Month: May 2015

Ex-MP: Ukraine’s default is a culmination of a plan

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Horrifying asset seizure which is legally sanctioned. Which countries are next? Privatization or bankruptcy — either way, the forces of the “free market” and “democracy” get the assets of the people. Truly, the end of freedom.

From Fort Russ

May 21, 2015
Ruposters.ru
Translated by Kristina Rus
 
 A deal on the blood: ex-Rada deputy forecasts a tragic finale of the conflict

The decision of the Verkhovna Rada not to pay debts means the default is close, thinks the ex-MP, the former head of the the State Commission of Financial Services [of Ukraine], Vasily Volga, reports “PolitNavigator”.

Vasily Volga

“First of all, it is necessary to distinguish two types of defaults. Technical default and total default. In case of a technical default the country declares that it cannot pay its obligations, and asks the creditors to change the terms of contracts of those liabilities. Perfect technical default is a partial write off of debt, a deferral of payments on principal for something like ten years and a receipt of a new credit to pay interest on loans. A couple of years ago just such a default was experienced by Greece”, – he said.

Volga called the situation in Ukraine up to now – a “gift from heaven”, when “they forgive everything and even give more money”.

He explained what would a total default mean for the country. “This is a situation when lenders refuse to write off and restructure debts. In this case, the creditors have the right to demand the arrest of all foreign property and accounts of a bankrupt state. Also, the creditors, to satisfy their requirements, have the right to foreclose on the assets of the debtor state within the state. And, of course, you can forget about any loans from any international financial institutions. The national currency is instantly devalued. The value of state assets will plunge towards zero. Social programs are destroyed“, – said Volga.

In this case the one who owns the debt of a bankrupt state, becomes the owner of everything for nothing. “I think we should not forget about the information spread in the press a couple of months ago about the Rothschilds buying the sovereign debt of Ukraine”, – said the politician.

He noted that if the default of the country will be total, then “we will witness a grand buyout, which was prepared by war and the murder of tens of thousands of my fellow citizens“. “The culmination is near. We will see everything. All the cards will be revealed,” –  assured Volga.

U.S. military officials present results from war game exercise on U.S.-Russia relations

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May 18, 2015
Center for Strategic and International Studies

http://www.c-span.org/video/?326105-1/discussion-future-military-policy-strategy
1 hour, 51 minutes

The transcript for this event is at the link.

“Army and Air Force officials presented their findings from a war game exercise that focused on potential future policy and strategy for U.S.-Russia relations and recent Russian aggression. Participants presented their findings and recommendations from a wargame exercise focused on U.S. policy and strategy.”

Computer programing coined the term “garbage in, garbage out”.

These officials sound surprised by events in Ukraine and in Crimea, as if those events happened out of the blue. They admit no connection to the coup d’état, no involvement for decades of U.S. support for Ukrainian nationalists, and no U.S. and investor money poured into Ukraine creating discord. Their history timeline starts with Crimea and East Ukraine turmoil. They seem to feel they did a lot of work in “figuring out” Russia and Russia’s possible future moves, but it’s in terms of Russia doing something to Ukraine or Europe. These officials in their war game seem completely separated from and oblivious to actual events — a very dangerous situation for everyone, given the stakes involved.

How much of this is willful ignorance and playing the victim, and how much is intentional PR and public manipulation — psyops?

U.S. officials cannot possibly formulate realistic policy objectives when their foundation is sand and when they seem so unwilling to get rid of their blinders.

From the C-SPAN transcript:

“WE’RE IN U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE BUT IN SPECIAL PROGRAM CALLED CARLYLE SCHOLARS PROGRAM. CARLYLE SCHOLARS PROGRAM IS — THE IDEA BEHIND IT CORE CURRICULUM IN FOUR MONTHS INSTEAD OF EIGHT TO NINE MONTHS, JUST CONDENSE IT A LITTLE BIT SO WE’VE GOT MORE TIME TO DO RESEARCH, ENGAGEMENTS
WITH THINK TANKS OR STATE DEPARTMENT…WE STARTED 2014 TO STUDY INTO RUSSIA. THE RELATIONSHIP — EUROPE RUSSIA, ACTUALLY. IT LINKED INTO SEVERAL PROGRAMS WE WERE DOING ALREADY AT U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE. OVER TIME WE HAD MEETINGS WITH MANY RESPECTED EXPERTS FROM THINK TANKS, UNIVERSITIES, DOD, STATE DEPARTMENT AS WELL [–the voices from within the US security apparatus system]

…WE STARTED WITH FIRST UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM, SO WE LOOKED INTO PUTIN’S STRATEGY, TRYING TO FIGURE THAT OUT… [Listening to his speeches and press conferences, as well as those of Mr. Lavrov, would have been a good place to start; they are easily available on the internet.]

…WE HAD MANY MEETINGS HERE IN WASHINGTON WITH THINK TANKS TO DISCUSS OUR VIEW ON WHAT WE THOUGHT THAT THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM WAS LIKE. [Think tanks like Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation???]

IT WAS VERY  INTERESTING TO FIND OUT REALLY THEY [policymakers] WERE CONFRONTING A SEA CHANGE IN U.S. POLICY. IT WAS CLEAR TO THEM THAT SOMETHING HAD CHANGED IN THE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT. THE TOUGH PART WAS FIGURING OUT WHAT TO DO ABOUT THAT. THEY REALIZED LAST TWO DECADES AT LEAST OUR RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA IN GENERAL BASED ON THE CONCEPT WE WOULD ENCOURAGE RUSSIA TO BECOME A NORMAL COUNTRY WITHIN EUROPEAN SECURITY ARCHITECTURE, EUROPEAN COMMUNITY AND THAT RUSSIA WOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO PLAY BY THE RULES [U.S. attitude is patronizing, disrespectful, and out of touch with reality] AND U.S. COULD TREAT THEM AS THEY TREAT ANY OTHER REGIONAL POWER AROUND THE WORLD. [not a world power, and not a power in balance with the United States]

AFTER THE SEIZURE OF CRIMEA AND WHEN CONFLICT ERUPTED IN EASTERN UKRAINE [surprise, surprise] IT BECOME CLEAR THAT SET OF ASSUMPTIONS WAS NO LONGER VALID.EVERYONE COULD SEE THAT SEA CHANGE. HARD PART BETWEEN PLAYERS TRYING TO FORMULATE IN THIS ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT WHAT SHOULD U.S. POLICY BE, FIGURE OUT HOW TO COMPETE WITH RUSSIA.

