an acceptance of bilingualism, mutual tolerance of different traditions, and devolution of power to the regions. ..."
    "... the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych last year brought the triumph of the monist view, held most strongly in western Ukraine, whose leaders were determined this time to ensure the winner takes all. ..."
    "... "fateful geographical paradox: that Nato exists to manage the risks created by its existence". ..."
    "... Nato's role has been, in part, to maintain US primacy over Europe's foreign policy. ..."
    "... Last year's "Fuck the EU" comment by Victoria Nuland, Obama's neocon assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, was the pithiest expression of this. ..."
    "... Sakwa writes with barely suppressed anger of Europe's failure, arguing that instead of a vision embracing the whole continent, the EU has become little more than the civilian wing of the Atlantic alliance. ..."
    "... Frontline Ukraine highlights several points that have become almost taboo in western accounts: the civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine caused by Ukrainian army shelling, the physical assaults on leftwing candidates in last year's election and the failure to complete investigations of last February's sniper activity in Kiev (much of it thought to have been by anti-Yanukovych fighters) or of the Odessa massacre in which dozens of anti-Kiev protesters were burnt alive in a building set on fire by nationalists or clubbed to death when they jumped from windows. ..."
    "... A very well documented report and yet anti Russian thinking pervades relentlessly against the true facts as they are available. ..."
    "... I'm impressed by what Sakwa says about the "monist" versus "pluralist" models of Ukrainian statehood. Indeed the recent "anti terrorist operations" can be seen as failed attempts by the monists to impose their model by force on the south and east. ..."
    "... There is a conspiracy of silence in Washington and Kiev about the true nature of the Neo Nazis operating as regular units within the Ukrainian army. ..."
    "... As in the endless accusations of being a "Putinbot" if you have the temerity to challenge the MSM script. ..."
    "... I have a strong suspicion that the demonising of Putin is at least in part a method to draw attention away from US (and maybe Israeli) warmongering of the last decades, so I hope this book will give a fairly balanced account of what's really taking place in Crimea and Ukraine. Also I suspect that the CIA is, true to form, stirring up the Ukrainians so to destabilise Russian influence. ..."
    Feb 19, 2015 | The Guardian

    When Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister, told a German TV station recently that the Soviet Union invaded Germany, was this just blind ignorance? Or a kind of perverted wishful thinking? If the USSR really was the aggressor in 1941, it would suit Yatsenyuk's narrative of current geopolitics in which Russia is once again the only side that merits blame.

    When Grzegorz Schetyna, Poland's deputy foreign minister, said Ukrainians liberated Auschwitz, did he not know that the Red Army was a multinational force in which Ukrainians certainly played a role but the bulk of the troops were Russian? Or was he looking for a new way to provoke the Kremlin?

    Faced with these irresponsible distortions, and they are replicated in a hundred other prejudiced comments about Russian behaviour from western politicians as well as their eastern European colleagues, it is a relief to find a book on the Ukrainian conflict that is cool, balanced, and well sourced. Richard Sakwa makes repeated criticisms of Russian tactics and strategy, but he avoids lazy Putin-bashing and locates the origins of the Ukrainian conflict in a quarter-century of mistakes since the cold war ended. In his view, three long-simmering crises have boiled over to produce the violence that is engulfing eastern Ukraine.

    The first is the tension between two different models of Ukrainian statehood.

    • One is what he calls the "monist" view, which asserts that the country is an autochthonous cultural and political unity and that the challenge of independence since 1991 has been to strengthen the Ukrainian language, repudiate the tsarist and Soviet imperial legacies, reduce the political weight of Russian-speakers and move the country away from Russia towards "Europe".
    • The alternative "pluralist" view emphasises the different historical and cultural experiences of Ukraine's various regions and argues that building a modern democratic post-Soviet Ukrainian state is not just a matter of good governance and rule of law at the centre. It also requires an acceptance of bilingualism, mutual tolerance of different traditions, and devolution of power to the regions.

    More than any other change of government in Kiev since 1991, the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych last year brought the triumph of the monist view, held most strongly in western Ukraine, whose leaders were determined this time to ensure the winner takes all.

    The second crisis arises from the internationalisation of the struggle inside Ukraine which turned it into a geopolitical tug of war. Sakwa argues that this stems from the asymmetrical end of the cold war which shut Russia out of the European alliance system. While Mikhail Gorbachev and millions of other Russians saw the end of the cold war as a shared victory which might lead to the building of a "common European home", most western leaders saw Russia as a defeated nation whose interests could be brushed aside, and which must accept US hegemony in the new single-superpower world order or face isolation. Instead of dismantling Nato, the cold-war alliance was strengthened and expanded in spite of repeated warnings from western experts on Russia that this would create new tensions. Long before Putin came to power, Yeltsin had urged the west not to move Nato eastwards.

    Even today at this late stage, a declaration of Ukrainian non-alignment as part of an internationally negotiated settlement, and UN Security Council guarantees of that status, would bring instant de-escalation and make a lasting ceasefire possible in eastern Ukraine.

    The hawks in the Clinton administration ignored all this, Bush abandoned the anti-ballistic missile treaty and put rockets close to Russia's borders, and now a decade later, after Russia's angry reaction to provocations in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine today, we have what Sakwa rightly calls a "fateful geographical paradox: that Nato exists to manage the risks created by its existence".

    The third crisis, also linked to the Nato issue, is the European Union's failure to stay true to the conflict resolution imperative that had been its original impetus. After 1989 there was much talk of the arrival of the "hour of Europe". Just as the need for Franco-German reconciliation inspired the EU's foundation, many hoped the cold war's end would lead to a broader east-west reconciliation across the old Iron Curtain. But the prospect of greater European independence worried key decision-makers in Washington, and Nato's role has been, in part, to maintain US primacy over Europe's foreign policy. From Bosnia in 1992 to Ukraine today, the last two decades have seen repeated occasions where US officials pleaded, half-sincerely, for a greater European role in handling geopolitical crises in Europe while simultaneously denigrating and sidelining Europe's efforts. Last year's "Fuck the EU" comment by Victoria Nuland, Obama's neocon assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, was the pithiest expression of this.

    Sakwa writes with barely suppressed anger of Europe's failure, arguing that instead of a vision embracing the whole continent, the EU has become little more than the civilian wing of the Atlantic alliance.

    Within the framework of these three crises, Sakwa gives the best analysis yet in book form of events on the ground in eastern Ukraine as well as in Kiev, Washington, Brussels and Moscow. He covers the disputes between the "resolvers" (who want a negotiated solution) and the "war party" in each capital.

    He describes the rows over sanctions that have split European leaders, and points out how Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, is under constant pressure from Nuland's favourite Ukrainian, the more militant Yatsenyuk, to rely on military force.

    As for Putin, Sakwa sees him not so much as the driver of the crisis but as a regulator of factional interests and a temporiser who has to balance pressure from more rightwing Russian nationalists as well as from the insurgents in Ukraine, who get weapons and help from Russia but are not the Kremlin's puppets.

    Frontline Ukraine highlights several points that have become almost taboo in western accounts: the civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine caused by Ukrainian army shelling, the physical assaults on leftwing candidates in last year's election and the failure to complete investigations of last February's sniper activity in Kiev (much of it thought to have been by anti-Yanukovych fighters) or of the Odessa massacre in which dozens of anti-Kiev protesters were burnt alive in a building set on fire by nationalists or clubbed to death when they jumped from windows.

    The most disturbing novelty of the Ukrainian crisis is the way Putin and other Russian leaders are routinely demonised. At the height of the cold war when the dispute between Moscow and the west was far more dangerous, backed as it was by the danger of nuclear catastrophe, Brezhnev and Andropov were never treated to such public insults by western commentators and politicians.

    Equally alarming, though not new, is the one-sided nature of western political, media and thinktank coverage. The spectre of senator Joseph McCarthy stalks the stage, marginalising those who offer a balanced analysis of why we have got to where we are and what compromises could save us. I hope Sakwa's book does not itself become a victim, condemned as insufficiently anti-Russian to be reviewed.

    • Jonathan Steele is a former Guardian Moscow correspondent, and author of Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev and the Mirage of Democracy. To order Frontline Ukraine for Ł15.19 (RRP Ł18.99), go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846

    Susan O'neill -> Steve Ennever 25 Feb 2015 07:11
    It must have because I remember that Moscow requested a special meeting of the UN security council in accordance with a treaty in Geneva. This was an attempt to negate the need for intervention in a foreign state by Russia (which would have delighted the US). Furthermore, both sides of the horror were armed to the teeth. Some perspective would be nice.
    Susan O'neill -> willpodmore 25 Feb 2015 06:47
    A very well documented report and yet anti Russian thinking pervades relentlessly against the true facts as they are available.

    Until Britain decides to distance itself from the US anti Russian thinking (that means criticism of the McCarthy era) we will still be looking to root out "Reds under the beds" and routing anything(or anyone) who might seem to be pro-Russian. Thanks for the contribution.

    AenimaUK -> jezzam 25 Feb 2015 05:12
    I thought Ukraine was already unaligned before this crisis started.

    Yes, before the undemocratic, right-wing, NATO-backed coup, it was.

    It is true that NATO is totally dominated by the US - but this is because they spend considerably more on defence than the rest of NATO put together. To this extent, European foreign policy is dominated by the US - this is entirely Europe's own choice and fault though.

    So your alternative is that the EU up its defence spending to match the absurd permanent war-economy levels of the US? And will the resources for that come from tax increases or public service cuts to match the US? Wasn't the point about the end of the Cold War that it was supposed to be the 'end' of the 'war'? Of course, those in charge of the US military-industrial complex and their chums in the DoD failed to get that memo (or rather, read it, decided it would threaten their economic and geo-political imperialism, and shredded it).

    willpodmore -> MiaPia2015 25 Feb 2015 04:24

    Not true MiaPia - Leading scholars of Russian history have refuted the claim that the famine was an act of genocide.

    Terry Martin concluded, "The famine was not an intentional act of genocide specifically targeting the Ukrainian nation." David Shearer noted, "Although the famine hit Ukraine hard, it was not, as some historians argue, a purposefully genocidal policy against Ukrainians. no evidence has surfaced to suggest that the famine was planned, and it affected broad segments of the Russian and other non-Ukrainian populations both in Ukraine and in Russia." Diane Koenker and Ronald Bachman agreed, "the documents included here or published elsewhere do not yet support the claim that the famine was deliberately produced by confiscating the harvest, or that it was directed especially against the peasants of Ukraine." Barbara Green also agreed, "Unlike the Holocaust, the Great Famine was not an intentional act of genocide." Steven Katz commented, "What makes the Ukrainian case non-genocidal, and what makes it different from the Holocaust, is the fact that the majority of Ukrainian children survived and, still more, that they were permitted to survive." Adam Ulam agreed too, writing, "Stalin and his closest collaborators had not willed the famine."
    Tauger explained, "The evidence that I have published and other evidence, including recent Ukrainian document collections, show that the famine developed out of a shortage and pervaded the Soviet Union, and that the regime organized a massive program of rationing and relief in towns and in villages, including in Ukraine, but simply did not have enough food. This is why the Soviet famine, an immense crisis and tragedy of the Soviet economy, was not in the same category as the Nazis' mass murders, which had no agricultural or other economic basis." He summed up, "Ukraine received more in food supplies during the famine crisis than it exported to other republics. Soviet authorities made substantial concessions to Ukraine in response to an undeniable natural disaster and transferred resources from Russia to Ukraine for food relief and agricultural recovery."

    Hans Blumenfeld pointed out that famine also struck the Russian regions of Lower Volga and North Caucasus: "This disproves the 'fact' of anti-Ukrainian genocide parallel to Hitler's anti-semitic holocaust. To anyone familiar with the Soviet Union's desperate manpower shortage in those years, the notion that its rulers would deliberately reduce that scarce resource is absurd Up to the 1950s the most frequently quoted figure was two million [famine victims]. Only after it had been established that Hitler's holocaust had claimed six million victims, did anti-Soviet propaganda feel it necessary to top that figure by substituting the fantastic figure of seven to ten million "

    Ellman concluded, "What recent research has found in the archives is not a conscious policy of genocide against Ukraine."

    Vaska Tumir -> Vladimir Boronenko 24 Feb 2015 21:23

    I beg to differ: there was nothing the matter with the Budapest Memorandum of Agreement of 1994 which guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Unfortunately, in November 2013, the EU decided to violate the terms of the Budapest Memo by presenting the then government of Ukraine with an economic ultimatum (something expressly forbidden by Article 3 of that international document several EU countries were signatories to).

    Had the EU honoured the terms of the Budapest Memo and had it agreed to the trilateral economic deliberations both Ukraine and Russia were asking for, nothing of the subsequent mess and the slaughter Kiev's brought to Donbass would have happened.

    The situation can still be rectified by recognizing the new Donetsk and Lugansk Republics as parts of a federal state, along the lines of Switzerland, say, thus preserving Ukraine as a country. Such a solution to the chaos NATO and the EU have brought about would be part of what Jonathan Steele suggests by saying that "a declaration of Ukrainian non-alignment as part of an internationally negotiated settlement, and UN Security Council guarantees of that status, would bring instant de-escalation and make a lasting ceasefire possible in eastern Ukraine".

    HollyOldDog Ecolophant 24 Feb 2015 17:44

    America does not have a language of its own, it is more correctly called a Dialect of English.

    HollyOldDog Dreikaiserbund 24 Feb 2015 17:33

    Russian invasion? What invasion? It's just a myth created by the incompetent.

    Colin Robinson 24 Feb 2015 17:04

    I'm impressed by what Sakwa says about the "monist" versus "pluralist" models of Ukrainian statehood. Indeed the recent "anti terrorist operations" can be seen as failed attempts by the monists to impose their model by force on the south and east.

    If the terms "monist" and "pluralist" come to be used more widely in discussion about the conflict, the world may begin to get more of a handle on what has been happening.

    Kalkriese -> senya 24 Feb 2015 14:38

    And you mean no-one on the US/Ukrainian side is not lying ?

    There is a conspiracy of silence in Washington and Kiev about the true nature of the Neo Nazis operating as regular units within the Ukrainian army.

    Putin is merely playing back by their rules and the fact he is successful in reclaiming Crimea is the cause of all the sour grapes emanating from Kiev.

    Kalkriese -> jezzam 24 Feb 2015 14:30

    "His last thesis - that the east-west reconciliation between Europe and Russia was somehow scuppered by the US and NATO is very hard to follow, or swallow."

    Are you really so naive ? Or just disingenuous ?

    Kalkriese -> prostak 24 Feb 2015 14:26

    "Russian troops have been proven many times"
    Really? By whom ? Where?
    Let's have some proof...

    StopPretending -> MiaPia2015 24 Feb 2015 14:08

    there was no 'Ukraine' state until Stalin created it. Perhaps that was the problem?

    MiaPia2015 24 Feb 2015 13:31

    Steele's analysis, and Sakwas book have one fatal flaw. The origins of this crisis did not start in 1991 with the end of the cold war, but rather its end allowed tensions that had been simmering since the Holodomor of the 1930s when millions of ethnic Ukrainians were starved to death by Stalin in an orchestrated genocide that then allowed ethnic Russians to move into Ukrainian territory. The desire to have an independent, Ukraine-speaking nation have always been there and are no different from the desire of any other country. What we have now is almost an exact repeat of what happened then.

    Steve -> Ennever 22 Feb 2015 19:57

    An interesting article indeed.

    The Odessa massacre if nothing else was evidence of the MSM's bias on this subject.

    50+ people being burnt alive for expressing their opinions seems a choice topic for our "je suis charlie" fanatic press. And yet we heard.... crickets - because it didn't suit their "we support Kiev" agenda.

    But Odessa wasn't the only atrocity in May 2014. The victory parade in Mariupol, May 9th. The National Guard arrive, possibly expecting a town full of Russian terrorists, but find civilians celebrating, understandably irate at the intrusion of military hardware and troops, who then open fire on them anyway.

    Did this get reported in the west?

    jezzam 22 Feb 2015 14:49

    A serious commentator like Steele putting Russia's case is much needed. His comments about Yatsenyuk do not add much that is new though. Yatsenyuk is very anti-Russian - this was already known. His popularity has in fact been much boosted by anti- Russian feelings in Ukraine induced by Putin's military agression. His party is now the largest in the Ukraine parliament.

    Steele's discussion of the Monist and pluralist views is all very well, but he does not discuss the kleptocratic view favoured by Putin and Yanukovych. The main cause of the revolution in Kiev was not the conflict between Monist and pluralist views, but the massive corruption and subversion of democracy in Ukraine, modelled on that of Russia. In Russia the ruling elite cream more than 30% of state income into their own pockets by corrupt practices. Yanukovych had established the same system in Ukraine. He was also well on the way to corrupting the judiciary. He had already locked up his main political opponent on a trumped up charge - again following the Putin model of government.

    Steeles's solution of "a declaration of Ukrainian non-alignment as part of an internationally negotiated settlement, and UN Security Council guarantees of that status" sounds good. Is this to be imposed on Ukraine though? What does it mean? I thought Ukraine was already unaligned before this crisis started. They already had guarantees of their territorial integrity from Russia, the US and UK as well. Fat lot of good that has done them.

    His last thesis - that the east-west reconciliation between Europe and Russia was somehow scuppered by the US and NATO is very hard to follow, or swallow. It is true that NATO is totally dominated by the US - but this is because they spend considerably more on defence than the rest of NATO put together. To this extent, European foreign policy is dominated by the US - this is entirely Europe's own choice and fault though.

    As to Steele's claim that Putin is being demonised, insults between countries are not productive and leaders should be treated with respect by other countries. However it is difficult to treat with respect someone who does not keep his word and lies to your face, particularly when these lies are so transparent. Brezhnev and Andropov never did this - at least not so blatantly.

    tiojo 22 Feb 2015 12:50

    "......that Nato exists to manage the risks created by its existence".

    Now if only the Guardian's current journalists would read this book we might get some decent coverage of events in Ukraine and Russia.

    Marilyn -> Justice 21 Feb 2015 22:37

    My only argument would be the assessment of blame re the snipers - 3 studies have shown them to be from 'the new coalition' and not old gov't, which is in line with the telephone call of Catherine Ashton and Urmas Paet,

    Standupwoman 21 Feb 2015 21:02

    Excellent, balanced article, and I really have to buy this book. I only wonder why the Guardian hasn't included this on its 'Ukraine' page for 19th February...

    GuyCybershy -> sbmfc 21 Feb 2015 17:06

    Especially in the US the public needs every issue distilled to good vs. evil. Anything more complex and they will reject it. This is the result of decades of "divide and conquer" politics.

    Vladimir Boronenko 21 Feb 2015 08:21

    "Even today at this late stage, a declaration of Ukrainian non-alignment as part of an internationally negotiated settlement, and UN Security Council guarantees of that status, would bring instant de-escalation and make a lasting ceasefire possible in eastern Ukraine." No it wouldn't. It is nothing but wishful thinking and delusion all over again. Ukraine had had that status already, and only scrapped it in December by a constitutional Parliament vote exactly because it showed its complete uselessness and impotence at the face of real-life threats. Just like the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 guaranteeing security of Ukraine, with one of the guarantors attacking and the other two looking on, although, if one was to stick to the letter of the Memo, of course, they are not bound to be involved unless its a nuclear threat.

    Johnlockett 20 Feb 2015 19:21

    Excellent article. Very balance and very near to the truth. Thank you
    John Lockett

    Statingobvious 20 Feb 2015 14:28

    An exceptionally unbiased piece where otherwise Russia and Putin bashing (& twisting of facts & outright lying) is the rule.

    mike42 20 Feb 2015 10:04

    "The most disturbing novelty of the Ukrainian crisis is the way Putin and other Russian leaders are routinely demonised. At the height of the cold war when the dispute between Moscow and the west was far more dangerous, backed as it was by the danger of nuclear catastrophe, Brezhnev and Andropov were never treated to such public insults by western commentators and politicians."

    Need more be said?

    Dreikaiserbund Les Mills 20 Feb 2015 09:14

    Challenging the 'MSM script' does not make you a Putinbot. Deriding anyone who supports Ukrainian sovereignty, who is opposed to the Russian invasion and trumpeting Vladimir as a great and wise leader - that is what makes you a Putinbot.

    EnriqueFerro -> theshonny 19 Feb 2015 19:57

    Thank you for the info on 'The War Against Putin' by M.S. King. I'll look for it, because even if it is pro-Putin, it is nonetheless interesting in order to check the rabid and massive anti-Putin and Russia-hating disease spreading out there.

    EnriqueFerro -> Mari5064 19 Feb 2015 19:53

    Mari, I'm afraid you read too many tabloids.

    EnriqueFerro 19 Feb 2015 19:51

    This is an excellent book, of which I'm finishing its reading now; it can be read avidly, because it says the truth, in a dispassionate and academic narrative, far from the typically stupid accounts in the Western media and in the mouths of our gullible and ignorant politicians. Read it and learn a lot about Ukraine, Russia, the EU, and the US/NATO.
    Usually interesting books which don't follow the official record are not displayed in the mass bookshops such as Floyds or Waterstones (to name two of the more serious in the UK). It is a way of censorship, to make it difficult for the public to find critical stuff. I found a lone copy well hidden in the history section at WS. A miracle! I took it quickly, and wonder if it was replaced!!!

    Les Mills -> leafbinder 19 Feb 2015 19:34

    As in the endless accusations of being a "Putinbot" if you have the temerity to challenge the MSM script. Incidentally, I'm surprised that this article has only a handful of comments. I came here via a link on Google news so I can only assume that the Guardian have it hidden away on their site, which definitely fits the anti-Russian agenda.

    leafbinder 19 Feb 2015 17:37

    By far THE best analysis of what sounds like a most insightful book. The reviewer has done us all a great service, since without it we would have never heard about the book from any other "NATO-Western" source. Even worse, the author of the book would be accused of not being "real" as is often the accusation when a comment appears that does not swallow Western propaganda line-hook-and-sinker.

    John Hansen 19 Feb 2015 14:31

    Jonathan Steele:

    Superb analysis of a significant book.

    :-)

    theshonny 19 Feb 2015 13:15

    Bought 'The War Against Putin' by M.S. King a short while ago, and found it going so much pro-Putin that it lost its impact. So now I hope for a more balanced account.

    I have a strong suspicion that the demonising of Putin is at least in part a method to draw attention away from US (and maybe Israeli) warmongering of the last decades, so I hope this book will give a fairly balanced account of what's really taking place in Crimea and Ukraine.

    Also I suspect that the CIA is, true to form, stirring up the Ukrainians so to destabilise Russian influence.

    sbmfc 19 Feb 2015 07:31

    I think the demonisation of Putin stems from the influence of Hollywood narratives in our societal perception.

    The idea of the villain is so commonplace that is widely assumed that anyone with a different agenda to ones own is perceived to be attempting to working directly against our own personal interests rather than in aid of their own different and completely independent interests.

    Essentially everything has been so dumbed down that only a good/evil narrative can be comprehended and the labels are only fit one way. The facts themselves are irrelevant.

    AnyFictionalName 19 Feb 2015 05:50

    When PM Yatsenyuk said:

    I don't want Ukrainian youths (i.e. those who consider their native language to be Ukrainian or Russian) to learn the Russian language, I want them to learn the English language.

    Is that kind of racism, inferiority complex or just sheer stupidity?

    [Feb 23, 2015] On the way to war on Russia By Brian Cloughley

    Quote: " This is nonsense, because there is no economic, political or military point in Russia trying to invade the Baltic States or any other country on its borders. There has been no indication of any such move - other than in bizarre statements by such as Mr Herbst and twisted reports in Western news media. It is absurd and intellectually demeaning and deceitful to suggest otherwise, and it is regrettable that someone of the superior intelligence of Mr Herbst could lower himself to say such a thing. But it makes good propaganda.
    Feb 18, 2015 | Asia Times Online

    Since the Soviet collapse - as Moscow had feared - [the NATO] alliance has spread eastward, expanding along a line from Estonia in the north to Romania and Bulgaria in the south. The Kremlin claims it had Western assurances that would not happen. Now, Moscow's only buffers to a complete NATO encirclement on its western border are Finland, Belarus and Ukraine. The Kremlin would not have to be paranoid to look at that map with concern. - Stars and Stripes (US Armed Forces newspaper), February 13, 2015.

    The Minsk Agreement of February 12, 2015, was arranged by the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine and contained important provisions concerning future treatment of citizens in the Russian-speaking, Russia-cultured eastern districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in Ukraine where there has been vicious fighting between separatist forces and government troops supported by militias.

    Most Western media did not report that the accord was signed by the leaders of the provinces (oblasts) of Donetsk and Luhansk as well as representatives of Russia and Ukraine, but the former two matter greatly in implementation of its provisions.

    To the disappointment of much of the West, and especially the United States, it appears that the great majority of the inhabitants of these regions are to be granted much of what they have been seeking (with robust support by Russia), which includes the right to speak and receive education in their birth-language; restitution of pension payments and other central revenue moneys that were stopped by the Kiev government; constitutional reform of Ukraine including "approval of permanent legislation on the special status of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk"; and free local elections in the oblasts.

    The way to peace will not be easy but the substance of the accord will go far to convincing the people of the eastern oblasts that they will not in future be treated as second-class citizens. They will be permitted an appropriate degree of decision-making in their regions, and if there is goodwill on the part of the Kiev government there is reason to believe that fair governance could apply. A major problem, however, is the attitude of the United States and Britain concerning Russia and Ukraine.

    Neither the US nor the UK was privy to discussions between participants in the Minsk talks except through technical intercept by their intelligence agencies and more intimate but necessarily partial description by Kiev's President Petro Poroshenko, whose subordinates reported through US and British conduits.

    London and Washington were excluded from negotiations because neither wishes a solution that could be agreeable to Russia and the Russian-cultured regions of east Ukraine.

    Both are uncompromisingly intent on humiliating Moscow, and although Britain is verging on irrelevance in world affairs except as a decayed and limited associate of the US in whatever martial venture may be embarked upon by Washington, the US Congress and White House are for once in agreement and are determined to destroy Russia's economy and topple its president and are being provocatively challenging in pursuit of that aim.

    There hasn't been such deliberate squaring-up politically and militarily since the height of the last Cold War. President Barack Obama's speeches about Russia and President Vladimir Putin have been bellicose, abusive and personally insolent to the point of immature mindlessness. He does not realize that his contempt and threats will not be forgiven by the Russian people who, it is only too often overlooked, are proud of being Russian and understandably resent being insulted.

    Obama claimed last year that the US "is and will remain the one indispensable nation in the world", which was regarded with mild derision by many nations; but now Russians are realizing what he meant by his chest-pounding, because America has fostered the Ukraine mess in attempting to justify its stance of uncompromising aggression against them.

    But Ukraine has nothing to do with the United States. It is on the border of Russia, not the US. It is not a member of NATO. It is not a member of the European Union. It has no defense or political treaty of any sort with the US. It is 5,000 miles - 8,000 kilometers - from Washington to Kiev and it is doubtful if more than a handful of members of Congress could find Ukraine on a map.

    In March 2014, the province of Crimea declared itself to be separate from Ukraine. There was a referendum on sovereignty by its 2.4 million inhabitants. The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe was asked to monitor and report on the referendum, but refused to do so. Both referendum and declaration were strongly condemned by the United States.

    Some 60% of the inhabitants of Crimea are Russian-speaking, Russian-cultured and Russian-educated, and they voted to rejoin Russia from which they had been separated by the diktat of Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev - a Ukrainian. It would be strange if they did not wish to accede to a country that welcomes their kinship and is economically benevolent concerning their future.

    Russia's support for the people of eastern Ukraine - and there is indubitably a great deal of assistance, both political and military, similar to that of the US-NATO alliance for the people of the breakaway Kosovo region of Serbia in 2008 - is based on the fact that the great majority of people there are Russian-speaking, Russian-cultured and discriminated against by the Ukrainian government, just as Kosovans were persecuted by Serbs.

    So it is not surprising that the majority of inhabitants of the eastern areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts want to "dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another" and be granted a large degree of autonomy - or even join Russia. The US refuses to admit that they might have even the slightest justification for their case.

    There has been a US-led media campaign attempting to persuade the public, in the words of John Herbst, former US ambassador to Ukraine, that President Putin's "provocations against the Baltic states, against Kazakhstan, indicate his goals are greater than Ukraine. If we don't stop Mr Putin in Ukraine we may be dealing with him in Estonia."

    This is nonsense, because there is no economic, political or military point in Russia trying to invade the Baltic States or any other country on its borders. There has been no indication of any such move - other than in bizarre statements by such as Mr Herbst and twisted reports in Western news media. It is absurd and intellectually demeaning and deceitful to suggest otherwise, and it is regrettable that someone of the superior intelligence of Mr Herbst could lower himself to say such a thing.

    But it makes good propaganda.

    In similar vein, President Putin's statement to Ukraine's President Poroshenko that "If I wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest" was reported by Britain's Daily Telegraph as "President Vladimir Putin privately threatened to invade Poland, Romania and the Baltic states" - which was malicious misrepresentation of what he said.

    Putin was making the point that Russia's armed forces could easily have taken successful military action against neighboring countries had they been ordered to do so - but he has no intention of doing anything so rash and stupid. What he and the Russian people want is justice and political choice for the ethnically Russian people in eastern Ukraine, as well as increasing bilaterally lucrative trade arrangements with adjoining countries. It would be insane for Moscow to hazard commercial links with any of its neighbors. Washington, on the other hand, is trying to break them.

    Following the Minsk agreement, Canada, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, (together with France and Germany, the Group of Seven) mildly welcomed it - for of course they had no public alternative - but took the opportunity, according to the White House, to "again condemn Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea which is in violation of international law".

    It appears that the US-stimulated nations of the G-7 demand that Crimea, with its 60% ethnic Russian population, should be in some fashion taken over by the Kiev government against the will of the majority of the people of that longtime Russian region.

    This would satisfy the aim of the US-NATO alliance, which wished and still wishes Ukraine to become a member of that organization, joining those already positioned on Russia's border. For US-NATO, the problem, now, is that the massive seaport at Sevastopol is independent of Kiev and will therefore be denied to US-NATO as a base from which to dominate the Black Sea.

    The US-led anti-Russia alliance continues to extend its influence along Russia's borders, and it is obvious that no matter what happens in Ukraine's eastern oblasts there will be continuing confrontation with Russia, led by Washington.

    Mikhail Gorbachev - the man whose empathy with president Ronald Reagan so helped to end the first Cold War - observed about the stance of US-NATO that "I cannot be sure that the [new] Cold War will not bring about a 'hot' one. I'm afraid they might take the risk."

    Given the intemperate and increasingly confrontational posture of the US and some of its NATO alliance supporters, the risk seems high. They are hazarding the lives of us all.

    Brian Cloughley is a former soldier who writes on military and political affairs, mainly concerning the sub-continent. The fourth edition of his book A History of the Pakistan Army was published last year.

    /neocons.shtml matches

    (Copyright 2015 Brian Cloughley)

    [Feb 18, 2015] CrossTalk: Cold-shoulder War (ft. Graham Allison)

    Feb 18, 2015 | https://www.youtube.com
    Warren , February 18, 2015 at 1:12 pm

    Published on 18 Feb 2015

    Is the West and Russia face off over Ukraine, it is fair to ask whether this conflict represents a much larger struggle. Are we actually witnessing the Third World War being played out? If this is in fact true, what kind of war is it and who is winning?

    CrossTalking with George Szamuely, John Laughland, and Graham Allison.

    [Feb 17, 2015] A Blackwater World Order By Kelley Vlahos

    February 6, 2015 |The American Conservative

    The privatization of America's wars swells the ranks of armies for hire across the globe.

    After more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's most profound legacy could be that it set the world order back to the Middle Ages.

    While this is a slight exaggeration, a recent examination by Sean McFate, a former Army paratrooper who later served in Africa working for Dyncorp International and is now an associate professor at the National Defense University, suggests that the Pentagon's dependence on contractors to help wage its wars has unleashed a new era of warfare in which a multitude of freshly founded private military companies are meeting the demand of an exploding global market for conflict.

    "Now that the United States has opened the Pandora's Box of mercenarianism," McFate writes in The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order, "private warriors of all stripes are coming out of the shadows to engage in for-profit warfare."

    It is a menacing thought. McFate said this coincides with what he and others have called a current shift from global dominance by nation-state power to a "polycentric" environment in which state authority competes with transnational corporations, global governing bodies, non-governmental organizations (NGO's), regional and ethnic interests, and terror organizations in the chess game of international relations. New access to professional private arms, McFate further argues, has cut into the traditional states' monopoly on force, and hastened the dawn of this new era.

    McFate calls it neomedievalism, the "non-state-centric and multipolar world order characterized by overlapping authorities and allegiances." States will not disappear, "but they will matter less than they did a century ago." He compares this coming environment to the order that prevailed in Europe before the domination of nation-states with their requisite standing armies.

    In this period, before the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 ended decades of war and established for the first time territorially defined sovereign states, political authority in Europe was split among competing power brokers that rendered the monarchs equal players, if not weaker ones. The Holy Roman Emperor, the papacy, bishoprics, city-states, dukedoms, principalities, chivalric orders–all fought for their piece with hired free companies, or mercenary enterprises of knights-turned profiteers.

    As progenitors of today's private military companies (PMCs), free companies were "organized as legal corporations, selling their services to the highest or most powerful bidder for profit," McFate writes. Their ranks "swelled with men from every corner of Europe" and beyond, going where the fighting was until it wasn't clear whether these private armies were simply meeting the demand or creating it.

    In an interview with TAC, McFate said the parallels between that period in history and today's global proliferation of PMCs cannot be ignored. He traces their modern origins to the post-Cold War embrace of privatization in both Washington and London, both pioneers in military outsourcing, which began in earnest in the 1980s.

    By the time the U.S. decided to invade Iraq and stay there in 2003, its smaller peacetime military force structure could not withstand the burden. The Pentagon increasingly relied on contractors to support and wage the war.

    "Policy makers, when they started the war in Iraq, they didn't think it would last beyond a few weeks. They had three terrible choices – they could withdraw prematurely, they could institute a Vietnam-era draft … or they could contract out. So they chose to contract it out," McFate said. "That is why you have it now and why it is not regulated."

    The U.S. used contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan more than it had in any war in its history: in 2010 there were more contractors deployed to war zones (207,000) than U.S. servicemembers (175,000). In World War II, contractors only made up 10 percent of the military workforce, according to McFate.

    From 1999 to 2008, at the peak of the wars, Pentagon spending on outsourcing alone increased from $165 billion to $466 billion a year. Attempts at oversight have been pathetic, as documented by the government's own inspectors general time and again. Success at regulating or imposing codes of conduct on contractors has proven elusive, too. The industry remains as opaque as it has been unassailable where it really counts-the pocketbook.

    "The industry is here to stay; it's not going anywhere," said McFate a former employee of Dyncorp, which cut its teeth in Bosnia. Dyncorp thrived as one of Washington's primary contractors for both security and reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq despite intermittent accusations of overbilling and underperformance on the job.

    Perhaps the most infamous of all contractors was Blackwater, which deflected charges of fraud, violence against civilians and murder for years before it was forced to "rebrand." Four of its former guards were convicted of murder in October, however, in connection with the massacre of 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square in 2007.

    Blackwater's founder Erik Prince has dipped and dodged his way through several incarnations of his company (no longer "Blackwater," it was renamed "Xe" and is now "Academi"), and has been successful at running a number of other so-called shell companies and international security operations inside and outside of the U.S. government trough, including anti-piracy enterprises in North Africa.

    In his post-American days (Prince left the U.S. for Abu Dhabi in 2010 amid a series of federal charges and lawsuits dogging Blackwater), Prince perched himself "at the top of the management chain" at Saracen International, a security group made up of hard-core mercenary veterans hired in 2009 to train indigenous forces in Puntland, Somalia, and to serve as a security detail for the embattled president of the fragile central government in Mogadishu.

    Saracen was officially kicked out of Somalia in 2011 after accusations were made that it was violating the country's arms embargo. According to Jeremy Scahill's seminal "Dirty Wars", however, by 2013 it was not clear that Saracen had ever left, and it was likely still operating in Somalia at the time with a handful of other international PMCs, including Dyncorp.

    This is the world that Prince has both made and has thrived in. According to McFate, "'irregular' warfare is more regular than the 'regular' warfare," as the number of internal conflicts have tripled while interstate wars have dwindled in number since a peak in 1965. As a result, PMCs have been used increasingly over the last 15 years by countries, NGOs, and corporations alike to protect ships on the high seas and oil fields in the deserts, to secure humanitarian missions, to raise armies against insurgencies, and to serve as security details at embassies, military bases, and palaces across the Middle East and beyond.

    On the darker side, many of the multinationals once on the U.S. dole as PMCs in places like Iraq have since started their own enterprises and taken their skills to clients no matter the mission. They are hard to track, and impossible to rein in.

    For example, before Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi was killed, he hired mercenaries from across Africa, "to brutally suppress the popular revolt against him," McFate points out. Likewise, papers reported in 2011 that one of Prince's companies, Reflex Responses, was hired to raise a force of several hundred guards for the emir of Abu Dhabi, to "assist the UAE government with intelligence gathering, security, counterterrorism and suppression of any revolts."

    By no means has the U.S. stopped using PMCs-they are protecting diplomats in Afghanistan and Iraq, training foreign militaries, and conducting intelligence. At this point they are more agile and better equipped to do this work overseas than even their military paymasters, McFate argues, and their use prevents the public angst-and scrutiny-that accompanies putting American soldiers into harms way.

    "The argument about private militaries being here to stay – that is the truth or unfortunate truth depending on your position," said Peter Singer, senior fellow for the Future War project at the New America Foundation and author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.

    "For those who thought this would all be over with the end of Iraq 2.0 or Obama's presidential victory, the facts just don't bear that out," he told TAC in an interview. Singer agrees with McFate's assessments in Modern Mercenary, which he said
    "mixes the analytic and academic side with his own personal experiences working for one of the firms; that combination is rare in this space."

    McFate details for the first time in public how he was hired by Dyncorp on behalf of a secret U.S. contract to help prevent a group of Hutu rebels, the Forces Nationales de Liberation (FNL), from sparking another genocide of the Tutsis during the ongoing civil war in Burundi. McFate was tasked at one point with guarding the president of Burundi from impending assassination. The president remained safe, and the civil war was brought to an end by 2005.

    McFate said he wrote about this, and Dyncorp's training of the Liberian army in 2011, to show in part that PMCs can be used to positive ends. But he is not naďve. He is clear about where they can fail, invite mission creep, or seize power for clients through violence. By their very nature, PMCs profit from conflict and are always at risk of creating and expanding it for their own benefit. McFate cites numerous examples throughout history in which mercenaries have played both sides, only to come out with full pockets.

    In addition, private armies live by no rules of war or international conventions; here, Erik Prince is the best example. PMCs can hide in countries with the lowest standards and norms. They have access to a global arms trade and the latest military technology, including drones. They are a risk to civilian populations, and their operations are never transparent. "You can FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) the CIA, you can't FOIA this industry," said McFate.

    So what to do? McFate suggests that banning PMCs or trying to regulate them into submission won't work because it would only drive them underground and into the realm of rogues. He suggests letting the market work to "incentivize desirable practices by making them profitable" might be the best course. He notes, however, that when the U.S. military had "market power" and was in the best position to set price and practices at the beginning of its wars, it "failed to do so."

    Whether the cons of private contracting outweigh the pros is a debate McFate chooses not engage, and his background as both soldier and contractor figure heavily in the tenor of his book. "I leave it deliberately up to the reader," he said. "The book is not an argument; it's more about exploration. There is a big global trend happening right under our feet. I think we are in the precipice of a big decision." That decision is how to deal with the privatization of war effectively, if at all.

    It will not be easy. U.S. agencies knowingly hired companies with spotty records. They used private contractors for controversial secret operations, including the detainee interrogations at Abu Ghraib, and a covert CIA assassination program involving Blackwater. It will take a lot more trust in Washington to believe that "best practices" in this industry can genuinely come from government itself.

    "In an idealized world the companies with the best practices and best performance records would end up with all the contracts, and the bad actors would be eliminated from the field," said Singer. "That hasn't happened in regular business, much less when you cross regular business with what you call politics."

    Or war. Get your seat belt on, because if McFate is right, it is "back to the future," and any choice we might have had in the matter is long gone.

    Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter and TAC contributing editor. Follow her on Twitter.

    [Feb 15, 2015] Ron Paul: Ukraine Coup Planned By Nato And EU

    Ron Paul: "The Ukraine coup was planned by NATO and EU... The best thing we can do for Ukraine is get the foreigners out." Quote from comments: "That is where anyone who does not believe that USA, EU and NATO are totally responsible for the violent mess Ukraine has become."
    Feb 15, 2015 | zerohedge.com

    As Ron Paul recently exclaimed, the war propagandists are very active and are winning over the support of many unsuspecting American citizens. So we thought the followingg 90 seconds of 'pure Paul' would provide a refreshingly different perspective as he explains, "I'm not pro-Russia, I'm not pro-Putin, I'm pro-facts."

    "The Ukraine coup was planned by NATO and EU... The best thing we can do for Ukraine is get the foreigners out."

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G93SlyJIQSg

    As Ron Paul previously concluded:

    Our government has no more credibility in telling us the truth about the facts that require us to expand our military presence in this region than Brian Williams.

    Constant war propaganda has proven too often to be our nemesis in supporting constant war promoted by the neoconservatives and the military industrial complex.

    ... ... ...

    The only way that Congress can be persuaded to back off with our dangerous interventionism, whether it's in the Middle East or Ukraine, is for the American people to speak out clearly in opposition.

    ekm1

    Where are the facts Mr Ron Paul?

    Ron Paul is making up stuff in order to sell products to disciples.

    Coup in Ukraine was staged by Putin via Yanukovych. Yanuk did not campaign on joing Eurasian union.

    Joining Eurasian union was a coup d'etat by Putin and Yanukovych.

    What happened was the counter coup, which yes, was urged by USA and nato.

    cigarEngineer

    EKM1, how is the air conditioning at US Misinformation Warfare Headquarters? Do you get paid weekly or bi-weekly? Then again, at $15/hr, who cares, right...

    Ignatius

    Lying for a living. Don't he know that politics pays better? Maybe he's just packin' his resume.

    Winston Churchill

    EKM just graduated to my do not bother to read comment list.

    Maybe PPT really stands for Piss Poor Trolls.

    Calmyourself

    British Battalion 77 peter puffers have arrived.. EKM, which barracks you out of? I am sure you will tell us next multiculturism is strengthing Britain..

    Jack Burton

    Winston, I don't know if you have noticed, but over the last few months the State Department Internet posters have moved away from ZH. Perhaps they consider us a lost cause. But some months back they were still very active here, posting sometimes dozens of State Department talking points, but winning no converts. As of late, they have withdrawn to troll more mainstream blogs and News Paper comments sections.

    The one benefit of the Ukraine Coup and civil war has been the western media exposing it'self like never before as one channel propaganda. Never before has media told so many demonstrable lies in so short a time. The transparent lies have begun to catch many people's attention. The script they read from is not at all clever or well thought out. The script is terribly transparent, and so easily proved to be lies.

    So, will this new war propaganda win? So far I say it's 75 yes, 25% no. So many Americans just lap up the lies without trying to get the real story. Fools have been

    TungstenBars

    "The one benefit of the Ukraine Coup and civil war has been the western media exposing it'self like never before as one channel propaganda."

    I agree 100% with this; more and more people are seeing the US state sponsored propaganda for what it is.

    In regards to "So, will this new war propaganda win?":

    I stated here before that the secondary objective of modern state sponsored propaganda in the west is to gain popular support, but the main objective is to send out the "offical accepted version of world events", meaning that it does not matter if 99% of Americans do not believe it. So long as America does not erupt in a civil war, what the state sponsored media says stands and nothing else matters and will be ignored. Anyone asking questions or causing trouble will be pointed to or judged based on that propaganda as if it was truth. Pretty much 1984.

    angel_of_joy

    He's from Toronto... the navel of the Universe (in their own opinion). Their view of the world is somewhat distorted, and "potted"...

    TungstenBars

    The state-sponsored anti-russian propaganda in Canada is in overdrive. Harper has gone full retard and traitor to appease to certain foreign interests.

    Most people don't believe the nonsense whatsoever. EKM, I don't get why he is so special as to actually believe it. He speaks for no-one.

    Jack Burton

    Canada just happened to be where the allies shipped the Ukrainian Nazis and SS veterans after World War II. The allies knew their strong anti communist and anti Russia bent, so figured to save as many as possible to form the useful agents they and their families now are. Harper is feeding those Western Ukrainian trolls and they in turn help ramp up public opinion into fever pitch.

    I am sick of this shit. My response to every person who repeats the lies, I will tell them that it is "their duty to go to this war in person, I will not accpet bullshit lies and then people asking others to due the fighting!" Put up or shut up assholes!

    Why does the west feed this war fever, and why the coup in the first place? War allows the public to be stripped of tax revenues, it allows national security to trump privacy and freedom, and it allows politicians to claim a patriotic mandate to rule us. Plus corporate profits and stocks are off the charts money makers.

    Spitzer

    This is true. They are scattered all over alberta and Sk. I met one recently that was bragging about cross burnings in Provost. Provost is a nazi ukranian KKK town

    Latina Lover

    Quoting Jack Burton:

    "I am sick of this shit. My response to every person who repeats the lies, I will tell them that it is "their duty to go to this war in person, I will not accpet bullshit lies and then people asking others to due the fighting!" Put up or shut up assholes!"

    I couldn't have said better myself. As a former grunt who saw some action when I was young and very stupid, any idiot advocating violence against others should put their money where their mouth is and lead by example.

    Instead we have this hypocrite drone army, spewing endless BS to induce others to die for their shabby causes, cowards hiding behind keyboards. To hell with all of them!

    schadenfreude

    http://www.kas.de/ukraine/en/publications/21063/

    This is from Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung a NOG from Germany. So this mght be propaganda or not. In fact there never were real elections Ukraine ever. Lawful was not one government there.

    giovanni_f

    Konrad-Adenauer-Siftung is anything but an unbiased organisation. Actually it is a transatlantic networking group in the business to spread neocon messages in Germany. The page you refer to does not contain ANY actual, proven issue but just the general out-of-the-air claim that the elections didn't meet demoratic standards.

    Try harder, Neocon troll.

    El Vaquero

    Are you claiming that Ron Paul was wrong when he said that we had a recording of the assistant US secretary of state and the US ambassador to Ukraine discussing who is going to take power in Ukraine BEFORE the coup in Ukraine?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvRljAaNgg


    ekm1

    Nuland did the right thing. It prepared the counter coup against Putin's coup

    El Vaquero

    Yes, Nuland took part in starting a civil war that has killed innocent people. That is obviously the right thing. Civil war is good for the people, or didn't people realize that?

    JESUS! FUCK!

    EU-Ukraine-Russia trade deals are NONE OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS!

    BlindMonkey

    so the Nazi Ukies could have gone about their protests by peaceful means but Nazis gonna Nazi and tortured, burned, raped and stole their merry way across the countryside. Even the Ukies have had enough of their shit and have tried to pull them back at various times just to see the Nazis flex and storm the buildings of their own gov.

    As I write this I am wondering what ahit are you trying to pull? You don't seem to be a satire artist like MDB. Paid troll? Maybe. I don't see how anyone can objectively read the news and come to the same conclusions as you.

    El Vaquero

    That is some seriously fucked up reasoning. The US did the right thing by kicking off something that was inevetable and accomplished nothing except putting the US and Russia closer to war, which, BTW would go nuclear. You call that the right thing?

    You're fucking nuts. This should be none of the US's fucking business. I'm sick of sending our soldiers over to die for somebody else's cause. Why don't you Eastern Europeans solve your own fucking problems?

    ekm1

    USA is now the business of world police. Becoming a soldier is the safest way of employment.

    World security is USA's export now. There is no other way, for now.

    Soldiers know very well they will end up in interventions, but they like the money and the thrill of it.

    Nobody forces young people to enroll. The money and the thrill entice them to

    El Vaquero

    So you want the USA to solve your problems? Being globo-cop is proving to be an unethical gig for the US, and should stop.

    And have you ever heard a US soldier talk about how they were defending the US in our interventionist wars? I have. They actually believe it. Young people don't know what they are signing up for, and often they fail to realize what they have done after they are finished.

    So, again, why can't you Eastern Euroopeans solve your own fucking problems? You know that the US is not going to be able to backstop you forever. What then?

    ekm1

    Yes. I've spoken with many. Most love it being in the military, absolutely love it

    El Vaquero

    Gee, that must explain the excessively high suicide rate amongst US vets.

    ThroxxOfVron

    "Most love it being in the military, absolutely love it "

    I believe it. Oh, the gory glory. Oh, the rush of being tough and exerting power.

    ...& dumb women love a douche with a paycheck in a tidy uniform.

    angel_of_joy

    That love generally stops suddenly when they come to suffer the consequences of their choice (i.e. the possibility of getting maimed or dying in combat).

    The military is a wonderful (state supported and encouraged) vehicle for crass freeloading, until a war happens. Then, a soldier's personal ROI becomes dramatically (even terminally, for many) NEGATIVE !

    The_Prisoner

    Course they do. They're sociopaths like you to whom only personal gain, even at the cost of murdering others whom just want to live their lives is justified.

    g speed

    A lot of these kids just do what their parents want them to do---very sad---kids come home with no legs and look at dad and ask why?

    green888

    Dispute resolution ? Kill someone is your only way- look at your films, entertainment; there is a bad guy and then the "good guy" kills him. It has all become part of your psyche, as ultimately any of your disputes has to be resolved in this way; but the resentment you leave behind has a price.

    If you complain about others, you should go home and conduct a self examination.

    RichardParker

    EKM1:

    You want to know what your masters think of the military?

    POS Kissinger actually told the truth for once when he explained how ""Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."

    JustUsChickensHere

    Somebody seems to have hacked the ekm1 account. He was always sort of necon, but never this blatantly wacko before.

    El Vaquero

    He's Eastern European. I suspect that some deep cultural hatred of the Russians going back a century or 5 has something to do with it. I want nothing to do with that tribal mentality bullshit when it comes to a potential US-Russia confrontation because I don't want to see mushroom clouds over Kirtland AFB with my own eyes. Call me crazy for that.

    TheFourthStooge-ing

    He's Albanian, which makes him half Latvian, half Polack, and half Bulgoslovenakian.

    OpenThePodBayDoorHAL

    WTF you fascist, the world does not want or need American storm troopers telling them how to run their lives for the benefit of America. History is a story of lesser powers uniting to oppose tyranny and eventually winning, this will be no different. Get the fuck back in your cave deep in exceptionalist Anglo-American fantasy land and leave the rest of the world the fuck alone.

    reload

    @EKM

    'world security'

    Right: let's have a little stock take shall we of those recent lucky nations receiving the security export.

    • Iraq
    • Libya
    • Egypt
    • Yemen
    • Ukraine
    • Somalia

    Notice the trend? All places of great insecurity due to US led attempts to insert or maintain puppet client governments whose purpose is to loot their host countries.

    You used to make sense on some issues, even when you were needlessly cryptic you were thought provoking. Hell, you even called for oil to trade with a $40 handle even though your reasoning was off, it Has happened.

    You have lost the plot tonight.

    Libertarian777

    because... Putin wants to rule a basket case? that's why he started a civil war?

    I haven't heard any logical arguments for why Putin would want to take over the Ukraine. Next I'll hear he wants to take over Greece. For what purpose? Cos he wants their monuments? Or does he like their national debt and 30 hour workweek?

