So much for US capitalism. If you don’t buy US weapons, sanctions will be imposed. So much for US capitalism.
RT.com
28 Mar, 2019
US defense officials are trying to convince India to reject Russian S-400 missiles, but warn against slapping sanctions on the nation if it completes the deal. However, as with Turkey, efforts have so far failed.
India’s decision to purchase the S-400 air defense system from Russia, as well as the fact that it leaves New Delhi exposed to American sanctions, was discussed during a House Armed Service committee hearing on Wednesday.
Assistant Defence Secretary Randall Schriver told the lawmakers he thought “it would be an unfortunate decision” if the Indians completed the S-400 deal. “We are very keen to see them make an alternative choice,” he said, adding that “we’re working with them to provide potential alternatives”.
A similar line came from Admiral Philip Davidson, Commander of the Indo-Pacific Command. “I continue to make the point with them that our interoperability and compatibility going forward will be advantaged with the purchase of US systems,” he said.
The purchase of advanced Russian arms makes any country a potential target for US secondary sanctions under the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The US slapped some on China for buying Russian Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 missiles in September last year.
This didn’t stop India from signing a contract a month later, purchasing five S-400 batteries with estimated worth of $5.43 billion. The two nations have a decades-long record of defense cooperation. Russian producers supplied some of the most advanced weapon systems to the Indian Armed Forces as well as contributed to joint projects like the BrahMos supersonic missile.
The threat of possible US sanctions was of course retained during the negotiations, with Indian officials insisting that New Delhi was pursuing an independent defense policy and was not dissuaded by it.
“When Russians asked about the American sanctions, my reply was, ‘Yes, we do appreciate that there could be sanctions on us, but we follow an independent policy,’” General Bipin Rawat, India’s chief of staff, said in the run-up to signing the deal.
Arguably adding insult to Injury, India even agreed that the contract would be paid in rubles rather than dollars, as was customary in international arms sales. Russia’s policy is to move away from the greenback where it makes sense, which Washington understandably does not appreciate.
Schriver warned the committee about being too zealous in implementing the provisions of the law against India.
“We want to work through it because India is an emerging partnership for us,” he said. The official added the law “is not designed to be an impediment in the growing strategic partnership we have with India. It’s designed for consequence to Russia.”
Potential US-made alternatives for the Russian offer would include Raytheon’s Patriot system or possibly Lockheed Martin’s THAAD system. The former is pitched as the better option to another buyer of the S-400, Turkey. Washington is pressuring Ankara into changing its mind on the deal with Russia by threatening that it could block delivery of F-35 fighter jets.
Speaking to the same Armed Service Committee a day before Schriver and Davidson, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Washington wants Turkey to get F-35s and that the only way for Ankara to do it is to buy US missiles. “We need Turkey to buy the Patriot,” he stressed.
Turkey refuses to yield to US pressure, but hinted it may buy the Patriot system to complement the S-400, not as a replacement.
Prosperity for his home country and a future free of woes are what Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wished for as he blew out a candle on his national flag-themed 74th birthday cake – a surprise treat from his staff on Wednesday night.
“In a no less covered case, Duterte referred to God as “stupid” and a “son of a b**ch”, suggesting that if there’s “one single witness” who can prove God’s existence by showing him a selfie together, he’d immediately step down from his top position.”
Prosperity for his home country and a future free of woes are what Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wished for as he blew out a candle on his national flag-themed 74th birthday cake – a surprise treat from his staff on Wednesday night.
“My wish, well, that this government will prosper and that we don’t get involved in the – it’s a very topsy[-turvy] world so even the Chinese are kind of [inaudible]…. My wish is that we will just continue to progress, we won’t be part of that mess with other countries”, the Philippine president said, as quoted by Indonesia’s Rappler, as he approached the round cake while his Davao City staff sang “Happy birthday to you, may the Lord God bless you!” on 27 March.
To mark the occasion, Sputnik has compiled a list of the most notorious verbal escapades of the sharp-tongued head of state, who has earned a reputation for using vulgar language against critics ever since his election in mid-2016. Although his aides have tried on multiple occasions to play down the president’s eccentricity and explain it away, it seems to be of little help, as Duterte continues to rail at critics of his overwhelming campaign to rid the Philippines of narcotics, which police say has killed at least 4,410 alleged drug dealers and users.
So, who or what has Duterte, so far, targeted in his strong-worded expletives?
‘Obama Son of W****’
• Over two years ago, Duterte cursed then President Barack Obama ahead of a regional summit in Laos by calling him a “son of a whore”, thereby prompting the US to cancel a meeting between the two leaders there. He later branded in the same way Pope Francis and the-then US ambassador to Manila, as well as fired expletives at the United Nations. During one of his speeches back home, he was captured on camera raising his middle finger in defiance to the European Parliament, with the snap making rounds on the Internet and making headlines in international media.
• Duterte fuelled a new barrage of criticism among rights groups and the general public ahead of his visit to Israel in 2018, as he blamed the high number of rapes in his home town of Davao on the large number of attractive women there.
“They say there are many rape cases in Davao”, Duterte said in a speech. “For as long as there are many beautiful women, there will be many rape cases, too”.
‘Silly Christ’
• Jesus, Christian saints, and Christianity at large have also been a subject of Duterte’s many rants, with the president calling the central Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity “silly” and Christ’s crucifixion “unimpressive”:
“Your God was nailed on the cross. F***, how unimpressive. I’m God and you will crucify me? Motherf***er. I’d tell them, ‘Lightning, finish all of them. Burn all the non-believers’”, the politician thundered during the 2018 Christmas week.
Anti-Vatican Rants
• Referring to the church as a social institution, he lambasted his country’s Catholic bishops as “useless fools”, allegedly calling on his people to “kill them”. The eccentric leader of the Catholic-majority nation also called out the Catholic Church as “the most hypocritical institution”.
In a no less covered case, Duterte referred to God as “stupid” and a “son of a b**ch”, suggesting that if there’s “one single witness” who can prove God’s existence by showing him a selfie together, he’d immediately step down from his top position.
Duterte Confesses
• Duterte, who is on record not only joking about rape and targeting the Vatican and Christian believers in his numerous escapades, also reportedly boasted about his adulteries and an abuse case dating back to his high school years. Several media outlets, including SCMP, reported in late 2018 about his confession to a priest that he had illegally fondled a family maid as she lay sleeping under a blanket, and by doing so woke her up. The reported admission instantly sent the nation into shock, with multiple voices calling for him to resign.
Double Standards?
• The Manila strongman, widely-known for his unambiguously negative attitude towards drugs, once baffled the international audience with yet another shocking statement, as he claimed to have smoked marijuana during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Singapore in November 2018. Duterte said he resorted to it so as to not fall asleep during the tight-scheduled daylong event.
• Duterte has also more than once demonstrated a rather casual attitude to the words “kill” and “death”. For instance, when slamming the ongoing guerrilla war being waged by the Maoist New People’s Army (NPA), an armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), he suggested setting up his own “death squads” to eradicate the group’s hitmen.