IT’S VERY DIFFICULT TO JETTISON THOSE SET OF ASSUMPTIONS AND LONG RANGE POLICIES THE U.S. WORK WITH FOR MANY, MANY YEARS. WE CONSIDERED ALTERNATIVE FUTURES WITHIN THE WAR GAME. IT BECAME CLEAR FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS, THE U.S. WOULD HAVE TO BE — WOULD HAVE TO MANAGE STRATEGIC COMPETITION WITH RUSSIA RATHER THAN TREAT RUSSIA AS ANOTHER NORMAL
COUNTRY IN THE ENVIRONMENT.

There is much more.

Participants:

  • Karen Briggman Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army
  • Joseph Hilbert Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army
  • Gert-Jan Kooij Lieutenant Colonel, Royal Netherlands Army
  • Andrew C. Kuchins Director, Center for Strategic and International Studies->Russia and Eurasia Program
  • Christopher Lay Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Air Force
  • James McNaughton Carlisle Scholar, U.S. Army War College

 

 

Why are we paying the NFL to help the Pentagon recruit troops?

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By Dave Zirin
From The Nation
May 13, 2015

New York National Guard members are sworn in during halftime of a game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs. (AP Photo/Bill Wippert)

All-star first baseman Carlos Delgado was not a fan of the numerous military appreciation events taking place at the ballpark a decade ago. These were staged to bolster support for the Iraq war and doubled as recruitment stations, using sports to increase the ranks of the armed forces, which had thinned dramatically after George W. Bush decided to call for a permanent era of armed conflict. As Delgado said, “I won’t stand for this war.… It’s a very terrible thing that happened on September 11. It’s [also] a terrible thing that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. I just feel so sad for the families that lost relatives and loved ones in the war. But I think it’s the stupidest war ever.”

Now we can not only see that these events were politically transparent propaganda for a flagging war effort. We know they were paid for by us. We know that the US Department of Defense doled out $5.4 million from 2011 to 2014 to fourteen NFL teams to stage these warm-hearted “Salute the Troops” events, as well as do product placement, advertising, and “casual” (otherwise known as “subliminal”) mentions.

National Guard spokesman Rick Breitenfeldt, in a statement that was actually supposed to defend and explain this practice said,

This isn’t, as some might think, payment for unfurling a flag or to welcome a soldier home on the field. This is more about spending for marketing and advertising, for signage, for website takeovers.… We have hundreds of [sponsorship agreements] with teams, including minor league baseball and at high school. We have found that spending in sports to help us recruit in our 18-24 demographic works out for us.

It’s that last part which really singes the eyes. Far too many people are outraged about this story just because the taxpayers were on the hook for something people thought was being underwritten by red, white, and blue NFL owners. Hell, this story was originally broken (in part) by Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake railing against “pork-chop” spending. Granted, the idea of any of our money going into the welfare-king pockets of NFL owners is stomach-churning. But the highly manipulative recruitment practices aimed at “18-24 year olds,” which Jeff Flake has no problem with, are being let off the hook. I know as the expression goes, you throw your line where the fish happen to gather or as Willie Sutton said, “I rob banks because that’s where the money is.” But this isn’t like opening a new gourmet burrito food truck in a neighborhood going hipster. This is preying on the young and using their love of sports to lure them into the arena of war. While football and fighting in war have traumatic brain injury in common, everything else—from the military metaphors used by announcers to the four-star-general fixations of head coaches (even NBA coaches think they’re fighter pilots!)—is worlds apart.

It would be wise to listen to the mother of the one NFL player who made that journey from “combat” on the field to the real combat overseas, the late Pat Tillman. As his mom, Mary, said to me last year, “A feeling of camaraderie is important to all humans and I think the camaraderie of sport provides the most reward. Many young men join the military in order to get that feeling of belonging, that feeling of brotherhood. It is irresponsible to try to entice young people into military service with subliminal messages.”

Now we know: not only subliminal but on our dime. One thing is certain: Carlos Delgado was right a decade ago. This is just the stupidest damn war ever.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/207161/why-are-we-paying-nfl-help-pentagon-recruit-troops

Reprinted under Fair Use Rules.

U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency: “Establish a Salafist principality in Syria”, facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”

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By Brad Hoff
From the Levant Report
Posted on Global Research, May 22, 2015

Declassified DIA document

VIDEO: Declassified: Massive Israeli Manipulation of US Media

On Monday, May 18, the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch published a selection of formerly classified documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Defense and State Department through a federal lawsuit.

While initial mainstream media reporting is focused on the White House’s handling of the Benghazi consulate attack, a much “bigger picture” admission and confirmation is contained in one of the Defense Intelligence Agency documents circulated in 2012: that an ‘Islamic State’ is desired in Eastern Syria to effect the West’s policies in the region.

Astoundingly, the newly declassified report states that for

“THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHICH] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.

The DIA report, formerly classified “SECRET//NOFORN” and dated August 12, 2012, was circulated widely among various government agencies, including CENTCOM, the CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA, State Dept., and many others.

The document shows that as early as 2012, U.S. intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset.

While a number of analysts and journalists have documented long ago the role of western intelligence agencies in the formation and training of the armed opposition in Syria, this is the highest level internal U.S. intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see ISIS as their own tool for regime change in Syria. The document matter-of-factly states just that scenario.

Forensic evidence, video evidence, as well as recent admissions of high-level officials involved (see former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford’s admissions here and here), have since proven the State Department and CIA’s material support of ISIS terrorists on the Syrian battlefield going back to at least 2012 and 2013 (for a clear example of “forensic evidence”: see UK-based Conflict Armament Research’s report which traced the origins of Croatian anti-tank rockets recovered from ISIS fighters back to a Saudi/CIA joint program via identifiable serial numbers).

The newly released DIA report makes the following summary points concerning “ISI” (in 2012 “Islamic State in Iraq,”) and the soon to emerge ISIS:

  • Al-Qaeda drives the opposition in Syria
  • The West identifies with the opposition
  • The establishment of a nascent Islamic State became a reality only with the rise of the Syrian insurgency (there is no mention of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State’s rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits; see section 4.D. below)
  • The establishment of a “Salafist Principality” in Eastern Syria is “exactly” what the external powers  supporting the opposition want (identified as “the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey”) in order to weaken the Assad government
  • “Safe havens” are suggested in areas conquered by Islamic insurgents along the lines of the Libyan model (which translates to so-called no-fly zones as a first act of ‘humanitarian war’; see 7.B.)
  • Iraq is identified with “Shia expansion” (8.C)
  • A Sunni “Islamic State” could be devastating to “unifying Iraq” and could lead to “the renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.” (see last non-redacted line in full PDF view.)