    The Russians are saying they are intervening to protect Russian people. The West claims Russia is trying to rebuild the Soviet Union.

    On the other hand the west is trying to expand NATO up to Russia's border (think of it as a 'western union').

    So even if Putin wants to recreate the USSR, why is it 'bad' when he wants to do it, but 'OK' when the west wants to do it? What is the distinction? Let me guess... human rights? Well the USA with a population of 330 million has MORE people incarcerated than CHINA with 1.2 BILLION people. (4x). Where's the 'human rights'?

    How many countries has Russia invaded. I'll even give you Crimea, so Crimea and Georgia.. that's 2.

    How many countries has the USA invaded... Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia.

    I can't follow the logic.

    LocalBoy

    NATO / IMF controlling Ukraine, along with Sevastopol, is instant suicide for Russia.
    Their choice was give in or fight. War became inevitable when NATO expanded toward Russia -

    It is well known that Russia will not give up Sevastopol, will not give up Ukraine to a foreign military alliance.

    lasvegaspersona

    'Nuland did the right thing'...sure...unless you believe in that whole 'democracy' thingy.

    An elected government was overthrown in violent protests that it appears the US organized and aided.

    This was done because NATO was displeased that the Ukes were not willing to move closer to the EU.

    NATO has shamelessly disregarded the agreements made way back when Gorby was in charge. They have place missiles in Poland fer-cryin-out loud.

    I think if I were Putin (and Russia) I'd be worried.

    chinoslims

    That's a bingo!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5pESPQpXxE

    will ling

    ah, nuland, mccrazy, kristol, et al , are "just soft" war criminals.

    ebworthen

    Oh ekm 1, puhleease! Yanukovych was elected by the people of Ukraine.

    How is an elected leader ousted by pro a EU Maidan which is supported by: the EU, NATO, our State Department, and meddling U.S. Senators - a coup by Putin?

    What is it you are smoking to make you believe such a thing?

    El Vaquero

    Observable facts do not matter to the narrative. Most will not look at them anyway. Putin could be the most evil sonofabitch the world has ever seen, and that still would not justify our destabilizing Ukraine.

    Element

    You realize Ukraine was totally broke well before any of this? Deeply in debt, big bills to pay, pooched economy? That sound stable to you?

    The reason Yanukovych was trying to obtain an association with the EU at all was because Ukraine was so broke and desperate for a new sugar daddy.

    And Yanukovych definitely would have gone that way too, if the IMF had not tried to fuck Ukraine so badly that Yanukovych was forced to walk away as it was national financial suicide to accept the terms Legarde wanted to inflict.

    The real source of the instability was Ukraine's own mess.

    What came next was just the rush to get the best bits of the carcass.

    So who was doing, or rather had already done, the destabilizing of the country?

    El Vaquero

    Yes, Ukraine was a corrupt broke mess. Why the fuck were our politicians over there? Why were they acting as though they knew that "Yats" was going to be the new PM? Why the fuck was John Brennan over there? What fucking business is it of ours?

    Miffed Microbio...

    The time will end for us as Global Cop as it always has in history. This is assured. However, only after millions have died during the posturing. And those who have played this role have never risen to that status again.

    This country will pay, including the innocents who were against the whole thing in the first place. We just get to watch while others distract themselves with amusements and trinkets.

    It is not our business now nor ever was. Why Ron Paul wasnt elected just blows my mind. That was our last hope for redemption.

    Miffed

    chinoslims

    It's not global cop. It's global robbery.

    El Vaquero

    Haven't you been paying attention to policing in the US lately? Civil asset forefitures plus shooting people because they dared to turn their back on the police while holding a plastic spoon means that cops and robbers are often one in the same.

    TheFourthStooge-ing

    The term you're looking for is protection racket.

    Element

    Nicely said, I see you have no trouble coming to terms with it, must be trauma ward experience kicking in.

    Miffed Microbiologist

    I accept the reality of it but this is no means a personal relief of my own responcibilities as a participant nor is it an escape into futility of action. Yes, if omnipotent, I would end this fast but since I am woefully lacking in such power I must content myself to personal and local rebellion. I hope others will join me at some point but it is always unwise to count on others.

    Americans have become slothful and content in their status in the world. It is ending now but few truly perceive it being subtle at this stage. When one is unconcerned about the atrocities this country is perpetuating on its own citizens or those in other nations, be it overt attacks or political maneuvering, then ones humanity is lost. I am not sure if it can be truly recovered. We brand our leaders as psychopathic but we should examine our own hearts as well.

    Yes, the inward trauma ward is not very pleasant. ;-)

    Miffed

    Element

    You don't really need a lesson on how geopolitics is played do you? I'll give you credit and presume you don't. But you better start to get real about this ElV, it isn't going to go away via wishes and idealism.

    It is real, and it is ugly, and it is about survival, or else not, and you do have to accept that it's happening and face it as it is, not how you would wish it to be.

    And that's all the slack I'm ever cut you on this topic.

    El Vaquero

    Serious question: Do you support a war with Russia? Because that is a very real danger with the kind of geopolitics being played today.

    Element

    Of course not.

    That said, it appears one key Russian does support war with NATO, given actions speak louder than words. It won't take long to find out if Putin is effectively suicidal. I think he's certainly become erratic over the past year, and made unexpectedly bad choices and extraordinary mistakes. I've been amazed by how badly he's done. So if this goes pear-shaped his recent judgement and decision-making under pressure doesn't inspire confidence.

    There's a moderate to reasonably good chance we're stuffed.

    The_Prisoner

    That's very magnanimous of you.

    You must have patience with us peons. Not all of us went to Duntroon and had the honor of serving the Empire.

    Thanks again, milord.

    Calmyourself

    Yanukovych pivoted to Russia for a saving loan and then what happened when he did not take money from EU bankers to prolong their party, that's right Nuland showed up to kick his ass out.. Get with the everlasting gobstopper of debt program or get "destabilized"

    Volkodav

    Yanuk was only thief, not open murderer... He also Ukrainian, not outsider alien passport gang

    Hefar lesser heavy handed than the "Red" mafia now in Kiev..who prove themselves killers.

    schadenfreude

    With all the propaganda dished out to the people it's difficult to know who staged what. But at least there are some facts, where eyerybody can draw conclusions.

    • French, German and Polish foreign ministers negotiated a deal with Yanukovich to have elections in September 2014. In the evening after this deal people on Maidan Sq. got shot. This caused the putsch against the government.
    • So the trigger was the shooting on Maidan Sq. which was never really investigated.
    • All actions afterwards was reaction and counter-reaction by the involved parties.
    • Nulands phone call is fact as well. This is an evidence of US involvement. Whether they initiated the shootings or Yanukovichs people for me is not proven, but likely. Why should Yanukovich do this, a couple of hours after he signed a deal with EU?

    Chupacabra-322

    Let's also not forget Criminal Psychopath / Sociopath Nuland's 5 Billion Dollar Fascist investment

    Victoria Nuland - Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs

    US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Nuland said: "Since the declaration of Ukrainian independence in 1991, the United States supported the Ukrainians in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good form of government - all that is necessary to achieve the objectives of Ukraine's European. We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. " Nuland said the United States will continue to "promote Ukraine to the future it deserves."

    HowdyDoody

    Not to mention the repeated strange coincidence that the Nazi violence ramps up after visits from major US/CIA gov actors.

    geno-econ

    Nuland has admitted publicaly that State Dept has spent $ 5 Billion influencing Kiev regime change over last several years. Granted much of this was in form of encouraging ex-patriots here in States, propaganda directed towards Ukrainian citizens and aide money. Only people in government know how much was allocated for actual arms but everyone knows the activities of Neocons in Washington.

    The point is the US encourages regime change and recently has had a dismal record of failure and huge wasteful spending.

    Just look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Georgia, Yeman and now Ukraine. Ron Paul is correct.

    nailgunnin4you

    Joining eurasian union was a coup d'etat by Putin and Yanukovych.

    I think coup d'état is a little strong here, which American talking head has you recycling this verbal diarrhoea? Only a war-mongering murrican would say establishing a better trade deal for your country is a coup d'état.

    Yanuk did not camapaign on joing eurasian union.

    So, in your bubble, a country's leader can only establish trade deals/policies/legislature et cetera that he campaigned on, and anything else he did not take to a previous election is a coup d'état even if it is a simple trade deal benefitting the people?

    You're not this stupid, please stop.

    JustObserving
    Ron Paul: Ukraine Coup Planned By Nato And EU

    Of course. Maidan terrorists were trained months before in Poland:

    Ukraine: Poland trained putchists two months in advance

    http://www.voltairenet.org/article183373.html

    And now USA and Ukraine are destroying the new ceasefire:

    US and Ukrainian officials seek to torpedo Minsk cease-fire agreement

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/14/ukra-f14.html

    q99x2

    If the NWO is successful in killing Ukranian's it won't be long before they start killing Americans. Globalists are traitors against all nations.

    Element

    Great sentiments and rhetoric, not much else, as what he's calling for is the end of US involvement in NATO. OK, what then?

    US forces have to leave Europe ... completely, the lot. But Europe is most definitely not going to butt-out of the changing of borders in Ukraine using Russian force and support.

    He seems to want to ignore that Russia is in fact attacking Ukraine, has stolen its navy, has taken Crimea, and has tried to carve off more and more of Eastern Ukraine, even in the past couple of days.

    "I'm pro-facts."

    OK, but are you also prepared to accept the implications and imperatives that those facts, Ron?

    SMC

    OK, what then?

    PEACE

    Element

    Peace since WWII involved the "balance of terror" of MAD. It is a BALANCE of forces and strategy and position.

    Change the balance radically and the strategic game changes radically, i.e. not-peace. And it happens in multiple locations.

    rejected

    Fact: Crimea was 'gifted' to Ukraine in the 1950's by crazy Khrushchev without a plebiscite.

    Fact: Crimea voted for reunification when given the chance.

    Fact: Ukraine only owned the Sevastopol Navel base by the graciousness of Russia.Russia even paid for a lease.

    Fact: The Ukrainian Navy was allowed to exit Sevastopol after the reunification vote. Why would Russia want their junk?

    Fact: Sevastopol would never have been given up by Russia regardless of the reunification vote just as the USSA refuses to leave Guantanamo.

    Fact: Russia has given Ukraine control of all the borders including the break away provinces with the new Minsk agreement.

    Fact: You are full of shit.

    Element

    Fact: Crimea is the UN recognized Sovereign territory of Ukraine in law.

    Fact: Crimea being Ukrainian territory is recognized by the overwhelming majority of countries on Earth.

    Deal with it.

    angel_of_joy

    UN does not recognize the Kosovo entity, but it still exists. UN din't sanction the entire war against Serbia, but it still took place.

    Reality is different than UN's view of the world, and the realities on the ground in Ukraine are changing as we speak. Deal with it !

    rejected

    Fact: The UN is not a sovereign state.

    Fact: The UN is funded mainly by the U.S

    Fact: The UN has no authority to recognize any state.

    Fact: The UN 'supposedly' supports self determination by it's very charter.

    Fact: You are still full of shit.

    Element

    Chancellor Merkel: (a few days ago)
    "One particular priority was given to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia this morning. We stand up for the same principles of inviolability of territorial integrity. For somebody who comes from Europe, I can only say if we give up this principle of territorial integrity of countries, then we will not be able to maintain the peaceful order of Europe that we've been able to achieve. This is not just any old point, it's an essential, a crucial point, and we have to stand by it. And Russia has violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine in two respects: in Crimea, and also in Donetsk and Luhansk.

    So we are called upon now to come up with solutions, but not in the sense of a mediator, but we also stand up for the interests of the European peaceful order. And this is what the French President and I have been trying to do over the past few days. We're going to continue those efforts.

    And I'm very grateful that throughout the Ukraine crisis, we have been in very, very close contact with the United States of America and Europe on sanctions, on diplomatic initiatives. And this is going to be continued. And I think that's, indeed, one of the most important messages we can send to Russia, and need to send to Russia.

    We continue to pursue a diplomatic solution, although we have suffered a lot of setbacks. These days we will see whether all sides are ready and willing to come to a negotiated settlement. I've always said I don't see a military solution to this conflict, but we have to put all our efforts in bringing about a diplomatic solution. ..."

    i.e. Europe doesn't want the US to leave, and Washington does not want the US to leave either.

    SO THE USA IS NOT LEAVING EUROPE

    Get it?

    Both consider this to be in their vital interests.

    So these also are the facts of the situation, and you can try to ignore these facts, because you do not like them, you do not like the ugliness of geopolitics, but that changes nothing about geopolitics.

    All I'm doing here is pointing that out.

    So cry a river of tears if you think it changes anything, or that if merely I changed my mind, it would make you less pissy and aggrieved.

    But those facts of this situation, will remain.

    That's where Ron Paul, and people like you, have your heads rammed firmly up your butts, screaming to mother to make it all go away.

    And I understand (perfectly) why you would want the world to be different than it is, but it simply isn't going to be.

    Now seriously, grow up and try to cope with that, rhetorical fantasies don't help.

    Volkodav

    bored. Chancellor Merkel sang differently about Kosovo.

    Victory_Garden

    "Both consider this to be in their vital interests."

    Good sir, who's interests? Certainly you do not refer to the average American.

    From this heart, how does the extreme waste of manpower and money and MIC profit pumping for moar bankster profits become a "vital interest" to we, the average Americans? How is that "in their vital interest" to the rest of the world? All the warmongering for profits, world domination, and population elimination is NOT interesting, or in the better "interests" of America and the world's people at all.

    How can you justify the out right blatant murder of innocents, women, and children for the moneygod? Whose really vitally interested in that? Constant never ending warmongering in foreign lands is NOT the choice of real truth following Americans at all, nor in their best interests. It is ONLY for evil zionist/luciferian/sataninc interests and NO covering up that FACT will change this truth.

    Darn, never thought about disagree with you before, for your truth really lit the Way for many here once ago.

    From this perspective, if they were to go after the evil bankster empire of chaotic dust in Europe, THAT would be of "vital interest" to the freedom loving American people. In fact, the world would rejoice if ALL these evil things were rounded up and placed on an island in the middle of the ocean to do what they will. Good riddance say we all! War is of NO vital interest to anyone. It just does not work.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGpwKQo5_Z0

    Ventnor

    Element,

    Yes, but in Ukraine, things are going Putin's way, not yours. He will play his long game and he will prevail.

    It could mean the end of your beloved NATO, which will have no viable purpose if it cannot dragoon Ukraine into its ranks so as to encircle and ultimately destroy Russia.

    It could also mean the end of the the EU, but that appears to be coming apart at the seams anyway.

    You say Europe is dead keen on having the US remain in Europe. That's true of the elite -- largely because Paris and Berlin are terrified of the vacuum that would be created by US withdrawal. Paris knows Germany would have the whip hand; Germany is afraid of being alone at the top.

    Nevertheless, our murderous and immoral Ukraine policy is earning us lots of new enemies among European populations. We are playing with fire. Not sure if we don't know that, or just don't care.

    Element

    Yes, but in Ukraine, things are going Putin's way, not yours.

    • I am not taking a side.
    • I am totally non-partisan.
    • I am pointing out what is going to happen.
    • Not what people want to happen.
    • I am pointing it out to >>95% partisans. You are one of them.

    Partisans usually do not like how things will develop to be stated plainly, as it often goes against the way they want things to develop.

    So partisans then shoot the messenger, rather than take the warning, on its face value.

    Miffed Microbiologist

    Element, I happen to agree with you though it does bother me personally. Sometimes hard facts are unpleasant to truly face and hopes of alternative choices are seductive though not likely relevant in these games of power.

    My only grief is this is being played with a participant that is rotting from within. Given up its manufacturing base. Economically in the crapper and showering many with money just to live day to day. An aging sick population. We see this farce play out everyday. We are being drained dry internally and will soon be unable to fill this role losing our strong foundation. And when it ends, another will assume the role as it always has been throughout history. Can you blame us for wanting an end to this?

    As a small player in this, one who will be likely swept away when the power shifts, I can only watch it unfold. And this gives me no pleasure to admit such a thing.

    Miffed

    YHC-FTSE

    Mrs.M, if you examine his post it's quite easy to see that he is suffering from a condition called, "Fatalism".

    "Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine stressing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate. Fatalism generally refers to any of the following ideas: The view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do."

    His argument that the convolutions of geopolitics are a natural result of survival and therefore beyond the scope of our control or wishful thinking is both wrong and indifferent to the real crimes being committed in our name.

    • We know who is involved in supporting the neo-nazis and zionists in Ukraine: Victoria Nuland of the US State Dept.
    • We know thousands of innocent people have died as a result. We know wholesale looting is taking place by the Israeli oligarchs.
    • We know, from their own words, from the mouth of the current Ukrainian Prime Minister that those who oppose the coup are being threatened with being burnt alive - in fact many Russian language speaking Ukrainians in Odessa and Mariupol have actually been murdered in this way.

    What else could they do but fight against the nutjobs in Kiev and ask for help from Russia? Be burnt alive or become refugees?

    Yet to brush all this aside with glib remarks about geopolitics and national survival with quite insane philosophies on death lacking in any depth of analysis or empathy for the victims of these horrendous crimes is, I think, quite revolting. Yes, control of our fate is an illusion, but we are also the cumulative sum of all of our decisions.

    So, Mrs.M, you keep your compassion alive. Your empathy and reason do you credit in a world full of cold sociopaths. Without such sweet and bitter experiences to guide our moral values in life, life would be very dull and useless indeed.

    YHC-FTSE

    "I am not taking a side.
    I am totally non-partisan."

    For a guy who believes he is non-partisan you sure do have a LOT to say about it for one side.

    "I am pointing out what is going to happen."

    For a guy who thinks he is a realist or pragmatist, you sure are delusional about being able to tell what is going to happen. Newsflash: NOBODY knows the future. Not even you.

    What's wrong with you? There's nothing coherent in your "message" at all - perhaps that's why you're getting junked.

    angel_of_joy

    Americans shouldn't leave, but stay there and keep paying for (and subsidizing with manpower and equipment) the European "security".

    That would be a sure way toward self-destruction of contemporary US, which is already practically bankrupt (and not only from a moral point of view...).

    LocalBoy

    Ukraine's government was functioning under a Constitution. Within the Constitution was allowances for Crimea to remain autonomous. The Ukrainian Constitution was trashed when the overthrow occurred allowing Crimea to vote for independence.

    How can you argue rule of law when the existing government is outside the rule of law while Crimea is within the law ?

    Good point about stealing your Navy - and the fact is there is very little that CAN be done about it. Russia took it and nothing will change that. Destroying Russia to give Crimea back to an illegitimate government will not fly - its all about price discovery. What price CAN be forced on Russia........so far very little.

    What price has the US already paid

    Red Lenin

    Fact: Crimea is the UN recognized Sovereign territory of Ukraine in law.

    Fact: Yugoslavia was recognized by the UN as a sovereign country. It no longer exists.

    Volkodav

    UN is worthless except for fill pockets with US taxpayer $.

    same as your opinion:

    • Crimea seceded
    • Crimea is peaceful
    • Crimea is free

    The_Prisoner

    Now you're fronting. Next thing you'll say Israel is legitimate

    Urban Roman

    "... and has tried to carve off more and more .."

    Really? The Russian Army has been fighting a random bunch of warmed-over nazi skinheads for almost a whole year, and can't manage to take a couple of oblasts west of the Don?

    Whatchoo smokin' over dere? Login or register to post comments

    angel_of_joy

    There was no Ukraine prior to 1991. Contemporary Ukraine is an artificially induced state, created in a moment of maximum weakness of the Russian state. As a result, it has no future, and no amount of US propping will change the facts on the ground. Crimea is populated by Russians in vast majority, who decided they don't want to be rulled by Kiev after the US led coup. More so, the Ukrainian "fleet" was built during USSR so it represents a Russian asset too. Your narrative is as dumb as this entire war... which will end badly for US.

    Volkodav

    Ukraine has never been a sovereign nation.

    Victory_Garden

    Darn Element, what happened to you?

    In the past, you were so spot on about all the fuckyoushima tragedy and offered much light for many who listened intently to your truth. We are grateful for all that light.

    Now, it seems as if you have been co-opted, or banned and someone else is using your handle to put out the same trash the organized criminal lame stream media propagandists are putting out for public consumption. It's ONLY regurgitation of the filthiest yukkity-muck ever.

    We all miss the truth bearing Element and wonder, are you really another dis-informationist? It would be a shame and big loss to find this out, as your great intelligence is needed to combat the evil that has run rampant over the planet for centuries. Is it money or love you quest after, dear One?

    Ask, would you rather have a Ron Paul for president, or the evil illegal usurping alien bushonian bankster puppet we have now? Truly, the puppet soterobama is absolutely the most vile evil and destructive worst president America has ever had.. History will reflect this fact. We may not see another righteous president ever again in America's coming to an end history. Sad to ponder that, eh!

    WE WANT GOD BACK IN AMERICA NOW!

    (Side-swiping truth, God is Love. Period!)

    new game

    hmmm, then silence...

    schadenfreude

    You are correct. All germans I spoke to said, that they should leave Russia with Crimea and the Donbass region.

    You are incorrect, that Ukraine is Russia. It is not. After WWII Stalin made the deal that he could enlarge Russia to the West. So he deported the polish to what was once Germany. This artificial enlargement divides Ukraine and is a rated break point that runs through the country. So both sides have a legitimate claim.

    Victory_Garden

    The latest rant on the GW story.

    Ron Paul WAS America's last chance to remain free from the horridness of the banksteronian evil that runs rampant over the land like diarrhea running out of a goose's arse.

    HowdyDoody

    NATO was created to force the USSR to target two widely separated entities (Europe and continental US) before the time of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This was to keep the USSR focused on Europe. In any envisioned war, Europe and USSR would be destroyed or severely weakened, strengthening the US position.

    steelhead23

    There is but one thing in all of this that is perfectly clear to me. The situation is quite confusing, lying is rampant, and unnecessarily provoking the Russian Bear is about the most dangerous thing anyone could do.

    My preference for U.S. policy is neither isolationism nor militarism. It's diplomacy. Further, the U.S. should abandon its use of economic sanctions against the Bear for his annexation of Crimea because Putin would never leave Crimea, meaning this economic cattle prod will continue to annoy the Bear.

    Instead, the U.S. and NATO should be willing to trade some form of recognition of Russian presence in Crimea for ending the war in eastern Ukraine. I would also hope that Kiev and Washington would be willing to see an autonomous region, perhaps more aligned with Moscow than Kiev and agreement not to place NATO troops or materiel in Ukraine.

    But of course, none of this is likely - everyone is lying and the trust needed for real diplomacy is nil.

    Herdee

    I guess that the CIA Director,Stephen Harper, Victoria Wench Nuland were only in Ukraine for a nice vacation?

    It shows anyone with a grade 2 education how the world still works.

    Bunga Bunga

    We couped some folks.

    655321

    RP gives me the impression he a form of controlled opposition, almost like a pressure release valve, giving people false hope and at same giving people false conclusions on key issues such as 9/11.

    Savyindallas

    You can't take on too many issues. Paul knows 911 was an inside job. His supporters know. Someday he will go public. I don't agree with the way he handles this, just as I don't like the politics of rand paul on many issues. TPTB would have loved RP to come out as a Truther - they would have detroyed him and his credibility as the sheeple just have no idea what is really going on.

    LeftyGoldblatt

    LiveLeak.com

    Ross Kemp Extreme World. Ukraine

    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=98d_1423931054

    Berspankme

    Watched it. The nazi's are taking over west ukraine. Porkoshenko better watch his back.

    HowdyDoody

    Dmitry Yarosh, the leader of the far right Pravy Sektor group (financed by Kolomoisky) has brought together the remnants of the Nazi volunteer battalions as one entity, under his control. He has also stated that they (again) will not comply with the ceasefire. These will be the shock troops in the next stage of this saga.

    Victory_Garden

    Yup!

    (use subtitles)

    TeaClipper

    This is how they do business in Ukraine parliament, whichever government is in

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9c7HbeKpeM

    gcjohns1971

    If the US were isolationist, a lot of Dead Ukrainians would likely be alive right now.

    With that said, there are plenty of intrigues to go around even the US were somehow frozen.

    There are many powerful entities who have their fingers in the Ukraine. Not the least of them are the Ukrainians themselves, both Eastern and Western variety.

    Neither the West's position, that everyone should account all Ukrainians both East and West to be homogenous, nor the East's position, that the East Ukraine is Russia, and the West Ukraine is an illegitimate province of Poland or LIthuania and therefore unworthy of self rule, is workable.

    Both of those positions lead to dead ends. The Ukrainians are Ukrainians because they are the descendants of those who followed the Kiev 'Rus' (Russians). The Russians are those who followed the Prince of Moscow. All of Russia and part of Ukraine was conquered by the Mongols. The part not conquered are the West Ukrainians. The part conquered are the East Ukrainians...plus many soviet era Russian imports.

    Russia's stake is control of the Black Sea Basin...which will cement Russia as mandatory near monopoly energy supplier to Europe. Europe's stake is to have access to non-Russian energy. The US's and NATO's stake is to prevent the re-arming of Europe by ensuring they have no REASON to re-arm.

    Pick your outcome:

    If Russia gets both Crimea and East Ukrainian land routes to Ukraine, then they decisively control energy to Europe. Europe's choices are then to EITHER a) Trust the US to ensure their economies and access to energy b) Ensure European access to energy themselves - militarily c) Become Russian colonies.

    Russia's choices are: a) Commit Russia to militarily conquering Ukraine and then use the economic benefit of that position to arm themselves for the inevitable world war that will result b) Resign itself to open competition for energy by surrendering either East Ukraine or Crimea.

    The US's choices are: a) Incrementally increase pressure on Russia via economic and/or military means until they allow Europe to have access to non-Russian energy b) Ignore Ukraine with the cost of later involvement in a world war in europe c) Ignore Ukraine and then withdraw from the transatlantic alliance.

    The fact is that the US is over-extended and should not have given Putin a reason for overt involvement. The fact is that Europe is un-prepared to militarily deter Russia from turning them into energy-plantation slaves. The fact is that EUrope is too proud and powerful for Russia as currently composed to force into energy submission simultaneously detering Europe from contesting the matter militarily.

    In the next 20 years there will be a major war in Europe, on the scale of WWII. Russia will be facing all of Western Europe.

    Russia propaganda seems confused about the organization of Power in the West, presenting it as a US-led top-down organization. In fact it is led by powerful European interests who act through governments. This is all highly observable. What did you think the eminence of the CFR was all about? What did you think Bilderberg was for??? When the European governments were decimated after WWII those interests acted through the US government.

    Europe is no longer decimated, and the shift of power from US to European entities has been historic and EASILY observable. What do you think the Eurozone and EU are all about??

    There's a lot of high-time preference going on - on every side of this, as each side too heavily weights the desirability of the fruit they see before them, and overly discounts the later costs of that fruit - both Europe and Russia wanting the Ukrainian fruit for the energy power it gives them, and the US in underestimating the costs of their chosen course to placate Europe via meddling in Ukraine.

    This is not going to end well for anyone in Europe no matter how it plays out. The stakes are too big for too many big powers.

    The US would be better off isolationist, and preparing to re-open ellis island. A lot of war refugees will need a home soon.

    China need only wait to inherit Eurasia from those who plan to foolishly decimate themselves.

    Rusputin

    So that would be a US/NATO/EU coup on a US/NATO/EU coup?

    Isn't one coup normally enough for a few years? The first one lasted 12 months and obviously the backstops weren't placed carefully enough, me thinks the bribery money is running out (has run out)!

    Catullus

    Here's Ron Paul in 2002 asking why the US was meddling with Ukrainian elections...

    http://antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=5688

    Armed Resistance

    Here you go: Victoria Nuland admitting that the US spent $5B to have regime change..

    http://youtu.be/U2fYcHLouXY

    Flybyknight

    Off the wall? That is where anyone who does not believe that USA, EU and NATO are totally responsible for the violent mess Ukraine has become.

    [Feb 14, 2015] Don't Arm Ukraine by John J. Mearsheimer

    Feb 8, 2015 | NYTimes.com

    ...Going down that road would be a huge mistake for the United States, NATO and Ukraine itself. Sending weapons to Ukraine will not rescue its army and will instead lead to an escalation in the fighting. Such a step is especially dangerous because Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and is seeking to defend a vital strategic interest.

    ...the conflict will not end there. Russia would counter-escalate, taking away any temporary benefit Kiev might get from American arms. The authors of the think tank study concede this, noting that "even with enormous support from the West, the Ukrainian Army will not be able to defeat a determined attack by the Russian military." In short, the United States cannot win an arms race with Russia over Ukraine and thereby ensure Russia's defeat on the battlefield.

    ... ... ...

    This coercive strategy is also unlikely to work, no matter how much punishment the West inflicts. What advocates of arming Ukraine fail to understand is that Russian leaders believe their country's core strategic interests are at stake in Ukraine; they are unlikely to give ground, even if it means absorbing huge costs.

    Great powers react harshly when distant rivals project military power into their neighborhood, much less attempt to make a country on their border an ally. This is why the United States has the Monroe Doctrine, and today no American leader would ever tolerate Canada or Mexico joining a military alliance headed by another great power.

    ... ... ...

    Upping the ante in Ukraine also risks unwanted escalation. Not only would the fighting in eastern Ukraine be sure to intensify, but it could also spread to other areas. The consequences for Ukraine, which already faces profound economic and social problems, would be disastrous.

    ... ... ...

    Our understanding of the mechanisms of escalation in crises and war is limited at best, although we know the risks are considerable. Pushing a nuclear-armed Russia into a corner would be playing with fire.

    Advocates of arming Ukraine recognize the escalation problem, which is why they stress giving Kiev "defensive," not "offensive," weapons. Unfortunately, there is no useful distinction between these categories: All weapons can be used for attacking and defending. The West can be sure, though, that Moscow will not see those American weapons as "defensive," given that Washington is determined to reverse the status quo in eastern Ukraine.

    ...Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, seems to recognize that fact, as she has said Germany will not ship arms to Kiev. Her problem, however, is that she does not know how to bring the crisis to an end.

    She and other European leaders still labor under the delusion that Ukraine can be pulled out of Russia's orbit and incorporated into the West, and that Russian leaders must accept that outcome. They will not.

    To save Ukraine and eventually restore a working relationship with Moscow, the West should seek to make Ukraine a neutral buffer state between Russia and NATO. It should look like Austria during the Cold War. Toward that end, the West should explicitly take European Union and NATO expansion off the table, and emphasize that its goal is a nonaligned Ukraine that does not threaten Russia. The United States and its allies should also work with Mr. Putin to rescue Ukraine's economy, a goal that is clearly in everyone's interest.

    It is essential that Russia help end the fighting in eastern Ukraine and that Kiev regain control over that region. Still, the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk should be given substantial autonomy, and protection for Russian language rights should be a top priority.

    Crimea, a casualty of the West's attempt to march NATO and the European Union up to Russia's doorstep, is surely lost for good. It is time to end that imprudent policy before more damage is done - to Ukraine and to relations between Russia and the West.

    John J. Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is the author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics."

    [Feb 11, 2015] The Bout Opening – Stick to Checkers, America. Not Up In Here

    See also comments to Ukraine: draft dodgers face jail as Kiev struggles to find new fighters by Shaun Walker
    Notable quotes:
    "... Take a look at this exposure of Grauniad bias: ..."
    "... "We have to twist arms when countries don't do what we need them to" ..."
    "... Ukraine President Poroshenko Threatens Martial Law: http://t.co/YiPgu0yPEY His main target: rising dissent in western Ukraine. ..."
    Feb 11, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    Moscow Exile , February 11, 2015 at 8:38 am

    Take a look at this exposure of Grauniad bias:

    Luhansk Women Curse Ukrainian Rocket Attack – Guardian Blames "Pro-Russian Rebels"

    patient observer, February 11, 2015 at 9:02 am

    Per:

    http://rt.com/news/231279-obama-foreign-policy-power/

    Our Nobel peace prize wiener says

    "We have to twist arms when countries don't do what we need them to"

    and if arm twisting does not work we will murder your families, embargo food and medicine, destroy your economy, lay waste to a generation of your children, and blacken your name for all history.

    He is truly a stinky turd in the cesspool that is Washington DC. But fear not, Hillary Clinton will be a worthy successor and will out-stink, out-murder and out-destroy Obama.

    Who in America can stop this madness? (rhetorical/trick question, no one can).

    Warren, February 11, 2015 at 6:53 am

    Ukraine President Poroshenko Threatens Martial Law: http://t.co/YiPgu0yPEY His main target: rising dissent in western Ukraine.

    - Justin Raimondo (@JustinRaimondo) February 11, 2015

    Moscow Exile , February 11, 2015 at 1:10 am
    Another Walker special:

    Ukraine: draft dodgers face jail as Kiev struggles to find new fighters

    The government has avoided officially declaring a state of war, instead referring to the operations in the east as an anti-terrorism operation, despite clear evidence of Russian military incursion. Part of the reason for this is the fact that Kiev would have trouble securing a much-needed support package from the International Monetary Fund if it was officially at war.

    A series of gruesome videos, sometimes shown on Russian television, has increased the psychological pressure on Ukrainians. One, released last month, showed a rebel commander waving a sword in the faces of bloodied Ukrainian soldiers, slicing off their insignias and forcing the men to eat them.

    Shit! I must have missed that one!

    "A friend of mine told me his friend was down there in the east and they ran into Chechens, who sliced off all their testicles. There were about 100 of them, and the Chechens castrated the lot of them. If I get called up, I think I'll go into hiding. I want a family and kids."

    'Kin' hell!!!!!!!

    karl1haushofer , February 10, 2015 at 11:21 pm

    "It may have escaped your notice, but Putin and Moscow have been calling for a ceasefire all along"

    I have grown to hate the whole word of "ceasefire" during this war. A real ceasefire would be great. But it is not going to happen until Kiev military is fully defeated!

    Another bogus "ceasefire" in Minsk means the following:

    1. Kiev gets to withdraw its men AND WEAPONS out of the Debaltsevo cauldron and the rebels will not be allowed to stop it..
    2. The rebels will not be able to give a big blow to the Kiev military by either annihilating or at least capturing the most competent part of their military in Debaltsevo and their weapons.
    3. The thousands of Kiev troops in Debaltsevo cauldron AND THEIR WEAPONS will be used in the future against Novorossiya.
    4. The shelling of civilians will continue as it was before. The "ceasefire" will not be applied to Kiev side, only to rebels.
    5. NATO will start the training and arming of Kiev troops. Next offensive will start next spring.
    6. The morale of the rebels will take a bit hit. They will realize that their military efforts and success is meaningless as they are not allowed win this war.

    Moscow must not allow Kiev to withdraw its troops and weapons out of that cauldron in any circumstances. That would be a treason against the troops that fought to create that cauldron. And that would be a treason against the whole Novorossiya.

    This war will not end until one side is fully defeated. It will be either Kiev or Novorossiya. Annihilating or capturing the Kiev troops and weapons in Debaltsevo cauldron would be a big military defeat for Kiev.

    marknesop, February 11, 2015 at 8:00 am

    "This war will not end until one side is fully defeated. It will be either Kiev or Novorossiya. Annihilating or capturing the Kiev troops and weapons in Debaltsevo cauldron would be a big military defeat for Kiev."

    On the contrary, the war could continue for many years yet without either side firing a shot, in much the same way the Georgian government never accepted the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and even designated a ministerial position for winning them back into the fold. Disagreement over the borders within Ukraine will keep them out of NATO for the foreseeable future, while their ruined economy will keep them out of the EU. A future government may mend its ties with Russia, but if it does not, Ukraine is doomed to decades of poverty and a steady drain of its population for better prospects. It can thank the west for that, and its own population's extremist element.

    Once again, there is no reason for Putin to become "the most hated man in Novorossiya" if it shakes out as you describe. The rebels must accept the deal on their own behalf, and it is not for Putin to agree to anything; Russia is simply acting as a sort of guarantor, by being part of the agreement but kind of like an honest broker, to ensure the western countries keep their word.

    I agree the Ukrainian forces should not be permitted to withdraw from Debalseve with their weapons, after getting cauldroned for the second time due to their own stupidity, lack of tactical knowledge and poor leadership. but i doubt that will happen, unless the rebels are idiot negotiators, because Semenchenko's battalion had to leave their weapons behind when they were allowed out of the southern cauldron, and it plainly did not teach the Ukies anything. Why would they be allowed to keep their weapons this time? But even if they do not, weapons are not going to be a problem to replace, and you know it.

    [Feb 11, 2015] Poroshenko: Ukraine conflict risks spiralling out of control

    Quote: Ironically (and rather disingenuously), US talking heads, media parrots and politicians in Washington – are still recycling their worn-out sound bites: "Russia is invading the Ukraine", "Moscow is responsible for the destabilization of the Ukraine", and it goes on.

    Military industrial lobbyists like US State Dept. Euro Secretary Victoria Nuland, and US Senator John McCain have played a key role in the Kiev's Nazi renaissance from the beginning – a new low point in international racketeering…

    Feb 11, 2015 | theguardian.com

    Ian56789

    War by media and the triumph of propaganda by John Pilger

    Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?

    Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what's called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

    These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war - with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.

    The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an "invisible government". It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies.

    The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media - a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.

    This power to create a new "reality" has building for a long time. Forty-five years ago, a book entitled The Greening of America caused a sensation. On the cover were these words: "There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual."

    I was a correspondent in the United States at the time and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of the author, a young Yale academic, Charles Reich. His message was that truth-telling and political action had failed and only "culture" and introspection could change the world.

    Within a few years, driven by the forces of profit, the cult of "me-ism" had all but overwhelmed our sense of acting together, our sense of social justice and internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated. The personal was the political, and the media was the message.

    Read more at :- http://johnpilger.com/articles/war-by-media-and-the-triumph-of-propaganda

    centerline

    The Minsk talks are about to enter their tenth hour, with the delegations of Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine still trying to reach a final compromise and come up with a joint resolution. Journalists have been covering the event for almost 12 hours now.

    http://rt.com/news/231327-minsk-peace-talks-updates/

    Pity the guardian doesn't have any journalists.

    Nickel07 -> centerline

    They rely on the arduous task of watching FOX (and it is incredibly arduous) or repeating whatever dribble comes out of the BBC

    Ian56789

    Nato's action plan in Ukraine is right out of Dr Strangelove by John Pilger

    (Extract)

    The genius of Stanley Kubrick's film is that it accurately represents the cold war's lunacy and dangers. Most of the characters are based on real people and real maniacs. There is no equivalent to Strangelove today because popular culture is directed almost entirely at our interior lives, as if identity is the moral zeitgeist and true satire is redundant, yet the dangers are the same. The nuclear clock has remained at five minutes to midnight; the same false flags are hoisted above the same targets by the same "invisible government", as Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations, described modern propaganda.

    In 1964, the year Dr Strangelove was made, "the missile gap" was the false flag. To build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue an undeclared policy of domination, President John F Kennedy approved the CIA's propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This filled front pages as the "Russian threat". In fact, the Americans were so far ahead in production of the missiles, the Russians never approached them. The cold war was based largely on this lie.

    Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato enlargement project. Reneging on a US promise to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand "one inch to the east", Nato has all but taken over eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato's military build-up is the most extensive since the second world war.

    In February, the US mounted one of its proxy "colour" coups against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were fascists. For the first time since 1945, a pro-Nazi, openly antisemitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism on the border of Russia. Some 30 million Russians died in the invasion of their country by Hitler's Nazis, who were supported by the infamous Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the UPA) which was responsible for numerous Jewish and Polish massacres. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, of which the UPA was the military wing, inspires today's Svoboda party.

    Since Washington's putsch in Kiev – and Moscow's inevitable response in Russian Crimea to protect its Black Sea fleet – the provocation and isolation of Russia have been inverted in the news to the "Russian threat". This is fossilised propaganda. The US air force general who runs Nato forces in Europe – General Philip Breedlove, no less – claimed more than two weeks ago to have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops "massing" on the border with Ukraine. So did Colin Powell claim to have pictures proving there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is certain is that Barack Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.

    Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan well after Osama bin Laden had fled, then destroyed Iraq beneath a false flag, invented a "nuclear rogue" in Iran, dispatched Libya to a Hobbesian anarchy and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror by drone.

    Read more at:- http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/nato-ukraine-dr-strangelove-china-us

    HisRume

    Lets be clear. Kiev must answer for their crimes when this is settled:

    On June 2nd 2014 a Ukraine jet fighter attacked the central administrative building in Lugansk city killing seven civilians. It was a gross act of state terrorism It was not a military target.

    Immediately the US and the Ukraine UN Representative lied, saying it was a misfiring rebel anti-aircraft manpad device that struck the buildings air con.

    Yet, when the osce investigation pronounced it had been a jet fighter attack, Kiev and Washington still denied it.

    They have still not answered to this war crime - the first terrorist act of this crisis incidentally.

    Lets not forget WHO is responsible for the appalling, criminal deaths in the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk and who started the "terror".

    Hermius

    GreatMountainEagle

    'The one constant here is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the leader of the free and thinking world who has not changed from the beginning and is to the people of Earth as the North star has been to sailors on the oceans for centuries.'

    This has to be the funniest thing ever posted on here (and saddest for those trapped in the PutinSSR)

    Ian56789 -> GreatMountainEagle

    Why do you get off on being a Goldman Sachs / Neocon troll?

    Ian56789 -> GreatMountainEagle

    Putin currently has an 86% approval rating in Russia. Primarily this is because they were ruled by Goldman Sachs and the US under Yeltsin in the 1990's. Yeltsin caused the collapse of the Russian economy and a 40% drop in people's living standards. Russia was a total mess by the late 1990's.

    Putin enjoys a very high approval rating because they do NOT want to be ruled by Goldman Sachs again and they see Putin as the only guy that can stop it from happening.

    Americans and Europeans haven't done so well living under Goldman Sachs rule for the last circa 15 years either. People's real standards of living in the developed countries has declined significantly.

    richiep40

    Forgetting all the name calling, who started it etc. what I don't get is how anyone can think this will work.

    The only premise where this will be possible is if the West will reign in Kiev's wish to obliterate the East of Ukraine and Russia can persuade the rebels that this is true.

    Without at least some assurances from the West about the safety of the East, the rebels will fight on, even if Putin removed his support (which he won't do if he thinks there will be a bloodbath, it would be political suicide for him).

    You can't ask Russia to get out of the situation if they think the Lunatics in charge of Kiev will do what they want to do.

    NormVan

    The US always attacking Putin. Russia has a functioning, united government of which Putin is one part. When the US decides to attack, the first thing they create is an evil dictator. They can bring freedom to the masses. US freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose.

    Obama having a hissy fit with Putin is childish. Obama got a start working for Henry Kissinger and rumored to work for the CIA.
    If he wants to do something useful he could send Mrs Nuland back to Kiev with some of her delicious cookies

    Goodthanx -> NormVan

    To gain a nomination of Presidency, you are prescreened by the Cia. Meaning, are you willing to be a lacky for the Cia, and the Military industrialists?
    No president has a long future without the support of both. JFK case in point.

    Nickel07

    Once the peace agreement is signed...what are you lot on the dark side going to do just come here and try to push back the tide of the investigations that will surely follow? What are you going to do try to scream Putin is a Nazi like kindergarten kids?

    I think you are about to lose big time and not just in Ukraine, but also by losing the little credibility you still have with some countries as demonstrated by the approach taken by Hollande and Merkel.
    And, to compound it all:

    "the reality of "American leadership" at times entails "twisting the arms" of states which "don't do what we need them to do," and that the US relied on its military strength and other leverage to achieve its goals."

    Translation : We coerce some folk.


    Mulefish

    Why tell us what Poro thinks, Guardian; he always lies, wasting our time and Guardian outdated reporters ink.

    Why tell us what Obama thinks, mass murderer. evil, inadequate, coward, fool, and the cause of all this. He is out of his depth; this is not any of his business; he should butt out He will have to.

    Merkel is just finding her voice and her brains and cutting loose the Yankee Nazi twits.

    The one constant here is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the leader of the free and thinking world who has not changed from the beginning and is to the people of Earth as the North star has been to sailors on the oceans for centuries.

    Ian56789

    NATO's Nazis: Ethnic Cleansing Their Opposition in East Ukraine
    November 17, 2014

    Nearly one year on from the US-backed faux 'colour revolution' in Maidan Square, the Ukraine has been violently ripped into pieces by the new CIA-backed government in Kiev.

    What began with pro-EU colour mobs and far right-wing neo-Nazi gangs in Kiev, has escalated to ethnic cleansing in the eastern half of the country. The horrors are unspeakable, as detailed in the report below (with video). NATO, led by the US and Britain, are actively backing Kiev's military brutal campaign of collective punishment and ethnic cleansing against Russian-speaking people in the east of that country.

    Ironically (and rather disingenuously), US talking heads, media parrots and politicians in Washington – are still recycling their worn-out sound bites: "Russia is invading the Ukraine", "Moscow is responsible for the destabilization of the Ukraine", and it goes on.

    Military industrial lobbyists like US State Dept. Euro Secretary Victoria Nuland, and US Senator John McCain have played a key role in the Kiev's Nazi renaissance from the beginning – a new low point in international racketeering…

    Read more at:- http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/11/17/natos-nazis-ethnic-cleansing-their-opposition-in-east-ukraine/

    richiep40

    Interesting Newsnight on the Maidan shootings, perhaps it wasn't so black and white.

    The much more devastating ARD (German TV) report (from about a year ago) seems to have been removed from the Internet. It used to be on YouTube.

    The only place I can find it is

    http://potentnews.com/2014/04/29/german-tv-10-4-14-who-were-the-maidan-snipers-ukraine/

    But don't bother ARD has removed the right to broadcast it for 'licencing' reasons.

    For a textual analysis of ARD's report try this, it about two pages down

    http://www.bne.eu/content/story/snipergate-who-ordered-shootings-kyivs-maidan

    Ian56789 richiep40

    The sniper shootings in Maidan

    The sniper fire came from the upper floors and roofs of buildings controlled by the protestors
    (Other pictures show the Berkut Police firing - but they are firing downwards in front of the protestors to try and stop their advance NOT firing at them.)

    The sniper's massacre in Maidan Feb 18th to 20th, that directly led to the Coup in Ukraine:-
    An academic analysis by a Canadian http://www.academia.edu/8776021/The_Snipers_Massacre_on_the_Maidan_in_Ukraine

    Kiev snipers were hired by Maidan leaders - the leaked EU's Ashton phone tape http://rt.com/news/ashton-maidan-snipers-estonia-946/

    Full Videoproof of Maidan snipers killing Ukraine Civilians Shooting From Behind! warning GRAPHIC 18+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnBa0Uj3Ijw&feature=youtu.be

    ​'No evidence of Berkut police behind mass killing in Kiev' – probe head
    There is no forensic evidence linking the victims of mass killings in Kiev on February 20 with officers from the Berkut police unit, the head of the parliamentary commission investigating the murders told journalists.

    "This will be yet another case, like the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which is still being investigated today," Gennady Moskal reported.

    The MP made the statements at a media conference on Tuesday gathered to announce preliminary results of his commission's probe. He assured that despite the Ukrainian General Prosecutor's office having arrested 12 Berkut officers on allegations of committing the mass killings, forensic evidence suggests their innocence.

    He said the bullets that killed people in Kiev on the bloodies day of confrontation between protesters seeking to oust President Viktor Yanukovich and riot police didn't match any of the firearms issued to Berkut's special unit, which, unlike the majority of riot police, was allowed to carry lethal weapons.

    http://rt.com/news/158864-kiev-snipers-not-berkut/

    The man in charge of those controlling the buildings from which the snipers fired was Andrey Parubiy who after the Coup was appointed head of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.

    Read more at:- http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/how-february-coup-in-kiev-was-plotted.html

    Mulefish -> Ian56789

    This was all reported on R.T.V. at the time.

    They had reporters on the ground when this was happening. They showed us the remarkable restraint shown by the Berkut in the face of being in the face of being viciously assailed by infused, probably drug fuelled, certainly Yankee pie and five billion fuelled, Nazi thugs, and the illogical directions from which the sniper bullets came. (~This type of third party sniping is typical Yank false flag trickery. They probably provided the snipers too.)

    They also broadcast the transcript of the Ashton phone call and her goofy, coward, reaction, not taken up, indeed studiously ignored, by the Western so-called press.

    In like vein, Putin offered up his radar records for the downing of MH17, including records of the presence of Ukrainian fighter planes present at the time, an offer not matched by the Kiev Junta or the mouthy U.S. deep in the throes of lying about the incident , all the same, with typical foul mouthedness.

    So easy to fool the common denizens of the West, especially the "exceptional" Yankees and their British government ass lickers.

    richiep40 -> Ian56789

    Thanks for all the info, I wouldn't say I knew all about all the research, but I definitely got the drift.

    I was really just commenting that the BBC Newsnight report was the first time that any of the British Media have come even slightly off message.

    For instance there were some reports from Donetsk on the horrible conditions there and the civilian casualties on BBC Radio this morning, but not once did they mention these were all in the City Centre held by the rebels and the only conceivable people launching the attacks were the Ukrainian forces.

    Now to anyone who takes an interest it is obvious, but for the casual listener who doesn't have an interest, I doubt it.

    coober

    Every government can use the full employment equation:
    Full Employment (FE) = Pension (P) X 1.2 X Money Velocity (MV) X 0.001
    That equation is for all Nations and States.

    A Ukraine Government can immediately tax Murdoch-type tax evaders, etc at 0.001% of money velocity and pay a new 20% State Pension.

    There is absolutely no valid excuse for unemployment in Ukraine. The State Pension can be adjusted lower and the tax rate can be adjusted higher. The pension is to spread the money around to create more small businesses and more jobs. The tiny rate of tax is for High Frequency Traders, Gamblers, Murdoch-types etc. Everyday people will not notice it.

    When Governments and people learn how good this modern tax is, we will be able to use it to replace Income Tax etc. War is obsolete.

    centerline coober

    One small hitch. It is the Murdoch type that make the taxes. They put people in power who will tax the poor so the government can subside the Murdochs.

    Murdoch moved his Australian accounting office offshore a few years ago so the Australian tax office paid Murdoch three quarters of a billion dollars.

    Bud Peart

    "Obama rounded unusually personally on Putin. "He has a foot very much in the Soviet past. That's how he came of age. He ran the KGB,"

    He ran the FSB, is he stupid or was this a planned lie to ratchet up cold war hysteria?


