In zijn uitgebreid gedocumenteerde boek Frontline Ukraine. Crisis In The Borderlands (2015) stelt de Britse hoogleraar Richard Sakwa het volgende vast:
the Ukraine crisis demonstrated that ultimately the EU was not an instrument to unite the continent and to overcome the logic of conflict in its community of nations, but another institution born in the Cold War that in the end was destined to perpetuate the Cold War in new forms. It was unable to act as an interlocutor (gesprekspartner. svh) between the contending parties or even to act as 'honest broker' between Washington and Moscow, and encouraged a conflict to cancerate (tot een kwaadaardig gezwel uitgroeien. svh) into war in it heartlands. Uncritical alignment with the 'Atlantic' community, in other words with Washington's policies, deprived it of credibility with Moscow. Instead, the honest-broker role was taken by Germany, although even here the Atlanticists used the Ukraine crisis to attack the traditional moderation of the Social Democrats.
Sakwa verwijst onder meer naar de SPD-minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Frank-Walter Steinmeier die tegenover Der Spiegel van 28 april 2014 er nadrukkelijk op wees dat
[t]here is no military solution to the conflict in Ukraine. Even if it can sometimes be frustrating, I am firmly convinced that only tenacious diplomatic work can bring us any closer to a solution.
Ondertussen deden
The Poles and the Lithuanians little except to amplify the crisis, while the British only added fuel to an already raging fire.
Dezelfde opjuttende rol speelde de overgrote meerderheid van de westerse 'vrije pers.' Als het ware uit een reflex hebben de westerse mainstream media de aloude Koude Oorlogsretoriek hervat, waarbij opnieuw de schijn wordt gewekt dat Rusland elk moment Europa kan binnenvallen. Waarom de Russische politieke elite dit zou doen, terwijl het inmiddels economisch en financieel verbonden is met Europa, was een vraag die niet gesteld werd omdat dan zou blijken dat er domweg geen sprake is van 'Russisch expansionisme.' Waar wel sprake van is, is de grote opwinding, grenzend aan hysterie, onder de Makkianen en Hoflanden en de rest van de zelfbenoemde 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder.
Om duidelijk te maken wat er precies aan de hand is, moet ik een stap terug doen. In 1972 (!) verscheen een herpublicatie van Walter Lippmann's kritiek op de naoorlogse Amerikaanse paranoïde houding ten opzichte van de Sovjet-Unie, getiteld The Cold War, met daaraan toegevoegd het beroemde beleidsbepalende essay van de Amerikaanse diplomaat George Kennan, architect van de naoorlogse 'containment-politiek.' In de introductie van het 81 pagina's tellende boekje schreef de Amerikaanse historicus en hoogleraar Ronald Steel dat al in 1946:
Kennan's analysis became [within a short time] the new orthodoxy, with its warning that the Soviet Union represented 'a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the United States there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the internal authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure.' Commenting on the language… some twenty years later, Kennan confessed that 'much of it reads exactly like one of those primers put out by alarmed congressional committees or by the Daughters of the American Revolution (een destijds rascistische, uiterst patriottistische organisatie. svh), designed to arouse the citizenry to the dangers of the Communist conspiracy.'
If the tone seemed exaggerated to Kennan two decades later. it very much captured the mood of the times. It assured him access to Forrestal, for whom the following year he wrote a private paper analyzing Soviet power and its implications for United States policy.
Forrestal was James Vincent Forrestal, de eerste Amerikaanse minister van Defensie, zoals dit in het moderne jargon heet. Forrestal werd in 1949 vanwege waanvoorstellingen in een psychiatrisch ziekenhuis opgenomen, waar hij kort daarna onder verdachte omstandigheden om het leven kwam. Als officiële doodsoorzaak werd zelfmoord gegeven, hoewel anderen stellen dat het moord was. Forrestal vreesde het communisme. Zijn psychische gesteldheid weerspiegelde de paranoïde sfeer destijds onder Amerikaanse beleidsbepalers. Daarom enige achtergrondinformatie:
Although Forrestal told associates he had decided to resign, he was shattered when Truman abruptly asked for his resignation. His letter of resignation was tendered on March 28, 1949. On the day of his removal from office, he was reported to have gone into a strange daze and was flown on a Navy airplane to the estate of Under Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett in Hobe Sound, Florida, where Forrestal's wife, Josephine, was vacationing. Dr. William C. Menninger of the Menninger Clinic in Kansas was consulted and he diagnosed 'severe depression' of the type 'seen in operational fatigue during the war.' The Menninger Clinic had successfully treated similar cases during World War II, but Forrestal's wife Josephine, his friend and associate Ferdinand Eberstadt, Dr. Menninger and Navy psychiatrist Captain Dr. George N. Raines decided to send the former Secretary of Defense to the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda, Maryland, where it would be possible to deny his mental illness. He was checked into NNMC five days later. The decision to house him on the 16th floor instead of the first floor was justified in the same way. Forrestal's condition was officially announced as 'nervous and physical exhaustion,' his lead doctor, Captain Raines, diagnosing his condition as 'depression' or 'reactive depression.'
