Kirby declined to answer whether Israel should face the same treatment
as Iran and North Korea – both of which have been sanctioned for alleged
or actual violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Some animals are more equal than others.
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Dec 31, 2016 | www.robustanalysis.net
Chris G said... December 29, 2016 at 05:50 PMAnd this is telling us something significant: namely, that supply-side economic theory is and always was a sham.
Urgh. That it is and always a sham is irrelevant. It is THE NARRATIVE that matters! They had a compelling story and they stuck to it. That's how you sell politics in this country.
Trump told a significant fraction of the population that he understood their problems and that he would fix them. He told enough people what they wanted to hear - and did so with a convincing tone - that he got himself elected. That's how you win. You sell people on your vision. If you tell a good story most people aren't going to reality-check it. Sad but true.
On the importance of narrative: Drew Westen, "What Happened to Obama?" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html
Chris G said in reply to Mr. Bill... Anyway, get involved. December 29, 2016 at 06:39 PM
Manned the phone banks and held signs for my state rep again this year. (Bowed out of going door-to-door this election though.) Tough race against a right-wing jerk. My guy won - in no small part because he's incredibly engaged with the community. I'll be back out for him again in 2018. That stated, I'm not sure how to make an impact at the national level - in part I think because I live in a very blue state. Keeping the goons from a establishing a local foothold seems a good place to start. Building resilient local networks feels like it will be essential for getting through the next four years.
Chris G said in reply to Chris G ... December 29, 2016 at 06:30 PM
Matt Taibbi in 2011: "I simply don't believe the Democrats would really be worse off with voters if they committed themselves to putting people back to work, policing Wall Street, throwing their weight behind a real public option in health care, making hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as ordinary people, ending the pointless wars abroad, etc."
Unfortunately, there are at best a handful of Democrats who've been doing that. That should have been our message 24/7/365 for the past eight years. (That and the story Westen laid out.) It was not.
Taibbi continued: "That they won't do these things because they're afraid of public criticism, and "responding to pressure," is an increasingly transparent lie. This "Please, Br'er Fox, don't throw me into dat dere briar patch" deal isn't going to work for much longer. Just about everybody knows now that they want to go into that briar patch."
Yup. And that is how you lose the Presidency, the House, the Senate, 30-someodd (?) governorships, and 900-someodd state legislative seats over the past eight years.
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Dec 24, 2016 | foreignpolicy.com
- Originally from: What China Didn't Learn From the Collapse of the Soviet Union
- By James Palmer
It's been 25 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, and in that time the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has generated tens of thousands of internal papers, roundtables, and even documentaries on the issue. Like most intellectual products in the mainland, 95 percent of these have been worthless regurgitations of the political line of the day by mediocre careerists . But the official angle on the collapse, which once seemed to be pushing the country toward reforms that were more sensitive to public needs and opening the economy, has shifted sharply in the last few years. Today, the lessons Beijing is drawing seem likely to keep sending it backward.
It's no surprise that the party is obsessed with the collapse of its former rival and ideological partner. The most bizarre thing about the brief spate of articles in 2012 and 2013 describing the newly appointed CCP general secretary, Xi Jinping, as a potential Mikhail Gorbachev for China was that some of the writers seemed to think they were paying him a compliment. In China, though, Gorbachev is seen not as a far-sighted reformer but as a disastrous failure, a man who led his country, and his party, to national calamity. That's not an unfair view: China has no desire to lose a quarter of its territory, watch GDP drop by 40 percent, and see male life expectancy cut short by seven years, as Russia did in the 1990s.
Before the Soviet leader's failed gambit, though, many Chinese looked favorably on Gorbachev. The Soviet Union and China had tentatively made up after their vicious - and nearly world-ending - split in the 1960s, and both were looking to learn from the other's experiences. Moscow was increasingly convinced that China's "reform and opening up" was a way forward for its moribund economy, and Chinese intellectuals, inside and outside the party, were intrigued by the possibilities offered by glasnost and perestroika - the pillars of Gorbachev's heralded reform platform.
The Soviet collapse prompted hard self-reflection, albeit couched within the even harder limits of Chinese political correctness.The Soviet collapse prompted hard self-reflection, albeit couched within the even harder limits of Chinese political correctness. (Even in relatively liberal moments - such as the fervent intellectual debates of the late 1980s - raising fundamental questions about national identity, the leadership of the party, and the correctness of socialism was a risky move for anyone inside the system.) What were the causes? Was China inevitably heading down the same path if it didn't change its ways?Virtually every aspect of the early People's Republic, from the organization of its railways to its party structure to its ethnic minority policy, was copied from the Soviet Union. As Marxist theorists saw it, like the Soviets, China had leapfrogged from peasant feudalism over industrial capitalism straight into socialism. But in reality, both slapped a veneer of socialism over a fusion of new nationalism and old-fashioned empire. And both followed mass famine with cultural revolution (originally a Soviet term ) and bloody party purges.
At first, part of the Chinese response was to use the Soviet example to spur further reform inside the party itself. As political scientist David Shambaugh has argued , critical analysis of Soviet failings pointed to a top-heavy, incompetent, and stagnant Soviet Communist Party and prompted efforts in Beijing to transform the CCP into a more modern, flexible, and resilient organization. That didn't mean sweeping democratic reform, but it meant a party more sensitive to public opinion - and more interested in steering it, through both subtle and unsubtle means, in the right direction.
There were also more immediate shifts. Fear of the popular changes unleashed across Eastern Europe had already played a powerful role in prompting the brutal crackdown on protesters in Beijing and elsewhere in 1989. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, deeply conscious of the role that rising nationalism, from Ukraine to Azerbaijan, had played in bringing down the Soviet Union, policy around China's autonomous regions and ethnic minorities tightened, and the language shifted. Minzu , the Chinese term for non-ethnic-Han groups, shifted from being "nationalities" in official translations to "ethnic minorities." Meanwhile, worries over Soviet economic stagnation boosted Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's final big push for economic reform during his 1992 "Southern Tour" of the country's newly booming commercial cities.
Running parallel to this, however, was always a counternarrative that suggested the disaster hadn't come from inside but outside. It was the reformers who had caused the fall of a superpower, this argument went, by shaking faith in the system through acknowledging the Soviet Union's past crimes , letting in dangerous foreign influences, and abandoning hard-line Marxism. This idea has now received official stamp from the very top of Beijing's leadership, and one can see it reverberating through the new wave of paranoia about foreign influence, reassertion of party power, and hostility to civil society.
As Xi himself put it in a 2013 speech : "Their ideals and beliefs had been shaken. In the end, 'the ruler's flag over the city tower' changed overnight. It's a profound lesson for us! To dismiss the history of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party, to dismiss Lenin and Stalin, and to dismiss everything else is to engage in historic nihilism, and it confuses our thoughts and undermines the party's organizations on all levels."
" Historical nihilism " has become a favorite shibboleth for those looking to demonstrate loyalty under Xi, as has the hysterical defense of every bit of past propaganda . Manufactured Maoist hero Lei Feng , once idealized by Chinese youth in the 1960s, has been dragged, yet again, from the grave to serve as inspiration for utterly indifferent Chinese youth despite the "Western conspiracy" against him .
The new line is simple: blame the West and blame the Soviet leaders - like Gorbachev - who let the West in. It's one reason why China has pushed through harsh new laws designed to force out foreign nongovernmental organizations, why the national press is getting shriller and shriller in its hostility to the United States, and why censorship is worsening. At the same time, there's no sign of the political reforms that some Western observers once confidently predicted .
What's behind this shift? Part of it seems to be Xi's personal conviction in the essential truth of the party - and in his own right to rule as a revolutionary scion . That would be enough to shift the entire course of discussion by itself, in a country where following the leader's signals is second nature for anyone who wants to climb the ladder. (It's a habit that carries over into other contexts: Before President-elect Donald Trump's Taiwan call, visiting Chinese groups in Washington were ending speeches with, "Together, we can make America and China great again.")
But Xi's own convictions have been empowered by the events of the last decade.
The deepest Chinese fear is of regime change similar to the kinds that swept across the former Soviet space and let loose the Arab Spring.The deepest Chinese fear is of regime change similar to the kinds that swept across the former Soviet space and let loose the Arab Spring. "Color revolution" is a useful phrase, because it detaches these events from true, rightful revolution - of the kind that made the People's Republic of China and all its "revolutionary martyrs" - and puts it firmly in the realm of an organized, U.S.-led conspiracy designed to destabilize potential opponents.
The belief that all of these revolutions were U.S.-orchestrated plots isn't just propaganda, but sincerely held; I argued with a People's Daily editor after a visit to Iran just after the Green Revolution in which he'd claimed that the Iranians loved their regime. "All the so-called protesters were CIA spies!" he told me.
In Beijing, American promotion of democracy and human rights is seen as just a tool to ensure U.S. dominance and one that therefore has to be constantly resisted. " Peaceful evolution ," the nationalist tabloid Global Times proclaimed, was just another name for color revolution. Even seemingly harmless cultural products have been caught up in this. Zootopia , a recent Disney animated children's film, explained a People's Liberation Army newspaper, was an American plot to weaken China's morale.
The hostility toward the color revolutions and the chaos they've unleashed has thus been projected backward. The Soviet fall, once seen at least in part as a result of the Communist Party's own failings, has become reinterpreted as a deliberate U.S. plot and a moral failure to hold the line against Western influence. That has ended what was once a powerful spur to reform - meaning that, barring a major change in leadership, the likely course of Chinese politics over the next few years will be further xenophobia, even more power to the party, and an unwillingness to talk about the harder lessons of history.
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Dec 21, 2016 | www.fff.org
by Jacob G. Hornberger December 15, 2016It is impossible to overstate the stakes involved in the latest controversy over Russia. They involve trillions of dollars in warfare largess to the tens of thousands of bureaucratic warfare-state parasites who are sucking the lifeblood out of the American people.
Ever since the advent of the U.S. national-security state after World War II, America has needed official enemies, especially ones that induce fear, terror, and panic within the American citizenry. When people are fearful, terrified, and panicked, they are much more willing, even eager, to have government officials do whatever is necessary to keep them safe and secure. It is during such times that liberty is at greatest risk because of the propensity of government to assume emergency powers and the proclivity of the citizenry to let them have them.
That's what the Cold War was all about. The official enemies were communism and the Soviet Union, which was an alliance of nations that had Russia at its center. U.S. officials convinced Americans that there was a worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the world, with its principal base in Moscow.
A correlative threat was Red China, whose communist hordes were supposedly threatening to flood the United States.
There were also the communist outposts, which were considered spearheads pointed at America. North Korea. North Vietnam. Cuba, which, Americans were told, was a communist dagger pointed out America's neck from only 90 miles away.
And then there was communism the philosophy, along with the communists who promoted it. It was clear, U.S. officials gravely maintained, that communism was spreading all across the world, including inside the U.S. Army, the State Department, and Hollywood, and that communists were everyone, including leftist organizations and even sometimes under people's beds.
Needless to say, all this fear, terror, and panic induced people to support the ever-growing budgets, influence, and power of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, which had become the national-security branch of the federal government - and the most powerful branch at that. Few cared that their hard-earned monies were being taken from them by the IRS in ever-increasing amounts. All that mattered was being kept safe from the communists.
Hardly anyone questioned or challenged this warfare-state racket. President Eisenhower alluded to it in his Farewell Address in 1961, when he pointed out that this new-fangled governmental structure, which he called "the military industrial complex," now posed a grave threat to the freedoms and democratic processes of the American people.
One of those who did challenge this official-enemy syndrome was President John F. Kennedy. At war with his national-security establishment in 1963, Kennedy threw the gauntlet down at his famous Peace Speech at American University in June of that year. There was no reason, Kennedy said, that the Soviet Union (i.e., Russia) and the rest of the communist world couldn't live in peace co-existence and even friendship, even if the nations were guided by different ideologies and philosophies. Kennedy announced that it was time to end the Cold War against Russia and the rest of the communist world.
What Kennedy was proposing was anathema to the national-security state and its ever-growing army of voracious contractors and subcontractors who were feeding at the public trough. How dare he remove the Soviet Union (i.e., Russia) as America's official enemy? How could the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA justify their ever-growing budgets and their ever-growing emergency powers? Indeed, how could they justify the very existence of their Cold War totalitarian-type apparatus known as a "national security state" without a giant official enemy to strike fear, terror, and panic with the American people?
Kennedy was considered a neophyte and an incompetent by the national-security establishment, not to mention an immoral adulterous philanderer who was even sleeping with the girlfriend of a Mafia don. What Kennedy didn't realize, the Pentagon and the CIA believed, was that it was impossible for the United States and the communist world to live in peaceful coexistence. This was a fight to the finish. Kennedy was being lulled, perhaps even blackmailed, into surrendering America to the Reds. He was considered a traitor, a betrayer, and the epitome of naïve. (See: JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne; The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger; Regime Change: The Kennedy Assassination by Jacob Hornberger; The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger; and CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley.)
Once Kennedy was removed from the scene, everything returned to "normal." The Cold War continued. The Vietnam War against the commies in Asia to prevent more dominoes from falling got ramped up. The Soviet Union, Red China, and the worldwide communist conspiracy continued to be America's big official enemies. The military and intelligence budgets continued to rise. The number of warfare state parasites continued soaring.
Seemingly, there was never going to be an end to the process. Until one day, the unexpected suddenly happened. The Berlin Wall came crashing down, East and West Germany were reunited, and the Soviet Union was dismantled, all of which struck unmitigated fear within the bowels of the American deep state.
Oh sure, there was still Cuba, Red China, North Korea, and Vietnam but those communist nations, for some reason, just didn't strike fear, terror, and panic within Americans as Russia did.
U.S. officials needed a new official enemy. Enter Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, who had served as a partner and ally of the U.S. government during the 1980s when he was waging war against Iran, which, by that time, had become converted from official friend to official enemy of the U.S. Empire. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam was made into the new official enemy. Like the Soviets and the communists, Saddam was coming to get us and unleash mushroom clouds all over America. The American people bought it and, not surprisingly, budgets for the national-security establishment continued their upward soar.
Then came the 9/11 attacks in retaliation for what the Pentagon and the CIA were doing in the Middle East, followed by with the retaliatory invasions Afghanistan and Iraq. Suddenly the new official enemies were "terrorism" and then later Islam. Like the communists of yesteryear, the terrorists and the Muslims were coming to get us, take over the federal government, run the IRS and HUD, and force everyone to study the Koran. The American people bought it and, not surprisingly, budgets for the national-security establishment continued their upward soar.
The problem is that Americans, including U.S. soldiers and their families, are now growing weary of the forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. But U.S. national-security state officials know that if they bring the troops home, the official enemies of terrorism and Islam disappear at the same time.
That's why they have decided to return to their old, tried and true official enemy - Russia and, implicitly, communism. It's why the U.S. broke its promise to Russia to dismantle NATO. It's why the U.S. supported regime change in the coup in Ukraine. It's why the U.S. wants Ukraine into NATO - to enable the U.S. to install missiles on Russia's border. It's why the national-security state is "pivoting" toward Asia - to provoke crises with Red China. It's why they are accusing Russia of interfering with the U.S. presidential election and campaigning for Donald Trump. The aim of it all is to bring back the old Cold War official enemies of Russia, China, and communism, in order to keep Americans afraid, terrified, and panicked, which then means the continuation of ever-growing budgets to all those warfare state parasites who are sucking the lifeblood out of the American people.
With his fight against the CIA over Russian hacking and his desire to establish normal relations with Russia, Donald Trump is clearly not buying into this old, tried-and-true Russia-as-official enemy narrative. In the process, he is posing a grave threat to the national-security establishment and its ever-growing budgets, influence, and power.
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Dec 20, 2016 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr
It's official: the US is funding Middle-East jihadists!We should not expect the truth from the corrupted establishment who fiercely fought Bernie Sanders, for example. We should expect it from someone who supported him. Indeed, the Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned as DNC vice-chair on February 28, 2016, in order to endorse Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination, and actually was the first female US Representative to endorse Sanders, 'dared' to introduce bill so that the US to stop arming terrorists!
Her words left no doubt of who is behind the dirty war in Syria and the chaos in the Middle East:
Mr. speaker, under US law, it is illegal for you, or me, or any American, to provide any type of assistance to Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or other terrorist groups. If we broke this law, we'll be thrown in jail.
Yet the US government has been violating this law for years, directly and indirectly supporting allies and partners of groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, with money, weapons, intelligence and other support in their fight to overthrow the Syrian government .
A recent NY Times article, confirmed that rebel groups supported by the US 'have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of al-Qaeda in Syria, formerly known as al Nusra.' The Wall Street Journal reports that rebel groups are 'doubling down on their alliance with al-Qaeda'. This alliance has rendered the phrase 'moderate rebels' meaningless .
We must stop this madness.We must stop arming terrorists .
I'm introducing the Stop Arming Terrorists act today, to prohibit taxpayer dollars for being used to support terrorists.
Speaking on CNN , Gabbard specifically named CIA as the agency that supports terrorist groups in the Middle East:
The US government has been providing money, weapons, intel. assistance and other types of support through the CIA, directly to these groups that are working with and are affiliated with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Also, Gabbard specifically named the allies through which the US assist these terrorist groups:
We've also been providing that support through countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar ...
Speaking on NPR , Gabbard explained that she was working on the issue of the US interventionist, regime-change wars for years since she has been in Congress. Therefore, her position coincides with that of Donald Trump who repeatedly declared his opposition to these wars. This was also the main reason for which she endorsed Bernie Sanders:
SIMON: You and President-elect Trump are obviously of different parties. But don't you kind of have the same position on Syria?
GABBARD: I have heard him talk about his opposition to continuing interventionist, regime-change wars. I want to be clear, though, that this is an issue that I have been working on for years since I have been in Congress. And it's one...
SIMON: It's why you endorsed Senator Sanders, isn't it?
GABBARD: It's - correct. It was a clear difference between Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton. I am hopeful that this new administration coming in will change these policies so that we don't continue making these destructive decisions, as have been made in the past.
This is really a unique moment, showing the absolute failure of the US obsolete, dirty policies and the degree of degeneration of the 'idealistic' picture of the Unites States as the number one global power. We can't remember any moment in the past in which a congressman was seeking to pass a bill to prohibit the US government funding terrorists, or, a newly elected president who, in his campaigns, was stating clearly that the previous administration created many terrorist groups.
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Dec 09, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Jim Kovpak December 9, 2016 at 3:45 amolga December 9, 2016 at 12:35 pmHello, I'm the blogger of Russia Without BS, a site you cited once in the stories about PropOrNot. As I have recently written on my blog , I believe PropOrNot is most likely one person who is not linked to any real organization group or intelligence agency. The individual is most likely what I call a cheerleader, which is basically a person with no reasonable connection to some conflict, yet who takes a side and sort of lives vicariously through their imagined "struggle."
That being said, you're probably not going to do yourself any favors claiming that Maidan was a fascist coup and that fascists are in charge in Ukraine. Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers (quite the opposite, actually), and they were not the majority of people there. Basically you condemning Maidan is like someone condemning Occupy just because of the presence of neo-Nazis and racists who were sometimes involved in certain Occupy chapters (this is well documented).
Without actually bothering to look at the issues involved, you are basically telling millions of Ukrainians that they should have tolerated a corrupt, increasingly authoritarian government that was literally stealing their future all because some right-wingers happened to latch on to that cause too. Here it also bears mentioning that it has been established that Yanukovych's Party of Regions transferred $200,000 to the far right Svoboda party and about $30,000 to the nationalist UNA-UNSO. This is serious money in Ukraine.
As for the slogan, yes, Slava Ukraini, Heroiam Slava! has its origins in the OUN, but there are some important things to consider when discussing Ukrainian history.
Firstly, most Ukrainians don't give a shit about Bandera and the OUN. So if they're not speaking out against people using those symbols or slogans it's not because they support them, but because they're more concerned with issues of pure survival. Look at the average salary in Ukraine and look into some of the instances of corruption (some of which continue to this day), and you'll understand why a lot of people aren't going to get up in arms about someone waving the red and black flag. Most people have become very cynical and see the nationalists as provocateurs or clowns, and thus they don't take them seriously enough.
... ... ...
dk December 9, 2016 at 2:30 pmBefore you call this good points, please familiarize yourself with the (accurate) history of the Maidan, Ukraine, neo-nazi presence in that country, and Russian history. Please Kovpak seems to be an embodiment of what Ames tries to convey.
hemeantwell December 9, 2016 at 9:23 am"You're a poseur!"
"No, you're poser!"The more experienced observer listens to all sides; and all sides lie at least a little, if only for their own comfort. Beyond that, subjectivity is inescapable, and any pair of subjectives will inevitably diverge. This is not a malign intent, it's existential circumstance, the burden of identity, of individual life.
My own (admittedly cursory) analysis happens to coincide with Jim Kovpak's first para (PropOrNot being primarily a lone "cheerleader"). And I can see merit, and the call for dispassionate assessment, in some of his other points. This does not mean I endorse Kovpak over Ames, or Ames over Kovpak; both contribute to the searching discussion with cogent observation (and the inevitable measure of subjective evaluation).
I thank both for their remarks, and also thank our gracious hosts ;).
OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 10:08 amEuromaidan was not started by right-wingers
No, but it was hijacked by fascists. It is sad that more democratic/progressive forces lost out, but that's what happened. You seem to be trying to avoid recognizing this fact by affirming the rightfulness of those who began the revolt. Their agency was removed not by Naked Capitalism or Mark Ames, but by fascists who out maneuvered, spent, and gunned them. It's time to mourn, not to defend a parasitic Frankenstein that is trying to develop a European fascist movement. Goons from that movement assaulted and injured May Day demonstrators in Sweden this year and then fled back to the Ukraine. They are dangerous and should not be protected with illusions.
hemeantwell December 9, 2016 at 12:05 pmTheir agency was removed not by Naked Capitalism or Mark Ames, but by fascists who out maneuvered, spent, and gunned them
And then these same fascists were whitewashed as noble freedom fighters by Western MSM simply because their interests happen to allign with the interests of the US, for the moment. Thus we have the ridiculous situation where supposedly reputable media like NYT and WaPoo cheer on the Azov battalion and its brethren, and deny the very symbolism of the various Nazi insignia and regalia featured on their uniforms. Jim makes some very good points, but he fell way short in ignoring the role of the US MSM in this travesty.
And just in case someone tries to claim that we all make mistakes at times and that the MSM made an honest mistake in regards to these neo-Nazi formations, the same thing has been happening in Syria, where the US and its Gulf allies have armed extremists and have whitewashed their extremism by claiming even Al Qaeda and its offshoots are noble freedom fighters.
flora December 9, 2016 at 9:57 amGood on the parallel with Syria. The evolution, or distortion, of revolutionary movements as they struggle to gain support and offensive power and then either are modified or jacked by "supporting" external powers is not a cheering subject. The tendency to ignore that this has happened takes two forms. One is what we are here discussing. The other is its opposite, as seen in, for example, the way some writers try to maintain that there never was a significant democratic/progressive/humane etc. element to the Syrian opposition.
OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 10:17 amUkraine, as I understand it, is not monolith but has roughly 2 interest areas – western and eastern – divided by the River Dnieper. The Western half is more pro-European and EU, the Eastern half is more pro-Russia. The word "fascist" in Ukraine means something slightly different than in means in the US and the EU. So I take your comment with a grain of salt, even though it is interesting.
Ukraine's geographical location as the land "highway" between Europe and Asia has created a long and embattled history there.
Soulipsis December 9, 2016 at 11:48 amSo perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points because you mistakenly think Russia is somehow opposed to US capitalism,
Uh, no. I haven't noticed anyone here thinking that Russia is some sort of fighter for social and economic justice. Rather, we as a group are sick of noxious propaganda driven by American Exceptionalism.
And speaking for myself, I find the rise of Russia to be potentially a very good thing for the US itself, if it manages to curtail the MIC-driven hegemonic drive, weakens its relative power, and forces it to focus its money and energies on pressing domestic issues.
hemeantwell December 9, 2016 at 12:15 pmSeconded.
KRB December 9, 2016 at 10:49 amThirded. The idea of considering Putin to be anticapitalist is risible. Putin represents a limit on a US hegemonized economic order and the greater likelihood that some portion of the fruits of the Russian oligarchic capitalist effort will benefit Russians, not elites tied to the US, because of his self-interested nationalism. Not much to cheer about but better than where things were headed when Yeltsin was in power.
Martin Finnucane December 9, 2016 at 2:47 pmThis is some insidious strawman and dishonest argumentation, speaking of "BS." Nowhere does this article state that the entire Maidan revolution was a "fascist coup"-that's you putting words in the author's mouth to make his article appear to be Russian propaganda. The author specifies names of top figures in power today with seriously disturbing neo-Nazi backgrounds-the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, its Interior Minister, and head of National Police. He never once calls it a "fascist coup". Using strawman to avoid having to answer these specific allegations is bad faith commenting.
The false analogy to Occupy shows how dishonest your comment is. No one disputes that neo-Nazi leader Parubiy was in charge of Maidan's "self-defense"; and that neo-Nazi Right Sektor played a lead role in the confrontations with the Yanukovych authorities. There is absolutely no equivalent to this with Occupy at all. Where does this false analogy even come from? No where does the author state that Maidan was ONLY fascists, that is again your strawman response. Maidan had a lot of support from pro-western, pro-european, pro-liberal forces. But to deny the key and often lead roles played by neo-fascists in the actual organization, "self defense" and violent confrontations with the Yanukovych goons is gross whitewashing.
Much worse is the way you rationalize the fascist OUN salute by arguing that it means something else now, or it's become normalized, etc. These are all the same bullshit arguments made by defenders of the Confederate flag. "It means something different now." "it's about heritage/being a rebel!/individualism!" There is no "but" to this, and anyone who claims so is an asshole of the first order. The salute descends directly from collaborators in the Holocaust and mass-murder of Jews and Poles and collaboration with Nazis. If people claim they don't understand its origins, then educate them on why it's so fucked up, don't make excuses for them. Really disgusting that you'd try to rationalize this away. There is no "but" and no excuse, period.
"Russia Without BS" is one hell of an ironic name for someone bs-ing like this. Your failure to actually engage the article, setting up and knocking down strawmen instead, and evading, using false analogies-reveal your own intellectual pathologies. Try responding to the actual text here, and maybe you'll be taken seriously.
sid_finster December 9, 2016 at 3:03 pm+1
My thought was that this post was an example of the strawman fallacy. Yet certainly Mr. Kovpak wasn't just shooting from the hip. That is, he thought about this thing, wrote it, looked it over, and said "well enough" and posted it. Poor logic, or bad faith?
I think the tell was his characterization of the article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking points." What the hell is a "Russian talking point"? How do Ames' contentions follow said talking points? Are he saying, perhaps, that Ames is another one of those Kremlin agents we've been hearing about, or perhaps another "useful idiot"? Perhaps Ames – of all people – is a dupe for Putin, right?
Hasbara, Ukrainian style. Bringing this junk onto NS, either this guy is alot of dumber than he gives himself credit for, or he actually has no familiarity with NS, outside of the now- and rightly-notorious WP/ProporNot blacklist. Probably the latter, since it looks like his comment was a pre-masticated one-and-done.
AD December 9, 2016 at 10:55 amI suspect that Mr. Kovpak is a member of the Ukrainian diaspora that first infested this country starting around 1945, and has since been trying to justify the belief that the wrong side won WWII.
OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 12:06 pmI'm glad Jim Kovpak provided this background. I was very troubled to see Ames breezily smear the Ukrainian uprising as "fascist," essentially writing off the protesters as U.S. proxies and dismissing their grievances as either non-existent or irrelevant. Something similar has happened in Syria, of course. Yes, the U.S. ruling blocs try to advance their interests in such places, but if you ignore the people on the ground or dismiss them as irrelevant, you're just playing into the hands of other tyrannical interests (in Syria: Assad, Putin, Hezbollah, etc.).
lyman alpha blob December 9, 2016 at 12:39 pm$5 billion spent over the past 25 years by the US in Ukraine (per Nuland). Yeah, they ain't US proxies. Gla that you straightened that out for us.
The grievances in Ukraine are many and are legitimate. But that the people's anger was hijacked by US-financed proxies is a fact. Nuland was caught dictating that Yats would be the new PM, and darned if he didn't become just that. The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko, and the country was plunged into a civil war. But Yats and Porky are freedom-loving democrats! The old saying remains true: "They may be corrupt SOBs, but they are our corrupt SOBs!"
Heck, for all the crocodile tears shed by the West about corruption and democracy, it has nurtured corruption in Eastern Europe and looked the other way as democracy has been trampled. Including in my native Bulgaria, where millions of dollars spent by the US and allied NGOs on promoting and financing "free press" have seen Bulgaria's freedom of media ranking slip to third world levels. But Bulgaria is a "democracy" because it is a member of the EU and NATO, and as such its elites have done the bidding of its Western masters at the expense of Bulgaria's national interests and the interests of its people. Ukraine is headed down that road, and all I can say to regular Ukrainians is that they are in for an even bigger screwing down the road, cheer-led by the Western "democracies" and "free" media.
Meddling by US hyperpower in the internal affairs and the replacement of one set of bastahds with another set of bastahds that is beholden to the US is not progress, which is why we call it out. After all the spilled blood and destruction sponsored by the US, can you honestly say that Ukraine and Syria and Libya and Iraq are now better off, and that their futures are bright? I can't, and I can't say that for my native country either. That's because this new version of neocolonialism is the most destructive and virulent yet. And it is particularly insidious because it fools well-meaning people, like yourself, into believing that it actually helps improve the lives of the natives. It does not.
RMcHewn December 9, 2016 at 4:37 pm"The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko "
That pretty much sums it up. Jim Kovpak does make some excellent points which help to understand what the Ukranians are thinking. The discussion regarding the poor education system and potential lack of knowledge of what certain symbolism refers to was really good. Sort of reminds me of the Southerners in the US who still claim that the Stars and Bars is just about Southern heritage and pride without bothering to consider the other ramifications and what the symbol means for those who were persecuted at one time (and continuing to today). But yeah, I'm sure there are those who think that that flag was just something the Duke boys used on the General Lee when trying to outrun Roscoe.
All that being said, I don't believe anybody here thinks that Yanukovich was some paragon of virtue ruling a modern utopia. The problem is that the new boss looks surprisingly familiar to the old boss with the main difference being that the fruits of corruption are being funneled to different parties with the people likely still getting the shaft.
If your a(just as many in the US are), it's quite possible they are also unaware of the current US influence in their country, just as most US citizens are unaware of what the US has done in other countries.
I'd be very interested in Jim Kovpak's thoughts on this.
Damian December 9, 2016 at 10:56 am$5 billion spent over the past 25 years by the US in Ukraine (per Nuland). Yeah, they ain't US proxies. Gla[d] that you straightened that out for us.
Yes, it doesn't get any more blatant than that, and if anyone believes otherwise they are obviously hooked on the officially sanctioned fake news, aka the MSM.
sid_finster December 9, 2016 at 11:35 am"Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers / Ukraine certainly does not have more right-wingers than other Eastern European nations" silly at best!
Paruiby (Neo Fascist) was in charge before and after the Maidan for security – the trajectory of the bullets came from his peoples positions that shot the cops – analyzed over and over
The Nazi Asov Battalion among other organizations supporting the Regime in Kiev has Nazi symbols, objectives and is one of the main forces armed and trained by American Military.
The entire corrupt Kiev administration is Nazi and now it appears the Clinton Campaign has direct ties well beyond the $13 million she received in her Slush Fund from the Oligarchs in 2013. The driving force behind this entire Fake News Initiative and support for Hillary is becoming more visible each day.
Your statements are pure propaganda and I would assume you work indirectly for Alexandra Chalupa!
Young Ex-Pat December 9, 2016 at 11:28 amNot to mention the Ukrainian Nazis penchant for shelling civilians. Or will Kovpak (Ukrainian school perhaps? Did his grandfather emigrate with the other Ukrainian SS?) will repeat the canard that unbeknownst to the locals, the rebels are shelling themselves, using artillery shells that can 180 mid-flight?
sid_finster December 9, 2016 at 11:30 am"Basically you condemning Maidan is like someone condemning Occupy just because of the presence of neo-Nazis and racists who were sometimes involved in certain Occupy chapters (this is well documented)."
You must be kidding. Where to begin? Can we start with the simple fact that the Russian Foreign Ministry wasn't handing out baked goods to Occupy protesters in NYC, egging them on as they tossed molotov cocktails at police, who, strangely enough, refrained from shooting protesters until right after a peaceful political settlement was reached? Coincidence or fate? Or maybe there is strong evidence that right wing fanatics were the ones who started the shooting on that fateful day? http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31359021
And sorry, no matter how much Kovpak denies it, the muscle behind the "glorious revolution" was a bunch of far-right thugs that make our American alt-right look like girl scouts. Andrei Biletsky, leader of Azov Battalion and head of Ukraine's creatively named Social-National Assembly, says he's committed to "punishing severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lead to the extinction of the white man." http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329 - Just like those hippies at Zuccotti Park, right?! Oh,and this guy received a medal from Poroshenko.
I can keep going, but your "Maidan was just like Occupy!" argument pretty much speaks for itself. Glory to the heroes indeed.
p.s. "Russia Without the BS" is awful.
OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 12:11 pmAs someone who lived many years in Ukraine, speaks Ukrainian and Russian and knows personally many of the people involved, yes, Ukrainians know full well the origin of the Nazi slogans that the local Nazis spout.
That doesn't mean that the average frustrated euromaidan supporter is a Nazi, but Nazis bussed in from Galicia did eventually provide the muscle, as it were, and the rest of the country were willing to get in bed with them, appoint them to run ministries, and let them have independent military units.
Those Nazis are perfectly happy to call themselves Nazis.
Foppe December 9, 2016 at 2:41 pmWhat is the liberals' talking point these days? "Not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of them decided that racism isn't a deal-breaker. End of story." Hillary's SoS-designate Nuland and Barry 0 decided that Ukie nazism wasn't a deal breaker. End of story.
Gareth December 9, 2016 at 12:24 pmTo be fair, there is a fairly wide gap between 'racist' and 'violent racist of the KKK/Nazi variety'.
Also (yes, partly preaching to the choir, but with a purpose), liberals are perfectly happy to stay quiet about enormous income/prosecution/incarceration/kill rate differences, so long as those targeted/affected can (bureau-/meritocratically) be described as 'druggies/criminals/"extremists"/uneducated-thus- undeserving '. And to ignore drone bombing of brown people. Etc. So all the pearl-clutching/virtue-signaling concerning racism is pretty easy to shrug off as concerning little more than a plea to express one's support for racist policy in a PC fashion.
(Highly recommend The New Jim Crow , which I've only recently started reading, for no good reason. Bizarre to realize that all of the stuff that's being reported on a little bit now has been going on for 30 years now (30y of silence / wir-haben-es-nicht-gewusst wrt the structural nature; note that any/all reporting that im/explicitly describes these issues as "scandals"/"excesses" is part of the problem.)
olga December 9, 2016 at 12:31 pmThe whole Fake News world is a house of mirrors:
http://www.stopfake.org/en/stopfakenews-98-eng-with-jim-kovpak/
lyman alpha blob December 9, 2016 at 12:48 pmWOW I guess we have democracy, so your comment got through. In a way, your post confirms the existence of rabidly anti-Russian entities – the very point that Mark Ames makes. But you know, there are people who know a thing or two about Russia and Ukraine, and can easily refute much of your diatribe. (1) Ukrainian neo-fascists were an integral part of the Maidan (trained in Poland, US, and Canada).
Yes, ordinary Ukrainians protested against corruption – but every U. government since 1991 has been corrupt. Yanukovich was no exception – but he was also not the worst one (do some research on J. Timoshenko).
Corruption persists in U. today – and based on the now-required property disclosures by U. politicians – may be even worse. It is likely correct that most U. don't give a damn about Bandera – but most U. also do not have any power to do anything about the neo-nazis, as they are (at least in the western part of the country) numerous, vocal, and prone to violence.
There is enough actual footage from Maidan that shows the presence of neo-nazi members on the square from the beginning. They were also the one who completed the violent overthrow of the government that happened on 2/21-22/14 – after a deal had been signed calling for early elections. The burning of 48 people in Odessa was probably done by angels, according to your likely analysis.
(2) But it is your comments about the U. neo-nazi participation in the war that seem to clarify who you really represent. This participation was not much discussed during the soviet times – I only found out that they continued to fight against the soviet state long after the war ended recently – from family members who witnessed it (in Belorussia, west. Ukr., and eastern Czechoslovakia). Some of them witnessed the unspeakable cruelty of these Ukr. "troops" against villagers and any partisans they could find. White-washing this period (or smearing soviet educational system) will not help – there is plenty of historical evidence for those who are interested in the subject.
(3) What you say about the Russian state promoting this or that is just a scurrilous attack, with no proof. Not even worth exploring. On the other hand, there are plenty of documented murders of Ukr. journalists (google Buzina – a highly intelligent and eloquent Ukr. journalist, who was gunned down in front of his home; there are quite a few others).
Ukr. in 2014 may have been protesting inept government, but what they ended up with is far worse – by any measure, Ukr. standard of living has gone way down. But now, the industrial base of the country has been destroyed, and the neo-nazi genie will not go back into the bottle any time soon. Ukr. as a unified place did not exist until after WWI, and the great divisions – brought starkly into contrast by the 2014 destruction of the state – cannot be papered over anytime soon.
integer December 9, 2016 at 4:04 pmAppreciate the points you bring up but if the Ukranians truly want an end to an exploitative system, they probably are not going to get it by allying themselves with Uncle Sugar. The US provided billions of dollars to foment the coup and our oligarchs expect a return on that investment – they aren't going to suddenly start trust funds for all Ukranians out of the goodness of their hearts. You are aware of that aren't you?
KRB December 9, 2016 at 4:33 pmSo perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points
I was going to say something about how the CIA made Ukraine's Social Nationalist party change its name to Svoboda (freedom), to obscure the obvious Nazi connection, but instead I will just laugh at you.
Reply ↓
Hahahahahaha!Rhondda December 9, 2016 at 5:22 pmWhat a shocker that Jim Kovpak, the commenter who tries smearing this article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking points" -- works for CIA-founded Voice of America and is a regular with Ukraine's "StopFake.org" which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy , the CIA's color revolution "soft" arm - in other words, PropOrNot's folks. Can't make this stuff up.
OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 5:54 pmIt was patently obvious from his comment that he's a pro shill but very good to have the proof. Thanks, KRB.
Eddie Anderson December 9, 2016 at 8:34 pmWait, so in Kovpak's case our tax dollars are used to fund and disseminate propaganda to America's public, too? I am not shocked or anything, but rather amused that the vaunted American democracy and famously free media is beginning to resemble communist Bulgaria. The good news is that by the 80's nobody believed the state and its propagandists, even on the rare occasion they were telling the truth, and America's people seem to be a bit ahead of the curve already, which may explain the "fake news" hysteria from the creators and disseminators of fake news.
Ignacio December 9, 2016 at 4:22 amUkraine certainly does not have more right-wingers than other Eastern European nations, but if you look at their polls and elections you see that the far-right in Ukraine does far worse than it does in other Eastern and even Western European countries
Okay, but isn't it the case that many far-right leaders have migrated to parties closer to the center, such as People's Front? Svoboda's leaders have done this. Andriy Parubiy, Tetiana Chornovol, and Oleksandr Turchynov, for example, hold high positions in People's Front, but started out as members or Svoboda. If I'm not mistaken, People's Front also has strong connections to the far-right Volunteer Battalions. I believe People's Front has its own paramilitary branch too.
What this tells me is that much of Ukraine's far-right may be masquerading as right-center. That's kind of like a political Trojan Horse operation. This way the fascists avoid standing out as far-right, but at the same time, move closer to the mechanisms of power within Ukraine's government.
Here in America we saw something like that in the early 1990s, when KKK leader David Duke migrated to the political mainstream by running for office as a Republican in Louisiana. Of course Duke never changed his views, he just learned to dissemble himself in the way he sold his politics to the public.
Here's an article by Lev Golinkin commenting on the far-right's strong and dangerous influence on Ukraine today. A fascist presence like this could easily be a powerful element in Ukrainian elections, very suddenly and unpredictably too. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ukrainian-far-right-and-the-danger-it-poses/
Benedict@Large December 9, 2016 at 7:32 amThis is getting darker and darker. As much as I dislike Trump I feel happier that Clinton didn't make it. The TINA party is the most reactionary thing by far!
notabanker December 9, 2016 at 7:56 amYes, these are dangerous people, as are most "true believers". I'm also becoming even more disappointed at Ms, Clinton. For a while, she seemed to be keeping a little distance from her dead-enders, but now that her and Bill are out back on the money trail (How much is enough?), it doesn't look good.
Selling fear? Really? Isn't there a shelf life on that?
Jim Haygood December 9, 2016 at 8:03 amAhhh, but it's not money they accumulate, its power. And time is their only constraint. This is what they do.
Clive December 9, 2016 at 9:00 amWilliam Banzai7 on "Prop or Nuts." Hillary's "Childen of the Rainbow" button (look carefully) is to die for.
https://c8.staticflickr.com/1/601/30710973103_365b8e0b4d_b.jpg
ambrit December 9, 2016 at 11:07 amThere's a crock of something at the end of that rainbow, but I doubt very much that it contains any gold.
Carolinian December 9, 2016 at 9:30 amI'm not certain about the contents of that crock, good sir. We now live in a "culture" where s–t IS gold. Otherwise, why are we now enduring a "popular press" full of "wardrobe malfunctions," new amazing bikini bodies, salacious gossip, and equally salacious "news?" (The Page Three was shut down really because there was too much competition.)
Oh tempura, oh s'mores! (Latinate for "We're crisped!")
Soulipsis December 9, 2016 at 11:59 amIndeed. The above article is great, great stuff and shows why some of us found Hillary more disturbing than Trump. Therefore Ames' final assumption
And the timing is incredible-as if Bezos' rag has taken upon itself to soften up the American media before Trump moves in for the kill.
seems a bit off. It's certainly true that Trump said news organizations should face greater exposure to libel laws but one suspects this has more to do with his personal peevishness and inability to take criticism than the Deep State-y motives described above. Clearly the "public versus private" Hillary–Nixon in a pant suit–would have been just the person to embrace this sort of censorship by smear and her connection with various shadowy exiles and in her own campaign no less shows why Sanders' failure to make FP the center of his opposition was, if not a political mistake, at least evidence of his limited point of view.
It's unlikely that anyone running this time would be able to change our domestic trajectory but this fascism from abroad is a real danger IMO. In Reagan times some of us thought that Reagan supported reactionary governments abroad because that's what he and his rogue's gallery including Casey and North wished they could do here. The people getting hysterical over Trump while pining for Hillary don't seem to know fascism when it's right in front of them. Or perhaps it's just a matter of whose ox is going to be gored.
Disturbed Voter December 9, 2016 at 6:45 amSanders might have had a hard time driving as far left on FP as he did on domestic issues. I'm his constituent, and I have a letter from him from mid-'15 reiterating all the mainstream lies about Russia and Ukraine.
integer December 9, 2016 at 6:49 amNo surprise, ever since the US, and Biden, got involved in Ukraine. And it is even probable, that people like that were behind the Kennedy assassination, that the US has admitted was a conspiracy, that is still protected from "journalistic sunshine" under lock and key by the US government.
integer December 9, 2016 at 7:01 amThanks for giving this article its own post, and thanks to dcblogger for providing the link in yesterday's Water Cooler.
Seems to me that this little bout of D-party/CIA incompetence, and/or incontinence, will finally sound the death knell for the Operation Paperclip gang's plan. Good riddance.
and/or incontinence
I'm looking at you, Soros!
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www.zerohedge.com
It has been our undertaking, since 2010, to chronicle our understanding of capitalism via our book The Philosophy of Capitalism . We were curious as to the underlying nature of the system which endows us, the owners of capital, with so many favours. The Saker has asked me to explain our somewhat crude statement 'Capitalism Requires World War'.
The present showdown between West, Russia and China is the culmination of a long running saga that began with World War One. Prior to which, Capitalism was governed by the gold standard system which was international, very solid, with clear rules and had brought great prosperity: for banking Capital was scarce and so allocated carefully. World War One required debt-capitalism of the FIAT kind, a bankrupt Britain began to pass the Imperial baton to the US, which had profited by financing the war and selling munitions.
The Weimar Republic, suffering a continuation of hostilities via economic means, tried to inflate away its debts in 1919-1923 with disastrous results-hyperinflation. Then, the reintroduction of the gold standard into a world poisoned by war, reparation and debt was fated to fail and ended with a deflationary bust in the early 1930's and WW2.
The US government gained a lot of credibility after WW2 by outlawing offensive war and funding many construction projects that helped transfer private debt to the public book. The US government's debt exploded during the war, but it also shifted the power game away from creditors to a big debtor that had a lot of political capital. The US used her power to define the new rules of the monetary system at Bretton Woods in 1944 and to keep physical hold of gold owned by other nations.
The US jacked up tax rates on the wealthy and had a period of elevated inflation in the late 40s and into the 1950s – all of which wiped out creditors, but also ushered in a unique middle class era in the West. The US also reformed extraction centric institutions in Europe and Japan to make sure an extractive-creditor class did not hobble growth, which was easy to do because the war had wiped them out (same as in Korea).
Capital destruction in WW2 reversed the Marxist rule that the rate of profit always falls. Take any given market – say jeans. At first, all the companies make these jeans using a great deal of human labour so all the jeans are priced around the average of total social labour time required for production (some companies will charge more, some companies less).
One company then introduces a machine (costed at $n) that makes jeans using a lot less labour time. Each of these robot assisted workers is paid the same hourly rate but the production process is now far more productive. This company, ignoring the capital outlay in the machinery, will now have a much higher profit rate than the others. This will attract capital, as capital is always on the lookout for higher rates of profit. The result will be a generalisation of this new mode of production. The robot or machine will be adopted by all the other companies, as it is a more efficient way of producing jeans.
As a consequence the price of the jeans will fall, as there is an increased margin within which each market actor can undercut his fellows. One company will lower prices so as to increase market share. This new price-point will become generalised as competing companies cut their prices to defend their market share. A further n$ was invested but per unit profit margin is put under constant downward pressure, so the rate of return in productive assets tends to fall over time in a competitive market place.
Interest rates have been falling for decades in the West because interest rates must always be below the rate of return on productive investments. If interest rates are higher than the risk adjusted rate of return then the capitalist might as well keep his money in a savings account. If there is real deflation his purchasing power increases for free and if there is inflation he will park his money (plus debt) in an unproductive asset that's price inflating, E.G. Housing. Sound familiar? Sure, there has been plenty of profit generated since 2008 but it has not been recovered from productive investments in a competitive free market place. All that profit came from bubbles in asset classes and financial schemes abetted by money printing and zero interest rates.
Thus, we know that the underlying rate of return is near zero in the West. The rate of return falls naturally, due to capital accumulation and market competition. The system is called capitalism because capital accumulates: high income economies are those with the greatest accumulation of capital per worker. The robot assisted worker enjoys a higher income as he is highly productive, partly because the robotics made some of the workers redundant and there are fewer workers to share the profit. All the high income economies have had near zero interest rates for seven years. Interest rates in Europe are even negative. How has the system remained stable for so long?
All economic growth depends on energy gain. It takes energy (drilling the oil well) to gain energy. Unlike our everyday experience whereby energy acquisition and energy expenditure can be balanced, capitalism requires an absolute net energy gain. That gain, by way of energy exchange, takes the form of tools and machines that permit an increase in productivity per work hour. Thus GDP increases, living standards improve and the debts can be repaid. Thus, oil is a strategic capitalistic resource.
US net energy gain production peaked in 1974, to be replaced by production from Saudi Arabia, which made the USA a net importer of oil for the first time. US dependence on foreign oil rose from 26% to 47% between 1985 and 1989 to hit a peak of 60% in 2006. And, tellingly, real wages peaked in 1974, levelled-off and then began to fall for most US workers. Wages have never recovered. (The decline is more severe if you don't believe government reported inflation figures that don't count the costof housing.)
What was the economic and political result of this decline? During the 20 years 1965-85, there were 4 recessions, 2 energy crises and wage and price controls. These were unprecedented in peacetime and The Gulf of Tonkin event led to the Vietnam War which finally required Nixon to move away from the Gold-Exchange Standard in 1971, opening the next degenerate chapter of FIAT finance up until 2008. Cutting this link to gold was cutting the external anchor impeding war and deficit spending. The promise of gold for dollars was revoked.
GDP in the US increased after 1974 but a portion of end use buying power was transferred to Saudi Arabia. They were supplying the net energy gain that was powering the US GDP increase. The working class in the US began to experience a slow real decline in living standards, as 'their share' of the economic pie was squeezed by the ever increasing transfer of buying power to Saudi Arabia.
The US banking and government elite responded by creating and cutting back legal and behavioral rules of a fiat based monetary system. The Chinese appreciated the long term opportunity that this presented and agreed to play ball. The USA over-produced credit money and China over-produced manufactured goods which cushioned the real decline in the buying power of America's working class. Power relations between China and the US began to change: The Communist Party transferred value to the American consumer whilst Wall Street transferred most of the US industrial base to China. They didn't ship the military industrial complex.
Large scale leverage meant that US consumers and businesses had the means to purchase increasingly with debt so the class war was deferred. This is how over production occurs: more is produced that is paid for not with money that represents actual realized labour time, but from future wealth, to be realised from future labour time. The Chinese labour force was producing more than it consumed.