_____________________________________________

The following is excerpted from the seven page DIA declassified report (bold-facing is my own):

R 050839Z AUG 12

…

THE GENERAL SITUATION:

A. INTERNALLY, EVENTS ARE TAKING A CLEAR SECTARIAN DIRECTION.

B. THE SALAFIST [sic], THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.

C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA AND IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.

…

3. (C) Al QAEDA – IRAQ (AQI):… B. AQI SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA…

…

4.D. THERE WAS A REGRESSION OF AQI IN THE WESTERN PROVINCES OF IRAQ DURING THE YEARS OF 2009 AND 2010; HOWEVER, AFTER THE RISE OF THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA, THE RELIGIOUS AND TRIBAL POWERS IN THE REGIONS BEGAN TO SYMPATHIZE WITH THE SECTARIAN UPRISING. THIS (SYMPATHY) APPEARED IN FRIDAY PRAYER SERMONS, WHICH CALLED FOR VOLUNTEERS TO SUPPORT THE SUNNI’S [sic] IN SYRIA.

…

7. (C) THE FUTURE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE CRISIS:

A. THE REGIME WILL SURVIVE AND HAVE CONTROL OVER SYRIAN TERRITORY.

B. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CURRENT EVENTS INTO PROXY WAR: …OPPOSITION FORCES ARE TRYING TO CONTROL THE EASTERN AREAS (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), ADJACENT TO THE WESTERN IRAQI PROVINCES (MOSUL AND ANBAR), IN ADDITION TO NEIGHBORING TURKISH BORDERS. WESTERN COUNTRIES, THE GULF STATES AND TURKEY ARE SUPPORTING THESE EFFORTS. THIS HYPOTHESIS IS MOST LIKELY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DATA FROM RECENT EVENTS, WHICH WILL HELP PREPARE SAFE HAVENS UNDER INTERNATIONAL SHELTERING, SIMILAR TO WHAT TRANSPIRED IN LIBYA WHEN BENGHAZI WAS CHOSEN AS THE COMMAND CENTER OF THE TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT.

…

8.C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OFESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN)

8.D.1. …ISI COULD ALSO DECLARE AN ISLAMIC STATE THROUGH ITS UNION WITH OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, WHICH WILL CREATE GRAVE DANGER IN REGARDS TO UNIFYING IRAQ AND THE PROTECTION OF ITS TERRITORY.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/defense-intelligence-agency-create-a-salafist-principality-in-syria-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/5451216

2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”

Hideous acts — ISIS, Fallujah, Iraq, George W., (and Ukraine, Syria, Libya) — and U.S. candidates who support them

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By William Blum
Posted on Global Research, May 24, 2015

anti-US-bombing-syria-iraq-isil-isis

She was a redheaded rebel, the singer in the family, a trash-talking, tattooed 21-year-old wrapped up in a hip-hop dream of becoming Holland’s Eminem. Then Betsy found Allah. After her sudden conversion to Islam last summer, Betsy began dressing in full Muslim robes. By January, the once-agnostic Dutch woman, raised in a home where the only sign of religion was a dusty Bible on a shelf, began defending homegrown terrorists. … Denis Cuspert, a German hip-hop artist known as Deso Dogg who converted in 2010 and later joined The Islamic State [ISIS], delivers a rap-like chant portraying the path to jihad as a chance for empowerment, spiritual fulfillment, vengeance and adventure. … ‘The door to jihad is standing there waiting for you,’ says a Swedish convert to Islam in a video. ‘It is the fastest way to paradise.’ “

Tales told many times in recent years, all over Europe, at times in the United States. Parents and authorities are deeply distressed and perplexed. How can young people raised in the West – the freedom-obsessed, democratic, peace-loving, humanitarian, fun-filled West – join the Islamic State and support the public cutting off of the heads of breathing, living human beings? Each of us in our own way are lost souls searching for answers to the awful mysteries of life. But THIS? What life-quest does The Islamic State satisfy that our beloved West can’t satisfy? ISIS is unique in the world in making US foreign policy look good. The Defense Department and the State Department have special task forces studying the new enemy; the latter regularly puts out videos to counteract the many Islamic State videos.

I hope those researching the question look inwardly as well as at ISIS. How do young people raised in the West – the same West we know and love – coldly machine-gun to death more than a dozen Iraqis, men, women, children, reporters, absolutely in cold blood, in the video made famous by Chelsea Manning; but this of course is nothing compared to Fallujah with its two-headed babies, even three-headed, an eye in the middle of the forehead. The Islamic State has done nothing compared to what the United States did to the people of Fallujah. Can anyone name a horror in all of history more gruesome? Yes, there are some, but not many; and much of Fallujah was personally executed by nice, clean-cut, freedom-obsessed, democratic, peace-loving, humanitarian, fun-filled made-in America young men.

Here’s US Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, in his memoir, April 6, 2004, the time of Fallujah, in video teleconference with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “We’ve got to smash somebody’s ass quickly,” said Powell. “There has to be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute demonstration of power.” Then Bush spoke:

“At the end of this campaign al-Sadr must be gone. At a minimum, he will be arrested. It is essential he be wiped out. Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal. … There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

“Years from now when America looks out on a democratic Middle East, growing in freedom and prosperity, Americans will speak of the battles like Fallujah with the same awe and reverence that we now give to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima” in World War II. – George W. Bush, 2006

Well, George, it’s either that or Fallujah was one of the key reasons for the rise of ISIS.

My point here is not that United States foreign policy is as barbaric and depraved as The Islamic State. It’s not. Most of the time. I simply hope to make it a bit easier to understand the enemy by seeing ourselves without the stars in our eyes. And I haven’t even mentioned what the United States has led the world in for over a century – torture.

The ever-fascinating and ever-revealing subject of ideology

Jeb Bush has gotten himself into trouble because, like all politicians running for office, he is unable to give simple honest answers to simple straightforward questions, for fear of offending one or another segment of the population. How refreshing it would be to have a politician say only what s/he actually believes, even if it’s as stupid as usual.

The brother of the previous president has been asked repeatedly: “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq?” At first his answer was “yes”, then at times “I don’t know”, even “no” at least once, or he’s refused to answer at all. Clearly he’s been guessing about which reply would win him points with the most people, or which would lose him the least.

This caused a minor uproar, even among conservatives. Right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham was moved to make a rare rational remark: “You can’t still think that going into Iraq, now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to. If you do, there has to be something wrong with you.”

