Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:22 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:36 pm
Russian-Iranian Relations in the Shadow of Ukraine
by Mark N. Katz
Prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in early 2014, Washington’s relations with Moscow were never worse than Washington’s relations with Tehran after the 1979 revolution. Indeed, occasionally in the 1990s and 2000s Russian-American relations seemed to be improving while Washington’s ties to Tehran remained poor. But since Hassan Rouhani became president of Iran in August 2013, and especially since the onset of the crises over Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, an unusual situation has developed: the possibility of improved Iranian relations with America and the West has increased while Russian ties with America and the West have sharply deteriorated.
Both Russian and Iranian commentators have discussed the implications of this new trend. Several Russian observers have warned that Russia could lose out if Iranian ties with America and the West improve. Several Iranian observers, for their part, have noted that many Russians fear just this. It is not surprising, then, that Moscow has stepped up its efforts to court Tehran.
Since the beginning of 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has met half a dozen times with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. In addition, several high-level Russian delegations have visited Tehran. In October 2014, the deputy director of Rosatom (which builds atomic energy plants) and the secretary of the Russian Security Council went to Iran. The following month, the chairman of the State Duma and the minister of economic development made the same trip. The Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, visited Tehran in January 2015 and signed a military cooperation agreement with Iran. Supreme Leader Khamenei’s foreign policy adviser and former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati met with President Vladimir Putin himself in Moscow in January 2015.
Converging Interests
Moscow and Tehran have also announced ambitious plans to boost trade. Moscow has increased its food imports from Iran after drastically reducing what it buys from Europe in retaliation for EU economic sanctions resulting from Russian actions in Ukraine. Moscow has also agreed to build two more nuclear reactors for Iran (it recently completed one, though this took many years), and hopes to build more still.
There has also been an effort to revive Russian air defense missile system sales to Iran, which then-President Dmitri Medvedev suspended in 2010. This move greatly angered Tehran since it had not only signed a contract to buy Russian S-300s but had also paid Moscow for them. In addition, Moscow has reportedly agreed (in the Putin-Velayati meeting) to promote Iran from observer status to full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at its July 2015 summit. Further, Moscow is pushing for a $20 billion barter trade agreement with Iran whereby Moscow would buy up to 500,000 barrels per day of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian equipment and goods.
Moscow and Tehran share several common interests. Both want to exclude any outside (especially American) presence in the Caspian Sea, which Russia and Iran border. Both also fear what the withdrawal of Coalition forces will mean for the future of Afghanistan as well as Central Asia. Indeed, this concern may be the impetus for the current members of the SCO (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) to seek Iran’s inclusion. In addition, Moscow and Tehran are the primary supporters of the Assad regime in Syria. Both of them have also taken steps to help the Baghdad government combat the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) in Iraq.
In the ongoing P5 + 1 negotiations with Tehran over the Iranian nuclear issue, Moscow has sought an agreement that prevents Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia, though, has advocated a more accommodating approach toward Iran on this issue than the Western states.
On top of their longstanding distrust of America, Moscow and Tehran obviously have many incentives for mutual cooperation. They could clearly help sustain each other if the ongoing nuclear negotiations fail and Iranian relations with America and the West turn hostile once again.
Divergent Aims
The problem for Moscow, though, is that it cannot control the trajectory of relations between America and the West. If Iran on the one hand and America, the UK, and France on the other reach a settlement on the nuclear issue, Russia is not in a strong position to block it. If Moscow tried, then Iran and the West could simply ignore Russia and go forward with an agreement on their own, thus demonstrating Moscow’s lack of influence.
Further, there are several disagreements between Moscow and Tehran that may not be resolved even in a climate of deteriorating relations between Iran and the West. Although Russia and Iran agree that external powers should be excluded from the Caspian, they have not been able to resolve their longstanding disagreement about how its waters—and mineral resources—should be divided among the bordering states.
In addition, although Moscow’s relations with the West as a whole are poor, its relations with Israel are quite strong. This may serve to limit Moscow’s willingness to resume air defense missile systems shipments to Iran. Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies and a member of the Russian Defense Ministry’s public advisory board, told The Moscow Times that “Russia has a secret obligation to Israel not to deliver S-300s to either Iran or Syria.”
There is a strong sense in Tehran that Moscow can cancel any Russian agreement to provide arms to Iran if and when it reaches an understanding with America and its allies to do so. Indeed, Iranians see both the Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement of 1995 (which was also supposedly secret, but whose terms were well publicized) and Medvedev’s 2010 cancellation of the S-300 contract (to encourage the U.S. Senate ratification of START 2 and accommodate Israel) as prior instances of unreliable Russian behavior.
Further, America and the West have on occasion supported, or at least didn’t oppose, the interests of Russia and Iran. In this era of low oil prices, Western firms are not exactly rushing to develop oil and gas deposits in the Caspian. Although America and its Coalition partners are drawing down their forces from Afghanistan, they too want to prevent the Taliban from overthrowing the Kabul government or expanding into Central Asia. Like Russia and Iran, America is also working to combat IS in Iraq. And although America and the West disagree with Russia and Iran about whether Bashar al-Assad should continue to rule Syria, all agree that IS and other Sunni jihadists must be prevented from coming to power in Damascus.
Although Russia and the West are deeply divided over Ukraine, Iran doesn’t pay much attention to this issue. Like many other non-Western governments, it has largely avoided getting involved.
Finally, there is one arena in which Russian and Iranian interests diverge sharply: they are competitors in the oil and gas market. With many in the West decrying the degree to which Europe is dependent on Russia for natural gas in particular, Iranian leaders have made clear their willingness to sell both gas and oil to Europe. This is not likely to occur, though, unless an agreement over the Iranian nuclear issue is reached that allows for the reduction of international economic sanctions against Iran. However much the Kremlin would publicly blame America and the West if the Iranian nuclear negotiations fail, the continuation of the sanctions against Tehran that prevents the export of Iranian oil and gas to the West would provide considerable private consolation for Moscow.
Perhaps the best Moscow can hope for, then, is that if the nuclear negotiations fail and Iranian-Western relations once again grow hostile, Iran will see Russia as its preferred partner in opposition to America and its allies. Moscow, though, is not in a position to prevent an improvement in Iranian ties to the West. And even if the nuclear talks do not succeed, longstanding Iranian friction with Russia will serve to limit the extent to which Tehran is willing to cooperate with Moscow against the West—especially when Tehran continues to share with the West a common interest to contain IS in Iraq and Syria and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Furthermore, if relations between Russia and the West deteriorate even further over Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, Moscow may actually distract the West’s attention away from Iran or even provide an incentive to be more accommodating toward Iran due to the need to focus the West’s resources on what it considers to be a much more dangerous enemy in the Kremlin.
The author is grateful to Yulia Krylova, a Ph.D. student in political science at George Mason University, for her research assistance for this article.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:45 pm
MARCH 25, 2015
On Russia, the Deep State and the Global Economy
An Interview with Paul Craig Roberts
by THE SAKER
I had been wanting to interview Paul Craig Roberts for a long time already. For many years I have been following his writings and interviews and every time I read what he had to say I was hoping that one day I would have the privilege do interview him about the nature of the US deep state and the Empire. Recently, I emailed him and asked for such an interview, and he very kindly agreed. I am very grateful to him for this opportunity.
The Saker
The Saker: It has become rather obvious to many, if not most, people that the USA is not a democracy or a republic, but rather a plutocracy run by a small elite which some call “the 1%”. Others speak of the “deep state”. So my first question to you is the following. Could you please take the time to assess the influence and power of each of the following entities one by one. In particular, can you specify for each of the following whether it has a decision-making “top” position, or a decision-implementing “middle” position in the real structure of power (listed in no specific order)
Federal Reserve
Big Banking
Bilderberg
Council on Foreign Relations
Skull & Bones
CIA
Goldman Sachs and top banks
“Top 100 families” (Rothschild, Rockefeller, Dutch Royal Family, British Royal Family, etc.)
Israel Lobby
Freemasons and their lodges
Big Business: Big Oil, Military Industrial Complex, etc.
Other people or organizations not listed above?
Who, which group, what entity would you consider is really at the apex of power in the current US polity?
Paul Craig Roberts: The US is ruled by private interest groups and by the neoconservative ideology that History has chosen the US as the “exceptional and indispensable” country with the right and responsibility to impose its will on the world.
In my opinion the most powerful of the private interest groups are: the Military/security Complex , the 4 or 5 mega-sized “banks too big to tai,l” and Wall Street, the Israel Lobby , Agribusiness , the Extractive industries (oil, mining, timber).
The interests of these interest groups coincide with those of the neoconservatives. The neoconservative ideology supports American financial and military-political imperialism or hegemony.
There is no independent American print or TV media. In the last years of the Clinton regime, 90% of the print and TV media was concentrated in 6 mega-companies. During the Bush regime, National Public Radio lost its independence. So the media functions as a Ministry of Propaganda.
