U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday condemned Russia's 'incredible act of aggression' in Ukraine and threatened economic sanctions by the United States and allies to isolate Moscow.
'You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text,' Kerry told the CBS program 'Face the Nation.'
De stelling dat een staat 'zich in de 21ste eeuw gewoonweg niet [gedraagt] op een 19de eeuwse manier door een land binnen te vallen op grond van een volstrekt verzonnen voorwendsel' werd door de westerse mainstream media die zich afficheren als de 'vrije pers' ongeclausuleerd verspreid als een relevant argument uit de mond van de Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken. Maar zo prominent als deze bewering door de westerse massamedia werd verspreid zo angstvallig wordt de context verzwegen waarin dergelijke uitspraken worden gedaan. Zelfs de schijn van onafhankelijk laten mijn mainstream collega's in tijden van crisis onmiddellijk vallen en tonen ze een kadaverdiscipline die toch telkens weer verbijsterend is. De angst hun status en inkomen te verliezen bepalen hun weerzinwekkend opportunisme en conformisme. Daarom de feiten. John Kerry dus, volgens de informatie van kritische Amerikaanse journalisten:
Kerry was an outspoken supporter of the Bush Doctrine, which declares that the United States has the right to unilaterally invade foreign countries, topple their governments, and occupy them indefinitely if they are deemed to pose even a hypothetical threat against the United States. In 2002, he voted against an unsuccessful resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq only if the United Nations Security Council permitted such force under the UN Charter and instead voted for an alternative Republican resolution, which authorized President Bush to invade that oil-rich country unilaterally in violation of the UN Charter.
The October 2002 war resolution backed by Kerry was not like the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution regarding Vietnam, where there was no time for reflection and debate. Kerry had been briefed by the chief UN weapons inspector and by prominent scholars of the region, who informed him of the likely absence of any of the alleged 'weapons of mass destruction' and the likely consequences of a U.S. invasion, but he voted to authorize the invasion anyway. It was not a 'mistake' or a momentary lapse of judgment. It demonstrated Kerry’s dismissive attitude toward fundamental principles of international law and international treaties that prohibit aggressive war….
Senator Kerry’s embrace of unilateralism and his rejection of the United Nations system was further illustrated in his attacks on former Vermont governor Howard Dean—who had been a rival for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination—for arguing that a genuine international coalition should have been established before the United States invaded Iraq. Kerry claimed that such multilateralism 'cedes our security and presidential responsibility to defend America to someone else' since it would 'permit a veto over when American can or cannot act.' Dean’s call for the United States to work in broad coalitions, insisted Kerry, is 'little more than a pretext for doing nothing.'
Even after the Bush administration acknowledged that there were no 'weapons of mass destruction' or WMD programs, Kerry said he would have voted for the war anyway because of the oppressive nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the fact that Iraq could potentially make WMDs in the future. What is disturbing about this is that there are scores of oppressive governments around the world that could conceivably pose some kind of threat at some time in the future. Kerry apparently believes that the president should have the power to go after any of them right now.
Even conservative analysts like Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma and later a lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, criticized what he called Kerry’s 'recklessly prowar positions,' arguing that Kerry’s criteria for going to war were 'wildly aggressive.' Correctly referring to Kerry as an 'über-militarist,' Edwards observed, 'I know of no leading American 'hawk,' not even among the most militant of the neocons, who has said he or she would have supported going to war if it were absolutely known that the perceived ‘imminent threat’ did not exist.'
It appears that Kerry has not changed his hawkish view. As recently as November 2011, Kerry voted against a resolution which would have repealed the 2002 authorization for the use of force in Iraq.
Kerry basically rejects the UN Charter and the whole basis of the post-World War II international legal system, which is based on the notion of collective security and the illegality of any nation launching an aggressive war. In Kerry’s view, powerful nations like the United States can invade any country they want if they determine that it might hypothetically pose some kind of threat someday in the future. To have someone with this extremist position as secretary of state sends a message to the international community that little has changed since the Bush administration.
