Vanzelfsprekend ben ook ik gevleid, wanneer iemand die ik al 35 jaar ken schrijft dat 'je verdomd vaak gelijk hebt, en dat het vaak geen prettige mededelingen zijn die je te melden hebt,' om hieraan toe te voegen: 'Jij ziet veel dingen scherper en eerder.' Dus was ik blij verrast toen iemand mij erop attendeerde dat Geert Mak's commentaar in de NRC van 31 januari 2015 veel overeenkomsten vertoont met de visie die ik al een decennialang op deze weblog verwoord. Onder de kop: 'De Duitsers en wij leggen onze mierenmoraal op aan heel Europa,' vertelt opiniemaker Mak het mainstream-publiek zijn 'sprookje' van de mieren en de krekels, in makkelijk te bevatten beeldspraak en taal. Volgens de aanhef zit de zaak als volgt in elkaar:
Zuid-Europa zucht onder het juk van bezuinigen. Armoede en werkloosheid lopen op. Ooit vonden wij, Noord-Europeanen, dat een groot moreel probleem. Nu laat het ons ijskoud. En dus slaat Griekenland terug
Opnieuw gebruikt Mak tamelijk vage algemeenheden die niet worden verklaard, en die zoveel mogelijk de kool en de geit sparen, want de bestsellerauteur kan uit commerciële overwegingen natuurlijk niet zijn bestseller-publiek al teveel voor het hoofd stoten. Hoe gaat mijn oude kameraad te werk? Hij schrijft ondermeer het volgende:
Zeker, de eurobrand is voorlopig vakkundig gesmoord. Maar laten we wel wezen: de euro is en blijft een uiterst problematische munteenheid omdat het achttien zeer uiteenlopende economische culturen – met de nadruk op ‘cultuur’ – in één monetaire dwangbuis perst. Daardoor ontbreekt het binnen de eurozone aan de broodnodige monetaire flexibiliteit, en dat blokkeert overal de kansen op herstel. De rek binnen die dwangbuis werd tot nu toe voornamelijk bepaald door het noorden.
Hierbij gebeurt iets typisch Makkiaans. De populistische Mak verzwijgt de reden waarom en van wie 'achttien zeer uiteenlopende economische culturen' koste wat kost 'in één monetaire dwangbuis' moesten worden geperst. Een interessante vraag aangezien Zweden, Noorwegen, Denemarken en Groot-Brittannië niet meedoen aan de Euro. Bovendien is er in ondermeer Nederland nooit hierover een publieke discussie geweest. Wie heeft er dus belang gehad bij het invoeren van de Euro? Gezien het feit dat voor de banken en de rijken met hun neoliberale ideologie de economische crisis al in 2009 was afgelopen, en de kloof tussen arm en rijk binnen de EU blijft toenemen, is de Euro voor de bevolking geen vooruitgang geweest. Waarom verzwijgt Mak dit feit?
Daarnaast is Mak's veronderstelling dat alleen de 'monetaire dwangbuis' in de eurozone 'overal de kansen op herstel [blokkeert]' volstrekt onjuist, als wij tenminste rekening houden met het feit dat de rijken almaar rijker worden. Voor de neoliberale macht is er al zes jaar sprake van volledig 'herstel,' zoals Mak zou weten als hij bijvoorbeeld de beurzen had gevolg. Er is al geruime tijd sprake van 'Jobless Growth.' Er wordt met miljarden gespeculeerd, net zolang tot het gokspel weer explodeert. Mak's verzuim uiteen te zetten waarom precies de bureaucratische EU die 'dwangbuis' heeft ingesteld, wordt nog opvallender, wanneer men weet dat het EU-besluit tot stand kwam in nauwe samenwerking met wat hij in een onbewaakt ogenblik het 'grootkapitaal' heeft genoemd. Maar een dergelijke onbeschaamdheid over de kapitaalkrachtigen past niet in een krant als de NRC, die voor een aanzienlijk deel afhankelijk is van reclamegelden. Dit verklaart tevens waarom Mak een mistgordijn optrekt. De ware boosdoeners moeten zoveel mogelijk buiten beeld worden gehouden en als dit niet langer meer mogelijk is, moeten ze in elk geval anoniem blijven.