The system has never differed from the limits laid down by the Laws of Thermodynamics. The Real economy system can never over-produce per se. The limit of production is absolute net energy gain. What is produced can be consumed. How did the Chinese produce such a super massive excess and for so long? Economic slavery can achieve radical improvements in living standards for those that benefit from ownership. Slaves don't depreciate as they are rented and are not repaired for they replicate for free. Hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants limited their way of life and controlled their consumption in order to benefit their children. And their exploited life raised the rate of profit!
They began their long march to modern prosperity making toys, shoes, and textiles cheaper than poor women could in South Carolina or Honduras. Such factories are cheap to build and deferential, obedient and industrious peasant staff were a perfect match for work that was not dissimilar to tossing fruit into a bucket. Their legacy is the initial capital formation of modern China and one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. The Chinese didn't use net energy gain from oil to power their super massive and sustained increase in production. They used economic slavery powered by caloric energy, exchanged from solar energy. The Chinese labour force picked the World's low hanging fruit that didn't need many tools or machines. Slaves don't need tools for they are the tool.
Without a gold standard and capital ratios our form of over-production has grown enormously. The dotcom bubble was reflated through a housing bubble, which has been pumped up again by sovereign debt, printing press (QE) and central bank insolvency. The US working and middle classes have over-consumed relative to their share of the global economic pie for decades. The correction to prices (the destruction of credit money & accumulated capital) is still yet to happen. This is what has been happening since 1971 because of the growth of financialisation or monetisation.
The application of all these economic methods was justified by the political ideology of neo-Liberalism. Neo-Liberalism entails no or few capital controls, the destruction of trade unions, plundering state and public assets, importing peasants as domesticated help, and entrusting society's value added production to The Communist Party of The People's Republic of China.
The Chinese have many motives but their first motivation is power. Power is more important than money. If you're rich and weak you get robbed. Russia provides illustrating stories of such: Gorbachev had received a promise from George HW Bush that the US would pay Russia approximately $400 billion over10 years as a "peace dividend" and as a tool to be utilized in the conversion of their state run to a market based economic system. The Russians believe the head of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, essentially killed the deal based on the idea that "letting the country fall apart will destroy Russia as a future military threat". The country fell apart in 1992. Its natural assets were plundered which raised the rate of profit in the 90's until President Putin put a stop to the robbery.
In the last analysis, the current framework of Capitalism results in labour redundancy, a falling rate of profit and ingrained trading imbalances caused by excess capacity. Under our current monopoly state capitalism a number of temporary preventive measures have evolved, including the expansion of university, military, and prison systems to warehouse new generations of labour.
Our problem is how to retain the "expected return rate" for us, the dominant class. Ultimately, there are only two large-scale solutions, which are intertwined .
One is expansion of state debt to keep "the markets" moving and transfer wealth from future generations of labour to the present dominant class.
The other is war, the consumer of last resort. Wars can burn up excess capacity, shift global markets, generate monopoly rents, and return future labour to a state of helplessness and reduced expectations. The Spanish flu killed 50-100 million people in 1918. As if this was not enough, it also took two World Wars across the 20th century and some 96 million dead to reduce unemployment and stabilize the "labour problem."
Capitalism requires World War because Capitalism requires profit and cannot afford the unemployed . The point is capitalism could afford social democracy after the rate of profit was restored thanks to the depression of the 1930's and the physical destruction of capital during WW2. Capitalism only produces for profit and social democracy was funded by taxing profits after WW2.
Post WW2 growth in labour productivity, due to automation, itself due to oil & gas replacing coal, meant workers could be better off. As the economic pie was growing, workers could receive the same %, and still receive a bigger slice. Wages as a % of US GDP actually increased in the period, 1945-1970. There was an increase in government spending which was being redirected in the form of redistributed incomes. Inequality will only worsen, because to make profits now we have to continually cut the cost of inputs, i.e. wages & benefits. Have we not already reached the point where large numbers of the working class can neither feed themselves nor afford a roof over their heads?13% of the UK working age population is out of work and receiving out of work benefits. A huge fraction is receiving in work benefits because low skill work now pays so little.
The underlying nature of Capitalism is cyclical. Here is how the political aspect of the cycle ends:
- 1920s/2000s – High inequality, high banker pay, low regulation, low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons (CEOs), reckless bankers, globalisation phase
- 1929/2008 – Wall Street crash
- 1930s/2010s – Global recession, currency wars, trade wars, rising unemployment, nationalism and extremism
- What comes next? – World War.
If Capitalism could speak, she would ask her older brother, Imperialism, this: "Can you solve the problem?" We are not reliving the 1930's, the economy is now an integrated whole that encompasses the entire World. Capital has been accumulating since 1945, so under- and unemployment is a plague everywhere. How big is the problem? Official data tells us nothing, but the 47 million Americans on food aid are suggestive. That's 1 in 7 Americans and total World population is 7 billion.
The scale of the solution is dangerous. Our probing for weakness in the South China Sea, Ukraine and Syria has awakened them to their danger.The Chinese and Russian leadershave reacted by integrating their payment systems and real economies, trading energy for manufactured goods for advanced weapon systems. As they are central players in the Shanghai Group we can assume their aim is the monetary system which is the bedrock of our Imperial power. What's worse, they can avoid overt enemy action and simply choose to undermine "confidence" in the FIAT.
Though given the calibre of their nuclear arsenal, how can they be fought let alone defeated? Appetite preceded Reason, so Lust is hard to Reason with. But beware brother. Your Lust for Power began this saga, perhaps it's time to Reason.
Uncle SugarFather ThymeSeriously - Having a Central Bank with a debt based monetary system requires permanent wars. True market based capitalism does not.
Wed, 03/02/2016 - 23:21 | 7264475 Seek_TruthYour logical fallacy is no true scotsman
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/no-true-scotsmangwissThose who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
If wealth were measured by creating strawmen- you would be a Rothschild.
Wed, 03/02/2016 - 23:27 | 7264485 GRDguyThat's because they don't understand the word "capitalism."
Capitalism simply means economic freedom. And economic freedom, just like freedom to breed, must be exposed to the pruning action of cause and effect, otherwise it outgrows its container and becomes unstable and explodes. As long as it is continually exposed to the grinding wheel of causality, it continues to hold a fine edge, as the dross is scraped away and the fine steel stays. Reality is full of dualities, and those dualities cannot be separated without creating broken symmetry and therefore terminal instability. Freedom and responsibility, for example. One without the other is unstable. Voting and taxation in direct proportion to each other is another example.
Fiat currency is an attempt to create an artificial reality, one without the necessary symmetry and balance of a real system. However, reality can not be gamed, because it will produce its own symmetry if you try to deny it. Thus the symmetry of fiat currency is boom and bust, a sine wave that still manages to produce equilibrium, however at a huge bubbling splattering boil rather than a fine simmer.
The folks that wrote this do not have a large enough world view. Capitalism does not require world wars because freedom does not require world wars. Freedom tends to bleed imbalances out when they are small. On the other hand, empire does require world war, which is why we are going to have one.
AchtungAffenCapitalism becomes imperialism when financial sociopaths steal profits from both sides of the trade. What you're seeing is an Imperialism of Capital, as explained very nicely in the 1889 book "The Great Red Dragon."
Caviar EmptorReally? I thought that was the re-prints of Mises Canada, Kunstler or Brandon Smith. In comparison, this article is sublime.
Wed, 03/02/2016 - 22:56 | 7264423 Jack's Raging B...Wrong. Capitalism needs prolonged directionless wars without clear winners and contained destruction that utilize massive amounts of raw materials and endless orders for weapons and logistical support. That's what makes some guys rich.
My Days Are Get...That's was a very long-winded and deliberately obtuse way of explaining how DEBT AS MONEY and The State's usurpation of sound money destroyed efficient markets. The author then goes to call this system Capitalism.
So yeah, the deliberate destruction of capital, in all its forms, is somehow capitalism. Brilliant observation. Fuck you. There are better terms for things like this. Perhaps....central banking? The State? Fiat debt creation? Evil? Naw, let's just contort and abuse language instead. That's the ticket.
slimycorporated...From Russia News Feed:
Cathal Haughian Bio :
I've spent my adult life in 51 countries. This was financed by correctly anticipating the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. I was studying Marx at that time. I'm presently an employee of the Chinese State. I educate the children of China's best families. I am the author, alongside a large international team of capitalists, of Before The Collapse : The Philosophy of Capitalism.
I also have my own business; I live with my girlfriend and was born and grew up in Ireland.
===============
Why would anyone waste time to read this drivel, buttressed by the author's credentials.
The unstated thesis is that wars involve millions of actors, who produce an end-result of many hundreds of millions killed.
Absent coercion ("the Draft"), how is any government going to man hundreds of divisions of foot soldiers. That concept is passé.
Distribute some aerosol poisons via drones and kill as many people as deemed necessary. How in the hell will that action stimulate the world economy.
Weapons of mass-destruction are smaller, cheaper and easier to deploy. War as a progenitor of growth - forget it.
The good news is that this guy is educating the children of elite in China. Possibly the Pentagon could clone him 10,000 times and send those cyborgs to China - cripple China for another generation or two.
Ms NoCapitalism requires banks that made shitty loans to fail
o r c kThe term cyclical doesn't quite cover what we have being experiencing. It's more like a ragdoll being shaken by a white shark. The euphoria of bubble is more like complete unhinged unicorn mania anymore and the lows are complete grapes of wrath. It's probably always been that way to some extent because corruption has remained unchallenged for a great deal of time. The boom phases are scarier than the downturns anymore, especially the last oil boom and housing boom. Complete Alfred Hitchcock stuff.
I don't think it's capitalism and that term comes across as an explanation that legitimizes this completely contrived pattern that benefits a few and screws everybody else. Markets should not be behaving in such a violent fashion. Money should probably be made steady and slow. And downturns shouldn't turn a country into Zimbabwe. I could be wrong but there is really no way to know with the corruption we have.
Good times.
And War requires that an enemy be created. According to American General Breedlove-head of NATO's European Command-speaking to the US Armed Services Committee 2 days ago, "Russia and Assad are deliberately weaponizing migration to break European resolve". "The only reason to use non-precision weapons like barrel bombs is to keep refugees on the move". "These refugees bring criminality, foreign fighters and terrorism", and "are being used to overwhelm European structures". "Russia has chosen to be an adversary and is a real threat." "Russia is irresponsible with nuclear weapons-always threatening to use them." And strangely, "In the past week alone, Russia has made 450 attacks along the front lines in E. Ukraine".
Even with insanity overflowing the West, I found these comments to be the most bizarrely threatening propaganda yet. After reading them for the first time, I had to prove to myself that I wasn't hallucinating it.
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Aug 08, 2014 | Yahoo/Reuters
Angel Davilla-Rivas, a Spaniard who came to east Ukraine to fight alongside pro-Russian rebels, proudly shows off two big monochrome portraits of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, tattooed on the right and left side of his torso.
Davilla-Rivas and his comrade Rafa Munez, both in their mid-twenties, traveled by train from Madrid to eastern Ukraine where they joined the Vostok battalion, the most prominent and heavily armed unit fighting Ukrainian troops.
"I am the only son, and it hurts my mother and father and my family a lot that I am putting myself at risk. But ... I can't sleep in my bed knowing what's going on here," said Davilla-Rivas, sporting a cap with the Soviet red star pinned to it.
That star and a ribbon around Munez's wrist hint at the Spaniards' motivation for joining a war thousands of miles from home. The ribbon's red, yellow and purple are the colors of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict in the 1930s where thousands of foreigners joined the leftists against right-wing foes who eventually prevailed.
Angel said he wanted to return the favor after the Soviet Union, under Stalin, supported the Republican side in Spain.
More than 1,100 people have been killed in the fighting in Ukraine since mid-April, according to the United Nations, in a civil conflict that has dragged ties between Russia and the West to their lowest since the Cold War.
The Spaniards are not the first foreigners to enter the fight.
Men from Russia, its former rebel republic of Chechnya and the Caucasus region of North Ossetia have fought on the rebel side along with volunteers from a Russian-backed separatist enclave of Georgia and natives of Serbia.
Russians have also taken top positions among the rebels, though a local took over at the helm of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk Peoples' Republic" on Thursday, in a move aimed at blunting Western accusations the rebellion is run by Moscow.
Moscow said last month there were reports that citizens from Sweden, Finland, France and the former Soviet Baltic states had joined pro-Kiev volunteer battalions in the east as "mercenaries".
Davilla-Rivas blamed the West - which has imposed sanctions on Moscow, accusing it of backing the rebels - for stoking the war. "The United States is trying to provoke a third (world war) against Russia here with your people," he said. "Ordinary people are suffering because they are caught in between three imperial powers - the Russian Federation, the European Union and, certainly, the United States, which is putting money into all this."
A Vostok fighter said he was happy to have the Spaniards. "We need support now, we need fighters. An additional automatic gun will do no harm, to support, to cover one's back," said the young, brown-haired man who did not give his name. The Spanish embassy in Moscow was not immediately available for comment.
(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
blazo 6 months ago
Civil war in Ukraine is going more then 4 months. 30 000 Ukrainians was killed, and 1 million expelled from their homes. Not too bad for only 4 months. But it could be better.Commander in chief of glorious Kiev army, Mr Porkoshenko, and his sponsor in killings and expulsions, Mr Obama are not satisfied. For money spent, much higher pace of killing should be #$%$ured. What is their reference? In Babin Yar during WW 2, 1200 Ukrainian #$%$, with help of 300 Germans, managed to kill 60 000 Ukrainians for only two days. So Mr Porkoshenko ask from Chef of all Ukrainian security forces, Mr Paruby to explain discrepancy in efficiency in Babin Yar, and in Donbas killings. Mr Paruby said: In Babin Yar Ukrainians to be killed were civilized and unarmed. They even smiled for photographs during killing. But in Donbas they are barbaric armed people, they don t allow us to kill them in peace. They turned arms on us, and killed 10 000 of our brave soldiers. They burned our tanks, APCs, and shot down our jet bombers. And as a extreme barbarism, they captured from us multiple rocket launchers, and fired on us, killing our 25th, 72nd, 79th motorized brigades. Mr Porkoshenko said: You are fired, and kicked him with foot to his #$%$.
The great strategist and visionary, Mr Porkoshenko said on 25th of May: It is not a question of days, weeks, or months, when rebellion in East Ukraine will be defeated. It is the question of hours.... .
Ricardo 6 months ago
Volunteers, revolutionaries, zealots, idealist, mercenaries are all drawn to conflicts all over the globe. Muslims are headed to Syria and Iraq from Europe and North Africa to fight either Assad or along side ISIS, now those that believe the days of the old USSR are returning are headed to eastern Ukraine to fight. If you look at some of the countries mentioned in this article it will not surprise anyone that they are all from Soviet/Russian supported countries that even after the collapse of the USSR still follow the Russians, no matter the consequences to their country.
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May 13, 2015 | RT News
The White House is determined to block the rise of the key nuclear-armed nations, Russia and China, neither of whom will join the "world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony," says head of the Institute for Political Economy, Paul Craig Roberts.The former US assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, has written on his blog that Beijing is currently "confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington's control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests."
Roberts writes that Washington's commitment to contain Russia is the reason "for the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda."
The author of several books, "How America Was Lost" among the latest titles, says that US "aggression and blatant propaganda have convinced Russia and China that Washington intends war, and this realization has drawn the two countries into a strategic alliance."
Dr Roberts believes that neither Russia, nor China will meanwhile accept the so-called "vassalage status accepted by the UK, Germany, France and the rest of Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia." According to the political analyst, the "price of world peace is the world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony."
"On the foreign policy front, the hubris and arrogance of America's self-image as the 'exceptional, indispensable' country with hegemonic rights over other countries means that the world is primed for war," Roberts writes.
He gives a gloomy political forecast in his column saying that "unless the dollar and with it US power collapses or Europe finds the courage to break with Washington and to pursue an independent foreign policy, saying good-bye to NATO, nuclear war is our likely future."
Russia's far-reaching May 9 Victory Day celebration was meanwhile a "historical turning point," according to Roberts who says that while Western politicians chose to boycott the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, "the Chinese were there in their place," China's president sitting next to President Putin during the military parade on Red Square in Moscow.
A recent poll targeting over 3,000 people in France, Germany and the UK has recently revealed that as little as 13 percent of Europeans think the Soviet Army played the leading role in liberating Europe from Nazism during WW2. The majority of respondents – 43 percent – said the US Army played the main role in liberating Europe.
"Russian casualties compared to the combined casualties of the US, UK, and France make it completely clear that it was Russia that defeated Hitler," Roberts points out, adding that "in the Orwellian West, the latest rewriting of history leaves out of the story the Red Army's destruction of the Wehrmacht."
The head of the presidential administration, Sergey Ivanov, told RT earlier this month that attempts to diminish the role played by Russia in defeating Nazi Germany through rewriting history by some Western countries are part of the ongoing campaign to isolate and alienate Russia.
Dr Roberts has also stated in his column that while the US president only mentioned US forces in his remarks on the 70th anniversary of the victory, President Putin in contrast "expressed gratitude to 'the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the victory.'"
The political analyst notes that America along with its allies "do not hear when Russia says 'don't push us this hard, we are not your enemy. We want to be your partners.'"
While Moscow and Beijing have "finally realized that their choice is vassalage or war," Washington "made the mistake that could be fateful for humanity," according to Dr Roberts.
Read more Perverted history: Europeans think US army liberated continent during WW2Read more US mulls sending military ships, aircraft near South China Sea disputed islands – report
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www.cnn.com
The extraordinary repudiation -- partly based on Trump's rejection of basic US foreign policy tenets, including support for close allies -- helped spark the hashtag #NeverTrump. Now, a source familiar with transition planning says that hard wall of resistance is crumbling fast.
There are "boxes" of applications, the source said. "There are many more than people realize."
Some of those applications are coming from the #NeverTrump crowd, the source said, and include former national security officials who signed one or more of the letters opposing Trump. "Mea culpas" are being considered -- and in some cases being granted, the source said -- for people who did not go a step further in attacking Trump personally.
... ... ...
Fifty GOP national security experts signed an August letter saying Trump "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being" because he "lacks the character, values and experience" to occupy the Oval Office, making him "the most reckless president in American history."
Another bipartisan letter cited concern about potential foreign conflicts of interest Trump might encounter as president, and called on him to disclose them by releasing his tax returns. Trump has refused to do so, saying he is under audit and will make the returns public only once that is done.
It remains to be seen what kind of team Trump will pull together, how many "NeverTrumpers" will apply for positions and to what degree the President-elect will be willing to accept them.
There's a fight underway within the Trump transition team about whether to consider "never Trumpers" for jobs, one official tells CNN. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is leading the transition team, has been working to persuade Trump and other top officials to consider Republicans who openly opposed his campaign. That has caused some friction with those who see no place for people who didn't support their candidate.
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Nov 02, 2016 | crookedtimber.org
likbez @ 16,
it seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from culturally based ultranationalism is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial understanding of "race" and "racism".
Populations can be racialized according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are".
Although from my understanding Ukrainian citizenship like that in most of Europe is primarily determined by jus sanguinis, and like most of Europe it's still deep in the muck of racial discrimination toward e.g. the Roma, so unless I'm misreading things it seems like a stretch to put too much distance between Ukraine (or Europe in general) and even a very colloquial sense of "ethnonationalism".
It can be articulated more explicitly by outright fascists or more obliquely by mainstream centrist parties, but it's still there.
And as long as we're talking about academic definitions of racism (I'm partial to the definition proffered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death", although Emmett Rensin's obnoxiously thorough definition is also good) funnily enough they tend to point at something pretty much identical to what Quiggin appears to mean by "tribalism".
Except unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup
Which seems like the only reason we'd bother talking about it as a specific mass political movement at all.
And again, as annoying as it is to have pigheaded reactionaries accuse us of twisting language and "playing the race card" and so on, putting up with this noise is preferable to sacrificing useful concepts like racism and fascism from one's everyday understanding of the world, and it's certainly preferable to swapping out the terms in question for a racially charged term like "tribalism".
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Nov 01, 2016 | crookedtimber.org
xxxJohn, I agree that tribalism is a huge force in politics, but the way you have defined it describes a huge portion of how people on all sides vote. All sorts of research shows that a majority of people seem to use the rubric "what do people of my affiliation believe" to reach conclusions and then defend them rather than following any particular chain of logic about the actual question. So I'm not sure what kind of differentiation work the term is doing.On the other hand I think you're definitely on to something about the change of formerly stable political orders, and I'm not sure I can identify what it is either. I sort of see what you are trying to do with the in-group/out-group thing. Those impulses always existed, so I wonder what has changed? Is it assimilation norms that have weakened? Economic loss or the fear of it in the 'in group'? Fear of going from an 'in group' to an 'out group'? Combination of those?
bruce wilder 10.30.16 at 9:34 pm
The success of [civil rights and anti-apartheid] movements did not end racism, but drove it underground, allowing neoliberals to exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor.
That coalition has now been replaced by one in which the tribalists and racists are dominant. For the moment at least, [hard] neoliberals continue to support the parties they formerly controlled, with the result that the balance of political forces between the right and the opposing coalition of soft neoliberals and the left has not changed significantly.
There's an ambiguity in this narrative and in the three-party analysis.
Do we acknowledge that the soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the inchoate left also "exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor."? They do it with a different style and maybe with some concession to economic melioration, as well as supporting anti-racist and feminist policy to keep the inchoate left on board, but . . .
The new politics of the right has lost faith in the hard neoliberalism that formerly furnished its policy agenda of tax cuts for the rich, war in the Middle East and so on, leaving the impure resentment ungoverned and unfocused, as you say.
The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil.
The problem of how to oppose racism and tribalism effectively is now entangled with soft neoliberal control of the remaining party coalition, which is to say with the credibility of the left party as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility of economic populism as an antidote for racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)
The form of tribalism used to mobilize the left entails denying that an agenda of economic populism is relevant to the problems of sexism and racism, because the deplorables must be deplored to get out the vote. And, because the (soft) neoliberals in charge must keep economic populism under control to deliver the goods to their donor base.
RichardM 10.30.16 at 9:41 pm ( 39 )
"That doesn't mean that we should maintain the long-standing taboo on using the word "racist" to describe such people."
Whether you 'should' or 'shouldn't' largely depends on which country you are in; the US has sufficient minorities able to vote that a 'wide' definition of racism is almost certainly a net vote-winner.
The UK, Australia, etc. don't. So they have to rely on opposition to racism on moral grounds, which in turn depends on using a narrow definition.
Alternatively, you could be talking in an academic context, independent of any particular country's politics, in which case I would imagine that using different words for different things would be minimally confusing.
LFC 10.30.16 at 10:50 pm Alesis @19
Race is the foundational organizing principle of American life
There is no such thing as "the foundational organizing principle of American life." There are conflicting ideologies, a conflicting set of histories, and a conflicting set of regional traditions, plus founding documents that are subject to conflicting interpretations. There are certain experiences that might be presumed to shape some sort of common collective memory, but nowadays even that is debatable.
Kurt Schuler 10.30.16 at 11:00 pm ( 41 )
As one who has lived for more than fifty years in the United States, rather than just a few years here and there as John Quiggin has, I assure him that racism has not been driven underground here. It has died as a mass sentiment capable of serving as a power base for such figures as Lyndon Johnson, George Wallace, or Jimmy Carter.All had to change their tune to retain or increase their power, and that was about half a century ago. No aspiring politician could get started today making the kind of racial appeals they did at the beginning of their political careers, and in the cases of Johnson and Wallace for a long time thereafter.
There is no mass sentiment for re-establishing separate drinking fountains, toilets, dining areas, schools, etc. by race or for repealing the Civil War-era amendments to the Constitution. I even hear rumors that Americans may be receptive to the idea of electing a black President.
Alan Luchetti 10.30.16 at 11:11 pm
I just put up this link for consideration:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/10/when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism/My suggestion is to tackle the pandering by the rich party for the poor's votes by appealing to racism, rather than the racism itself. "You're being played" may work better than "you're wrong".
I also think that the severity continuum of racism needs to be emphasized. We pretty much all exhibit minor solecisms as we overcome features of our culture and upbringing. When a gentle correction triggers complaints about monstrous PC allegations, I recommend a response like "Hey, it's no biggie. You're not Hitler. Why are you taking a dive?"
porpoise 10.30.16 at 11:29 pm ( 43 )
"Tribalism" in the sense it's being used here has nothing to do with "primitive" tribes; it's a reference to the ancient Roman tribes (the origin of the word) and the similar Greek phylai, which were essentially arbitrary groupings of citizens which struggled amongst each other because of group identification despite all being of the same ethnic group and nation. If there's a better word for this, it isn't ethnonationalism or fascism.Omega Centauri 10.31.16 at 1:19 am
I think poor to outright horrific epistemology in public discussion creates the basis for a lot of bad politics. Many have described our current time as a post-truth era. There have been some efforts towards fact-checking, but these seem to be simple refutations of facts, like Trump saying
that he didn't say X, when we can play a two-day old tape of him in fact saying X. Part of the manifestation of "tribalism", is the holding of in-group shibboleths, and the failure to critically examine them -- for fear that that might weaken their role as weaponized-memes. That and our
politics has severely degenerated into character assassination, much of it unfounded. So we can't even have a semi-rational discussion about issues, as political actors have to expend all their efforts fending off attempts to assassinate their reputation, and to level even more damaging attacks against their enemies.So we have to start reclaiming decent epistemological practices in our public discussion. I don't think this is going to be an easy or a quick process. But without it, we are highly vulnerable to emotion based movements and their demagogues. Graham's conspiracy theory observations, as well as those of bob@4 and loki@12, are symptoms of this degeneration of epiestemology.
John Quiggin 10.31.16 at 1:44 am
nastywoman @21 The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold. In US political discussion, "working class" is used to mean "no college degree" which isn't at all the same thing: it includes lots of small business owners, for example, and is also correlated with age.
The terminology appears to be driven by data. Education level is objective and easily elicited, whereas social class is not.
Mike Furlan 10.31.16 at 1:50 am
Racism (and sexism), something described by Tom Magliozzi's "Non Impediti Ratione Cogitationis-Unencumbered by the Thought Process" is impervious to argumentation. I've lost a lot of friends driven mad first by the Kenyan, and now by that "nasty woman."
Imagine a future scenario of yet another financial crisis the pushes unemployment above 30% and mere words will certainly fail you.
My hope is to build communities of loving people, so that we are not picked off one at a time as we compose blog posts.
Bob Zannelli 10.31.16 at 2:19 am ( 47 )
The great problem progressives face is that many , if not most of the working class really don't want social justice , they want to be the fat cats. And when they don't join the ranks of the fat cats they are easily convinced that this is because the liberals are stealing from them to give to the "welfare" people. Trump has expanded to include hordes of invading Mexicans and Muslims.Bob Zannelli 10.31.16 at 2:20 am
"There is no such thing as "the foundational organizing principle of American life." There are conflicting ideologies, a conflicting set of histories, and a conflicting set of regional traditions, plus founding documents that are subject to conflicting interpretations. There are certain experiences that might be presumed to shape some sort of common collective memory, but nowadays even that is debatable."
I agree with this.
js. 10.31.16 at 2:39 am ( 49 )
Re bruce wilderthe credibility of the left party as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility of economic populism as an antidote for racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)
1. I have no fucking idea what you got out of my comments, but just to be very clear, I would almost certainly support, and strongly, almost all _policies_ that you're likely to classify as "economically populist". (I prefer a term like "socially equitable"-in a material sense, not talking about symbolic stuff or the politics of recognition here. But e.g. I think repeal of the Hyde Amendment should go under exactly the same heading as minimum wage increases, trade deals with strong labor protections, etc.-which kind of thing gets lost when people talk about "economic populism".)
On the _politics_ you and I each think the other one is dead wrong, and both of us already know this, and neither of us is about to give half an inch, so I don't think there's much point in pursuing the argument. But…
2. …Entirely leaving aside racism for a minute, when has it ever seemed plausible that "economic populism" would be an effective counter to entrenched sexism? This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
--
Re WLGR
In contrast to a true petite bourgeoisie, which has no historical memory of the full trauma of capitalist expropriation, a labor aristocracy on some level is aware that its economically secure position relative to the still-fully-dispossessed global working class depends on accepting and defending the racist/nationalist logic of imperial expropriation
I'll have to think about more. My first instinct is to say - there's something to this, but the contrast is significantly less sharp than that (in both directions), but I need to think it out more.
WLGR 10.31.16 at 4:18 am
I seriously doubt a human social phenomenon as broad and universal as "identifying with an in-group against an out-group", if this is how y'all intend to define "tribalism", can be made narrow enough to usefully describe a specific tendency in modern capitalist politics.
It would be absurd to claim that nobody who isn't a fascist/racist/ethnonationalist/etc. determines their political priorities on some level according to ingroup/outgroup morality - speaking from experience in a US context, cosmopolitan liberals' disdain for "rubes"/"hicks"/"rednecks" from "flyover country" (probably the very people "tribalist" is intended to denote) could itself be described as "tribalist" in the sense you mean it, as for that matter could many socialists' disdain for liberals, or economists' disdain for sociologists, or old-money politicos' disdain for nouveau-riche boors like Donald Trump, or whatever.
People seem to be shying away from the idea that what defines so-called "tribalists" as a political force in developed capitalist nation-states is "tribalism" regarding a particular aspect of their worldview, namely race and nationality. I get that this is a contortion to avoid the politically charged act of calling people "racists" or "fascists" (although it's perplexing that so many people here have surrendered to reactionaries' bizarre contention that using these terms even when they're suitably descriptive is somehow foul play) but insinuating a categorical deficiency of basic human social consciousness compared to the categorically more enlightened social consciousness of the accuser is hardly any less insulting, even before you get into the racial implications of the term itself.
The best comparison I can think of is the way so-called "New Atheists" tend to group their ideological taxonomy according to the distinction between "rational" and "irrational": both of these are such thoroughly universal aspects of human thought and behavior that it can only be monumental hubris to characterize "rationality" as the very cornerstone of one's worldview and "irrationality" as the very cornerstone of an opponent's. A weaker and more defensible claim of rationality about a very particular aspect of one's worldview, such as the existence of deities, leaves open the possibility of irrationality in other aspects of their worldview, such as the alleged existential threat of Islam (about which many "rationalist" "New Atheists" are famously paranoid and reactionary). Now imagine the term "irrational" has been used for centuries as a sloppily interchangeable pejorative for various targets of systematic marginalization, oppression, enslavement, and genocide.
Graham 10.31.16 at 4:52 am ( 51 )
do those qualify as conspiracy?
Perhaps they doI would say that after talking to people the republican base is the coalition of
1. Plutocrats
2. Single issue abortion voters
3. Conspiracy theorists and religious conspiracy theorists (end times prophecy mixed with conspiracy)
4. True believers – that is free market types who believe that top end tax cuts and cutting minimum wage actually help the poor
5. Basket of deplorables you racist/mysoginest you name itType 1, 4 and some of 2 have been pealed off the R coalition during the trump campaign due to how shocking a candidate Trump is. However, type 3 and 5 are more energized than ever. If there was an effective way to counter type 3 republican voters their coalition would reduce by maybe half. I know that sounds like a lot but I've lived in the south and have a lot of friends there. Conspiracy is more powerful than people realize
nastywoman 10.31.16 at 4:57 am
'The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold.'
Not if we count all 'the workers' – who follow and will vote for Trump because he promised them to bring their jobs back -(with fascistic solutions)
According to a study of Alan Krueger that examined prime-age men (ages 25–54) who are not working or looking for work – there are alone about 7 million (lost) workers -- (and their wives and relatives) – many of them supposedly dropped out of the labor force altogether and reporting 'pain' that keeps them from taking jobs.
These workers – a lot of them who had lost their jobs by US companies outsourcing or terminating their jobs altogether after the economical collapse of 2008 – are a 'traditional constituency' of the left – and they should have been supported much better and NOT 'picked up' by Trump.
kidneystones 10.31.16 at 5:48 am ( 53 )
@ 31 Hi Joseph.The link actually takes you to page 2 of the Grenville article. He cites Hochschild on page 1: 'Arlie Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" captures the intractability of the discontent: "'You are patiently standing in a long line' for something you call the American dream. You are white, Christian, of modest means, and getting along in years. You are male. There are people of color behind you, and 'in principle you wish them well.' But you've waited long, worked hard, 'and the line is barely moving.'
Then 'Look! You see people cutting in line ahead of you!' Who are these interlopers? 'Some are black,' others 'immigrants, refugees.'
They get affirmative action, sympathy and welfare - 'checks for the listless and idle.' The government wants you to feel sorry for them."@50 WLGR "….rational" and "irrational": both of these are such thoroughly universal aspects of human thought and behavior that it can only be monumental hubris to characterize "rationality" as the very cornerstone of one's worldview and "irrationality" as the very cornerstone of an opponent's." Agreed. Happens here all the time, or used to.
Val 10.31.16 at 6:22 am
I tend to agree with what WLGR is saying about 'tribalists'. What porpoise @43 said is interesting historically, but I don't think it removes the overlay from later colonial and imperial associations of 'tribes' with 'primitives'/inferiors. So I don't think tribalism is a good word here, but not sure what would be a better one.
'Cultural nationalism' seems to come closest, at least in the Australian and British contexts I'm familiar with, because the so-called 'tribalists' seem to be people who have a strong idea about who are the 'right kind' of Australians (or Britons), and it is a mixture of cultural and racial/ethnic characteristics.
Here in Australia, it is certainly possible for people from non-Anglo backgrounds to be at least conditionally accepted by the 'tribalists' if they appear to embrace the tribalists' idea of Aussie culture (although it's conditional because the 'tribalists' who are 'accepting' the non-Anglo immigrants unconsciously see their ability to pass judgement as related to their own Anglo/white background, I think). Complicated, I am getting tied in knots, but I agree tribalist isn't the best word.
Neville Morley 10.31.16 at 7:24 am ( 55 )
Porpoise @43: I'm slightly puzzled by your version of classical history.Yes, the Romans had tribes, dating from the very beginning of their history; these *were* seen as relating to what you refer to as "primitive tribes", and according to at least one ancient source reflected the original composition of the Roman people from Latins, Sabines and Etruscans.
Yes, by the late Republic these were largely (not entirely) arbitrary divisions of more or less homogeneous citizens – but by that date there's no evidence that I'm aware of that they served any purpose other than organising voting in the comitia tributa; certainly no struggles because of group identification.
ZM 10.31.16 at 7:45 am bruce wilder,
"The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil."
I think economic populism is problematic really, depending on what policy settings you mean by "economic populism" I guess.
I remember thinking Australia could have more protectionist policies and that would be a solution to some of our economic issues, but then I did an economics group project with a woman from Singapore, and I realised a country like Singapore would be much worse off if other countries resorted to protectionism as a response to the financial crisis, and I was being unfair thinking more protectionist policy was the answer.
I don't think that the economic populism of the post-war era is really something we want to return to - in Australia at least it was connected to the racist White Australia Policy which was dismantled over time by 1973 and also to sexist policies that benefited male wage earners with the "living wage" but prevented women from taking up certain jobs or from working after marriage and that sort of thing.
Also in the post-war era Australia benefitted from trade networks with the UK as part of the Commonwealth, but I presume that some other countries didn't benefit from that set of international trade agreements (although I have never looked into what the international trade settings were to know which countries overall benefited and which countries disbenefited).
I don't think returning to economic populism is a solution. There were a lot of problems, both within countries with racism and sexism, and also between countries with unfair international trade agreements.
Any solution to current problems has to be equitable within the nation, and fair between nations. If economic populism is the answer it has to be a transformed economic populism that is capable of that, and also of managing our global and local environmental problems.
ZM 10.31.16 at 8:05 am ( 57 )
Also at the moment the Australian federal government is doing the "Racism. It Stops With Me" campaign around Australia trying to encourage everyday Australians to speak out against racism when they encounter it in their daily lives. I hope the US government does something similar if Trump loses the election, I really think anti-racism is better off being bi-partisan, and its a bad long term strategy by either main party in America to use race to divide voters.Alesis 10.31.16 at 10:20 am
I think the notion that racism is somehow regional in the US or that their are "conflicting histories" is pitch perfect example of the difficulty of keeping race in American life in focus I mentioned in my comment.
There is no region of the US in which race did not play a foundation role. No history of the US which does not rest in the disenfranchisement of "lower races". From Oregon to Florida. From New York to California.
From 1700 to 2016 this is an American constant and we will continue to the "Shocked! Shocked!" That more Trump's arise until we recognize that.
RichardM 10.31.16 at 10:53 am ( 59 )
> The terminology appears to be driven by data. Education level is objective and easily elicited, whereas social class is not.Race too, of course.
It doesn't seem like it would be beyond the power of a single guy who wanted to write a book to bring a torch and see if there is anything interesting hidden where the lampposts don't shine.
The raw data seems to be available[1], it just needs correlating with polls. That's a 2-3 man year project, probably doable within a 5 digit budget.
[1] https://dqydj.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2013scf_income_v_wealth_united_states.png
SusanC 10.31.16 at 1:41 pm
I think I agree that "conspiracy theory" is a strong element in current politics. It has been for a while, of course. See for example Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics .
In a democratic system, any party hoping to win has to somehow persuade the voters to vote for them and not the other party. Hence impugning the judgment or moral character of the opposing party is one of the obvious strategies. Accusing the other party of actually being crooks (as opposed to merely making poor decisions, or decisions that benefit some group other than the voters one wishes to court) takes this a step further. Once a party had taken the "they're a bunch of crooks" move, it would be surprising if they didn't leap at the chance when they can make a credible and specific allegation of lawbreaking by their opponent, instead of just relying on non-specific "would you buy a used car from this man?" rhetoric. ("man" -> "woman" if we're talking about Hilary Clinton rather than Richard Nixon, but the same principle holds)
The current round of populism seems to go further still, in attributing crookedness not just to their political opponents but to just about everyone involved in the entire system, e.g. by alleging that the election might be fraudulent.
The term "conspiracy theory" often has rather dismissive or perjorative connotations, but I think this basic political pattern could exist even if the opposing party were actually in fact crooks.
[And over here in the UK, it's also a kind of conspiracy theory that Tony Blair lied to the people about the case for going to war in Iraq. It's less obvious what Blair could actually be charged with criminally (as opposed to Hilary Clinton), but that hasn't stopped people calling for his head … possibly in a literal, rather than metaphorical, sense]
JimV 10.31.16 at 1:59 pm ( 61 )
Omega Centauri 10.31.16 at 1:19 am (#44): great comment, puts the finger on the problem, and deserves engagement. Unfortunately, all I have to offer are solutions from science-fiction: reliable lie-detectors and benign A.I. government. But how to avoid the obvious misuses and bad side-tracks on the way to utopian deployment of such technologies is beyond me. The Internet already gives us the ability to do our own fact-checking and analysis of issues, but it seems more effective at spreading lies.MPAVictoria 10.31.16 at 2:29 pm
Unions, unions, and more unions are the answer to the question of what the left should be doing going forward. Union members are more likely to:
– Vote
– Volunteer in support of progressive campaigns and causes
– Support progressive economic AND social policiesThe left's strategy going forward MUST include efforts to increase union density.
WLGR 10.31.16 at 3:46 pm ( 63 )
js, I guess the most important caveat re: the US (along with other settler societies) is that many Euro-Americans never actually went through proletarianization themselves, but probably would have been pushed into the working class they'd stayed in Europe through the heyday of capitalist industrialization, so they left Europe and joined the metaphorical shock troops of settler-colonialism in order to avoid it. The important point is that the combined spoils of settler-colonial expropriation, racial/national hierarchy, and continuing imperialist exploitation in the Third World have largely spared the much-ballyhooed "white working class" (i.e. labor aristocracy) from the abject poverty capitalism invariably wreaks on the working class proper - and on some level these people realize that as long as capitalism exists, this economic safety net is only really justifiable if there's some fundamental hierarchy of humanity dictating that they as a group deserve to be offered better lives than the people trying to "steal their jobs" and so on. The extent to which different people in different situations are compelled to articulate this ideology in fully conscious ways is another matter, but when they are, terms like "racist", "ethnonationalist", and "fascist" are entirely descriptive and not the least bit inappropriate.For anybody who hasn't heard of it, the book Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat is an accessible exposition of this kind of viewpoint (and for anybody who takes a glance and can't get past smarming at the crude typesetting and nonstandard semantic choices e.g. "Amerika", just grow up).
WLGR 10.31.16 at 3:52 pm
likbez @ 16,
it seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from culturally based ultranationalism is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial understanding of "race" and "racism".
Populations can be "racialized" according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are".
Although from my understanding Ukrainian citizenship like that in most of Europe is primarily determined by jus sanguinis, and like most of Europe it's still deep in the muck of racial discrimination toward e.g. the Roma, so unless I'm misreading things it seems like a stretch to put too much distance between Ukraine (or Europe in general) and even a very colloquial sense of "ethnonationalism". It can be articulated more explicitly by outright fascists or more obliquely by mainstream centrist parties, but it's still there.
And as long as we're talking about academic definitions of racism (I'm partial to the definition proffered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death", although Emmett Rensin's obnoxiously thorough definition is also good) funnily enough they tend to point at something pretty much identical to what Quiggin appears to mean by "tribalism". Except unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup , which seems like the only reason we'd bother talking about it as a specific mass political movement at all. And again, as annoying as it is to have pigheaded reactionaries accuse us of twisting language and "playing the race card" and so on, putting up with this noise is preferable to sacrificing useful concepts like racism and fascism from one's everyday understanding of the world, and it's certainly preferable to swapping out the terms in question for a racially charged term like "tribalism".
Anarcissie 10.31.16 at 4:13 pm ( 65 )
Mike Furlan 10.31.16 at 1:50 am @ 46:
'… My hope is to build communities of loving people, so that we are not picked off one at a time as we compose blog posts.'Or at least tolerant people who are positive about relationships with the Others even though they may err. Surely this would be a requirement for achieving equality, because otherwise you have the good people and the bad people, and the good people would have to defeat, rule over, or maybe even exterminate the bad people. P. J. O'Rourke once wrote that the reason Evangelicals adhere to the Republican Party (and Black people to the Democrats) is that that is the party which, while it doesn't do much for them, doesn't hate them. We have seen that expressed in the recent past not only with Trump's success but with the 'basket of deplorables'. Even a petrochemical plant poisoning your back yard may be preferable to submitting to the power of those who openly despise you and your kind.
But a lot of people want to fight.
John Quiggin 10.31.16 at 8:33 pm
Kurt Schuler @41 This seems an odd choice of post on which to claim special authority as a US resident, given that it's about developments common throughout the developed world, and refers to Australia and the UK, as well as the US.
js. 10.31.16 at 8:47 pm ( 67 )
On topic:
The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold. In US political discussion, "working class" is used to mean "no college degree" which isn't at all the same thing: it includes lots of small business owners, for example, and is also correlated with age.
Right. This is why I think petty bourgeois (petit bourgeois if you want to be all fancy and French about it) is a better term.
nastywoman 10.31.16 at 9:43 pm
In conclusion this analysis is still based on a traditional understanding of left and right which doesn't exist anymore in most European countries – as concerning the most important issues like globalization and protectionism the radical left and the radical right seem to agree.
And so the the traditional understanding of left and right is often used for justification of the own political position, while it is less and less helpful to explain voting behavior.
As in voting behavior the dividing lines are NOT so much anymore between left and right, but more between a liberal, cosmopolitan bourgeoisie in the center and on both edges populists who are propagating partitioning and protectionism.
This is true not only for Europe but also for the United States of Trump – aka the once 'United States of America' -(if this currently very popular joke in Europe is allowed?)
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crookedtimber.org
kidneystones 10.30.16 at 9:15 am 14
I read an interesting piece in the Nikkei, hardly an left-leaning publication citing Arlie Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right."
Doubtless some here would like to see more misery heaped upon those who do not look to the Democratic party as saviors, but Hochschild is rarely regarded as a defender of the American right.
Few dispute that a significant subset of any given population is going to regard in-group/out-group distinctions along the highly imprecise lines of 'race' and ethnicity, or religion. The question, for some, is what percentage?
The Nikkei article by Stephen Grenville concludes: Over the longer term, the constituency for globalization has to be rebuilt, the methodology for multilateral trade agreements has to be revived…"
Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines.
These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans. The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious lines as it does elsewhere.
Generally, I think John is right. The term 'racist' no longer carries any of the stigma it once held in part because the term is deployed so cynically and freely as to render it practically meaningless. HRC and Bill and their supporters (including me, at one time) are racists for as long as its convenient and politically expedient to call them racists. Once that moment has passed, the term 'racist' is withdrawn and replaced with something like Secretary of State, or some other such title.
I've no clear 'solution' other than to support a more exact and thoughtful discussion of the causes of fear and anxiety that compels people to bind together into in-groups and out-groups, and to encourage the fearful to take a few risks now and again.
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Nov 01, 2016 | www.unz.com
The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.
The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an "agreement" that demanded the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable.As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.
From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics – the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage.
Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: "We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence, or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked."
The West's medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars' worth of arms – is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half the children are malnourished.
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Oct 28, 2016 | www.reuters.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday it was hard for him to work with the current U.S. administration because it did not stick to any agreements, including on Syria.Putin said he was ready to engage with a new president however, whoever the American people chose, and to discuss any problem.
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Oct 26, 2016 | crookedtimber.org
PGD 10.24.16 at 6:28 pm 32
It is striking to me how even on the left the discussion of U.S. militarism and imperialism has been marginalized and does not come up much in casual conversation. We had an active peace movement through the worst days of the Cold War, and then there was a bit of a resurgence of it in response to the Iraq War. But Obama's acceptance of the core assumptions of the 'War on Terror' (even as he waged it more responsibly) seems to have led to the war party co-opting the liberals as well until there is no longer an effective opposition. The rhetoric of 'humanitarian intervention' has been hugely successful in that effort.One of the most depressing things about this election campaign to me has been to see the Democrats using their full spectrum media dominance not to fight for a mandate for left policies, but to run a coordinated and effective propaganda campaign for greater U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, focusing on demonizing Putin and on humanitarian intervention rhetoric around Aleppo and the like.
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May 22, 2015 | Antiwar.com
The Russian-Turkish plan to pipe Russian gas through Turkey and then on to Macedonia and thence into southern Europe has long been opposed by the West, which is seeking to block the Russians at every turn. Now the Western powers have found an effective way to stop it: by overthrowing the pro-Russian government of Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.The original plan was for the pipeline to go through Bulgaria, but Western pressure on the government there nixed that and so the alternative was to pipe the gas through Macedonia and Greece. With the Greeks uninterested in taking dictation from the EU – and relatively impervious, at the moment, to Western-sponsored regime change – the Macedonians were deemed to be the weak link in the pro-Russian chain. That was the cue for the perpetually aggrieved Albanians to play their historic role as the West's willing proxies.
After a long period of dormancy, suddenly the "National Liberation Army" (NLA) of separatist Albanians rose up, commandeering police stations in Kumanovo and a nearby village earlier this month. A 16-hour gun battle ensued, with 8 Macedonian police and 14 terrorists killed in the fighting. The NLA, which reportedly received vital assistance from Western powers during the 2001 insurgency, claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Simultaneously, the opposition Social Democratic Union party (SDSM) – formerly the ruling League of Communists under the Stalinist Tito regime – called for mass demonstrations over a series of recent government scandals. SDSM has lost the last three elections, deemed "fair" by the OCSE, with Gruevski's conservative VMRO-DPMNE (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity) enjoying a comfortable majority in parliament. But that doesn't matter to the "pro-democracy" regime-changers: SDSM leader Zoran Zaev declared "This will not be a protest where we gather, express discontent and go home. We will stay until Gruevski quits."
Sound familiar?
Macedonia has a long history of manipulation at the hands of the NATO powers, who nurtured the Muslim-Kosovar insurgency to impose their will on the components of the former Yugoslavia. As in Kosovo, the Albanians of Macedonia were willing pawns of the West, carrying out terrorist attacks on civilians in pursuit of their goal of a "Greater Albania."
During the 2001 Albanian insurgency, an outgrowth of the Kosovo war, the EU/US used the NLA as a battering ram against the Slavic authorities. The NLA was never an authentic indigenous force, but actually an arm of the US-armed-and-trained "Kosovo Liberation Army," which now rules over the gangster state of Kosovo, crime capital of Europe. A "peace accord," the Ohrid Agreement, was brokered by the West, which kept the NLA essentially intact, albeit formally "dissolved," while the Macedonian government was blackmailed into submission. I wrote about it at the time, here and here.
Follow that last link to read about the George Soros connection. Soros was originally a big booster of Macedonia, handing them a $25 million aid package and holding the country up as a model of multiculturalism. However, the Macedonians soon turned against him when he sided with the Albanians in their demands for government-subsidized Albanian-language universities and ethnic quotas for government jobs. When he told them to change the name of the country to "Slavomakejonija," they told him to take a walk. Soros, a longtime promoter of Albanian separatism – he played sugar daddy to a multitude of front groups that promoted the Kosovo war – is now getting his revenge.
Prime Minister Gruevski, for his part, charges that the sudden uptick in ethnic violence and political turmoil is the work of Western "NGOs" and intelligence agencies (or do I repeat myself?) with the latter playing a key role in releasing recordings of phone conversations incriminating several top government officials. A not-so-implausible scenario, given what happened in neighboring Ukraine.