Forrestal seemed to be on the road to recovery, having regained 5.5 kg since his entry into the hospital. However, in the early morning hours of May 22, his body, clad only in the bottom half of a pair of pajamas, was found on a third-floor roof below the 16th-floor kitchen across the hall from his room. Forrestal's alleged last written statement, touted in the contemporary press and later biographers as an implied suicide note, was part of a poem from Sophocles' tragedy Ajax.
Na de lettergreep 'nacht' van het woord 'nachtegaal' te hebben overgeschreven, stopte Forrestal ineens met het overschrijven:
It remains a speculation whether the word 'nightingale' triggered what Dr. Raines later called 'Forrestal’s sudden fit of despondence (wanhoop. svh),' but a coincidence should not go unremarked. As discussed in Chapter 23, 'Nightingale' was the name of an anti-Communist guerrilla army made of Ukrainian refugees, recruited and trained by the CIA to carry on a secret war against the Soviet Union from behind the Iron Curtain. Many of the recruits were Nazi collaborators who had carried out mass executions of their fellow countrymen, including thousands of Jews, behind the German lines during the war. As a member of National Security Council, Forrestal had authorized the operation.
Hoe dan ook:
Forrestal inserted his sheets of paper in the book between the last page and the back cover and placed the book on the bed table, open to the poem. Then he quickly walked across the corridor into the diet kitchen. Tying one end of his dressing-gown sash to the radiator just below the window, and the other around his neck, he removed the simple screen and climbed out the window. No one knows whether he then jumped or hung until the silk sash gave way, but scratches found on the cement work just below the window suggest that he may have hung for at least one terrible moment, then changed his mind –too late – before the sash gave way and he plunged thirteen stories to his death. Only seconds after he entered the diet kitchen, a nurse on the seventh floor heard a loud crash. His broken body had landed on the roof of a third-floor passageway, the dressing-gown sash still tied around his neck and his watch still running. The Montgomery County coroner concluded that death was instantaneous.
Forrestal's dood veranderde niets in het anti-communisme van het Witte Huis, het Pentagon en het Congres. Kennan's rapport voor Forrestal 'was warmly received' door zijn opvolger en de rest van het politieke en militaire establishment, het werd
widely distributed among policy makers, and ultimately appeared in the July 1947 issue of the quarterly journal Foreign Affairs, the unofficial voice of the foreign policy establisment. Entitled 'The Sources of Soviet Conduct,' the article was signed simply by 'X,' precisely because it was being presented as official policy, but its authorship soon became generally known.
The effect of the X article was electrifying. It articulated in the most eloquent and lucid terms for the general public the new2 policy of confrontation with Russia that, under the rubric of 'containment,' had become the diplomacy of the Truman administration… his gifted pen provided the intellectual rationalization for them at a time when the wartime spirit of corporation with Soviet Russia had not yet been publicly buried.
Maar niet iedereen trapte in de paniekzaaierij. Sterker nog, de destijds meest vooraanstaande Amerikaanse publicist, Walter Lippmann, was het apert oneens met het afschilderen van de Sovjet-Unie als de grote boeman. Niet alleen had het land in dezelfde jaren veertig meer dan 25 miljoen burgers verloren door de nazi-inval, maar bovendien was de infrastructuur van het Europese deel van het communistische rijk vernietigd. Het kon onmogelijk een bedreiging zijn van de VS, het machtigste land dat als overwinnaar uit de oorlog was gekomen. De werkelijkheid werd in 1948 voor insiders beschreven door George Kennan zelf, inmiddels hoofd van het beleidsbepalende Planningbureau van het Amerikaanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken. In een destijds uiterst geheim memorandum merkte hij op:
we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction…
We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and… unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
Uit onder andere deze woorden valt op te maken dat de VS eerder een bedreiging vormde voor de wereld dan de Sovjet Unie, een feit waarvan ook de goed geïnformeerde Lippmann op de hoogte was. In de heruitgave van The Cold War schreef Ronald Steel over hem:
Shortly after publication of the X article, Walter Lippmann, the uncrowned dean of American journalists whose internationally syndicated column was required reading in the foreign office of every major country, launched a full-scale broadside (frontale aanval. svh) against Kenna's containment policy.
