In the movie, 'The Matrix', humans only belatedly discovered the lives they were living were virtual hallucination lies and they were actually wrapped in pod-like cocoons from which they had to be forcibly liberated. The actual reality of Earth was a dark, dystopian place replete with smoking ruins and few resources - not the glitzy world on offer in the dream world. Something similar obtains with the fictitious view of the world on offer from the U.S. Neoliberal media - hell bent to distort all our vision on external events, especially what's happening in the Ukraine.
To help liberate readers from their respective Neolib-confected news 'cocoons' I offer the following news items from outside the 'Matrix'!
NATO's Warmongers:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/brian-cloughley/54851/the-belligerent-alliance-natos-warmongers
Excerpt:
Nato’s vast air forces blitzed Yugoslavia into submission. When the Balkan war was over, leaving the region in fragments, Nato congratulated itself and looked for another reason to remain in being. Europe was at peace and there were no indications that there could ever be a conflict. There could have been a new era for Russia. But it wasn’t allowed to see the dawn of reconciliation because Nato desperately wanted to expand its numbers and surround and threaten the new Russia that was so anxious to join the comity of nations.
Nato asked Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to join in 1999. Then in 2004 came Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. To increase the net-drawing round Russia’s borders, Albania and Croatia were added in 2009. At the Chicago Nato summit in May 2012 it was declared that “At the 2008 Bucharest Summit we agreed that Georgia will become a member of Nato and we reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions.”
Why did the US want all these countries to join Nato? Russia was no threat to any of them. But Russia could present an economic threat to the US, especially as it was prospering through its cooperation with the European Union in provision of gas, oil and coal. And, who knows? – there could have been a very much wider economic union: that of Russia with greater Europe. This was to be circumvented at all costs.
So Nato re-invented itself at the bidding of Washington. According to Nato, it “has a new mission: extending peace through the strategic projection of security… This is not a mission of choice, but of necessity. The Allies neither invented nor desired it.” Well, in that case, just who did desire and invent it?
Nato’s members “undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered.” Right now they are engaging in provocative military confrontation that could hazard world peace. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that they don’t run aground.
Ukraine + Flight 370: Bad News for Neocons
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/ira-chernus/54838/ukraine-flight-370-bad-news-for-neocons
Excerpt:
For whatever reason, Ukraine and Flight 370 have held roughly equal appeal in the American news appetite, with 370 often having the edge. So the deep geopolitical dimensions of the Ukraine story obviously don't matter a whole lot to the news-consuming public. The people want to be infotained.
That's very bad news for the neoconservatives who have worked so hard, and are still working, to make the U.S. - Russia showdown over Ukraine a matter of incomparable import and urgency.
Not that they care so deeply about the Ukrainian people. For neocons, Ukraine is just the latest center stage for a drama that is always unfolding (more or less) everywhere, a drama pitting strong U.S. leadership against a global collapse into chaos and anarchy. Those are the only two alternatives neocons can see. And to them it looks like a matter of life or death.
Apparently the rest of America no longer sees it that way. That's the bad news for the neoconservatives.
To understand what’s at stake here for the neocons and for the rest of us, let's look briefly at the history of their movement.
Crimea's Case for Leaving Ukraine:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54693/crimeas-case-for-leaving-Ukraine
Excerpt:
If you were living in Crimea, would you prefer to remain part of Ukraine with its coup-installed government – with neo-Nazis running four ministries including the Ministry of Defense – or would you want to become part of Russia, which has had ties to Crimea going back to Catherine the Great in the 1700s?
Granted, it’s not the greatest choice in the world, but it’s the practical one facing you. For all its faults, Russia has a functioning economy while Ukraine really doesn’t. Russia surely has its share of political and financial corruption but some of that has been brought under control.
Not so in Ukraine where a moveable feast of some 10 “oligarchs” mostly runs the show in shifting alliances, buying up media outlets and politicians, while the vast majority of the population faces a bleak future, which now includes more European-demanded “austerity,” i.e. slashed pensions and further reductions in already sparse social services.
Even if the U.S.-backed plan for inserting Ukraine into the European Union prevails, Ukrainians would find themselves looking up the socio-economic ladder at the Greeks and other European nationals already living the nightmare of “austerity.”
Beyond that humiliation and misery, the continuing political dislocations across Ukraine would surely feed the further rise of right-wing extremists who espouse not only the goal of expelling ethnic Russians from Ukraine but Jews and other peoples considered not pure Ukrainian.
What’s Wrong with Secession?
And, despite what you hear from the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. media, it’s not at all uncommon for people to separate themselves from prior allegiances.
It’s especially common amid political upheavals, like Ukraine’s neo-Nazi-spearheaded coup that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych – after he signed an agreement on Feb. 21 to relinquish much of his power, hold early elections and order police to withdraw.
Though this agreement was co-signed by European nations, they stood aside when neo-Nazi militias exploited the police withdrawal and overran government buildings, forcing Yanukovych and many government officials to flee for their lives.
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Mainstream Media is Lost in Ukraine:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54812/mainstream-us-media-is-lost-in-Ukraine
Excerpt:
As the Ukraine crisis continues to deepen, the mainstream U.S. news media is sinking to new lows of propaganda and incompetence. Somehow, a violent neo-Nazi-spearheaded putsch overthrowing a democratically elected president was refashioned into a “legitimate” regime, then the “interim” government and now simply “Ukraine.”
The Washington Post’s screaming headline on Sunday is “Ukraine decries Russian ‘invasion,’” treating the coup regime in Kiev as if it speaks for the entire country when it clearly speaks for only a subset of the population, mostly from western Ukraine. The regime’s “legitimacy” comes not from a democratic election but from a coup that was quickly embraced by the U.S. government and the European Union.
Objective U.S. journalists would insist on a truthful narrative that conveys these nuances to the American people, not simply behave as clumsy propagandists determined to glue “white hats” on the side favored by the State Department and “black hats” on everyone that the U.S. government disdains. But virtually the entire mainstream press corps has opted for the propaganda role, much as it has in the past. Think Iraq 2002-03.
You also might remember the mainstream media’s rush to judgment over the Sarin attack in Syria on Aug. 21, 2013. The State Department rashly blamed the incident on the Syrian government despite serious doubts inside the U.S. intelligence community.
[See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis.”]
Because the retraction was “buried,” however, much of Official Washington still thinks the earlier story, supposedly proving the Syrian government’s guilt, is operational. That’s why you see politicians, like Sen. John McCain, accusing President Barack Obama of cowardice for failing to bomb Syria after it crossed his “red line” against using chemical weapons.
You’ve had a similar rush to judgment in connection with the violence that broke out in Kiev last month. The U.S. government and news media blamed lethal sniper fire on the government of President Viktor Yanukovych and – after he was driven from office by a neo-Nazi-led putsch on Feb. 22 – the U.S. media made much of how the new rump regime in Kiev had accused Yanukovych of mass murder.
However, according to an intercepted phone conversation between Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, Paet reported on a conversation that he had with a doctor in Kiev who said the sniper fire that killed protesters was the same that killed police officers.
As reported by the UK Guardian, “During the conversation, Paet quoted a woman named Olga – who the Russian media identified her as Olga Bogomolets, a doctor – blaming snipers from the opposition shooting the protesters.”
Paet said, “What was quite disturbing, this same Olga told that, well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.
“So she also showed me some photos, she said that as medical doctor, she can say it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened. … So there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition.”
----
The next step is to white-out the brown shirts of the neo-Nazi storm troopers who led the final violent overthrow of Yanukovych. Then, you clean up the unsavory coup regime by having its U.S.-chosen leader, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, receive a formal welcome at the White House. Next, you pretend that the concerns of the ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s east and south are simply the result of Moscow’s propaganda and intimidation.