Speaking of which: the government of President Petro Poroshenko is leading the country into complete financial insolvency and veritable martial law. Aid money from the West is going into the prosecution of the ongoing civil war, and the country has already defaulted on its huge debt in all but the formal sense. Opposition politicians and journalists are routinely murdered and their deaths reported as "suicides," while it is now illegal to describe the ongoing conflict with the eastern provinces as anything but a "Russian invasion." Journalists who contradict the official view are imprisoned: Ruslan Kotsaba, whose arrest I reported on in this space, is still being held, his "trial" a farce that no Western journalist has seen fit to report on. Kotsaba's "crime"? Making a video in which he denounced the war and called on his fellow Ukrainians to resist being conscripted into the military. Antiwar activists throughout the country have been rounded up and imprisoned. Any journalist connected to a Russian media outlet has been arrested.
Yes, these are the "European values" Ukraine is now putting into practice. Adding ignominy to outrage, a law was recently passed – in spite of this Reuters piece urging Poroshenko to veto it – which makes it a crime to criticize the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that fought on the side of the Germans during World War II. As Ha'aretz reports, a group of 40 historians from major Western academic institutions issued an open letter protesting this outrage:
"Not only would it be a crime to question the legitimacy of an organization (UPA) that slaughtered tens of thousands of Poles in one of the most heinous acts of ethnic cleansing in the history of Ukraine, but also it would exempt from criticism the OUN, one of the most extreme political groups in Western Ukraine between the wars, and one which collaborated with Nazi Germany at the outset of the Soviet invasion in 1941. It also took part in anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine and, in the case of the Melnyk faction, remained allied with the occupation regime throughout the war."
Ukraine is showing its true colors, which I identified last year, to the point where even the usually compliant Western media is forced to admit the truth.
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May 17, 2015 | sputniknews.com
A sinister atmosphere surrounds the Clinton Foundation's role in Ukrainian military coup of February 2014, experts point out.
It has recently turned out that Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, a vocal proponent of Ukraine's European integration, made huge contributions to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State. Although the foundation swore off donations from foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton was serving as a state official, it continued accepting money from private donors. Many of them had certain ties to their national governments like Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman and ex-parliamentarian.
Remarkably, among individual donors contributing to the Clinton Foundation in the period between 1999 and 2014, Ukrainian sponsors took first place in the list, providing the charity with almost $10 million and pushing England and Saudi Arabia to second and third places respectively.
It is worth mentioning that the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation alone transferred at least $8.6 million to the Clinton charity between 2009 and 2013. Pinchuk, who acquired his fortune from a pipe-making business, served twice as a parliamentarian in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada and was married to the daughter of ex-president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.
Although the Clinton's charity denies that the donations were somehow connected with political matters, experts doubt that international private sponsors received no political support in return. In 2008 Pinchuk pledged to make a five-year $29 million contribution to the Clinton Global Initiative in order to fund a program aimed at training future Ukrainian leaders and "modernizers." Remarkably, several alumni of these courses are current members of Ukrainian parliament. Because of the global financial crisis, the Pinchuk Foundation sent only $1.8 million.
Experts note that during Mrs. Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, Viktor Pinchuk was introduced to some influential American lobbyists. Curiously enough, he tried to use his powerful "friends" to pressure Ukraine's then-President Viktor Yanukovych to free Yulia Tymoshenko, who served a jail term.Viktor Pinchuk has always been one of the most vocal proponents of Ukraine's European integration. In 2004 Pinchuk founded the Yalta European Strategy (YES) platform in Kiev. YES is led by the board including ex-president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. According to the website of the platform, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Kofi Annan, Radoslaw Sikorski, Vitaliy Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Petro Poroshenko and other prominent figures have participated in annual meetings of YES since 2004.
No one would argue that proponents of Ukraine's pro-Western course played the main role in organizing the coup of February 2014 in Kiev. Furthermore, the exceptional role of the United States in ousting then-president Viktor Yanukovich has also been recognized by political analysts, participants of Euromaidan and even by Barack Obama, the US President.
Experts note that after the coup, the Ukrainian leadership has actually become Washington's puppet government. Several foreign citizens, including American civilian Natalie Jaresko, Lithuanian investment banker Aivaras Abromavicius and Georgia-born Alexander Kvitashvili have assumed high posts in the Ukrainian government. It should be noted that Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine's Financial Minister, have previously worked in the US State Department and has also been linked to oligarch Viktor Pinchuk.
So far, experts note, the recent "game of thrones" in Ukraine has been apparently instigated by a few powerful clans of the US and Ukraine, who are evidently benefitting from the ongoing turmoil. In this light the Clinton Foundation looks like something more than just a charity: in today's world of fraudulent oligopoly we are facing with global cronyism, experts point out, warning against its devastating consequences.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150323/1019905665.html#ixzz3YT3FykcISee also: US Intelligence Services Behind 2014 Ukraine Coup – EU Parliament Member
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Oct 24, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
ilsm -> to pgl ... October 23, 2016 at 04:10 AM
Ruling elite has a crook for a candidate appealing to fears and prefers her wars for oil to be with Russia.DrDick -> ilsm ... October 23, 2016 at 08:54 AM , 2016 at 08:54 AM
More stupidity. First off, the American elite (like all elites) is far from unitary and most of them back Republicans, though they hedge their bets by also supporting centrist Democrats.ilsm -> DrDick... , October 23, 2016 at 11:25 AMGreed is a unifier. What they said on SNL opening skit...... Klinton is the republican.anne : , October 23, 2016 at 05:23 AMhttps://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/790154851682545665EMichael -> anne... , October 23, 2016 at 05:28 AMGlenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
Exploiting Cold War rhetoric & tactics has helped her win the election. I guess the idea is: deal with the aftermath and fallout later.
Katrina vandenHeuvel @KatrinaNation
How does new Cold War-- which ends space for dissent, hurts women & children, may lead to nuclear war--help what Clinton claims she is for?
4:36 AM - 23 Oct 2016
I would submit that there are very few voters that will vote from Clinton because of this "cold war rhetoric" schtick. Greenwald keeps falling and cannot get up.ilsm -> EMichael...likbez -> ilsm...Few "will [move the] vote from Clinton because of this "cold war rhetoric" schtick.Those "few" were awake during the 80's and see the nuclear/neocon dystopian horror behind Clinton. While Trump mentioned using nukes, Hillary's nuke policy is 'well' laid out by Robert Kagan and the hegemon interests.
Recall Mao said "go ahead......' Nukes are just another form of the pointless body count strategy.
Like before WWI, Hillary might be "a symptom of degenerate [neoliberal] aristocracy clinging to irresponsible power." Gen. Butler, "War Is A Racket." is still a classic book on the subject.See an interesting discussion at
http://crookedtimber.org/2016/10/22/unnecessary-wars/#comments
Here are a couple of comments
== quote ===greg 10.22.16 at 11:02 pm ( 29 )
All war is for profit. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were fought for profit. The profit from Iraqi oil and whatever was expected from Afghanistan were irrelevant. Weapons of mass destruction, the Taliban, even Isis, were and are all issues that could have been more efficiently handled, but instead were pretexts to convince the credulous of the necessity of war.
The real profit was the profit taken by the military-political-industrial complex in the treasure and stolen rights of the American people. That is the bottom line for why we went to war, and why we are still there, and why, if our elites persist, we might go to war with Russia or China.
The good news is that, because of the unrelenting depredations by American elites on the treasure and rights of the people, the United States is increasingly unable to wage war effectively. The bad news is that our elites are too blind to see this.
America: Consuming your future today.
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Peter T 10.23.16 at 8:56 am
faustusnotes
fear of "socialism" – meaning, broadly, greater popular participation in politics – was explicitly a major factor in the German and Russian decisions for war. In both cases, they hoped victory would shore up increasingly fragile conservative dominance. It also underlay British and French attitudes. 1870-1914 was a very stressful time for elites.
1915 was too early for any of the combatants to settle. By mid-late 1916 there were some voices in favour of negotiations, but the Germans would have none of it then or in 1917. By the time the Germans were prepared to talk (mid 1918), they had lost. Fear of socialism was again a major factor in the post-war settlements.
Liberals of today see World War I as the great disaster that shattered the pre-war liberal order. In the same way, the generation post 1815 saw the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars as the great disaster that shattered the happy old order. The extent of the damage and loss was much the same in each, although World War I took 5 years to do what the French wars did in 25.
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Omega Centauri 10.23.16 at 1:13 am ( 33 )
The decision to continue it seems to be a natural consequence of the human proclivity towards doubling down. This operates on many levels, some of which are related to the need for vindication of those involved in the decision to start the conflict.
There is also the horror that if you end a war without achieving something the masses can identify with as victory, then the families of those killed will see that their loved ones died in vain -- for someone else's mistake (very bad for your political future).
And of course if you quit, what is to stop the enemy from extracting reparations or worse from you, because in his eyes, you are the criminal party. Much easier to try yet one more offensive, or to lure a formerly neutral party into joining in and opening up another front, which you hope will break the stalemate.
The thing that appalls me so much about the Great War, is how so many nations were dragged in, by promises of booty . In many ways it resembles the Peloponnisian war, in its inability to allow neutrals to be neutrals.
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crookedtimber.org
bruce wilder 10.22.16 at 8:46 pm ( 25 )
The case against war was fully developed and strongly argued in the years before 1914 . . .
Was it? I wonder about that.
Continuing the war, once the bloodbath is underway and its futility is fully evident (which surely is objectively the case as early as 1915), seems to me to be the point where moral culpability on all sides applies most forcibly. It is on this point that I think arguments from before the war cannot have the weight the horror of experience must give them. Elite leadership across Europe failed.
It was a symptom of degenerate aristocracy clinging to irresponsible power. Continuing to turn the crank on the meat grinder without any realistic strategic hope or aim should have condemned the military establishment as well as the political establishment in several countries where it didn't. Hindenburg was there to appoint Hitler; Petain to surrender France.
It is inexplicable, really, unless you can see that the moral and practical case against war is not fully developed between the wars; if there's a critique that made use of experience in its details in the 1920s and 1930s and made itself heard, I missed it - it seems like opposites of such an appreciation triumph.And, before the war? Are the arguments against war really connecting? There's certainly a socialist argument against war, based on the illegitimacy of war's class divisions, which were conveniently exemplified in military rank and reactionary attitudes among the officer class. That internationalist idea doesn't seem to survive the war's first hours, let alone first weeks.
Universal conscription in France and Germany created a common experience. Several generations learned not so much the horror of mass slaughter as war as the instant of national glory in dramatic crises and short-lived conflicts with a decisive result.
bruce wilder 10.22.16 at 8:47 pm.26Certainly, there had been arguments made before the war and even several disparate political movements that had adopted ideas critical of imperialism by military means. I question, though, how engaged they were with mainstream politics of the day and therefore how fully developed we can say their ideas or arguments were.
Consider the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 as examples of the state of the practical politics of a program for peace. The first Conference was called by the Czar and the second by Theodore Roosevelt - no little irony in either case.
Without looking it up I recall Barbara Tuchman using the 1907 Conference as an illustration of the growing war fever gripping western (so-called) civilization, as many of the delegates apparently sat around discussing how they longed for a cleansing war.
I cannot pretend to understand the psychology, but I accept that it was prevalent, as least for a certain class. Morally reprehensible this glorification of war? I certainly think so. Was it engaged by fully developed argument? When?
The long effort by reactionary forces to assemble a coalition capable of defeating Napoleon had created in Europe what for a time was called the Concert of Europe. Austria, Prussia and Russia initially cooperated in suppressing liberal and nationalist aspirations and that effort gradually morphed into efforts to harness or channel rising liberalism and nationalism and industrial power.
It was the evolved apparatus descended from Metternich's Congress of Vienna thru Bismarck's Congress of Berlin that made wars brief and generally decisive in regard to some policy end.
The long list of successive crises and brief wars that stevenjohnson references above - often cited as evidence of the increasing fragility of the general peace - could just as well be cited as evidence for the continued effectiveness of the antique Concert of Europe in containing and managing the risk of general war. (Fashoda 1898, Venezuela 1902, Russo-Japanese War 1905, Agadir 1911, Balkan Wars 1911-1912 - it can be a very long list).
It was against the background of this Great Game of elite diplomacy and saber-rattling and brief, limited wars that efforts had been made to erect an arguably more idealistic apparatus of liberal international peace thru international law, limitations of armaments and the creation of formal mechanisms for the arbitration of disputes.
If this was the institutional program produced by "the fully developed and strongly argued" case against war, it wasn't that fully developed or strongly argued, as demonstrated by the severe shortcomings of the Hague Conferences.
It was one of the mechanisms for peace by international law - the neutrality of Belgium mutually guaranteed by Britain and Germany in the Treaty of London 1839 - that triggered Britain's entry as an Allied Power and general war. There is, of course, no particular reason Australia should have taken an interest in Belgium's neutrality, but it was that issue that seemed to compel the consensus of opinion in favor of war in Britain's government.
The consequences were horrific as mass mobilization and industrialized warfare combined with primitive means of command-and-control and reactionary often incompetent leadership to create a blood-bath of immense scale. (See my first comment.)
What I don't find is the alternative lever or mechanism at the ready, put in place by this fully developed argument against war. The mechanism in place was the neutrality of Belgium guaranteed by international law (arguably reinforced in the stipulations of the Hague Conference of 1907). If Germany doesn't violate Belgian neutrality, the result in the West at least is stalemate as France and Germany are evenly matched across their narrow and mostly impassable frontier; in the East, Russia must concede to Germany even as Austria must concede to Russia; - instead of a general conflagration, the result is another negotiated settlement of some sort, perhaps arbitrated by Britain or the U.S.
The urgent questions of the day regarding the organization of modern liberal polities in the territories of Ottoman Turkey, Hapsburg Austria and Czarist Russia - what is the strongly argued and fully developed case there? How is the cause of Polish nationalism, or Finnish nationalism or Yugoslav nationalism to be handled or managed without violence and war?
The antique system of a Concert of Europe had kinda sorta found a way by means of short and decisive engagements followed by multi-power negotiation, a pattern that had continued with the gradual emergence of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania. But, where was the argument for managing irredentism and nationalist aspiration peacefully?
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Sep 14, 2016 | marknesop.wordpress.com
Posted on September 14, 2016...let's roll the counters back to September 18, 2013 – almost exactly three years ago. Just before, of course, the glorious Maidan which freed Ukrainians from the oppressive yoke of Russia. At that moment in history, western analysts were trembling with eagerness to vilify Yanukovych, but were still hopeful that he would stick his head out of his shell long enough to sign the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the European Union. Washington maintains a kind of ongoing paternal affection for revolution – which is always less painful and noisy when it's a continent or two away – but is practical enough to accept an easy victory if that's the way it plays out.
It didn't play out like that, of course, and an American-backed coup ensued in which Yanukovych offered to give the revolutionary political figures everything they had asked for – early elections, a provisional coalition government with the egghead among the revolutionaries as Prime Minister, the works. They were a little taken aback at how easy it was, and then decided it wasn't enough – Yanukovych must be holding back something if he gave in that easily, and therefore he must be tricking them, since the script called for the dictator-president to cower in fear and to be flung into the street in disgrace. So they went ahead with the traditional revolution, gaining nothing at all thereby except the ushering-in of a self-appointed revolutionary junta, and the empowerment of fervent fascist nationalists who had previously had to keep their admiration for the Nazis on the down-low.
It is worth mentioning here – because whenever it is brought up, the response ranges from amnesia to outright denial it ever happened – that the pre-revolutionary government went into it with its eyes wide open and a good working awareness of the probable consequences. Yanukovych and Azarov, at least, were briefed that cutting off trade with Russia, which Brussels and Washington insisted upon, would likely be disastrous for the Ukrainian economy. Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boiko announced that Ukraine was not blowing off the deal entirely; it was just suspending it until the state could be sure that increased trade with Europe would compensate for the loss of the Russian market. Before that, Yanukovych and Azarov tried energetically to broker a triumvirate coalition of Ukraine, Russia and the EU, to sort out the trade issues that Brussels insisted made such an arrangement impossible. Not to put too fine a point on it, Russia and Ukraine proposed a tripartite forum which would see Ukraine as a bridge between the Eurasian Economic Union and the European Union. Brussels emphatically rejected it, confident that it could pry Ukraine away from Russia, because the initiative was always strategic rather than economic .
The government of the day in Ukraine saw fairly clearly what was likely going to happen – and so did we, didn't we? Yes, we did, as detailed here . We pointed out that nearly half those Ukrainians who answered a survey that they wanted Ukraine to join the EU did so because it would strengthen and grow the Ukrainian economy, but that it was difficult to see how that would come about considering 60% of Ukraine's trade was with the former Soviet market, and highlighted the unlikelihood that Europe was going to pick up 60%-plus of Ukraine's trade, resulting in prosperity. We pointed out that only half as many people who responded to the survey that Ukraine's relations with Russia were characterized as 'friendly' said the same of relations with the EU. So, you could kind of see how (a) a failure to see rapid economic benefits as a result of signing the agreement, coupled with (b) the opposite effect, a precipitate drop in trade, plus (c) severing of relations with a country nearly a quarter of Ukrainians considered a friend, in exchange for a necrophiliac relationship with a trade union few cared much for except for the usual percentage of lapdog dissidents, was very likely to result in widespread dissatisfaction and an explosive situation. Did it? It sure did.
Anyway, as much fun as tooting our own horn is, that's not exactly what I wanted to talk about. I want to review, in exquisite detail, the panorama of failure that is Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's (RFE/RL) feelgood graphic presentation for the rubes and dimwits on how association with the EU was going to be better than sex in warm chocolate for Ukraine. And that forecast has turned out to be about as accurate as a prediction that Justin Bieber would be nominated UN Secretary-General by popular acclaim.
But let's not leave it at that. Because you know that if those who forecast disaster for Ukraine – based on, I think, the ability to read and to add – had somehow been wrong, and Ukraine had sprinted into double-digit economic growth and taken over the role of driving engine of the European economy, we would never have been allowed to forget it. Turnabout, then, being fair play…
1. The cream-skimming oligarchy, accustomed to riding to wealth on the backs of its panting workforce, will be out – swept away by a new era of small-business confidence. Did that happen? Hardly. The President Ukraine eventually elected was fingered for starting up a new offshore shell corporation even as his troops were being driven into a disastrous encirclement at Ilovaisk. The same old oligarchs continue to control more than 70% of Ukraine's GDP. The Anti-Corruption Committee appointed by Poroshenko, unsurprisingly, declined to investigate him for corruption . Now more than two years into his presidency, Poroshenko still has not sold his assets as he promised to do if elected, and his businesses continue to fatten his personal bottom line in direct contravention of Ukrainian law and the Constitution. Never a peep of protest about that, though, from Poroshenko's International Advisory Council , which includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and make-believe-economist wooden-head Anders Aslund. This council continues to advise the President of what remains the most corrupt country in Europe .
2. The boss at the company where you work will have to learn different ways to lead, because screaming and ranting are not acceptable in Europe. In many European countries, the boss is just a senior worker who you can call by his first name. This sort of rolls into the first point, but it seems sort of self-evident that if Ukrainian companies do not do more business with Europe and replace their lost Russian markets, and the same oligarchs still own the same companies, little will change about employee-employer dynamics. According to Eurostat , Ukraine's trade with the EU was down sharply in 2015 in both imports and exports. A decrease in imports is not particularly surprising – Ukraine is living on handouts from the international community while it continues to pour funding into its armed forces so that it can pursue the game of civil war, and hasn't any money. Not to mention thousands of Ukrainian working stiffs are employed by Roshen, owned by the President, so I wouldn't be trying out, "Morning, Petro – how's it hanging?" on my tongue any time soon if I were you. The new Prime Minister, Vladimir Groysman, is unlikely to be 'Vova' to very many workers, either. He's quite wealthy in his own right, at least part of that wealth shunted from EU development funds to his father's cement and asphalt company. However, as an unnamed Ukrainian politician is said to have quipped to a Ukrainskaya Pravda reporter when Groysman received his new appointment, "Do you know what the difference is between Groysman and Yatsenyuk? When Volodymir [Groysman] will start stealing, he will steal off the profit. Yatsenyuk was doing it off the loss." It's good to see Ukrainians haven't lost their sense of humour.
3. As the standard of living improves in Ukraine, people will begin to trust each other. In Yanukovych's Ukraine, people tended to trust only their own small circle, but in the New Ukraine, the doormat will be changed from "Beat It, Shyster!" to "Come On In, Friend!" I'll let Thomas C. Theiner take over on the subject of trust in Ukraine, post-Maidan. A committed Atlanticist neoconservative and former cheerleader for Ukraine, Theiner lived in Kiev for 5 years, and has the advantage of personal knowledge. In his assessment, if you are the type who likes to throw away money, go to Vegas instead of Kiev – that way, at least there's a chance you'll see a return. Thomas?
"Even today, it's impossible for a foreign businessman to start a company in Ukraine without being harassed for bribes. If you pay, they just demand more; if you don't pay, you won't succeed at all. The only way out is to hire a local to help you navigate the bureaucracy and grease the correct wheels. But whomever you hire will charge a 400-500 percent premium. Hiring a foreign law company with offices in Kyiv, which charges Western prices, is the only alternative."
Expectations of a dramatic change were not realized, and the changing of the guard only brought in different crooks. No significant progress has been made on corruption. If your company is successful without the correct palms being greased, an expedient will be found for getting you out of town for a few days. When you come back, the company will be under new ownership, and like George Thorogood in "Move it on Over" , your key won't fit no more. Move over, little dog, a big ol' dog's movin' in. All puffickly legal, as well, by Ukrainian courts.
4. Without gross, horrible, corrupt Yanukovych in charge, trust in the police will rise and pretty soon they will be rescuing kitties from trees instead of taking bribes and roughing people up. Just last month, at least three police officers in western Ukraine beat Oleksandr Tsukerman and shot him dead in front of his relatives, including his mother. Around 200 local residents gathered in front of the police station, and uniformed officers had to keep them back when the detained police officers who are accused of the crime were brought out. In case you were thinking the dead man was a violent criminal who somehow invited his own death, the Ukrainian Police Chief ordered the entire station disbanded. A group of people in the same region were beating up passers-by right in front of the police , and officers involved in a wrongful death and four officers who raped a woman and fractured her skull were not dismissed from their jobs. Call me a pessimist, but that doesn't sound encouraging to me.
5. The difference in social status between the very wealthy and the middle class will gradually disappear, and rich people will no longer be VIP's. It's pretty easy to show this one up for the epic piece of optimistic stupidity it was. The President of Ukraine is also an active businessman and multimillionaire, while per-capita GDP adjusted for purchasing power, for the ordinary folk, has collapsed and the unemployment rate is leaping upward in great jagged peaks. Yet according to the State Statistics of Ukraine, wage growth has been steady and touched a record high in July 2016. A month later, a Ukrainian miner on live TV set himself afire at a press conference to protest wage arrears. This desperate protest is alleged to have taken place after industrial action and hunger strikes failed to move the government. How can these two realities co-exist? I guess it's easy for wages to be at a record high if you don't…you know…pay them.
6. Women's rights; in the European Parliament, a third of the members are women. In the Verkhovna Rada under jerky Yanukovych, only 10% were women. Well, folks, the glorious Maidan was not for nothing. The current Rada is 12.02% women – only 87.98% are men. The gain is mostly illusory, as only 416 seats of the Rada's statutory 450 are occupied due to the banning of certain political parties . But a third of 416 would be 138 women rather than the current 50, so women's rights groups should not relax just yet, as some work obviously remains to be done.
7. In Yanukovych's Russia-friendly Ukraine, intolerance was the rule and blacks and homosexuals mostly stayed hidden. Most Ukrainians would not vote for a Jewish presidential candidate, and even fewer for a black one. How things have changed! Now Nazi symbology in public is commonplace in Ukraine , whilst the government ostentatiously banned Communist symbology and recognized Nazi-era collaborators as Freedom Fighters. As best I recall, the Nazis were not known for their tolerance. How many Ukrainians in the new Europe-ready Ukraine would vote for a black or a gay presidential candidate? A Gay Pride march in Kiev scheduled for 2014 was canceled when authorities refused to police the event and said they could not guarantee the participants' safety from homophobic violence. At another attempt in 2015 , international supporters from Canada had to cross three lines of police to get to the meeting point, and were given a list of things to not do: Don't wear bright colours. Don't kiss or hold hands. Don't speak to the police unless spoken to. The bus company which was approached by Kiev Pride to take the marchers to and from the march allegedly refused, saying, "We'll take the diplomats, we'll take the journalists, but we're not taking any faggots." Clearly, tolerance not only has not improved, but is in full retreat and is not a priority for the new government.
8. Life expectancy. In 2010 , the year Yanukovych was elected president, it was 70.2 years. In 2016 , it's 69.6. I'm having a hard time seeing that as an improvement.
9. Health. Sports clubs encourage a healthier lifestyle. Most of Ukraine's sports clubs and facilities were inherited from the Soviet Union. A search for "Poroshenko opens new sports club" yielded nothing much except the news – I guess I shouldn't be surprised – that he owns one : (search for "Poroshenko's allies show up on website listing tax-haven firms") Fifth Element, at 29A Electrykiv St. in Kiev. That's also the registered address of Intraco Management, owned by deputy head of Roshen Sergey Zaitsev. Intraco Management showed up in Mossack-Fonseca's records, which came to be better known as the Panama Papers. Meanwhile, health care in Ukraine remains deplorable and there has been no noticeable improvement.
In fact, although you can find the occasional bright spot if your business is finding bright spots and spinning them into a tapestry of success, Ukraine is a nation in free-fall. The currency is trading at 26.33 UAH to the US greenback , slowly edging up to that truly scary record spike of 33.5 to the dollar in February of last year. Pre-Maidan, the rate was about 7 hryvnia to the dollar. When Poroshenko assumed his present office, it was 12 to the dollar. The president's approval rating has corkscrewed down to around 10% . Believe it or not – and I frankly find it incomprehensible there can be an electorate anywhere, whose fingers must be nothing but scar tissue now from being burnt so many times, that so adamantly will not change its ways – the current leader in the polls is… Yulia Tymoshenko. Yes, indeed; if anything can save the floundering country, it's another stinking-rich oligarch. Yulia Tymoshenko, multi-millionaire. Ukrainian family living wage , 9,950 UAH per month, about $383.00 USD. Per month. And the reduced price for gas for households was canceled in May , as an anti-corruption measure.
By the benchmarks set in the happy-time graphic, Ukraine is failing catastrophically in every metric, gasping for breath like a fish on the kitchen floor with someone standing on it. There is zero chance of any kind of peace deal this year, since Poroshenko arbitrarily decided to reverse the agreed-upon terms and announce no moves toward autonomy for the east could take place until Russia returned control of the border to Ukraine – causing Russia to withdraw from the Normandy format, since negotiations with such a fucking blockhead are a complete waste of everyone's time.
To be completely fair to RFE/RL, they did not originate the graphic; that came from the highly-imaginative Institute of World Politics in Ukraine. But it fits perfectly with RFE/RL's style; it's hard for a one-time CIA-funded leopard to change its spots, and many of it columnists seem to rely far more on imagination themselves when they are writing their material. So they can own it.
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Oct 24, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
ilsm -> Dan Kervick... , October 24, 2016 at 03:22 PM
Anne and I have seen this for a while.likbez -> ilsm... , -1Nothing new Strobe Talbott was closeted, and brought Mrs Kagan aka Victoria Nuland in to State in 1993.
Bill bearded the bear breaking Kosovo and Bosinia out of Serbia...........
The down payment for Kyiv in 2012 was in 1996.
Nuland occupies a special place among neocons.This former associate of Dick Cheney managed to completely destroy pretty nice European county, unleashing the horror of real starvation on the population.
Ukraine now is essentially Central African country in the middle of the Europe. Retirees often live on less then $1 a day. most adults (and lucky retirees) on less then $3 a day. $6 a day is considered a high salary. At the same time "oligarchs" drive on Maybachs, and personal jets.
Sex tourism is rampant. Probably the only "profession" that prospered since "Maydan".
Young people try to get university education and emigrate to any county that would accept them (repeating the story of Baltic countries and Poland).
Now this a typical IMF debt slave with no chances to get out of the hole.
Politically this is now a protectorate of the USA with the USA ambassador as the real, de-facto ruler of the country. Much like Kosovo is.
Standard of living dropped approximately three times since 2014.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraines-perpetual-war-perpetual-peace-17614
"If the country continues on its present course, Odessa's reformist governor Mikheil Saakashvili has noted sarcastically, Ukraine will not reach the level of GDP it had under former president Viktor Yanukovych for another fifteen years"
"In Kiev, which is by far the wealthiest city in Ukraine, payment arrears for electricity have risen by 32 percent since the beginning of this year."
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Oct 23, 2016 | www.moonofalabama.org
Terry | Oct 22, 2016 11:28:30 AM | 1Just a re-post from the last thread to the new . "In a remarkable conflict-of-interest, Fox News analyst and former Clinton operative Douglas E. Schoen has failed to disclosed to readers that he's been paid millions of dollars from Ukrainian agents to incite a war between the United States and Russia.rg the lg | Oct 22, 2016 11:29:52 AM | 2Before inciting war with Russia, Schoen worked for Bill Clinton and brokered meeting (for $40,000 a month) between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire oligarchs." http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/09/09/fox-news-analyst-and-clinton-operative-douglas-e-schoen-accepted-millions-of-dollars-to-agitate-for-war-with-russia/
Personally I don't know if I 'trust' RT any more than I 'trust' American media ... but I do pay attention to both.Here's an article to get the ball rolling: what is propaganda? Who is guilty of propagandizing news?
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/363737-rt-uk-msm-hysteria-russia/
Of course, I truly think that Telesur is about as balanced as we can get.
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Oct 21, 2016 | www.bloomberg.com
As Europeans assess the fallout from the U.K.'s Brexit referendum , they face a series of elections that could equally shake the political establishment. In the coming 12 months, four of Europe's five largest economies have votes that will almost certainly mean serious gains for right-wing populists and nationalists. Once seen as fringe groups, France's National Front, Italy's Five Star Movement, and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands have attracted legions of followers by tapping discontent over immigration, terrorism, and feeble economic performance. "The Netherlands should again become a country of and for the Dutch people," says Evert Davelaar, a Freedom Party backer who says immigrants don't share "Western and Christian values."
... ... ....
The populists are deeply skeptical of European integration, and those in France and the Netherlands want to follow Britain's lead and quit the European Union. "Political risk in Europe is now far more significant than in the United States," says Ajay Rajadhyaksha, head of macro research at Barclays.
... ... ...
...the biggest risk of the nationalist groundswell: increasingly fragmented parliaments that will be unable or unwilling to tackle the problems hobbling their economies. True, populist leaders might not have enough clout to enact controversial measures such as the Dutch Freedom Party's call to close mosques and deport Muslims. And while the Brexit vote in June helped energize Eurosceptics, it's unlikely that any major European country will soon quit the EU, Morgan Stanley economists wrote in a recent report. But they added that "the protest parties promise to turn back the clock" on free-market reforms while leaving "sclerotic" labour and market regulations in place. France's National Front, for example, wants to temporarily renationalise banks and increase tariffs while embracing cumbersome labour rules widely blamed for chronic double-digit unemployment. Such policies could damp already weak euro zone growth, forecast by the International Monetary Fund to drop from 2 percent in 2015 to 1.5 percent in 2017. "Politics introduces a downside skew to growth," the economists said.
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Oct 14, 2016 | www.nytimes.com
Global economic weakness and a rise in inequality appear to be causing a disturbing growth in ethnic nationalism. Leaders today often do not openly declare themselves to be ethnic nationalists - in which identity is defined by perceived genetic, religious or linguistic heritage rather than democratic ideals or principles. But political appeals to such forms of identity are nevertheless widespread.
In the United States, despite his attempts to woo minority voters, Donald J. Trump appears to derive support from such sentiment. In Moscow, Vladimir V. Putin has used Russian nationalist sentiment to inspire many of his countrymen. And we see growing ethnic political parties inspired by national identity in other countries.
It is natural to ask whether something so broad might have a common cause, other than the obvious circumstantial causes like the gradual fading of memories about the horrors of ethnic conflict in World War II or the rise in this century of forms of violent ethnic terrorism. Economics is my specialty, and I think economic factors may explain at least part of the trend.
Yet economic growth continues, though at a reduced pace, and not just in the United States. According to the International Monetary Fund , real world gross domestic product was 29 percent higher in 2015 than it was just before the recession, in 2007. It has just grown at a lower rate than before, 3.2 percent a year in the eight years after 2007 compared with 4.5 percent a year in the eight years ending in 2007. Perhaps that doesn't sound like a big enough difference to affect political outcomes.
But the modest slowdown could be a big part of the explanation for the apparent rise of ethnic nationalism, if combined with another factor: rising inequality, along with considerable fear about future inequality.
The numbers are stark. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, earnings have been basically static. In the bureau's language, "median usual weekly earnings - in constant (1982-84) dollars (employed full time)" has hardly grown in a generation. The total increase since this data series began in 1979 has been only 1.2 percent, or 0.03 percent a year. The increase has been less than 1 percent since 2007. Even such paltry economic growth is going to the very top, not to the median wage earner. That means that roughly half of full-time wage earners are doing less well in real terms than their parents were.
Benjamin M. Friedman of Harvard University, in his book "The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth" (Knopf, 2005) , said that at a deep level people make judgments about the economic progress that they see in their own lifetimes, and in comparison with the progress made by the previous generation, especially their own parents. Few people study economic growth statistics. But nearly everyone knows what they are being paid. If they realize that they are doing less well than their forebears, they become anxious. And if they can't see themselves and others in their cohort as progressing over a lifetime, their social interactions often become angry, resentful and even conspiratorial.
Ethnic nationalism creates an ego-preserving excuse for self-perceived personal failure: Other groups are blamed for bad behavior and conspiracies. Often, ethnic, racial or religious conflict follows. Among the horrific examples are the atrocities committed in the name of nationalism during World War II - not coincidentally following the Great Depression . Mr. Friedman provides other such instances from the last two centuries in which ethnic conflict followed slow economic growth.
He does point out many exceptions to these generalizations: Some poor and unequal societies experience very little violence. But it appears that a sense of falling behind economically among a substantial segment of a population does encourage ethnic nationalism and conflict.
The rise in inequality in our time represents a seismic shift in economic power away from the working class. Its cause is many-faceted, including globalization, the decline of labor unions, changes in political alignments and advancing information technology that is replacing jobs.
Even those who have not lost out yet in terms of economic power are fearful that they might. The causes of inequality, particularly advances in information technology, are not going away soon. These perceptions have damaged people's sense of economic security, even beyond what economic data reveal to be objectively true.
A 2015 study published in The American Economic Review by Michael Kumhof of the Bank of England, Romain Rancière of the International Monetary Fund and Pablo Winant of the Bank of England found that both the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of 2007-9 had their origins, in part, in rising inequality.
Both were accompanied by increases in borrowing by low- to middle-income people, who tried to maintain their standards of living. High-income people, described by the authors as desiring wealth for its own sake, did the lending. The loans attracted investors because high rates of interest compensated them for the risk of default.
This model described purely rational people, who don't really exist. It could be made more realistic with some reference to psychology: Borrowing produced a sense of personal shame. A desperate optimism arose from wishful thinking bias , distorting judgment. This led to profound social consequences and anger after the bubbles burst.
Linking these causes to the rise of ethnic nationalism is imprecise; these factors reflect a long-term loss of confidence. Such fears are often vague and ill formed, but their effects are powerful.
There are some remedies, even if they are not popular or easily executed.
Hillary Clinton's proposals to raise taxes on those with the very highest incomes to fund programs for lower-income people, for example, may not generate much enthusiasm from those whose incomes have not grown as expected and who may be doing less well than their parents. That is because many people do not like the sound of a proposed handout even if it might help them; they aspire to prove their own worth by earning a good income, and yet that prospect eludes them.
But something has to be done about the two trends of rising inequality and weak economic growth, for if they continue we may see more unhappiness, discontent and political disruption. Substantial fiscal stimulus might be helpful, but it has been blocked. Making the tax system progressive enough to break the trend toward ever greater income inequality has also been beyond our grasp, yet it may be the best option we have.
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Oct 12, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Science Officer Smirnoff October 12, 2016 at 11:58 am
PlutoniumKun October 12, 2016 at 1:09 pmAs you recall the French Exocet , a souped-up V1 in respects, has been "out there" a long time.
. . . In the years after the Falklands War, it was revealed that the British government and the Secret Intelligence Service had been extremely concerned at the time by the perceived inadequacy of the Royal Navy's anti-missile defenses against the Exocet and its potential to tip the naval war decisively in favor of the Argentine forces. A scenario was envisioned in which one or both of the force's two aircraft carriers (Invincible and Hermes) were destroyed or incapacitated by Exocet attacks, which would make recapturing the Falklands much more difficult.
Actions were taken to contain the Exocet threat. A major intelligence operation was also initiated to prevent the Argentine Navy from acquiring more of the weapons on the international market.[16]
The operation included British intelligence agents claiming to be arms dealers able to supply large numbers of Exocets to Argentina, who diverted Argentina from pursuing sources which could genuinely supply a few missiles. France denied deliveries of Exocet AM39s purchased by Peru to avoid the possibility of Peru giving them to Argentina, because they knew that payment would be made with a credit card from the Central Bank of Peru. British intelligence had detected the guarantee was a deposit of two hundred million dollars from the Andean Lima Bank, an owned subsidiary of the Banco Ambrosiano.[17][18] wiki
Mark P. October 12, 2016 at 2:03 pmYes, and it was an Exocet that put a big hole in the side of the USS Stark in 1987 .
The French are major proliferisers of modern weapon systems. They and the Russians have put a lot of weapons out there which are affordable for small States but have the potential even to worry the biggest militaries.
Much of world history depends on the relative availability of defensive/offensive weaponry. Back when the castle was the apex of military might any local thug with the money to build one could become a lord and rule his little kingdom. Then when cannons became powerful enough to reduce them to rubble empires came back into vogue. When battleships ruled the waves, this allowed the great seagoing nations to dominate, but the invention of the torpedo along with submarines and long range bombers levelled things up for smaller nations such as Japan. Then the aircraft carrier swung things back to empires in the post war years. But now I think high speed sea skimming and ballistic missiles along with long distance torpedoes have swung things back to 'weaker' nations. Even the Houthi's in Yemen seem to have obtained missiles capable of knocking out an ex-US combat vessel.
JohnnyGL October 12, 2016 at 3:39 pmThe democratization of missile technology is the big military story of the last three decades. Look at, for instance, at how Hezbollah's Sheik Nasrullah kicked off the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict by striking an Israeli warship during a TV presentation. Very slick.
In fac, talking of the USS Stark, all those ships with their big aluminum superstructures will burn down to their waterline when hit. The Emirates even recently banned aluminum in tower buildings recently.
Aluminum's vulnerability didn't matter during the decades of the Cold War when if the Big One started the surface navy wouldn't really do any fighting because it would all be up anyway, and meanwhile smaller groups and nations - especially those with brown skins - didn't have access to serious missile technology.
The big transition point came with the Falklands War when the UK's admirals smartly stood their aircraft carriers beyond range till Margaret Thatcher phoned to Mitterand and intimated that the British might use their Polaris submarine to nuke Buenos Aires unless Mitterand gave up the Exocet codes. Think I'm kidding? Thatcher got the codes; they didn't call her Mad Maggie for nothing.
As for why they're still building surface warships with aluminum superstructures, it's military Keynesianism and everybody would have to be submariners otherwise, which wouldn't be fun..
Felix_47 October 12, 2016 at 4:59 am+1 to this
I think the Pentagon did an analysis under GW Bush about attacking Iran and buried the idea.
I believe this is why Iran made a big dash for surface-to-surface missiles to defend themselves, and DID NOT have to go for nukes. If you've got anti-ship missiles, you can push those carriers far enough out to sea which limits the ability to launch airstrikes.
Plus, with anti-ship missiles, you can put the Persian Gulf on total lockdown and watch the Saudis suffocate. Iran has already been dealing with sanctions for years, so it's no sweat to them!
If the USA ever has an aircraft carrier sunk, the unipolar moment is indisputably over.
PlutoniumKun October 12, 2016 at 6:40 amI suspect that for the money put out the Chinese get a lot more defense. In fact, if they are spending 200 billion and we are spending 600 billion we can be sure that they are close to parity. Of course, we are spending a lot more than 600 billion when you add in VA, disability and retirement costs as well as current war outlays. The entire defense industry in both China and the US is obsolete given modern communications and immigration trends anyway. How are you going to bomb Yemen when the excess population in Yemen ends up driving taxis in Washington D.C. or why bomb Syria when all it does is encourage the Syrians to move to the west? What is the difference between a Syrian or Afghan in Idaho or Berlin and one in Damascus or Kabul? The national state is becoming obsolete and military action is powerless against demography.
Colonel Smithers October 12, 2016 at 8:09 amThe key paradox for the US military is that wars are won not by who has the greatest number of tanks, ships or aircraft, but by the country that can put the greatest number of tanks, ships and aircraft into the field of battle . The US has by far the biggest military in the world, but it has also put itself in the position of needing a military a multiple of everyone elses because of the sheer geographical spread of commitments. China's military is tiny and primitive compared to the US, but in reality any war is likely to be geographically limited – to (for example) the South China Sea. China has every chance of being able to match the US in this kind of war.
As for China's blue sea commitments, I actually doubt they have any intention of really pursuing a long range war capacity. The Chinese know their history and know that a military on this scale can be economically ruinous. But there is a naval military concept known as fleet in being , which essentially means that even a theoretical threat can force an enemy to pour resources into trying to neutralise it. China I think is using this concept – continually setting off rumours of new strike missiles, long range attack aircraft, new aircraft carriers, etc., to force the US (aided and abetted by the defence industry) to spent countless billions on phantom threats. Some of these rumours may be true – many I suspect are simply deliberate mischief making by the Chinese, with the serious aim of dissipating America's military strength.
PlutoniumKun October 12, 2016 at 11:25 amA new theatre for that mischief and dissipation is Africa. My parish has a Nigerian priest. When he's away, we usually get another Nigerian. At supper for the Bishop last Saturday, our priest, an Ibo, and another, a Hausa from Kano, said that many, if not, most Nigerians think Boko Haram is assisted by the US and, to a lesser extent, France as it gives the pair an excuse to maintain troops in the region and keep their client state governments in line.
JohnnyGL October 12, 2016 at 3:31 pmWhether or not its true, the fact that intelligent people think that way shows everything you need to know about how US and Western soft power has been frittered away the past few years through stupidity and cynicism.
readerOfTeaLeaves October 12, 2016 at 11:25 amI recall a NYT or WaPo article saying those Iraqis were convinced the US was in bed with ISIS, too.
Is there a pattern here?
lyman alpha blob October 12, 2016 at 2:16 pm+10
Yes, and I still take taxis, so I hear a fair amount of Amharic and other African dialects.
Unsure what the Uber drivers speak.
Mark P. October 12, 2016 at 5:43 pmWhy bomb? Because then Uncle Sugar gets to take their stuff after they all leave their war torn countries. If some of the refugees are pissed off and blow up some people in their new homelands, why that's just a little collateral damage and when has the establishment ever cared about that? It just gives them an excuse to surveil everyone.
Ka-ching! – that's why the bombs.
Christopher Fay October 12, 2016 at 5:17 amWhat can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.
The worst is atomic war.
The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
- that crazy commie madman, Dwight Eisenhower, in 1953 on military Keynesianism.
PlutoniumKun October 12, 2016 at 7:24 amClubOrlov argues that the difference in military spending between the U. S. and Russia is lessened as our spending is bloated and misspent due to corruption.
The Russians are treating spending as a scarce natural resource. In the U. S. we spend as McCain says like drunken sailors.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.tw/2016/08/a-thousand-balls-of-flame.html#more
Cry Shop October 12, 2016 at 5:49 amI'd be very sceptical that the Russian military somehow avoids the rampant corruption in other parts of the Russian economy.
By necessity, the Russian military has always been parsimonious and has had to get more firepower for its rouble than other wealthier countries. Much of their weaponry is very simple, effective and robust, and Russian tactics are as good if not better than any other major military. However, they've had their white elephants too – their new Yasen Class attack submarines are far too expensive as an example, and poor quality control in manufacturing has meant that many of their more advanced weapons have dubious real world utility. Their large ships are generally a disaster, a complete waste of money (this is why they were buying assault ships from France).
fajensen October 12, 2016 at 6:45 amUSA military power is just as great as it has ever been, if not greater. What's changed is the traction it had in forcing alignment from partners who held very little cultural/common ground with the USA.
Biggest factor in that loss of traction is that Russia (and to a lesser extent China) is not exporting revolution anymore. Both China and Russia engage in real politic with limited military power that makes them a far less threatening partner than the USA for any state that is willing to transfer some of the wealth to them that the USA formerly extracted (and usually these new players pay much better price with less interference). Even Vietnam, which has real historical reasons to be Sinophobic, probably fears China less than it does a US Government which attempts to subvert Vietnam's economy through currency dependency. How so Russia, which is no threat to any of Vietnam's interests.
What constrains Russia's power isn't the military, but it's relatively minuscule consumer market. Similarly, China's trade protectionism for semi-finished and finished goods has constrained it's ability to project power to those nations, like Australia, Argentina & Russia, which subsist primarily on raw material exports. China is in a better situation than Russia to change this situation and expand it's power into Europe, though I doubt Xi is the man for it.
Colonel Smithers October 12, 2016 at 10:04 amWhat's changed is the traction it had in forcing alignment from partners who held very little cultural/common ground with the USA.
I'd claim that the alignment came not so much from US military might but rather from the US offering better terms – at least to "white countries"; plenty of brutal regime change and CIA skulduggery was applied on brown folks, still is, in fact.
Now, it seems to the world that the US have become so bloated with it's own military and perceived cultural/economic superiority that the US offers pretty much nothing in return to anyone, regardless of the favors asked. Everyone are treated as colonies and vassals, except perhaps a few leaders and decision makers (Or maybe it was always like that but now we got the Internet and we know).
This state of affairs pisses people off.
In addition, people are beginning to understand that what is applied to brown people abroad today can happen to them also tomorrow. That in the US world order, everyone who is not an American have no value compared to an American* and can be killed, tortured, disappeared with no consequences what so ever. Because fuck Nürenberg.
Therefore, everyone else being in some way enemies of the US merely by belonging to another tribe than America, has realized that there is no good thing coming from aligning with America, sooner or later the "military option" or "the regime change" will come out and we will be knifed in the back. Those who can actively resist, those who have the option aligns with other powers, those who cannot do this, will drag their feet and try to avoid direct confrontation, maybe something will show up?
Stupid, weak, nations like Denmark and Sweden go all in with 110% effort on the fantasy that they will be seen as good people with an American core, struggling to claw it's way out, from inside their unworthy un-American bodies and therefore they will be protected – at least for a while*.
*)
Americans themselves are beginning to realize that anyone who isn't rich & covered in lawyers can be fined, jailed or even killed right in the street by the police for basically nothing at all. This is beginning to grate on their understanding of their place in the pecking order. But, everyone still blame Whites, Latinos, Blacks, Feminists identity politics works, keeps the contraption from falling off the road.This also shows why the silly idea of escape by being super-American will not work: Americans are treated like shit too.
Synoia October 12, 2016 at 12:02 pmThank you. I like your point about "stupid, weak nations". French is my second language. English is my third. I watch French TV news most days and visit the place regularly, business and pleasure, and studied there. I am surprised, but may be should not be, at how American France has become / is becoming. Hollande and Sarko, who has American connections by way of his stepmother and half brothers, have made the country a poodle in a way that de Gaulle and Chirac would not. Most French people I know seem ok or indifferent to that. Part of that Americanisation seems to be the English / Americanised English forenames given to French children. I have observed that trend in (western) Germany and even francophone communities well away from the French mainland.
OIFVet October 12, 2016 at 11:26 amI am reminded of a friend of mine in South Africa, who was somewhat older than s 20 years Olds.
Adolf, my friend, was born before WW II, and the name was quite popular then. It became less popular of after WW II.
BRUCE E. WOYCH October 12, 2016 at 12:24 pmBravo! Sorry but I can't resists linking to an old comment of mine to reinforce the point about stupid and weak nations. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/links-101215.html#comment-2501325 .
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best example of what being a loyal US "ally" entails: corrupt local elites working against their country's own best interests lest they become a target for a color revolution. Meanwhile their much-suffering subjects don't know which way to turn to hide their collective embarrassment.OIFVet October 12, 2016 at 12:47 pmMore current samples for your file sir:
(1)
Hungary: MP Questioned Over Fraud Allegations
https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/5715-hungary-mp-questioned-over-fraud-allegations
Published: Wednesday, 12 October 2016 12:31
(2)
Ukrainian Top Officials Involved in Secret Offshore Deals
Published: Tuesday, 04 October 2016 09:00
by Graham Stack
https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/5691-ukrainian-top-officials-involved-in-secret-offshore-deals
======================
OCCRP: (MORE ARTICLES) https://www.occrp.org/index.php
ORGANIZED CRIME and CORRUPTION REPORTING PROJECTBRUCE E. WOYCH October 12, 2016 at 2:24 pmMy files are bulging to the bursting point. The latest fiasco in Colonia Bulgaria was the election of the new GenSec of the UN. Bulgaria had a leading candidate, until Merkel decided that she wanted Germany to play an outsized role in the UN, and bring EU politics into the UN. Disaster ensued:
So the initial Bulgarian candidate Bokova looked like the ideal choice. Here was a chance for little old Bulgaria to shine on the world stage for the first time in over a millenium, possibly since the Bulgars burst out of Central Asia on horseback. Add this to the background context: it is unprecedented for a country to nominate a candidate officially, a front-runner no less, and then do a public switcheroo before the world's eyes. But that's exactly what Bulgaria did just a week ago. Bokova was dumped and Georgieva spooned up. Disaster ensued, as I predicted it would in previous columns .