Lippmann's twelve columns on the X article were written in the late summer of 1947 and published in book form that year under the title 'The Cold War.'
Steel wijst erop dat Lippmann's kritiek 'a key document' is 'in the history of the cold war,' dat precies op het moment verscheen dat de 'containment,' van de Sovjet Unie 'was just beccoming the official policy of the United States government.'
Lippmann's kritiek
rested on two major grounds: the X article presented a faulty explanation of Soviet behavior, and its recommendations for American policy were potentially a disastrous 'strategic monstrosity.' In other words, he rejected virtually every aspect of Kennan's thesis and the prescription that flowed from it. Whereas Kennan emphasized Marxist ideology as the prime determinant of Soviet actions (the 'innate antagonism between capitalism and socialism,' 'the infallibility of the Kremlin'), Lippmann demonstrated from Russian history that the determination to establish a sphere of influence in eastern Europe was a czarist ambition long before it was taken over by the Soviets.
The main thrust of Lippmann's attack, however, was directed at Kennan's prescription for dealing with the Soviet Union: the containment doctrine. The essence of that policy was Kennan's recommendation that the Kremlin's expansionist tendencies must be matched by the 'adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points.' The scenario raised by Kennan's analysis was of perpetual crisis at various points around the world as Moscow probed for weak points in the West's defensive armor… the containment doctrine sounded to Lippmann like a blueprint for global American intervention. Furthermore, he knew something which was not then apparent to many readers: the paper written for Forrestal in nFebruary 1947, from which the X article was drawn, had served as the intellectual justification for the Truman Doctrine, even though Kennan himself, as he wrote many years later, was disturbed by the doctrine's presentation in 'terms more grandiose and more sweeping than anything that I, at least, had ever envisaged.'
Hoe 'overweldigend' en 'veel omvattend' de expansionistische Truman Doctrine was, bleek slechts zes jaar jaar later toen de VS in 1953 de democratische regering van Iran met geweld ten val bracht, nadat premier Mossadeq de Iraanse olie-bronnen had genationaliseerd, die sinds 1913 in Britse handen waren geweest. Een jaar later zorgde de CIA ervoor dat de democratisch gekozen president van Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, werd verdreven nadat hij hervormingen had ingevoerd, waarbij straatarme boeren braak liggend land van het Amerikaanse concern United Fruit ter beschikking kregen. Tot grote woede van de aandeelhouders en de Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Foster Dulles en zijn broer, Allen Dulles, directeur van de CIA.
The Dulles brothers overthrew Guatemala’s popular president Arbenz, because his land reform threatened the interest of the Dulles brothers’ Sullivan & Cromwell law firm’s United Fruit Company client. The brothers launched an amazing disinformation campaign depicting Arbenz as a dangerous communist who was a threat to Western civilization. The brothers enlisted dictators such as Somoza in Nicaragua and Batista in Cuba against Arbenz. The CIA organized air strikes and an invasion force. But nothing could happen until Arbenz’s strong support among the people in Guatemala could be shattered. The brothers arranged this through Cardinal Spellman, who enlisted Archbishop Rossell y Arellano. 'A pastoral letter was read on April 9, 1954 in all Guatemalan churches.'
A masterpiece of propaganda, the pastoral letter misrepresented Arbenz as a dangerous communist who was the enemy of all Guatemalans. False radio broadcasts produced a fake reality of freedom fighter victories and army defections. Arbenz asked the UN to send fact finders, but Washington prevented that from happening. American journalists, with the exception of James Reston, supported the lies. Washington threatened and bought off Guatemala’s senior military commanders, who forced Arbenz to resign. The CIA’s chosen and well paid 'liberator,' Col. Castillo Armas, was installed as Arbenz’s successor.