In a no less notorious incident, Duterte addressed a Philippine senator’s accusations against Duterte’s son Paolo of being involved in drug smuggling, and suggested that they “shoot each other as they meet in Congress”.
“That judgement by the rest of the world who remain sane and retain basic moral goodness is that the United States is a diabolical rogue regime threatening the existence of the entire planet.”
“…Trump’s re-election hopes for 2020 depend on keeping his evangelical Christian voter base happy-clappy and singing Alleluias all the way to the polling booths.”
“In a recent media interview, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his evangelical Christian beliefs make him view President Trump as a chosen instrument of the almighty. Why?
Because, in Pompeo’s view, Trump is fulfilling an apocalyptic biblical prophesy held by many evangelical Christians. This prophesy contends that Israel will be the scene for Jesus returning to Earth, bringing about Judgement Day and the end of the world, when all “good Christians” like Pompeo will ascend to heaven in glory.”
Remember the madcap scene in ‘Apocalypse Now’, the 1979 film by Francis Ford Coppola about American genocidal rampaging in Vietnam? “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”, bellows the psychotic military commander as US choppers strafe and destroy a Vietnamese village.
The same kind of unhinged death-wishing is reminiscent in the Trump administration. President Trump is on an infernal roll and his twisted supporters are loving it.
His military forces are reportedly killing civilians in air strikes simultaneously in four countries — Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen; his officials are openly bragging about fomenting regime change in Venezuela; and now in the latest madcap dash for depredation, Trump is backing the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights captured by Israel 52 years ago in the Six Day War.
And to make all this mayhem even more horrific, Trump’s cabinet and many of his supporters are convinced that he is on a “mission from God”. In a recent media interview, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his evangelical Christian beliefs make him view President Trump as a chosen instrument of the almighty. Why?
Because, in Pompeo’s view, Trump is fulfilling an apocalyptic biblical prophesy held by many evangelical Christians. This prophesy contends that Israel will be the scene for Jesus returning to Earth, bringing about Judgement Day and the end of the world, when all “good Christians” like Pompeo will ascend to heaven in glory.
It’s not just Pompeo who indulges this “vision”. Vice President Mike Pence and several other members of Trump’s White House are reportedly of the same evangelical conviction. They are sometimes referred to Zionist Christians because their vision of divine glory is intertwined with the restoration of the “kingdom of Israel” as in reputed biblical times.
That’s why Trump’s fawning over Israel — from the declaration of Jerusalem as its capital, to the ditching of the Iran nuclear accord, to the latest announcement on the Golan Heights — has been cheered on at every step of the way.
The Israeli state is, of course, delighted with Trump’s acquiescence to its every demand — despite what the rest of the world sees as the gross violation of international norms and laws. But, in addition, for the Christian rightwing believers within Trump’s White House, the policy of appeasement towards Israel is literally “God sent” because it is hastening “the end of times”. And Tump himself is thus viewed by these people as an embodiment of “God’s will”. (His alleged paying off of porn stars is a slight problem for their puritanical narrative.)
That’s what makes the present White House a truly frightening entity. It doesn’t just believe in its own self-righteousness — as with many other past US administrations. Team Trump actually want more conflict and mayhem in the name of “Israelite Glory” in order to fulfill their religious fantasies of divine redemption on Earth.This week, Russia and a host of other countries, including all Arab nations, even notably American client regimes like Saudi Arabia, warned that Trump’s unprecedented recognition of Syria’s Golan Heights as Israeli territory will unleash new waves of conflict across the Middle East. But such warnings will mean nothing to the Trump administration because it believes it is on a “mission from God”.
There are plenty of other mundane explanations for Trump’s kowtowing to Israel without bringing God into the equation. Multi-million-dollar donations from superrich Zionist Jewish-Americans like Sheldon Adelson are part of it. So too are well-documented American oil interests in the Golan Heights. And Trump’s re-election hopes for 2020 depend on keeping his evangelical Christian voter base happy-clappy and singing Alleluias all the way to the polling booths.
The irony is that while US news media and politicians have desperately sought to prove that “Russian collusion” was not an illusion, the stark reality is that the Trump administration has been openly, shamelessly colluding with the foreign state of Israel, pandering to all its despotism against Palestinian rights and warmongering towards Iran.
The US news media and politicians don’t even see that outrageous in-your-face “malign influence” — and the few who do speak out like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar are vilified mercilessly as “anti-Semitic”.
American imperialism has always been a particularly vile global scourge due to its “exceptionalism” and self-righteous propaganda. But the Trump administration has taken the obscenity to new depraved lows. When murdering children around the world with air strikes, starving countries into submission, and blessing the outright theft of foreign land is hailed as “God’s work” then you know there is something apocalyptic in the air. But not the kind of apocalypse that Trump’s Christian zealots cheer as a glorious event.Judgement Day of a kind is already here. Indeed, has been for quite a while. That judgement by the rest of the world who remain sane and retain basic moral goodness is that the United States is a diabolical rogue regime threatening the existence of the entire planet.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik
The EU’s new, comprehensive new Copyright Directive passed the European Parliament ensuring the way we use the Internet will change in the future.
And not for the better.
The controversial parts are Articles 11 and 13, the “link tax” and the “upload filter” requirements. For a good run down of how terrible these new rules are look anywhere on the internet but this article at Gizmodo (who I hope doesn’t charge me a link tax for doing so!) will do.
I would also watch this video from Dave Cullen, a resident of Ireland, i.e. the EU, as to what he thinks this means.
Dave makes a number of fantastic points about the ramifications of Articles 11 and 13 which I will not dispute.
The arrogance and pig-headedness of EU MEPs to push this through without even listening to arguments for Amendments speaks volumes as to how much this legislation was bought and paid for.
And you know who was doing the buying. The same folks currently behind destroying Brexit — The Davos Crowd. I don’t want to put too fine a point on this now, since I’ve covered all this recently (here) and in the past (here ).
Controlling The Wire
But there are very valid reasons why this push for control of information flow from the EU is yet another example of their desperations to keep control of what I’ve in the past called The Wire:
In short, The Wire is the main conduit through which we communicate with each other. Even money is The Wire. What are prices if not information about what we are willing to part with our money in exchange for? Without The Wire modern society fails. So, government can’t shut it down but neither can it allow unrestrained access to it.
Electricity, commerce, communications, everything, goes over The Wire. This isn’t a radical concept but like all important ideas, once it is presented to you you can’t unsee it.
Control of The Wire is the only fight that matters or has ever mattered in society. The Internet is The Wire writ large. Therefore, it only makes sense that control of it is paramount to maintaining any control over society at large.
The corporate oligarchs are in fear for their projects. They want desperately to maintain control. They’ve worked for decades to evolve the nation-state into the new shiny transnational superstate the EU exemplifies.