Bulgaria lost its once-in-a-millenium chance at shaping the world. As the record shows, Gutteres won.
If Bulgaria were a normal healthy country, the Prime Minister would now resign and the government would fall. Because, it was the Prime Minister's decision to switch candidates. He did so despite knowing that two-thirds of Bulgarian citizens preferred his first candidate. Boyko Borissov is his name, a deeply underachieving dull-witted schemer-survivor in the wooden tradition of the region. A short-fingered Bulgarian if ever there was one. He first came to the fore as the bodyguard of the last Bulgarian Communist leader. That should give you a clue to the man's qualities. So why did Boyko 'switch horses'? Why did he do it?
Brutal, just brutal kick in the butt from the ally's MSM. And that's only one of many reactions. Because even the bosses don't like grovelling toadies. They want to control them, but they will never invite them for an afternoon tea. Particularly a marionette whose mafia ties the Congressional Quarterly wrote about. Not that these organized crime ties are a disqualifier, if anything the US likes that because it makes Borissov easy to control.
At least Merkel's scheming and Bulgaria's humiliation had an unexpected positive effect: Power and Churkin managed to put on a BFF act in front of the cameras and allied to get Gutteres elected as SecGen, while delivering a massive kick in Merkel's ample backside. Takes some doing to get the US and Russia to not only see eye to eye on anything, but to also work in concert. Bravo!
PS This also proves a historical truth: doing Germany's bidding never ends well for Bulgaria. Or for any other nation.
hemeantwell October 12, 2016 at 8:36 amOIFVet (compliments) You may need a new file
Somewhere over / under the rainbow
(orchestrated social media unrest)
(1)
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-secretly-created-cuban-twitter-stir-unrest
By ALBERTO ARCE and DESMOND BUTLER and JACK GILLUM Apr. 4, 2014 4:25 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) - In July 2010(2)
White House denies 'Cuban Twitter' ZunZuneo programme was covert
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/white-house-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-covert
Paul Lewis and Dan Roberts in Washington
Thursday 3 April 2014 14.26 EDT
--------------–BRUCE E. WOYCH October 12, 2016 at 12:53 pmglobal scenario that the down-to-earth presidents of China and Russia seem to have in mind resembles the sort of balance of power that existed in Europe.
The article floats away here. China and Russia might want to have something that "resembles" that time, but the analogy overlooks the fact that the relatively calm state of affairs - Franco-Prussian war? - on the European continent after Napoleon coexisted with savage colonial expansion. The forms of superexploitation thereby obtained did much to help stabilize Europe, even as competition for colonial lands became more and more destabilizing and were part of what led to WW1.
Now we're in a situation in which superexploitation options are largely gone. Routine profit generation has become difficult due to global productive overcapacity, leading to behavioral sinkish behavior like the US cannibalizing its public sector to feed capital. Since the late 19th century US foreign policy has been organized around the open markets mantra. It may be possible for the Chinese, with their greater options for economy manipulation, to avoid the crashes the US feared from lack of market access. But the current situation on its face does not have anything like the colonial escape valve available in the 19th century.
BRUCE E. WOYCH October 12, 2016 at 1:56 pmOf course,duplicitous political COPORATISM means systems over a systemic characterized by marked or even intentional deception that is now sustained and even spearheaded by state systems. Many contemporary liberal idealists living in urban strongholds of market mediated comfort zones will not agree to assigning such strong description to an Obama administration. It is too distant and remote to assign accountability to global international finance and currency wars that have hegemonic hedge funds pumping and dumping crisis driven anarchy over global exploit (ruled by market capital fright / fight and flight). To the extent that colonialism or neocolonialism does not actually hold fixed boundary ground is irrelevant, since assets are more differential and flexible needing only corporate law to sustain strict boundaries on possession or instruments that convert to the same power over assets. No one, of course, wants to assess stocks and bonds as instruments of global oppression or exploitation that far exceeds 19th century's crude colonial rule. Recall, however, how "joint stock" corporations first opened chartered exploit at global levels under East and West Trading power aggregates that were profit driven enter-prize. So in reality the current cross border market system of neoliberal globalization is, in fact, a stealth colonialism on steroids. TPP is part of that process in all its stealthy dimensions.
John Rose October 12, 2016 at 3:04 pm(TPP In a Nutshell http://labornotes.org/2016/09/october-all-hands-deck-stop-tpp )
"The TPP is a corporate power grab, a 5,544-page document that was negotiated in secret by big corporations while Congress, the public, and unions were locked out.
Multinationals like Google, Exxon, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, UPS, FedEx, Apple, and Walmart are lobbying hard for it. Virtually every union in the U.S. opposes it. So do major environmental, senior, health, and consumer organizations.
The TPP will mean fewer jobs and lower wages, higher prices for prescription drugs, the loss of regulations that protect our drinking water and food supply, and the loss of Internet freedom. It encourages privatization, undermines democracy, and will forbid many of the policies we need to combat climate change."http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/30/ttp-ttip-map-shows-
how-trade-deals-would-enable-polluter-power-grab
TTP & TTIP: Map Shows How Trade Deals Would Enable 'Polluter Power-Grab'
by Andrea Germanos
The new, interactive tool 'gives people a chance to see if toxic trade is in their own backyard'Dead Squashed Kissinger October 12, 2016 at 8:54 amFrom a long range view, 19th Century compitition using black and brown property and lives was an improvement over battling face to face with neighbors. It was an expansion of tribal boundaries, somewhat.
Now, few argue openly (except in presidential debates) against those boundaries encompassing brown and black members of the human race. We engage our ruthlessness less openly in covert operations, corporate predations and financial hegemony.
Even awful behavior can be seen as an advance.BRUCE E. WOYCH October 12, 2016 at 1:26 pmThis is very handy, thanks. However the conclusion stops short of what the SCO is saying and doing. They have no interest in an old-time balance of power. They want rule of law, a very different thing. Look at Putin's Syria strategy: he actually complies with the UN Charter's requirement to pursue pacific dispute resolution. That's revolutionary. When CIA moles in Turkey shot that Russian jet down, the outcome was not battles and state-sponsored terror, as CIA expected. The outcome was support for Turkey's sovereignty and rapprochement. Now when CIA starts fires you go to Russia to put them out.
While China maintains its purist line on the legal principle of non-interference, it is increasingly vocal in urging the US to fulfill its human rights obligations. That will sound paradoxical because of intense US vilification of Chinese authoritarianism, but when you push for your economic and social rights here at home, China is in your corner. Here Russia is leading by example. They comply with the Paris Principles for institutionalized human rights protection under independent international oversight. The USA does not.
When the USA goes the way of the USSR, we'll be in good hands. The world will show us how developed countries work.
BRUCE E. WOYCH October 12, 2016 at 1:48 pm"RULE OF LAW" up front and personal (again?)
Now why would the USA be worried about global rule of law?
An Interesting ideal. No country above the law." US President Barack Obama has vetoed a bill that would have allowed the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia.
In a statement accompanying his veto message, Obama said on Friday he had
"deep sympathy" for the 9/11 victims' families and their desire to seek justice for
their relatives.The president said, however, that the bill would be "detrimental to US national interests" and could lead to lawsuits against the US or American officials for actions taken by groups armed, trained or supported by the US.
"If any of these litigants were to win judgements – based on foreign domestic laws as applied by foreign courts – they would begin to look to the assets of the US government held abroad to satisfy those judgments, with potentially serious financial consequences for the United States," Obama said."
-----------------------
To the tune of "Moma said " by The Shirelles –
.Oh don't you know Obama said they be days like this,
..they would be days like this Obama saidBraden Smith October 12, 2016 at 10:07 amOne interesting irony is that in Obama's TPP "The worst part is an Investor-State Dispute Settlement provision, which allows a multinational corporation to sue to override any U.S. law, policy, or practice that it claims could limit its future profits."
(source: http://labornotes.org/2016/09/october-all-hands-deck-stop-tpp )
"Though the Obama administration touts the pact's labor and environmental protections, the official Labor Advisory Committee on the TPP strongly opposes
it, arguing that these protections are largely unenforceable window dressing."NotSoSure October 12, 2016 at 10:37 amI think you're overstating the Russian military advantage in Syria and Ukraine, while ignoring the real dysfunction in US foreign policy. Key policy thinkers at State and Defense still believe that it's worth the time and effort for the US to project military influence in Syria. This is a policy position entirely driven by Israel's existential concern over Iran. There are no substantial US interests in Syria right now. We aren't actually fighting ISIS, because if we were, we would be targeting the foreign funding coming from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. As a consequence, if we simply withdrew from Syria, Russia would be left propping up a regime that would be fighting an ongoing insurgency against foreign jihadists.
In other words, it would be wasting its time and resources on a pointless fight to build a state in the Middle East (sounds familiar). Russia is the one with a military base in Syria that they need to protect. Let them waste the time and energy defending their military assets.
Instead, the US should be reducing its Middle East footprint and selectively engaging in key diplomatic efforts. The Saudis and the Gulf States are committed to fighting it out with Iran for Middle East influence. There's no reason for us to pick sides in this fight. Let them engage in proxy wars without US military assistance and then, when the time is right, we can offer our role as a neutral broker and negotiate terms that actually benefit our strategic interests.
The reason we can't play this role in the region is because we are so myopically focused on policies that are pro-Israeli. Eliminate Israel's interests from the calculations, and our policies would change dramatically.
Adams October 12, 2016 at 11:43 amIt's a good thing. The US has become that quote in The Dark Knight: "you die a hero or live long enough to become the villain."
readerOfTeaLeaves October 12, 2016 at 12:05 pmGreat article and comments. Surprised there has been no speculation here about what HRC will do with the geopolitical hash created by neo-lib economics and neo-con foreign and military policies. We know what Obama did (not) do with what was really a political mandate. Certainly he has been constrained politically and, perhaps, personally ( shame what happened to those nice Kennedy boys, they had so much "promise.") However, as has been ably pointed out in comments above, his actions where he was not constrained are the flag in the wind. You don't have to be a weatherman .
Hillary, of course, has already shown her colors. There will be no Nobel based on promises and high expectations. She will relentlessly pursue the PNAC programme and the "exceptional, essential nation" fantasy, contra the analysis above. You can take the girl out of the Goldwater, but you can't take the Goldman out of the girl.All that glitters ..
PlutoniumKun October 12, 2016 at 12:22 pmFascinating thread, thanks.
I stream a lot of Korean dramas, and lately Chinese dramas have also been showing up in my video feeds; it is clear that Taiwan and China are trying to access eyeballs globally, as a means to gain soft power – and revenue.The earlier Chinese dramas seeking a global audience seemed shrill, melodramatic, and approximately the production quality of the old static BBC costume dramas of the 1970s. I found them unwatchable.
However, China has recently put out something that is quite possibly a masterpiece of storytelling. " Nirvana in Fire " [NiF] is an epic story of betrayal, treachery, loyalty, and trust, with some incredible martial arts into the mix. NiF is described as the Chinese Game of Thrones . (I am unable to make a good comparison, as I have not watched GoT). However, I'd argue that NiF is every bit as good as the BBC's brilliant " The Tudors " (2007, with Jonathon Rhys Meyers).
I take NiF as a sign that despite what sounds like a hideous housing bubble, China's cultural endeavors are developing at a level that is as outstanding as anything that any nation can produce. And in a world where the Internet seems to be morphing into a vast, global video distribution service (woohoo!!), that is no small thing. Judging from social media stats, it appears to be quite formidable.
This new Silk Road is often spoken of as physical, and I do not take it lightly; nevertheless, the silkier threads are probably the telecom infrastructure carrying subtitled dramas to mobiles, desktops, and smart TVs around the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_In_Fire
From the wiki page: "The drama was a commercial and critical success, surpassing ten million views by its second day,[4] and receiving a total number of daily internet views on iQiyi of over 3.3 billion by the end of the series.[5][6] Nirvana in Fire was considered a social media phenomenon, generating 3.55 billion posts on Sina Weibo that praised its characters and story-line."
I searched for 'Facebook posts on GoT' but could not get any results that I trusted enough to include here. It's a fair guess, however, they did not amount to 3,550,000,000 comments. Whoever gets to stream their dramas across Africa and S. America will develop a formidable 'soft power' resource.NotSoSure October 12, 2016 at 2:57 pmThat series sounds very interesting, I must look for it.
I think the Chinese are quite serious about using film and TV as soft power, but they face a paradox in that it is hard to promote quality drama while also indulging in heavy censorship. The Chinese are very good at using carrots and sticks to 'tame' artists – just look at how a formerly great film maker like Zhang Yimou has gone from making beautiful and subtle allegories about Chinese society to now just making big empty commercial epics which are little more than propaganda pieces. I doubt Chinese film makers will ever have the freedom to make the sort of challenging work that Korean film makers do all the time (Japanese film makers once did this too, but seem to have given up). But they probably have enough talent to make plenty of entertaining fantasy TV and film, but whether it will travel so well I'm not sure.
sgt_doom October 12, 2016 at 2:17 pmLOL, I watched that drama too, and I'd agree. Most Chinese dramas are unwatchable, but as NiF showed, it's not because there are no capable series makers, etc, because there are plenty of those in China. The problem is rather the producers for whatever reason think that local audiences are only interested in melodramas and idols dressed in ridiculous costumes.
And please, NiF is better than GoT. I am a big fan of the books, and the TV series to me is laughable.
I just find this difficult to believe that America's diplomatic power is in decline.
After all, is the great-grandson of what was once the top dope dealer on the planet, Francis Blackwell Forbes, now the SecState (that would be John "Forbes, Winthrop, Dudley" Kerry)?
Color me confused . . .
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Oct 12, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Not only did Obama have a free hand in Congress, he had the biggest popular mandate for reform of any president since 1932. And he fucked up.
PlutoniumKun October 12, 2016 at 4:46 amColonel Smithers October 12, 2016 at 5:39 amNot mentioned, of course, is that TPP etc., are central to the US's strategy to counter Russia and China, and it seems these Pacts are on the verge of failing miserably.
There seems plenty of evidence in the Pacific in particular that many countries, from Myanmar and Philippines to Australia are trying to follow a strategy of neutrality, playing the big powers off each other, rather than attaching themselves to the US or China. I suspect we'll see more of this in the Middle East and Europe and even South America.
Also, militarily its worth pointing out that Russia and China etc., do not have to match the US's fleets to gain equality on the oceans. They just have to have the technology for areal denial – i.e. sufficient long range missiles to make the US reluctant to send aircraft carriers within striking distance. This is similar to the early 20th Century situation where relatively cheap submarines allowed weaker countries to prevent the traditional great Naval Powers from having things their own way. Although in its own way, this proved very destabilising.
The other factor not mentioned is that the the neocons have squandered the US's greatest single strength – its 'soft' power. The US is simply not respected and liked around the world the way it was even in the Cold War. I think the hysteria around Obama's election was at least partly based around the worlds longing for a US they could like. Among other things, Obama squandered that and left everyone with a choice between two detestable individuals, both of which are sure to make things worse.
PlutoniumKun October 12, 2016 at 8:11 amThank you. Well said. Area denial is also cheaper and, probably, less corrupt.
That is such a good point about the soft power squandered by Obama. I wonder if that will come to be seen as a failure on the scale that Kennan thought about Slick Willie's reversal of policy towards Russia.
A question for readers based in the US. I am the child of immigrants who came to the UK from a colony mentioned by Hiro in the mid-1960s, although we have ancestors who left these islands for that francophone colony in the early 19th century. Most, but not all immigrants in the UK and their children take tales of British superiority (vide why the UK will make Brexit a success) with a bucket of salt.
Do our US peers do that? Obama seems like these British ministers of immigrant stock who need to prove that they belong and so adopt these positions that others / natives rarely bother with or express. In Obama's case, he seems to bang on about American Exceptionalism more than anyone I can remember. Is Obama worried in case Joe Sixpack questions his background?
On another note, thank you (to PK) for the anecdote about RC churchgoers. I was away on Monday evening and unable to say so.
Synoia October 12, 2016 at 11:55 amI'm sorry, but I don't see how you can argue this with regard to foreign policy where (unlike domestic policy) the president has a much freer hand.
Nobody forced Obama to continue drone strikes over much of the muslim world. Nobody forced him to put known ideological neocons into key positions of influence and power in State and the Pentagon. Nobody forced him to give Israel a free hand in Gaza and the occupied strip. Nobody forced him to help the French and British destroy the wealthiest country in Africa (Libya) and turn it into an Isis stronghold.
Nobody forced him to encourage Ukrainian Nazi's to attack ethnic Russians without consequence.
Nobody forced him to pursue a 'tilt to the Pacific' aimed at isolating China with the inevitable blow-back that we are now seeing. Nobody forced him to interfere in Syria with the aim of getting rid of Assad. Nobody forced him to continue a policy of isolating and undermining progressive democratic governments in South and Central America.
He's proven very good at giving the notion that all these things 'just happened' as he sat back looking on sadly. I don't buy it.
Moneta October 12, 2016 at 8:36 amThe list from PuKIm IS his list of accomplisments.
Apologies to PuKim, I suspect your list is incomplete :-), one significant omission is the Expansion of Warrantless Surveillance of all Peoples.
This by a constitutional scholar apparently more interested in exploiting perceived holes in the constitution than upholding its grand principles.
Oops, that's a second great Obama accomplishment that was accidentally omitted form you list above.
PlutoniumKun October 12, 2016 at 8:51 amI don't believe Obama could have done otherwise. Without a neolib ideology he would not have made it to President.
So you are asking him to drop what made him rise to the top.
moneta October 12, 2016 at 9:34 amI agree that he has demonstrated a neoliberal-lite ideology, although its a little complicated by the fact that he has several times seemed to have shown that he 'gets' that current policy is wrong headed, but he has consistently shown little or no indication to stand up to the hard liners within the administration. I don't believe he has any foreign policy ideology other than his famous 'don't do stupid' policy, and as such will always go with establishment groupthink.
I suspect his judgment is not that he had to be a neoliberal to get to the top (Change! Hope!), but he needed to be a neoliberal to ensure he stayed at the top without either an assassins bullet, or a stray recording/email, knocking him off the summit.
Ivy October 12, 2016 at 10:51 amI believe he made it to President because he was a Neolib who could make the population believe there would be change. 10 years ago most of the population probably did not even know the word neolib existed. And most of the population thought helocs were God's gift to the USA.
The fact that Trump is actually a thing shows how screwed up the US is. I can't imagine a president making decisions without dissonance, conflicts or contradictions.
The us was based on a frontier mentality yet liberals think one Neolib president who spoke of change could change course.
It's going to take a few presidents because society determines individuals' roles. When someone is very different, society might accept one eccentric touch but not multiple all at once.
For example, maybe the us needs to go single payer but the golf from private to nationalized is so vast that you can only get there by iteration unless there is a huge shock that permits the leaders to do it in one scoop.
BRUCE E. WOYCH October 12, 2016 at 11:45 amMany view Obama as a type of Manchurian candidate , sleeper agent or otherwise not who he has been crafted to be. Combine that with a deep distrust by much of the populace, to the extent that they pay attention , of the media, as the latter as a group have largely demonstrated a profound disregard for truth and objectivity.
Politicians at least swear an oath upon taking office, even if many immediately ignore it, while so-called journalists no longer attempt to self-police or maintain integrity. The media seem to want to act as unelected officials with a seat at the top table.
Mark P. October 12, 2016 at 1:32 pmAs plausible deniability goes, Obama merges statecraft with tradecraft seamlessly between overt and covert political propaganda. Charming and disarming to democrats and ideals, his passive stances are often a buffer to the more dangerous background signal being sent as a lurking threat.
good guy / bad guy writ large. It can be argued that he has used the same role play domestically where most of his constitutional prejudices have been corporate and most of his financial policies equally republican.
See:
Obama Resists Hawks As U.S., Russia Step Up War Threats Over Syria
Posted: 10 Oct 2016 04:25 AM PDT
http://www.justice-integrity.org/faq/1122-obama-resists-hawks-as-u-s-russia-step-up-war-threats-over-syria
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http://www.justice-integrity.org/"Nobody forced Obama…" is a formidable listing while apologists are generally sympathetic to his charm and graceful very likeable personality.
In fact, (after all is said and done) Obama (as world leaders go) may well go down in history as even a great president and world shaker where amoral realism is counted after all the smoke and mirrors clear.History is written by the victor as Napoleon stated succinctly. I suggest to you that his "legacy" that is currently being groomed so carefully, includes some items that researchers and historians will also have to explain more comprehensively than any cult of personality will cover.:
see:
https://www.stpete4peace.org/obama-fact-sheet
http://stpeteforpeace.org/obama.htmlJack October 12, 2016 at 10:10 amPK wrote: 'he had to be a neoliberal to get to the top (Change! Hope!), but he needed to be a neoliberal to ensure he stayed at the top without either an assassins bullet, or a stray recording/email, knocking him off the summit.'
Moneta is correct. The TBTB knew what was coming. So much as Bernanke with his academic expertise on QE and the Great Depression was preemptively put in place in 2006 at the Fed, Obama was heavily backed by Wall Street under conditions that would have been made clear to him in the 2006-2008 period.
The most important element of TPTB 's program in backing Obama was the installation of Eric Holder as Attorney General, after Holder had been a primary architect of MERS and mortgage securitization at Covington Burling. Again, a preemptive move to protect Wall Street and forestall any prosecution of those at the top there (and Holder furthermore was conveniently a POC to continue the apparent Change!Hope! pitch).
I think of it as the Eric Holder administration in retrospect, actually.
Portia October 12, 2016 at 12:56 pmWhat made him rise to the "top" were a multitude of promises made to his party and independents, which he later failed to fulfill. And his failure is almost 100%. He gained the nomination and beat Clinton, who was and is a neo-con, by promising to be different. Instead, he outdid Bush in his war mongering. The promises he made were in part why he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in advance of him actually having done anything, the award of which is sorely regretted now by those who made it. PlutoniumKun listed some of the things Obama could have avoided but did anyway. One item he failed to mention was the US support of Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen which has now resulted in the US possibly being liable for the war crimes committed there.
sinbad66 October 12, 2016 at 8:48 amthe perfect Trojan Horse. and could not be criticized for the longest time because he is a minority. now we have a woman who will "make history". never mind what they get up to while in office.
pretzelattack October 12, 2016 at 8:54 amNobody forced him to continue a policy of isolating and undermining progressive democratic governments in South and Central America.
A point rarely mentioned. Well said!
Jack October 12, 2016 at 10:18 ammaybe cause he talked a lot about change? you know, closing guantanamo, appointing liberals to the bench, prosecuting war criminals and financial criminals, stuff like that. not starting any more wars in the middle east. more will come to me if i think about it. oh yeah, marching with striking union workers. trying to get the public option. taking a hard look at the fisa court. sorry, running out of time here.
Moneta October 12, 2016 at 10:37 amOf course it was doable. You are apparently overlooking the fact that for the first 2 years of the Obama presidency he pretty much had a free hand. Both houses of Congress were in the hands of democrats. Only later did the excuse of Republican vitriol have any weight. And lest you forget, the voters weighed Obama in the 2010 mid-terms and found him lacking. Most analysts point to the Democrat losses in that election as a result of Obama's failure to carry out his promised agenda.
sid_finster October 12, 2016 at 12:27 pmIn an alternate universe. Maybe it's because I'm in Canada, but I did not think he would accomplish much. Hard to stop a slow moving train.
JohnnyGL October 12, 2016 at 3:17 pmNot only did Obama have a free hand in Congress, he had the biggest popular mandate for reform of any president since 1932. And he fucked up.
Jeremy Grimm October 12, 2016 at 1:34 pmIn March of 2009, I recall an FT editorial by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times asking if Obama was already a failure. I had a nagging feeling he was right, and he was.
On Foreign Policy, Obama's got the thawing of relations with Cuba and the Iran deal. We'll see if those are consolidated as a legacy or rolled-back by his successor.
With regard to pretty much everything else Obama tried to do, he's failed pretty badly. But supplying weapons to Al Nusra in Syria takes the cake for me. What happened to "don't do stupid stuff?"
human October 12, 2016 at 9:25 amIt's really about acting like Hillary's idea of Lincoln. Obama had the nation behind him and Congress, the Bully Pulpit mentioned below, the power to appoint and request the resignations of the leaders of the Executive Branch arms of power, he could have lobbied for changing Rule 22 in the Senate his first year and changed the Senate rules for filibuster, and if Congress sends him a bill he doesn't like he can NOT sign it, and if there is a bill he does like he can actually get behind that bill and twist a few Congressional arms to get what he wants.
Obama can and has accomplished a great deal in his presidency. The problem is he was accomplishing what he promised to his other supporters - not us.
OIFVet October 12, 2016 at 11:13 amThis is the very purpose of the bully pulpit presented to Obama in '08. Obama has always been in thrall to his paymasters as demonstrated by his actions during his administrations.
What is larger, 200,000 or 6,000. The first nnumber is the number of people who attended candidate 0bama's rally in Berlin in 2008. Heady, hopey changey times they were. The latter number is the number of people who attended president 0bama's rally in Berlin in 2013.
It is amusing to portray 0bama as a limp-wristed impotent figurehead. He isn't, he believes in American exceptionalism with "every fiber" of his body.
The results are clear, most regular everyday Euros are quite cynical about the US. 0bama surpassed Bush in creating a number of calamities, and has been heavy handed with our supposed allies, thus destroying the myth of about the supposed "partnership."
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Oct 09, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Reply ↓
allan October 9, 2016 at 10:38 am fresno dan October 9, 2016 at 10:45 amIt looks like the Saudi attack on the funeral in Yemen that killed 82+ people and wounded hundreds
was carried out using US-made MK-82 bombs.Surely John Kerry will call for a war crimes investigation … oh, wait:
GenDyn gets $39 million contract modification for foreign military bombs [UPI]
WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 (UPI) - General Dynamics – Ordnance and Tactical Systems has been awarded a $39 million modification to a foreign military sales contract for various bomb bodies.
The contract falls under the U.S. Army and involves sales to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, France and Iraq.
The modification calls for 162 MK82-1 bomb bodies, 7,245 MK82-6 bomb bodies and 9,664 MK84-10 bomb bodies. …
allan October 9, 2016 at 12:58 pmallan
October 9, 2016 at 10:38 amOnly barrel bombs can commit atrocities – Western, "liberal" modern advanced expensive high tech weapons have special self righteous code imprinted in them that prevents the slaughter of the TRULY innocent…
"Ordnance and Tactical Systems has been awarded a $39 million modification to a foreign military sales contract for various bomb bodies"
Oh, and it helps the economy…i.e., the richest, and isn't that who the economy is for?Hearts and minds:
Thousands of armed Yemeni protesters call for investigation into wake bombing [Reuters]
Thousands of Yemenis, many of them armed, gathered at the United Nations headquarters in Yemen's capital Sanaa on Sunday calling for an international investigation into an air strike on a wake this weekend that was widely blamed on Saudi-led forces.
The attack – that killed at least 140 people on Saturday – hit a hall where rows of the city's notables had gathered for the wake of the interior minister's father.
The Saudi-led coalition has denied any role in the incident, believed to be one of the deadliest strikes in the 18-month-old war in which at least 10,000 people have been killed. …
And when the Saudis deny any role in a mass-casualty attack, you can take it to the bank.
Or at least Tony Podesta's bank account.
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Oct 01, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
Pundits have declared a "New Cold War." If only! The Cold War was a time when leaders focused on reducing tensions between nuclear powers. What we have today is much more dangerous: Washington's reckless and irresponsible aggression toward the other major nuclear powers, Russia and China.
During my lifetime American presidents worked to defuse tensions with Russia. President John F. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Richard Nixon negotiated SALT I and the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and Nixon opened to Communist China. President Carter negotiated SALT II. Reagan worked with Soviet leader Gorbachev and ended the Cold War. The Berlin Wall came down. Gorbachev was promised that in exchange for the Soviet Union's agreement to the reunification of Germany, NATO would not move one inch to the East.
Peace was at hand. And then the neoconservatives, rehabilitated by the Israeli influence in the American press, went to work to destroy the peace that Reagan and Gorbachev had achieved. It was a short-lasting peace. Peace is costly to the profits of the military/security complex. Washington's gigantic military and security interests are far more powerful than the peace lobby.
Since the advent of the criminal Clinton regime, every American president has worked overtime to raise tensions with Russia and China.
China is confronted with the crazed and criminal Obama regime's declaration of the "pivot to Asia" and the prospect of the US Navy controlling the sea lanes that provision China.
Russia is even more dangerously threatened with US nuclear missile bases on her border and with US and NATO military bases stretching from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
Russia is also threatened with endless provocations and with demonization that is clearly intended to prepare Western peoples for war against "the Russian threat." Extreme and hostile words stream from the mouth of the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who has called the president of Russia "the new Hitler" and threatened Russia with military force. Insouciant Americans are capable of electing this warmonger who would bring Armageddon upon the earth.
Yesterday, Israel's voice in the US, the New York Times, added to Hillary's demonization of the most responsible leader in the world with this editorial: "Vladimir Putin's Outlaw State." This irresponsible and propagandistic editorial, no doubt written by the neoconservatives, blames all the troubles in Ukraine and Syria on Putin. The NYT presstitutes know that they have no case, so they drag in the US-orchestrated false report on MH-17 recently released by Washington's Netherlands vassal.
This report is so absurd as to cast doubt on whether intelligence exists anywhere in the Western world. Russia and the now independent Russian provinces that have separated from Ukraine have no interest whatsoever in shooting down a Malaysian airliner. But despite this fact, Russia, according to the orchestrated report, sent a surface-to-air missile, useful only at high altitude, an altitude far higher than the Ukrainian planes fly that are attacking Russians in the separated republics, to the "rebels" so that the "rebels" could shoot down a Malaysian airliner. Then the missile system was sent back to Russia.
How insouciant does a person have to be to believe this propaganda from the New York Times?
Does the New York Times write this nonsense because it is bankrupt and lives on CIA subsidies?
It is obvious that the Malaysian airliner was destroyed for the purpose of blaming Russia so that Washington could force Europe to cooperate in applying illegal sanctions on Russia in an attempt to destabilize Russia, a country that placed itself in the way of Washington's determination to destabilize Syria and Iran.
In a recent speech, the mindless cipher, who in his role as US Secretary of Defense serves as a front man for the armaments industry, declared the one trillion dollars (1,000 billion dollars or 1,000,000 million dollars, that is, one million dollars one million times) that Washington is going to spend of Americans' money for nuclear force renewal is so we can "get up in the morning to go to school, to go to work, to live our lives, to dream our dreams and to give our children a better future."
But Russia's response to this buildup in Washington's strategic nuclear weapons is, according to Defense Secretary Aston B. Carter, "saber rattling" that "raises serious questions about Russia's leaders commitment to strategic stability."
Do you get the picture? Or are you an insouciant American? Washington's buildup is only so that we can get up in the morning and go to school and work, but Russia's buildup in response to Washington's buildup upsets "strategic stability."
What the Pentagon chief means is that Russia is supposed to sit there and let Washington gain the upper hand so Washington can maintain "strategic stability" by dictating to Russia. By not letting Washington prevail, Russia is upsetting "strategic stability."
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been broken and tamed by the neoconservatives, recently displayed the same point of view with his "ultimatum" to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In effect, Kerry told Lavrov that Russia must stop helping Syria resist the jihadist forces and allow the US-supported ISIS to regain the initiative and reduce Syria to the chaos in which Washington left Libya and Iraq. Otherwise, Kerry said that the agreement to cooperate is off.
There can be no cooperation between the US and Russia over Syria, because the two government's goals are entirely different. Russia wants to defeat ISIS, and the US wants to use ISIS to overthrow Assad. This should be clear to the Russians. Yet they still enter into "agreements" that Washington has no intention of keeping. Washington breaks the agreements and blames Russia, thus creating more opportunities to paint Russia as untrustworthy. Without Russia's cooperation in setting themselves up for blame, Russia's portrait would not be so black.
The headline set the stage: "Russia's Brutal Bombing of Aleppo May Be Calculated, and It May Be Working." According to the NYT report, Russia was not bombing ISIS. Russia was "destroying hospitals and schools, choking off basic supplies, and killing aid workers and hundreds of civilians."
The NYT asks: "What could possibly motivate such brutality?"
The NYT answers: Russia is "massacring Aleppo's civilians as part of a calculated strategy . . . designed to pressure [moderates] to ally themselves with extremists," thereby discrediting the forces that Washington has sent to overthrow Syria and to reduce the country to chaos.
When America's Newspaper of Record is nothing but a propaganda ministry, what is America?
Pundits keep explaining that Washington's 15 year old wars in the Middle East are about controlling the routing of energy pipelines. Little doubt this is a factor as it brings on board powerful American energy and financial interests. But this is not the motive for the wars. Washington, or the neoconservatives who control the US government, intend to destabilize the Russian Federation, the former Soviet Central Asian countries, and China's Muslim province by adding Syria and then Iran to the chaos that Washington has created in Iraq and Libya. If Washington succeeds in destroying Syria as it succeeded in destroying Libya and Iraq, Iran becomes the last buffer for Russia. If Washington then knocks off Iran, Russia is set up for destabilization by jihadists operating in Muslim regions of the Russian Federation.
This is clear as day. Putin understands this. But Russia, which existed under Washington's domination during the Yeltsin years, has been left threatened by Washington's Fifth Columns in Russia. There are a large number of foreign-financed NGOs in Russia that Putin finally realized were Washington's agents. These Washington operatives have been made to register as foreign-financed, but they are still functioning.
Russia is also betrayed by a section of its elite who are allied economically, politically, and emotionally with Washington. I have termed these Russians "America Worshipers." Their over-riding cause is to have Russia integrated with the West, which means to be a vassal of Washington.
Washington's money even seems to have found its way into Russian "think tanks" and academic institutions. According to this report, two think tanks, one Russian one American, possibly funded by Washington's money, have concluded that "US,Russia 'Have far more common interests than differences' in Asia-Pacific."
This "academic report" is a direct assault on the Russian/Chinese alliance. It makes one wonder whether the report was funded by the CIA The Russian media fall for the "common interest" propaganda, because they desire to be included in the West. Like Russian academics, the Russian media know English, not Chinese. Russia's history since Peter the Great is with the West. So that is where they want to be. However, these America Worshipping Russians cannot understand that to be part of the West means being Washington's vassal, or if they do understand the price, they are content with a vassal's status like Germany, Great Britain, France, and the rest of the European puppet states.
To be a vassal is not an unusual choice in history. For example, many peoples chose to be Rome's vassals, so those elements in Russia who desire to be Washington's vassal have precedents for their decision.
To reduce Russia's status to Washington's vassal, we have Russian-US cooperation between the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations and the US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. These two co-conspirators against Russian sovereignty are working to destroy Russia's strategic alliance with China and to create a US-Russian Pacific Alliance in its place. One of the benefits, the joint report declares, is "maintaining freedom of navigation and maritime security."
"Freedom of navigation" is Washington's term for controlling the sea lanes that supply China. So now we have a Russian institute supporting Washington's plans to cut off resource flow into China. This idiocy on the part of the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations is unlikely to reassure China about its alliance with Russia. If the alliance is broken, Washington can more easily deal with the two constraints on its unilateralism.
Additionally, the joint report says that Moscow could cooperate with Washington in confidence-building measures to resolve territorial disputes in the Asia-Pacific region. What this means is that Russia should help Washington pressure China to give up its territorial claims.
One cannot but wonder if the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations is a CIA front. If it is not, the CIA is getting a free ride.
The foreign policy of the United States rests entirely on propagandistic lies. The presstitute media, a Ministry of Propaganda, establishes an orchestrated reality by treating lies as fact. News organizations around the world, accustomed as they are to following Washington's lead, echo the lies as if they are facts.
Thus Washington's lies–such as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad's use of chemical weapons, Russian invasions–become the reality.
Russia's very capable spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, understands that Washington uses the Western media to control explanations by shaping public opinion. She terms it a "reality show." However, Zakharova thinks the problem is that Washington misuses "international relations and international platforms for addressing internal issues." By this she means that Obama's foreign policy failures have made him hysterical and impudent as he strives to leave a legacy, and that American/Russian relations are poisoned by the US presidential campaign that is painting Trump as a "Putin stooge" for not seeing the point of conflict with Russia.
The US presstitutes are disreputable. This morning NPR presented us with a report on Chinese censorship of the media as if this was something that never happens in the US. Yet NPR not only censors the news, but uses disinformation as a weapon in behalf of Washington and Israel's agendas. Anyone who depends on NPR is presented a very controlled picture of the world. And do not forget German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte, who admits he planted stories for the CIA in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitnung and says that there is no significant European journalist who doesn't do the same thing .
The situation is far more serious than Zakharova realizes. Russians seem unable to get their minds around the fact that the neoconservatives are serious about imposing Washington's hegemony on the rest of the world. The neoconservative doctrine declares that it is the principal goal of US foreign policy to prevent the rise of any country that would have sufficient power to serve as a check on American unilateralism. This neoconservative doctrine puts Russia and China in Washington's crosshairs. If the Russian and Chinese governments do not yet understand this, they are not long for this world.
The neoconservative doctrine fits perfectly with the material interests of the US military/security complex. The US armaments and spy industries have had 70 years to entrench themselves with a huge claim on the US budget. This politically powerful interest group has no intention of letting go of its hold on US resources.
As long ago as 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned that the Cold War confronted Americans with a new internal danger as large as the external Soviet threat:
"Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
"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 recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet 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.
"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. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
President Eisenhower's warning that our liberties were equally at stake from the military/security complex as from the Soviet Threat did not last 24 hours. The military/security complex buried Eisenhower's warning with extraordinary hype of the Soviet Threat.
In truth, there was no Soviet threat. Stalin had buffered Russia from the West with his control of Eastern Europe, just as Washington controlled Western Europe. Stalin had eliminated Trotsky and his supporters who stood for world revolution. Stalin declared "socialism in one country."
Stalin terminated international communism. But the American military/security complex had much money to gain from the Amerian taxpayers in order to "protect America from International Communism." So the fact that there was no effort on the part of the Soviet Union to subvert the world was ignored. Instead, every national liberation movement was declared by the US military/industrial complex to be a "falling domino" of the Communist takeover of the world.
Ho Chi Minh begged Washington for help against the French colonialists in Vietnam. Washington told him to go to hell. It was Washington that sent Ho Cho Minh to seek communist support.
The long Vietnam war went on for years. It enriched the military/security complex and officers' pensions. But it was otherwise entirely pointless. There were no dominoes to fall. Vietnam won the war but is open to American influence and commerce.
Because of the military/security complex more than 50,000 Americans died in the war and many thousands more suffered physical and psychological wounds. Millions of Vietnamese suffered death, maiming, birth defects and illnesses associated with Washington's use of Agent Orange.
The entire war was totally pointless. It achieved nothing but destruction of innocents.
This is Washington's preferred way. The corrupt capitalism that rules in America has no interest in life, only in profit. Profit is all that counts. If entire countries are destroyed and left in ruins, all the better for American armaments industries.
Yes, please, a new Cold War. We need one desperately, a conflict responsibly managed in place of the reckless, insane drive for world hegemony emanating from the crazed, evil criminals in Washington who are driving the world to Armageddon.
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Oct 01, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
im1dc : September 30, 2016 at 09:01 AM
Peres stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran 2 years agohttp://www.businessinsider.com/shimon-peres-netanyahu-iran-2016-9
"Shimon Peres 2 years ago: I stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran, and you can talk about it when I'm dead"
by Natasha Bertrand...9-30-2016...36m
" Former Israeli president Shimon Peres, who died on Wednesday at the age of 93, told the Jerusalem Post two years ago that current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "was ready to launch an attack" on Iran, and "I stopped him."
Peres, speaking to the Post's Steve Linde and David Brinn in a meeting at the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa on August 24, 2014, apparently said he didn't want to go into details about the conversation he had had with Netanyahu..."
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Sep 24, 2016 | www.antiwar.com
A good friend passed along an article at Forbes from a month ago with the pregnant title, "U.S. Army Fears Major War Likely Within Five Years - But Lacks The Money To Prepare." Basically, the article argues that war is possible - even likely - within five years with Russia or North Korea or Iran, or maybe all three, but that America's army is short of money to prepare for these wars. This despite the fact that America spends roughly $700 billion each and every year on defense and overseas wars.Now, the author's agenda is quite clear, as he states at the end of his article: "Several of the Army's equipment suppliers are contributors to my think tank and/or consulting clients." He's writing an alarmist article about the probability of future wars at the same time as he's profiting from the sales of weaponry to the army.
As General Smedley Butler, twice awarded the Medal of Honor, said: War is a racket . Wars will persist as long as people see them as a "core product," as a business opportunity. In capitalism, the profit motive is often amoral; greed is good, even when it feeds war. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is willing to play along. It always sees "vulnerabilities" and always wants more money.
But back to the Forbes article with its concerns about war(s) in five years with Russia or North Korea or Iran (or all three). For what vital national interest should America fight against Russia? North Korea? Iran? A few quick reminders:
#1: Don't get involved in a land war in Asia or with Russia (Charles XII, Napoleon, and Hitler all learned that lesson the hard way).
#2: North Korea? It's a puppet regime that can't feed its own people. It might prefer war to distract the people from their parlous existence.
#3: Iran? A regional power, already contained, with a young population that's sympathetic to America, at least to our culture of relative openness and tolerance. If the US Army thinks tackling Iran would be relatively easy, just consider all those recent "easy" wars and military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria
Of course, the business aspect of this is selling the idea the US Army isn't prepared and therefore needs yet another new generation of expensive high-tech weaponry. It's like convincing high-end consumers their three-year-old Audi or Lexus is obsolete so they must buy the latest model else lose face.
We see this all the time in the US military. It's a version of planned or artificial obsolescence . Consider the Air Force. It could easily defeat its enemies with updated versions of A-10s, F-15s, and F-16s, but instead the Pentagon plans to spend as much as $1.4 trillion on the shiny new and under-performing F-35 . The Army has an enormous surplus of tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, but the call goes forth for a "new generation." No other navy comes close to the US Navy, yet the call goes out for a new generation of ships.
The Pentagon mantra is always for more and better, which often turns out to be for less and much more expensive, e.g. the F-35 fighter.
Wars are always profitable for a few, but they are ruining democracy in America. Sure, it's a business opportunity: one that ends in national (and moral) bankruptcy.
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views . He can be reached at [email protected] . Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission.
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Jan 30, 2015 | english.pravda.ru
30.01.2015US started Ukraine civil war. War in Donbass continues
It has been over a year of blood, tears and destruction in Ukraine especially in SE Ukraine. The new country now called Novorossia, has been fighting the puppet government in Kiev, USA who is committing genocide in the Donbass region. America's new addition to its Empire is funded with billions and millions supported by NATO and other mercenaries. Yet, Kiev still cannot complete its mission the US trained it for. Oleg Tsarov warned about the impish activities the US was performing before the protests began in Kiev. America started the war in Ukraine but like Goliath was slain by little David.
US Started Ukraine Civil War *PROOF* Nov 20, 2013
Oleg Tsarov, who was then the People's Deputy of Ukraine, talks about US preparations for civil war in Ukraine, November 2013 in Kiev parliament. Major protests began the day after his speech. You can hear the paid protesters chanting "Ukraine" in the background trying to keep him from speaking the truth. Later, April 14, 2014, Oleg was beaten by a mob when he was running for president but fortunately survived. His face was badly beaten as shown here. Remember, his speech was the day before the Maidan Protests. See the Timeline. In his speech he said:
"...activists of the organization 'Volya' turned to me providing clear evidence that within our territory with support and direct participation of the US EMBASSY (in Kiev) the 'Tech Camp' project is realized under which preparations are being made for a civil war in Ukraine.
The project is currently overseen and under the responsibility of the US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt. After the conversation with the organization 'Volya'. I have learned they succeeded to access the facilities of 'Tech Camp' disguised as a team of IT specialists. To their surprise, briefings on the peculiarities of modern media were held. AMERICAN instructors explained how social networks and Internet technologies can be used for targeted manipulation of public opinion as well as to activate protest potential to provoke violent unrest in the territory of Ukraine; radicalization of the population triggering infighting.
American instructors presented examples of successful use of social networks used to organize protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Recent conference took place Nov 14-15, 2013, in the heart of Kiev in the Embassy of the United States of America!
Is it conceivable that representatives of the US Embassy which organize the 'Tech Camp' conferences misuse their diplomatic mission? UN resolution of December 21, 1965 regulates inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of a state to protect its independence and its sovereignty in accordance with paragraphs 1,2 and 5. I ask you to consider this as an official supplication to pursue an investigation of this case."
Well, no investigation was ever made especially by the "land of the free". Vladimir Putin has asked the UN for help but they drag their feet. The US embassies have caused more damage than the Soviet Union has ever done. In the video, we can see Oleg and others knew about America's interference in Ukraine affairs. He wanted to stop the civil war and courageously ran for president to stop the impending bloodshed. Thousands of deaths could have been avoided if people had listened to him. He could not fight the tide of billions of dollars from Obama and the US Congress. The Nazis in Kiev had their way while Poroshenko sent men to their deaths. What a waste into a whirlpool of misery.
Obama and Poroshenko told the army they were going to fight terrorists. The "terrorists" were innocent civilians. Kiev POW's were later paraded in front of the bombarded people as they got a dose of REALITY. If only Obama or Poroshenko had told them the truth that they were bombing civilians they thought. The Ukrainian army is full of city boys who are inexperienced, fighting in unknown territory. The Novorossia militia is filled with coal miners and other blue collar workers with many who have had combat experience in Chechnya or older men with experience from the Soviet-Afghanistan war.
The militia has seen their children, wives, Mothers, Fathers, grandparents and close friends killed but their faith, as this touching video shows, helps them defend their land. The Ukrainian army was drafted and sent by seedy Obama and Poroshenko under the penalty of 5 yrs in jail if they did not fight. If you feel sorry for them as POW's then I hope you see the bodies or graves of the thousands of civilians who were killed by them. It is a tragedy for everyone involved. Even for Soros, Obama, Poroshenko, Kerry, Nuland, members of US Congress who approved this, the Nazis in Kiev, all will suffer far worse on Judgment Day unless they repent.
The civil war continues in Ukraine but despite Kiev's effort to mask the number of their dead soldiers and POW's, Novorossia continues victory after victory on the battlefield. Ukraine army focuses on shelling civilians while Novorossia kills Kiev's soldiers or captures them. Sometimes they are returned to their Mothers as seen in this film.
Donetsk Republic Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko from Novorossia argues with Kiev army officer in this powerful video. He said that the Kiev army succumbed to the coup:
"To give away our own country to be looted by Americans and other European countries"
That video is by Graham Phillips who does the job that the impotent lame stream media won't do in America. Bravo Graham! Many thanks to Kazzura for her translation of most of the videos.
Notice in the West the so called journalists are nowhere to be found on the battlefield in Ukraine as this man was here. I am certainly not addressing the media like CNN, FOX, CBS and the other court jesters who are paid clowns in the freak show called "US government". They dare tell America lies about the war. I would force them to dig the graves of the dead. How quickly the mainstream media goose steps in unison blaming Russia as Hitler did. Showing them the truth would be like showing a burnt building to a pyromaniac. The US media is in the business of making money not telling the truth. Peace and truth don't make billions of dollars they say. Were they bribed or are they true liars? "The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else." - George Bernard Shaw
Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland was back in the news recently. In her efforts to support the US program against "Russia Today". "Noodle Head Nuland" belittled RT by saying "RT's tiny, tiny audience in the United States". Remember her? The Benghazi gal was first talking about Democracy in Ukraine with Chevron. Their version of "democracy and freedom" means war to the rest of the world. She was seen handing out food to protesters and police in Kiev. How nice she is sounding so sweet and so kind. She was later caught on tape saying "Fuck the EU" when discussing the setup of the Ukraine government. Later she was grilled by Republican Dana Rohrabacher where she admitted there were Nazis on Maidan. Yeah, I really trust that evil witch who learned her craft from Hillary.
It is obvious to the world, but not to the West, that Kiev was overthrown by the US and EU. Although the US propaganda blames Russia for everything the OSCE has already disproven their claims. We wanted to show in our main video that Kiev was actually warned before Pandora's Box was opened. The blame is clearly on the US as instigators. They sowed the devil's seed.
Nevertheless, those who were deceived by the US or went along with the evil knowingly are also to blame and bear the responsibility of misleading Ukraine. Kiev has now become the newest suffering colony in America's empire. The only real "Hope and Change" for the people of Donbass is fighting against Obama's tyranny and becoming the independent country of Novorossia. "Let Freedom Ring!" America has forgotten its meaning.
Xavier Lerma. Contact Xavier Lerma at [email protected]
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UKRAINE: Surrounded Donetsk- Ukraine General Staff applies experience of the Spanish Civil War
http://hvylya.org/analytics/politics/okruzhennyiy-donetsk-genshtab-ukrainyi-primenyaet-opyit-grazhdanskoy-voynyi-v-ispanii.html ^ | 03.08.14, 18:06Posted on 8/3/2014 8:22:10 PM by [email protected]
Ukrainian Interior Ministry forces ATO Main news of recent days: an operation to encircle Donetsk is nearly complete!
This radically changes the entire operational environment at the front. Let's already stop hiding behind a fig leaf is an abbreviation of ATU and will be referred to as a war-torn, and advanced-front.
Many people ask how the war, which, by its type refers to the type of maneuver, formed wheel built? After all, in the civil wars there is no front line. What do the schemes that appear on the Internet, which clearly outline the front line?