Het probleem is dat het hele opiniestuk in de NRC van vaagheden aan elkaar hangt. Ik geef een willekeurig voorbeeld: 'De rek binnen die dwangbuis werd tot nu toe voornamelijk bepaald door het noorden.' Met andere woorden: we wordeen hier achtereenvolgens geconfronteerd met een onverklaarbaar tot stand gekomen 'dwangbuis,' die 'voornamelijk door het noorden,' wordt aangegord. Door wie precies? De bevolking? De economische macht? Of de politici van 'links' zowel als 'rechts,' die de dictaten van de neoliberale ideologie gehoorzamen, omdat 'Er geen alternatief [is] voor de maatschappelijke constellatie die we nu hebben en dus heeft het geen enkele zin daar naar te streven,' zoals de PVDA-voorman Wim Kok het ooit formuleerde? Zelfs de SP stemde onmiddellijk voor miljardensteun aan de speculerende en frauderende banken. Deze werkelijkheid blijft bij Mak verhult achter een berg woorden, die geen verklaring bieden voor de huidige stand van zaken. Geert Mak beschrijft slechts wat iedereen al geruime tijd weet, namelijk dat 'de democratie' is uitgehold door de democratische politici zelf die de politieke beleid in handen hebben gegeven van de economische macht. Maar zijn beschrijving is geen verklaring. De vraag blijft: waarom is dit alles tot stand gekomen? Waarom heeft 'links' geen 'alternatief voor de maatschappelijke constellatie,' waarbij op dit moment 85 miljardairs evenveel bezitten als de helft van de hele mensheid, die van één tot twee dollar per dag moet zien te overleven. Ik stel die vraag omdat Mak's door autoriteiten zo geprezen bestseller In Europa (2004) eindigde met de conclusie dat
Europa als vredesproces een eclatant succes [was]. Europa als economische eenheid is ook een eind op weg.
Het neoliberalisme was toen al zo ver 'op weg' dat het inmiddels wereldwijd de macht had overgenomen, zonder dat Mak dit doorhad. Waarschijnlijk omdat hij 'niet zonder hoop' kon, 'Stan, dat klinkt misschien wat pathetisch, maar het is toch zo.' En die hoop werd geprojecteerd in het neoliberalisme, waarbij de democratische greep op de economische macht tot een minimum werd teruggebracht. Dit alles omdat mijn geschoolde generatiegenoten, behorend tot de 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder, volgens eigen zeggen, geen 'alternatief' bezaten.
Zij, net als ik, behoorden in de jaren zestig tot wat de invloedrijke Amerikaanse intellectueel Paul Goodman in zijn baanbrekende boek Growing Up Absurd (1960) de 'disaffected youth who are articulate' noemde, en van wie hij één van de belangrijkste woordvoerders werd. Goodman was als eerste in staat onze afkeer tegen 'the system' duidelijk te formuleren. De vraag was toen, net als nu, waarom niet meer burgers het dominante bestel bekritiseerden. Volgens Paul Goodman was deze vraag
Zij, net als ik, behoorden in de jaren zestig tot wat de invloedrijke Amerikaanse intellectueel Paul Goodman in zijn baanbrekende boek Growing Up Absurd (1960) de 'disaffected youth who are articulate' noemde, en van wie hij één van de belangrijkste woordvoerders werd. Goodman was als eerste in staat onze afkeer tegen 'the system' duidelijk te formuleren. De vraag was toen, net als nu, waarom niet meer burgers het dominante bestel bekritiseerden. Volgens Paul Goodman was deze vraag
an important one and the answer is, I think, a terrible one: that people are so bemused by the way business and politics are carried on at present, with all their intricate relationships, that they have ceased to be able to imagine alternatives. We seem to have lost our genius for inventing changes to satisfy crying needs.