That’s what we’re seeing now. The New York Times even dispatched correspondent C.J. Chivers, the same guy who falsely fingered the Syrian government with that “vector analysis” last September, to co-author a dispatch entitled “Pressure and Intimidation Grip Crimea,” with the subtitle, “Russia Moves Swiftly to Stifle Dissent Ahead of Secession Vote.”
You get the picture? While the New York Times accepted the rump parliament’s actions in Kiev last month as “legitimate” – voting in lock step under the watchful of eye of neo-Nazi militias to depose Yanukovych and strip away rights of ethnic Russians – a different standard will apply to Crimea’s referendum on bailing out of the failed Ukrainian state.
That vote, if it favors secession, must be seen as rigged and resulting only from Russian coercion, all the better to continue the false narrative that now dominates the U.S. political/media process.
Can Obama Speak Strongly for Peace?
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54799/can-obama-speak-strongly-for-peace
Excerpt:
With the neocons again ascendant – and with the U.S. news media again failing to describe a foreign crisis honestly – Barack Obama faces perhaps the greatest challenge of his presidency, a moment when he needs to find the courage to correct a false narrative that his own administration has spun regarding Ukraine – and to explain why it’s crucial to cooperate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the cause of world peace.
In other words, if Obama is to salvage his historical legacy, he must find within himself the strength and eloquence that President John F. Kennedy displayed in possibly his greatest oration, his June 10, 1963 address at American University in Washington, D.C. In that speech, Kennedy outlined the need to collaborate with Soviet leaders to avert dangerous confrontations, like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Kennedy also declared that it was wrong for America to seek world domination, and he asserted that U.S. foreign policy must be guided by a respect for the understandable interests of adversaries as well as allies. Kennedy said:
“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”
Kennedy recognized that his appeal for this serious pursuit of peace would be dismissed by the cynics and the warmongers as unrealistic and even dangerous. The Cold War was near its peak when Kennedy spoke. But he was determined to change the frame of the foreign policy debate, away from the endless bravado of militarism:
“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. …
“Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”
And then, in arguably the most important words that he ever spoke, Kennedy said, “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
Kennedy followed up his AU speech with practical efforts to work with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to rein in dangers from nuclear weapons and to discuss other ways of reducing international tensions, initiatives that Khrushchev welcomed although many of the hopeful prospects were cut short by Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963
----
Obama has yet to leave behind any memorable quote, despite his undeniable eloquence. There are his slogans, like “hope and change” and some thoughtful speeches about race and income inequality, but nothing of the substance and the magnitude of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” and Kennedy’s “we all inhabit this small planet.”
But now may be the time for Obama to deliver a speech that grapples with the central foreign policy question facing the United States, essentially whether America will continue seeking to be an Empire or return to being a Republic. Obama also needs to confront the crisis in the political/media worlds where propaganda holds sway and the public is misled.
If Obama doesn’t meet this challenge head on – and explain to the American people why he has sought (mostly behind the scenes) to work with Russian President Putin to reduce tensions over Syria and Iran – he can expect that the final years of his presidency will be overwhelmed by neocon demands that he start up a new Cold War.
---
If President Obama doesn’t actually believe that the United States should undertake the willful destabilization of nuclear-armed Russia, he might want to tell the American people before these matters get out of hand. He also should describe more honestly the events now overtaking Ukraine.
But it has been Obama’s custom to allow his administration’s foreign policy to be set by powerful “rivals” who often have profoundly different notions about what needs to be done in the world. Obama then tries to finesse their arguments, more like the moderator of an academic debate than President.
The best documented case of this pattern was how Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and General David Petraeus maneuvered Obama into what turned out to be a pointless “surge” in Afghanistan in 2009. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Robert Gates Double-Crosses Obama.”]
Kerry’s Double-Dealing
But Obama has been undercut, too, by his current Secretary of State John Kerry, who has behaved more like President John McCain’s top diplomat than President Obama’s. To the surprise of many Democratic friends, Kerry has chosen to take highly belligerent – and factually dubious – positions on Iran, Syria and now Ukraine.
-----
As Obama quietly tried to build on his collaboration with Putin, Kerry’s State Department undercut the relationship once more when neocon holdover Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland stoked the crisis in Ukraine on Russia’s border.
Last December, Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, told a group of Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion to promote the country’s “European aspirations.” She also personally encouraged anti-government protesters in Kiev by passing out cookies and discussed in an intercepted phone call who should serve in the new regime once President Yanukovych was gone.
Last month, when snipers opened fire and the violence killed both protesters and police, Kerry’s State Department was quick to point the finger of blame at the democratically elected President Yanukovych, although more recent evidence, including an intercepted call involving the Estonian foreign minister, suggests that elements of the opposition shot both protesters and police as a provocation.
Nevertheless, the State Department’s rush to judgment blaming Yanukovych and the gullible acceptance of this narrative by the mainstream U.S. news media created a storyline of “white-hat” protesters vs. a “black-hat” government, ignoring the many “brown shirts” of neo-Nazi militias who had moved to the front of the Kiev uprising.
How the West Enabled the Rise of Russian Nationalism (The Nation)
http://www.thenation.com/article/178826/how-west-enabled-rise-russian-nationalism
Excerpt:
With the ascent of Arseny Yatsenyuk’s pro-Western coalition in Kiev, Moscow has had reason to believe that Kiev would resume its drive to join NATO and denounce the Black Sea agreement that allows Russia to keep its fleet in Crimea until 2042. By intervening in Crimea, Putin acknowledged that his leverage against Kiev—largely based on natural gas supplies and personal ties with Ukrainian pragmatists—was insufficient to ensure Ukraine’s neutral status and preserve Russian fleet in the Black Sea.
In addition to security hawks, the Ukrainian revolution empowered Russian ethno-imperialists who have been insulted by the new Ukraine’s version of history that devalues the Soviet contribution to Nazi defeat and glorifies Stepan Bandera. Bandera fought alongside the Nazi against the Soviets and actively participated in Holocaust. Former Ukrainian leader Yushchenko awarded Bandera the medal of Hero of Ukraine that Yanukovych subsequently cancelled. That the Western nations never condemned such a nationalist version of history and embraced those who advanced it exacerbated Russians’ sense of betrayal by Kiev
Steps that followed confirmed Russian fears. Kiev canceled the law on Russian language (it has now repealed that action), restricted Russian media coverage, pushed many eastern and southern representatives out of the Rada, proposed “lustrations” against members of the “old regime,” and formed a new government with a heavy representation of nationalist figures. Indeed, prominent positions in the new cabinet are now held by members of ultranationalist organizations who trace their political roots to Bandera. Among them are minister of defense, head of national security, prosecutor general and minister of education—presumably to educate Ukrainians in the spirit of Russophobic history. Back in the government is also the proponent of NATO under Yushchenko, Boris Tarasyuk. The new Rada is now considering a law on gaining membership in the alliance. In response to many Crimeans obtaining Russian passports, there is also a proposal to punish the second (Russian) citizenship with ten years jail time.
During the Ukrainian revolution, Putin could not ignore those who turned to Russia for protection. In the war in Georgia he defended not only Russia’s security perimeters, but also Russian citizens and small nationalities in the Caucasus. Putin further embraced some ethno-nationalist ideas in response to nationalist and middle class protests in 2011–12. For instance, in one of his pre-election articles he described ethnic Russians as “the core [sterzhen’] that binds the fabric” of Russia as a culture and a state. Inaction to the Ukranian revolution would have come with the high cost of declining support for Putin”s claims to leadership in Eurasia.
Although the exact extent of nationalist influences on Putin remains unknown, it is clear that the Crimea intervention has made his internal position stronger. Until security guarantees are provided to Russia, and the issue of Ukraine’s non-NATO status and protection of ethnic Russians is seriously addressed, it is increasingly likely that Crimea will remain the Kremlin’s leverage and will not be returned to Ukraine.