First, the schemes are not reflected front and border control zones. Please note that the scheme is not solid and dotted line .
Secondly, in the civil wars of the twentieth century in key areas formed a solid front.
Third, in these days we are recognizing a century of the First World War. This grand massacre marked by the fact that the war for the first time in human history has become a purely positional. On the western front rows of trenches stretched linear continuum from the North Sea to Switzerland. And before the war were maneuverable. However, the basic principles of the strategy work as a maneuver, and as the positional constructions. Therefore the environment in Donetsk - is now a decisive factor that will help determine the subsequent course of events.
1919 defeat of Denikin. Future Marshal Yegorov spends quite a front operation at significantly discharged constructions than we are now seeing in the Donbas.
But the most accurate historical analogy of what is happening in the East of the country, is the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, a rehearsal for WWII.
Three months ago, when the ATO was just beginning, with Yuri Romanenko, we discussed what it will be for operation from a military point of view, with what does it compare? Spain! - Even then we came to this conclusion.
One side holds successive offensives against disparate unsaturated builds on the other hand, in the end it all comes down to a struggle for basic megacities - Barcelona and Madrid in the years 1938-1939 and for the Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014. We see that during the Spanish Civil War also called the control zone - fronts.
As then, leading the offensive side of the wire successive offensives in various sectors of the front. General Franco did not immediately come to such a strategy. But, he quickly enough proved its effectiveness.
The Spanish Civil War
Another connecting factor - and in Spain, and in the Donbass defensive side had and has the ability to constantly replenish their strength. I mean the International Brigades in Spain and Russian mercenaries in the Donbass. Just do not make direct analogies and remember Hemingway. Ideology, morality and culture here is not the point, only comparison is the strategic and military experience.
Based on the study of the history of strategic decisions during the Spanish Civil War. The General staff of Ukraine has abandoned an ambitious but totally inappropriate, in terms of strategy, the plan of encirclement throughout the territory occupied by the enemy.
General Staff of Ukraine refused ambitious but completely wrong, in terms of strategy, plan the environment throughout the territory To carry out such an operation is necessary to introduce martial law and full mobilization. The economic crisis - Ukraine needs to live and work. The President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko demanded to find less radical solutions. The General staff was to develop private operations against individual enemy factions. And immediately came to fruition!
Today, we are seeing a decline IAF combat capability, as they are forced to operate in disparate groups. The actions of terrorists is completely dictated by the operational environment. Given the fact that the strategic initiative is fully on the side of the APU, the actions of illegal armed groups cropped, are predictable and can be controlled. While the IAF will not solve the problems with communications around Donetsk, they have no opportunity for meaningful operations on other sites.
Maneuver warfare strategy can be compared to the battle in zero gravity, when one of the opponents, getting zubodrobilny kick gets a chance to continue the fight, that only lasts with some kind of support. In our case, this leg is large metropolitan areas. Having lost the strategic initiative, the IAF will be forced to pull their main forces in the Donetsk and Lugansk, allowing the APU, if necessary, to conduct the operation on the closure of the border with Russia. Everything is good in its season!
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Sep 23, 2016 | www.alternet.org/TomDispatch
Recently, sorting through a pile of old children's books, I came across a volume, That Makes Me Mad!, which brought back memories. Written by Steve Kroll, a long-dead friend, it focused on the eternally frustrating everyday adventures of Nina, a little girl whose life regularly meets commonplace roadblocks, at which point she always says... well, you can guess from the title! Vivid parental memories of another age instantly flooded back-of my daughter (now reading such books to her own son) sitting beside me at age five and hitting that repeated line with such mind-blowing, ear-crushing gusto that you knew it spoke to the everyday frustrations of her life, to what made her mad.
Three decades later, in an almost unimaginably different America, on picking up that book I suddenly realized that, whenever I follow the news online, on TV, or-and forgive me for this but I'm 72 and still trapped in another era-on paper, I have a similarly Nina-esque urge. Only the line I've come up with for it is (with a tip of the hat to Steve Kroll) " You must be kidding! "
Here are a few recent examples from the world of American-style war and peace. Consider these as random illustrations, given that, in the age of Trump, just about everything that happens is out-of-this-world absurd and would serve perfectly well. If you're in the mood, feel free to shout out that line with me as we go.
Nuking the Planet: I'm sure you remember Barack Obama, the guy who entered the Oval Office pledging to work toward "a nuclear-free world." You know, the president who traveled to Prague in 2009 to say stirringly : "So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons... To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same." That same year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize largely for what he might still do, particularly in the nuclear realm. Of course, that was all so 2009!
Almost two terms in the Oval Office later, our peace president, the only one who has ever called for nuclear "abolition"-and whose administration has retired fewer weapons in our nuclear arsenal than any other in the post-Cold War era-is now presiding over the early stages of a trillion-dollar modernization of that very arsenal. (And that trillion-dollar price tag comes, of course, before the inevitable cost overruns even begin.) It includes full-scale work on the creation of a "precision-guided" nuclear weapon with a "dial-back" lower yield option. Such a weapon would potentially bring nukes to the battlefield in a first-use way, something the U.S. is proudly pioneering .
And that brings me to the September 6th front-page story in the New York Times that caught my eye. Think of it as the icing on the Obama era nuclear cake. Its headline : "Obama Unlikely to Vow No First Use of Nuclear Weapons." Admittedly, if made, such a vow could be reversed by any future president. Still, reportedly for fear that a pledge not to initiate a nuclear war would "undermine allies and embolden Russia and China... while Russia is running practice bombing runs over Europe and China is expanding its reach in the South China Sea," the president has backed down on issuing such a vow. In translation: the only country that has ever used such weaponry will remain on the record as ready and willing to do so again without nuclear provocation, an act that, it is now believed in Washington, would create a calmer planet.
You must be kidding!
Plain Old Bombing: Recall that in October 2001, when the Bush administration launched its invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. was bombing no other largely Islamic country. In fact, it was bombing no other country at all. Afghanistan was quickly "liberated," the Taliban crushed, al-Qaeda put to flight, and that was that , or so it then seemed.
On September 8th, almost 15 years later, the Washington Post reported that, over a single weekend and in a "flurry" of activity, the U.S. had dropped bombs on, or fired missiles at, six largely Islamic countries: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. (And it might have been seven if the CIA hadn't grown a little rusty when it comes to the drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal borderlands that it's launched repeatedly throughout these years.) In the same spirit, the president who swore he would end the U.S. war in Iraq and, by the time he left office, do the same in Afghanistan, is now overseeing American bombing campaigns in Iraq and Syria which are loosing close to 25,000 weapons a year on those countries. Only recently, in order to facilitate the further prosecution of the longest war in our history, the president who announced that his country had ended its "combat mission" in Afghanistan in 2014, has once again deployed the U.S. military in a combat role and has done the same with the U.S. Air Force . For that, B-52s (of Vietnam infamy) were returned to action there, as well as in Iraq and Syria , after a decade of retirement. In the Pentagon, military figures are now talking about " generational " war in Afghanistan-well into the 2020s.
Meanwhile, President Obama has personally helped pioneer a new form of warfare that will not long remain a largely American possession. It involves missile-armed drones, high-tech weapons that promise a world of no-casualty-conflict (for the American military and the CIA), and adds up to a permanent global killing machine for taking out terror leaders, "lieutenants," and "militants." Well beyond official American war zones, U.S. drones regularly cross borders, infringing on national sovereignty throughout the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, to assassinate anyone the president and his colleagues decide needs to die, American citizen or otherwise (plus, of course, anyone who happens to be in the vicinity ). With its White House "kill list" and its "terror Tuesday" meetings, the drone program, promising "surgical" hunting-and-killing action, has blurred the line between war and peace, while being normalized in these years. A president is now not just commander-in-chief but assassin-in-chief , a role that no imaginable future president is likely to reject. Assassination, previously an illegal act, has become the heart and soul of Washington's way of life and of a way of war that only seems to spread conflict further.
You must be kidding!
The Well-Oiled Machinery of Privatized War: And speaking of drones, as the New York Times reported on September 5th, the U.S. drone program does have one problem: a lack of pilots. It has ramped up quickly in these years and, in the process, the pressures on its pilots and other personnel have only grown, including post-traumatic stress over killing civilians thousands of miles away via computer screen. As a result, the Air Force has been losing those pilots fast. Fortunately, a solution is on the horizon. That service has begun filling its pilot gap by going the route of the rest of the military in these years-turning to private contractors for help. Such pilots and other personnel are, however, paid higher salaries and cost more money. The contractors, in turn, have been hiring the only available personnel around, the ones trained by... yep, you guessed it, the Air Force. The result may be an even greater drain on Air Force drone pilots eager for increased pay for grim work and... well, I think you can see just how the well-oiled machinery of privatized war is likely to work here and who's going to pay for it.
You must be kidding!
Selling Arms As If There Were No Tomorrow: In a recent report for the Center for International Policy, arms expert William Hartung offered a stunning figure on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia. "Since taking office in January 2009," he wrote , "the Obama administration has offered over $115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia in 42 separate deals, more than any U.S. administration in the history of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The majority of this equipment is still in the pipeline, and could tie the United States to the Saudi military for years to come." Think about that for a moment: $115 billion for everything from small arms to tanks, combat aircraft, cluster bombs , and air-to-ground missiles (weaponry now being used to slaughter civilians in neighboring Yemen).
Of course, how else can the U.S. keep its near monopoly on the global arms trade and ensure that two sets of products-Hollywood movies and U.S. weaponry-will dominate the world's business in things that go boom in the night? It's a record to be proud of, especially since putting every advanced weapon imaginable in the hands of the Saudis will obviously help bring peace to a roiled region of the planet. (And if you arm the Saudis, you better do no less for the Israelis, hence the mind-boggling $38 billion in military aid the Obama administration recently signed on to for the next decade, the most Washington has ever offered any country, ensuring that arms will be flying into the Middle East, literally and figuratively, for years to come.)
Blessed indeed are the peacemakers-and of course you know that by "peacemaker" I mean the classic revolver that "won the West."
Put another way...
You must be kidding!
.... .... ....
Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture . He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com . His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World .Selected commnets (117 COMMENTS)
Papachuck111 • 2 hours agoI've spelled his name "Obomba" after his second year in office. Bush had "Shock and Awe"... Obomba has "Stealth and Wealth"... The American economy has been a WAR ECONOMY for a long time. But hey, we're freeeeeeeeee… freedom isn't free, and all that other bullshit.RadioUranus • 2 hours agoIt's been all downhill since "Brer Rabbit" Bush got into it with the Middle East "tar baby."Palimpsestuous • 2 hours agoAw shucks, Tom, you been reading my posts? Thanks for writing this article; it corroborates everything I've been saying about Obama's lust for war and destabilization. You could have mentioned the Pentagon currently has JSOC kill teams in 147 countries, per Noam Chomsky. You also could have mentioned the US is the most feared force on the global stage, feared, that is, by actual citizens, not so much by their leaders.southvalley Palimpsestuous • an hour agoPresident Obama's 58% approval tells me the American public are largely bloodthirsty savages led by a psychopath in pursuit of global tyranny. Either that, or 58% of Americans would rather play Goldilocks and the Three Bears with their political attention than accept responsibility for their part in destroying human civilization.
"Thanks. I'll take the tall, smiling psychopath, second from the right. He looks presidential."
The end of our democracy coincides with the end of our being an informed public. Who could have ever anticipated such a coincidence, but everyone with a passing awareness of history.
Nah, the American people have really no idea what's going on as we try to survive this BS. Most still think we actually have a Constitution. Remember, we wanted an "outsider" in '08 too a new face and he turned out to be silly putty in they're hands. Oh, I just heard Jennifer Flowers is coming to the debates to support Trump. Wonder how much they paid that POS liarBill • 2 hours agoNo one who has the common sense to say he'll work for a nuclear weapons-free world changes his mind. He either never meant what he said, or he's been compromised by those who control all things political and otherwise in this country. I'm betting on the latter.Palimpsestuous Bill • 2 hours agoI'll take that bet, even if there's no way to verify who wins. I think Obama's been a duplicitous scumbag from the get go. He's demonstrated a consistently strong dedication to fucking the public while protecting the professional class of mobsters in suits.AC3 • 3 hours agoAnd I voted for this asshole, twice. Options, options. Are there any options?
These types of articles are why I used to value AlterNet as a source of information. Thank you - it was informative and had a human touch. Your overt trying to manipulate and sway an election with bias overload is tiresome. The HRC/3rd party candidate blackout and 24/7 turbo train of anti-Trump is insulting our intelligence and not effective. You're preaching to the choir, we get it, Trump is psycho, but so is Clinton in her own awful & well established way - just like Obama was, and Bush before that, and Clinton before him, and Bush before... If you want to be 'Alter'native, tell the truth about ALL the candidates and report on the machinations behind the Plutocracy + how we can create an alternative is helpful, enough with the Huffpo-Salon DNC propaganda headquarters.America pushes war on the world through its materialism hegemon.nuanced • 3 hours agoIt's a long-running, vicious war. Tens of millions alone forced from their traditional cultures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America -- simply by a heavily-subsidized U.S. Industrial Ag which underprices commodity crops and kills those local cultures.
Then the big finance boys with their shopping malls, nukes, franchise fast food, and millions upon millions of cars choking the land, poisoning the skies.
U.S. corporate academe could provide alternatives to the mindless materialism. Could keep the humanities central enough in all departments to keep some wider consciences among Americans who for years have been blissfully blind and narcissistic about its war on the world.The tenured classes will have none of it. They abhor the humanities. They want no perspectives on their specializations.
And so liberals, ever blind to their corporate academe, pop up occasionally "shocked, shocked" at what the U.S. pushes on the world. But the complicity goes on. The blindness goes on.
Don't you think there's something funny about this, as Kate asked her boy Cal in "East of Eden" -- funny how our dear, smug, tenured, dehumanized purists live so totally in their "purity"?
If only Obama had Trump's magic wand for getting things done.brucebennett • 3 hours agoYears ago Glen Ford of "Black Agenda Report" correctly referred to this shameless sellout as "the more effective evil". The implication was that the perception created by his propagandists that Obama is a committed Democrat who is just trying to do his best against a obstructionist Congress and right-wing media is false.Bill denton310 • 2 hours agoWe have seen repeatedly that the truth is quite different. Barry the Liar is an enthusiastic member of the MIC, Wall Street, and the oligarchs. He has actually expanded the powers of the President and the National Security State that we live in and even claims the right to kill an American citizen without trial! When George Carlin said - "I don't believe anything my government tells me" he could have been talking about this shill for the TPB.
When Mr. Nobel Peace Prize creates even more war and also tells you that President Hillary Clinton would be "continuity you can believe in" I am having none of it. For at least 30 years this Republican Lite party have devolved into the sorry state they are now. I will not assist them to go even further and wreck what is left of the American Dream.
Stein 2016!Yes, why isn't anyone in the mass media picking up on this obvious hypocrisy? For the same reasons it never picks up on anything else of importance - it's controlled.For_Alternet • 4 hours agoNow explain why anyone should pay attention to any more articles about what Trump or Clinton just came out with. It just doesn't matter any more.
Obama has been one of the most hypocritical presidents ever elected.tio che -> 200YearOldJuniper • 3 hours agoMurder is murder, obomber is as guilty as bush/cheney and their lackeys, rice and killary, of terrorist crimes against humanity!H. M. • 4 hours agoJust think, this is the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Obama; now, just imagine the neoliberal neocon Hillary at the helm of the war machine!MYR • 5 hours agoI'm afraid it will be check-mate for Humanity as we know it!
The so-called "peace President" should return his Nobel Prize award immediately, so as not to slander the good intentions of Alfred Nobel.
Promoting wars, supporting war hawks, deploying drones to kill people in sovereign states, selling weapons to tyrannical governments are destructive ideas that Alfred Nobel had sought to counteract.Oh no, this isn't true. Obama has been playing 11th dimensional chess as policy for the last eight years and let me tell you, folks inhabiting the11th dimension are pretty dam happy with their universal health care, peaceful foreign policy and prosperous for all economy.DHFabian • 6 hours agoI've personally drifted between "Seriously?" and knowing that there's really not much left to say. Deep into the longest, most expensive war in US history, we don't exactly see massive anti-war protests, people filling the mall in DC to call for peace, churches organizing prayer rallies in the name of the Prince of Peace. Walter Cronkite is gone, and the horrors of war doesn't come into our living rooms each evening. The war is distant, sterile, tidy.Redacted • 8 hours agoWhich decisions are made by Congress, which are made by the president, and in the end, does it matter? America does war. We can no longer afford to do much else, and more importantly, there appears to be little will to change course. Americans can look at the federal budget, see that the lion's share goes into maintaining war, then demand that Congress cut food stamps. (Indeed, in 2015, Congress cut food stamps to the elderly poor and the disabled from $115 per month to $10.)
Budgets stand as a statement about American priorities. There is an endless strream of money for war, but none for the survival of our poor. The progressive discussion of the last eight years can be summed up as an ongoing pep rally for the middle class, with an occasional "BLM!" thrown in for good measure. A revolution to stay the course.
Obama got his start in politics with money from the family that owns Grumman, and he's been dancing to their tune ever since.tio che Redacted • 5 hours agoClump, OTOH, takes money from every single MIC source, neocon source, billionaire nutty Israeli warmonger, Saudi warmonger, Central American dictator, even down to lowly death squad commendates, etc etc -and she's extremely well connected to all of them by now I imagine.
This is a person who wants both direct involvement in killing, has already done so from her phone, and enjoys the power of being a merchant of death, I predict she will be the among the most war like and worst presidents ever selected- if not the worst one ever.
Dark days ahead for imperialist amerika; and sadly for the rest of the World; as the empire's death dealing is global!Christie • 8 hours agoIf you think Obama was war happy, you do not want to see war hawk Hillary in action as President.NoldorElf • 8 hours agoThe debate should be about issues-Hillary would apparently rather talk about sexism that her war hawk record. Trump wants to emphasis tending to America's needs and says we should stop empire building.
"Lies (in which Clinton was deeply complicit) led to the U.S.-led destruction of Iraq and Libya. Lies underlie U.S. policy on Syria. Some of the biggest liars in past efforts to hoodwink the people into supporting more war (Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz) are backing Hillary, whose Washington Post Pinocchio count is "sky-high," for president.
The US Election: an Exercise in Mendacity (untruthfulness) http://www.counterpunch.org/20...
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The Clintons do not want anyone to even mention their corrupt involvement in Haiti:"The Clinton exploitation of Haiti will eventually go up in flames, and when the smoke settles an emotional and fiscal disaster of enormous proportions will finally be visible to the world. It will be difficult to sift through the ashes to find truth, but the truth is there. Follow the money, follow the pandering, follow the emails, and follow the favors traded for gold.
"The story ends in more pain, suffering, and abuse for the Haitian people as women are sexually harassed and verbally abused by Korean managers in the sweatshops of Caracol, while a former Gap Inc. executive is at the helm of USAID garment industry agreements with Haiti. If the Clinton connections to Wall Street leave Americans yawning, the systematic exploitation of Haitian workers with a wink and a nod from the Clinton Foundation should at the very least create outrage. But then again, this is Haiti, and Haitian lives do not seem to matter.
Recently Leaked Documents Confirm Clinton Haitian Gold Scheme | OpEdNews
http://www.opednews.com/articl...Obama sold out on the left. In reality, he was paid from day one to do exactly that. He was literally the ultimate snake oil salesman. Campaign on a platform of change and govern like Bush won 2 more terms.DHFabian NoldorElf • 5 hours agoThe wars went on, the bankers got bailed out and didn't go jail, inequality rose, along with a total failure to address any of the real problems facing society.
If Obama is the best the Democrats can come up with, then it is high time the left en masse left the Democratic Party. It's one big reason why I cannot support Clinton, who will be even more pro-war. It's a vote for more of the same.
What left? Seriously. We've only heard from liberals who Stand in Solidarity to preserve the advantages of the middle class. They so strongly believe in the success of our corporate state that they think everyone is able to work, and there are jobs for all. If we had a left, they would have been shining a spotlight on our poverty crisis as the proof that our deregulated capitalism is a dismal failure.kyushuphil DHFabian • 2 hours agoThe "inequality" discussion has been particularly interesting. Pay attention to what is said. Today's liberal media have narrowed the inequality discussion to the gap between workers and the rich, disappearing all those who are far worse off.
True, so onerously true what you say, DH.Redacted • 8 hours agoDoes it happen by accident, when our tenured classes have stripped away the humanities from all, guaranteeing what you term narrow discussion?
And, Hillary Clump was the biggest war monger in his misadministration. As for the nukes, I recently drove by a minuteman nuclear missile silo in Wyoming, you can see the damn thing right there by the road.Lord Dude Redacted • 8 hours agoVery sad that instead of reducing these as he promised to, this idiot modernized them and added more.
Clinton and Kerry voted to invade Iraq and Obama rewards them with the Sec State jobs.DHFabian Lord Dude • 5 hours agoAnd the media marketed to liberals began going all out in 2015, before she launched her campaign, to try to sell Clinton as a "bold progressive." This, with her decades-long record of support for the right wing agenda.Redacted Lord Dude • 8 hours agoOh well, don't worry about it. As Big Bill so carefully explained, all that any American needs to keep in mind is, "Get up every morning, work hard, and play by all the rules." Don't look around, don't ask questions, don't think.
And now she will be rewarded by the MIC and neocons with the ultimate prize - the white house.Lord Dude Redacted • 8 hours agoShe lacked the courage to filibuster the Iraq Resolution and tell the truth to the American people that they were being lied into a needless war that would waste trillions of their money. And now she's being rewarded. SMH.Redacted Lord Dude • 7 hours ago
She had no wish to filibuster this anymore than the Trojan horse Bernie Sanders wanted to filibuster her drone attacks later on.Lord Dude • 8 hours agoHe will be the first president to have been at war for two complete terms.taosword • 8 hours agoAnd he went into Syria and Libya without permission of Congress. Not even W did that.
Many say that Obama's hands are tied in all these matters, and that he cannot get anything past the Congress. I am not sure about that. I would like to see more of a public fighter in him to show us all that he is consistently trying to get us out of the Mideast and not modernize nuclear weapons and not be willing to use them first, and stop this insane, immoral, illegal CIA drone assassination program. Show me strong consistent public statements to this effect for the last 7 years and I may believe it. Otherwise he is like president Johnson who while doing good civil rights things at home was trying to get me killed in Vietnam.avelna • 9 hours agoOr, to put it more succinctly...We're f**cked. The whole world.southvalley • 9 hours agoClassic "We must destroy the world in order to save it"nineteen50 • 9 hours agoVote Hillary for more of the same only "muscled up"Hometalk222 • 10 hours agoHow did an article about Obama and nuclear weapons , turn into a hit piece on D Trump??? Oh yeah, this is Alternet.smkngman3 • 10 hours agoObama learned from the Clintons on how to get those "Foundation" checks rolling in.David Shaw Jr • 10 hours agoHis "peace prize" should be repossessed.
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en.wikipedia.org
If intellectuals replace the current professional politicians as the leaders of society the situation would become much worse. Because they have neither the sense of reality, nor common sense. For them, the words and speeches are more important than the actual social laws and the dominant trends, the dominant social dynamics of the society. The psychological principle of the intellectuals is that we could organize everything much better, but we are not allowed to do it.
But the actual situation is as following: they could organize the life of society as they wish and plan, in the way they view is the best only if under conditions that are not present now are not feasible in the future. Therefore they are not able to act even at the level of current leaders of the society, which they despise. The actual leaders are influenced by social pressures, by the current social situation, but at least they doing something. Intellectuals are unhappy that the real stream of life they are living in. They consider it wrong. that makes them very dangerous, because they look really smart, while in reality being sophisticated professional idiots.
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Sep 16, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com
...Arriving on Capitol Hill to repair ties between Trump and party elites, Gov. Mike Pence was taken straight to the woodshed.
- John McCain told Pence that Putin was a "thug and a butcher," and Trump's embrace of him intolerable.
- Said Lindsey Graham: "Vladimir Putin is a thug, a dictator … who has his opposition killed in the streets," and Trump's views bring to mind Munich.
- Putin is an "authoritarian thug," added "Little Marco" Rubio.
What causes the Republican Party to lose it whenever the name of Vladimir Putin is raised?
Putin is no Stalin, whom FDR and Harry Truman called "Good old Joe" and "Uncle Joe." Unlike Nikita Khrushchev, he never drowned a Hungarian Revolution in blood. He did crush the Chechen secession. But what did he do there that General Sherman did not do to Atlanta when Georgia seceded from Mr. Lincoln's Union?
Putin supported the U.S. in Afghanistan, backed our nuclear deal with Iran, and signed on to John Kerry's plan have us ensure a cease fire in Syria and go hunting together for ISIS and al-Qaida terrorists.
Still, Putin committed "aggression" in Ukraine, we are told. But was that really aggression, or reflexive strategic reaction? We helped dump over a pro-Putin democratically elected regime in Kiev, and Putin acted to secure his Black Sea naval base by re-annexing Crimea, a peninsula that has belonged to Russia from Catherine the Great to Khrushchev. Great powers do such things.
When the Castros pulled Cuba out of America's orbit, we decided to keep Guantanamo, and dismiss Havana's protests?
Moscow did indeed support secessionist pro-Russia rebels in East Ukraine. But did not the U.S. launch a 78-day bombing campaign on tiny Serbia to effect a secession of its cradle province of Kosovo?
... ... ...
Russia is reportedly hacking into our political institutions. If so, it ought to stop. But have not our own CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, and NGOs meddled in Russia's internal affairs for years?
... ... ...
Is Putin's Russia more repressive than Xi Jinping's China? Yet, Republicans rarely use "thug" when speaking about Xi. During the Cold War, we partnered with such autocrats as the Shah of Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, and Park Chung-Hee of South Korea. Cold War necessity required it.
Scores of the world's 190-odd nations are today ruled by autocrats. How does it advance our interests or diplomacy to have congressional leaders yapping "thug" at the ruler of a nation with hundreds of nuclear warheads?
... ... ...
Patrick J. Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative and the author of book The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority
Tiktaalik , says: September 16, 2016 at 2:41 am
bacon , says: September 16, 2016 at 5:29 am>>During the Cold War, we partnered with such autocrats as the Shah of Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, and Park Chung-Hee of South Korea buttressed could be even more pertinent) Very good article indeed. Knee-jerk reaction of american politicians and journalists looks extremely strange. As a matter of fact they look like idiots or puppets. Skeptic , says: September 16, 2016 at 9:13 amRubio and Graham are reflexively ready to push US influence everywhere, all the time, with military force always on the agenda, and McCain seems to be in a state of constant agitation whenever US forces are not actively engaged in combat somewhere. They are loud voices, yes, but irrational voices, too.
John Blade Wiederspan , says: September 16, 2016 at 10:18 amVery sensible article. And as the EU falls further into disarray and possible disintegration, due to migration and other catastrophically mishandled problems, a working partnership with Russia will become even more important. Right now, we treat Russia as an enemy and Saudi Arabia as a friend. That makes no sense at all.
SteveM , says: September 16, 2016 at 10:23 am"Just" states the starvation of the Ukraine is a western lie. The Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest refutes this dangerous falsehood. Perhaps "Just" believes The Great Leap Forward did not lead to starvation of tens of millions in China. After all, this could be another "western lie". So to could be the Armenian genocide in Turkey or slaughter of Communists in Indonesia.
blimbax , says: September 16, 2016 at 11:29 amAs I've stated many times, Obama the narcissist hates Putin because Putin doesn't play the sycophantic lapdog yapping about how good it is to interact with the "smartest person in the room".
I'm serious. Obama craves sources of narcissistic supply and has visceral contempt for sources of narcissistic injury. I.e., people who may reveal the mediocrity that he actually is. Obama considers Putin a threat in that context.
The downside for the U.S. is that Obama has extended hating Putin to hating Russia. And yes, Washington is flooded with sources of sycophantic narcissistic supply for Obama including the MSM. And they are happy to massage his twisted ego by enthusiastically playing along with the Putin/Russia fear-monger bashing.
And so the U.S. – Russia relationship is wrecked by the "smartest person in the room".
P.S. too bad Hillary is saturated with her own psychopathology that portends more Global Cop wreckage.
Joe the Plutocrat , says: September 16, 2016 at 3:46 pmJohn asks, "We also have to deal with our current allies. Whom would Mr. Buchanan like to favor?"
Well, we could redouble our commitment to our democracy and peace loving friends in Saudi Arabia, we could deepen our ties to those gentle folk in Egypt, and maybe for a change give some meaningful support to Israel. Oh, and our defensive alliances will be becoming so much stronger with Montenegro as a member, we will need to pour more resources into that country.
Anyway, what Buchanan is saying is, "We have to deal with him," not "favor him." The two terms should not be confused.
There are a lot of "allies" of questionable usefulness that the US should stop "favoring," and a lot of competitors (and potential allies in the true sense) out there the US should begin "dealing" with.
Clint , says: September 16, 2016 at 4:41 pm"During the Cold War, we partnered with such autocrats as the Shah of Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, and Park Chung-Hee of South Korea. Cold War necessity required it (funny, you failed to mention Laos, South Vietnam, Nicaragua, Noriega/Panama, and everyone's favorite 9/11 co-conspirator and WMD developer, Saddam Hussein). either way how did these "alliances" work out for the US? really doesn't matter, does it? it is early 21st century, not mid 20th century. there is a school of thought in the worlds of counter-terrorism/intelligence operations, which suggests if you want to be successful, you have to partner with some pretty nasty folks. Trump is being "handled" by an experienced, ruthless (that's a compliment), and focused "operator". unless, of course, Trump is actually the superior operator, in which case, this would be the greatest black op of all time.
WakeUp , says: September 16, 2016 at 4:45 pm"From Russia With Money - Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset and Cronyism,"
"Of the 28 US, European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors" or sponsored speeches by former President Bill Clinton, Schweizer told The Post.
http://nypost.com/2016/07/31/report-raises-questions-about-clinton-cash-from-russians-during-reset/
Everything the Western elite does is about dollar hegemony and control of energy. Once you understand that then the (evil)actions of the Western elite make sense. Anyone who stands in the way of those things is an "enemy". This is how they determine an "enemy".
As long as Russia is not a puppet of the globalist banking cartel they will be presented as an "enemy". Standing in the way of energy imperialism was the last straw for the all out hybrid war being launched on Russia now.
If the Western public wasn't so lazy and stupid we would remove the globalists controlling us. Instead people, especially liberals, get in bed with the globalists plans against Russia bc they can't stand Russia is Christian and supports the family.
Every word about Russia allowed in the Western establishment are lies funded and molded by people like Soros and warmongers. This is the reality. Nobody who will speak honestly or positively about Russia is allowed any voice. And scumbag neoliberal globalists like Kasperov are presented as "Russians" while real Russian people are given zero voice.
What the Western elite is doing right now in Ukraine and Syria is reprehensible and its all our fault for letting these people control us.
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Sep 16, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com
SteveM , says: September 16, 2016 at 10:23 amAs I've stated many times, Obama the narcissist hates Putin because Putin doesn't play the sycophantic lapdog yapping about how good it is to interact with the "smartest person in the room".
I'm serious. Obama craves sources of narcissistic supply and has visceral contempt for sources of narcissistic injury. I.e., people who may reveal the mediocrity that he actually is. Obama considers Putin a threat in that context.
The downside for the U.S. is that Obama has extended hating Putin to hating Russia. And yes, Washington is flooded with sources of sycophantic narcissistic supply for Obama including the MSM. And they are happy to massage his twisted ego by enthusiastically playing along with the Putin/Russia fear-monger bashing.
And so the U.S. – Russia relationship is wrecked by the "smartest person in the room".
P.S. too bad Hillary is saturated with her own psychopathology that portends more Global Cop wreckage.
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www.nakedcapitalism.com
Chauncey GardinerdiptherioWhat is "Globalization" and "Free Trade" really?… Does it encompass the slave trade, trading in narcotics, deforestation and export of a nation's tropical hardwood forests, environmentally damaging transnational oil pipelines or coal ports, fisheries depletion, laying off millions of workers and replacing them and the products they make with workers and products made in a foreign country, trading with an enemy, investing capital in a foreign country through a subsidiary or supplier that abuses its workers to the point that some commit suicide, no limits on or regulation of financial derivatives and transnational financial intermediaries?… the list is endless.
As always, the questions are "Cui bono?"… "Who benefits"?… How and Why they benefit?… Who selects the short-term "Winners" and "Losers"? And WRT those questions, the final sentence of this post hints at its purpose.
Yeah, how is European colonialism - starting in, what, like the 15th century, or something - not "globalisation"? What about the Roman and Persian and Selucid empires? Wasn't that globalisation? I think we've pretty much always lived in a globalised world, one way or another (if "globalised world" even makes sense).
floraBring back the broader, and more meaningful conception of Political Economy and some actual understanding can be gained. The study of economics cannot be separated from the political dimension of society. Politics being defined as who gets what in social interactions.
What folly. All this complexity and strident study of minutia to bring about what end? Human history on this planet has been about how societies form, develop, then recede form prominence. This flow being determined by how well the society provided for its members or could support their worldview. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
The neoliberal experiment has run its course. Milton Friedman and his tribe had their alternative plan ready to go and implemented it when they could- to their great success. The best looting system developed-ever. This system only works with the availability of abundant resources and the mental justifications to support that gross exploitation. Both of which are reaching limits.
Only by thinking, and communicating in the broader terms of political economy can we hope to understand our current conditions. Until then, change will be difficult to enact. Hard landings for all indeed.
If only the Milton Friedman tribe had interested itself in sports instead of economics. They could have argued that referees and umpires should be removed from the game for greater efficiency of play, and that sports teams would follow game rules by self-regulation.
LA Mike September 17, 2016 at 8:15 pm
sdWhile in traffic, I was thinking about that today. For some time now, I've viewed the traffic intersection as being a good example of the social contract. We all agree on its benefits. But today, I thought about it in terms of the Friedman Neoliberals.
Why should they have to stop at red lights. Wouldn't the whole thing just work out more efficiently if you leave traffic lights and rules out of it? Just let everyone figure it out at each light, survival of the fittest.
I Have Strange DreamsSomething I have wondered for some time, how does tourism fit into trade? With increasingly free movement of people as tourists whose spending impacts nations GDP, where does it fit in to discussions on globalization and trade?
Other things to consider:
– negative effects of immigration (skilled workers leave developing countries where they are most needed)
– environmental pollution
– destruction of cultures/habitats
– importation of western diet leading to decreased health
– spread of disease (black death, hiv, ebola, bird flu)
– resource wars
– drugs
– happiness
How are these "externalities" calculated?
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Sep 18, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com
hedgeless_horseman BuddyEffed Sep 17, 2016 10:58 AM Kirby declined to answer whether Israel should face the same treatment
as Iran and North Korea – both of which have been sanctioned for alleged
or actual violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.Some animals are more equal than others.
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Sep 18, 2016 | www.scribd.com
This is where cultural nationalism comes in. Only it can serve to mask, and bridge, the divides within the 'cartel of anxiety' in a neoliberal context.
Cultural nationalism is a nationalism shorn of its civic-egalitarian and developmentalist thrust, one reduced to its cultural core. It is structured around the culture of thee conomically dominant classes in every country, with higher or lower positions accorded to other groups within the nation relative to it. These positions correspond, on the whole, to the groups' economic positions, and as such it organises the dominant classes, and concentric circles of their allies, into a collective national force. It also gives coherence to, and legitimises, the activities of the nation-state on behalf of capital, or sections thereof, in the international sphere.
Indeed, cultural nationalism is the only ideology capable of being a legitimising ideology under the prevailing global and national political economy.
Neoliberalism cannot perform this role since its simplicities make it harsh not just towards the lower orders, but give it the potential for damaging politically important interests amongst capitalist classes themselves. The activities of the state on behalf of this or that capitalist interest necessarily exceed the Spartan limits that neoliberalism sets. Such activities can only be legitimised as being 'in the national interest.'
Second, however, the nationalism that articulates these interests is necessarily different from, but can easily (and given its function as a legitimising ideology, it must be said, performatively) be mis-recognised as, nationalism as widely understood: as being in some real sense in the interests of all members of the nation. In this form, cultural nationalism provides national ruling classes a sense of their identity and purpose, as well as a form of legitimation among thelower orders.
As Gramsci said, these are the main functions of every ruling ideology. Cultural nationalism masks, and to a degree resolves, the intense competition between capitals over access to the state for support domestically and in the international arena – in various bilateral and multilateral fora – where it bargainsfor the most favoured national capitalist interests within the global and imperial hierarchy.
Except for a commitment to neoliberal policies, the economic policy content of this nationalism cannot be consistent: within the country, and inter-nationally, the capitalist system is volatile and the positions of the various elements of capital in the national and international hierarchies shift constantly as does the economic policy of cultural nationalist governments. It is this volatility that also increases the need for corruption – since that is how competitive access of individual capitals to the state is today organised.
Whatever its utility to the capitalist classes, however, cultural nationalism can never have a settled or secure hold on those who are marginalised or sub-ordinated by it. In neoliberal regimes the scope for offering genuine economic gains to the people at large, however measured they might be, is small.
This is a problem for right politics since even the broadest coalition of the propertied can never be an electoral majority, even a viable plurality. This is only in the nature of capitalist private property. While the left remains in retreat or disarray, elec-toral apathy is a useful political resource but even where, as in most countries, political choices are minimal, the electorate as a whole is volatile. Despite, orperhaps because of, being reduced to a competition between parties of capital, electoral politics in the age of the New Right entails very large electoral costs, theextensive and often vain use of the media in elections and in politics generally, and political compromises which may clash with the high and shrilly ambitiou sdemands of the primary social base in the propertied classes. Instability, uncertainty ...
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Sep 14, 2016 | September 12, 2016 at 8:58 am
www.nakedcapitalism.comThe story of Chile's popular, and democratic rejection of government by oligarchs is today's must-read, and provides unsettling similarities to current events, most strikingly in my estimation, recently in Venezuela.
The Popular Unity government enjoyed promising successes during its first year in power. Domestic production spiked in 1971, leading to a GDP growth rate of almost 9 percent. Unemployment fell from 7 percent to below 3 percent, and wages increased dramatically, particularly for the lowest earners. Allende's land reform program - along with intensified popular attacks on large, unproductive landholdings - led to near record harvests and a new abundance of food for the poor.
Of course no good deed goes unpunished by oligarchs.
On the other hand, Chilean elites also pursued a more top-down strategy in their effort to bring the economy to its knees. Objecting to government-mandated price controls and export restrictions, powerful business interests took to hoarding consumer essentials, secretly warehousing enormous quantities of basic goods only to let them spoil as avoidable food shortages rocked the nation.
And of course there's the USA's never-ending efforts to spread peace and democracy.
Meanwhile, in Washington, President Nixon was making good on his promise to "make Chile's economy scream." He called for an end to all US assistance to the Allende government, and instructed US officials to use their "predominant position in international financial institutions to dry up the flow" of international credit to Chile.
And finally a sobering reminder, that in the end, if they can't beat you at the polls, they are not above putting and end to you altogether.
Deeply committed to maintaining the legality of the revolutionary process, the UP government sought to slow the pace of radical democratic reforms at the grassroots in a misguided effort to avoid a putsch, or the outbreak of open civil war. In the end, this error proved fatal - an armed popular base, exercising direct control over its communities and workplaces, could have been an invaluable line of defense for the Allende administration, as well as for its broader goal of total societal transformation.
Because, with friends like these ;
When Henry Kissinger began secretly taping all of his phone conversations in 1969, little did he know that he was giving history the gift that keeps on giving. Now, on the 35th anniversary of the September 11, 1973, CIA-backed military coup in Chile, phone transcripts that Kissinger made of his talks with President Nixon and the CIA chief among other top government officials reveal in the most candid of language the imperial mindset of the Nixon administration as it began plotting to overthrow President Salvador Allende, the world's first democratically elected Socialist. "We will not let Chile go down the drain," Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in a phone call following Allende's narrow election on September 4, 1970, according to a recently declassified transcript. "I am with you," Helms responded.
9/11 means different things to different people.
RabidGandhi , September 12, 2016 at 9:26 amJim Haygood , September 12, 2016 at 11:50 amThe comparison with Venezuela is hugely important, especially with regard to the suppliers boycot, where the Venezuelan opposition seem to be directly copying the Chilean playbook. Even so, there is another aspect that should be of greater concern. Chile stands out for its reliance on mining, especially copper. By failing in his bid to diversify the Chilean economy, Allende left his country vulnerable to the fluctuations of the global economy and the whims of first world importers.
If memory serves, in 1973 mining represented around ~25% of the Chilean economy. Venezuela, by contrast, now has 45% of its GDP tied up in oil exports. The only fact that should be surprising, then, is that the Bolivarian governments have lasted as long as they have; perhaps a testament to the sweeping social improvements that have won them a mass-supported bulwark against constant right wing assaults. Even so, with the economy undiversified, that bulwark will only hold out for so long.
Alejandro , September 12, 2016 at 1:36 pmThis phenomenon has been termed the "resource curse." It consists of multiple elements, all bad.
For one, the ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price reduces the incentive to diversify one's economy. In an extreme case like Saudi Arabia, even the workers hired to produce the oil are mostly foreign, leaving domestic workers unskilled and idle.
Second, contrary to the belief early in the industrial revolution that commodity prices would be driven up by scarcity, in fact technological improvement has more than counterbalanced scarcity to keep commodity prices flat to down in real terms.
Finally, as every commodity trader knows, the stylized secular chart pattern of any commodity is a sharp spike owing to a shortage, followed by a long (as in decades) bowl produced by excessive capacity brought online in the wake of the shortage.
Governments, not adept at realizing that commodity price spikes are not sustainable, accumulate fixed costs during the boom years and then get crunched in the subsequent price crash.
Watt4Bob , September 12, 2016 at 4:21 pmIs this suppose to explain what happened in Chile in 1973? Catallactics, ushered in AND imposed via a brutal military dictatorship, yet fail to recognize the contradiction in the so-called "effects of violent intervention with the market"
OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , September 12, 2016 at 5:26 pmThis phenomenon has been termed the "resource curse." It consists of multiple elements, all bad.
The curse is mostly the result of having powerful and rapacious neighbors with no compunction but to use whatever means necessary to install a 'friendly' government willing to repress its own people in order to allow the theft of their 'resources'.
For one, the ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price reduces the incentive to diversify one's economy.
It was not the people of Chile, who profited by the "ability to produce a commodity at the world's lowest price" and so cannot be blamed for the inability to diversify their economy.
As for Chile's governing elite, they wore the comfortable version of the "copper collar', the one made of money as opposed to chains, and so paid-off, lived in wealth and comfort so long as they kept their countrymen from doing anything that Anaconda copper didn't like.
In an extreme case like Saudi Arabia, even the workers hired to produce the oil are mostly foreign, leaving domestic workers unskilled and idle.
The extreme case of Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the hegemonic tactics just described, install a government 'friendly' to American 'interests' in this case the House of Saud, and make them so fabulously wealthy that there is no questioning their loyalty, until it becomes questionable
Second, contrary to the belief early in the industrial revolution that commodity prices would be driven up by scarcity, in fact technological improvement has more than counterbalanced scarcity to keep commodity prices flat to down in real terms.
Finally, as every commodity trader knows, the stylized secular chart pattern of any commodity is a sharp spike owing to a shortage, followed by a long (as in decades) bowl produced by excessive capacity brought online in the wake of the shortage.
Until finally, after the inevitable effect of monopolistic control of commodity 'markets' and the corrupting influence of corporate power destroy the working man's earning potential, and by extension his purchasing power, and so extinguishes 'demand'.
Governments, not adept at realizing that commodity price spikes are not sustainable, accumulate fixed costs during the boom years and then get crunched in the subsequent price crash.
It was not the Chilean government who concerned themselves with sustainability, as they were paid not to, and the corporations who made all the money didn't give a damn either.
It should be easy to understand the logic, and necessity of voting out the ruling elite who were very good at lining their own pockets, but not so good at planning for their people's well-being.
The Chilean people grew tired of rule by greedy people bought-off by American corporations, and elected a socialist government in an effort to remedy the situation.For their troubles, they were treated to a violent coup with thousands killed, tortured and disappeared.
And finally, it appears that you think this is all the 'natural' operation of 'markets'?
Katniss Everdeen , September 12, 2016 at 9:27 amSuperb stuff, especially "monopolistic control of commodity markets", supply and demand pressures on wheat and oil and copper have mostly faded to insignificance with hyper-leveraged commodities markets and supine (complicit) regulators.
See: oil going to $140 not so many years ago despite building supply and weak demand. Goldman famously decided commodities were an "asset class" in 2003 and completely f*cked up these critical price signals for the world economy.
Jim Haygood , September 12, 2016 at 11:40 am" . an armed popular base, exercising direct control over its communities and workplaces, could have been an invaluable line of defense for the Allende administration, as well as for its broader goal of total societal transformation."
"Those who do not learn history" are condemned to being exploited and controlled by those who do.
MyLessThanPrimeBeef , September 12, 2016 at 5:10 pm'Objecting to government-mandated price controls and export restrictions, powerful business interests took to hoarding consumer essentials.'
Businesses don't exist for the purpose of "hoarding." But if mandated prices are set below cost, of course goods will not be sold at a loss. Blaming the victims instead of the price controllers is like blaming a murder victim for "getting in the way of my bullet."
hunkerdown , September 12, 2016 at 5:36 pmGoods perhaps, but not labor. If mandated prices (for labor) are set below cost, serfs will still sell their labor. For example, any soldier who never came back from Iraq obviously under-priced his labor.
afisher , September 12, 2016 at 12:30 pmBusinesses don't exist for the purpose of "hoarding."
Oh, right, our precious middlemen call it "sequestration" and "arbitrage". There's a million pounds of aluminum in the Mexican desert that calls bullshit on your claim. Any more self-absorbed theology you would like to discuss this fine Monday?
pretzelattack , September 12, 2016 at 1:03 pmThe terrible legacy of the Pinochet years were also done by the "Chicago boys" who were hired to run the government. In their hate of the people and the embrace of neoliberal capitalism, they did something much worse: they changed the Constitution of the country so that undoing all their hateful legislation would be near impossible to override. When you hear of Student Protests in Chile – they are still fighting to undo the terrible legacy.
Sidenote: US has one of the Chicago Boys, entrenched at the Cato Institute.
ProNewerDeal , September 12, 2016 at 5:40 pmyeah the chicago austerity mongers, and kissinger. guess who takes advice from kissinger, and pushes neoliberal economic policies. the democrats used to be opposed to that sort of thing, at least in public.
What was Allende's Socialist party's policies, were they Nordic-style Social Democracy? I still am not sure if there is a meaningful ideological difference between Nordic Social Democracy, & Latin American "Socialism of the 21st Century" in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia.
Norway & Venezuela both have a state-owned oil company, the profits of which are actually used to help their citizens, specifically in education & health funding. Yet the likes of 0bama/Bush43 praise Norway & slam Venezuela.
Allende was even a full White Guy TM like the Nordics, albeit not blond-hair blue eyes like some Nordics. I suspected this was perhaps an important reason the likes of 0bama/Bush43 praises the Nordic nations while labeling the part-Native American &/or Black Venezuelan/Ecuador/Bolivian Presidents as being "Commie" "Dictators".
Perhaps the Nordics have a special secret deal with Murica & the US Imperial MIC: go along with the US Imperial foreign policy, & don't loudly promote your Social Democratic system, to anyone but especially not to nonwhite nations; & in turn we won't falsely slander you as Commie Dictators as we do any other nation attempting Social Democracy.
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Sep 13, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Retreat and Its Consequences: American Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order , Robert J. Lieber, Cambridge University Press, 152 pages
The United States has been pursuing a grand strategy of primacy since at least the end of the Cold War. This hegemonic approach has sought, through active, deep engagement in the world, to preserve and extend the U.S.'s global dominance that followed the Soviet Union's collapse. In other words, it has aimed to turn the unipolar moment into a unipolar era. Maintaining this dominance has meant aggressive diplomacy and the frequent display, threat, and use of military power everywhere from the Balkans to the Baltics, from Libya to Pakistan, and from the Taiwan Straits to the Korean peninsula.
Unfortunately, primacy has largely failed to deliver what must be the first, second, and third priorities for any grand strategy: the satisfaction of national interests, foremost among them America's safety. Rather than peace and security, primacy has brought about questionable military interventions and wars of choice in Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans (twice), Iraq (three times, depending on how you count), Libya, and Syria. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the deaths of almost 7,000 American troops, the wounding of tens of thousands more, and the filing of disability claims by nearly a million veterans. Rather than protecting the conditions of our prosperity, primacy has cost Americans dearly, with the annual defense budget now set to rise to around $600 billion and the Iraq War alone wasting trillions of dollars. As for our values, the U.S. approach has placed our nation in the uncomfortable position of defending illiberal regimes abroad, stained our reputation for the rule of law with Guantanamo and drone campaigns, and sacrificed the Constitutional authority of Congress.
Is it any wonder that more and more Americans question whether our foreign policy is working? Or that more and more Washington elites, though still a minority, are becoming dissatisfied with the status quo? Such challengers seek to reform the military budget and force structure to make them consistent with our real security needs. They also want to reduce ally free-riding and make sure that the full range of possible costs and consequences of our actions abroad get a more serious hearing so that we, in the immortal words of President Obama, "Don't do stupid shit."