But this stupor is inevitably the baleful influence of the very kind of organizational network that we have: the system pre-emits the available means and capital; it buys up as much of the intelligence as it can and muffles the voices of dissent; ad then it irrefutably proclaims that itself is the only possibility of society, for nothing else is thinkable. Let me give a couple of examples of how this works. Suppose (as is the case) that a group of radio and TV broadcasters, competing in the… fashion of semi-monopolies, control all the stations and channels in an area, amassing the capital and variously bribing Communications Commissioners in order to get them; and the broadcasters tailor their programs to meet the requirements of their advertisers, of the censorship, of their own slick and clique tastes, and of a broad common denominator of the audience, none of whom may be offended: they will then claim not only that the public wants the drivel that they give them, but indeed that nothing else is being created.
Het is buitengewoon wrang dat juist de generatie die in de jaren zestig en zeventig de vitale posten in de samenleving ging bekleden, met als leuze 'de verbeelding aan de macht,' vandaag de dag publiekelijk meedelen dat ze geen 'alternatief' bezitten voor de desastreuze neoliberale doctrine. Vanuit dit bewustzijn is verklaarbaar waarom Geert Mak in 2004 beweerde dat 'Europa als economische eenheid ook een eind op weg' was en nog in 2013 liet weten dat 'Jorwert zonder Brussel' onmogelijk was geworden, aangezien de neoliberale
EU een markt [is] van bijna een half miljard mensen met de hoogste gemiddelde levensstandaard ter wereld. Alleen al voor Nederland is de Unie goed voor tweederde van onze totale export, een vijfde van het nationale product. We hebben nu een open toegang tot die markt. Gaan we die deur echt dichtgooien?
Het was niet voor niets dat Goodman meer dan een halve eeuw geleden erop wees dat 'This pre-empting of the means and the brains by the organization, and the shutting out of those who do not conform, can go so far as to cause delusions.'
Eén van de gevolgen van deze 'waan' is dat
people put up with a system because 'there are no alternatives.' And when one cannot think of anything to do, soon one ceases to think at all.
Dit verklaart grotendeels de houding van Geert Mak en zijn grote populariteit onder het mainstream-publiek. Hoewel er voor hem nog in 2013 geen alternatief voor het neoliberale Brussel bestond, gaf hij zijn publiek toch nog een hoopvolle verwachting mee, namelijk dat het ooit eens goed gaat komen. Ondertussen dépolitiseert hij met zijn opportunistisch gewauwel de belangrijkste politieke vraagstukken van onze tijd, en dit maakt hem zo'n populaire opiniemaker voor de mainstream-pers. Daardoor blijft
The idea of directly addressing crying objective public needs, like shelter or education, and using our immense and indeed surplus resources to satisfy them, anathema. For in the great interlocking system of corporations people live not by attending to the job, but by the status, role playing, and tenure, and they work to maximize profits, prestige, or votes regardless of utility or even public disutility — that is, the plethora of cars has now become a public disutility, but automobile companies continue to manufacture them and persuade people to buy them,
aldus Goodman in Growing Up Absurd, waarvan in 2012 een heruitgave verscheen. Het tragische is dat voor de meesten van mijn geschoolde Nederlandse generatiegenoten, de jaren zestig nooit een doorleefde werkelijkheid is geweest. Ze profiteerden van de vernieuwingen, verwierven er hun status en inkomen mee, en dreven vervolgens mee met de tijdgeest die in de jaren tachtig omsloeg. 'De rek is eruit,' zo schreef Mak zelf in 1980 in De Groene Amsterdammer, en op zoek naar een publiek paste hij zich aan. 'De verbeelding aan de macht' bleek in werkelijkheid het eeuwige pragmatische opportunisme van het poldermodel. Dus doofde de vernieuwingsvlam en begonnen ze te zoeken naar erkenning, naar bevestiging en schouderklopjes van de macht. Zo schoven de meesten via het middenveld op naar de rechtervleugel. En daar proberen ze het neoliberalisme te rechtvaardigen met leuzen als 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel.' Terwijl Mak enerzijds constateert dat Europa in de greep is van wat hij het 'grootkapitaal' betitelt, 'die ons totaal ontglipt en waar je niks tegen kunt doen,' beweert hij anderzijds dat de 'kracht van onze westerse samenleving onze democratie [is], onze variatie in ideeën, onze tolerantie, onze openheid tegenover andere culturen,' om een week later weer met evenveel stelligheid te poneren:
nu heeft Syriza gesproken, binnenkort is Podemos in Spanje aan de beurt en meer zal er volgen. Een kind kon deze ontwikkeling voorspellen. In de vermageringskuur draaide immers alles om de financiële markten en het vertrouwen van de financiële sector. Dat moest tot iedere prijs worden behouden. Daarvoor is het vertrouwen van de Europese bevolking in het Europese project rücksichtslos opgeofferd – met alle sociale en politieke gevolgen van dien…
De chaos in zijn hoofd is kenmerkend voor het opportunisme en conformisme van mijn generatiegenoten voor wie de last van de vrijheid te zwaar werd, hun eigen verantwoordelijkheid niet meer konden accepteren, met alle winden meewaaiden, en die vóór alles onderdeel wilden zijn van de 'politiek-literaire elite' van de gevestigde orde. En daarom kan ik oprecht stellen dat bij nader inzien ik helemáál niet gevleid ben dat Geert Mak mij, overigens zonder mijn naam te noemen, meermaals letterlijk citeert. Meer hierover later.