The new Copyright Directive is designed to erect barriers-to-entry and shut down opposition speech by outsourcing the enforcement to the platforms hosting the material.
And those platforms are only too happy to do this because they get to crowd out any potential competition. So, while their costs increase slightly, they are now immune to the competition which would grind out their margins to zero over time, as any unfettered market would.
Remember, that in all human endeavors profit is an ever-elusive thing. With incentives properly aligned someone is always attracted to the profit someone else is achieving and will figure out a way to build a better mousetrap, as it were, grinding out that profit.
If you can short-circuit this process via control of The Wire then you can guarantee a profit for your past work for far longer than you would otherwise.
This is known as rent.
Fake Property, False Choices
This is why the music and film industry want their IP protected from ‘fair use’ policies. They see the plummeting margins and want to continue charging on a per use/listen/view basis things they retain the copyright to far beyond the public’s willingness to pay them.
It’s too expensive for these companies to go after us individually. That doesn’t work except in very limited ways. Yes, they can de-platform Alex Jones or Sargon of Akkad ad hoc but with predictable backlash against it.
Enshrining it in law takes this, however, to another level. And it is a yet another Hobson’s Choice put before people to either accept regulation of these companies as public utilities — ensuring their monopoly status — or render the internet unusable.
This Directive is pure protectionism of legacy media producers be it news, music, film, etc. whose business models haven’t just collapsed they’re literally now subsidized by other profitable industries, i.e. the Washington Post is, effectively, an Amazon company.
So, in effect, Article 11 and 13 are just typical corporatist honey pots, at least in theory.
But it is all bad? Is the future to be this and more laws and controls like this?
Likely not.
IP Deflation
Let’s look specifically at the link tax. To do this we have to look at a worst-case scenario where the EU disregards all cross-border treaty and tax-enforcement issues and our governments go along with this nonsense.
So, I want to link to an article in Der Speigel to make some point about Angela Merkel.
To do so now, under Article 13, I have to get a license to link from them and pay a fee. Let’s call that fee €100. Instead of paying that fee my natural reaction would be to not link to it and just make reference to it.
I’ll quote it and not put in a link.
If that doesn’t work and WordPress takes my post down, I’ll screencap the relevant section of the article (4chan-style) and then not link to it. This requires a more sophisticated sniffer to figure out what I did.
And in the worst case if they figure that out, I’ll simply not even quote them anymore. And I’ll write the article in such a way that I don’t need to. They don’t get the traffic anymore. They never got the license fee.
The result is they fall in the Google search rankings.
And I get to keep my traffic up and my audience happy.
Who wins here? Me or them?
Me.
Especially if I keep my link license fee set for my content at what it’s worth, zero.
To me a link is free advertising. I know that each one is a gift that pays huge dividends. I cherish people who contact me for permission to scrape my work.
The whole point of what I do is to reach as wide an audience as possible. Why would I put up barriers to that?
You have to put this in perspective. Ninety five percent of the news you read is a restatement of a government or corporate press release. If you think someone can’t reprint government or corporate press releases for less than €100 a head you are crazy.
Just like it is in retail sales. Amazon is killing local retailers because easily cross-shopped items are simply more efficiently delivered without a brick and mortar storefront. The costs of maintaining it and people going to the central location is a waste of scarce, precious capital.
It’s an old model without a future.
News organizations that don’t add anything but only disseminate the same stuff but with a slightly different spin on it won’t be able to charge a dime for links. Functionally, for 95% of news, is there any difference between Yahoo!, MSN, CNN or FOX?
No.
If you produce something that is value-added people will figure out a way to justify to themselves paying for it. Advertising covers some of that cost. If they don’t it isn’t lost revenue, it was revenue you never had in the first place at that price.
In the Internet business eyeballs are everything. Losing eyeballs for link taxes is just bad business.
The Last War
So the EU just gave these sclerotic, dying industries everything they’ve ever wanted. But, in the long run, it will be their undoing as it will incentivize an entire generation of citizen journalists to fill in the niches and do primary research.
Moreover, it will be unenforceable at any practical level, as Dave Cullen points out. The EU will itself cause a cratering of traffic to and from its IP ranges.
As the cost of The Wire drops on a per megabyte basis, think 5G, so too does the cost to resist control of it. Lower bandwidth costs makes possible peer-to-peer networking and decentralized autonomous organizations that even the most hardened crypto-enthusiast haven’t conceived of yet.
And once there are no middle men to go after and turn into the copyright police, we’re back to them going after individuals again. At that point it’s game over.
That’s a long way off at this point and the present will be difficult, at best, to navigate. But we’re not flat-footed here. I do feel for guys like Dave Cullen who build great content and now are looking at real constraints.
I don’t envy them in the slightest.
But to me this feels like just another desperation move by old men fighting the last war to hold onto The Wire that’s slipping out of their fingers, writing laws out of date before they are even implemented.
The notion that Russia interfered in the US elections – even without Trump’s collusion – has become an article of faith among the American political and media establishment.
“Russia under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin has presented a somewhat shocking quandary for the US ruling class. It found that Russia was no longer in the servile business of rolling over to pander to Washington’s tyranny in international relations. Under Putin, Russia shook off the vassal status that it had unfortunately acquired under the feckless presidency of Boris Yeltsin (1991-99).”
“The fundamental issue for Washington is that Russia is not a vassal for American imperialism. That’s why there will be no reset. There will only be reset when American imperialism is replaced by a law-abiding, genuinely democratic US government. Until then, expect more US hostility, confrontation and even war towards Russia.”
Former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages
28.03.2019
Why There’ll Be No US-Russia Reset Post-Mueller
President Donald Trump and his White House team may have been cleared of collusion with the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election. That startling conclusion by Special Counsel Robert Mueller after nearly two years of investigation, might be viewed by some as giving Trump freedom to now get on with normalizing relations with Moscow. Don’t bet on it.
Mueller’s report, and US attorney general William Barr’s appraisal of it, only partially vindicate Trump’s long-held claims that the whole so-called “Russiagate” story is a “hoax”.
Yes, Mueller and Barr conclude that neither Trump nor his campaign team “conspired” with Russia to win the presidential race. But Democrat opponents are now dredging up the possibility that Trump “unwittingly” facilitated Kremlin cyber operations to damage his 2016 rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton.
In his summary of Mueller’s report, Barr unquestioningly accepts as fact the otherwise contentious claim that Russia interfered in the US election. Democrats and the anti-Trump US news media have not been deterred from pursuing their fantasy that the Kremlin allegedly meddled in US democracy. Trump has been cleared, but Russia has certainly not. It very much continues to have the smear of interference slapped all over its image.
At the heart of this narrative – bolstered by Mueller and Barr – is the false claim that Russian cyber agents hacked into the Democrat party computer system during 2016 and released emails compromising Clinton to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. That whole claim has been reliably debunked by former NSA technical expert William Binney and other former US intelligence officials who have shown indisputably that the information was not hacked from outside, but rather was released by an insider in the Democrat party, presumably based on indignation over the party’s corruption concerning the stitch-up against Clinton’s rival nomination for the presidential ticket, Bernie Sanders.