And yet Robert Lieber, in his slender new book Retreat and Its Consequences , thinks those who seek an alternative approach are dangerously misled. He sees any sign of realism and restraint-real, anticipated, or imagined-as a retreat with far-reaching negative implications. Lieber, a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University, instead makes the case for doubling down on primacy and against the U.S. playing a "reduced" role in the world. He does so mainly by attempting to show the negative consequences of the Obama administration's supposed retrenchment while arguing for the importance of aggressive American global leadership.
Unfortunately for the primacist cause, Retreat and Its Consequences is not a satisfactory rejoinder to its challengers. Lieber is unconvincing in both his indictment of opposing views and his case for deep engagement. The book frequently reads like a rehashing of attacks we've heard high and low since Bush departed office, from scholars like Peter Feaver of Duke University to the Beltway neoconservatives to the fear-mongering talking heads on cable news. More importantly, it trots out a deeply flawed argument that the United States under Obama is actually in retreat and shedding its global leadership.
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Retreat and Its Consequences is the last book of Lieber's informal trilogy on recent U.S. foreign policy. In the first book in the series, The American Era (2005), Lieber argued in favor of the United States continuing in the post-9/11 era to lead the world through a grand strategy of "preponderance" and "active engagement." He claimed that such an approach would dovetail with the realities of that changed world, to the benefit of U.S. security and the international order alike. The next book, Power and Willpower in the American Future (2012), challenged the declinist perspective and made the case for why the U.S. could still exert global leadership despite facing a number of different challenges.
Lieber begins this third book, Retreat and Its Consequences , by claiming that America's long-standing active engagement in global affairs has been increasingly questioned at home and that the U.S. has recently been retrenching and pulling back from its traditional leadership role. He describes this retrenchment in theory and practice, then briefly (and in more detail later in the book) paints a picture of a world gone bad as a consequence of this alleged retreat. He hangs most of his indictment on President Obama's foreign-policy approach, which Lieber claims reflects "a clear preference for reducing U.S. power and presence abroad" as well as "a deep skepticism about the use of force" and "a de-emphasis on relationships with allies."
The middle section of the book provides chapter-long discussions of U.S. foreign relations with Europe, the Middle East, and the BRICS countries. In the Europe chapter, Lieber argues that our critical relationship with our European allies is suffering. He claims that the "Atlantic partnership has weakened as the United States has downplayed its European commitments and Europeans themselves have become less capable and more inclined to hedge their bets." The latter is due to Europe's own internal woes, including economic problems, military weakness (as well as growing pacifism), demographic challenges, and problems with the EU. The other half of the problem he lays, as is typical in this book, at the Obama administration's doorstep due to its de-emphasis on Europe and its weak behavior towards Putin's Russia.
As for the Middle East, Lieber claims that the region and U.S. national interests there are suffering due to Obama's flawed retrenchment and disengagement strategy. Indeed, Lieber argues that Obama's transformative moves, only lightly described, have "contributed to the making of a more dangerous and unstable Middle East." He also discusses U.S. interests and history in the region, the sources of Middle East instability, and the "unexpected consequences" of the Iraq War-the rise of ISIS and Iran.
Lieber's main point regarding the BRICS is that these countries have not helped and will not be able to help sustain the current global order. Indeed, he thinks these states have their own different priorities and, to the extent they benefit from the current system, will try to free ride as much as possible. Lieber uses these cases as still more reasons why the U.S. cannot disengage from its global leadership role even as economic power continues to diffuse.
In the penultimate chapter, Lieber returns to his allegation that the U.S. has been retreating from the world and our leadership role-and tries to show that it has had dangerous consequences. In the process, he discusses U.S. policies toward Russia, China, Iraq and Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, and Cuba. In all these cases, Lieber finds evidence of failure and worsening conditions due to Obama's retrenchment and his aversion to using American power. He also claims that the Obama administration has cut our military while failing to provide a focused articulation of what goals it needs to meet.
Lieber ends by returning to the theme of Power and Willpower in the American Future , namely that the U.S., despite its challenges, still has the capacity to pursue an active hegemonic grand strategy. He takes issue with the declinists and argues yet again that the U.S. ought to lead the world; otherwise, it "is likely to become a more disorderly and dangerous place, with mounting threats not only to world order and economic prosperity, but to its own national interests and homeland security."
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Lieber's book isn't without its lucid moments. First, he is on sound footing when he notes that the BRICS are not fully committed to the current American-led international order. Furthermore, he is also right about the need for our European allies to increase their own capabilities-though one wishes he had paused to consider how this is an unsurprising result of U.S. security guarantees that incentivize free-riding.
Second, Lieber also helpfully challenges the declinist view prevalent in some circles. The United States certainly has its challenges, with staggering debt and deficits, not to mention a stifling regulatory regime. But the U.S. continues to enjoy many strengths and advantages, especially relative to the other near-great powers in the system. (And in international politics, it is relative power that matters most.) Yet while Lieber gets the condition of the patient right in this instance, the good doctor does not convincingly argue for the necessity of his preferred prescription. That the U.S. may not be in relative decline or in as much future trouble as some might claim does not imply that the U.S. should continue to follow primacy. Rather, one could argue that it is precisely because of some of our continued advantages that his grand strategy is not required. When discussing the BRICS, Lieber admits that China suffers from some grave problems that may prevent it from becoming a serious challenger to American dominance. This raises the question of why the United States must do-and risk-so much to ensure our security or that of our allies in Asia.
Despite these positives, Retreat and Its Consequences and the overarching approach that has guided Lieber's policy views for so long suffer from a number of critical flaws. Most importantly, the argument of the book is simply based on a mistaken and endlessly repeated premise that the United States has significantly retreated from the world and that this has been a key source of so many problems in it. Basically, Lieber, as we've heard so often from others, is arguing that the administration has pursued restraint, the world has gone to hell, restraint is responsible for our woes-and thus we must return to primacy. Admittedly, Obama, especially in his second term, has exercised greater discretion in how he has managed our global engagement and leadership. And he may in his heart of hearts have some sympathy with those who have counseled greater realism. But neither make for a policy of retreat.
Indeed, the United States under Obama has continued to pursue a variant of primacy despite what Lieber and others keep saying in their critiques. The United States is still committed to defending over 60 other countries and commanding the global commons. It still has a forward-deployed military living on a globe-girdling network of hundreds of military bases. In fact, it has recently sent more troops and equipment to Iraq, Eastern Europe, and even Australia. The United States still enjoys the world's strongest military force, costing taxpayers around $600 billion a year. This sum represents nearly a third of all global spending and is equal to that of at least the next 10 countries combined. Its nearest competitor, China, spends far less, about $150 billion.
And during the Obama years, the United States surged forces in Afghanistan, fought a war against Libya that led to regime change, re-entered Iraq and engaged (even if tepidly) in Syria, supported Saudi Arabia's dubious fight in Yemen, continued to conduct drone strikes abroad, became unprofitably enmeshed diplomatically in Ukraine's troubles, and continued to exert its power and influence in Asia. And just recently the U.S. again bombed targets in Libya. Retreat, you say?
Finally, Lieber's claim that disengagement and retrenchment is to blame for problems in the greater Middle East is rich given how the primacist approach he favors was to a great extent responsible for the problems in the first place. The degree of disarray in Libya and the consequences of it have flowed directly from the U.S.'s decision to go to war against Gaddafi and to pursue regime change. There is little need to note how disastrous the Iraq War was for the region and American interests-and how Iraq continues to be a source of trouble that the U.S. is ill-suited to resolve. It is especially noteworthy that the relative increase of Iranian influence Lieber bemoans was an entirely predictable result of that short-sighted campaign. And we haven't likely seen all of the poisonous fruit from what is happening in Yemen. In short, Lieber and his fellow primacists have advocated for policies in the Middle East-including the war in Iraq-that are a big part of the problem, not the solution.
Our country needs challenges and alternatives to the status quo rather than boilerplate justifications of the policies that have failed to make us safer over the past 25 years. Regardless of what Lieber would have us believe, President Obama's grand strategy has remained firmly planted within the confines of the Washington consensus and does not represent a retreat. One could only imagine what Lieber would think of a policy that truly hewed more closely to the advice of our Founders.
William Ruger is the vice president for research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute.
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Sep 04, 2016 | www.theamericanconservative.com
August 30, 2016, 11:13 AMPeggy Noonan wrote a thoughtful column on the horrors of war last week:
Our leaders are shallow on the subject of war. No, worse than shallow-they're silent. Which is one reason they will likely not be fully trusted should they make rough decisions down the road on Syria, or Iran, or elsewhere.
War is terrible. That should be said over and over, not because it's a box you ought to check on the way to the presidency but because you're human and have a brain.
War is always terrible, and it is made even more so when it is waged when it doesn't have to be. Most wars are avoidable and unnecessary, and yet most of our political leaders are reliably in favor of every U.S. military intervention around the world when it matters. Some may later say they regret their support for a previous war, especially if it was a much costlier one than they expected, but at the time the "safe" and "smart" position for ambitious politicians to take is to be for bombing and/or invading. Almost all of the political incentives at least since Desert Storm have flowed in the direction of supporting military action, and so most of the people that seek the presidency have learned not to be an early opponent of any proposed intervention.
Noonan recounts a telling exchange with a politician in which she asked him if he hated war. After being reassured that he wasn't walking into a trap, he said yes, but still qualified the answer by saying that war is sometimes necessary. The trouble is that most of our politicians, and almost all of our presidential candidates, have never seen a war that they thought was unnecessary. Reflexive interventionists may sometimes include the caveat that they don't want war, but in the next breath they are keen to tell you why "action" is imperative. Sometimes they dress this up with euphemisms. They don't talk about going to war, but say that that the U.S. shouldn't be standing "on the sidelines" or that the U.S. needs to "lead," but invariably this amounts to a demand that force be used in another country. Sometimes they dress up calls for war with technical terms, such as the much-abused "no-fly zone" phrase, that obscure what they are talking about. At other times, they simply acquiesce in a policy of lending support to a client state's horrific war, and that way they don't have to say anything and can pretend to have nothing to do with it.
It is in this environment that relatively dovish candidates have to emphasize their readiness to use force while hawkish candidates are under much less pressure to prove that they aren't warmongers. While there is near-constant U.S. warfare somewhere in the world, hardly anyone in politics talks about the need for peace. Just as our candidates don't express their hatred of war, they typically don't profess their desire for peace for fear that they will be pilloried as "weak."
Despite the fact that U.S. forces have been engaged in hostilities for Obama's entire presidency, the loudest and most frequent criticisms of his foreign policy are that he is supposedly too reluctant to use force and didn't bomb Syria. If one of the most activist, militarized presidencies in modern U.S. history is being portrayed in the media as insufficiently aggressive, we aren't likely to hear our leaders regularly condemning the evils of war.
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09, 2015 | Defend Democracy Press
Russia so desperately desires to be part of the disreputable and collapsing West that Russia is losing its grip on reality.
Despite hard lesson piled upon hard lesson, Russia cannot give up its hope of being acceptable to the West. The only way Russia can be acceptable to the West is to accept vassal status.
Russia miscalculated that diplomacy could solve the crisis that Washington created in Ukraine and placed its hopes on the Minsk Agreement, which has no Western support whatsoever, neither in Kiev nor in Washington, London, and NATO.Russia can end the Ukraine crisis by simply accepting the requests of the former Russian territories to reunite with Russia. Once the breakaway republics are again part of Russia, the crisis is over. Ukraine is not going to attack Russia.
Russia doesn't end the crisis, because Russia thinks it would be provocative and upset Europe. Actually, that is what Russia needs to do-upset Europe. Russia needs to make Europe aware that being Washington's tool against Russia is risky and has costs for Europe.
Instead, Russia shields Europe from the costs that Washington imposes on Europe and imposes little cost on Europe for acting against Russia in Washington's interest. Russia still supplies its declared enemies, whose air forces fly provocative flights along Russia's borders, with the energy to put their war planes into the air.
This is the failure of diplomacy, not its success. Diplomacy cannot succeed when only one side believes in diplomacy and the other side believes in force.
Russia needs to understand that diplomacy cannot work with Washington and its NATO vassals who do not believe in diplomacy, but rely instead on force. Russia needs to understand that when Washington declares that Russia is an outlaw state that "does not act in accordance with international norms," Washington means that Russia is not following Washington's orders. By "international norms," Washington means Washington's will. Countries that are not in compliance with Washington's will are not acting in accordance with "international norms."
Washington and only Washington determines "international norms." America is the "exceptional, indispensable" country. No other country has this rank.
A country with an independent foreign policy is a threat to Washington. The neoconservative Wolfowitz Doctrine makes this completely clear. The Wolfowitz Doctrine, the basis of US foreign and military policy, defines as a threat any country with sufficient power to act as a constraint on Washington's unilateral action. The Wolfowitz Doctrine states unambiguously that any country with sufficient power to block Washington's purposes in the world is a threat and that "our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of" any such country.
Russia, China, and Iran are in Washington's crosshairs. Treaties and "cooperation" mean nothing. Cooperation only causes Washington's targets to lose focus and to forget that they are targets. Russia's foreign minister Lavrov seems to believe that now with the failure of Washington's policy of war and destruction in the Middle East, Washington and Russia can work together to contain the ISIS jihadists in Iraq and Syria. This is a pipe dream. Russia and Washington cannot work together in Syria and Iraq, because the two governments have conflicting goals. Russia wants peace, respect for international law, and the containment of radical jihadists elements. Washington wants war, no legal constraints, and is funding radical jihadist elements in the interest of Middle East instability and overthrow of Assad in Syria. Even if Washington desired the same goals as Russia, for Washington to work with Russia would undermine the picture of Russia as a threat and enemy.
Russia, China, and Iran are the three countries that can constrain Washington's unilateral action. Consequently, the three countries are in danger of a pre-emptive nuclear strike. If these countries are so naive as to believe that they can now work with Washington, given the failure of Washington's 14-year old policy of coercion and violence in the Middle East, by rescuing Washington from the quagmire it created that gave rise to the Islamic State, they are deluded sitting ducks for a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
Washington created the Islamic State. Washington used these jihadists to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya and then sent them to overthrow Assad in Syria. The American neoconservatives, everyone of whom is allied with Zionist Israel, do not want any cohesive state in the Middle East capable of interfering with a "Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates."
The ISIS jihadists learned that Washington's policy of murdering and displacing millions of Muslims in seven countries had created an anti-Western constituency for them among the peoples of the Middle East and have begun acting independently of their Washington creators.
The consequence is more chaos in the Middle East and Washington's loss of control.
Instead of leaving Washington to suffer at the hands of its own works, Russia and Iran, the two most hated and demonized countries in the West, have rushed to rescue Washington from its Middle East follies. This is the failure of Russian and Iranian strategic thinking. Countries that cannot think strategically do not survive.
The Iranians need to understand that their treaty with Washington means nothing. Washington has never honored any treaty. Just ask the Plains Indians or the last Soviet President Gorbachev.
If the Russian government thinks that Washington's word means anything, the Russian government is out to lunch.
Iran is well led, and Vladimir Putin has rescued Russia from US and Israeli control, but both governments continue to act as if they are taking some drug that makes them think that Washington can be a partner.
These delusions are dangerous, not only to Russia and Iran, but to the entire world. If Russia and Iran let their guard down, they will be nuked, and so will China. Washington stands for one thing and one thing only: World Hegemony.
Just ask the Neoconservatives or read their documents. The neoconservatives control Washington. No one else in the government has a voice. For the neoconservatives, Armageddon is a tolerable risk to achieve the goal of American World Hegemony.
Only Russia and China can save the world from Armageddon, but are they too deluded and worshipful of the West to save Planet Earth?
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sputniknews.com
The Hungarian billionaire appeared to have a fascination with not just fostering but creating anti-Putin opposition forces inside of Russia in a bid to destabilize the country.The recent DC Leaks document dump of over 2,500 documents from George Soros' Open Society Foundations illustrates a disturbing trend by the billionaire of using his wealth and influence to sow chaos across the world in a bid to profit off of global suffering and impose neoliberal ideas on an international scale.
The leaks have already exposed Soros' efforts to destabilize the European Union by promoting a policy of open borders and mass migration and fracturing Ukraine's government by fomenting an illegal coup of a democratically elected government using neo-Nazi hardliners. Once dubbed the "puppet master" by the fanatical Glenn Beck, Soros has also been linked to both corruption in the United States and, according to some, positive social reform in his funding of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Yet the man who has brought regimes around the world to their knees has long wanted to bring Putin's government crashing down, but has proven unsuccessful time and again. New memos from the DC Leaks file dump show that this failure to oust Putin wasn't for lack of trying on the part of Soros. In a November 2012 document titled "OSF [Open Society Foundation] Russia Strategic Planning Meeting Notes" a team of anti-Putin international experts sat down to discuss how to "identify joint priorities for OSF's Russia activities in the coming year. How can we most effectively collaborate, considering the deteriorating political environment for our partners?"
Whereas that seems benign, the document minutes show that the meeting's participants hoped that Medvedev's years as president would provide "an opening" for the Open Society Foundations to influence and rattle the Russian government. A hope that disappeared when Putin returned to office.
"The Medvedev period allowed for a number of improvements and significant openings for NGOs… However, pressure has come back very quickly in the short time that Putin has been back in power."
The NGO operation became quickly distrusted in Russia following the botched "Maidan like" protests which were immediately dismantled before it could threaten the Russian government. "The Russian protests deeply affected the life of NGO's," read the minutes. The meeting explains that the government had attempted to encourage civil opposition by providing funds, "but by encouraging self-organization, they had opened up Pandora's Box… the door was opened for self-mobilization."
The document proceeded to provide an extensive bullet point list of "what must be done" in order to destabilize Russia including working to flood the country with migrants and influencing the country's media operations.
The memo was followed up with what was called "the Russia Project" which called for identifying and organizing opponents to Putin, advancing principles of globalism, and undermine Russia's image in the lead up to the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160828/1044703488/soros-memo-oust-putin-russia.html
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sputniknews.com
New documents released by hackers who compromised George Soros' Open Society Foundations raise serious questions about the Hungarian billionaire's role in Ukraine.
A leaked document, from the massive 2,500 file dump by DC Leaks of George Soros' most sensitive Open Society Foundations communications, show the inordinate amount of power and authority the Hungarian billionaire wielded over Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of the Maidan government overthrow.Soros, along with key executives from the Open Society Foundations, held extensive meetings with nearly every actor involved in the Maidan coup including Ukraine's Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice, Health and Education as well as US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and the regional director of USAID. However, the documents do exclude one key official, Victoria Nuland, who was allegedly involved in steering the opposition to the Yanukovych government.
The records focus on plans to minimize and counter Russian influence and cultural ties to Ukraine with a focus towards steering Kiev towards social and economic reforms that Soros favored. The Hungarian billionaire has not been bashful about his acts or intent to influence politics in Ukraine establishing the NGO, International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) to spearhead the formation of the "New Ukraine."
Most troubling in the document leak appears to be a file titled "Breakfast with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt" to discuss Ukraine's future. In the meeting, which took place on March 31, 2014, just months after the Maidan coup and weeks prior to civil strife following Ukrainian forces assault on Donbass, US Ambassador Pyatt outlines a PR war against Putin, a position George Soros viewed favorably in the meeting.
"The short term issue that needs to be addressed will be the problem in getting the message out from the government through professional PR tools, especially given Putin's own professional smear campaigns," said the US Ambassador.
George Soros responded, "Agreement on the strategic communications issue – providing professional PR assistance to the Ukrainian government would be very useful."
Pyatt seemed open to the idea of guiding Ukraine towards a decentralization of power just short of Lavrov's recommendation for a federalized Ukraine, but George Soros pushed back stating that a federalization model would result in Russia gaining influence over eastern regions of the country which the Hungarian billionaire disapproved of.
The Ambassador noted that Secretary of State John Kerry "would be interested to hear George Soros' views on the situation directly, upon return from his trip" raising the question why one wealthy foreign individual, neither from Ukraine nor Russia, had such access to influence American policy.
Ambassador Pyatt's position towards decentralization also appeared to shake as the correspondence continued saying that the "Russian propaganda machine is telling Kharkhiv and Donbass residents that the government in Western Ukraine is looking to take away their resources and rights through the decentralization process, feeding into Lavrov's line that the Ukrainian government is dysfunctional and not successful as a unitary state, making it a necessity to have federalization.
Then, in a full capitulation, the American diplomat point blank asks George Soros, "what should the US government be doing and what is the US government currently doing."
To which, George Soros responded, "Obama has been too soft on Putin, and there is a need to impose potent smart sanctions." He then called on the US government to "impose sanctions on Russia for 90 days or until the Russian government recognizes the results of the presidential elections."
In a separate meeting, titled "Civil Society Roundtable Meeting," George Soros directly calls for the formation of a Ukrainian "fifth column" – a group whose sole purpose is to undermine a larger group – in order to push Ukraine away from Russia.
"We would rather have people there as fifth column – pivotal thing for future of Ukrainian society – continue to work with Crimean people" said the document regarding the disputed territory only highlighting that there was potentially improper interference by Soros in Ukraine's civil society.
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SPIEGEL ONLINE (SPON)
The newly leaked emails reveal a clandestine network of Western agitators around the NATO military chief, whose presence fueled the conflict in Ukraine. Many allies found in Breedlove's alarmist public statements about alleged large Russian troop movements cause for concern early on. Earlier this year, the general was assuring the world that US European Command was "deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary."The emails document for the first time the questionable sources from whom Breedlove was getting his information. He had exaggerated Russian activities in eastern Ukraine with the overt goal of delivering weapons to Kiev.
The general and his likeminded colleagues perceived US President Barack Obama, the commander-in-chief of all American forces, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel as obstacles. Obama and Merkel were being "politically naive & counter-productive" in their calls for de-escalation, according to Phillip Karber, a central figure in Breedlove's network who was feeding information from Ukraine to the general.
"I think POTUS sees us as a threat that must be minimized,... ie do not get me into a war????" Breedlove wrote in one email, using the acronym for the president of the United States. How could Obama be persuaded to be more "engaged" in the conflict in Ukraine -- read: deliver weapons -- Breedlove had asked former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Breedlove sought counsel from some very prominent people, his emails show. Among them were Wesley Clark, Breedlove's predecessor at NATO, Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Kiev.
One name that kept popping up was Phillip Karber, an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC and president of the Potomac Foundation, a conservative think tank founded by the former defense contractor BDM. By its own account, the foundation has helped eastern European countries prepare their accession into NATO. Now the Ukrainian parliament and the government in Kiev were asking Karber for help.
Surreptitious Channels
On February 16, 2015, when the Ukraine crisis had reached its climax, Karber wrote an email to Breedlove, Clark, Pyatt and Rose Gottemoeller, the under secretary for arms control and international security at the State Department, who will be moving to Brussels this fall to take up the post of deputy secretary general of NATO. Karber was in Warsaw, and he said he had found surreptitious channels to get weapons to Ukraine -- without the US being directly involved.
According to the email, Pakistan had offered, "under the table," to sell Ukraine 500 portable TOW-II launchers and 8,000 TOW-II missiles. The deliveries could begin within two weeks. Even the Poles were willing to start sending "well maintained T-72 tanks, plus several hundred SP 122mm guns, and SP-122 howitzers (along with copious amounts of artillery ammunition for both)" that they had leftover from the Soviet era. The sales would likely go unnoticed, Karber said, because Poland's old weapons were "virtually undistinguishable from those of Ukraine."
AFP
A destroyed airport building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk : Thousands were killed in fighting during the Ukraine conflict.
Karber noted, however, that Pakistan and Poland would not make any deliveries without informal US approval. Furthermore, Warsaw would only be willing to help if its deliveries to Kiev were replaced with new, state-of-the-art weapons from NATO. Karber concluded his letter with a warning: "Time has run out." Without immediate assistance, the Ukrainian army "could face prospect of collapse within 30 days."
"Stark," Breedlove replied. "I may share some of this but will thoroughly wipe the fingerprints off."
In March, Karber traveled again to Warsaw in order to, as he told Breedlove, consult with leading members of the ruling party, on the need to "quietly supply arty ( eds: artillery ) and antitank munitions to Ukraine."
Much to the irritation of Breedlove, Clark and Karber, nothing happened. Those responsible were quickly identified. The National Security Council, Obama's circle of advisors, were "slowing things down," Karber complained. Clark pointed his finger directly at the White House, writing, "Our problem is higher than State," a reference to the State Department.
... ... ...
'The Front Is Now Everywhere'Karber's emails constantly made it sound as though the apocalypse was only a few weeks away. "The front is now everywhere," he told Breedlove in an email at the beginning of 2015, adding that Russian agents and their proxies "have begun launching a series of terrorist attacks, assassinations, kidnappings and infrastructure bombings," in an effort to destabilize Kiev and other Ukrainian cities.
In an email to Breedlove, Clark described defense expert Karber as "brilliant." After a first visit, Breedlove indicated he had also been impressed. "GREAT visit," he wrote. Karber, an extremely enterprising man, appeared at first glance to be a valuable informant because he often -- at least a dozen times by his own account -- traveled to the front and spoke with Ukrainian commanders. The US embassy in Kiev also relied on Karber for information because it lacked its own sources. "We're largely blind," the embassy's defense attaché wrote in an email.
At times, Karber's missives read like prose. In one, he wrote about the 2014 Christmas celebrations he had spent together with Dnipro-1, the ultranationalist volunteer battalion. "The toasts and vodka flow, the women sing the Ukrainian national anthem -- no one has a dry eye."
Karber had only good things to report about the unit, which had already been discredited as a private oligarch army. He wrote that the staff and volunteers were dominated by middle class people and that there was a large professional staff that was even "working on the holiday." Breedlove responded that these insights were "quietly finding their way into the right places."
Highly Controversial Figure
In fact, Karber is a highly controversial figure. During the 1980s, the longtime BDM employee, was counted among the fiercest Cold War hawks. Back in 1985, he warned of an impending Soviet attack on the basis of documents he had translated incorrectly.
He also blundered during the Ukraine crisis after sending photos to US Senator James Inhofe, claiming to show Russian units in Ukraine. Inhofe released the photos publicly, but it quickly emerged that one had originated from the 2008 war in Georgia.
By November 10, 2014, at the latest, Breedlove must have recognized that his informant was on thin ice. That's when Karber reported that the separatists were boasting they had a tactical nuclear warhead for the 2S4 mortar. Karber himself described the news as "weird," but also added that "there is a lot of 'crazy' things going on" in Ukraine.
The reasons that Breedlove continued to rely on Karber despite such false reports remain unclear. Was he willing to pay any price for weapons deliveries? Or did he have other motives? The emails illustrate the degree to which Breedlove and his fellow campaigners feared that Congress might reduce the number of US troops in Europe.
Karber confirmed the authenticity of the leaked email correspondence. Regarding the questions about the accuracy of his reports, he told SPIEGEL that, "like any information derived from direct observation at the front during the 'fog of war,' it is partial, time sensitive, and perceived through a personal perspective." Looking back with the advantage of hindsight and a more comprehensive perspective, "I believe that I was right more than wrong," Karber writes, "but certainly not perfect." He adds that, "in 170 days at the front, I never once met a German military or official directly observing the conflict."
Great Interest in Berlin
Breedlove's leaked email correspondences were read in Berlin with great interest. A year ago, word of the NATO commander's "dangerous propaganda" was circulating around Merkel's Chancellery. In light of the new information, officials felt vindicated in their assessment. Germany's Federal Foreign Office has expressed similar sentiment, saying that fortunately "influential voices had continuously advocated against the delivery of 'lethal weapons.'"
Karber says he finds it "obscene that the most effective sanction of this war is not the economic limits placed on Russia, but the virtual complete embargo of all lethal aid to the victim. I find this to be the height of sophistry -- if a woman is being attacked by a group of hooligans and yells out to the crowd or passersby, 'Give me a can of mace,' is it better to not supply it because the attackers could have a knife and passively watch her get raped?"
General Breedlove's departure from his NATO post in May has done little to placate anyone in the German government. After all, the man Breedlove regarded as an obstacle, President Obama, is nearing the end of his second term. His possible successor, the Democrat Hillary Clinton, is considered a hardliner vis-a-vis Russia.
What's more: Nuland, a diplomat who shares many of the same views as Breedlove, could move into an even more important role after the November election -- she's considered a potential candidate for secretary of state.
bubasan 07/28/2016
Upon reading this article, I am reminded of Dwight D Eisenhowers Farewell speech to the American Public on January 17, 1961. So long as we continue the PC mentality of NOT Teaching History, as it really was, we are going to repeat past mistake's. The now famous and appropriate quote from President Eisenhower:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
Inglenda2 07/28/2016
The idea of NATO as a defence organisation, following the 2nd World War was quite rational. The history of this organisation however, has shown, how a well meant intention can be misused to force through policies, which have nothing to do with the original purpose. Currently it would appear to have no other role, than to provide high ranking army officers with well paid employment, which can only be justified by way of international conflicts. In the absence of conflict, NATO would have no other cause for existence.
PeterCT 07/28/2016
Why is Breedlove so fat? He is setting a bad example to his troops. Show all comments
turnipseed 07/29/2016
The Cold War continues, only the enemy is not the Soviet Union but Russia. Ever since the war against Napoleon Russia has emerged as a threat to certain European interests, at first liberal and nationalist interests. After the Bolshevik Revolution the enemy was still Russia, now revitalized with extreme Bolshevik ideology. Hitler used this effectively to target liberals, leftists and especially Jews.
After the fall of Communism nothing has really changed. The West is still urged to resist the Russian threat, a threat invented by Polish, Baltic, and Ukrainian nationalists and perhaps Fascists. Donald Trump alone seems impervious to this propaganda. Let's at least give him credit in this case, if not in many others. NATO has become a permanent anti-Russian phony alliance, financed by America.
90-grad 07/31/2016
Quite detailed article. Not being published in the german website. How to describe these people, basically just trying to ignite bigger conflicts, or even war. Hardliner, hawks, to me not strong enough. These are criminals of war, and they should be named accordingly. These are exactly the kind of persons, who helped Bush to invade Irak, basing on false informations to the public. And their peace endangering activities help politicians like H.Clinton to keep the peoble in fear, solely to their own benefit. Disgusting!
huguenot1566 07/31/2016
Extremely disturbing
I don't even know here to begin. Breedlove, Karber, Clark all Americans, seemingly on their own without Obama's permission, trying to exaggerate or fabricate evidence in order to start a war with Russia and the danger to the world is profoundly terrifying (Iraq 2003). The US Embassy in Ukraine saying they were in the dark and therefore relying on information from a college professor, Karber, who still thinks we're in the Cold War along with Clark who was retired & meddling in an unofficial capacity as far as the story implies tells me they should be brought up on charges. And Breedlove is supposed to follow orders not make up his own policy & then try & manufacture evidence supporting that policy to start war. If the US Embassy in Ukraine says they were in the dark then clearly they were fishing for info to proactively involve themselves in another nation & region's personal business. Congress & the U.S. military should investigate as these actions violate the U.S. Constitution. Thankfully, Germany and NATO is able to say no. It tells Americans that something isn't right on their end of this.
verbatim128 07/31/2016
Look who was crying wolf!
These people are hell-bent to bring the world to the brink of war, with lies and excuses about fear of Russian attacks. So Poland was willing to step into the conflict with Ukraine and deliver lethal armament? All the while afraid of Russia invading it? We, public opinion and most Western peace-loving folk, are played like a fiddle to step into the fray to "protect" and further some age-old ethnic and nationalistic rivalries. Time to put an end to this.
gerhard38 08/01/2016
Fucking war monger
Philip Breedlove is a war monger and should be fired from his position. The efforts of the group around him seeking to secure weapons for the Ukraine to intensify the conflict must have happened with Breedlove's knowledge and support. If not, then he is not capable to meet the demands of his job and should be dismissed for incompetence. Either way, this guy is unacceptable.
aegiov 08/01/2016
Ms. Nuland is the same us official recorded by Russian intelligence trying to manipulate events in Ukraine before the overthrow of the president and all the tragic events that followed. That she is still working for US state dept. is puzzling to say the least. good reporting. thank you.
titus_norberto 08/02/2016
The Front Is Now Everywhere, indeed...
Quote: 'The Front Is Now Everywhere', yes indeed, we can go back to the Wilson administration, he invented the League of Nations and his nation did not even joined.
There is a folly in American presidents, they believe they can solve worlds problems, especially in the Middle East, with two invariable results:
1- utter failure plus CHAOS; and
2- utter disregard for DOMESTIC GOVERNANCE.
Now, the fact that the front is NOW 2016 everywhere is the result of failure one. Donald Trump is the result of failure two. There is another aspect to consider, what is General Breedlove doing ? Very simple, he is attempting to INVENT a NEW ROLE for NATO, as it is well known in the domain of sociology: any organization strives for survival, especially when it becomes OBSOLETE.
vsepr1975 08/03/2016
nato Breedhate?
w.schuler 08/09/2016
Fat Bredlove is a war monger
This is true and it was obvious from the very beginning. But SPON was always parotting him. And SPON member Benjamin Bidder and many other SPON guys were foaming at the mouth with war rhetoric all the time in 2014-15. Shame on those fools. Finally, with this contribution you are approaching your real job. And this is to distribute information instead of propaganda.
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jackpineradicals.com
In case your wondering who the US is financing in Ukraine, its these Nazis who have now killed over 10,000 ethnic Russian civilians while the corrupt US media has intentionally covered it up.
Thanks to US funding they continue to march on……. Neocon Nuland, spouse of Hillary's neocon buddy, Kagan, signer of the PNAC And things like this are why is is hopelessly naive and playing right
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www.huffingtonpost.com
Wahhab proclaimed those who did not accept his puritan monotheism as apostates and idolaters who should be killed immediately. And now, Shiites, Alawites, Zaidis, Druze, Ismailis - and Kurds, who are mostly Sunni Muslim - are defending themselves and their families from the truly fundamentalist zealotry of neo-Wahhabism that murders all whom it deems apostate. To reverse the narrative and cast their efforts to defend themselves as somehow sectarian is bizarre - especially since the bulk of the Syrian army and Kurds fighting ISIS are themselves Sunni Muslims.
To fight ISIS is not anti-Sunni. To fight ISIS is to be against Wahhab's revived doctrines. The leading Iraqi commentator Hayder al-Khoei highlighted that in a recent op-ed :
The tip of the spear in Falluja is not an Iranian-backed paramilitary group but the U.S.-created Counter Terrorism Service and its elite U.S.-trained Special Forces known locally as the Golden Division. These forces, besides being a mixed Shia-Sunni unit, are led by a Kurdish commander ... At a time when sectarian dynamics is one of many factors fueling the crises in Iraq and beyond, it is important for Western journalists and analysts to not be more sectarian than the Iraqis on the ground actually fighting ISIS.In short, the ephemeral global narrative does not relate well to the facts on the ground where there is much less sectarianism than this Western-Gulf narrative purports to exist.But let that pass. This narrative, echoed widely beyond the Financial Times , is Orwellian in another way. It serves another deeper purpose. It has much to do with finding and articulating, as Jim Lobe notes , the point of intersection between liberal interventionism and neoconservatism. This intersection is the subject of a May 16 report from the Center for a New American Security, which was drawn up by a bipartisan task force of 10 senior members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and augmented by six dinner discussions with invited experts.
Their approach is to cast Iran as the source of all 'regional tensions' and to hold onto America's Gulf bases in order to be a 'force that can flex across several different mission sets and prevail.'It is, in a sense, the riposte from the two interventionist wings of American politics to Trump's iconoclasm in foreign policy. And, Lobe writes, "it's fair to predict that the above-mentioned report is likely to be the best guide to date of where a Hillary Clinton presidency will want to take the country's foreign policy."The report is all about how to maintain America's benevolent hegemony - or how to maintain and expand today's "rules-based international order," which implies maintaining and expanding the geo-financial order as much as the political order. As we saw in U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter's interview with Vox, there are clear, though somewhat cushioned, echoes of the 1992 U.S. Defense Planning Guidance.
The CNAS report states, "[F]rom a resurgent Russia to a rising China that is challenging the rules-based international order to chaos, and the struggle for power in the Middle East, the United States needs a force that can flex across several different mission sets and prevail." The report simply restates in more nuanced language many of ideas that underline the concept of the " American Century " and U.S.-led unipolar world order.What does this have to do with propagating the meme that the war on ISIS is a disguised sectarian war on Sunni Islam? Well, quite a lot. Consider this from the report (italics mine):
The United States should adopt a comprehensive strategy, employing an appropriate mix of military, economic and diplomatic resources, to undermine and defeat Iran's hegemonic ambitions in the Greater Middle East. Whether in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria or Bahrain, Tehran's advances and longer-term ambitions should be regarded as a threat to stability that it is in the U.S. interest to counter and deter.The last sentence is truly amazing. So the spread of cultural and militant Wahhabism has nothing to do with tension in the region? Here we see that the crux of the joint neocon, liberal-interventionist foreign policy for the Middle East is to cast Iran as the source of all "regional tensions" and secondly, to hold onto America's Gulf bases - in order to "flex across several different mission sets and prevail."The next administration must make abundantly clear that it has no interest in pursuing an off-shore balancing strategy, such as the 'new equilibrium' some have suggested, which envisages a significant U.S. military drawdown from the region. On the contrary, the Persian Gulf should be deemed a region of vital interest to the security of the United States. As such, U.S. military forces in the region should be sufficient to ensure the security of Gulf allies and the Strait of Hormuz against potential Iranian aggression. At the same time, Gulf allies should have access to sufficient defense articles and services to deter Tehran even if U.S. forces are not present or immediately available to assist.
We also reject Iran's attempt to blame others for regional tensions it is aggravating, as well as its public campaign to demonize the government of Saudi Arabia.Saudi Arabia is mildly rebuked in the CNAS report for having helped radicalize Sunni Islamist groups in the past, but the Kingdom receives applause for its law enforcement and intelligence cooperation. It is very clear from the report's context that a makeover of Saudi Arabia's status as a U.S. ally is underway and that this rehabilitation is seen as integral to aiding America's "hard-nosed enforcement strategy ... to counter Iran's destabilizing activities throughout the region, from its support to terrorist groups like Hezbollah to its efforts to sow instability in the Sunni Arab states."
The old Western standby of using psychologically inflamed Sunni radicalism as a means to weaken opponents seems like it won't be dismantled completely.Another gloss in the CNAS report is striking: while ISIS as a threat is made much of, and a call is issued to "uproot" it, when it comes to Syria, the report simply states that "it is also essential to assist in the formation of a Sunni alternative to ISIS and the [Syria President Bashar] Assad regime" and to create "a safe space ... where moderate opposition militias can arm, train, and organize." Yet there is no mention of Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda's Syria wing. Its role simply is not addressed.This conscious lacuna suggests that the authors do not want to embarrass Saudi Arabia for all its fired-up Sunni jihadist tools. The old Western standby of using psychologically inflamed Sunni radicalism as a means to weaken opponents seems like it won't be dismantled completely. It is fine, evidently, to make a hoo-ha about ISIS while Nusra is to be slipped quietly into the Syrian calculus in order to shift the military balance and convince Assad that he cannot remain in power.
This new/old policy platform is well assisted by broadcasting a narrative that those fighting ISIS on the ground (Iran and its allies) are the "naked sectarians" who compound their sectarian intent by provoking Sunnis to rally to ISIS, their defender. Thus, Iran becomes the threat to regional security, and the CNAS case against Iran is crystalized. This is working quite well, it seems, to judge by its play in the media.
It may be fairly asked however, why these eminent American foreign policy hands should be espousing what many might see as such a retrograde stance. Promoting Saudi Arabia and Gulf states as key U.S. allies would seem to go against the grain of contemporary - even Congressional - sentiment. Ditto for maintaining America's necklace of (expensive) military bases around the globe in order to project American military power. Are Americans not tiring of endless war? And has not the arming and training of a Sunni opposition in Syria been tried several times and failed? Why should this policy be any more successful next time around?
ISIS is the consensual scapegoat to be lambasted by all and sundry, but its spirit - neo-Wahabbism - is not to be rooted out.It is not that the report's authors don't grasp these points, but if the neocons have one constancy, it has been their unwavering support for Israel. They think that the Gulf states are ready for a normalization with Israel and wish to do profitable business with it. What stands in the way of this rapprochement, in the neocon view, is Iran, Syria and Hezbollah's vehement opposition - and their ability to ignite public opinion across the Muslim world on behalf of the Palestinians.So what is the final takeaway from all this? It is that ISIS is the consensual scapegoat to be lambasted by all and sundry, but its spirit - neo-Wahabbism - is not to be rooted out. It is too useful to Saudi Arabia and Turkey and to Western interests - to weaken Assad, for example, and to contain Iran and fight Hezbollah .
Whether in the form of Nusra or Ahrar al-Sham, another al Qaeda-allied rebel group in Syria, this chameleon-like Sunni jihadist force collectively provides a useful pivot around which neocons and liberal interventionists alike can pursue interventionism and the continuance of "the American Century." It also provides a valuable intersection between Israel and Gulf interests. As Lobe wryly notes , "the authors' undisguised hostility toward Tehran pours forth with specific policy recommendations that, frankly, could have been written as a joint paper submitted by Saudi Arabia and Israel."
Will the report, like the neocon Project for the New American Century, to which it is perhaps conceived as a successor, come to form the basis of American foreign policy if a Democrat won the forthcoming election? Possibly, yes.
But there is also an intangible feeling of something passé in these policy prescriptions, a sense that they belong to a former era. The current presidential campaign, with all its iconoclasm and evidence of widespread popular anger towards the status quo, suggests that such a palpable replay of the past is not tenable.Earlier on WorldPost:
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18.12.2013 | www.strategic-culture.org
Nuland would survive the controversy over the October 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission/CIA facility in Benghazi, Libya. Initially, many conservative Republicans criticized Nuland for her role in providing ambassador to the UN Susan Rice with "talking points" explaining away the failure of the U.S. to protect the compound from an attack that killed U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. personnel. All it took was a tap on the shoulder from Nuland's husband Kagan and his influential friends in the neo-con hierarchy for the criticism of his wife to stop. And stop it did as Nuland was confirmed, without Republican opposition, to be the new Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, a portfolio that gave her a clear mandate to interfere in the domestic policies of Ukraine and other countries, including Russia itself.
Kagan began laying the groundwork for his wife's continued presence in a Democratic administration when, in 2007, he switched sides from the Republicans and aligned with the Democrats. This was in the waning days of the Bush administration and, true to form, neo-cons, who politically and family-wise hail from Trotskyite chameleons, saw the opportunity to continue their influence over U.S. foreign policy.
With the election of Obama in 2008, Kagan was able to maintain a PNAC presence, through his wife, inside the State Department. Kagan, a co-founder of PNAC, monitors his wife's activities from his perch at the influential Brookings Institution. And it was no surprise that McCain followed Nuland to Maidan Square. Kagan was one of McCain's top foreign policy advisers in the 2008 campaign, even though he publicly switched to the Democrats the year before. Kagan ensured that he kept a foot in both parties. Although McCain was defeated by Obama in 2008, Kagan's influence was preserved when his wife became a top foreign policy adviser to Obama. The root of this control by neo-cons of the two major U.S. political parties is the powerful Israel Lobby and is the reason why in excess of 95 percent of neo-cons are also committed Zionists.
Kagan's writings and pronouncements from Brookings have had a common thread: anti-Vladimir Putin rhetoric and a strong desire to see Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, Bashar al Assad falling in Syria and thus eliminating a Russian ally, no further expansion of Shanghai Cooperation Organization membership and the eventual collapse of the counter-NATO organization, and the destabilization of Russia's southern border region by radical Salafists and Wahhabists funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Qatar, not coincidentally, hosts a Brookings Institution office that advises the Qatari government.
But dominance of U.S. foreign policy does not end with Nuland and her husband. Kagan's brother, Fred Kagan, is another neo-con foreign policy launderer. Residing at the American Enterprise Institute, Fred Kagan was an "anti-corruption" adviser to General David Petraeus. Kagan held this job even as Petraeus was engaged in an extra-marital affair, which he corruptly covered up. Fred Kagan's wife is Kimberly Kagan. She has been involved in helping to formulate disastrous U.S. policies for the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Fred and Kimberly have also worked on U.S. covert operations to overthrow the government of Iran. No family in the history of the United States, with the possible exception of John Foster and Allen Dulles, has had more blood on its hands than have the Kagans. And it is this family that is today helping to ratchet up the Cold War on the streets of Kyiv.
Victoria Nuland is, indeed, the proper "Doughnut Dolly" for the paid George Soros, U.S. Agency for International Development, National Endowment for Democracy, and Freedom House provocateurs on Maidan Square. Political prostitutes representing so many causes, from nationalistic Ukrainian fascists to pro-EU globalists, require a symbol. There is no better symbol for the foreign-made "Orange Revolution II" than the biscuit-distributing Victoria Nuland.
Her unleavened biscuits have found the hungry mouths of America's "Three Stooges" of ex-boxer and political opportunist Vitaly Klitschko, globalist Arseny Yatsenyuk, and neo-Nazi Oleg Tyagnibok.
Wayne MADSEN Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club
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www.nakedcapitalism.com
Carolinian , August 4, 2016 at 2:43 pm
Lambert Strether Post author , August 4, 2016 at 2:50 pmPaul Wolfowitz is leaning Clinton. Nuff said.
Carolinian , August 4, 2016 at 3:20 pmFollowing along with his good friend, Republican Robert Kagan (married, in good bipartisan power couple fashion, to Victoria Nuland, rumored to be inline for Clinton's Secretary of State, but I don't think so. Not even Clinton could be that crazy).
Lambert Strether Post author , August 4, 2016 at 3:33 pmNuland is a Democrat? Boy they let anybody in. I only ask because she's supposed to be a Bush holdover but maybe worked for the Clintons before that?
Carla , August 4, 2016 at 3:59 pmNuland started out with Bill Clinton, then moved on to Dick Cheney . She certainly is nimble!
I can't find a link that makes her party affiliation explicit. Foreign Policy :
Because of her marriage to Kagan, most Europeans believe she's a Republican, but her hawkish approach to Russia isn't entirely unique within the Obama administration.
But FP does not then go on to clarify. I assumed she was a Democrat because of the Clinton connection. My bad!
John k , August 4, 2016 at 4:14 pmFP professionals don't need no stinkin' party affiliations. They are the other half of the "Double Government" that most voters have never heard of. You know, the half that makes sure foreign policy is consistent from one administration (and party) to the next. Works great!
NotTimothyGeithner , August 4, 2016 at 4:45 pmYou start out wherever your opportunity lies. Once established you can follow your heart. Where does her heart lead her when Cheney leaves office? Drum roll… Why, it's Hillary!
Hugoodanode?It's probably bias, but my sense is Republicans love to parade anyone who is Jewish or not white in front of cameras who can say, "im a Republican" without drooling or dying a little on the inside. Since Nuland is Jewish, the GOP would have her on their book tour if she was suspected Republican especially given the GOP obsession with winning Florida Jewish retirees.
If Nuland was a Republican, we would know.
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Feb 25, 2016 | Consortiumnews
Exclusive: Hillary Clinton's cozy ties to Washington's powerful neocons have paid off with the endorsement of Robert Kagan, one of the most influential neocons. But it also should raise questions among Democrats about what kind of foreign policy a President Hillary Clinton would pursue, writes Robert Parry.
Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's interests.
In a Washington Post op-ed published on Thursday, Kagan excoriated the Republican Party for creating the conditions for Trump's rise and then asked, "So what to do now? The Republicans' creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out."
Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."
While many of Kagan's observations about the Republican tolerance and even encouragement of bigotry are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies.
The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented an aggressive "regime change" strategy against governments and political movements that don't toe Washington's line or that deviate from Israel's goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results.
Yet, with the failure of Republican establishment candidates to gain political traction against Trump, Clinton has clearly become the choice of many neoconservatives and "liberal interventionists" who favor continuation of U.S. imperial designs around the world. The question for Democrats now is whether they wish to perpetuate those war-like policies by sticking with Clinton or should switch to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who offers a somewhat less aggressive (though vaguely defined) foreign policy.
Sanders has undermined his appeal to anti-imperialist Democrats by muting his criticism of Clinton's "regime change" strategies and concentrating relentlessly on his message of "income inequality" for which Clinton has disingenuously dubbed him a "single-issue candidate." Whether Sanders has the will and the time to reorient his campaign to question Clinton's status as the new neocon choice remains in doubt.
A Reagan Propagandist
Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative "regime change" in Ukraine in 2014.
Later in 2014, Kagan told The New York Times that he hoped that his neocon views which he had begun to call "liberal interventionist" would prevail in a possible Hillary Clinton administration. The Times reported that Clinton "remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes" and quoted Kagan as saying:
"I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. 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."
Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton.
... ... ...
While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison?
Will Clinton even follow the latest neocon dream of "regime change" in Moscow as the ultimate way of collapsing Israel's lesser obstacles - Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian resistance? Does Clinton have the wisdom to understand that neocon schemes are often half-baked (remember "the cakewalk" in Iraq) and that the risk of overthrowing Vladimir Putin in Moscow might lead not to some new pliable version of Boris Yeltsin but to a dangerous Russian nationalist ready to use the nuclear codes to defend Mother Russia? (For all Putin's faults, he is a calculating adversary, not a crazy one.)
The fact that none of these life-and-death foreign policy questions has been thoroughly or intelligently explored during the Democratic presidential campaign is a failure of both the mainstream media moderators and the two candidates, Sanders and Clinton, neither of whom seems to want a serious or meaningful debate about these existential issues.
Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore of the campaign.
[For more on the powerful Kagan family, see Consortiumnews.com's "A Family Business of Perpetual War."]
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).
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Jun 08, 2016 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
UkrinForm
Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) has opened criminal proceedings regarding the possible organization by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of illegal crossing through the border with the use of fake documents, the SBI has reported on its Facebook page.