Opposition to International Law – Israel
Iraq is not the only example of Kerry’s hostility toward international law, however. An outspoken supporter of the policies of a series of right-wing Israeli governments in the occupied territories, Kerry has defended the Israeli re-occupation of sections of the West Bank; Israel's ongoing violation of a series of UN Security Council resolutions; Israel's policy of assassinating suspected militants and other Palestinian leaders; former rightist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposed annexation of vast stretches of occupied Palestinian territory in order to incorporate illegal Jewish settlements into Israel; moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; opposing Palestinian self-determination or UN recognition of statehood outside of parameters agreed to by Israel’s right wing government; and the Israeli government’s construction of an illegal separation wall deep inside occupied territory (in defiance of a recent near-unanimous ruling by the International Court of Justice, which led Kerry to strongly criticize the UN’s judicial body).
Kerry defended Israel’s 2010 attack on an unarmed humanitarian flotilla in international waters, during which they killed nine crewmen—including a 19-year-old American citizen—despite the attack’s violation of international maritime law. Despite the ships being inspected prior to leaving the port of a NATO ally, Kerry justified the fatal raid on the unarmed ships on the grounds that Israel had every right 'to make sure weapons are not being smuggled in.'
In the face of international outcry at Israeli’s 2006 war on Lebanon and 2008-2009 war on the Gaza Strip, Kerry joined Republican Senate colleagues in co-sponsoring resolutions unconditionally supporting the attacks. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and others condemned both Israel and the Arab militias for apparent war crimes, but Kerry insisted that Israel’s actions constituted legitimate self-defense and were perfectly legal. Kerry also attacked a well-documented 575-page report by the UNHRC, led by a team of reputable international jurists, which presented evidence of war crimes by both Hamas and Israel during the 2008-2009 fighting. Kerry insisted that attacks by Israel (which were responsible for over 800 civilian deaths) were perfectly legal, attributing the entire fault to Hamas (which was responsible for three civilian deaths). Despite longstanding international legal conventions against bombing civilian-populated areas, Kerry insisted that Israel’s entire military operation constituted legitimate self-defense.
Kerry’s hostility toward international humanitarian law came into particular focus in 2004, when he launched a series of attacks against the International Court of Justice. That summer, the World Court issued a unanimous (save for the U.S. judge) advisory opinion that Israel—like all countries—is bound by international humanitarian law and that the separation barrier being built inside the occupied West Bank was illegal.
In response, Kerry cosponsored a Senate resolution 'supporting the construction by Israel of a security fence to prevent Palestinian terrorist attacks, condemning the decision of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the security fence, and urging no further action by the United Nations to delay or prevent the construction of the security fence.' Kerry’s resolution claimed that 'the International Court of Justice is politicized and critical of Israel' since 'The United States, Korea, and India have constructed security fences to separate such countries from territories or other countries for the security of their citizens.' Kerry’s comparison, however, fails to note that the other barriers, unlike Israel’s, were placed along internationally recognized borders and were therefore not the subject of legal challenge. The Court explicitly affirmed Israel’s right to construct the barrier on their border, just not in foreign territory under Israeli occupation. Rather than displaying a bias against Israel, the World Court has actually been quite consistent: In the only other two advisory opinions issued by the ICJ involving occupied territories (South African-occupied Namibia in 1972 and Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara in 1975), they also ruled against the occupying power.
In the case of the occupied West Bank, however, Kerry insisted, that the World Court 'do[es] not have jurisdiction' and that any legal challenges to the route of the wall should go through the Israeli judiciary 'and we should respect that process.' In other words, Kerry takes an extreme position, effectively saying that legal matters involving international humanitarian law in territories under foreign belligerent occupation should be addressed solely by the courts of the occupying power. Part of this may be that he doesn’t even recognized territory invaded by U.S. allies as occupied. Kerry’s Senate resolution against the World Court decision, had it passed, would have marked the first time either house of Congress has passed a resolution that refers to the West Bank not as an “occupied” territory but as 'disputed.' This distinction is important for two reasons: the word 'disputed' implies that the claims of the West Bank’s Israeli conquerors are as legitimate as the claims of Palestinians who have lived on the land for centuries, and disputed territories—unlike occupied territories—are not covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention and many other international legal statutes.