War Is the New Normal: 7 Deadly Reasons Why America’s Wars Persist
February 1, 2015
Photo Credit: Oleg Zabielin/Shutterstock.com
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It was launched immediately after the 9/11 attacks, when I was still in the military, and almost immediately became known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT. Pentagon insiders called it “the long war,” an open-ended, perhaps unending, conflict against nations and terror networks mainly of a radical Islamist bent. It saw the revival of counterinsurgency doctrine, buried in the aftermath of defeat in Vietnam, and a reinterpretation of that disaster as well. Over the years, its chief characteristic became ever clearer: a “Groundhog Day” kind of repetition. Just when you thought it was over (Iraq, Afghanistan), just after victory (of a sort) was declared, it began again.
Now, as we find ourselves enmeshed in Iraq War 3.0, what better way to memorialize the post-9/11 American way of war than through repetition. Back in July 2010, I wrote an article for TomDispatch on the seven reasons why America can’t stop making war. More than four years later, with the war on terror still ongoing, with the mission eternally unaccomplished, here’s a fresh take on the top seven reasons why never-ending war is the new normal in America. In this sequel, I make only one promise: no declarations of victory (and mark it on your calendars, I’m planning to be back with seven new reasons in 2019).
1. The privatization of war: The U.S. military’s recourse to private contractors has strengthened the profit motive for war-making and prolonged wars as well. Unlike the citizen-soldiers of past eras, the mobilized warrior corporations of America’s new mercenary moment -- the Halliburton/KBRs (nearly $40 billion in contracts for the Iraq War alone), the DynCorps ($4.1 billion to train 150,000 Iraqi police), and the Blackwater/Xe/Academis ($1.3 billion in Iraq, along with boatloads of controversy) -- have no incentive to demobilize. Like most corporations, their business model is based on profit through growth, and growth is most rapid when wars and preparations for more of them are the favored options in Washington.
"Freedom isn’t free," as a popular conservative bumper sticker puts it, and neither is war. My father liked the saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” and today’s mercenary corporations have been calling for a lot of military marches piping in $138 billion in contracts for Iraq alone, according to the Financial Times. And if you think that the privatization of war must at least reduce government waste, think again: the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated in 2011 that fraud, waste, and abuse accounted for up to $60 billion of the money spent in Iraq alone.
To corral American-style war, the mercenaries must be defanged or deflated. European rulers learned this the hard way during the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth century. At that time, powerful mercenary captains like Albrecht von Wallenstein ran amok. Only Wallenstein’s assassination and the assertion of near absolutist powers by monarchs bent on curbing war before they went bankrupt finally brought the mercenaries to heel, a victory as hard won as it was essential to Europe’s survival and eventual expansion. (Europeans then exported their wars to foreign shores, but that’s another story.)
2. The embrace of the national security state by both major parties:Jimmy Carter was the last president to attempt to exercise any kind of control over the national security state. A former Navy nuclear engineer who had served under the demanding Admiral Hyman Rickover, Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber and fought for a U.S. foreign policy based on human rights. Widely pilloried for talking about nuclear war with his young daughter Amy, Carter was further attacked for being “weak” on defense. His defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 inaugurated 12 years of dominance by Republican presidents that opened the financial floodgates for the Department of Defense. That taught Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council a lesson when it came to the wisdom of wrapping the national security state in a welcoming embrace, which they did, however uncomfortably. This expedient turn to the right by the Democrats in the Clinton years served as a temporary booster shot when it came to charges of being “soft” on defense -- until Republicans upped the ante by going “all-in” on military crusades in the aftermath of 9/11.