NY Times Manufactures More Half Truths On Ukraine:
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/20/the_new_york_times_manufactures_ignorance_more_half_truths_about_ukraine/
Excerpt:
I have explored previously in this space the journalistic phenomenon I term “the power of leaving out.” We have a classic case before us.
I cannot find anywhere an account that rests on the self-evident proposition that as action begets reaction, reaction by definition requires antecedent action. Putin’s speech at the Kremlin Palace Tuesday revealed his boiling reaction to events in Ukraine since Yanukovych was deposed. He stood before all as a man provoked, and in case anyone missed this he did the favor of saying so in spades.
“If you press a spring too hard it will recoil,” Putin said. Entirely apt, pretty good one-sentence summary, including an acknowledgment that he has sprung swiftly at Ukraine, and in angry reaction.
Nothing, no hint of responsibility explained in the news reports and analysis, no causality. There are the merest flicks at the role of unnamed “foreigners,” but only such as to make Putin appear paranoid. Here is my favorite, from the Times coverage of the Putin speech:
“He said that the United States and Europe had crossed ‘a red line’ on Ukraine by throwing support to the new government that quickly emerged after Mr. Yanukovych fled the capital.”
Can you spot the phony chronology? Putin’s gripe predated Yanukovych’s flight by a long way, arising out of the covert meddling of Americans among the friendliest pols in Kiev (and, if history is any guide, probably among the demonstrators in Independence Square, too).
The Ukraine crisis was the final touch, the political piece, in a two-decade campaign to entice westward the country’s vigorously anti-Russian elements. More broadly, we have the advance of NATO up to Russia’s borders, a strategy so provocative and ahistorical that even Tom Friedman thinks it was dumb (or he did for at least one afternoon at the computer not long ago).
This kind of willful omission can do lasting damage to public understanding. It is an eternal point of contention among scholars, but many are the historians who recognize that the Soviet Union, as it long insisted, was indeed surrounded during the Cold War, and its posture was in important measure defensive. Few Americans even now grasp this as at least an arguable dimension of the period’s history.
This week we witness the manufacture of the same ignorance again. This is the open and shut of it.
I blame the media only in part. Their sin lies in not calling the political leadership on its failure to accept responsibility in Ukraine crisis — and its consequent determination to repeat the same mistakes.
The Pentagon has sent new F-16s to Poland and new F-15s to the Baltics. It is now flying surveillance jets over the Polish and Romanian borders with Ukraine. It is planning new naval exercises in the Black Sea, the rough equivalent of Russian naval exercises in the Caribbean.
Nothing provocative here. No, the lesson drawn is that the East–West chasm now opening requires more of this, not less. Ian Bond, who directs foreign policy studies at the Center for European Affairs, a London think tank, thinks American military exercises scheduled to take place in Ukraine this July (unconscionable in itself) should be moved up in response to the crisis.
Neoliberalism, Truth and Social Justice (Interview with Henry Giroux):
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/neoliberalism_youth_and_social_justice_20140314
Showing posts with label Neocon coup in Ukaine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neocon coup in Ukaine. Show all posts
Monday, March 17, 2014
Friday, March 7, 2014
Geopolitical Chess - And What Obama and the Neocons Still Don't Get
As the Ukraine crisis continues to escalate, see e.g.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/07/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA1Q1E820140307
There is little indication that either the U.S. neocons who want to 'checkmate Russia( via NATO expansion to its doorstep)', or Obama - one of their seeming 'Bishops' - gets it. As the preceding Reuters news link shows, Vladimir Putin rebuffed Obama's stern warnings, and again called to attention what he sees as Russia's interests- specifically in the Crimea. Also, as Col. Lawrence Wilkerson already noted ('All In' four nights ago) this is an expected response and only a fool or liar wouldn't grasp it. The fact is the Russians have a strategic interest in the Crimea - given their long term Black Sea naval base- and they're not about to put it at risk because of the West's hectoring.
I am not going to belabor again why Obama, the U.S. and the Neoliberal West are all wrong on this. People can read or re-read the previous blog posts examining the deep politics of the issue - including over a dozen links explaining why Russia is correct in defending her interests - just like the U.S. would be if there was an incursion of Russian interests at her doorstep - say constructing a massive Russian naval base near Havana. The U.S. has always invoked the specious "Monroe Doctrine" to defend interests in the hemisphere (even going beyond sometimes, as in overthrowing elected democratic governments, i.e. of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1972), hence it's passing foolish to insist Russia has no similar mandates in its hemisphere- or at least at its borders!
You cannot have a unipolar, single empire world - I don't care how much the neocons and their Neoliberal allies want it!
This lack of insight is partly why the U.S. and Neoliberal West (the 'New World Order') are losing at this game of geopolitical chess. They have been so spoiled and rendered soft by 13 years of fighting bogus 'wars' against a basically phony enemy in al Qaeda and the "terrorists" (which they've stupidly elevated to another superpower) and a series of occupations, that they've lived in a fool's paradise. Now, when confronted by a serious, formidable, real superpower - that doesn't use IEDs, but nuclear missiles, they don't know whether to shit or go blind. (Some neocons would argue Russia "isn't a real superpower" - brandishing their Amerikkan exceptionalist memes, but I say any nation that claims 3,000 ICBMs with nuclear warheads certainly is.)
Here is where the next move in geopolitical chess comes in - IF the U.S. and West are to save face and not made to look like impotent idiots - and it was delivered last night by Nina Khrushcheva on Chris Hayes' All In (much to the host's amazement).
First, some background. Very often in playing chess one finds that a limited option is available. Let's use the classic example of a 'fork' attack. In this case, the opponent's knight is 'forking' your queen and a pawn. The experienced chess player understands the queen is much too valuable to allow to be taken so moves her out of harm's way, allowing the pawn to be taken instead. By using this move, you preserve your main force and can still put up a good fight, but are not decimated.
In the case of the current crisis, and as Nina Khrushcheva pointed out to Hayes, Crimea is the 'pawn' and despite all the hair on fire screeching by Obama and the West about the planned referendum - they must give it up because Putin won't. It is the jewel of Russia and everyone who's studied Russian history knows that. (Evidently Obama doesn't, so needs to crack more books on it.) Prof. Khrushcheva made it clear President Putin doesn't want a full war, but he won't hesitate and there will be "a full blown conflict" if the West pushes its hand too hard. Thus, as Prof. Khrushcheva put it, Kerry needs to stop his empty threats, so does Obama (including sending more warships to the region which will only inflame tensions) and give up the Crimea as a pawn.
This will be hard for U.S. and Neoliberal imperialists, given that with their phony "world backing" they believe they have Russia and Putin by the proverbial balls, but it is the only practical move available. Putin doesn't want a war but he will deliver a conflict that will make the recent terror "wars'" look like croquet matches, if the West pushes him on this ( as the CBS Early show news reported out of Moscow this morning.)
Give up the pawn, then move on. Don't worry about perceptions, or 'backing down' out of stupidly held arrogance or the document NSC -68 which foolishly stated (as the basis for the U.S. to go to war or overthrow governments) as described thusly by Morris Berman[1]:
"the importance of perception, arguing that how we were seen was as crucial as how militarily secure we actually were. This rapidly expanded the number of interests deemed relevant to national security”.