De Amerikaanse politiek van terreur, die door bestseller-auteur Geert Mak wordt geprezen met de bewering dat de VS 'decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent [fungeerde] – om maar te zwijgen van alle hulp die het uitdeelde,’ en door Henk Hofland, die spreekt van 'het vredestichtende Westen,' bereikte een voorlopig hoogtepunt in Vietnam, waarover de voormalige Amerikaanse minister van Defensie Robert McNamara in 1995 schreef dat als gevolg van het Vietnam-beleid van ‘de regeringen Kennedy, Johnson en Nixon… verschrikkelijk leed’ was toegebracht aan miljoenen mensen, omdat ‘wij de macht onderschatten van het nationalisme teneinde een volk te motiveren… om te vechten en te sterven voor hun overtuigingen en waarden — en we blijven dat vandaag de dag nog steeds doen in vele delen van de wereld,’ terwijl ‘wij niet het door God gegeven recht hebben om elke natie naar ons eigen beeld te scheppen,’ een feit dat opnieuw op grote schaal werd genegeerd tijdens de illegale Amerikaanse Shock and Awe-inval in Irak, waarbij eveneens ontelbare slachtoffers werden gemaakt. Het is deze terreur die heeft geleid tot de contra-terreur, waaraan vanaf 11 september 2001 de westerse mainstream media zo prominent aandacht besteden, zonder expliciet te verklaren waarom een groot deel van de wereld 'de Amerikanen zo haat.' De wet van oorzaak en gevolg bestaat niet voor propagandisten die de leugen verspreiden dat de agressieve Amerikaanse establishment 'decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent' fungeerde 'om maar te zwijgen van alle hulp die het uitdeelde,’ of die mega-terrorisme verkopen als 'vredestichtend.'
Daarentegen zijn er genoeg Amerikaanse intellectuelen die niet doortrapt dan wel misdadig zijn, zoals bijvoorbeeld Paul Craig Roberts, die 'Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy' onder president Reagan was en 'associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.' In tegenstelling tot de Makkianen en de Hoflanden spreekt hij uit directe ervaring en niet vanuit een aangeleerde ideologie. Onder de kop 'Washington’s Secret Agendas' schreef hij op 28 september 2014:
One might think that by now even Americans would have caught on to the constant stream of false alarms that Washington sounds in order to deceive the people into supporting its hidden agendas.
The public fell for the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan are terrorists allied with al Qaeda. Americans fought a war for 13 years that enriched Dick Cheney’s firm, Halliburton, and other private interests only to end in another Washington failure.
The public fell for the lie that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction' that were a threat to America and that if the US did not invade Iraq Americans risked a 'mushroom cloud going up over an American city.' With the rise of ISIS, this long war apparently is far from over. Billions of dollars more in profits will pour into the coffers of the US military security complex as Washington fights those who are redrawing the false Middle East boundaries created by the British and French after WW I when the British and French seized territories of the former Ottoman Empire.
The American public fell for the lies told about Gaddafi in Libya. The formerly stable and prosperous country is now in chaos.
The American public fell for the lie that Iran has, or is building, nuclear weapons. Sanctioned and reviled by the West, Iran has shifted toward an Eastern orientation, thereby removing a principal oil producer from Western influence.
The public fell for the lie that Assad of Syria used 'chemical weapons against his own people.' The jihadists that Washington sent to overthrow Assad have turned out to be, according to Washington’s propaganda, a threat to America.
The greatest threat to the world is Washington’s insistence on its hegemony. The ideology of a handful of neoconservatives is the basis for this insistence. We face the situation in which a handful of American neoconservative psychopaths claim to determine the fate of countries.
Many still believe Washington’s lies, but increasingly the world sees Washington as the greatest threat to peace and life on earth. The claim that America is 'exceptional and indispensable' is used to justify Washington’s right to dictate to other countries.
The casualties of Washington’s bombings are invariably civilians, and the deaths will produce more recruits for ISIS. Already there are calls for Washington to reintroduce 'boots on the ground' in Iraq. Otherwise, Western civilization is doomed, and our heads will be cut off. The newly created propaganda of a 'Russian threat' requires more NATO spending and more military bases on Russia’s borders. A 'quick reaction force' is being created to respond to a nonexistent threat of a Russian invasion of the Baltics, Poland, and Europe.
