Take two: Turkiye’s election circus gets even crazier

May 26 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The second round of Turkish presidential elections has drawn global attention for its increasingly bizarre alliances, outrageous propaganda, and personality politics. Ironically, not much is expected to change in its aftermath.

By Ceyda Karan

The political landscape in Turkiye has become increasingly convoluted after the 14 May presidential and parliamentary elections left the Turkish presidency up for grabs – with a critical, second round of polls to be held on Sunday.

As the main candidates who failed to secure the presidency in the first round prepare for the 28 May election, Turkiye’s patchwork system of political alliances has become more intricate, marked by polarizing debates on issues such as secularism, nationalism, Syrian refugees, and the Kurdish issue. In the very year that Turkiye celebrates the Republic’s 100th anniversary, the country’s political atmosphere has grown more uncertain than ever.

The official results of the first round of the presidential election saw incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the candidate of the People’s Alliance, obtain 49.5 percent of the vote, while main opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of the National Alliance, received 44.8 percent – both remaining under the 50+ percent threshold required for an outright win.

Muharrem Ince, who withdrew from the race at the last minute, secured 0.43 percent of the vote, and Sinan Ogan, the candidate of the secular nationalist ATA Alliance, received 5.17 percent.

The sequel no one asked for

The second round between Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu has essentially transformed the election into a referendum on the former’s 21-year rule. The public’s sentiment and perception have therefore become crucial in this contest.

Despite the parliamentary election’s official results being due on 19 May, the Supreme Election Board (YSK) has not yet released them, leading to some frantic domestic speculation on the reasons for this. Some observers have raised concerns about the possibility of fraudulent voters, as the number of voters is reportedly double the population growth rate. In normal circumstances, parliament should convene on the third day after the official results are published, and elected MPs should be sworn in.

However, Erdogan is purportedly stalling the swearing-in procedure because members of his alliance, the radical Islamist Kurdish movement HUDA PAR, refuse to utter the phrase “Turkish nation” during the ceremonial oath. This leaves Erdogan keen to defer the ceremony – and this drama – until after the 28 May presidential election.

In the lead up to Sunday’s polls, the main topics dominating Turkiye’s political discourse are distrust in the fairness of the election, Turkish citizenships granted to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nationals in exchange for top-dollar real estate purchases, and the wildly disparate numbers of refugees currently residing in the country (the government says less than 4 million; the opposition claims 13 million).

These highly polarizing issues have triggered a number of realignments within the two main alliances contesting the presidency.

This time it’s personal

Since the country’s 2017 referendum, in which parliamentary democracy was replaced by a Turkish-style presidential system that recognizes unsealed ballots as valid, electoral irregularities have become a recurring concern. And so the opposition is understandably apprehensive about potential “vote theft” and the security of ballots.  

Furthermore, the unusually high voter turnout rate of over 80 percent in Turkiye’s devastated earthquake-affected areas that claimed the lives of tens of thousands and caused mass migration, has raised questions.

In the southeastern region, which has a significant Kurdish population, Erdogan’s far-right, ultra-nationalist, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) coalition partner, made significant gains in the polls, sparking allegations of ballot manipulation. Similarly, suspicions arose due to the unchanging 5 percent vote share garnered by the third candidate and kingmaker, Sinan Ogan, throughout the vote count.

However, after an initial week of furious debates, these concerns have now been fully overshadowed by the impending second round of voting.

In fact, the parliamentary elections, where Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 35.6 percent of the vote and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) secured 25.3 percent – and the subsequent uncertainty regarding the exact representation of the two parties and their allies – have been largely forgotten.

The presidential contest has taken center stage as the sole, focal political point of interest. And last-minute shifts and tweaks in the madcap alliances that make up the two leading coalitions are all the Turkish media talk about.

Switching slogans and alliances

Kilicdaroglu’s Millet (or Nation) Alliance, which leads the narrative for change (essentially, ousting Erdogan), has adopted patriotic slogans such as “Those who love their homeland should come to the ballot box” and “Let the gates of hell be closed.” Although he emphasized “unity” and objected to Erdogan’s polarizing politics in the first round of polls, Kilicdaroglu has adopted a more confrontational discourse in this second phase. Interestingly, he adopted the “hell” slogan from Sinan Ogan, a candidate who was eliminated in the first vote and who has since endorsed Erdogan ahead of the runoff vote.

Before 14 May, Ogan stated, “Maybe we won’t open the gates of heaven, but we will close the gates of hell.” The “hell” he referred to was the Erdogan government. While harshly criticizing Erdogan for his handling of Syrian refugees, Ogan also declared that Turkish nationalists – like himself – would never align themselves with the Islamist HUDA PAR. He even suggested that the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), representing Kurdish politics, would negotiate a deal with Erdogan in the second round.

But, ironically, it was Ogan who ended up striking a deal with Erdogan, announcing his support for the president on the grounds of maintaining “stability” in Turkiye. This, despite the fact that Ogan’s main condition regarding the repatriation of refugees appears not to have been met: Although a popular election issue, Erdogan has ruled out repatriating Syrian asylum seekers.

Winning over the nationalists

It remains uncertain how much of Ogan’s nationalist voter base will take to Erdogan. The ATA Alliance, to which he owes his candidacy, has become heavily divided in advance of the second polls. The foundation of the alliance consists of the far-right Zafer Party, in collaboration with some smaller political parties. Two days after Ogan threw his weight behind Erdogan, Zafer Party Leader Umit Ozdag announced his support for Kilicdaroglu.

Unlike Ogan, Ozdag says he has clinched a deal with his candidate – Kilicdaroglu – to repatriate Syrian refugees on the basis of international law and humanitarianism. Ozdag has also said they agreed that there would be zero compromise in the fight against the Kurdish PKK and terrorism.