The bottom line is that whether this crisis continues escalating will largely depend on whether the U.S. gets its global supremacy meme under control, and has the humility to walk away - giving up the pawn. Let's also bear in mind that all Obama's recent protestations as to the upcoming scheduled referendum are misplaced,, given he said that needs to be decided by the "legitimate Ukraine government" in Kiev. BUT ....as pointed out by many other commentators (e.g. Robert Parry, Normon Solomon, Eric Margolis) as well as yours truly - this isn't so. That Kiev gov't under neocon puppet Arseniy Yatsenuk is illegitimate and seized power in a coup instigated by the Neocons, e.g. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/54599/ukraine-we-all-get-the-tyranny-we-deserve
Sadly, the signs are that Obama is being manipulated again toward a bad decision. As the Guardian put it yesterday:
Let us hope Obama soon wakes up and removes that "stick" from the table for the good of the world. To do so he will need to find the same courage John Fitzgerald Kennedy did back in October, 1962 - to defy his Joint Chiefs- who demanded he bomb and invade Cuba. His defiance and choice of a less belligerent option left us an extant world as opposed to a pile of radioactive ash. A similar outcome to the current crisis may hinge on Obama mustering the same level of pluck and self-confidence.
This time, Obama will have to face down the assorted hives and warrens of neocons (e.g. the National Endowment for Democracy, The Center for Strategic and International Studies etc.) besieging him to act in a "gutsy" but most unwise manner, to show Putin "who's boss". We hope he can summon the same spine as JFK did to resist the generals in 1962.
See:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/54677/vlad-the-bad-steals-a-march-on-the-west
Excerpt:
Disturbingly, US Republicans and the usual media propagandists are heaping blame on President Barack Obama for “losing Crimea,” as if any of them knows where it was before last week. John McCain and his sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham have been demanding that Obama “get tough.”
Sure. Let’s mine Russia’s ports or blockade its oil and gas exports. Nothing like a nuclear war to show how weak the Democrats are. Thank god McCain did not win the presidency. The dolts at Fox TV can’t tell the difference between caution and cowardice.
Also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-c-koehler/54637/outing-the-deep-state
and:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54643/the-we-hate-putin-groupthink
[1] Morris Berman: 2006, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/07/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA1Q1E820140307
There is little indication that either the U.S. neocons who want to 'checkmate Russia( via NATO expansion to its doorstep)', or Obama - one of their seeming 'Bishops' - gets it. As the preceding Reuters news link shows, Vladimir Putin rebuffed Obama's stern warnings, and again called to attention what he sees as Russia's interests- specifically in the Crimea. Also, as Col. Lawrence Wilkerson already noted ('All In' four nights ago) this is an expected response and only a fool or liar wouldn't grasp it. The fact is the Russians have a strategic interest in the Crimea - given their long term Black Sea naval base- and they're not about to put it at risk because of the West's hectoring.
I am not going to belabor again why Obama, the U.S. and the Neoliberal West are all wrong on this. People can read or re-read the previous blog posts examining the deep politics of the issue - including over a dozen links explaining why Russia is correct in defending her interests - just like the U.S. would be if there was an incursion of Russian interests at her doorstep - say constructing a massive Russian naval base near Havana. The U.S. has always invoked the specious "Monroe Doctrine" to defend interests in the hemisphere (even going beyond sometimes, as in overthrowing elected democratic governments, i.e. of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1972), hence it's passing foolish to insist Russia has no similar mandates in its hemisphere- or at least at its borders!
You cannot have a unipolar, single empire world - I don't care how much the neocons and their Neoliberal allies want it!
This lack of insight is partly why the U.S. and Neoliberal West (the 'New World Order') are losing at this game of geopolitical chess. They have been so spoiled and rendered soft by 13 years of fighting bogus 'wars' against a basically phony enemy in al Qaeda and the "terrorists" (which they've stupidly elevated to another superpower) and a series of occupations, that they've lived in a fool's paradise. Now, when confronted by a serious, formidable, real superpower - that doesn't use IEDs, but nuclear missiles, they don't know whether to shit or go blind. (Some neocons would argue Russia "isn't a real superpower" - brandishing their Amerikkan exceptionalist memes, but I say any nation that claims 3,000 ICBMs with nuclear warheads certainly is.)
Here is where the next move in geopolitical chess comes in - IF the U.S. and West are to save face and not made to look like impotent idiots - and it was delivered last night by Nina Khrushcheva on Chris Hayes' All In (much to the host's amazement).
First, some background. Very often in playing chess one finds that a limited option is available. Let's use the classic example of a 'fork' attack. In this case, the opponent's knight is 'forking' your queen and a pawn. The experienced chess player understands the queen is much too valuable to allow to be taken so moves her out of harm's way, allowing the pawn to be taken instead. By using this move, you preserve your main force and can still put up a good fight, but are not decimated.
In the case of the current crisis, and as Nina Khrushcheva pointed out to Hayes, Crimea is the 'pawn' and despite all the hair on fire screeching by Obama and the West about the planned referendum - they must give it up because Putin won't. It is the jewel of Russia and everyone who's studied Russian history knows that. (Evidently Obama doesn't, so needs to crack more books on it.) Prof. Khrushcheva made it clear President Putin doesn't want a full war, but he won't hesitate and there will be "a full blown conflict" if the West pushes its hand too hard. Thus, as Prof. Khrushcheva put it, Kerry needs to stop his empty threats, so does Obama (including sending more warships to the region which will only inflame tensions) and give up the Crimea as a pawn.
This will be hard for U.S. and Neoliberal imperialists, given that with their phony "world backing" they believe they have Russia and Putin by the proverbial balls, but it is the only practical move available. Putin doesn't want a war but he will deliver a conflict that will make the recent terror "wars'" look like croquet matches, if the West pushes him on this ( as the CBS Early show news reported out of Moscow this morning.)
Give up the pawn, then move on. Don't worry about perceptions, or 'backing down' out of stupidly held arrogance or the document NSC -68 which foolishly stated (as the basis for the U.S. to go to war or overthrow governments) as described thusly by Morris Berman[1]:
"the importance of perception, arguing that how we were seen was as crucial as how militarily secure we actually were. This rapidly expanded the number of interests deemed relevant to national security”.
The bottom line is that whether this crisis continues escalating will largely depend on whether the U.S. gets its global supremacy meme under control, and has the humility to walk away - giving up the pawn. Let's also bear in mind that all Obama's recent protestations as to the upcoming scheduled referendum are misplaced,, given he said that needs to be decided by the "legitimate Ukraine government" in Kiev. BUT ....as pointed out by many other commentators (e.g. Robert Parry, Normon Solomon, Eric Margolis) as well as yours truly - this isn't so. That Kiev gov't under neocon puppet Arseniy Yatsenuk is illegitimate and seized power in a coup instigated by the Neocons, e.g. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/54599/ukraine-we-all-get-the-tyranny-we-deserve
Sadly, the signs are that Obama is being manipulated again toward a bad decision. As the Guardian put it yesterday:
"The escalating crisis in Ukraine has set
off reckless missile-rattling in this country. As Harvard’s Stephen Walt
tweeted on March 2: “Public discourse on #Ukraine situation hitting new heights
in hyperbole. (‘New Cold War, WW III,’ etc.) Rhetorical overkill not helpful.”
He may have been thinking of neocon Charles Krauthammer, who in his Washington
Post column called for the United States to ante up $15 billion for Ukraine
and send a naval flotilla to the Black Sea.
The same paper headlined that the
crisis “tests Obama’s focus on diplomacy over military force,” quoting Andrew
Kuchins of the Center for Strategic and International Studies decrying
President Obama’s “taking the stick option off the table.”
Let us hope Obama soon wakes up and removes that "stick" from the table for the good of the world. To do so he will need to find the same courage John Fitzgerald Kennedy did back in October, 1962 - to defy his Joint Chiefs- who demanded he bomb and invade Cuba. His defiance and choice of a less belligerent option left us an extant world as opposed to a pile of radioactive ash. A similar outcome to the current crisis may hinge on Obama mustering the same level of pluck and self-confidence.