That is real scandal crying out to be investigated, as well as the Obama administration’s decision to unleash FBI illegal wiretapping and dirty tricks against Trump as being a “Russian stooge”. The Russian collusion charade was always a distraction from the really big serious crimes carried out by the Obama White House, the FBI and the Democrat party.
In any case, the notion that Russia interfered in the US elections – even without Trump’s collusion – has become an article of faith among the American political and media establishment.
That lie will continue to poison US-Russia relations and be used to justify more economic sanctions being imposed against Moscow. Trump may be cleared of being a “Kremlin stooge”. But he will find no political freedom to pursue a normalization in bilateral relations because of the predictable mantra about Russia interfering in American democracy.
But there is a deeper reason why there will be no reset in US-Russia relations. And it has nothing to do with whether Trump is in the White House. The problem is a strategic one, meaning it relates to underlying geopolitical confrontation between America’s desired global hegemony and Russia’s rightful aspiration to be an independent foreign power not beholden to Washington’s dictate.
Russia under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin has presented a somewhat shocking quandary for the US ruling class. It found that Russia was no longer in the servile business of rolling over to pander to Washington’s tyranny in international relations. Under Putin, Russia shook off the vassal status that it had unfortunately acquired under the feckless presidency of Boris Yeltsin (1991-99).
Putin’s landmark speech in Munich in 2007 was certainly a watershed moment in geopolitical relations whereby the Russian leader condemned US rampaging across the Middle East with criminal wars.
Then there was the failed attempt in 2008 by the US and NATO to over-run Georgia, failed because of a decisive military intervention by Russia in support of neighboring South Ossetia.
The return of the Cold War in US-Russia relations under former President GW Bush was due to the realization in Washington that Putin and Russia were no longer subordinates that could be pushed around for the gratification of American imperialism.
The Americans then tried another tack. Public relations and inveigling.
When Barack Obama took over the White House in 2009, there was the famous “reset policy” initiated by Washington towards Moscow. In March 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greeted Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva with a jokey “reset button”, purportedly to demonstrate a willingness in Washington for a new beginning in bilateral relations.
Ominously, Clinton’s State Department mislabelled the button with the Russian word for “overload” not “reset”. Her inane cackling to ingratiate herself with the skeptical Lavrov was also a giveaway of a phony reset.
Look how hollow such ostensible claims for “reset” by Washington have since manifested.
Admittedly, there was a significant gain in Obama’s negotiation of substantial nuclear arms reductions with the New START treaty in 2010.
However, it didn’t take long until Washington was back to its usual business of subversions and covert wars for regime change against foreign states that didn’t kowtow to its dictates. We saw this with ample evidence in the overthrow of Libya’s government in 2011, the attempted ouster in Syria beginning the same year, and the even more daring American intervention in Ukraine in early 2014 when it installed a rabidly anti-Russian regime through an illegal coup d’état.
We are also presently seeing this criminal American imperialism being conducted brazenly towards Venezuela, where Washington wants to overthrow a socialist president in order to get its corporate hands on the South American country’s vast oil wealth.
All the while, Russia has become ever more resolute its defiance of Washington’s global gangsterism. Moscow’s military defense of Syria from US-led regime change was certainly a pivotal moment in defining the limits of Moscow’s tolerance, as was Russia’s defense of Crimea.
For these reasons, Washington in its chagrin has moved to abandon the other major arms control treaty, the INF, which could allow it to install short and medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe, thus aggravating threats and tensions with Russia. The future of the much-vaunted New START treaty is also in doubt because of American vacillation. So much for Obama’s “reset”.
These are the structural, strategic factors in why Washington is set on a course of hostility towards Moscow. It has got very little to do with President Trump being in the White House or whether he has been cleared of “collusion” with Moscow.
The fundamental issue for Washington is that Russia is not a vassal for American imperialism. That’s why there will be no reset. There will only be reset when American imperialism is replaced by a law-abiding, genuinely democratic US government. Until then, expect more US hostility, confrontation and even war towards Russia.
Vasily Prozorov’s testimony will likely be dismissed by Western governments that support Ukraine, but there is plenty of evidence to back his claims about MH-17.
Former Ukrainian intelligence officer Vasily Prozorov’s testimony will likely be dismissed by Western governments that support Kiev, but there is plenty of evidence to back his claims.
KIEV, UKRAINE — A former top official in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), who recently fled the country, has given explosive testimony regarding the involvement of the Ukrainian government in the 2014 downing of the MH-17 passenger plane. The incident, which killed all 283 passengers and 15 flight crew members on board, had been blamed on Russia by Ukraine’s government, the United States and much of Western media.
In addition, the former official, Vasily Prozorov, told a group of international reporters that Ukraine’s controversial Azov Battalion, known for its Neo-Nazi ideology and symbolism, ran and maintained secret prisons in contested areas of Eastern Ukraine where there is fighting between pro-government forces and pro-Russian separatists. Prozorov, who has sought asylum in Russia, also accused the United States and the United Kingdom of training an SBU division that returned to Ukraine to conduct terrorist attacks in the Donbass region, which has been the site of a civil war since the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2014 in a U.S.-backed coup.
Prozorov’s identity was kept secret until the press conference began, in breaking with standard protocol. Prozorov then introduced himself, stating that he had been employed by the SBU from 1999 to 2018, but — after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 — had contacted Russian intelligence and began working undercover in the central office of the SBU. He does not describe himself as a defector, as he stated that his allegiance remains with the Ukrainian people while the allegiance of those who came to power with U.S. assistance in 2014 has long been suspect.
Prozorov then noted that, soon after the coup and before the civil war between Western and Eastern Ukraine had begun, the SBU — at Kiev’s behest — had begun to plan combat operations in the East and that the government had requested that plans be made that would result in mass civilian deaths among ethnic Russian populations, who were to be labeled as “accomplices to terrorists.”
The former SBU officer also detailed how the post-coup SBU had established secret prisons where prominent dissidents of the U.S.-backed government were interrogated, tortured and even killed. One of those prisons, located at an airstrip in Mariupol, was nicknamed “the Library” and Prozorov compared it to a “concentration camp” and showed images of severely beaten detainees he claimed had been imprisoned at the site. The former SBU officer also stated that SBU’s decisions, in regards to the black-site prisons and other areas, were often “led” by foreign advisers from the United States and the United Kingdom. The SBU’s use of torture in Ukraine’s civil war has been well-documented even though the SBU blocked UN efforts to probe its extent.
In addition, Prozorov asserted that the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, a militia that was incorporated into Ukraine’s Interior Ministry as a component of the country’s National Guard, also operates its own prisons in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zones in Eastern Ukraine. The Azov Battalion receives funding from the government of Ukraine as well as from the U.S. government and has also received weapons from the Israeli government.