    [Feb 10, 2015] Merkel to meet Obama amid growing US scepticism over Ukraine peace talks

    Notable quotes:
    "... They pushed and pushed without any regard for people they tramped underfoot expecting Russia to fold any day and beg for mercy. ..."
    "... Chechnya - Islamist insurgency like what Iraq is facing. S. Ossetia. - Georgian shelling and invasion of this province designed to get NATO to help out. Instead the Russians deal to the invaders. Sorry mate - your argument is as flaky as the hoary old one of Iran wanting to annihilate Israel based on a mistranslated Ahmedinejad speech (which some historically challenged folks still try and drag up) ..."
    "... When "destabilisation" looks like a western sponsored coup, quacks like a western sponsored coup..... ..."
    "... Putin will be crucified in Russia if he is seen pushing the rebels to accept an agreement against their interests. The bottom line is unless the West gives strong indications that it is prepared to negotiate in good faith, the commodity it so far lacked, nothing will happen. If the West waits much longer, the only subject for negotiations will be an unconditional surrender of the Ukrainian army in Donbass. ..."
    "... One of the latest statements of Angela Merkel was: "We want to establish security in Europe with Russia, not against Russia" (0:20 in this video). Sorry, but to me it does not sound like preparation "for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia". ..."
    Feb 10, 2015 | The Guardian

    sodtheproles ID1439675 10 Feb 2015 16:51

    Wrong. The EU and Americans started this when refusing Yanukovich more time to consider the trade deal, and when encouraging the billionaires to send their thugs onto Maidan. Tsarev and many others were aware that a coup was on the menu back in October 2013, when he spoke in the Rada. The EU deal had the support of the billionaires, not least because it offered them the chance to apply on a wider stage the skills they had acquired defrauding the Ukrainian state in the 90s, whereas if Ukraine turned towards the Eurasian Union, they'd have to deal with Putin, who if nothing else a reined in the billionaires.

    caliento 10 Feb 2015 15:52

    Wonder why Putin is welcomed by Turkey, Egypt, Hungary, Greece? It is called respect for a leader who stands behind his position showing no fear. Obama, Merkel, Hollande, Cameron E.U., NATO have no respect. And why should they? Obama's "yellow line" is constantly on display along with the rest of the misfits in Europe. More talks, more "signed" "peace" agreements? More Russian lies? Is this group of misfits just "stuck on stupid"? Putin has uttered another threat....that should be enough for the misfits to surrender & deny reality on the ground & leave Ukraine abandoned once again. I taught Bush was bad but Obama is one for the history books on how not to be a "world leader".

    Yuriy11 -> TeeJayzed Addy 10 Feb 2015 13:12

    And the ally of what Ukraine wish to be the USA? If America considers itself as the guarantor of freedom, democracy and protection of human rights it should support the population of Donbass and Lugansk. The population of these regions of Ukraine wished to have only the rights which are written down in the country Constitution.

    Instead of guaranteeing it these rights, the new management of Ukraine began to bomb and fire at peace cities of Donetsk and Lugansk areas. Instead of solving all problems by negotiations. Also Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk and other steels openly to glorify Banderu - the fascist, the military criminal. The youth has started to use nazi symbolics and nazi slogans.

    Can be the USA wishes to become the ally of new fascists? Judging by statements, Obama about desire to deliver to Ukraine the weapon, very similar, that it is going to support fascist government Poroshenko.

    EugeneGur 10 Feb 2015 10:46

    Merkel is the stiffest opponent of supplying weapons, while holding firm against any other concessions to Putin

    Why no concessions? Is that how negotiations are conducted, without any concessions on one side, with all the concessions on the other? I understand this is the American style. But it should be obvious by now to everybody with half a brain that Putin is not the type to be easily intimidated. He can be negotiated with but not blackmailed. They should've also known before they started this mess that Russia isn't Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia or even Vietnam but a much bigger, nastier and better armed country. Germany, of all countries, should've known that you don't want to piss Russia off, you really don't.

    What I see in all these jerking movements is a bunch of very scared "world leaders" who have no idea what to do next. They pushed and pushed without any regard for people they tramped underfoot expecting Russia to fold any day and beg for mercy. When it didn't happen and looks unlikely to happen, there is no plan B. And, of course, honest in good faith negotiations with Russia are entirely out of the question. They just don't know what it means.

    Angela Merkel and Barack Obama are under pressure to shore up western unity over the Ukraine crisis

    Who cares about your "unity"? We have a pretty good idea what kind of "unity" that is. People are dying over there, and these bunch of cheating clowns are concerned with saving whatever is left of their faces. Disgusting.

    Albert_Jacka_VC 10 Feb 2015 08:53

    As usual, the Russophobes don't get it. But they will!

    This morning NAF scouts spotted NATO tanks inside the encirclement (cauldron) at Debaltseve. According to their information the possibility is strong that up to 25% of the trapped army may be NATO. !

    Shell remnants marked clearly with US identifying numbers from 155mm shells, shot by the Paladin artillery system have been recovered from areas the Ukrainian army have attacked civilian targets.

    If the NATO troops are there - (who else would be running the complicated military equipment?) - Zackharchenko's people may display them to the world.

    Everyone will see that the junta that brought us a non-existent Russian invasion has illegitimate and illegal support from NATO's warmongers!

    This explains both the US and EU fudging a new peace initiative. If NATO troops are taken captive, what then?

    Then they are, by Poro's own admission, war criminals. And their urgers (Kerry, Nuland, Stoltenberg, Rasmussen, and the whole foul rabble, are war criminals too.

    Елена Петрова 9 Feb 2015 21:29

    Powerful Documentary on the People of Donbass and why NATO will be in a Tough Fight Should it Invade the Region

    http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/02/07/powerful-documentary-on-the-people-of-donbass-and-why-nato-will-be-in-a-tough-fight-should-it-invade-the-region/

    And yet another says, "Who started it? Everyone knows who started this. How to put it better? Everything started by America's hallooing. The same sh#t happened with Georgia, and now here in Ukraine."

    Albert_Jacka_VC -> jezzam 9 Feb 2015 21:10

    All your info is wrong. Putin himself advocated Ukraine enter a trading arrangement with BOTH Russia and the EU. The EU would have none of it.

    Or rather, Nuland banned it. The EU had no say. We know what Nuland said.
    The coup was a violent, murderous act, and Yanukovych fled after death threats, because his disarmed Berkut could not protect him.

    As to Putin's actions in Ukraine, you buy the spin in the Western press. that's why you're deluded. Donetzkers fight to stay alive, against Kolomoisky's killers.
    Ukraine is illegal, Nazi, and now defeated. Its currency crashed 15% yesterday. How much today?

    That is why the warmongers are flapping about. No other reason than that their war on Russia via 'Ukraine' is a flop.

    Albert_Jacka_VC -> david wright 9 Feb 2015 20:43

    Ukraine is not a sovereign state. Ukraine is an illegal junta of Nazis who took power by murder, and threatrs of murder. that is why even their Ukrainian citizens will not fight for the junta.

    Listen to the babushka [turn captions on] --

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQjmwVC_Dts

    preventallwarsdotorg 9 Feb 2015 19:40

    From the Obama-Merkel Washington press conference; on Ukraine, Angela Merkel seemed optimistic on the chances of 'diplomacy'. But President Obama seemed so determined in 'seeing-off' President Putin by any means; repeatedly, labelling him 'the aggressor'.

    Does President Obama have a personal problem with President Putin?
    Unfortunately, terrible historic armed conflicts arise for populations from intractable inter-personal disagreements between their antagonistic national political leaders. But while their personal safeties are secured, their populations are destroyed.

    National leaders still can't see that nowadays wars generally have 'un-winnable' and frustrating outcomes for even the best equipped militaries. Yet, with seeming careless abandon, their inclinations to increase arms in wars remain unbridled.

    But why did none of the correspondents at the Press conference press the leaders on their likely expectations for Ukraine, Europe and the world if more arms are sent to Ukraine against Russia!
    If national political leaders would be victims of their sponsored wars, would they be as insistent with such risky, futile and potentially increased destructive recipes?

    Yet, the world still seems as impervious to politicians' handling of war crises!
    Why can't it be more innovative to accept or devise better alternatives to the persistently failed and disastrous politicians' bent for even more wars?!

    Andrew Nichols -> Milton 9 Feb 2015 19:02

    And as for those who say they believe that Crimea and Eastern Ukraine are all that Putin is after, I suggest you look at Russia's interventions in Chechnya and Georgia/S.Ossetia,

    Chechnya - Islamist insurgency like what Iraq is facing. S. Ossetia. - Georgian shelling and invasion of this province designed to get NATO to help out. Instead the Russians deal to the invaders. Sorry mate - your argument is as flaky as the hoary old one of Iran wanting to annihilate Israel based on a mistranslated Ahmedinejad speech (which some historically challenged folks still try and drag up)

    Andrew Nichols Milton 9 Feb 2015 18:57

    "But the west did not send troops or tanks into Ukraine. It didn't attempt political destabilisation." When "destabilisation" looks like a western sponsored coup, quacks like a western sponsored coup.....

    EugeneGur 9 Feb 2015 18:45

    amid growing US scepticism that European peace talks with Russia will succeed in deterring its continued military support for separatists.

    I am pretty sure that Russia supports the rebels militarily to a certain extent although I am not sure how far that support goes. Most of Russia is convinced that it doesn't go far enough. Considering that nobody has been able to prove anything (where are these marvelous American satellites when you need them?), probably, Russian public is right, the support is modest, so it's easy to hide. The West wants Russia to stop supporting the rebels. My question is why would Russia do that? What's in it for Russia?

    You will say the magic word "sanctions". First, Russia is not all that eager about the sanctions to be lifted, because we know they are hurting Europe as much, if not more. Second, Russia doesn't believe the West, and for a good reason. Putin organized the Minsk agreements single-handedly and made the rebels accept it. It was a gift that Putin gave both to the West and to Ukraine, because he convinced the rebel army to stop in the middle of a very successful offensive. By doing so, he risked a lot of his political capital, since everybody in Russia as well as in Donbass hated it and believed it was a mistake, which it turned out to be. What did he get in return? Less than nothing - he got additional sanctions, additional demands, which, I hope proved to him finally that the West is double-dealing and entirely untrustworthy.

    Putin will be crucified in Russia if he is seen pushing the rebels to accept an agreement against their interests. The bottom line is unless the West gives strong indications that it is prepared to negotiate in good faith, the commodity it so far lacked, nothing will happen. If the West waits much longer, the only subject for negotiations will be an unconditional surrender of the Ukrainian army in Donbass.

    Paul Easton 9 Feb 2015 18:30

    Ok now we know what Obama wants. He says he doesn't want to arm Ukraine but as usual he is lying because his new choice for War Secy is in favor. The remaining question is whether European countries will go along with this insanity. European people had better take to the streets en masse if they value their lives.

    Come gather 'round people
    Wherever you roam
    And admit that the waters
    Around you have grown
    And accept it that soon
    You'll be drenched to the bone
    If your time to you
    Is worth savin'
    Then you better start swimmin'
    Or you'll sink like a stone
    For the times they are a-changin'.

    alsojusticeseeker 9 Feb 2015 17:57

    US secretary of state John Kerry said in an interview aired on Sunday. "Hopefully he will come to a point where he realises the damage he is doing is not just to the global order, but he is doing enormous damage to Russia itself."

    So, finally Kerry unveils that they are after ordinary people in Russia, not exclusively after "Putin's close circle" and all that crap.

    PeraIlic jezzam 9 Feb 2015 17:22

    Perhaps if Russia really wants E. Ukraine it should be allowed to take it, with all the consequences this entails, including the economic burden of rebuilding the areas... It seems that these guys from Kiev have similar ideas as you.

    Huge explosion at Donetsk chemical plant, Kiev blames 'dropped cigarette butt' (VIDEO)

    The spokesman for Kiev's Anti-Terrorist Operation said that rebels were at fault for the accident.

    "This was caused by a dropped cigarette butt," Andrey Lysenko told the media on Monday.

    "Accidents often happen in factories where no one is responsible for fire safety. Well, it's chaos, and they are barbarians."

    Not all pro-Kiev officials agreed.

    The Ukrainian military deployed a Smerch (the BM-30 Tornado) multiple rocket system to shell the area in the city, Boris Filatov, former deputy head of the industrial Dnepropetrovsk Region and a member of the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada), said on his Facebook page.

    According to Filatov, the men who fired the missiles "do not know what they hit because they were shooting based on coordinates."

    Earlier, Ukrainian far-right politician and paramilitary commander Dmitry Yarosh, who is involved in the Kiev military action in southeastern Ukraine, confirmed on his Facebook page that the explosion was caused by Ukrainian artillery.

    PeraIlic 9 Feb 2015 17:13

    Merkel is the stiffest opponent of supplying weapons, while holding firm against any other concessions to Putin and calculating that the west may need to prepare for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia and seeking to build up Ukraine.

    One of the latest statements of Angela Merkel was: "We want to establish security in Europe with Russia, not against Russia" (0:20 in this video). Sorry, but to me it does not sound like preparation "for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia".

    [Feb 10, 2015] Merkel to meet Obama amid growing US scepticism over Ukraine peace talks

    Notable quotes:
    "... They pushed and pushed without any regard for people they tramped underfoot expecting Russia to fold any day and beg for mercy. ..."
    "... Chechnya - Islamist insurgency like what Iraq is facing. S. Ossetia. - Georgian shelling and invasion of this province designed to get NATO to help out. Instead the Russians deal to the invaders. Sorry mate - your argument is as flaky as the hoary old one of Iran wanting to annihilate Israel based on a mistranslated Ahmedinejad speech (which some historically challenged folks still try and drag up) ..."
    "... When "destabilisation" looks like a western sponsored coup, quacks like a western sponsored coup..... ..."
    "... Putin will be crucified in Russia if he is seen pushing the rebels to accept an agreement against their interests. The bottom line is unless the West gives strong indications that it is prepared to negotiate in good faith, the commodity it so far lacked, nothing will happen. If the West waits much longer, the only subject for negotiations will be an unconditional surrender of the Ukrainian army in Donbass. ..."
    "... One of the latest statements of Angela Merkel was: "We want to establish security in Europe with Russia, not against Russia" (0:20 in this video). Sorry, but to me it does not sound like preparation "for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia". ..."
    Feb 10, 2015 | The Guardian

    sodtheproles ID1439675 10 Feb 2015 16:51

    Wrong. The EU and Americans started this when refusing Yanukovich more time to consider the trade deal, and when encouraging the billionaires to send their thugs onto Maidan. Tsarev and many others were aware that a coup was on the menu back in October 2013, when he spoke in the Rada. The EU deal had the support of the billionaires, not least because it offered them the chance to apply on a wider stage the skills they had acquired defrauding the Ukrainian state in the 90s, whereas if Ukraine turned towards the Eurasian Union, they'd have to deal with Putin, who if nothing else a reined in the billionaires.

    caliento 10 Feb 2015 15:52

    Wonder why Putin is welcomed by Turkey, Egypt, Hungary, Greece? It is called respect for a leader who stands behind his position showing no fear. Obama, Merkel, Hollande, Cameron E.U., NATO have no respect. And why should they? Obama's "yellow line" is constantly on display along with the rest of the misfits in Europe. More talks, more "signed" "peace" agreements? More Russian lies? Is this group of misfits just "stuck on stupid"? Putin has uttered another threat....that should be enough for the misfits to surrender & deny reality on the ground & leave Ukraine abandoned once again. I taught Bush was bad but Obama is one for the history books on how not to be a "world leader".

    Yuriy11 -> TeeJayzed Addy 10 Feb 2015 13:12

    And the ally of what Ukraine wish to be the USA? If America considers itself as the guarantor of freedom, democracy and protection of human rights it should support the population of Donbass and Lugansk. The population of these regions of Ukraine wished to have only the rights which are written down in the country Constitution.

    Instead of guaranteeing it these rights, the new management of Ukraine began to bomb and fire at peace cities of Donetsk and Lugansk areas. Instead of solving all problems by negotiations. Also Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk and other steels openly to glorify Banderu - the fascist, the military criminal. The youth has started to use nazi symbolics and nazi slogans.

    Can be the USA wishes to become the ally of new fascists? Judging by statements, Obama about desire to deliver to Ukraine the weapon, very similar, that it is going to support fascist government Poroshenko.

    EugeneGur 10 Feb 2015 10:46

    Merkel is the stiffest opponent of supplying weapons, while holding firm against any other concessions to Putin

    Why no concessions? Is that how negotiations are conducted, without any concessions on one side, with all the concessions on the other? I understand this is the American style. But it should be obvious by now to everybody with half a brain that Putin is not the type to be easily intimidated. He can be negotiated with but not blackmailed. They should've also known before they started this mess that Russia isn't Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia or even Vietnam but a much bigger, nastier and better armed country. Germany, of all countries, should've known that you don't want to piss Russia off, you really don't.

    What I see in all these jerking movements is a bunch of very scared "world leaders" who have no idea what to do next. They pushed and pushed without any regard for people they tramped underfoot expecting Russia to fold any day and beg for mercy. When it didn't happen and looks unlikely to happen, there is no plan B. And, of course, honest in good faith negotiations with Russia are entirely out of the question. They just don't know what it means.

    Angela Merkel and Barack Obama are under pressure to shore up western unity over the Ukraine crisis

    Who cares about your "unity"? We have a pretty good idea what kind of "unity" that is. People are dying over there, and these bunch of cheating clowns are concerned with saving whatever is left of their faces. Disgusting.

    Albert_Jacka_VC 10 Feb 2015 08:53

    As usual, the Russophobes don't get it. But they will!

    This morning NAF scouts spotted NATO tanks inside the encirclement (cauldron) at Debaltseve. According to their information the possibility is strong that up to 25% of the trapped army may be NATO. !

    Shell remnants marked clearly with US identifying numbers from 155mm shells, shot by the Paladin artillery system have been recovered from areas the Ukrainian army have attacked civilian targets.

    If the NATO troops are there - (who else would be running the complicated military equipment?) - Zackharchenko's people may display them to the world.

    Everyone will see that the junta that brought us a non-existent Russian invasion has illegitimate and illegal support from NATO's warmongers!

    This explains both the US and EU fudging a new peace initiative. If NATO troops are taken captive, what then?

    Then they are, by Poro's own admission, war criminals. And their urgers (Kerry, Nuland, Stoltenberg, Rasmussen, and the whole foul rabble, are war criminals too.

    Елена Петрова 9 Feb 2015 21:29

    Powerful Documentary on the People of Donbass and why NATO will be in a Tough Fight Should it Invade the Region

    http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/02/07/powerful-documentary-on-the-people-of-donbass-and-why-nato-will-be-in-a-tough-fight-should-it-invade-the-region/

    And yet another says, "Who started it? Everyone knows who started this. How to put it better? Everything started by America's hallooing. The same sh#t happened with Georgia, and now here in Ukraine."

    Albert_Jacka_VC -> jezzam 9 Feb 2015 21:10

    All your info is wrong. Putin himself advocated Ukraine enter a trading arrangement with BOTH Russia and the EU. The EU would have none of it.

    Or rather, Nuland banned it. The EU had no say. We know what Nuland said.
    The coup was a violent, murderous act, and Yanukovych fled after death threats, because his disarmed Berkut could not protect him.

    As to Putin's actions in Ukraine, you buy the spin in the Western press. that's why you're deluded. Donetzkers fight to stay alive, against Kolomoisky's killers.
    Ukraine is illegal, Nazi, and now defeated. Its currency crashed 15% yesterday. How much today?

    That is why the warmongers are flapping about. No other reason than that their war on Russia via 'Ukraine' is a flop.

    Albert_Jacka_VC -> david wright 9 Feb 2015 20:43

    Ukraine is not a sovereign state. Ukraine is an illegal junta of Nazis who took power by murder, and threatrs of murder. that is why even their Ukrainian citizens will not fight for the junta.

    Listen to the babushka [turn captions on] --

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQjmwVC_Dts

    preventallwarsdotorg 9 Feb 2015 19:40

    From the Obama-Merkel Washington press conference; on Ukraine, Angela Merkel seemed optimistic on the chances of 'diplomacy'. But President Obama seemed so determined in 'seeing-off' President Putin by any means; repeatedly, labelling him 'the aggressor'.

    Does President Obama have a personal problem with President Putin?
    Unfortunately, terrible historic armed conflicts arise for populations from intractable inter-personal disagreements between their antagonistic national political leaders. But while their personal safeties are secured, their populations are destroyed.

    National leaders still can't see that nowadays wars generally have 'un-winnable' and frustrating outcomes for even the best equipped militaries. Yet, with seeming careless abandon, their inclinations to increase arms in wars remain unbridled.

    But why did none of the correspondents at the Press conference press the leaders on their likely expectations for Ukraine, Europe and the world if more arms are sent to Ukraine against Russia!
    If national political leaders would be victims of their sponsored wars, would they be as insistent with such risky, futile and potentially increased destructive recipes?

    Yet, the world still seems as impervious to politicians' handling of war crises!
    Why can't it be more innovative to accept or devise better alternatives to the persistently failed and disastrous politicians' bent for even more wars?!

    Andrew Nichols -> Milton 9 Feb 2015 19:02

    And as for those who say they believe that Crimea and Eastern Ukraine are all that Putin is after, I suggest you look at Russia's interventions in Chechnya and Georgia/S.Ossetia,

    Chechnya - Islamist insurgency like what Iraq is facing. S. Ossetia. - Georgian shelling and invasion of this province designed to get NATO to help out. Instead the Russians deal to the invaders. Sorry mate - your argument is as flaky as the hoary old one of Iran wanting to annihilate Israel based on a mistranslated Ahmedinejad speech (which some historically challenged folks still try and drag up)

    Andrew Nichols Milton 9 Feb 2015 18:57

    "But the west did not send troops or tanks into Ukraine. It didn't attempt political destabilisation." When "destabilisation" looks like a western sponsored coup, quacks like a western sponsored coup.....

    EugeneGur 9 Feb 2015 18:45

    amid growing US scepticism that European peace talks with Russia will succeed in deterring its continued military support for separatists.

    I am pretty sure that Russia supports the rebels militarily to a certain extent although I am not sure how far that support goes. Most of Russia is convinced that it doesn't go far enough. Considering that nobody has been able to prove anything (where are these marvelous American satellites when you need them?), probably, Russian public is right, the support is modest, so it's easy to hide. The West wants Russia to stop supporting the rebels. My question is why would Russia do that? What's in it for Russia?

    You will say the magic word "sanctions". First, Russia is not all that eager about the sanctions to be lifted, because we know they are hurting Europe as much, if not more. Second, Russia doesn't believe the West, and for a good reason. Putin organized the Minsk agreements single-handedly and made the rebels accept it. It was a gift that Putin gave both to the West and to Ukraine, because he convinced the rebel army to stop in the middle of a very successful offensive. By doing so, he risked a lot of his political capital, since everybody in Russia as well as in Donbass hated it and believed it was a mistake, which it turned out to be. What did he get in return? Less than nothing - he got additional sanctions, additional demands, which, I hope proved to him finally that the West is double-dealing and entirely untrustworthy.

    Putin will be crucified in Russia if he is seen pushing the rebels to accept an agreement against their interests. The bottom line is unless the West gives strong indications that it is prepared to negotiate in good faith, the commodity it so far lacked, nothing will happen. If the West waits much longer, the only subject for negotiations will be an unconditional surrender of the Ukrainian army in Donbass.

    Paul Easton 9 Feb 2015 18:30

    Ok now we know what Obama wants. He says he doesn't want to arm Ukraine but as usual he is lying because his new choice for War Secy is in favor. The remaining question is whether European countries will go along with this insanity. European people had better take to the streets en masse if they value their lives.

    Come gather 'round people
    Wherever you roam
    And admit that the waters
    Around you have grown
    And accept it that soon
    You'll be drenched to the bone
    If your time to you
    Is worth savin'
    Then you better start swimmin'
    Or you'll sink like a stone
    For the times they are a-changin'.

    alsojusticeseeker 9 Feb 2015 17:57

    US secretary of state John Kerry said in an interview aired on Sunday. "Hopefully he will come to a point where he realises the damage he is doing is not just to the global order, but he is doing enormous damage to Russia itself."

    So, finally Kerry unveils that they are after ordinary people in Russia, not exclusively after "Putin's close circle" and all that crap.

    PeraIlic jezzam 9 Feb 2015 17:22

    Perhaps if Russia really wants E. Ukraine it should be allowed to take it, with all the consequences this entails, including the economic burden of rebuilding the areas... It seems that these guys from Kiev have similar ideas as you.

    Huge explosion at Donetsk chemical plant, Kiev blames 'dropped cigarette butt' (VIDEO)

    The spokesman for Kiev's Anti-Terrorist Operation said that rebels were at fault for the accident.

    "This was caused by a dropped cigarette butt," Andrey Lysenko told the media on Monday.

    "Accidents often happen in factories where no one is responsible for fire safety. Well, it's chaos, and they are barbarians."

    Not all pro-Kiev officials agreed.

    The Ukrainian military deployed a Smerch (the BM-30 Tornado) multiple rocket system to shell the area in the city, Boris Filatov, former deputy head of the industrial Dnepropetrovsk Region and a member of the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada), said on his Facebook page.

    According to Filatov, the men who fired the missiles "do not know what they hit because they were shooting based on coordinates."

    Earlier, Ukrainian far-right politician and paramilitary commander Dmitry Yarosh, who is involved in the Kiev military action in southeastern Ukraine, confirmed on his Facebook page that the explosion was caused by Ukrainian artillery.

    PeraIlic 9 Feb 2015 17:13

    Merkel is the stiffest opponent of supplying weapons, while holding firm against any other concessions to Putin and calculating that the west may need to prepare for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia and seeking to build up Ukraine.

    One of the latest statements of Angela Merkel was: "We want to establish security in Europe with Russia, not against Russia" (0:20 in this video). Sorry, but to me it does not sound like preparation "for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia".

    [Feb 09, 2015] The west must talk to Vladimir Putin about Ukraine

    Looks like guardian staff got new different instructions from their MI5 handlers...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Hove, East Sussex ..."
    Feb 09, 2015 | The Guardian

    David Stainwright, Hove, East Sussex

    I have no love for modern capitalist Russia, or for Vladimir Putin, but there are always two sides to a conflict. Regrettably, the Guardian gives credence mainly to the anti-Putin version. In that narrative, the Russian leader is alleged to have violated Ukraine's sovereignty, though no hard evidence is offered. For those who support western Ukraine's criticism of Putin it is salutary to remember that the present government came to power via a coup. Moreover, many of its supporters are self-confessed followers of Nazi ideology.

    For the Guardian, one of Putin's main transgressions has been the annexation of Crimea. But this is dangerous ground for western critics of Putin, as a moment's reflection should remind one that Israel routinely annexes Palestinian land but has never been censured for its action. Turkey, which annexed northern Cyprus, has never been subjected to sanctions. Two wrongs do not make a right, but it is morally shaky ground for western leaders to condemn one country for annexation while condoning it by another power.

    As David Owen has pointed out (26 August 2014), Russian leaders are understandably worried by the eastward march of Nato, threatening its security. If we wish to avoid catastrophe in Europe the west must come to a diplomatic agreement with Russia, however difficult that may be (Report, 8 February). The alternative is unthinkable.

    Tim Dyce, London

    The solution to Ukraine has been floated – and ignored – before. Treat Russia as part of continental and cultural Europe. Field a joint EU peacekeeping force with Russia and Ukraine. Fly all three flags. Enforce and police the Minsk agreement. Leave Crimea for another day. Use an EU Marshall plan to rehabilitate eastern Ukraine. Recognise significant regional autonomy within a unified Ukraine. This is something the UK should lead with France and Germany, rather than waiting for Washington to let us do it.

    Stephen Mennell, Dublin

    David Cameron could play no part in the Moscow talks (Report, theguardian.com, 7 January). Britain is a US puppet state, which for decades has not had a foreign policy separate from that of the US. Since America precipitated the Ukraine crisis by orchestrating the coup in Kiev, it would not be appropriate for Britain to play any part in mediation.

    [Feb 09, 2015] The west must talk to Vladimir Putin about Ukraine

    Looks like guardian staff got new different instructions from their MI5 handlers...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Hove, East Sussex ..."
    Feb 09, 2015 | The Guardian

    David Stainwright, Hove, East Sussex

    I have no love for modern capitalist Russia, or for Vladimir Putin, but there are always two sides to a conflict. Regrettably, the Guardian gives credence mainly to the anti-Putin version. In that narrative, the Russian leader is alleged to have violated Ukraine's sovereignty, though no hard evidence is offered. For those who support western Ukraine's criticism of Putin it is salutary to remember that the present government came to power via a coup. Moreover, many of its supporters are self-confessed followers of Nazi ideology.

    For the Guardian, one of Putin's main transgressions has been the annexation of Crimea. But this is dangerous ground for western critics of Putin, as a moment's reflection should remind one that Israel routinely annexes Palestinian land but has never been censured for its action. Turkey, which annexed northern Cyprus, has never been subjected to sanctions. Two wrongs do not make a right, but it is morally shaky ground for western leaders to condemn one country for annexation while condoning it by another power.

    As David Owen has pointed out (26 August 2014), Russian leaders are understandably worried by the eastward march of Nato, threatening its security. If we wish to avoid catastrophe in Europe the west must come to a diplomatic agreement with Russia, however difficult that may be (Report, 8 February). The alternative is unthinkable.

    Tim Dyce, London

    The solution to Ukraine has been floated – and ignored – before. Treat Russia as part of continental and cultural Europe. Field a joint EU peacekeeping force with Russia and Ukraine. Fly all three flags. Enforce and police the Minsk agreement. Leave Crimea for another day. Use an EU Marshall plan to rehabilitate eastern Ukraine. Recognise significant regional autonomy within a unified Ukraine. This is something the UK should lead with France and Germany, rather than waiting for Washington to let us do it.

    Stephen Mennell, Dublin

    David Cameron could play no part in the Moscow talks (Report, theguardian.com, 7 January). Britain is a US puppet state, which for decades has not had a foreign policy separate from that of the US. Since America precipitated the Ukraine crisis by orchestrating the coup in Kiev, it would not be appropriate for Britain to play any part in mediation.

    [Feb 08, 2015] Ukraine conflict: four-nation peace talks in Minsk aim to end crisis

    Notable quotes:
    "... Oh yes. There is also an issue of mercenaries. It is said that the Ukrainian army encircled in the Debaltsevo cauldron has Western mercenary units that Merkel and Hollande are desperate to evacuate before the extent of the Western involvement in fully revealed. ..."
    "... Lithuania has already admitted it's sending Kiev weapons. Poland likely as well given their stance. And if anyone thinks the US is quietly sitting on the sidelines given stuff such as Contragate in the past, they're almost certainly deluded. ..."
    "... The German intelligence service puts the number of dead in Ukraine at closer to 50 thousand rather than 5 thousand. ..."
    The Guardian

    ID5868758 -> centerline 8 Feb 2015 23:44

    CIA and Americans caught in the cauldron, or whatever they're calling it? That's what some on a German comment thread were saying today.

    EugeneGur -> centerline 8 Feb 2015 23:44

    Oh yes. There is also an issue of mercenaries. It is said that the Ukrainian army encircled in the Debaltsevo cauldron has Western mercenary units that Merkel and Hollande are desperate to evacuate before the extent of the Western involvement in fully revealed.

    TuleCarbonari -> EugeneGur 8 Feb 2015 23:31

    What is special about the East? It is richer in natural resources than the West. Joe Biden's son and other businessmen won't be able to operate in a politically volatile area. It must be pacified somehow.

    Bullybyte -> WiseOldManNo476 8 Feb 2015 23:43

    There will be no war.

    Earth to WiseOldManNo476. You obviously haven't noticed. There already IS a war; it is about to escalate; and the UK will be involved in it right up to its neck.

    The problem being a bully (the US) is that it becomes arrogant and expects its own way all of the time, when someone pushes back, they fold. This isn't Iraq you know.

    And who is pushing back? You?

    Looks like the EU will be choosing the lesser of two evils.

    Yes. Listen to the tough talk by Cameron. Look how the EU ratcheted up their sanctions on Russia only a few days ago. The EU have already chosen the lesser of two reasons.

    BTW, enjoy your collapsing petro dollar and associated hyper inflation coming your way very soon.

    And this will be happening when? After your kids have been killed?

    KrasnoArmejac Roodan 8 Feb 2015 23:20

    no roodan, we should not go to war. it is ukraines fight, not ours. but we should not treat putin like he is a normal politician (or person for that matter). we should not have our newspapers asking questions that have been answered a million times before, just so we could be proud of our political corectness. you know those questions, right? questions like: are those really russians that are fighting the ukranians? it's like answering the question: is the sky blue? over and over and over again. we should not keep satellite images proving russian tanks crossing the border classified, just so mister putin could have a face-saving exit once this is all over with. because my dear roodan, contrary to what your mother (and all mothers for that matter) told you: ignoring the bully will not make him stop punching you. it will just make you a loser-for-life. if you don't trust me ask mister neville chamberlain and his piece of paper

    EugeneGur 8 Feb 2015 23:13

    the latest Franco-German peace initiative . . . was driven by the urgent desire to avoid a new bloodbath in the besieged Ukrainian-held town of Debaltseve

    Really? What is so special about Debaltsevo that makes the European leaders so concerned about its fate? What sets it apart so decisively from Donetsk, Gorlovka, Krasnoarmeisk, Shakhtursk, and a dozen of other Donbass towns that have been pounded by artillery fire for months. Hundreds of civilians died, and the only response from our European friends was deafening silence about the killings and loud accusations against Russia of everything and anything.

    I'll tell you what's special about Debaltsevo. A large number of Ukrainian troops are trapped there, and unless something is done, there are likely end up dead. This means another devastating defeat for the Ukrs, from which they are unlikely to recover. So, Merkel and Hollande rushed (or were dispatched?) to the rescue of their little nazi Ukrainian protegees. One cannot help but feel contempt for such European "leaders" and generally for what Europe turned into under American patronage.

    sbmfc 8 Feb 2015 10:22

    Given the still unfolding disasters in Syria and Libya surely the policy of the west attempting to pick a winner in a local conflict is completely discredited.

    It may be the case that war in Europe suits the American agenda but the EU should only be focused on a peaceful solution. Borders in Europe have always been fluid and it is impossible to see the rebel areas now ever peacefully existing within Ukraine.

    snowdogchampion -> Strummered 8 Feb 2015 10:17

    there ARE English speaking troops that sound AMERICAN Foreign fighters filmed on ground with Kiev army not to mention the CIA agents ;-)

    Kal El -> Eric Hoffmann 8 Feb 2015 10:13

    And where is Kiev getting all its weapons etc from ? Their stuff was 20 year old USSR stuff. Mothballed and rusting.

    Lithuania has already admitted it's sending Kiev weapons. Poland likely as well given their stance. And if anyone thinks the US is quietly sitting on the sidelines given stuff such as Contragate in the past, they're almost certainly deluded.

    NoBodiesFool 8 Feb 2015 10:12

    If peace breaks out what will the poor weapons dealers and their bankster backers do? Someone please think of the poor children of the weapons dealers and the banksters. Also, think of the poor children of the fossil fuel cartels that all of this is really about. They really don't have enough money and they so would like another Bugatti for New Year's. Please, give war a chance - for the children.

    Rialbynot 8 Feb 2015 10:12

    When the German-speaking population in South Tyrol rebelled against Italian rule in the late 1960s, the Italian government initially attempted to put down the rebellion using force.

    However, a campaign of sabotage and bombings by German-speaking separatists led by the SouthTyrolean Liberation Committee continued.

    Finally, the issue was resolved in 1971, when a new treaty was signed and ratified by the Austrian and Italian governments. It stipulated that disputes in South Tyrol would be submitted for settlement to the International Court of Justice in The Hague and that the province would receive greater autonomy within Italy. The new agreement proved broadly satisfactory to the parties involved and the separatist tensions soon eased.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trentino-Alto_Adige/S%C3%BCdtirol

    Europe has a blueprint for resolving the (far more deadly) East Ukraine crisis.

    Asimpleguest -> CaptainBlunder 8 Feb 2015 10:09

    strange - I read otherwise

    ''MOSCOW, December 10. /TASS/. Russian military led by Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces Alexander Lentsov are providing assistance to the Ukrainian south-east conflict sides in reaching compromise for deescalation of tension and troops' pullout, Chief of the Russian General Staff General Valery Gerasimov said on Wednesday.

    The mission was sent at the request of the Chief of the Ukrainian General Staff, Viktor Muzhenko, said Gerasimov.''

    snowdogchampion 8 Feb 2015 10:09

    thanks god! mind that the US warmongers will not be part of the PEACE talks cause they want WAR at our doorstep.. McCain & Co. must be p!ssed off.. hope Merkel's security has been increased, you never know, there might be a CIA agent around

    SHappens 8 Feb 2015 10:08

    Merkel is due to meet Barack Obama, the US president, in Washington on Monday, in a bid to synchronise US and western European positions on Ukraine ahead of the Minsk summit. Or how to make a peaceful initiative go jeopardized. All Putin has to do is sit and wait. And let them EU and US paddle.

    Merkel feels they owe the East Ukrainians to stop the war they promoted and encouraged for months but McCain says that these poor Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves. I suppose he is referring to the East Ukrainians, as they did not attack anybody in Kiev and are indeed defending themselves from undiscriminated shelling from Kiev. Let's hope the Nobel prize will honor it.

    Koninklijk 8 Feb 2015 10:08

    Even if there is no further escalation, these repercussions are going to be felt in Europe for a long time. We'll just have to hope nobody really wants a war in Europe, in the short or long term.

    Kal El 8 Feb 2015 10:05

    The German intelligence service puts the number of dead in Ukraine at closer to 50 thousand rather than 5 thousand.

    Which when you think about is more of a truer number given that Ukraine is currently on its 4TH, yes 4TH mobilisation/conscription wave.

    If the number of dead/injured is what Kiev claims, quite clearly they would NOT need all of these mobilisations in the last year. The current mobilisation even includes women.

    [Feb 08, 2015] Ukraine crisis Do not try to scare Putin, warns Merkel By Tom Parfitt, Moscow and Justin Huggler in Berlin

    Another terrible and extremely brutal created by West civil war in the name of neo-colonial domination of the territory, resources and markets is in full swing. And that's after Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afganistan, Libya... Already probably over 50K of dead and several times more wounded. More then a million of refuges (mostly in Russia)...
    Feb 07, 2015 | Telegraph

    Sending arms to Ukraine will not scare Vladimir Putin, warns Angela Merkel while Francois Hollande warns it could lead to war

    It was a day of bluster and speeches but also paralysis over how to bring the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine to an end.

    On one side, hawks in Washington favour supplying "advanced weapons" to Ukraine's government in Kiev. On the other, cautious European leaders warned it is easier to provoke Vladimir Putin than to scare him.

    "I am firmly convinced this conflict cannot be solved with military means," said Angela Merkel, the German chancellor at the Munich Security Conference.

    Mrs Merkel, who is the only major Western leader to have a working relationship with Mr Putin, said a flow of American arms to Ukraine would not intimidate the Russian leader.

    "I cannot imagine any situation in which improved equipment for the Ukrainian army leads to President Putin being so impressed that he believes he will lose militarily," she said. "I have to put it that bluntly."

    She added that force had not proved to be the solution in the past when dealing with Russia. "I grew up in East Germany, I have seen the Wall," she said. "The Americans did not intervene in the Wall, but in the end we won."

    More than 5,300 people have died in the conflict so far, many in devastating artillery barrages, and Kiev warned yesterday that rebel troops were massing for a fresh offensive.

    An increasing number of US politicians and senior officials have suggested countering the rebel troops by supplying "defensive weapons" such as Javelin anti-tank missiles, small arms and ammunition to allow Ukraine to strike back at the tanks, artillery and troops that Russia appears to be sending to the east of the country.

    General Philip Breedlove, Nato's top military commander, insisted on Saturday that the option should remain on the table. "I don't think we should preclude out of hand the possibility of the military option," he said, adding: "There is no conversation about boots on the ground."

    President Barack Obama has remained silent so far, but Ashton Carter, his nominee for defence secretary, told a Senate committee last week that he is "very much inclined" to provide arms to Petro Poroshenko's government.

    A day after five hours of talks in Moscow between Mrs Merkel, François Hollande and Mr Putin yielded no public agreement beyond a commitment to a further phone call, all the major players in the crisis met at the Munich Security Conference, electrifying what is usually a dry affair.

    There was no mistaking where the sympathies of the audience, made up of international leaders including 20 heads of state, lay. When Mrs Merkel mentioned in her speech that she was glad to see Petro Poroshenko present, the Ukrainian President stood up and took a bow, to rapturous applause. Brandishing the passports of several Russian soldiers allegedly seized on Ukrainian territory, he said they were the "best evidence for the aggression and for the presence of Russian troops".

    Mr Hollande has said he is against arming Ukraine and Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, said the UK also supports a diplomatic solution while he denounced Mr Putin's "bully-boy" tactics.

    "At the moment we do not feel that the supply of arms would be a helpful contribution," said Mr Hammond. "And so long as there is something approximating a military stalemate, the focus must be on finding a political solution to resolve it."

    He also rejected accusations that the UK had become a "diplomatic irrelevance", saying: "We will decide, together, what is the best way to go forward. The United States and the United Kingdom will be at that table with France and Germany."

    But Malcolm Rifkind, the former Defence and Foreign Secretary, was one of several delegates who pressed Mrs Merkel on how Mr Putin could be tackled without bolstering Ukraine's army. "Frederick the Great said that diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments," the Tory MP pointed out.

    Joe Biden, the US vice president, appeared to leave a route open for weapons supplies to Kiev, saying: "We do not believe in a military solution to the conflict, but we do not believe that Putin has the right to do whatever he wants." He added: "Too many times, President Putin has promised peace and delivered tanks."

    On Sunday, Mrs Merkel, Mr Hollande, Mr Putin and Mr Poroshenko will resume the debate and are expected to thrash out a blueprint on a conference call. But it remains unclear what incentive, or threat, Moscow requires in order to scale back its support for the thousands of heavily armed militiamen in east Ukraine.

    On Saturday Mr Putin insisted that his country was innocent, saying during a visit to Sochi on the Black Sea: "We are not going to wage war on anyone, we plan to cooperate with everybody."

    "There clearly is an attempt to restrain our development with different means," he told trade union activists. "There is an attempt to perturb the existing world order... with one incontestable leader who wants to remain as such thinking he is allowed everything while others are only allowed what he allows and only in his interests. This world order will never suit Russia."

    In Munich, Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, took the West to task for allegedly escalating the conflict but expressed hope the renewed peace talks would bear fruit. "We believe there is every possibility that we will reach a result and agree the recommendations that will allow the sides to really untie this knot of a conflict," he said.

    Representatives of the rebels, Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe signed a peace deal in Minsk, Belarus, in September. That deal agreed a ceasefire, a withdrawal of artillery, prisoner exchanges and other concessions but was never implemented in full. Despite some lulls, fighting and shelling continued and last month the rebels announced they were abandoning talks over a ceasefire and going on the offensive.

    French and German officials have said the current peace talks are seeking a way to implement the original Minsk agreement, possibly conceding more land to the rebels to reflect their recent advances.

    But Mr Poroshenko said any new deal should not expand the territory given over to rebel control, and its signatories could not pick and choose which points to fulfil.

    "The Minsk protocol is not a buffet in the Bayerischer Hof hotel," he said, referring to the location of the Munich conference.

    [Feb 07, 2015] Fear of Vladimir Putin grows in EU capitals amid spectre of total war

    theguardian.com

    FranklyMrShandy -> demdike 7 Feb 2015 11:57

    Oh, that sounds like a great solution!

    You may as well bomb Moscow if you do that, because (as the article makes clear) to Putin the two would be equivalent.

    Why the F*** were Obama and Nato so keen to have more pieces on their pie... this really bugs me. Ok, so Ukraine was not "neutral in the right way" and was under heavy Russian influence. And so? It's on Russia's doorstep for f***'s sake! What do you expect!

    If China masterminded a coup in Mexico with the aim of bringing the country into a defense treaty with Beijing ... do you think that Washington would not do everything possible to stop it?

    jeeeeez

    Amazon10 7 Feb 2015 11:43

    What people seem to have forgotten is that Russia is NOT the Soviet Union but a free market state that like all others and wants to protect it's own interests. It is confronted by agressive NATO states that have encroached on territories that they agreed they would not.

    In addition thay have a circle of nuclear based with missiles pointing at them. Ukraine, which was a past soviet state but then became neutral after the fall of the Soviet Union. However the US had other ideas as voiced by their representative to the EU Newland who inadvertently had her plans for the Ukraine exposed. Their intended coup took place despite a democratically elected being in place and a government was installed committed to Western imperialism and expansion of NATO.

    The population of the eastern region rejected this coup and it's nazi composition and found that the only way they could resist the military forced brought upon them by Kiev and it's western supporters was by fighting back. This is where we are at today. I am sure that Russia have aided the east with military weapons and have accept over 1million refugees. There has not been a single piece of evidence to show that Russian forces have involved on Ukraine soil. The aggressive rhetoric from the West towards Russia make the likelihood of war real and could have grave consequences for us all if we allow the real truth to be distorted in order to bring this about. The leaders of Europe must be made aware that we will not let this happen and that our constant aggression towards whoever we disagree with is not an excuse for war

    dylan kerling -> Spockdem 7 Feb 2015 11:42

    his post clearly implied it and if you've seen any of his other posts in other articles you would realize he clearly does seem to look at this situation as a dichotomy of good vs evil, west vs Russia.

    When someone lists some atrocities while only referring to one side and completely ignoring the fact that the other has done all of it only more frequently and with less of a reason I would say he's excusing the west from it.

    Lastly I'm not condoning Russia, I'm pointing out US hypocrisy and the fact that we still hear all this talk of how Russia is doing all these terrible things from our political leaders while completely white washing that we've done the very same time and time again.

    If anyone is a shill is all of you that seem to think it's OK when the west does it but if those evil Russians do anything oh boy are they in trouble.

    LarsNil -> Ram2009 7 Feb 2015 11:41

    "Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is identified in State Department documents as an informant for the U.S. since 2006. The documents describe him as "[o]ur Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko." The State Department documents also report that Poroshenko is "tainted by credible corruption allegations."

    The most recent top official to join the Ukrainian government is Natalia A. Jaresko, a long-time State Department official, who went to Ukraine after the U.S.-sponsored Orange Revolution. Jaresko was made a Ukrainian citizen by the president on the same day he appointed her finance minister. William Boardman reports further on Jaresko:

    Natalie Jaresko, is an American citizen who managed a Ukrainian-based, U.S.-created hedge fund that was charged with illegal insider trading. She also managed a CIA fund that supported 'pro-democracy' movements and laundered much of the $5 billion the U.S. spent supporting the Maidan protests that led to the Kiev coup in February 2014. Jaresko is a big fan of austerity for people in troubled economies."

    http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/chomsky_and_kissinger_agree_avoid_historic_tragedy_in_ukraine_20150206

    Vatslav Rente 7 Feb 2015 11:35

    Fakes of the Ukrainian government. The Best.

    September 9, 2014 The head of the National Bank of Ukraine Valeriya Gontareva during a round table in Kiev, said: "200 FSB agents work on loosening the Ukrainian banking system and the hryvnia" :)

    February 5, 2015 "The reasons for the fall of the hryvnia - no," - said the Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Abramavičius.

    February 4, 2015: $ 1/17 hryvnia, February 7, 2015 $ 1/26 hryvnia.

    February 6, 2015 Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Ukrainian TV channel 24: "spirit of the Ukrainian soldiers the best in the world. If you give them the necessary knowledge, skills and weapons, they will be able to capture the whole of Russia "

    Damn sclerosis. Apparently he forgot how as Russia routed the Georgian army for 4 days.

    Let me remind you, this man was considered for the post of head of the Anti-Corruption Committee of Ukraine. In Georgia, he declared a national search in. The Prosecutor's Office indicted in absentia Saakashvili of abuse of power, embezzlement of budget funds, the attempt to seize other people's property. The investigation is conducted from 25 October 2013, and during this period were collected 80 volumes of evidence, questioned nearly 100 witnesses.

    2013 Yatsenyuk in an interview with Ukrainian TV: "In the Ukrainian authorities are amateurs!" Prime Ministers of Ukraine Azarov, Foreign exchange reserves of more than 22 billion dollars, the rate of $ 1 / 8.5 hryvnia.
    Now Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, gold and currency reserves of $ 6 billion, the rate of $ 1/26 hryvnia.

    Davos January 21, 2015 President of Ukraine Poroshenko: "In my country there are more than 9000 troops from the Russian Federation, 500 tanks, heavy artillery and armored vehicles."
    Wow, it's strange that the separatists have not yet reached the border with Poland :)

    February 7, 2015 security conference in Munich. Showing the passport of Russian citizens and military tickets Poroshenko said: "What you still need more facts, evidence of the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine?"
    Ok, but the soldiers of the Russian Army during the service do not have passports, only military ID. But of course when traveling to Ukraine they are given a complete set, in case of capture. Ha ha ha :)

    The Mayor Of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko. At a meeting with Ukrainian soldiers: "they Say that there is no body armor, but it is physical protection. The main armor for each of you, is have a mother, wife, children... Social standards - this is the armor. When everyone knows that if something happens, his family will receive good compensation and will not have to beg" :) Uh... good consolation for the soldiers...

    You do not cast doubt on the adequacy of the new government of Ukraine? I think that these clowns, already tired most of the Ukrainians.

    cherryredguitar Yubin Underok 7 Feb 2015 11:16

    Here is why: Russia has an army of online shills.

    Of course, those nice trustworthy people at GCHQ and Langley wouldn't do stuff like that, would they?

    [Feb 07, 2015] Putin and Ukraine leader to hold phone talks after inconclusive end to summit

    Notable quotes:
    "... Moscow is not satisfied with the attempts to restrain the development of Russia and to preserve the unipolar world. ..."
    "... there are really an attempt to keep our development by a variety of means, ..."
    "... To stay in the belief that he can do all, while others can be something that only permuted by him and only in his best interest, "- said the head of state. ..."
    "... If someone likes it, wants to live in the condition of half occupation -- but we will not do this. ..."
    Feb 06, 2015 | The Guardian

    1waldo1 7 Feb 2015 10:05

    To stop the spreading of this increasingly dangerous conflict, there is a solution, that is in the interest of all affected:

    The USA should butt out. It's that simple. This is a European 'problem' (instigated by and foisted upon by the Americans) and will be solved by Europe and Europe alone.

    "The German chancellor said she wanted to secure peace in Europe with Russia and not against it." Wise words.

    Paul Feeney Spiffey 7 Feb 2015 10:00

    NATO is a One trick pony..and it's only one trick is War. NATO should have been dismantled when the old Soviet Union broke up. Instead, it's been taken over by the USA to aid its geopolitical S&P 500 agenda. If anyone should be in front of a War crime tribunal, it's not Lavrov but Obama for 3000 Pakistani people DRONED or Bush & Blair for one million Iraq's in the name of WMD's, if the 'Report' into it ever sees the light of day. International Diplomacy is the answer to Ukraine not more WAR....

    Regnom 7 Feb 2015 09:29

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, said that the actions of Washington and its allies have undermined the structure of European security. "The construction of European security, which is based on the UN Charter and the Helsinki principles, has long been undermined the actions of the US and its allies," - he said. Russian Foreign Minister also stressed that in any difficult situation, Washington is trying to accuse Moscow. "In every difficult situation our American colleagues are trying to" throw a switch" to Russia", - he said. As an example of his words Lavrov led to "revive the recent talks on a treaty on intermediate- and shorter-range missiles."

    According to him, now there is a "culmination" of course conducted by the West to retain its dominance in the world: "We believe that there is a culmination held during the last quarter of a century the course of our Western colleagues to maintain any means of its dominance in world affairs, to capture geopolitical space in Europe."

    Regnom 7 Feb 2015 09:21

    Putin today:

    "Moscow is not satisfied with the attempts to restrain the development of Russia and to preserve the unipolar world.

    "War, thank God, is not happens. But there are really an attempt to keep our development by a variety of means, there are an attempt to "freeze" the world order led by one undisputed leader, who wants to stay as such. To stay in the belief that he can do all, while others can be something that only permuted by him and only in his best interest, "- said the head of state.