"SBI investigators will check reports on former President Petro Poroshenko organizing illegal crossing through the state border of Ukraine with the use of deliberately forged documents," the report reads.
In particular, the report specifies that it will be established during the investigation whether officials of the customs and border authorities included deliberately false information in official documents in order to ensure border crossing.
Former Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Andriy Portnov reported earlier that according to his statement, the SBI opened a criminal case to check possible violations of border crossing "by persons close to Poroshenko in 2018 under other people's passports to the Maldives archipelago."
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marknesop.wordpress.com
Peruse, if you will, this sabre-rattling pile of poop . Coming on the heels of recent articles which warn that the west sees a nuclear war as both winnable and possible , even probable, and the conviction that a new western strategy is the attempt to initiate a Kremlin palace coup by Russian nationalist hardliners fed up with Putin's squishiness because he will not respond more aggressively to NATO provocations on Russia's doorstep, it's hard not to conclude that the west has lost its mind. If the fear of a planet-devastating nuclear war – in which the two major world nuclear powers pull out all the stops in an unrestricted attempt to annihilate one another – no longer holds our behaviors in check…what's scarier than that?We seriously need to persuade our leaders, in the strongest terms, that they cannot talk smack like that. It might seem funny to you to hear a senior government official from the country that fabricated a case for war so it could destroy its old enemy, Saddam Hussein, and lay waste to his country and people, prattling on about 'the rules-based international order', just as if the United States recognizes any limitations on its application of raw power, anywhere on the globe, in its own interests. It's quite true that whenever the USA wants to start a war with someone, it first makes out a case that this is a situation in which it must act. And even its critics would have to acknowledge that it is damned good at this sort of fakery, and has come a long way since one of its premiere PR firms – Hill & Knowlton – coached the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States through her performance as a make-believe Kuwaiti nurse devastated by Saddam's forces' make-believe plundering of a Kuwaiti hospital, something which did not happen. It did, however, strike precisely the right responsive chord in public anger and disgust to kick off Gulf War I. Both wars against Iraq got off the ground on entirely fabricated scenarios calculated to get the rubes all in a lather to do the right thing. To hear a self-righteous assrocket like Ashton Carter maunder on about the rules-based international order, considering the United States encouraged the military campaign by the Ukrainian government to kill its own citizens in a blatant violation of the very core principles of the imaginary rules-based international order…why, it's a little like listening to Imelda Marcos teaching a seminar on how to take care of your shoes so they'll last a long time and you won't have to buy more. I have to say, it just… it makes me mad.
What has really brought us to this point in the history of the Big Blue Marble is that despite the progress we've made together since the end of the Cold War, the indispensable and exceptional nation has in recent years tried by various means to overthrow the government of Russia, without success. It has tried incentivizing and supporting opposition movements, and got most of its NGO's kicked out of the country for its pains. It has tried sexual politics, hoping to mobilize the world's homosexuals against 'Putin's draconian anti-gay laws', only to have the effort fall flat. It has tried open economic warfare, which worked just long enough for President Obama to take credit for it , then Russian counter-sanctions made European businesses wish they had never heard of President Obama . Shortly after that, Russia began to muscle in on US agricultural markets ; a startlingly lifelike performance for a dying country. It looks like everything that has been tried in the effort to send Russia down for a dirtnap has failed. What's left? They're running out of war-alternative regime-change efforts.
And what has made Washington suddenly so cocky with the nuclear stick? Could it be that its European-based missile defense system has just gone live ? After all Obama's waffling, after his backing away from the missile defense the hawks wanted, in the winding-down days of his presidency he re-committed to it, and the site in Romania has started up, with great fanfare. Washington continues to insist, tongue in cheek, that the system is not and cannot be targeted against Russia's nuclear deterrent, but for what other purpose could it be there? The rogue-missiles-from-Iran canard is pretty much played out. It seems pretty clear that Washington figures its interceptors (the Standard series SM3) give it a potential first-strike capability, which would – in theory – see Washington's unalerted launch taking out most of Russia's ICBM's in their silos, and the forward-based interceptors taking out the few missiles that avoided Washington's hammer-blow. If they don't believe that, why the sudden nuclear-weapons nose-thumbing?
If they do believe that, it's a big mistake. First of all, where the USA relies on a nuclear triad deterrent – land-based, air-deployable and seaborne nuclear missiles – Russia adds a fourth leg; mobile Transporter/Erector/Launcher (TEL) vehicles which have a demonstrated off-road capability, so that they could be most anywhere. The USA could not be sure of hitting all Russia's land-based missiles before launch. Then there is the sea-based component, in SSBN's, ballistic-missile submarines. The BOREI Class carries the Bulava missile. Each of the 20 missiles can carry up to 10 MIRV warheads of 150 kilotons yield. The USA is already worried that it is falling behind Russia and China in submarine capability. Finally, Russia has the 'dead hand' system, which is an automatic program that will launch all undestroyed fixed-site missiles even if everyone in Russia is dead.
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This is an existential battle for Russia. No amount of conciliatory gestures will buy it peace, and the United States is determined to push it off the edge of the world. With NATO surrounding it, even if it disbanded its military and plowed all its croplands into flowerbeds, the west would still pretend to see it as a threat, and would foment internal discord until it broke apart. Russia's leaders know this. Its people know this. Strutting up and down the border and waving the NATO flag is not going to make Russia get scared about 'consequences', and kneel in the dirt. NATO's fundamental problem is that it understands neither the Russian character or the true circumstances in the country, preferring to rely on rosy estimates presented by its think tanks.The biggest 'consequence' of this dick-waving and posturing is that we are back where we were in 1947.
Patient Observer , May 24, 2016 at 10:16 amMark, a very timely and well-written post! The red hot approaching white hot rhetoric is unnerving to the sane. Yet, there is virtually no chance of a successful US first strike for the reasons you mentioned. If some breakthrough in ABM technology were to occur that could be quickly retrofit to existing installations then a strategic imbalance could occur. I suppose Russia must assume that is the US thinking so such a worst-case scenarios needs to be part of their strategic planning.Northern Star , May 24, 2016 at 1:12 pmWe had Star Wars back in the 80's designed to render Soviet missiles useless. Yet any competent scientist or engineer could determine that it was ALL BS. A favorite story was that a scientist indicated an anti-missile laser system they were working on had achieve 10 to the 7th power output (don't remember the units) but they needed to reach 10 to the 14th power output. An eager politician reported to the administration that all they needed was TWO of the lasers to shoot down Soviet missiles.
So, my take is that the US rhetoric is based on two possibilities – one that you mentioned is that everything else has failed so why not give war a chance. The Russians, being substantially saner that the West, and knowing the horrors of war, could back down in deference to the survival of humanity. The other ploy could be to induce Russia into another arms race to bankrupt their economy. This later strategy, if it is the case, would have been formulated from the widely mistaken belief that the 80's Star Wars eventually forced the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is the danger of using sustained propaganda indiscriminately, your own side may end up believing it.
One last thought is that no one foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union. By poking around enough, perhaps the West thinks something can trigger a similar cascade of events resulting in the collapse of Russia. Its sort of magical thinking without basis in reality but its good enough for politicians and think tanks. Just keep Gorbachev out of Russia:)
Your warning about how the West, having given up on a liberal revolution, would now like a nationalistic coup in Russia was spot on. Nothing could be worse for Russia than engaging in a tit-for-tat battle with the West. The Russian strategy seems to be working quite nicely as its economy adjusts to life without the West, it outsmarts the Empire at every turn and the Eurasian Union proceeds.
Depending on how things go in November….one must remember that Santa Coup could come down the White House chimney….et Al , May 24, 2016 at 2:08 pm…everything else has failed so why not give war a chance
####John Lennon would have wept. Genius PO! Genius!
It looks like we all agree that the US is at loose ends. So far all its plans have come to naught, so trying a little bit of everything in the hope that something magical will happen (as noted), is a massive indictment on US governmental institutions. Damned stubborn Russians.
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May 23, 2016 | theamericanconservative.com
"CKI Vice President William Ruger began by posing the question: "Has there been a coherent theme to U.S. foreign policy over the last 25 years?" In response, Mearsheimer dove into a description of liberal hegemony over the last two decades, which essentially amounts to the U.S. being involved everywhere to avoid a problem popping up anywhere. He argued that the U.S. undertook this commitment to direct globalization and proceeded to muck up the Middle East and Europe. To most people, this sounds a lot like a vestige of post-Cold War triumphalism:The basic foreign policy here is one of liberal hegemony-and it has two dimensions to it. The first is that we're bent on militarily dominating the entire globe-there's no place on the planet that doesn't matter to the indispensable nation, we care about every nook and cranny of the planet and we're interested in being militarily dominate here, there, and everywhere. That's the first dimension. The second dimension is we're deeply committed to transforming the world-we're deeply committed to making everybody look like us.
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Without a strategic rethink in U.S.-Russian relations, Mearsheimer warned that Russian paranoia and sense of vulnerability could ignite conflict. When asked about the biggest foreign policy mistake of the last 25 years, Mearsheimer first said Iraq, and then added the crisis in Ukraine and the resulting destabilization of U.S.-Russian relations: "If you take a country like Russia, that has a sense of vulnerability, and you push them towards the edge, you get in their face, you're asking for trouble."
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lenta.ru
За последний месяц на Украине появилось новое правительство во главе с Владимиром Гройсманом, была переформатирована коалиция в Верховной Раде и назначен новый генпрокурор. Бывший депутат Рады, а потом спикер парламента Новороссии Олег Царев рассказал "Ленте.ру" о том, чего ждать от обновленной украинской власти.
"Порошенко дожал американцев и олигархов"
"Лента.ру": Что изменится на Украине с назначением нового правительства Владимира Гройсмана? Можно ли ожидать улучшения социально-экономической ситуации?
Царев: Главным итогом последнего политического кризиса я считаю то, что Петру Порошенко удалось сосредоточить в своих руках всю полноту власти. На пути к этому он смог дожать американцев, олигархов, продавить оппонентов внутри страны. Финальным аккордом стало избрание 12 мая генпрокурором Украины кума президента Юрия Луценко. Порошенко получил полный карт-бланш, установил контроль и над кабинетом министров, и над Верховной Радой, и над силовыми структурами. Оппоненты Порошенко - [Игорь] Коломойский и [Арсений] Яценюк - пытались ему противостоять. В частности, с их противодействием я связываю активную раскрутку на Украине скандала с панамскими офшорами президента. Вся эта кампания неслучайно началась в тот момент, когда глава государства поехал на переговоры в США. Целью было его ослабление, чтобы он не смог договориться с американцами. Тем не менее он американцев дожал и своего добился. Основным аргументом для расширения его полномочий было устранение угрозы сползания страны к анархии. Да, это движение в сторону диктатуры, но американцы никогда не возражали против диктатуры, если она действует в их интересах.
А что этот личный успех Порошенко значит для украинского народа?
К интересам украинского народа вся эта политическая борьба не имеет никакого отношения. Речь идет о контроле финансовых потоков, в частности крупные игроки готовятся к намечающейся последней приватизации. Одно из последствий украинского переворота и, как следствие, гражданской войны в Донбассе и разрыва экономических связей с Россией - обесценивание активов у олигархов. На сегодняшний день их активы, заложенные под взятые в зарубежных банках кредиты, меньше самих кредитов. Фактически они банкроты. Спасти олигархов может только срочная покупка по заниженным ценам новых активов, чтобы получить за рубежом под них новые кредиты и за их счет перекрыть старые. В продажу должны пойти порты, железная дорога, АЭС, сельскохозяйственные угодья. Как вы понимаете, мировая банковская система устроена так, что в конечном итоге вся украинская собственность должна поменять владельцев с украинских на зарубежных.
Этот процесс уже начался?
Первоначально договоренности у олигархов имелись с уже бывшим премьером Яценюком. Активы были распределены. Например, Коломойский должен был забрать Одесский припортовый завод, еще ряд предприятий. Яценюк их устраивал, его аппетиты были поменьше, чем у президента, поэтому олигархи поддерживали главу правительства в борьбе против Порошенко. Все СМИ Коломойского активно раздували панамский скандал, работа велась по всему миру, оплачивалась международная пиар-кампания. Но Порошенко выдержал, договорился с американцами, а у тех есть рычаги давления на украинских олигархов, хранящих свои средства в странах Запада. Теперь все олигархи пришли договариваться к Порошенко. Коломойский и другие контролируют своих депутатов, дают им указания. Благодаря этому президенту удалось сделать премьер-министром лично преданного ему Гройсмана и назначить генпрокурором Луценко.
"У каждого украинского политика есть куратор в США"
Какие перспективы у такой конфигурации власти?
На сегодняшний момент американцы против резких изменений. Такова логика президентских выборов в США - уходящий президент не должен оставлять проблемы следующему главе государства. Поэтому сейчас Россию будут похлопывать по плечу, говорить о возможной отмене санкций, может быть, даже откатится цена на нефть. Но это временная ситуация! У администрации нового американского президента будет свой план по Украине. Москва получила временную передышку, важно использовать это короткое время для решения внутренних проблем, наведения порядка в экономике.
На Украине по-прежнему периодически заявляют о себе радикальные националисты, экстремисты. Почему Запад не выступает против этого?
Тут ситуация двойственная. С одной стороны, Порошенко для того и дали возможность сосредоточить власть в своих руках, чтобы он укрепил государство. Он от нацистов потихоньку уже избавляется, но полностью убирать их со сцены не будет. Отморозков под рукой иметь удобно. Надо разобраться с "Оппозиционным блоком" или Васей Волгой (лидер партии "Союз левых сил" - "прим. "Ленты.ру" ), другими какими-то оппонентами? И типа возмущенная общественность делает это. Президент разводит руками: "Что я могу? Это не я, это другие люди". Радикалы полностью не исчезнут, но будут работать по команде, в строго очерченных границах выполняя ту роль, которую выполняли батальоны смерти в Латинской Америке.
Отношение к России будет меняться?
Никаких надежд на это питать не стоит - Украина останется русофобской по духу. Просто русофобия будет не самодеятельной, а санкционированной, управляемой государством. России и украинцам с отличной от официальной точкой зрения лучше не станет.
Активно проявляет себя в украинском политическом пространстве Михаил Саакашвили. Понятно, что у него огромные амбиции, ограничиваться Одесской областью он не желает. Каковы его перспективы?
У него хорошие шансы войти в высшие эшелоны украинской власти. У Саакашвили второй личный рейтинг после Юлии Тимошенко. Надо понимать, что у каждого более-менее серьезного украинского политика сейчас есть свой американский куратор. Кто-то работает с демократами, кто-то - с консерваторами, кто-то связан с Госдепартаментом, другие взаимодействуют с конкретным чиновником, у кого-то "крыша" ЦРУ, как, например, у Наливайченко (бывший глава СБУ - прим. "Ленты.ру" ). При этом между самими кураторами идет серьезная борьба. Из-за этого возникают различные казусы. Так, куратор бывшего министра финансов Украины Натальи Яресько сообщила ей, что ее кандидатура утверждена на должность главы правительства. Та стала уже делать какие-то высокомерные заявления, но в итоге в правительстве Гройсмана не сохранила даже должность главы Минфина. Проблема Саакашвили связана с тем, что его кураторы в США сегодня не на вершине власти. Вторая трудность - отсутствие у него своей политической силы. Ему надо свой рейтинг как-то конвертировать в движение, чтобы закрепиться внутри Украины.
Юлия Тимошенко сможет вернуться во власть?
У нее не только высокий рейтинг, но есть и собственная политическая сила - партия "Батькивщина". Да, в Раде это всего 25 депутатов, поэтому она и не претендует на какие-то серьезные посты. Я знаю, что ей при формировании правительства Гройсмана предлагали войти в кабмин. Но она посчитала, что ей лучше еще нарастить рейтинг, находясь в оппозиции.
"Боевые действия в Донбассе продолжатся"
Что в ближайшее время ждет Донбасс? И какова судьба минских соглашений?
По сути, жители Донбасса - заложники неопределенности, вызванной минскими соглашениями. Меня совсем не удивило отсутствие результатов на последней встрече министров иностранных дел нормандской четверки. Для украинской власти вопросом жизни и смерти в полном смысле этого слова является непризнание вооруженного конфликта на востоке страны гражданской войной. Если война в Донбассе - не война с Россией, а внутренний гражданский конфликт, то начало АТО, привлечение армии, насильная мобилизация, обстрелы городов Донбасса - это не только грубое нарушение Конституции Украины, но и преступление, по которому нет сроков давности. Руководители страны - военные преступники. Все погибшие в результате конфликта, как военные так и мирные жители, на их совести. Представители киевской власти как попугаи будут говорить об агрессии России на востоке Украины. То, что они сами себе противоречат, их не сильно волнует. Если Россия агрессор, то надо разрывать дипломатические отношения и объявлять войну России. Причем логичнее всего начинать "освобождение от России" с Крыма. Ведь то, что в Крыму, в отличие от Донбасса, находится российская армия, ни для кого не секрет. Но дураков нет. Одно дело воевать в Донбассе с выдуманными российскими войсками, а совсем другое - столкнуться с настоящей кадровой российской армией в Крыму.
С соглашениями тупиковая ситуация?
То, что подписи под минскими соглашениями поставили представители самопровозглашенных народных республик, и так поставило Киев в сложное положение. Если договоренности будут выполнены, то дело Киеву придется иметь уже с легитимными представителями Донбасса. (Лично я считаю, что у глав ДНР Александра Захарченко и ЛНР Игоря Плотницкого легитимности больше, чем у Порошенко). Это значит, что в случае конфликта он попадает под определение "гражданская война", а действия киевского руководства можно трактовать как военное преступление. Таким образом, при выполнении минских соглашений Киев окажется в шпагате.
Фашистские режимы держатся на страхе, они устойчивы, если существует только одна точка зрения. А не разделяющих ее государство или батальоны смерти устраняют. Неподконтрольный центральной власти анклав на востоке нельзя физически раздавить, и это делает режим очень неустойчивым. С другой стороны, минский комплекс мер продавливают европейцы и публично отказываться от него нельзя. Но и выполнить невозможно. Все это прекрасно понимают как в Киеве, так и в Вашингтоне. Если бы американцы действительно хотели выполнения соглашений, то Виктория Нуланд сегодня бы сидела в Киеве и разговаривала с депутатами, руководителями фракций и олигархами в жесткой форме. Аргументов много: угроза запрета въезда в ЕС, закрытие кредитования в зарубежных банках, конфискация собственности и арест счетов за границей Государственные СМИ и СМИ, подчиняющиеся олигархам, с утра и до вечера, в случае если бы действительно ставилась такая задача, говорили о том что, минские договоренности надо выполнять. Но мы этого не наблюдаем.
Мое резюме такое: Украина и США как минимум до президентских выборов в Америке сохранят риторику о том, что минские соглашения следует выполнять. Но в то же время выполнять их, голосуя в Верховной Раде за амнистию, специальный статус отдельных районов, изменения в Конституцию, закон о выборах в Донбассе, не будут. Организовывать крупномасштабное наступление тоже не будут, дабы не нарваться на контрнаступление. Но боевые действия в ограниченном режиме на границе с Донбассом, очевидно, продолжатся по той причине, что первый пункт соглашений - прекращение огня. Невыполнение первого пункта дает возможность затягивать и с другими.
Какие-то поводы для оптимизма вы все-таки видите?
Медленно, шаг за шагом, но в Донбассе все-таки становится спокойнее, а уровень жизни немного растет. Я как один из тех, кто стоял в начале этого процесса, хотел бы большего. Поэтому я, возможно, слишком резко оцениваю ситуацию, хотя сделано, конечно, очень много.
"Я не общаюсь с Януковичем"
Есть регионы Украины, которые готовы пойти по пути ДНР и ЛНР?
За время правления Порошенко украинские силовики провели точечную, но системную работу по выявлению недовольных киевской властью. Одни попали в тюрьму, другие покинули Украину. Движение сопротивления во многом подавлено. Общее недовольство теми, кто пришел к власти после госпереворота в 2014 году, есть, уровень жизни падает, тарифы растут, социально-экономическая ситуация ухудшается. Но отсутствуют лидеры, способные повести за собой людей.
Вы общаетесь с кем-то из прежнего руководства Украины? Может быть, обсуждаете что-то с беглым президентом Виктором Януковичем?
Я с глубоким уважением отношусь к бывшему главе правительства Николаю Азарову. С ним мы обсуждаем много вопросов. С Януковичем не общаюсь. Знаете, после госпереворота в Киеве погибло громадное количество людей, Донбасс стал зоной боевых действий. Через возглавляемый мной парламент Новороссии шла первая российская гуманитарная помощь, другой структуры для такой работы просто не было. Я по пять-шесть раз в день посещал пострадавшие семьи в Луганске, Донецке. Мне важно было показать людям, что их не бросили. Я приезжал в семьи, где погибли дети, старики, где разрушены дома. Я видел это горе, которое принесла, в том числе, политика Януковича. Это очень тяжело.
Вы считаете, что лично Янукович виноват в происходящем на Украине сейчас?
У него были все рычаги власти. Он мог бороться как Каддафи, как сирийский лидер Башар Асад, он мог погибнуть, как Альенде (Сальвадор Альенде, президент Чили, погиб в 1973 году в ходе военного переворота - прим. "Ленты.ру" ), и остаться символом сопротивления в веках, но он этого не сделал. Политик не имеет права думать о себе.
И что же, не было тогда людей, близких к "телу", которые могли оказать на него какое-то влияние, чтобы он принял другое решение? Или он никого не слушал?
Украина - олигархическая страна, причем классическая олигархическая страна. Можно много говорить про демократические выборы, но в итоге украинский народ выбирает того кандидата, которого выбрали олигархи. Ну, как минимум из перечня тех, на кого они сделали ставку. Поэтому его обязательства перед ними были важнее, чем перед простыми людьми.
А олигархам, выходит, невыгодно было сохранить страну?
В какой-то момент олигархов взяли за самое дорогое, что у них есть, - за деньги и за собственность. Вариантов не было.
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May 4, 2016 | nakedcapitalism.com
Yves here. We were one of the few sites to follow the brutal handling of the Cyprus banking system when one of its major banks got wobbly in 2013. Cyprus was demonized as a money laundering center , when its main sin was that it served as a conduit for inbound investment into Russia, including investment by large, well-recognized companies. The reason for structuring investments via entities in Cyprus was that that enabled them to be subject to British law, which investors greatly preferred to relying on Russian law and courts. Cyprus thus has a significant amount of its economy dependent on lawyers and bankers to structure these deals. The ECB lowered the boom and forced bail-ins, which were more severe than they needed to be by virtue of one of the major banks being restructured in a way that led to a significant subsidy to a Greek bank that bought some of its operations. In other words, while something may well have needed to be done with the Cyprus banks, the brutality of the operation was driven by geopolitics, not the professed reasons.
The geopolitical angle of the West's meddling in Cyprus a bit more obvious in this John Helmer sighting.
By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
The US is intensifying the pressure on Cyprus to accept a secret NATO plan to keep Turkish forces on the island.
Victoria Nuland, the State Department official in charge of regime change in Russia and Ukraine, met for talks last week with the President of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, and with Turkish Cypriot figures. The State Department and US Embassy in Nicosia have kept silent on what was said. A well-informed Cypriot source reports Nuland "was in Cyprus to pre-empt any likelihood of future deepening in relations with Russia. Anastasiades may not want to, but he may have no other option." A second Cypriot political source said: "[Nuland] will try to blackmail him. I'm not sure how he will react."
lyman alpha blob, May 4, 2016 at 2:21 pm
Greece isn't happy about the Turks in Cyprus, period.
I was in Greece about 25 years ago when poppy Bush was president and paid a visit. That was the first glimpse I had of US power first hand – there were hundreds of suits talking into their sleeves lining the major route through Athens taken by the Bush motorcade. The whole city was essentially shut down and I couldn't believe that the US could project that kind of power in a foreign country. Later while I was at the Thessalonike airport coincidentally at the same time Bush was there, our flight was delayed due to a bomb threat presumably directed at Bush. Never did find out if it was a real bomb or not.
Don't remember the ostensible reason for the Bush visit to Greece but I do remember the Greeks wanting the question Bush about the Turks occupying Cyprus and if the US would help end it. I remember thinking Bush probably doesn't even know where Cyprus is but even if he did, the US wasn't interested and weren't going to do a damn thing about it.
After 25 years of not seeming to car at all, now the US wants to make the problem worse by polishing apples for Erdogan for some reason I really cannot fathom. Cui bono indeed.
craazyboy, May 4, 2016 at 10:39 am
Looks pretty clear cut to me. Turkey is an ally. Russia most definitely not. Turkey could use somewhere to store all that surplus ME oil they've been buying. The USA(Nuland) can even kick in a few bucks for infrastructure. It all makes sense. Win-Win all around.
ambrit, May 4, 2016 at 11:26 am
John Wright , May 4, 2016 at 2:22 pmPoor Cyprus. We might as well revive the Crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. Are there any Lusignans alive today?
DJG , May 4, 2016 at 3:16 pmHere is a recent comment I made that includes Nuland and her immediate family.
Note that the establishment's candidate HRC "remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes"
apber , May 5, 2016 at 7:35 amThat Nuland is still around is all that I have to know about HRClinton's vaunted foreign-policy experience. That Nuland is still around is all that I have to know about Obama, American exceptionalism, and this supposedly scandal-free administration. And the Democratic elites want to get all snotty about Trump?
After the streaming of the video-assassination of Osama bin Laden of the last few days, and after this maneuver, which is assassination of a small and vulnerable state, I respect George Orwell even more as a voice of prophecy.
TheCatSaid , May 4, 2016 at 5:42 pmWith Nuland, the ultimate neocon, we get WWIII in a Clinton Presidency. The key to Trump will be his proposed cabinet, VP, advisors etc. If nary a dual citizen neocon or a Goldman Treasury Secretary, we may have a chance; otherwise Trump will be outed as just another globalist stooge.
ltr , May 4, 2016 at 5:44 pmAre the oil discoveries off of Cyprus (announced in 2014) be part of the geopolitics discussed here? Cyprus made an agreement with Greece & Egypt according to the Guardian .
RBHoughton , May 4, 2016 at 11:00 pmI am really really worried about how aggressive our foreign policy is, and this remarkable essay shows how dangerous our policy with respect to Russia can be.
Punxsutawney , May 4, 2016 at 11:04 pmResuscitating the Turkish part of Cyprus may be a great money-maker for Ms Nuland's friends. You can wander though entire deserted towns and villages. Everyone's voted with their feet and land can be had at a fraction of its cost in the south. It used to have the added advantage of being immune to extradition requests (remember Polly Peck?) but I am unsure if that continues.
This looks like another aspect of Erdogan's vice-like grip on the reproductive glands of the European Commission and ECB. It really is quite funny to see the two countries directing EU policy these days are USA and Turkey.
EoinW , May 5, 2016 at 8:47 amWhere Neocons like Nuland go, death and destruction follow in their wake. Look at Ukraine.
I have been thinking that the NeoCon response to a Trump Presidency will be assassination. Naturally an assassination blamed on some left wing fanatic – will the next Oswald please stand up! Could it be, however, that the NeoCons recognize their problem isn't Trump, it's the people supporting Trump and their anti-establishment views? In that case, the only way to whip them into line is falling back on the most tried and true form of of social conditioning: nationalism/patriotism. Perhaps it won't be a countdown to knock off Trump before January. Instead we might already be into a countdown on a shooting war with Russia. This wouldn't just rally all Americans to the imperial cause, it was also force President Trump to rely on his nationalistic traits.
I wonder if the NeoCons could be that clever. They have succeeded in running the most powerful country in the world for 15 years in spite of countless disasters. Maybe they are clever enough to achieve their next great misadventure, one ending in nuclear war.
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www.unz.com
Apr 20, 2016 |The Unz Review
• 7 CommentsI was sceptical from an early stage about the Arab Spring uprisings leading to the replacement of authoritarian regimes by secular democracies. Optimistic forecasts I was hearing in the first heady months of 2011 sounded suspiciously similar to what I had heard in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and in Baghdad after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. In each of the three cases, there was the same dangerous conviction on the part of the domestic opposition, outside powers and the international media that all ills could be attributed to the demonic old regime and a brave new world was being born.
This seemed very simple-minded: I was very conscious that these police states – be they in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen or Bahrain – were the product as well as the exploiters of threats to their country's independence from abroad as well as social, sectarian and ethnic divisions at home. Journalists, who earn their bread by expressing themselves freely, were particularly prone to believe that free expression and honest elections were all that was needed to put things right.
Explanations of what one thought was happening in these countries were often misinterpreted as justification for odious and discredited regimes. In Libya, where the uprising started on 15 February 2011, I wrote about how the opposition was wholly dependent on Nato military support and would have been rapidly defeated by pro-Gaddafi forces without it. It followed from this that the opposition would not have the strength to fill the inevitable political vacuum if Gaddafi was to fall. I noted gloomily that Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, who were pressing for foreign intervention against Gaddafi, themselves held power by methods no less repressive than the Libyan leader. It was his radicalism – muted though this was in his later years – not his authoritarianism that made the kings and emirs hate him.
This was an unpopular stance to take on Libya during the high tide of the Arab Spring, when foreign governments and media alike were uncritically lauding the opposition. The two sides in what was a genuine civil war were portrayed as white hats and black hats; rebel claims about government atrocities were credulously broadcast, though they frequently turned out to be concocted, while government denials were contemptuously dismissed. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were much more thorough than the media in checking these stories, although their detailed reports appeared long after the news agenda had moved on.
Whatever their other failings, the rebels ran a slick and highly professional press campaign from their headquarters in Benghazi. Spokesmen efficiently fended off embarrassing questions and crowds waved placards bearing well-thought-out slogans in grammatical English in front of the television cameras.
My doubts about many aspects of the Libyan uprising, as it was presented to the world, are open to misinterpretation. There was nothing phony about people's anger against a man and a regime that had monopolised power over them for 43 years. As in other Arab military regimes turned police states, Gaddafi had once justified his rule as necessary to defend Libyan national interests against foreign states and oil companies. But as the decades passed, these justifications became excuses for a Gaddafi family dictatorship that stifled all dissent.
Just how claustrophobic it was to be a Libyan at this time was brought home to me by Ahmed Abdullah al-Ghadamsi, an intelligent, able and well-educated man whom I met by accident after the fall of Tripoli and who worked for me as a guide and assistant. He came from a family and a district in Tripoli that was always anti-Gaddafi, and he had been on the edge of the resistance movement before we met. He was good at talking his way through checkpoints and winning the confidence of the suspicious militiamen who were manning them.
We shared a feeling of exhilaration now that the old regime was gone. I remember Ahmed saying to me with amused exasperation that "books used to be more difficult to bring into the country than weapons". Seven weeks later, he was dead. He had felt he must play some active role in the revolution rather than just making money, had volunteered as a fighter and was shot through the head in the last days of the civil war.
In the early months of the uprising, a good place to judge the rebel movement was close to the front line in the largely deserted town of Ajdabiya, two hours' drive south of Benghazi. Here the military stalemate of sudden advances and retreats was very visible: in the restaurant of the local hotel waiters started to ask journalists to pay their bills before they ate. The urgency on the part of the hotel management reflected their bitter experience of seeing journalists – their only customers – abandon meals half-eaten and leave, bills unpaid, because of a sudden and unexpected advance by the pro-Gaddafi forces.
On the outskirts of Ajdabiya, rebel pick-ups and trucks, with heavy machine guns welded to the back, rushed backwards and forwards, the speed of their retreats so swift as to endanger any camera crews or reporters standing nearby. I had an ominous feeling, as I drove about Ajdabiya, Benghazi and the hinterland of Cyrenaica, that all would not turn out well. "It would take a long time to reduce Libya to the level of Somalia," I wrote on 13 April 2011, "but civil conflicts and the hatreds they induce build up their own momentum once the shooting has begun. One of the good things about Libya is that so many young men – unlike Afghans and Iraqis of a similar age – do not know how to use a gun. This will not last."
Nor did it. But it was not the militarisation of Libyans that broke the stalemate but the intervention of Nato air forces. The shape of things to come was already becoming clear: on 22 May I described how flames were billowing up "from the hulks of eight Libyan Navy vessels destroyed by Nato air attacks as they lay in ports along the Libyan coast. Their destruction shows how Muammar Gaddafi is being squeezed militarily, but also the degree to which the US, France and Britain, and not the Libyan rebels, are now the main players in the struggle for power in Libya. Probably Gaddafi will go down because he is too weak to withstand the forces arrayed against him. Failure to end his regime would be too humiliating and politically damaging for Nato after 2,700 air strikes. Once he goes, there will be a political vacuum that the opposition will scarcely be able to fill. The fall of the regime may usher in a new round of a long-running Libyan crisis that continues for years to come."
By August, Gaddafi had fled and I was in Tripoli touring the abandoned palaces, villas and prisons of the ruling family that had so recently abandoned them. I tried not to be a professional pessimist, pointing out hopefully that, unlike Iraqis and Afghans, Libyans had a high standard of living, were well educated and were not split by age-old ethnic and sectarian divisions. But even this upbeat summary concluded plaintively as I added: "All the same, I wish the shooting outside my window would stop."
It never really did stop. Tripoli was full of checkpoints that reminded me of Lebanon during the civil war of 1975 to 1990. The arrival of the new transitional government from Benghazi did not fill me with confidence since one of its first measures was to announce the end of the ban on polygamy introduced by Gaddafi. I had periodically visited Tripoli in the 1980s and 1990s and had noticed that, as in the oil states of the Gulf, most of the work was done by migrants from poor countries that were Libya's African neighbours. To find out what was happening in Libya at that time, I would go for a walk in the marketplace and fall into conversation with bored Ghanaians or Chadians, all migrants on their day off, who would tell me more about the real state of the country than any Libyan official or Western diplomat.
But with the fall of Gaddafi, all black faces were regarded with suspicion by the new rulers as likely supporters of the fallen leader. They were often accused of being "pro-Gaddafi mercenaries", interrogated, jailed and occasionally murdered. Life for the migrant and indigenous black population was to get steadily worse in the coming years as Libya disintegrated, and by 2015 Ethiopian and Egyptian Christians were being executed by Islamic State's Libyan clone. Meanwhile, the West Europeans were reaping what they had sown by destroying the Libyan state: migrant labourers, who had once found jobs in Libyan markets and building sites, were now risking their lives as they sailed in over-crowded and unseaworthy boats across the Mediterranean in a desperate attempt to reach Europe.
My fears about the "Somalianisation" of Libya, first expressed in March 2011, had turned out to be all too true. Four years later, Libya was ruled, in so far as it was ruled at all, by two governments, one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, while real authority lay in the hands of militias that fought each other for power and money. Demonstrators in the streets of Tripoli were shot down by anti-aircraft machine guns whose large calibre bullets tore apart the bodies of protesters; Tripoli International Airport was destroyed in fighting between rival militias; torture was ubiquitous; and the country split between east and west. For all his quirky personality cult and monopoly of power, life in Libya under Gaddafi had not been as bad as this. The demonisation of Gaddafi had an unfortunate effect in ensuring the opposition had no real programme other than his replacement by themselves.
Libyans were relieved at the end of 2011 to find that they no longer had to study the puerile nostrums of Gaddafi's Green Book – in the knowledge that if you failed the exam devoted to this work, you had to retake the entire course. But Libyans also found to their horror that they had lost a haphazard but functioning state, and with it personal security in the sense of being able to walk the streets in safety. They were now at the mercy of predatory militiamen who were paid out of Libya's diminished oil revenues. I remember a fellow journalist upbraiding me politely in 2011 for stressing the failings of the Libyan rebels, saying: "Let's remember who are the good guys." A few months later, as the revolution turned sour, good and bad in Libya were ever more difficult to tell apart.
This was a common experience in the six countries most affected by the Arab Spring. By 2015, three of these – Libya, Syria and Yemen – were being ravaged by warfare and two others – Egypt and Bahrain – were ruled by authoritarian governments more brutal and dictatorial than anything that had gone before. Only in Tunisia, where it had all started, did an elected civilian government cling on, though increasingly destabilised by massacres of foreign tourists by Isis training camps in Libya. The Arab Spring had turned into the age of jihad.This is an extract from 'Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East' by Patrick Cockburn, published by OR Books, price £18. The discount code readers can use for 15% off 'Chaos and Caliphate' is: INDEPENDENT
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socresonline.org.uk
Sociological Research Online, vol. 2, no. 1, < http://www.socresonline.org.uk/2/1/8.html>To cite from articles published in Sociological Research Online, please reference the above information and include paragraph numbers if necessary Received: 10/12/96 Accepted: 15/1/97 Published: 31/3/97
Abstract
- The article reviews briefly the theory of nationalism, and introduces (yet another) definition of nations and nationalism. Starting from this definition of nationalism as a world order with specific characteristics, oppositions such as core and periphery, globalism/nationalism, and realism/idealism are formally rejected. Nationalism is considered as a purely global structure. Within this, it is suggested, the number of states tends to fall to an equilibrium number which is itself falling, this number of states being the current best approximation to a single world state. Within nationalism variants are associated with different equilibrium numbers: these variants compete. Together, as the nationalist structure, they formally exclude other world orders. Such a structure appears to have the function of blocking change, and it is tentatively suggested that it derives directly from an innate human conservatism. The article attempts to show how characteristics of classic nationalism, and more recent identity politics, are part of nationalist structures. They involve either the exclusion of other forms of state, or of other orders of states, or the intensification of identity as it exists.
Keywords:
- Culture; Globalism; Identity; Innovation; Multiculturalism; Nation State; Nationalism; Structuralism
Introduction
- 1.1
- If a world order of states is so arranged that similarity within each state is maximized, and the number of states is minimized, then that world order is a nationalist world order, and its components are nation states. This definition does not start from the characteristics of a nation, as many definitions of nationalism do. It starts instead from the world order, considering the nation only in a very abstract sense. Implicitly this definition is also a functionalist theory of nationalism, and this is expanded later in this article. The article closes with a more speculative section on how identity politics could replace nationalism, but continue its function.
- 1.2
- That nations have a function, and what it is, is nowhere more clearly expressed than in President Clinton's First Inaugural speech:
When our founders boldly declared America's independence to the world and our purposes to the Almighty, they knew that America, to endure, would have to change. Not change for change's sake, but change to preserve America's ideals - life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless.- 1.3
- A world of nation states is a world of states built to maintain past ideals, where change is limited to that necessary for their survival, a world structured against 'change for the sake of change'. Structuralism, functionalism, and voluntarism are currently taboo in the social sciences. Yet, I think it strange to reject the clear explanations of the purpose of nationalism, so often given by nationalists and national leaders. In practice it is often an abdication of moral judgment on the actions of nationalists.
- 1.4
- Before considering the relation of structure and function of nations, a brief indication of the range of theories of nationalism. Any comprehensive review of theories of nationalism could only be of book length (for instance Smith, 1983). The Oxford Reader on Nationalism (Hutchinson and Smith, 1994) collects examples of the main theories.
- 1.5
- At least nine academic disciplines develop theories of nationalism and nation states:
- political geography
- international relations
- political science
- cultural anthropology
- social psychology
- political philosophy (normative theory)
- international law and Staatsrecht
- sociology
- history
- 1.6
- It is not surprising that authors in one discipline are unfamiliar with theory in another, or that there is overlap and duplication. Peter Alter (1985: p. 169) remarks that the literature can scarcely be overseen. In this fragmentation among disciplines, a plurality of theories is at least possible. In turn, plurality of theories should give more space for innovative theories - more than in a single recent paradigmatic discipline. (This reverses the standard assumption, that periods of revolution in science are the periods of innovation in science. Given fragmentation of disciplines, there might be more innovation in 'normal science' than through paradigm change.) However, in this respect nationalism theory is a disappointment. Plurality of disciplines has not produced an equivalent plurality of theory. Some common approaches recur across disciplines. Examples of such common features are the tendency, to approach nationalism on a country-by-country basis, and to date it as a phenomenon of modernity.
- 1.7
- In any case, it is possible to give some simple (non-inclusive) categorization of theories of nationalism:
- normative theory of nationalism in political philosophy, for instance in Walzer (1983).
- theories of nationalism as political extremism. These use a definition of nationalism common in the media: as equivalent to jingoism, ethnic hatred, expansionism, militarism, or aggressive separatism, contrasted with constitutionalism, liberalism or patriotism (see Connor, 1994: pp. 196 - 209). This approach is related to 'shopping list' definitions of the extreme right (Mudde, 1996: pp. 228 - 9).
- modernization theories of nationalism: these form the bulk of social science theory of nationalism
- primordialist theories, disputing the modern origin of nations
- civilization theories of nationalism, often implying an ultimate global community. Freud's (1932) comparison of peoples with primitive organisms is a core version of such a theory of nations.
- historicist theories, which take the existence of nations as given, and consider their development (or obstacles to that development).
- social-integrative theories, especially 'substitute religion' theories
- state formation theories, residually explaining nationalism, usually as a product of centralizing policy to uniformity
- global system or global order theories, which do not usually consider internal characteristics of nation states. Theory of state formation through war combines this with the last category (for instance, Rasler and Thompson, 1989).
- 1.8
- This is only one categorization, and indicative only. James Goodman (1996), for instance, categorizes theories of nationalism into five approaches: ethno-national, modernization, state-centred, class-centred, and 'uneven development' theories.
- 1.9
- Four authors have dominated academic consideration of nationalism in the last 10 years:
- Ernest Gellner (Nations and Nationalism, 1983).
- Eric Hobsbawm (The Invention of Tradition, 1983, co-edited with Terence Ranger, and later Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 1992).
- Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities, 1983).
- Anthony D. Smith (The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 1986)
- 1.10
- The first three are in the category modernization theories, A. D. Smith is the main 'primordialist'. Gellner's academic field was the philosophy of sociology, Anderson taught international relations, Hobsbawm is a social historian, and Smith a sociologist (notes in Hutchinson and Smith, 1994).
- 1.11
- Gellner's work is the most consistently theoretical: it proposes a model of the transformation to nation states derived from economic factors:
So the economy needs both the new type of central culture and the central state; the culture needs the state; and the state probably needs the homogeneous branding of its flock ... (Gellner, 1983: p. 140)- 1.12
- Anderson does not propose a derivation of this kind, but his central thesis is that communication and media did facilitate the emergence of nations as imagined communities. For Anderson, only face- to-face contact can sustain community: nations are in some sense an illusion. Both of these views date nationalism as definitively modern. A. D. Smith's central thesis is that pre-modern equivalents of nations existed - indirectly invalidating the modernization theories. Hobsbawm's article on invented tradition appeared earlier, but can be read as a refutation of the pre-modern origin of national tradition. Hobsbawm gives examples of how such tradition, even the sustaining myth of nations, can be borrowed, added to, or simply invented. (A similar work by Bernard Lewis (1977), did not apparently have the same impact.)
- 1.13
- The so-called resurgence of nationalism in Eastern Europe after 1989 brought these works to media attention, as well as academic status. (At one time I could chose between six different courses on them, at one university.) All of them are also very readable, with much interesting illustration from the history of nations. No more recent work has made the same impact, and the fixation on the themes of these authors may have limited theoretical perspectives.
- 1.14
- Any attempt to compress these works into one paragraph is inadequate. However, one thing is clear: the authors have not engaged in any wide speculation about hypothetical worlds of entirely non-national states. Nations are explained in these theories, not the absence of non-nations. Insofar as possible alternatives are considered, these are possible continuations of the mediaeval European order.
Universalist Particularism
- 2.1
- Most nationalism theory pays little attention to nationalism as a world order. This is surprising, since nationalists themselves so often treat it as such. Some definitions of nationalism are entirely particularistic: Elwert (1989: p. 37) says that nationalists only want a nation for themselves, not others. This is untrue: nationalists have often wanted other nations. The classic example is Mazzini, who founded or inspired not only Young Italy, but Young Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Bohemia and Argentina among others (Mack Smith, 1994: pp. 11-12). Mazzini's vision was global: he saw the peoples as nothing less then the units of humanity's army:
L'Umanità è un grande esercito che move alla conquista di terre incognite, contro nemici potenti e avveduti. I Popoli sono i diversi corpi, le divisioni di quello esercito. (Mazzini (1860) [1953]: p. 89)- 2.2
- This is a metaphor, but it should emphasize the extreme universalism of nationalism. Armies are not known for maximizing autonomy or individual will. Any listing of the ethical claims of nationalism (the subject of a separate article) will show that nationalism can not de derived, from Enlightenment ideas of self-determination. That was the basic thesis of Elie Kedourie's influential Nationalism (1960, revised 1992).
- 2.3
- Peter Taylor (1989: p. 175) summarizes the world as seen by nationalists, at three levels (approximately the global, national and individual).
- The world is, for them, a mosaic of nations which find harmony when all are free nation states.
- Nations themselves are natural units with a cultural homogeneity based on common ancestry or history, each requiring its own sovereign state on its own inalienable territory.
- Individuals all belong to a nation, which requires their first loyalty, and in which they find freedom.
- 2.4
- This standard nationalist thought says more about nationalism than the immediate goals of any one nationalist group. For both of these things - world view and activism - the word 'nationalism' is used. This may be confusing, but it is also misleading to split nationalism into 'international relations' and 'internal politics', and then include secessionism in the second category. Basque separatists in Northern Spain and South-western France want a nation state, and are labelled nationalists: the governments of France and Spain, who have already got a nation state, are not. There is undeniably a secessionist nationalism, with claims against a larger state, such as those of the ETA. However, the definition at the start of this article is intended to emphasize the global effect of such movements, and their historical equivalence to the founders of the states they oppose. The term nationalism is used here, deliberately, to describe both aspects of the phenomenon.
- 2.5
- Nationalism is not a particularism. It is a universalism, a consistent vision or ideology. Autonomy, secession, war and conquest can be compatible with a universal shared goal. Apparently amending his earlier view of nationalism, Peter Taylor (1995: p. 10) described one world as 'the nemesis of interterritoriality'. However, a world of nations can still be one world, if it is one nationalist world. The definition of nationalism used here is intended to emphasize this universal, 'world order', aspect of nationalism. Since nations, united nations.
- 2.6
- The definition implies that nationalism is a substitute for a world state. If cultural homogeneity cannot be achieved, because co-ordination over distance is not perfect, then a strategy of co-operating local similarities is the best option. The number of cultures on earth will be the outcome of this strategy. Later, as states form on the basis of pre-existing ethnic or cultural groups, the number of states will also derive from this strategy. If there are too few states, and each too large, they may become internally diverse. If there are too many, they will differ too much among themselves. It is therefore not possible to project the long term fall in the number of states to the point at which only one is left, as Robert Carneiro did (1976; see Chase- Dunn, 1990). The trend to fewer political units seemed clear enough to Carneiro, to project a date for world government: 2300 AD. If however, the nationalist world order is considered as a global structure, and not seen as competing states, then there is no certainty of reaching a single world state. If there is already such a global order, globalization does not imply the reduction of its components to one. Instead, there is an optimum number of nation states at any one time, within such a nationalist world order. That optimum is determined by limits of communications, transport, and the degree of political and social organization. This number is falling, but constraints of distance may never be eroded enough to reduce it to one. The optimum number may in fact exceed the number of states that now exist. The many separatist movements, the success of small states, and the fact that there are many more languages than states, all indicate a world with many more than 185 states: perhaps closer to 1000.
- 2.7
- That implies a change in the nature of the component states. The classic 19th century European nation state, the basis of most definitions of nationalism, would best fit a world of between 200 and 500 states. It is a universalism: but there are competing universalisms, variants within nationalism. This is very clear in Europe, where these variants are used as programmes for the whole continent. Most are serious, some are what might be called geopolitical kitsch (Heineken, 1992; Pedersen, 1992). Classic nationalists speak of Europe des patries, ethno-nationalists of Europe des ethnies (Heraud, 1993), regionalists of Europe of the regions (Borrп╠s-Alomar, 1994). Only in Europe are the alternatives formulated so explicitly, but these universalist structures are implicitly global. They are ways of dividing the world: alternatives to classic nationalism. In other words, use of similar terms at a global scale can be expected: a world of the regions, a world of the peoples, and so on.
- 2.8
- There is what might be called world- nationalism, associated with a single global state. Its explicit form is world federalism, and plans to the UN into a sort of world government. This centuries-old tradition (see ter Meulen, 1917; van der Linden, 1987) is represented by the work of Richard Falk (1987; 1992) and many others (Marien, 1995: pp. 297 - 301). It is paralleled by the philosophical tradition of cosmopolitanism (see Toulmin, 1990), and by a belief in globalization. (Marien's 1995 article covers a very wide range of global visions, from New Age to neo-liberal.) Then there is inter-culturalism - the division of the world into 5 to 50 cultures or civilizations, once used in organicist versions by historians (Demandt, 1978: pp. 96 - 101), and recently revived by Samuel Huntington (1993). At the same scale are the pan- nationalist movements, all of them failures until now (Snyder, 1984: p. 254). Then there is classic (inter-) nationalism, the basis of the existing world order. Next to that is ethno-nationalism (Connor, 1994; Heraud, 1993; Tiryakian, 1985; Watson, 1990). Although there is no clear distinction between some 'nations' and 'peoples', the scale of the inter-ethnic world is very different, with up to 10,000 'peoples'. It is this variant which has the clearest demands at present, classically stated in the International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Nations (CWIS, 1994). At a similar scale is a historic-cultural-linguistic regionalism, well organized in Europe (see Kohr, 1986; Labasse, 1991). These regions are often seen as units of a future federal Europe, combining regionalism with a weak pan-nationalism. Finally although it rarely generates separatism, there is an inter-localism: it sees the small community, the village or neighbourhood, as the only authentic unit of social organization.