Insights into the MH-17 downing
Prozorov’s most shocking statements were related to the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, or MH-17, which was promptly blamed on Russia by the post-coup Ukrainian government, the United States and much of the Western world. Prozorov stated, noting first that it was his personal opinion based on his experiences, that the Ukrainian government had been an “accomplice to the Malaysian MH-17 flight disaster.”
He continued, stating:
The amazingly prompt reaction of the Ukrainian leadership was the first thing that made me feel suspicious. My unequivocal opinion was President Pyotr Poroshenko and his press-service had prior knowledge of the affair. Secondly, hostilities had been underway for several months by then, but the airspace over the area was not closed.”
He also noted that his efforts to learn more about the circumstances of the disaster within the SBU from a senior officer were met with the following reply: “Don’t poke your nose into this business, if you don’t wish to have problems.” However, Prozorov noted that “some information has leaked out in the end, though.”
He then concluded:
On the basis of my own analysis I can speculate who was an accomplice in the crime and who was involved in concealing evidence. In my opinion, there were two men involved – the current deputy chief of the Ukrainian presidential staff Valery Kondratyuk and chief of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence directorate, Vasyl Burba.”
Valery Kondratyuk, left and Vasily Burba, right
Prozorov’s full conference can be watched here (in Russian). A summary with English subtitles can be watched here.
Claims well-supported by independent reporting
Though some may be quick to dismiss Prozorov’s testimony as “Russian propaganda,” many of his claims fit with independent reporting on the Ukrainian conflict. For instance, in regard to Prozorov’s claim of “black site” prisons, the SBU denied the UN access in 2016 to many detention centers in Mariupol — where Prozorov says “the Library” prison is located — and Kramatorsk. The SBU claimed that it blocked the UN inspectors access in order to protect “government secrets.” The UN had first tried to access the areas after several human-rights groups had found credible evidence of torture taking place at facilities in the area.
Prozorov’s claims that the post-coup SBU had made plans to murder ethnic Russians in the Donbass are also supported by publicly available evidence. For instance, when the civil war began, the Kiev-based government stated its intention to specifically target civilians in order “to clean the cities.” In 2016, then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who has been called “Washington’s man in Ukraine,” called pro-Russian civilians in the region “subhumans.” In an interview aired by the U.S.-funded, pro-government Ukrainian news channel Hromadske TV, a Ukrainian journalist aligned with the government asserted that the contested region was home to 1.5 million people “who are superfluous” and “must be exterminated.” With such sentiments having been openly stated by prominent politicians and journalists aligned with the current government in Kiev, Prozorov’s assertions seem hardly unreasonable.
US Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Robert Ashley, right, meets with Vasyl Burba, Chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine. Photo | Defence Intelligence of Ukraine
In regard to Ukraine’s alleged role in the downing of MH-17, it is worth noting that past reports by late American investigative journalist Robert Parry described in detail how the “independent” MH-17 investigation was almost completely dependent on information from Ukraine’s SBU in piecing together the event. According to Parry:
[This control by the SBU, combined with its past obstruction of the UN torture probe],suggests that the SBU also would steer the JIT away from any evidence that might implicate a unit of the Ukrainian military in the shoot-down, a situation that would be regarded as a state secret which could severely undermine international support for the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev. Among the SBU’s official duties is the protection of Ukrainian government secrets.”
In addition, one of Parry’s sources maintained that the CIA had, like Prozorov, found evidence that Ukraine’s government had indeed been “an accomplice” to the MH-17 incident:
A source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the CIA’s conclusion pointed toward a rogue Ukrainian operation involving a hard-line oligarch with the possible motive of shooting down Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official plane returning from South America that day, with similar markings as MH-17. The source said a Ukrainian warplane ascertained that the plane was not Putin’s but the attack went ahead anyway, with the assumption that the tragedy would be blamed on the pro-Russian rebels or on Russia directly.”
Another reason Prozorov’s testimony should not be outright dismissed as propaganda is the fact that he pushed back on previous Russian media reports involving U.S. infiltration of the SBU. When asked by a reporter if he could confirm reports that foreign military officials, including Americans, occupied their own floor at SBU headquarters, Prozorov adamantly denied those claims, stating that after 2005 there were CIA officials present in SBU headquarters but that the practice had been discontinued. He stated that U.S. intelligence officials regularly visited SBU headquarters after the 2014 coup but were not based in the building.
Thus, while Prozorov’s testimony will likely be dismissed by mainstream Western media outlets and Western governments that support Kiev, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that many of his claims — including his most shocking — deserve careful consideration, not outright dismissal. Indeed, were Prozorov a defector from a country currently at odds with the U.S. — be it Russia, Venezuela or Iran — it is highly likely that mainstream media would repeat and his promote his claims regardless of their veracity. However, because he has sought asylum in Russia, his recent statements are unlikely to gain international traction merely because of where he is now located, in spite of the evidence supporting many of those statements.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism
A Strange Harvest (1980) is a documentary about unexplained cattle mutilations that were widespread in the American West in the 1970s and 1980s. (From a Wikipedia article on cattle mutilation: “A 1979 FBI report indicated that, according to investigations by the New Mexico State Police, there had been an estimated 8,000 mutilations in Colorado, causing approximately $1,000,000 damage.”) Many instances of cattle mutilations can be attributed to predation, but others appear to be the result of unexplained human activity.
This well-made documentary, which runs about 1.5 hours, is a masterpiece of low-budget creepiness. The synthesizer soundtrack is ominous and weird, and the cinematography is hallucinatory. I don’t buy the argument that space aliens are responsible, but it’s still a compelling movie.
The arrival of a relative handful of Russian military personnel this week triggered a flurry of denunciations from Trump administration officials.
“In response to a question about US denunciations of the Russian military presence in Venezuela, the Chinese spokesman stated: “First of all, countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Latin American countries, are all independent and sovereign states. They have the right to determine their own foreign policy and their way to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation with countries of their own choosing.”
“As in colonial times 200 years ago, the US continues to regard Latin America as a zone for its exclusive interests, its own ‘backyard’ and they directly demand that it should obey the US without a word, and that other countries should steer clear of the region,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday. “
US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House Wednesday that “Russia has to get out” of Venezuela. Asked how Washington would enforce this demand, he responded, “We’ll see. All options are open.”
Trump delivered his ultimatum during a White House photo op with Fabiana Rosales, the wife of right-wing opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who, with US backing, proclaimed himself “interim president” of Venezuela in January, calling upon the military to overthrow the existing government of President Nicolas Maduro.
Rosales, referred to by Trump administration officials as Venezuela’s “first lady,” is conducting an international tour aimed at drumming up support for the US-orchestrated regime change operation, which has flagged noticeably since the fiasco suffered last month with the failure of a cynical attempt to force trucks carrying supposed humanitarian aid across the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
Both Guaidó and his US patrons had predicted that the provocation would trigger a rising by the Venezuelan armed forces against Maduro. With a handful of right-wing opposition supporters and gang members turning out for the “humanitarian” hoax, security forces easily contained the attack.