    "Such a world order will never satisfied Russia," - he added. "If someone likes it, wants to live in the condition of half occupation -- but we will not do this. At the same time, we are not going to war with anyone and we are going to work with everyone"- said Putin.

    snowdogchampion -> snowdogchampion 7 Feb 2015 09:08

    here Merkel's speech (1hr) https://www.securityconference.de/en/media-library/video/single/statement-and-discussion-with-dr-angela-merkel/

    and Lavrov (45min) https://www.securityconference.de/en/media-library/video/single/statement-and-discussion-with-sergey-lavrov-1/

    and more

    [Feb 07, 2015] Merkel downbeat as world awaits Putin's response to latest Ukraine peace plan by Julian Borger in Munich

    Feb 07, 2015 | The Guardian


    Nickel07 Tepluken 7 Feb 2015 23:15

    of course it is a mafia state no different than the US...but you guys are the ones screaming your titties off about wonderful Yats is , you put the pusillanimous bastard in power...

    centerline Tepluken 7 Feb 2015 23:14

    international isolation

    Explain international. I know the US believes it is the centre of the universe but the majority of people on earth do not agree. (I guess I should explain to a dumb as dogshit yank) A majority is over 50%.

    centerline hdc hadeze 7 Feb 2015 23:10

    Schwarzenegger and Stallone are pretty tough blokes too. I see those flowers were fund raising for the hard done by Israel so the could blast a few more UN schools.

    John Smith 7 Feb 2015 23:07

    The Russians should connect via land to Crimea, push 100km past THAT, and THEN have a buffer zone. That would allow a end to this. Anything less and the CIA will just ramp up Ukrainian arms for a year or two until they have the means to attack again.

    Ukraine and it's quasi-fascist nationalists cannot be trusted, emboldened by American money, they REALLY cannot be trusted. I say that as a patriotic American.

    Friend4you 7 Feb 2015 23:04

    I agree with you John Smith , this war criminal John McCain is like Dracula , he lives on blood , this sick man used to travel to Egypt and meet the Muslim Brotherhood , supply them with money to destabilize Egypt . Wherever there are troubles you will find this blood thirsty man.

    MaxBoson Laurence Johnson 7 Feb 2015 23:01

    Motivated by your post, I checked the Web and found a Wiki piece on the Minsk Agreement. According a map there, the airport is smack dab on the red line designated as the "insurgent line of control". Since the Ukrainian forces were supposed to remain outside a 15km buffer zone, the question is why their attacks on the airport went unreported in Western media. This is a really bizarre situation; comments are now a better source of information the article being commented on.

    John Smith 7 Feb 2015 22:56

    I've had endless support pounding the New York Times every time it runs another lying anti-Putin, anti-Russia op-ed. We have the usual large block of idiot American Neocons who simply rise to any bait to throw hate at the supposed badguy Russian leader. But we also have endless numbers of smart people who watched this mess go down, and know better than to join the Neocon dopes in a let's-arm-Ukraine hatefest.

    If one guy is the King of Neocon Idiots it's Sen John McCain. The old war criminal is a one man disaster on foreign policy. Thank the mythical Christ the asshole was defeated by the idiot Obama.

    centerline Outfit17 7 Feb 2015 22:56

    Democracy is good if it votes for the US. IF the majority vote against the US then that is dictatorship. (democracy is defined as pro US voting)

    [Feb 07, 2015] Putin and Ukraine leader to hold phone talks after inconclusive end to summit

    Notable quotes:
    "... Moscow is not satisfied with the attempts to restrain the development of Russia and to preserve the unipolar world. ..."
    "... there are really an attempt to keep our development by a variety of means, ..."
    "... To stay in the belief that he can do all, while others can be something that only permuted by him and only in his best interest, "- said the head of state. ..."
    "... If someone likes it, wants to live in the condition of half occupation -- but we will not do this. ..."
    Feb 06, 2015 | The Guardian

    1waldo1 7 Feb 2015 10:05

    To stop the spreading of this increasingly dangerous conflict, there is a solution, that is in the interest of all affected:

    The USA should butt out. It's that simple. This is a European 'problem' (instigated by and foisted upon by the Americans) and will be solved by Europe and Europe alone.

    "The German chancellor said she wanted to secure peace in Europe with Russia and not against it." Wise words.

    Paul Feeney Spiffey 7 Feb 2015 10:00

    NATO is a One trick pony..and it's only one trick is War. NATO should have been dismantled when the old Soviet Union broke up. Instead, it's been taken over by the USA to aid its geopolitical S&P 500 agenda. If anyone should be in front of a War crime tribunal, it's not Lavrov but Obama for 3000 Pakistani people DRONED or Bush & Blair for one million Iraq's in the name of WMD's, if the 'Report' into it ever sees the light of day. International Diplomacy is the answer to Ukraine not more WAR....

    Regnom 7 Feb 2015 09:29

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, said that the actions of Washington and its allies have undermined the structure of European security. "The construction of European security, which is based on the UN Charter and the Helsinki principles, has long been undermined the actions of the US and its allies," - he said. Russian Foreign Minister also stressed that in any difficult situation, Washington is trying to accuse Moscow. "In every difficult situation our American colleagues are trying to" throw a switch" to Russia", - he said. As an example of his words Lavrov led to "revive the recent talks on a treaty on intermediate- and shorter-range missiles."

    According to him, now there is a "culmination" of course conducted by the West to retain its dominance in the world: "We believe that there is a culmination held during the last quarter of a century the course of our Western colleagues to maintain any means of its dominance in world affairs, to capture geopolitical space in Europe."

    Regnom 7 Feb 2015 09:21

    Putin today:

    "Moscow is not satisfied with the attempts to restrain the development of Russia and to preserve the unipolar world.

    "War, thank God, is not happens. But there are really an attempt to keep our development by a variety of means, there are an attempt to "freeze" the world order led by one undisputed leader, who wants to stay as such. To stay in the belief that he can do all, while others can be something that only permuted by him and only in his best interest, "- said the head of state.

    "Such a world order will never satisfied Russia," - he added. "If someone likes it, wants to live in the condition of half occupation -- but we will not do this. At the same time, we are not going to war with anyone and we are going to work with everyone"- said Putin.

    snowdogchampion -> snowdogchampion 7 Feb 2015 09:08

    here Merkel's speech (1hr) https://www.securityconference.de/en/media-library/video/single/statement-and-discussion-with-dr-angela-merkel/

    and Lavrov (45min) https://www.securityconference.de/en/media-library/video/single/statement-and-discussion-with-sergey-lavrov-1/

    and more

    [Feb 07, 2015] Merkel downbeat as world awaits Putin's response to latest Ukraine peace plan by Julian Borger in Munich

    Feb 07, 2015 | The Guardian


    Nickel07 Tepluken 7 Feb 2015 23:15

    of course it is a mafia state no different than the US...but you guys are the ones screaming your titties off about wonderful Yats is , you put the pusillanimous bastard in power...

    centerline Tepluken 7 Feb 2015 23:14

    international isolation

    Explain international. I know the US believes it is the centre of the universe but the majority of people on earth do not agree. (I guess I should explain to a dumb as dogshit yank) A majority is over 50%.

    centerline hdc hadeze 7 Feb 2015 23:10

    Schwarzenegger and Stallone are pretty tough blokes too. I see those flowers were fund raising for the hard done by Israel so the could blast a few more UN schools.

    John Smith 7 Feb 2015 23:07

    The Russians should connect via land to Crimea, push 100km past THAT, and THEN have a buffer zone. That would allow a end to this. Anything less and the CIA will just ramp up Ukrainian arms for a year or two until they have the means to attack again.

    Ukraine and it's quasi-fascist nationalists cannot be trusted, emboldened by American money, they REALLY cannot be trusted. I say that as a patriotic American.

    Friend4you 7 Feb 2015 23:04

    I agree with you John Smith , this war criminal John McCain is like Dracula , he lives on blood , this sick man used to travel to Egypt and meet the Muslim Brotherhood , supply them with money to destabilize Egypt . Wherever there are troubles you will find this blood thirsty man.

    MaxBoson Laurence Johnson 7 Feb 2015 23:01

    Motivated by your post, I checked the Web and found a Wiki piece on the Minsk Agreement. According a map there, the airport is smack dab on the red line designated as the "insurgent line of control". Since the Ukrainian forces were supposed to remain outside a 15km buffer zone, the question is why their attacks on the airport went unreported in Western media. This is a really bizarre situation; comments are now a better source of information the article being commented on.

    John Smith 7 Feb 2015 22:56

    I've had endless support pounding the New York Times every time it runs another lying anti-Putin, anti-Russia op-ed. We have the usual large block of idiot American Neocons who simply rise to any bait to throw hate at the supposed badguy Russian leader. But we also have endless numbers of smart people who watched this mess go down, and know better than to join the Neocon dopes in a let's-arm-Ukraine hatefest.

    If one guy is the King of Neocon Idiots it's Sen John McCain. The old war criminal is a one man disaster on foreign policy. Thank the mythical Christ the asshole was defeated by the idiot Obama.

    centerline Outfit17 7 Feb 2015 22:56

    Democracy is good if it votes for the US. IF the majority vote against the US then that is dictatorship. (democracy is defined as pro US voting)

    [Feb 06, 2015] Merkel and Hollande to present Ukraine peace plan to Putin

    Those who are responsible for soaking Donbass in blood will not stop. They need to be stopped by force. Ukrainian citizens have become either consumable or brainwashed. And for Western Ukrainians, the core supported of Yatsenyuk & Poroshenko clan (forme junta that now is integrated into Porosheko government) the war is far from their territory. People are dying there in Debaltsevo and Uglegorsk, Donetsk and Luhansk, while the military and mercenaries are trying to prove their side of the story through shelling of infrastructure and killing citizens. Donbass meetings and referendums were a result EuroMaidan, and emergence of separatst are direct result of absurd actions of the new Ukrainian government, which turn their county into a death factory for the sake of enforcing on the country Western Ukranian brand of nationalism. Those who are living in peace and whose relatives are protected from conscption are demanding the continuation of the war the most loudly. They nurture and inspire her, feeding infernal demons. They created a diabolical request to victims. and they got them: woman, children, eldery, like in any civil war. But they now infected with their bloodthirsty bacillus and can't stop. So people like Yatsenyuk and Turchinov need to be stopped first, removed from this current position and sent to the Hague court before we can talk about peace. And let's don;t forget that the blood of victims of Odessa massacre in also on them. We are talking about repetion of civil war in Spain here with their 200 thousand victims. Looks like Europeans learned nothing from two world war and as soon the the generation the fought the war is in graved a new war is immediately started.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Seems the US is not happy at loosing year on year its percentage of global GDP and is aggressively trying to protect its satrapies or even enlarge them. ..."
    theguardian.com

    Laurence Johnson -> Agatha_appears 6 Feb 2015 15:51

    There are two proxies in the West. Poroshenko is clearly the EU"s man in Ukraine, and Yatsenyuk is very clearly the US's man in Ukraine.

    Whatever Merkel and Hollande come up with for a peace plan, you can guarantee that Yatsenyuk will derail it as soon as possible.

    For Yats, only the supply of weapons, and many more billions of handouts and debt forgiveness will do. In the world for Yats, the war must go on.

    hodgeey nino45 6 Feb 2015 15:27

    I think most people who write here are compassionate; there are few people who have not been touched by tragedy and they learn to be both sympathetic and empathetic, but hesitate to show it.

    Having worked with Russians in Russia I can tell you we are not very different.

    nino45 ID1439675 6 Feb 2015 15:19

    Thank you for your concern, maybe I said it in a wrong way.. my English is not that good. I wanted to express the feeling our elders here have when watching the news. Many people have friends and relatives there, so it is very hard on them. I just wanted to say that ordinary Russian people show compassion in many ways, well not writing comments here in English, but calling their relatives and sending them packages...


    JCDavis -> ID1439675 6 Feb 2015 14:45

    If the US has advisors and a CIA office in Kiev they are there by invitation

    It's the other way around. The CIA invited the present government -- traitors all -- to join in their coup.

    JCDavis -> Agatha_appears 6 Feb 2015 13:58

    You are badly misreading the situation. Ukraine is pawn in a geopolitical struggle for world empire. It will be sacrificed in an instant if it suits the purposes of any of these people. Except Yats, the CIA's pick for the coup, a traitor who will be sacrificed in any case. Who could trust such a person?

    Agatha_appears 6 Feb 2015 13:48

    Let them negogiate peace. Merkel wants peace, Hollande needs peace, Putin desperately is seeking peace. Poroshenko is reasonable and negogiable. But imbecile Yatzenuk is non-negogiable. Let us pray that tkhe talks end with peaceful project.

    JCDavis -> harryphilby 6 Feb 2015 13:23

    The Yanks don't do peace.

    This is true. Obama is Cheney's blackmailed puppet, and Cheney was the only neocon in Bush's criminal administration who actually wanted to fight Russia. He is quite mad, and he is the most powerful man in the world. Bad combination.

    Euphobia1 6 Feb 2015 13:21

    One problem is the history of the Ukraine which except for very short periods has always been part of Russia. Only an accident of fate made Ukraine a country and many of its citizens feel Russian and still want to be part of Russia.

    Russia never invaded the Ukraine because it didn't have to as it was Russia. It would be like say East Anglia becoming a separate state in UK just because a politician who lived there thought it might be nice and then finding itself a sovereign state. Khrushchev did this for the Ukraine when he was the boss. Khrushchev never thought the Soviet Union would break up and Ukraine become a separate country for only the second time in it's history.

    When the Soviet Union collapsed the USA treated it so badly. Instead of embracing it when it asked to join the EU Russia was rejected and the West has been encroaching on to it's borders ever since. No wonder Russia is fearful. The USA likes to fight wars in other people's countries. Good for business.

    Russia is big powerful and proud country. Ukraine used to be the major part of it and many living there may still want to be part of it too. The West should wake up and start seeking solutions fast. War is not an answer.


    Justthefactsman 6 Feb 2015 13:20

    Anybody seen pictures that confirm that Russian Federation troops are in the Eastern Ukraine ?

    With todays satellite technology it is almost possible to recognise a packet of cigarettes, how come we haven't seen any satellite images of these massive troop movements ?

    What has happened about the inquiry that is supposed to be investigating the shooting down of the Malayan airliner? Why is the progress not being reported.?

    Shit, it those crafty nasty Russians who are holding up the investigation. How? By asking to see the whole truth about the situation, and we wouldn't want to embarrass the coup inheritors in Kiev by revealing the truth, would we ?

    TrueCopy -> Eric Hoffmann 6 Feb 2015 13:17

    Dude there is no military solution to the mess. The most effective forces on the ground on the Ukraine regime side are Ukrainian "volunteer" paramilitary forces, who are coming from the western part of Ukraine, no one is talking giving them weapons, although Poland has been supporting them for a while. The Ukrainian army isn't going to fight any better no matter what they get. The best thing US can provide them is satellite intelligence, that is already doing. Russia isn't directly involved, but even if the invade Ukraine, there is not much we can do, it is better to just cut a deal and move on.

    JCDavis 6 Feb 2015 13:14

    So Hollande and Merkel and threatening Putin with early membership of Ukraine in NATO, completing Obama's new iron curtain earlier rather than later. Thus this stupid ploy will fail and Congress will throw gas on the fire (boneheads that they are) and Russia will move in with real troops and take all of southern Ukraine. This seems inevitable. Ukraine's goose was cooked when Ukrainian traitors conspired with the CIA Only the carving up is not complete.


    zchabj6 6 Feb 2015 13:13

    It is in the US strategic interest to have a war on Russia's border indefinitely as they already had a part in in Chechnya and Georgia. Georgia is now part of NATO so it worked quite well for the US despite the unnecessary loss of life, not that any nation cares anymore it seems.

    It is not in the interest of Russia, Eurozone, EU or any European state .

    Hence the Russian organized Minsk peace process and some belated EU help to make it happen while the US considers prolonging the war through weapons transfers as they have done and continue in Syria, another Iran/Russia ally.

    Seems the US is not happy at loosing year on year its percentage of global GDP and is aggressively trying to protect its satrapies or even enlarge them.

    [Feb 06, 2015] Recognition by Obama and Americals as "players" in Ukranian conflict

    Feb 3, 2015 | valery-pavlov.livejournal.com

    American political and economic language has the notion of "player". It is beyond morality (as well as U.S. foreign policy in General). The player in the financial market or political player in the middle East, etc. Well, if you play chess or a shoot-and-kill videogame game of some kind, the murder of a pawn, knight, or military unit is not subject to moral evaluation. That's what game requires.

    Recognition made by Obama that the USA has prepared a coup in Ukraine, is the recognition of a smug "player". Which slightly opened the card for psychological pressure signaling something to rebels or political opponents, or voters within the US.

    Classic moral definitions have been substituted by the USA neoliberal elite with the concepts, which they call "legitimacy". On this planet they now reserved for themselves that right to define what is "legitimate" and what is not.

    The problem is that directly or indirectly Americans kill not pawns and not units in videogame. But human beings. After ww2 toll of Americans victims is already on millions. Collapse of indigenous cultures, of the states, of established international contacts and relations, etc.. And they propose nothing in return for destroyed lives, cultures and states other then neoliberal order. Which is not a worthy replacement. Or offer of Washington consensus which was applied to several states-victims and destroyed all of them. All those IMF reforms does not work, because they were designed not to work and benefit countries in question but the USA and international corporations. Now those "gamers" face certain difficulties. Because the whole world is not the USA. Which remembers who caused suffering to many millions of people.

    But I digress. We are discussion Obama admission of the organization of year another coup d'état in another banana revolution (in this case - European county called Ukraine) and he provided some interesting details. Now about details.

    For example, I am sure that the group thugs in masks on the Maidan which brutally attacked f law-enforcement officers, which threw burning petrol at police and hit police with chains were iether of non-Ukrainian origin or specially brainwashed and trained by West units. Where they were trained? Who are these people? Who financed and built-up racist, anti-Russian hysteria in the media and on the Internet, in social networks? Who on the American side was negotiating with Putin and Yanukovich, how they cheated and they had expected? Give us names !

    Well, since Obama opened the card, then I wonder - what's next? And it would be nice to know the details of this dirty operation not after 50 years, but now. Were those methods, using which the USA essentially started civil war in Ukraine, legitimate? Are similar dirty method of overthrowing legitimate government now OK to everybody?

    [Feb 05, 2015] Merkel and Hollande to fly to Moscow in new effort to resolve Ukraine crisis by Shaun Walker in Kiev, Ian Traynor in Brussels, Dan Roberts in Washington and Alec Luhn in Moscow

    Notable quotes:
    "... is the most wasteful abuser of the world's scarce resources, ..."
    "... I have been to Croatia and Serbia I was in Vukovar a few years ago. It was truly horrendous. Yugoslavia was destabilized by the US government and that no one can deny. The UN had no chance against heavily armed Serbs and Croats to stop the chaos. US are doing the same in Ukraine. Well it is not the USA people its the 0.00001% of the USA, ..."
    "... The EU also has a similar problem, they need another country to leech off every few years to keep the EURO going. The moment countries start to drop out or the EU fails to find more victims to feed off, the EURO along with the EU will collapse. ..."
    "... General - the BBC is state-funded. Do you refuse to believe a word it says? But why is funding from a state less likely to produce balanced journalism than funding from the five or six billionaires who own almost all the world's media? Especially when those billionaires effectively control the state apparatus anyway. ..."
    "... I'm not condoning Russia's recent actions, but the American people and politicians seem incapable of "walking a mile in the other man's shoes". The USA has attempted to encircle Russia with armed NATO members - what do you think our reaction would be if Mexico and the Caribbean contained hostile troops and missiles aimed at us? I think we know the answer to that from the Cuban missile crisis. ..."
    "... The fundamental question Is, what brought Ukraine into this mess? It is the expansion of NATO to the backyards of Russia. It happened at a time when Russia was weak and was still struggling to recover from the collapse of the Soviet system upon which their life and economy was built. And what was the goal of the US to expand NATO to the doorsteps of Russia? The US policy of domination of the world. It is this policy that poses the greatest danger to the security of the world since the fall of the bipolar world in the early 90s. The world, especially the Europe is facing a critical choice at this point of time in history. Europe has to set itself free of the US bondage or stay a mute spectator to the aggressive and intolerant policies of the conservative hard liners in the US, that would multiply the conflicts across the globe. Today, these hard liners in the US pose the greatest threat to the stability and overall growth of the people of this planet. ..."
    "... Ethnic cleansing, though always popular with ultra-nationalists, is not the only way forward. Let the people decide. Not Kerry, not Merkel, not Putin, not Hollande, not Poroshenko not Yatzenyuk. Public votes. ..."
    "... Absolutely. And when are we going to here the truth about that damn plane crash?? ..."
    "... CNN is a joke, it should be called "CORRUPTED NEWS NETWORK". The sort of trash they report is what feeds all the Obama Drones, after all, they need their fuel from some where. ..."
    "... The thing Rand missed was the "government" is run by the same 1% that she praises as the "job creators". ..."
    "... They are playing the same "game" that sociopathic kings have played since the beginning of time. Why the "rest of us" allow ourselves to be governed by sociopaths remains a mystery. ..."
    "... That would be heading 180 degrees in the wrong direction. What if Russia had taken a similar stand over the 'territorial integrity of Serbia' during the Kosovo affair? Aren't the situations analogous? ..."
    "... I'm more and more disappointed with Merkel. ..."
    "... It does however look as if the Hawks want to re-arm Ukraine so that they don't have to pay! This is on a par with shooting the debt collector when he comes to your house. ..."
    "... I am sorry to say that the antics of western politicians are starting to resemble a virility contest and I would like this to cease forthwith as there are other far more serious problems to deal with. ..."
    "... Georgia had announced their withdrawal from the 'Coalition of the Billing' in Afghanistan and the Bushies conveniently airlifted their entire combat contingent back home almost overnight. ..."
    "... The US worked to stir up trouble for the democratically elected Ukrainian Government, under Yushchenko, despite the wishes of its EU Partners. At the time, US State Department Neo-Con Victoria Nuland was notoriously quoted as saying "F*ck the EU!" ..."
    "... Educate yourself please. This information is readily available. ..."
    Feb 05, 2015 | The Guardian


    Soul_Side -> Dick Harrison 5 Feb 2015 20:16

    Dick Harrison

    Better than being a russian proxy state, look how advanced America is

    Advanced? A nation that can't, or won't, provide adequate healthcare for its own citizens, has more than 40million living souls dependent on food stamps, that has the greatest income-disparity on the planet, is the most wasteful abuser of the world's scarce resources, trades the most weapons in the world, spends the most on war in the world, and imprisons the highest proportion of its citizens of all the countries in the world.

    You could be forgiven for not wanting to buy into all that.

    thomas142 -> ID9187603 5 Feb 2015 20:15

    I have been to Croatia and Serbia I was in Vukovar a few years ago. It was truly horrendous. Yugoslavia was destabilized by the US government and that no one can deny. The UN had no chance against heavily armed Serbs and Croats to stop the chaos. US are doing the same in Ukraine. Well it is not the USA people its the 0.00001% of the USA,

    AlienLifeForce Dugan222 5 Feb 2015 20:13

    The problem is the US depends on war to keep the USD going just like they need the petrodollar, without them the USD will be like a drop of water in the desert.

    The EU also has a similar problem, they need another country to leech off every few years to keep the EURO going. The moment countries start to drop out or the EU fails to find more victims to feed off, the EURO along with the EU will collapse.

    Remember Germany relies very much on export, which is why the EU increasing pressure to expand. Merkel has not been looking her self recently, what with everything in Greece going wrong and now Ukraine has gone to plan, things don't look too good for the USD and the EURO.

    Caroline Louise Generalken 5 Feb 2015 20:11

    General - the BBC is state-funded. Do you refuse to believe a word it says? But why is funding from a state less likely to produce balanced journalism than funding from the five or six billionaires who own almost all the world's media? Especially when those billionaires effectively control the state apparatus anyway.

    NigelRG 5 Feb 2015 20:09

    I'm not condoning Russia's recent actions, but the American people and politicians seem incapable of "walking a mile in the other man's shoes". The USA has attempted to encircle Russia with armed NATO members - what do you think our reaction would be if Mexico and the Caribbean contained hostile troops and missiles aimed at us? I think we know the answer to that from the Cuban missile crisis.

    nadodi 5 Feb 2015 20:07

    The fundamental question Is, what brought Ukraine into this mess? It is the expansion of NATO to the backyards of Russia. It happened at a time when Russia was weak and was still struggling to recover from the collapse of the Soviet system upon which their life and economy was built. And what was the goal of the US to expand NATO to the doorsteps of Russia? The US policy of domination of the world. It is this policy that poses the greatest danger to the security of the world since the fall of the bipolar world in the early 90s. The world, especially the Europe is facing a critical choice at this point of time in history. Europe has to set itself free of the US bondage or stay a mute spectator to the aggressive and intolerant policies of the conservative hard liners in the US, that would multiply the conflicts across the globe. Today, these hard liners in the US pose the greatest threat to the stability and overall growth of the people of this planet.

    desconocido Dick Harrison 5 Feb 2015 20:04

    I think it's a question of first or second language and also of cultural identity. And also of course noticing that you are being shafted by west ukrainian nazis.

    Davo3333 laSaya 5 Feb 2015 20:03

    Because the land they are living on has been Russian land for centuries. So Crimea is Russian and should never have been part of Ukraine at all after the Soviet Union split up and Eastern and Southern Ukraine are also Russian but the first step for those regions would be to form new independent countries which could then decide whether they wished to rejoin Russia or remain independent. The Ukrainians live in West Ukraine and it is them who should move into their own areas and leave Eastern and Southern Ukraine alone. And another thing the population of Russia has been increasing in the last few years , not decreasing as you have stated.

    Soul_Side laSaya 5 Feb 2015 20:01

    laSaya said:

    Why don't those Russian speaker just hop in a bus and journey to Russia. The Russian landmass is big enough to take those Russia lovers in.

    Let me understand this point of view exactly, you think they should leave their homes, livelihoods, their aged, disabled and infirm relatives too weak to travel, their land, their places of birth, their local culture and local identity and just move somewhere else because their neighbour seeks to dominate them? Would you?

    Ethnic cleansing, though always popular with ultra-nationalists, is not the only way forward. Let the people decide. Not Kerry, not Merkel, not Putin, not Hollande, not Poroshenko not Yatzenyuk. Public votes.

    angdavies 5 Feb 2015 19:56

    Ahhh.. I love the smell of proxy war in the morning!

    Just let Putin save some face. Any Ukrainian who loves her country should back any peace talks up to the hilt, otherwise there'll be no Ukraine worth living in if the US starts to pump in the weapons. That will kick-off full scale Russian nationalist jihadism - a war that cannot be won.

    AlienLifeForce -> Seriatim 5 Feb 2015 19:56

    Absolutely. And when are we going to here the truth about that damn plane crash??

    Strange you should ask, when I last looked, the US had decided that the findings of the investigation should remain classified. If there was any evidence to point the finger at Russia, don't you think they would have used it?

    glit00 -> senya 5 Feb 2015 19:50

    courtesy of google translate:

    Commander (Chief) under the extraordinary period, including a state of martial law or a battle, in order to arrest a soldier who commits an act that falls within the elements of a crime related to disobedience, resistance or threats boss, violence, unauthorized leaving the fighting positions and designated areas of deployment units (units) in the areas of combat missions, shall have the right to apply measures of physical restraint without causing damage to the health of military and special funds sufficient to stop illegal actions.

    In a battle commander (chief) can use weapons or give orders to subordinates of their application, unless otherwise impossible to stop the unauthorized retreat or other similar actions, while not causing the death of soldier.

    If circumstances permit, the commander (chief) before use of physical effects, special tools or weapons should give voice warning, shot up or by other means notify the person against whom he may apply such measures

    suzi 5 Feb 2015 19:38

    suspicions that Putin is seeking to split Europe and America

    He need hardly bother when the US itself is doing such a good job in that direction!

    cycokan -> thomas142 5 Feb 2015 19:36

    While I agree, that US foreign policy is often very, let's say, adventurous, I do not see them as idiots.

    Trying to force Germany or France and most, if not all other European countries into an open war with Russia would be the end of NATO and the end of any American sphere of influence in Europe, because, I can assure you, at least the German populace would simply never join such an adventure.

    AlienLifeForce Haynonnynonny 5 Feb 2015 19:40

    CNN is a joke, it should be called "CORRUPTED NEWS NETWORK". The sort of trash they report is what feeds all the Obama Drones, after all, they need their fuel from some where.

    AlienLifeForce -> MentalToo 5 Feb 2015 19:35

    Putin thinks that by making Merkel and Hollande come to him, he is the greater man.

    Putin did not make them come to him, Merkel and Hollande are going because if they have any sense, they will try and repair relations between Europe and Russia as well when an agreement can be made.

    He has basically created this war because the people of Ukraine dared to reject him.

    The US created the problems in Ukraine and if the people of Ukraine rejected Putin, why are large numbers of them heading towards the Russian boarder?

    he has disregarded everything from international law, human rights, human lives, basic humanity including been the source to numerous war crimes and crimes towards humanity.

    If anything this fits the description of the US more then Russia, especially when we look at the last 20 - 30 years. Russia has done everything that was agreed when the cold war ended and has since established good working relations world wide with out wars and conflicts.

    He claims it was because Russia was threatened and needed protection. But Russia wasn't.

    Again, Russia kept to the agreements made after the cold war ended, the US never did and has continued to move NATO ever closer to the Russian boarders. How does this represent good business relations from the west and why should Russia accept this to begin with.

    All this was simply because his ego was hurt.


    It is just as well Putin is not the sort of person you describe, because we would all be ash by now.

    If anything is "poor", its you with your lack of understanding and ignorance.

    KauaiJohnnie sasha19 5 Feb 2015 13:57

    Of course if Putin did nothing there wouldn't be a conflict. But NATO was pushing on Russia's borders in violation of the agreements made with Gorbachev 30 years ago. What possible benefit is that to you and me?

    Likewise, the deployment of Star Wars, which hasn't been shown to work but has cost billions (and billions) in Europe is hardly for protection against Iranian missiles.

    This is just to demonstrate the strength of the USA military. And for what purpose? In "Atlas Shrugged" why did the government want to build a bigger bomb? To threaten anyone and everyone who wouldn't bow to the government wishes. The thing Rand missed was the "government" is run by the same 1% that she praises as the "job creators".

    They are playing the same "game" that sociopathic kings have played since the beginning of time. Why the "rest of us" allow ourselves to be governed by sociopaths remains a mystery.

    roundthings 5 Feb 2015 13:55

    "We will make a new proposal to solve the conflict which will be based on Ukraine's territorial integrity."

    That would be heading 180 degrees in the wrong direction. What if Russia had taken a similar stand over the 'territorial integrity of Serbia' during the Kosovo affair? Aren't the situations analogous?

    Sure, Putin has been out of order. He deserves a smack. But the price of doing so is too high. These politician boneheads are dragging us into a war - a stupid war, an unnecessary war.

    I'm more and more disappointed with Merkel. Her first strike was the panicked flight out of nuclear. No 2 was not recognizing that, yes the Greeks need to be made to lift their game, maybe take on a few of Schaeuble's tax collectors; but mindless squeezing of the bloke on the Athenian street is in no-one's interest. Could her failure to see sense on Ukraine be strike no 3?

    Joe Bloggs 5 Feb 2015 13:55

    Phew! I just like to say Not In My Name as it looks to me as if Hawks are milking the situation for all it is worth so that they can have a go at Russia. As far as I know the land in dispute is populated by Russian speakers who make up 95% of the population. There was also a referendum which had a landslide result showing that almost everyone wanted to be allied with Russia.

    Of course the Hawks claimed that the result was invalid! IMHO it is really a problem caused by boundary disputes that came about when the USSR ceased to exist.

    I propose the same solution that was used by the British Raj in India in 1947, what could be simpler? As to Russia compensating the Ukraine, allegedly Ukraine owes Russia an astronomical amount in unpaid gas bills. It does however look as if the Hawks want to re-arm Ukraine so that they don't have to pay! This is on a par with shooting the debt collector when he comes to your house.

    I am sorry to say that the antics of western politicians are starting to resemble a virility contest and I would like this to cease forthwith as there are other far more serious problems to deal with.

    Spaceguy1 -> One sasha19 5 Feb 2015 13:54

    Naah, Zerohedge is predominantly a financial blog. Plenty of their articles are actually spot on. I use Zerohedge just as another source of information filtering out some of their conspiracies. Besides the article in Zerohedge just copied what the Russian news agency reported here; http://tass.ru/en/russia/775419

    Canajin -> ID8787761 5 Feb 2015 13:53

    They should also return Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Samoa, and Hawaii to their people. Not to mention Guam, Marianas, etc.

    BradBenson -> Gene428 5 Feb 2015 13:52

    Where do you get your information? We are the ones who have been constantly kicking the Russian Bear in the ass. Here are the facts.

    In regard to Georgia

    The Georgian Invasion of the neutral provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia was completely orchestrated by the Bushies, while Putin was attending the previous Olympic Games in China.

    Georgia had announced their withdrawal from the 'Coalition of the Billing' in Afghanistan and the Bushies conveniently airlifted their entire combat contingent back home almost overnight. They were then immediately deployed to attack the neutral provinces. The whole thing was an attempt to seize key Russian controlled oil pipelines from the Caucasus to the Black Sea.

    Then, as now, Putin was forced to react to aggression on his borders. He flew home, issued an ultimatum and then sent in the Russian Army to clean out the Georgian Invaders, chasing them all the way back to Tbilisi until their CIA installed President begged the world for help. Not surprisingly, none came, but John McCain was able to proudly proclaim, "We are all Georgians today".

    During the after battle clean-up, it was reported that there were a number of black soldiers among the dead Georgians. Those Georgians were most likely from Atlanta, Resaca and Augusta.

    In regard to the Crimea

    The presence of Russian ground forces and the only warm water ports for the Russian Navy made the Crimea a de facto Russian Territory. When the illegal coup d'état was pulled off in the Maidan, Putin and the Russian Military secured their bases on the Black Sea and in the Crimea.

    Why should the neo-Nazis in Kiev, or their CIA backed puppet-masters have thought that the Russians would allow this territory to be illegally seized as was the rest of the Ukraine? When coup d'état's occur, borders can change unexpectedly. The people of the Crimea overwhelmingly support the presence of the Russians.

    In regard to the coup d'état in Kiev

    The US worked to stir up trouble for the democratically elected Ukrainian Government, under Yushchenko, despite the wishes of its EU Partners. At the time, US State Department Neo-Con Victoria Nuland was notoriously quoted as saying "F*ck the EU!"

    However, during the rest of that famous 4 minute telephone call, Ms. Nuland was recorded as she outlined who the US wanted in the new Ukrainian Government--the one that would replace the existing government after it was overthrown. This happened despite the fact that Ukrainian Elections for a new President were already scheduled roughly two months hence. Then, against the wishes of its reluctant EU Partners, the US stage-managed the illegal coup d'état in Kiev using neo-Nazis as their vanguard in the streets.

    Educate yourself please. This information is readily available.

    ID5868758 -> ID8787761 5 Feb 2015 13:45

    "Russia invaded Georgia." A perfect example of a western lie, that has been repeated over and over again, so many times that the lie has become the "truth".

    [Feb 05, 2015] Merkel and Hollande to fly to Moscow in new effort to resolve Ukraine crisis by Shaun Walker in Kiev, Ian Traynor in Brussels, Dan Roberts in Washington and Alec Luhn in Moscow

    Notable quotes:
    "... is the most wasteful abuser of the world's scarce resources, ..."
    "... I have been to Croatia and Serbia I was in Vukovar a few years ago. It was truly horrendous. Yugoslavia was destabilized by the US government and that no one can deny. The UN had no chance against heavily armed Serbs and Croats to stop the chaos. US are doing the same in Ukraine. Well it is not the USA people its the 0.00001% of the USA, ..."
    "... The EU also has a similar problem, they need another country to leech off every few years to keep the EURO going. The moment countries start to drop out or the EU fails to find more victims to feed off, the EURO along with the EU will collapse. ..."
    "... General - the BBC is state-funded. Do you refuse to believe a word it says? But why is funding from a state less likely to produce balanced journalism than funding from the five or six billionaires who own almost all the world's media? Especially when those billionaires effectively control the state apparatus anyway. ..."
    "... I'm not condoning Russia's recent actions, but the American people and politicians seem incapable of "walking a mile in the other man's shoes". The USA has attempted to encircle Russia with armed NATO members - what do you think our reaction would be if Mexico and the Caribbean contained hostile troops and missiles aimed at us? I think we know the answer to that from the Cuban missile crisis. ..."
    "... The fundamental question Is, what brought Ukraine into this mess? It is the expansion of NATO to the backyards of Russia. It happened at a time when Russia was weak and was still struggling to recover from the collapse of the Soviet system upon which their life and economy was built. And what was the goal of the US to expand NATO to the doorsteps of Russia? The US policy of domination of the world. It is this policy that poses the greatest danger to the security of the world since the fall of the bipolar world in the early 90s. The world, especially the Europe is facing a critical choice at this point of time in history. Europe has to set itself free of the US bondage or stay a mute spectator to the aggressive and intolerant policies of the conservative hard liners in the US, that would multiply the conflicts across the globe. Today, these hard liners in the US pose the greatest threat to the stability and overall growth of the people of this planet. ..."
    "... Ethnic cleansing, though always popular with ultra-nationalists, is not the only way forward. Let the people decide. Not Kerry, not Merkel, not Putin, not Hollande, not Poroshenko not Yatzenyuk. Public votes. ..."
    "... Absolutely. And when are we going to here the truth about that damn plane crash?? ..."
    "... CNN is a joke, it should be called "CORRUPTED NEWS NETWORK". The sort of trash they report is what feeds all the Obama Drones, after all, they need their fuel from some where. ..."
    "... The thing Rand missed was the "government" is run by the same 1% that she praises as the "job creators". ..."
    "... They are playing the same "game" that sociopathic kings have played since the beginning of time. Why the "rest of us" allow ourselves to be governed by sociopaths remains a mystery. ..."
    "... That would be heading 180 degrees in the wrong direction. What if Russia had taken a similar stand over the 'territorial integrity of Serbia' during the Kosovo affair? Aren't the situations analogous? ..."
    "... I'm more and more disappointed with Merkel. ..."
    "... It does however look as if the Hawks want to re-arm Ukraine so that they don't have to pay! This is on a par with shooting the debt collector when he comes to your house. ..."
    "... I am sorry to say that the antics of western politicians are starting to resemble a virility contest and I would like this to cease forthwith as there are other far more serious problems to deal with. ..."
    "... Georgia had announced their withdrawal from the 'Coalition of the Billing' in Afghanistan and the Bushies conveniently airlifted their entire combat contingent back home almost overnight. ..."
    "... The US worked to stir up trouble for the democratically elected Ukrainian Government, under Yushchenko, despite the wishes of its EU Partners. At the time, US State Department Neo-Con Victoria Nuland was notoriously quoted as saying "F*ck the EU!" ..."
    "... Educate yourself please. This information is readily available. ..."
    Feb 05, 2015 | The Guardian


    Soul_Side -> Dick Harrison 5 Feb 2015 20:16

    Dick Harrison

    Better than being a russian proxy state, look how advanced America is

    Advanced? A nation that can't, or won't, provide adequate healthcare for its own citizens, has more than 40million living souls dependent on food stamps, that has the greatest income-disparity on the planet, is the most wasteful abuser of the world's scarce resources, trades the most weapons in the world, spends the most on war in the world, and imprisons the highest proportion of its citizens of all the countries in the world.

    You could be forgiven for not wanting to buy into all that.

    thomas142 -> ID9187603 5 Feb 2015 20:15

    I have been to Croatia and Serbia I was in Vukovar a few years ago. It was truly horrendous. Yugoslavia was destabilized by the US government and that no one can deny. The UN had no chance against heavily armed Serbs and Croats to stop the chaos. US are doing the same in Ukraine. Well it is not the USA people its the 0.00001% of the USA,

    AlienLifeForce Dugan222 5 Feb 2015 20:13

    The problem is the US depends on war to keep the USD going just like they need the petrodollar, without them the USD will be like a drop of water in the desert.

    The EU also has a similar problem, they need another country to leech off every few years to keep the EURO going. The moment countries start to drop out or the EU fails to find more victims to feed off, the EURO along with the EU will collapse.

    Remember Germany relies very much on export, which is why the EU increasing pressure to expand. Merkel has not been looking her self recently, what with everything in Greece going wrong and now Ukraine has gone to plan, things don't look too good for the USD and the EURO.

    Caroline Louise Generalken 5 Feb 2015 20:11

    General - the BBC is state-funded. Do you refuse to believe a word it says? But why is funding from a state less likely to produce balanced journalism than funding from the five or six billionaires who own almost all the world's media? Especially when those billionaires effectively control the state apparatus anyway.

    NigelRG 5 Feb 2015 20:09

    I'm not condoning Russia's recent actions, but the American people and politicians seem incapable of "walking a mile in the other man's shoes". The USA has attempted to encircle Russia with armed NATO members - what do you think our reaction would be if Mexico and the Caribbean contained hostile troops and missiles aimed at us? I think we know the answer to that from the Cuban missile crisis.

    nadodi 5 Feb 2015 20:07

    The fundamental question Is, what brought Ukraine into this mess? It is the expansion of NATO to the backyards of Russia. It happened at a time when Russia was weak and was still struggling to recover from the collapse of the Soviet system upon which their life and economy was built. And what was the goal of the US to expand NATO to the doorsteps of Russia? The US policy of domination of the world. It is this policy that poses the greatest danger to the security of the world since the fall of the bipolar world in the early 90s. The world, especially the Europe is facing a critical choice at this point of time in history. Europe has to set itself free of the US bondage or stay a mute spectator to the aggressive and intolerant policies of the conservative hard liners in the US, that would multiply the conflicts across the globe. Today, these hard liners in the US pose the greatest threat to the stability and overall growth of the people of this planet.

    desconocido Dick Harrison 5 Feb 2015 20:04

    I think it's a question of first or second language and also of cultural identity. And also of course noticing that you are being shafted by west ukrainian nazis.

    Davo3333 laSaya 5 Feb 2015 20:03

    Because the land they are living on has been Russian land for centuries. So Crimea is Russian and should never have been part of Ukraine at all after the Soviet Union split up and Eastern and Southern Ukraine are also Russian but the first step for those regions would be to form new independent countries which could then decide whether they wished to rejoin Russia or remain independent. The Ukrainians live in West Ukraine and it is them who should move into their own areas and leave Eastern and Southern Ukraine alone. And another thing the population of Russia has been increasing in the last few years , not decreasing as you have stated.

    Soul_Side laSaya 5 Feb 2015 20:01

    laSaya said:

    Why don't those Russian speaker just hop in a bus and journey to Russia. The Russian landmass is big enough to take those Russia lovers in.

    Let me understand this point of view exactly, you think they should leave their homes, livelihoods, their aged, disabled and infirm relatives too weak to travel, their land, their places of birth, their local culture and local identity and just move somewhere else because their neighbour seeks to dominate them? Would you?

    Ethnic cleansing, though always popular with ultra-nationalists, is not the only way forward. Let the people decide. Not Kerry, not Merkel, not Putin, not Hollande, not Poroshenko not Yatzenyuk. Public votes.

    angdavies 5 Feb 2015 19:56

    Ahhh.. I love the smell of proxy war in the morning!

    Just let Putin save some face. Any Ukrainian who loves her country should back any peace talks up to the hilt, otherwise there'll be no Ukraine worth living in if the US starts to pump in the weapons. That will kick-off full scale Russian nationalist jihadism - a war that cannot be won.

    AlienLifeForce -> Seriatim 5 Feb 2015 19:56

    Absolutely. And when are we going to here the truth about that damn plane crash??

    Strange you should ask, when I last looked, the US had decided that the findings of the investigation should remain classified. If there was any evidence to point the finger at Russia, don't you think they would have used it?

    glit00 -> senya 5 Feb 2015 19:50

    courtesy of google translate:

    Commander (Chief) under the extraordinary period, including a state of martial law or a battle, in order to arrest a soldier who commits an act that falls within the elements of a crime related to disobedience, resistance or threats boss, violence, unauthorized leaving the fighting positions and designated areas of deployment units (units) in the areas of combat missions, shall have the right to apply measures of physical restraint without causing damage to the health of military and special funds sufficient to stop illegal actions.

    In a battle commander (chief) can use weapons or give orders to subordinates of their application, unless otherwise impossible to stop the unauthorized retreat or other similar actions, while not causing the death of soldier.

    If circumstances permit, the commander (chief) before use of physical effects, special tools or weapons should give voice warning, shot up or by other means notify the person against whom he may apply such measures

    suzi 5 Feb 2015 19:38

    suspicions that Putin is seeking to split Europe and America

    He need hardly bother when the US itself is doing such a good job in that direction!

    cycokan -> thomas142 5 Feb 2015 19:36

    While I agree, that US foreign policy is often very, let's say, adventurous, I do not see them as idiots.

    Trying to force Germany or France and most, if not all other European countries into an open war with Russia would be the end of NATO and the end of any American sphere of influence in Europe, because, I can assure you, at least the German populace would simply never join such an adventure.

    AlienLifeForce Haynonnynonny 5 Feb 2015 19:40

    CNN is a joke, it should be called "CORRUPTED NEWS NETWORK". The sort of trash they report is what feeds all the Obama Drones, after all, they need their fuel from some where.

    AlienLifeForce -> MentalToo 5 Feb 2015 19:35

    Putin thinks that by making Merkel and Hollande come to him, he is the greater man.

    Putin did not make them come to him, Merkel and Hollande are going because if they have any sense, they will try and repair relations between Europe and Russia as well when an agreement can be made.

    He has basically created this war because the people of Ukraine dared to reject him.

    The US created the problems in Ukraine and if the people of Ukraine rejected Putin, why are large numbers of them heading towards the Russian boarder?

    he has disregarded everything from international law, human rights, human lives, basic humanity including been the source to numerous war crimes and crimes towards humanity.

    If anything this fits the description of the US more then Russia, especially when we look at the last 20 - 30 years. Russia has done everything that was agreed when the cold war ended and has since established good working relations world wide with out wars and conflicts.

    He claims it was because Russia was threatened and needed protection. But Russia wasn't.

    Again, Russia kept to the agreements made after the cold war ended, the US never did and has continued to move NATO ever closer to the Russian boarders. How does this represent good business relations from the west and why should Russia accept this to begin with.

    All this was simply because his ego was hurt.


    It is just as well Putin is not the sort of person you describe, because we would all be ash by now.

    If anything is "poor", its you with your lack of understanding and ignorance.

    KauaiJohnnie sasha19 5 Feb 2015 13:57

    Of course if Putin did nothing there wouldn't be a conflict. But NATO was pushing on Russia's borders in violation of the agreements made with Gorbachev 30 years ago. What possible benefit is that to you and me?

    Likewise, the deployment of Star Wars, which hasn't been shown to work but has cost billions (and billions) in Europe is hardly for protection against Iranian missiles.

    This is just to demonstrate the strength of the USA military. And for what purpose? In "Atlas Shrugged" why did the government want to build a bigger bomb? To threaten anyone and everyone who wouldn't bow to the government wishes. The thing Rand missed was the "government" is run by the same 1% that she praises as the "job creators".

    They are playing the same "game" that sociopathic kings have played since the beginning of time. Why the "rest of us" allow ourselves to be governed by sociopaths remains a mystery.

    roundthings 5 Feb 2015 13:55

    "We will make a new proposal to solve the conflict which will be based on Ukraine's territorial integrity."

    That would be heading 180 degrees in the wrong direction. What if Russia had taken a similar stand over the 'territorial integrity of Serbia' during the Kosovo affair? Aren't the situations analogous?

    Sure, Putin has been out of order. He deserves a smack. But the price of doing so is too high. These politician boneheads are dragging us into a war - a stupid war, an unnecessary war.

    I'm more and more disappointed with Merkel. Her first strike was the panicked flight out of nuclear. No 2 was not recognizing that, yes the Greeks need to be made to lift their game, maybe take on a few of Schaeuble's tax collectors; but mindless squeezing of the bloke on the Athenian street is in no-one's interest. Could her failure to see sense on Ukraine be strike no 3?

    Joe Bloggs 5 Feb 2015 13:55

    Phew! I just like to say Not In My Name as it looks to me as if Hawks are milking the situation for all it is worth so that they can have a go at Russia. As far as I know the land in dispute is populated by Russian speakers who make up 95% of the population. There was also a referendum which had a landslide result showing that almost everyone wanted to be allied with Russia.

    Of course the Hawks claimed that the result was invalid! IMHO it is really a problem caused by boundary disputes that came about when the USSR ceased to exist.

    I propose the same solution that was used by the British Raj in India in 1947, what could be simpler? As to Russia compensating the Ukraine, allegedly Ukraine owes Russia an astronomical amount in unpaid gas bills. It does however look as if the Hawks want to re-arm Ukraine so that they don't have to pay! This is on a par with shooting the debt collector when he comes to your house.

    I am sorry to say that the antics of western politicians are starting to resemble a virility contest and I would like this to cease forthwith as there are other far more serious problems to deal with.

    Spaceguy1 -> One sasha19 5 Feb 2015 13:54

    Naah, Zerohedge is predominantly a financial blog. Plenty of their articles are actually spot on. I use Zerohedge just as another source of information filtering out some of their conspiracies. Besides the article in Zerohedge just copied what the Russian news agency reported here; http://tass.ru/en/russia/775419

    Canajin -> ID8787761 5 Feb 2015 13:53

    They should also return Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Samoa, and Hawaii to their people. Not to mention Guam, Marianas, etc.

    BradBenson -> Gene428 5 Feb 2015 13:52

    Where do you get your information? We are the ones who have been constantly kicking the Russian Bear in the ass. Here are the facts.

    In regard to Georgia

    The Georgian Invasion of the neutral provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia was completely orchestrated by the Bushies, while Putin was attending the previous Olympic Games in China.

    Georgia had announced their withdrawal from the 'Coalition of the Billing' in Afghanistan and the Bushies conveniently airlifted their entire combat contingent back home almost overnight. They were then immediately deployed to attack the neutral provinces. The whole thing was an attempt to seize key Russian controlled oil pipelines from the Caucasus to the Black Sea.

    Then, as now, Putin was forced to react to aggression on his borders. He flew home, issued an ultimatum and then sent in the Russian Army to clean out the Georgian Invaders, chasing them all the way back to Tbilisi until their CIA installed President begged the world for help. Not surprisingly, none came, but John McCain was able to proudly proclaim, "We are all Georgians today".

    During the after battle clean-up, it was reported that there were a number of black soldiers among the dead Georgians. Those Georgians were most likely from Atlanta, Resaca and Augusta.

    In regard to the Crimea

    The presence of Russian ground forces and the only warm water ports for the Russian Navy made the Crimea a de facto Russian Territory. When the illegal coup d'état was pulled off in the Maidan, Putin and the Russian Military secured their bases on the Black Sea and in the Crimea.

    Why should the neo-Nazis in Kiev, or their CIA backed puppet-masters have thought that the Russians would allow this territory to be illegally seized as was the rest of the Ukraine? When coup d'état's occur, borders can change unexpectedly. The people of the Crimea overwhelmingly support the presence of the Russians.

    In regard to the coup d'état in Kiev

    The US worked to stir up trouble for the democratically elected Ukrainian Government, under Yushchenko, despite the wishes of its EU Partners. At the time, US State Department Neo-Con Victoria Nuland was notoriously quoted as saying "F*ck the EU!"

    However, during the rest of that famous 4 minute telephone call, Ms. Nuland was recorded as she outlined who the US wanted in the new Ukrainian Government--the one that would replace the existing government after it was overthrown. This happened despite the fact that Ukrainian Elections for a new President were already scheduled roughly two months hence. Then, against the wishes of its reluctant EU Partners, the US stage-managed the illegal coup d'état in Kiev using neo-Nazis as their vanguard in the streets.