Both political parties, Republicans and Democrats, are dependent on the same private interest groups for campaign funds, so both parties dance to the same masters. Jobs offshoring destroyed the manufacturing and industrial unions and deprived the Democrats of Labor Union political contributions. In those days, Democrats represented the working people and Republicans represented business.
The Federal Reserve is there for the banks, mainly the large ones.The Federal Reserve was created as lender of last resort to prevent banks from failing because of runs on the bank or withdrawal of deposits. The New York Fed, which conducts the financial interventions, has a board that consists of the executives of the big banks. The last three Federal Reserve chairmen have been Jews, and the current vice chairman is the former head of the Israeli central bank.
Some believe that this reveals a Rothschild plot, but the reality is that Jews are prominent in the financial sector, for example, Goldman Sachs. In recent years, the US Treasury Secretaries and heads of the financial regulatory agencies have mainly been the bank executives responsible for the fraud and excessive debt leverage that set off the last financial crisis.
In the 21st century, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have served only the interests of the large banks. This has been at the expense of the economy and the population. For example, retired people have had no interest income for eight years in order that the financial institutions can borrow at zero costs and make money.
No matter how rich some families are, they cannot compete with powerful interest groups such as the military/security complex or Wall Street and the banks. Long established wealth can look after its interests, and some, such as the Rockefellers, have activist foundations that most likely work hand in hand with the National Endowment for Democracy to fund and encourage various pro-American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in countries that the US wants to influence or overthrow, such as occurred in Ukraine. The NGOs are essentially US Fifth Columns and operate under such names as “human rights,” “democracy,” etc. A Chinese professor told me that the Rockefeller Foundation had created an American University in China and is used to organize various anti-regime Chinese. At one time, and perhaps still, there were hundreds of US and German financed NGOs in Russia, possibly as many as 1,000.
I don’t know if the Bilderbergs do the same. Possibly they are just very rich people and have their proteges in governments who try to protect their interests. I have never seen any signs of Bilderbergs or Masons or Rothchilds affecting congressional or executive branch decisions.
On the other hand, the Council for Foreign Relations is influential. The council consists of former government policy officials and academics involved in foreign policy and international relations. The council’s publication, Foreign Affairs, is the premier foreign policy forum. Some journalists are also members. When I was proposed for membership in the 1980s, I was blackballed.
Skull & Bones is a Yale University secret fraternity. A number of universities have such secret fraternities. For example, the University of Virginia has one, and the University of Georgia. These fraternities do not have secret governmental plots or ruling powers. Their influence would be limited to the personal influence of the members, who tend to be sons of elite families. In my opinion, these fraternities exist to convey elite status to members. They have no operational functions.
The Saker: What about individuals? Who are, in your opinion, the most powerful people in the USA today? Who takes the final, top level, strategic decision?
Paul Craig Roberts: There really are no people powerful in themselves. Powerful people are ones that powerful interest groups are behind. Ever since Secretary of Defense William Perry privatized so much of the military in 1991, the military/security complex has been extremely powerful, and its power is further amplified by its ability to finance political campaigns and by the fact that it is a source of employment in many states. Essentially Pentagon expenditures are controlled by defense contractors.
The Saker: I have always believed that in international terms, organizations such as NATO, the EU or all the others are only a front, and that the real alliance which controls the planet are the ECHELON countries: US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand aka “AUSCANNZUKUS” (they are also referred to as the “Anglosphere” or the “Five Eyes”) with the US and the UK are the senior partners while Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the junior partners here. Is this model correct?
Paul Craig Roberts: NATO was a US creation allegedly to protect Europe from a Soviet invasion. Its purpose expired in 1991. Today NATO provides cover for US aggression and provides mercenary forces for the American Empire. Britain, Canada, Australia, are simply US vassal states just as are Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the rest. There are no partners; just vassals. It is Washington’s empire, no one else’s.
The US favors the EU, because it is easier to control than the individual countries.
The Saker: It is often said that Israel controls the USA. Chomsky, and others, say that it is the USA which controls Israel. How would you characterize the relationship between Israel and the USA – does the dog wag the tail or does the tail wag the dog? Would you say that the Israel Lobby is in total control of the USA or are there still other forces capable of saying “no” to the Israel Lobby and impose their own agenda?
Paul Craig Roberts: I have never seen any evidence that the US controls Israel. All the evidence is that Israel controls the US, but only its MidEast policy. In recent years, Israel or the Israel Lobby, has been able to control or block academic appointments in the US and tenure for professors considered to be critics of Israel. Israel has successfully reached into both Catholic and State universities to block tenure and appointments. Israel can also block some presidential appointments and has vast influence over the print and TV media. The Israel Lobby also has plenty of money for political campaign funds and never fails to unseat US Representatives and Senators considered critical of Israel. The Israel lobby was able to reach into the black congressional district of Cynthia McKinney, a black woman, and defeat her reelection. As Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “No American President can stand up to Israel.” Adm. Moorer could not even get an official investigation of Israel’s deadly attack on the USS Liberty in 1967.
Anyone who criticizes Israeli policies even in a helpful way is labeled an “anti-Semite.”
In American politics, media, and universities, this is a death-dealing blow. You might as well get hit with a hellfire missile.
The Saker: Which of the 12 entities of power which I listed above have, in your opinion, played a key role in the planning and execution of the 9/11 “false flag” operation? After all, it is hard to imagine that this was planned and prepared between the inauguration of GW Bush and September 11th – it must have been prepared during the years of the Clinton Administration. Is it not true the the Oklahoma City bombing was a rehearsal for 9/11?
Paul Craig Roberts: In my opinion 9/11 was the product of the neoconservatives, almost all of whom are Jewish, Dick Cheney, and Israel. Its purpose was to provide “the new Pearl Harbor” that the neoconservatives said was necessary to launch their wars of conquest in the Middle East. I don’t know how far back it was planned, but Silverstein was obviously part of it and he had not had the WTC for very long before 9/11.
As for the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, US Air Force General Partin, the Air Force’s munitions expert, prepared an expert report proving beyond all doubt that the building blew up from the inside out and that the truck bomb was cover. Congress and the media ignored his report. The patsy, McVeigh, was already set up, and that was the only story allowed.
The Saker: Do you think that the people who run the USA today realize that they are on a collision course with Russia which could lead to thermonuclear war? If yes, why would they take such a risk? Do they really believe that at the last moment Russian will “blink” and back down, or do they actually believe that they can win a nuclear war? Are they not afraid that in a nuclear conflagration with Russia they will lose everything they have, including their power and even their lives?
Paul Craig Roberts: I am as puzzled as much as you. I think Washington is lost in hubris and arrogance and is more or less insane. Also, there is belief that the US can win a nuclear war with Russia. There was an article in Foreign Affairs around 2005 or 2006 in which this conclusion was reached. The belief in the winnability of nuclear war has been boosted by faith in ABM defenses. The argument is that the US can hit Russia so hard in a preemptive first strike that Russia would not retaliate in fear of a second blow.
The Saker: How do you assess the current health of the Empire? For many years we have seen clear signs of decline, but there is still not visible collapse. Do you believe that such a collapse is inevitable and, if not, how could it be prevented? Will we see the day when the US Dollar suddenly become worthless or will another mechanism precipitate the collapse of this Empire?
Paul Craig Roberts: The US economy is hollowed out. There has been no real median family income growth for decades. Alan Greenspan as Fed Chairman used an expansion of consumer credit to take the place of the missing growth in consumer income, but the population is now too indebted to take on more. So there is nothing to drive the economy. So many manufacturing and tradable professional service jobs such as software engineering have been moved offshore that the middle class has shrunk. University graduates cannot get jobs that support an independent existence. So they can’t form households, buy houses, appliances and home furnishings. The government produces low inflation measures by not measuring inflation and low unemployment rates by not measuring unemployment. The financial markets are rigged, and gold is driven down despite rising demand by selling uncovered shorts in the futures market. It is a house of cards that has stood longer than I thought possible. Apparently, the house of cards can stand until the rest of the world ceases to hold the US dollar as reserves.
Possibly the empire has put too much stress on Europe by involving Europe in a conflict with Russia. If Germany, for example, were to pull out of NATO, the empire would collapse, or if Russia can find the wits to finance Greece, Italy, and Spain in exchange for them leaving the Euro and EU, the empire would suffer a fatal blow.
Alternatively, Russia might tell Europe that Russia has no alternative but to target European capitals with nuclear weapons now that Europe has joined the US in conducting war against Russia.
The Saker: Russia and China have done something unique in history and they have gone beyond the traditional model of forming an alliance: they have agreed to become interdependent – one could say that they have agreed to a symbiotic relationship. Do you believe that those in charge of the Empire have understood the tectonic change which has just happen or are they simply going into deep denial because reality scares them too much?