A staunch nationalist, Ozdag frequently invokes Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – the much-revered founder of the Turkish Republic – rails against Erdogan’s role in accepting millions of Syrian refugees and selling Turkish citizenship in exchange for cash, and constantly warns about Turkiye’s “demographic threat.”

In part, this refers to the Erdogan administration’s distribution of Turkish citizenship to anyone who purchases real estate for $400,000, sharply increased rents caused by the influx of foreigners, and the perceived influence of these people (without any ties to Turkiye or knowledge of the Turkish language) on elections. All these issues feature heavily in the nationalist movement’s narrative and propaganda.

As an example, during the first round of elections, the Turkish public reacted strongly to a live broadcast on the private, pro-government A Haber news channel. In the aired footage, a Kuwaiti individual speaking Arabic into the microphone after casting his vote shocked Turkish viewers. The channel swiftly cut the broadcast and deleted the video.

Unprecedented election propaganda

But if this election can be distilled into a popularity referendum on Erdogan, the sitting Turkish president has some clear advantages over his opponent: He uses every state tool at his disposal and has a mainstream media loyal to him. While TV channels cover Erdogan’s statements and rallies around the clock, Kilicdaroglu has few opportunities to be nationally heard outside of opposition media outlets.

As a result, Erdogan has been particularly sloppy about his political rhetoric, making ludicrous claims and sometimes outright lies – without being duly checked by the media.

In a Trumpian boast during a rally in the earthquake-stricken province of Malatya, Erdogan boasted that the number of people who came to listen to him in the square was higher than the number of deaths caused by the 6 February earthquake.

While victims had cried out for urgent government assistance for days without a response – which Erdogan himself has admitted – he told rally crowds: “We mobilized all means from the first hours of the disaster.” There have been many such gaffes along the campaign trail this year, which finally culminated in a major media scandal over a faked video montage.

Erdogan accidentally admitted that a video montage shown by his team in public squares before the first round of votes had been faked. The edited footage depicted PKK leaders in the Qandil region of Iraq singing along to a song in Kilicdaroglu’s political ad. The intent of the video was clearly to link the latter to the PKK and terrorism.

The opposition reacted strongly to the slander, with Kilicdaroglu calling Erdogan a “montage fraudster” and filing a lawsuit for compensation. But because of the president’s iron grip on mainstream Turkish media, it is not known how many voters at those rallies are aware of the fakery.

The propaganda has progressed well beyond the video scandal. Fake brochures attributed to Kilicdaroglu, including bizarre campaign promises and praise for terrorism, have been detected and prosecuted along the way. There’s no telling how much of an effect these fake-news scandals will affect Sunday’s polls.

‘Unprincipled coalitions’

As the second round vote approaches, Professor Emin Gurses from Sakarya University, highlights the shallow opportunism of these Turkish elections, telling The Cradle:

“In Turkiye, there is an understanding that it is permissible to lie while doing politics. Voters voted for the candidate they know and recognize through trust. They [politicians] act to win the election. They don’t look at friend or foe.”

The last-minute alliance shifts may not even change anything. According to Gurses, Sinan Ogan has little to gain by backing Erdogan, and on the other side, even if a deal is struck with Ozdag, it will be challenging for Kilicdaroglu to close the 2.5 million-vote gap with Erdogan.

Meanwhile, columnist Mehmet Ali Guller from Cumhuriyet has highlighted the consequences of the 50+1 system in Turkiye, which he argues leads to unprincipled coalitions, with ideology, programs, and politics pushed to the background. Guller charges that there are no significant differences in the fundamental policies of both sides:

“There is no fundamental difference between the two options in terms of economic policies, it is in the details. And in terms of foreign policy, there is no fundamental difference between the two options, there are details. Because both options are essentially Atlanticist and NATOist.”

100 years on: It’s looking bleak

Regardless of the election outcome, Guller foresees an ongoing economic crisis that offers no short-term solution. He also notes that both Islamists and nationalists exist in the two main political coalitions, creating an ideological stalemate of sorts, and predicts that Turkiye will be forced to hold another election within the next five years.

If Kilicdaroglu wins, he may find himself governing the country using decrees inherited from his predecessor despite advocating for a return to parliamentary democracy, as his alliance will be in the minority in parliament.

In this “unprincipled” political environment, it is even plausible that Erdodan, the architect of the Turkish-style presidential system, may consider reverting to a “parliamentary system.” On the other hand, if Erdogan emerges victorious, an unprecedented economic crisis is expected, with Turkiye’s CDS rating surpassing 700 and the US dollar projected to reach at least 24 Turkish liras. 

In the upcoming local elections, Erdogan is likely to continue his right-wing populist campaign to reclaim cities like Istanbul, which he lost in 2019.

Because Turkiye requires at least $200 billion in resources, Erdogan’s foreign policy stance will be determined by economic opportunity, as he is not seen as a reliable partner by any country, on either side of the global divide. He is expected to continue his balancing act: putting the “migrant issue” before the EU; Syria and Ukraine before Russia; relations with Russia before the US, and using Turkiye’s presence in Syria as leverage over the Arab world, using these as bargaining chips to maximize his gains.

In any case, the outlook for the Republic of Turkiye, on its 100th anniversary, appears bleak.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

‘If not me, who?’: Mikhail Gorbachev ended Cold War and saved the world, but failed to save Soviet Union FEATURE

30 Aug, 2022

It is hard to imagine that anyone could have dismantled the Soviet Union from the inside faster or more comprehensively than Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who had no such intention. Its crumbling is both Gorbachev’s singular achievement and his personal tragedy.

It is also the most important moment in history since 1945.