    Educate yourself please. This information is readily available.

    ID5868758 -> ID8787761 5 Feb 2015 13:45

    "Russia invaded Georgia." A perfect example of a western lie, that has been repeated over and over again, so many times that the lie has become the "truth".

    [Feb 04, 2015] Donetsk hit by shells as violence intensifies in Ukraine – video

    Note the headline " Donetsk hit by shells as violence intensifies in Ukraine". No one is responsible for shelling. It was just hit. Compare this with headlines about supposed "separatists" shellings.
    theguardian.com

    At least three people were killed in a series of shellings in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Wednesday that pro-Russian separatists said were Uragan missiles fired by Ukrainian forces. Earlier, the Ukrainian military said two of its soldiers had been killed and 18 wounded in fighting against pro-Russian separatists in the previous 24 hours

    [Feb 04, 2015] Q A: Should US send lethal military assistance to Ukraine?

    Feb 03, 2015 | The Guardian

    AlienLifeForce -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 22:29

    Ukrainian Government: "No Russian Troops Are Fighting Against Us"
    Posted on January 30, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.

    Ukraine's top general is contradicting allegations by the Obama Administration and by his own Ukrainian Government, by saying that no Russian troops are fighting against the Ukrainian Government's forces in the formerly Ukrainian, but now separatist, area, where the Ukrainian civil war is being waged.

    The Chief of Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, is saying, in that news-report, which is dated on Thursday January 29th, that the only Russian citizens who are fighting in the contested region, are residents in that region, or of Ukraine, and also some Russian citizens (and this does not deny that perhaps some of other countries' citizens are fighting there, inasmuch as American mercenaries have already been noted to have been participating on the Ukrainian Government's side), who "are members of illegal armed groups," meaning fighters who are not paid by any government, but instead are just "individual citizens" (as opposed to foreign-government-paid ones). General Muzhenko also says, emphatically, that the "Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army."

    In other words: He is explicitly and clearly denying the very basis for the EU's sanctions against Russia, and for the U.S.'s sanctions against Russia: all of the sanctions against Russia are based on the falsehood that Ukraine is fighting against "the regular units of the Russian army" - i.e., against the Russian-Government-controlled-and-trained fighting forces.

    The allegation to the effect that Ukraine is instead fighting against "regular units of the Russian army" is the allegation that Vladimir Putin's Russia has invaded Ukraine, and it is the entire basis for the economic sanctions that are in force against Russia.

    Those sanctions should therefore be immediately removed, with apology, and with compensation being paid to all individuals who have been suffering them; and it is therefore incumbent upon the Russian Government to pursue, through all legally available channels, restitution, plus damages, against the perpetrators of that dangerous fraud - and the news reports have already made clear precisely whom those persons are, who have asserted, as public officials, what can only be considered to be major libel.

    Otherwise, Ukraine's top general should be fired, for asserting what he has just asserted.

    If what General Muzhenko says is true, then he is a hero for having risked his entire career by having gone public with this courageous statement. And, if what he says is false, then he has no place heading Ukraine's military.

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/ukrainian-government-russian-troops-fighting-us.html

    USCricketer 3 Feb 2015 22:06

    While there is no doubt about covert US military aid already going to Ukraine it'll be another foolhardy step for Mr. Obama, or for the Republicans now in control, to overtly jump into the Ukrainian mess. One 'unintended consequence' of raising such stakes would be Russia coming out openly in support of Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, which will be extremely bad news for Israel and the US Jewish American lobby.

    Did somebody say that Obama and the Republicans are regretting the 'unintended consequences' in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Syria, in Yemen ??

    And they now want to open another front in Ukraine?

    Where will the money for this yet another foolhardy endeavor come from ?

    Ah, No..I forgot the news that Mr. Obama is setting up a brand new dollar printing press to pay for his Ukraine adventure to-be..


    greatwhitehunter -> EugeneGur 3 Feb 2015 21:14

    the beating kiev took proir to the ceasefire was requested by poroshenko. The separatists targeted the azov battalion . poroshenko new he couldnt have a ceasefire until the asov battalion was taken down a peg or two. kiev is not a united force.

    poroshenko is more likely to side with the east than the far right in the long term. The real civil war has yet to start.

    PeraIlic -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 20:13

    i want russia to take their soldiers and weapons back from ukraine and stop invading a spovreign country quite simple. then war will be over meanwhile you advocate further bloodshed all the time with no regard for ukrainians

    I think it's better Poroshenko to return his army to the west, where they came from, and miners from Donbas that he left alone to dig coal as before.


    EugeneGur -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 19:12

    I hope Russia did equip them enough to kick the Ukrs out of Donbass for good. It is intolerable to watch day after day as unarmed people are deliberately targeted and killed and do nothing. Finally, the Russian government came to its senses realizing that without a decisive military victory by the Donbass fighters there won't be any peace in Ukraine.

    [Feb 04, 2015] Q A: Should US send lethal military assistance to Ukraine?

    Feb 03, 2015 | The Guardian

    AlienLifeForce -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 22:29

    Ukrainian Government: "No Russian Troops Are Fighting Against Us"
    Posted on January 30, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.

    Ukraine's top general is contradicting allegations by the Obama Administration and by his own Ukrainian Government, by saying that no Russian troops are fighting against the Ukrainian Government's forces in the formerly Ukrainian, but now separatist, area, where the Ukrainian civil war is being waged.

    The Chief of Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, is saying, in that news-report, which is dated on Thursday January 29th, that the only Russian citizens who are fighting in the contested region, are residents in that region, or of Ukraine, and also some Russian citizens (and this does not deny that perhaps some of other countries' citizens are fighting there, inasmuch as American mercenaries have already been noted to have been participating on the Ukrainian Government's side), who "are members of illegal armed groups," meaning fighters who are not paid by any government, but instead are just "individual citizens" (as opposed to foreign-government-paid ones). General Muzhenko also says, emphatically, that the "Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army."

    In other words: He is explicitly and clearly denying the very basis for the EU's sanctions against Russia, and for the U.S.'s sanctions against Russia: all of the sanctions against Russia are based on the falsehood that Ukraine is fighting against "the regular units of the Russian army" - i.e., against the Russian-Government-controlled-and-trained fighting forces.

    The allegation to the effect that Ukraine is instead fighting against "regular units of the Russian army" is the allegation that Vladimir Putin's Russia has invaded Ukraine, and it is the entire basis for the economic sanctions that are in force against Russia.

    Those sanctions should therefore be immediately removed, with apology, and with compensation being paid to all individuals who have been suffering them; and it is therefore incumbent upon the Russian Government to pursue, through all legally available channels, restitution, plus damages, against the perpetrators of that dangerous fraud - and the news reports have already made clear precisely whom those persons are, who have asserted, as public officials, what can only be considered to be major libel.

    Otherwise, Ukraine's top general should be fired, for asserting what he has just asserted.

    If what General Muzhenko says is true, then he is a hero for having risked his entire career by having gone public with this courageous statement. And, if what he says is false, then he has no place heading Ukraine's military.

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/ukrainian-government-russian-troops-fighting-us.html

    USCricketer 3 Feb 2015 22:06

    While there is no doubt about covert US military aid already going to Ukraine it'll be another foolhardy step for Mr. Obama, or for the Republicans now in control, to overtly jump into the Ukrainian mess. One 'unintended consequence' of raising such stakes would be Russia coming out openly in support of Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, which will be extremely bad news for Israel and the US Jewish American lobby.

    Did somebody say that Obama and the Republicans are regretting the 'unintended consequences' in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Syria, in Yemen ??

    And they now want to open another front in Ukraine?

    Where will the money for this yet another foolhardy endeavor come from ?

    Ah, No..I forgot the news that Mr. Obama is setting up a brand new dollar printing press to pay for his Ukraine adventure to-be..


    greatwhitehunter -> EugeneGur 3 Feb 2015 21:14

    the beating kiev took proir to the ceasefire was requested by poroshenko. The separatists targeted the azov battalion . poroshenko new he couldnt have a ceasefire until the asov battalion was taken down a peg or two. kiev is not a united force.

    poroshenko is more likely to side with the east than the far right in the long term. The real civil war has yet to start.

    PeraIlic -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 20:13

    i want russia to take their soldiers and weapons back from ukraine and stop invading a spovreign country quite simple. then war will be over meanwhile you advocate further bloodshed all the time with no regard for ukrainians

    I think it's better Poroshenko to return his army to the west, where they came from, and miners from Donbas that he left alone to dig coal as before.


    EugeneGur -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 19:12

    I hope Russia did equip them enough to kick the Ukrs out of Donbass for good. It is intolerable to watch day after day as unarmed people are deliberately targeted and killed and do nothing. Finally, the Russian government came to its senses realizing that without a decisive military victory by the Donbass fighters there won't be any peace in Ukraine.

    [Feb 04, 2015] DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA: War Is the new normal By William J Astore

    The U.S. military's recourse to private contractors has strengthened the profit motive for war-making and prolonged wars as well
    February 1, 2015 | atimes.com

    It was launched immediately after the 9/11 attacks, when I was still in the military, and almost immediately became known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT. Pentagon insiders called it "the long war," an open-ended, perhaps unending, conflict against nations and terror networks mainly of a radical Islamist bent. It saw the revival of counterinsurgency doctrine, buried in the aftermath of defeat in Vietnam, and a reinterpretation of that disaster as well.

    Over the years, its chief characteristic became ever clearer: a "Groundhog Day" kind of repetition. Just when you thought it was over (Iraq, Afghanistan), just after victory (of a sort) was declared, it began again.

    Now, as we find ourselves enmeshed in Iraq War 3.0, what better way to memorialize the post-9/11 American way of war than through repetition. Back in July 2010, I wrote an article for TomDispatch on the seven reasons why America can't stop making war.

    More than four years later, with the war on terror still ongoing, with the mission eternally unaccomplished, here's a fresh take on the top seven reasons why never-ending war is the new normal in America. In this sequel, I make only one promise: no declarations of victory (and mark it on your calendars, I'm planning to be back with seven new reasons in 2019).

    1. The privatization of war: The U.S. military's recourse to private contractors has strengthened the profit motive for war-making and prolonged wars as well. Unlike the citizen-soldiers of past eras, the mobilized warrior corporations of America's new mercenary moment -- the Halliburton/KBRs (nearly $40 billion in contracts for the Iraq War alone), the DynCorps ($4.1 billion to train 150,000 Iraqi police), and the Blackwater/Xe/Academis ($1.3 billion in Iraq, along with boatloads of controversy) -- have no incentive to demobilize. Like most corporations, their business model is based on profit through growth, and growth is most rapid when wars and preparations for more of them are the favored options in Washington.

    "Freedom isn't free," as a popular conservative bumper sticker puts it, and neither is war. My father liked the saying, "He who pays the piper calls the tune," and today's mercenary corporations have been calling for a lot of military marches piping in $138 billion in contracts for Iraq alone, according to the Financial Times. And if you think that the privatization of war must at least reduce government waste, think again: the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated in 2011 that fraud, waste, and abuse accounted for up to $60 billion of the money spent in Iraq alone.

    To corral American-style war, the mercenaries must be defanged or deflated. European rulers learned this the hard way during the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century. At that time, powerful mercenary captains like Albrecht von Wallenstein ran amok. Only Wallenstein's assassination and the assertion of near absolutist powers by monarchs bent on curbing war before they went bankrupt finally brought the mercenaries to heel, a victory as hard won as it was essential to Europe's survival and eventual expansion. (Europeans then exported their wars to foreign shores, but that's another story.)

    2. The embrace of the national security state by both major parties: Jimmy Carter was the last president to attempt to exercise any kind of control over the national security state. A former Navy nuclear engineer who had served under the demanding Admiral Hyman Rickover, Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber and fought for a U.S. foreign policy based on human rights. Widely pilloried for talking about nuclear war with his young daughter Amy, Carter was further attacked for being "weak" on defense. His defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 inaugurated 12 years of dominance by Republican presidents that opened the financial floodgates for the Department of Defense. That taught Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council a lesson when it came to the wisdom of wrapping the national security state in a welcoming embrace, which they did, however uncomfortably. This expedient turn to the right by the Democrats in the Clinton years served as a temporary booster shot when it came to charges of being "soft" on defense -- until Republicans upped the ante by going "all-in" on military crusades in the aftermath of 9/11.

    Since his election in 2008, Barack Obama has done little to alter the course set by his predecessors. He, too, has chosen not to challenge Washington's prevailing catechism of war. Republicans have responded, however, not by muting their criticism, but by upping the ante yet again. How else to explain House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in March? That address promises to be a pep talk for the Republicans, as well as a smack down of the Obama administration and its "appeasenik" policies toward Iran and Islamic radicalism.

    Serious oversight, let alone opposition to the national security state by Congress or a mainstream political party, has been missing in action for years and must now, in the wake of the Senate Torture Report fiasco (from which the CIA emerged stronger, not weaker), be presumed dead. The recent midterm election triumph of Republican war hawks and the prospective lineup of candidates for president in 2016 does not bode well when it comes to reining in the national security state in any foreseeable future.

    3. "Support Our Troops" as a substitute for thought. You've seen them everywhere: "Support Our Troops" stickers. In fact, the "support" in that slogan generally means acquiescence when it comes to American-style war. The truth is that we've turned the all-volunteer military into something like a foreign legion, deploying it again and again to our distant battle zones and driving it into the ground in wars that amount to strategic folly. Instead of admitting their mistakes, America's leaders have worked to obscure them by endlessly overpraising our "warriors" as so many universal heroes. This may salve our collective national conscience, but it's a form of cheap grace that saves no lives -- and wins no wars.

    Instead, this country needs to listen more carefully to its troops, especially the war critics who have risked their lives while fighting overseas. Organizations like Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace are good places to start.

    4. Fighting a redacted war. War, like the recent Senate torture report, is redacted in America. Its horrors and mistakes are suppressed, its patriotic whistleblowers punished, even as the American people are kept in a demobilized state. The act of going to war no longer represents the will of the people, as represented by formal Congressional declarations of war as the U.S. Constitution demands. Instead, in these years, Americans were told to go to Disney World (as George W. Bush suggested in the wake of 9/11) and keep shopping. They're encouraged not to pay too much attention to war's casualties and costs, especially when those costs involve foreigners with funny-sounding names (after all, they are, as American sniper Chris Kyle so indelicately put it in his book, just "savages").

    Redacted war hides the true cost of a permanent state of killing from the American people, if not from foreign observers. Ignorance and apathy reign, even as a national security state that is essentially a shadow government equates its growth with your safety.

    5. Threat inflation: There's nothing new about threat inflation. We saw plenty of it during the Cold War (nonexistent missile and bomber gaps, for example). Fear sells and we've had quite a dose of it in the twenty-first century, from ISIS to Ebola. But a more important truth is that fear is a mind-killer, a debate-stifler.

    Back in September, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham warned that ISIS and its radical Islamic army was coming to America to kill us all. ISIS, of course, is a regional power with no ability to mount significant operations against the United States. But fear is so commonplace, so effectively stoked in this country that Americans routinely and wildly exaggerate the threat posed by al-Qaeda or ISIS or the bogeyman du jour.

    Decades ago, as a young lieutenant in the Air Force, I was hunkered down in Cheyenne Mountain during the Cold War. It was the ultimate citadel-cum-bomb-shelter, and those in it were believed to have a 70% likelihood of surviving a five-megaton nuclear blast. There, not surprisingly, I found myself contemplating the very real possibility of a thermonuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, a war that would have annihilated life as we knew it, indeed much of life on our planet thanks to the phenomenon of nuclear winter. You'll excuse me for not shaking in my boots at the threat of ISIS coming to get me. Or of Sharia Law coming to my local town hall. With respect to such fears, America needs, as Hillary Clinton said in an admittedly different context, to "grow a pair."

    6. Defining the world as a global battlefield: In fortress America, all realms have by now become battle spheres. Not only much of the planet, the seas, air, and space, as well as the country's borders and its increasingly up-armored police forces, but the world of thought, the insides of our minds. Think of the 17 intertwined intelligence outfits in "the U.S. Intelligence Community" and their ongoing "surge" for information dominance across every mode of human communication, as well as the surveillance of everything. And don't forget the national security state's leading role in making cyberwar a reality. (Indeed, Washington launched the first cyberwar in history by deploying the Stuxnet computer worm against Iran.)

    Think of all this as a global matrix that rests on war, empowering disaster capitalism and the corporate complexes that have formed around the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and that intelligence community. A militarized matrix doesn't blink at $1.45 trillion dollars devoted to the F-35, a single under-performing jet fighter, nor at projections of $355 billion over the next decade for "modernizing" the U.S. nuclear arsenal, weapons that Barack Obama vowed to abolish in 2009.

    7. The new "normal" in America is war: The 9/11 attacks happened more than 13 years ago, which means that no teenagers in America can truly remember a time when the country was at peace. "War time" is their normal; peace, a fairy tale.

    What's truly "exceptional" in twenty-first-century America is any articulated vision of what a land at peace with itself and other nations might be like. Instead, war, backed by a diet of fear, is the backdrop against which the young have grown to adulthood. It's the background noise of their world, so much a part of their lives that they hardly recognize it for what it is. And that's the most insidious danger of them all.

    How do we inoculate our children against such a permanent state of war and the war state itself? I have one simple suggestion: just stop it. All of it. Stop making war a never-ending part of our lives and stop celebrating it, too. War should be the realm of the extreme, of the abnormal. It should be the death of normalcy, not the dreary norm.

    It's never too soon, America, to enlist in that good fight!

    William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular. His D.Phil. is in Modern History from the University of Oxford. He's just plain tired of war and would like to see the next politician braying for it be deployed with a rifle to the front lines of battle. He edits the blog The Contrary Perspective.

    Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

    Copyright 2015 William J. Astore

    More …

    [Feb 03, 2015] The Golden Age Of Black Ops: US Special Forces Have Already Deployed To 105 Nations This Year

    Feb 03, 2015 | zerohedge.com

    During the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2014, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed to 133 countries - roughly 70% of the nations on the planet - according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt, a public affairs officer with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). And this year could be a record-breaker, just 66 days into fiscal 2015 - America's most elite troops had already set foot in 105 nations, approximately 80% of 2014's total. Despite its massive scale and scope, this secret global war across much of the planet is unknown to most Americans…"We want to be everywhere," said Votel at Geolnt...

    [Feb 02, 2015] Ukraine crisis: Kiev hopes talks will go ahead despite renewed violence

    So after killing several hundred thousand Iraqis the USA want to kill several hundred thousand Ukrainians to further imperial ambitions of neocon elite... Now we have the situation that that reminds me Spanish civil war.
    Notable quotes:
    "... it would take far more than these two and a few russians to instigate a civil war in Ukraine. ..."
    Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

    The recent upsurge in violence has alarmed Ukraine's western allies, with US secretary of state John Kerry announcing plans to express his support for the nation during talks in Kiev on Thursday with Poroshenko and prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.


    fedupwiththeliesalso -> maninBATHTUB 2 Feb 2015 05:48

    The situation is far more complex than that.

    it would take far more than these two and a few russians to instigate a civil war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government were never attacked by anyone in the east or russia. But it attacked Easterners. To say this is a Russians instigated situation is untrue.

    IvanMills 1 Feb 2015 22:48

    Kiev launched a civil war against its citizens in the east. Kiev's military is bombing cities killing civilians and destroying property.

    What do the US and the EU have to do with another country's internal conflict.


    AlienLifeForce Oskar Jaeger 1 Feb 2015 19:58

    Yes, its rediculous that thousands of civilians have been killed while the EU & US turn their backs and blame Russia for an invasion they cant even prove. Must be hard for the US to explain with all those drones they have?


    AlienLifeForce Oskar Jaeger 1 Feb 2015 19:29

    There is no doubt that the events that have taken place in Ukraine have been very interesting, and like I have pointed out before, I have always been curious as to why there has not been any real news coverage on the ground from the western media since the government was overthrown. Because of this you end up looking for further information through the web, like most sensible people do. I can honestly say I have followed this story from the start and like I said, when you have interest in something, you want to know everything about it. What has surprised me the most, is that I have not been able to find any evidence to support the Russian invasion. Instaed I have found out about Tech Camp, Black Water and all the other reasons you can think of that support the interest of the EU & US, very interesting.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576490/Are-Blackwater-active-Ukraine-Videos-spark-talk-U-S-mercenary-outfit-deployed-Donetsk.html

    AlienLifeForce

    The Chief of Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, is saying, in that news-report, which is dated on Thursday January 29th, that the only Russian citizens who are fighting in the contested region, are residents in that region, or of Ukraine, and also some Russian citizens (and this does not deny that perhaps some of other countries' citizens are fighting there, inasmuch as American mercenaries have already been noted to have been participating on the Ukrainian Government's side), who "are members of illegal armed groups," meaning fighters who are not paid by any government, but instead are just "individual citizens" (as opposed to foreign-government-paid ones). General Muzhenko also says, emphatically, that the "Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army."

    In other words: He is explicitly and clearly denying the very basis for the EU's sanctions against Russia, and for the U.S.'s sanctions against Russia: all of the sanctions against Russia are based on the falsehood that Ukraine is fighting against "the regular units of the Russian army" - i.e., against the Russian-Government-controlled-and-trained fighting forces.

    The allegation to the effect that Ukraine is instead fighting against "regular units of the Russian army" is the allegation that Vladimir Putin's Russia has invaded Ukraine, and it is the entire basis for the economic sanctions that are in force against Russia.

    Those sanctions should therefore be immediately removed, with apology, and with compensation being paid to all individuals who have been suffering them; and it is therefore incumbent upon the Russian Government to pursue, through all legally available channels, restitution, plus damages, against the perpetrators of that dangerous fraud - and the news reports have already made clear precisely whom those persons are, who have asserted, as public officials, what can only be considered to be major libel.

    AlienLifeForce

    Ukranian general admitted junta targeted purposely civilians and perfirmed genocide just to get Russia involved in conflict but failed.

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/ukrainian-government-russian-troops-fighting-us.html


    fedupwiththeliesalso -> jezzam 1 Feb 2015 17:52

    "democracy, justice, freedom of speech, increased happiness, health, prosperity"

    What does America know of any of those things? They only apply if you can afford it.

    Joao Silva 1 Feb 2015 17:19

    The result that came out the ballots in Greece are a signal to the other opposition leaders in Europe. A unanimous decision to sanction Russia over Ukraine turned out to change the regime in Greece. Unanimous is stupidity. Spain is going to be the next. I have no bets on the third, forth ones.

    So it seems that to confront EU's hardness on Russia can change the mind of voters across Europe. after all, it is only a USA/UK/France/Germany/Poland, Ukraine(Big 6) war. The others countries will get nothing but losses on their fragile economies. But they had been, until Greece's voters changed it, being like sheep heading to the slaughterhouse following the command of the Big 6.

    LinkMeyer maninBATHTUB 1 Feb 2015 15:57

    "
    The best weapon against a psychopath is to let them destroy themselves."
    How long will it take you?

    GardenShedFever Metronome151 1 Feb 2015 15:46

    I have read this unsupported accusation against Russia many times, yet when the facts on the ground are ascertained, it is Kiev that sent its tanks against its own people in Donetsk and Luhansk. Those East Ukrainians, as Crimeans before them, rejected Kiev's violence, violence fomented in Lviv, Kiev, and further afield, Brussels and Washington. They have looked to Russia for help once the shells began to rain down on them. Russia's response has been less than requested, but has halted at least some of Kiev's murderous rampage. At the least, it has restricted Kiev's air support for its mercenerary brigades. For that, the people of East Ukraine will be forever thankful.

    [Feb 02, 2015] Ukraine crisis: Kiev hopes talks will go ahead despite renewed violence

    So after killing several hundred thousand Iraqis the USA want to kill several hundred thousand Ukrainians to further imperial ambitions of neocon elite... Now we have the situation that that reminds me Spanish civil war.
    Notable quotes:
    "... it would take far more than these two and a few russians to instigate a civil war in Ukraine. ..."
    Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

    The recent upsurge in violence has alarmed Ukraine's western allies, with US secretary of state John Kerry announcing plans to express his support for the nation during talks in Kiev on Thursday with Poroshenko and prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.


    fedupwiththeliesalso -> maninBATHTUB 2 Feb 2015 05:48

    The situation is far more complex than that.

    it would take far more than these two and a few russians to instigate a civil war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government were never attacked by anyone in the east or russia. But it attacked Easterners. To say this is a Russians instigated situation is untrue.

    IvanMills 1 Feb 2015 22:48

    Kiev launched a civil war against its citizens in the east. Kiev's military is bombing cities killing civilians and destroying property.

    What do the US and the EU have to do with another country's internal conflict.


    AlienLifeForce Oskar Jaeger 1 Feb 2015 19:58

    Yes, its rediculous that thousands of civilians have been killed while the EU & US turn their backs and blame Russia for an invasion they cant even prove. Must be hard for the US to explain with all those drones they have?


    AlienLifeForce Oskar Jaeger 1 Feb 2015 19:29

    There is no doubt that the events that have taken place in Ukraine have been very interesting, and like I have pointed out before, I have always been curious as to why there has not been any real news coverage on the ground from the western media since the government was overthrown. Because of this you end up looking for further information through the web, like most sensible people do. I can honestly say I have followed this story from the start and like I said, when you have interest in something, you want to know everything about it. What has surprised me the most, is that I have not been able to find any evidence to support the Russian invasion. Instaed I have found out about Tech Camp, Black Water and all the other reasons you can think of that support the interest of the EU & US, very interesting.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576490/Are-Blackwater-active-Ukraine-Videos-spark-talk-U-S-mercenary-outfit-deployed-Donetsk.html

    AlienLifeForce

    The Chief of Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, is saying, in that news-report, which is dated on Thursday January 29th, that the only Russian citizens who are fighting in the contested region, are residents in that region, or of Ukraine, and also some Russian citizens (and this does not deny that perhaps some of other countries' citizens are fighting there, inasmuch as American mercenaries have already been noted to have been participating on the Ukrainian Government's side), who "are members of illegal armed groups," meaning fighters who are not paid by any government, but instead are just "individual citizens" (as opposed to foreign-government-paid ones). General Muzhenko also says, emphatically, that the "Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army."

    In other words: He is explicitly and clearly denying the very basis for the EU's sanctions against Russia, and for the U.S.'s sanctions against Russia: all of the sanctions against Russia are based on the falsehood that Ukraine is fighting against "the regular units of the Russian army" - i.e., against the Russian-Government-controlled-and-trained fighting forces.

    The allegation to the effect that Ukraine is instead fighting against "regular units of the Russian army" is the allegation that Vladimir Putin's Russia has invaded Ukraine, and it is the entire basis for the economic sanctions that are in force against Russia.

    Those sanctions should therefore be immediately removed, with apology, and with compensation being paid to all individuals who have been suffering them; and it is therefore incumbent upon the Russian Government to pursue, through all legally available channels, restitution, plus damages, against the perpetrators of that dangerous fraud - and the news reports have already made clear precisely whom those persons are, who have asserted, as public officials, what can only be considered to be major libel.

    AlienLifeForce

    Ukranian general admitted junta targeted purposely civilians and perfirmed genocide just to get Russia involved in conflict but failed.

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/ukrainian-government-russian-troops-fighting-us.html


    fedupwiththeliesalso -> jezzam 1 Feb 2015 17:52

    "democracy, justice, freedom of speech, increased happiness, health, prosperity"

    What does America know of any of those things? They only apply if you can afford it.

    Joao Silva 1 Feb 2015 17:19

    The result that came out the ballots in Greece are a signal to the other opposition leaders in Europe. A unanimous decision to sanction Russia over Ukraine turned out to change the regime in Greece. Unanimous is stupidity. Spain is going to be the next. I have no bets on the third, forth ones.

    So it seems that to confront EU's hardness on Russia can change the mind of voters across Europe. after all, it is only a USA/UK/France/Germany/Poland, Ukraine(Big 6) war. The others countries will get nothing but losses on their fragile economies. But they had been, until Greece's voters changed it, being like sheep heading to the slaughterhouse following the command of the Big 6.

    LinkMeyer maninBATHTUB 1 Feb 2015 15:57

    "
    The best weapon against a psychopath is to let them destroy themselves."
    How long will it take you?

    GardenShedFever Metronome151 1 Feb 2015 15:46

    I have read this unsupported accusation against Russia many times, yet when the facts on the ground are ascertained, it is Kiev that sent its tanks against its own people in Donetsk and Luhansk. Those East Ukrainians, as Crimeans before them, rejected Kiev's violence, violence fomented in Lviv, Kiev, and further afield, Brussels and Washington. They have looked to Russia for help once the shells began to rain down on them. Russia's response has been less than requested, but has halted at least some of Kiev's murderous rampage. At the least, it has restricted Kiev's air support for its mercenerary brigades. For that, the people of East Ukraine will be forever thankful.

    [Feb 02, 2015] 'US wanted Sgt Bergdahl back from captivity, but silenced'

    Feb 02, 2015 | RT Op-Edge

    The US made an exception for Bowe Bergdahl, swapping him for five Gitmo prisoners as the Pentagon could not afford to have him in captivity forever, former US marine Ross Caputi told RT.But the military did not want Bergdahl to speak, either.

    Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in eastern Afghanistan in 2009. He was released last May after being swapped for five detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

    Bergdahl was rather critical in his statements about the US Army. In his e-mails to the parents sergeant wrote:

    "I'm ashamed to be an American. The US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies."

    Now the US government wants to charge Bergdahl with desertion.

    RT: Is the US Army simply out for revenge here?

    Ross Caputi: There are probably some individuals that are. I don't know if that is the policy of more higher-up people within the command. It does look like they are making a consolidated effort to keep everything quiet about Bowe Bergdahl case.

    RT: Sergeant Bergdahl was highly critical about the US Army in Afghanistan. Is there any truth in what he says, what do you think?

    RC: I think that he definitely had some legitimate criticism, especially in the letters that he wrote to his parents before he deserted. He was very upset about the abuses that were going on within the military, particularly within the rank structure. And he was also very upset about how their operations were harming civilians in Afghanistan. Those were totally valid criticisms. I'm not sure that he went about voicing his objections in a right way.

    RT: The US normally refuses to do prisoner swaps. So why was an exception made for Bergdahl?

    RC: I can only speculate. I just know that veterans themselves have a lot of propaganda value. Everybody wants to use veterans for propaganda purposes. The left does it as well as the right. They always want to have veterans supporting their politics to give the certain amount of the legitimacy to what their platform is. The US military saw the propaganda value in Bergdahl's case, saw it has been very sensitive.

    [Feb 01, 2015] US considers providing arms to Ukraine as rebels step up attacks, says report

    It does not make much sense to read or quote that article: a typical propaganda peace... From comments:
    "The Guardian, not alone among the western MSM, that has been incredibly biased in reporting on what is happening in Ukraine. It would be reasonable to expect less blatantly biased reporting from The Guardian, and it amazes me that day after day it faithfully repeats the propaganda from the US etal as though it is fact-based news ... in many cases, especially, for example, when reporting on the shelling of towns (e.g. Mariupol) it reports shelling by the Kiev 'government' as being shelling by the Novorussians - why do this?
    and
    "Typical propaganda comment. In your opinion peace will not be reach until Russia bends over to Uncle Sam and say yes sir no sir three bags full sir? I don't think it's in their nature. Whole world knows current PM of Ukraine is appointed by US foreign office. Do a bit of research it helps with facts"
    Notable quotes:
    "... Doesn't he realize that the only time when Poroshenko talks about cease fire is when he is under pressure from the rebels. ..."
    "... Couldn't Obama mind his own business for once? ..."
    "... Ukraine is a failed state. It has ceased to exist as anything but the frontline for US geopolitical machinations. ..."
    "... I am sure they don't want to be enslaved to the CIA either. ..."
    Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

    TG Asch, everybody's closet neoliberal and neocon, blah-piece today is simply warmongering dressed-up as journalism - equating Putin to Milosevic simply illustrates his lack of current or historical knowledge and understanding. Asch was and is in fact a propagandist, not a journalist.

    There is a wealth of much more accurate and nuanced information on what has and is happening in the Ukraine available in the public domain. It seems that the people working for The Guardian (and the BBC) are choosing to ignore this and stick to the White House's and Downing Street's disinformation handouts" ...

    For The Guardian to be posting pieces advocating more war - as Asch does - is simply irresponsible in the current circumstances, especially when it is impossible to find any alternate views being given any space at all - not equal space, any space - by The Guardian. Balance, Fairness, Judgment, Independence - these all seem to have gone out the window when it comes to the Ukraine and The Guardian has placed itself on the side of the warmongers.

    Why is the Guardian doing this?

    Selected Skeptical Comments

    vr13vr 1 Feb 2015 22:29

    Looks like Obama's goal is to maintain the conflict there indefinitely. Doesn't he realize that the only time when Poroshenko talks about cease fire is when he is under pressure from the rebels. If you give him more weapons, and if you embolden him, he will not be talking about truce.

    This conflict will just go on, and that's what Obama seems to prefer.

    edwardrice peacefulmilitant 1 Feb 2015 22:29

    Putin has ''pushed'' Obama? Couldn't Obama mind his own business for once?

    What has a deeply corrupt bankrupt dysfunctional country 1000s of miles from the US got to do with the Obama? Why should the US tax payer fund another foreign war?

    What right does the US have to trample over the heads of 500 million Europeans and escalate a civil war in Europe!

    scruffythejanitor 1 Feb 2015 22:28

    I really don't see much American enthusiasm to be involved in Ukraine- it seems more like they can't extricate themselves from it. Nations seem to behave like nations. The US is committed to supporting Europe and condemning russian aggression in annexing Ukraine, as any large country would when one country violates another's sovereignty. You don't get to violate another country's borders, officially.

    Russia persistently cries foul whenever the US publicly interferes with another nation's affairs, such as in Iraq, the presumption being that each country does not clandestinely interfere in it's own way. The crocodile tears over US violations of sovereignty looked a lot more convincing ten years ago than they do today.

    ID1011951 1 Feb 2015 22:28

    The Guardian, not alone among the western MSM, that has been incredibly biased in reporting on what is happening in Ukraine. It would be reasonable to expect less blatantly biased reporting from The Guardian, and it amazes me that day after day it faithfully repeats the propaganda from the US etal as though it is fact-based news ... in many cases, especially, for example, when reporting on the shelling of towns (e.g. Mariupol) it reports shelling by the Kiev 'government' as being shelling by the Novorussians - why do this?

    TG Asch, everybody's closet neoliberal and neocon, blah-piece today is simply warmongering dressed-up as journalism - equating Putin to Milosevic simply illustrates his lack of current or historical knowledge and understanding. Asch was and is in fact a propagandist, not a journalist.

    There is a wealth of much more accurate and nuanced information on what has and is happening in the Ukraine available in the public domain. It seems that the people working for The Guardian (and the BBC) are choosing to ignore this and stick to the White House's and Downing Street's disinformation handouts ...

    For The Guardian to be posting pieces advocating more war - as Asch does - is simply irresponsible in the current circumstances, especially when it is impossible to find any alternate views being given any space at all - not equal space, any space - by The Guardian. Balance, Fairness, Judgment, Independence - these all seem to have gone out the window when it comes to the Ukraine and The Guardian has placed itself on the side of the warmongers.

    Why is the Guardian doing this?

    Dugan222 1 Feb 2015 22:07

    Great....my disgust is beyond words. In all the peace talks, there were not a single American representative present. When comes to arming Ukraine, America is already taking the lead and making unilateral decisions even without the EU consent. Yeah, leading from behind when comes to peace. Taking a leadership role when comes to starting a war. America is greatest. I guess Russia will do the same openly and officially. Ukrainian crisis will become a proxy war for the West to bring back the Cold War.

    Both the Russian backed separatists and American backed Ukrainians will murder and kill each others...until a demarcation line is drawn somewhere in Kiev. Wondering who would build the Kiev Wall first. The East, the Russian side, or the West, American side?? Ha...the Kiev Wall.... Is not America's problem since the conflict is thousands of miles away.

    BTW, Ukraine has been received arms through various Nato members already. And there are reports of US mercenaries on the ground as well. Obviously, the Obama administration wants to make it official. For Putin, he does not really need to make it official though.

    GardenShedFever -> David Dalton Lytle Jr. 1 Feb 2015 22:06

    I'm English, but I think you are American.

    And film of weapons caches captured from the cyborgs that include brand new, advanced weapons not issued to the Ukraine military (but, of course, the cyborgs are Kolomoisky's merceneries, supported by McCain et al) demonstrates the US finger in the Kiev pie.

    GardenShedFever HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 22:02

    Poroshenko was "elected" on the lowest turnout in Ukraine's history, with vast swathes of Ukraine boycotting the election, opposition parties banned, opposition politicians abused, assaulted, and disappeared.

    There is no democracy in Ukraine. Its sovereignty disappeared with the US sponsored coup that toppled Yanukovych.

    HollyOldDog HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 22:00

    Since when? The West Ukraine army never put into practice the last MINSK Agreement. The shelling on East Ukraine never stopped.

    GardenShedFever HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 21:57

    Good enough to know that, with a boycott of elections in the south and east of Ukraine, there is not even a semblance of democracy there, as the people are neither represented in Kiev, nor do they want to.

    Ukraine is a failed state. It has ceased to exist as anything but the frontline for US geopolitical machinations.

    When the EU made a last ditch agreement with Yanukovych, to introduce early elections, what was the US response?

    "Fuck the EU" said Victoria Nuland. That tells you all you need to know.


    MediaWatchDog ID6674371 1 Feb 2015 21:56

    Typical propaganda comment. In your opinion peace will not be reach until Russia bends over to Uncle Sam and say yes sir no sir three bags full sir? I don't think it's in their nature. Whole world knows current PM of Ukraine is appointed by US forigen office. Do a bit of research it helps with facts

    Parangaricurimicuaro 1 Feb 2015 21:54

    This new development only shows how badly Kiev is losing.

    MediaWatchDog 1 Feb 2015 21:51

    German Chancellor Angela Markels mobile phone is/was tapped by US president and her plan for peaceful and democratic settlement of Ukraine was fu**ed by US forigen deputy secretary Victoria Nuland.

    Now CIA is in full command arming extremists, again!

    MediaWatchDog -> Kavi Mazumdar 1 Feb 2015 21:45

    Scotland style referendum? Scaremongering and ganging up on voters by big businesses and Westminster politicians? F that it will hard to keep Victoria Nuland types out, CIA is way too powerful than Westminster. Why not have a proper referendum, not like Crimea or Scotland!

    MediaWatchDog -> randomguyfromoz 1 Feb 2015 21:42

    Ethic Russians don't want to be part of Russia in your opinion? You are probably right, I am sure they don't want to be enslaved to the CIA either.

    Zwoman48 1 Feb 2015 21:41

    The U.S. instigated and supported the coup in Ukraine and is thinking of arming the fascists. All you need to know, everyone.

    MediaWatchDog 1 Feb 2015 21:40

    Fact 1. Victoria Nuland topple old regime and appointed Yats as nations PM, fuc**d EU plan of democratic transional government.

    Fact 2. Since then head of CIA and other top level US officials have actively involved on Ukraine.

    Fact 3. Now they are considering providing weapons.

    Thanks to the US Empire for successfully opening up new cold war at European borders.

    Hoon -> Ai Ooi 1 Feb 2015 21:34

    Someone has to pay for this. The UK had just finish paying USA for their debts from the 1st World War! What about the 2nd? And now Ukrain! & Middle East. This will bankrupt the EU for sure!

    Zwoman48 HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 21:44

    Bollocks! That's the absolute lie the western media wants you to swallow. Oh. I see you HAVE.

    HHeLiBe -> Kavi Mazumdar 1 Feb 2015 21:32

    How about Pakistan invades Kashmir with special forces, causes so much disturbance all the Indians flee for their lives, and then forces a referendum on those who remain?

    TommyGuardianReader , Feb 1, 2015 21:31

    Given that comments have prematurely been closed on yesterday's Guardian "Comment is Free" article, in which a salesman masquerading as a journalist spins the line that "sometimes only guns can stop guns",

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/putin-stopped-ukraine-military-support-russian-propaganda

    It's worth reflecting that guns can stop gunners and civilians (see Martin Place), but they cannot stop guns. Whether it's Tokyo or Dallas, Texas, guns, munitions and drones are big money.

    During the First World War the British government continued to pay Krupp's of Essen royalties for some of their gun patents. It was probably insider traders linked to Krupp's of Essen who dobbed in Sir Roger Casement's naive attempts to get German arms to Irish independence fighters in order to try to avert the long-planned Imperial utility World War.

    He was a bit like the David Kelly of his day, in that he got in the way of the machine.

    By the way, on an unrelated matter, isn't all this noise about Russia and Putin distracting us from the Chilcott Inquiry, and the roles of Bush, Cheney and Putin in the Coalition Of The Willing?

    As Don Henderson wrote in his song "Was War For Those Who Want It":

    "The men who build the planes and make the tanks
    Are neutral and get payment in Swiss francs
    While the rich on both sides prosper the poor will kill the poor
    Was war for those who want it, they would want an end to war."


    Maria Meri 1 Feb 2015 21:30

    Can anybody name one year after the 2nd WW whn the US hadn't been policing somewhr - war indeed seems to form it's economic base (commies said this ages ago)

    GardenShedFever 1 Feb 2015 21:21

    Considering the weapons caches captured by the rebels after dislodging Ukraine's "cyborgs" from Donetsk airport, the US has been arming Kiev's forces for some time. Advanced US weapons are not routine equipment for the Ukraine military, are they?
    It is no surprise the USA is clamouring to escalate this civil war. They began it, and they expected a near bloodless coup, like the Orange Revolution. Their problem this time, however, was they backed and funded far-right Ukrainian Nationalists who are despised in the South and East, and although the Maidan protests had sympathy, the commandeering of those protests by Right Sektor and Svoboda has alienated vast swathes of the Ukrainian populace. The rejection of the Kiev coup was overt, and the coup leaders' response to that rejection horrifying. No matter how much western media have tried to brush it under the carpet, the mass murder in Odessa last May polarised opinion. Those with Russian sympathies realised they were targets, and so the kick-back happened. In Donetsk and Luhansk, this mayterialised as mass support for declarations of independence, in Kharkhiv more subtle, partisan resistance, but the fact is irrefutable. Kiev only rules via terror.

    And now that terror is to be overtly supported by Washington. Honesty, at least and at last. The warmongers have their war.

    Zogz 1 Feb 2015 21:21

    Only a matte of time till the US arms Kiev. They have been itching to do it since they organized the coup. The "military advisors" are already on the ground some suggest they are working with the Kiev troops. Whist such war mongery is not unusal for the US, I cannot help bu be suprised with EU reactions. Allowing the US to escalate tensions on the border of Europe is foolhardy in the extreme. All it wll do is make Europe more dependent on the US, more insecure, and more at risk. A win win for the US, but for Europe?

    AstheticTheory 1 Feb 2015 21:08

    So America has revealed its open secret: it intervened to secure the government in Ukraine it wanted and now it is prepared to escalate its defence of its new possession

    [Feb 01, 2015] Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns

    If west make Yats, Turchinov, Poroshenko, Kolomysky, Avakov and Co Persona non grata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in EU and USA and the USA annul green-card/citizenship for crimes committed the war would stop in one day. They don't want to do that, so that means that they want the continuation of the war. From comments: 'From the increasingly hysterical pronouncements form Garton Ash, Bildt and other luminaries of Post-Democratic Europe it seems they are getting nervous about their gravy train hitting the buffers."
    Notable quotes:
    "... The same country (Germany) caused Yugoslavia to be destroyed ..."
    Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

    CityCalledNain 1 Feb 2015 16:54

    From the increasingly hysterical pronouncements form Garton Ash, Bildt and other luminaries of Post-Democratic Europe it seems they are getting nervous about their gravy train hitting the buffers.

    Grexit, Brexit, Spexit .....

    This all spells trouble for people who live high on the hog off the largesse of EU NGO funds.


    Kyrin Bekuloff -> Lesia Menchynska 1 Feb 2015 16:54

    Yeah, I actually understand both Russian and Ukrainian, and I can tell you with complete confidence that the Ukrainian side is full of nutheads. The latest thing they claimed is that they destroyed a Russian Armata tank. (yet they haven't even been built yet)

    Miriam Bergholz 1 Feb 2015 16:53

    "We need to counter this propaganda not with lies of our own but with reliable information and a scrupulously presented array of different views. No one is better placed to do this than the BBC."

    I couldn't stop laughing!

    Even better: "The US may have the best drones in the world, and Germany the best machine tools, but Britain has the best international broadcaster." As in: the US kills better, Germany makes the best machines (do you refer to guns or spades?), and the UK broadcast the best news on what? Invasion of Iraq, Lybia, etc.etc. torture, Chilcot inquire? What? Oh yes, the need to confront Russia at all cost.

    Though I recorded the fact that the BBC actually at some point reported on the neo-nazi batallion in East Ukraine, issue that Russian and other media did report from the very beginning. I suppose that now that apparently the batallion have been dispersed, (though they said that they will continue fighting) it will start (again) the demonization of Putin. What is the move now? Convince us on the necessity to send NATO troops to replace them?

    The corporate media have been competing in informing with half lies and half truth, very easy to catch, so, how can you convince somebody? There is a lot of very good alternative media in the US, Europe, and Asia. If established papers like the Guardian wants to keep their readers should start doing what they are supposed to do: tell the truth but nothing but the truth, and please not more crap about Putin, it is very boring, though I recognize it was kind of funny the Independent telling that Putin is a psychopath. You should read the comments, very enlightening. I asked whether they had the pressure from the government to start again this crude demonization. The Guardian as well? It is a very good sync because there are at the least four European news telling more or less the same with some different dramatics!

    Anyway, why the stress? Is it because the results of the Greece election and some of their statements regarding Russia? or it is that NATO really wants a war with Russia and you are trying to convince us that it is a very good idea? Or is it that the alternative media is gaining the field? All three?


    halduell 1 Feb 2015 16:52

    And again, who "has deployed heavy military equipment, energy-supply blackmail, cyber-attack, propaganda by sophisticated, well-funded broadcasters, covert operations and agents of influence in EU capitals"?

    Through the looking glass here with a monstrous piece of yellow journalism in which up is down, back is front and the phenomenon of projection is apparent in every sentence.
    Rubbish, Mr Ash. Pure rubbish.


    micktravis1968 1 Feb 2015 16:52

    Btw I wonder if James Harding, the head of BBC News, is any relation to Luke Harding, the Graun correspondent whose Kiev-Junta -friendly dispatches from East Ukraine are reminiscent of the sort of reports the Volkischer Beobachter correspondents used to send from places like Guernica.


    whitja01 1 Feb 2015 16:48

    Apparently, Obama just admitted on CNN to the US being involved in 'brokering power-transition' in Ukraine, i.e. regime change. So now we have not only Nuland's word, but that of the US president himself.

    So who is the war-monger, TGA? Who is the greater danger to world peace, Russia or the US?


    RoyRoger 1 Feb 2015 16:46

    Putin must be stopped.

    Mr. Timothy Garton Ash !!!.

    Why did we not hear you shout: Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton ''must be stopped!!?

    '' Must be stopped '' entering a sovereign democratic country that was less then 12 months from their general election.

    Why did we not hear you shout ''must be stopped'' from giving sustenance to a bunch of, Kiev, Molotov cocktail throwing police murdering (39 dead and 139 injured) coup d' etat' neo Nazis; thugs.

    Mr. Timothy Garton Ash, blame, Putin, and the Russian people for all manner of things across the world if you wish and the suggestion that, Putin, eats four babies for breakfasts every monning.

    But one thing I know; the blame for the troubles in, Ukraine, rests with the Corporate corrupt White House and NATO. The Ukraine is their self-made crisis and it will, very soon, bite the bastards on the arse.

    These incompetent fuckers, Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton, will go down in history as the creators of the biggest political and economical blunder in history.

    Come on !!, Mr. Timothy Garton Ash, fess-up, you know in your heart that Putin and the Russian people did not create the coup d' etat' in, Kiev.

    If these five political imbeciles, Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton, had not gone swanning around the, Maidan Square in, Kiev, we would't be in the mess we are now. This is NATO's and the Corporate corrupt White House fucking political disaster.

    And the bill is going to be dropped in the laps of the Europeans.

    We must never forget: Ukraine is not part of the European Union nor is it a member of NATO. So what the fuck are we doing sticking our fucking noses in a sovereign democratic country without a mandate from our Parliament?


    herditbefore 1 Feb 2015 16:44

    The situation in the Ukraine is the same as was the case in Cyprus. There was a government that wanted to take Cyprus into a union with Greece, the north mostly Turkish speakers opposed this and Turkey stood by their kith and kin.

    In the Ukraine there is a government which wants to go into a union with the EU and the eastern ethnic Russians oppose this.

    There as been a cease fire in Cyprus for about 40 years, not ideal but it does not stop the mainly Greek Cypriots from joining the EU or getting on with life, the same thing could happen with the eastern Ukraine if they think they will be happier outside of the EU let them.

    The grass is not always better on the other side and living is not just about Mercedes and BMWs.


    Klashii 1 Feb 2015 16:44

    As a direct result of the kind of garbage TGA is advocating here, millions have already died in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere this century. And how could we forget Vietnam in the last century when the US tried to bring 'democracy' to those that weren't in the slightest bit interested in having it.

    When will the West wake up and realize that not everyone wants 'democracy'shoved down their throats - especially American 'democracy'.


    rodmclaughlin 1 Feb 2015 16:43

    "Ukraine urgently needs military support". Go to hell. For NATO to give military support to Kiev would be a dangerous escalation. A cornered bear is a dangerous animal. The author is effectively asking people in the NATO countries to risk their lives for Kiev. Interfering in the nations located on the tank practice ground between Moscow and Berlin always ends in tears.

    NikLot 1 Feb 2015 16:41

    "German chancellor Angela Merkel and foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have been right to keep trying diplomacy, but even they concluded in mid-January that it wasn't worth going to meet Putin in Kazakhstan."

    Why should anyone care what Herr and Frau think on the subject!? They essentially torpedoed any jaw-jaw, giving preference to the alternative - it is Ukrainian and Russian blood after all.

    The same country (Germany) caused Yugoslavia to be destroyed, the moment they got reunited, with Britain and France staying shamefully quiet. The Helsinki final document was torn to shreds with that.

    [Feb 01, 2015] Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns

    If west make Yats, Turchinov, Poroshenko, Kolomysky, Avakov and Co Persona non grata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in EU and USA and the USA annul green-card/citizenship for crimes committed the war would stop in one day. They don't want to do that, so that means that they want the continuation of the war. From comments: 'From the increasingly hysterical pronouncements form Garton Ash, Bildt and other luminaries of Post-Democratic Europe it seems they are getting nervous about their gravy train hitting the buffers."
    Notable quotes:
    "... The same country (Germany) caused Yugoslavia to be destroyed ..."
    Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

    CityCalledNain 1 Feb 2015 16:54

    From the increasingly hysterical pronouncements form Garton Ash, Bildt and other luminaries of Post-Democratic Europe it seems they are getting nervous about their gravy train hitting the buffers.

    Grexit, Brexit, Spexit .....

    This all spells trouble for people who live high on the hog off the largesse of EU NGO funds.


    Kyrin Bekuloff -> Lesia Menchynska 1 Feb 2015 16:54

    Yeah, I actually understand both Russian and Ukrainian, and I can tell you with complete confidence that the Ukrainian side is full of nutheads. The latest thing they claimed is that they destroyed a Russian Armata tank. (yet they haven't even been built yet)

    Miriam Bergholz 1 Feb 2015 16:53

    "We need to counter this propaganda not with lies of our own but with reliable information and a scrupulously presented array of different views. No one is better placed to do this than the BBC."