Despite rationalizing for his support for the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Iraq was violating a series of UN Security Council resolutions, when U.S. allies have defied UN Security Council resolutions, Kerry has defended them. For example, he has supported Israel’s annexation of occupied East Jerusalem, which Israeli forces seized in June 1967, despite a series of UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Israel rescind its annexation (such as resolutions 262 and 267). He has also opposed efforts to block Israeli efforts to colonize large sections of the West Bank, despite a series of resolutions calling on Israel to withdraw from these illegal settlements (such as resolutions 446, 452, 465, and 471).
Thus, in John Kerry’s world, the United States alone can decide which United Nations Security Council resolutions to enforce and how they are enforced. No less than President Bush, Kerry seeks to effectively overturn the post-World War II international system based upon the rule of law and collective security in order to forcibly impose a Pax Americana.
Credibility Problems
A U.S. secretary of state, even one as far to the right as John Kerry, must not be perceived as dishonest. Repeatedly being caught making blatant falsehoods in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary does not give America’s chief diplomat the kind of credibility our country needs to conduct relations with foreign nations.
Unfortunately, Kerry’s credibility has repeatedly been put into question by his willingness to either fabricate non-existent threats or naively believe transparently false and manipulated intelligence claiming such threats exist—such as when he chose to ignore a plethora of evidence from weapons inspectors and independent arms control analysts who said that, prior to his vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq in October 2002, Iraq had already achieved at least qualitative disarmament.
In a speech on the Senate floor immediately prior to the vote, Senator Kerry categorically stated that Saddam Hussein was 'attempting to develop nuclear weapons.' However, there appears to be no evidence to suggest that Iraq had had an active nuclear program for at least eight to ten years prior to the U.S. invasion. Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in 1998 and subsequently that Iraq's nuclear program appeared to have been completely dismantled. To justify his claims of an Iraqi nuclear threat, Senator Kerry claimed that 'all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons.' The reality, of course, was that much of the U.S. intelligence community was highly skeptical of claims that Iraq was attempting to acquire nuclear materials, and this fact was widely circulated in academic journals, the mainstream media, and in intelligence reports.
In addition, despite being briefed to the contrary by former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and other arms control experts, Senator Kerry stated unequivocally that 'Iraq has chemical and biological weapons.' He even claimed that most elements of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs “are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.” He did not try to explain how this could be possible, given the limited shelf life of such chemical and biological agents and the strict embargo against imports of any additional banned materials that had been in place since 1990. The Massachusetts senator also asserted that authorizing a U.S. invasion of that oil-rich country was necessary since 'these weapons represent an unacceptable threat.'
However, despite inspections by the United Nations Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) and subsequent searches by U.S. forces, no chemical or biological weapons have been found.
Senator Kerry’s fabrications about Iraq did not stop there. He made similarly ludicrous claims that 'Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents, which could threaten Iraq’s neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf.' In a cynical effort to take advantage of Americans’ post-9/11 fears, Kerry went on to claim that 'Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States homeland.'
Again, no such Iraqi UAVs or other systems capable of delivering chemical and biological weapons have been found.
'Egyptians Following Right Path, Kerry Says,' read the New York Times headline Sunday trumpeting the secretary of state’s homage to ruthless military dictators who the very next day were scheduled to stage a show trial of Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
This was all part of a 'road map' to democracy 'being carried out to the best of our perception,' Kerry intoned, apparently embracing the calumny that the destruction of representative government in Egypt was always the American plan.
Kerry’s perception did not extend to the court farce the next day when Egypt’s duly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, held incommunicado for four months and denied access to his lawyers, was put on trial on accusations of causing violence among protesters in the streets, violence that paled in comparison to the deliberate killing of civilians by an Egyptian military trained and financed by the government Kerry represents.