Popular perceptions have transformed the former Soviet leader into a kitschy icon, remembered as much for starring in an advert for no-crust pizza, as for picking up a Nobel Peace Prize.

But in the demise of ‘The Evil Empire’ he was no naïf, nor a catalyst for generic historic inevitabilities. Almost every single event in the countdown to the fall of communism in Russia and beyond is a direct reflection of the ideals, actions and foibles of Mikhail Gorbachev and those he confronted or endorsed.

This is the story of a farm mechanic who managed to penetrate the inner sanctum of the world’s biggest country, an explanation of what drove him once he reached the top, and an attempt to understand whether he deserves opprobrium or sympathy, ridicule or appreciation.

First president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev before a parade marking the 69th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
RIA Novosti.

The first president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev signs autographs during the presentation of his new book “Alone with Myself” in the Moskva store.
RIA Novosti.

If not me, who? And if not now, when?
— Mikhail Gorbachev

CHILDHOOD

Growing up a firebrand Communist among Stalin’s purges

Born in 1931 in a Ukrainian-Russian family in the village of Privolnoye in the fertile Russian south, Mikhail Gorbachev’s childhood was punctuated by a series of almost Biblical ordeals, albeit those shared by millions of his contemporaries.

His years as a toddler coincided with Stalin’s policy of collectivization – the confiscation of private lands from peasants to form new state-run farms – and Stavropol, Russia’s Breadbasket, was one of the worst-afflicted. Among the forcible reorganization and resistance, harvests plummeted and government officials requisitioned scarce grain under threat of death.

Gorbachev later said that his first memory is seeing his grandfather boiling frogs he caught in the river during the Great Famine.

Yet another grandfather, Panteley – a former landless peasant — rose from poverty to become the head of the local collective farm. Later Gorbachev attributed his ideological make-up largely to his grandfather’s staunch belief in Communism “which gave him the opportunity to earn everything he had.”

Panteley’s convictions were unshaken even when he was arrested as part of Stalin’s Great Purge. He was accused of joining a “counter-revolutionary Trotskyite movement” (which presumably operated a cell in their distant village) but returned to his family after 14 months behind bars just in time for the Second World War to break out.

Just in time for the Second World War to break out. For much of the conflict, the battle lines between the advancing Germans and the counter-attacking Red Army stretched across Gorbachev’s homeland; Mikhail’s father was drafted, and even reported dead, but returned with only shrapnel lodged in his leg at the end of the war.

Although Sergey was a distant presence in his son’s life up to then and never lived with him, he passed on to Mikhail a skill that played a momentous role in his life — that of a farm machinery mechanic and harvester driver. Bright by all accounts, Mikhail quickly picked up the knack — later boasting that he could pick out any malfunction just by the sound of the harvester or the tractor alone.

But this ability was unlikely to earn him renown beyond his village. Real acclaim came when the father and son read a new decree that would bestow a national honor on anyone who threshed more than 8000 quintals (800 tons or more than 20 big truckloads) of grain during the upcoming harvest. In the summer of 1948 Gorbachev senior and junior ground an impressively neat 8888 quintals. As with many of the agricultural and industrial achievements that made Soviet heroes out of ordinary workers, the exact details of the feat – and what auxiliary efforts may have made it possible – are unclear, but 17-year-old Gorbachev became one of the youngest recipients of the prestigious Order of the Red Banner of Labor in its history.

Having already been admitted to the Communist Party in his teen years (a rare reward given to the most zealous and politically reliable) Mikhail used the medal as an immediate springboard to Moscow. The accolade for the young wheat-grinder meant that he did not have to pass any entrance exams or even sit for an interview at Russia’s most prestigious Moscow State University.

With his village school education, Gorbachev admitted that he initially found the demands of a law degree, in a city he’d never even visited before, grueling. But soon he met another ambitious student from the countryside, and another decisive influence on his life. The self-assured, voluble Raisa, who barely spent a night apart from her husband until her death, helped to bring out the natural ambition in the determined, but occasionally studious and earnest Gorbachev. Predictably, Gorbachev rose to become one of the senior figures at the university’s Komsomol, the Communist youth league — which with its solemn group meetings and policy initiatives served both as a prototype and the pipeline for grown-up party activities.

STAVROPOL

Party reformist flourishes in Khruschev’s Thaw

Upon graduation in 1955, Gorbachev lasted only ten days back in Stavropol’s prosecutor’s office (showing a squeamishness dealing with the less idealistic side of the Soviet apparatus) before running across a local Komsomol official. For the next 15 years his biography reads like a blur of promotions – rising to become Stavropol region’s top Komsomol bureaucrats, overseeing agriculture for a population of nearly 2.5 million people before his 40th birthday.

All the trademarks of Gorbachev’s leadership style, which later became famous around the world, were already in evidence here. Eschewing Soviet officials’ habit of barricading themselves inside the wood-paneled cabinets behind multiple receptions, Gorbachev spent vast swathes of his time ‘in the field’, often literally in a field. With his distinctive southern accent, and his genuine curiosity about the experiences of ordinary people, the young official a struck chord as he toured small villages and discussed broken projectors at local film clubs and shortages of certain foodstuffs.

His other enthusiasm was for public discussion, particularly about specific, local problems – once again in contrast with the majority of officials, who liked to keep negative issues behind closed doors. Gorbachev set up endless discussion clubs and committees, almost quixotically optimistic about creating a better kind of life among the post-war austerity.

POLITBURO

Cutting the line to the throne

By the 1970s any sign of modernization in Soviet society or leadership was a distant memory, as the country settled into supposed “advanced socialism”, with the upheavals and promises of years past replaced by what was widely described as ‘An Era of Stagnation’ (the term gained official currency after being uttered by Gorbachev himself in one of his early public speeches after ascending to the summit of the Soviet system).

Without Stalin’s regular purges, and any democratic replacement mechanisms, between the mid-1960s and 1980s, almost the entire apparatus of Soviet leadership remained unchanged, down from the increasingly senile Leonid Brezhnev, who by the end of his life in 1982 became a figure of nationwide mockery and pity, as he slurred through speeches and barely managed to stand during endless protocol events, wearing gaudy carpets of military honors for battles he never participated in. Predictably, power devolved to the various factions below, as similarly aged heavyweights pushed their protégés into key positions.

The Kremlin Palace of Congresses (now the State Kremlin Palace). The XXV Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Feb. 24-March 5, 1976). CPSU Central Committee General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev delivering speech.
RIA Novosti.

Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov, CPSU CC Politbureau member, CPSU CC secretary, twice Hero of Socialist Labor.
RIA Novosti.Leonid Brezhnev, left, chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium and general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, with Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, on Lenin’s Mausoleum on May 1, 1980.
RIA Novosti.The Soviet Communist Party’s politburo member Konstantin Chernenko and central committee member Yury Andropov attend the Kremlin Palace of Congresses’ government session dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the USSR.
RIA Novosti.Yuri Andropov (1914-1984), General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (since November 1982).
RIA Novosti.

With a giant country as the playground, the system rewarded those who came up with catchy programs and slogans, took credit for successes and steered away from failures, and networked tirelessly to build up support above and below. Gorbachev thrived here. His chief patrons were Brezhnev himself, purist party ideologue Mikhail Suslov, who considered Stavropol his powerbase, and most crucially the hardline head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov. The security chief referred to the aspiring politician as ‘My Stavropol Rough Diamond’ — another rejoinder to those seeking to paint Gorbachev as a naïve blessed outsider, a Joan of Arc of the Soviet establishment.

After being called to Moscow in 1978 to oversee Soviet agriculture — an apocryphal story suggests that he nearly missed out on the appointment when senior officials couldn’t find him after he got drunk celebrating a Komsomol anniversary, only to be rescued by a driver at the last moment — Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed to the Politburo in 1980.

The Politburo, which included some but not all of the ministers and regional chiefs of the USSR, was an inner council that took all the key decisions in the country, with the Soviet leader sitting at the top of the table, holding the final word (though Brezhnev sometimes missed meetings or fell asleep during them). When Gorbachev became a fully-fledged member he was short of his 50th birthday. All but one of the dozen other members were over sixty, and most were in their seventies. To call them geriatric was not an insult, but a literal description of a group of elderly men – many beset by chronic conditions far beyond the reach of Soviet doctors – that were more reminiscent of decrepit land barons at the table of a feudal king than effective bureaucrats. Even he was surprised by how quickly it came.

Brezhnev, who suffered from a panoply of circulation illnesses, died of a heart attack in 1982. Andropov, who was about to set out on an energetic screw-tightening campaign, died of renal failure in 1984. Konstantin Chernenko was already ill when he came to leadership, and died early in 1985 of cirrhosis. The tumbling of aged sovereigns, both predictable and tragicomic in how they reflected on the leadership of a country of more than 250 million people, not only cleared the path for Gorbachev, but strengthened the credentials of the young, energetic pretender.

Leonid Brezhnev’s funeral procession at Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum.
RIA Novosti.

The decorations of General Secretary of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev seen during his lying-in-state ceremony at the House of Unions.
RIA Novosti.Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and the last Soviet president (second left in the foreground) attending the funeral of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Konstantin Chernenko (1911-1985) in Moscow’s Red Square.
RIA Novosti.The funeral procession during the burial of Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the CPSU central committee, chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
RIA Novosti.The funeral of Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The coffin is placed on pedestal near the Mausoleum on Red Square.
RIA Novosti.The funeral procession for General Secretary of the CPSU Konstantin Chernenko moving towards Red Square.
RIA Novosti.General Secretary of the Central Comittee of CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev at the tribune of Lenin mausoleum during May Day demonstration, Red square.
RIA Novosti.

On 11 March 1985, Gorbachev was named the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR.

REFORMS NEEDED

Overcoming economic inefficiency with temperance campaigns

As often in history, the reformer came in at a difficult time. Numbers showed that economic growth, which was rampant as Russia industrialized through the previous four decades, slowed down in Brezhnev’s era, with outside sources suggesting that the economy grew by an average of no more than 2 percent for the decade.

The scarcity of the few desirable goods produced and their inefficient distribution meant that many Soviet citizens spent a substantial chunk of their time either standing in queues or trading and obtaining things as ordinary as sugar, toilet paper or household nails through their connections, either “under the counter” or as Party and workplace perks, making a mockery of Communist egalitarianism. The corruption and lack of accountability in an economy where full employment was a given, together with relentless trumpeting of achievement through monolithic newspapers and television programs infected private lives with doublethink and cynicism.

A line of shoppers outside the Lenvest footwear shop.
Ria Novosti.

But this still does not describe the drab and constraining feel of the socialist command economy lifestyle, not accidentally eschewed by all societies outside of North Korea and Cuba in the modern world. As an example, but one central to the Soviet experience: while no one starved, there was a choice of a handful of standardized tins — labeled simply salmon, or corned beef — identical in every shop across the country, and those who were born in 1945 could expect to select from the same few goods until the day they died, day-in, day-out. Soviets dressed in the same clothes, lived in identical tower block housing, and hoped to be issued a scarce Lada a decade away as a reward for their loyalty or service. Combined with the lack of personal freedoms, it created an environment that many found reassuring, but others suffocating, so much so that a trivial relic of a different world, stereotypically a pair of American jeans, or a Japanese TV, acquired a cultural cachet far disproportionate to its function. Soviets could not know the mechanisms of actually living within a capitalist society — with its mortgages, job markets, and bills — but many felt that there were gaudier, freer lives being led all around the world.

And though it brought tens of millions of people out of absolute poverty, there was no longer an expectation that the lifestyles of ordinary Soviets would significantly improve whether a year or a decade into the future, and promise of a better future was always a key tenet of communism.

Several wide-ranging changes were attempted, in 1965 and 1979, but each time the initial charge was wound down into ineffectual tinkering as soon as the proposed changed encroached on the fundamentals of the Soviet regime — in which private commercial activity was forbidden and state control over the economy was total and centralized.

Moscow, Russia. Customers at the Okean [Ocean] seafood store. 1988.
Ria Novosti.

Gorbachev deeply felt the malaise, and displayed immediate courage to do what is necessary — sensing that his reforms would not only receive support from below, but no insurmountable resistance from above. The policy of Uskorenie, or Acceleration, which became one of the pillars of his term, was announced just weeks after his appointment — it was billed as an overhaul of the economy.

But it did not address the fundamental structural inefficiencies of the Soviet regime. Instead it offered more of the same top-down administrative solutions — more investment, tighter supervision of staff, less waste. Any boost achieved through rhetoric and managerial dress-downs sent down the pyramid of power was likely to be inconsequential and peter out within months.

His second initiative, just two months after assuming control, betrayed these very same well-meaning but misguided traits. With widespread alcohol consumption a symptom of late-Soviet decline, Gorbachev devised a straightforward solution — lowering alcohol production and eventually eradicating drinking altogether.

Doctor Lev Kravchenko conducting reflexotherapy session with a patient at the Moscow Narcological Clinical Hospital #17.
RIA Novosti

Stolichnaya vodka from the Moscow Liqueur and Vodka Distillery.
RIA Novosti.

“Women write to me saying that children see their fathers again, and they can see their husbands,” said Gorbachev when asked about whether the reform was working.

Opponents of the illiberal measure forced Russian citizens into yet more queues, while alcoholics resorted to drinking industrial fluids and aftershave. Economists said that the budget, which derived a quarter of its total retail sales income from alcohol, was severely undermined. Instead a shadow economy sprung up — in 1987, 500 thousand people were arrested for engaging in it, five times more than just two years earlier.

More was needed, and Gorbachev knew it.

PERE­STROIKA

“We must rebuild ourselves. All of us!”

Gorbachev at his zenith

Gorbachev first uttered the word perestroika — reform, or rebuilding — in May 1986, or rather he told journalists, using the characteristic and endearing first-person plural, “We must rebuild ourselves. All of us!” Picked up by reporters, within months the phrase became a mainstay of Gorbachev’s speeches, and finally the symbol of the entire era.

Before his reforms had been chiefly economic and within the existing frameworks; now they struck at the political heart of the Soviet Union.

The revolution came from above, during a long-prepared central party conference blandly titled “On Reorganization and the Party’s Personnel Policy” on January 27, 1987.

In lieu of congratulatory platitudes that marked such occasions in past times, Gorbachev cheerfully delivered the suspended death sentence for Communist rule in the Soviet Union (much as he didn’t suspect it at the time).

“The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its leaders, for reasons that were within their own control, did not realize the need for change, understand the growing critical tension in the society, or develop any means to overcome it. The Communist Party has not been able to take full advantage of socialist society,”
said the leader to an audience that hid its apprehension.

“The only way that a man can order his house, is if he feels he is its owner. Well, a country is just the same,” came Gorbachev’s trademark mix of homely similes and grand pronouncements.” Only with the extension of democracy, of expanding self-government can our society advance in industry, science, culture and all aspects of public life.”

“For those of you who seem to struggle to understand, I am telling you: democracy is not the slogan, it is the very essence of Perestroika.”

Gorbachev used the word ‘revolution’ eleven times in his address, anointing himself an heir to Vladimir Lenin. But what he was proposing had no precedent in Russian or Soviet history.

The word democracy was used over 70 times in that speech alone.
The Soviet Union was a one-party totalitarian state, which produced 99.9 percent election results with people picking from a single candidate. Attempts to gather in groups of more than three, not even to protest, were liable to lead to arrest, as was any printed or public political criticism, though some dissidents were merely subjected to compulsory psychiatric care or forced to renounce their citizenship. Millions were employed either as official KGB agents, or informants, eavesdropping on potentially disloyal citizens. Soviet people were forbidden from leaving the country, without approval from the security services and the Party. This was a society operated entirely by those in power, relying on compliance and active cooperation in oppression from a large proportion of the population. So, the proposed changes were a fundamental reversal of the flows of power in society.

General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachyov making his report “October and perestroika: the revolution continues” in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses at a joint session of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Supreme Soviet, devoted to the 70th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
RIA Novosti.

Between Gorbachev’s ascent and by the end of that year, two thirds of the Politburo, more than half of the regional chiefs and forty percent of the membership of the Central Committee of Communist Party, were replaced.

Gorbachev knew that democracy was impossible without what came to be known as glasnost, an openness of public discussion.

“We are all coming to the same conclusion — we need glasnost, we need criticism and self-criticism. In our country everything concerns the people, because it is their country,”
said Gorbachev, cunningly echoing Lenin, at that January forum, though the shoots of glasnost first emerged the year before.

From the middle of 1986 until 1987 censored Soviet films that lay on the shelves for years were released, the KGB stopped jamming the BBC World Service and Voice of America, Nobel Peace Prize winner nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov and hundreds of other dissidents were set free, and archives documenting Stalin-era repressions were opened.

A social revolution was afoot. Implausibly, within two years, television went from having no programs that were unscripted, to Vzglyad, a talk show anchored by 20 and 30-somethings (at a time when most Soviet television presented were fossilized mannequins) that discussed the war in Afghanistan, corruption or drugs with previously banned videos by the Pet Shop Boys or Guns N’ Roses as musical interludes. For millions watching Axl Rose, cavorting with a microphone between documentaries about steel-making and puppet shows, created cognitive dissonance that verged on the absurd. As well as its increasing fascination with the West, a torrent of domestic creativity was unleashed. While much of what was produced in the burgeoning rock scene and the liberated film making industry was derivative, culturally naïve and is now badly dated, even artifacts from the era still emanate an unmistakable vitality and sincerity.

Rock for Peace concert in Moscow, 1988.
RIA Novosti.

“Bravo!” Poster by Svetlana and Alexander Faldin. Allegorically portraying USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, it appeared at the poster exposition, Perestroika and Us.
RIA Novosti.Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, talking to reporters during a break between sessions. The First Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR (May 25 — June 9, 1989). The Kremlin Palace of Congresses.
RIA Novosti.

Many welcomed the unprecedented level of personal freedom and the chance to play an active part in their own country’s history, others were alarmed, while others still rode the crest of the wave when swept everything before it, only to renounce it once it receded. But it is notable that even the supposed staunchest defenders of the ancien régime — the KGB officers, the senior party members — who later spent decades criticizing Perestroika, didn’t step in to defend Brezhnev-era Communism as they saw it being demolished.

What everyone might have expected from the changes is a different question — some wanted the ability to travel abroad without an exit visa, others the opportunity to earn money, others still to climb the political career ladder without waiting for your predecessor die in office. But unlike later accounts, which often presented Gorbachev as a stealthy saboteur who got to execute an eccentric program, at the time, his support base was broad, and his decisions seemed encouraging and logical.

As a popular politician Gorbachev was reaching a crescendo. His trademark town hall and factory visits were as effective as any staged stunts, and much more unselfconscious. The contrast with the near-mummified bodies of the previous General Secretaries — who, in the mind of ordinary Soviet citizens, could only be pictured on top of Lenin’s Mausoleum during a military parade, or staring from a roadside placard, and forever urging greater productivity or more intense socialist values — was overwhelming.
Gorbachev was on top — but the tight structure of the Soviet state was about to loosen uncontrollably.

USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev in Sverdlovsk Region (25-28 April, 1990). Mikhail Gorbachev with the people of Sverdlovsk at the Lenin Square.
RIA Novosti.

USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev visits Sverdlovsk region. Mikhail Gorbachev visiting Nizhnij Tagil integrated iron-and-steel works named after V.I. Lenin.
RIA Novosti.CPSU Central Committee General Secretary, USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev in the Ukrainian SSR. Mikhail Gorbachev, second right, meeting with Kiev residents.
RIA Novosti.

COLD WAR ENDS

Concessions from a genuine pacifist

In the late 1980s the world appeared so deeply divided into two camps that it seemed like two competing species were sharing the same planet. Conflicts arose constantly, as the US and the USSR fought proxy wars on every continent — in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan, with Europe divided by a literal battle line, both sides constantly updated battle plans and moved tank divisions through allied states, where scores of bases housed soldier thousands of miles away from home. Since the Cold War did not end in nuclear holocaust, it has become conventional to describe the two superpowers as rivals, but there was little doubt at the time that they were straightforward enemies.

“The core of New Thinking is the admission of the primacy of universal human values and the priority of ensuring the survival of the human race,” Gorbachev wrote in his Perestroika manifesto in 1988.

At the legendary Reykjavik summit in 1986, which formally ended in failure but in fact set in motion the events that would end the Cold War, both sides were astonished at just how much they could agree on, suddenly flying through agendas, instead of fighting pitched battles over every point of the protocol.

“Humanity is in the same boat, and we can all either sink or swim.”

General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and U.S. President Ronald Reagan (right) during their summit meeting in Reykjavik.
RIA Novosti.

Landmark treaties followed: the INF agreement in 1987, banning intermediate ballistic missiles, the CFE treaty that reduced the military build-up in Europe in 1990, and the following year, the START treaty, reducing the overall nuclear stockpile of those countries. The impact was as much symbolic as it was practical — the two could still annihilate each other within minutes — but the geopolitical tendency was clear.

President Reagan: Signing of the INF Treaty with Premier Gorbachev, December 8, 1987

Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the US president Ronald Reagan.
RIA Novosti.

Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and the US president Ronald Reagan signing an agreement in the White House. Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on the official visit to the USA.
RIA Novosti.

Military analysts said that each time the USSR gave up more than it received from the Americans. The personal dynamic between Reagan — always lecturing “the Russians” from a position of purported moral superiority, and Gorbachev — the pacifist scrambling for a reasonable solution, was also skewed in favor of the US leader. But Gorbachev wasn’t playing by those rules.

“Any disarmament talks are not about beating the other side. Everyone has to win, or everyone will lose,” he wrote.

The Soviet Union began to withdraw its troops and military experts from conflicts around the world. For ten years a self-evidently unwinnable war waged in Afghanistan ingrained itself as an oppressive part of the national consciousness. Fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers died, hundreds of thousands more were wounded or psychologically traumatized (the stereotypical perception of the ‘Afghan vet’ in Russia is almost identical to that of the ‘Vietnam vet’ in the US.) When the war was officially declared a “mistake” and Soviet tanks finally rolled back across the mountainous border in 1989, very few lamented the scaling back of the USSR’s international ambitions.

Last Soviet troop column crosses Soviet border after leaving Afghanistan.
RIA Novosti.

Driver T. Eshkvatov during the final phase of the Soviet troop pullout from Afghanistan.
RIA Novosti.Soviet soldiers back on native soil. The USSR conducted a full pullout of its limited troop contingent from Afghanistan in compliance with the Geneva accords.
RIA Novosti.The convoy of Soviet armored personnel vehicles leaving Afghanistan.
RIA Novosti.

In July 1989 Gorbachev made a speech to the European Council, declaring that it is “the sovereign right of each people to choose their own social system.” When Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, soon to be executed by his own people, demanded — during the 40th anniversary of the Communist German Democratic Republic in October 1989 — that Gorbachev suppress the wave of uprisings, the Soviet leader replied with a curt “Never again!”

“Life punishes those who fall behind the times,” he warned the obdurate East German leader Erich Honecker. Honecker died in exile in Chile five years later, having spent his dying years fending off criminal charges backed by millions of angry Germans.

Russian tanks did pass through Eastern Europe that year — but in the other direction, as the Soviet Union abandoned its expensive bases that were primed for a war that neither side now wanted.

Graffitti at the Berlin Wall.
RIA Novosti.

East German citizens climb the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate after the opening of the border was announced early November 9, 1989. REUTERS/Herbert Knosowski BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE.
Reuters.

A big section of the Berlin Wall is lifted by a crane as East Germany has started to dismantle the wall near the Brandenburg Gate in East Berlin, February 20, 1990.
Reuters.

By the time the Berlin Wall was torn down in November, Gorbachev was reportedly not even woken up by his advisors, and no emergency meetings took place. There was no moral argument for why the German people should not be allowed to live as one nation, ending what Gorbachev himself called the “unnatural division of Europe”. The quote came from his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

ETHNIC TENSIONS

Smoldering ethnic conflicts on USSR’s outskirts flare up

Ethnic tensions on the outskirts of the empire lead to full-scale wars after USSR’s collapse. Towards the end of his rather brief period as a Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev had to face a problem many thought of as done and dusted; namely, ethnic strife, leading to conflict and death.

By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union was officially considered by party ideologists to be one multi-ethnic nation, despite it being comprised of 15 national republics and even more internal republics and regions, with dozens of ethnic groups living there in a motley mixture. The claim was not completely unfounded as the new generation all across the country spoke Russian and had basic knowledge of Russian culture along with Marxist philosophy. In fact, the outside world confirmed this unity by calling all Soviet citizens “Russians” — from Finno-Ugric Estonians in the West to the Turkic and Iranian peoples of Central Asia and natives of the Far East, closely related to the American Indians of Alaska.

Demonstration on Red Square. The International Labor Day. “Long live the brotherly friendship of the peoples of the USSR!” reads the slogan under the USSR national emblem surrounded by flags of 15 of the Union republics carried at a May Day demonstration in 1986.
RIA Novosti.

At the same time, the concept of the single people was enforced by purely Soviet methods — from silencing any existing problems in the party-controlled mass media, to ruthless suppression of any attempt of nationalist movements, and summary forced resettlement of whole peoples for “siding with the enemy” during WWII.

After Gorbachev announced the policies of Glasnost and democratization, many ethnic groups started to express nationalist sentiments. This was followed by the formation or legalization of nationalist movements, both in national republics and in Russia itself, where blackshirts from the “Memory” organization blamed Communists and Jews for oppressing ethnic Russians and promoted “liberation.”

Neither society nor law enforcers were prepared for such developments. The Soviet political system remained totalitarian and lacked any liberal argument against nationalism. Besides, the concept of “proletarian internationalism” was so heavily promoted that many people started to see nationalism as part of a struggle for political freedoms and market-driven economic prosperity. At the same time, the security services persisted in using the crude Soviet methods that had already been denounced by party leaders; police had neither the tools nor the experience for proper crowd control.

As a result, potential conflicts were brewing all across the country and the authorities did almost nothing to prevent them. In fact, many among the regional elites chose to ride the wave of nationalism to obtain more power and settle old accounts. At the same time, the level of nationalism was highly uneven and its manifestations differed both in frequency and intensity across the USSR.

In February 1988, Gorbachev announced at the Communist Party’s plenum that every socialist land was free to choose its own societal systems. Both Nationalists and the authorities considered this a go-ahead signal. Just days after the announcement, the conflict in the small mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh entered an open phase.

Nagorno-Karabakh was an enclave populated mostly, but not exclusively, by Armenians in the Transcaucasia republic of Azerbaijan. Relations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis had always been strained, with mutual claims dating back to the Ottoman Empire; Soviet administrative policy based purely on geography and economy only made things worse.

In spring 1989, nationalists took to the streets in another Transcaucasian republic — Georgia. The country was (and still is) comprised of many ethnic groups, each claiming a separate territory, sometimes as small as just one hill and a couple of villages, and the rise of nationalism there was even more dangerous. Georgians marched under slogans “Down with Communism!” and “Down with Soviet Imperialism.” The rallies were guarded and directed by the “Georgian Falcons” — a special team of strong men, many of them veterans of the Afghan war, armed with truncheons and steel bars.

“Down with Communism!”

“Down with Soviet Imperialism.”

This time Gorbachev chose not to wait for clashes and a Spetsnaz regiment was deployed to Tbilisi to tackle the nationalist rallies. Again, old Soviet methods mixed poorly with the realities of democratization. When the demonstrators saw the soldiers, they became more agitated, and the streets around the main flashpoints were blocked by transport and barricades. The soldiers were ordered to use only rubber truncheons and tear gas, and were not issued firearms, but facing the Georgian Falcons they pulled out the Spetsnaz weapon of choice — sharp shovels just as deadly as bayonets.