    I couldn't stop laughing!

    Even better: "The US may have the best drones in the world, and Germany the best machine tools, but Britain has the best international broadcaster." As in: the US kills better, Germany makes the best machines (do you refer to guns or spades?), and the UK broadcast the best news on what? Invasion of Iraq, Lybia, etc.etc. torture, Chilcot inquire? What? Oh yes, the need to confront Russia at all cost.

    Though I recorded the fact that the BBC actually at some point reported on the neo-nazi batallion in East Ukraine, issue that Russian and other media did report from the very beginning. I suppose that now that apparently the batallion have been dispersed, (though they said that they will continue fighting) it will start (again) the demonization of Putin. What is the move now? Convince us on the necessity to send NATO troops to replace them?

    The corporate media have been competing in informing with half lies and half truth, very easy to catch, so, how can you convince somebody? There is a lot of very good alternative media in the US, Europe, and Asia. If established papers like the Guardian wants to keep their readers should start doing what they are supposed to do: tell the truth but nothing but the truth, and please not more crap about Putin, it is very boring, though I recognize it was kind of funny the Independent telling that Putin is a psychopath. You should read the comments, very enlightening. I asked whether they had the pressure from the government to start again this crude demonization. The Guardian as well? It is a very good sync because there are at the least four European news telling more or less the same with some different dramatics!

    Anyway, why the stress? Is it because the results of the Greece election and some of their statements regarding Russia? or it is that NATO really wants a war with Russia and you are trying to convince us that it is a very good idea? Or is it that the alternative media is gaining the field? All three?


    halduell 1 Feb 2015 16:52

    And again, who "has deployed heavy military equipment, energy-supply blackmail, cyber-attack, propaganda by sophisticated, well-funded broadcasters, covert operations and agents of influence in EU capitals"?

    Through the looking glass here with a monstrous piece of yellow journalism in which up is down, back is front and the phenomenon of projection is apparent in every sentence.
    Rubbish, Mr Ash. Pure rubbish.


    micktravis1968 1 Feb 2015 16:52

    Btw I wonder if James Harding, the head of BBC News, is any relation to Luke Harding, the Graun correspondent whose Kiev-Junta -friendly dispatches from East Ukraine are reminiscent of the sort of reports the Volkischer Beobachter correspondents used to send from places like Guernica.


    whitja01 1 Feb 2015 16:48

    Apparently, Obama just admitted on CNN to the US being involved in 'brokering power-transition' in Ukraine, i.e. regime change. So now we have not only Nuland's word, but that of the US president himself.

    So who is the war-monger, TGA? Who is the greater danger to world peace, Russia or the US?


    RoyRoger 1 Feb 2015 16:46

    Putin must be stopped.

    Mr. Timothy Garton Ash !!!.

    Why did we not hear you shout: Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton ''must be stopped!!?

    '' Must be stopped '' entering a sovereign democratic country that was less then 12 months from their general election.

    Why did we not hear you shout ''must be stopped'' from giving sustenance to a bunch of, Kiev, Molotov cocktail throwing police murdering (39 dead and 139 injured) coup d' etat' neo Nazis; thugs.

    Mr. Timothy Garton Ash, blame, Putin, and the Russian people for all manner of things across the world if you wish and the suggestion that, Putin, eats four babies for breakfasts every monning.

    But one thing I know; the blame for the troubles in, Ukraine, rests with the Corporate corrupt White House and NATO. The Ukraine is their self-made crisis and it will, very soon, bite the bastards on the arse.

    These incompetent fuckers, Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton, will go down in history as the creators of the biggest political and economical blunder in history.

    Come on !!, Mr. Timothy Garton Ash, fess-up, you know in your heart that Putin and the Russian people did not create the coup d' etat' in, Kiev.

    If these five political imbeciles, Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton, had not gone swanning around the, Maidan Square in, Kiev, we would't be in the mess we are now. This is NATO's and the Corporate corrupt White House fucking political disaster.

    And the bill is going to be dropped in the laps of the Europeans.

    We must never forget: Ukraine is not part of the European Union nor is it a member of NATO. So what the fuck are we doing sticking our fucking noses in a sovereign democratic country without a mandate from our Parliament?


    herditbefore 1 Feb 2015 16:44

    The situation in the Ukraine is the same as was the case in Cyprus. There was a government that wanted to take Cyprus into a union with Greece, the north mostly Turkish speakers opposed this and Turkey stood by their kith and kin.

    In the Ukraine there is a government which wants to go into a union with the EU and the eastern ethnic Russians oppose this.

    There as been a cease fire in Cyprus for about 40 years, not ideal but it does not stop the mainly Greek Cypriots from joining the EU or getting on with life, the same thing could happen with the eastern Ukraine if they think they will be happier outside of the EU let them.

    The grass is not always better on the other side and living is not just about Mercedes and BMWs.


    Klashii 1 Feb 2015 16:44

    As a direct result of the kind of garbage TGA is advocating here, millions have already died in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere this century. And how could we forget Vietnam in the last century when the US tried to bring 'democracy' to those that weren't in the slightest bit interested in having it.

    When will the West wake up and realize that not everyone wants 'democracy'shoved down their throats - especially American 'democracy'.


    rodmclaughlin 1 Feb 2015 16:43

    "Ukraine urgently needs military support". Go to hell. For NATO to give military support to Kiev would be a dangerous escalation. A cornered bear is a dangerous animal. The author is effectively asking people in the NATO countries to risk their lives for Kiev. Interfering in the nations located on the tank practice ground between Moscow and Berlin always ends in tears.

    NikLot 1 Feb 2015 16:41

    "German chancellor Angela Merkel and foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have been right to keep trying diplomacy, but even they concluded in mid-January that it wasn't worth going to meet Putin in Kazakhstan."

    Why should anyone care what Herr and Frau think on the subject!? They essentially torpedoed any jaw-jaw, giving preference to the alternative - it is Ukrainian and Russian blood after all.

    The same country (Germany) caused Yugoslavia to be destroyed, the moment they got reunited, with Britain and France staying shamefully quiet. The Helsinki final document was torn to shreds with that.

    [Feb 01, 2015] US considers providing arms to Ukraine as rebels step up attacks, says report

    It does not make much sense to read or quote that article: a typical propaganda peace... From comments:
    "The Guardian, not alone among the western MSM, that has been incredibly biased in reporting on what is happening in Ukraine. It would be reasonable to expect less blatantly biased reporting from The Guardian, and it amazes me that day after day it faithfully repeats the propaganda from the US etal as though it is fact-based news ... in many cases, especially, for example, when reporting on the shelling of towns (e.g. Mariupol) it reports shelling by the Kiev 'government' as being shelling by the Novorussians - why do this?
    and
    "Typical propaganda comment. In your opinion peace will not be reach until Russia bends over to Uncle Sam and say yes sir no sir three bags full sir? I don't think it's in their nature. Whole world knows current PM of Ukraine is appointed by US foreign office. Do a bit of research it helps with facts"
    Notable quotes:
    "... Doesn't he realize that the only time when Poroshenko talks about cease fire is when he is under pressure from the rebels. ..."
    "... Couldn't Obama mind his own business for once? ..."
    "... Ukraine is a failed state. It has ceased to exist as anything but the frontline for US geopolitical machinations. ..."
    "... I am sure they don't want to be enslaved to the CIA either. ..."
    Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

    TG Asch, everybody's closet neoliberal and neocon, blah-piece today is simply warmongering dressed-up as journalism - equating Putin to Milosevic simply illustrates his lack of current or historical knowledge and understanding. Asch was and is in fact a propagandist, not a journalist.

    There is a wealth of much more accurate and nuanced information on what has and is happening in the Ukraine available in the public domain. It seems that the people working for The Guardian (and the BBC) are choosing to ignore this and stick to the White House's and Downing Street's disinformation handouts" ...

    For The Guardian to be posting pieces advocating more war - as Asch does - is simply irresponsible in the current circumstances, especially when it is impossible to find any alternate views being given any space at all - not equal space, any space - by The Guardian. Balance, Fairness, Judgment, Independence - these all seem to have gone out the window when it comes to the Ukraine and The Guardian has placed itself on the side of the warmongers.

    Why is the Guardian doing this?

    Selected Skeptical Comments

    vr13vr 1 Feb 2015 22:29

    Looks like Obama's goal is to maintain the conflict there indefinitely. Doesn't he realize that the only time when Poroshenko talks about cease fire is when he is under pressure from the rebels. If you give him more weapons, and if you embolden him, he will not be talking about truce.

    This conflict will just go on, and that's what Obama seems to prefer.

    edwardrice peacefulmilitant 1 Feb 2015 22:29

    Putin has ''pushed'' Obama? Couldn't Obama mind his own business for once?

    What has a deeply corrupt bankrupt dysfunctional country 1000s of miles from the US got to do with the Obama? Why should the US tax payer fund another foreign war?

    What right does the US have to trample over the heads of 500 million Europeans and escalate a civil war in Europe!

    scruffythejanitor 1 Feb 2015 22:28

    I really don't see much American enthusiasm to be involved in Ukraine- it seems more like they can't extricate themselves from it. Nations seem to behave like nations. The US is committed to supporting Europe and condemning russian aggression in annexing Ukraine, as any large country would when one country violates another's sovereignty. You don't get to violate another country's borders, officially.

    Russia persistently cries foul whenever the US publicly interferes with another nation's affairs, such as in Iraq, the presumption being that each country does not clandestinely interfere in it's own way. The crocodile tears over US violations of sovereignty looked a lot more convincing ten years ago than they do today.

    ID1011951 1 Feb 2015 22:28

    The Guardian, not alone among the western MSM, that has been incredibly biased in reporting on what is happening in Ukraine. It would be reasonable to expect less blatantly biased reporting from The Guardian, and it amazes me that day after day it faithfully repeats the propaganda from the US etal as though it is fact-based news ... in many cases, especially, for example, when reporting on the shelling of towns (e.g. Mariupol) it reports shelling by the Kiev 'government' as being shelling by the Novorussians - why do this?

    TG Asch, everybody's closet neoliberal and neocon, blah-piece today is simply warmongering dressed-up as journalism - equating Putin to Milosevic simply illustrates his lack of current or historical knowledge and understanding. Asch was and is in fact a propagandist, not a journalist.

    There is a wealth of much more accurate and nuanced information on what has and is happening in the Ukraine available in the public domain. It seems that the people working for The Guardian (and the BBC) are choosing to ignore this and stick to the White House's and Downing Street's disinformation handouts ...

    For The Guardian to be posting pieces advocating more war - as Asch does - is simply irresponsible in the current circumstances, especially when it is impossible to find any alternate views being given any space at all - not equal space, any space - by The Guardian. Balance, Fairness, Judgment, Independence - these all seem to have gone out the window when it comes to the Ukraine and The Guardian has placed itself on the side of the warmongers.

    Why is the Guardian doing this?

    Dugan222 1 Feb 2015 22:07

    Great....my disgust is beyond words. In all the peace talks, there were not a single American representative present. When comes to arming Ukraine, America is already taking the lead and making unilateral decisions even without the EU consent. Yeah, leading from behind when comes to peace. Taking a leadership role when comes to starting a war. America is greatest. I guess Russia will do the same openly and officially. Ukrainian crisis will become a proxy war for the West to bring back the Cold War.

    Both the Russian backed separatists and American backed Ukrainians will murder and kill each others...until a demarcation line is drawn somewhere in Kiev. Wondering who would build the Kiev Wall first. The East, the Russian side, or the West, American side?? Ha...the Kiev Wall.... Is not America's problem since the conflict is thousands of miles away.

    BTW, Ukraine has been received arms through various Nato members already. And there are reports of US mercenaries on the ground as well. Obviously, the Obama administration wants to make it official. For Putin, he does not really need to make it official though.

    GardenShedFever -> David Dalton Lytle Jr. 1 Feb 2015 22:06

    I'm English, but I think you are American.

    And film of weapons caches captured from the cyborgs that include brand new, advanced weapons not issued to the Ukraine military (but, of course, the cyborgs are Kolomoisky's merceneries, supported by McCain et al) demonstrates the US finger in the Kiev pie.

    GardenShedFever HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 22:02

    Poroshenko was "elected" on the lowest turnout in Ukraine's history, with vast swathes of Ukraine boycotting the election, opposition parties banned, opposition politicians abused, assaulted, and disappeared.

    There is no democracy in Ukraine. Its sovereignty disappeared with the US sponsored coup that toppled Yanukovych.

    HollyOldDog HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 22:00

    Since when? The West Ukraine army never put into practice the last MINSK Agreement. The shelling on East Ukraine never stopped.

    GardenShedFever HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 21:57

    Good enough to know that, with a boycott of elections in the south and east of Ukraine, there is not even a semblance of democracy there, as the people are neither represented in Kiev, nor do they want to.

    Ukraine is a failed state. It has ceased to exist as anything but the frontline for US geopolitical machinations.

    When the EU made a last ditch agreement with Yanukovych, to introduce early elections, what was the US response?

    "Fuck the EU" said Victoria Nuland. That tells you all you need to know.


    MediaWatchDog ID6674371 1 Feb 2015 21:56

    Typical propaganda comment. In your opinion peace will not be reach until Russia bends over to Uncle Sam and say yes sir no sir three bags full sir? I don't think it's in their nature. Whole world knows current PM of Ukraine is appointed by US forigen office. Do a bit of research it helps with facts

    Parangaricurimicuaro 1 Feb 2015 21:54

    This new development only shows how badly Kiev is losing.

    MediaWatchDog 1 Feb 2015 21:51

    German Chancellor Angela Markels mobile phone is/was tapped by US president and her plan for peaceful and democratic settlement of Ukraine was fu**ed by US forigen deputy secretary Victoria Nuland.

    Now CIA is in full command arming extremists, again!

    MediaWatchDog -> Kavi Mazumdar 1 Feb 2015 21:45

    Scotland style referendum? Scaremongering and ganging up on voters by big businesses and Westminster politicians? F that it will hard to keep Victoria Nuland types out, CIA is way too powerful than Westminster. Why not have a proper referendum, not like Crimea or Scotland!

    MediaWatchDog -> randomguyfromoz 1 Feb 2015 21:42

    Ethic Russians don't want to be part of Russia in your opinion? You are probably right, I am sure they don't want to be enslaved to the CIA either.

    Zwoman48 1 Feb 2015 21:41

    The U.S. instigated and supported the coup in Ukraine and is thinking of arming the fascists. All you need to know, everyone.

    MediaWatchDog 1 Feb 2015 21:40

    Fact 1. Victoria Nuland topple old regime and appointed Yats as nations PM, fuc**d EU plan of democratic transional government.

    Fact 2. Since then head of CIA and other top level US officials have actively involved on Ukraine.

    Fact 3. Now they are considering providing weapons.

    Thanks to the US Empire for successfully opening up new cold war at European borders.

    Hoon -> Ai Ooi 1 Feb 2015 21:34

    Someone has to pay for this. The UK had just finish paying USA for their debts from the 1st World War! What about the 2nd? And now Ukrain! & Middle East. This will bankrupt the EU for sure!

    Zwoman48 HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 21:44

    Bollocks! That's the absolute lie the western media wants you to swallow. Oh. I see you HAVE.

    HHeLiBe -> Kavi Mazumdar 1 Feb 2015 21:32

    How about Pakistan invades Kashmir with special forces, causes so much disturbance all the Indians flee for their lives, and then forces a referendum on those who remain?

    TommyGuardianReader , Feb 1, 2015 21:31

    Given that comments have prematurely been closed on yesterday's Guardian "Comment is Free" article, in which a salesman masquerading as a journalist spins the line that "sometimes only guns can stop guns",

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/putin-stopped-ukraine-military-support-russian-propaganda

    It's worth reflecting that guns can stop gunners and civilians (see Martin Place), but they cannot stop guns. Whether it's Tokyo or Dallas, Texas, guns, munitions and drones are big money.

    During the First World War the British government continued to pay Krupp's of Essen royalties for some of their gun patents. It was probably insider traders linked to Krupp's of Essen who dobbed in Sir Roger Casement's naive attempts to get German arms to Irish independence fighters in order to try to avert the long-planned Imperial utility World War.

    He was a bit like the David Kelly of his day, in that he got in the way of the machine.

    By the way, on an unrelated matter, isn't all this noise about Russia and Putin distracting us from the Chilcott Inquiry, and the roles of Bush, Cheney and Putin in the Coalition Of The Willing?

    As Don Henderson wrote in his song "Was War For Those Who Want It":

    "The men who build the planes and make the tanks
    Are neutral and get payment in Swiss francs
    While the rich on both sides prosper the poor will kill the poor
    Was war for those who want it, they would want an end to war."


    Maria Meri 1 Feb 2015 21:30

    Can anybody name one year after the 2nd WW whn the US hadn't been policing somewhr - war indeed seems to form it's economic base (commies said this ages ago)

    GardenShedFever 1 Feb 2015 21:21

    Considering the weapons caches captured by the rebels after dislodging Ukraine's "cyborgs" from Donetsk airport, the US has been arming Kiev's forces for some time. Advanced US weapons are not routine equipment for the Ukraine military, are they?
    It is no surprise the USA is clamouring to escalate this civil war. They began it, and they expected a near bloodless coup, like the Orange Revolution. Their problem this time, however, was they backed and funded far-right Ukrainian Nationalists who are despised in the South and East, and although the Maidan protests had sympathy, the commandeering of those protests by Right Sektor and Svoboda has alienated vast swathes of the Ukrainian populace. The rejection of the Kiev coup was overt, and the coup leaders' response to that rejection horrifying. No matter how much western media have tried to brush it under the carpet, the mass murder in Odessa last May polarised opinion. Those with Russian sympathies realised they were targets, and so the kick-back happened. In Donetsk and Luhansk, this mayterialised as mass support for declarations of independence, in Kharkhiv more subtle, partisan resistance, but the fact is irrefutable. Kiev only rules via terror.

    And now that terror is to be overtly supported by Washington. Honesty, at least and at last. The warmongers have their war.

    Zogz 1 Feb 2015 21:21

    Only a matte of time till the US arms Kiev. They have been itching to do it since they organized the coup. The "military advisors" are already on the ground some suggest they are working with the Kiev troops. Whist such war mongery is not unusal for the US, I cannot help bu be suprised with EU reactions. Allowing the US to escalate tensions on the border of Europe is foolhardy in the extreme. All it wll do is make Europe more dependent on the US, more insecure, and more at risk. A win win for the US, but for Europe?

    AstheticTheory 1 Feb 2015 21:08

    So America has revealed its open secret: it intervened to secure the government in Ukraine it wanted and now it is prepared to escalate its defence of its new possession

    [Jan 30, 2015] Ukraine Through the Fog of the Presstitutes by Paul Craig Roberts

    Mar 06, 2014 | CounterPunch

    Gerald Celente calls the Western media "presstitutes," an ingenuous term that I often use. Presstitutes sell themselves to Washington for access and government sources and to keep their jobs. Ever since the corrupt Clinton regime permitted the concentration of the US media, there has been no journalistic independence in the United States except for some Internet sites.

    Glenn Greenwald points out the independence that RT, a Russian media organization, permits Abby Martin who denounced Russia's alleged invasion of Ukraine, compared to the fates of Phil Donahue (MSNBC) and Peter Arnett (NBC), both of whom were fired for expressing opposition to the Bush regime's illegal attack on Iraq. The fact that Donahue had NBC's highest rated program did not give him journalistic independence. Anyone who speaks the truth in the American print or TV media or on NPR is immediately fired.

    Russia's RT seems actually to believe and observe the values that Americans profess but do not honor.

    I agree with Greenwald. You can read his article here. Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT's Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times.

    My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative "mainstream media." My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda.

    For example, Martin's denunciation of Russia for "invading" Ukraine is based on Western propaganda that Russia sent 16,000 troops to occupy Crimea. The fact of the matter is that those 16,000 Russian troops have been in Crimea since the 1990s. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreement, Russia has the right to base 25,000 troops in Crimea.

    Apparently, neither Abby Martin nor Glenn Greenwald, two intelligent and aware people, knew this fact. Washington's propaganda is so pervasive that two of our best reporters were victimized by it.

    As I have written several times in my columns, Washington organized the coup in Ukraine in order to promote its world hegemony by capturing Ukraine for NATO and putting US missile bases on Russia's border in order to degrade Russia's nuclear deterrent and force Russia to accept Washington's hegemony.

    Russia has done nothing but respond in a very low-key way to a major strategic threat orchestrated by Washington.

    It is not only Martin and Greenwald who have fallen under Washington's propaganda.

    They are joined by Patrick J. Buchanan. Pat's column calling on readers to "resist the war party on Crimea" opens with Washington's propagandistic claim: "With Vladimir Putin's dispatch of Russian Troops into Crimea."

    No such dispatch has occurred. Putin has been granted authority by the Russian Duma to send troops to Ukraine, but Putin has stated publicly that sending troops would be a last resort to protect Crimean Russians from invasions by the ultra-nationalist neo-nazis who stole Washington's coup and established themselves as the power in Kiev and western Ukraine.

    So, here we have three of the smartest and most independent journalists of our time, and all three are under the impression created by Western propaganda that Russia has invaded Ukraine.

    It appears that the power of Washington's propaganda is so great that not even the best and most independent journalists can escape its influence.

    What chance does truth have when Abby Martin gets kudos from Glenn Greenwald for denouncing Russia for an alleged "invasion" that has not taken place, and when independent Pat Buchanan opens his column dissenting from the blame-Russia-crowd by accepting that an invasion has taken place?

    The entire story that the presstitutes have told about the Ukraine is a propaganda production. The presstitutes told us that the deposed president, Viktor Yanukovych, ordered snipers to shoot protesters. On the basis of these false reports, Washington's stooges, who comprise the existing non-government in Kiev, have issued arrest orders for Yanukovych and intend for him to be tried in an international court. In an intercepted telephone call between EU foreign affairs minister Catherine Ashton and Etonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet who had just returned from Kiev, Paet reports: "There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition." Paet goes on to report that "all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides . . . and it's really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don't want to investigate what exactly happened." Ashton, absorbed with EU plans to guide reforms in Ukraine and to prepare the way for the IMF to gain control over economic policy, was not particularly pleased to hear Paet's report that the killings were an orchestrated provocation. You can listen to the conversation between Paet and Ashton here: http://rt.com/news/ashton-maidan-snipers-estonia-946/

    What has happened in Ukraine is that Washington plotted against and overthrew an elected legitimate government and then lost control to neo-nazis who are threatening the large Russian population in southern and eastern Ukraine, provinces that formerly were part of Russia. These threatened Russians have appealed for Russia's help, and just like the Russians in South Ossetia, they will receive Russia's help.

    The Obama regime and its presstitutes will continue to lie about everything.

    Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Roberts' How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format.

    [Jan 30, 2015] Ukraine Through the Fog of the Presstitutes by Paul Craig Roberts

    Mar 06, 2014 | CounterPunch

    Gerald Celente calls the Western media "presstitutes," an ingenuous term that I often use. Presstitutes sell themselves to Washington for access and government sources and to keep their jobs. Ever since the corrupt Clinton regime permitted the concentration of the US media, there has been no journalistic independence in the United States except for some Internet sites.

    Glenn Greenwald points out the independence that RT, a Russian media organization, permits Abby Martin who denounced Russia's alleged invasion of Ukraine, compared to the fates of Phil Donahue (MSNBC) and Peter Arnett (NBC), both of whom were fired for expressing opposition to the Bush regime's illegal attack on Iraq. The fact that Donahue had NBC's highest rated program did not give him journalistic independence. Anyone who speaks the truth in the American print or TV media or on NPR is immediately fired.

    Russia's RT seems actually to believe and observe the values that Americans profess but do not honor.

    I agree with Greenwald. You can read his article here. Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT's Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times.

    My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative "mainstream media." My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda.

    For example, Martin's denunciation of Russia for "invading" Ukraine is based on Western propaganda that Russia sent 16,000 troops to occupy Crimea. The fact of the matter is that those 16,000 Russian troops have been in Crimea since the 1990s. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreement, Russia has the right to base 25,000 troops in Crimea.

    Apparently, neither Abby Martin nor Glenn Greenwald, two intelligent and aware people, knew this fact. Washington's propaganda is so pervasive that two of our best reporters were victimized by it.

    As I have written several times in my columns, Washington organized the coup in Ukraine in order to promote its world hegemony by capturing Ukraine for NATO and putting US missile bases on Russia's border in order to degrade Russia's nuclear deterrent and force Russia to accept Washington's hegemony.

    Russia has done nothing but respond in a very low-key way to a major strategic threat orchestrated by Washington.

    It is not only Martin and Greenwald who have fallen under Washington's propaganda.

    They are joined by Patrick J. Buchanan. Pat's column calling on readers to "resist the war party on Crimea" opens with Washington's propagandistic claim: "With Vladimir Putin's dispatch of Russian Troops into Crimea."

    No such dispatch has occurred. Putin has been granted authority by the Russian Duma to send troops to Ukraine, but Putin has stated publicly that sending troops would be a last resort to protect Crimean Russians from invasions by the ultra-nationalist neo-nazis who stole Washington's coup and established themselves as the power in Kiev and western Ukraine.

    So, here we have three of the smartest and most independent journalists of our time, and all three are under the impression created by Western propaganda that Russia has invaded Ukraine.

    It appears that the power of Washington's propaganda is so great that not even the best and most independent journalists can escape its influence.

    What chance does truth have when Abby Martin gets kudos from Glenn Greenwald for denouncing Russia for an alleged "invasion" that has not taken place, and when independent Pat Buchanan opens his column dissenting from the blame-Russia-crowd by accepting that an invasion has taken place?

    The entire story that the presstitutes have told about the Ukraine is a propaganda production. The presstitutes told us that the deposed president, Viktor Yanukovych, ordered snipers to shoot protesters. On the basis of these false reports, Washington's stooges, who comprise the existing non-government in Kiev, have issued arrest orders for Yanukovych and intend for him to be tried in an international court. In an intercepted telephone call between EU foreign affairs minister Catherine Ashton and Etonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet who had just returned from Kiev, Paet reports: "There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition." Paet goes on to report that "all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides . . . and it's really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don't want to investigate what exactly happened." Ashton, absorbed with EU plans to guide reforms in Ukraine and to prepare the way for the IMF to gain control over economic policy, was not particularly pleased to hear Paet's report that the killings were an orchestrated provocation. You can listen to the conversation between Paet and Ashton here: http://rt.com/news/ashton-maidan-snipers-estonia-946/

    What has happened in Ukraine is that Washington plotted against and overthrew an elected legitimate government and then lost control to neo-nazis who are threatening the large Russian population in southern and eastern Ukraine, provinces that formerly were part of Russia. These threatened Russians have appealed for Russia's help, and just like the Russians in South Ossetia, they will receive Russia's help.

    The Obama regime and its presstitutes will continue to lie about everything.

    Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Roberts' How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format.

    [Jan 28, 2015] Ukraine at war: 'People feel abandoned'

    Those brazen propagandists from Guardian now resort to postmodernism: "The fighting has intensified dramatically since last week". In reality this is indiscriminate shelling of Donetsk, one million city by Kiev army. Ukrainian army is shelling one million city in the center of Europe and nobody in Western capitals gives a f*ck.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Until recently, I also thought as you. But recently it became known fact that it was the Maidan smokescreen. Matter was not addressed in the Maidan. The question was decided in quiet rooms. Maidan does not put pressure on decision-making. (This issue was resolved in Washington) ..."
    "... To me, the conflict is all about the the Galicians wanting to eradicate Russian civic identity. The Galicians have been like that from the start. In that respect, they are kind of like fanatics. ..."
    "... It seems Russain Orthodox commanders did not take well the Scientologist from Lviv (Yats) and the Baptist with strong connections with the PL govt. (Turch.). ..."
    "... The Ukrainian army is attacking its own people in the south east using indiscriminate shelling. The rebels have been defending for almost a year ..."
    "... The reality is that most Ukrainians are not motivated to fight for Kiev. The Ukrainian people want peace. Only the Galician ideologically driven hard cores are willing to do combat, and their morale is falling fast because of their endless defeats. ..."
    "... Ukrainian military casualties are roughly 3,500 killed in action, and another 9,000 wounded. That is shocking. Kiev is trying to hide the magnitude of the disaster from its own people, but Ukrainian citizens are becoming aware of the horrible battle losses. Entire villages in Ukraine are reportedly ignoring Kiev's draft notices. ..."
    Jan 28, 2015 | The Guardian

    The fighting has intensified dramatically since last week and the situation here is deteriorating rapidly. In the past five days, there has been heavy fighting. We hear the constant boom of shelling and crackle of shooting.

    More than 70 houses are reported to have been damaged or destroyed in the last week, and several hospitals have been damaged since the fighting began in the summer. In recent days, a building of a psychiatric institution that we're supporting was destroyed by shelling.

    It's getting more complicated to get into the areas caught in the conflict. Last week the checkpoints to cross into the rebel-controlled areas were closed and no one has been allowed to pass.

    Medical supply lines have been cut and little medicine is getting through, as has been the case for months. When Médecins sans Frontičres (MSF) started working here in May, we focused on supplying hospitals on the frontline with kits to treat war injuries. Obviously, when you're in a conflict zone, the frontline is where the people are being seriously injured and killed.

    After months of stress on the health system, it is clear that the conflict is having an impact on the whole population of the area. Basic healthcare, maternity care, treatment of chronic diseases; everything is affected.

    ... ... ...


    Mij Swerdna shakesomeaction 28 Jan 2015 18:56

    More like Kiev won't let Donbas decide it's own destiny. It is not they who have gone to the west to kill. More like the other way around.


    Mij Swerdna alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 18:04

    Everyone here is responsible for their own actions. The side you are against is not responsible for what both sides do. People like you are devoid of compassion until hardships that you regard with indifference are visited on you and yours.

    And then it's people like you who cry and whine the loudest.

    Mij Swerdna -> alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 17:57

    What are talking about? They did those things at Maidan- but that was okay because you sympathize with neo-Nazis. Hypocrite.

    Mij Swerdna -> vr13vr 28 Jan 2015 16:07

    And the Holodomor did not take place anywhere near the ones who go on about it the most. It happened in eastern Ukraine and southern Russia.

    Mij Swerdna -> Pomario 28 Jan 2015 15:33

    Your imagination seems to go to any lengths to make Russia a villain. You are motivated by hatred (bigotry, the stupid kind).

    Mij Swerdna -> firstgeordie 28 Jan 2015 15:26

    Very bigoted of you. Actually, they are more apt to sacrifice. I wouldn't confuse that virtue with a lack of respect for life because that very lack is more than rampant in the west except that there is a growing tendency on the part of the west to arrange for "lesser" peoples to serve as cannon fodder.

    Mij Swerdna -> Pomario 28 Jan 2015 15:14

    Not quite. What he was worried about was the massive propaganda blitz that would have resulted if Russia had opted to honor the Donbas referendum and annexed it. As it turns out, he needn't have. They were going to do what they were going to do to Russia regardless. They should have saved Donbas because those incompetent cowards in the west would not have challenged them militarily if they were part of Russia. There would be wailing and gnashing of teeth to be sure- but no destroyed infrastructure and no thousands of dead civilians and refugees.

    The real aggressors in this conflict are the people who want to exterminate the people of Donbas. I am judging by actions mind you, not the lawyer like gibberish used to justify those actions. If it walks like a duck...

    buttonbasher81 Robobenito 28 Jan 2015 14:51

    Again you haven't actually stated what is meant by support, all you use are conjecture and conspiracy by reffering back to bad things the US has done in the past. All the thousands of people marching on the streets were all CIA operatives were they? Sounds about as believeable as putins Russian soldiers being in the East of Ukraine on holiday to me. And don't trot out that 5bn line, its been stated again and again that was spent over a number of years in the Ukraine and moreover some of which would have gone to Yanukovychs Government. You going to argue the US paid him to overthrow himself?


    Mij Swerdna Jeremn 28 Jan 2015 08:43


    They are inhuman. Kiev is ideologically driven by Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Volyn (with US blessing).These oblasts had the highest voter turnout and were solidly in Yat's corner. The fact that the actual far right parties did not do well in elections means nothing. They are hiding behind Yats.


    Kolo07 -> EddieGrey1967USA 28 Jan 2015 04:25

    Until recently, I also thought as you.

    But recently it became known fact that it was the Maidan smokescreen.

    Matter was not addressed in the Maidan. The question was decided in quiet rooms.

    Maidan does not put pressure on decision-making. (This issue was resolved in Washington)


    EddieGrey1967USA BMWAlbert 27 Jan 2015 21:58

    You are probably correct about the numbers of troops involved in Crimea. Thanks for the more accurate info. Still, your figures aren't too far out of line with mine.

    I agree with your final comment about Donbas and a national unity government. It is quite interesting to consider what might have followed if the Euromaidan crew had been smart enough to reach out immediately to Donbass last February. Indeed, if they had included Donbass powerbrokers from the early days, they might have held the country together.

    However, to include Donbass powerbrokers in Euromaidan, the new government would have needed to distance itself from the Galician ultranationalists. Do you think that could have happened in theory? My guess is that it couldn't have happened, now that I think about it. I say that because the Galicians were -- and continue to be -- a powerhouse behind the entire Euromaidan revolt, in addition to shaping the government that followed.

    To me, the conflict is all about the the Galicians wanting to eradicate Russian civic identity. The Galicians have been like that from the start. In that respect, they are kind of like fanatics.

    EddieGrey1967USA -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 21:52

    There's a big difference between Serbia and Ukraine, though. That's because the USA is backing the nationalists in Kiev, essentially encouraging them to pursue the dream of an enlarged Ukraine, or a Greater Ukraine (fighting war to keep colonies in Donbass, etc.). By contrast, the USA was opposing Milosevic's efforts to create a Greater Serbia.

    So, even after Yatsenyuk, Poroshenko, Lysenko, Parubiy, etc. are defeated and overthrown, they will never face war crimes tribunals. That's because they will have American protection.

    The only exception to this situation is if the Russians actually capture Yats, Poroshenko, Parubiy etc. and charge them with war crimes. However I don't think this will happen. Most likely Yats & Co will escape west before that ever happens.

    You make a very interesting point about Ukraine being divided on the issue of joining the EU and Russia. In that sense, post war Ukraine could resemble post-Milosevic Serbia. I agree.


    BMWAlbert -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 19:51

    Eddue, the Krim figures I have read state that there were 18,000 (maybe 2500 is paper strength, NOT the real strength).

    Of these 18K I believe about one third (circa 6000) stayed with UA army and were allowed to leave.

    Of the 12000 UA Army troops remaining, only half actually joined the RU Army. 6000 thus chose a 'middle way'. That 12000 total may be aligned with the 13000 figure you cite (?).

    It might be noted that the whole of the semi-autonomous province might not have been lost at all had commanders of the UA Army reserve forces actually acted in March 2014 (as ordered) to secure the isthmus. They did not move. It seems Russain Orthodox commanders did not take well the Scientologist from Lviv (Yats) and the Baptist with strong connections with the PL govt. (Turch.).

    Different people have different views on which North American and EU countries might have had influence over these important initial choices for PM and President at a time when UA needed a national unity govt. NOT a single cabinet post was chosen from Donbas. Not smart.


    EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 18:12

    What will become of Ukraine, when this is all over?

    When a nation is defeated in war, all of its people undergo psychological shock. The country questions its self-worth, and it experiments with changes in politics, culture, and social issues. Defeated nations do this as they come to terms with the realization that they have failed the ultimate test.

    These periods of anguished, inward self-reflection on a national scale are especially true for countries that are defeated and conquered. We saw this in France after 1817, during the so-called La Belle Epoque. Something similar happened in Prussia after 1806, and in Germany after 1918 and 1945.

    Ukraine will not only suffer defeat, but it may also lose its independence. How will this generation of young Ukrainians -- the so called Euromaidan Generation -- react to this national trauma? Everything that they have been raised to believe about themselves and their country will have been proven to be false...mythological. Just one big lie.

    Young Ukrainians, after this war, will totally lose respect for the leaders movements like Euromaidan. These young people will question their own values and beliefs. Like the Germans after 1945, Ukrainians, I think, will then work hard to create a new and honest society for themselves. They will renounce ultranationalism, and they will advocate the virtues of peace and political stability.

    That is when Ukraine's true moment of glory will occur. Defeated, conquered...true....but repentant, wise, and progressive. Ukrainians will then be celebrated worldwide for their maturity and commitment to peace, just like the West Germans after 1945.

    EddieGrey1967USA -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 18:02

    You are wrong. The rebel army is large and strong, particularly since so many Donbass men are now enlisting. Read yesterday's article in DB written by Kyiv Post writer/hack/propagandist James Miller and his colleague, Michael Weiss. They confirm this.

    ID8787761 -> alpamysh 27 Jan 2015 15:12

    Not true. US or UK solider caught on camera in Mariopul:
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-25/out-my-face-please-why-are-us-soldiers-mariupol

    The general is far from alone.

    Actually you're not getting it old boy. The Ukrainian army is attacking its own people in the south east using indiscriminate shelling. The rebels have been defending for almost a year. And you plucked that 9000 number from thin air. Without tangible evidence your statement of 9000 people is meaningless.

    EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 15:11

    What surprises me especially is that Western news suppresses information about the severity of Ukrainian military defeats. The Western media has been doing this from the very beginning.

    For example, in Crimea last March, 13,000 Ukrainian troops defected to the Russians immediately. That is out of a total of 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Crimea at the time. Only a few Western media sources reported the shocking truth about these Ukrainian defections.

    The reality is that most Ukrainians are not motivated to fight for Kiev. The Ukrainian people want peace. Only the Galician ideologically driven hard cores are willing to do combat, and their morale is falling fast because of their endless defeats.

    At this point in time, I would imagine that the Galician troops must feel overawed and frightened at the prospect of doing combat with the pro-Russian rebels. Does the Ukrainian military even have medical psychiatric support to treat the combat trauma suffered by these troops?

    What will happen after the war, when these defeated and traumatized soldiers -- many suffering from combat induced psychosis -- return home to Galicia? It's upsetting to realize the things that might happen.

    But Kiev started this war....the Donbass people didn't start it.

    EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 15:05

    Ukraine is facing total disaster now, kind of like a sinking ship. It's economy is destroyed, and it is losing a war so badly that all of Ukraine may eventually be conquered by the rebels.

    Ukrainian military casualties are roughly 3,500 killed in action, and another 9,000 wounded. That is shocking. Kiev is trying to hide the magnitude of the disaster from its own people, but Ukrainian citizens are becoming aware of the horrible battle losses. Entire villages in Ukraine are reportedly ignoring Kiev's draft notices.

    For historicians, social scientists, and economists, Ukraine is a classic case of a nation in defeat. The experts are observing Ukraine closely as it disintegrates.

    All of this would have been avoided if only the Euromaidan government consisted of reasonable people.

    [Jan 28, 2015] Doubt everything – Ukrainian students warning to Russian counterparts

    Guardian reprints RFE aka Radio F*ck Europe. Well done Guardian. Saves money. From comments: "Rubbish. The most dangerous squirrel-brains are perched at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and at the State Dept. building not far away. It was they who inflamed the Kiev putsch and now may be wondering if the Pandora's box they opened is tough to control."
    Notable quotes:
    "... as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space ..."
    Jan 28, 2015 | The Guardian

    axiomparadigm -> MrBepec 28 Jan 2015 19:59

    A pity I had to ask a Russian speaking friend to tell me the ist of it and he said there are cries for Bandeira... So it is a right wing nazi supporting rally.

    Walter Potocki 28 Jan 2015 19:47

    Take a cooky from Nuland and march to eastern front, empire will give you a postmortem medal.

    Sehome -> alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 19:42

    Rubbish. The most dangerous squirrel-brains are perchjed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and at the State Dept. building not far away. It was they who inflamed the Kiev putsch and now may be wondering if the Pandora's box they opened is tough to control.

    yataki -> yataki 28 Jan 2015 19:30

    ...and they are saying that Yanukovich was a 'dictator'. Oh, excuse me, no matter how corrupted he was, he was a democratically elected president legally recognized by the international community. Even Vic Nuland admitted that. You people could have voted him out of the office, but you preferred an armed coup. You can disagree with me, but to me and many people around the world, it was clearly a violent coup led by the far-right. There was nothing heroic about it.

    yataki 28 Jan 2015 19:17

    "Check what you hear, doubt what you see."
    I suggest these bright young people should first check what they hear from their own government, and seriously doubt what they see. One should never stop checking and doubting his/her own government. There is nothing wrong about that.
    Would be interested to see Russian students' answer to that sort of cheap propaganda.

    BunglyPete 28 Jan 2015 18:26

    If and when the truth behind this gets out the fallout could be massive.

    US, EU and many top western officials on board, an entirely complicit media, and we are talking about actual nazis actually killing civilians on the doorstep of actual Europe, and looking at war with Russia.

    If if it gets enough attention this could cause a big impact across the globe. Interesting times.

    centerline 28 Jan 2015 18:23

    The video goes on to counter claims from Russian-state media that the Euromaidan protests in Kiev were a US funded coup.

    Full Spectrum Dominance. Part of the US military doctrine.

    Full spectrum dominance includes the physical battlespace; air, surface and sub-surface as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space. Control implies that freedom of opposition force assets to exploit the battlespace is wholly constrained.

    https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Full-spectrum_dominance.html

    unended 28 Jan 2015 18:18

    From the article:

    It also accuses pro-Russian separatists of forcing many in Crimea "at gunpoint" to vote in favour of joining Russia.

    From the Pew Research Center:

    Crimean residents are almost universally positive toward Russia. At least nine-in-ten have confidence in Putin (93%) and say Russia is playing a positive role in Crimea (92%). Confidence in Obama is almost negligible at 4%, and just 2% think the U.S. is having a good influence on the way things are going on the Crimean peninsula. . . .

    For their part, Crimeans seem content with their annexation by Russia. Overwhelming majorities say the March 16th referendum was free and fair (91%) and that the government in Kyiv ought to recognize the results of the vote (88%).p> http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/05/08/despite-concerns-about-governance-ukrainians-want-to-remain-one-country/

    I wonder what would make these western Ukrainian students think that about Crimea? Could it have something to do with having been subjected to "rampant propaganda"?

    Manolo Torres 28 Jan 2015 17:57

    And from where did this students get this idea? Perhaps From their own ministry of truth?

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/-sp-ukraine-new-ministry-truth-undermines-battle-for-democracy

    Was it a US initiative?

    Ukraine freedom support act.
    Expanded Broadcasting in Former Soviet Republics:
    Mandates the Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to submit a plan and cost estimate to increase Russian-language broadcasting into countries of the former Soviet Union funded by the United States in order to counter Russian propaganda

    Is it perhaps just another youtube video operation, produced by neoconservatives in the NED and the US State department?, in the style of the "I am an Ukrainian?" Perhaps it was made by the same RFE/RL, whose origins we all know?

    I wonder if this students would be as "receptive" as this citizens in Kiev, when a woman from Luhansk was trying to tell them about her experience with airstrikes on June the 2nd.

    Judge by yourselves, it seems to me that the Ukrainian students should be addressing themselves.

    jonsid 28 Jan 2015 17:46

    And the smearing starts. First shot by Radio Fuck Europe.

    New Greek Government Has Deep, Long-Standing Ties With Russian Eurasianist Dugin

    A five year old could write the script....

    http://www.rferl.org/content/greek-syriza-deep-ties-russian-eurasianist-dugin/26818523.html

    1waldo1 28 Jan 2015 17:30

    And these very attractive and innocent-looking students did this all on their own. Not a word of encouragement from the new Ministry of Propaganda or whatever it's called in Kiev.
    And how did the video reach the Guardian so quickly?

    [Jan 28, 2015] Doubt everything – Ukrainian students warning to Russian counterparts

    Guardian reprints RFE aka Radio F*ck Europe. Well done Guardian. Saves money. From comments: "Rubbish. The most dangerous squirrel-brains are perched at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and at the State Dept. building not far away. It was they who inflamed the Kiev putsch and now may be wondering if the Pandora's box they opened is tough to control."
    Notable quotes:
    "... as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space ..."
    Jan 28, 2015 | The Guardian

    axiomparadigm -> MrBepec 28 Jan 2015 19:59

    A pity I had to ask a Russian speaking friend to tell me the ist of it and he said there are cries for Bandeira... So it is a right wing nazi supporting rally.

    Walter Potocki 28 Jan 2015 19:47

    Take a cooky from Nuland and march to eastern front, empire will give you a postmortem medal.

    Sehome -> alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 19:42

    Rubbish. The most dangerous squirrel-brains are perchjed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and at the State Dept. building not far away. It was they who inflamed the Kiev putsch and now may be wondering if the Pandora's box they opened is tough to control.

    yataki -> yataki 28 Jan 2015 19:30

    ...and they are saying that Yanukovich was a 'dictator'. Oh, excuse me, no matter how corrupted he was, he was a democratically elected president legally recognized by the international community. Even Vic Nuland admitted that. You people could have voted him out of the office, but you preferred an armed coup. You can disagree with me, but to me and many people around the world, it was clearly a violent coup led by the far-right. There was nothing heroic about it.

    yataki 28 Jan 2015 19:17

    "Check what you hear, doubt what you see."
    I suggest these bright young people should first check what they hear from their own government, and seriously doubt what they see. One should never stop checking and doubting his/her own government. There is nothing wrong about that.
    Would be interested to see Russian students' answer to that sort of cheap propaganda.

    BunglyPete 28 Jan 2015 18:26

    If and when the truth behind this gets out the fallout could be massive.

    US, EU and many top western officials on board, an entirely complicit media, and we are talking about actual nazis actually killing civilians on the doorstep of actual Europe, and looking at war with Russia.

    If if it gets enough attention this could cause a big impact across the globe. Interesting times.

    centerline 28 Jan 2015 18:23

    The video goes on to counter claims from Russian-state media that the Euromaidan protests in Kiev were a US funded coup.

    Full Spectrum Dominance. Part of the US military doctrine.

    Full spectrum dominance includes the physical battlespace; air, surface and sub-surface as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space. Control implies that freedom of opposition force assets to exploit the battlespace is wholly constrained.

    https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Full-spectrum_dominance.html

    unended 28 Jan 2015 18:18

    From the article:

    It also accuses pro-Russian separatists of forcing many in Crimea "at gunpoint" to vote in favour of joining Russia.

    From the Pew Research Center:

    Crimean residents are almost universally positive toward Russia. At least nine-in-ten have confidence in Putin (93%) and say Russia is playing a positive role in Crimea (92%). Confidence in Obama is almost negligible at 4%, and just 2% think the U.S. is having a good influence on the way things are going on the Crimean peninsula. . . .

    For their part, Crimeans seem content with their annexation by Russia. Overwhelming majorities say the March 16th referendum was free and fair (91%) and that the government in Kyiv ought to recognize the results of the vote (88%).p> http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/05/08/despite-concerns-about-governance-ukrainians-want-to-remain-one-country/

    I wonder what would make these western Ukrainian students think that about Crimea? Could it have something to do with having been subjected to "rampant propaganda"?

    Manolo Torres 28 Jan 2015 17:57

    And from where did this students get this idea? Perhaps From their own ministry of truth?

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/-sp-ukraine-new-ministry-truth-undermines-battle-for-democracy

    Was it a US initiative?

    Ukraine freedom support act.
    Expanded Broadcasting in Former Soviet Republics:
    Mandates the Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to submit a plan and cost estimate to increase Russian-language broadcasting into countries of the former Soviet Union funded by the United States in order to counter Russian propaganda

    Is it perhaps just another youtube video operation, produced by neoconservatives in the NED and the US State department?, in the style of the "I am an Ukrainian?" Perhaps it was made by the same RFE/RL, whose origins we all know?

    I wonder if this students would be as "receptive" as this citizens in Kiev, when a woman from Luhansk was trying to tell them about her experience with airstrikes on June the 2nd.

    Judge by yourselves, it seems to me that the Ukrainian students should be addressing themselves.

    jonsid 28 Jan 2015 17:46

    And the smearing starts. First shot by Radio Fuck Europe.

    New Greek Government Has Deep, Long-Standing Ties With Russian Eurasianist Dugin

    A five year old could write the script....

    http://www.rferl.org/content/greek-syriza-deep-ties-russian-eurasianist-dugin/26818523.html

    1waldo1 28 Jan 2015 17:30

    And these very attractive and innocent-looking students did this all on their own. Not a word of encouragement from the new Ministry of Propaganda or whatever it's called in Kiev.
    And how did the video reach the Guardian so quickly?

    [Jan 28, 2015] Ukraine at war: 'People feel abandoned'

    Those brazen propagandists from Guardian now resort to postmodernism: "The fighting has intensified dramatically since last week". In reality this is indiscriminate shelling of Donetsk, one million city by Kiev army. Ukrainian army is shelling one million city in the center of Europe and nobody in Western capitals gives a f*ck.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Until recently, I also thought as you. But recently it became known fact that it was the Maidan smokescreen. Matter was not addressed in the Maidan. The question was decided in quiet rooms. Maidan does not put pressure on decision-making. (This issue was resolved in Washington) ..."
    "... To me, the conflict is all about the the Galicians wanting to eradicate Russian civic identity. The Galicians have been like that from the start. In that respect, they are kind of like fanatics. ..."
    "... It seems Russain Orthodox commanders did not take well the Scientologist from Lviv (Yats) and the Baptist with strong connections with the PL govt. (Turch.). ..."
    "... The Ukrainian army is attacking its own people in the south east using indiscriminate shelling. The rebels have been defending for almost a year ..."
    "... The reality is that most Ukrainians are not motivated to fight for Kiev. The Ukrainian people want peace. Only the Galician ideologically driven hard cores are willing to do combat, and their morale is falling fast because of their endless defeats. ..."
    "... Ukrainian military casualties are roughly 3,500 killed in action, and another 9,000 wounded. That is shocking. Kiev is trying to hide the magnitude of the disaster from its own people, but Ukrainian citizens are becoming aware of the horrible battle losses. Entire villages in Ukraine are reportedly ignoring Kiev's draft notices. ..."
    Jan 28, 2015 | The Guardian

    The fighting has intensified dramatically since last week and the situation here is deteriorating rapidly. In the past five days, there has been heavy fighting. We hear the constant boom of shelling and crackle of shooting.

    More than 70 houses are reported to have been damaged or destroyed in the last week, and several hospitals have been damaged since the fighting began in the summer. In recent days, a building of a psychiatric institution that we're supporting was destroyed by shelling.

    It's getting more complicated to get into the areas caught in the conflict. Last week the checkpoints to cross into the rebel-controlled areas were closed and no one has been allowed to pass.

    Medical supply lines have been cut and little medicine is getting through, as has been the case for months. When Médecins sans Frontičres (MSF) started working here in May, we focused on supplying hospitals on the frontline with kits to treat war injuries. Obviously, when you're in a conflict zone, the frontline is where the people are being seriously injured and killed.

    After months of stress on the health system, it is clear that the conflict is having an impact on the whole population of the area. Basic healthcare, maternity care, treatment of chronic diseases; everything is affected.

    ... ... ...


    Mij Swerdna shakesomeaction 28 Jan 2015 18:56

    More like Kiev won't let Donbas decide it's own destiny. It is not they who have gone to the west to kill. More like the other way around.


    Mij Swerdna alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 18:04

    Everyone here is responsible for their own actions. The side you are against is not responsible for what both sides do. People like you are devoid of compassion until hardships that you regard with indifference are visited on you and yours.

    And then it's people like you who cry and whine the loudest.