The latest US provocation has centered upon the arrival in Venezuela over the weekend of two Russian aircraft carrying approximately 100 military personnel. An Antonov An-124 cargo jet and an Ilyushin II-62 passenger plane landed on Saturday at the Maiquetía airport outside of Caracas.
The arrival of the relative handful of Russian military personnel triggered a flurry of denunciations from top Trump administration officials, who have been orchestrating the bid to bring down the Venezuelan government.
White House national security adviser John Bolton declared that the US “will not tolerate hostile foreign military powers meddling” within the Western Hemisphere.
Earlier this month, Bolton invoked the Monroe Doctrine as the foundation of US policy in Venezuela. This 19th century declaration of US foreign policy initially was directed at opposing any attempts by the empires of Europe to recolonize newly independent republics in Latin America. In the 20th century, it was invoked by successive US governments as a license for US imperialism to use military force to impose its will throughout the hemisphere, resulting in some 50 direct armed interventions and the imposition of fascist-military dictatorships over much of South and Central America.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, meanwhile, told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, in a March 25 telephone conversation, that Washington would “not stand idly by as Russia exacerbates tensions in Venezuela,” according to a spokesman for the State Department.
The State Department called the arrival of the Russian troops a “reckless escalation” of tensions in Venezuela, adding that “The continued insertion of Russian military personnel to support the illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela risks prolonging the suffering of the Venezuelan people…”
What hypocrisy! Washington has imposed an ever-escalating wave of sanctions that have gravely exacerbated the intense crisis of the country’s economy, with Venezuelan working people paying the price. A Trump administration official briefing reporters last Friday boasted: “The effect of the sanctions is continuing and cumulative. It’s sort of like in Star Wars when Darth Vader constricts somebody’s throat, that’s what we are doing to the regime economically,”
The Russian Foreign Ministry quoted Lavrov as having responded to Pompeo by charging that “Washington’s attempts to organize a coup in Venezuela and threats against its legitimate government are in violation of the UN Charter and undisguised interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the arrival of the Russian troops was in fulfillment of an “agreement on military technical cooperation” signed between Moscow and Caracas in 2001.
“As in colonial times 200 years ago, the US continues to regard Latin America as a zone for its exclusive interests, its own ‘backyard’ and they directly demand that it should obey the US without a word, and that other countries should steer clear of the region,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday. “[D]oes the US think that people are waiting for it to bring democracy to them on the wings of its bombers? This question can be answered by Iraqis, Libyans and Serbs.”
Meanwhile, a US official speaking to Reuters expressed concern that the Russian military personnel who arrived on Saturday included a team of specialists in cybersecurity.
This concern coincides with a new series of electricity blackouts that began on Monday, affecting much of Caracas and at least 16 states. The Maduro government has blamed the outages on sabotage, including cyber-attacks on the power system’s computerized infrastructure.
Meanwhile the Venezuelan situation has also ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing, with the US forcing the cancelation of a 60th anniversary meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which was set to begin on March 26 in Chengdu.
The Trump administration had demanded that the IDB accept a representative named by its puppet Guaidó as Venezuela’s representative at the meeting. China refused to issue a visa to Washington’s man, Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard economist and former minister in the government of Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez, which oversaw the massacre of some 3,000 workers and youth in the suppression of the popular 1989 revolt known as the caracazo. Hausmann has publicly called for the US to invade Venezuela along with a “coalition of the willing.”
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry defended Beijing’s action on Tuesday, declaring that “Guaidó himself is not a president elected through legal procedures and thus lacks legitimacy,” adding that “changing Venezuela’s representative at the IDB won’t help solve the Venezuelan issue.”
In response to a question about US denunciations of the Russian military presence in Venezuela, the Chinese spokesman stated: “First of all, countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Latin American countries, are all independent and sovereign states. They have the right to determine their own foreign policy and their way to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation with countries of their own choosing.”
He added, in a pointed criticism of US imperialist policy, “Latin American affairs are not a certain country’s exclusive business, nor is Latin America a certain country’s backyard.”
The heated exchanges between Washington, on the one hand, and Moscow and Beijing, on the other, expose the geo-strategic interests that underlie US imperialism’s regime change operation in Venezuela. Both Russia and China have established extensive economic and political ties with Venezuela, which boasts the largest proven oil reserves on the planet.
China has invested upwards of $50 billion in Venezuela over the past decade in loan agreements repaid with oil exports. Russia’s total investments in the country are estimated at close to $25 billion, including in the exploitation of a significant share of the country’s oil fields.
Washington views the Venezuelan crisis through the prism of the “great power” conflicts with “revisionist” states that it laid out in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and the Pentagon’s strategy document elaborated at the end of 2017.
US imperialism is determined to wrest control of Venezuela’s vast oil resources for the US-based energy monopolies and deny them to its global rivals, particularly China and Russia. To that end, it is prepared to starve the Venezuelan people and turn Latin America into a battlefield in a third world war.
No longer bound by a gag order, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos has gone public about his Mueller probe conviction, describing the Russia collusion narrative as a ‘hoax’ manufactured by intelligence agencies.
No longer bound by a gag order, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos has gone public about his Mueller probe conviction, describing the Russia collusion narrative as a ‘hoax’ manufactured by intelligence agencies.
Papadopoulos, who served 12 days in prison last fall for lying to investigators, has launched a media blitz to clarify “misinformation” about his guilty plea following the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Papadopoulos explained that the FBI had tried to pressure him to “admit” that he had told someone at the Trump campaign about his conversations with a shadowy professor, Joseph Mifsud. Painted as a Russian agent by the FBI, Mifsud told Papadopoulos during a London meeting that Russia had possession of Hillary Clinton’s emails. The professor went missing in September 2018.
“Because if I had told anyone in the campaign, it would have been a conspiracy, but it would have been based on Western intelligence basically fabricating the entire thing,” he said.
“As I am talking to Mueller’s people and they are trying to get me to say something that I know is not true, I just couldn’t. I had to stick to the facts, the truth.”
The 31-year-old was framed as the cornerstone of the Trump campaign’s alleged collaboration with the Kremlin, after he supposedly told Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, that Russia had Clinton’s emails.
But Papadopoulos told ‘Fox & Friends’ that he never discussed the issue with Downer.
“I actually was the one who reported Downer to both the FBI and Bob Mueller because of his very bizarre, strange behavior during my meeting with him. He was pulling his phone out, he was recording me. It was very bizarre,” he said.
Ultimately, Mueller’s probe into alleged Russia collusion was a “hoax,” Papadopoulos said, but he wasn’t allowed to comment on it until after he was sentenced.
Papadopoulos is currently promoting a book about his experience, “Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump.”
Mueller’s nearly two-year probe, which ended on Friday, concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Curiously, investigators charged Papadopoulos with “lying in order to conceal his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries” – an allegation which the former Trump official is now disputing.