Paul Craig Roberts: Stephen Cohen says that there is simply no foreign policy discussion. There is no debate. I think the empire thinks that it can destabilize Russia and China and that is one reason Washington has color revolutions working in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. As Washington is determined to prevent the rise of other powers and is lost in hubris and arrogance, Washington probably believes that it will succeed. After all, History chose Washington.
The Saker: In your opinion, do presidential elections still matter and, if yes, what is your best hope for 2016? I am personally very afraid of Hillary Clinton whom I see as an exceptionally dangerous and outright evil person, but with the current Neocon influence inside the Republican, can we really hope for a non-Neocon candidate to win the GOP nomination?
Paul Craig Roberts: The only way a presidential election could matter would be if the elected president had behind him a strong movement. Without a movement, the president has no independent power and no one to appoint who will do his bidding. Presidents are captives. Reagan had something of a movement, just enough that we were able to cure stagflation despite Wall Street’s opposition and we were able to end the cold war despite the opposition of the CIA and the military/security complex. Plus Reagan was very old and came from a long time ago. He assumed the office of the president was powerful and acted that way.
The Saker: What about the armed forces? Can you imagine a Chairman of the JCS saying “no, Mr President, that is crazy, we will not do this” or do you expect the generals to obey any order, including one starting a nuclear war against Russia? Do you have any hope that the US military could step in and stop the “crazies” currently in power in the White House and Congress?
Paul Craig Roberts: The US military is a creature of the armaments industries. The whole purpose of making general is to be qualified to be a consultant to the “defense” industry, or to become an executive or on the board of a “defense” contractor. The military serves as the source of retirement careers when the generals make the big money. The US military is totally corrupt. Read Andrew Cockburn’s book, Kill Chain.
The Saker: If the USA is really deliberately going down the path towards war with Russia – what should Russia do? Should Russia back down and accept to be subjugated as a preferable option to a thermonuclear war, or should Russia resist and thereby accept the possibility of a thermonuclear war? Do you believe that a very deliberate and strong show of strength on the part of Russia could deter a US attack?
Paul Craig Roberts: I have often wondered about this. I can’t say that I know. I think Putin is humane enough to surrender rather than to be part of the destruction of the world, but Putin has to answer to others inside Russia and I doubt the nationalists would stand for surrender.
In my opinion, I think Putin should focus on Europe and make Europe aware that Russia expects an American attack and will have no choice except to wipe out Europe in response. Putin should encourage Europe to break off from NATO in order to prevent World War 3.
Putin should also make sure China understands that China represents the same perceived threat to the US as Russia and that the two countries need to stand together. Perhaps if Russia and China were to maintain their forces on a nuclear alert, not the top one, but an elevated one that conveyed recognition of the American threat and conveyed this threat to the world, the US could be isolated.
Perhaps if the Indian press, the Japanese Press, the French and German press, the UK press, the Chinese and Russian press began reporting that Russia and China wonder if they will receive a pre-emptive nuclear attack from Washington the result would be to prevent the attack.
As far as I can tell from my many media interviews with the Russian media, there is no Russian awareness of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Russians think that there is some kind of misunderstanding about Russian intentions. The Russian media does not understand that Russia is unacceptable, because Russia is not a US vassal. Russians believe all the Western bullshit about “freedom and democracy” and believe that they are short on both but making progress. In other words, Russians have no idea that they are targeted for destruction.
The Saker: What are, in your opinion, the roots of the hatred of so many members of the US elites for Russia? Is that just a leftover from the Cold War, or is there another reason for the almost universal russophobia amongst US elites? Even during the Cold War, it was unclear whether the US was anti-Communist or anti-Russian? Is there something in the Russian culture, nation or civilization which triggers that hostility and, if yes, what is it?
Paul Craig Roberts: The hostility toward Russia goes back to the Wolfowttz Doctrine:
“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. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
While the US was focused on its MidEast wars, Putin restored Russia and blocked Washington’s planned invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran. The “first objective” of the neocon doctrine was breached. Russia had to be brought into line. That is the origin of Washington’s attack on Russia. The dependent and captive US and European media simply repeats “the Russian Threat” to the public, which is insouciant and otherwise uninformed.
The offense of Russian culture is also there–Christian morals, respect for law and humanity, diplomacy in place of coercion, traditional social mores–but these are in the background. Russia is hated because Russia (and China) is a check on Washington’s unilateral uni-power. This check is what will lead to war.
If the Russians and Chinese do not expect a pre-emptive nuclear attack from Washington, they will be destroyed.
This interview originally appeared in The Vineyard of the Saker.
by solace » Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:05 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:07 pm
Mike Whitney interviews the Saker for Counterpunch
The Ukraine, As We Know It, Is Gone Forever
by MIKE WHITNEY for Counterpunch
The Saker is an ex-military analyst who was born in Europe to a family of Russian refugees. He now lives in Florida where he writes the Vineyard of the Saker blog and is a regular contributor to Russia Insider. The international community of Saker Blogs includes, besides the original Saker blog, French, German, Russian, Oceania and Serbian members and will soon include a Latin American member. – Mike Whitney
Mike Whitney: Is the United States responsible for the troubles in Ukraine?
The Saker: Yes, absolutely, there’s no doubt about it. While it’s true that the Ukrainian people were unhappy with the corrupt Yanukovich regime, the coup itself was definitely CIA orchestrated. The EU was also involved, especially Germany, but they didn’t play nearly as big a role as the U.S. The taped phone messages of (US Undersecretary of State) Victoria Nuland show who was really calling the shots behind the scenes.
Mike Whitney: What role did the Obama administration play in Kiev’s decision to launch a war on its own people in the east of Ukraine?
The Saker: A central role. You have to understand that there is no “Ukrainian” power in Kiev. Poroshenko is 100% US-run as are the people around him. The head of the notorious Ukrainian secret police (the SBU), Valentin Nalivaichenko, is a known CIA agent. It’s also true that the US refers to Poroshenko “our Ukraine insider”. All of his so called “decisions” are actually made by U.S. officials in Kiev. As for Poroshenko’s speech to Congress a few weeks ago, that was obviously written by an American.
Mike Whitney: The separatists in the East have been very successful in repelling the Ukrainian army and their Neo Nazi counterparts in the security services. What role has Russia played in assisting the Novorussia militias?
The Saker: Russia’s role was critical. While Russian troops were not deployed across the border, Moscow did allow volunteers and weapons to flow in. And while the assistance was not provided directly by the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service) or the military, it was provided by various private groups. Clearly, the Kremlin has the power to help-out when it choses to do so. In one instance, there appears to have been direct artillery support from across the Russian border (in the so-called “southern cauldron”), but most of the aid has been covert. Besides the covert assistance, Russia has also provided intelligence, logistical and political support for the Novorussians. Without Russia’s support, the Novorussians never would have been able to turn the tide in the war.
Mike Whitney: Did Putin send Russian troops to Crimea and illegally seize the area or is that a fiction that’s been propagated in the western media?
The Saker: It’s actually a technicality. Yes, Putin did send Russian troops to Crimea, but no, they never exceeded the limits allowed under current agreements between Russia and the Ukraine. Remember that the Black Sea Fleet was already headquartered in Sevastopol, so there were plenty of troops available locally. Also, there was a large group of local volunteers who perform essential operations. Some of these volunteers were so convincing that they were mistaken for Russian Special Forces. But, yes, at the critical moment, Putin did send additional special forces to Crimea.
Was the operation legal? Well, technically it didn’t violate treaty agreements in terms of numbers, but did it violate Ukraine’s sovereignty. The reason Moscow did this was because there was solid evidence that Kiev was planning to move against Crimea. (possibly involving Turkey and Crimean Tatars) If Putin had not taken the initiative, the bloodbath in Crimea could have been worse than it’s been in Novorussia. Also, by the time Putin made the decision to protect Crimea, the democratically-elected President (Yanukovich) had already been removed from office, which created a legal vacuum in Kiev. So the question is: Should Putin have abided by the laws of a country that had been taken over by a gang of armed thugs or should he have tried to keep the peace by doing what he did?
What Putin chose to do was allow the people of Crimea to decide their own future by voting freely in a referendum. Yes, the AngloZionist propaganda says that they were forced to “vote at the barrel of a gun”, but that’s nonsense. Nobody disputes the fact that an overwhelming majority of Crimeans (95%) wanted to leave Ukraine and join Russia. All the “polite armed men in green” did was make it possible for the people to exercise their right of self-determination, something that the junta in Kiev never would have permitted.
Mike Whitney: What influence does Obama have on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s decision-making? Is Washington actually running the show?
The Saker: Yes, totally. Obama gives the orders and Poroshenko obeys.
Just as they do everywhere, the US uses local oligarchs to colonize a country. Take for example Russia between 1991 and 1999. It was run by oligarchs behind a drunken figurehead. (Boris Yeltsin) Everyone knew that Russia had become a American colony and that the US could do whatever it wanted. It’s the same today.
Yanukovich was no more pro-Russian than any other Ukrainian President. He’s just an oligarch who’s been replaced by another oligarch, Poroshenko. The latter is a very intelligent man who knows that his survival depends on his complete obedience to Uncle Sam.
I wouldn’t put it past the US to dump Poroshenko and install someone else if it suits their purposes. (Especially if the Right Sector takes power in Kiev.) For now, Poroshenko is Washington’s man, but that could change in the blink of an eye.
Mike Whitney: How close is the Obama administration to achieving its goal of establishing NATO bases (and, perhaps, missile sites) in Ukraine? What danger does this pose for Moscow?
The Saker: The only place where NATO bases really make sense is in Crimea, and that option is no longer available. But there’s more to this issue than meets the eye, that is, if the US continues to pursue this provocative policy of establishing NATO bases on the Russian border, then Russia will withdraw from the INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) and deploy advanced versions of the SS-20 (Soviet Nuclear Ballistic Missile) closer to Europe. The point is, US meddling could lead to a confrontation between nuclear-armed adversaries.
Mike Whitney: The European Commission has created a number of obstacles to prevent Russia from building the Southstream pipeline which will diversify export routes for natural gas from Russia to central and southern Europe. Critics have said that the Obama administration is behind the move, and that powerful US energy giants want to either block or control the flow of energy from Russia to Europe. Is this the broader context of the troubles in Ukraine, that is, are we really seeing an energy war unfold in real time?
The Saker: This is an important part of the equation, but not the central one. The central one is the mistaken belief (put forward by Zbigniew Brzezinski) that without the Ukraine Russia cannot be a superpower, and the equally mistaken belief (put forward by Hillary Clinton) that Putin wants to re-create the Soviet Union. For the AngloZionists, the Ukraine is a zero-sum game in which the US must either control the Ukraine or destroy it, but not allow Russia to have it. The problem with this theory is that Russia doesn’t really want or need the Ukraine. What Russia wants is a stable, dependable and neutral partner with which it can do business. Even now, while the Novorussians are demanding full independence, Russia has been pushing a different plan altogether. Moscow wants a unitary Ukraine in which each region would have de-facto autonomy but still be part of the same state.
Powerbrokers in the West are so maniacally obsessed with controlling the Ukraine, they can’t imagine that Russia doesn’t want the same thing. But Russia doesn’t want the Ukraine. It has no need for a broken, dysfunctional, failed state with massive social problems, that will require billions upon billions of dollars to rebuild.
Sure, there are cultural, historical, religious and even family ties between Russia and the Ukraine, but that does not mean they want to run the place. Russia already got what it wanted, Crimea. As for the rest, Moscow’s attitude is, “You broke it, you own it.”
Mike Whitney: What’s the endgame here? Will Poroshnko succeed in keeping Ukraine together and further isolate Russia from Europe or will Ukraine splinter along political lines? Or is there another scenario that you see as more likely?
The Saker: Crimea is gone forever. So is Novorussia. But in the case of the latter, there might be a transitional phase in which Kiev retains some degree of sovereignty over areas in the east.
In the near term, there could be more fighting, but eventually there will be a deal in which Novorussia will be given something close to independence. One thing is certain, that before reaching an agreement on final status, two issues will have to be settled:
1– There must be regime change in Kiev followed by de-Nazification.
Neither Russia nor Novorussia will ever be safe as long as the Nazis are in power in Kiev. That means that these russophobic, nationalist freaks will have to be removed before final status issues can be resolved. The Russians and the Novorussians are somewhat divided on this issue. While the Novorussians want their independence and say “To hell with the Nazis in Kiev”, the Kremlin wants regime change and sees it crucial for their national security. We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out in the future.
2– There will have to be a conference of donors.
The Ukraine is basically dead, it’s been reduced to rubble. It will take years to rebuild, and immense sums of money. The US, EU and Russia will all have to contribute. If the AngloZionists persist in their maximalist position and continue to support the Nazi junta in Kiev, the Russians will not pay a single kopeck. Russian aid will go exclusively to Novorussia.
Sooner or later the US and EU will realize that they need Russia’s help. And when they finally figure that out, they’ll work together to reach a comprehensive political agreement. Right now, they’re more preoccupied with punishing Putin (through economic sanctions and political isolation) to prove that no one can defy the Empire. But that kind of bullying behavior won’t change the reality on the ground. The West needs Russia’s cooperation, but Russia isn’t going to cooperate without strings attached. The US will have to meet certain conditions before Moscow agrees to a deal.
UKRAINE: “Gone forever”
Though it’s too early to tell, I think the Ukraine as we know it, is gone forever. Crimea will remain part of Russia, while Novorussia will become independent and probably end up in some kind of association status with Russia. As for the rest of the Ukraine, there’s bound to be a confrontation between the various oligarchs and Nazis, after which the pragmatists will appear and lead the way to a settlement. Eventually, there will be some kind of accommodation and a new state will emerge, but I can’t imagine how long it will take for that to happen.
If you want a more systematic analysis of the points above, please see my analysis (here:
by Searcher08 » Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:17 pm
solace » Wed Mar 25, 2015 9:05 pm wrote:The Saker:
"I am fully aware of the role which Jews played in the horrors of the 20th century, I am aware that they declared war on Russia first, and on Germany after that (both times the order came from organized American Jewry and Jewish banks), I loathe both Rabbinical Judaism and Zionism because both are based on self-worship and racism. I don't need lectures on all the bad things Jews have done or are still doing. Believe me, I have read more anti-Jewish books than most people here (if only because I read them all not only English, but also in Russian which has at least 10 times as many anti-Jewish books as there are in English)."
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.ca/2014/0 ... leaks.html
Heh. Great guy, eh? He coulda wrote speeches for Hitler and Alexander III.
by Wombaticus Rex » Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:27 pm
Searcher08 » Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:17 pm wrote:
You go gurl! Please keep your devastatingly insightful one line micro-neuronal analysis' a-coming. There is a thread FULL of 'dodgy characters' and 'sketchy organisations' called 'TIDS' - please have a look at it!!!
by seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:30 pm
No wonder Jeff never comes here anymore. The shame must be unbearable.
by Wombaticus Rex » Wed Mar 25, 2015 6:55 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 25, 2015 8:58 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 31, 2015 11:27 am
MARCH 31, 2015
The Threats Against Russia
Canada’s Political Mainstream Backs War in Ukraine
by ROGER ANNIS
Canadians will go to the polls next October in the first national election since the Conservative Party won a majority government in 2011. There is intense concern among progressive people in the country about the prospects of the Conservatives winning another term in office.
The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is moving further and further to the right. It has aligned itself tightly with U.S. foreign policy, including being ‘holier than thou’ in its unconditional support of Israel. It joined the U.S.-led air war in Iraq six months ago and now it is joining the U.S. in expanding that to Syria. It has cemented Canada’s role as a leading climate vandal in the world. It has attacked civil and social rights across the board and is now deepening that attack with the proposed, ‘police-state Canada’ Bill C-51.
This leaves many Canadians favorable to the idea of an electoral and governing alliance between the two, large opposition parties in Parliament—the Liberal and New Democratic parties—in order to defeat the Conservatives. NDP leader Tom Mulcair says he is open to a governing coalition with the Liberals if neither party wins an electoral majority.
But on the increasingly dangerous issue in world politics—the war in eastern Ukraine and accompanying military threats and expansion of NATO in eastern Europe—there is an astonishing unanimity in the Canadian political and media establishment. NATO is embarked on a drive to weaken Russia, with all the risk and folly that entails—including a nuclear danger. The people and territory of Ukraine are being used as war proxies to get at Russia. Yet, there is nary a peep of disagreement in the Parliament in Ottawa.
Liberals in lock-step with Conservatives over Ukraine/Russia
Is it possible for opposition parties in Ottawa to promise big change from Conservative rule when they share the Conservative–and NATO–ambition for a ‘long war’ with Russia? It is not. Canadians are seriously mistaken if we believe that a country embarked on confrontation with the peoples of Russia and elsewhere in eastern Europe can simultaneously tackle the important issues of our times such as climate change, political rights and social justice (particularly as concerns Indigenous peoples).
The website The New Cold War: Ukraine and beyond is writing and publishing extensively about the ‘blame Russia’ group think in government and mainstream media in Canada and other NATO countries over the war in Ukraine. With few exceptions, mainstream media in the NATO countries is acting as an echo chamber of government policy. The ‘blame Russia’ narrative says that the governing coalition in Ukraine of billionaire neo-conservatives and right-wing extremists are brave defenders of Ukraine worthy of support against ‘Russian aggression’, end of discussion.
It gets worse in Canada. Two of the country’s leading newspapers—the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail—have been publishing articles promoting the fundraising efforts in Canada of Ukraine’s extreme-right paramilitaries for the purchase of weapons and other military equipment.
The Liberal Party, supposedly a party of the mainstream center, is proving every bit as hawkish and warlike as the Conservatives. A key voice of the party on Ukraine and Russia is Chrystia Freeland. She is an author, former editor of the Globe and Mail, and the star candidate of the Liberals who won the hotly contested by-election race in 2013 for the Parliamentary seat of Toronto Centre , narrowly defeating the candidate of the NDP, Linda McQuaig, a left-wing journalist.
One of Freeland’s parents was Ukrainian and she is fluent in the language.
Freeland spoke bluntly to a gathering of Ukrainian Canadian women on March 8 at an event in Toronto marking International Womens Day. A brief portion of her remarks (in English) was broadcast in a Ukrainian language news program here (at the 7′ mark).
She told the gathering, “This conflict with Russia is not going to end in one day. Our community, our country, the entire Western world needs to really be prepared for a new environment. This is not something that can end quickly, and we need to adjust the way we think. We need to understand this is a very profound ideological battle going on.
She went on, “It’s actually a conflict even bigger than Ukraine. This is about the rule of law and democracy in Europe and the Western world. That’s why it is being fought so fiercely.”
She gave an interview to a Ukrainian-Canadian publication at the same event in which she said, “Having said that [the West has been valiantly aiding Ukraine], I think we need to be prepared that right now this Minsk-2 [ceasefire] moment is a pause, not the end. And we need to be prepared for this conflict to be a very, very long conflict.”
Yvan Baker, the Liberal member for Etobicoke Center (Toronto) in the Ontario Legislature (an electoral district with a large number of Ukrainian-Canadians), is another of the Liberal hawks on Ukraine. He gave a statement to the Legislature on March 11 in which he said, “Today, Ukraine is at war and the situation is dire. Russian-backed forces have occupied part of Eastern Ukraine and continue to advance. The soldiers I met [while visiting Ukraine in November 2014] are fighting against state-of-the-art equipment with outdated weapons, some from World War II.”
“The invasion is a global threat. It is a violation of international law and order established at such great cost during WWII.”
“Efforts at peace have failed. For months, Ukraine’s president has been asking for defensive [sic] weapons so that his nation stands a chance against the larger and more advanced Russian military. Others such as [U.S. Senator] John McCain and John Boehner [Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives] have echoed his call and the U.S. Congress has passed authorization for the U.S. to arm Ukraine.
“I urge our federal government to act on the Ukrainian Canadian Congress’s Feb. 21st statement which calls for Canada to, and I quote: ‘dramatically increase sectoral sanctions’, ‘increase the provision of communications and intelligence capabilities’ and ‘provide Ukraine with the defensive weapons, equipment and training it needs to defend its territorial integrity’.”
Liberal Party Premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynne joined the pro-war chorus last August when she appeared at a Ukraine Independence Day event in Toronto. It was organized by the extremist Ukrainian Canadian Congress and it featured a fundraising booth of the fascist Right Sector party of Ukraine. Funds were directed to the purchase of military equipment.
Wynne’s speech was a vigorous call to continue Kyiv’s war in eastern Ukraine. At the time, the war was at one of its bloodiest stages. Rockets and mortars were raining down relentlessly on civilian targets, including school and hospitals, while residents, including children, were living months on end in makeshift bomb shelters.
Wynne told the gathering that Ukraine armed forces “are defending the very independence that we are here to commemorate”. She declined to speak to journalists afterward.
It is unusual, to say the least, for a provincial premier in Canada to pronounce vigorously on a foreign policy issue, particularly so when it concerns a brutal war against a civilian population. But such is the group-think support for Kyiv’s war that Wynne’s call to arms raised little attention or controversy.
A Liberal member of Parliament in Montreal, Irwin Cotler, succeeded on March 25 in gaining unanimous support for a motion in Parliament to extend sanctions against Russian officials deemed to be involved in the death in prison custody of a Russia lawyer more than five years ago.
The official opposition party, the NDP, has not been as vigorously outspoken as the Liberals (excepting an appearance by MP Peggy Nash at an event in Toronto last November where she shared a stage with a Right Sector guest speaker). But it supports the government/NATO drive.
The one Green Party member in Parliament has been in lock-step on Ukraine, notwithstanding her divergence from the government on the bombings in Iraq and on civil liberties issues. Elizabeth May put an innocuous question to the government in the House of Commons on March 25 in which she assured, “We all join the Prime Minister in condemning Putin’s aggression [sic]…”
Police-state laws
Ironically, the opposition parties in Ottawa are voicing discomfort and even some opposition to a new set of police-state laws in Canada which resemble an awful lot those which have come into force in Ukraine during the past year. Bill C-51 contains several new “national security” provisions which will make it easier for Canada’s political police and other police agencies to spy on, disrupt and pre-emptively arrest people deemed to be a threat to vaguely denied “national interests” and “national security” in Canada. The bill has been condemned by human rights lawyers and advocates, environmentalists and trade union leaders, among many others, who say its provisions are aimed squarely at critics of government and industry such as them. (See a full explanation of Bill C-51 here.)
Indeed, the political policing to which Bill C-51 gives further legitimacy has been on full display in the streets of Montreal and Quebec City in the past ten days as tens of thousands of post-secondary students have gone on strike in Quebec against hikes to tuition fees and other antisocial, austerity policies. Last week, police in Montreal and Quebec City assaulted several large student demonstrations and arrested hundreds. In Quebec City on March 24, 274 protesters were arrested and detained by police during an evening protest and street march. Two days later during another evening march, some students were shot point-blank in the face by Quebec City police with tear gas canisters.
The police actions in Quebec should concern every Canadian and they raise the obvious spectre of the cruel, war policies in Ukraine coming home to roost in Canada. And in an eerie replication of the pattern of mainstream news reporting of Ukraine, the news of police actions in Quebec has largely gone unreported elsewhere in the country.
Illegal war in the Middle East
Another taste of the new, Ukraine-inspired law and order in Canada is the federal government’s decision to extend to Syria the aerial bombing campaign it has been conducting in Iraq alongside its U.S. big brother. The bombings are purportedly targeting “terrorists”. On what legal basis is Canada going to war in Syrian territory? Roughly the same as in Iraq, namely, ‘the U.S. is doing it, so we should join them’.
Harper told Parliament that Canada is “pursuing this action on exactly the same legal basis as its allies”. But he did not answer what, exactly, is that basis.
Foreign affairs minister Rob Nicholson told the chamber, “The Americans have operated in there [Syria] for six months without resistance from the Syrian government.”
Minister of Defense Jason Kenny says Canada is acting at the behest of the discredited and U.S. puppet government in Iraq. He said, “Iraq has asked Canada and allied countries to help them defend their innocent civilians from terror attacks being launched out of eastern Syria in a part of that country the Syrian government either is unwilling or unable to control.”
When pressed by opposition parties and journalists, the Conservatives agreed to send a letter to the United Nations to inform it of its plans.
The Liberals and the NDP agreed to the bombings in Iraq when they were launched six months ago but are uneasy over extending this to Syria. Both voted against the Syria adventure, though a section of the Liberals disagrees with party leader Justin Trudeau.
There is an atmosphere of intellectual intimidation prevailing in Canada whereby criticism of the war and of NATO is said to amount to uncritical support of the Russian government (or what they call “Putin’s regime”). As a consequence, some alternative media is silent. Academia and antiwar groups are largely quiescent. In 2003, the advocates of war against Iraq did not get very far with accusations against antiwar forces of “appeasing” Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. Today, a parallel argument against Russia has been effective in quieting voices that would otherwise be expected to be critical.
The NATO confrontation with Russia is a reckless and dangerous course that is corroding politics in Canada. It threatens the capacity to forge a progressive alternative to the governing warmakers if it is not challenged. That’s why it is important to speak and act against the war in Ukraine and its wider implications.
Roger Annis is an editor of the website The New Cold War: Ukraine and beyond.
by Nordic » Fri Apr 03, 2015 5:51 am
Donbass' Struggle, Europe's Shame
Donbass – a region in Europe under assault by its own government, supported by EU
I am standing on sacred territory in Donbass, which also happened to be sacred territory during the former Soviet Union. On the top of this hill roughly halfway between Donetsk and Lugansk, there used to be an elaborate monument complex celebrating the heroes of World War II who defeated nazi-fascism.
Kiev’s self-described “anti-terrorist operations” (ATO) – which continue to demonize the whole population of Donbass – have turned this literally upside down. Last year, Kiev’s forces took Saur-mogila, and bombed the whole monument complex. The forces of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk retook it, at great cost; and now a red-white-blue resistance flag dominates the landscape, waving in the wind.
As I was climbing the hill I stumbled accidentally into the definitive, graphic image of the current civil war in Ukraine, the microcosm/proxy theatre of a do-or-die, Cold War 2.0 geopolitical confrontation between the US and Russia.
Top of the hill at Saur-mogila | Photo: Pepe Escobar, Sputnik
One of the statues in the monument, representing a World War II hero, is in fragments, but not destroyed; the torn torso is striving to rise up from the ground. Seventy years after the victory against nazi-fascism, the statue has almost been blown to bits by forces in Kiev aligned with, and infiltrated by, nazi-fascist elements. And Europe, refusing to look at what’s really happening in its eastern borderlands, is, once again, splendidly oblivious.
On the top of the hill, I could finally get a full geographical perspective of the battles of last summer. Facing northeast in the distance were the forces of fascist Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh. Russia is to the right.
The “cauldron” of Debaltsevo — actually three cauldrons where Kiev’s forces were encircled, squeezed and devastated by the resistance is slightly northwest, 40 kilometers away. Donetsk residents say there could have been at least 10,000 lethal casualties on Kiev’s side during the whole siege.
“Children Holed up in Basements”
Saur-mogila represents a great military victory for Donbass. But what matters most for average people is the humanitarian situation, which remains dire. The main trauma doctor at Donetsk’s general hospital assured me there has been no Red Cross or “international community” help whatsoever reaching the city.
After all, for all those corporate/manicured faces from Washington to Brussels, everyone in Donbass is a “terra-rist”, according to Kiev’s playbook imported straight from the neo-con controlled Dubya era.
The oh so civilized “West” – unwilling to learn anything from history – would rather listen to the spiders-in-a-bottle oligarch dance in Kiev, which in these Orwellian times sings a travesty of “democracy”.
Well, this is how the oligarch theoretically in charge (he’s not; the CIA and the State Department are), Petro Poroshenko, wants to treat the whole population of Donbass; “Our children will go to schools and kindergartens, while theirs will be holed up in basements!”
And this from the “leader” of a (failed) state which aspires to become a EU member; the EU, predictably, looks the other way.
So, also predictably, an overflow of “holed up in basements” is exactly what I saw in Donetsk — from veterans’ homes turned into refugee centers to Soviet-era bomb shelters complete with Soviet iconography painted on the walls. Whole families, the elderly, people afraid to come out even by daylight, and dozens of traumatized babies, children and teenagers.
According to Moscow-based Iskander Sultan, a coordinator of volunteer union groups, there may have been as many as 2 million refugees fleeing from Donbass over the past year; compare it to Pakistan in the early 2000s, when there were 4 million Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban.
For those who have chosen to stay behind, especially among the elderly, at least the payment of pensions — frozen by Kiev — will be reinstated by the twin People’s Republics (their Parliament has 60 members, 30 from Donetsk and 30 from Lugansk, working in close cooperation.)
Seen from Donetsk, the plight of so many average working class or lower middle class families, which look just like your average family in Manchester, Lille, Bologna or Valencia, displaced by a proxy war which they never wanted, demonized in block as “terra-rists”, threatened by fascists with deportation, and completely ignored by the “civilized” West, is as mind-boggling as the cosmic arrogance/ignorance of the “civilized” narrative which sees Ukraine only as good guys/democrats in Kiev against bad guys/rebels remote-controlled by evil Russia.
The “civilized” bunch does not know it, because Western corporate media isn’t allowed to inform them. But in Donetsk, for instance, there is ample debate on what would be a possible future for Donbass. Some prefer a largely autonomous region within Ukraine (but then again, a minute later, they admit that after the Odessa massacre last May and this “junta” in Kiev treating them as terrorists, that will never happen). Some prefer an independent nation (although admitting the interests of the “West” would never allow it). And some prefer to become part of Russia (while admitting, a minute later, that would be a burden Moscow would rather not take.)
Meanwhile, the fight for mere survival is primordial. Primorka (“Land by the Sea”), bordering the Sea of Azov in Rostov Region, is one of the refugee camps for eastern Ukrainians on Russian territory, currently hosting 246 people, including 51 children attending school, and three newborn babies. Most are elderly, mainly from Donetsk, unable to find work but dreaming of going back. One of the families even managed to escape the Debaltsevo cauldron.
The site used to be a children summer camp, closed for a few years. It was reopened through the initiative of a private citizen, Alexander Dobrovolsky, who sold his apartment to finance the operation. At the start Primorka was housing over 1,300 refugees. Now it has finally obtained municipal and federal funds as well.
Among the stray dogs roaming the very clean and well-maintained camp, right by the sea, one is called Obama. Another one is “Yats”. There also used to be a dog called Poroshenko. It died two weeks ago.
Pepe Escobar traveled to Donetsk at the invitation of German-based media project Europa Objektiv.
Pepe Escobar’s latest book is "Empire of Chaos". Follow him on Facebook.
by conniption » Sun Apr 05, 2015 4:11 pm
offguardian
Published on April 4, 2015
Tim Garton Ash: “Ukraine is a toxic failure – but let’s blame Putin.”
BlackCatte
The reframing of recent history is a venerable practice long used by governments and corporations to cover their various acts of monstrosity, greed, duplicity or cowardice, and to rewrite defeat into victory. Unfortunately the emergence of the internet and instant information dissemination has made this ancient system largely useless. But our betters have not really wised up to this yet. They still think they control the flow of information as they did 20 years ago, and they believe that by planting their Revisionist Histories in compliant organs like the Guardian they are successfully erasing the real past. The results are often comical, and always instructive. They give us insights into the variously idiotic, ignorant and disturbed thinking currently in vogue in the corridors of power.
Tim Garton Ash, for example, in his latest Ministry of Information piece for the Guardian has been assigned the almost impossible task of creating a fairly major paradigm-shift, made necessary by the recent standoff between billionaire gangsters in Kiev. The MSM did its best to suppress these ugly goings-on, but they leaked out via Russian news channels and the alt media. So, since it’s no longer possible to ignore the turf wars or the lawlessness underpinning them, the Official Story needs to absorb this bit of unavoidable reality and try to reframe it in a way that doesn’t effect major damage on its own narrative. Not an easy job, when the entire moral basis of the “Maidan Revolution” and the entire justification for the coup that removed Yanukovych was that it was putting an end to oligarchical misrule. Tim is not a clever writer, but this task would be beyond someone far more gifted. The result makes great reading.
Tim eases us in with some gauze-lensed diversionary sentiment about Mustapha Dzhemilev, “diminutive, soft-spoken 71-year-old leader of the Crimean Tatars, gentle on the outside, hard as steel within”, who is a member of Poroshenko’s parliamentary party (Hmmm…I wonder how he feels about the fact several of his current colleagues in the government want a “clean nation, not like under Hitler, but… a little bit like that” because I am pretty sure this racist Utopia does not include Tatars any more than Jews, Poles, Hungarians or Russians). Tim contrasts this by quoting another Rada MP, US-educated Hanna Hopko (of the “centre-right” “Self-RelianceParty“) on her reassuringly rational belief that “our willingness to die,” makes Ukraine “a political nation”. The message here is clear, Tim tells us:
Two very different life stories, but one and the same message: steely determination that Ukraine should become a sovereign, modern European country.
Absolutely – the cornerstone of all stable social systems has to be exploited minorities and young women with a death-wish. Just add the casual “non-personhood” assigned to every Ukrainian who doesn’t share this vision, throw in a few nazis and democracy is as good as won. But Tim is just warming up, it’s after this he pulls the bait and switch which is the real point of his piece – from celebrating the wonderful renaissance that is Ukraine, to telling us it’s actually a piss-stained, graft-infested hell-hole.
This is a story we largely miss. In Berlin, Washington or Brussels we say “Ukraine”, but within 30 seconds we are talking about Putin, Nato and the EU. So let us consider, for once, the struggle for Ukraine, by Ukrainians, inside the majority of its territory still actually controlled by Ukraine. Even if there were no war, this would be a daunting task, for there is a breathtaking scale of corruption and oligarchic misrule, which has deformed the state ever since it gained formal independence nearly a quarter of a century ago.
The deputy finance minister says the grey or black economy may account for as much as 60% of the country’s economy. One example: we are told that of the 20,000 kiosks that are dotted along the streets of Kiev, selling various goods, only 6,000 are properly registered and pay some taxes. The other 14,000 may pay bribes and protection money, but not taxes. Who controls them? Well, we are told, it’s often public prosecutors (who are numerous, and have extraordinary powers), police officers or judges. Here is a state so intravenously corrupted that those who should be its doctors are its poisoners. Perhaps we might call the radioactive poison in its bloodstream Ukrainium.
Ha! “Ukrainium”. Nice. But once the uproarious laughter subsides we’re left with some annoying little anomalies. For example, Tim’s quite right, this is a story “we largely miss.”
You know why, Tim? Because you’ve all be claiming it isn’t true, remember?
I mean, forgive the confusion, but are you now saying Ukraine, post-Yanukovych, is not after all free and happy and run by non-oligarchs for non-oligarchs? Then why have you been insisting it was? And if that was just a misunderstanding and isn’t even slightly true, and if we’re not even pretending any more, then what are we doing in Ukraine at all? Why has the west spent so much money and risked world peace just to replace one set of corrupt goons with another? Why are we currently debating whether to send these mobsters lethal weapons? Is the west now openly admitting to supporting robber-barons? Are we coming clean about sending advisors to train neo-nazis and mercenaries in the private armies of rival hoods?
Aren’t these things we should be talking about, Tim?
Err…no. Tim doesn’t think so. What Tim thinks we should be talking about are the two “D-words” (de-oligarchisation and de-shadowing) which promise to magically fix all the nasty things once that “independent anti-corruption bureau” the Rada is setting up really kicks in (no, come on, don’t laugh). In fact Tim doesn’t even want us to notice the huge admission being made or the failures that make it necessary. He just wants us to move seamlessly into the latest reality built for us and live in it, uncomplaining. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Ukraine has always been a corrupt hell hole. Now let’s just glide on to the real point which is of course that all this corruption, which we previously claimed had been erased along with Yanukovych, but now claim…actually, errr…wasn’t, is all Vladimir Putin’s fault.
…we must understand that Putin is unlikely to be content with just a “frozen conflict” in eastern Ukraine – which many here in Kiev privately describe as the least worst option for now. He wants a simmering conflict, one that ensures the whole of Ukraine remains a weak, unstable, dysfunctional state.
Well, ok, not all his fault – but heck, he likes it that way, because…well, Tim doesn’t tell us why, but he just does ok? Because Putin is evil. And evil people hate our freedoms. Which is why – when you think about it – this stinking cesspool of graft and lies, incompetence and racial hatred is NOTHING TO DO WITH US AND, REALLY (when you look at it right), JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF RUSSIAN AGGRESSION.
And which of course also more or less excuses our continued plan to keep supporting it with money, troops and probably guns, even to the point of igniting WW3.
Well, Tim and his masters apparently think so. Or at least they want us to think so. They can only hope their target audience don’t read anything but him, and Soros, and Shaun Walker. But sadly the comments reveal the forlornness of such a hope. Lamentably, as usual, it’s BTL the real journalism happens. Let’s conclude by sharing some of it.
by Peachtree Pam » Mon Apr 06, 2015 5:38 am
Exclusive: Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and – from op-ed pages – he demands Congress buy more weapons. There’s a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia – and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats.
This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks.
Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. (Photo credit: Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl)
Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of War.
Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (which doesn’t disclose details on its funders), used his prized perch on the Washington Post’s op-ed page on Friday to bait Republicans into abandoning the sequester caps limiting the Pentagon’s budget, which he calculated at about $523 billion (apparently not counting extra war spending). Kagan called on the GOP legislators to add at least $38 billion and preferably more like $54 billion to $117 billion:
"The fact that [advocates for more spending] face a steep uphill battle to get even that lower number passed by a Republican-controlled Congress says a lot — about Republican hypocrisy. Republicans may be full-throated in denouncing [President Barack] Obama for weakening the nation’s security, yet when it comes to paying for the foreign policy that all their tough rhetoric implies, too many of them are nowhere to be found. …
"The editorial writers and columnists who have been beating up Obama and cheering the Republicans need to tell those Republicans, and their own readers, that national security costs money and that letters and speeches are worse than meaningless without it. …
"It will annoy the part of the Republican base that wants to see the government shrink, loves the sequester and doesn’t care what it does to defense. But leadership occasionally means telling people what they don’t want to hear. Those who propose to lead the United States in the coming years, Republicans and Democrats, need to show what kind of political courage they have, right now, when the crucial budget decisions are being made.”
So, the way to show "courage” – in Kagan’s view – is to ladle ever more billions into the Military-Industrial Complex, thus putting money where the Republican mouths are regarding the need to "defend Ukraine” and resist "a bad nuclear deal with Iran.”
Yet, if it weren’t for Nuland’s efforts as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, the Ukraine crisis might not exist. A neocon holdover who advised Vice President Dick Cheney, Nuland gained promotions under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and received backing, too, from current Secretary of State John Kerry.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, speaking to Ukrainian and other business leaders at the National Press Club in Washington on Dec. 13, 2013, at a meeting sponsored by Chevron.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, speaking to Ukrainian and other business leaders at the National Press Club in Washington on Dec. 13, 2013, at a meeting sponsored by Chevron.
Confirmed to her present job in September 2013, Nuland soon undertook an extraordinary effort to promote "regime change” in Ukraine. She personally urged on business leaders and political activists to challenge elected President Viktor Yanukovych. She reminded corporate executives that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European aspirations,” and she literally passed out cookies to anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square.
Working with other key neocons, including National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and Sen. John McCain, Nuland made clear that the United States would back a "regime change” against Yanukovych, which grew more likely as neo-Nazi and other right-wing militias poured into Kiev from western Ukraine.
In early February 2014, Nuland discussed U.S.-desired changes with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (himself a veteran of a "regime change” operation at the International Atomic Energy Agency, helping to install U.S. yes man Yukiya Amano as the director-general in 2009).
Nuland treated her proposed new line-up of Ukrainian officials as if she were trading baseball cards, casting aside some while valuing others. "Yats is the guy,” she said of her favorite Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Disparaging the less aggressive European Union, she uttered "Fuck the EU” – and brainstormed how she would "glue this thing” as Pyatt pondered how to "mid-wife this thing.” Their unsecure phone call was intercepted and leaked.
Ukraine’s ‘Regime Change’
The coup against Yanukovych played out on Feb. 22, 2014, as the neo-Nazi militias and other violent extremists overran government buildings forcing the president and other officials to flee for their lives. Nuland’s State Department quickly declared the new regime "legitimate” and Yatsenyuk took over as prime minister.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been presiding over the Winter Olympics at Sochi, was caught off-guard by the coup next door and held a crisis session to determine how to protect ethnic Russians and a Russian naval base in Crimea, leading to Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and annexation by Russia a year ago.
Though there was no evidence that Putin had instigated the Ukraine crisis – and indeed all the evidence indicated the opposite – the State Department peddled a propaganda theme to the credulous mainstream U.S. news media about Putin having somehow orchestrated the situation in Ukraine so he could begin invading Europe. Former Secretary of State Clinton compared Putin to Adolf Hitler.
As the new Kiev government launched a brutal "anti-terrorism operation” to subdue an uprising among the large ethnic Russian populations of eastern and southern Ukraine, Nuland and other American neocons pushed for economic sanctions against Russia and demanded arms for the coup regime. [See Consortiumnews.com’s "What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]
Amid the barrage of "information warfare” aimed at both the U.S. and world publics, a new Cold War took shape. Prominent neocons, including Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century which masterminded the Iraq War, hammered home the domestic theme that Obama had shown himself to be "weak,” thus inviting Putin’s "aggression.”
In May 2014, Kagan published a lengthy essay in The New Republic entitled "Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” in which Kagan castigated Obama for failing to sustain American dominance in the world and demanding a more muscular U.S. posture toward adversaries.
According to a New York Times article about how the essay took shape and its aftermath, writer Jason Horowitz reported that Kagan and Nuland shared a common world view as well as professional ambitions, with Nuland editing Kagan’s articles, including the one tearing down her ostensible boss.
Though Nuland wouldn’t comment specifically on her husband’s attack on Obama, she indicated that she held similar views. "But suffice to say,” Nuland said, "that nothing goes out of the house that I don’t think is worthy of his talents. Let’s put it that way.”
Horowitz reported that Obama was so concerned about Kagan’s assault that the President revised his commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of the criticism and invited Kagan to lunch at the White House, where one source told me that it was like "a meeting of equals.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s "Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”]
Sinking a Peace Deal
And, whenever peace threatens to break out in Ukraine, Nuland jumps in to make sure that the interests of war are protected. Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande hammered out a plan for a cease-fire and a political settlement, known as Minsk-2, prompting Nuland to engage in more behind-the-scenes maneuvering to sabotage the deal.
In another overheard conversation — in Munich, Germany — Nuland mocked the peace agreement as "Merkel’s Moscow thing,” according to the German newspaper Bild, citing unnamed sources, likely from the German government which may have bugged the conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel and then leaked the details.
Picking up on Nuland’s contempt for Merkel, another U.S. official called the Minsk-2 deal the Europeans’ "Moscow bullshit.”
Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the practical impact of the Ukraine war on Europe: "They’re afraid of damage to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia.” According to the Bild story, Nuland also laid out a strategy for countering Merkel’s diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis.
"We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them,” Nuland reportedly said.
NATO Commander Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove was quoted as saying that sending more weapons to the Ukrainian government would "raise the battlefield cost for Putin.” Nuland interjected to the U.S. politicians present that "I’d strongly urge you to use the phrase ‘defensive systems’ that we would deliver to oppose Putin’s ‘offensive systems.’”
Nuland sounded determined to sink the Merkel-Hollande peace initiative even though it was arranged by two major U.S. allies and was blessed by President Obama. And, this week, the deal seems indeed to have been blown apart by Nuland’s hand-picked Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, who inserted a poison pill into the legislation to implement the Minsk-2 political settlement.
The Ukrainian parliament in Kiev added a clause that, in effect, requires the rebels to first surrender and let the Ukrainian government organize elections before a federalized structure is determined. Minsk-2 had called for dialogue with the representatives of these rebellious eastern territories en route to elections and establishment of broad autonomy for the region.
Instead, reflecting Nuland’s hard-line position, Kiev refused to talks with rebel leaders and insisted on establishing control over these territories before the process can move forward. If the legislation stands, the result will almost surely be a resumption of war between military forces backed by nuclear-armed Russia and the United States, a very dangerous development for the world. [See Consortiumnews.com’s "Ukraine’s Poison Pill for Peace Talks.”]
Not only will the Ukrainian civil war resume but so will the Cold War between Washington and Moscow with lots of money to be made by the Military-Industrial Complex. On Friday, Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan, drove home that latter point in the neocon Washington Post.
The Payoff
But don’t think that this unlocking of the U.S. taxpayers’ wallets is just about this one couple. There will be plenty of money to be made by other neocon think-tankers all around Washington, including Frederick Kagan, who works for the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, and his wife, Kimberly, who runs her own think tank, the Institute for the Study of War [ISW].
Kimberly Kagan, founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War.
According to ISW’s annual reports, its original supporters were mostly right-wing foundations, such as the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, but it was later backed by a host of national security contractors, including major ones like General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and CACI, as well as lesser-known firms such as DynCorp International, which provided training for Afghan police, and Palantir, a technology company founded with the backing of the CIA’s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir supplied software to U.S. military intelligence in Afghanistan.
Since its founding in 2007, ISW has focused mostly on wars in the Middle East, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, including closely cooperating with Gen. David Petraeus when he commanded U.S. forces in those countries. However, more recently, ISW has begun reporting extensively on the civil war in Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.com’s "Neocons Guided Petraeus on Afghan War.”]
In other words, the Family Kagan has almost a self-perpetuating, circular business model – working the inside-corridors of government power to stimulate wars while simultaneously influencing the public debate through think-tank reports and op-ed columns in favor of more military spending – and then collecting grants and other funding from thankful military contractors.
To be fair, the Nuland-Kagan mom-and-pop shop is really only a microcosm of how the Military-Industrial Complex has worked for decades: think-tank analysts generate the reasons for military spending, the government bureaucrats implement the necessary war policies, and the military contractors make lots of money before kicking back some to the think tanks — so the bloody but profitable cycle can spin again.
The only thing that makes the Nuland-Kagan operation special perhaps is that the whole process is all in the family.
by Nordic » Tue Apr 07, 2015 6:40 am
Eurasian Emporium or Nuclear War?
By Pepe Escobar
April 06, 2015 "ICH" - "Asia Times" - A high-level European diplomatic source has confirmed to Asia Times that German chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has vigorously approached Beijing in an effort to disrupt its multi-front strategic partnership with Russia.
Beijing won’t necessarily listen to this political gesture from Berlin, as China is tuning the strings on its pan-Eurasian New Silk Road project, which implies close trade/commerce/business ties with both Germany and Russia.
The German gambit reveals yet more pressure by hawkish sectors of the U.S. government who are intent on targeting and encircling Russia. For all the talk about Merkel’s outrage over the U.S. National Security Agency’s tapping shenanigans, the chancellor walks Washington’s walk. Real “outrage” means nothing unless she unilaterally ends sanctions on Russia. In the absence of such a response by Merkel, we’re in the realm of good guy-bad guy negotiating tactics.
The bottom line is that Washington cannot possibly tolerate a close Germany-Russia trade/political relationship, as it directly threatens its hegemony in the Empire of Chaos.
Thus, the whole Ukraine tragedy has absolutely nothing to do with human rights or the sanctity of borders. NATO ripped Kosovo away from Yugoslavia-Serbia without even bothering to hold a vote, such as the one that took place in Crimea.
Watch those S-500s
In parallel, another fascinating gambit is developing. Some sectors of U.S. Think Tankland – with their cozy CIA ties – are now hedging their bets about Cold War 2.0, out of fear that they have misjudged what really happens on the geopolitical chessboard.
I’ve just returned from Moscow, and there’s a feeling the Federal Security Bureau and Russian military intelligence are increasingly fed up with the endless stream of Washington/NATO provocations – from the Baltics to Central Asia, from Poland to Romania, from Azerbaijan to Turkey.
This is an extensive but still only partial summary of what’s seen all across Russia as an existential threat: Washington/NATO’s intent to block Russia’s Eurasian trade and development; destroy its defense perimeter; and entice it into a shooting war.
A shooting war is not exactly a brilliant idea. Russia’s S-500 anti-missile missiles and anti-aircraft missiles can intercept any existing ICBM, cruise missile or aircraft. S-500s travel at 15,480 miles an hour; reach an altitude of 115 miles; travel horizontally 2,174 miles; and can intercept up to ten incoming missiles. They simply cannot be stopped by any American anti-missile system.
Some on the U.S. side say the S-500 system is being rolled out in a crash program, as an American intel source told Asia Times. There’s been no Russian confirmation. Officially, Moscow says the system is slated to be rolled out in 2017. End result, now or later: it will seal Russian airspace. It’s easy to draw the necessary conclusions.
That makes the Obama administration’s “policy” of promoting war hysteria, coupled with unleashing a sanction, ruble and oil war against Russia, the work of a bunch of sub-zoology specimens.
Some adults in the EU have already seen the writing on the (nuclear) wall. NATO’s conventional defenses are a joke. Any military buildup – as it’s happening now – is also a joke, as it could be demolished by the 5,000 tactical nuclear weapons Moscow would be able to use.
When in doubt, bully
Of course it takes time to turn the current Cold War 2.0 mindset around, but there are indications the Masters of the Universe are listening – as this essay shows. Call it the first (public) break in the ice.
Let’s assume Russia decided to mobilize five million troops, and switch to military production. The “West” would back down to an entente cordiale in a flash. And let’s assume Moscow decided to confiscate what remains of dodgy oligarch wealth. Vladimir Putin’s approval rate – which is not exactly shabby as it stands – would soar to at least 98%. Putin has been quite restrained so far. And still his childishly hysterical demonization persists.
It’s a non-stop escalation scenario. Color revolutions. The Maidan coup. Sanctions; “evil” Hitler/Putin; Ukraine to enter NATO; NATO bases all over. And yet reality – as in the Crimean counter coup, and the battlefield victories by the armies of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk – has derailed the most elaborate U.S. State Department/NATO plans. On top of it Merkel and France’s Francois Hollande were forced into an entente cordiale with Russia – on Minsk 2 – because they knew that would be the only way to stop Washington from further weaponizing Kiev.
Putin is essentially committed to a very complex preservation/flowering process of Russia’s history and culture, with overtones of pan-Slavism and Eurasianism. Comparing him to Hitler does not even qualify as a kindergarten prank.
Yet don’t expect Washington neo-cons to understand Russian history or culture. Most of them would not even survive a Q&A on their beloved heroes Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt. Moreover, their anti-intellectualism and exceptionalist arrogance creates only a privileged space for undiluted bullying.
A U.S. academic, one of my sources, sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi copied to a notorious neo-con, the husband of Victoria, the Queen of Nulandistan. Here’s the neo-con’s response, via his Brookings Institution email: “Why don’t you go (expletive deleted) yourself?” Yet another graphic case of husband and wife deserving each other.
At least there seem to be sound IQs in the Beltway driven to combat the neo-con cell inside the State Department, the neo-con infested editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, an array of think tanks, and of course NATO, whose current military leader, Gen. Breedlove/Breedhate, is working hard on his post-mod impersonation of Dr. Strangelove.
Russian “aggression” is a myth. Moscow’s strategy, so far, has been pure self-defense. Moscow in a flash will strongly advance a strategic cooperation with the West if the West understands Russia’s security interests. If those are violated – as in provoking the bear – the bear will respond. A minimum understanding of history reveals that the bear knows one or two things about enduring suffering. It simply won’t collapse – or melt away.
Meanwhile, another myth has also been debunked: That sanctions would badly hurt Russia’s exports and trade surpluses. Of course there was hurt, but bearable. Russia enjoys a wealth of raw materials and massive internal production capability – enough to meet the bulk of internal demand.
So we’re back to the EU, Russia and China, and everyone in between, all joining the greatest trade emporium in history across the whole of Eurasia. That’s what Putin proposed in Germany a few years ago, and that’s what the Chinese are already doing. And what do the neo-cons propose? A nuclear war on European soil.
Copyright 2015 Asia Times. All rights reserved. www.atimes.com
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 161 guests