Indeed, the Obama administration has refused to categorize the Egyptian military’s overthrow of the Morsi government as a coup, for fear that would automatically trigger the legal requirement of a cutoff of most of the $1.5 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian military. Kerry was at great pains to assure Egyptian reporters that even the temporary hold on some weapons that the U.S. had implemented was not intended to penalize the Egyptian military for destroying Egypt’s experiment in democracy.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/pay_no_attention_to_that_imperialist_behind_the_curtain_20131104
Jonathan Steele, writing for Guardian, argues that both the US and the EU need to ratchet down both their rhetoric and threats. He contends the only real solution to the turmoil in Ukraine is one which respects the rights and aspirations of all Ukrainians. Matching Cohen's analysis in some way regarding NATO's encroachment, Steele writes:
'Both John Kerry's threats to expel Russia from the G8 and the Ukrainian government's plea for Nato aid mark a dangerous escalation of a crisis that can easily be contained if cool heads prevail. Hysteria seems to be the mood in Washington and Kiev, with the new Ukrainian prime minister claiming, ''We are on the brink of disaster" as he calls up army reserves in response to Russian military movements in Crimea.
Were he talking about the country's economic plight he would have a point. Instead, along with much of the US and European media, he was over-dramatising developments in the east, where Russian speakers are understandably alarmed after the new Kiev authorities scrapped a law allowing Russian as an official language in their areas. They see it as proof that the anti-Russian ultra-nationalists from western Ukraine who were the dominant force in last month's insurrection still control it. Eastern Ukrainians fear similar tactics of storming public buildings could be used against their elected officials.
As for Russia's involvement, it should at least be seen in light of its own interests and the legality of the military intervention. Even if not justified, says Steele, it must be compared to that of other world powers who now wave their finger at Moscow with such hypocrisy. He concludes:
'Vladimir Putin's troop movements in Crimea, which are supported by most Russians, are of questionable legality under the terms of the peace and friendship treaty that Russia signed with Ukraine in 1997. But their illegality is considerably less clear-cut than that of the US-led invasion of Iraq, or of Afghanistan, where the UN security council only authorized the intervention several weeks after it had happened. And Russia's troop movements can be reversed if the crisis abates. That would require the restoration of the language law in eastern Ukraine and firm action to prevent armed groups of anti-Russian nationalists threatening public buildings there.
The Russian-speaking majority in the region is as angry with elite corruption, unemployment and economic inequality as people in western Ukraine. But it also feels beleaguered and provoked, with its cultural heritage under existential threat. Responsibility for eliminating those concerns lies not in Washington, Brussels or Moscow, but solely in Kiev.'
Ondertussen gaat de westerse propaganda in de mainstream media gewoon door. Ook de polderpers is weer helemaal in de achterhaalde Koude Oorlogsretoriek geschoten. De met de Anne Vondelingprijs beloonde voormalige NRC-correspondente in Brussel van de EU en de NAVO, Caroline de Gruyter schreef in haar column van zaterdag 8 maart, wereldvrouwendag, zonder enige reserve dat de 'Russische president alles in termen van macht [ziet],' terwijl volgens een anonieme 'betrokkene' in Brussel zou hebben gezegd dat 'Wij die taal niet [spreken]. Wij hebben het over processen, over afspraken.' De 'afspraken' en 'processen' die er bijvoorbeeld toe leiden dat Europese Unie nu de belangrijkste handelspartner is van Israel, dat doorgaat het internationaal recht te schenden. 'Poetin ziet alles in machtstermen,' stelt mevrouw De Gruyter zonder kennelijk te beseffen dat elke grootmacht door de hele geschiedenis heen 'in machtstermen' denkt en handelt. Minister Kerry is daar nu juist zo'n treffend voorbeeld van. Maar omdat het polderdenken zo diep verankerd ligt in de poldermentaliteit van de polderjournalisten verzuimt Caroline de Gruyter haar publiek duidelijk te maken dat het echte gevaar voor Europa niet Poetin, maar Obama is. Opmerkelijk is ook haar volgende voorstelling van zaken:
Ze (EU. svh) moeten hem (Poetin. svh) ook sussen over de NAVO. Daarin zijn de Amerikanen dominant. Die wilden Oekraïne en Georgië NAVO-lid maken…'
Caroline de Gruyter, NRC: 'Poetin ziet alles in machtstermen...'
Aangezien De Gruyter de Anne Vondeling-prijs heeft gekregen voor haar berichtgeving, moeten we ervan uitgaan dat zij de betekenis begrijpt van het begrip sussen: 'met kalmerende woorden rustig maken. Voorbeelden: 'een kind in slaap sussen,' bedaren, kalmeren.' Poetin moet dus tot 'bedaren' worden gebracht, 'gekalmeerd' worden, terwijl, zo suggereert de NRC-columniste, er in feite geen vuiltje aan de lucht is wat betreft de NAVO en Rusland. Ook dit is een vertekening van de werkelijkheid. Allereerst verzwijgt zij het feit dat Rusland tot tweemaal toe door een Europees land is aangevallen, onder Napoleon door Frankrijk, onder Hitler door Duitsland. Bij de laatste inval kwamen 26.6 miljoen Russen om het leven, tenminste 10 miljoen van hen burgers, alles bijeen 13,44 procent van de bevolking, procentueel bijna het zesvoudige van het aantal oorlogsdoden in Nederland tussen '40 en '45. Als we dit extrapoleren dan waren er tijdens de nazi-bezetting tenminste 1,2 miljoen Nederlanders om het leven gekomen. Het moet voor iedereen duidelijk zijn dat de ervaring de Russen heeft geleerd de agressie van het Westen te vrezen. Ook daarom is het interessant te lezen wat Vladimir Kozin schreef in een artikel van 2 maart 2013. Hij is 'a member of an interagency working group attached to the Russian presidential administration discussing missile defense issues with NATO, and is a leading researcher with the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies.' Vladimir Kozin:
U.S.-NATO Missile System: First-Strike Potential Aimed At Russia
U.S. operational missile defense systems to be deployed in Romania and Poland in 2015 and 2018, respectively, are not designed to intercept potential ballistic missiles launched by Iran…The only purpose of the U.S. missile defense equipment deployed in Europe is to destroy Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Russia would also like to know in what maritime areas the U.S. plans to base long-range interceptors. ..Will the U.S. ground-based anti-ballistic missiles, to be deployed at the Deveselu base in Romania and near the Polish town of Redzikovo, be replaced with more capable ones, thus augmenting their capability to cancel out Russian nuclear deterrence forces?
Why has the U.S. Air Force completed building new underground warehouses at 13 air bases in six NATO member countries to store precision nuclear air bombs designed to destroy hard targets?
[T]he Americans completely exclude from the negotiations such important non-nuclear weapons as anti-missile systems, anti-satellite weapons and high-precision capabilities that could perform lightning strikes in any part of the world…
the U.S. is floating new arms-control proposals to obscure its far-reaching plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons and the missile defense shield, destabilizing the global political and military environment and undermining the fragile strategic and military balance between Moscow and Washington that took several decades to establish. For instance, building up combat and data-collection missile defense equipment while reducing strategic offensive weapons could lead to a dangerous situation described by U.S. leaders back in the 1960s and ’70s as the nuclear missiles and anti-ballistic missiles arms race. Such an imbalance could tempt the U.S. to launch a first nuclear strike.
This is why, no matter how White House proposals are presented, Russia’s defense interests will not be served by a further reduction of its strategic offensive weapons against the background of a U.S. buildup of missile defense capabilities around the world. Russia’s updated foreign policy, issued in mid-February, says our country has consistently supported constructive cooperation with the U.S. in the area of arms control, including taking into consideration the unbreakable link between strategic offensive and defensive capabilities and the urgency of making the nuclear disarmament process multilateral. It also assumes that negotiations on a further reduction of offensive nuclear weapons are possible “only taking into consideration all the factors affecting global strategic stability, without any exceptions.” […]
Quite frankly, instead of thinking how to encircle Russia with nuclear and missile defense weapons, the American side should think about how it can work together with us and other interested parties to prevent meteorites from raining down on our planet.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
Bernays, die die volgens Life Magazine één van de honderd invloedrijkste mensen in de twintigste eeuw is geweest, stelde het volgende:
If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.
Hij noemde
this scientific technique of opinion-molding the 'engineering of consent.'
Bernays was ervan overtuigd dat de elite zich moest concentreren op ‘regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.’ De Amerikaanse geleerde Noam Chomsky schreef over hem:
Bernays was drawing from his experience in Woodrow Wilson’s state propaganda agency, the Committee on Public Information. 'It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind,' he wrote. His goal was to adapt these experiences to the need of the 'intelligent minorities,' primarily business leaders, whose task is 'The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses.' Such 'engineering of consent' is the very 'essence of the democratic process,' Bernays wrote shortly before he was honoured for his contributions by the American Psychological Association in 1949. The importance of “controlling the public mind” has been recognized with increasing clarity as popular struggles succeeded in extending the modalities of democracy, thus giving rise to what liberal elites call 'the crisis of democracy' as when normally passive and apathetic populations become organized and seek to enter the political arena to pursue their interests and demands, threatening stability and order. As Bernays explained the problem, with 'universal suffrage and universal schooling… at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people. For the masses promised to become king,' a tendency fortunately reversed – so it has been hoped – as new methods 'to mold the mind of the masses' were devised and implemented.’
Een dergelijke ‘engineering of consent' was volgens Bernays juist de 'essence of the democratic process.'
Het was deze Edward Bernays, neef van Freud, die in zijn boek Crystallizing Public Opinion al in 1923 over en voor zijn rijke opdrachtgevers schreef:
The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been possible so to mould the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.
Het spreekt voor zich dat hij vorstelijk beloond werd voor zijn inzicht in 'the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses,' dat een 'indispensable feature of democratic society' is geworden, zoals hij zelf het zo treffend omschreef. Vanaf toen wist de 'intelligent few,' deze 'invisible wire pullers,' hoe ze 'continuously and systematically' de voorname taak van 'regimenting the public mind' het best konden uitvoeren. De zogeheten 'vrije pers' heeft in dit proces een doorslaggevende rol zoals we nu weer over de hele breedte van het media-aanbod kunnen zien. Dit feit is zo voortreffelijk geformuleerd door Frits van Exter, de voormalige hoofdredacteur van Trouw, en huidige hoofdredacteur van Vrij Nederland, toe hij over 'De conditionering van de kudde' het volgende verklaarde:
Lezers horen wantrouwend te zijn tegenover de media ... De aandacht van de media [wordt] natuurlijk voor een belangrijk deel gestuurd … door de politieke machten… Dat geldt voor de nationale politiek, maar natuurlijk ook voor de internationale politiek… Het heeft voor een deel te maken met de vluchtigheid van het medium. Deels ook volgen de media elkaar, sommige zijn dominanter, en andere lijden aan kuddegedrag… Als je volgend bent, dan betekent dat als een autoriteit, of iemand die gekozen is om een bepaald gezag uit te oefenen, zegt 'ik vind dit een belangrijk onderwerp, daar gaan we nou es wat aan doen,' dat je dat ook bekijkt. De dingen waar hij het niet over heeft, die volg je dus minder… het werkt voor een deel reflexmatig. Reflexen zijn het, je bent daar geconditioneerd in.
Ik zou het werkelijk niet treffender hebben kunnen formuleren, vandaar dat ik graag Van Exter's woorden citeer, waarbij ik nog opmerkt dat voor de 'conditionering van de kudde,' de Makkianen door de macht worden geprezen en beloond.
'You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.' Wie moet wie 'in slaap sussen'?
Morgen meer.
'You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text,' Kerry told the CBS program 'Face the Nation.'
Putin’s Ukraine adventure a gift to Netanyahu
By Uri Avnery
Binyamin Netanyahu is very good at making speeches, especially to Jews, neocons and such, who jump up and applaud wildly at everything he says, including that tomorrow the sun will rise in the west.
The question is: is he good at anything else?
His father, an ultra-ultra-rightist, once said about him that he is quite unfit to be prime minister, but that he could be a good foreign minister. What he meant was that Binyamin does not have the depth of understanding needed to guide the nation, but that he is good at selling any policy decided upon by a real leader…
This week Netanyahu was summoned to Washington. He was supposed to approve John Kerry’s new “framework” agreement, which would serve as a basis for restarting the peace negotiations, which so far have come to naught.
On the eve of the event, President Barack Obama gave an interview to a Jewish journalist, blaming Netanyahu for the stalling of the “peace process” – as if there had ever been a peace process.
In the US with a bag of empty slogans
Netanyahu arrived with an empty bag – meaning a bag full of empty slogans. The Israeli leadership had striven mightily for peace, but could not progress at all because of the Palestinians. It is Mahmoud Abbas who is to blame, because he refuses to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
What about the settlements, which have been expanding during the last year at a hectic pace? Why should the Palestinians negotiate endlessly, while at the same time the Israeli government takes more and more of the land which is the substance of the negotiations? (As the classic Palestinian argument goes: “We negotiate about dividing a pizza, and in the meantime Israel is eating the pizza.”)
Obama steeled himself to confront Netanyahu, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and its congressional stooges. He was about to twist the arms of Netanyahu until he cried “uncle” – the uncle being Kerry’s “framework”, which by now has been watered down to look almost like a Zionist manifesto. Kerry is frantic for an achievement, whatever its contents and discontents.
Netanyahu, looking for an instrument to rebuff the onslaught, was ready to cry as usual “Iran! Iran! Iran!” – when something unforeseen happened.
Napoleon famously exclaimed: 'Give me generals who are lucky!' He would have loved General Bibi.
Because, on the way to confront a newly invigorated Obama, there was an explosion that shook the world: Ukraine.
Enter Ukraine
It was like the shots that rang out in Sarajevo a hundred years ago.
The international tranquility was suddenly shattered. The possibility of a major war was in the air.
Netanyahu’s visit disappeared from the news. Obama, occupied with a historic crisis, just wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. Instead of the severe admonition of the Israeli leader, he got away with some hollow compliments. All the wonderful speeches Netanyahu had prepared were left unspeeched. Even his usual triumphant speech at AIPAC evoked no interest.
All because of the upheaval in Kiev.
By now, innumerable articles have been written about the crisis. Historical associations abound.
Though Ukraine means 'borderland,' it was often at the centre of European events. One must pity Ukrainian schoolchildren. The changes in the history of their country were constant and extreme. At different times Ukraine was a European power and a poor downtrodden territory, extremely rich ('the breadbasket of Europe') or abjectly poor, attacked by neighbours who captured its people to sell them as slaves or attacking its neighbours to enlarge its country.
Ukraine’s relationship with Russia is even more complex. In a way, Ukraine is the heartland of Russian culture, religion and orthography. Kiev was far more important than Moscow, before becoming the centrepiece of Muscovite imperialism.
In the Crimean War of the 1850s, Russia fought valiantly against a coalition of Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia, and eventually lost. The war broke out over Christian rights in Jerusalem, and included a long siege of Sevastopol. The world remembers the charge of the Light Brigade. A British woman called Florence Nightingale established the first organization to tend the wounded on the battlefield.
In my lifetime, Stalin murdered millions of Ukrainians by deliberate starvation. As a result, most Ukrainians welcomed the German Wehrmacht in 1941 as liberators. It could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but unfortunately Hitler was determined to eradicate the Ukrainian Untermenschen in order to integrate Ukraine into the German Lebensraum.
The Crimea suffered terribly. The Tatar people, who had ruled the peninsula in the past, were deported to Central Asia, then allowed to return decades later. Now they are a small minority, seemingly unsure of where their loyalties lie…
Netanyahu’s prayers answered
The relationship between Ukraine and the Jews is no less complicated.
Some Jewish writers, like Arthur Koestler and Shlomo Sand, believe that the Khazar empire that ruled the Crimea and neighbouring territory a thousand years ago, converted to Judaism, and that most Ashkenazi Jews are descended from them. This would turn us all into Ukrainians. (Many early Zionist leaders indeed came from Ukraine.)…
Where will this leave Netanyahu?
He has gained some months or years without any movement toward peace, and in the meantime can continue with the occupation and build settlements at a frantic pace.
That is the traditional Zionist strategy. Time is everything. Every postponement provides opportunities to create more facts on the ground.
Netanyahu’s prayers have been answered. God bless Putin.
http://www.redressonline.com/2014/03/putins-ukraine-adventure-a-gift-to-netanyahu
Peter Jenkins →
The West’s Ukraine Policy is Furrowing British Brows
British people who take an interest in what is happening abroad are perplexed and worried by the recent turn of events in Ukraine. They have difficulty understanding why the US and EU have been showing so little sensitivity to Russia’s vital security interests in the Ukraine; and they are not convinced that adequate thought has been given to identifying where the West’s true interests lie.
Russia has good reason to care about the strategic alignment of its neighbour to the South. As a former British ambassador to NATO reminded an audience recently, Ukraine is to Russia a bit what Ireland is, or was, to Britain.
Western politicians talk as though Russia’s attachment to the “sphere of influence” concept is reprehensible. Yet the US has long seen Latin America as a US sphere of influence and has not hesitated to act to keep unwelcome intruders out. How many of those who have condemned the sending of Russian troops to the Crimea as unlawful, and a threat to peace, remember the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, which amused neither Grenada’s head of state, Her Majesty the Queen, nor her Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher? And that’s only one example of US unlawful acts in the Latin American sphere.
Similarly, for centuries British leaders not only regarded the island to the West as a potential back-door into Britain that must not be allowed to come under hostile influence, let alone occupation; they also held to the principle that the Channel ports opposite Britain must be kept out of the hands of potentially hostile powers.
Even that paragon of 21st century soft power, the EU, has a “neighbourhood policy”, which is a sphere of influence policy by another name.
Perhaps US and European leaders believe that the Kremlin is wrong to see NATO and the EU as potentially hostile. If so, they underestimate the effect on Russian strategic perceptions of the eastward expansion of NATO since the reunification of Germany, and of NATO plans to station on the Russian periphery missiles that could be targeted against Russian assets, not to mention the huge sums of money that the US continues to spend on renewing its weapons of mass destruction, and on modernizing delivery systems.
Whereas Russia’s interest in avoiding a strategic realignment of the Ukraine is obvious, the West’s interest in encouraging a realignment is not.
Have EU leaders asked themselves whether European electorates will thank them if the overthrow of a democratically elected Ukrainian government leads to the EU having to subsidize Ukrainian agricultural production, open up EU labour markets to millions of Ukrainians, and channel tens of billions of Euros from EU structural and regional funds into developing Ukrainian infrastructure? The idea of fast-track Ukrainian accession to the EU, which is now in play, will lead in precisely that direction, and sooner rather than later.
Are NATO leaders considering the wisdom of giving Ukrainian nationalists reason to expect a future in which a Ukrainian government is entitled to demand that British or French soldiers die in defence of Kiev?
And to what extent have Western leaders weighed the possible consequences of the provocations they have been offering to Russia? Do heavily-indebted European states want to have to start rebuilding their armed forces to guard against a renewal of Russian hostility towards the Western democracies? Are leaders confident that they can end the humanitarian crisis in Syria without Russian cooperation? Are they sure they can dispense with Russian influence in Tehran and Pyongyang? Do they want to bring to an end the era of multilateral cooperation at the UN and in other global institutions that the demise of Soviet communism ushered in?
The potential consequences of the West’s handling of this latest Ukrainian crisis are so serious that a change of course is a necessity. There is an alternative to multiplying provocations and threatening Russia with dire but still-to-be-determined “consequences” (“I shall do such things, I know not what” says Shakespeare’s King Lear before madness overwhelms him). Far more constructive would be for the EU and US to invite Russia and China, and representatives of all shades of Ukrainian opinion, to a conference to discuss long-term arrangements for the security, prosperity and neutrality of the Ukraine. (A guarantee of neutrality akin to that in the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 is, surely, a promising way forward.)
Such Great Power conferences have long been a feature of European diplomacy. On the whole, they have done more good than harm. A conference now can offer an opportunity not only to resolve the Ukrainian crisis but to do so within the wider context of East/West relations. It is time the West made an effort to understand the resentments that have been accumulating in Russia since 1990, and to address the trust deficit that has been growing where it should have been shrinking — as Russia’s actions in recent days demonstrate all too clearly.
About the Author
Peter Jenkins was a British career diplomat for 33 years, following studies at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He served in Vienna (twice), Washington, Paris, Brasilia and Geneva. He specialized in global economic and security issues. His last assignment (2001-06) was that of UK Ambassador to the IAEA and UN (Vienna). Since 2006 he has represented the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, advised the Director of IIASA and set up a partnership, ADRgAmbassadors, with former diplomatic colleagues, to offer the corporate sector dispute resolution and solutions to cross-border problems. He was an associate fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy from 2010 to 2012. He writes and speaks on nuclear and trade policy issues.
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