Russia described the Israeli bombing of Gaza as “dangerous” and warned it could lead to a “large-scale armed conflict” with civilian deaths on both sides.
Moscow has expressed deep concern regarding the latest wave of airstrikes carried out by Israeli warplanes on the besieged Gaza Strip and is urging both sides to show restraint and immediately return to a ceasefire.
In a statement released Tuesday, the Russian foreign ministry described the Israeli bombing of Gaza as “dangerous” and warned it could lead to a “large-scale armed conflict” with civilian deaths occurring on both sides.
“Moscow is deeply concerned about a new round of tensions that may lead to a large-scale armed conflict, civilian deaths on both sides and the further deterioration of the already dire situation in the Gaza Strip, which has been under a blockade for years,” the statement adds.
Israeli warplanes have carried out more than 50 airstrikes on Gaza in the last two days, damaging around 500 Palestinian homes. Ten Palestinians were injured during the Israeli attacks in response to a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip during the early hours of March 25. The rocket hit a home in Mishmeret in central Israel, ultimately leaving seven wounded.
Gaza, considered by many to be an open air prison, is one of the most densely populated regions of the world. In 2018 alone, Israel killed at least 290 Palestinians including during the Great Return March while 14 Israelis were killed by Palestinians during the same period. During the last major war between Israel and Gaza in 2014, Israel’s IDF suffered only two fatalities.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, President Trump told reporters that Russian soldiers must leave Venezuela, just days after Russia deployed a military contingent outside of Caracas.
“Russia has to get out,” Trump told the media during a meeting with Fabiana Rosales, wife of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who he referred to as “the first lady of Venezuela.” When asked how that could actually be accomplished, Trump replied: “We’ll see. All options are open.”
Vice President Mike Pence was also present at the meeting with Rosales.
“The United States views Russia’s arrival of military planes this weekend as an unwelcome provocation,” Pence told reporters.
The rift between the United States and Russia over Venezuela deepened following the arrival of Russian military personnel to support Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend. According to Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the sending of Russian personnel was done “in strict accordance” with Venezuela’s constitution along with a bilateral agreement.
“We call on Russia today to cease all support of the Maduro regime and stand with Juan Guaido and stand with nations across this hemisphere and across the world until freedom is restored,” Pence added.
All the old ideas for uprooting the status quo have failed. I point this out not to depress people, but to persuade them to stop twisting on locked doorknobs. The old ideas don’t work, so we need new ones.
The political process has failed. Capitalism has failed. Socialism has failed. Libertarianism has failed. Marx has failed. Populism has failed. Anarchism has failed. I say this not because of any glaring flaws in any of those ideas (in theory any of them could potentially work in an alternate universe), but because we are hurtling towards extinction in the fairly near future, and none of them have saved us.
“But Caitlin!” you may object. “My particular favorite ideology would have saved us long ago if only everyone had gotten on board with it!”
Okay. But they didn’t. And now we’re on the brink of armageddon. That means it has failed. It doesn’t work.
We are well on our way to extinction via climate collapse or nuclear holocaust, and even if we miss those by some miracle we are headed toward an artificial intelligence-led tech dystopia in which our consciousness is permanently enslaved by a propaganda network that is far too advanced for there to be any hope of escaping into truth.
Our ecosystem is very fragile and rapidly fading, and the difference between the ability to survive without it and our current scientific capability is the difference between flying and jumping. Which won’t matter if one of the many small, unpredictable moving parts in the steadily escalating new cold war with Russia results in a nuclear weapon being deployed as a result of misunderstanding or miscommunication and sparking off the annihilation of every organism on earth, as nearly happened during the last cold war on more than one occasion.
This is where the status quo has gotten us. All attempts to overthrow it have failed. The time is up, and the results are in.
The political process doesn’t work.
I say this not because the political process can’t work, due to some technical failure in the way it has been applied. I say this because it doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that we’re on the cusp of the apocalypse with no signs of steering clear of it. Attempts to uproot the status quo via political engagement and voting does not work.
“But Caitlin!” you may object. “The only reason the political process doesn’t work is because it has been hijacked by corrupt powers with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo! If we can extract those corrupt powers, we can make the political process work!”
Okay. But you didn’t. You were unable to extract the corrupt powers, and now we’re on the brink of extinction. Your strategy has failed.
Capitalism doesn’t work.
I say this not because capitalism can’t work in theory, I say this because it doesn’t work in practice. How do I know it doesn’t work in practice? Because the planet is dying and we’ve all got doomsday weapons pointing at our heads that may go off at any moment. The results are in. Capitalism doesn’t work.
“But Caitlin!” you may object. “What we’ve tried hasn’t been real capitalism! The free market hasn’t been given a chance to solve all our problems, because of the artificial interference and regulations of Big Government. If we can get rid of Big Government, we can solve all our problems!”
Okay. But that never happened. And now here we are at the end of the world, watching our planet ripped to shreds by status quo power structures. Capitalism failed. It doesn’t work.
Socialism doesn’t work.
I say this not because socialism can’t work in theory, I say it because it doesn’t work in real life, as evidenced by the fact that our world is on fire, our time is up, and we are all about to die. Socialism failed to save us. It doesn’t work.
“But Caitlin!” you may object. “Socialism hasn’t worked because it’s never had a chance to work! If the capitalist imperialists would just stop sabotaging socialist experiments, it would thrive and replace the status quo! We’d all be saved!”
Okay. But we’re not. The worldwide populace has not answered the call of socialism in sufficient numbers to overthrow the interests which oppose it, and now we’re at the end of days. The plan was to unite the working class against the elite oppressors around the world and implement socialism, and it failed. It is a strategy which does not work.
Libertarianism doesn’t work.
We could do this all day, with any number of ideologies. Perhaps libertarianism could work under the right circumstances, but attempts to rally the public around it have utterly failed, and now we’re staring down the barrel of extinction. You can object and make excuses, or you can acknowledge that the strategies for implementing your preferred status quo-challenging ideology don’t work, and find new ones.
It’s easy to isolate yourself within a particular ideological echo chamber and create the illusion for yourself that your pet ideology is making progress. Oh look, Russiagate was disproven. Oh look, Jeremy Corbyn did well in those last elections. Oh look, the Democratic Socialists of America gained a few thousand members. But if you step out of that echo chamber and look at the big picture, you see a futile tug-of-war between feuding ideologies with no gains made anywhere near the scale that would be necessary to avert the massive threats on our horizon.
My point here is that we may have found an ideological standpoint that really resonates with us, and that ideology itself may be intrinsically worthy and vastly superior to the status quo. But the strategies for implementing that strategy have failed spectacularly. If you can’t implement your strategy, you’re just diddling cutesy ideas while the world burns. It’s just a nice identity for you to hold onto and make your feely bits feel nice.
“I’m a Marxist!”
“I’m an anarchist!”