Usually it takes the American public a year, or two, three, or four to realize that it has been deceived by lies and propaganda, but by that time the public has swallowed a new set of lies and propaganda and is all concerned about the latest 'threat.' The American public seems incapable of understanding that just as the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth, threat was a hoax, so is the sixth threat, and so will be the seventh, eighth, and ninth.
Moreover, none of these American military attacks on other countries has resulted in a better situation, as Vladimir Putin honestly states. Yet, the public and its representatives in Congress support each new military adventure despite the record of deception and failure.
Perhaps if Americans were taught their true history in place of idealistic fairy tales, they would be less gullible and less susceptible to government propaganda. I have recommended Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The The Untold History of the United States, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and now I recommend Stephen Kinzer’s The Brothers, the story of the long rule of John Foster and Allen Dulles over the State Department and CIA and their demonization of reformist governments that they often succeeded in overthrowing. Kinzer’s history of the Dulles brothers’ plots to overthrow six governments provides insight into how Washington operates today.
In 1953 the Dulles brothers overthrew Iran’s elected leader, Mossadegh and imposed the Shah, thus poisoning American-Iranian relations through the present day. Americans might yet be led into a costly and pointless war with Iran, because of the Dulles brothers poisoning of relations in 1953…
We recently witnessed a similar operation in Ukraine.
President Eisenhower thanked the CIA for averting 'a Communist beachhead in our hemisphere,' and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles gave a national TV and radio address in which he declared that the events in Guatemala 'expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin.' This despite the uncontested fact that the only outside power operating in Guatemala was the Dulles brothers.
What had really happened is that a democratic and reformist government was overthrown because it compensated United Fruit Company for the nationalization of the company’s fallow land at a value listed by the company on its tax returns. America’s leading law firm or perhaps more accurately, America’s foreign policy-maker, Sullivan & Cromwell, had no intention of permitting a democratic government to prevail over the interests of the law firm’s client, especially when senior partners of the firm controlled both overt and covert US foreign policy. The two brothers, whose family members were invested in the United Fruit Company, simply applied the resources of the CIA, State Department, and US media to the protection of their private interests. The extraordinary gullibility of the American people, the corrupt American media, and the indoctrinated and impotent Congress allowed the Dulles brothers to succeed in overthrowing a democracy.
Keep in mind that this use of the US government in behalf of private interests occurred 60 years ago long before the corrupt Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes. And no doubt in earlier times as well.
The Dulles brothers next intended victim was Ho Chi Minh. Ho, a nationalist leader, asked for America’s help in freeing Vietnam from French colonial rule. But John Foster Dulles, a self-righteous anti-communist, miscast Ho as a Communist Threat who was springing the domino theory on the Western innocents. Nationalism and anti-colonialism, Foster declared, were merely a cloak for communist subversion.
Paul Kattenburg, the State Department desk officer for Vietnam suggested that instead of war, the US should give Ho $500 million in reconstruction aid to rebuild the country from war and French misrule, which would free Ho from dependence on Russian and Chinese support, and, thereby, influence. Ho appealed to Washington several times, but the demonic inflexibility of the Dulles brothers prevented any sensible response. Instead, the hysteria whipped-up over the 'communist threat' by the Dulles brothers landed the United States in the long, costly, fiasco known as the Vietnam War. Kattenburg later wrote that it was suicidal for the US 'to cut out its eyes and ears, to castrate its analytic capacity, to shut itself off from the truth because of blind prejudice.' Unfortunately for Americans and the world, castrated analytic capacity is Washington’s strongest suit.
The Dulles brothers’ next targets were President Sukarno of Indonesia, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo, and Fidel Castro. The plot against Castro was such a disastrous failure that it cost Allen Dulles his job. President Kennedy lost confidence in the agency and told his brother Bobby that after his reelection he was going to break the CIA into a thousand pieces. When President Kennedy removed Allen Dulles, the CIA understood the threat and struck first.
Warren Nutter, my Ph.D. dissertation chairman, later Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, taught his students that for the US government to maintain the people’s trust, which democracy requires, the government’s policies must be affirmations of our principles and be openly communicated to the people. Hidden agendas, such as those of the Dulles brothers and the Clinton, Bush and Obama regimes, must rely on secrecy and manipulation and, thereby, arouse the distrust of the people. If Americans are too brainwashed to notice, many foreign nationals are not.
The US government’s secret agendas have cost Americans and many peoples in the world tremendously. Essentially, the Dulles brothers created the Cold War with their secret agendas and anti-communist hysteria. Secret agendas committed Americans to long, costly, and unnecessary wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. Secret CIA and military agendas intending regime change in Cuba were blocked by President John F. Kennedy and resulted in the assassination of a president, who, for all his faults, was likely to have ended the Cold War twenty years before Ronald Reagan seized the opportunity.
Secret agendas have prevailed for so long that the American people themselves are now corrupted. As the saying goes, 'a fish rots from the head.' The rot in Washington now permeates the country.
De Koude Oorlog maakte die 'geheime agenda's' mogelijk. Om een greep te krijgen of te houden op de grondstoffen en markten en, zoals George Kennan besefte, op die manier rijk te blijven, moest het Amerikaanse geweld op de een of andere manier gelegitimeerd worden. Vandaar het belang van het communistische Rusland als vijand. Het was Robert McNamara die naderhand erop wees dat de ‘defensie uitgaven [in de VS] tijdens het fiscale jaar 1993 in totaal 291 miljard dollar bedroegen –25 procent meer… dan in 1980.’ Eenkwart meer dus vergeleken met de tijd dat de VS nog een 'aartsvijand' bezat, hetgeen bewijst dat de Sovjet Unie niet de oorzaak maar de aanleiding was voor de militarisering van de VS. Als voormalige minister van Defensie wist McNamara dat ‘[d]e VS bijna evenveel voor nationale veiligheid [spendeert] als de rest van de wereld tezamen.’ Hij was niet de enige Amerikaanse autoriteit die zijn landgenoten ervoor waarschuwde dat de 'democratie' was veranderd in een 'National Security State.' 34 jaar eerder had president Dwight Eisenhower in zijn afscheidsspeech de Amerikanen vergeefs gewaarschuwd voor wat de oud-generaal het 'militair industrieel complex' had genoemd:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.... We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted,
aldus Eisenhower.
In verband met de lengte ga ik morgen verder met de frappante overeenkomsten tussen de naoorlogse paranoïde Amerikaanse hegemonistische politiek tegenover 'de Sovjet-Unie' en de huidige hysterie van de westerse gevestigde orde over 'Poetin.'
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who
pushed for the Ukraine coup.
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2015/03/12/516183nulands-mastery-of-ukraine-propaganda/
Why the US is Finally Talking to
Russia
So a woman walks into a room… That’s how quite a few jokes usually start. In our case, self-appointed Queen of Nulandistan Victoria “F**k the EU” walks into a room in Moscow to talk to Russian deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Grigory Karasin.
A joke? Oh no; that really happened. Why?
Let’s start with the official reactions. Karasin qualified the talks as "fruitful", while stressing Moscow does not approve of Washington becoming part of the Normandy-style (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France) negotiations on Ukraine. Not after the relentless demonization not only of the Kremlin but also of Russia as a whole since the Maidan coup.
Ryabkov, for his part, made it known the current state of the US-Russia relationship remains, well, corrosive.
It’s crucial to remember the Queen of Nulandistan went to Moscow only after meeting with certified Washington vassal President Poroshenko and her own, hand-picked Prime Minister, “Yats”; and that was before accompanying Secretary of State John Kerry on the full regalia State Department trip to Sochi on May 12.
Inside the EU, chaos remains on the key subject of sanctions. The Baltics and Poland toe the “Russians are coming!” Cold War 2.0 hysteria line, while the adults in Brussels are represented by Italy, Greece, Spain and Hungary.
So Germany and France are already in deep trouble keeping the messy EU house in order. At the same time Berlin and Paris know nothing the self-described “Don't Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration pulls off will mollify Moscow to abandon its precise red lines.
Watch Those Red Lines
It’s crucial to notice that Crimea does not seem to be on the table anymore; it’s a fait accompli. But then there are those U.S. “military trainers” who have been deployed to western Ukraine only for a “six-month mission” (historical reminder; this is how the Vietnam war started). For Moscow, expansion of this “mission” is an absolute red line.
And then there’s the ultimate red line; NATO expansion, which remains unabated in the Baltics, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. That won’t stop; it’s part of NATO’s obsession in solidifying a new Iron Curtain from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
Thus, beyond all the talking, the next step to watch is whether the Obama administration will really refrain from weaponizing Kiev.
Ukraine for all practical purposes is now a massively indebted failed state turned into an IMF colony. The EU does not want it – although NATO does. For Moscow, the – ghastly – show will only be over when Ukraine, with or without the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, is neutral, and not part of a NATO strategic threat.
I have examined here the possibility that the Obama administration’s strategic shift towards talking instead of cursing/threatening may signify that the real Masters of the Universe have finally understood the emerging New (Silk) World Order is bound to leave them behind.
The difference is that now – and the Pentagon knows it – Moscow has amassed up to 10,000 tactical nuclear weapons. In the – apocalyptic — event of a war between Russia with NATO, the wet dream of many a US neo-con, these tactical nuclear weapons would knock out every commercial and military airfield of every NATO country in twenty minutes. That would leave no airfield for NATO combined air operations.
And then there’s the S-500 missile defense system, which can protect Russia against any form of Pentagon/NATO nuclear missile retaliation. No US offensive weapon, including Stealth bombers, could get through the S-500 maze, and the Pentagon also knows it.
Strategy? What Strategy?
The Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski-style strategy has always been to lure Russia into another Afghanistan in Ukraine, leading to a collapse of the Russian economy with the Big Prize being a Western takeover of Russia’s oil and natural gas wealth, and by extension Central Asia’s. Ukrainians would be used as cannon fodder, as were Afghans since the 1980s Arab-Afghan jihad.
Yet the Obama administration overplayed its hand, and realpolitik now spells out the deepening of the Russia-China strategic partnership across the entire Eurasian land mass; Eurasia as a prospective, massive commercial emporium stretching from Beijing to Berlin, or from Shanghai to St. Petersburg and beyond towards Rotterdam and Duisburg.
Without the exceptionalist obsession of some key Beltway factions, none of the elements of Cold War 2.0 would be in play, as Russia is a natural ally of the US in many fronts. That in itself reveals the state of “strategic thinking” by the current US administration.
Moscow, anyway, won’t be caught off-guard by the current, barely disguised, charm offensive, because Russian intelligence knows that may well veil a “Grand Chessboard”-style tactic of two steps back to regroup for a massive advance later.
Moreover, nothing has basically changed other than the original, dissuasive Cold War era MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – doctrine being over.
The US still retains PGS (Prompt Global Strike) capability. Ukraine is just a detail. The real game-changer will happen when Russia is able to seal its whole territory, via the S-500s, against PGS. That will happen sooner than anyone thinks. And that’s why the real Masters of the Universe – via their emissaries – feel compelled to talk.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
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Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko attends memorial to victims of Babi Yar massacre, Sept. 29, 2014Photo by Associated Press
New Ukrainian laws that came into effect over the past two months will outlaw the display of objects and names from the country's communist past, while honoring groups that collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of Ukrainian Jewry, Bloomberg reports.
A law signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko last week bans all Soviet and Nazi symbols, including town and street names.
It is expected to lead to the renaming such regional centers as Dnipropetrovsk (named after Grigory Petrovsky, who ran Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s) and Kirovograd (bearing the name of Sergei Kirov, a Bolshevik leader allegedly killed by Stalin,) as well as dozens of other towns and hundreds of streets.
Another bill, signed into law in April, prescribes that Ukrainians honor a number of World War II nationalist organizations, some of which – such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – fought alongside the Nazis.
The law was protested by 40 historians from major Western universities in an open letter to Poroshenko and Ukrainian legislators.
"Not only would it be a crime to question the legitimacy of an organization (UPA) that slaughtered tens of thousands of Poles in one of the most heinous acts of ethnic cleansing in the history of Ukraine," the historians wrote, " but also it would exempt from criticism the OUN, one of the most extreme political groups in Western Ukraine between the wars, and one which collaborated with Nazi Germany at the outset of the Soviet invasion in 1941.
"It also took part in anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine and, in the case of the Melnyk faction, remained allied with the occupation regime throughout the war."
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also criticized the laws.
“Broadly and vaguely defined language that restricts individuals from expressing views on past events and people, could easily lead to suppression of political, provocative and critical speech, especially in the media,” wrote Dunja Mijatovic, OSCE representative on freedom of the media, in April.
"As Ukraine advances on the difficult road to full democracy, we strongly urge the nation's government to refrain from any measure that preempts or censors discussion or politicizes the study of history," the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a statement.
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Ukraine to honor groups that killed Jews in World War ll . A new law requires that nationalist groups involved in the killings of Jews and Poles be honored. http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.657381
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