Such discussions always leave out a critical point. Why did millions of Americans, and even more millions abroad, march against the war in the fall of 2002 and early 2003, before it began? What did they know that the Bush brothers and countless other politicians didn’t know? It was clear to the protesters that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were habitual liars, that they couldn’t care less about the people of Iraq, that the defenseless people of that ancient civilization were going to be bombed to hell; most of the protesters knew something about the bombings of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Panama, Yugoslavia, or Afghanistan; and they knew about napalm, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, etc. Those who marched knew that the impending war was something a moral person could not support; and that it was totally illegal, a textbook case of a “war of aggression”; one didn’t have to be an expert in international law to know this.

Didn’t the Brothers Bush, Hillary Clinton (who voted for the war in the Senate), et al know about any of these things? Of course they did. They just didn’t care enough; supporting the empire’s domination and expansion was a given, and remains so; no US politician gets very far – certainly not to the White House – questioning the right of American Exceptionalism to impose itself upon humanity (for humanity’s sake of course).

Consider the darlings du jour of the American Left, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. They very seldom speak out critically about US foreign policy or even the military budget. The anti-war/anti-imperialist segment of the American left need to put proper pressure on the two senators.

Mr. Sanders should also be asked why he routinely refers to himself as a “democratic socialist”. Why not just “socialist”? It’s likely a legacy of the Cold War. I think that he and other political figures who use the term are, consciously or unconsciously, trying to disassociate themselves from communism, the Soviet Union, Marxism, etc., all those things that are not good for you. (The word “socialist” once connoted furtive men with European accents, sinister facial hair, and bombs.)

It would be delightful to hear Sanders openly declare that he is simply a “socialist”. Socialism can be democratic; indeed, a lot more so than capitalism, particularly concerning the distribution of wealth and all the ramifications of that. Presented here are some relevant thoughts on these issues, from myself and others:

It’s only the socialists who maintain as a bedrock principle: People before Profit, which can serve as a very concise definition of socialism, an ideology anathema to the Right and libertarians, who fervently believe, against all evidence, in the rationality of a free market. I personally favor the idea of a centralized, planned economy. (Oh my God, a damn Commie!) Modern society is much too complex and technical to leave its operation in the hands of libertarians, communitarians, or anarchists seeking to return to a “community” or “village” level.

“Washington has always regarded democratic socialism as a greater challenge than totalitarian Communism, which was easy to vilify and made for a handy enemy. In the 1960s and ’70s, the favored tactic for dealing with the inconvenient popularity of economic nationalism and democratic socialism was to try to equate them with Stalinism, deliberately blurring the clear differences between the world views.” – Naomi Klein

“If it is true, as often said, that most socialist regimes turn out to be dictatorships, that is largely because a dictatorship is much harder to overthrow or subvert than a democracy.” – Jean Bricmont, Belgian author of “Humanitarian Imperialism” (2006)

Without a proclaimed socialist vision, radical change becomes too many different things for too many different individuals and groups.

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.” – Martin Luther King

The United States is so fearful of the word “socialism” that it changed the “social sciences” to the “behavioral sciences”.

If for no other reason than to save the environment, the world needs to abandon the capitalist system. Every day, in every spot on earth, in a multitude of ways, corporations are faced with a choice: to optimize profits or to do what’s best for the planet.

The great majority of people in any society work for a salary. They don’t need to be motivated by the profit motive. It’s not in anyone’s genes. Virtually everybody, if given the choice, would prefer to work at jobs where the main motivations are to help others, improve the quality of life of society, and provide themselves with meaningful and satisfying work. It’s not natural to be primarily motivated by trying to win or steal “customers” from other people, no holds barred, survival of the fittest or the least honest.

And what about this thing called “democracy”, or “majority rule”? Many millions marched against the invasion of Iraq before it began. I don’t know of a single soul who marched in favor of it, although I’m sure there must have been someone somewhere. That lucky soul was the one they listened to.

Finally, the question being asked of Jeb Bush and others is not the best one. They’re asked: “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq?” A more important question would be: “Knowing what we knew then, would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq?” And the answer should be “no”, because we knew that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his weapons of mass destruction. This is very well documented, from diverse sources, international and Iraqi, including Saddam himself and his chief lieutenants.

The American Mainstream Media – A Classic Tale Of Propaganda

“When an American warplane accidentally struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 during the Kosovo campaign …”

These words appeared in the Washington Post on April 24, 2015 as part of a story about US drone warfare and how an American drone attack in Pakistan in January had accidentally killed two Western aid workers. The Post felt no need to document the Belgrade incident, or explain it any further. Almost anyone who follows international news halfway seriously knows about this famous “accident” of May 7, 1999. The only problem is that the story is pure propaganda.

Three people inside the Chinese embassy were killed and Washington apologized profusely to Beijing, blaming outdated maps among other problems. However, two well-documented and very convincing reports in The Observer of London in October and November of that year, based on NATO and US military and intelligence sources, revealed that the embassy had been purposely targeted after NATO discovered that it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. The Chinese were doing this after NATO planes had successfully silenced the Yugoslav government’s own transmitters.  The story of how the US mainstream media covered up the real story behind the embassy bombing is absolutely embarrassing.

Over and above the military need, there may have been a political purpose served. China, then as now, was clearly the principal barrier to US hegemony in Asia, if not elsewhere. The bombing of the embassy was perhaps Washington’s charming way of telling Beijing that this is only a small sample of what can happen to you if you have any ideas of resisting or competing with the American juggernaut. Since an American bombing campaign over Belgrade was already being carried out, Washington was able to have a much better than usual “plausible denial” for the embassy bombing. The opportunity may have been irresistible to American leaders. The chance might never come again.

All of US/NATO’s other bombing “mistakes” in Yugoslavia were typically followed by their spokesman telling the world: “We regret the loss of life.” These same words were used by the IRA in Northern Ireland on a number of occasions over the years following one of their bombings which appeared to have struck the wrong target. But their actions were invariably called “terrorist”.

Undoubtedly, the US media will be writing of the “accidental” American bombing of the Chinese embassy as long as the empire exists and China does not become a member of NATO.

P.S On May 20 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a list of 39 English-language books recovered during the raid that reportedly killed Osama bin Laden. Noam Chomsky and I are the only two authors on the list with two books.

As some of you may remember, in January, 2006 bin Laden, in an audiotape, recommended that Americans read my book Rogue State. This resulted in the US media discovering my existence for a week. You can read the full story in my book America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy (pp. 281-84).

Notes:

  1. Washington Post, May 7, 2015
  2. Ricardo Sanchez, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story (2008), pages 349-350
  3. Associated Press, November 11, 2006
  4. William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy, pp. 61-2
  5. The Observer (London), October 17, 1999 (“Nato bombed Chinese deliberately”), and November 28, 1999 (“Truth behind America’s raid on Belgrade”)
  6. Extra! Update (magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR], New York), December 1999; appeared first as solitary article October 22, 1999 (“U.S. Media Overlook Expose on Chinese Embassy Bombing”)

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/their-precious-young-minds-and-our-precious-young-minds/545142

    http://williamblum.org/aer/read/139

If U.S. military spending returned to 2001 level

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By David Swanson
Posted on War is a Crime

The House of Representatives has headed out of town to memorialize wars without managing to achieve agreement with the Senate on reauthorizing some of the most abusive “temporary” measures of the PATRIOT Act. Three cheers for Congressional vacations!

What if not just our civil liberties but our budget got a little bit of 2001 back?

In 2001, U.S. military spending was $397 billion, from which it soared to a peak of $720 billion in 2010, and is now at $610 billion in 2015. These figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (in constant 2011 dollars) exclude debt payments, veterans costs, and civil defense, which raise the figure to over $1 trillion a year now, not counting state and local spending on the military.

Military spending is now 54% of U.S. federal discretionary spending according to the National Priorities Project. Everything else — and the entire debate in which liberals want more spending and conservatives want less! — is contained within the other 46% of the budget.

U.S. military spending, according to SIPRI, is 35% of the world total. U.S. and Europe make 56% of the world. The U.S. and its allies around the globe (it has troops in 175 countries, and most countries are armed in great part by U.S. companies) make up the bulk of world spending.

Iran spends 0.65% of world military spending (as of 2012, the last year available). China’s military spending has been rising for years and has soared since 2008 and the U.S. pivot to Asia, from $107 billion in 2008 to now $216 billion. But that’s still just 12% of world spending.

Per capita the U.S. now spends $1,891 current U.S. dollars for each person in the United States, as compared with $242 per capita worldwide, or $165 per capita in the world outside the U.S., or $155 per capita in China.

The dramatically increased U.S. military spending has not made the U.S. or the world safer. Early on in the “war on terror” the U.S. government ceased reporting on terrorism, as it increased. The Global Terrorism Index records a steady increase in terrorist attacks from 2001 to the present. A Gallup poll in 65 nations at the end of 2013 found the United States overwhelmingly viewed as the greatest threat to peace in the world. Iraq has been turned into hell, with Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia close behind. Newly embittered terrorist groups have arisen in direct response to U.S. terrorism and the devastation it’s left behind. And arms races have been sparked that benefit only the arms dealers.

But the spending has had other consequences. The U.S. has risen into the top five nations in the world for disparity of wealth. The 10th wealthiest country on earth per capita doesn’t look wealthy when you drive through it. And you do have to drive, with 0 miles of high-speed rail built; but local U.S. police have weapons of war now. And you have to be careful when you drive. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives U.S. infrastructure a D+. Areas of cities like Detroit have become wasteland. Residential areas lack water or are poisoned by environmental pollution — most often from military operations. The U.S. now ranks 35th in freedom to choose what to do with your life, 36th in life expectancy, 47th in preventing infant mortality, 57th in employment, and trails in education by various measures.

If U.S. military spending were merely returned to 2001 levels, the savings of $213 billion per year could meet the following needs:

  • End hunger and starvation worldwide — $30 billion per year.
  • Provide clean drinking water worldwide — $11 billion per year.
  • Provide free college in the United States — $70 billion per year (according to Senate legislation).
  • Double U.S. foreign aid — $23 billion per year.
  • Build and maintain a high-speed rail system in the U.S. — $30 billion per year.
  • Invest in solar and renewable energy as never before — $20 billion per year.
  • Fund peace initiatives as never before — $10 billion per year.

That would leave $19 billion left over per year with which to pay down debt.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but this is life and death. War kills more by how the money isn’t spent than by how it is spent.

http://warisacrime.org/content/if-us-military-spending-returned-2001-level

New York: Ramstein vigil at German Consulate on Tuesday, May 26

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Posted on War is a Crime

NEW YORK – A vigil imploring the German government to order the immediate closure of the United States drone satellite relay station at Ramstein Air Base will be held at 11:30 am, Tuesday, May 26, 2015 at the German Consulate, 871 U.N. Plaza.

The Ramstein relay station, according to an April 17, 2015 article in The Intercept, is essential to U.S. drone attacks because it “enables drone operators in the American Southwest to communicate with their remote aircraft in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and other targeted countries.”

The vigil will mark the opening of a court case in Cologne, Germany on May 27, 2015 on behalf of Faisal bin Ali Jaber, an environmental engineer from Yemen who lost his brother-in-law and a nephew to a U.S. drone attack in 2012.  His suit seeks to force the German government act to close the Ramstein relay station under a provision of German law that allows people to seek redress if they have suffered harm from activities generated on German soil, in this case drone execution without due process.

“This is an extremely important case not only because it has the potential for stopping U.S. drone attacks but because it may expose much about the U.S. drone program that has been kept secret from the American public and the world,” said Nick Mottern, Director of KnowDrones.com

The vigil will include music by the Raging Grannies singing group and display of a large model of the MQ-9 Reaper, the world’s most numerous and deadly drone.  The event is being organized by: KnowDrones.com, the Granny Peace Brigade and World Can’t Wait.

http://warisacrime.org/content/ramstein-vigil-german-consulate-871-un-plaza-nyc

Ray McGovern: College of William & Mary honors a war criminal

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By Ray McGovern
Posted on War is a Crime, May 18, 2015

Exclusive: Condoleezza Rice has crossed the threshold into esteemed celebrity – a welcomed speaker at this year’s College of William and Mary commencement – despite her record as the liar who sold the illegal war in Iraq and choreographed the torture techniques for use at CIA “black sites.”

By Ray McGovern

Nothing better illustrates the extent to which the United States has turned its back on the rule of law than when the likes of Condoleezza Rice are asked to address graduates and receive doctoral degrees honoris causa at university commencements. Ms. Rice – in my view a war criminal – was accorded those honors Saturday by the College of William and Mary, the second-oldest college in the U.S.

Unlike Rice’s other university appearances in recent years, there was not the slightest sign of unhappiness, let alone protest. Most of the graduating seniors were not yet ten years old in 2003 when Rice played a key role helping President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney launch a war of aggression against Iraq. So, the graduates’ ignorance may perhaps be understandable, but it does not speak well for their grasp of recent history.