No you’re not. You’re an ideological LARPer dressing up in an identity and pretending to change the world, while the world itself tumbles into the abyss.
Again, I say this not to create a sense of hopelessness, but to get people to stop wasting time and energy pushing on locked doors. Stop trying strategies that people have been trying for decades with essentially zero ground gained, and try something else instead. Stop hanging out in your little echo chambers and thinking that anything’s changing just because you are surrounded by people who agree with you. Sure, hold onto your beliefs about what kind of system would most benefit the world if you like, but be acutely aware that those beliefs in our current situation are completely meaningless.
The reality is that as long as powerful people control the dominant public narratives, no ground will be gained in steering our species away from the status quo trajectory that’s killing us, because you won’t be able to awaken mainstream consciousness to what’s going on. The only thing that has any hope of prying the oligarchic hands off the steering wheel is the mainstream public seeing what they’re doing and using the power of their numbers to force drastic change in a wildly different direction. If we can’t make that happen, we’re all just banging on locked doors while the curtain closes on humanity.
We all need to do better. I include myself in this. We need to try new things. Many, many new things. We need new ideas. What kind of new ideas? I don’t know, that’s why I’m telling you. I’m just one woman, and I put as many ideas out there as I can, but it’s not enough. Clearly it’s not enough, because here we are.
In my opinion the obvious way to open up a path for dissident ideas to replace the status quo is to kill the public trust in the stories they were told in school and continue to be told by the mass media about the kind of world and country they live in, but so far that hasn’t happened. My own ideas for advancing that agenda which I’ve been seeding into the world have been inadequate, and so have everyone else’s. So we need more new ideas. Lots and lots of new ideas.
What we’ve tried up until now hasn’t worked, so if there’s anything that might work it’s going to come from a wildly unanticipated direction, from way outside the failed mental processes which have accompanied us to this point. We need to open ourselves to that kind of idea.
That’s basically all I’ve got to offer today. A helpless but sincere plea for humanity to try something new, spat out onto the internet in the Hail Mary hope that it might plant some seeds and loosen the soil for something unprecedented to open up in human consciousness. Sometimes that’s all that we can do.
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Instead of “collusion with Russia”, will the mainstream media soon be buzzing about a potential war with Russia? The Trump administration and the Russian government are currently engaged in a very heated war of words regarding the deteriorating situation in Venezuela, and at this point it is difficult to see how this crisis will end well unless one side is willing to back down. The Russians are backing current president Nicolas Maduro, and as you will see below, they now have troops on the ground in the country. That absolutely infuriated President Trump, because it greatly complicated his plans for regime change in Venezuela. He told the press that Russia must “get out” and that “all options are open” as far as accomplishing that goal. In other words, President Trump is actually threatening Russia with military force if they refuse to pull their troops out of the country.
Of course the Russians are not going to do that. They have been strongly speaking out against the possibility of U.S. military intervention, and they seized the upper hand strategically when they were able to get boots on the ground in Venezuela over the weekend…
One flight tracking website shows two aircraft left a Russian military base for the Venezuelan capital Caracas on Friday, with a further jet leaving on Sunday.
The arrival of the military jets was confirmed by Javier Mayorca, an independent journalist, who said an Antonov-124 cargo plane and a smaller jet touched down late on Saturday.
He said approximately 100 soldiers – led by General Vasily Tonkoshkurov, who is head of the Mobilization Directorate of Russia’s armed forces – was also seen, as well as 35 tons of equipment.
Having the backing of the Russian military greatly, greatly strengthens Maduro’s position, and it is going to be much more difficult for the Trump administration to get rid of him now.
In recent public statements, Russian officials have made it exceedingly clear that they will not tolerate U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, and they underscored that point by sending in troops.
The influx of Russian forces, reportedly with intelligence officers among them, prompted U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to call his Russian counterpart on Monday and warn him, “that the United States and regional countries will not stand idly by as Russia exacerbates tensions in Venezuela.”
Okay, so what does “not stand idly by” actually mean?
“Russia has to get out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he met with Guaido’s wife, Fabiana Rosales.
Asked how he would make Russian forces leave, Trump said: “We’ll see. All options are open.”
But Russia is not going to get out of Venezuela.
So either Trump will have to back down, or he will have to risk a full-blown war with Russia by taking military action.
Yes, we have actually reached that point.
On a note that may or may not be related, the U.S. Army has just placed an order for 167,195 assault rifles…
The Army Contracting Command-New Jersey (ACC-NJ) has issued a pre-solicitation to the defense industry, on behalf of Project Manager Soldier Weapons (PM-SW), for the request to procure 167,195 M4/M4A1 Carbines to be manufactured exclusively within the United States or its Territories.
The M4/M4A1 carbines provide a shorter and lighter variant of the M16A2 assault rifle to the United States Armed Forces. The lightweight assault rifle fires 5.56×45mm NATO ammunition from a 30-round magazine and has semi-automatic and three-round burst firing modes.
Is this just a routine order, or does someone anticipate that our troops will be doing some fighting soon?
Whether military action is coming in the short-term or not, it is clear that the U.S. intends to continue to increase the pressure on Maduro. President Trump met with Juan Guaido’s wife on Wednesday, and the day before another crippling power outage paralyzed much of Venezuela…
Venezuelans reacted with despair and resourcefulness on Tuesday as nationwide power cuts closed schools and businesses, paralyzing a nation that was only starting to recover from its worst blackouts earlier this month.
The new outages, which began Monday, forced people to follow now-familiar routines: scour neighborhoods for food and water in the few shops that were open or seek out the few spots where they could find a signal on their mobile phones and get in touch with family and friends.
Now that the Mueller investigation is over, hopefully there will be a vigorous national debate about our policy regarding Venezuela, because the American people deserve to know what another war would cost us.
A war in Venezuela would be far more complicated and far more difficult than our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just consider Ron Paul’s assessment of such a conflict…
So is President Trump about to attack Venezuela? At a recent US House hearing, one of the expert witnesses testified that such an invasion would require between 100,000 and 150,000 US troops, going up against maybe three times that number of Venezuelan troops in a country twice the size of Iraq. With a lot of jungle. All for a “prize” that has nothing to do with US security. If the president makes such a foolish move he might find the current war cheerleaders in the Democrat Party changing their tune rather quickly. Let’s hope Trump changes his tune and returns to his promises of no more regime change wars.
On top of all that, an invasion of Venezuela would risk sparking a full-blown war with Russia.
It would be a foreign policy mistake of epic proportions, and we must not do it.
Without a doubt, the situation in Venezuela is heartbreaking, and we should all hope for their economy to be restored.
But this is something for the people of Venezuela to sort out. As I have repeatedly stressed, the U.S. cannot be the police of the world, and the U.S. military should not be used to overthrow governments just because we do not like who is currently running things.
If we are going to ask young American men and women to shed their blood and sacrifice their lives, it had better be for a really, really, really good reason, and regime change in Venezuela definitely does not qualify.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone