The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has set up a body to counter foreign ‘disinformation’
The US has established a Foreign Malign Influence Center to address foreign threats to elections as well as the “public opinion” within the country, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines revealed in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday.
Operating under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FMIC has access to “all intelligence possessed or created pertaining to foreign malign information, including election security.” Its director, Jeffrey Wichman, was formerly chief of analysis for the CIA’s Counterintelligence Mission Center.
For the agency’s purposes, ‘foreign’ means originating in Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, or “any other foreign country that the Director of the Center” deems appropriate, while ‘foreign malign influence’ is defined as “any hostile effort undertaken by, or at the direction of, or on behalf of or with the substantial support of,” one of the named countries in order to influence, covertly or overtly, US government or state policy or the “public opinion within the United States.”
While the FMIC was apparently founded in September at the behest of recent legislation, Thursday’s hearing was the first public mention of its existence. Its establishment was controversial, as some senators and intelligence officers questioned the need for another agency with the same remit as the Global Engagement Center, the State Department subsidiary tasked with disseminating American propaganda to fight the foreign variety.
Haines addressed some of those concerns in Thursday’s hearing, insisting the FMIC was working to “support the Global Engagement Center and others throughout the US government in helping them to understand what are the plans and intentions of the key actors in this space: China, Russia, Iran, etc.”
Countering ‘foreign disinformation’ has become something of an obsession for government bureaucrats since the 2016 election of Donald Trump, with half a dozen agencies springing up since then. In addition to the GEC, launched in 2017, the Pentagon quietly launched an Influence and Perception Management Office last year, joining the Department of Homeland Security’s Foreign Influence and Interference Branch, Countering Foreign Influence Task Force, and the ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board, as well as the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.
However, Pentagon contractor RAND Corporation recently acknowledged Russia’s role is probably overstated. The think tank warned in a study conducted last year that blaming Moscow for all information Washington doesn’t like is likely to backfire, urging the Defense Department to reduce “overattribution of disinformation on social media to Russia.”
“Pointing the finger at Russia in every instance of activity on social media resembling Russian interference distorts the understanding of the threat,” the report stated.
A review of Banerjee’s “Fighting Imperialism and Authoritarian Regimes: Between the Devil and the Deep Sea” (2003) and Salamey’s “Hezbollah, Communitarianism, and Anti-Imperialism” (2019).
“such power and the people who excercised it, embodied a mystique, expressed not simply in guns but in books, uniforms, social behavior and a mass of manufactured products. Only by accepting these things and those who brought them would it be possible to penetrate this mystique and grasp the power which lay behind it” (Chris Calpham, Third World Politics: an introduction, 1985)
According to the Middle East Institute, the Washington-based think-tank, Hezbollah today stands as the “most formidable” armed non-state actor in the world. Hezbollah has developed exponentially since the 1980s growing to be the most numerously large political party in the Arab world, and spearheading the Axis of Resistance coalition againstZionism and US imperialism [and its Arab allies] in West Asia at large. The stance on Hezbollah has recurrently caused sharp disagreements among the Left in the Arab World and abroad: whereby some would promote anti-imperialist solidarity with the party, and others would explain away the party’s anti-imperialist achievements to critique other factors.
Anti-anti-imperialism
In “Fighting Imperialism and Authoritarian Regimes: Between the Devil and the Deep Sea”, Sumanta Banerjee introduces a pertinent debate of leftist circles into academia (2003). Banerjee offers a critique of post-soviet anti-imperialism: contrasting old leftist anti-imperialist liberation movements with contemporary identity-based anti-imperialist liberation movements which presumably fall short of leftist standards of social liberation. He argues that the Left is regressing by uncritically prioritizing the contradiction of imperialism while overlooking other tenants of social liberation which he characterizes as violating “the beliefs and operative norms” of “the Left and democratic forces” (S. Banerjee, 2003, p:183).
The regression and eventual dissolution of the USSR stifled the popularity of socialist ideals and did away with the blanket ideology that most anti-imperialist actors adopted a variant of. It became a notable trend of liberation movements, especially in West Asia, to turn towards their respective cultures for revolutionary inspiration rather than turning to the literature of scientific socialism. The prior leftwing secular character of liberation movements was replaced by cultural indigenous ideologies: the most distinguished among which is Hezbollah.
In his article, Banerjee condemns these non-socialist anti-imperialist movements as ‘authoritarian’. He doesn’t directly address Hezbollah but poses a critique generally to all non-socialist anti-imperialist actors. He argues that they hardly any better than their imperialist oppressors such that they too stifle social liberation: thus allegorizing the latter as the ‘Devil’ and the former as the ‘Deep Sea’ (S. Banerjee, 2003, p:184). He adds that the anti-imperialist struggle against US hegemony has been distorted since the time of ‘Che Guevara’ and ‘Nelson Mandela’ (S. Banerjee, 2003, p:183). Many leftists, he argues, have remained uncritically fixated on supporting any party opposing US hegemony regardless of other factors; he theorizes that they have been so blinded by the evils of the Devil that they have obliviously backed up into the embrace of the Deep Sea (S. Banerjee, 2003).
Banerjeee’s argument, essentially, challenges the precedence of the struggle against imperialism in leftist lore and activism. The novel significance of his article is that it formulates a topic heatedly debated in vintage cafes and niche pubs, and introduces it into academia where it can be scientifically unpacked. While he doesn’t address Hezbollah directly, his arguments echo those posed by some leftists against initiatives for political affinity with Hezbollah.
Communitarianism
Imad Salamey (2019) comports the aforementioned argument to be point-precise geared toward Hezbollah by introducing the prospect of “communitarianism”. Salamey explains in “Hezbollah, Communitarianism, and Anti-Imperialism” that Hezbollah is one byproduct of the global trend of communitarianism (2019). Communitarianism, Salamey explains, arises as a result of the ferocious expansion of capitalism and the equivocal decline of nation-states with the curbing of governments in favor of laissez-faire market policies (2019).
In the absence of the state’s welfare role, communities turn inwards for a safety net. Hezbollah’s inception in Lebanon came in this context: in light of the Shia community’s social marginalization, the sectarian chaos of the Lebanese civil war, and the recurrent Zionist attacks on the predominantly shia-populated south. Hezbollah arose as the safety net for its immediate community against the ills of capitalism and imperialism.
Salamey explains that communitarianism is rooted in a “primordial cultural solidarity” which undermines the nation-state (2019); In the case of Hezbollah, this underlying cultural solidarity was of that between the Iranian and Lebanese Shias: which was optimized ultimately in the form of the robust alliance between Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps.
Before unpacking the communitarian basis of Hezbollah, Salamey aimed to synthesize the general conception of anti-imperialism in Marxist lore and then presented the two as incompatible. He argues that:
The Marxist directive for revolution, and by extension anti-imperialist praxis, is premised upon the Westphalian conception of the nation-state (liberation is the liberation of a nation within a state),
Communitarianism by definition undermines the nation-state, and Hezbollah is manifestly communitarian (primarily because of its substate identity)
Thus, Hezbollah isn’t anti-imperialist (the strive against American imperialism is accidental and not decisively anti-imperialist).
The conclusion of Salamey’s article builds on that of Banerjee’s: leftists in support of Hezbollah under the pretext of anti-imperialist solidarity are violating the ideological beliefs and operative norms of the Left (Salamey, Hezbollah, Communitarianism, and Anti-Imperialism, 2019; Banerjee, Between the Devil and the Deep Sea, 2003). This Post-Soviet Communitarian critique of Hezbollah roughly presents some arguments typically posed by western and westernized leftists denouncing affinity with Hezbollah.
Argument 1: Hezbollah isn’t Leftist
One of the typical discourse narratives posed against affinity with Hezbollah is by wistfully contrasting Hezbollah with the romanticized leftist anti-imperialist icons such as Che Guevara or Nelson Mandela. While this is a unscientific criticism of Hezbollah that is uncommon among credible Leftist intellectuals or noteworthy parties, it is popular among the contemporary ‘woke’ left as a to-go-to argument.
The objective of conjuring the picturesque revolutionary experiences of Guevara and Mandela is to undermine Hezbollah’s strive for liberation in contrast. Proponents of such speaking points aim to marginalize Hezbollah’s achievements against Zionist colonialism and Takfiri fascism by putting it in competition with icons like Guevara or Mandela: In an effort to present Hezbollah’s anti-imperialist efforts as ‘accidental’ or ‘isolated incidents’ sidelining them in the assessment of Hezbollah’s character.
These speaking points offer no real critique but only employ symbolic smearing to contain Hezbollah’s popularity momentum from extending to the Left-wing in the Arab World and the West. Such smear-campaigning speaking points are comparable to that posed against the Red Army in the late 1940s. The Red Army led by Stalin had taken on the full brunt of the Nazi war machine and liberated Europe from the ruthless rule of Nazism suffering 8.6 million deaths in the process (which is 10 times more than the deaths suffered by the US, Britain, and France combined). However this fact was actively distorted for western public opinion: presenting the victory over Fascism as a victory of all the “Allied Powers”, presenting the Red Army as only a marginal contributor to this victory, and presenting Stalin as an anti-christian-church-destroyer to the conservative working class in Europe and the US.
Argument 1 marginalizes Hezbollah’s admirable strife against the Zionist and Takfiri footsoldiers of US imperialism. It conditions support for Hezbollah upon the party’s self-identification as a leftist party, factoring out the consequential significance of Hezbollah’s strife against the forces of reaction. A bullet that pierces the heart of a colonizing soldier or a fanatic fascist promotes people’s liberation regardless of the ideological incentives which motivate the soldier.
Argument 2: Hezbollah isn’t Secular
While argument 1 stands as a strawman argument against leftist solidarity with Hezbollah, other arguments present a more sophisticated version of Argument 1. Primarily, and most commonly, is the argument referring to the Islamic ideology of Hezbollah: an argument that is alluded to by the aforementioned prospect of communitarianism (Salamey, 2019).
It is argued that Leftists can’t stand in solidarity with Hezbollah despite its anti-imperialist practice and stance because of its Islamic ideology. The Shia Islamic ‘communitarian’ character (or the ‘sectarian’ character of Hezbollah, to put it in the language of Lebanese political discourse), is argued, to devalue Hezbollah’s revolutionary anti-imperialist character.
Proponents of this argument explain that Hezbollah’s strife against Zionists and Takfiris arises from an in-group (shia community) v out-group (non-shia communities) rationale rather than a scientific understanding of imperialism: whereby imperialism is defined as the byproduct of the disproportionate accumulation of capital in favor of some nations at the expense of others, which entails the exploitation of the latter by the former for the purposes of maximizing economic interests (Lenin, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1917).
Hezbollah, however, isn’t sectarian despite adopting a religious ideology and employing religious discourse. The party’s praxis isn’t a zero-sum game of competition with other religious groups and this is assessed consequentially (i.e. in terms of results). Even if we were to entertain this faulty accusation and grant the validity of inferring chauvinistic sectarianism from religiosity, Hezbollah’s anti-imperialist character still holds. Assuming that Hezbollah is a “sectarian” communitarian party and interpreting wars in the “middle east” from an orientalist lens as irrational wars between different tribes motivated by identitarian chauvinism, Hezbollah’s praxis remains consequentially anti-imperialist praxis. Even if we were to assume that the Party’s wars against Zionists and Takfiris is motivated by an inter-communitarian feud, this doesn’t change the fact that (1) Zionists and Takfiris were acting as footsoldiers of Imperialism and (2) Hezbollah’s strife against them was successful and effective.
This line of reasoning is cited by prominent theorists of Scientific Socialism. Marx and Engels hailed the Irish struggle for independence from British colonialism while acknowledging that the Irish liberation movement was prominently led by Catholic clergymen and that the conflict of decolonization had manifested for the Irish fighters as a war for protecting the catholicization of the indigenous population of the Island against the Protestant British invaders (Marx &Engels, On the Irish Question,1867).
Additionally, Stalin, in “Foundations of Leninism” when addressing the monarchist Emir’s efforts for liberation in Afghanistan, emphasized assessing liberation movements according to the results which they yield rather than according to a checklist of democratic standards (1924). “The national movement of the oppressed countries should be appraised not from the point of view of formal democracy, but from the point of view of actual results, as shown by the general balance sheet of the struggle against imperialism. The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican program of the movement, or the existence of a democratic basis of the movement.” (Stalin, 1924).
More so, however, Hezbollah stands as significantly more politically sophisticated than the Irish liberation movement in the 1860s (endorsed by Marx and Engels) or the Afghan Emir’s liberation attempt (endorsed by Stalin). The party’s religious and cultural ideology doesn’t exclude a scientific conception of imperialism as expressly stated in their 2009 manifesto. In the Chapter on Domination and Hegemony, it reads “Savage capitalism forces – embodied mainly in international monopoly networks of companies that cross the nations and continents, networks of various international establishments especially the financial ones backed by superior military force have led to more contradictions and conflicts – of which not less important – are the conflicts of identities, cultures, civilizations, in addition to the conflicts of poverty and wealth. These savage capitalism forces have turned into mechanisms of sowing dissension and destruction of identities as well as imposing the most dangerous type of cultural, national, economic as well as social theft. Globalization reached its most dangerous facet when it turned into a military one led by those following the Western scheme of domination – of which it was most reflected in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, where the latter’s share was the July 2006 aggression by the ‘Israelis’ ”(2009).
Islamic Fervor
Marxism isn’t as vehemently anti-religion as McCarthyists and infantile leftists make it seem. Dominoquo Losurdo unpacks this adequately in “Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History” (2016). He explains that, historically, the classes of society achieved initial awareness of the national question through religion: that It was through religious idioms and prospects that people became conscious of real material contradictions. “Marx and Engels carefully avoided indiscriminate liquidation of movements inspired by religion… Religious affiliation can be experienced very intensely and mobilized effectively in political and historical upheaval, but is not the primary cause of such conflict” (Losurdo, 2016).
In the case of Hezbollah, political theory and praxis of anti-zionism and anti-imperialism was developed in reference to the Epic of Karbala, in which Al-Hussein fought ferociously for justice against the tyranny of Yazid. This cultural narrative is native to the Lebanese Shia even prior to the inception of Hezbollah. The cultural significance and religious rituals of Aashura weren’t parachuted from Iran on the eve of the Islamic revolution. Aashura is a historic watershed of Arab history. It symbolizes an indigenous revolution against the tyranny of the Islamic caliphate: the descendants of the Prophet contended the distorted interpretation of Islam which manufactured political legitimacy for tyrant caliphs by triumphing the authentic interpretation of Islam which promotes the normative ideal of justice.
One would dismiss this, citing Marx: “religion is the opiate of the masses” (Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the Right, 1843). Aashura, however, unlike the religious narratives which promote pacifism referenced by Marx in his opiate metaphor, acted as a catalyst for the masses of the Lebanese Shia community to bear arms against Imperialist projects.
Hezbollah capitalized on the Epic of Aashura which has long been transmitted from generation to generation in this community. The narrative was allegorically projected to contemporary politics following a scientific analysis of the material contradictions as the 2009 manifesto expressly elaborates. The cultural spite against Yazid’s injustice and tyranny was evoked by Hezbollah’s clergymen to be compared to the hegemony of the US empire, and consequently mobilizing hundreds against the proxies of imperialism. This tactic of mobilization proved exceptionally effective in consolidating the world’s most powerful non-state actor, reversing the Arab nation’s setback in their struggle against Israeli colonialism, and snuffing out the deviant Takfiri fascist enterprise in the Levant.
“What human consciousness does is try to understand the world. When social life is calm, so are ideologies; when class conflicts come to existence so too do competing ideologies and conscious statements; and only when a revolutionary class arises can revolutionary ideas come into being” (Peter Stillman, Marx Myths and Legends, 2005)
Picturesquely, it is the whispered Islamic idioms that teemed serenity and discipline in the hearts of fighters fortified in Bint Jbeil as they took on the full brunt of the Israeli war machine, and it is the battle cry of “Ya Zaynab” which resounded as Kornet ATGMs flattened Israeli tanks back in 2006.
The Compatible Left
However, acknowledging criticism and engaging in self-criticism is central to the development and optimization of political praxis. A scientific analysis, regardless of the conclusion it’s comported towards, is generally beneficial. It introduces theoretical concepts that allow one to think better of complicated issues and theorize about them: like the allegory of the devil and the deep sea (S. Banerjee, 2003) or the trend of ‘communitarianism’ (I. Salamey, 2019).
In the same context, to frame the discourse and filter critique from smear campaigning, it is notable to introduce a term coined by CIA strategists: The Compatible Left. Which refers to leftist intellectuals and parties coopted by the CIA in an effort to manufacture a Left that is compatible with imperialism. The Compatible Left is also comparable with the Neo-comprador class which James Petras theorizes about in “NGOs: In the Service of Imperialism” (2007). The compatible left is an inconsequential left: it employs leftist lore and language while ensuring that the status quo of imperialism remains robust and unchallenged.
Israeli lawmakers have voted in favor of a bill that would impose the death penalty on so-called “terrorists” accusing of killing Israelis. Backed by rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hardline allies, the bill has been bitterly opposed by Palestinians and foreign observers.
The death penalty bill passed its first reading in the Israeli parliament (Knesset) by 55 votes to nine on Wednesday. Most of the opposition – led by former Prime Minister Yair Lapid – abstained from the vote in protest.
The bill was authored by MP Limor Son Har-Melech and supported by Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Both Son Har-Melech and Ben-Gvir are members of the ‘Jewish Power’ party, an extremist Zionist faction that helped Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party back into power in last November’s elections.
Under the legislation, anyone who “intentionally or out of indifference causes the death of an Israeli citizen when the act is carried out from a racist motive or hate to a certain public… and with the purpose of harming the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in its homeland” shall face execution, with no chance of prison time.
The law would apply in the West Bank, which although partially administered by the Palestinian Authority, is subject to Israeli military occupation and law.
The bill crosses “a clear red line as part of Israel’s slide into total fascism,” Arab-Israeli political party Hadash Ta’al said in a statement. “Today it is the Palestinians, tomorrow it will be the protestors on the streets. Ben-Gvir will be easy on the trigger when it comes to determining who is a terrorist.”
The Palestinian Authority said that the bill is “cruel, barbaric, and inhumane,” describing it as “rooted in Jewish supremacy.” Its passage will lead to Palestinians “arbitrarily and ceremonially being put on death row,” its statement continued.
Thousands of Israelis gathered outside the country’s parliament building in recent days to protest the bill, while opposition poured in from abroad. Speaking after a meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called the bill “particularly worrying,” given that Israel has not executed anyone since Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged in 1962.
As tensions rise between the West and Russia-China-Iran – core of the emerging multi-polar world – many historic possibilities and opportunities open up for people elsewhere. The cause and the nature of these possibilities and opportunities is briefly outlined here, for those who may sense and wonder about the tectonic shifts occurring.
Honest disclosure: The author is most definitely not an expert in geopolitics or diplomacy. But he finds himself hopelessly stuck with a mischievous mind which cannot resist exploring ideas – particularly ideas which are iconoclastic in nature. The outcomes of the mischievous explorations are shared freely with others, in the belief that others will find something useful in them.
Frozen minds
First, a few necessary words about minds which have lost the ability to explore new ideas – incredibly puny minds which are closed, locked and deep-frozen in ‘higher-us-versus-lower-them’ world-views. A recent ‘jungle-versus-garden’ comment by a certain high official of the EU gives a glimpse of that world view. Needless to say, the author is profoundly thankful to that high official for providing such a superb illustrative glimpse of that world view.
People of this frozen world-view imagine that their world-view – which, sadly, is dearer to them than a million lives – is worshiped by everybody else on the planet. How can it be, they figure, that the most precious thing in their lives is not valued by ‘the wretched rest’? Surely they must be jealous of us! They have to be! Why, even we privileged ones are jealous of one another!
You get the idea. Surely all of us have encountered such frozen minds at some time or another. An example from the EU was cited, but examples can easily be found from almost any corner of our beautiful planet. For ease of reference, we shall refer to such minds simply as ‘frozen minds’.
Necessity is the mother of adaptation and invention. Therefore, when there is no necessity, there is neither adaptation nor invention. This implies that the root cause behind ‘frozen minds’ is privileged life which does not ever necessitate either adaptation or invention.
Outward symbols of wealth and privilege abound, of course, and they are flaunted ceaselessly; but the minds behind the symbols are well and truly frozen. To the un-perceptive, the outward symbols indeed signify something – power, wealth, success, progress … something. In fact the whole elaborate charade is put up to impress the foolish. But there is no substance behind the symbols; the minds are frozen in a pitiful state of ignorance.
‘European values’, ‘liberal democracy’ … et cetera … are no more than empty phrases which are ritually recited in pitiful, laughable and failing attempts to relate the frozen minds to reality. When words and phrases do not resonate with truth – with reality – they are empty, meaningless, ritualistic.
Such frozen minds brook no opposition. Why? Because they are not capable – intellectually or emotionally – of dealing with different world views! Their haughty demeanor and insider-speak is simply a way to hide insecurity. The roots of Fascism lie in the incapacity and insecurity of frozen minds.
So how do these frozen types manage their self-serving politics?
They have devised an incredibly crude and laughable strategy: Try to dumb down the world to a level where the frozen ones feel they can handle it.
The idea is that their level of ignorance and incompetence will then become the lowest common denominator globally. They can then dictate terms as the ‘holy fountainhead of the new religion’. The world should be grateful.
Surprise, surprise! The world is refusing to dumb down! One can understand and almost rejoice at the frustration of the frozen minds.
Also, when understanding of genuinely different world views is impossible, how can diplomacy work? Lack of understanding sows seeds of conflict.
New shoots are inevitable
For people of any country, a primary aim of life is to enhance their material well-being: incomes, health, family life, education … et cetera. If they remain focused on that aim – and avoid being taken in by the pomposity and false promises of the frozen minds – they will map out a path for themselves which suits their history, culture, agro-economic conditions and so on.
That is no more than A-B-C, or common sense. There is so much diversity In human life around the planet, that this simple path would lead to diversity, plurality, originality, creativity and overall – even if patchy – well-being.
But this is beyond the range of understanding and acceptance of the frozen minds. Fascist tendencies of the privileged burst forth: How dare these countries think for themselves when we have already told them what is best for them? Don’t we have the monopoly on ‘progress’? Don’t we have the first call on the resources of that country?
But deception and exploitation cannot continue for too long. As countries around the world become aware of the cruel and cunning games played by the privileged ones, differences and mistrust will grow. ‘Soft power’ will not work as well as it did; coercion will increasingly be used.
At this point, a bit of geometry will elucidate a crucial point.
In a two-dimensional drawing, when the distance scale is doubled, the area making up any region becomes four times as large. For example, if the side of a square or the radius of a circle is doubled, its area is quadrupled.
The space of social, political and economic world views is multi-dimensional. When distances grow in world views between major players in geo-politics and geo-economics, the space available to all players is enlarged many-fold. Then options open up which could not exist in a ‘frozen’ world order, and which remain well beyond the grasp of those with frozen minds.
While this is true in general, the space available to vassals and hangers-on of ‘frozen minds’ actually shrinks. After all, if they choose to hitch their wagons to a certain kind of mule, they remain confined to the mule’s path. They do not have the freedom to benefit from new options opening up.
In a period of transition marked by growing differences, any keen and independent mind observing the goings-on will surely see opportunities and possibilities which a frozen mind will miss. All along, the irrepressible internet facilitates the sharing of ideas, insights and suggested solutions.
There are some two hundred countries in the world. In terms of geo-politics and geo-economics, some are major players, some are in mid-range and some are smaller. People of all countries, big or small, deserve a life of human dignity and self-respect. But that will not come about without wise choices. Nothing comes without effort. Effort is needed to see what lies behind propaganda, to see the difference between propaganda and the well-being of societies.
Soft-power must be based on truth. Where there is a stink of lies and cover-ups, there are no values to be found. Anyone declaiming about values must be judged by what he or she is willing to give up for the sake of those values.
Seeds of new life?
Seeds must be planted for new shoots to appear. In a small and wonderful country, say C – which is deemed by arrogant experts to be ‘underdeveloped’ – we hope an event like the following occurs soon.
A University organizes a symposium on ‘Impact of economic and trade policy on the well-being of societies’. Scholars from all the major ‘poles’ of geo-economics, representing different viewpoints, are invited to the symposium.
The scholars discuss key principles of ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘communism’, ‘conservatism’, ‘liberalism’, free markets, regulated markets, banking, exchange rates, modern wisdom, medieval wisdom, ancient wisdom … and so on. Every invited scholar is expected to elucidate his or her viewpoint and answer critical questions posed by students and other citizens.
Students and other citizens of country C and other nearby countries organize the event and moderate the debates. An independent jury evaluates how well and how clearly each scholar makes his or her case.
The debates are not fake debates designed to hide true choices from dumbed down public. Rather, the organizers ensure that all the viewpoints are presented, debated and evaluated against the yardstick of well-being of societies. Name-dropping is not permitted. If somebody claims, for example, that Plato said such-and-such, then that somebody must also explain how Plato’s such-and-such viewpoint will enhance our well-being in the here and now.
The event described here is imaginary. There may be little likelihood of such an event occurring today. But why should such events not occur all the time, in different parts of the world? Is our well-being not at stake?
In an era of major transition, it matters not whether one is tall or short, dark- or light-skinned, rich or poor, this or that race, this or that ideology, this or that religion … et cetera. What matters is whether one is sensitive to truth.
The truth is that the work of attaining well-being cannot to outsourced. Sadly, the delivery of fake ‘well-being’ to others has become global mega-politics run by charlatans. This politics relies totally on propaganda and false promises. As part of political strategy, true paths to attain well-being – that is, faith and one’s own diligent effort – are being deliberately obscured.
Even Universities, where learning and scholarship should be nurtured, are instead subverted into becoming malicious propaganda centres.
Beyond the short time horizons of charlatans, however, the most valuable human asset is that of perceptive, creative, nimble minds which can harness collective strengths towards the common good. One senses that a transition is under way today from the age of brute power and lies to the age of truth and understanding. While it will be painful, the transition is inevitable.
Pink Floyd rock legend Roger Waters made an impressive and impassioned plea for peace at the UN Security Council this week. The English-born singer-songwriter was invited by Russia to address the specially convened forum on the prospects of finding a peaceful resolution in Ukraine.
Waters spoke eloquently and from the heart for over 14 minutes via a video link to the gathering at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York. Much respect is due to him for his strident call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine as well as for his general anti-war message on behalf of the world’s “voiceless majority”.
The 79-year-old artist has been a life-long advocate for peace and human rights, and many people around the world admire not only his musical creations but also his integrity and indefatigable defense of human rights. As he noted during his speech, his own father was killed in action during the Second World War when he was just an infant in 1944, and so he has been “touched by war”.
To his eternal credit, Waters has not taken megastar retirement in luxurious, mindless oblivion. He has remained as politically active and outspoken as when he was a younger artist, critical of exploitative corporate capitalist power and imperialist warmongering. With fierce integrity and poignant compassion, he has championed the cause of the Palestinian people and the freedom of publisher Julian Assange locked up in a British prison, among other causes. His music and artistry are a holistic expression of his pathos and politics.
He may have been invited by Russia to address the UNSC this week, but Waters showed himself to be no “apologist” for Moscow. During his speech, he claimed that Russia had “illegally invaded” Ukraine in February 2022, and he forthrightly condemned that. He is entitled to his opinion.
Nevertheless, he also condemned the provocations by the United States and NATO in building up Ukraine with armaments in the years before the conflict erupted last February. He denounced the war profiteering by Western powers from their relentless and reckless supplying of weapons to Ukraine which, he said, was risking a nuclear apocalypse if it spiralled into a bigger all-out confrontation.
The reactions to this noble intervention by Roger Waters were telling. While he spoke to the UNSC, the envoys from Ukraine fiddled on their phones, showing contemptible disrespect. Following his speech, the Ukrainian and the American representatives mocked Waters for peddling “Russian propaganda”.
There was little reporting in the Western media of his words. Some reportage tried to undermine his sincere calls for peace and his blistering critique of the warmongering capitalist system by focusing on what they claimed was his justification for Russian military action in Ukraine after he had said the war was “not unprovoked”.
Hardly surprising. Western mainstream news media have become so debased as propaganda channels that anyone who dares to discuss the historical context of the conflict is immediately smeared as a “Kremlin stooge”. Their media function is to prevent any intelligent, truthful understanding of how this conflict manifested or what is really at stake. The same goes for other conflicts and in particular, the next one Washington is fomenting with China.
Waters deserves immense praise for his courageous, unstinting calls for peace and for a broader understanding of the nature and causes of the conflict in Ukraine. But the dismissive response to his supplications illustrates clearly that the Western warmongers and their NeoNazi regime in Kiev have no intention or will to find a just peace. They are, to quote that classic song by Pink Floyd, “comfortably numb” to any feeling of justice and peace.
Thus, lamentably, his demands for an immediate ceasefire are naive. While many people around the world will admire the call for peace, it is misleading to not fully realize how the conflict in Ukraine came about and why it is being pursued by Western powers. Such appeals will not prevail against the war fundamentalists. Indeed, any ceasefire without resolving the root causes of the war would only prolong the conflict by allowing a rearming of the NATO-sponsored Kiev regime against Russia. Besides, Washington and its Western lackeys are “agreement incapable” and have no integrity.
The most effective immediate way to end the conflict is for Western powers to stop fueling it with the madcap armaments they are piling up in Ukraine. Washington and its European allies are embarking on endless rounds of supplying more offensive weapons. They have already committed to deploying battlefield tanks and this week there was more talk of supplying advanced NATO fighter jets as well as long-range missiles that can hit deep inside Russian territory. The lavish indulgence this week by Britain, France, Germany and the rest of the European Union towards Kiev’s incessant demands for more weapons shows that there is no interest in a genuine diplomatic dialogue for a peaceful settlement.
The European elite political class like their masters in Washington have dangerously distorted the conflict in Ukraine into one of absolute necessity for defeating alleged Russian aggression and “defending democracy”.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky – whose regime in Kiev is up to its eyes in corruption from the arms bazaar in that country as well as infested with Nazi-adulating paramilitaries – was feted in Europe this week with the preposterous claim that Ukraine was defending European values from Russian barbarity. The echo of Third Reich ideology and Russophobic propaganda here is truly astounding.
This war is an existential one. On the one hand, the defeat of Russia is being painted (falsely) as the ultimate challenge to supposed Western civilization. The West has made it a zero-sum contest based on false premises. On the other hand, a real existential issue is that the war is all about preserving American hegemony and propping up the floundering Western imperial global order. “Unipolar world domination,” as Roger Waters put it.
The blockbuster report this week by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh revealing well-founded allegations that the U.S. military blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines from Russia to Germany last September demonstrates that this war in Ukraine is only a part of a bigger geopolitical conflict. The Western media’s relative silence over what is ostensibly a staggering act of international terrorism by the Americans and their European minions is as damning as it is instructive.
Hersh credibly claims that the plot to sabotage the pipelines – signed off by the Biden administration – predated the Russian intervention in Ukraine. When added to ignominious admissions by European leaders that there was no intention of honoring the 2014-15 Minsk peace agreements because the tacit objective was always to weaponize Ukraine for an eventual showdown against Russia, then we begin to understand that the intrinsic agenda for war makes a mockery of the Western narrative about “defending Ukraine from Russian aggression”.
Appeals like that of Roger Waters – albeit principled and well-intentioned – are in the final analysis naive and, regrettably, futile. Such appeals presuppose that Western elites and their warmongering system are capable of peaceful and moral reasoning. They are not.
Russia had a legal and moral duty to defend the ethnic Russian people of former Ukraine from eight years of NATO-backed aggression after the CIA-backed coup d’état in Kiev in 2014. That NATO aggression will not be stopped now by moralistic appeals. For we are talking about a system that is tantamount to a rabid dog that needs to be put down. And we are not talking about a system that is limited to the vile Kiev regime. We are talking about the entire U.S.-led capitalist system and its imperialist war machine. A system that has ravaged the world for eight decades since the end of World War Two.
Or to put it another way by way of taking issue with a contradiction in Roger Water’s speech: you can’t appeal to a “bully” to do the right thing. You have to punch the bully in the face.
On the bigger historical picture, it can be increasingly seen now in this present time that the Second World War did not bring about an end to Nazism, fascism and imperialism, especially as Western history books would narrate. The end of that horrendous war was only a respite from the disease. There will be no peace in Ukraine or anywhere else until that disease is terminated – once and for all.
This is not an unexpected outcome for Japan but has been in the works for the last 50 years as a policy outlook of the Trilateral Commission (though is not limited to this institution). It is in fact the League of Nations’ vision that has been on the wish list of those who began WWI in hopes that the world would accept a one world government of regionalisations in service to an empire. It is what orchestrated the Great Depression to again attempt an implementation of a League of Nations outlook through the rise of a “National Socialist” brand of fascism seen in Italy and Germany (which would not have been possible without an economic crisis). And it was what launched a Second World War in a desperate attempt to forcefully implement such a vision onto the world (for more this refer here and here.)
It has always been about obtaining a League of Nations organization for the world and those who have called themselves democrats have often found themselves in the same room as those who called themselves fascists in order to see such a vision through.
As Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the father of Pan-Europeanism (who happened to also be pro-fascist), wrote in his 1943 autobiography “A Crusade for Pan-Europe”:
“The Anti-Fascists hated Hitler…yet they…paved the way to his successes. For these anti-Fascists succeeded in transforming Mussolini, Hitler’s strongest enemy during the years of 1933 and 1934, into Hitler’s strongest ally. I don’t blame the Italian and Spanish anti-Fascists for their brave and very natural fight against their ruthless political enemies. But I blame the democratic politicians, especially in France…they treated Mussolini as an ally of Hitler till he became one.”
According to Kalergi, and many other ‘elites’ of similar pedigree, it was an inevitability that a fascist Pan-European rule should occur, and Kalergi expressed his clear disdain for anti-fascist and democratic resistance to this ‘inevitability’. From Kalergi’s standpoint, because of the anti-fascist and democratic resistance to a more ‘peaceful’ transference to fascism, they had created a situation where fascism would have to be imposed on them with violent force. It was a tragedy in the eyes of Kalergi that could have been avoided if these countries had simply accepted fascism on ‘democratic’ terms.
Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi would write in his other autobiography “An Idea Conquers the World”:
“The use of mass hypnotism for propaganda purposes is most successful at times of crisis. When National Socialism made its bid for power, millions of Germans had been thrown completely off their balance: middle-class families had sunk to the level of the proletariat, whilst working-class families were without work. The Third Reich became the last hope for the stranded, of those who had lost their social status, and of those rootless beings who were seeking a new basis for an existence that had become meaningless…
The economic background of the Hitler movement becomes apparent when one recalls that Hitler’s two revolutions coincided with Germany’s two great economic crises: the inflation of 1923 and the recession of the early 1930s, with its wave of unemployment. During the six intervening years, which were relatively prosperous for Germany, the Hitler movement was virtually non-existent.” [emphasis added]
The father of Pan-Europeanism and spiritual father of the European Union, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, often spoke well of Austrian and Italian fascism and even Catholic fascism, and thus the above quote by him takes on another layer of eeriness. Kalergi acknowledges that Hitler’s rise would not have been possible if there had not been two periods of extreme economic crisis for Germany. The question is, were these crises organic in their occurrence or rather engineered?
In Kalergi’s 1954 autobiography “An Idea Conquers the World,” he writes: “there is not doubt that Hitler’s popularity rested mainly on the fanatical struggle which he waged against the Versailles Treaty.”
If we look at the political ecosystem Kalergi was navigating in, we get some hints to such a question, which included such men as Max Warburg, Baron Louis Rothschild, Herbert Hoover, Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, Owen D. Young, Bernard Baruch, Walter Lippmann, Colonel House, General Tasker Bliss, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Thomas Lamont, Justice Hughes. All of these men are named by Kalergi directly as his support base in the United States in his autobiography. They were adamantly supportive of Kalergi’s Pan-Europeanism, aka a “United States of Europe,” were staunch supporters of a League of Nations vision and were architects within the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920) which was responsible for the Treaty of Versailles which launched Germany into its first wave of extreme economic crisis. (For more on this story refer here.)
Financial analyst and historian Alex Krainer writes:
“The [Trilateral] commission was co-founded in July of 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski and a group of American, European and Japanese bankers, public officials and academics including Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker. It was set up to foster close cooperation among nations that constituted the three-block architecture of today’s western empire. That ‘close cooperation’ was intended as the very foundation of the empire’s ‘three block agenda,’ as formulated by the stewards of the undead British Empire.”
On Nov 9th, 1978, Trilateral Commission member Paul Volcker (Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979-1987) would affirm at a lecture delivered at Warwick University in England: “A controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate object for the 1980s.” This is also the ideology that has shaped Milton Friedman’s “Shock Therapy”.
In 1975 the CFR launched a public study of global policy titled the 1980’s Project. The general theme was “controlled disintegration” of the world economy, and the report did not attempt to hide the famine, social chaos, and death its policy would bring upon most of the world’s population.
This is precisely what Japan has been undergoing, and which economist Richard Werner demonstrated in his book Princes of Yen, to which a documentary by the same name was made. That Japan’s economy was put through a manufactured bubble in order to create an economic crisis that would then justify the need for extreme structural reform.
We will now briefly discuss how the United States, the Tiger Economies and Europe have also been put through the same process of manufactured economic crises and what this means for the world today, what has been the consequence for Europe in following a “United States of Europe” model and how does the one world government model of a League of Nations differ from the multipolar framework made up of sovereign nation states. I will conclude this paper with remarks on why Shinzo Abe was assassinated.
Colonialism 2.0: The Asian Economic Crisis of the Tiger Economies
Japan was not the only high-performance economy in Asia that in the 1990s found itself in the deepest recession since the Great Depression. In 1997, the currencies of the Southeast Asian Tiger Economies could not maintain a fixed exchange rate with the U.S. dollar. They collapsed by between 60-80% within a year.
The causes for this crash went as far back as 1993. In that year, the Asian Tiger Economies – South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia – implemented a policy of aggressive deregulation of their capital accounts and the establishment of international banking facilities, which enabled the corporate and banking sectors to borrow liberally from abroad, the first time in the postwar era that borrowers could do so. In reality, there was no need for the Asian Tiger Economies to borrow money from abroad. All the money necessary for domestic investment could be created at home.
“Indeed the pressure to liberalise capital flows came from outside. Since the early 1990s, the IMF, the World Trade Organization and the U.S. Treasury had been lobbying these countries to allow domestic firms to borrow from abroad. They argued that neoclassical economics had proven that free markets and free capital movement increased economic growth.
Once the capital accounts had been deregulated, the central banks set about creating irresistible incentives for domestic firms to borrow from abroad by making it more expensive to borrow in their own domestic currencies than it was to borrow in U.S. dollars.
The central banks emphasised in their public statements that they would maintain fixed exchange rates with the U.S. dollar, so that borrowers did not have to worry about paying back more in their domestic currencies than they had originally borrowed. Banks were ordered to increase lending. But they were faced with less loan demand from the productive sectors of the economy, because these firms had been given incentives to borrow from abroad instead. They therefore had to resort to increasing their lending to higher-risk borrowers.
Imports began to shrink, because the central banks had agreed to peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar. The economies became less competitive, but their current-account balance was maintained due to the foreign issued loans, which count as exports in the balance-of-payments statistics. When speculators began to sell the Thai baht, the Korean won and the Indonesian rupee, the respective central banks responded with futile attempts to maintain the peg until they had squandered virtually all of their foreign exchange reserves. This gave foreign lenders ample opportunity to withdraw their money at the overvalued exchange rates.
The central banks knew that if the countries ran out of foreign exchange reserves, they would have to call in the IMF to avoid default. And once the IMF came in, the central banks knew what this Washington-based institution would demand, for its demands in such cases had been the same for the previous three decades: the central banks would be made independent [and subservient to the IMF diktat].
On the 16th of July the Thai Finance Minister took a plane to Tokyo to ask Japan for a bailout. At the time Japan had USD $213 billion in foreign exchange reserves, more than the total resources of the IMF. They were willing to help but Washington stopped Japan’s initiative. Any solution to the emerging Asian Crisis had to come from Washington via the IMF.
After two months of speculative attacks the Thai government floated the baht.
The IMF to date has promised almost $120 billion USD to the embattled economies of Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. Immediately upon arrival in the crisis-stricken countries, the IMF teams set up offices inside the central banks, from where they dictated what amounted to terms of surrender. The IMF demanded a string of policies, including curbs on central bank and bank credit creation, major legal changes and sharp rises in interest rates. As interest rates rose, high risk borrowers began to default on their loans.
Burdened with large amounts of bad debts, the banking systems of Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia were virtually bankrupt. Even otherwise healthy firms started to suffer from the widening credit crunch. Corporate bankruptcies soared. Unemployment rose to the highest levels since the 1930s.”
The IMF knew well what the consequences of its policies would be. In the Korean case, they even had detailed but undisclosed studies prepared, that had calculated just how many Korean companies would go bankrupt if interest rates were to rise by five percentage points. The IMF’s first agreement with Korea demanded a rise of exactly five percentage points in interest rates.
Richard Werner stated in an interview: “The IMF policies are clearly not aimed at creating economic recoveries in the Asian countries. They pursue quite a different agenda and that is to change the economic, political and social systems in those countries. In fact, the IMF deals prevent the countries concerned, like Korea, Thailand, to reflate.”
Interviewer: “Interesting. So you’re saying it’s making the crisis worse and you’re suggesting that the IMF has a hidden agenda?”
Richard Werner responded: “Well, it’s not very hidden this agenda because the IMF quite clearly demands that the Asian countries concerned have to change the laws so that foreign interests can buy anything from banks to land. And in fact, the banking systems can only be recapitalised, according to the IMF deals, by using foreign money which is not necessary at all, because as long as these countries have central banks, they could just print money and recapitalise the banking systems. You don’t need foreign money for that. So the agenda is clearly to crack open Asia for foreign interests.”
The IMF demanded that troubled banks not be bailed out, but instead closed down and sold off cheaply as distressed assets, often to large U.S. investment banks. In most cases the IMF-dictated-letters-of-intent explicitly stated that the banks had to be sold to foreign investors.
In Asia, government organised bailouts to keep ailing financial institutions alive were not allowed. But when a similar crisis struck back home in America a year later, the very same institutions reacted differently.
“The Connecticut based hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, which accepted as clients only high-net-worth individual investors and institutions, had leveraged its $5 billion USD in client capital, by more than 25 times, borrowing more than $100 billion USD from the world’s banks. When its losses had threatened to undermine the banks that had lent to it, with the possibility of a systemic banking crisis that would endanger the U.S. financial system and economy, the Federal Reserve organised a cartel-like bailout by leaning on Wall Street and international banks to contribute funds so that it could avoid default.
Why would the United States make demands on foreign nations in the name of the free market, when it has no intention of enforcing the same rules within its own borders?
The examples of the Japanese and Asian crises illustrate how crises can be engineered to facilitate the redistribution of economic ownership, and to implement legal, structural and political change.”
The reason why the Asian banks were forbidden to be saved, was so there could be a foreign buy-out of these Asian economies. Who needed the British East-India Co. when you now had the IMF ensuring the empire’s colonial objectives?
The IMF and Trilateral Commission’s “not so Hidden” Agenda
The IMF has clearly set its sights on a western banking take-over of Asia, but what was the “agenda” for Europe and the United States who were located within this sphere of influence? Were they destined to benefit from the plunders of the empire?
The short answer to this, which should be evident by now, is no.
The manufactured crises in the United States and Europe were to further centralise power amongst an ever smaller grouping and clearly not for the benefit of the people, or shall we say subjects of the land, who happen to be living in these regions.
Europe has particularly done a number on itself due to its adherence to a “United States of Europe” vision. Countries within the Euro currency bloc had forfeited their right to a national currency and handed this power to the European Central Bank (ECB), the most powerful and secretive of all central banks.
Under such a system, no European country has control over its own economy and is completely exposed to whatever the ECB decides.
Richard Werner remarked: “They [ECB] have to focus more on credit creation rather than interest rates. The ECB has a lot to learn from its past mistakes, because basically I don’t think it really watched credit creation carefully enough. Where in Spain, Ireland, we had massive credit expansion, under the watch of the ECB, interest rates are of course the same in the Eurozone, but the quantity of credit cycle is very different…There is one interest rate for the whole euro area but in 2002 the ECB told the Bundesbank [central bank of Germany] to reduce its credit creation by the biggest amount in its history and told the Irish central bank to print as much money as if there was no tomorrow. What do you expect is going to happen? Same interest rate. Is it the same growth? No. Recession in Germany, boom in Ireland. Which variable tells you that? Credit creation.”
From 2004 under the ECB’s watch, bank credit growth in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain increased by over 20% per annum and property prices sky-rocketed. When bank credit fell, property prices collapsed, developers went bankrupt and the banking systems of Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece became insolvent.
“The ECB could have prevented these bubbles just as it could have ended the ensuing banking and economic crises. But it refused to do so until major political concessions had been made, such as the transfer of fiscal and budgeting powers from each sovereign state to the European Union.
In both Spain and Greece, youth unemployment has been pushed up to 50%, forcing many youths to seek employment abroad. The deliberations of the ECB’s decision-making bodies are secret. The mere attempt at influencing the ECB, for instance through democratic debate and discussion, is forbidden according to the Maastricht Treaty.
The ECB is an international organisation that is above and outside the laws of jurisdictions of any individual nation. Its senior staff carry diplomatic passports and the files and documents inside the European Central Bank cannot be searched or impounded by any police force or public prosecutor.
The European Commission, an unelected group whose aim is to build a ‘United States of Europe,’ with all the trappings of a unified state has an interest in weaking individual governments and the influence of the democratic parliaments of Europe. It turns out that the evidence for central-bank independence that was relied upon in the Maastricht Treaty derived from a single study that was commissioned by none other than the European Commission itself.”
The Fascist Roots of the ‘United States of Europe’
On February 15th, 1930, Churchill published in The Saturday Evening an articled titled “The United States of Europe,” where he wrote:[1]
“…The resuscitation of the Pan-European idea is largely identified with Count Coudenhove-Kalergi…The League of Nations, from which the United States have so imprudently – considering their vast and increasing interests – absented themselves, has perforce become in fact, if not in form, primarily a European institution. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi proposes to concentrate European forces, interests and sentiments in a single branch which, if it grew, would become the trunk itself, and thus acquire obvious predominance. For think how mighty Europe is, but for its divisions! Let Russia slide back, as Count Kalergi proposes, and as it is already so largely a fact, into Asia. Let the British Empire, excluded in his plan, realize its own world-spread ideal, even so, the mass of Europe, once united, once federalized or partially federalized, once continentally self-conscious-Europe, with its African and Asiatic possessions and plantations, would constitute an organism beyond compare.” [emphasis added]
In Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s “An Idea Conquers the World” he writes:
“I discovered to my surprise that the feeling of European consciousness had first shown itself during the Crusades. After the fall of the Roman Empire the Crusades represented the most vigorous display of European solidarity. For a time, feuds between kings, princes and cities were submerged in a common cause…Finally, in 1834, Mazzini founded Young Europe, a movement designed to coordinate all existing revolutionary movements with a view to building up a new and united Europe on a basis of nationalism and democracy.” [emphasis added]
Interestingly Kalergi would write that Giuseppe Mazzini who Kalergi considered the most modern organizer towards a “united Europe on a basis of nationalism and democracy” was also considered the forerunner of fascism in Italy. Kalergi writes:[2]
“Fascism at that time [in Italy] had not yet broken with parliamentarism and democracy. The new Italian government was a government of coalition; it respected the principle of constitutional monarchy, pretending only to give it new vigor and authority. It appealed to the heroic instincts of youth, to the spirit of sacrifice and of idealism. It tried to restore the respect for religious values and the glorious traditions of ancient Rome. It hailed the memory of Mazzini as a forerunner of Fascism.” [emphasis added]
The theme of the Crusaders would be central to Kalergi’s idea for a Pan-Europe, to which he even incorporated the symbol of the Crusaders within his flag for the Pan-European cause.
In his 1943 autobiography, Kalergi further expands on his theme of the Crusader of Pan-Europe:[3]
“I chose the sign of the red cross superimposed on a golden sun as the emblem of our movement. The red cross, which had been the flag of the medieval crusaders, seemed the oldest known symbol of supra-national European brotherhood. In more recent times it has also gained recognition as a symbol of international relief work. The sun was chosen to represent the achievements of European culture in helping to illuminate the world. Thus, Hellenism and Christianity – the cross of Christ and the sun of Apollo – figured side by side as the twin enduring pillars of European civilization.” [emphasis added]
This idea of a “United States of Europe”, Kalergi’s “Pan-Europe” vision was a clever and dishonest play on words. The United States had originally existed in the form of 13 colonies beholden to the British Empire. However, when the United States maneuvered for independence from the British Empire by organizing itself into a sovereign nation state, the founding fathers unified the new republic around a system of Hamiltonian banking. This innovation in political economy converted unpayable debts into a new system of federal credit, enacted federal protectionism to favor local industrial growth and vectored the banks around investments which improved the General Welfare.
Thus, the United States was able to form one currency and a national bank to facilitate trade which upheld the economic sovereignty of the newly created nation.
This Hamiltonian economic organization in turn influenced German economist Friedrich List’s “The National System of Political Economy” which led to the Zollverein. Germany at the time was also divided into regions like the United States (Germany had never really been a nation up until this point) and the Zollverein allowed for Germany to begin establishing itself as a sovereign nation state for the first time in history. Friedrich List had directly referred to the Hamiltonian economic system as his inspiration for Germany. This system had also influenced Sun Yat-sen the father of the Republic of China in his “The Three Principles of the People” which was a direct reference to Lincoln/Henry C. Carey’s economic program which itself was a continuation of Alexander Hamilton’s economic principles. This was also revived in the form of American pro-Lincoln economists in Japan who helped organize the industrial growth program begun with the Meiji Restoration.
This is what the multi-polar framework is continuing, the defense and growth of sovereign nation-states. Yes, there is regional cooperation. You need regional cooperation for big infrastructure projects, such as rail, that will involve numerous nations. But regional cooperation should not be confused with a League of Nations vision and we can easily tell the difference between the two in terms of what is actually being proposed politically and economically. I will be writing a paper in the near future to address this subject more directly but for now I would refer the reader here for more on this.
In the case of the League of Nations, Pan-Europe, United States of Europe etc. etc. vision, it was the very opposite. It was to take power away from the sovereign nation-state framework and transform nations into vassal states subservient to systems of empire. That is, the “United States of Europe” was a dishonest and misleading reference to the original 13 American colonies. It was dishonest because instead of promoting further national economic sovereignty, the nations within Europe were expected to remove their sovereignty and be beholden to a centralised control through a European Union (centralised political power) and European Central Bank (centralised economic power) and NATO (centralised military power). No country within Europe would have control over their political, economic or military destiny within such a stranglehold.
In order for the League of Nations vision to take-over, sovereign nation-states would have to be dismantled. For more on this story refer to my book “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set.”
What the American and European economic crises have taught us is that the tax-payer will be made to pay for the increasing centralised take-over of what were once sovereign economies in order to empower a very small grouping of people, as the rights and welfare of average citizens are increasingly viewed as irrelevant.
Why Shinzo Abe was Assassinated
Former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe was assassinated July 8th, 2022, and though no longer in the position of Prime Minister of Japan at the time of his assassination (having served from 2006-2007 and 2012- September 16, 2020) he was the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history and continued to exert major influence on policy-shaping within Japan.
News of Abe’s assassination was received around the world with an admixture of very strong emotion from both extremes. Some were horrified by his death and praised what he had done for Japan as something almost saintly. Others ecstatically celebrated his death, thinking no possible good could come from him due to his attempts to revive the dark side of Japan’s imperial past and his public displays of tribute to the Japanese fascists from WWII. When the news was still fresh and the frenzy of confusion at its peak, many even blamed China for the orchestration of Abe’s death, thinking they were clearly the ones to benefit from such an act.
It is true that Abe had a very dangerous and destructive mission to restore Japan to its status as an imperialistic empire. He was a corrupt insider who pushed for the dangerous privatization of the Japanese government and increased the gap between the wealthy and middle-class citizens. However, it is also too simplistic as to celebrate his death as an absolute triumph. As we can clearly see seven months after Abe’s assassination, Japan has not become more peaceful and ready for dialogue with its eastern partners but rather has become much more bellicose and stauncher in its cooperation with the increasingly war frenzied western demands. Japan has also greatly severed motion towards greater economic and political cooperation with Russia and China, which was still moving forward when Abe was alive.
It is also interesting to note that Abe was assassinated weeks before Pelosi’s Circus Tour to Taiwan. Although Pelosi’s provocation did not amount to any military confrontation, we cannot say that that was not its intention, nor that things could have played out very differently in terms of a military confrontation between China and the United States.
The reader should be reminded that in 2014, Japan had changed or “reinterpreted” its constitution which gave more powers to the Japan Self-Defense Forces, allowing them to “defend other allies” in case of war being declared upon them. The United States, of course, fully supported the move.
This “reinterpretation” of Japan’s constitution effectively entered it into NATO.
In December 2022, Japan announced a new national security strategy. This new strategy would double defense spending. Japan also plans to invest in counter-strike capabilities, including buying U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles and developing its own weapons systems.
It was precisely Abe’s grand vision of Japan returning to its “glory” days as an empire that was problematic for the League of Nations vision, for if Japan saw itself on par with other great empires, or perhaps even greater, it meant that it did not ultimately intend to bend the knee. That is, Abe was not willing to sell off Japan as a satrapy, however, that was exactly what the western diktat was essentially demanding of Japan. Under this western diktat Japan was being ordered to accept its fate to collapse economically and sink into desperation, become increasingly militaristic and extremist and lead a kamikaze charge into a war with China and Russia which would lead to the ruination of the Japanese civilization. It does not look like Abe was going to go along with that stark vision for Japan.
Pastreich writes: “[Abe]…was already the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history, and had plans for a third bid as prime minister, when he was struck down.
Needless to say, the powers behind the World Economic Forum do not want national leaders like Abe, even if they conform with the global agenda, because they are capable of organizing resistance within the nation state.
…In the case of Russia, Abe successfully negotiated a complex peace treaty with Russia in 2019 that would have normalized relations and solved the dispute concerning the Northern Territories (the Kuril Islands in Russian). He was able to secure energy contracts for Japanese firms and to find investment opportunities in Russia even as Washington ramped up the pressure on Tokyo for sanctions.
The journalist Tanaka Sakai notes that Abe was not banned from entering Russia after the Russian government banned all other representatives of the Japanese government from entry.
Abe also engaged China seriously, solidifying long-term institutional ties, and pursuing free trade agreement negotiations that reached a breakthrough in the fifteenth round of talks (April 9-12, 2019). Abe had ready access to leading Chinese politicians and he was considered by them to be reliable and predictable, even though his rhetoric was harshly anti-Chinese.
The critical event that likely triggered the process leading to Abe’s assassination was the NATO summit in Madrid (June 28-30).
The NATO summit was a moment when the hidden players behind the scenes laid down the law for the new global order. NATO is on a fast track to evolve beyond an alliance to defend Europe and to become an unaccountable military power, working with the Global Economic Forum, the billionaires and the bankers around the world, as a ‘world army,’ functioning much as the British East India Company did in another era.
The decision to invite to the NATO summit the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand was a critical part of this NATO transformation.
These four nations were invited to join in an unprecedented level of integration in security, including intelligence sharing (outsourcing to big tech multinationals), the use of advanced weapons systems (that must be administrated by the personnel of multinationals like Lockheed Martin), joint exercises (that set a precedent for an oppressive decision-making process), and other ‘collaborative’ approaches that undermine the chain of command within the nation state.
When Kishida returned to Tokyo on July first, there can be no doubt that one of his first meetings was with Abe. Kishida explained to Abe the impossible conditions that the Biden administration had demanded of Japan.
The White House, by the way, is now entirely the tool of globalists like Victoria Nuland (Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs) and others trained by the Bush clan.
The demands made of Japan were suicidal in nature. Japan was to increase economic sanctions on Russia, to prepare for possible war with Russia, and to prepare for a war with China. Japan’s military, intelligence and diplomatic functions were to be transferred to the emerging blob of private contractors gathering for the feast around NATO.
We do not know what Abe did during the week before his death. Most likely he launched into a sophisticated political play, using of all his assets in Washington D.C., Beijing, and Moscow—as well as in Jerusalem, Berlin, and London, to come up with a multi-tiered response that would give the world the impression that Japan was behind Biden all the way, while Japan sought out a détente with China and Russia through the back door.”
Let us be honest here, since the hot mess should be rather plain for everyone to see at this point; those who are in the position of pushing the IMF, NATO, World Economic Forum’s disastrous policies are not the brains in the room. The embarrassment of less than two-month former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, who did not even know Russian territory from Ukrainian territory, responding that she would never recognise Rostov and Voronezh as Russian, is just one of too many examples that are occurring on an almost daily basis. These are the perfect tools for such insane policies for this very reason, they do not understand what outcome they are ultimately pushing. They are absolutely clueless and thus expendable as the card-board cut-outs that they are.
The reality of the situation is that no nation is expected to survive this stand-off.
It is not about the western bloc against the eastern bloc. It is about the ruination of all nations and the formation of one empire, or if you prefer the wording, one world government. Again, this is the League of Nations vision that has been the wet dream of a very small grouping since the First World War.
It is not about western democracy or liberalism or western value systems. It is about, and has only ever been about the reinstitution of systems of empire. This is what the First World War was about, this was what the Second World War was about and it is what the Third World War is about.
Interestingly, we again see Germany and Japan positioned next to the trip-wire that is ready to launch the globe into another full-blown world war. And guess what will be the fate of those two countries, Germany and Japan, who’s automaton ‘leadership’ so foolishly think of themselves as included within the ‘elite’ grouping who will somehow survive after setting the world on fire, as they so foolishly made the mistake of thinking during the Second World War. They will see once again how expendable their people, their civilization are to this ‘elite’ grouping they so desperately want to be accepted by.
One thing is for certain since Abe’s assassination. Japan is moving ever more rapidly forward on a very dangerous path that threatens it to be once again on the wrong side of history. The question is, are Germany and Japan so foolish as to make the same mistake twice, for they should not assume they will survive such a reckoning a second time.
The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com.
Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard. (1943) Crusade for Pan-Europe: Autobiography of a Man and a Movement. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, pg. 198-200. ↑
Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard. (1943) Crusade for Pan-Europe: Autobiography of a Man and a Movement. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, pg. 78. ↑
Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard. (1954) An Idea Conquers the World. Purcell & Sons Ltd., Great Britain, pg. 98.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva leads his first ministerial meeting since his inauguration at Alvorada Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, Jan. 6, 2023 (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
By Al Mayadeen English
The Brazilian president orders the federal security to deploy in Brasilia and stop the rioters as he accuses his far-right predecessor Bolsonaro of encouraging his supporter’s riots.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered on Sunday federal security to intervene in Brasilia and restore calm after Bolsonaro supporters raided the National Congress building, the Supreme court and the presidential palace.
Lula said that the “fascists, fanatics” rioters will be punished “with the full force of law.”
The federal intervention in the district will remain until January 31, according to the decree.
According to Brazilian broadcaster GloboNews, Brazil’s congress, Supreme Court and Presidential Palace have all been retaken by security forces.
“They took advantage of the silence on Sunday, when we are still setting up the government, to do what they did. And you know that there are several speeches by the former president encouraging this. And this is also his responsibility and the parties that supported him.”
Aproveitaram o silêncio do domingo, quando ainda estamos montando o governo, para fazer o que fizeram. E vocês sabem que existem vários discursos do ex-presidente estimulando isso. E isso também é responsabilidade dele e dos partidos que sustentaram ele.
Supporters of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro broke into the country’s National Congress building and Planalto presidential palace on Sunday, in protest against leftist President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva who defeated far-right Bolsonaro in the presidential elections held on October 30.
Hundreds of protesters holding the Brazilian flag stormed the national congress and took the roofs waving the country’s flags despite attempts by security officers to contain the unrest, an AFP photographer said.
Some protesters were holding signs calling on the country’s military to “intervene militarily” against democratically elected Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
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Arrests and failed coup attempt.. Da Silva vows to hold the “fascists” accountable
You may be asking the question what on earth is “international fascism” and how could NATO be in support of such a thing?! Well, the ugly truth is that what took over world policy in our post-WWII era was in fact a continuation of a fascist outlook for a new world order. Fascism, contrary to what we were told, had not in fact been defeated but was given a brand new face for its public endeavours and went underground for some of its more unsavoury methods. The now official recognition of NATO’s Gladio networks, effectively made up of secret armies in service to NATO including a prominent membership of Nazis, trained to commit acts of terrorism and assassinations against Western citizens and their democratic governments is now acknowledged by historians, yet much of the Western populace remain uninformed about this decades long horrifying abuse of power which was used to support a transition towards far right-wing governments.
The thought behind International Fascism in a post-WWII world, was that it would be an alliance that would allow a superior form of organisation that would build up a new European world entity which would function as a model for what would in turn be used on the world stage under a League of Nations mandate.
It is for this reason why so many fascists who had dishonestly referred to themselves as “national socialists” happened to also be promoters of pan-Europeanism and pan-Americanism, and supported the continuation of the British Empire, for these three spheres would function as the three leading regionalisations under a new system of empire under the League of Nations construct. Africa was openly discussed amongst these imperialists and fascists as the necessary slave labour camp to support Europe’s needs.
It is for this reason that individuals such as Oswald Mosley, a leading British fascist who supported both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s reign, began advocating for a “united Europe” as a defense against the supposed communist threat immediately after the Second World War. A “united Europe” reunited with “former” fascists who had now become supposed “defenders of freedom” against the evil totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. Mosley complained in his Europe: Faith and Plan (published in 1958) that this resistance from some European quarters to ally themselves with the fascists against this communist threat was putting the free world in danger. He encouraged Europeans to forget the past abuses that were committed by the fascists, since they were ultimately doing what they thought best for Europe, and that they were not wrong in their outlook but perhaps too hasty and impatient in their execution of such a vision.
With the end of the Second World War, there appeared an almost instantaneous agreement among the Western European nations the need to defend their sovereignty against the rise of Soviet communism. Ironically the solution to this was the idea of a ‘New World Order’[1] for Europe. The Fifth Column was sold as a communist one, and thus the need to work with ‘former’ Nazis and fascists was justified to secure the European civilization from the threatened invasion by the ‘Asiatic hordes.’ Of course, the common people were not notified of this decision to reunite with the fascists; that not even before the end of the Second World War, there were discussions of aligning with the fascists to secure what was to be the ‘New World Order’.
To ensure that Europe would stand strong, it seemed only logical that it should form a European unity, able to collectively use their resources and military in a coordinated defense against this looming “Asian threat”. It would be interesting, that many nations who treated the army of Hitler with seeming indifference up to the very moment of invasion, would now trumpet loudly the need to prepare for war on all fronts (economically, culturally, politically, militarily including paramilitary) against the Eastern barbarians, and Mosley had positioned himself at the forefront of this clarion call.
In his The World Alternative (1936) Mosley wrote: “We must return to the fundamental concept of a European Nation which animated the war generation of 1918.” In reference to the openly pro-fascist former British Prime Minister Lloyd George’s (1916-1922) War Cabinet. When the Axis began losing crucial battles in 1943, this only intensified Europeanism as the new order’s last line of defense that would be entrusted to the younger generation. On November 14th, 1944 Mussolini proposed in the Verona programme “a European Community, with a federation of all nations and the development of Africa’s natural resources.”[2]
Stephen Dorril writes in his book Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism:[3]
“The Eastern Front was transformed into the ‘European Front’ as Europe’s defence became a supra-national moral obligation. The Waffen SS assumed the role of Europe’s army and its struggle to hold back the Bolsheviks from overrunning the West invoked an embryonic Europeanism, which became a central myth of post-war Fascism. Neo-Fascist thinker Maurice Bardeche wrote that ‘the Defense of the West has remained in the memory, and this is still the chief meaning of fascist ideas’.”
Churchill would also support such a direction with the United Europe Movement.[4]
On October 1st, 1947 Mosley published The Alternative, where he writes “Chaos looms and the people of Europe seek the alternative…Our creed was brought to dust because the Fascist outlook in each land was too national, we had no sense of European union.” A year later he wrote in The European Situation: The Third Force, that a united Europe will “insure that Europeans shall never be slaves either of West or East; either of finance or of bolshevism. We shall neither be bought by Wall Street nor conquered by the Kremlin.” However, the road to Europe’s salvation would not end there, according to Mosley, there would also be the need to secure labour from Africa to serve the needs of Europeans.
In 1948, the FBI, who were oddly stationed in London, had forwarded to J. Edgar Hoover’s intelligence headquarters that Mosley was planning a Fascist International.[5] The U.S. counterintelligence corps (CIC) also wrote a report noting that Mosley viewed “the national socialist elements in West Germany as the most suitable partners at the organising of a fascist concentration movement in Europe…[Mosley] was continuing the tradition of a Fascist International which Hitler was forced to abandon. He has hit on a stratagem which gives him the air of a progressive spirit.” The Austrian neo-Nazi paper Alpenruf wrote Dec 31st, 1949 “the spiritual centre of a cleansed Fascism is today neither in Germany nor in Austria, but – strange though it may seem – in England.” In the Swedish Fascist paper Vaegen Framat, they “claimed the European underground movements were growing but needed to be brought together to preserve everything that had been valuable in the past. The war had weakened their position and co-operation was essential, even for racial policies. Nations were not strong enough to enforce the unity of Europe.” [6]
This was the new chosen direction towards a Fascist International and none of it would have been possible without Churchill’s announcement of the Iron Curtain, for it pushed the European countries into this very configuration and justified the need to partner with ‘former’ fascists. The fascists did not need to militarily win the war, for the Europeans had walked into the Fascist International out of their own accord.
From this standpoint, WWII was in fact never won, rather it has been continued in the form of a Cold War to this very day. During this over 76 year long Cold War, fascist cells grew and were dispersed globally, and have come only relatively recently to be acknowledged under the umbrella term Gladio due to newly declassified intelligence dossiers. Mosley would also be at the forefront of these post-WWII paramilitary fascist cells, along with Karl-Heinz Priester and the legendary Nazi Otto Skorzeny who was one of the primary masterminds behind the entire Gladio network.[7]
The Gladio network was beholden to NATO, and thus it should not be surprising that the position of NATO Commander and Chief of Allied Forces Central Europewas a position that was filled SOLELY by ‘former’ Nazis for 16 YEARS STRAIGHT, from 1967-1983.
Mosley had concluded in his eerie introduction to his book Europe: Faith and Plan in support of a Pan-Europe:[8]
“In the light of all Europe’s recent history it is disingenuous nonsense to pretend that Germany is the only guilty party. It is more, it is a deliberate lie circulated for the vile purpose of perpetuating the division of Europe and for promoting the ultimate victory of communism. In the meantime it serves also the squalid purpose of those who snatch financial gain from the decay and collapse of a dying system, rather than make the effort to benefit both themselves and all Europe by honestly carrying the far greater rewards of constructive tasks in building the new system.
… In all nature the pangs of birth are severe, particularly in political nature. No fully grown man should be blamed for the pain or even the blood that accompanied his birth. For the long memory to linger on these things is to create a complex which can be disastrous to the whole psyche of Europe. That is precisely why we are continually invited to think about them.
Things were done in haste and passion which should now be forgotten. All who were drawn to the new movement of European dynamism and renaissance were people in too much of a hurry. It was a fault on the right side, for the results of the succeeding inertia are now plain to see. We felt that something must be done, and done quickly, to release the new and beneficent forces of science[9] and to wipe away unnecessary suffering from the face of humanity. We were impatient with the forces of inertia, reaction and anarchy which opposed the new European order of mind and will that we believed alone could do these things with the speed that was necessary.
…The catastrophe of this generation has destroyed the old landmarks of politics, and the modern mind should equally eliminate their memory. We have passed beyond Fascism and beyond many tenets of the old Democracy, because science has rendered them irrelevant in a world which confronts us with new facts. Not only are the facts of the post-war period new, but science is continually adding still newer facts.[10] Old policies have no relevance to the present, and old memories of bitterness should have no place in it either.
One great lesson alone we can all derive from the past. We owe to Europe self-restraint in moments of passion, and kindness at all times to our kindred. These evil things which have occurred are not only wrong, they do not pay. In the end they destroy those who commit them. The time-honoured standards of the European alone can endure. In the events of a great age, honour, truth and manly restraint are not only as necessary as in the past but more than ever essential. The great qualities in man should grow in proportion to the age, not diminish. Let us remember the past only long enough to learn this. Then let us forget [the past].
Europe needs a great act of oblivion, before a new birth.”
Operation Gladio: NATO’s Dagger
With the Second World War ‘won’, the world was very much under the impression that we were to take the phrase ‘Never Again’ to heart. Unfortunately, those in charge of forming Western policy and geopolitical strategy post-WWII could not have disagreed more.
Operation Unthinkable is a prime example of the sort of thinking that was ruminating within Britain and the United States post-Roosevelt. Operation Unthinkable was the name given to two related possible future war plans by the British Chiefs of Staff against the Soviet Union in 1945. The creation of the plans was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in May 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff (Roosevelt passed away on April 12th, 1945). One plan assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany to “impose the will of the Western Allies” on the Soviets. The second plan was a defensive scenario in which the British were to defend against a Soviet drive towards the North Sea and the Atlantic following the withdrawal of the American forces from the Continent.
Though the first plan of the operation would be shelved with the new government under Clement Attlee, this remained a predominantly governing mindset for British and American intelligence. However, contrary to what we are told today, the second plan of Operation Unthinkable was not shelved. It was in fact fully implemented under the initiation of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This plan would continue through every other British Prime Minister’s term that followed afterward, without the knowledge of most members of the British government.
During the Second World War, preparations were made in the case of a possible German victory and ‘stay-behind’ guerilla warfare units were stationed throughout Europe. The model was the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, a top-secret guerilla-commando force established in 1940. It was the brainchild of Winston Churchill and was called ‘Churchill’s secret army.’ This program would eventually be adopted into NATO. After the Allied victory, these ‘stay-behind’ units were not disbanded but rather were strengthened and expanded in almost every European country, with direct aid and encouragement from the United States.
Daniele Ganser, a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland published NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe in 2005, which is regarded as an authoritative overview of NATO’s Operation Gladio networks and functions. This chapter will reference extensively Ganser’s pioneering work on this crucial history of Western clandestine warfare that was waged on Western civilians and their democratically elected governments for several decades under the guise of Soviet terrorism.
Daniele Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies:[11]
“The clandestine network, which after the revelations of the Italian Prime Minister [Andreotti] was researched by judges, parliamentarians, academics and investigative journalists across Europe, is now understood to have been code-named ‘Gladio’ (the sword) in Italy., while in other countries the network operated under different names including ‘Absalon’ in Denmark, ‘ROC’ in Norway, ‘SDRA8’ in Belgium. In each country, leading members of the executive, including Prime Ministers, Presidents, Interior Ministers and Defense Ministers, were involved in the conspiracy, while the ‘Allied Clandestine Committee’ (ACC), sometimes also euphemistically called the ‘Allied Co-ordination Committee’ and ‘Clandestine Planning Committee’ (CPC), less conspicuously at times also called ‘Coordination and Planning Committee’ of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), coordinated the networks on the international level. The last confirmed secret meeting of ACC with representatives of European secret services took place on October 24, 1990 in Brussels.
…Leading officers of the secret network trained together with the U.S. Green Berets Special Forces in the United States of America and the British SAS Special Forces in England…In case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe the secret Gladio soldiers under NATO command… [formed a] stay-behind network operating behind enemy lines.”
However, the expected Soviet invasion never occurred. And thus, these secret armies found another purpose. They were to be used against the people. The desire was that by staging false-flag operations that were blamed on communists, panic and revulsion would be invoked sending voters flocking to the welcoming arms to so-called ‘secure’ right-wing governments. Italy, which had the largest and most powerful communist party in Europe, would be first on the hit-list. The Communist Party of Italy, admired for leading the fight against Mussolini, was expected to win in Italy’s first post-war election in June 1946. This, of course, was considered intolerable under the Iron Curtain diktat.
Investigative journalist Christopher Simpson writes in his book Blowback, how a substantial part of the funding for the opposition to the Communist Party of Italy, which was the Christian Democratic Party, came from captured Nazi assets, largely held by the Americans. This intervention tipped the balance in favour of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party, which hid thousands of fascists in its ranks. The Christian Democratic Party would be the dominating party in Italy for five decades until it was dissolved in 1994.
In March 2001, General Giandelio Maletti, former head of Italian counterintelligence, suggested that next to the Gladio secret army, the Italian secret service and a group of Italian right-wing terrorists, the massacres which had discredited the Italian communists had also been supported by the White House in Washington and the CIA. At a trial of right-wing extremists accused of having been involved in the Piazza Fontana massacre, General Maletti testified:
“The CIA, following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left, and, for this purpose, it may have made use of right-wing terrorism…The impression was that the Americans would do anything to stop Italy from sliding to the left… Italy has been dealt with as a sort of protectorate [of the United States]…”[12]
In order to ensure that no further communist support were to arise in Italy, Operation Gladio, with direction and support from the CIA and MI6, led a campaign of brutal violence against Italians that stretched into the better part of two decades known as the ‘years of lead,’ the anni di piombo.
Daniele Ganser writes in NATO’s Secret Armies:[13]
“According to the findings of the Belgian parliamentary investigation into Gladio, a secret non-orthodox warfare even preceded the foundation of the alliance [NATO]. As of 1948, non-orthodox warfare was coordinated by the so-called ‘Clandestine Committee of the Western Union’ (CCWU).
…When in 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, CCWU [Clandestine Committee of the Western Union] was secretly integrated into the new international military apparatus and as of 1951 operated under the new label CPC [Clandestine Planning Committee]. At the time European NATO headquarters were in France and also the CPC was located in Paris. Like the CCWU before it the CPC was concerned with the planning, preparation and direction of non-orthodox warfare carried out by the stay-behind armies and Special Forces. Only officers with the highest NATO security clearance were allowed to enter CPC headquarters…under the guidance of CIA and MI6 experts the chiefs of the Western European Secret Services met at regular intervals during the year in order to coordinate measures of non-orthodox warfare in Western Europe.”
In 1959, an internal NATO briefing minute, dated June 1st, 1959, slipped into the hands of a British newspaper, which revealed that the task of the stay-behind units had been switched from confronting a Soviet invasion to confronting an “internal subversion”. The secret armies were henceforth to play a “determining role…not only on the general policy level of [domestic] warfare, but also on the politics of [domestic] emergency.”[14] What this meant was that a secret army of stay-behind units, under the direction of NATO, in absence of a Soviet threat, were to direct their actions to internal matters which would include espionage and acts of terrorism on the citizens of Europe with the support and cover of those nations’ police units. This would be used to further centralise control within right-wing governments who supported the NATO apparatus.
Operation Gladio, which used the tactic Strategy of Tension, functioned on three basic levels. The first was a guerilla war to be fought primarily on the streets, in order to draw loyalties away from the Soviet Union. The second level was the political front and would involve NATO-inspired conspiracies, which typically accused certain governments of being in secret partnership with the USSR, in order to evict democratically elected governments unfriendly to the NATO state apparatus and replace them with puppet regimes. The third level was the assassination (hard and soft) of figures who were deemed obstructive to NATO’s aims. Examples of Gladio assassinations include Italy’s former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, Sweden’s Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 (known as Sweden’s JFK), Turkey’s Prime Minister Adnan Menderes in 1961 along with two cabinet colleagues, and U.S. President Kennedy in 1963. As well as the soft assassination (character assassination) of UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson. These assassinations would typically be followed by a NATO/U.S. supported putsch. Attempted assassinations from Operation Gladio included President de Gaulle (more on this shortly) and Pope John Paul II.[15]
Yves Guerin-Serac: the Black Ops Grandmaster behind Operation Gladio
“He [Yves Guerin-Serac] was in thrall to his personal vision of a Christian-Fascist New World Order. He was also the intellectual mentor of Gladio terrorism. He wrote the basic training and propaganda manuals which can be fairly described as the Gladio order of battle.”
– Richard Cottrell, Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart to Europe
Guerin-Serac was a war hero, agent provocateur, assassin, bomber, intelligence agent, Messianic Catholic, and the intellectual grandmaster behind the ‘Strategy of Tension’ essential to the success of Operation Gladio. Guerin-Serac published via Aginter Press the Gladio manual, including Our Political Activity in what can aptly be described as Gladio’s First Commandment:[16]
“Our belief is that the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favouring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures…In our view the first move we should make is to destroy the structure of the democratic state under the cover of Communist and pro-Soviet activities…Moreover, we have people who have infiltrated these groups.”
“Two forms of terrorism can provoke such a situation [breakdown of the state]: blind terrorism (committing massacres indiscriminately which cause a large number of victims), and selective terrorism (eliminate chosen persons)…
This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of ‘communist activities.’ After that, we must intervene at the heart of the military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion, suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal apparatus. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”
Anarchic random violence was to be the solution to bring about such a state of instability thus allowing for a completely new system, a global authoritarian order. Yves Guerin-Serac, who was an open fascist, would not be the first to use false-flag tactics that were blamed on communists and used to justify more stringent police and military control from the state.
On the 27th of February 1933, Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, shouted outside the burning of the Reichstag:
“This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up!”[18]
It is quite incredible that people never seem to grow tired of these sort of theatrics as part of the popular narrative of what we are told shapes our history, no matter how many times we have heard it played before. The line of obvious patsies is also something that seems to never grow tiring. In the case of the Reichstag fire, now widely acknowledged as a false-flag, it was some befuddled Dutch Jew that was instantly accused.
The day after the fire, six days before the scheduled general election, Hitler persuaded the elderly and confused President von Hindenburg (the icon of the First World War) that the crisis was of such profound gravity it could only be met by complete abolition of all personal liberties. The Reichstag Fire Law conferred by Hindenburg gave Hitler many of the instruments that he required for a total seizure of power. Within two weeks, parliamentary democracy was also reduced to the smoking embers of history. It would not be the only false-flag to be orchestrated by Hitler.
Richard Cottrell writes in Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe :[19]
“SS units forced a small group of concentration camp victims ‘released’ from Buchenwald and disguised in Polish uniforms, to stage a false flag mock attack on the main radio tower in the Nazi controlled free state of Danzig. Citing provocation by the Poles, the German invasion of Poland followed.”
Guerin-Serac spent his life dedicated to a new Black Empire[20] which he dreamed would combine the universal divinity of the Roman church with the United States and Europe as successor to the Holy Roman Empire. This was Christian Fascism and Yves Guerin-Serac was its Crusader.[21] He belonged to several old gangs, including the first generation of ‘former’ Nazis and fascists. He also belonged to a veteran clan of French officers blooded in the Indochinese and Korean struggles and was a member of the elite troop of the 11ème Demi-Brigade Parachutiste du Choc, which worked with the SDECE (French intelligence agency). His connection to French Intelligence would be key in his becoming a founding member of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS), a French terrorist group, made up of disaffected French officers, based in Spain which fought against Algerian independence. Guerin-Serac would form an intricate paramilitary and terrorist network throughout Europe, as well as training facilities to service Operation Gladio, via the cover of Aginter Press.
“Guerin-Serac arrived in Lisbon in 1966 with an inspirational blueprint for the next stage of the struggle against godless liberalism. He proposed…an organization that would act as nothing less than an international travel agency for terrorists. The principal funding was supplied by the CIA, according to the Pellegrino Commission established in 1995 by the Italian Senate to investigate the anni di piombo [years of lead]. Guido Salvini was the magistrate appointed to examine the 1969 bombing of the agricultural bank in Milan’s Piazza Fontana. He pinned the blame firmly on Guerin-Serac’s Aginter Press. Salvini told the senators that Aginter operatives were active in Italy from 1967 onwards, instructing local militant neo-fascist organisations in the use of explosives. From this nugget, the CIA is positively connected to the Gladio wave of terrorism sweeping Europe.”
Behind the plain business shopfront of Aginter Press lay an invisible network designed to shuttle terrorists around Europe, Latin America, and Africa providing false documents and passports for killers posing as reporters and photographers including Guerin-Serac.[23]
“Aginter… was a Gladio finishing school, where recruits to the secret armies from all over Europe were trained in the arts of bomb making, assassination, psychological operations, destabilisation and counter-insurgency. Much of this was borrowed from the textbooks of the U.S. Army’s centre for covert warfare at Fort Bragg.Guest instructors from time to time included members of Britain’s SAS, the Green Berets …Guerin-Serac was blithely summoned to next door Spain to organise the death squads crushing resistance to the Franco regime. Aginter activities have been traced to all those countries where the Strategy of Tension operated at peak volume: Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Germany and Belgium.”
Britain’s Betrayal of its Greek Brothers-in-Arms in Support of Fascism
Britain did not wait for the end of WWII before cooperating with Nazis. Under Mussolini’s direction, Italian troops attacked Greece during the Second World War in 1940 but were defeated by the massive resistance of the Greek population. Hitler, in turn, sent his German troops which conquered the country and placed it under the control of the Axis Powers in 1941. The Greeks once again organised a massive resistance operation and throughout the war the German army faced great difficulties keeping the country under control. As in Italy and France, Greece’s strongest resistance organisation to the fascist occupation was dominated by the communists. ELAS, the People’s Liberation Army, had been founded on the initiative of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) some months after the German invasion. EAM, the political wing of the People’s Liberation Army was also dominated by the Greek communists. Out of a population of seven million up to two million Greeks were members of the EAM party, while 50,000 were actively fighting in the ranks of the ELAS army.[25]
ELAS’s operations were supported by the British secret army SOE.[26] Many personal friendships developed between the Greek ELAS resistance fighters and the British SOE liaison officers. However, this was abruptly severed in March 1943 when Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to halt all British support for ELAS, as he feared that Greece after the defeat of the Axis Powers could come under communist control. At that time, Greece was at the peak of fighting a war with the German Nazis.
In order to minimise the power of the Greek communists and socialists, London planned to reinstall the Greek conservative King George II, who had cooperated with the fascist dictator Ioannis Metaxas (Prime Minister of Greece from April 1936 – January 1941), to form a pro-fascist government. Metaxas had called for a fascist “new order” in Greece, argu1943,that the Great Depression proved the failure of democracy and that fascism was the solution.[27] This fascist solution occurred in alignment with the restoring of the Greek monarchy.[28] The crucial British Foreign Office directive of March 20th, 1943 stated “SOE should always veer in the direction of groups willing to support the King and Government, and furthermore impress on such groups as may be anti-monarchical the fact that the King and Government enjoy the fullest support of His Majesty’s Government [of Britain].”[29] King George II was less than popular among many Greeks after having cooperated with the fascist dictator Metaxas. Yet London pursued the conservative policy and in October 1943, the British Foreign Office even contemplated “a downright policy of attacking and weakening EAM by every means in our power.”[30]
‘Former’ Nazi collaborators and right-wing special units such as the fascist X Bands, with British support started to hunt and kill ELAS fighters. However, these groups did not enjoy popular support and recruitment levels were only at around 600 men. Thus, Churchill decided to up the ante, and in late 1944 gave the order for a new Greek army unit, which came to be known variously as the Greek mountain Brigade, the Hellenic Raiding Force, or LOK, its Greek acronym Lochos Oreinon Katadromon.[31] As it was aimed against the communists and the socialists, the unit excluded “almost all men with views ranging from moderate conservative to left wing. Under British military supervision and at Churchill’s express order, the unit was filled with royalists and anti-republicans.”[32]
“As ELAS fought against both the German Nazi occupiers and the British-sponsored Hellenic Raiding Force, Churchill feared a public relations disaster should it be revealed to the British public that London was secretly supporting the fascists against the Communists in Greece. In August 1944 he therefore instructed the BBC to eliminate ‘any credit of any kind’ to ELAS when reporting on the liberation of Greece. But only weeks later ELAS secured victory over the German occupiers and Hitler was forced to withdraw his soldiers also from Greece. Churchill immediately demanded that the resistance should disarm, an order which ELAS was willing to obey if it was equally applied to their only remaining enemy on the field, the British sponsored Hellenic Raiding Force.”
Britain refused to disband the secret right-wing army and thus large Greek demonstrations against Britain’s support for the fascist monarchy took place on December 3rd, 1944, a mere six weeks after Hitler’s forces had been defeated and pushed out of the country. A small group of 200-600 peaceful protestors, men, women and children, gathered at the Syntagma Square in Athens, the main square in front of the Greek parliament. A much larger group of 60,000 protestors were delayed by police blockades. British troops and police with machine guns were positioned on the rooftops.[34] Suddenly, and without warning, the peaceful demonstration was turned into a massacre as the command was given: “Shoot the bastards.” Shortly after the bloodbath, the main group of protestors arrived in the square. In a display of remarkable restraint, these 60,000 protestors held a peaceful demonstration against Britain’s support for the fascist monarchy, while among the dead bodies of their recently slain comrades.
In London, Churchill faced an angry House of Commons which demanded an explanation for the barbarity. While admitting that it had been a “shocking thing,” Churchill stressed that it was equally stupid to bring large numbers of unarmed children to a demonstration, while the city was full of armed men. The role of the secret right-wing army in the Syntagma massacre was never investigated.[35]
After the demonstration of force, the British reinstalled King George II and a succession of weak British puppet governments with right-wing leanings followed. A Greek resistance faction rearmed and took to the hills and in the fall of 1946 started a civil war against the British and the local right. An exhausted Britain asked in early 1947 for the United States’ support. Truman with his famous ‘Truman Doctrine’ in March 1947 was able to convince Congress to openly intervene in Greece. Greece was the first country to be invaded by the United States during the Cold War.[36] In the following decades, Washington put forward the argument used in Greece to justify its open or covert invasions of Korea, Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Panama and several other countries.[37]
The United States secretly started Operation Torch and used chemical warfare to defeat the Greek resistance by dropping thousands of gallons of Napalm on Greece.[38] By late 1948, the Greek resistance which had defeated the Italian fascists, the German Nazis and the British troops, finally collapsed after years of heroic fighting. A hollowed out Greece joined NATO in 1952 and by that time “had been moulded into a supremely reliable ally-client of the United States. It was staunchly anti-Communist and well integrated into the NATO system.”[39]
Peter Murtagh writes in The Rape of Greece: The King, the Colonels and the Resistance:[40]
“The [Hellenic] Raiding Force doubled as the Greek arm of the clandestine pan-European guerilla network set up in the 1950s by NATO and the CIA which was controlled from NATO headquarters in Brussels by the Allied Coordination Committee…The Greek branch of the network was…known as Operation Sheepskin.”
Is this what Kalergi was referring to as his “Crusade for Pan-Europe”; a “clandestine pan-European guerilla network” to ‘defend’ Europe?
“The Greek junta consolidated its power through a regime of imprisonment and torture…Communists, Socialists, artists, academics, journalists, students, politically active women, priests, including their friends and families were [horrifically] tortured…’We are all democrats here’ Inspector Basil Lambro, the chief of the secret police of Athens, was fond of stressing. ‘Everybody who comes here talks. You’re not spoiling our record.’ The sadist torturer made it clear to his victims: ‘We are the government, you are nothing. The government isn’t alone. Behind the government are the Americans.’ If in the mood Basil also offered his analysis of world politics: ‘The whole world is in two parts, the Russians and the Americans. We are the Americans. Be grateful we’ve only tortured you a little. In Russia, they’d kill you’.”
The National Security Act of 1947, a Trojan horse, was a part of the new breed of legislation post-Roosevelt and led to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), placing it under the direction of the National Security Council (NSC). Although it did not explicitly authorize the CIA to conduct covert operations, Section 102 was sufficiently vague to permit abuse. By December 1947, less than four months after the creation of the CIA, the perceived necessity to “stem the flow of communism” in Western Europe—particularly Italy—by overt and covert “psychological warfare” forced the issue and NSC 4-A[42] was born. NSC 4-A would be replaced by NSC 10/2[43] less than one year later, approved by President Truman on June 18th, 1948, creating the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). NSC 10/2 was the first presidential document which specified a mechanism to approve and manage covert operations, and also the first in which the term “covert operations” was defined.
In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the U.S. parliament investigated the CIA and the NSC via the Frank Church Senate Committee Hearings[44] and found that:
“The national elections in Europe in 1948 had been a primary motivation in the establishment of the OPC…By channeling funds to centre parties and developing media assets, OPC attempted to influence the election results – with considerable success…These activities formed the basis for covert political action for the next twenty years. By 1952 approximately forty different covert action projects were under way in one central European country alone…Until 1950 OPC’s paramilitary activities (also referred to as preventive action) were limited to plans and preparations for stay-behind nets in the event of future war. Requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, these projected OPC operations focused, once again, on Western Europe and were designed to support NATO forces against Soviet attack.”[45]
George F. Kennan selected Frank Wisner as the first commander of the CIA covert action unit OPC. Wisner and other U.S. OPC officers “tended to be white Anglo-Saxon patricians from old families with old money…and they somewhat inherited traditional British attitudes toward the coloured races of the world.”[46] Wisner became the chief architect of the network of secret armies in Western Europe. From 1948-1950 the OPC was a renegade operation run by Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner. In 1950 the OPC was renamed the Directorate of Plans and continued under the direct commandership of Frank Wisner. George F. Kennan, OPC overseer at the time, would strongly support the passing of NSC 10/2 and CIA covert actions in Italy and beyond.
“…next to the Pentagon the U.S. Special Forces were also directly involved in the secret war against the Communists in Western Europe, as together with the SAS they trained the members of the stay-behind network. After the U.S. wartime secret service OSS had been disbanded after the end of the war the U.S. Special Forces were reborn with headquarters at Fort Bragg, Virginia, in 1952. General McClure established a Psychological Warfare Centre in Fort Bragg and in the summer of 1952 the first Special Forces unit, somewhat misleadingly called the 10th Special Forces Group was organised according to the OSS experience during the Second World War, and directly inherited the latter’s mission to carry out, like the British SAS, sabotage missions and to recruit, equip and train guerillas in order to exploit the resistance potential in both Eastern and Western Europe.
…At all times the U.S. Special Forces were set up in Fort Bragg in 1952 the name of the CIA covert action branch changed from ‘OPC’ to ‘Directorate of Plans’ (DP), and Wisner was promoted Deputy Director of Plans. Together with CIA Director Allen Dulles he intensified U.S. covert action operations on a global scale. Dulles authorised CIA assassination attempts on Castro and Lumumba as well as the CIA’s LSD experiments with unwitting subjects…”
Edward Lansdale who was chief of the Saigon Military Mission and a protégé of General Lemnitzer; who wanted to send a submarine to the shore outside Havana where it would create an “inferno of light.” At the same time, according to Lansdale’s plan, Cuba-based agents would warn the religious natives of the second coming of Christ and the Savior’s distaste for Fidel Castro. The plan was called ‘Elimination by Illumination,’ but was ultimately shelved.[48] It would be funny if such plans stayed on paper, but these men were responsible for the torture and deaths of countless individuals for the plans that made it into reality.
As soon as General Lemnitzer became Army Chief of Staff in 1959, he installed Lansdale at a desk in Deputy Defense Secretary Gilpatric’s office in the Pentagon. Lansdale was put in charge of Operation Mongoose under direct patronage of Lemnitzer with the main object to eliminate Castro in direct defiance of federal law prohibiting political assassinations. Operation Mongoose was an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians and covert operations carried out by the CIA and was run out of JM/Wave in Miami. Lansdale would participate in many covert operations including raids and bombings in Cuba and other targets all over Latin America.
In March 1962, General Lemnitzer, not taking a hint as to what happened to Dulles, Bissell and Cabell, decided it would be a good idea to propose Operation Northwoods to President Kennedy for approval. Operation Northwoods was a proposed false-flag operation against American citizens, which called for CIA operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets and subsequently blame the Cuban government in order to justify a war against Cuba. The plan was drafted by General Lemnitzer specifically and had a striking similarity with NATO’s Operation Gladio. The logic of Northwoods was the stripe of Gladio. The general staff inclined towards prefabricated violence because they believed benefits gained by the state count more than injustice against individuals. The only important criterion was reaching the objective and the objective was ultra right-wing government.
There was not a single item in the Northwoods manual that did not amount to a blatant act of treason, yet the U.S. military establishment dispatched Top Secret – Justification for U.S. military Intervention in Cuba straight to the desk of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, for onward transmission to President Kennedy. Needless to say, President Kennedy rejected the proposal and a few months later General Lemnitzer’s term was not renewed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, having served from October 1st 1960 to September 30th 1962.
However, NATO lost no time, and in November 1962 Lemnitzer was appointed commander of U.S. European Command and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) of NATO, the latter to which he served from January 1st, 1963 to July 1st, 1969.
Lemnitzer was a perfect fit to oversee the cross-continental Gladio operations in Europe. He had been a prime motivating force in setting up the Special Forces Group in 1952 at Fort Bragg, where commandos were trained in the arts of guerilla insurgency in the events of a Soviet invasion of Europe. Before long the men who proudly wore distinctive green berets were cooperating discreetly with the armed forces of a string of European countries and participating in direct military operations some of them extremely sensitive and highly illegal if not downright treasonous.
One of these operations was the NATO/CIA coalition which had sponsored at least two attempts to assassinate President de Gaulle.[49] In response to this, de Gaulle had kicked NATO’s headquarters out of France, removed France from NATO and had given Lemnitzer a summary order to quit NATO. If President de Gaulle’s orders had been denied, he would have been prepared to go to war, and thus there was a bit of reshuffling, but essentially the game continued intact.
“France is determined to regain on her whole territory the full exercise of her sovereignty.”
– President of France Charles de Gaulle
It was thought by many of the pro-fascist imperialist persuasion that de Gaulle was ultimately going to play ball. That though he may have had his criticisms of fascism, he was at the end of the day an anti-communist and an imperialist and thus, it was inevitable that he would eventually ‘see the light’. This was something that the pro-fascists thought they could work with in the ‘restructuring’ of Europe amidst a Cold War.
“On the initiative of the U.S. and the British Special Forces SAS, a secret army was set up in France under the cover name ‘Plan Bleu’ (Blue Plan) whose task was to secretly prevent the powerful PCF [Communist Party of France] from coming to power. The Blue Plan, in other words, aimed to prevent France from turning red…The SAS, specialised in secret warfare, contacted the newly created French secret service Direction Generale des Etudes et Recherche (DGER) and agreed with them to set up a secret army in northern France across the Channel in the Bretagne.”
One month after having ousted the communists from the government, the French socialists attacked the military right and the CIA and exposed the Plan Bleu secret army. On June 30th, 1947, French socialist Minister of the Interior Edouard Depreux exposed that a secret right-wing army had been erected in France behind the back of politicians with the task to destabilize the French government. “Towards the end of 1946 we got to know of the existence of a black resistance network, made up of resistance fighters of the extreme-right, Vichy collaborators and [pro] monarchists…They had a secret attack plan called ‘Plan Bleu’, which should have come into action towards the end of July, or on August 6 [1947].”[51]
“The secret war against the Communists did not end when Plan Bleu was exposed and closed down in 1947. Much to the contrary, French Socialist Prime Minister Paul Ramadier saw to it that his trusted chiefs within the military secret service were not removed by the scandal. When the storm had passed he ordered Henri Ribiere, Chief of SDECE, and Pierre Fourcand, deputy Director of the SDECE, in late 1947 to erect a new anti-Communist secret army under the code name ‘Rose des Vents’ (Rose of the Winds, i.e. Compass Rose), the star-shaped official symbol of the NATO. The code name was well chosen, for when NATO was created in 1949 with headquarters in Paris, the SDECE coordinated its anti-Communist secret war closely with the miliary alliance. The secret soldiers understood that within its maritime original context the compass rose is the card pattern below the compass needle according to which the course is set, and according to which corrections are undertaken if the ship is in danger of steering off course.”
(left) NATO’s symbol, (right) ‘Rose des Vents (Rose of the Winds i.e. Compass Rose) name of a French anti-communist secret army established in 1947. NATO’s first headquarters was established in France in 1949.
However, there was one very large mistake that was made in establishing NATO’s base in France. De Gaulle was not going to play ball after all…
After the Second World War there was increasing pressure for European nations to commit to the NATO diktat. President of France Charles de Gaulle (1959-1969) disagreed with this orientation. One of the major points of this disagreement was over the force de frappe (nuclear striking force), which de Gaulle believed should be kept firmly outside of NATO’s control. He refused the prospect of France getting automatically dragged into a shooting war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. De Gaulle’s relentless pursuit of French nationalism and independence in foreign and military policies was clearly incompatible with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s charter. When de Gaulle began talk of delivering Algeria her independence, it was decided by former allies, and members of his own military and police that de Gaulle had to go.
On April 21st, 1961, a plot to overthrow President de Gaulle, organised by the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète, the French terrorist group run by Yves Guerin-Serac) swung into action. On that day, four disaffected generals known as the ‘ultra group’ staged a coup in Algiers. The civil caucus in Washington, Pentagon and NATO headquarters in France were all implicated in the plot to eliminate the French president and secure Algeria for the West. The coup leader, air force general Maurice Challe, was formerly commander of NATO’s forces in Central Europe.
The first outlines of the coup were agreed in the summer of 1960, when the former governor of Algeria, Jacques Soustelle, had a secret tête-à-tête with Richard M. Bissell. Bissell, the CIA Deputy Director of Plans (formerly called the OPC), the covert operations wing of the CIA, and close associate of Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner. In the same year, Challe stage-managed his resignation from NATO. In January 1961 the main plotters assembled, the chief item on the agenda was to form the OAS as an alternative government that would replace de Gaulle’s government once he had been toppled. Key figures in Plan Bleu were all present.[53] Challe’s forces in Algeria were secretly funded using channels closely connected to the French Gladio.[54] On the eve of the coup, Bissell, had an undisclosed meeting with Challe in Algiers. Challe was told that if he could get the country under control inside 48 hours, then the U.S. government would formally recognise his regime.[55] The putsch ultimately failed.
“When NATO was founded in 1949, its headquarters, including the SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe], were built in France. France was thereafter particularly vulnerable to NATO and CIA secret warfare as de Gaulle lamented – for together with NATO also the secret Gladio command centre CPC [Clandestine Planning Committee] was located in Paris as the Italian document ‘The special forces of SIFAR [Italian intelligence] and Operation Gladio’ of June 1959 revealed. ‘On the level of NATO the following activities must be mentioned: 1. The activity of the CPC of Paris…attached to SHAPE.’”
What this meant was that the Gladio command centre, the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) was located in Paris to directly coordinate with NATO’s headquarters. In other words, Gladio was working directly for the NATO command centre.
Ganser continues:
“Furthermore also the secret Gladio command centre ACC [ Allied Clandestine Committee] repeatedly met in Paris. It came as a massive shock to the White House in Washington when de Gaulle in February 1966 – due to a number of strategic and personnel motives that historians still struggle to explain – decided to challenge the United States head-on, and ordered NATO and the United States either to place their military bases in France under French control, or to dismantle them. The United States and NATO did not react to the ultimatum whereupon in a spectacular decision de Gaulle took France out of NATO’s military command on March 7, 1966 and expelled the entire NATO organisation together with its covert action agents from French territory. To the anger of Washington and the Pentagon the European headquarters of NATO had to move to Belgium. In Brussels, Mons and Casteau, new European NATO headquarters were being erected where they have remained until today. The Belgium parliamentary investigation into Gladio and secret warfare later confirmed that ‘in 1968 the Chair of CPC moved to Brussels.’ [in order to be with NATO] Research in Belgium furthermore revealed that the ACC secret warfare centre held a meeting with international participation in Brussels as late as October 23 and 24, 1990.
Belgium Gladio author Jan Willems drew attention to the sensitive fact that when de Gaulle withdrew the French army from the military-integrated command of NATO, some of the secret agreements between France and the United States were cancelled. ‘On this occasion it was revealed that secret protocols existed concerning the fight against Communist subversion, signed bilaterally by the United States and its NATO allies. De Gaulle denounced the protocols as an infringement of national sovereignty. Similar secret clauses were also revealed in other NATO states. In Italy Giuseppe de Lutiis revealed that when becoming a NATO member Italy in 1949 had signed not only the Atlantic Pact, but also secret protocols that provided for the creation of an unofficial organisation ‘charged with guaranteeing Italy’s internal alignment with the Western Block by any means, even if the electorate were to show a different inclination.’ And also in the initial NATO agreement in 1949 required that before a nation could join, it must have already established a national security authority to fight Communism through clandestine citizen cadres’.”
Not only was de Gaulle not going to go along with the secret armies of NATO, but he was going to actively intervene to ensure the sovereignty of Europe’s nations against the fascist imperialist end-goal of NATO and its secret Gladio arms. It was a full all-out-war in the underground world of intelligence and clandestine warfare, and de Gaulle was one of the very few that was fully equipped to play the game.
There would subsequently be over 30 assassination attempts on de Gaulle’s life during his presidency. After 43 years, in 2009, France would finally rejoin NATO, a decision made by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has had “an interesting record of winning elections with dramatic perfectly timed post-terror interventions…”[57] It should be noted that there has been a great deal of effort to either flatly deny or downplay France’s role in Gladio, and the involvement of NATO, however, these are demonstrably false. When Italy’s Operation Gladio was finally revealed to the world in the early 1990s (more on this shortly), there was a media frenzy inquiring into whether other governments within Europe were also implicated.
The French along with the British denied that their governments had any involvement in the Gladio networks. Italian Prime Minister Andreotti, not wanting to be the only boat sunk, mercilessly shattered the French cover-up when on November 10th, 1990 he declared that France also had taken part in the very recent meeting of the Gladio directing body ACC (Allied Clandestine Committee) in Belgium on October 23rd, 1990. It was only with Andreotti’s accusation that France changed its tune and acknowledged its role in Gladio, with French Defence Minister Jean Pierre Chevènement claiming that the French secret army was “completely passive…”[58]
In the Quiet of a Small Town
“Sex trafficking, industrial paedophilia, the reports of snuff movies made for political and financial blackmail, or just for profit, were all entangled in a black cobweb of spies, officially connived drug running, the secret paramilitary network, and the constant meddling of NATO’s high command in the internal affairs of the country.”
– Richard Cottrell, Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe
Belgium is made up of a Flemish and French ethnic population. During WWII, many Flemings either openly or symbolically sided with the Germans, in hopes of Flemish nationhood – even within a Nazi commonwealth – doing away with Belgium altogether.
Richard Cottrell writes in Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe:[59]
“A residue from wartime fraternisation with the Germans led to Nazi-style paganistic symbolism and mystical blood bonding ceremonies within the Belgian stay-behind network and elements of the national armed forces, which in any event inclined to the Right. This mystical streak was set for a chilling significance in shaping many of the perversion yet to be wrought on Belgium.”
“According to Belgian Gladio author Jan Willems, the creation of WUCC [Western Union Clandestine Committee] in spring 1948 had been a direct consequence of a public speech by British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin held in London on January 22, 1948. In front of the British parliament Bevin had elaborated on his plan for a ‘Union Occidental’, an international organisation designed to counter what he perceived to be the Soviet threat in Europe…”
Ernest Bevin (Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs July 1945-March 1951) aided in the creation of NATO and was instrumental in the founding of the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret Cold War propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, specialised in pro-colonial, anti-communist, disinformation propaganda, including black propaganda.[61] His commitment to the West European security system, made him eager to sign the Treaty of Brussels in 1948. It drew Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg into an arrangement for collective security, opening the way for the formation of NATO in 1949.[62] Bevin also played a role in Parliament misinforming MPs and failing to extradite the Mufti of Jerusalem, while in French custody, who had been installed and funded by the British government in Palestine and had worked closely with the Nazis during the Second World War.[63]
Little Belgium soon after NATO’s move to Brussels, had the second most powerful and intrusive crime cartels in Western Europe. In a very short time, Europe’s cockpit was also its chief narcotics and illegal arms hub, with a sideline of sex trafficking. According to investigative journalist Richard Cottrell,[64] the CIA had recruited Belgian Nazis – mostly, but not exclusively, Flemish – as soon as the war ended, and selected them for high offices at state and provincial levels. Such ‘former’ Belgian Nazi figures were protected from justice and released from prison under the protection of the CIA. NATO’s machinations along with General Lemnitzer’s imported experts in counterinsurgency[65] were responsible for the formation of the Belgian Gladio operations; divided into SDRA-8 (French) and STC/Mob (Flemish) divisions.[66]
“According to journalist Manuel Abramowitz – a leading investigator of the far Right in Belgium – neo-Nazis were egged on to infiltrate all the mechanisms of the state, with special attention reserved for the police and the army. By the 1980s, this level of penetration had become so deep – thanks to fascist fronts such as the neo-Nazi militia Westland New Post and its French speaking counterpart, Front de la Jeunesse – that Belgium’s military forces could be said to have fallen almost entirely under extremist control. Not once in the wake of the many false-flag operations over the coming decades, did convincing proof ever appear of a credible coordinated Left-wing subversive force operating on Belgian soil, while seditious organisations of the Far Right flourished openly.”
Senator Hugo Coveliers chairman of the special investigating committee probing gangsterism and terrorism in Belgium (1988-1990) tracked the presence of incriminating materials to a special unit called the ‘judicial police’. Here is what Coveliers said on what became known as the ‘scandal of the X-Dossiers’:
“Imagine, everywhere you hear that story about a blackmail dossier in which organisations of the extreme right are in the possession of pictures and videos on which a number of prominent people in and around Brussels have sex with young girls; minors it is said. The existence of this dossier has always been vehemently denied. Until it was proven that testimonies and videos of this affair indeed were in the possession of the police services.
The at first non-existing dossier turns out to exist. The videos without substance then turn out to be interesting enough after all to be handed over to the examining magistrate tasked with the investigation into the Gang of Nivelles [held responsible for some of the shop massacres]. But this person is subsequently afraid to testify about that! What do you think is going on here!”[68]
Cottrell, who is a former European Parliament MP and has conducted formal investigations ordered by the European Parliament, explores these avenues in greater detail in his book. He concludes that these sex-trafficking rings within Belgium, involving the abuse and murder of children, are encouraged among public officials for two reasons. The first is to produce incriminating blackmail making political retreat impossible. The second reason is that some of these activities that were recorded and retained in top secret files, were part of cultist initiation ceremonies.
“It was alleged these involved paganistic neo-Nazi traits such as blood rituals, practised by elements within the state’s secret forces, as well as the orthodox military structure.”
In the context of this, NATO’s twitter scandal posting the Black Sun Nazi occult symbol[70] for international women’s day in 2022, might not have been a slip-up after all…
Among the plethora of books H.G. Wells wrote, was “The New World Order,” (1940). It appears that Wells was among the very first to pioneer the now infamous term. ↑
Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 560-561. ↑
Chung, Cynthia. (2022) The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set: The Birth of International Fascism and Anglo-American Foreign Policy. See Chapter 2. ↑
Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 577. ↑
Dorril, Stephen. (2006) Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British fascism. Viking, London, New York, pg. 15-16 ↑
Mosley wrote to Wells to congratulate him on a speech supporting ‘Liberal Fascism’. Mosley included a copy of his book The Greater Britain, and wrote “I am afraid the word ‘Liberal’ has not much relation in my book, but it certainly is an attempt to create a scientific Fascism which is free from the excess and repressions of the Continent…like most prophets, you will probably have the unpleasant experience of recognising many of your own teachings of the past reproduced and reshaped by less capable hands.” From Stephen Dorril’s book ‘Blackshirt.’ ↑
Refer to Chapter 1 of my book “The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set” for Mosley’s concept of a “scientific dictatorship” which was almost entirely influenced by H.G. Wells. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005) NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, London, New York, pg. 1. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005) NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, London, New York, pg. 28 ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. Richard Cottrell is a former European Parliament MP and investigative journalist. Cottrell has also conducted formal investigations commissioned by the European Parliament. ↑
For more details around the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II see Richard Cottrell’s book Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 115-121. ↑
William L. Shirer. (1959) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, pg. 192. ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, Nato’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
Black Empire is in reference to a Fascist Empire. ↑
Recall from Chapter 2 Kalergi’s Catholic Crusade for a Pan-Europe. ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
Recall in Chapter 1, that Mosley and his son were working for a Spanish travel agency that was organising Otto Skorzeny’s travel itinerary, which was likely connected to Aginter Press. ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 212. ↑
Cliadakis, Harry. (January 1979). The Political and Diplomatic Background to the Metaxas Dictatorship, 1935-36. Journal of Contemporary History. 14 (1): pg. 117–138. ↑
The United States Senate. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence activities. Book IV: Supplementary detailed staff reports on foreign and military intelligence, pg. 36. ↑
Powers, Thomas. (January 1979) The man who kept the secrets: Richard helms and the CIA. Alfred A. Knopf, pg. 37. ↑
Ganser, Daniele. (2005). NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. Frank Cass, pg. 57. ↑
Kruger, Henrik. (1980) The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence & International Fascism. South End Press, pg. 143. ↑
Cottrell, Richard. (2015) Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe: The Pentagon-Nazi-Mafia Terror Axis. Progressive Press. ↑
Baylis, John (1982). Britain and the Dunkirk Treaty: The Origins of NATO. Journal of Strategic Studies. 5 (2): pg. 236–47. ↑
See Chapter 11 of my book ‘The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set.’ ↑
Richard Cottrell is a former European Parliament MP and investigative journalist. Cottrell has also conducted formal investigations commissioned by the European Parliament. ↑
See Chapter 8 of my book ‘The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set.’ ↑
Richard Cottrell. (2015) Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe. Progressive Press. ↑
EU politicians are accused of conspiring with Libyan coastguards to push refugees back to Libya only to be placed in detention camps.
NGO rescuers at sea (via Twitter @CaoimheButterly)
German NGO European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed a formal complaint to The Hague accusing several high-ranking EU and Members of State officials of “atrocious crimes committed against migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers,” an ECCHR executive summary of a Communication to the International Criminal Court reads.
The charges specifically involve EU politicians conspiring with Libyan coastguards by intercepting refugees and preventing them from reaching Europe by sea and forcing them to return to Libya only to be placed in detention camps.
According to the summary, the illegal pushbacks took place between 2018 and 2021 but initially began in February 2017 when the Italian government struck a deal with Libya to intercept refugees at sea.
Among the suspects include EU’s former foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, the Italian Interior Minister at the time of the deal, Marco Minniti, as well as some co-conspirators, namely Matteo Salvini, the far-right leader who served as Interior Minister in 2018-2019 and his then chief of staff, and Matteo Piantedosi, who is now Interior Minister.
🧵Our Communication presents evidence to argue that interceptions by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard (scLCG) are #notSAR “rescue operations.” Migrants & refugees intercepted and returned to Libya are deprived of their liberty and at risk of suffering other forms of violence. 1/6 pic.twitter.com/YslvjEWQsC
Former and current prime ministers of Malta are also included in the complaint, namely Malta’s current Prime Minister, Robert Abela, and his predecessor, Joseph Muscat.
The former executive director of European border agency Frontex Fabrice Leggeri is also listed.
According to The Guardian, Minniti said he had no idea about the complaint, adding that he will “evaluate it, like the other interior ministers from 2017 until today.”
“At the time, the agreement was signed by the Italian prime minister, [Paolo] Gentiloni, and his counterpart, [Fayez] al-Sarraj. So, from all the records, it appears that I am not the signatory,” he added.
The deal was successful at reducing 81% of migration in Italy’s southern shores during the first half of 2018 compared with the first half of 2017.
It was renewed in 2020 and again earlier in November for one year.
The renewal cost Italy a total of €13m.
“The Communication details 12 exemplary incidents of the interception of migrants and refugees at sea and their return to and detention in Libya between 2018 and 2021. The incidents present a particularly clear and detailed picture of the cooperation between European Union agencies (particularly the European Commission, EUNAVFOR MED, and Frontex) and Member States (including Italy and Malta) with Libyan actors, on both the policy and operational levels, with regard to the interception of migrants and refugees at sea for the purpose of their return to and detention in Libya,” the ECCHR summary reads.
Christopher Hein, a professor of law and immigration policies at Luiss University in Rome, claimed that the “deal is totally in line with the policy of the EU.”
“It is a bilateral agreement, but it is supported and co-financed by the EU,” Hein said, adding that “tens of thousands” of people had been intercepted and brought back to Libya since 2017, with 35,000 intercepted so far this year.
For years, Brussels has been struggling to agree on and implement a new policy for sharing responsibility for migrants and asylum seekers, but the row has brought the issue to the fore.
Italy’s new government under the far-right leader, Georgia Meloni, refused to allow earlier this month a Norwegian-flagged NGO ship with 234 migrants on board rescued from the Mediterranean to dock.
The Ocean Viking eventually arrived in France, where authorities reacted angrily to Rome’s stance, canceling an earlier agreement to accept 3,500 asylum seekers stranded in Italy.
The row jeopardized the EU’s stopgap interim solution, prompting Paris to convene an extraordinary meeting of interior ministers from the 27 member states on Friday. “The Ocean Viking crisis was a bit of improvisation,” Schinas admitted, defending the new plan from his commission to better coordinate rescues and migrant and refugee arrivals.
“We have twenty specific actions, we have an important political agreement, everyone is committed to working so as not to reproduce this kind of situation.”
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin stated that France has no reason to accept migrants relocated from Italy if Rome “does not accept the law of the sea.”
In addition, Darmanin’s Italian opposite number Matteo Piantedosi played down the Ocean Viking incident, saying the meeting was “not dealing with individual cases or operational management.” He stated that he had shaken hands with the French Minister and that there was a “convergence of positions” that would allow the ministers to resume discussions at their meeting on December 8.
As the 25th of September election nears in #Italy, the far-right is focusing its campaign on immigrants. Will Italy submit to the far-right with its neo-fascist roots? pic.twitter.com/eZuMXx7Gxn
*The author with Pyatnashka commanders at outpost near Avdeevka, Donetsk People’s Republic. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]
Published Nov 19, 2022, Covert Action[See the comments section, some apologists for the West’s war on Syria have resurfaced…]
Smeared, stigmatized, and lied about in Western media propaganda, the mostly Russian-speaking people of the Donbass region were being slaughtered by the thousands in a brutal war of “ethnic cleansing” launched against them by the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv, which the U.S. installed after the CIA overthrew Ukraine’s legally elected president in a 2014 coup.
Although the Donbass people had been pleading for Russian military aid to defend them against the increasingly murderous military assaults by the Ukraine government forces, which killed more than 14,000 of their people, Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to intervene. Instead, he tried to broker a peace agreement between the warring parties.
But the U.S. and Britain secretly colluded to sabotage peace negotiations, persuading president Zelenksy to ignore the Minsk III peace agreement that the Ukraine government had previously signed, and which had been countersigned by Russia, France and Germany.
Realizing that the U.S. and its NATO allies would never permit peace negotiations to succeed, Putin finally sent troops into Ukraine on February 24. Russian troops went in to support and reinforce the outnumbered and outgunned Donbass Forces who had been defending their land against attacks by the Kyiv government for nearly eight years.
Voices From the Frontlines of Former Eastern UkraineRepublics
In the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in October, I went to a frontline outpost 70 meters from Ukrainian forces in Avdeevka (north and west of Donetsk), according to the Donbas commanders I spoke with there. [Watch our interview here]
To reach that position, I went with two other journalists to a meeting point with two commanders of Pyatnashka—volunteer fighters, including Abkhazi, Slovak, Russian, Ossetian and other nationalities, including locals from Donbas.
From there, they drove us to a point as far as they could drive before walking the rest of the way, several minutes through brush and trenches, eventually coming to their sandbagged wood and cement fortified outpost.
It has changed hands over the years, Ukrainian forces sometimes occupying it, Donbas forces now controlling it.
*“Vydra,” a unit commander of the Pyatnashka fighters. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]
One soldier, a unit commander who goes by the call sign “Vydra” (Otter), was formerly a miner from the DPR who had been living in Russia with his family. In 2014, he returned to the Donbas to defend his mother and relatives still there. He spoke of the outpost.
“We dug and built this with our hands. Several times over the years, the Ukrainians have taken these positions. We pushed them back, they stormed us…Well, we have been fighting each other for eight years.”
There, artillery fire is the biggest danger they face. “You can hide from a sniper, but not from artillery, and they’re using large caliber.”
His living quarters is a dank, cramped, room with a tiny improvised bed, with another small room and bed for others at the outpost.
A sign reads: “If shelling occurs, go to the shelter.” The kind of sign you see all over Donetsk and cities of the Donbas, due to Ukraine’s incessant shelling of civilian, residential areas. In a frontline outpost where incoming artillery is the norm, the sign is slightly absurd, clearly a joke.
An Orthodox icon sits atop the sign. Ukrainian nationalists hang and spray Nazi graffiti and slogans of death; these fighters revere their faith.
A poster, with the DPR flag, reads: “We have never known defeat, and it’s clear that this has been decided from above. Donbas has never been forced to its knees, and no one will ever be allowed to.”
The only things decorating the space are tins of tuna and canned meat, instant noodles, and washing powder. Their existence is bare minimum, nothing glamorous about it; they volunteer because, as they told me, this is their land and they will protect it.
Perhaps surprising to some, when Vydra was asked whether he hates Ukrainians, he replied emphatically no, he has friends and relatives in Ukraine.
“We have no hatred for Ukraine. We hate those nationalists who came to power. But ordinary Ukrainians? Why? Many of us speak Ukrainian. We understand them, they understand us. Many of them speak Russian.
I’ve been involved in sports a lot of time, wrestling. So, I’ve got a lot of friends in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kirovograd, Odessa, Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk, Transcarpathia.
I have relatives in western Ukraine, and we still communicate. Yes, they say one thing on the street, but when we talk to each other, they say, ‘Well, you have to, because the SBU is listening.’
Ukraine shouts about democracy, then puts people in handcuffs for no reason. My aunt got in trouble because they found my photo on her Skype.
And I’m on the Myrotvorets [kill list] website.” [As is the author, see this article.]
He spoke of Ukraine’s shelling from 2014, when the people of the Donbass were unarmed and not expecting to be bombed by their own country.
“When the artillery hit the city of Yenakievo, east of Gorlovka, we were defenseless. We went with hunting rifles and torches to fight them. Most of the weapons we had later were captured from them. We had to go to the battlefield without weapons in order to get the weapons.”
When asked if he was concerned that Ukrainian forces might take Donetsk he replied no, of course not, they didn’t succeed in 2014, they won’t now.
When asked whether he had a message for soldiers of the Ukrainian army, Vydra replied without hesitating, “Go home! We’ve been saying that since 2014: Go home. Unequivocally, we don’t want them here, but we don’t want to kill them. I’m not speaking about nationalists, I’m speaking about Ukrainian soldiers, who are drafted or forcefully employed in the Ukrainian army. Guys, go home, either surrender or go. This is our land. We’re not leaving, we’re not going anywhere.”
I asked how he felt to be treated and described as sub-human, to be called dehumanizing names, a part of the Ukrainian nationalists’ brainwashing propaganda. As I wrote previously:
“Ukrainian nationalists openly declare they view Russians as sub-human. School books teach this warped ideology. Videos show the extent of this mentality: Teaching children not only to also hate Russians and see them as not humans, but also brainwashing them to believe killing Donbas residents is acceptable. The Ukrainian government itself funds neo-Nazi-run indoctrination camps for youths.”
“It’s offensive,” Vydra said, “We are saddened: There are sick people. We need to heal them, slowly.”
I asked whether he thought friendship between Ukrainians and Russians would be possible.
“It will take years for any friendship. Take Chechnya, one region of Russia, it was at war. But slowly, slowly…We must all live together. We are one people.” Indeed, now Chechen fighters are one of the most effective forces fighting alongside Donbas and Russian soldiers to liberate Donbas areas from Ukrainian forces.
He opened a zippered trousers pocket and proudly brandished a small plastic sleeve containing children’s drawings, also containing icons of saints and Christ, and prayers…
“This is very personal, it’s like my guardian angel. I put it in plastic, I don’t even keep my ID in plastic. I’ve been carrying this one in my pocket since February. I’ve been in all sorts of hot spots. A child drew this, we receive letters from children. It’s very nice to look at them when it’s hard and we are under fire.”
He read one letter:
“We are waiting for you. Thank you for risking your lives to defend Donbas. Yulia and Ira.”
“I don’t even know who are Yulia and Ira,” he said smiling.
Showing the icons, he said, “This is Saint Ushakov, our great commander. This is Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Protector. This Abkhazi icon was given to me by the guys. This is a prayer book. And here is a prayer,” he said of one page prayer.
“These words are to support when times are very hard. When there is heavy shelling, it can go on for hours. So, while you’re sitting there, you can read this.
Especially for the younger guys, 22, 23 years old, just finished college. This is new to them.”
Commanders Speak of Geopolitical Reasons for Ukraine’s War
Outside, sitting in front of an Orthodox banner and a collection of collected munitions—including Western ones—two platoon commanders, “Kabar” and “Kamaz,” spoke of the bigger geopolitical picture. [See video]
“America is running the show here,” Kabar said. “It builds foreign policy on the basis of how its domestic policy is built, which is through conflicts with external countries. They are accustomed to proving their power to their people through terrorism around the world, inciting fires in Syria, in the east. They played the card of radical Islam there.
And now they are playing the card of fascism. They do not see themselves on the other side of good. They need wars, blood, cruelty, and they signed Europe up for this.
However, they’ve missed one point: Russia, since the days of the Soviet Union, has never retreated in large scale wars. They took Europe and pushed it to slaughter Russia, and they put Russia in such a position that it must secure its national interests. Europe needs to understand this, to pay attention to history, to stop being led by the United States.”
“Kabar,” a commander of the Pyatnashka fighters. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]
When asked about his feeling regarding Ukrainians, “Kabar” replied similarly to Vydra.
“We don’t blame the whole Ukrainian people. Ukrainians are our friends, they are our relatives. They’ve been struck by evil, and it’s not their fault, ordinary people are not to blame for this. We will liberate them from fascism, we’ll show them brotherhood, and we’ll make friends.
This is a good opportunity for us to defeat evil. God has honored us with this right to fight evil.”
Kamaz, when asked why he is fighting, replied that this is his homeland, he was born here, and that he has a son who he doesn’t want to inherit Ukraine’s war on the Donbas.
“I myself am Greek by nationality. Ukrainians are Slavs, they are our brothers, their grandfathers fought together shoulder to shoulder with our grandfathers against Nazism and fascism. We are here to finish it, so that our children live a normal happy life. We are fighting for the future.”
He spoke of America’s continuous need for war.
“We’ve seen it in Syria and Yugoslavia, where they destroyed everything and then set everything up their own way, so the people must submit, almost like slaves.”
I asked whether he thought peace between Ukraine and Russia is possible.
“Yes, possibly, why not? But at the moment, the President of Ukraine said there will be no negotiations.
Negotiations are possible, but I think not with this president. When he comes to his senses, he will not be able to negotiate, because he took a lot of money.”
Before leaving the outpost, we chatted a bit with the commanders. A puppy sought the attention of a young soldier. Another puppy ran around our feet. The outpost commanders and soldiers take care of the dogs. Their presence added a somewhat surreal touch to the scene: an outpost which is routinely shelled, where life can cease to exist at any moment, and these happy, well-cared for puppies running around like dogs anywhere.
Western Media Inverted Reality, Lauding Nazis and Demonizing Defenders
While many in the West think that this conflict started in February 2022, those following events since 2014 are aware that, following the Maidan coup and Odessa massacre, and the rise of fascism in Ukraine against the Ukrainian people, the Donbas republics wanted to distance themselves from Ukraine’s Nazis and fascism.
The sacrifices which the people of the Donbas republics have endured, particularly those fighting to protect their families and loved ones, have been and continue to be immense.
Just as the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army were maligned, so too have Donbas forces have been maligned by Western media, though both are defending their homelands from terrorist forces trained and funded by the West. Terrorists given the freedom to commit endless atrocities against Donbas civilians.
These defenders, many living in dank trench conditions didn’t choose war, they responded to it, to protect their loved ones and their future. In spite of more than eight years of being warred upon by Ukraine, they retain their humanity.
Ahead of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, calls to de-politicize sports seem ridiculous and senseless upon examining the inseparable historical connection between sports and politics.
Debunking the myth of ‘de-politicizing’ sports
A few days before the 2022 Qatar World Cup, French President Emmanuel said that sport should not be politicized.
“I think we must not politicize sport,” said Macron, whose national team is defending the title it won in Russia in 2018.
Macron, who will go to Qatar if the French team reaches the semifinals, said it was “a very bad idea to politicize sport,” noting that France will host the Olympic Games in 2024.
This comes amid a wave of criticism that Qatar is being subjected to over reports that many migrant workers — predominantly from South Asia and South-East Asia and Africa — have suffered from exploitation and widespread labor abuses while working on the Gulf country’s World Cup projects.
Doha is also accused of allegedly paying bribes to some football federations in exchange for winning the right to host the FIFA World Cup on its territory.
It seems that the French President is contradicting himself and has apparently “forgotten” his interference and role in ensuring that French player Kylian Mbappe remains in France with his current team Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), as well as forcing coach Didier Deschamps to call Real Madrid player Karim Benzema to the French national team and participate in the 2020 European Championship, as per investigative journalist Romain Molina.
It also seems that Macron has forgotten that his country’s football federation did politicize sport and was the first to call for the expulsion of the Russian national team from the 2022 World Cup following the start of the war in Ukraine, showing clear double standards and turning a blind eye on several other issues pertaining to human rights, such as Israeli occupation crimes against Palestinians for example.
Soon after the Ukraine war broke out, numerous sports governing bodies suspended Russia from international competitions. However, these bans coincided with unprecedented support for Ukraine despite these bodies banning any other form of political or religious expression on the field.
Solidarity with #Ukraine is being shown across stadiums worldwide, breaking the sports no-politics doctrine. On the other hand, athletes and football clubs were fined and even punished for showing support for #Palestine. Who's politicizing the matter? #Russiapic.twitter.com/GVZ6Sxjyfl
Aside from the French President’s shallow argument, let’s not forget that, historically, sports have always been intertwined with politics and used as a theater to promote political ideology, voice political messages and criticism, shift diplomatic feuds to sports arenas, and whitewash human rights violations by political regimes – also known as sportswashing.
Several sports clubs around the world were even established on the basis of politics, were influenced by their founders who are usually into politics, and their fans follow certain political ideologies.
Felix Jakens, head of Priority Campaigns and Individuals at Risk at Amnesty International UK, defines sportswashing as “a process or moment where a country with a bad human rights record attempts to use sport as a way to create positive PR to clean up its image and deflect attention away from its human rights record.”
For example, when Italy was awarded the right to host the second FIFA World Cup in 1934, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini saw it as an opportunity to whitewash his regime’s image in front of the international community, despite the heinous crimes committed at the time.
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini awarding the 1934 World Cup to Italy’s players (AP)
Similarly, Adolph Hitler used the 1936 Olympics held in Germany in an attempt to promote Nazism and prove the superiority of the Aryan-race athletes.
Adolph Hitler during the Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany in August 1936 (AP)
The same can be said about Argentina organizing the 1978 World Cup under the dictatorship of General Jorge Videla, where matches would be played a few meters away from where thousands of dissidents were being tortured.
On the other hand, the sports arena was also used, by athletes and fans, to protest injustice and show support for rightful causes.
In fact, when late boxing champion Muhammed Ali was drafted into the US Army to take part in the Vietnam war in 1966, the African-American athlete expressed his rejection of the decision, saying, “I will say directly, no, I will not go 10,000 miles to help kill innocent people.”
As a result, Ali was stripped of his title and suspended from boxing before the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in June 1971.
Boxing Heavyweight champion Muhammed Ali 1965 (AP)
In a related context, after receiving the gold and bronze medals for the men’s 200-meter race at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, African-American runners John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised a fist in a Black Power salute in protest of mistreatment and systematic racism in one of the most iconic images of 20th-century sports.
Despite being demonized by the press and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) later expelling the two from the Games, Smith said this act of activism “was a cry for freedom and for human rights” and that “we had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.”
Tommie Smith and John Carlos (Bettmann/Bettmann Archive)
Most recently, in continuation of Carlos and Smith’s activism in the sports arena, several athletes all over the world “take a knee” before the start of games in protest of police brutality and systematic racism and in support of their victims, and multiple sports federations and clubs have endorsed this cause, especially after the death of African American George Floyd, who was brutally killed by a white police officer in the US city of Minneapolis.
When it comes to fandom, in late 2018, fans of the Raja Athletic Club of Casablanca (RCA), known for their endless support for the Palestinian cause, impressed the world with a new chant called “Fbladi Dalmouni,” i.e. “In my country, I suffered from injustice.”
The lyrics of the chant recount the suffering of the Moroccan youths and blame the country’s government for corruption, the economic situation, and oppressing freedom of expression.
RCA fans are only one example of the political messages and numerous causes that sports fans express during events in order to grab attention and make their voices heard against injustice and oppression.
Another example is notably Celtic F.C. fans, who have always openly declared their support for the Palestinian cause by abundantly raising Palestinian flags in their stadium, all whilst chanting pro-Palestinian anthems. FIFA usually fines the Scottish Football Association over Celtic fans’ acts of solidarity with the Palestinian people, deeming it “not appropriate for a sports event.”
In stark contrast, FIFA, along with other major sports bodies, allow themselves to practice double standards and violate their rules by hailing acts of solidarity with Ukraine.
As such, it becomes clear that amid such political activism in sports, as well as other similar acts, a call such as Macron’s to de-politicize sports seems ridiculous and senseless upon examining the inseparable historical connection between sports and politics.
The French President’s call is also unjust and would deprive athletes and fans of a huge platform to voice their opinion and shed light on their causes in a world full of injustices.
World Cup 2022.. How to involve the international conflict in the football event?
Progressive Democratic Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (front) and Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (center) pose for a photograph at Capitol Hill. (AP file photo)
Progressive Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that the United States is “facing an environment of fascism” similar to the days of Jim Crow in the leadup to the 2022 midterms which Democrats are likely to lose to Republicans.
Federal officials at the Department of Homeland Security and FBI have warned of a “heightened threat” ahead of the midterm elections charged by violent extremism, CBS News reported
What they’re saying: “We are really truly facing an environment of fascism in the United States of America. This type of intimidation at the polls brings us to Jim Crow,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told MSNBC on Friday about reports of intimidation at Arizona ballot boxes.
“It brings us back and harkens back to a very unique form of American apartheid that is not that long past ago,” she added. “And we have never fully healed from it and those wounds threaten to rip right back open if we do not strongly defend democracy in the United States of America.”
US authorities released a bulletin on Friday that said domestic violent extremists pose a threat of violence for the 2022 midterms and the days after.
“Following the 2022 midterm election, perceptions of election-related fraud and dissatisfaction with electoral outcomes likely will result in heightened threats of violence against a broad range of targets ― such as ideological opponents and election workers,” the bulletin reads, according to CNN.
CBS reported that these extremists may target state and local government buildings following the election.
The bulletin was issued on the same day as the attack on US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their residence in San Francisco.
Speaking at a political event in Pennsylvania hours after Paul Pelosi was attacked and gravely injured by an intruder, US President Joe Biden blamed the Republican Party, increasingly influenced by the political vitriol of former President Donald Trump, for “too much political violence.”
“There’s too much violence, political violence, too much hatred, too much vitriol,” Biden said.
“And what makes us think that one party can talk about ‘stolen elections,’ ‘COVID being a hoax,’ ‘this is all a bunch of lies,’ and it not affect people who may not be so well balanced? What makes us think that it’s not going to corrode the political climate?” Biden added.
Paul Pelosi was attacked and severely beaten by an assailant with a hammer, according to people familiar with the matter.
Pelosi, 82, suffered blunt force trauma to his head and body, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation into the attack who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe.
The assailant is in custody, and the motivation for the attack is under investigation, the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Democrats are worried they could lose control of both chambers of Congress on November 8 which would give Republicans the power to bring Biden’s legislative agenda to a halt. Biden’s unpopularity is helping drive this view.
Biden’s term has been marked by the economic scars of the global health crisis, including soaring inflation. Biden’s popularity hit a record low of 36 percent in May and June.
US consumer inflation hit a 40-year high of 8.6 percent in the 12 months through May, with gasoline marking a record high and the cost of food soaring, Labor Department data showed.
The surging costs have become a political headache for the Biden administration, which has tried several measures to lower prices but said much of the responsibility to control inflation falls to the Federal Reserve.
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
NATO’s think tank, the Atlantic Council, exhibits “Israel’s” political model as an ideal model for the future of Ukraine – a model based on hyper-militarization and fascism.
Zelensky, NATO explain how Ukraine could become a ‘big Israel’
By Al Mayadeen English
The Atlantic Council, a NATO-backed think tank, is openly proposing that Ukraine embody a more enhanced version of the Israeli political model, based on hyper-militarization, intelligence superiority, and technological innovation.
In other words, Ukraine is crystallizing into its most fascist form, a blow to the so-called claims of “democracy” that NATO and Western powers are marketing.
The paper, titled “Zelenskyy wants Ukraine to be ‘a big Israel.’ Here’s a road map.,” was published in early April, and is written by Daniel Shapiro, former US ambassador to “Israel,” who has worked for Israeli intelligence and enjoys close ties with Israeli think tanks. Shapiro is currently an Israeli spy-tech consultant.
This suggestion was not born from a vacuum. Within the same timeframe, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky divulged to reporters that in the future, he’d like Ukraine to be “a big Israel,” after which NATO released the article which roughly explains how the model could be executed.
Zelensky articulated that Ukraine would never be like Switzerland (as of February 24), which has remained neutral when it came to regional conflicts. Rather, he said: “we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
The Jewish president, who paid no heed to his neo-Nazi battalions (quite ironically), went on to explain what a “big Israel” would look like:
“We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas — there will be people with weapons,” Ukraine’s president said, predicting a bleak existence for his citizens. “I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.”
The future of Ukraine, according to Zelensky, will not be “absolutely liberal, European.”
Shapiro explained that the “two embattled countries share more than you might think.” The vision to create a ‘big Israel’ out of Ukraine, according to the former ambassador, would be to militarize Ukraine so much to push US interest in Eastern Europe against its rival, Russia.
Although in 2018, 40 human rights activists petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice to stop arming Ukraine after Azov Battalion members were caught brandishing Israeli-made weapons, the military entity has been sending mercenaries to Ukraine and providing weapons since February.
Zelensky has cried anti-Semitism in recent months, citing that “Putin’s war” is a war on Ukrainian Jews, although they make up less than 0.5% of the population. However, the Ukrainian president seems very much unfazed by the openly Nazi battalions in this country. Perhaps the two do, indeed, have very much in common.
The proposed model, first and foremost, suggested increasing security – in other words, ramping up surveillance and intelligence – in Ukraine. He explains that the basis for security in “Israel” is that the entirety of the population participates.
“Civilians recognize their responsibility to follow security protocols and contribute to the cause,” Shapiro wrote of Israeli settlers. “Some even arm themselves (though under strict supervision) to do so. The widespread mobilization of Ukrainian society in collective defense suggests that the country has this potential.”
To draw the parallel, this idea aligns with Zelenksy’s vision: “People with weapons,” as the president explained, will be existent in every aspect of civilian life.
Shapiro furthermore seconded Israeli “high-tech innovation” in military and intelligence, which are highly assisted and backed by the US and citizens’ taxpayer money as Washington allocates billions for the settler-colonial regime on a yearly basis.
It is striking that Zelensky undermined the role of foreign aid in cementing “Israel’s” feet in settler-colonial activities, explaining – either naively or purposely – that “Israel will defend itself, by itself—and rely on no other country to fight its battles.”
Ukraine, to become “Israel 2.0”, “will need to upgrade its intelligence services”, as “Tel Aviv” “has invested deeply in its intelligence capabilities to ensure that it has the means to detect and deter its enemies—and, when needed, act proactively to strike them.”
Shapiro would know. In 2017, the former ambassador joined the Israeli spy company NSO as an independent advisor, where he assisted clients with the evaluation of Pegasus packages. The clients include multiple European Union nations and the Saudi monarchy.
Shapiro has also worked for WestExec Advisors, which is a consulting firm founded in 2017 by current Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Before Biden’s election, Shapiro did some media work after the Democratic Party’s platform removed language opposing land annexation in the occupied West Bank in Palestine.
NATO, furthermore, would benefit greatly from a hyper-militarized Ukraine. Major weapon corporations in the US are core donors to the alliance and their bodies, including the Atlantic Council. Companies include Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon. Gregory J. Hayes, the Raytheon Chairman, is on the Atlantic Council’s international advisors board.
Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s anti-tank Javelin missiles have been called the “symbol of Ukraine’s resistance”, with Washington providing over 8,500 missiles to Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
If Zelensky were to really make his dream come true, there will need to be behemoth-size investments into Europe’s poorest country for the working class, with hysterical weapon and surveillance tech investments… just like “Israel.”
Leaving aside the usual sycophantic nonsense, which applauds your continuing efforts to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East with missile attacks, trying to change the earth’s climate using beliefs, promising an unknown source of ‘green’ energy whilst promoting vaccines to save us from certain death from a dose of flu, here’s an alternative open letter.
As a UK citizen now retired, having recently returned to the UK after over a decade of living and working in Asia and the Far East I’m stunned by the stupification around me. Have I inadvertently fallen down an alternative universe Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, or is there a hidden factory somewhere mass-producing stupid politicians?
As yet another British Prime Minister resigns following the resignations of two others before him producing a failing economy, soaring inflation, sky-high taxes, an energy crisis and a falling pound … The indoctrinated cheer on men with beards wearing dresses and it’s left to a dwindling minority to explain why carrots don’t grow on trees in a socially engineered ideological dystopia! The consequences of which you blame on the Russians, or the Chinese depending on who the US has currently fallen out with.
As you sit in your elitist tax payer funded ivory towers, let’s briefly detail the chaos and mayhem you’ve produced.
Did you think the outside world believed you were trying to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East and not trying to control the world’s major oil producers who just all happened to have abandoned the petrodollar? How many millions lost their lives in that failed adventure?
How many of you swooned over a 16-year-old autistic Swedish school drop out with Asperger’s syndrome, OCD and selective mutism whose mother said she had “special eyes” that could see carbon rising from a dying planet? As a self-inflicted energy crisis looms and both Britain and Germany re-open coal-fired power stations, are you still cheering for mentally ill Greta and her windmills?
How can you keep a straight face whilst telling millions that if they didn’t have the Covid vaccine they’d be passing on the flu they didn’t have onto others? How much of the vaccine scam profit disappeared into the pockets of pharmaceuticals, lobbyists and your own pockets? The whole country could hear the cash tills ringing as shares in the pharmaceuticals producing vaccines went through the roof amid crony contracts awarded to favoured companies. Are you listening former British Health Secretary Matt Hancock who resigned after being caught with his nose in the trough.
Predictably, as the manufactured hysteria wore off and attention spans waned, the advice from the British National Health Service was to open our windows and let the virus out. Apparently, it had been hiding in our homes the whole time? Moreover, the experiment of a “new normal” locked down muzzled population also failed, together with the attempt to introduce Covid passports as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Britain and throughout Europe in mass demonstrations to protest against the implementation of virtual house arrest and freedom of movement. After this, what comes next, a climate change lock down?
Moving on, Russia, who just by coincidence is another major energy producer surrounded by NATO missile bases and sanctioned hoping its economy collapses and produces another “regime change.” Why does that produce a feeling of déjà vu? How long did you believe a nuclear power would tolerate an aggressive US led NATO advancing towards its border? The last time western armies gathered on Russian borders was in 1941 and that didn’t end well.
Oh the irony, as you cheer for the same Nazis your grandfathers fought against and vilify the Russians who are now having to fight them again. How many of you condemned the previous eight years of ethnic Russian murders in the Crimea and Donbass by Nazi militias who you helped arm and train, but turned a blind eye to the consequences. No crocodile tears and outraged comments from you when Russian civilians were being killed. Make no mistake, in another era the majority of you would be sitting in the same Nuremberg dock as the previous psychopaths!
For the last quarter century you are without doubt the most useless, corrupt and destructive political class in British history. In one generation you have dumbed down the British population to an idiocracy in your ‘Woke’ eagerness to remove the cultural traditions and values of centuries. As suicide statistics soar, mental health issues reach an all-time high and drugs become a lifestyle choice for many to block out the horror of reality, it’s not a diverse and equality multicultural utopia you’ve produced, it’s a nightmare!
And you, the US demagogues and liberal fascist European Commissioners; in two decades your ideologically warped quest for power has not only failed to make the world a safer place, you have brought us to the verge of a nuclear conflict. Between you, you’ve managed to wreck our economies, brought terrorism to our streets and created the worst energy crisis since the 1970s – whilst becoming fabulously wealthy yourselves. Yes, we have noticed. The sooner you’re removed from power, the sooner both we the western populations and the outside world can have a rest from your incompetence and murderous activities!
Meanwhile, as I write from England, outside my window another car with exhaust baffles removed and the window wound down emitting ear-splitting decibels of rap ‘music’ drives past, whilst on the pavement a silent E-scooter carrying a bald middle-aged man with expressionless eyes in short trousers and tattooed legs races by.
Asia Teacher is a UK citizen, retired teacher of English plus Social and Political Science.
We have a date with history and it is the liberation of Palestine today in the XXI century against the colonial yoke and anachronism called “Israel”.
Perhaps the end of hunger is the liberation of the world. Freedom is dignity and justice, there is no liberation with the injustice of hunger, hunger is savagery and slavery…The end of hunger is not in the universal human imaginary…It is a corpse theme and even laughable. There is an atheistic confession regarding the end of hunger in the world, anointed with alms, charity and philanthropy.
The liberation of Palestine is the liberation of the world
Zionism is a Eurocentric fascist movement and today it is the engine of imperial inhumanity and is the very normalization of fascism. Zionism is an enemy of humanity that with its despotic supra-power allows it to mock and subjugate the world as the untouchable bearer of Peace.
Zionism operates among rivals, i.e. there is American Zionism and there is Russian Zionism, and there is Chinese Zionism. There is Zionism in its fascist nature and there is also Zionism operating on the left wing. There is Nazi Christian Zionism as well as Islamo-fascist Zionism and at the same time, it operates in the illustrious temple of art, academia and intellectuality: in multiple cases in the scientific and technological plunder, always in the financial, commercial and media mafia. Its hyperrealistic power seems surrealistic.
For decades Zionism has been one of the great articulators of the West in the macabre spilling of the blood of the peoples of Africa and Latin America for the plundering of their natural resources.
In 1948, the Euro-Zionist movement succeeded in imposing a colonial regime in Palestine called “Israel”. It was imposed on the basis of ethnic cleansing against the native Semitic Palestinian people. The wounded Arab world protested and the international Zionist power managed to conceal its barbarism, stating that they were Arab savages, anti-Semitic Muslims… Zionism is the perfect crime, the victim is guilty. Western egocentric gluttony ejaculates in its creative and illustrative ignorance: They found the land of love, sang Edith Piaf in tribute to the colonial regime of “Israel” that massacred the native Semitic Palestinian people.
Note
“Israel” that was imposed in 1948 in Palestine is a classic colonialism, a colonial anachronism and its parallelism with the classic colonialism is that it does not come from a country but from a European movement (Zionism), which seeks to create a nation-state. In this case, they use the Jewish religious doctrine (Semitic heritage), they falsify history, they allege that it is about the ”return” to the ancestral land (Indo-Europeans, non-Semitic Jews). And this is why we are facing a colonialism in which it does not only colonize the land of the people but steals, appropriates the history of the native people, and this is because it is a colonialism that does not come from a country but from a movement that seeks to be a country. Therefore it takes the history of the native people. “Israelis” are not “Israelites”. This colonial particularity of usurping the native Palestinian history, culinary and cultural expression, is part of the equation of extermination of the Palestinian people. The native Palestinians are not only expelled from their homeland but the enemy seeks to expel them from history.
End of the note
It is worrying to see today, how the tyrannies, neo-colonial Arab monarchies, in order to perpetuate themselves in power, are investing colossal sums of money in the falsification of Islam, in school education, in large international Islamic forums, to present this colonialism as an Islamic principle. Be careful with this.
The liberation of Palestine, that is to say the end of the colonial regime of “Israel”, is the collapse of the Arab dictatorships, whether they are pro-imperialist Arab dictatorships or anti-imperialist Arab dictatorships.
Behind the cruel US imperial invasion of Iraq was the colonial regime of “Israel”, through the Zionist Lobby, as part of the colonial expansionist project: “Greater Israel”, from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Today, the colonial regime of “Israel” is in possession of at least 400 atomic bombs.
The humiliating Oslo Accords in which a Palestinian elite groveled and were forced to abandon the armed struggle. By abandoning the armed struggle, much of the Palestinian imaginary was lost, we no longer speak of the Fida’i. It used to be said: To be against “Israel” is not to be against the Jews. Now it is said: To criticize “Israel” does not mean to be against “Israel”. Without realizing it, we are becoming Zionists. It is criminally naïve to believe in the existence of this colonialism.
Former Palestinian leaders gave up the armed struggle for the peaceful struggle that already existed, but a peaceful struggle has not been achieved either, since Western repression does not allow us to express freely or to express the essence of the Palestinian Cause. We have not positioned our own lexicon, under the pretext that we must be intelligent, strategic, objective, subtle, tactical. Although the Palestinians have become more visible in the world, this has not stopped Zionism from advancing its ethnic cleansing in order to make the Palestinian people disappear.
Yes, war is perverse, but pacifism, in some cases of a petty bourgeois humanism, demagogic and in other honest cases, has proved not to be enough to fight the most powerful fascism of today; on the contrary, it has facilitated its advance. Zionism scoffs at all the great denunciations made by great institutions of the world including the UN. We are contemplating history instead of provoking history.
No one has the right to impose which is the way to resist, the peaceful or the armed struggle, both are valid. Another element is to impose on us to recognize Israeli colonialism as an alternative for Peace. That is a trap. As a native Palestinian of the Diaspora, I do not recognize colonial despotism. The solution is Palestinian independence. Never expel any so-called Israeli, they were born there, that is their land, that is Palestine.
Israeli colonialism is not limited to Palestine but to the rest of the Arab-Persian and Kurdish countries.
The end of the Palestinian people would be the victory of fascist obscurantism, an attack against the rest of the peoples of the world. The peoples of the world will be weaker.
We have a date with history and it is the liberation of Palestine today in the XXI century against the colonial yoke and anachronism called “Israel”. We have a debt to Humanity and that is to extirpate colonialism from our contemporary history and to extirpate the most powerful fascism of our time. It sounds lovely to say this, the challenge is immense, we must stop self-censorship, under the pretext that we must be strategic. We must kick the table, educating the world about the just Palestinian cause and the danger that Zionism poses to humanity. That embarks deep determination and steadfastness, therein lies the beauty of being Palestinian. From our Diaspora they will come for us to ruin our lives, but to liberate Palestine is the liberation of the world. A more dignified and noble world is mandatory.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
I heard about it from my daughter, Sarah, in Chicago.
“Dad, did you hear about Highland Park?” That was an ominous beginning. She continued: “There was a shooting during the 4th of July Parade. A bunch of people were killed.”
My heart sank. I lived in Highland Park for almost 15 years, from 2001-2015. Sarah too. I had been there just a few weeks ago to visit my dear neighbors Hannah and Joe, and to meet up with Sarah.
“You ok, sweetie?”
“Yeah, but it’s really bad.”
“Let me hang up and find out more.”
I looked at the NYTimes and Guardian and texted Hannah – she and her husband were out of town and ok. I told my wife Harriet, who was out pulling weeds in the garden. I was tearful; she consoled me. Though I hadn’t lived there in a while, Highland Park was a big part of my life. It was where I bought a house with my former wife in late 2001; where I ran hundreds of miles in the beautiful forest reserves; where I taught my dog Echo how to catch a frisbee; where I wrote three books; where I recovered from injuries after a bad car crash; where Sarah went through a very challenging (for all of us) adolescence; where I started a new life after my divorce; and where Harriet and I were married by a rabbi, with Echo as our witness, in 2014.
I never made many friends there, but I didn’t care about that. I had friends enough in Chicago and L.A. And then there was the gift of Hannah – a brilliant and funny art historian (U. of Illinois, Chicago), and her kind businessman husband, Joe Reinstein. Joe and I didn’t have that much in common except for being Jewish, enjoying gardening and liking to make jokes. He sounds a little bit like Jack Benny. Many of you, dear readers, won’t have a clue as to who that is, so please look him up on YouTube.
Highland Park, a city of 30,000, is about one-third Jewish. When my former wife (Catholic) and I moved up to there in 2001, some of our Northwestern University colleagues were surprised that we relocated to such a bourgeois suburb. To quiet the teasing, I told them that we moved there so I could “be among my people.” That shut everybody up. Then as now, identity politics ends discussion. In truth, though I am a cultural Jew, I haven’t stepped inside a synagogue since my bar mitzvah in 1969, not including other people’s bar mitzvahs and weddings.
Now, after the shooting, Highland Park was going to become one more of those names on a list that includes Parkland, Sandy Hook, Buffalo, and Uvalde. The grim consolation is that the list is now so long – and growing longer every day — that Highland Park will soon be displaced in memory by another mass casualty event. In a few years, it will be a footnote. But not for the people whose family members were killed or wounded; not for the town’s other residents who will remember that infamous day, and not for a north Florida transplant who remembers the place with fondness.
Outline of a critique of fascist violence
In time, we’ll find out much more about the confessed killer, Bobby Crimo. But my friend Sue Coe nailed the profile in an email she sent me before he was identified: “He will be a 20-something white male, who hunts, goes online in his bedroom, and over excites himself. His mother/grandmother/caretaker, who he hates, does his laundry, and cooks his food. He won’t have many friends; past fellow students will say he was a loner. Maybe there’s a manifesto, posted online, ripped off from some other moron.” She forgot to mention that he will be a Trump supporter, rare for someone his age, and rarer still in Democratic Highland Park or nearby Highwood where the killer lived with his father and uncle. Sue is clever but not clairvoyant – she described what has recently become the typical profile of the mass shooter.
Crimo may have a diagnosable psychotic illness such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or delusional disorder. Alternatively, he might suffer from a less totalizing, but still debilitating mental illness such as borderline personality disorder or depression. He apparently attempted suicide in 2019. In online raps (or rants), he claimed to be compelled to kill. But whether there is a plausible diagnosis or not, the question will be the same: Why did this 21 y.o. kid decide to buy an assault weapon and kill or injure dozens of people he didn’t even know? Answers won’t be found in the DSM but in the convergence of fascism and Republican Party politics.
Fascism is a well-understood political formation, but easier to recognize in hindsight than foresight. It cannot be defined, as some have tried to do, by a delimited set of attributes, for example: 1) militarism and a culture of violence, 2) the leadership (Fuhrer) principle, 3) antagonism to democracy, 4) deferral to the authority of elites, 5) racism, 6) strict control of both gender expression and sexual reproduction, 7) denigration of science, 8) the ubiquity of lies and conspiracy theories, and 9) the bringing of government and civil society to heel in order to enforce one-party rule. The problem with this list or any other, is that it establishes an ideal type that exists nowhere except the mind of the investigator.
Then what use are the words fascist and fascism today? They serve as a warning, enabling us to recognize especially toxic political speech and behavior, and prepare ourselves for the behemoth lying in wait. Does the rampant racism, violence, corruption, and electoral fraud of the last president and current Republican Party mark a fascist turning point in the United States? Does Republican debasement of the Supreme Court – marked by its denial of women’s autonomy, endorsement of gun culture, refusal to accept EPA authority to prevent a climate catastrophe, and endorsement of a theocratic state — indicate the rise of fascism?
To be sure, U.S. capitalist democracy was deranged from the start by slavery and genocide. When those practices were ended or curbed, it was still marked by racial oppression, gross inequality, and environmental degradation. Despite that, U.S. politics has been self-correcting to a surprising degree, staving off fascism when it seemed imminent. The first Ku Klux Klan (1865-1900) was stymied by Progressive Era legislation and policing, and the second (1915-1940) by the Great Northern Migration (which depleted the Black population of the South) and by the democratic solidarity that arose after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Germany’s declaration of war against the U.S. Fascism in other words, has frequently been incipient, but countervailing tendencies were always stronger. However, that pattern – a glide to the right matched by a lurch back to the center — may be changing.
During the last three decades or so, neo-liberal capitalism has sustained a highly productive collaboration with Christian nationalism and other versions of far-right, populist extremism. They are strange bedfellows. The goal of the first is to ensure the highest possible profits for the longest possible time, regardless of the human or environmental consequences. The climate crisis has made this stance existential. Continued economic growth and increasing profits – the lifeblood of large business enterprises — is simply incompatible with environmental responsibility. For that reason, fossil capital, along with its confederates in the weapons, aerospace, steel, and home building industries, is waging a war against the coming era of environmental regulation and economic planning that must inevitably curb growth. That’s what the recent Supreme Court decision, West Virginia vs EPA, was all about. It was a big win for capital against the environmental movement and American labor. Working people, especially the non-white sector, are the first victims of climate change. In addition, the Court’s ruling will be used to attack workplace health and safety laws.
The goal of the second group, the far-right Christian nationalists, anti-abortionists, militias, and self-proclaimed fascists, is to establish a new nation of white Christian, Aryan, or “legacy” Americans who will reclaim the power they believe was taken from them by the Jews, Blacks, feminists, and queers who sought to “replace” them. Their cultism (QAnon, Stop the Steal, anti-Vax, etc), gun-rights militancy and religious enthusiasm has little in common with the secularism and public reserve of the corporate heads, lawyers, bankers, lobbyists, and advertising executives who comprise the neoliberal faction of U.S. conservatism, but they share one fundamental principle: that the only salient economic and political unit is the individual and the family. The neoliberal faction adds a proviso — codified by the Supreme Court in Citizens United — that corporations have many of the same rights as people.
For neoliberal capital, this means that state or federal programs to regulate production, improve social welfare, and protect the environment are both non-sensical and counterproductive; they are based on the mistaken premise that societies exist and have collective interests that need to be safeguarded. For the far right — Christian nationalist, militia, anti-abortion, and the rest — exclusive focus on individuals and families means that any concatenation of social groupings that opposes their apocalyptic vision must be cast aside if not eliminated. Social movements of feminists, queers, Blacks, or any others, are anathema.
This mixture of neo-liberal and far right-populist extremism is highly volatile. It is also the basis of MAGA and Republican Party identity. When that world view is offered up by the former president and his congressional and mass-media followers and apologists, the consequences can be catastrophic: Witness the January 6 coup attempt, and the earlier, far right killings in El Paso, Pittsburgh, Poway, Buffalo, Uvalde…and now Highland Park.
MAGA triggers and the alien within
When I lived in Highland Park, I never locked my door. I know that’s a cliché about small-town life, but it was true. That doesn’t mean the practice is wise. Our house was broken into once, but instead of walking through the unlocked front door, the would-be thieves broke through a locked, glass side door. They didn’t manage to steal anything and hastily exited the front door, likely chased by Echo – notably nippy with strangers — who would not have passed up the chance to licitly bite a burglar. The police came five minutes after we called them and had great sport playing detective – dusting for fingerprints, checking for signs of forced entry, looking for shoe prints in the wet soil outside. They never caught the guys.
The idea that the Highland Park Police would ever have to deal with a murder, much less a mass murder was unimaginable to me. From 2000 to 2020, there hadn’t been a single killing in town. But everyone was aware of the threat guns posed, especially after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in December 2012. In June 2013, Highland Park’s City Council and Mayor Nancy Rotering introduced a measure banning assault weapons and large capacity magazines. I spoke in favor of the it at the June meeting dedicated to the subject, as did many others. However, there were a few who spoke up in opposition, repeating the standard NRA line that people, not guns kill people. One older woman waved a coffee mug and said it could be used as a lethal weapon – a wag near her dared her to try. Another speaker invoked the second amendment with the reverential awe usually reserved for the second commandment – people sniggered. The ban passed easily. It was unsuccessfully challenged in multiple courts, and ultimately survived a Supreme Court review – I doubt it would today.
I now wonder if the confessed killer’s father, Robert Crimo II attended that City Council meeting. He’s a gun lover and Trump supporter who helped his son obtain the rifle used in the shooting. He also ran for mayor of Highland Park in 2019 against the incumbent Mayor Rotering, losing by a margin of 2-1. In April that year, police visited the Crimo home after a report that Robert III (Bobby) had attempted suicide. No action was taken after his parents gave assurances that mental health professionals would be contacted. In September, the police again came to the Crimo household after receiving a call that Bobby had threatened to kill his family. They searched his room and found in his closet 16 knives, a dagger, and a sword. His father later that day claimed they were his, and the weapons were returned. The Highland Park Police promptly reported to the Illinois State Police that Bobby was a “clear and present danger” to himself and others. Despite that, in December 2019, the 19-year-old – who eight months earlier attempted suicide — applied for and was issued a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card (FOID). Because he was underage, the application was co-signed by his father.
The FOID application should have been denied because under state law, no gun permit can be issued to someone “whose mental condition is of such a nature that it poses a clear and present danger to the applicant, or any other person or the community.” In addition, a FOID must be denied to anyone who “has been a patient at a mental health facility in the last five years.” If Bobby’s parents had in fact contacted mental health professionals after the boy’s attempted suicide, they would have had to take him to “a mental health facility,” most likely Northshore Hospital’s Behavioral Health Center in Highland Park, just half a mile from where they lived. Apparently, both the Illinois State Police and the physician or psychologist who treated Bobby, failed to send notification to the Illinois Department of Health Services FOID reporting system.
A few days after being granted his FOID, and then again between June 2020 and September 2021, Crimo bought at least five guns, including two rifles, one of which was the semi-automatic Smith & Wesson M&P15 used in the killings. That’s similar to the guns used by the young, far-right killers in Buffalo and Uvalde. In late September 2020, Bobby attended a Trump rally in Northbook, Illinois. On January 2, 2021, four days before the capital insurrection, Crimo joined other Trump supporters to greet the soon-to-be- ex-president at an unidentified airport. On June 27, 2021, he posted a video of himself draped and dancing in a Trump flag. Sometime later, he had the number “47” tattooed on his face and painted on the side of his car. If Trump is re-elected in 2014, he will be the 47th president, though if the numbers are transposed — 7/4 – they represent the date of the Highland Park shootings.
We know less about Crimo’s actions in the weeks before the shooting, though more information may soon emerge. We know that in some of his most recent YouTube and other postings, he revealed his identification with soldiers, spies, assassins (Lee Harvey Oswald) and warriors — especially with the German SS. After the massacre in Highland Park, he drove up to another, famously Democratic Party stronghold, Madison, Wisconsin, with the intention of shooting up their July 5 parade too. Fortunately, he abandoned that plan when he got there and returned, more or less to the scene of the crime, where he was captured. Was the ongoing Trump saga – the former president’s unrelenting “stop the steal” rhetoric, claims of persecution, exhortations to “take our country back,” endorsement of the NRA, and invitations to violence – a trigger for Crimo? But if they were, why did Crimo attack innocent people at a patriotic parade? There is no obvious answer.
In Male Fantasies (1987), Klaus Theweleit described the transformation of de-commissioned German soldiers after World War I into mercenary militias called Freikorps. Those bands were responsible for political assassinations and the brutal repression of protesting German workers, communists, feminists, and social democrats. By the late ‘20s, they became the stormtroopers (Sturmabteilung) that enabled Hitler’s rise to power. Some became prominent Nazis, like Rudolf Höss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration and death camps.
Many of the men studied by Theweleit were subjected to stern discipline as children – part of a normally pathological Prussian upbringing — and then further brutalized as soldiers in wartime trenches. Consequently, they developed a sense that they had been hollowed out, or that they had been overcome by an “alien within.” This foreign being was hungry and dangerous, and could find relief only in violence, especially against a crowd. While the solider was stern, bounded, firm and resolute, the crowd was vivid, thriving, shapeless, feminine, social, communal, and sexual – everything he was not, and it had to be destroyed.
Theweleit’s two volume book is widely cited – too widely – in studies of male sexual violence and the psychology of Nazism. There is no easy way to map a wide-ranging study of the literature the psychopathology of World War I veterans onto the mind and behavior of young, mass shooters today. But the preoccupations of the Highland Park killer – assassinations, school shootings, the SS, spies, guns, knives, and militias – suggests comparison with the young fascists in Male Fantasies who emerged in inter-war Europe, scarred and deadly dangerous, who hated crowds, and were ready to follow the orders of a charismatic leader.
Fascism, unlike Covid, can’t be diagnosed with a nose swab; but its symptoms are unmistakable and sometimes fatal. It’s fair to say it killed seven people in Highland Park and injured 30 others. It was also deadly in El Paso, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Uvalde. Urgent action is needed to stop the proliferation of assault weapons and guns with large magazines. But this essay is not about the need for gun control, or “gun safety”, essential as that is. It’s about the violence that again struck a U.S. community last week, and the need to resist the Republican far-right – both its corporate and Christian nationalist wings. Until their assault upon our health, safety, bodily autonomy, religious (or irreligious) freedom, and environmental future is stopped, the killing will continue.
Stephen F. Eisenman is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Northwestern University and the author of Gauguin’s Skirt (Thames and Hudson, 1997), The Abu Ghraib Effect (Reaktion, 2007), The Cry of Nature: Art and the Making of Animal Rights (Reaktion, 2015) and many other books. He is also co-founder of the environmental justice non-profit, Anthropocene Alliance. He and the artist Sue Coe and now preparing for publication part two of their series for Rotland Press, American Fascism Now.
The worship of the “heroes of Mariupol”, i.e. bandits from Azov, cowardly hiding behind the backs of civilians imprisoned in Azovstal, is another example of the progressive nazification of political consciousness in contemporary Poland.
In Gdańsk one of the the squares was officially named in honour of “heroic Mariupol”. Well, although it is hard to believe, there are circles in Poland that can raise toasts to the SS-men killed during attack on the Reich Chancellery in 1945 as “defenders of European civilization”. The worship of the “heroes of Mariupol”, i.e. bandits from Azov, cowardly hiding behind the backs of civilians imprisoned in Azovstal, is another example of the progressive nazification of political consciousness in contemporary Poland.
Deniers of the Polish Genocide
Along with the destruction of the monuments of the Polish-Russian brotherhood in arms, cases of fights against the liberating Red Army are exposed. Books expressing regret that Poland did not become Hitler’s close ally are being published on a mass scale. The one and only case of cooperation between the Polish anti-communist underground and the UPA against the Polish army, in propaganda, grows to the size of a great alliance with Ukrainian Nazism. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not properly reacted to the scandalous Ambassador Andrij Melnyk interview, in which he had questioned and even praised the Volhynia Massacre, in which nearly 200,000 Poles were killed by the Banderites. The state authorities order this year to refrain from organising the celebration of the anniversary of the culmination of these events, when on the night only, Bloody Sunday of 11th July 1943, 99 Polish villages in Volhynia were attacked with the slogan “Death to Poles!”. The monument commemorating the victims of the Banderite genocide, which the local government wanted to set up in a small village in Podkarpacie, near the border with Ukraine, was arrested and censored, when elements as a figure of a boy pierced by a Banderites’ pitchfork and the heads of children punched on fences were removed. “In the current geopolitical situation, should not go back to those events” – repeats the Polish government, but the crimes of the UPA looked exactly so extremely cruel. All remainders of fight of Polish partisans against Ukrainian Hitler’s collaborators are fiercely removed from the public space. Not only the Ukrainian minority in Poland and new immigrants, but many Polish politicians demand, for example, a change of street named in honor of the legendary Major Stanisław Basaj, “Lynx”, during the Second World War a hero of the fights against German and Ukrainian Nazis, in 1945 murdered by the UPA. So is it still Poland, or already Nazi Ukraine?
Polonisation or Banderisation
These are not random events. We are dealing with the acceleration of preparations for the establishment of Polish-Western Ukrainian federation. Thus, Poles are being prepared for a compromise, which would be the acceptance of the Bandera cult. In order to return to Lviv – Poland must therefore become at least a bit Banderish, it is explained to the Poles. The problem is that in such a scenario there are not the former eastern lands that would return to Poland, but Poland would be joined to the Nazi-Banderite Reich.
It sounds scary, but we, Poles accept it. After all, there is no harm to those willing…. However, organising ourselves, we could even turn the strategy used against us towards our national benefits. And when we come back to Wołyń, to Stanisławów, Równe, Tarnopol – we can always replace the heads of Bandera’s monuments and transform them into Marechal Piłsudski’s ones. Or even Jeremy Wiśniowiecki (the conqueror of the Chmielnicki’s Kozaks Uprising in the 17th century). As long as we do not let to nazificate us.
If we say that the Yellow Vests are not socialist revolutionaries even latently, then what are they protesting about?
To put it the most simply: they are protesting the end of European Social Democracy, with the limited protections it provided.
(This is the seventeenth chapter in a new book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. Please click here for the article which announces this book and explains its goals.)
The Yellow Vests intuited that the pan-European project has ended the era of European Social Democracy (1945-75) and replaced it with elite-driven, free market, winner-take-all Liberalism.
Seeing that their list of 43 demands doesn’t include the word “Europe” once, however, the Yellow Vests don’t really grasp that the European Union represents the organisational assassin of European Social Democracy. The European Union and Eurozone’s response to the Great Recession made it entirely clear: these are institutions which are perfectly hostile to Social Democracy’s minor redistributions and protections which fundamentally embolden the average worker and citizen.
Social Democracy was not born after World War II, just as “neoliberalism” was first on display back in 1871, with what was imposed after the destruction of the Paris Commune. Marx chronicled the birth of European Social Democracy, in 1848, when the Mountain Party (which initially claimed the mantle of neo-Jacobinism) sided with the small-traders in the June Days massacre instead of with the urban proletariat and rural peasantry, as the Jacobins had done in 1789. They went from supporting Socialist Democracy to calling themselves Democratic Socialists (Démocrate-socialistes) and this – and not the downward slope from Napoleon Bonaparte to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte – should be considered the truest essence of Marx’s famous line of history repeating itself as farce.
“The revolutionary point was thereby broken off from the social demands of the proletariat and a (social) democrat turn given to them….”
That was the birth of Social Democracy: an ideology where the social demands of the recently-feudal masses (decent pay, health care, education, pensions, etc.) get only partially addressed while the political demands of an aristocracy opposing an absolute monarch (free speech, property rights, trial by jury, etc.) are fully met. Liberalism has always sought to limit progressive changes to the political question of how to move on from feudalism, and to stop progressive changes to the social question of how to move on from feudalism. The reformist ideology of Social Democracy has operated within Western Liberal Democracy for nearly 175 years and only partially prevailed for 30 of them.
The sooner the Yellow Vests realise that Social Democracy will never be a harmonious solution to the elitism dominant in Liberalism, the better, as Marx did:
“The peculiar character of Social Democracy is epitomised in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as the means, not to remove the two extremes – capital and wage-slavery – but in order to weaken the antagonism and transform them into a harmonious whole.”
Putting capital primarily in the hands of the recently-feudal masses so they can provide the broad economic stability and success which would end wage- and debt-slavery has never been a goal of Social Democracy, from the Mountain Party to Leon Blum to Francois Mitterrand to Francois Hollande to the “Democratic Socialists of America” led by Bernie Sanders in the 21st century United States.
Yellow Vest: “We are not beggars! What is 100 euros only given one time? State taxes compose 60% of the price of gasoline, so calling it 100 euros is totally false – the people truly only receive 40 euros. This is election nonsense, but Macron won’t win votes with these crumbs.”
Marx continued in his examination of France and gave us the key to the capitalist culture of both Liberal and Social Democracies: “This substance is the transformation of society along (Social) democratic lines, but a transformation within the boundaries of the small-trader’s class.” One extraneous sentence later: “It believes rather that the special conditions for its own emancipation are the general conditions under which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle be avoided.”
Trotsky and the Yellow Vests saw that, due to the rise of financial capitalism, a leftist alliance must include the small businessman, but they reject the goal of Social Democracy to elevate their virtues and needs over those of the average worker and citizen.
Thus even when Social Democracy prevails in Liberalist capitalist cultures the virtues of the usually bourgeois-aspiring, individualistic, managerial small-trader class become the highest virtues to be promoted. Everyone must be a self-interested, competitive entrepreneur who aspires to be a boss and a “job creator”. This veneration of the small trader is the most obvious in American culture, and it is American culture which has been imposed on France via the pan-European project: at the alleged “end of history”, with the fall of the USSR, the United States shepherded the pan-European project, which is rightly said to be even more Liberalist (i.e. Bankocratic) than anything which could be created in the United States.
What we see in the modern era, and as this book proves, is that Liberalism, Social Democracy and Fascism have all joined together and “become bourgeois”. This amalgam of 18th century Liberalism, 19th century Social Democracy and 20th century fascism is ultimately not different from the aristocracy of the 17th century and earlier, which which ruled the 99% in an entirely autocratic manner. The extremely modest expansion of wealth and political power from a blood/marriage line to a line of the super-wealthy 1% still results in the exclusion of the recently-feudal masses from policy making, and this is what the Yellow Vests emphatically reminded. Their primary demand was not Socialist revolution but merely to get more public opinion into public policymaking.
The bourgeois bloc continually dangles Social Democracy as a reformist possibility, and thus they secure the loyalty of both the big and the small bosses and owners. However, when the moment of implementation comes, amid the next guaranteed bust in Liberalist capitalism, the response is the anti-Socialist virulence of Liberalism via the ruthless elite domination of a Fascism which has made peace with big capital.
Yellow Vest: “Macron’s repeatedly evaded the main problems. His solutions are not concrete, and it is certain that in a few months we will just be in the same situation. This is why we will keep protesting, for certain.”
Baudelaire wrote, “The most beautiful trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist,” and this is what modern Western Liberal Democracy has done with the elitism, arrogance and autocracy which is the basis of absolute monarchy. Macron’s “Jupiterian” remove has pulled the sheet off of Western Liberal Democracy, again, and reminded that the idea of an autocratic ruler remains the preference of a Western elite which has always been totally opposed to Socialist-inspired measures.
The republican lie of Liberalism
When Western leaders communicate among themselves and with their foreign counterparts they use the language of Liberalism; when they implement policy they use the ruthlessness of Fascism; but when they communicate with the masses they know that republican language is paramount.When Western leaders communicate among themselves and with their foreign counterparts they use the language of Liberalism; when they implement policy they use the ruthlessness of Fascism; but when they communicate with the masses they know that republican language is paramount.
This is especially true in France and the United States, where royalism has been fully discredited from holding public power. Thus, there is a constant emphasis by contemporary French leaders and their mainstream media on maintaining “republican” values.
However, the republicanism of both is an antiquated one as it is based on Liberal and not Socialist Democracy. A perfect example of the inadequacy of their elite-led republicanism is found in the Orwellian name of the group which wages the actual physical repression of the Yellow Vests: the detested CRS riot police (Compagnies républicaines de sécurité – Republican Security Companies.) A woman wearing a full-body bathing suit – a “burkini” (combination of “burqa” and “bikini”) is breathlessly presented as a bigger threat to French republicanism than the repression of the Yellow Vests. Most obviously, there is the mainstream conservative party’s name change shepherded by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2015 – from L’Union pour un mouvement populaire(UMP) to lesRépublicains: the party had so many corruption scandals that a rebranding was deemed unavoidable.
Such is the false republicanism in Liberal Democracies.
The lip service towards republicanism allows the perpetuation of the outdated notion in France that the world still views them as the brightest beacon of progressive politics. They are different than almost all of Northern Europe, where royals still – bewilderingly – remain on thrones which hide mountains of the public’s rightful riches and influence. Indeed, an Iranian can find in France a refuge from the common Western toleration and whitewashing of monarchism.
The elite in the United States uses “freedom”, while monarchies like the UK use “human rights” in the same way – to insist that freedom and human rights for their modern aristocracies still represents the pinnacle of progressivism.
The legacy of 1789 exists in France today only in this constant demand to uphold “republicanism”, even if it is not at all the spirit of 1789 and only mouths its forms. The Yellow Vest repression will remind all of history that the freedoms offered by the republicanism of Western Liberal Democracy with French characteristics are a fantasy – there is only the autocracy of the bourgeois bloc.
France’s 21st century belief that “the republic” must jingoistically unite the French is ultimately a means used to falsely claim the legacy of 1789 while also ensuring that talk for progressive politics ends with this very initial answer to the “political question”, and with no answer to the “social question”, as well.
This also explains why there is so much forced discussion in France about what a huge threat Islam poses to this immoral republicanism: Islam correctly insists on God and morality being the highest allegiance, and certainly not laws forced through by a Fascist-allying, imperialist bourgeois bloc.
Nothing is more Liberalist than the European Union, and thus the ‘Social Fascist’ repression of anti-austerity movements and the Yellow Vests
We have already linked the European Union with the birth of neoliberalism and neo-imperialism, we have established how Fascism was subsumed and its tactics adopted, and we have shown how the goal of the third restoration of Western Liberalism is to roll back the modest gains of Social Democracy.
All that’s needed is to show how Western Liberal Democracy wields the power of the state as autocratically as royal families and their coteries used to – for this we simply have to look to the Yellow Vests.
Western Liberal Democracy and pre-1789 autocracy – there is no real difference.
Whether the form is a parliamentary republic based on Liberalism, or an executive-led republic based on Liberalism, or a constitutional monarchy based on Liberalism – the autocracy has been the same. Only the truly elite have the money to buy Liberalist rights and influence in public policy.
Yellow Vest: “As usual, no prison for the rich – everything goes fine for them, always. They never know hunger or poverty, but put everything on the average person’s back. Benalla should have been treated like anyone else – justice should be equal for everyone.”
Just as the trends of 250 years of Iranian or Chinese history can be summarised so too can the trend of the past 250 years of French and Western history, and this book has aimed to do that. Above all the trend of moving away from an autocratic monarch and towards an empowered people’s republic is discerned. The problem has been Western Liberal Democracy’s conception of a republic: what they have always had is an oligarchic republic, inspired by the English, which aims for perpetual repression of the recently-feudal (to Asian conceptions of time!) Western masses.
The early years of all revolutionary republics are always fraught with missteps and mistakes, but made with the sincere goal of broad societal progress. In 1789 the move away from absolute monarchy was met with great difficulty and international opposition. In 1848 the move away from a limited monarchy was met with great difficulty, also caused by great inexperience. In 1871 the move towards a social republic was met with great difficulty and international opposition, also caused by great inexperience. But inexperience is not the primary difficulty of the people today – they know how to rule, but they still face great international opposition. As Marx wrote:
“The cry of ‘social republic’with which the February Revolution (of 1848) was ushered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague aspiration after a republic that was not only to supersede the monarchical form of class rule but class rule itself. The Commune (i.e. the first appearance of Socialist Democracy) was the positive form of that republic.”
However, the social republic was annihilated by neoliberalism and would not appear until 1917 in the eastern frontier of Europe – Russia.
The Yellow Vests reminded those in the 21st century who believe that the “end of history” had occurred in 1991 that the people’s desires for a social republic are no longer vague. However the Yellow Vests have had the misfortune of living in the world’s only region – the West – where socialist-inspired revolutionary cultures have never won implantation.
To their great credit, the Yellow Vests created a revolutionary condition for all of France. When it was thwarted by Liberal Democratic politicians, media and unions the Yellow Vests continued to march to keep promoting what may truly turn into a revolutionary culture at the next major uprising over Liberalism’s endemic failures. The Yellow Vests have created a vast and reliable network – there’s no doubt they will spring into action at the next opportunity.
The next political progression for the Yellow Vests is the realisation that the pan-European project only dangled the illusion of mere Social Democracy, but that its “neoliberal” basis is actually Fascist and autocratic to its very core.
The analysis of that splendidly successful revolutionary Bolshevik, Trotsky, must be remembered today if the Yellow Vests are to break with the perpetual illusion of mere Social Democracy:
“The program of the Communist International has the following to say on this subject: ‘Side by sidewith the Social Democracy, which assists the bourgeoisie to stifle the proletariat and to lull its vigilance, Fascism appears.’ The Communist International failed to understand that it is not the mission of Fascism to functionside by sidewith the Social Democracy, but to destroy all the existing workers’ organizations, including the reformist. The task of Fascism, in the words of the program, is to ‘annihilate theCommuniststrata of the proletariat, and their leading cadres.’ Fascism, then, does not at all threaten the Social Democracy and the reformist trade unions; on the contrary, the Social Democracy itself plays a “Fascist” role to an ever increasing degree. Fascism achieves nothing more than the consummation of the labours of reformism, by functioning ‘side by sidewith the Social Democracy’.” (Emphasis his)
The Communist Bolsheviks rejected mere Social Democracy and instead used Socialist Democracy as their guiding structure ideology, as do Socialist-inspired countries today, who then adapt its primary economic and political imperatives to local cultures and mores. They saw that Social Democracy and Fascism work together to destroy not just Socialist Democracy-inspired groups, unions, parties, countries, etc, but also groups, unions, parties and countries which attempt Social Democratic reforms of Liberalism. As time goes on the Yellow Vests will realise, thanks to their own repression, that Liberal Democracy and Social Democracy offer them no solution except the destruction of the Yellow Vests.
One sentence later – in which Trotsky expressed his usual disapproval with the Moscow-based Comintern – Trotsky continued:
“We have here before us all the basic elements of the theory of social fascism. The leaders of the Communist International failed to understand that capitalism in decay is no longer able to come to terms with the most moderate and most servile Social Democracy, either as a party in power, or as a party in opposition. It is the mission of Fascism to take its place not ‘side by side with the Social Democracy’, but on its bones. Precisely from this there flows the possibility, the need and the urgency for the united front.” (Emphasis his)
(Recall that a united front (joining together in society’s leftist struggles), is not the same as a popular front (an electoral alliance).)
Call it what you want: Social Fascism, Liberalism, autocracy, Fascism, constitutional monarchy, rule by the 1% – it is all the same oligarchic autocracy for the recently-feudal masses. I call it Western Liberal Democracy to properly place it in a geographic and historical context.
As soon as the Yellow Vests stop trying to win back the Social Democratic measures which Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and Macron rolled back, the sooner they will realise that Socialist-inspired countries have shown a better way, method and goal. Without a major reformulation of the pan-European project – which seems impossible to get off the ground in a Liberalist-dominated media – the pan-European project’s initial lure of even greater Social Democratic gains should be seen only as a chimera.
The Yellow Vests know enough to reject existing establishment institutions, as well as pathetic PFAXIst (Popular Fronts Against Xenophobia but for Imperialism) electoral strategies – they must realise the monarchist-elitist-reformist-fascist alliance which is Western Liberal Democracy must be rejected in favor of Socialist Democracy.
That, of course, will lead to even more repression.
But their bravery will earn them more and more comrades; their correctness will only increase as the repression accumulates; the guaranteed cycles of failure in capitalism and the clockwork greed of high finance all make the move away from autocratic Liberalism certain.
The combination of royalism, Liberalism and Fascism is doomed, but people must be liberated from the long-outdated and pernicious influence of Liberalism before the next political advancement can take place. Thus the Yellow Vests, and thus this book, which is another humble tally of Liberalism’s failures.
Yellow Vest: “The people I speak with express absolutely no desire to stop the movement and remain very positive. The Yellow Vests are, above all, the French people, and the French people recognize this and this is why the movement will have a second wind.”
So admirably, The Yellow Vests have cleared the path for France: the despairing working poor, middle and lower classes have a fighting force which can never, ever be called Fascistic. France is back to being the West’s leaders of progressive politics.
Marx’s most important passage on France – guiding France from 1789 to 2022 and beyond
Here we have the most important passage in Marx’s writings on France – from his writings on the Paris Commune – because it historically summarises a century of turbulent political and socio-economic changes and pinpoints the establishment of modern Western Liberal Democracy.
The passage covers the vital and obscured history of France for a century after 1789. The short parentheticals are mine and designed to add clarity to Marx’s meaning:
“If the parliamentary republic, as M. Theirs said, ‘divided them least’ (the different factions of the French ruling class in 1850), it opened an abyss between that class and the whole body of society outside their spare ranks. The restraints by which their own divisions had under former regimes still checked the state power were removed by their union; and in view of the threatening upheaval of the proletariat they now used that state power mercilessly and ostentatiously as the national (and imperialist) war engine of capital against labor.
In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses they were, however, bound not only to invest the executive with continually increased powers of repression, but at the same time divest their own parliamentary stronghold – the National Assembly – one by one, of all its own means of defence against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of (President) Louis(-Napoleon) Bonaparte, turned them out. The national offspring of the ‘Party of Order’ (the dominant political party of the 2nd) Republic was the Second Empire (of Emperor Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte).
The (Second) empire, with the coup d’etat for its birth certificate, universal suffrage for its salvationand the sword for its sceptre, professed to rest upon the peasantry – the large mass of producers not directly involved in the struggle of capital and labor. Itprofessed to save the working class by breaking down parliamentarianism and, with it, the undisguised subserviency of government to the propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied classes by upholding their economic supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all the chimera of national glory.
In reality it was the only form of government possible, at a timewhen the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation. (As they would acquire, starting with the Paris Commune and then later the USSR, China, Iran, etc.) It (the 2nd French Empire) was acclaimed throughout the world as the saviour of society. Under its sway bourgeois society, freed from political cares, attained a development unexpected even by itself. Its industry and commerce expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated cosmopolitan orgies (Marx uses this last word literally, per scandals of the time); the misery of the masses was set off by a shameless display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury. The state power, apparently soaring high above society, was at the same time itself the very scandal of that society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions. Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had saved (i.e. the bourgeois elite of the 2nd Republic), were laid bare by the bayonet of Prussia, herself eagerly bent upon transferring the supreme seat of that regime from Paris to Berlin.”
The globalist descendants of the victors of 1871 would eventually comprise on Brussels instead of Berlin. Belgium – the country fabricated so that France and Germany would have a place to fight their wars, it is often joked – became “the seat of that regime”.
Yellow Vest: “We are not proud, at least not yet, because we have many more victories to accomplish. We insist on having referendums initiated by citizens, in order to democratically give a voice to all of France and to the Yellow Vests. We will keep marching to ensure that our common future is serene and peaceful.”
If we make only minor substitutions in Marx’s passage to include contemporary developments, does this not make an up-to-date history of France and Europe covering over two centuries?
“If the pan-European project “divided them least” (the different factions of national ruling classes in Europe) least, it opened an abyss between that class and the whole body of society outside their spare ranks. The restraints by which their own divisions had under former regimes still checked the state power were removed by their union; and in view of the threatening upheaval of the Yellow Vests they now used that state power mercilessly and ostentatiously as the international war engine of capital against labor.
In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses they (the pan-European project) were, however, bound not only to invest the national executive branches with continually increased powers of repression, but at the same time divest their own national parliamentary branches, one by one, of all its own means of defence against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of amodern Louis Bonaparte (or something new and revolutionary, perhaps similar to the Supreme Leader branch of government in Iran), could not be allowed to have turned them – Brussels – out. The national offspring of the pan-European project was the neoliberal Empire of the European Union.
The empire, with the fall of the USSR for its birth certificate, denying the national referendums which rejected the European Union and which were based on universal suffrage for its salvation and the sword for its sceptre, professed to rest upon the neo-peasantry – the large mass of producers not directly involved in the struggle of capital and labor and whodesired to avoid more intra-European wars, free movement around Europe and the strengthening of a Social Democratic safety net. It also professed to save the working class by breaking down national parliamentarianism and, with it, the undisguised subserviency of government to the propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied classes by upholding their economic supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all the chimera of supranational glory via colluding with the United States to enforce Liberalist values worldwide.
In reality it was the only form of government possible, at a time when the bourgeoisie had fully acquired the faculty of ruling the nation, something they had no experience with in 1848. It (the pan-European project) was acclaimed throughout the West as the saviour of European society. Under its sway bourgeois society, freed from political cares, such as the profit drags and democratic nuisances created by the era of Social Democracy, attained a development unexpected even by itself. Its industry and commerce expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated cosmopolitan orgies; the misery of the masses was set off by a shameless display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury. The state power, apparently soaring high above society, was at the same time itself the very scandal of that society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions. Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had saved –the royals threatened by 1789, the bourgeois threatened by 1848, the colluding Social Democrats threatened by 1917 and the Fascists threatened by 1945 – were laid bare by the bayonet of the Yellow Vests, herself eagerly bent upon transferring the supreme national seat of that regime from Brussels back to Paris.”
France is not Cuba, Iran, China or even Southern Lebanon – it will likely take a civil war for the Yellow Vests to ever use bayonets to finally win political and economic redistribution. However, the Yellow Vests emphatically prove the willingness of Western Liberal Democracy to use violence just as brutally as the autocracies of 1788.
The Yellow Vests also remind that Western Liberal Democracy does not even allow the rights which Liberalism claims to protect – how long can that persist in a country which regularly demands the right to publicly exercise such rights, and whose pens have been freed by the digital era?
If the French elite is not going to permit even the basic rights of Liberalism, then France needs a defensive force which can protect the Liberalist rights of protesters. That is the subject of the next chapter.
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Upcoming chapter list of France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values.
‘The next war in Europe will be between Russia and Fascism, except that Fascism will be called Democracy.’
Fidel Castro, c. 1992
Introduction
Europe is a serial suicide. The first attempt began in Sarajevo in 1914 and finished in Versailles in 1919. The second began a generation later in Warsaw in 1939 and ended in Berlin in 1945. Having very nearly succeeded at the second attempt (it missed atomic bombs by mere months), Europe sobered up and slowed down, waiting till the centenary of 1914 before it tried for the third time. This attempt began in Kiev, again in Eastern Europe, in 2014 and is continuing in the Special Military Operation (SMO). At every attempt Europe has lost. The first time it lost three empires (the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian and the German), the second time two Empires, the fatally weakened British and French, so ensuring the supremacy of the American Empire in Europe, as in the rest of the world.
What will Europe lose this time? It will lose the only Empire remaining – the EU. When? Only some time after the conclusion of the SMO. Now, it would be foolish to predict with exactitude when that, which is the culmination of Europe’s third attempted suicide, will be. It could all be over in early July. Alternatively it could drag on for years. However, both those outcomes are extreme possibilities and there are other possibilities inbetween. Nevertheless, some tendencies are clear. It is only the extent and speed at which they will progress that is uncertain. In any case, whatever happens in the Ukraine, Europe will be reformatted. It will never be the same again. The seed sown by the Western elite in Kiev in 2014 is being reaped today in the harvest of division, discontent and poverty in Europe.
If we look at the three aims of the Special Military Operation, we can see that the first and second aims, the liberation of the Donbass and demilitarisation, are both 75% done, despite new arrivals of Western arms to prolong the agony. However, the reality is also that the operation has had to be much extended from the Donbass to the east and south of the Ukraine and there we are not even 50% done. However, the third aim, the denazification of the Ukraine, has not even begun and cannot begin until the murderous Zelensky regime has been replaced with a government which actually cherishes the independence and cultural traditions of the Ukraine. Then it will no longer be a servile chimpanzee of the LGBT West and its Nulands who, very politely speaking, have no time for Europe.
Military
Some have criticised the Allied Special Operation in the Ukraine. After four months, they say, not even the whole of the Donbass has yet been liberated. Such critics should get out of their armchairs and go and fight against NATO. We would soon see how fast they would go. Why has progress been ‘slow’? Firstly, because though the Allied Forces are small in size, they are fighting against the vast bulk of the Kiev Army, which has been trained, retrained, supplied and resupplied and dug into its fortified positions by NATO over eight years. Secondly, because the Allies are trying to avoid civilian casualties and of course casualties to themselves. That is not easy when Kiev is using civilians as human shields and shelling from residential areas. The Allies will not carpet-bomb like the West. There is no hurry.
However, with the very recent events in Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, the gateway to the whole of Central and Western Ukraine is being opened. Thus, we read the report on 25 June: ‘The Office of the President ordered the transfer of all reserves from the Mykolaiv/Odessa/Kharkiv direction for a counterattack in the Severodonetsk direction’. In other words, Kiev has only reserves left and it wants to transfer all of them. This sounds like desperation – the end is near. Judging by the quality of Kiev’s reserves so far, this will be a walkover. And that firstly presumes that the reserves will be willing to be massacred. And that secondly presumes that they can be transferred when all around the roads are occupied by Allied troops, or are controlled by Russian radar, artillery, drones and aircraft.
Most significantly of all, this means that Mykolaiv/Odessa/Kharkiv will be left more or less defenceless, without even reserves. According to serious Western data, Ukrainian military losses are about 200,000 killed with nearly three quarters of military equipment and ammunition destroyed. In just four months. This is catastrophic. If even Western spies from MI6, the BRD and Poland say this, then there is little future or hope for the US puppets in Kiev. We can only expect military collapse and the formation of a new government, authentically pro-Ukrainian (that is anti-American) and therefore pro-Russian. What happens after the liberation of the Ukraine? The liberation of Moldova? Of the Baltics? We do not know. But if aggressive NATO/EU sabre-rattling continues, all is possible.
Economic, Political and Ideological
As we know, the Western anti-Russian sanctions, have been a self-imposed economic disaster, an own goal. Blowback has been nasty. Dedollarisation is happening. Pay in roubles, please. Now. Food, fertiliser, oil, gas, all are rocketing in price, and it is not winter. Popular discontent and street demonstrations in Western Europe are mounting. In France the Rothschild candidate Macron has lost control of the French Parliament to the left and to the right. In the UK the ‘delusional’ (the word of members of his own Party) Johnson (a man condemned by his own as ‘an opportunistic journalist who has at his heart a moral vacuum’) is seen as a liability, who will lead the Tory Party to annihilation in any election. We will not speak here of other nonentities like Scholz, Draghi, Trudeau and Biden.
Then there is the formation of alternatives to the Western bloc. A new G8/BRICS+? Russia has seen plenty of discreet and not so discreet support from China, India, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, Africa (from Egypt to South Africa), Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Argentina, Hungary…. That is, from the aptly-named ‘emerging’ world on all five Continents, from those who have raw materials and manufacturing infrastructure. They want to emerge from the ruins of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The isolated West, the US, Canada, UK, EU, Australia, has few friends outside its inward-looking little world. There are just a few occupied vassals in Asia, like Israel, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, who are forced to buy Western arms in order to stop themselves being liberated from themselves, and that is it.
Even the mercenaries of the State-controlled Western media are beginning to go back on their State-paid lies. They are used to turning everything on its head, to inverting it all. Thus, the Russian Army was composed of ‘demoralised and untrained raw conscripts’, who had suffered ‘massive losses’ and ‘lacked fuel and ammunition’, ‘raped children and murdered’, were ‘in full retreat’ and bombed and shelled ‘residential areas and civilians’. Just change the word ‘Russian’ to ‘Kiev’ and we are a lot nearer the truth. Does anybody believe these media lies any more? Surely only the living dead? It must be embarrassing for these hacks who have been telling, or rather were ordered to tell, the opposite of the truth. They used to report their dreams as reality. Now they have to report reality – their worst nightmares.
Conclusion: The Age of Empires Is Over
After the Western defeats, or rather routs, in Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO has no military or political future. In fact, it should have been abolished after the fall of the USSR. The Ukraine (or whatever it will be called in whatever borders it will have when its liberation is complete) is Russian. Just forget it, NATO. You have already lost. The expansion of NATO into Asia? What a joke. Taiwan is Chinese, as will be all the Western Pacific. Just forget it, NATO. You have already lost. The American Century which began in February/March 1917 with the palace revolt by corrupt aristocrats and generals in the Russian Empire, carefully orchestrated from London and New York, is over. Europe no longer needs to attempt suicide, let alone succeed. You are free to restore the sovereignty of your nation states.
The fact is that the Age of Empires is over. 1917 signalled the beginning of this. In 1991 the Red Star (USSR) Empire collapsed. Today the White Star (USSA) Empire, with its Twelve-Star EU (USSE) vassal Empire in tow, is collapsing, and for exactly the same reason: because nobody believes in their ideologies any more. Both Communism and Capitalism have failed. Now is the Age of Free Alliances of Sovereign Nations. What is the future of Europe after its third failed attempt at suicide? It is in reintegrating the Sovereignty of Eurasia, protected by the Russian resource umbrella. The Atlantic never united Europe, it divided Europe. If those who live across the Atlantic want to rediscover from us how to start living normal lives again, they can. But it will be on our terms, those of our Sovereignty, not on theirs.
We have spoken of the Special Military Operation as the culmination of Europe’s third attempted suicide. We have said that Europe will never be the same again after it. This is because, unless Europe is really serious this time about suicide (and it has managed to avoid it twice before), this Operation Z is going to split up the tyrannical Western world, EU and UK Europe, from the USA. It is Operation Z+. And who are we, those who will survive? We are Generation Z+. We are those who will come ‘out of great tribulation’ and survive. We are those who are going to live in the real Global world, not in the Western bubble Globalist world. We are the real Europeans of ancient and new European history, who refused to commit suicide, the Sovereign Europeans. Reality is dawning at last.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. His new book is ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values’. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
Part 1 discussed how a “hung parliament” isn’t going to happen in France. President Emmanuel Macron won enough seats and can find plenty of allies among the mainstream conservatives, as well as the Socialist Party and Green Party. Thus, on all issues involving far-right economics, neoliberalism and the pan-European project Macron will proceed without parliamentary difficulty.
Part 1 ended with my pointing out how Macron’s coalition-building is actually unimportant.
Because the Mainstream Media is fine with his ends, they rarely discuss how Macron often used the 49-3 executive decree in his first term even when he had an absolute majority. Macron bypassed parliament just to avoid public discussion in Parliament on his hugely unpopular austerity “reforms” – i.e. right-wing rollbacks.
And then the guy would actually sign these bills – which were also entirely written by his own coterie – live on television, rubbing it in everyone’s faces! The French, of course, can’t stand this obviously autocratic – and certainly not democratic – behavior. The elite-driven “bourgeois bloc”, however, adored it.
So who cares about the French legislature? Certainly Macron has not.
Francois Hollande used the 49-3 executive decree multiple times as well, so this is clearly a long-running issue of executive branch power grabs.
The MSM doesn’t want to focus on these facts because they so obviously reveal the incredibly low quality of French democracy and of the pan-European project.
Therefore, even if Macron can’t create a majority to pass neoliberal legislation why would he allow parliament to restrain hims now? In the coming years we should expect his rationalisations along the lines of, “We must avoid dysfunction and stagnation, therefore I decree…”.
All the above explains why the democratic absolute majority winner of the legislative vote was “none of the above” – abstention won 54%. The French know that modern autocracy – rule by the 49-3 executive decree and the overruling of national sovereignty by Brussels – rules, thus rendering Europe’s national parliaments a waste of time, breath and attention. Remember Syriza of Greece, or the “bomb” Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, promised Ireland? Many European citizens have not.
Elections at just 46% turnout are a hair’s breadth away from not having democratic credibility, but that must be added with the constant use of the 49-3 executive decree and the certainty of a Brussels’ veto for any legislation they don’t like. It combines to modern autocracy – rule by an oligarchical elite.
When is the broad prosperity and stability which Western Liberal Democracy promises ever going to arrive? When is the broad prosperity and stability of the pan-European project ever going to arrive? Certainly the latter’s short tenure has been marked by nothing but economic disaster and democratic repression.
Because Western Liberal Democracy took the defeated fascists of World War II under their wing they also subsumed many of their ideas. One of them is identity politics: the average Frenchman is now being told to focus on the paltry 15% score of the National Front and not the larger issues presented in the paragraph above. It’s nonsense, and to do that would be to play into the hands of the bourgeois bloc.
All of these realities should be clear to people who cover French politics.
Macron has to actually pay attention to parliament now and work a little harder to win over some votes (but only if he actually feels like it) – I guess that’s democracy, but it’s not much. The MSM and bourgeois bloc elite is worried that “reforms” – i.e. rollbacks to the Social Democratic advances implemented from 1945-75 – won’t get through, but after 13 years here, and over 1,500 2-3 minute television reports for PressTV, which includes over 3,000 soundbites from French people, and hundreds of written columns, I’m worried about the democratic will of the French people.
But it’s been foolish to look for the democratic will in Western Liberal Democratic parliaments and in French parliament ever since 1848, when they did away with unelected monarchy.
France’s parliament is going to get louder, but that’s about it. It’ll be more like the United States in that there will be a lot of grandstanding and big talk, and then the same right-wing conclusions will arrive exactly as predicted. If it somehow doesn’t – Macron will use the executive decree. If Macron somehow doesn’t use the executive decree – Brussels will step in to forbid, sanction or legislate around the democratic will of any member nation.
As time goes on this reality will become clear and clearer. Some in the NUPES alliance and some in the National Front will actually say such things in Parliament. Macron promised to govern in a way to decrease “extremism” – i.e. those who point out the failures of Liberalism – but he clearly achieved the exact opposite.
Macronism is my generation’s type of conservatism, but that doesn’t mean it was ever built to last. The former Rothschild banker was a candidate who was fabricated at the last moment of 2016 by the intensely monied powers who have always governed in Western Liberal Democracy. He’s not as all-powerful as he was in his first term, but how could he be, given his discrediting behavior, his lack of merit and the arrogant elite he chooses to guide him? How could Western Liberal Democracy not keep proving to the masses their lack of concern for the problems of the working poor and middle classes?
However, since 2009 France does not control its currency, prices, budget, laws, rails, skies and obviously much, much else. A major failure of the Yellow Vests was to focus their attention entirely on Macron and on parliament and not on the pan-European project. The Western media tells them deceptive lies, but this column has laid out solid conclusions drawn from close observation. The Yellow Vests have protested every Saturday since October 2021 – you likely haven’t heard about that because the MSM refuses to tell the truth about that, too. When the next inevitable bust period occurs in Liberalism, they are ready to be there.
Will France descend into chaos shortly, as many predict? My God – how can it get more chaotic than every single Saturday from November 2018 through June 2019? All that’s left is for the forces of order to open fire on protesters – massacres!
That would change things – at least I hope it would. The West, ever-grandstanding about their moral superiority, certainly ignored the occasionally-lethal brutality towards the Yellow Vests.
The French elections have ended – major changes were not made. Since the Great Recession, and subsequent undemocratic installation of the pan-European project, the world’s third-largest but weakest and least-sovereign economy has only gotten weaker. After damage so great we don’t even know how bad it is, the coronavirus fog has lifted – remember that it was instituted just weeks after the failure of France’s longest labor movement ever, the general strike of 2019-20. France and the EU are marching to war over the unrest in Ukraine, and also sacrificing their economies for that cause.
Such is France today.
No Bonapartism – either Napoleonic or Louis-Napoleonic – is coming to save them from the autocratic bourgeois bloc. They have no revolutionary “Supreme Leader branch” of government, either – they don’t even want to understand what that term means. The French don’t believe in the goodwill of the leadership of the United States, but they follow them anyway. China, which since 2008 has soared in direct inverse proportion to the demise of Europe, is following an independent path, just as Iran has done since 1979. Now Russia appears to be doing the same after three decades of Liberalism.
The world needn’t worry about the results of French parliament, but they should worry for the French.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 