This time, Obama will have to face down the assorted hives and warrens of neocons (e.g. the National Endowment for Democracy, The Center for Strategic and International Studies etc.) besieging him to act in a "gutsy" but most unwise manner, to show Putin "who's boss". We hope he can summon the same spine as JFK did to resist the generals in 1962.
See:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/54677/vlad-the-bad-steals-a-march-on-the-west
Excerpt:
Disturbingly, US Republicans and the usual media propagandists are heaping blame on President Barack Obama for “losing Crimea,” as if any of them knows where it was before last week. John McCain and his sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham have been demanding that Obama “get tough.”
Sure. Let’s mine Russia’s ports or blockade its oil and gas exports. Nothing like a nuclear war to show how weak the Democrats are. Thank god McCain did not win the presidency. The dolts at Fox TV can’t tell the difference between caution and cowardice.
Also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-c-koehler/54637/outing-the-deep-state
and:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54643/the-we-hate-putin-groupthink
[1] Morris Berman: 2006, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
The Neoliberal Ukraine News Blackout - Why You Shouldn't Be Surprised
Neoliberalism is a new form
of hybrid global financial
authoritarianism. It is connected to the Deep State and marked by its savage
willingness in the name of accumulation, privatization, deregulation,
dispossession and power to make disposable a wide range of groups
extending from low income youth and poor minorities to elements of the middle
class that have lost jobs - Henry Giroux, on smirkingchimp.com (last week)
If Putin and Russia continue to be surrounded and marginalized, the world will become ever more hostage to the whims of the Wolves-of-Wall-Street class that drives the energy industry, which in turn drives the policies of the White House, Downing Street and other similar addresses.
Ultimately, it is we, the citizens of the West, who lose big. In allowing uncontested victories by this unelected alliance operating putatively on our behalf, we the people marginalize our own interests. We also ensure that we ourselves never break free of our own political corruption—and remain unable to inaugurate our own real, functioning democracy. - Russ Baker, 'We All Get the Tyranny We Deserve', smirkingchimp.com
After watching an initial segment on Chris Hayes' ' All In' last night, wherein he "blamed Russia" for what was going on in Ukraine (like all the right wing mouthpieces at FOX, as well as other pseudo libs at MSNBC) I turned to my wife in an aggravated state of despair and said: "Even Chris has now been bought out. He's so terrified of losing his MSNBC gig that he won't even go near the deeper political story of how the neocons instigated a coup in Kiev and incited the current crisis." My wife replied, "So you believe he'd lose his job if he went there?" And I said: "For sure!" to which she responded "So much for the free country." (I also reminded her that Comcast had taken over MSNBC, the same bunch that just pushed for a merger that will likely slow many of us on the net.)
Again another day of propaganda from the Neoliberal corporate media. Anyone looking for a scintilla of truth or accuracy would be hard put to find it. First there was Martha Raddatz on ABC News yapping about "Putin the bully", then the scene switched to John, aka 'Lurch', Kerry, posturing in Kiev for the State Dept. Neocons, then on NBC we beheld former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, expressing incredulity at the extent of "anti-American sentiment" he beheld in Russia during his stint there..
What is he, a nitwit, or just plain ignorant? Has he never heard of the 'Shock Doctrine''? Author Naomi Klein gives the key information in her book: 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' (2007). But you know, a dedicated Neolib politico or hack would ignore such a book because it exposes too much of what his or her shtick is about - and no Neolib wants to know. Anyway, in her chapter on the Russian capitalist "experiment" (pp. 282-87) she documents how a cabal of gangster capitalists under the IMF and the "Chicago gang of Milton Friedman" attempted to brutally re-make the existing Russian centrally planned economy into a Neoliberal free market outpost of the West. The process was long and painful, entailing first getting rid of Mikhail Gorbachev - who through his glasnost and perestroika did far more than Reagan to render the world more peaceful, never mind the propaganda.
Klein makes no bones about the fact that the Friedman "school of economics" was responsible largely for the ideological ruthlessness that laid waste to Russia in the early 1990s. They only needed (Boris) Yeltsin to help dissolve the former Soviet Union.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz (p. 283) called Russia's pro-capitalist market experimenters "market Bolsheviks". As Klein put it (ibid.):
"However, where the original Bolsheviks fully intended to build their centrally planned state in the ashes of the old, the market Bolsheviks believed in a kind of magic: if the optimal conditions for profit were created - the country would rebuild itself- no planning required."
Newspapers, magazines from the period (which I still have and can peruse anytime) depict horrific suffering by ordinary Russians as they had to beg, borrow or steal to survive - thanks to the Neoliberal market barbarians. Is this being an "American traitor" to reveal this, probably something most Americans don't know? Nope, because one can't be a traitor to an economic paradigm he never accepted in the first place and is in fact an aberrational economic-political mutant that has no relation to the nation or its Constitution!
The sad facts? After only a year of Neoliberal thuggery and "market therapy" millions of Russians had lost their life savings when the ruble lost nearly all its value. And yes, they rightly blame Neoliberal capitalism as hatched and cultivated in the US of A for their plight. Why wouldn't they?
In fact, I ought not have been surprised that the only places one will find the real backstory are in the Left-most recesses of the web - places like www.smirkingchimp.com and http://firedoglake.com/
These are places where the last bastion of REAL patriots, aka REAL Liberals (not Neoliberals) go to get a heads up on the news. The REAL News. Not the crap and propaganda spouted by the mainstream media. If you aren't visiting those sites too then you aren't getting the real lowdown on the Ukraine. You're only getting what the Neoliberal masters of PR want you to see.
But I perhaps write too fast. If one watches MSNBC one might catch a glimpse of the truth - even if the thread isn't pursued by the host, as in the case of Chris Hayes' interview of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.) two nights ago. In that interview, for example, Col. Wilkerson not only gave the proper historical background and how the Neoliberal Market priority helped to propel it, but also how the neocons still ensconced in Obama's administration helped engender the immediate crisis. As he observed, after Russia was promised (in 1991) that NATO would not go one inch further to the east...
" a series of Presidents came in who not only went further to the east - pushed by Lockheed Martin and others, who wanted to sell weapons to eastern and central European countries - but hinted at Georgia and Ukraine."
In other words, the Neoliberal capitalist weapons market PUSHED the expansion of NATO to Russia's doorstep - even trying to entice the capture of two former Soviet states via weapons sales as NATO members. And the idiots in the U.S> wonder why Putin and Russia are going ape shit? What are they? Well Col. Wilkerson has the answer for that too:
"Anyone who knows Russian history .....could have guessed that President Putin would move into the Ukraine once we had formed a group there, led by the NED and its affiliates - which effectively pulled off a coup.......If I were Putin I'd have done exactly what Putin did. And anyone who says they couldn't predict this is either a fool or lying"
Well, then we have a hell of a lot of lying, fool politicos and media. But why be surprised? They are convinced, following the work of PR master Edward Bernays - if they all speak with one voice and repeat it over and over again, they will get Americans to believe THEIR baloney that Russia started it - when as Col. Wilkerson said, the U.S. Neocons started it. Putin merely responded to their provocation - though Obama (a Neoliberal at heart) refuses to acknowledge it.
The point is everyone, politicians and media are in on the game, to connive and deceive the American people that Neoliberal democracy is true freedom, when it is merely an ersatz freedom. It means the free spread of markets - any kind, including weapons, and water-air destroying natural gas fracking - without regard to human security or welfare. Why do you think so many Neolibs also want to cut Social Security and Medicare?
The entrenched pseudo-freedom of Neoliberalism explains everything from the recent Comcast takeover of Time-Warner e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-comcast-45-b-merger-will-rampant.html
to the disastrous West Virginia coal cleaner dump and pollution of water for over 300,000 e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-neoliberal-business-model-to-blame.html
to the humping for the new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement to hijack more American jobs to low wage notions e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/lets-not-get-punnked-by-neoliberals.html
This is why it is so critical to always portray Neoliberal "democracy" (what I regard as an oxymoron) as the only legit form. Make your freedom real based on MARKET choices, but forget personal ones - they only exist to the point you choose one brand of toothpaste or fried chicken over another.
This is also why they want the Ukraine pulled into the fake Market domain of Neoliberal capitalism. They also made it appear as if the Ukrainians themselves chose to "rebel" against the Kiev gov't of Viktor Yanukovych, not that the neocons started it. This is why it's also incumbent on the alert and aware citizen not to swallow the neo-Cold War codswallop being peddled that Putin and Russia are "playing the long game" and are intent on "re-assembling the old Soviet state into a new Russian empire". This is the sort of recycled, 50's style paranoid bullshit I'd expect from brainwashed Neolib degenerates who are so aware of their own violations of sovereignty they would concoct them for others to provide cover. As for these new U.S. sanctions, don't look for the Europeans to back them, not when they stand to lose their natural gas supplies from Russia!
Something to take to the bank: If it's coming from a Neoliberal source, don't believe it!
See also these critical adjunct articles!
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/54599/ukraine-we-all-get-the-tyranny-we-deserve
Excerpt:
The problem is, you can only believe that the West truly cares about the people of Ukraine and their democracy if you have zero historical memory. Or if your analysis of all of these events comes from news organizations that don’t ever really, fully do their jobs.
The US corporate media never changes its spots. After being tricked and lied to on Vietnam, the first Gulf War, the Iraq invasion, Libya, Syria, and just about everything else, it once again takes the US foreign policy establishment at its word that it only wishes to do the right thing. The right thing. It bears repeating.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-stanton/54603/ukraines-leaders-seek-national-socialism-dictatorship
Excerpt:
So the US leadership is supporting the creation of One Nation Under God in Ukraine. As one of the key groups involved in the militant overthrow of an elected government has stated in its party platform, “a system of the dictatorship of the Nation with regard to the socioeconomic interests of the people” needs to be implemented (more below).
Isn’t that what the military in Egypt proclaimed in its coup to oust another elected official, Morsi?
The American press is fond of patting itself on the back for upholding the first amendment to the US Constitution, that being, among other things, freedom of the press. But that does not mean the freedom to obfuscate, ignore facts and curry favor with the US national security apparatus in whatever covert or overt form it takes.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-boardman/54602/us-provokes-russia-acts-surprised-to-get-a-nasty-reaction
Excerpt:
If too many people get sucked in by the current, distorted media coverage of events unfolding now in Ukraine, then there's a good chance life will get very ugly for a lot of innocent people, since one of the logical end points is the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone in power knows that's a potential reality, but the urge to demagogue the Russians is presently overwhelming honesty and caution.
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/walter-c-uhler/54786/the-hypocritical-united-states-of-amnesia-and-Russia
Excerpt:
In 2003, using the false pretexts of weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda to manipulate an American public still angry about and fearful from al-Qaeda’s attacks on 11 September 2001, the administration of George W. Bush ordered the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq – perhaps the worst war crime since those committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The invasion precipitated an incipient civil war between the Sunnis and Shias, give rise to an anti-American insurgency, caused a massive destruction of property, cost Iraq the lives of least 100,000 innocent men, women and children and forced the displacement of at least 4 million people from their homes. (Thus far, Putin’s intrusion into the Crimea has caused nothing like that.)
France, Germany and Russia ended up on the right side of history when they opposed America’s invasion. But, none of them threatened economic sanctions against the U.S. for its brazen violation of international law. Their feckless behavior brings to mind the observation made by an Athenian in Thucydides’ “Melian dialogue:” “You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
If Putin and Russia continue to be surrounded and marginalized, the world will become ever more hostage to the whims of the Wolves-of-Wall-Street class that drives the energy industry, which in turn drives the policies of the White House, Downing Street and other similar addresses.
Ultimately, it is we, the citizens of the West, who lose big. In allowing uncontested victories by this unelected alliance operating putatively on our behalf, we the people marginalize our own interests. We also ensure that we ourselves never break free of our own political corruption—and remain unable to inaugurate our own real, functioning democracy. - Russ Baker, 'We All Get the Tyranny We Deserve', smirkingchimp.com
After watching an initial segment on Chris Hayes' ' All In' last night, wherein he "blamed Russia" for what was going on in Ukraine (like all the right wing mouthpieces at FOX, as well as other pseudo libs at MSNBC) I turned to my wife in an aggravated state of despair and said: "Even Chris has now been bought out. He's so terrified of losing his MSNBC gig that he won't even go near the deeper political story of how the neocons instigated a coup in Kiev and incited the current crisis." My wife replied, "So you believe he'd lose his job if he went there?" And I said: "For sure!" to which she responded "So much for the free country." (I also reminded her that Comcast had taken over MSNBC, the same bunch that just pushed for a merger that will likely slow many of us on the net.)
Again another day of propaganda from the Neoliberal corporate media. Anyone looking for a scintilla of truth or accuracy would be hard put to find it. First there was Martha Raddatz on ABC News yapping about "Putin the bully", then the scene switched to John, aka 'Lurch', Kerry, posturing in Kiev for the State Dept. Neocons, then on NBC we beheld former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, expressing incredulity at the extent of "anti-American sentiment" he beheld in Russia during his stint there..
What is he, a nitwit, or just plain ignorant? Has he never heard of the 'Shock Doctrine''? Author Naomi Klein gives the key information in her book: 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' (2007). But you know, a dedicated Neolib politico or hack would ignore such a book because it exposes too much of what his or her shtick is about - and no Neolib wants to know. Anyway, in her chapter on the Russian capitalist "experiment" (pp. 282-87) she documents how a cabal of gangster capitalists under the IMF and the "Chicago gang of Milton Friedman" attempted to brutally re-make the existing Russian centrally planned economy into a Neoliberal free market outpost of the West. The process was long and painful, entailing first getting rid of Mikhail Gorbachev - who through his glasnost and perestroika did far more than Reagan to render the world more peaceful, never mind the propaganda.
Klein makes no bones about the fact that the Friedman "school of economics" was responsible largely for the ideological ruthlessness that laid waste to Russia in the early 1990s. They only needed (Boris) Yeltsin to help dissolve the former Soviet Union.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz (p. 283) called Russia's pro-capitalist market experimenters "market Bolsheviks". As Klein put it (ibid.):
"However, where the original Bolsheviks fully intended to build their centrally planned state in the ashes of the old, the market Bolsheviks believed in a kind of magic: if the optimal conditions for profit were created - the country would rebuild itself- no planning required."
Newspapers, magazines from the period (which I still have and can peruse anytime) depict horrific suffering by ordinary Russians as they had to beg, borrow or steal to survive - thanks to the Neoliberal market barbarians. Is this being an "American traitor" to reveal this, probably something most Americans don't know? Nope, because one can't be a traitor to an economic paradigm he never accepted in the first place and is in fact an aberrational economic-political mutant that has no relation to the nation or its Constitution!
The sad facts? After only a year of Neoliberal thuggery and "market therapy" millions of Russians had lost their life savings when the ruble lost nearly all its value. And yes, they rightly blame Neoliberal capitalism as hatched and cultivated in the US of A for their plight. Why wouldn't they?
In fact, I ought not have been surprised that the only places one will find the real backstory are in the Left-most recesses of the web - places like www.smirkingchimp.com and http://firedoglake.com/
These are places where the last bastion of REAL patriots, aka REAL Liberals (not Neoliberals) go to get a heads up on the news. The REAL News. Not the crap and propaganda spouted by the mainstream media. If you aren't visiting those sites too then you aren't getting the real lowdown on the Ukraine. You're only getting what the Neoliberal masters of PR want you to see.