Since his election in 2008, Barack Obama has done little to alter the course set by his predecessors. He, too, has chosen not to challenge Washington’s prevailing catechism of war. Republicans have responded, however, not by muting their criticism, but by upping the ante yet again. How else to explain House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in March? That address promises to be a pep talk for the Republicans, as well as a smack down of the Obama administration and its “appeasenik” policies toward Iran and Islamic radicalism.
Serious oversight, let alone opposition to the national security state by Congress or a mainstream political party, has been missing in action for years and must now, in the wake of the Senate Torture Report fiasco (from which the CIAemerged stronger, not weaker), be presumed dead. The recent midterm election triumph of Republican war hawks and the prospective lineup of candidates for president in 2016 does not bode well when it comes to reining in the national security state in any foreseeable future.
3. “Support Our Troops” as a substitute for thought. You’ve seen them everywhere: “Support Our Troops” stickers. In fact, the “support” in that slogan generally means acquiescence when it comes to American-style war. The truth is that we’ve turned the all-volunteer military into something like aforeign legion, deploying it again and again to our distant battle zones and driving it into the ground in wars that amount to strategic folly. Instead of admitting their mistakes, America’s leaders have worked to obscure them by endlessly overpraising our “warriors” as so many universal heroes. This may salve our collective national conscience, but it’s a form of cheap grace that saves no lives -- and wins no wars.
Instead, this country needs to listen more carefully to its troops, especially the war critics who have risked their lives while fighting overseas. Organizations like Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace are good places to start.
4. Fighting a redacted war. War, like the recent Senate torture report, is redacted in America. Its horrors and mistakes are suppressed, its patriotic whistleblowers punished, even as the American people are kept in a demobilized state. The act of going to war no longer represents the will of the people, as represented by formal Congressional declarations of war as the U.S. Constitution demands. Instead, in these years, Americans were told togo to Disney World (as George W. Bush suggested in the wake of 9/11) and keep shopping. They’re encouraged not to pay too much attention to war’s casualties and costs, especially when those costs involve foreigners with funny-sounding names (after all, they are, as American sniper Chris Kyle so indelicately put it in his book, just “savages”).
Redacted war hides the true cost of a permanent state of killing from the American people, if not from foreign observers. Ignorance and apathy reign, even as a national security state that is essentially a shadow governmentequates its growth with your safety.
5. Threat inflation: There’s nothing new about threat inflation. We saw plenty of it during the Cold War (nonexistent missile and bomber gaps, for example). Fear sells and we’ve had quite a dose of it in the twenty-first century, from ISIS to Ebola. But a more important truth is that fear is a mind-killer, a debate-stifler.
Back in September, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham warned that ISIS and its radical Islamic army was coming to America to kill us all. ISIS, of course, is a regional power with no ability to mount significant operations against the United States. But fear is so commonplace, so effectively stoked in this country that Americans routinely and wildly exaggerate the threat posed by al-Qaeda or ISIS or the bogeyman du jour.
Decades ago, as a young lieutenant in the Air Force, I was hunkered down inCheyenne Mountain during the Cold War. It was the ultimate citadel-cum-bomb-shelter, and those in it were believed to have a 70% likelihood of surviving a five-megaton nuclear blast. There, not surprisingly, I found myself contemplating the very real possibility of a thermonuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, a war that would have annihilated life as we knew it, indeed much of life on our planet thanks to the phenomenon of nuclear winter. You’ll excuse me for not shaking in my boots at the threat of ISIS coming to get me. Or of Sharia Law coming to my local town hall. With respect to such fears, America needs, as Hillary Clinton said in an admittedly different context, to “grow a pair.”
6. Defining the world as a global battlefield: In fortress America, all realms have by now become battle spheres. Not only much of the planet, the seas, air, and space, as well as the country’s borders and its increasingly up-armored police forces, but the world of thought, the insides of our minds. Think of the 17 intertwined intelligence outfits in “the U.S. Intelligence Community” and their ongoing “surge” for information dominance across every mode of human communication, as well as the surveillance of everything. And don’t forget the national security state’s leading role in making cyberwar a reality. (Indeed, Washington launched the first cyberwar in history by deploying the Stuxnet computer worm against Iran.)
Think of all this as a global matrix that rests on war, empowering disaster capitalism and the corporate complexes that have formed around the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and that intelligence community. A militarized matrix doesn’t blink at $1.45 trillion dollars devoted to the F-35, a single under-performing jet fighter, nor at projections of $355 billion over the next decade for “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear arsenal, weapons that Barack Obama vowed to abolish in 2009.
7. The new "normal" in America is war: The 9/11 attacks happened more than 13 years ago, which means that no teenagers in America can truly remember a time when the country was at peace. "War time" is their normal; peace, a fairy tale.
What’s truly “exceptional” in twenty-first-century America is any articulated vision of what a land at peace with itself and other nations might be like. Instead, war, backed by a diet of fear, is the backdrop against which the young have grown to adulthood. It’s the background noise of their world, so much a part of their lives that they hardly recognize it for what it is. And that’s the most insidious danger of them all.
How do we inoculate our children against such a permanent state of war and the war state itself? I have one simple suggestion: just stop it. All of it. Stop making war a never-ending part of our lives and stop celebrating it, too. War should be the realm of the extreme, of the abnormal. It should be the death of normalcy, not the dreary norm.
It’s never too soon, America, to enlist in that good fight!
http://www.alternet.org/world/war-new-normal-7-deadly-reasons-why-americas-wars-persist?akid=12744.56814.BnoM32&rd=1&src=newsletter1031225&t=9
Ukraine Government: “We Target Civilians.” Separatists: “Their Targeting Maps Prove It.”
The pro-regime Ukrainian TV station Hromandske TV — which is funded by the U.S. Government, the Dutch Government, has reported that the Ukrainian Government is specifically targeting civilians to die in the Donbass region in the former Ukraine’s southeast. It’s being done in order “to clean the cities.”
This is open acknowledgement that the operation, which the U.S. is financing (and Ukraine is bankrupt so it can never reimburse its donors), is actually an ethnic-cleansing campaign.
Previously, on Hromadske TV, a proponent of doing just that (ethnic cleansing) was interviewed. He said: “If we take, for example, just the Donetsk oblast, there are approximately 4 million inhabitants, at least 1.5 million of which are superfluous. … Donbass must be exploited as a resource, which it is. … The most important thing that must be done — no matter how cruel it may sound — is that there is a certain category of people that must be exterminated.”
Here is how it’s done:
[9 September 2014, from Slavyangrad, pro-separatists’ clips are shown, taken from pro-Ukrainian-Government telecasts] Video of Commander of the Ukrainian Government’s volunteer battalion ’Shaktarsk,’ Ruslan Onishchenko:
“Our mission, being employees of the Ministry of the Interior, is to clean the cities, after the army has ‘worked’ this territory with aircraft, artillery and heavy military equipment. This is a normal tactical approach to warfare.”
Retired Col. General Vladimir Ruban, interviewed on the pro-Ukrainian-Government Hromadske TV, then says:
“I want to offer the Ukrainian artillerists medals, to those who shell the city [Donetsk], the houses and the civilian population, … for they [artillerists] have deserved it [medals], both because of the accuracy and inaccuracy. … It’s one thing if attack groups or any mobile mortar troops drive through the city and shoot, … but if the artillery units fired from the airport [i.e., from the distance], then no one can claim that the separatists shoot themselves [i.e., that the people who are being killed in the city are victims of separatist troops mistakenly hitting passers-by when aiming at Government troops. He is saying that artillerists will clearly get the blame, whereas street-fighters can always blame the ‘terrorists.’]. … The shelling there is done as intimidation, … not just object destruction, but intimidation [to get the population to flee to nearby Russia]. The civilian population is intimidated by a chaotic bombardment of different objects. There are many shells that plug directly into the streets or vegetable gardens [and so make the very ground on which these people live terrifying to them]. INTERVIEWER: This refers to those that didn’t explode? ANSWER: Yes, … there are many of those, … shells that fail to detonate. But Gorlowka has been fortunate to have not yet been totally eradicated from the face of the earth, along with the civilian population. INTERVIEWER: You mean that the city is bombarded violently? ANSWER: Gorlowka was shelled by our troops, [even] as I went there for the prisoner exchange. Although it was known that I was there, they [our troops] kept up the bombardment of Gorlowka.
General Ruban might not have know it at the time of his interview, but on February 1st, Life News in Russia bannered “Militia DNR: Ukrainian Army Uses US Missiles,” and reported that in Gorlovka were found “shells that do not belong to Ukrainian artillery, and even more so do not use Soviet or post-Soviet military equipment. According to their hypothesis, the weapons are from NATO. Deputy brigade commander Army DNR [Donetsk People’s Republic] callsign ‘Biker’ showed shells and said that … this is a special projectile 155 caliber self-propelled artillery of the M109 A1 American production, which is used by NATO countries.” Furthermore, “The presence of foreigners in their army and radio intercepts confirms our intelligence when we hear in interceptions, phrases in English and Polish.” Germany’s Bild, and Britain’s Mail, are also among the international news organizations that have previously reported on American mercenaries, including the former notorious Blackwater organization, ‘advising’ the Ukrainian army in this war. The finding of U.S. military provisions on the battlefields in Donbass is, furthermore, routine; but U.S. soldiers, like Russian ones, are probably not fighting there. Ukraine is only a proxy war between the two major nuclear powers, not yet a direct war between the nuclear powers.
Within just the past few days, further video evidence was uploaded which indicates that the targeting of civilians is a central purpose of the U.S.-funded Ukrainian war campaign:
[29 January 2015] The journalists of Ren TV [a major Russian network, privately owned by Russian aristocrats] today received the first documentary evidence that residential areas of Donbass [the rebelling region of the former Ukraine; the farthest-east part of Ukraine, shown here in the darkest purple] are being targeted. Although Kiev may claim that ‘stray shells’ hit a hospital or a kindergarten, we have found on the front line that is being left behind by departing Ukrainian soldiers, artillery maps, where the targets were restaurants, cafeterias and shops. Here is an exclusive report by our correspondent Valentin Trushin from the former UAF’s [Ukrainian Armed Forces} trenches:
This is a field near the village of Ozeryanovka, from which recently was a Ukrainian battery firing at Gorlovka: … [The rebel soldier says that many of these abandoned tanks and other weapons are undamaged, and ‘They will say tomorrow that Russia supplied them to us, but it’s actually their equipment that will be repaired if necessary but will be used at war against them.’ Views of Government-destroyed Gorlovka are shown.] … In the [rebel-]destroyed dugouts were found … notebooks of cannon commanders, maps. The documents show that shelling of the city [by the Government] was not random, but deliberate.The coordinates of the targets are shown. For examples, one is a restaurant, another a cafeteria or a market where no militiamen were stationed. … Here are their target-maps, … irrefutable evidence of war crimes.
Little over a month ago, a rebel commander explained why the Ukrainian armed forces are losing:
[13 Dec. 2014, from Cassad TV in Crimea, run by a man whom the U.S. aristocracy describe as being a far-right Marxist]
“How the Elite UA [Ukrainian Army] Troops Were Defeated by the Militia. Interview with Commander Kedr” (head of the anti-Ukrainian-Government Semyonovka battalion in the outskirts of Slovyansk): How did you manage to defeat them? ANSWER: The most surprising thing is that they were eliminated by the [rebel] militias, who haven’t graduated from any military academies. Many of them haven’t even served in the army before. The majority of them had only for the very first time recently taken weapons in their hands [they hadn’t previously owned or used even a gun]. I think that victory … [resulted from] … the high motivation of our troops, and it was guaranteed by the high morale, the example that was being given by the commanders who were taking part in the fight themselves. It provided such a result. Good trophies [weapons] were captured then, … [and it even] happened before the Ilovaisk cauldron [when the enemy was encircled], and at a time when the situation was very difficult for the militias themselves, … [so] there was only one injured soldier from our side in that battle, but from the enemy’s side were killed 15-12 men, practically all of them [that were fighting]. … Six [of them] were taken captive. [The battlefield is shown with enemy corpses]. … Our unit arrived to collect the corpses of two of their shot-down pilots. But the enemy managed to save one of their pilots. I repeat: Our troops weren’t professional military but people like miners and trolley-bus drivers. [3:17] I’d say to Ukrainian mothers that our soldiers have nowhere to retreat from their own land, while the enemy have a chance to turn around and go home.
[4:14: video is shown of the enemy’s combat ration.] It’s an American combat ration.
The actual reason why this southeast-Ukrainian ethnic-cleansing campaign is necessary for Obama, who installed the current regime in Ukraine, is that, if it is not done, and, if the people who lived and voted in the Donbass region (Ukraine’s far-east) were still to remain there and allowed to vote there as being citizens of Ukraine, then they would vote at least 90% against the regime’s candidates, and for moderates, because, even before the regime had started to exterminate these people, they had voted 90% for Viktor Yanukovych in the last democratic Ukraine-wide Presidential election (which was back in 2010), and he was the very same man whom Obama overthrew. Now, after this extermination-campaign, the vote there against the Obama stooges would be virtually 100% — not just 90%.
In other words: Obama needs to get rid of those people. They can die, or else they can flee to Russia, but Obama needs them gone from Ukraine.
As regards why Obama had wanted their land to begin with, it was because unless the gas and other assets in the ground there can be privatized or sold off by the Ukrainian Government to pay its debts, the Ukrainian Government will go bankrupt and become an enormous drag on everyone who had previously lent to it, including the U.S., IMF, EU, World Bank, and others (ironically including even Russia).
Now that the situation is becoming increasingly clear that this land will not be able to be controlled by the Ukrainian Government, Obama’s best bet (in terms of his objectives) is to allow the war simply to end with Ukraine’s defeat, so that no more good money will go to Ukraine after the previous bad money is thus lost, but just cut the losses and bring this truncated and rabidly anti-Russian western half of Ukraine into NATO for the goal that is, apparently, Obama’s top foreign-policy objective: surrounding Russia with U.S. nuclear missiles and with regimes that hate Russia, in order to get Russia’s capitulation to America’s aristocracy.
Vladimir Putin wants Donbass to instead remain a part of Ukraine, as a counter-weight there against the rabidly anti-Russian voters in Ukraine’s western region, so as to produce yet another Yanukovych-like leadership in Ukraine and thus reduce the likelihood of a global nuclear war (which would be Russia’s only alternative if Obama were to succeed in his surround-Russia-with-missiles plan).
After all: John Fitzgerald Kennedy didn’t like it when the Soviet Union in 1962 tried to place nuclear missiles in just one location near the U.S.: Cuba. For Putin, Ukraine is like a nuclear Cuba was to America, but more like around ten nuclear Cubas, in Russia’s case. For Ukraine to join NATO would, perhaps, alone be sufficient threat to Russia so as to produce an immediate Russian nuclear attack against the U.S. and other NATO nations (a pre-emptive Russian attack, against us). The insane ones there would be the U.S. and any nation that supports it — the nations that then are clearly aiming to ‘conquer’ Russia. The U.S., under Kennedy, refused to stand for it in reverse; and Russia, under Putin or any other leader, shouldn’t stand for it, either. NATO needs to end, immediately. It had started as an anti-communist club, and was then valid; but what it was and is after the end of the Soviet Union, is the greatest threat to the entire world. It is now nothing but an anti-Russian club: not just insane, but also evil.
The only beneficiaries of today’s NATO are the West’s arms-merchants and other military suppliers. For everybody else, it’s catastrophe waiting to happen.
So: that’s the reason why the United States has been supporting (and, until now, even demanding) an ethnic-cleansing campaign in the former Ukraine. It’s part of the evil and supremely dangerous insanity that is NATO.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
1 opmerking:
West to Send More Heavy Weapons for Ukraine’s Battered Military
http://www.globalresearch.ca/west-to-send-more-heavy-weapons-for-kievs-battered-military/5429127
Neo-Nazis in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-LKFptM7oOk
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