It is far less excusable for the patrician leadership of William and Mary to have bestowed this honor on Rice. Did the news not penetrate their ivory tower that last year Ms. Rice was prevented from being accorded similar honors by irate students at Rutgers University, who were sickened at the thought that their commencement would be sullied by Rice’s presence?

One of the leaders of the “No Rice” campaign at Rutgers last year (a senior at the time), Carmelo Cintrón Vivas, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that the “students felt that war criminals shouldn’t be honored. … Someone who has such a tainted record as a public servant in this country should not … get an honorary law degree for trying to circumvent the law. … That’s not fair to any student graduating or not graduating at Rutgers University.”

He found “ludicrous” the familiar argument that Rice’s academic achievements outweigh her political positions: “If we look into a lot of international criminals and just bad people in history, a lot of them had great academic careers or great medical careers. … Your career is one thing, and the way you act as a person, as a human being, is another one. And that’s why we make this an issue about human rights.”

How to explain the contrast between the apathy prevailing at William and Mary and the awareness and activism at Rutgers? Perhaps one clue is the marked difference between the costs of attending. Tuition and fees are significantly higher at William and Mary, located in Williamsburg, Virginia. Another clue might be seen in the remarkable “tradition” of asking predominantly conservative Republican speakers to do the honors, and to get the honors, at commencement.

In contrast to the scene at William and Mary, this year’s commencement at Rutgers awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters to Frances Fox Piven, a highly respected scholar and advocate for poor working people. Piven’s recent books include The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush’s Militarism. Piven also won the Shirley Chisholm Award for “leadership toward social and economic justice.”

Looking at the assembled graduates at William and Mary, I could not help but mourn the fact that they were being sent off into life by Rice instead of Piven. I would expect Piven to address the pressing challenges facing the “99 percent” – and the injustices behind the growing unrest in Baltimore, St. Louis and other troubled cities. Rice did not mention any of that on Saturday. It was all about her – a reflection, perhaps, of the fact that, although black in Birmingham, Alabama, she nonetheless grew up relatively privileged.

Worse Still: War Crimes

Rather than some profile in courage or a person of steadfast principles, Condoleezza Rice represents malleability in the face of criminality and evil. She is a profile in cowardice and expediency, the opposite sort of lesson in how to live one’s life than Piven or many other worthy commencement speakers would be expected to present.

When President George W. Bush told Ms. Rice to scarf up any and all “evidence,” no matter how sketchy or deceptive, to prove that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD), she led the fraudulent campaign to present the “intelligence” needed to deceive Congress into supporting a war that fits the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal’s definition of a “war of aggression as the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Rice played her role as drum majorette for war with exceptional enthusiasm – conjuring up the danger of “mushroom clouds” from Iraq’s (nonexistent) nukes; “yellowcake” uranium from darkest Africa (based on crudely forged documents); and aluminum tubes (that turned out to be standard Iraqi artillery tubes) but she said were for refining uranium.

Rice led the parade, with Dick Cheney’s indispensable help, promoting the various manufactured “evidence” against Iraq. The fraudulent nature of those spurious claims was laid bare in a July, 23, 2002 British document, The Downing Street Memorandum, published by The London Times on May 1, 2005. Established as authentic, the memo exposed the unconscionable attempt to “fix” the intelligence to justify a U.S./U.K. attack for “regime change” in Iraq.

For the rest of the article:
http://warisacrime.org/content/tis-season-fete-war-criminals

Comments: McGovern states later in the article: 

“The William and Mary experience on Saturday is hardly the first time a university has succumbed to the “prestige virus” and given some powerful celebrity high honors at a commencement despite the person’s deplorable actions. There are, sad to say, numerous examples, including an earlier one involving Ms. Rice.

 …’Thus compromised,’ warned [Daniel] Berrigan, ‘the Christian tradition of nonviolence, as well as the secular boast of disinterested pursuit of truth — these are reduced to bombast, hauled out for formal occasions, believed by no one, practiced by no one.’”

It is not just Catholic colleges that have invited Rice. In 2011, she was invited to speak at Westmont College, a Protestant Christian college in California, at the annual President’s Breakfast and later to students.
http://blogs.westmont.edu/magazine/2011/04/26/an-extraordinary-ordinary-woman/
An Extraordinary, Ordinary Woman

Westmont followed this by hosting Robert Gates in 2012, Colin Powell in March 2013, and stunningly, Henry Kissinger in a special event on October 2013. The Kissinger event took place one month after the release of declassified documents detailing Kissinger’s role in the US-backed Pinochet coup in Chile, which overthrew Salvador Allende.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/resurgence/2013/276-277/world3.htm

Clearly, this brand of Christianity and these institutions have difficulty with the values of peace, justice, truth, love, wisdom, or that over-used word though under-used value, righteousness.

 

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 30 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com

 

Is the US planning a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident in the South China Sea?

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This is one example of US verbrecherische. [1]

By Peter Symonds
From the World Socialist Web Site
Posted on Global Research, May 18, 2015

Following weeks of scaremongering by American officials over China’s activities in the South China Sea, US Secretary of State John Kerry used his visit to Beijing last weekend to issue an ultimatum to Chinese leaders to halt land reclamation on islets and shoals. His Chinese counterpart Wang Yi bluntly refused, insisting that China would safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity “as firm as a rock.”

Washington is not going to take no for an answer. In what is already an explosive situation, the question has to be asked: Is the US preparing a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident as the pretext for direct military action against Chinese facilities and armed forces in the South China Sea? Such reckless brinkmanship would risk war between two nuclear armed powers.

The historic parallels are chilling. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson needed a justification for decisions that had already been made to dramatically escalate US military involvement in a civil war in Vietnam and to begin bombing targets in North Vietnam. Pentagon planners had concluded that Washington’s widely reviled puppet regime in Saigon was incapable of defeating the North Vietnamese-backed National Liberation Front on its own.

Preparations for massively expanding US involvement were drawn up well in advance. In the summer of 1964, the US worked with the South Vietnamese to stage a series of provocations—probes by US-supplied patrol boats to expose North Vietnamese radar systems. On August 2, the USS Maddox was monitoring one of these raids in the Gulf of Tonkin, part of the South China Sea, eight miles offshore and well within the North Vietnam’s 12-mile territorial waters, that provoked an exchange of fire with small North Vietnamese boats.

Two days later the USS Maddox, accompanied by the destroyer C. Turner Joy, reported coming under fire. There was, in fact, no attack. The entirely manufactured incident, surrounded by a barrage of media sensationalism and official lies, was exploited to paint North Vietnam as the aggressor. The belligerent response of the United States was presented as justified, defensive actions to maintain “international peace and security in Southeast Asia.”

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by the US Congress on August 7, 1964, with just two votes against. It provided the quasi-legal cover for a criminal, open-ended war in Vietnam that claimed millions of lives, devastated the country’s economy and left a legacy of destruction that remains to this day.

Far more is at stake today. For decades, the US showed little interest in the festering territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and its South East Asian neighbours. In 2010, however, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as part of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” against China, declared that the US had “a national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the strategic waters.

Over the past year, Washington has abandoned its pretence of neutrality in the maritime disputes. It has aggressively challenged the legitimacy of China’s claims and thus its administration of various shoals and reefs. Ignoring similar activities by other claimants, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, the US has portrayed land reclamation in the South China Sea as an aggressive threat to US national interests. In late March, Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, denounced China’s actions as the construction of “a great wall of sand.”

From words, the US is turning to actions. As part of the “pivot” to Asia, the Pentagon is already engaged in a massive military build-up and strengthening of alliances and strategic partnerships throughout Asia directed against China. One of the latest warships, the USS Fort Worth, has just completed a week-long “freedom of navigation” patrol in the South China Sea designed to test and challenge China’s presence.

While the USS Fort Worth remained outside China’s claimed territorial waters, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has called on the Pentagon to draw up plans for US warships and warplanes to enter the 12-mile limit and directly challenge Chinese sovereignty. Undoubtedly behind the scenes, far more detailed war plans have been drawn up.

Significantly in the midst of a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week entitled “Safeguarding American Interests in the East and South China Seas,” Assistant Defence Secretary David Shear blurted out that the US was preparing to base B1 bombers in northern Australia as part its military “rebalance” against China. Although later denied, nuclear-capable B-52 bombers are already rotating through Australia air bases.

Layers of the US foreign policy establishment are already braying for more concerted US action in the South China Sea to teach China a lesson. In the course of last week’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Chairman Bob Corker repeatedly expressed the review that the Obama administration was not doing enough.

In an article published in the National Interest entitled “Time to Stand Up To China in the South China Sea,” analyst Michael Mazza from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute praised the Pentagon’s plans for more “freedom of navigation” exercises, then added: “It is important that the president make the decision to act, and soon. The longer he waits, the more entrenched Chinese positions will become, both figuratively and literally.”

This logic is unquestioningly being applied more broadly. What is driving the provocative actions of US imperialism in Asia and around the world is the determination to use its still formidable military force to stem its historic decline. From Washington’s standpoint, the longer it waits, the greater the difficulty and dangers in subordinating Beijing to its interests. Thus the willingness to provoke a confrontation in the South China Sea as a test of strength, regardless of its potentially calamitous consequences.

But in confronting China, Washington faces widespread anti-war opposition at home and around the world, born of two decades of continuous wars including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. No one should be surprised by a new “Gulf of Tonkin incident” suddenly emerging in order to try to stampede public opinion behind US aggressive military operations against China.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-us-planning-a-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-in-the-south-china-sea/5450245

[1] http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/john-helmer-how-angela-merkel-has-been-abandoned-by-john-kerry-victoria-nuland-and-vladimir-putin.html

Angela Merkel’s affront to Russia and the gulf in German-Russian relations

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By John Helmer
Posted on Naked Capitalism, May 19, 2015

How Angela Merkel Has Been Abandoned By John Kerry, Victoria Nuland, And Vladimir Putin

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, would do almost anything to get and keep power. That, in the opinion of powerful German bankers, includes making herself look ready for war with Russia in order to make her political rival, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the coalition Foreign Minister and opposition leader in Berlin, look too weak to be electable when the German poll must be called by 2017. So, sources close to the Chancellery say, Merkel insulted President Vladimir Putin and all Russians to their faces last week. This week Victoria Nuland, the junior State Department official who told the chancellor to get fucked a year ago, was in Moscow, replacing Merkel with a settlement of the Ukraine conflict the Kremlin prefers.

“We are ready for this,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last Thursday after meeting Secretary of State John Kerry. Referring to Nuland, Lavrov added: “we were not those who had suspended relations. Those, who had done it, should reconsider their stance….But, as usual, the devil is in the details.” Lavrov meant not one, but two devils, who have sabotaged every move towards a settlement of the Ukraine conflict since the start of 2014 – Nuland and Merkel.

Merkel’s Kaput! moment came on May 10, when she went to Moscow to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Deutsche Welle, the state German press agency, called it Merkel’s “compromise after she stayed away from a Russian military parade the day before.”

At the following press conference with Putin, Merkel said: “We have sought more and more cooperation in recent years. The criminal and illegal annexation of Crimea and the military hostilities in eastern Ukraine has led to a serious setback for this cooperation.” German sources say the word Merkel said, “verbrecherische” has rarely been used by her before; it carries the connotation in colloquial German of gangsterism — and of Nazism. “Merkel doesn’t seem to care what she says any longer,” a high-level German source says. “She exhibits more and more emotion these days, more irritation, and less care for what she says, and where. Putin understood exactly what she meant, and on the occasion she said it. He acted with unusual generosity not to react.”

The Kremlin transcript omitted Merkel’s remarks altogether. The Moscow newspapers ignored Merkel’s word and emphasized the positive Putin ones. “Our country fought not against Germany,” Putin replied to Merkel, “but against Nazi Germany. We never fought Germany, which itself became the Nazi regime’s first victim. We always had many friends and supporters there.”

US state radio followed with an attempt to endorse Merkel’s “verbrecherische”, and castigate the Kremlin for ignoring it. “An official interpreter at a Kremlin press conference has omitted a top Western leader’s stinging criticism of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on May 12.

Reporter Carl Schreck claimed he “is unclear whether the interpreter made a conscious call to soft-pedal Merkel’s rebuke, or simply missed the word…One person who certainly would have understood the German word for ‘criminal’ used by Merkel – ‘verbrecherisch’ — is Putin himself. The Russian leader, who was stationed in Dresden with the Soviet KGB in the 1980s, is a fluent German speaker and in the past has spoken with Merkel in her native language. Whether he heard the word might depend on what ear Putin was listening with. He sported an earpiece on his left ear, presumably to listen to the Russian-language interpreter. His right ear — the one closest to Merkel — was free of electronic accoutrements.”

Schreck – the word in German means fright or scare — was a reporter for the Moscow Times for several years before moving to Prague for the US government. On his own website he doesn’t explain his German background, or whether his Washington state upbringing included the German language. Compared to Putin, Schreck is a soft touch for the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov. For him Schreck’s most sensitive question has been: “What do you look for in a woman?”

Verbrecherische isn’t the first instance of Merkel’s loose lips sinking her own ship. Last November she picked more aggressive German for impromptu remarks than were set down in the chancellery’s script. But that was in Australia, and Putin had already left the country. Merkel isn’t the only politician to say things in Australia which don’t count in the rest of the world.

The irony of Merkel’s May 10 attack on Putin is that Kremlin sources believe Putin has been the last of the officials on the Security Council to give Merkel the benefit of their strategic doubt. Yevgeny Primakov, Putin’s most experienced strategic advisor, has been telling him privately for months there is no prospect of salvaging the German-Russian entente while Merkel is chancellor, and no hope for the German opposition to break her grip in the short run.

In public, on January 15, Primakov said: “External changes that would favor Russia should not be expected anytime soon. It is doubtful that the sanctions will be cancelled in the near future. Betting on some politicians and European businessmen who speak against the sanctions is not realistic.” Primakov omitted the adjective German out of politeness. He and the Russian intelligence services regard Merkel as Washington’s patsy.

Two days after Merkel’s trip to Moscow, on May 12, Kerry met with Putin and Lavrov in Sochi. The Kremlin communique was minimal, acknowledging that “special focus” had been given to the Ukraine conflict. “The Russian side gave its assessments of the reasons behind the Ukrainian crisis, stating the key points of Russia’s position. It was stressed during the meeting that Russia strives to implement the Minsk Agreements in full and will do its utmost to support this process.”

By “reasons behind”, Putin and Lavrov meant Nuland and the Washington war party. Ahead of the Sochi meeting, the State Department spokesman had tried to play up Kerry, and downplay Nuland. “You can’t deal with diplomatic issues if you don’t do diplomacy,” the spokesman declared on May 11. On May 13, the spokesman was asked if “United States is ready to put pressure on Ukraine to fully implement Minsk II agreements”, and ducked the question.

On the next day, by the time Nuland was in Kiev meeting Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk and President Petro Poroshenko, the spokesman claimed the “United States’ full and unbreakable support for Ukraine’s government, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of Ukraine.”

Whatever devil can be read in these details, US Government statements indicate something new — there are now only two pairs of shoulders, Merkel’s having been shouldered aside. If there’s to be a settlement of the Ukraine conflict, it will be trilateral, according to the US, one between the US, Russia, and Ukraine. From the Russian point of view, it’s plain this means a deal between Russia and the US, with Nuland to keep the Ukrainian government in line.

Nuland has insisted that she was right beside Kerry in his meetings in Sochi. The press photographs have excluded her. The Kremlin, Lavrov and Kerry have spoken as if Nuland wasn’t there.

In Sochi Kerry also went to the trouble of showing Merkel how to behave in front of a memorial to the Russian dead in the war against Germany.

According to Kerry, “the war memorial here in Sochi [is] where more than 4,000 of the millions of courageous then-Soviets who died in World War II are buried. And it’s a very beautiful memorial and I was very moved by the young children who were there taking part in the ceremony. And I think Sergey and I both came away from this ceremony with a very powerful reminder of the sacrifices that we shared to bring about a safer world, and of what our nations can accomplish when our peoples are working together towards the same goal.”

Kerry also gave the regime in Kiev a warning of what not to interpret from anything Nuland may be saying. “If… President Poroshenko is advocating an engagement in a forceful effort at this time,” Kerry said in Sochi, “we would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk in serious jeopardy. And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be.”

http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/05/242214.htm

Now that Nuland has been excluded from the decision-making of the big boys, her job was to go to Kiev to tell the smaller boys what the new US line is. Yatseniuk’s version of their talks – minus the customary photo opportunity – was that “the key topics of the talks were questions of overcoming Russian aggression and the implementation of the Minsk agreements, the implementation of economic reforms and the fight against corruption, as well as the assistance from the United States in these processes. Yatsenyuk and Nuland discussed the status of implementation of the program of cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, as well as the preparation for a free trade zone between Ukraine and the European Union from January 1, 2016.”

Poroshenko stuck to pledging allegiance: “coordination of our actions with the U.S. is vitally important,” is the only quote the presidential website posted from the meeting. Photo opportunities were also curtailed.

Nuland’s version, according to the US Embassy transcript, was to emphasize just how “eager [we are] to deepen our involvement in helping the parties achieve full implementation—everything from complete ceasefire and pullback on the line of control, to the political pieces, to the border pieces.” By “political pieces” Nuland meant the constitutional changes for eastern Ukraine Putin insists on and Kerry mentioned, while Nuland bit her tongue.

Nuland has also ignored Yatseniuk’s requests for more money because Washington will neither declare it’s in favour of a Ukrainian default on its US-held sovereign bonds at the end of this month, nor provide any money to stop it.

Instead, the US Treasury rolled out its former Secretary, Lawrence Summers, to announce that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “has done as much as can reasonably be asked”. Summers, on the receiving end of Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk’s treasury (right), is this week omitting to call for fresh European Union money or contributions from the Ukrainian oligarchs.

Summers says he is also opposed to an offer of new American taxpayer money. Instead, his US Treasury plan is that “Ukraine’s creditors — led by the investment firm Franklin Templeton, but also with the support of a number of major US fund managers, who are sufficiently embarrassed by their selfish and unconstructive position that they avoid public identification — are playing hardball and refusing any write-offs. Understandably, if there are a substantial group of such free riders, other debt holders including the Russians will not accept writedowns… The IMF and national authorities should call out the recalcitrant creditors on their irresponsible behaviour.”

In Kiev Nuland put Merkel in her place, relegating her and the French to a single mention in last place in the process to decide the outcome of the Ukraine settlement. The US, she said in Kiev, is “in lockstep with our European allies and partners”. Lockstep means chain-gang — Germany must follow where the US leads. The Merkel Kaput! has been followed by the Merkel kibosh!

Dictionary note: Kaput started in French, when it meant losing in cards, and passed into English via the German kaputt during World War 1. Kibosh, disposed of in English, is derived from the Irish caidhp bháis, meaning death cap — the hood put on someone before execution, or the black cap worn by English judges when pronouncing the death sentence.

 

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

John Helmer: How Angela Merkel Has Been Abandoned By John Kerry, Victoria Nuland, And Vladimir Putin