- 2.9
- In all these variants, the possible states share four functional characteristics (described later), and there is a global order of such states. I would emphasize that this article is not intended to explain all aspects of nationalism, but to consider why states do not deviate from this model.
Core, Periphery, Hegemony
- 3.1
- In universal structures (functional or not) there is logically no core or periphery - at least, not in the sense of most world system models. However, competition between universalisms can create this appearance. Some separatist movements, for instance, defy the expected logic of core and periphery: the Lega Nord, or Catalonian separatism. Mansvelt Beck (1991) explains this as an 'inverted core- periphery relationship'. This kind of explanation can be avoided on the assumption that there is no real separatism at all. Catalonian regionalism is regionalism, a model for the whole world, not just Spain: Basque nationalism is a manifestation of global ethno- nationalism, and so on. The variants of nationalism are superimposed universalisms. An ETA attack on a Spanish army barracks is, seen in this way, a clash of universalisms.
- 3.2
- To this extent, nationalist movements cannot logically be analyzed in terms of social movement theories. (This is an example of the formal consequences of adopting the universalist definition used in this article). Nor can electoral support for 'nationalist parties' be analyzed. In Britain, the Scottish National Party supports a nation state, but then so do the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Support for nationalism in UK elections is consistently around 99 percent. Again, separatist sentiment is labelled nationalist, but unionist sentiment is not. In this way, SNP support enters a different category for electoral analysis: but this is a purely taxonomic effect.
- 3.3
- In a similar way, a rise in the number of states may generate the illusion of power, struggle and resistance. This may be the case, even if there is no difference of scale. All units (potential states) might be comparable, as with Czechoslovakia, Czechia, and Slovakia. These are all classic European nation states. However, seen from Slovakia, Czechoslovakia stands for hegemonic culture, an imposed universalism, oppression and 'power'. Earlier, the Slavic nationalists who inspired the Czechoslovak state, had opposed the dominance of German-language culture in Central Europe. Earlier still, German romantic nationalists had opposed the dominance of French Enlightenment rationalist culture. All secessionist movements are anti-hegemonic and anti-universalist, until independence day. After that they become another's hegemonic universalism, another's 'state'. And, indeed, Slovakia has been criticized, for its treatment of the Hungarian minority.
- 3.4
- Logically, in a perfect order of nations, there is no dominance or 'power': everyone co-operates a nationalist in sustaining the structure. This may however involve changing the number of states, creating the illusion of conflict. People volunteer for military service: that is said to prove they are willing to die for their country. It is equally logical to say they die for the functioning of the world order. That, emphasized, in a perfect order of nations.
- 3.5
- This is an abstraction, true. Nevertheless, it is not such an abstraction that is has no real effect. Conflicts do involve common reinforcement, including reinforcement of national structure. Secession, especially, forces both sides further into their own identity. Identity makes counter- identity (see Barth, 1969), as with Slovak and Czech. It is probably true that Czecho-Slovakia is more nationalist since it split: it is certainly true of Yugoslavia. In this way the action of individuals in one nation can intensify global identity, affecting the number of nations in the process. So it is logically possible that there is no national oppression, nor national liberation. The 'struggle' is to intensify nationalism, the world order. Inside it, to oppress or be oppressed as a nation serves the same function. In practice, an oppressed group will say it is a nation fighting a state: the state will say it is a nation fighting terrorists.
Global/National, Order/Chaos
- 4.1
- Another opposition recurrent in theory on nations is that between the national and the global (see Arnason, 1990). The nation state and national culture are being eroded by global communication - it is often said. It is said that Internet will dissolve nations. Much the same thing was said about satellite television, air travel, radio, the telegraph, and railways. Nation states are still here. Yet few people are sceptical about 'globalization' (Cox, 1992; Smith, 1990), and in a sense there is no reason to be. There is no erosion of the national by the global, but only because there is nothing to erode. Nationalism is 100% global: a world order cannot logically be further globalized.
- 4.2
- The components of an order do not stand in opposition to it: certainly not in the sense implied by the term 'globalization'. The implicit assumption is that nations are particular entities, necessarily at a sub-global level. In other worlds, the whole idea starts from the assumption that there is no universal nationalism. If I claim the people on the pitch at a football match walked there by chance, and I see them playing football, then I could say they are being 'football- ized'. In fact they went there as a group, for that purpose.
- 4.3
- The question is why there is such enthusiasm for the concept of globalization. First, it is in the nature of nationalism itself. The world of nations is an imperfect substitute for a homogenous world state: it is logical for nationalists to hope it is approaching. Secondly, the enthusiasm is in any case matched by the anti-universalist ideas mentioned above. There are books and conferences on the coming global state, but equally on the rise of regions. It seems possible to combine two scales of thought, for instance in cultural pan-syncretism (see Nederveen Pieterse, 1993) or sub-state federation (Bengoetxea, 1993). Thirdly, this is only one example of a pattern: for each of the level of scale of nationalism, there are possible upward and downward transitions. Shifts from the ethno-regional to the global, for instance, or from pan-nationalism to linguistic regionalism.
- 4.4
- Only three of these possibilities are active at present:
- globalism, more normative than descriptive
- anti-hegemonic criticism of existing national states and their cultures, without any territorial effect as yet. In reaction there is some new defence of the nation state, especially in response to multiculturalism and identity politics. This applies most in high-immigration western industrialized countries, where it is a major issue. (The U.S.A. especially: see Schlesinger, 1992.) In any case, more recent interest in fusion, hybridity, and 'crossing boundaries' favours pan- nationalism. Separatist identity politics seems on the way out.
- ethno-nationalism, and in Europe regionalism at the same subnational scale - which enjoys some support within the EU (van der Knaap, 1994).
This last is by far the most active shift. The next ten years are unlikely to see a world government, and the US is unlikely to break up (and does not need Arthur Schlesinger to save it): but it might see an independent Vlaanderen or Catalunya, or the definitive break-up of Afghanistan.
- 4.5
- The world order of nations is therefore characterized by both secession and fusion, but it is not being 'torn apart'. It is a structure being rebuilt to function better. All these shifts in scale merely substitute one universalism for another, all variants of one world order. There is no dramatic fragmentation, and no paradigmatic shift to one world community. No shift is needed.
- 4.6
- It also follows, from the definitions used here, that a world of nation states cannot be chaotic or anarchic. The academic discipline of international relations is influenced by the idea of a slow progress toward the imposition of some kind of order on warring, aggressive states, the tradition of, for instance, Hedley Bull (1977, 1984). This tradition concedes some 'order in the system'. However, logically there cannot be anything else but order. A world order is by definition not disorder: international relations are by definition 'idealist' in International Relations terms, and a national state cannot be a Machtsstaat. So called realism models a world of aggressively competitive states - sometimes identified with mediaeval Europe. From this a recognition of commonalities may emerge, and states may co-operate, bringing order and peace. Those who consider this inherent or inevitable are usually classified as idealist.
- 4.7
- But war is not disorder: Carneiro's model, the simplest possible, demonstrates that states disappear through 'competitive exclusion' until there is one left: there are many wars, but it is an ordered, linear process (see Cioffi-Revilla, 1991). The realist/idealist dispute ignores the type of state involved. The question is not why there are so many wars between nations, but why there are so few wars between non-nations. Not why there is ethnic cleansing, but why there is so little non-ethnic cleansing. Not what is international relations, but why there are only inter-national relations. Any attempt to imagine a fundamentally non-national world, should make clear how stable the world of nations is. Nation states can apparently fight each other, without risk of emergence of new state forms in the alleged 'chaos'.
Other Worlds
- 5.1
- It may seem that all this imposes a simplistic order on a complex world. However it is nationalists who want to impose a simple structure, and they have been remarkably successful. Of course the world order is not perfect, and states do have autonomous interests. These may be of the kind graphically attributed to them in pre-war Geopolitik (Schmidt, 1929), or less obsessively in recent geopolitical atlases. Nations do sometimes act as entities 'seeking access to the sea', or 'control of river basins', or resources, or historical territories. The Schmidt-Haack Atlas maps tens of different types of claim, and some were later used by Germany. However, if all nation states consistently acted like this, there would be constant all-state war.
- 5.2
- There is also the possibility that a state will turn against the world order, a real renegade state. Usually this term merely indicates a state disliked by western policy makers: see Dror (1971) on 'crazy states'. A real renegade state would have to stop being a nation state: no-one speaks of 'crazy nations'. More probable is that nationalism as a universal order conflicts with other universalisms; other world orders of one or more states, or perhaps a stateless world. The definition of nationalism used here, defines it as a monolith with great historical continuity. It should then react to competing monoliths, as a unit. The Greek polis is often cited as the prototype of nations, indeed of all political community. It was also a unit within an order of similar states. That Hellenic order may have had a proto-national identity itself. However, as an order of city states, it was in intermittent conflict with Asian empires. The present order of nation states covers the globe, however, so that any competing world will be found within it.
- 5.3
- There is at present one clear example of a competing world order: theocratic religious universalism, of the kind promoted (in Britain) by the Muslim Unity Organization. It advocates a world caliphate, khilafa. It is not accidental that this group operates from Britain: the existing Islamic nation states would be the first to disappear on the road to the caliphate. However small such groups are, they have a coherent and radical alternative not just to 'the West', but to the whole existing world:
...there is a long and still vibrant tradition of Muslim agitation against nationalism and the nation state. The most recent manifestation of this agitation has had Shi'i inspiration, but there are no significant differences between Sunni and Shi'a on this question, or between Arab and non-Arab Muslims. Feeling that Islam's decline is due chiefly to the adoption of Western ideas and culture, all express pessimism and suggest a radical restructuring of the world order. (Piscatori, 1986: p. 145)- 5.4
- A complete alternative world order is unlikely to control any territory within the world order it rejects. It is however not adequate to consider such universalist Islamic movements as 'social movements' within existing nation states. They cannot be accommodated within the 'public domain' of these states, as suggested by John Rex (1996) in a previous article in Sociological Research Online. This has nothing to do with their immigrant or ethnic status: a Catholic theocracy would not fit into a liberal democratic nation state either.
Blocking
- 6.1
- As long as there are nations, there will be no caliphate; it is neither a people, nor a region, nor a nation, nor a culture. Structurally, nationalism excludes other entities from state status. Nationalism is a blocking world order: it excludes other worlds. It is difficult to imagine all these possible worlds from inside the world of nations, and that is part of its success. Any attempt to imagine them will lead to apparent absurdity.
- 6.2
- What nationalism blocks, above all, is change. The definition of nationalism as tending to total homogeneity implies stability also. The order blocks, but not without direction. It may well be, in itself, empty: it does not define, for instance, what language will be spoken in the third nation east of the Rhine. That does not stop it having a purpose. If the world order of nations (as defined here) is superimposed on a world, it will block change in time, and exclude the alternative worlds that are possible at any point in time. That is an ethical choice, and the ethics of nations are outside the scope of this article, as noted.
- 6.3
- If nationalism is chosen, someone chose it. No one person invented nationalism: the most logical 'someone' is, exactly as Mazzini suggested, humanity. There is some theory which links the nation to the psyche: the most obvious areas of interest are self-determination (Ronen, 1979) and personal identity, sense of self (Bloom, 1990). I suggest the structure of nationalism derives from an innate human conservatism. This is no more absurd than saying that structures of reservoirs and water supply derive from an innate human need for water. It does not imply that all persons at all times are absolutely conservative. (Nor does it contradict biology: change causes stress.)
- 6.4
- How can the world order of nations answer such an innate aversion to change? First, in that it gives a monopoly of state formation - and so of sovereignty - to nations. Not that all states correspond exactly to one nation: again, the point is how few states correspond to non-national entities. They do exist as historical curiosities: the Vatican, and the autonomous Agio Oros (Athos) in Greece. Some nationalists have a horror of a state without a nation: see Heraud's comment on the Vatican as a product of History, 'qui est violence' (1993: p. 11). If national divisions were not dominant, there should be more of these counter-examples. Secondly, the nation itself is past-based. Trans-generationality is a key characteristic of nations, and found in many definitions of nation. Writing on the subjective experience of cultural identity, A. D. Smith (1990: p. 179) names three components of shared experience: a sense of transgenerational continuity, shared memories, and a sense of common destiny. Collapsing the three into one gives the purpose of a nation: it exists to project the past (as collectively remembered) into the future, as little changed as possible. Nationalists almost do not ignore the future:
Nations are thus projects for the future and have the right to self-determination in order to organise their future. (Bengoetxea, 1993: p.95)- 6.5
- However in a national world order, nations are the only entities with self-determination and territory, and they are past- constituted. Just as with the world order, the nation is empty but not directionless: superimpose a nation on a heritage, and it will preserve it. In fact it will make the past into a 'heritage', one of the metaphors of possession common in nationalism. It is logical in nations, that the past should increase its share of economy, society and culture (see Horne, 1984; Lowenthal, 1985), that territory undergoes 'heritage-ization' (Walsh, 1992: pp. 138 - 147), that memory is cultural (see Assman, 1988) and that its preservation is a task of the state. Despite Lowenthal's title, the past is not treated as an apart entity, but rather divided up to correspond to existing nations. The world is thus occupied by states projecting parallel pasts into the future: there is no non-memory space, no space which is not of the past.
- 6.6
- Thirdly, the nations are in principle eternal, and so the nation state, and so the world order. (Dependent territories and mandates can have a formal time limit, but this relates to a transfer of power. Mandate territories become independent nation states, or join an existing neighbour.) The idea of setting up a state for a limited time for a specific purpose is alien to nationalism. The exceptions which show it is possible - for example extraterritorial mining concessions - are curiosities in a world of nations. The projection of the past will continue.
- 6.7
- Fourth, and most specifically, no state has ever been established for the primary purpose of change. This logical possibility is not limited by available technology or culture - it could have been done 1000 years ago.
- 6.8
- Returning to the definition: there logically exists a general class of orders of states where the boundaries are not drawn so as to maximise change. In other words, a class of change-limiting orders, in effect change-minimizing orders. The order of nations is probably the most effective of these. Formally, it is an order of coterminous states covering the entire land surface, formed by transgenerational identity communities, claiming a monopoly of state formation, and eternal legitimacy. All the scale variants of nationalism conform to this definition.
- 6.9
- These four functional characteristics of the nationalist world order emphasize how different it is from other possible orders, and how it has excluded them for a long time. In effect it has become superimposed on the world, by choice. It would be inaccurate to say it arrived at one instant. No-one can give a definitive date for when nationalism began: Marcu (1976: pp. 3 - 15) quotes 41 different views on the issue. Instead, a structure has been elaborated and intensified, and the beginnings of other structures have been abandoned. Compare the five possible futures of thirteenth century Europe suggested by Tilly (1975: p. 26), or the different routes to the national identity suggested by Armstrong (1982: pp. 283 - 300). The intensification has increased in the last 200 years, as nations become more national.
- 6.10
- It is a property of nationalism that intensifying the national identity intensifies the world order. Most theory of nationalism attributes this process to the state, at most to the interaction of state and civil society:
Après avoir ajusté à leur échelle propre l'armée, la justice, la religion et l'administration, ils en viennent à nationaliser le marché (impôts, douanes, lois et règlements, poids et mesures, etc.) à nationaliser l'école (langue officielle, programmes, examens, etc.) et, de proche en proche, à nationaliser encore la conscription, les services publics, certaines entreprieses au moins (chemins de fer, postes, ports etc.) ... l'Etat tend à façonner toute la societé civile, laquelle tend, en retour, a soumettre l'Etat à ses finalités propres... (Fossaert, 1994: p. 195)After having adjusted the army, the courts, religion and administration to national scale, they start to national-ise the market (taxes, customs, laws and regulations, weights and measures), to national-ise the schools (official language, educational programmes, exams), and then to nationalise in turn, conscription, public service, some business enterprises (railways, post, ports) ... The State forms civil society, which in turn begins to use the State for its own goals... (Fossaert, 1994: p. 195)
- 6.11
- The logic of nationalism however, is that this is a process of convergence driven from below, that the national identity is exactly what A. D. Smith (1990: p. 179) says it is not: an average. The state is merely an instrument. Too large a state and the convergence will be ineffective, too small and the averages will differ too much - and so back to the starting definition. Neither secession nor conquest disturb this process in the long run: the new nations will have their own 'nationalization', their own convergence. In other words, even at the level of the individual state, attitudes to change can determine the degree of national uniformity. Secession, in effect, punishes the state for allowing too much difference in the population. This is not an abstraction: many nationalists explicitly value homogeneous communities.
- 6.12
- In any case, daily reality in most nations is not secession, but less spectacular processes of emancipation. Nations are not perfect: they include minorities (or majorities) which do not conform to the national ideal, but have no other national identity. Repeatedly, such groups chose to integrate into the nation, rather than allow non-national secession. They pressure the state for inclusion, and often try to adjust the national identity, through cultural politics. Once again, there is no political-geographic inevitability in this: if people can secede as a nation they can secede as something else. They chose not to, with some historical exceptions. Again, the remarkable feature of the world order of nations is not the number of secessionist movements, but the fact that all of them represent a people, or a nation.
- 6.13
- A good example of the intensity of this choice is the campaign of gay and lesbian groups - especially in the U.S.A. - against the military ban on service, for 'the right to die for my country'. It seems absurd to demand to be killed in an army which discriminates against you. The emotions here can only be nationalist, U.S.A. nationalist: a sort of desperate desire to be part of an identity, to conform, to belong, not to be different. This is an example of genuine anger directed against the state, for failing to homogenize the nation. The logically possible alternatives do not occur. Despite the influence of religion in the U.S.A., there is no comparable demand for the 'right to die for my church', let alone any other organization. There is also no serious secessionist movement of gays and/or lesbians despite decades of social organization. When Cardinal Archbishop Quarracino of Buenos Aires proposed (in August 1994) a 'separate country for homosexuals', he had to publicly apologise, saying it was a joke. He did not know, probably, of Queer Nation (Bérubé, 1991; Chee, 1991), nor that it makes no territorial demands, despite its name.
- 6.14
- Many processes, then, which may seem separate or contradictory, can be described in a structure of nationalism, starting from its formal definition as a specific world order. Integration through formalism is a characteristic of conspiracy theories: does all this imply a vast conspiracy involving almost all humans over centuries? Not necessarily: it is possible to generate complex structures from simple rules. The most general rule for a nationalist world as a blocking world order would be approximately: 'if there is change, intensify identity'. A second rule might be to intensify identity preferably by fusion or accretion, and only if that failed, by secession. However, it is not necessary to imply a hidden formal grammar of nationalism. People do not need one: they can reflect on what is happening, and produce open doctrines of complex action - as did Mazzini, and other nationalist ideologists.
Identity Politics and Territory
- 7.1
- National identity links the individual to the world order. It has also been a central theme in universities over the last 15 - 20 years. Especially so, in English-speaking countries where a liberal political tradition is confronted by ethnic diversity (Rex, 1996). Some of that academic activity has an obvious link to nationalism, ethnic studies for example. More generally, there is an interest in what might be called structures of cultural identity, which may have a spatial or territorial counterpart.
- 7.2
- In the US the work of bell hooks, for instance, shows a transition from marginality as a 'site of deprivation' to a 'site of resistance' to a 'site one stays in' (hooks, 1990: p. 341), which is almost a summary of secessionist nationalism. In this way nationalist models, even of classic Mazzinian nationalism, may be adopted for identity politics. (That is, without necessarily breaking up existing nation states.) This continuity from 19th century nationalism to recent identity politics has yet to be researched. Even before the First World War, the Austro-Marxist Bauer (1907) anticipated the model of a multicultural state, now common in political speech in western Europe. Already in 1944, Louis Adamic described the United States as 'A Nation of Nations', and President Kennedy echoed the idea in the sixties (Kennedy, 1964). In contrast to Benedict Anderson's view (1992) that multiculturalism is transitional, there is no reason why a nation state can not be a Vielvölkerstaat, with diversity as a national value. The ultimate logic would be to make each nation itself a microcosm of the world order: united nations of united nations.
- 7.3
- It seems possible that use of identity can be further intensified, possibly to the point that a non-territorial structure of transgenerational identity replaces classic nationalism. For an example of the new politics, see the post-structuralist critique of Transgender Nation by Newitz (1993), and other texts at the same site. The new world order could be 'syncretic', a term from the study of religion (see Colpe, 1987). It could be a world order of gender pluralism, trans- diaspora cultures, trans-trans hybrids, and other new combinations of the existing - suppressing change by the volume of diversity.
- 7.4
- More probable is, that the parallels between the new politics and the old, will reinforce classic nationalism. Take this (random) example: a comment on bell hooks from a recent paper on spaces of citizenship:
In hooks's case these 'homes' entailed her grandparent's house and then the black neighbourhoods containing this house and also her own, and the implication is that these houses and neighbourhoods were rather more to her than 'just' sites of belonging, they were also sites where black people could escape from the antagonism, anger and attacks which arose when they trespassed on white space (however legitimate in legal terms their presence in this white space would actually be). In other words, hooks indicates something of how black people can never be citizens confidently occupying the spaces of white society, but hints too at how they may find ways of trying to foster alternative locales in which some sense of being a citizen - this time of a distinctively black world - is made possible. (Painter & Philo, 1995: pp. 116 - 7)- 7.5
- Change some names and this becomes much less friendly:
In Tudjman's case these 'homes' entailed his grandparent's house and then the Croat neighbourhoods containing this house and also his own, and the implication is that these houses and neighbourhoods were rather more to him than 'just' sites of belonging, they were also sites where Croat people could escape from the antagonism, anger and attacks which arose when they trespassed on Yugoslav space (however legitimate in legal terms their presence in this Yugoslav space would actually be). In other words, Tudjman indicates something of how Croat people can never be citizens confidently occupying the spaces of Yugoslav society, but hints too at how they may find ways of trying to foster alternative locales in which some sense of being a citizen - this time of a distinctively Croat world - is made possible.- 7.6
- And of course it was made possible.
- 7.7
- There is no need to reinvent nationalism, for nations have not disappeared, but some people seem determined to reinvent it anyway. The structure of nationalism is being altered, but its singularity and purpose are not. It remains one structure, one world order excluding other worlds. The man who more than anyone, was the founding father of modern nationalism, Johann Gottlieb Herder, wrote in 1774:
Ist nicht das Gute auf der Erde ausgestreut? Weil eine Gestalt der Menschheit und ein Erdstrich es nicht fassen konnte, wards geteilt in tausend Gestalten, wandelt - ein ewiger Proteus! - durch alle Weltteile und Jahrhunderte hin...(Herder, 1990/1774: p. 36)- 7.8
- Nationalism is a Proteus, but it changes only to prevent change. Rewriting Herder in the negative gives the judgment of nationalism: Only that which is already strewn about the Earth, is good.
References
- ADAMIC, L. (1944) A Nation of Nations. New York: Harper.
ALTER, P. (1985) Nationalismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Translation: Nationalism (1989) London: Edward Arnold.)
ANDERSON, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
ANDERSON, B. (1992) Long Distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics. Amsterdam: Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam.
ARMSTRONG, J. A. (1982) Nations Before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
ARNASON, J. (1990) 'Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity', Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 7, pp. 207 - 236.
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While we would be the first
to admit that Jeffrey Sachs was the godfather of "shock therapy" (aka "the economic rape of Russia"
and several other xUSSR republics), he is right as for the ongoing Syria bloodbath which has come to
define the geopolitical situation for the past 3 years. And how this is an event that would "surely
rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment" if the truth were fully known, we
agree 100 percent. www.huffingtonpost.com
In the Milwaukee debate, Hillary Clinton took pride in her role in a recent UN Security Council resolution on a Syrian ceasefire:
But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together.
This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton's role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.
In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US intransigence - Clinton's intransigence - that led to the failure of Annan's peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats. Despite Clinton's insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage. Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead.
As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not mostly about Bashar al-Assad, or even about Syria itself. It is mostly a proxy war, about Iran. And the bloodbath is doubly tragic and misguided for that reason.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East, view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a border state of Israel. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all clamored to remove Iran's influence in Syria.
This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional power for a long time--in fact, for about 2,700 years. And Shia Islam is not going away. There is no way, and no reason, to "defeat" Iran. The regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that recognizes the mutual and balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Iran. And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists.
Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran's influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.
When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at Syrian regime change.
In early 2011, Turkey and Saudi Arabia leveraged local protests against Assad to try to foment conditions for his ouster. By the spring of 2011, the CIA and the US allies were organizing an armed insurrection against the regime. On August 18, 2011, the US Government made public its position: "Assad must go."
Since then and until the recent fragile UN Security Council accord, the US has refused to agree to any ceasefire unless Assad is first deposed. The US policy--under Clinton and until recently--has been: regime change first, ceasefire after. After all, it's only Syrians who are dying. Annan's peace efforts were sunk by the United States' unbending insistence that U.S.-led regime change must precede or at least accompany a ceasefire. As the Nation editors put it in August 2012:
The US demand that Assad be removed and sanctions be imposed before negotiations could seriously begin, along with the refusal to include Iran in the process, doomed [Annan's] mission.
Clinton has been much more than a bit player in the Syrian crisis. Her diplomat Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was killed as he was running a CIA operation to ship Libyan heavy weapons to Syria. Clinton herself took the lead role in organizing the so-called "Friends of Syria" to back the CIA-led insurgency.
The U.S. policy was a massive, horrific failure. Assad did not go, and was not defeated. Russia came to his support. Iran came to his support. The mercenaries sent in to overthrow him were themselves radical jihadists with their own agendas. The chaos opened the way for the Islamic State, building on disaffected Iraqi Army leaders (deposed by the US in 2003), on captured U.S. weaponry, and on the considerable backing by Saudi funds. If the truth were fully known, the multiple scandals involved would surely rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment.
The hubris of the United States in this approach seems to know no bounds. The tactic of CIA-led regime change is so deeply enmeshed as a "normal" instrument of U.S. foreign policy that it is hardly noticed by the U.S. public or media. Overthrowing another government is against the U.N. charter and international law. But what are such niceties among friends?
This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark violation of international law but has also been a massive and repeated failure. Rather than a single, quick, and decisive coup d'état resolving a US foreign policy problem, each CIA-led regime change has been, almost inevitably, a prelude to a bloodbath. How could it be otherwise? Other societies don't like their countries to be manipulated by U.S. covert operations.
Removing a leader, even if done "successfully," doesn't solve any underlying geopolitical problems, much less ecological, social, or economic ones. A coup d'etat invites a civil war, the kind that now wracks Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It invites a hostile international response, such as Russia's backing of its Syrian ally in the face of the CIA-led operations. The record of misery caused by covert CIA operations literally fills volumes at this point. What surprise, then, the Clinton acknowledges Henry Kissinger as a mentor and guide?
And where is the establishment media in this debacle? The New York Times finally covered a bit of this story last month in describing the CIA-Saudi connection, in which Saudi funds are used to pay for CIA operations in order to make an end-run around Congress and the American people. The story ran once and was dropped. Yet the Saudi funding of CIA operations is the same basic tactic used by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s (with Iranian arms sales used to fund CIA-led covert operations in Central America without consent or oversight by the American people).
Clinton herself has never shown the least reservation or scruples in deploying this instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Her record of avid support for US-led regime change includes (but is not limited to) the US bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq War in 2003, the Honduran coup in 2009, the killing of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and the CIA-coordinated insurrection against Assad from 2011 until today.
It takes great presidential leadership to resist CIA misadventures. Presidents get along by going along with arms contractors, generals, and CIA operatives. They thereby also protect themselves from political attack by hardline right-wingers. They succeed by exulting in U.S. military might, not restraining it. Many historians believe that JFK was assassinated as a result of his peace overtures to the Soviet Union, overture he made against the objections of hardline rightwing opposition in the CIA and other parts of the U.S. government.
Hillary Clinton has never shown an iota of bravery, or even of comprehension, in facing down the CIA She has been the CIA's relentless supporter, and has exulted in showing her toughness by supporting every one of its misguided operations. The failures, of course, are relentlessly hidden from view. Clinton is a danger to global peace. She has much to answer for regarding the disaster in Syria.
Steven Beliveau, Northeastern UniversityThe people of the United States do not want that woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton to have relations with the people of the United States. She is totally unqualified, a disaster of a secretary of state, has incredibly poor judgement is a terrible candidate and should never be allowed to serve in any government capacity - EVER.Matt HemingwaySimple equation....war=money=power. Perpetual warfare is the post 911 gold rush and every establishment politician in every country is the snake oil salesman pushing this through. The people on the top make money and the rest of us get killed and go broke.Max SouthNot only the root cause, but also to-ols are important: now Western media/StateDep try depict what happens in Syria as sectarian, all while majority of both Syrian army and government are Sunni (even Assad's wife is Sunni) -- secular ones.Ram Samudrala, Professor and Chief, Division of Bioinformatics at SUNY BuffaloSyrian government is only hope for them, as well as for Christians, Kurds and all other ethnic and religious minorities that fight against Wahhabi/Salafist jihadists.
Sanders' platform is expansive and IMO he has provided the most detail on how he will get things done, which anyone can find out with a bit of investigation (http://berniesanders.com/issues/). But all of it doesn't matter since you can't predict how events will unfold. In this regard, I trust Sanders more than anyone else to decide what is best for all people in the the country (and even the world). I personally will do well with anyone but I think Sanders is looking out for the average person more than anyone else.Charles Hill, Works at Seif employedWell said. Hillary is a warmonger neocon just like Bush/McCain/Graham/Cheney. Trump and Bernie are not.Masha Manning, Houston, TexasPundits do not realize when they heap praises at Hillary Clinton's debate performances that ordinary people watching cannot get past her lack of trustworthiness and her dishonesty; and that whatever she says is viewed in that context and is therefore worthless.Eric Smith, Burlington, VermontIt's dismaying that the blowback from the 1953 CIA-assisted overthrow of Mossadegh is still behind the instability of the Middle East, and that we have continued to commit the same mistakes over and over. Can't we just get rid of this agency?Bijan Sharifias an iranian-american (and veteran), i appreciate sen sanders bringing this up in the debate.Eric Smith, Burlington, VermontBijan Sharifi Indeed. The CIA repeated this stunt in Vietnam 10 years after the Mossadegh mess and have been doing it at least once every decade since then. In every case, it has been a failure. How supporting that nonsense is seen as foreign policy experience, I'll never know.Timothy Francis, Project Manager at CHC ConsultingHillary helped facilitate the arming of terrorists in Syria in 2010 and 2011. She as far as I al concerned, Hillary supported the deaths of Syrians and terrorism. So why on earth would I want her to be president? Hello?Dianne Primmer, Houston, TexasThis is the much vaunted foreign policy that Hillary's supporters think qualify her for the presidency. That's a disaster waiting to happen.Christopher Head, Lighting Designer at Freelance Lighting Designer
More like a continuance of a disaster deferred. Thanks to John Kerry cleaning up the mess of her disastrous term as SoS. Syria is still a mess, but he has been working his butt off to be every bit of diplomat that Hillary was not. As soon as she returns to office expect more of her warfare first and diplomacy 'meh'.Gary PackIgnacio, she was for an all out invasion by the USA into Syria to remove Assad. She, John McCain, and Linsey Graham had to settle for just arming the Al Queda and IS for the time being.Sheia MahoneThis is what Trump has been alluding to in re Clinton, Obama, Bush, etc DC corruption used to bring down regimes that have continually destabilized America & the world.Where & Why was Obama & Holder not as directly held accountable in this discussion. Trump rightfully points that Americans have died for nothing yet the villains who are the catalysts of these atrocities still have jobs & stature in US. America needs to be rebooted once again & bring in leadership not buoyed by greed. power & indifference of those before him.
Ronald Burker, Boonsboro Senior HighJames Elliott cheerleading will not get anything done, I don't think Bernie understands how to get things done in our system, reality is 40 years of bad will not be fixed in even 4 years.The problem here really is the fact that Americans bitch and don't vote every election and this has let money just walk in and buy more influence, you want a real revolution, vote every election you are alive and you will let your children and their children a better life.
Harvey RiggsThat is about it, Clinton is a repub in dem clothing and the US is the biggest threat to world peace when it can not get its way in another countries politics or to get them to follow the US master plan that mainly supports the US's goal.Robert ChanMore messes in this world has been started with covert means in order to get what we want and millions upon milllions are suffering and the rest of the world countries 1'%ers who run those countries are scared to stand up aguinst the US and lose that under the table support.
what makes her so maddeningly hawkish? what credentials she has that her peace-loving supporters believe that she can lead the US/world for peace? wake-up, and let's get united behind bernie.Kathleen Lowy, MSW: RutgersThey believe the mythology that if women ruled the world it would be a better place...I beg to differ....Margaret Thatcher, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I were not exactly peace lovers...Additionally, years ago I was shocked to see that there were women members of the KKK. So much for women by their gender alone saving the world.
Sheila RajanLooking at the various misguided US excursions over the past 2 decades from outside of America, this comes as no surprise. Clinton's deep involvement in these venal adventures comes as no surprise either. Bill Clinton may have been adored in liberal America, but he was NOT, outside of your borders. To us he appeared as just another one in a long line of Presidents under the sway of the arms manufacturers, CIA, banks and financiers. Hillary Clinton is just an offshoot.Charlene Avis Richards, Works at Self-EmployedExcellent article.Leo Myers, Univ. of MinnesotaBut let us not forget Hillary Clinton's "regime change" record in Ukraine with Victoria "Fuc# the E.U.!" Nuland, wife of Neocon Robert Kagan and an Under Secretary of Hillary Clinton's at The State Department.
Hillary Clinton's fingerprints are all over Ukraine:
Yes, Somehow the so-called MSM refuses to expose the continuing debacle of our worldwide acts of Terrorism! The failure after failure of "our" military establishment such as targeted assassinations as an official policy using drones, black ops, spec ops, military "contractors", hired mercenaries, war lord militias and the like; the illegal and immoral acts of war cloaked in the Israeli framed rubric of "national defense".James Aliberti, Wentworth Institute of TechnologyFurther it is American war industry in partnership with our military that is arming the world with military grade weapon systems, tons and tons of munitions, and training to use them for such terror weapons as IEDs. It is MSM control by the establishment that enables the failures of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Obama, Clinton to treat horrendous failures as successes!
Hillary Clinton supporters don't care, they don't care that she could be a felon nor do they care she is owned by Wall Street and many other corporate special interest, they just don't care.Up here in New Hampshire, we soundly rejected untrustworthy, dishonest, disingenuous and corrupt Hillary, we just wish the rest of the nation had as much time to get to know the candidates as we had up here!
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naked capitalism
timbers, January 27, 2016 at 9:30 amhidflect, January 27, 2016 at 6:56 am"…the US need not push Russia into a corner, market forces are doing that work far more efficiently."
I think you're confusing markets with the US government.
It is the fall in the price of oil in part caused by political decisions, and partly Obama's illegal economic sanctions on Russia and US lies and propaganda and regime change directed at Russia that are "efficiently" doing what they're doing.
Would be very surprised if Washington is successful with any of it's "market forces" regarding Russia because Russia knows if it loses this matchup in Syria and retreats, the part that comes next is it Uncle Sam funding ISIS like terrorists on Russian soil instead of Syria as it is now. And if Russia can free itself of Western economic orthodoxy and dump the dollar, it will never fear a falling Rubble so much ever again. Lets hope Putin orders a moving away of short term Russian dollar holdings, so that a deliberate Russian default sees the West lose more in lost Russian payments than it can seize in Russian assets held in their countries.
Then who would "market forces be efficiently working for"?
In broad simplified stroke, Russia is fighting on the side of the angels and US is the Darth Vader of the world. The U.N. has said we have the biggest refugee crisis since WWII and the refugees are all coming from nations the US is or has done regime change in. Aside for this meaning Obama is directly responsible for the suffering if tens of millions of families and deaths of hundreds of thousands, it also is producing maybe dangerous right wing political reactions in Europe.
The Russians are smart enough to know the difference between economic sanctions and military threats and US funded/promoted terrorism. I've watched their actions long enough to trust them to make sound, intelligent responses (though was disappointed Lavrov agreed to allow Obama&Co funded Al-qaeda like terrorists to be included as legitimate political opponents of Assad in the peace talks).
susan the other, January 27, 2016 at 1:58 pmWhy the hell should he shake her hand? She's an ideological, irrational hate-monger who despises Russia. Kerry was an ass for bringing her along.
ltr, January 27, 2016 at 8:01 amKerry was probably disciplining her or rehabilitating her; there musts be a tempered new consensus at State. You're coming with me Vicki and you are going to behave like a rational, sincere diplomat because you've got some big fences to mend.
ltr, January 27, 2016 at 10:17 amVictoria Nuland is a monstrous diplomat who has soufght to cause or caused untold harm in American-Russian relations. She reflected Hillary Clinton's thinking and evidently reflects John Kerry's and ultimately the President's thinking.
susan the other, January 27, 2016 at 2:08 pmCorrecting and adding:
Victoria Nuland is a monstrous diplomat who has sought to cause or caused untold harm in American-Russian relations. She reflected Hillary Clinton's thinking and evidently reflects John Kerry's and ultimately the President's thinking. (I could care less about the shaking or not shaking. Nuland's presence is a sign of disrespect to Russia and the Russians know that perfectly well. This post is needed and excellent.)
McKillop, January 27, 2016 at 10:55 amI think her presence and her humiliation (notice Kerry left the room) are the equivalent of an apology to Lavrov and Russia for her dingbat, destructive role in Ukraine.
RUKidding, January 27, 2016 at 11:05 amIf Nuland and her posse are as instrumental in the devastation brought to Ukraine as reported then I think she deserves a damned good shaking.
oho, January 27, 2016 at 11:06 amInteresting, thanks. I think the article is worthy. I certainly could not blame Lavrov for snubbing this horrid excuse for a human being. The Kaganate of Nuland represents a portion of Obama's foreign policy and reflects what will be ahead should HRC win the election. The entire Kagan family should not be hired to do this work on behalf of "We the People," but there they are… doing their evil thing.
Gaylord, January 27, 2016 at 12:41 pmBill Kristol and David Brooks cries out wondering where all the conservatives have gone?
The answer is right there….Nuland, Kristol and Co. have driven the GOP base who are even mildly aware of foreign affairs to Trump's camp.
shinola, January 27, 2016 at 1:45 pmNuland was not even appropriately dressed for a diplomatic meeting IMO.
Wat, January 27, 2016 at 2:24 pmI guess I'll never be a diplomat.
I would have spit on her (& I'm Amurkin)
Perhaps Nuland thought Lavrov was a subject of some kind. She's probably too arrogant and stupid to figure it out, but she has now encountered a legitimate opponent. When the day of reckoning comes for her, she may learn what responsibility is.
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Sott.net
The relevance of the Soros connection may seem confusing to many. Certainly, however, no one in their right mind will suggest that a man that has made his fortune bankrupting nations and impoverishing their peoples lies awake at night wringing his hands over concerns for black people in America.Soros is most well-known for playing a major role in the funding and facilitating of the "Bulldozer Revolution" in Serbia that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, Georgia's "Rose Revolution" of 2003, the 2006 push to move Turkey toward a more Islamist governing structure, and even the Occupy movement in the United States among a great many others - none of which brought anything other than greater misery, impoverishment, and police state mechanisms to bear on the general public. The Occupy movement, being the only exception, still brought nothing to its participants except the opportunity to burn off excess anger and energy along with a few cracked protester skulls. It was otherwise an incredible waste of time.
Regardless, the methods being used by the Soros machine in terms of the #blacklivesmatter and other related campaigns across the country are much the same as those used in Europe to usher in greater austerity, police states, and fascism through government-coup and social protest - i.e. a coordinated media campaign to provide the general public with a false perception of events as well as a false narrative, the use of social media and slogans, and the deployment of "swarming adolescents" in the streets.
When media campaigns alone are not enough, there are other methods that are able to be implemented if need be. For instance, a Mother Jones report revealed the fact that in some areas where rioting began, there appears to have been a concerted effort on the part of the authorities to create an environment in which riots would be inevitable. For example, in an instance where it was reported that teens in Baltimore attacked police by throwing rocks, it was never mentioned that police had corralled these teens - who should have been on their way home - off the bus and into an area in between the mall and the high school. According to onlookers, it appeared that both the teens and the police were surprised at the situation - the police surprised at the lack of violence and the teens surprised that they were kept from going home. Eventually, rocks and bottles were reportedly thrown at police and the situation deteriorated from there. Of course, the entire story was never fully reported in the mainstream press. Still, while the rocks and bottles may have started from those in the crowd, others may justifiably wonder if there were not provocateurs already placed simply waiting to cause violence as soon as the tension had reached a boiling point. As it is, it is very likely that protesters and police alike were dupes in a devious game.
Consider also the fact that the Baltimore authorities, despite implementing heavy-handed tactics against high schoolers on their way home, allowed criminals, thieves, and violent thugs to prey upon innocent people, private property, and communities for quite some time without a serious effort to stop them. In fact, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake even openly admitted that the looters were allowed to riot when she stated that "We also gave those who wish to destroy space to do that as well." The police were prevented from actually stopping the riots and were kept largely unequipped as well. In other words, the riots were both allowed and encouraged until they had reached a boiling point and the National Guard was called in.
Of course, the color revolution and destabilization is not merely some communiqué presented to a small group of people that organically takes on a life of its own. There is an entire science behind the application of a movement of destabilization both when it takes place overseas as well as when it takes place domestically. As Pottenger and Frieson of Color Revolutions and Geopolitics write,
Many are the professions that utilize this type of understanding, including (but not limited to) marketing, advertising, public relations, politics and law-making, radio, television, journalism and news, film, music, general business and salesmanship; each of them selling, branding, promoting, entertaining, sloganeering, framing, explaining, creating friends and enemies, arguing likes and dislikes, setting the boundaries of good and evil: in many cases using their talents to circumvent their audiences' intellect, the real target being emotional, oftentimes even subconscious.With this explanation in mind, consider the description provided by Ian Traynor of the Guardian regarding the "revolutions" and "mass movements" which was taking place in Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus, and Georgia in 2004 and the time of the writing of his article. Indeed, Traynor's depiction of the methodology used by the Foundations, NGOs, and government agencies stirring up dissent and popular revolt is equally illuminating. Traynor writes,Looking beneath the facade of the color revolutionary movement we also find a desire-based behavioral structure, in particular one that has been built upon historical lessons offered by social movements and periods of political upheaval.
It then makes sense that the personnel of such operations include perception managers, PR firms, pollsters and opinion-makers in the social media. Through the operational infrastructure, these entities work in close coordination with intelligence agents, local and foreign activists, strategists and tacticians, tax-exempt foundations, governmental agencies, and a host of non- governmental organizations.
Collectively, their job is to make a palace coup (of their sponsorship) seem like a social revolution; to help fill the streets with fearless demonstrators advocating on behalf of a government of their choosing, which then legitimizes the sham governments with the authenticity of popular democracy and revolutionary fervor.
Because the operatives perform much of their craft in the open, their effectiveness is heavily predicated upon their ability to veil the influence backing them, and the long-term intentions guiding their work.
Their effectiveness is predicated on their ability to deceive, targeting both local populations and foreign audiences with highly-misleading interpretations of the underlying causes provoking these events.
In the centre of Belgrade, there is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-violent Resistance. If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire.They emerged from the anti-Milosevic student movement, Otpor, meaning resistance. The catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora, meaning high time. Otpor also had a potent, simple slogan that appeared everywhere in Serbia in 2000 - the two words "gotov je", meaning "he's finished", a reference to Milosevic. A logo of a black-and-white clenched fist completed the masterful marketing.The details and techniques of the manipulation of mass numbers of people have only continued to become more and more advanced and sophisticated, particularly with the advent of social media.In Ukraine, the equivalent is a ticking clock, also signalling that the Kuchma regime's days are numbered.
Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists' weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful.
These slogans and symbols are the product of mass marketers employed by State Departments and intelligence agencies for the sole purpose of destabilizing and/or overthrowing a democratically elected or unfavorable (to the oligarchy)government.
As Jonathan Mowat wrote,
As in the case of the new communication technologies, the potential effectiveness of angry youth in postmodern coups has long been under study. As far back as 1967, Dr. Fred Emery, then director of the Tavistock Institute, and an expert on the "hypnotic effects" of television, specified that the then new phenomenon of "swarming adolescents" found at rock concerts could be effectively used to bring down the nation-state by the end of the 1990s. This was particularly the case, as Dr. Emery reported in "The next thirty years: concepts, methods and anticipations,'' in the group's "Human Relations," because the phenomena was associated with "rebellious hysteria." The British military created the Tavistock Institute as its psychological warfare arm following World War I; it has been the forerunner of such strategic planning ever since. Dr. Emery's concept saw immediate application in NATO's use of "swarming adolescents" in toppling French President Charles De Gaulle in 1967.[1][...]In November 1989, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, under the aegis of that university's "Program for Social Innovations in Global Management," began a series of conferences to review progress towards that strategic objective, which was reported on in "Human Relations" in 1991. There, Dr. Howard Perlmutter, a professor of "Social Architecture'' at the Wharton School, and a follower of Dr. Emery, stressed that "rock video in Kathmandu," was an appropriate image of how states with traditional cultures could be destabilized, thereby creating the possibility of a "global civilization." There are two requirements for such a transformation, he added, "building internationally committed networks of international and locally committed organizations,'' and "creating global events" through "the transformation of a local event into one having virtually instantaneous international implications through mass-media."[2]The American people must quickly learn the formula behind color revolutions, destabilizations, and the agendas of the world oligarchy before it becomes too late for us all. They must learn that simply because "leaders" appear to them, attempt to speak the same language and articulate rage does not mean that these leaders are men of the people.Protests are necessary. Directed rage may also be necessary. But the wanton destruction of communities belonging to you or your neighbors is not only counterproductive, it produces rage that will be aimed back at you, and justifiably so. The entire country is being played like a fiddle. Baltimore is not an isolated collection of dupes, it is a microcosm. It is time the American people wise up and become street smart before it is too late.
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guest77 | Jan 9, 2016 3:28:12 AM | 55I just finished listening to the audio book of David Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard. Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government . It was very good I think.
I'll spare you a full review, but the Dulles era has some very important and interesting similarities with our own (in fact, the ties are most certainly those first formed during the Dulles brothers tenure at State and CIA). Talbot doesn't delve deeply into these more recent aspects, but he does acknowledge them. And the similarities are quite clear. We find Dulles attempting to convince his superiors of the need and advantages of dealing with "moderate Nazis" like Reinhard Gehlen, so today there are personalities in our government following a policy of working with "moderate Islamists" and "moderate ultra-nationalists" to achieve our goals.
Initially I had heard that it was a Allen Dulles biography, and though there is a lot of detail about his personal life, his marriage, and even his kids, I would say it strays from what one might consider a "standard" biography and is more about Dulles and his times. For instance, there are a couple of chapters devoted just to the Kennedy Assassination, another on Oswald, and one on the "Generals' putsch" in France in '61. Perhaps someone looking for more focus on Dulles the man might be disappointed by this, but for someone like myself interested in the history and insights of era Dulles lived in. The era covered is approximately the 1930s through the 1969.
Talbot uses Dulles life as the base to build up the important (and to my mind misunderstood and misconstrued) stories in recent US history. That story is, of course, the following: despite the impression most Americans have of our country fighting the ultimate "good war" against universally despised enemies - that fact is that the ruling elite of the US was deeply split.
A large portion of the US elite was sympathetic to the Nazis. Indeed, the pro-Nazi segment of the US elite had built up ties with Germany during the inter-war period. The bonds were economic, political and even ideological - indeed, these links were so important that likely Germany would not have been able to rearm itself without the help of these "patriotic" Americans (Talbot makes clear that in some cases this kinship was evident even during the war itself!).
And no one represents the fascist sympathizing segment of the US elite like Allen Dulles. And Talbot tracks this key figure's fascist ties as he rises in the US power structure from his early years as an OSS man wheeling and dealing with Nazi generals in Bern, Switzerland and on through Dulles' creation and/or support of fascist governments in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa during the Cold War. Talbot covers the events surrounding Dulles life excellently. Especially moving was his chapter on Guatemala - the tragedy of the Arbenz family as a mirror of the tragedy of Guatemala is covered through the eyes of the grandson of Arbez.
Talbot covers the horror stories of the results of America working closely with dictators like Trujillo, the Shah, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Batista (he misses Indonesia though, an operation that caused the death of 1,000,000 Indonesians). But of course, as an American, the most important question to Talbot is that of Dulles role in the Kennedy assassination. Talbot covers this topic well and makes a very good case for Dulles involvement - including revealing (from his day calendar) the fact that "fired" and "retired" from the CIA Allen Dulles, spent the weekend - from the time Kennedy was shot and killed Friday through the hours that Oswald was gunned down - at a CIA command facility in Virginia.
guest77 | Jan 9, 2016 4:08:48 AM | 59
https://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2008/01/allen-dulles-papers-released-by-cia-to-princeton-are-now-online/Allen Dulles papers released by CIA to Princeton are now online
Posted on January 23, 2008 by Dan LinkeThe Central Intelligence Agency has released to Princeton University some 7,800 documents covering the career of Allen W. Dulles, the agency's longest-serving director, which now can be viewed online at http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/st74cq497
Dulles (1893-1969), a Princeton alumnus who headed the CIA from 1953 to 1961, was renowned for his role in shaping U.S. intelligence operations during the Cold War. Last March, the CIA released to Princeton a collection of letters, memoranda, reports and other papers - some still redacted - that the agency had removed from Dulles' papers after his death and before their transfer to the University in 1974.
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