But I perhaps write too fast. If one watches MSNBC one might catch a glimpse of the truth - even if the thread isn't pursued by the host, as in the case of Chris Hayes' interview of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.) two nights ago. In that interview, for example, Col. Wilkerson not only gave the proper historical background and how the Neoliberal Market priority helped to propel it, but also how the neocons still ensconced in Obama's administration helped engender the immediate crisis. As he observed, after Russia was promised (in 1991) that NATO would not go one inch further to the east...
" a series of Presidents came in who not only went further to the east - pushed by Lockheed Martin and others, who wanted to sell weapons to eastern and central European countries - but hinted at Georgia and Ukraine."
In other words, the Neoliberal capitalist weapons market PUSHED the expansion of NATO to Russia's doorstep - even trying to entice the capture of two former Soviet states via weapons sales as NATO members. And the idiots in the U.S> wonder why Putin and Russia are going ape shit? What are they? Well Col. Wilkerson has the answer for that too:
"Anyone who knows Russian history .....could have guessed that President Putin would move into the Ukraine once we had formed a group there, led by the NED and its affiliates - which effectively pulled off a coup.......If I were Putin I'd have done exactly what Putin did. And anyone who says they couldn't predict this is either a fool or lying"
Well, then we have a hell of a lot of lying, fool politicos and media. But why be surprised? They are convinced, following the work of PR master Edward Bernays - if they all speak with one voice and repeat it over and over again, they will get Americans to believe THEIR baloney that Russia started it - when as Col. Wilkerson said, the U.S. Neocons started it. Putin merely responded to their provocation - though Obama (a Neoliberal at heart) refuses to acknowledge it.
The point is everyone, politicians and media are in on the game, to connive and deceive the American people that Neoliberal democracy is true freedom, when it is merely an ersatz freedom. It means the free spread of markets - any kind, including weapons, and water-air destroying natural gas fracking - without regard to human security or welfare. Why do you think so many Neolibs also want to cut Social Security and Medicare?
The entrenched pseudo-freedom of Neoliberalism explains everything from the recent Comcast takeover of Time-Warner e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-comcast-45-b-merger-will-rampant.html
to the disastrous West Virginia coal cleaner dump and pollution of water for over 300,000 e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-neoliberal-business-model-to-blame.html
to the humping for the new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement to hijack more American jobs to low wage notions e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/lets-not-get-punnked-by-neoliberals.html
This is why it is so critical to always portray Neoliberal "democracy" (what I regard as an oxymoron) as the only legit form. Make your freedom real based on MARKET choices, but forget personal ones - they only exist to the point you choose one brand of toothpaste or fried chicken over another.
This is also why they want the Ukraine pulled into the fake Market domain of Neoliberal capitalism. They also made it appear as if the Ukrainians themselves chose to "rebel" against the Kiev gov't of Viktor Yanukovych, not that the neocons started it. This is why it's also incumbent on the alert and aware citizen not to swallow the neo-Cold War codswallop being peddled that Putin and Russia are "playing the long game" and are intent on "re-assembling the old Soviet state into a new Russian empire". This is the sort of recycled, 50's style paranoid bullshit I'd expect from brainwashed Neolib degenerates who are so aware of their own violations of sovereignty they would concoct them for others to provide cover. As for these new U.S. sanctions, don't look for the Europeans to back them, not when they stand to lose their natural gas supplies from Russia!
Something to take to the bank: If it's coming from a Neoliberal source, don't believe it!
See also these critical adjunct articles!
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/54599/ukraine-we-all-get-the-tyranny-we-deserve
Excerpt:
The problem is, you can only believe that the West truly cares about the people of Ukraine and their democracy if you have zero historical memory. Or if your analysis of all of these events comes from news organizations that don’t ever really, fully do their jobs.
The US corporate media never changes its spots. After being tricked and lied to on Vietnam, the first Gulf War, the Iraq invasion, Libya, Syria, and just about everything else, it once again takes the US foreign policy establishment at its word that it only wishes to do the right thing. The right thing. It bears repeating.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-stanton/54603/ukraines-leaders-seek-national-socialism-dictatorship
Excerpt:
So the US leadership is supporting the creation of One Nation Under God in Ukraine. As one of the key groups involved in the militant overthrow of an elected government has stated in its party platform, “a system of the dictatorship of the Nation with regard to the socioeconomic interests of the people” needs to be implemented (more below).
Isn’t that what the military in Egypt proclaimed in its coup to oust another elected official, Morsi?
The American press is fond of patting itself on the back for upholding the first amendment to the US Constitution, that being, among other things, freedom of the press. But that does not mean the freedom to obfuscate, ignore facts and curry favor with the US national security apparatus in whatever covert or overt form it takes.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-boardman/54602/us-provokes-russia-acts-surprised-to-get-a-nasty-reaction
Excerpt:
If too many people get sucked in by the current, distorted media coverage of events unfolding now in Ukraine, then there's a good chance life will get very ugly for a lot of innocent people, since one of the logical end points is the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone in power knows that's a potential reality, but the urge to demagogue the Russians is presently overwhelming honesty and caution.
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/walter-c-uhler/54786/the-hypocritical-united-states-of-amnesia-and-Russia
Excerpt:
In 2003, using the false pretexts of weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda to manipulate an American public still angry about and fearful from al-Qaeda’s attacks on 11 September 2001, the administration of George W. Bush ordered the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq – perhaps the worst war crime since those committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The invasion precipitated an incipient civil war between the Sunnis and Shias, give rise to an anti-American insurgency, caused a massive destruction of property, cost Iraq the lives of least 100,000 innocent men, women and children and forced the displacement of at least 4 million people from their homes. (Thus far, Putin’s intrusion into the Crimea has caused nothing like that.)
France, Germany and Russia ended up on the right side of history when they opposed America’s invasion. But, none of them threatened economic sanctions against the U.S. for its brazen violation of international law. Their feckless behavior brings to mind the observation made by an Athenian in Thucydides’ “Melian dialogue:” “You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Why Are Liberal Commentators Afraid to Relate the WHOLE Ukraine Backstory?
The Neocon Repukes, including Lindsey Graham, Mike Rogers, and John McCain ("This is a feckless foreign policy!") are all screeching for Obama to "do something" about the Ukraine situation, but this reactionary, bully boy rhetoric is what we expect from numb skulls. Any person with even room temperature I.Q. knows that you aren't going to be able to "muscle down" a proud nation that sports an armed force of 845,000, and thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles.
On the other hand, I've been looking - searching desperately in fact- for some liberal voice or commentator to at least get the Ukraine back story right, even as the rest of the Neoliberal corporate media gets hysterical - goading Obama into precipitous action. Yesterday evening I scanned my generally favorite liberal commentators to search for any kind of kernel of genuine, unfiltered, unskewed insight into what's happening in the Ukraine.
I started out with Chris Hayes (All In, MSNBC) and was encouraged when his guest Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.) appeared. He started out, correctly, referencing that the seeds of the current crisis go all the way back to the administration of George H.W. Bush, when he and his Secretary of State Jim Baker assured Mikhail Gorbachev that "NATO would not go one inch further to the east".. He added: "Then a series of Presidents came in who not only went further to the east - pushed by Lockheed Martin and others, who wanted to sell weapons to eastern and central European countries - but hinted at Georgia and Ukraine."
Most salient, and a key point of history I wanted to see expressed:
"Anyone who knows Russian history .....could have guessed that President Putin would move into the Ukraine once we had formed a group there, led by the NED and its affiliates - which effectively pulled off a coup".
The NED and its affiliates!! NEOCONS! There it is! The National Endowment for Democracy, the Right wing, Nazi -linked bunch which was a central part of Ronald Reagan’s propaganda war against the Soviet Union three decades ago. And which many have noted has been working to destabilize Ukraine, and with the help of Victoria Nuland, John McCain and others, oust Viktor Yanukovych. But don't believe me, hear out Col. Wilkerson, who went on to say:
"What is Putin to think when a nation that talks about bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO suddenly effects the removal of his oligarchic leader in Kiev. If I were Putin I'd have done exactly what Putin did. And anyone who says they couldn't predict this is either a fool or lying"
In other words, Obama spouting more balderdash that "Russia is on the wrong side of history" is Neoliberal codswallop. It's the U.S. on the wrong side for betraying promises it made on the expansion of NATO!!
More to the point, Col. Wilkerson did confirm that what President Putin said in comments yesterday was correct: Yanukovych was overthrown in a coup confected by the NED and neocons!
Alas, Chris Hayes - even when the red meat was handed to him on a platter by his guest- backed away from pursuing the NED - Neocon links to the Amerikkan putsch that delivered Kiev and the Ukraine to "Yats" (Nuland's favorite NED pawn) and went off to discuss the "costs to Putin" and Russia.
I then turned to Rachel Maddow, hoping she might run with it given she already has a documentary on our Iraq invasion folly coming out Thursday. Actually, earlier in the day, in an interview on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell. Maddow charged that the George W. Bush administration's Middle East policy "has steered America's current security policy and response to global crises — including the one in Ukraine." Talking about her new documentary, "Why We Did It," involving circumstances leading to the Iraq War, Maddow told her MSNBC colleague that the Bush administration is largely responsible for the nation's current course overseas.
She went on to say that :
“The decisions of our generation on national security are determined more than anything by what the George W. Bush administration did with that nine-year war in Iraq and, alongside it a 13-year war in Afghanistan that’s still going on, and the American people are against those wars."
which is certainly true, and we know the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) was behind the Iraq invasion. Trouble is she didn't pursue the Neocon- PNAC connection to Iraq and then follow it through to how they also wanted Ukraine included in the 'regime change' mix after Iraq, Iran and Syria. Since the cons couldn't provoke Obama into regime change in the latter two (Putin intervened and caused the 'Cons to back down - while providing Obama and the U.S. with outs), they decided to go after Ukraine - on Putin's doorstep. If they had had any sense at all, they ought to have known that Putin would respond exactly the way Wilkerson said he would - and which even Wilkerson admitted HE would! (At least there's one U.S. official or military person who's not a hypocrite!)
I then tuned into Maddow's show at 7 p.m. and she went into a long prelude about the "deal" made to disarm nukes in the Ukraine and how this led to "closer ties with the West". (I dispute the meaning of the term "closer" as she interpreted it and vis-Ã -vis how the Ukraine or Russia did, based on Col. Wilkerson's earlier assessments). She then attempted to show it was a formal agreement or "treaty" between Russia, the U.S., the Ukraine and EU not to intervene there. Hence, when Putin dispatched troops to the Crimea he "violated it".
This is wrong on several counts. First, what Maddow referenced was not a formal document but a diplomatic agreement. This meant it did not carry any treaty obligations, including for the U.S. to "defend" the Ukraine, or for Russia never to intrude. What Maddow also neglected to mention in her set piece (and yes it was great to have those nuclear weapons disassembled), is that while Russia kept her part of the bargain, the U.S. didn't. NATO expansion continued under Clinton. To his credit, Clinton didn't launch an attack on Iraq in 1998 as the Neocons demanded (that had to wait their installation of Gee Dumbya in 2001) but his expansion of NATO partly laid the path to what's unfolding now.
The problem is that Maddow avoided all of this like the plague. Why? If her work on the documentary 'Why We Did It' is a barometer, she ought to have brought the same ferocity and truth-telling to the fore on the Ukraine, but she held back. Why? In fact, she had a pro-Maidan compact, "Ukrainian lobby" American congress woman on as guest who merely stoked the airwaves with more anti-Russian propaganda - as if the Neocon controlled media (like The Washington Post) haven't done enough in that regard.
Second, even the CIA in an LA Times story yesterday, acknowledged that "a 1997 treaty between Russia and Ukraine allows up to 25,000 Russian troops in the vital Crimea region" - thereby scotching the nonsense that Putin "invaded Crimea", certainly in his mind this is balderdash given all actions are in conformance with said treaty, see e.g.
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-intelligence-russia-ukraine-20140303,0,4657644.story#axzz2uy8lfu8m
True, CIA director Brennan "doesn't believe this justified Russia's moves", but I revert back to what Col. Wilkerson (Ret.) noted above - that given the U.S. neocons conducted a putsch, a coup - he WAS justified and Wilkerson would have done it too if in Putin's place as he himself noted.
Then there was the WaPo's Eugene Robinson, perhaps the last relatively liberal voice and columnist on what has become a nonstop cheerleader for Neocon-Neoliberal foolishness. In his column yesterday ('Who are We To Judge Russia') he certainly hits the nail right on the head in his opening paragraph:
"Let’s be real. It’s one thing to say that Russia’s takeover of the Crimean Peninsula “cannot be allowed to stand,” as many foreign policy sages have proclaimed. It’s quite another to do something about it.
Is it just me, or does the rhetoric about the crisis in Ukraine sound as if all of Washington is suffering from amnesia? We’re supposed to be shocked — shocked! — that a great military power would cook up a pretext to invade a smaller, weaker nation? I’m sorry, but has everyone forgotten the unfortunate events in Iraq a few years ago?"
But from there he veers off into less relevant piffle and issues, including falling into the Neocon propaganda meme trap, i.e. that his "sentiments are with the legitimate Ukrainian government, not with the neo-imperialist regime in Russia" Again, failing to see that the government controlled by Nuland's and the Neocon's pawn "Yats" (Arseniy Yatsenuk ) is in fact NOT legit, but was installed after a coup - the same one Col. Lawence Wilkerson acknowledged had occurred in his interview with Chris Hayes. (See also “Cheering a ‘Democratic’ Coup in Ukraine.”)
Hence, with Robinson's weight behind the illegit American puppet Arseniy Yatsenuk it's not surprising he doesn't pursue the Neocon -NED links to the putsch in Kiev. WHY not? Are the Neocons THAT powerful in the Beltway that they have everyone by the balls? Why are ALL the professed liberal voices so intimidated? Are they afraid they will lose their jobs if they come out even the slightest in a way that might be construed "pro-Russian"?
What has become ever more apparent to me the past week, is that if intelligent Americans really want to find out the cause and basis of the current crisis, they will have to dig much deeper than any American corporate news source. All of them are laden with propaganda, disinformation and outright untruths - in varying amounts. Pick your poison. Even the relatively liberal MSNBC has fallen under the "blame Russia" meme. Sadly, even when shows like Chris Hayes 'All In' feature informed guests - like Col. Wilkerson - with an opportunity for background and backstory - there seems to be the incentive to punk out, as opposed to pursuing the truth. Even if that truth leads to the door of a U.S.-sponsored coup, and installation of a figure head pawn.
But as I noted repeatedly before, in my assorted blog posts on the JFK assassination in November, if we don't become more conversant with what really happened in our own history, we will be at the mercy of any brain-twisting propaganda that comes along. And these days, believe me, there's a LOT of it.
At least blog readers can be assured I will do my utmost to keep them properly informed and especially on who they can trust and who they can't!
See also: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-lindorff/54577/not-funny-but-it-s-still-hard-not-to-laugh-how-can-the-us-accuse-russia-of-violating-international-la
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/daniel-patrick-welch/54587/blessing-in-disguise-ukraine-may-be-the-last-straw-if-it-doesnt-kill-us-all
and
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/ted-rall/54581/the-four-horsemen-of-the-american-apocalypse
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