    Mij Swerdna -> alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 17:57

    What are talking about? They did those things at Maidan- but that was okay because you sympathize with neo-Nazis. Hypocrite.

    Mij Swerdna -> vr13vr 28 Jan 2015 16:07

    And the Holodomor did not take place anywhere near the ones who go on about it the most. It happened in eastern Ukraine and southern Russia.

    Mij Swerdna -> Pomario 28 Jan 2015 15:33

    Your imagination seems to go to any lengths to make Russia a villain. You are motivated by hatred (bigotry, the stupid kind).

    Mij Swerdna -> firstgeordie 28 Jan 2015 15:26

    Very bigoted of you. Actually, they are more apt to sacrifice. I wouldn't confuse that virtue with a lack of respect for life because that very lack is more than rampant in the west except that there is a growing tendency on the part of the west to arrange for "lesser" peoples to serve as cannon fodder.

    Mij Swerdna -> Pomario 28 Jan 2015 15:14

    Not quite. What he was worried about was the massive propaganda blitz that would have resulted if Russia had opted to honor the Donbas referendum and annexed it. As it turns out, he needn't have. They were going to do what they were going to do to Russia regardless. They should have saved Donbas because those incompetent cowards in the west would not have challenged them militarily if they were part of Russia. There would be wailing and gnashing of teeth to be sure- but no destroyed infrastructure and no thousands of dead civilians and refugees.

    The real aggressors in this conflict are the people who want to exterminate the people of Donbas. I am judging by actions mind you, not the lawyer like gibberish used to justify those actions. If it walks like a duck...

    buttonbasher81 Robobenito 28 Jan 2015 14:51

    Again you haven't actually stated what is meant by support, all you use are conjecture and conspiracy by reffering back to bad things the US has done in the past. All the thousands of people marching on the streets were all CIA operatives were they? Sounds about as believeable as putins Russian soldiers being in the East of Ukraine on holiday to me. And don't trot out that 5bn line, its been stated again and again that was spent over a number of years in the Ukraine and moreover some of which would have gone to Yanukovychs Government. You going to argue the US paid him to overthrow himself?


    Mij Swerdna Jeremn 28 Jan 2015 08:43


    They are inhuman. Kiev is ideologically driven by Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Volyn (with US blessing).These oblasts had the highest voter turnout and were solidly in Yat's corner. The fact that the actual far right parties did not do well in elections means nothing. They are hiding behind Yats.


    Kolo07 -> EddieGrey1967USA 28 Jan 2015 04:25

    Until recently, I also thought as you.

    But recently it became known fact that it was the Maidan smokescreen.

    Matter was not addressed in the Maidan. The question was decided in quiet rooms.

    Maidan does not put pressure on decision-making. (This issue was resolved in Washington)


    EddieGrey1967USA BMWAlbert 27 Jan 2015 21:58

    You are probably correct about the numbers of troops involved in Crimea. Thanks for the more accurate info. Still, your figures aren't too far out of line with mine.

    I agree with your final comment about Donbas and a national unity government. It is quite interesting to consider what might have followed if the Euromaidan crew had been smart enough to reach out immediately to Donbass last February. Indeed, if they had included Donbass powerbrokers from the early days, they might have held the country together.

    However, to include Donbass powerbrokers in Euromaidan, the new government would have needed to distance itself from the Galician ultranationalists. Do you think that could have happened in theory? My guess is that it couldn't have happened, now that I think about it. I say that because the Galicians were -- and continue to be -- a powerhouse behind the entire Euromaidan revolt, in addition to shaping the government that followed.

    To me, the conflict is all about the the Galicians wanting to eradicate Russian civic identity. The Galicians have been like that from the start. In that respect, they are kind of like fanatics.

    EddieGrey1967USA -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 21:52

    There's a big difference between Serbia and Ukraine, though. That's because the USA is backing the nationalists in Kiev, essentially encouraging them to pursue the dream of an enlarged Ukraine, or a Greater Ukraine (fighting war to keep colonies in Donbass, etc.). By contrast, the USA was opposing Milosevic's efforts to create a Greater Serbia.

    So, even after Yatsenyuk, Poroshenko, Lysenko, Parubiy, etc. are defeated and overthrown, they will never face war crimes tribunals. That's because they will have American protection.

    The only exception to this situation is if the Russians actually capture Yats, Poroshenko, Parubiy etc. and charge them with war crimes. However I don't think this will happen. Most likely Yats & Co will escape west before that ever happens.

    You make a very interesting point about Ukraine being divided on the issue of joining the EU and Russia. In that sense, post war Ukraine could resemble post-Milosevic Serbia. I agree.


    BMWAlbert -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 19:51

    Eddue, the Krim figures I have read state that there were 18,000 (maybe 2500 is paper strength, NOT the real strength).

    Of these 18K I believe about one third (circa 6000) stayed with UA army and were allowed to leave.

    Of the 12000 UA Army troops remaining, only half actually joined the RU Army. 6000 thus chose a 'middle way'. That 12000 total may be aligned with the 13000 figure you cite (?).

    It might be noted that the whole of the semi-autonomous province might not have been lost at all had commanders of the UA Army reserve forces actually acted in March 2014 (as ordered) to secure the isthmus. They did not move. It seems Russain Orthodox commanders did not take well the Scientologist from Lviv (Yats) and the Baptist with strong connections with the PL govt. (Turch.).

    Different people have different views on which North American and EU countries might have had influence over these important initial choices for PM and President at a time when UA needed a national unity govt. NOT a single cabinet post was chosen from Donbas. Not smart.


    EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 18:12

    What will become of Ukraine, when this is all over?

    When a nation is defeated in war, all of its people undergo psychological shock. The country questions its self-worth, and it experiments with changes in politics, culture, and social issues. Defeated nations do this as they come to terms with the realization that they have failed the ultimate test.

    These periods of anguished, inward self-reflection on a national scale are especially true for countries that are defeated and conquered. We saw this in France after 1817, during the so-called La Belle Epoque. Something similar happened in Prussia after 1806, and in Germany after 1918 and 1945.

    Ukraine will not only suffer defeat, but it may also lose its independence. How will this generation of young Ukrainians -- the so called Euromaidan Generation -- react to this national trauma? Everything that they have been raised to believe about themselves and their country will have been proven to be false...mythological. Just one big lie.

    Young Ukrainians, after this war, will totally lose respect for the leaders movements like Euromaidan. These young people will question their own values and beliefs. Like the Germans after 1945, Ukrainians, I think, will then work hard to create a new and honest society for themselves. They will renounce ultranationalism, and they will advocate the virtues of peace and political stability.

    That is when Ukraine's true moment of glory will occur. Defeated, conquered...true....but repentant, wise, and progressive. Ukrainians will then be celebrated worldwide for their maturity and commitment to peace, just like the West Germans after 1945.

    EddieGrey1967USA -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 18:02

    You are wrong. The rebel army is large and strong, particularly since so many Donbass men are now enlisting. Read yesterday's article in DB written by Kyiv Post writer/hack/propagandist James Miller and his colleague, Michael Weiss. They confirm this.

    ID8787761 -> alpamysh 27 Jan 2015 15:12

    Not true. US or UK solider caught on camera in Mariopul:
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-25/out-my-face-please-why-are-us-soldiers-mariupol

    The general is far from alone.

    Actually you're not getting it old boy. The Ukrainian army is attacking its own people in the south east using indiscriminate shelling. The rebels have been defending for almost a year. And you plucked that 9000 number from thin air. Without tangible evidence your statement of 9000 people is meaningless.

    EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 15:11

    What surprises me especially is that Western news suppresses information about the severity of Ukrainian military defeats. The Western media has been doing this from the very beginning.

    For example, in Crimea last March, 13,000 Ukrainian troops defected to the Russians immediately. That is out of a total of 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Crimea at the time. Only a few Western media sources reported the shocking truth about these Ukrainian defections.

    The reality is that most Ukrainians are not motivated to fight for Kiev. The Ukrainian people want peace. Only the Galician ideologically driven hard cores are willing to do combat, and their morale is falling fast because of their endless defeats.

    At this point in time, I would imagine that the Galician troops must feel overawed and frightened at the prospect of doing combat with the pro-Russian rebels. Does the Ukrainian military even have medical psychiatric support to treat the combat trauma suffered by these troops?

    What will happen after the war, when these defeated and traumatized soldiers -- many suffering from combat induced psychosis -- return home to Galicia? It's upsetting to realize the things that might happen.

    But Kiev started this war....the Donbass people didn't start it.

    EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 15:05

    Ukraine is facing total disaster now, kind of like a sinking ship. It's economy is destroyed, and it is losing a war so badly that all of Ukraine may eventually be conquered by the rebels.

    Ukrainian military casualties are roughly 3,500 killed in action, and another 9,000 wounded. That is shocking. Kiev is trying to hide the magnitude of the disaster from its own people, but Ukrainian citizens are becoming aware of the horrible battle losses. Entire villages in Ukraine are reportedly ignoring Kiev's draft notices.

    For historicians, social scientists, and economists, Ukraine is a classic case of a nation in defeat. The experts are observing Ukraine closely as it disintegrates.

    All of this would have been avoided if only the Euromaidan government consisted of reasonable people.

    [Jan 24, 2015] A typical pattern of behaviour of western MSM in Ukraine civil war coverage

    Looks like cold War Ii started and propaganda is in full swing. Propaganda is generally an appeal to emotion, not intellect. There are four conditions for a message to be considered propaganda. Propaganda involves the intention to persuade and deceive. Propaganda is sent on behalf of a state, organization, or cause. It is distributed to a significant group of people. Finally, propaganda is a struggle for mind of people (as the term brainwashing implies).
    Notable quotes:
    "... The MSM finds the shelling of civilians newsworthy only when it can be blamed on the rebels. ..."
    Jan 24, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    karl1haushofer , January 24, 2015 at 7:34 am

    Western MSM is having a field day over the Mariupol GRAD attack that killed civilians and was supposedly done by the rebels. The MSM finds the shelling of civilians newsworthy only when it can be blamed on the rebels.

    Finnish MSM is in a full propaganda swing. They are ignoring the shelling in Gorlovka that has killed many civilians but are reporting the Mariupol shelling with big headlines. And they are once again censoring the user comments with a heavy hand that try to point of the media hypocrisy.

    [Jan 24, 2015] A typical pattern of behaviour of western MSM in Ukraine civil war coverage

    Looks like cold War Ii started and propaganda is in full swing. Propaganda is generally an appeal to emotion, not intellect. There are four conditions for a message to be considered propaganda. Propaganda involves the intention to persuade and deceive. Propaganda is sent on behalf of a state, organization, or cause. It is distributed to a significant group of people. Finally, propaganda is a struggle for mind of people (as the term brainwashing implies).
    Notable quotes:
    "... The MSM finds the shelling of civilians newsworthy only when it can be blamed on the rebels. ..."
    Jan 24, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    karl1haushofer , January 24, 2015 at 7:34 am

    Western MSM is having a field day over the Mariupol GRAD attack that killed civilians and was supposedly done by the rebels. The MSM finds the shelling of civilians newsworthy only when it can be blamed on the rebels.

    Finnish MSM is in a full propaganda swing. They are ignoring the shelling in Gorlovka that has killed many civilians but are reporting the Mariupol shelling with big headlines. And they are once again censoring the user comments with a heavy hand that try to point of the media hypocrisy.

    [Jan 22, 2015] Donetsk trolleybus explosion blows Ukraine peace negotiations apart by Shaun Walker

    Notable quotes:
    "... Shaun, maybe you can explain why a few days ago the Graun/Observer printed nonsensical stories about the Ukrainian army's victory at the S.S. Prokofiev airport? ..."
    "... You never wondered why there are 300 articles on US/UK mainstream articles, *explicitly* targeted to and titled after Putin, did you? ..."
    The Guardian

    CityCalledNain 22 Jan 2015 17:33

    Shaun, maybe you can explain why a few days ago the Graun/Observer printed nonsensical stories about the Ukrainian army's victory at the S.S. Prokofiev airport?

    After the fiasco of the Graun/BBC trumpeting Ukrainian's supposed victory just before they were crushed at Ilovaisk you should have learned your lesson.

    But, once again you have made yourselves look like idiots, and once again Russian and Novorossiyan news sources have been proved to be accurate


    Vermithrax -> ShermanPotter 23 Jan 2015 07:38

    In my youth the USSR stood at the West German border with a 13-1 tank superiority. Then they were a threat. Now they are hundreds of miles further east with a fraction of the forces at their disposal. They are being used as a convenient bogeyman for policies that do not benefit Europe one jot. They have all the oil and gas Europe needs without the fundamentalist religion. In many ways now they are a natural ally, especially as the alternative is that China will benefit from it.

    I suppose there will always be some Grima Wormtongue's who think being America's fawning client state is a good idea.

    unclesmurf ijustwant2say 22 Jan 2015 17:32

    Putin, is being attacked by the same mechanism that has been attacking governments around the globe for the last seventy years. The one described here:

    http://williamblum.org/books/americas-deadliest-export

    And of course the do not care *at all* about Putin. What they care about, is that how they may get their hands on the huge natural resources of the vast slab of the planet called Russia. You see, Putin, the bad guy, is keeping everything PUBLIC, with the earnings of everything, oil, gas, weapons, going to the Russian state and nor to the bank accounts of very few, insanely rich individuals.

    But I assume you are ok with the UK privatizing British Aerospace, and having now to pay a huge surcharge to the shareholders of QinetiQ. Simply to buy the *same* weapons, designed by the *same* engineers and built by the *same* technicians. But No: "We HAVE to privatize it".

    I also assume you are ok with the trains here in the UK being a complete ripoff, because they are of course private, even if it is the government who pays for the track and even if it they private rail companies are subsidized (as if the huge ticket prices were not sufficient) by the Government, to the tune of BILLIONS annually.

    But No: "We have to privatize it".

    You never wondered why there are 300 articles on US/UK mainstream articles, *explicitly* targeted to and titled after Putin, did you?

    thingreen -> edwardrice 22 Jan 2015 17:28

    Interesting, though that working 'class' people make up bulk of soldiers is not exactly a startling revelation in any war - if you looked at the casualty lists for our anti-terrorist operations against the freedom fighters of PIRA you'd see a similar make up of people who I suspect many here would consider as dupes and economic conscripts.

    Simon311 Damocles59 23 Jan 2015 07:31

    How are they "so-called" rebels?

    It is clear these areas are beyond Kiev' s control and it is time to acknowledge this.

    And If Abkhazia and Ossetia are "basket cases" why are they not asking to join the wonderful nation of Georgia?

    Simon311 Robert Looren de Jong 23 Jan 2015 07:29

    Whatever it is clear that the people in these regions are not going to be reconciled to the Kiev Government.

    Time to recognise this and end the fighting.

    wombat123 -> Custodis 23 Jan 2015 07:26

    The people labeled "rebels" started off by refusing to recognize the leaders of the coup as a lawful government, which in fact, they were not under the Ukrainian constitution. These people included most of the police officers in eastern Ukraine. The killing started when the supporters of the coup came east and attacked those refusing to accept the coup so the fighting did not start with a rebellion as the term is normally understood.

    It is perverse to label those who oppose the violent overthrow of lawful authority as "rebels". It was clear that most people in the east thought the coup was a criminal act and its leaders were not the lawful government. It is quite clear that it was the supporters of the coup who are the aggressors and they came east and attacked people who did not accept the coup as lawful.

    Some of the first combat started when supporters of the coup started attacking police in the east. Were the police officers "rebels" for opposing the armed overthrow of their country's constitutional order and elected government? "Rebel" does not seem like an honest term for someone in that situation.

    DCarter -> Gaz0007 23 Jan 2015 07:06

    The USSR collapsed largely because it's people, particularly in the non-Russian republics, desired the same rights and freedoms as people in Western Europe and North America...all of whom managed to maintain those freedoms throughout the Cold War by forming a military alliance called NATO.

    In retrospect though those freedoms were illusory, or at best transient, and all we did was to trade domination by a party apparatus for domination by a corporate oligarchy. And it is in those corporate interests that NATO now acts, not in the interests of the people if Eastern Europe or Western Europe or even North America.

    Solongmariane -> Spiffey 23 Jan 2015 07:01

    DNR is getting experienced with the ceasefires from KIEV. It's just asking a time-out to recuoerate losses, to send re-inforcements, and to get new weapons. It was so at 6 sept, and 19 dec. Not again, such time out.

    SHappens 23 Jan 2015 06:42

    The main pro-Russian rebel leader in eastern Ukraine says his troops are on the offensive and he does not want truce talks with Kiev anymore.

    At lest this has he merit to be clear. No more hypocrisy as Kiev never intended to respect any ceasefire but used this time to regroup.

    On the other hands, when you read this below, the dice are loaded and the US goals is war against Russia whatever on the ground. This is a dialogue of the deaf.

    ---

    "This tactic of avoiding questions about what the Ukrainian government is doing by pointing to Russia is becoming increasingly obvious," the journalist said.

    Here is an excerpt from the briefing:

    Gayane Chichakyan: Do the actions of the Ukrainian government comply with the Minsk agreement?

    Jen Psaki: In general Russia has illegally – and Russian-backed separatists have illegally – come into Ukraine, including Donetsk. Ukraine has a responsibility and an absolute right to defend itself. We certainly expect both sides to abide by the Minsk agreements. We have not seen that happen, we've seen a lot of talk, not a lot of backup from the Russian side.

    GC: I am specifically asking about the actions of the Ukrainian government. Can you give a more definitive answer, whether or not they comply with the Minsk agreements?

    JP: You are not talking about a specific incident, I think I'll leave it at what I said.

    GC: With the Minsk agreement, do they comply? You pass a judgment that Russia is not complying with the agreement, can you assess whether Ukraine is complying?

    JP: I listed a range of specific ways Russia is not complying.

    GC: Under the agreement sides must avoid deploying and using heavy artillery. Isn't it what the Ukrainian government is doing right now?

    JP: First of all, let's start again with the fact that Russia has illegally intervened in Ukraine and come into a country that was a sovereign country. So I am not sure that you are proposing that a sovereign country doesn't have the right to defend themselves.

    GC:I am asking specifically about the actions of the Ukrainian government, you are veering off.

    JP: I think we are going to leave it at that.

    [Jan 20, 2015] The Guardian View of war in Ukraine maintain the pressure on Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... DNR reports can't be taken at face value, though. They're biased. To me, DNR reports are only good if they are backed up by AP or Reuters info, or if they're associated by twitter announcements from people near the battle zone who are known not to be trolls (i.e., people who are reasonably objective). ..."
    "... "The artillery and aviation overwhelm the city with their shells, and then we're going to clean-up operation, it is normal procedure in this war." ..."
    Jan 20, 2015 | The Guardian

    EdwardGreen1968 -> IngAzazello 20 Jan 2015 19:04

    Putin wants Donbass to remain in Ukraine as a self-governing part of the country. Obviously he's hoping to maximize Russian influence in Ukraine by operating through the Donbass's future leaders. For Putin, such an arrangement will work like a Trojan Horse strategy.

    For the obvious reasons, Kiev isn't happy with Putin's aims. That's understandable. What's reprehensible about Kiev, however, is that it won't simply cut Donbass loose and end the war. After all, we're talking about millions of people in east Ukraine who don't want to be part of Ukraine anymore. Kiev has no good reason for fighting over this.

    Kiev could solve two problems at once by allowing Ukraine to divided. Think about it.

    EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015 18:57

    That could very well happen, but Poroshenko will be replaced by Yatsenyuk and the pro-war party. Those ultranationalists and far rightists are the ones pressuring Poroshenko to somehow "win" the war. Poroshenko's position becomes more and more insecure every time the Ukrainian army's inferiority in combat is demonstrated.

    The only light at the end of the tunnel here, I think, is that the pro-war party is drawing most of its support from the far western provinces of Ukraine. That's the only region that's really hyped up for war. I don't think the rest of Ukraine is really willing to tolerate the agony of ongoing combat. So, when the far western provinces burn out on war, politicians will emerge in Kiev who are ready for peace. But how long will it take to get to that point?

    EdwardGreen1968 wombat123 20 Jan 2015 18:45

    Wombat: I agree with you completely. My greatest fear is that, because of domestic political weakness, Poroshenko won't bite the bullet and make peace.

    From there, Western foreign policy hawks will keep enabling Kiev to go back into battle -- to get destroyed again -- for no good reason.

    EugeneGur -> sasha19 20 Jan 2015 18:38

    Cargo 200 reports are all false?

    They likely are. Some have been proven to be false. Most are repetitions of the same statements from the same sources. Some of these reports claim that there are as many as 15,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Donbass. Have you ever asked yourself a question how come that not a single one has ever been killed or captured to be shown to the world to be positively identified as an active member of the Russian army? All we have is some unlabeled graves that could belong to anybody, some unknown people making claims that cannot be verified. Everything I've seen coming from Donbass shows that there are no Russian soldiers there only volunteers, but that nobody denies.

    Colin Robinson 20 Jan 2015 18:34

    Use of SS insignia by the Azov Battalion is blatant enough to have been noticed by the BBC. They are nazis, self-proclaimed... but after all (some say) they're just one little section of a broader nationalist movement... If the majority of Kiev's enforcers do not wear such blatant fascist gear, why worry?

    Thing is, fascists have historically used a range of symbols, not all of German origin. The National Front in Britain is a militant, ultra-nationalist movement with a history of marching behind the Union Jack... While SS logos are a serious provocation in themselves, what people wear is in the end less important that what they do.

    The nationalistic movement currently dominant in Kiev has a record of lethal violence - the riot police set alight by petrol bombs in Maidan, the mass lynching in Odessa on May 2, the shooting of civilians from armoured vehicles in Mariupol on May 9... Maybe behaviour like this should have been enough to set alarm bells ringing around the world, with or without SS insignia?

    wombat123 20 Jan 2015 18:13

    Putin already chose peace. It is the leaders of the coup and their NATO backers who chose violence and civil war instead of elections. As a consequence, there is no government that is legitimate under Ukraine's constitution or in the eyes of all regions of the country.

    Just as it was the NATO-backed leaders of the coup that overthrew the elected government through violence and civil war, it is they who are massively violating the ceasefire agreement with large scale shelling of civilians in eastern cities. They would not have done this without a green light and support from NATO. NATO is not just supporting a renewal of the civil war but serious war crimes as well.

    MaxBoson -> moncur 20 Jan 2015 17:42

    At the time the exodus took place, TV was full of pictures of highways filled with Serbs in endless ten-wide columns fleeing Croatia. Some say they left out of fear, some that they were driven out; regardless of the details, it boils down to an expulsion. In any event, it is beyond dispute that the Serbs left and that there were around 300,000 of them. This event has been called the largest ethnic-cleansing of the entire Balkan tragedy.

    EugeneGur -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015 17:28

    We all wish for that but I am not sure it's realistic. At least, to stop the destruction of the cities would be great. Gorlovka is devastated and Donetsk is in a bad shape.

    The info is from

    http://rusvesna.su/

    They've proven to be reasonably reliable before.


    Manolo Torres -> sasha19 20 Jan 2015 17:19

    Can you quote those articles, because other more compelling evidence like Russian prisoners of war or Russian death soldiers (remember when we were told that the Ukranians obliterated all those tanks?) in Ukraine simply doesn´t exist, and it is indeed very difficult to believe that there has been none when there are supposed to be thousands of official Russian forces deployed.

    At the same time the Russian army is apparently a very though place to be, in 2000 more than 1000 Russian soldiers died as "non combatants" , in 2007 around 450. I have my doubts that, for example, the people that run the comittee of mothers of Russian soldiers, and associations of that sort, that received huge amounts of money from US agencies, are not doing some dirty work convincing the families that their sons were indeed killed in Ukraine.

    A link to Khodorkovsky´s foundation, compiling a list from a dubious facebook group, will not do.

    Wu Bravo -> MarcelFromage 20 Jan 2015 17:12

    I read from different sources, because I think herewith I might have a more objective view, description from different perspectives and angles. And even by doing this I never state, I have obtained the only and the very truth. Of course not. Education is the answer, my dear friend. If you do a research, it is obligatory to look at different sources, even though you might disagree with them. So do I, my dear, friend. I do not bother myself, I educate myself and I am trying to be objective, thus relying on FACTS and not on bullshit and not fact-based comments. I disagree with this article but I did not told that my opinion is the only possible truth. However, in comparison to you, my remarks were fact based and to the point, in your case your remarks may be treated as personnel but not fact-based and not to the point. like baby: "may be you are right, but your haircut is awful :). Sorry my friend, if I have offended you by this, it was never my intention, and I will be ready to discuss this issues with you if you provide some facts, I have not noticed

    unended 20 Jan 2015 17:11

    Indeed, it takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Russian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that Russia's armed forces have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk, and making sure Ukraine's sovereignty over its internationally recognised territory is not restored.

    Am I reading the Wall Street Journal opinion page?

    Here's one to try on

    It takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Guardian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that the US and EU have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel fascists of Lviv, and making sure Ukraine's democracy is not restored.

    Manolo Torres -> MarcelFromage, 20 Jan 2015
    Of course, I always do. Here you have it, but next time try doing your own research.

    Kiev MOHYLA school of journalism, partners:

    Rinat Akhmetov Foundation for Development of Ukraine and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy are pleased to announce the launch of the 2nd year of the Digital Media for Universities Project.

    If you go all the way down to that webpage you find:

    © 2007 Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism
    Design: Yuri Panin. Programming: Bogdan Tokovenko. Powered by ExpressionEngine.
    The web site is created with an assistance from the U.S. Department of State through the Educational Partnership Program.

    BBC: Ukrainian tycoon Rinat Akhmetov confronts rebellion

    Separatist leaders have threatened to "nationalise" Mr Akhmetov's assets.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinat_Akhmetov

    As of April 2014, he was listed as the 101st richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of US 11.6 billion.[5] T here have been claims Akhmetov has been involved in organized crime.

    EdwardGreen1968 -> EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015
    There is a real possibility of encircling the 24th brigade of the Ukrainian army unless they withdraw.

    Wow! That is dramatic. Where are you getting this info? Let's hope it's true.

    The idea is to push the Ukrainian army as far away from the main cities as possible, so they wouldn't be able to fire at them even from far range artillery.

    To be honest, it would be much better for everyone if the rebels execute a complete encirclement of the Ukrainian army. If that's accomplished, Kiev will not be able to play games any longer with fake peace talks, lobbing shells at Donetsk civilians, etc.

    Something decisive like Stalingrad or Dien Bin Phu. That's the kind of victory that will finally end this war.

    EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015 16:48

    The latest - the rebels are gaining pretty well along the entire front. In LPR, the took blockpost 31 and attacking blockpost 29. There is a real possibility of encircling the 24th brigade of the Ukrainian army unless they withdraw. In DPR, rebels took Peski near airpost. Peski, together with Avdeevka, were the towns from which the Ukrainian army fired at Donetsk during the entire period of so called "cease-fire". The idea is to push the Ukrainian army as far away from the main cities as possible, so they wouldn't be able to fire at them even from far range artillery.

    Elena Hodgson -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015

    Edward, people are dying! The sooner this war ends, the less civilians are killed and maimed! Yats with his war speeches is a Rabid Rabbit!

    EdwardGreen1968 -> ID6741142 20 Jan 2015

    A final aside/ note: If, though it will not, the Kievan forces did 'win' the war on the ground what do you think will happen to the people who are caught up in this? Do you think that having been labelled 'terrorists' they will be allowed to sleep easy when the guns stop? What will happen to the women as the invaders arrive? Wake up or this does not have a happy ending!

    That's the reality that Western media reporters and editors are not allowed to talk about. They'll lose their jobs if they do.

    Either way, that horrifying outcome you describe will only happen if Moscow caves in under economic pressure. Kiev can't get to that position militarily. Based on battlefield news, Kiev is destined to lose every single battle, and very badly at that.

    EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015 16:28

    What I meant is that the Ukrainian army is being forced back in combat, but that it's probably succeeding in making an organized retreat. That means that the Ukrainians take casualties, lose ground, but reestablish defensive lines slightly to the west. That is an indecisive victory for the pro-Russian rebels.

    On the other hand, if there were reports that the Ukrainian lines were broken, and that their units were getting encircled (put in kettles) -- just like at Ilovaisk -- then it would be a decisive victory for the rebels.

    It's hard to tell what's really happening based on the reports. The good thing about a decisive outcome -- if it ever happens -- is that it may lead directly to peace (which is what I really want to see).

    EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015

    DNR reports can't be taken at face value, though. They're biased. To me, DNR reports are only good if they are backed up by AP or Reuters info, or if they're associated by twitter announcements from people near the battle zone who are known not to be trolls (i.e., people who are reasonably objective).

    Either way, the proliferation of data during these past few hours suggests the Ukrainians are being backed down at multiple points on the front.

    ID6741142 20 Jan 2015 16:19

    What saddens me in reading so many threads is the real victims of this conflict, the innocent citizens of East Ukraine are, with the odd exception, being ignored. Too many of you seem to want to score political points, trading 'fact's' that none of you will even give time for consideration since they are obviously propaganda, whichever 'side' you support. It is pointless.

    Yet people are dying and a lot more will unless the focus changes, not just on here but in the political world towards actually caring about the people.

    A couple of you deserve commendation as you have recognised this. Also you recognised that BOTH sides have played games.

    Russia does have a regime that has extreme views on many issues. It is willing to exert it power to stop the growth of western influence on its doorstep. And it does have a strong, biased propaganda machine - I know I have Russian friends living in Russia.

    However the West did play a hand in the change of Gov't. It knew that there were strong far-right groups involved in that overthrow & it knows they are exerting a higher level of influence than they should in the current conflict. The West does not have a good track record of backing the 'right' groups.

    Meanwhile, people who did not want a war, die in their homes.

    There is hypocrisy on BOTH sides.

    When it is over there will almost certainly be war crimes that will come to light on both sides.
    Is that why the media is not as high a presence as might be expected?

    You rant about the shelling as if that is the only weapon used against the citizens of the Eastern Ukraine. What about the stopping of aid lorries from the west by the pro-Kiev units - under the control of RW-nationalist leaders?

    Hearts & Minds - that is what wins all civil conflicts, and more importantly underpins any chance to repair the serious damage done to 'trust'. The people in the East will believe Russia more because it is not shooting at them AND more importantly it's aid is getting through. (Yes I know it convoys also have weapons etc hidden but we play those 'games too when it suits.) The West is slow to learn this lesson. It has failed time and again in its middle eastern, conflicts to get this right, it thinks guns not grain, missile not milk & water, even though these cost far less to provide.

    The ONLY solution, whatever anyone may say, is, as already stated, for Ukraine to become, for the foreseeable future, a totally neutral state in which the rights of all citizens/cultures are protected (not just Russian & other ethnic minorities but also cultural sub groups (i.e. LGBT)).

    This may not be what the ordinary Ukrainians want.Not the oligarchs who drove the Kiev changes because they would make more money in the EU!, who rule in this corrupt country (yes corrupt that has been part of he EU's demands to sort it out), What the people really want is not as clear as some might think , and do they actually have the facts to work it out? If we can't be sure about the value of being in the EU in GB, with our so called 'open/ democratic' media what chance do the ordinary Ukrainians have?

    But if getting the country working and people cared for is the true aim of all 'outside influential states' then that 'sacrifice' is worth it to bring peace, and the chance to build a balanced state and economy. It will NEED both Russian and EU/USA support otherwise it will be almost impossible to achieve especially with the war damage to be sorted!

    But while the politicians behave like too many of you on here, with partisan fervour, nationalistic pride etc and blinkered bar room vision, then the people who live in this potentially beautiful and culturally rich nation will continue to die.

    Come on Guardian stop focusing on the politics - we have heard it all before & it is not changing anybody's opinion. Be brave. Lead the field and get the world to know just what price is being paid by the old and young, and agitate for the peace that must happen now, before a humanitarian disaster overtakes it all, and not when nationalistic pride allows it to.

    A final aside/ note: If, though it will not, the Kievan forces did 'win' the war on the ground what do you think will happen to the people who are caught up in this? Do you think that having been labelled 'terrorists' they will be allowed to sleep easy when the guns stop? What will happen to the women as the invaders arrive? Wake up or this does not have a happy ending!

    JezNorth noshtgchq 20 Jan 2015 16:18

    Could be dangerous , these loonies could start another masive false flag - Maidan snipers , MH-17 , buss etc .

    Do you really think this helps your cause or just makes you come off as an crass insta-mod.

    PeraIlic -> Expats10 20 Jan 2015 16:17

    To fight from civilian areas when you have a choice is cowardice.

    What kind of choice are you talking about when the Ukrainian army was practically came to the suburbs of Lugansk and Donetsk. Almost until yesterday, they were bombing the cities from their airports, is not it?

    Ukrainian commander of the attack on Ilovaisk testified before the cameras, "The artillery and aviation overwhelm the city with their shells, and then we're going to clean-up operation, it is normal procedure in this war."

    If you do not believe me, I can very easily find the URL address of the video, just for you.


    Kolobok07 -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015 16:17

    No, the Ukrainian army has resisted ...

    But there are reports of the capture of 39 and 41 checkpoints and attack extended to other positions.
    Pesky and Avdeyevka not completely stripped from the Ukrainian military.


    EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015 16:15

    Indeed, it takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Russian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that Russia's armed forces have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk

    I confess I have that twisted conspiratorial mindset - I do not for a second believe that Russian army is involved in the Donbass fighting. Not only not a shed of evidence has ever been produced, not a single soldiers captured (apart from those unfortunate 10 soldiers that wandered into Ukraine and did not fire a single shot) or a body shown, nothing.
    I do not doubt that Russia supports Donbass, and it should. These are our people that refuse to recognized an illegal "government" imposed on them by foreign powers as a result of a coup, and they appealed to Russia for help. Why shouldn't Russia help? Because the West says so? Furthermore, these people came under attack by the Kiev junta and are fighting for their freedom and their lives. The only fault I can find with the Russian government's behavior is that it doesn't do enough. Nevertheless, they are winning. Junta miscalculated yet again, and the only thing it is capable of is killing civilians.

    graduated reduction in sanctions in return for Russian concessions and cooperation in Ukraine and elsewhere has been set aside

    Why should Russia give concessions in Ukraine and cooperate in killing our people in Donbass? Why should Russia cooperate in supporting what it considers to be a government based on nazi ideology in Ukraine? Give me one good reason.

    For that matter, why should Europe do that? Feeling nostalgic about nazism?

    [Jan 20, 2015] The Guardian View of war in Ukraine maintain the pressure on Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... DNR reports can't be taken at face value, though. They're biased. To me, DNR reports are only good if they are backed up by AP or Reuters info, or if they're associated by twitter announcements from people near the battle zone who are known not to be trolls (i.e., people who are reasonably objective). ..."
    "... "The artillery and aviation overwhelm the city with their shells, and then we're going to clean-up operation, it is normal procedure in this war." ..."
    Jan 20, 2015 | The Guardian

    EdwardGreen1968 -> IngAzazello 20 Jan 2015 19:04

    Putin wants Donbass to remain in Ukraine as a self-governing part of the country. Obviously he's hoping to maximize Russian influence in Ukraine by operating through the Donbass's future leaders. For Putin, such an arrangement will work like a Trojan Horse strategy.

    For the obvious reasons, Kiev isn't happy with Putin's aims. That's understandable. What's reprehensible about Kiev, however, is that it won't simply cut Donbass loose and end the war. After all, we're talking about millions of people in east Ukraine who don't want to be part of Ukraine anymore. Kiev has no good reason for fighting over this.

    Kiev could solve two problems at once by allowing Ukraine to divided. Think about it.

    EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015 18:57

    That could very well happen, but Poroshenko will be replaced by Yatsenyuk and the pro-war party. Those ultranationalists and far rightists are the ones pressuring Poroshenko to somehow "win" the war. Poroshenko's position becomes more and more insecure every time the Ukrainian army's inferiority in combat is demonstrated.

    The only light at the end of the tunnel here, I think, is that the pro-war party is drawing most of its support from the far western provinces of Ukraine. That's the only region that's really hyped up for war. I don't think the rest of Ukraine is really willing to tolerate the agony of ongoing combat. So, when the far western provinces burn out on war, politicians will emerge in Kiev who are ready for peace. But how long will it take to get to that point?

    EdwardGreen1968 wombat123 20 Jan 2015 18:45

    Wombat: I agree with you completely. My greatest fear is that, because of domestic political weakness, Poroshenko won't bite the bullet and make peace.

    From there, Western foreign policy hawks will keep enabling Kiev to go back into battle -- to get destroyed again -- for no good reason.

    EugeneGur -> sasha19 20 Jan 2015 18:38

    Cargo 200 reports are all false?

    They likely are. Some have been proven to be false. Most are repetitions of the same statements from the same sources. Some of these reports claim that there are as many as 15,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Donbass. Have you ever asked yourself a question how come that not a single one has ever been killed or captured to be shown to the world to be positively identified as an active member of the Russian army? All we have is some unlabeled graves that could belong to anybody, some unknown people making claims that cannot be verified. Everything I've seen coming from Donbass shows that there are no Russian soldiers there only volunteers, but that nobody denies.

    Colin Robinson 20 Jan 2015 18:34

    Use of SS insignia by the Azov Battalion is blatant enough to have been noticed by the BBC. They are nazis, self-proclaimed... but after all (some say) they're just one little section of a broader nationalist movement... If the majority of Kiev's enforcers do not wear such blatant fascist gear, why worry?

    Thing is, fascists have historically used a range of symbols, not all of German origin. The National Front in Britain is a militant, ultra-nationalist movement with a history of marching behind the Union Jack... While SS logos are a serious provocation in themselves, what people wear is in the end less important that what they do.

    The nationalistic movement currently dominant in Kiev has a record of lethal violence - the riot police set alight by petrol bombs in Maidan, the mass lynching in Odessa on May 2, the shooting of civilians from armoured vehicles in Mariupol on May 9... Maybe behaviour like this should have been enough to set alarm bells ringing around the world, with or without SS insignia?

    wombat123 20 Jan 2015 18:13

    Putin already chose peace. It is the leaders of the coup and their NATO backers who chose violence and civil war instead of elections. As a consequence, there is no government that is legitimate under Ukraine's constitution or in the eyes of all regions of the country.

    Just as it was the NATO-backed leaders of the coup that overthrew the elected government through violence and civil war, it is they who are massively violating the ceasefire agreement with large scale shelling of civilians in eastern cities. They would not have done this without a green light and support from NATO. NATO is not just supporting a renewal of the civil war but serious war crimes as well.

    MaxBoson -> moncur 20 Jan 2015 17:42

    At the time the exodus took place, TV was full of pictures of highways filled with Serbs in endless ten-wide columns fleeing Croatia. Some say they left out of fear, some that they were driven out; regardless of the details, it boils down to an expulsion. In any event, it is beyond dispute that the Serbs left and that there were around 300,000 of them. This event has been called the largest ethnic-cleansing of the entire Balkan tragedy.

    EugeneGur -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015 17:28

    We all wish for that but I am not sure it's realistic. At least, to stop the destruction of the cities would be great. Gorlovka is devastated and Donetsk is in a bad shape.

    The info is from

    http://rusvesna.su/

    They've proven to be reasonably reliable before.


    Manolo Torres -> sasha19 20 Jan 2015 17:19

    Can you quote those articles, because other more compelling evidence like Russian prisoners of war or Russian death soldiers (remember when we were told that the Ukranians obliterated all those tanks?) in Ukraine simply doesn´t exist, and it is indeed very difficult to believe that there has been none when there are supposed to be thousands of official Russian forces deployed.

    At the same time the Russian army is apparently a very though place to be, in 2000 more than 1000 Russian soldiers died as "non combatants" , in 2007 around 450. I have my doubts that, for example, the people that run the comittee of mothers of Russian soldiers, and associations of that sort, that received huge amounts of money from US agencies, are not doing some dirty work convincing the families that their sons were indeed killed in Ukraine.

    A link to Khodorkovsky´s foundation, compiling a list from a dubious facebook group, will not do.

    Wu Bravo -> MarcelFromage 20 Jan 2015 17:12

    I read from different sources, because I think herewith I might have a more objective view, description from different perspectives and angles. And even by doing this I never state, I have obtained the only and the very truth. Of course not. Education is the answer, my dear friend. If you do a research, it is obligatory to look at different sources, even though you might disagree with them. So do I, my dear, friend. I do not bother myself, I educate myself and I am trying to be objective, thus relying on FACTS and not on bullshit and not fact-based comments. I disagree with this article but I did not told that my opinion is the only possible truth. However, in comparison to you, my remarks were fact based and to the point, in your case your remarks may be treated as personnel but not fact-based and not to the point. like baby: "may be you are right, but your haircut is awful :). Sorry my friend, if I have offended you by this, it was never my intention, and I will be ready to discuss this issues with you if you provide some facts, I have not noticed

    unended 20 Jan 2015 17:11

    Indeed, it takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Russian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that Russia's armed forces have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk, and making sure Ukraine's sovereignty over its internationally recognised territory is not restored.

    Am I reading the Wall Street Journal opinion page?

    Here's one to try on

    It takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Guardian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that the US and EU have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel fascists of Lviv, and making sure Ukraine's democracy is not restored.

    Manolo Torres -> MarcelFromage, 20 Jan 2015
    Of course, I always do. Here you have it, but next time try doing your own research.

    Kiev MOHYLA school of journalism, partners:

    Rinat Akhmetov Foundation for Development of Ukraine and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy are pleased to announce the launch of the 2nd year of the Digital Media for Universities Project.

    If you go all the way down to that webpage you find:

    © 2007 Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism
    Design: Yuri Panin. Programming: Bogdan Tokovenko. Powered by ExpressionEngine.
    The web site is created with an assistance from the U.S. Department of State through the Educational Partnership Program.

    BBC: Ukrainian tycoon Rinat Akhmetov confronts rebellion

    Separatist leaders have threatened to "nationalise" Mr Akhmetov's assets.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinat_Akhmetov

    As of April 2014, he was listed as the 101st richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of US 11.6 billion.[5] T here have been claims Akhmetov has been involved in organized crime.

    EdwardGreen1968 -> EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015
    There is a real possibility of encircling the 24th brigade of the Ukrainian army unless they withdraw.

    Wow! That is dramatic. Where are you getting this info? Let's hope it's true.

    The idea is to push the Ukrainian army as far away from the main cities as possible, so they wouldn't be able to fire at them even from far range artillery.

    To be honest, it would be much better for everyone if the rebels execute a complete encirclement of the Ukrainian army. If that's accomplished, Kiev will not be able to play games any longer with fake peace talks, lobbing shells at Donetsk civilians, etc.

    Something decisive like Stalingrad or Dien Bin Phu. That's the kind of victory that will finally end this war.

    EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015 16:48

    The latest - the rebels are gaining pretty well along the entire front. In LPR, the took blockpost 31 and attacking blockpost 29. There is a real possibility of encircling the 24th brigade of the Ukrainian army unless they withdraw. In DPR, rebels took Peski near airpost. Peski, together with Avdeevka, were the towns from which the Ukrainian army fired at Donetsk during the entire period of so called "cease-fire". The idea is to push the Ukrainian army as far away from the main cities as possible, so they wouldn't be able to fire at them even from far range artillery.

    Elena Hodgson -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015

    Edward, people are dying! The sooner this war ends, the less civilians are killed and maimed! Yats with his war speeches is a Rabid Rabbit!

    EdwardGreen1968 -> ID6741142 20 Jan 2015

    A final aside/ note: If, though it will not, the Kievan forces did 'win' the war on the ground what do you think will happen to the people who are caught up in this? Do you think that having been labelled 'terrorists' they will be allowed to sleep easy when the guns stop? What will happen to the women as the invaders arrive? Wake up or this does not have a happy ending!

    That's the reality that Western media reporters and editors are not allowed to talk about. They'll lose their jobs if they do.

    Either way, that horrifying outcome you describe will only happen if Moscow caves in under economic pressure. Kiev can't get to that position militarily. Based on battlefield news, Kiev is destined to lose every single battle, and very badly at that.

    EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015 16:28

    What I meant is that the Ukrainian army is being forced back in combat, but that it's probably succeeding in making an organized retreat. That means that the Ukrainians take casualties, lose ground, but reestablish defensive lines slightly to the west. That is an indecisive victory for the pro-Russian rebels.

    On the other hand, if there were reports that the Ukrainian lines were broken, and that their units were getting encircled (put in kettles) -- just like at Ilovaisk -- then it would be a decisive victory for the rebels.

    It's hard to tell what's really happening based on the reports. The good thing about a decisive outcome -- if it ever happens -- is that it may lead directly to peace (which is what I really want to see).

    EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015

    DNR reports can't be taken at face value, though. They're biased. To me, DNR reports are only good if they are backed up by AP or Reuters info, or if they're associated by twitter announcements from people near the battle zone who are known not to be trolls (i.e., people who are reasonably objective).

    Either way, the proliferation of data during these past few hours suggests the Ukrainians are being backed down at multiple points on the front.

    ID6741142 20 Jan 2015 16:19

    What saddens me in reading so many threads is the real victims of this conflict, the innocent citizens of East Ukraine are, with the odd exception, being ignored. Too many of you seem to want to score political points, trading 'fact's' that none of you will even give time for consideration since they are obviously propaganda, whichever 'side' you support. It is pointless.

    Yet people are dying and a lot more will unless the focus changes, not just on here but in the political world towards actually caring about the people.

    A couple of you deserve commendation as you have recognised this. Also you recognised that BOTH sides have played games.

    Russia does have a regime that has extreme views on many issues. It is willing to exert it power to stop the growth of western influence on its doorstep. And it does have a strong, biased propaganda machine - I know I have Russian friends living in Russia.

    However the West did play a hand in the change of Gov't. It knew that there were strong far-right groups involved in that overthrow & it knows they are exerting a higher level of influence than they should in the current conflict. The West does not have a good track record of backing the 'right' groups.

    Meanwhile, people who did not want a war, die in their homes.

    There is hypocrisy on BOTH sides.

    When it is over there will almost certainly be war crimes that will come to light on both sides.
    Is that why the media is not as high a presence as might be expected?

    You rant about the shelling as if that is the only weapon used against the citizens of the Eastern Ukraine. What about the stopping of aid lorries from the west by the pro-Kiev units - under the control of RW-nationalist leaders?

    Hearts & Minds - that is what wins all civil conflicts, and more importantly underpins any chance to repair the serious damage done to 'trust'. The people in the East will believe Russia more because it is not shooting at them AND more importantly it's aid is getting through. (Yes I know it convoys also have weapons etc hidden but we play those 'games too when it suits.) The West is slow to learn this lesson. It has failed time and again in its middle eastern, conflicts to get this right, it thinks guns not grain, missile not milk & water, even though these cost far less to provide.

    The ONLY solution, whatever anyone may say, is, as already stated, for Ukraine to become, for the foreseeable future, a totally neutral state in which the rights of all citizens/cultures are protected (not just Russian & other ethnic minorities but also cultural sub groups (i.e. LGBT)).

    This may not be what the ordinary Ukrainians want.Not the oligarchs who drove the Kiev changes because they would make more money in the EU!, who rule in this corrupt country (yes corrupt that has been part of he EU's demands to sort it out), What the people really want is not as clear as some might think , and do they actually have the facts to work it out? If we can't be sure about the value of being in the EU in GB, with our so called 'open/ democratic' media what chance do the ordinary Ukrainians have?

    But if getting the country working and people cared for is the true aim of all 'outside influential states' then that 'sacrifice' is worth it to bring peace, and the chance to build a balanced state and economy. It will NEED both Russian and EU/USA support otherwise it will be almost impossible to achieve especially with the war damage to be sorted!

    But while the politicians behave like too many of you on here, with partisan fervour, nationalistic pride etc and blinkered bar room vision, then the people who live in this potentially beautiful and culturally rich nation will continue to die.

    Come on Guardian stop focusing on the politics - we have heard it all before & it is not changing anybody's opinion. Be brave. Lead the field and get the world to know just what price is being paid by the old and young, and agitate for the peace that must happen now, before a humanitarian disaster overtakes it all, and not when nationalistic pride allows it to.

    A final aside/ note: If, though it will not, the Kievan forces did 'win' the war on the ground what do you think will happen to the people who are caught up in this? Do you think that having been labelled 'terrorists' they will be allowed to sleep easy when the guns stop? What will happen to the women as the invaders arrive? Wake up or this does not have a happy ending!

    JezNorth noshtgchq 20 Jan 2015 16:18

    Could be dangerous , these loonies could start another masive false flag - Maidan snipers , MH-17 , buss etc .

    Do you really think this helps your cause or just makes you come off as an crass insta-mod.

    PeraIlic -> Expats10 20 Jan 2015 16:17

    To fight from civilian areas when you have a choice is cowardice.

    What kind of choice are you talking about when the Ukrainian army was practically came to the suburbs of Lugansk and Donetsk. Almost until yesterday, they were bombing the cities from their airports, is not it?

    Ukrainian commander of the attack on Ilovaisk testified before the cameras, "The artillery and aviation overwhelm the city with their shells, and then we're going to clean-up operation, it is normal procedure in this war."

    If you do not believe me, I can very easily find the URL address of the video, just for you.


    Kolobok07 -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015 16:17

    No, the Ukrainian army has resisted ...

    But there are reports of the capture of 39 and 41 checkpoints and attack extended to other positions.
    Pesky and Avdeyevka not completely stripped from the Ukrainian military.


    EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015 16:15

    Indeed, it takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Russian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that Russia's armed forces have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk

    I confess I have that twisted conspiratorial mindset - I do not for a second believe that Russian army is involved in the Donbass fighting. Not only not a shed of evidence has ever been produced, not a single soldiers captured (apart from those unfortunate 10 soldiers that wandered into Ukraine and did not fire a single shot) or a body shown, nothing.
    I do not doubt that Russia supports Donbass, and it should. These are our people that refuse to recognized an illegal "government" imposed on them by foreign powers as a result of a coup, and they appealed to Russia for help. Why shouldn't Russia help? Because the West says so? Furthermore, these people came under attack by the Kiev junta and are fighting for their freedom and their lives. The only fault I can find with the Russian government's behavior is that it doesn't do enough. Nevertheless, they are winning. Junta miscalculated yet again, and the only thing it is capable of is killing civilians.

    graduated reduction in sanctions in return for Russian concessions and cooperation in Ukraine and elsewhere has been set aside

    Why should Russia give concessions in Ukraine and cooperate in killing our people in Donbass? Why should Russia cooperate in supporting what it considers to be a government based on nazi ideology in Ukraine? Give me one good reason.

    For that matter, why should Europe do that? Feeling nostalgic about nazism?

    [Jan 19, 2015] They were never there: Russia's silence for families of troops killed in Ukraine by Alec Luhn

    From comments: "With all the respect for the dead and their families, if this is the number of Russian soldiers dead, damn good they are, I take my hat, what an army, almost invisible and extremely professional. "
    The Guardian

    freedomcry iangio 19 Jan 2015 19:42

    I still don't see what Putin is getting out of his Novrossya rampage.

    Bingo. He's getting nothing, and that's why he's so dovish and reluctant to commit. It's just one of those instances where he can't ignore the fact that he's got a people to answer to. We all want a free Novorossia and a Crimea that's reunited with the rest of us and forever safe from Ukrainian petty imperialism.

    We don't need Putin or the television to tell us that. On the contrary, it's because of the Russian people that Putin, however hard he might try to be his usual neither-here-nor-there self, can't afford to not have a bottom line in this.

    Tom20000 Eye Spy 19 Jan 2015 19:45

    I don't think you understand what free speech is. The guardian is a private organisation with no obligation to show all comments.

    Georgethedog 19 Jan 2015 19:52

    "During a meeting with the president, Krivenko even handed Putin a list of about 100 soldiers killed in eastern Ukraine"

    With all the respect for the dead and their families, if this is the number of Russian soldiers dead, damn good they are, I take my hat, what an army, almost invisible and extremely professional.

    Good Luck Kiev Junta!

    Vignola1964 -> Tom20000 19 Jan 2015 19:31

    There is much I do not know about this and other conflicts taking place around the world at the moment, but we can all feel the sinister hands behind the scenes, driving ordinary people into hostilities. There are no innocents anywhere.

    In my opinion, the 1% profit from the other 1% constantly at conflict at any one time. The more the merrier as far as they are concerned. For me this is evil.

    kowalli -> Tom20000 19 Jan 2015 19:16

    It must be embarrassing for the general public.

    ??? general public just think why west can't give any real proof, but give us bunch of lies. You really think that this 7 guys can do anything?
    You didn't even tell us results of mh17 Boeing or why ukrainians are shelling civilians like USA in Iraq.
    West just copypasting what USA tell them and think that they are exceptional people.

    RicardoFloresMagon -> vr13vr 19 Jan 2015 19:14

    Whether the claims have any merit or not, just the existence of all those groups who file petitions and challenge authorities suggests there is much more democracy in Russia than it is in the US. I can't even imagine similar organizations in the US criticizing and pressuring Obama's administration or questioning military commanders whether the death of their sons in Iraq was justified.

    InternationalANSWER
    United for Peace and Justice
    Iraq Veterans Against the War
    Code Pink
    Not in Our Name
    GI Rights Network
    and a few more...
    ... not to mention millions protested the war before it even started in every major city.

    JanZamoyski -> iangio 19 Jan 2015 19:11

    A nice leverage to control an escaped satellite state. Either by constant war which will bleed Ukraine and damage it chances of joining EU / NATO or by planting an autonomous, hostile region which MPs are going to paralyse the Ukrainian parliament. Like they need more fist fights...

    Christine Cannon -> Alexander Sokolov 19 Jan 2015 19:11

    So why are these young boys killing their neighbors. what is in it for them. Death

    psygone -> Vignola1964 19 Jan 2015 19:10

    "UK observers" is a little bit different than "deployments of HM Special Forces"

    Popeyes 19 Jan 2015 19:04

    This is nothing more than a proxy war between the West and Russia, and as Russia supports and arms Donbass, Washington has been supplying Kiev with weapons including stingers, anti-tank missiles, anti-armor weapons and other heavy weapons, as are many NATO countries.

    Poroschenko has just signed a decree that mobilizes up to 50,000 "healthy men and women" aged 25 to 60 to the frontlines in Eastern Ukraine... just how does that sit with the E.U? The U.S wanted a full scale war when this all started last year and it seems nothing has changed.

    JanZamoyski -> cheburawka 19 Jan 2015 19:03

    The same silly argument yet again. Kremlin isn't interested in occupying Ukraine. Putin is too smart for that.

    This isn't Chechnya with its 1 million population, but a much bigger country with 45 million population. Despite some sympathetic population, many Ukrainians would react with hostilities to such occupation. This would mean long bloody and expensive conflict Putin doesn't want to pay for.

    Chechnya despite it size was hell for Russia and Putin who was PM during second Chechnyy war realises Ukrainian occupation would be the end of him.

    In the end in Chechnya Putin found some locals to fight his war for him and that's what happened to some extent in Crimea and Donbass.
    The overblown issue of ethnic Russian population being oppressed was a joke, but with some external military help it doesn't matter now.
    Thanks to 5000+ dead in this conflict is fuelling itself and all Putin has to do is feed the flame with equipment, ammo and some "volunteers" if necessary.

    FFS this "war" has been on for seven months now. Where do you think the rebels are getting their money, ammo and vehicles from ? From babushkas donations and not existing pensions ?

    This region needs regular humanitarian food conveys but somehow has never ending supply of military vehicles and ammo. Stop trolling or open your eyes.

    Anette Mor 19 Jan 2015 19:03

    260 russian nationals secretly killed in east ukraine? Out of 5000? Totally looks like an invasion to me. There are at least half a million with Russian passports permanently living or visiting close family. Time to stop writing this useless none stories and start contributing to finishing that war.

    cherryredguitar -> False_Face 19 Jan 2015 19:42

    You haven't got a bit of evidence that there is some sort of American conspiracy here.

    I've got a documented American admission that they funded these Russian Soldiers Mothers groups.
    Now you may think that it's entirely a coincidence that the Russian Soldiers Mothers groups are saying exactly what the Americans who fund them would want them to say, but some of us are a tad more cynical, made that way by the lies of the warmongers.

    tanyushka -> iangio 19 Jan 2015 19:39

    Actually, Kiev was the first capital of Russia & the first royal dinasty, the Ruriks, lived there & then moved to Moscow... once in Moscow came the time of Romanovs, but much later...

    do you suggest Russia should also claim Kiev since it was its first capital?

    Putin has only said he's going to seek re-election, which is perfectly legal... why shouldn't he if he is a popular president? do you suggest Russia should change its Constitution to please its enemies?

    about economic ruin... well, that was Boris the drunkard, the favourite of the West, & oligarchs like Khodorkovsky, Brezovsky, etc. Never Heard of the Wild, Wild East?

    Putin brought order and control & the economy has been doing great so far... check your info instead of repeating lies...

    onu labu -> MacCosham 19 Jan 2015 19:39

    Note that hundred of military personnel die every year in Russia from various causes.

    noted.

    Vignola1964 -> psygone 19 Jan 2015 19:38

    It might not occur to you but special forces operatives tend to know potential adversaries quite well. They know how they are trained, might even have worked alongside them. They are professional. Hague was not. He should never alluded to any official or unofficial UK presence in Maidan. The fact that he did was worse than poor form..it endangered those same observer's lives. Were Hague to utter the words that would deny you your rejoinder to my point, even you would question his sanity.

    Eye Spy -> Robert Looren de Jong 19 Jan 2015 19:34

    are you for real.

    So the people of Crimea were all forced to go and vote at gunpoint and all these Russian guns at the heads of the voters were airbrushed out of the images that were beamed into our homes...well I never

    that means that there were thousands of Crimeans who were shot and buried because they decided to take the bullet....oh my gosh

    that means when the Americans roll in to liberate the captive Crimean' they are going to be met with flowers being thrown at their feet and they will discover mass graves....sounds like Iraq.

    You are fanciful but I can be just as inventive.

    Scipio1 19 Jan 2015 19:34

    I see the Guardian has published a photograph of the latest friend of freedom and democracy - Yatsenuik - who was part of the corrupt Orange regime of Yuschenko and Tymoshenko, 2004-2010, and who also recently accused the USSR of invading Ukraine and Germany after 1941. Does this mean something I wonder?

    As for Russian troops being in eastern Ukraine, well this seems probable. However, this is quite different from an invasion. An invasion would involve tens of thousands with air support and taking of towns and large areas of land.

    Clearly this has not and will not happen. Principally because no-one wants to take on a basket case like Ukraine. Russian troops are probably present but this is to ensure that their kith and kin in the Don Bas are not ethnically cleansed and murdered by Russophobic neo-Nazi outfits like the Azov Battalion, the Aidar Battalion, Pravy Sector (whoops, I mean the National Guard of course) whose multiple atrocities in the East have been blacked out by the western media, even the trendy faux media like ....

    It is difficult to work out exactly what the Kiev regime is trying to do in its anti-terror operation. Obviously not trying to win hearts and minds in the east by systematic bombardment and wiping out the infrastructure (very much in the style of the IDF - the hasbara doctrine). One would have thought that the massive despoliation of the most productive region of the Ukraine was against their national interests. It would have been a bit like the British during their long war against the IRA shelling Cross Maglen or West Belfast.

    But of course there is no genuine government in Ukraine, this insofar as Yatsenuik, Poroshenko and Kolomoisky are simply carrying out the orders the US Ambassador in Kiev. The US simply wants to keep the pot boiling and making maximum chaos of Russia's western borders. Yes, the US will fight to every last Ukrainian.

    Oh, and by the way there are plenty of foreign troops in West Ukraine, including Poles, US advisers, international fascist and neo-Nazi groups like the above mentioned Azov Battalion. And arms are also pouring in from NATO.

    Did the EUSA-NATO juggernaut, in their relentless push eastwards, think they could prompt yet another colour revolution in a country that had democratically voted in Yanukovich who wanted to maintain a non-aligned status. Russian reaction was very predictable to what they considered to be a massive provocation, and yet regime change was pursued a l'outrance by the US and its vassal states in Europe. And of course the regime change in Ukraine was to be followed by regime change in Russia.

    So who exactly are the aggressors here? Who is the genuine threat to world peace? Well of course it depends who you ask. But outside the Anglosphere the answer of the majority of the world's population is resounding. The great rogue state is .....

    kowalli 19 Jan 2015 19:33

    Western guys are funny - they keep talking about anything, but when they are asked about facts - they can give you anything except of more lies...

    [Jan 15, 2015] The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs by By Mikhail Klikushin

    OK. First WashPost. Now Observer. So much for State Department propaganda efforts...
    Jan 14, 2015 | observer.com

    Prominent Ukrainian MP denounces Obama's weakness, calls him a 'shot-down pilot'

    By Mikhail Klikushin | 01/14/15 8:05am

    There were times in Ukraine's recent history when even the country's military brass were kneeling before the U.S. Literally. In June 2013, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft received the saber of the Ukrainian Cossack in the city of Kherson from a kneeling Ukrainian high-rank military official. Mr. Tefft nowadays is serving the country as an Ambassador to Russia where no such honors are even imaginable.

    But that was then - a previous regime.

    On the surface, today's Ukraine is much more favorably disposed toward everything Western and everything American because of the exciting wind of transformations that swept through the Ukrainian political landscape last year. Its political culture looks modern, attractive, refined and European. For example, at the end of last year a new law was passed that allowed former citizens of other countries to participate in Ukrainian politics and even the government, in case they denounce their former citizenships. The reason given was the fight with notorious Ukrainian corruption. Apparently, in a country of more than 40 million people, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk (called "Rabbit" by his citizens) couldn't find a dozen or so native-born yet not corrupt professionals for his government.

    Now three former foreigners-ex-American Natalia Yaresko (Minister for Finance), ex-Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavičius (Minister For Economy and Trade) and ex-Georgian Alexander Kvitashvili (Minister for Public Health)-are firmly established in their new cabinets. They are just the beginning. They gave up their U.S. and European passports with only two benefits in return: a $200-a-month salary and the chance to build a prosperous new Ukraine.

    In a strange twist of fate, the Ukrainian ministers during their meetings now have to speak hated Russian - former foreigners do not speak Ukrainian well enough and locals do not speak English at the level necessary for complicated discussions on how to save a Ukraine economy that is disappearing before their eyes.

    The problems they are facing are overwhelming. The new minister for economy, Mr. Abromavičius, knows that the country is in fact bankrupt. "To expect that we are going to produce real as opposed to declarative incentive programs is unrealistic," he declared. In other words, the new Ukrainian budget is nothing but a piece of paper. But without this piece of paper there will be no new money from the European Bank and the IMF.

    The first steps he has taken so far are controversial.

    On January 5, the new minister for economy appointed former Estonian Jaanika Merilo - a young dark-haired beauty-as his advisor on foreign investments, improvement of business climate in Ukraine, coordination of international programs and so on. Directly after her appointment, the young lady put online not her resume or a program for Ukrainian financial stabilization but a series of candid shots that display her long legs, plump lips and prominent cleavage. In some shots, she places a knife to her lips a la Angelina Jolie and sits on the chair a la Sharon Stone.

    Ms. Merilo, too, forfeited her European passport in the hope of a better future for her new Motherland.

    By law, double citizenship is not permitted for a Ukrainian governmental official, but, as often happens in Ukraine, for some there is always another way around. The governor of Zaporozhe region, oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, for example, has three citizenships.

    As exhilarating winds of change swept through the Ukrainian government, Western newspapers giddily reported the fact that after the last elections for the first time in decades there would be no Communists in the Ukrainian Parliament. But that means all possible organized opposition to the current president and prime minister is gone.

    Instead, the new Rada has a big group of parliamentarians of very uncertain political loyalties and even dubious mental state-former warlords and street activists who distinguished themselves during street fights and tire burnings.

    These government rookies are sometimes turning to strange ways of self-promotion, now within the walls of the Parliament.

    One new face in the Rada-leader of the Right Sector ultra-nationalist party and former warlord Dmytro Yarosh-admitted in a January interview with Ukrainian TV that he caresses a real hand grenade in his pocket while inside the Rada. Because he is MP, the security personnel has no right to check his pockets. They just ask if he has anything dangerous on his person and he says no. The reason to have a hand grenade on his body is that there are too many enemies of Ukraine within the MP crowding him during the voting process. He is not afraid, of course. But when the time comes, he will use this grenade and with a bit of luck he will take a lot of them with him if he dies.

    Ukrainian MPs Yuri Beryoza and Andrei Levus, also former warlords and members of radical parties, became notorious last December after publicly applauding the terrorist attack in the Russian city of Grozny-an attack in which 14 policemen were killed. "On our eastern borders our brothers are coming out from under Russia's power. It's normal. These are the allies of Ukraine," said Mr. Beryoza. This is the same fellow who had earlier promised that the Ukrainian army would soon take Moscow. Andrei Levus proposed Russia withdraw all of her "punishers" from the "People's Republic of Ichkeria" (i.e. Chechnya) immediately.

    Another former warlord, former member of social-national party and today's Ukrainian MP Igor Mosiychuk said to the journalists that Ukraine, "being in the state of war, must stimulate the opening of the second front in the Caucuses, in Middle Asia" against Russia. In the scandalous video, which has been viewed 2.5 million times, he unloaded an assault rifle into the portrait of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov ranting, "Ramzan, you have sent your dogs, traitors into our land. We have been killing them here and we will come after you. We will come after you to Grozny. We will help our brothers to free Ichkeria from such dogs like you. Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the free Ichkeria!"

    Despite this bravado, the personal security for all three MPs had to be increased-at high cost to the cash-starved country-after the Chechen leader promised to bring them to justice in Russia for incitement of terrorism.

    [Jan 15, 2015] The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs by By Mikhail Klikushin

    OK. First WashPost. Now Observer. So much for State Department propaganda efforts...
    Jan 14, 2015 | observer.com

    Prominent Ukrainian MP denounces Obama's weakness, calls him a 'shot-down pilot'

    By Mikhail Klikushin | 01/14/15 8:05am

    There were times in Ukraine's recent history when even the country's military brass were kneeling before the U.S. Literally. In June 2013, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft received the saber of the Ukrainian Cossack in the city of Kherson from a kneeling Ukrainian high-rank military official. Mr. Tefft nowadays is serving the country as an Ambassador to Russia where no such honors are even imaginable.

    But that was then - a previous regime.

    On the surface, today's Ukraine is much more favorably disposed toward everything Western and everything American because of the exciting wind of transformations that swept through the Ukrainian political landscape last year. Its political culture looks modern, attractive, refined and European. For example, at the end of last year a new law was passed that allowed former citizens of other countries to participate in Ukrainian politics and even the government, in case they denounce their former citizenships. The reason given was the fight with notorious Ukrainian corruption. Apparently, in a country of more than 40 million people, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk (called "Rabbit" by his citizens) couldn't find a dozen or so native-born yet not corrupt professionals for his government.

    Now three former foreigners-ex-American Natalia Yaresko (Minister for Finance), ex-Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavičius (Minister For Economy and Trade) and ex-Georgian Alexander Kvitashvili (Minister for Public Health)-are firmly established in their new cabinets. They are just the beginning. They gave up their U.S. and European passports with only two benefits in return: a $200-a-month salary and the chance to build a prosperous new Ukraine.

    In a strange twist of fate, the Ukrainian ministers during their meetings now have to speak hated Russian - former foreigners do not speak Ukrainian well enough and locals do not speak English at the level necessary for complicated discussions on how to save a Ukraine economy that is disappearing before their eyes.

    The problems they are facing are overwhelming. The new minister for economy, Mr. Abromavičius, knows that the country is in fact bankrupt. "To expect that we are going to produce real as opposed to declarative incentive programs is unrealistic," he declared. In other words, the new Ukrainian budget is nothing but a piece of paper. But without this piece of paper there will be no new money from the European Bank and the IMF.

    The first steps he has taken so far are controversial.

    On January 5, the new minister for economy appointed former Estonian Jaanika Merilo - a young dark-haired beauty-as his advisor on foreign investments, improvement of business climate in Ukraine, coordination of international programs and so on. Directly after her appointment, the young lady put online not her resume or a program for Ukrainian financial stabilization but a series of candid shots that display her long legs, plump lips and prominent cleavage. In some shots, she places a knife to her lips a la Angelina Jolie and sits on the chair a la Sharon Stone.

    Ms. Merilo, too, forfeited her European passport in the hope of a better future for her new Motherland.

    By law, double citizenship is not permitted for a Ukrainian governmental official, but, as often happens in Ukraine, for some there is always another way around. The governor of Zaporozhe region, oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, for example, has three citizenships.

    As exhilarating winds of change swept through the Ukrainian government, Western newspapers giddily reported the fact that after the last elections for the first time in decades there would be no Communists in the Ukrainian Parliament. But that means all possible organized opposition to the current president and prime minister is gone.

    Instead, the new Rada has a big group of parliamentarians of very uncertain political loyalties and even dubious mental state-former warlords and street activists who distinguished themselves during street fights and tire burnings.

    These government rookies are sometimes turning to strange ways of self-promotion, now within the walls of the Parliament.

    One new face in the Rada-leader of the Right Sector ultra-nationalist party and former warlord Dmytro Yarosh-admitted in a January interview with Ukrainian TV that he caresses a real hand grenade in his pocket while inside the Rada. Because he is MP, the security personnel has no right to check his pockets. They just ask if he has anything dangerous on his person and he says no. The reason to have a hand grenade on his body is that there are too many enemies of Ukraine within the MP crowding him during the voting process. He is not afraid, of course. But when the time comes, he will use this grenade and with a bit of luck he will take a lot of them with him if he dies.

    Ukrainian MPs Yuri Beryoza and Andrei Levus, also former warlords and members of radical parties, became notorious last December after publicly applauding the terrorist attack in the Russian city of Grozny-an attack in which 14 policemen were killed. "On our eastern borders our brothers are coming out from under Russia's power. It's normal. These are the allies of Ukraine," said Mr. Beryoza. This is the same fellow who had earlier promised that the Ukrainian army would soon take Moscow. Andrei Levus proposed Russia withdraw all of her "punishers" from the "People's Republic of Ichkeria" (i.e. Chechnya) immediately.

    Another former warlord, former member of social-national party and today's Ukrainian MP Igor Mosiychuk said to the journalists that Ukraine, "being in the state of war, must stimulate the opening of the second front in the Caucuses, in Middle Asia" against Russia. In the scandalous video, which has been viewed 2.5 million times, he unloaded an assault rifle into the portrait of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov ranting, "Ramzan, you have sent your dogs, traitors into our land. We have been killing them here and we will come after you. We will come after you to Grozny. We will help our brothers to free Ichkeria from such dogs like you. Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the free Ichkeria!"

    Despite this bravado, the personal security for all three MPs had to be increased-at high cost to the cash-starved country-after the Chechen leader promised to bring them to justice in Russia for incitement of terrorism.

    [Jan 11, 2015] Ukraine's forgotten city destroyed by war by Oleg Orlov for Echo Moskvy

    Notable quotes:
    "... The East Ukrainians won't get any sympathy from Cameron or Merkel as none of their citizens are dying - only pieces on a chess board to them. ..."
    Jan 07, 2014 | The Guardian

    Mr. Russian, Jan 8, 2015 20:50

    I see the Guardian rhetoric has changed, as well as rhetoric of our usual guests from NSA.
    Does that mean that Ukrainian government would finally get a push to end the war?

    PeraIlic -> psygone, 8 Jan 2015 15:35

    That's right - Putin's 12 point cease fire plan makes the Russians 100 percent responsible for its success or failure.

    What kind of twisted logic? One who has proposed a draft of the agreement, he is 100% responsible for its fulfillment, and not those who have signed it???

    For the fulfillment of any agreement are obliged all its signatories, it is old rule, which is still in force, and always will be so. As a reminder, the protocol was signed in Minsk by:

    Swiss diplomat and OSCE representative Heidi Tagliavini
    Former president of Ukraine and Ukrainian representative Leonid Kuchma
    Russian Ambassador to Ukraine and Russian representative Mikhail Zurabov
    DPR and LPR leaders

    Ralphinengland 9 Jan 2015 18:36

    Ł2.13 million was given by the UK to ECHO (EU) & CERF (UN) - and who knows where THAT ended up. Considering eastern Ukraine had a population of approx 8 million, less people who fled, then Ł3.53 million for say 7 million people IF - I repeat IF - that money ever got anywhere near the Donbas, is FIFTY pence per person!!!

    HollyOldDog -> Dunscore 9 Jan 2015 16:26

    The East Ukrainians won't get any sympathy from Cameron or Merkel as none of their citizens are dying - only pieces on a chess board to them. They are a bloodless pair.

    Anette Mor -> psygone 8 Jan 2015 11:59

    You are joking. "Russian refusal or inability"? Donbas is still being bombed daily. All infrastructure destroyed several times over. Yet they got better electricity and gas supply than main Ukraine.

    The war has to stop first for proper recovery to start. The war is on full blow. Help people to survive is the only reasonable expectation for now.

    [Jan 11, 2015] Ukraine's forgotten city destroyed by war by Oleg Orlov for Echo Moskvy

    Notable quotes:
    "... The East Ukrainians won't get any sympathy from Cameron or Merkel as none of their citizens are dying - only pieces on a chess board to them. ..."
    Jan 07, 2014 | The Guardian

    Mr. Russian, Jan 8, 2015 20:50

    I see the Guardian rhetoric has changed, as well as rhetoric of our usual guests from NSA.
    Does that mean that Ukrainian government would finally get a push to end the war?

    PeraIlic -> psygone, 8 Jan 2015 15:35

    That's right - Putin's 12 point cease fire plan makes the Russians 100 percent responsible for its success or failure.

    What kind of twisted logic? One who has proposed a draft of the agreement, he is 100% responsible for its fulfillment, and not those who have signed it???

    For the fulfillment of any agreement are obliged all its signatories, it is old rule, which is still in force, and always will be so. As a reminder, the protocol was signed in Minsk by:

    Swiss diplomat and OSCE representative Heidi Tagliavini
    Former president of Ukraine and Ukrainian representative Leonid Kuchma
    Russian Ambassador to Ukraine and Russian representative Mikhail Zurabov
    DPR and LPR leaders

    Ralphinengland 9 Jan 2015 18:36

    Ł2.13 million was given by the UK to ECHO (EU) & CERF (UN) - and who knows where THAT ended up. Considering eastern Ukraine had a population of approx 8 million, less people who fled, then Ł3.53 million for say 7 million people IF - I repeat IF - that money ever got anywhere near the Donbas, is FIFTY pence per person!!!

    HollyOldDog -> Dunscore 9 Jan 2015 16:26

    The East Ukrainians won't get any sympathy from Cameron or Merkel as none of their citizens are dying - only pieces on a chess board to them. They are a bloodless pair.

    Anette Mor -> psygone 8 Jan 2015 11:59

    You are joking. "Russian refusal or inability"? Donbas is still being bombed daily. All infrastructure destroyed several times over. Yet they got better electricity and gas supply than main Ukraine.

    The war has to stop first for proper recovery to start. The war is on full blow. Help people to survive is the only reasonable expectation for now.

    [Jan 10, 2015] If Credibility Is Fragile, Then Commitments Should Be Rare By Noah Millman

    January 7, 2015 | The American Conservative

    Daniel Larison on how hawks use credibility as a bludgeon:

    The "credibility" argument is almost exclusively used by foreign policy hawks, and they pay no attention to negative international reactions to U.S. behavior that contradict their assumptions about "credibility." If other states react to provocative and confrontational policies by becoming more assertive in their respective regions, hawks interpret that as proof of the other states' inherent aggressiveness and "expansionist" tendencies.

    Hawks usually don't accept that adverse responses that directly follow U.S. actions have any connection to U.S. policies, but any development that happens to take place after the U.S. "fails" to "act" somewhere is preposterously traced back to the moment of "inaction." Thus the U.S. is blamed for somehow "causing" unrelated events in one part of the world by choosing not to do something in an entirely different part, but it is excused from responsibility for the direct negative consequences of whatever it has actually done.

    That's because the only thing that jeopardizes "credibility" in their eyes is "inaction" (i.e., not attacking or threatening to attack someone), and adverse consequences of "action" (e.g., expanding alliances, invading/bombing/occupying other countries) are ignored or spun as the result of later "weakness."

    This is all correct, but the funny thing to me is that credibility arguments should be the almost exclusive preserve of advocates of restraint. Why? Because if credibility is an important asset that allows America to achieve some objectives without deploying resources (by simply making a commitment to respond if some other actor takes some other action), then we shouldn't squander that asset by making commitments we don't intend – or cannot – make good on.

    [Jan 07, 2015] $14 Million An Hour War Costs Top $1.6 Trillion Since 9-11, Say Congressional Researchers by David Sirota

    December 22 2014 | ibtimes.com

    American taxpayers have shelled out roughly $1.6 trillion on war spending since 9/11, according to a new report from Congress' nonpartisan research arm. That's roughly $337 million a day -- or nearly a quarter million dollars a minute -- every single day for 13 years.

    The $1.6 trillion estimate, which comes to $14 million per hour since 9/11, from the Congressional Research Service is up roughly half a trillion dollars from its 2010 estimate, which found that the post-9/11 military operations are second only to World War II in terms of financial cost.

    In its report, which was released earlier this month, CRS finds that the 92 percent of the war-related expenditures since 9/11 have flowed into the Pentagon. Just 6 percent has been spent on foreign assistance and diplomacy, and 1 percent on medical services for veterans.

    The report, which was posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, breaks down the war-related expenditures by different military operations. It finds that a little more than half the $1.6 trillion has gone toward operations in Iraq. Another $686 billion has been spent on military operations in Afghanistan.

    CRS notes that the Obama administration is requesting nearly $6 billion in new funding to finance military operations against the Islamic State group, but researchers note that predicting "future costs of the new U.S. role in countering the Islamic State is difficult because of the nature of the air campaign and uncertainties about whether the U.S. mission may expand."

    Last week, a Defense Department official disclosed that since August, U.S. taxpayers have already spent more than $1 billion -- or $8 million a day -- on air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Additionally, the Obama administration announced it is deploying 1,300 troops to Iraq in January.

    John Hudak · University of Rochester

    What's the big deal? I mean, what else could we have done with the money? Research, infrastructure, education, space exploration, etc?

    Juliet Richardson

    i've posted elsewhere that the USA seems to be the only industrialized country that appears to be on a permanent war footing. at 54, i have a hard time recalling a time when we weren't either getting out of war, preparing for war or fighting a war.

    those 'terrible socialist countries' we look down on have a whole slew of things that the so-called 'greatest country in the world' SHOULD have but --don't--, all because of this idea of unending war, yet another great idea borrowed from '1984'. high speed rail, infrastructure, single payer health care, unemployment benefits you can actually live on and sometimes they include complete retraining[!!], free or heavily subsidized college tuition...... that's a short list!

    we, on the other hand can kill a bunch of people anytime we want to. yee. haw.

    Jim Starowicz

    Fact: Bob Herbert 'Losing Our Way' : "And then the staggering costs of these wars, which are borne by the taxpayers. I mean, one of the things that was insane was that, as we're at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration cut taxes. This has never been done in American history. The idea of cutting taxes while you're going to war is just crazy. I mean, it's madness." Bill 'Moyers and Company': 'Restoring an America That Has Lost its Way' 10 Oct. 2014

    Fact: Matthew Hoh {former Marine and foreign service officer in Afghanistan}: "We spend a trillion dollars a year on national security in this country." "And when you add up to the Department of Defense, Department of State, CIA, Veterans Affairs, interest on debt, the number that strikes me the most about how much we're committed financially to these wars and to our current policies is we have spent $250 billion already just on interest payments on the debt we've incurred for the Iraq and Afghan wars." 26 September 2014

    Fact: "If military action is worth our troops' blood, it should be worth our treasure, too - not just in the abstract, but in the form of a specific ante by every American." -Andrew Rosenthal 10 Feb. 2013

    USN All Shore '67-'71 GMG3 Vietnam In Country '70-'71 - Independent**



    Etc

    Society

    Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

    Quotes

    War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

    Bulletin:

    Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

    History:

    Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

    Classic books:

    The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

    Most popular humor pages:

    Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

    The Last but not Least Technology 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


    Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

    FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.

    This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...

    You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site

    Disclaimer:

    The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

    Last modified: March, 12, 2020

    [Jan 05, 2015] US and Russia in danger of returning to era of nuclear rivalry by Julian Borger

    Sign of emergence of this anti-Russian witch hunt from 2015...
    Notable quotes:
    "... This is just US propaganda to get the increased military spending through congress. ..."
    Jan 01, 2015 | The Guardian
    A widening rift between Moscow and Washington over cruise missiles and increasingly daring patrols by nuclear-capable Russian submarines threatens to end an era of arms control and bring back a dangerous rivalry between the world's two dominant nuclear arsenals.

    Tensions have been taken to a new level by US threats of retaliatory action for Russian development of a new cruise missile. Washington alleges it violates one of the key arms control treaties of the cold war, and has raised the prospect of redeploying its own cruise missiles in Europe after a 23-year absence.

    On Boxing Day, in one of the more visible signs of the unease, the US military launched the first of two experimental "blimps" over Washington. The system, known as JLENS, is designed to detect incoming cruise missiles. The North American Aerospace Command (Norad) did not specify the nature of the threat, but the deployment comes nine months after the Norad commander, General Charles Jacoby, admitted the Pentagon faced "some significant challenges" in countering cruise missiles, referring in particular to the threat of Russian attack submarines.

    Those submarines, which have been making forays across the Atlantic, routinely carry nuclear-capable cruise missiles. In the light of aggressive rhetoric from Moscow and the expiry of treaty-based restrictions, there is uncertainty over whether those missiles are now carrying nuclear warheads.

    The rise in tension comes at a time when the arms control efforts of the post-cold-war era are losing momentum. The number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed by the US and Russia actually increased last year, and both countries are spending many billions of dollars a year modernising their arsenals. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and a failing economy, Vladimir Putin is putting increasing emphasis on nuclear weapons as guarantors and symbols of Russian influence. In a speech primarily about the Ukrainian conflict last summer, Putin pointedly referred to his country's nuclear arsenal and declared other countries "should understand it's best not to mess with us".

    The Russian press has taken up the gung-ho tone. Pravda, the former mouthpiece of the Soviet regime, published an article in November titled "Russian prepares a nuclear surprise for Nato", which boasted of Russian superiority over the west, particularly in tactical nuclear weapons.

    "The Americans are well aware of this," the commentary said. "They were convinced before that Russia would never rise again. Now it's too late."

    Some of the heightened rhetoric appears to be bluster. The new version of the Russian military doctrine, published on 25 December, left its policy on nuclear weapons unchanged from four years earlier. They are to be used only in the event of an attack using weapons of mass destruction or a conventional weapon onslaught which "would put in danger the very existence of the state". It did not envisage a pre-emptive strike, as some in the military had proposed.

    However, the new aggressive tone coincides with an extensive upgrading of Russia's nuclear weapons, reflecting Moscow's renewed determination to keep pace with the US arsenal. It will involve a substantial increase in the number of warheads loaded on submarines, as a result of the development of the multi-warhead Bulava sea-launched ballistic missile.

    The modernisation also involves new or revived delivery systems. Last month Russia announced it would re-introduce nuclear missile trains, allowing intercontinental ballistic missiles to be moved about the country by rail so they would be harder to target.

    There is also mounting western anxiety over Russian marketing abroad of a cruise missile called the Club-K, which can be concealed, complete with launcher, inside an innocuous-looking shipping container until the moment it is fired.

    However, the development that has most alarmed Washington is Russian testing of a medium-range cruise missile which the Obama administration claims is a clear violation of the 1987 intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty, the agreement that brought to an end the dangerous standoff between US and Russian cruise missiles in Europe. By hugging the contours of the Earth, cruise missiles can evade radar defences and hit strategic targets with little or no notice, raising fears on both sides of surprise pre-emptive attacks.

    At a contentious congressional hearing on 10 December, Republicans criticised two of the administration's leading arms control negotiators, Rose Gottemoeller of the State Department and Brian McKeon of the Pentagon, for not responding earlier to the alleged Russian violation and for continuing to observe the INF treaty.

    Gottemoeller said she had raised US concerns over the new missile "about a dozen times" with her counterparts in Moscow and Obama had written to Putin on the matter. She said the new Russian cruise missile – which she did not identify but is reported to be the Iskander-K with a reach in the banned 500-5,500km range – appeared to be ready for deployment.

    The Russians have denied the existence of the missile and have responded with counter-allegations about American infringements of the INF treaty that Washington rejects.

    McKeon said the Pentagon was looking at a variety of military responses to the Russian missile, including the deployment of an American equivalent weapon.

    "We have a broad range of options, some of which would be compliant with the INF treaty, some of which would not be, that we would be able to recommend to our leadership if it decided to go down that path," McKeon said. He later added: "We don't have ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe now, obviously, because they are prohibited by the treaty but that would obviously be one option to explore."

    Reintroducing cruise missiles into Europe would be politically fraught and divisive, but the Republican majority in Congress is pushing for a much more robust American response to the Russian missile.

    The US military has also been rattled by the resurgence of the Russian submarine fleet. Moscow is building new generations of giant ballistic missile submarines, known as "boomers", and attack submarines that are equal or superior to their US counterparts in performance and stealth. From a low point in 2002, when the Russian navy managed to send out no underwater patrols at all, it is steadily rebounding and reasserting its global reach.

    There have been sporadic reports in the US press about Russian submarines reaching the American east coast, which have been denied by the US military. But last year Jacoby, the head of Norad and the US northern command at the time, admitted concerns about being able to counter new Russian investment in cruise missile technology and advanced submarines.

    "They have just begun production of a new class of quiet nuclear submarines specifically designed to deliver cruise missiles," Jacoby told Congress.

    Peter Roberts, who retired from the Royal Navy a year ago after serving as a commanding officer and senior UK liaison officer with the US navy and intelligence services, said the transatlantic forays by Akula-class Russian attack submarines had become a routine event, at least once or twice a year.

    "The Russians usually put out a sortie with an Akula or an Akula II around Christmas It normally stops off Scotland, and then through the Bay of Biscay and out over the Atlantic. It will have nuclear-capable missiles on it," he said.

    Roberts, who is now senior research fellow for sea power and maritime studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said the appearance of a periscope off the western coast of Scotland, which triggered a Nato submarine hunt last month, was a sign of the latest such Russian foray.

    He said the Russian attack submarine was most likely heading for the US coast. "They go across to eastern seaboard, usually to watch the carrier battle groups work up [go on exercises].

    "It's something the Americans have been trying to brush off but there is increasing concern about the American ability to track these subs. Their own anti-sub skills have declined, while we have all been focused on landlocked operations, in Afghanistan and so on."

    The Akula is being superseded by an even stealthier submarine, the Yasen. Both are multipurpose: hunter-killers designed to track and destroy enemy submarine and carrier battle groups. Both are also armed with land-attack cruise missiles, currently the Granat, capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

    On any given sortie, Roberts said, "it is completely unknown whether they are nuclear-tipped".

    A Russian media report described the Akula as carrying Granat missiles with 200-kilotonne warheads, but the reliability of the report is hard to gauge.

    The US and Russia removed cruise missiles from their submarines after the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction treaty (Start), but that expired at the end of 2009. Its successor, New Start, signed by Obama and the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, in 2010 does not include any such limitation, nor does it even allow for continued exchange of information about cruise missile numbers.

    Pavel Podvig, a senior research fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and the leading independent analyst of Russian nuclear forces, said: "The bottom line is that we don't know, but it's safe to say that it's quite possible that Russian subs carry nuclear SLCMs [submarine-launched cruise missiles].

    Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and founding publisher of ArmsControlWonk.com, believes the JLENS blimps are primarily a response to a Russian move to start rearming attack submarines with nuclear weapons.

    "For a long time, the Russians have been saying they would do this and now it looks like they have," Lewis said. He added that the fact that data exchange on cruise missiles was allowed to expire under the New Start treaty is a major failing that has increased uncertainty.

    The Russian emphasis on cruise missiles is in line with Putin's strategy of "de-escalation", which involves countering Nato's overwhelming conventional superiority with the threat of a limited nuclear strike that would inflict "tailored damage" on an adversary.

    Lewis argues that Putin's accentuation of Russia's nuclear capabilities is aimed at giving him room for manoeuvre in Ukraine and possibly other neighbouring states.

    "The real reason he talks about how great they are is he saying: 'I'm going to go ahead and invade Ukraine and you're going to look the other way. As long as I don't call it an invasion, you're going to look at my nuclear weapons and say I don't want to push this,'" he said.

    With both the US and Russia modernising their arsenals and Russia investing increasing importance its nuclear deterrent, Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said we are facing a period of "deepening military competition".

    He added: "It will bring very little added security, but a lot more nervous people on both sides."

    InvisibleOISA -> Ethelunready 4 Jan 2015 23:53

    Just how many warheads have the Iranians lofted towards Europe in the past quarter century? Anyhow, the Yanqui ABM system is a pathetic blunderbuss. But extremely profitable for Boeing.

    For instance:

    US ABM test failure mars $1bn N. Korea defense plan
    06.07.2013 10:03

    A $214-million test launch of the only US defense against long-range ballistic missile attacks failed to hit its target over the Pacific Ocean, according to the Missile Defense Agency. There have been no successful interceptor tests since 2008.

    InvisibleOISA 4 Jan 2015 23:41

    Hey Julian. What a wussy propaganda piece. How about a few facts to put things in perspective.

    "All told, over the next decade, according to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, the United States plans to spend $355 billion on the maintenance and modernization of its nuclear enterprise,[3] an increase of $142 billion from the $213 billion the Obama administration projected in 2011.[4] According to available information, it appears that the nuclear enterprise will cost at least $1 trillion over the next 30 years.[5]

    Beyond these upgrades of existing weapons, work is under way to design new weapons to replace the current ones. The Navy is designing a new class of 12 SSBNs, the Air Force is examining whether to build a mobile ICBM or extend the service life of the existing Minuteman III, and the Air Force has begun development of a new, stealthy long-range bomber and a new nuclear-capable tactical fighter-bomber. Production of a new guided "standoff" nuclear bomb, which would be able to glide toward a target over a distance, is under way, and the Air Force is developing a new long-range nuclear cruise missile to replace the current one."

    And what about NATO, the u$a poodle.

    NATO

    "The new B61-12 is scheduled for deployment in Europe around 2020. At first, the guided bomb, which has a modest standoff capability, will be backfitted onto existing F-15E, F-16, and Tornado NATO aircraft. From around 2024, nuclear-capable F-35A stealthy fighter-bombers are to be deployed in Europe and gradually take over the nuclear strike role from the F-16 and Tornado aircraft."

    Source: Arms Control Association

    VikingHiking -> Rudeboy1 4 Jan 2015 23:25

    To sum up the results of the lend-lease program as a whole, the Soviet Union received, over the war years, 21,795 planes, 12,056 tanks, 4,158 armored personnel carriers, 7,570 tractor trucks, 8,000 antiaircraft and 5,000 antitank guns, 132,000 machine-guns, 472 million artillery shells, 9,351 transceivers customized to Soviet-made fighter planes, 2.8 million tons of petroleum products, 102 ocean-going dry cargo vessels, 29 tankers, 23 sea tugboats and icebreakers, 433 combat ships and gunboats, as well as mobile bridges, railroad equipment, aircraft radar equipment, and many other items."

    "Imperialist Powers paid for the blood of Soviet soldiers with limited supplies of obsolete weapons, canned food and other war materiel which amounted to about 4% of total Soviet production during WarII".

    During Cold War all traces of Lend Lease and after UNRRA help were meticulously sanitized and removed; photos of soviet soldiers riding Shermans, Universal Carriers or manning AAA guns were excluded from books and never appeared in magazines.

    Five eights of the total German War effort was expended on the Russian front.

    So it was a combination of allied arms and resources which kaputed the Nazi's, namely
    1) The Russian Army
    2) THE American Air Force
    3) The British Navy and Merchant Marine
    4) Hitler's Stupidity

    Beckow -> StrategicVoice213 4 Jan 2015 23:03

    Are you done with your boasting? By the way, you forgot Hollywood and GMO foods.

    Leaving aside the one-side nature of your list (internet or web were also invented in CERN by a European team), technology or business are not the same as intelligence.

    Most Americans simply don't understand the world, its history, other cultures, don't see others as having independent existence with other choices. They don't get it because they are isolated and frankly quite lazy intellectually. Thus the infamous "we won WW2 in Normandy" boast and similar bizarre claims.

    Are other often similar? Yes, absolutely. But most of the others have no ability to provoke a nuclear Armageddon, so their ignorance is annoying, but not fatal. The article was about the worsening US-Russia confrontation and how it may end (or end everything). The fact that US has actively started and provoked this confrontation in the last few years, mostly out of blissful ignorance and endless selfishness. Thus we get "defensive missiles against Iran on Russia's border", coups in Ukraine, endless demonizations...well, I think you get the picture. If you don't, see the original post

    irgun777 4 Jan 2015 22:59

    " increasingly daring patrols by nuclear-capable Russian submarines "

    What motivates the Cry Wolf tune of this article ?
    Don't we also conduct nuclear and nuclear capable submarine patrols ? Even our allies
    and friends operate routinely " nuclear capable submarines "

    Our military budget alone is 10 times the Russian , we have over 600 military bases around
    the world , some around Russia. We still continue to use heavy , nuclear capable bombers
    for patrol , something Russia stopped doing after the Cold War. Russia did not
    support and financed a coup in our neighbors . Something Ron Paul and Kissinger warned us
    not to do.


    Georgeaussie 4 Jan 2015 22:55

    This is just US propaganda to get the increased military spending through congress. I think its interesting that Americans believe their military personal are defending there country when the United States is usually the aggressor. And that is my view,. And as for people saying Russian bots and Korean bots(which i don't know if they exist) you are sounding just as bad as them, every country has propaganda and everyone has a right to believe what they want, wether its western media or eastern media. People on here don't need people like you with you extreme biases, yes have an opinion, but don't put other peoples opinion down because you think your right, collectively there is no right or wrong, do you know whats going on around closed doors in your govt? Well sorry you probably know less then you think, i like to read different media reports and its interesting, do you "obama bots" know that Russia is helping look for the black box of the air asia flight? I just thought it was interesting not reading that in my "western media" reports over the weeks. So comment and tell me if you honestly think "western bot" are correct and "eastern bots" aren't b/c i would like too know how there i a right and and wrong. In my OPINION there isn't if anything you are both wrong.


    Veritas Vicnit 5 Jan 2015 00:05

    p1. 'Russian General: We Are At War'

    "Gen. Leonid Ivashov... issued a sharp warning about the nature of the strategic crisis unfolding in Ukraine: "Apparently they [US and EU officials] have dedicated themselves, and continue to do so, to deeply and thoroughly studying the doctrine of Dr. Goebbels. . . They present everything backwards from reality. It is one of the formulas which Nazi propaganda employed most successfully: . . . They accuse the party that is defending itself, of aggression. What is happening in Ukraine and Syria is a project of the West, a new type of war: ... wars today begin with psychological and information warfare operations. . . under the cover of information commotion, U.S. ships are entering the Black Sea, that is, near Ukraine. They are sending marines, and they have also begun to deploy more tanks in Europe. . . We see that on the heels of the disinformation operation a land-sea, and possibly air operation is being prepared." (Russian General: 'We Are At War', February 22, 2014)

    "what David Petraeus has done for counter-insurgency warfare, Stuart Levey [later David Cohen] has done for economic warfare" [Sen. Joe Lieberman]

    Russian military sources have disclosed their recognition that offensive operations (economic warfare, proxy warfare, regime change operations, etc.) are active as is the mobilisation of military architecture.

    MattTruth 5 Jan 2015 00:05

    Russia is not a threat to USA. The elite of USA just need a war and need it soon.

    afewpiecesofsilver -> Continent 5 Jan 2015 00:00

    That's exactly why the US/NATO is trying to 'wedge' Ukraine into their EU. Then they can develop military bases in traditionally, socially, culturally, verbally Russian Ukraine, right on Russia's border....After the well known, publicized and continuous international bullying and abuse of Russia and Putin over the last couple of years, and now the recent undermining of it's oil economy by US and NATO, anyone who is condemning Putin and Russia obviously can't read.

    moosejaw12999 5 Jan 2015 00:00

    Might give a few minute warning on cruise missiles but will do nothing against drones will it Barry ? When you start a game , you should think for a minute where it might end . Americas worst enemy is always her own disgruntled people . Drones will be the new weapon of choice in Americas upcoming civil war .

    Ross Kramer 4 Jan 2015 23:58

    "Russia is a regional power" - Obama said last year. Yeah, sure. Just by looking at the map I can see it is twice bigger than the US in territory. Its tails touches Alaska and its head lays on the border with Germany. How on Earth the biggest country in the world with the nuclear arsenal equal to that of the US can be "just a regional power"?

    [Aug 18, 2008] McCain's Mob Connections by Michael Collins Piper

    Aug 18, 2008 | www.americanfreepress.net

    Now It's The Post Covering Up John McCain's Mob Connections

    AN AFP EXCLUSIVE

    IF YOU STILL DOUBT that the big media is determined to keep under wraps the organized crime origins of the $200 million fortune of John McCain and his wife Cindy, take note of how the prestigious Washington Post touched on the issue in its July 22 edition. Rather, instead, note how the Post covered up the matter.

    The Post reported: Cindy Lou Hensley grew up as an only child, and a privileged one, in a large rancher in an upper-class section of Phoenix. Her dad, Jim Hensley, founded what became a large Anheuser-Busch distributorship, and her mom, Marguerite, was a proper belle who emphasized impeccable manners.

    The Post also added, almost discretely, that Mrs. McCain's wealth "may" exceed $100 million (although most sources estimate it is worth $200 million or more) and -- for the record -- that "she was the apple of her father's eye."

    The Post did not mention that Mrs. McCain's father was a highly-placed fixture in the Arizona branch of the national organized crime syndicate: He was the chief henchman of the late Kemper Marley, Arizona point man for infamous mob chief Meyer Lansky and his powerful partners-in-crime, the super-rich Bronfman family of Montreal.

    In that capacity -- for 40 years until his death in 1990 -- Marley was undisputed political boss of Arizona, acting as the behind-the-scenes power over both the Republican and Democratic parties.

    As such, his wealth and connections played the primary role in advancing John McCain's political career from the start.

    Although some Democrats have muttered that Mrs. McCain's business interests could impact on her husband's decision-making as president, none has dared cross the line and make reference to the fact this vast wealth was spawned by what others have indelicately (although quite correctly) called "the Jewish Mafia."

    Correspondents for American Free Press have repeatedly referenced the McCain fortune's ties to the Lansky-Bronfman syndicate going back to 2000 when McCain first ran for president. Most recently, in its July 14/21 issue AFP reported the story again. At that time, AFP pointed out that in its June 30 edition, Newsweek (owned by the Washington Post's parent company) also suppressed McCain's mob link.

    Newsweek said Mrs. McCain's family "was deeply rooted in Arizona," and that her father "was one of the most prominent men in the state," who was "a World War II bombardier . . . shot down over the English channel," -- in other words, a war hero like McCain.

    Newsweek did not mention (or even hint of) the racketeering, corruption and murder associated with Hensley and his patrons.

    Newsweek said Hensley "borrowed $10,000 to start a liquor business" which became one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributorships in the country and pointed out that the vast Hensley influence and fortune "got [McCain] access to money and connections" after he divorced his ailing first wife and married his then mistress, Cindy Hensley, and settled in Arizona where he first ran for office in 1982. But there was much more to the story.

    Newsweek did not mention what AFP had reported and which is republished here in order to keep this important story before the American public:

    To repeat: McCain's father-in-law was the top

    lieutenant for Kemper Marley, the Lansky syndicate's chief Arizona operative who acted, in turn, as the front man for the Bronfman family -- key players in the Lansky syndicate.

    During Prohibition, the Canadian-based Bronfmans supplied -- and thus controlled -- the "spigot" of liquor funneled to Lansky syndicate functionaries in the United States, including Al Capone in Chicago.

    After Prohibition, Lansky-Bronfman associates such as Marley got control of a substantial portion of liquor (and beer) distribution across the country. Marley's longtime public relations man, Al Lizanitz, revealed that it was the Bronfmans who set Marley up in the alcohol business.

    In 1948, 52 of Marley's employees (including Jim Hensley, the manager of Marley's company) were prosecuted for federal liquor violations. Hensley got a six month suspended sentence and his brother Eugene went to prison for a year.

    In 1953 Hensley and (this time) Marley were prosecuted by federal prosecutors for falsifying liquor records, but young attorney William Rehnquist acted as their "mouthpiece" (as mob attorneys are known) and the two got off scot-free. Rehnquist later became chief justice of the Supreme Court and presided over the "fix" that made George W. Bush president in a rightly disputed election.

    Arizona insiders say Hensley "took the fall" for Marley in 1948 and Marley paid back Hensley by setting him up in his own beer distribution business.

    Newsweek implied Hensley's company was a "mom and pop" operation that became a big success, but the real story goes to the heart of the history of organized crime.

    Hensley's sponsor, Marley, was also a major player in gambling, a protégé of Lansky associate Gus Greenbaum who, in 1941, set up a national wire for bookmakers. After Lansky ordered a hit on his own longtime partner, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, who was stealing money from the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas -- which was financed in part by loans from an Arizona bank chaired by Marley -- Greenbaum turned operations of the wire over to Marley while Greenbaum took Siegel's place in tending to Lansky's interests in Las Vegas.

    In 1948 Greenbaum was murdered in a mob "hit" that set off a series of gang wars in Phoenix, but Marley survived and prospered as did Jim Hensley, who sponsored McCain's rise to power.

    McCain's father-in-law also dabbled in dog racing and expanded his fortune by selling his track to an individual connected to the Buffalo-based Jacobs family, key Prohibition-era cogs in the Lansky network as distributors of Bronfman liquor.

    Expanding over the years, buying up race tracks and developing food and drink concessions at sports stadiums, Jacobs enterprises were described as being "probably the biggest quasi-legitimate cover for organized crime's money-laundering in the United States."

    In 1976, Hensley's mentor -- Marley (at the height of his power) -- was the key suspect behind the contract murder of journalist Don Bolles who was investigating the mob in Arizona, but Marley was never prosecuted.

    Since McCain's career was sponsored by the Lansky-Bronfman syndicate, it is no coincidence McCain recently traveled to London where Lord Jacob Rothschild of the international banking empire raised money among American expatriates on McCain's behalf.

    Rothschild has long been allied with the Bronfman family as major patrons of Israel.

    A journalist specializing in media critique, Michael Collins Piper is the author of Final Judgment , the controversial "underground bestseller" documenting the collaboration of Israeli intelligence in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He is also the author of The High Priests of War , The New Jerusalem , Dirty Secrets , The Judas Goats: The Enemy Within and The Golem: Israel's Nuclear Hell Bomb . All are available from AFP: 202-547-5585. He has lectured on these topics in places as diverse as Malaysia, Japan, Iran, Canada, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

    (Issue # 33, August 18, 2008)

    Please make a donation to American Free Press

    Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003