At least 19 people were killed in the clashes or trampled by the crowd that was forced from the central square but had nowhere to go. Hundreds were wounded.

Soviet tanks are positioned on April 9, 1989 in front of the Georgian government building where pro-independence Georgians were killed as paratroopers moved in to break up a mass demonstration. An anti-Soviet demonstration was dispersed on April 9th by the Soviet army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries. In independent Georgia “April 9” is an annual public holiday remembered as the Day of National Unity.
AFP PHOTO.

Moscow ordered an investigation into the tragedy and a special commission uncovered many serious mistakes made both by the regional and central authorities and party leaders. However, at the May Congress of People’s Deputies, Gorbachev categorically refused to accept any responsibility for the outcome of the events in Tbilisi and blamed the casualties on the military.

Further on, the last Soviet leader persisted in the kind of stubbornness that inevitably must have played a part in his fall. In February 1990, the Communist Party’s Central Committee voted to adopt the presidential system of power and General Secretary Gorbachev became the first and last president of the USSR. The same plenum dismantled the Communist Party’s monopoly of power, even though the country had no grassroots political organizations or any political organizations not dependent on the communists save for the nationalists. As a result, the urge for succession increased rapidly, both in the regional republics and even in the Soviet heartland — the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

In 1990, the Republic of Lithuania was the first to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Despite his earlier promises, Gorbachev refused to recognize this decision officially. The region found itself in legal and administrative limbo and the Lithuanian parliament addressed foreign nations with a request to hold protests against “Soviet Occupation.”

In January 1991, the Lithuanian government announced the start of economic reforms with liberalization of prices, and immediately after that the Supreme Soviet of the USSR sent troops to the republic, citing “numerous requests from the working class.” Gorbachev also demanded Lithuania annul all new regulations and bring back the Soviet Constitution. On January 11, Soviet troops captured many administrative buildings in Vilnius and other Lithuanian cities, but the parliament and television center were surrounded by a thousand-strong rally of protesters and remained in the hands of the nationalist government. In the evening of January 12, Soviet troops, together with the KGB special purpose unit, Alpha, stormed the Vilnius television center, killing 12 defenders and wounding about 140 more. The troops were then called back to Russia and the Lithuanian struggle for independence continued as before.

A Lithuanian demonstrator stands in front of a Soviet Army tank during the assault on the Lithuanian Radio and Television station on January 13, 1991 in Vilnius.
AFP PHOTO.

Vilnius residents gather in front of the Lithuanian parliament following the takeover of the Radio and Television installations by Soviet troops.
AFP PHOTO.An armed unidentified man guards the Lithuanian parliament on January 19, 1991 in Vilnius.
AFP PHOTO.Vilnius residents holding a Lithuanian flag guard a barricade in front of the Lithuanian parliament on January 20, 1991.
AFP PHOTO.Soviet paratroopers charge Lithuanian demonstrators at the entrance of the Lithuanian press printing house in Vilnius. January, 1991.
AFP PHOTO.

Gorbachev again denied any responsibility, saying that he had received reports about the operation only after it ended. However, almost all members of the contemporary Soviet cabinet recalled that the idea of Gorbachev not being aware of such a major operation was laughable. Trying to shift the blame put the president’s image into a lose-lose situation — knowing about the Vilnius fighting made him a callous liar, and if he really knew nothing about it, then he was an ineffective leader, losing control both of distant territories and his own special forces.

The swiftly aborted intervention — troops were called back on the same day — was a disappointment both to the hardliners, who would have wanted Gorbachev to see it through, and to the democratic reformers, horrified by the scenes emerging from Vilnius.

This dissatisfaction also must be one of the main factors that provoked the so-called Putch in August 1991 — an attempt by die-hard Politburo members to displace Gorbachev and restore the old Soviet order. They failed in the latter, but succeeded in the former as Gorbachev, isolated at his government Dacha in Crimea, returned to Moscow only because of the struggles of the new Russian leader Boris Yeltsin. When Gorbachev returned, his power was so diminished that he could do nothing to prevent the Belovezha agreement — the pact between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine that ended the history of the Soviet Union and introduced the Commonwealth of Independent States. All republics became independent whether they were ready to or not.

This move, while granting people freedom from Soviet rule, also triggered a sharp rise in extreme nationalist activities — the stakes were high enough and whole nations were up for grabs. Also, in the three years between Gorbachev’s offering of freedom and the collapse of the USSR, nothing was done to calm simmering ethnic hatred, and with no directions from Moscow or control on the part of the Soviet police and army, many regions became engulfed in full-scale civil wars, based on ethnic grounds.

Things turned especially nasty in Tajikistan, where fighting between Iranian-speaking Tajiks and Turkic-speaking Uzbeks very soon led to ethnic cleansing. Refugees had to flee for their lives to Afghanistan, which itself witnessed a war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.

Government soldiers aim at positions of armed opposition groups in the border area of Afghanistan 08 June 1993. The civil war between pro-communist forces and the opposition has left thousands dead and turned hundreds of thousands of people into refugees in the last year.
AFP PHOTO.

Two fighters of the Tajik pro-Communist forces engage in a battle with pro-Islamic fighters 22 December 1992 in a village some 31 miles from the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.
AFP PHOTO.Tajik women cry over the dead body of a soldier 29 January 1993. The soldier was killed during fighting between Tajikistan government troops and opposition forces in Parkhar.
AFP PHOTO.

The long and bloody war in Georgia also had a significant ethnic component. After it ended three regions that were part of the republic during Soviet times — Abkhazia, Adzharia and South Ossetia – declared independence, which was enforced by a CIS peacekeeping force. At some point, Georgia managed to return Adzharia but when Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, backed and armed by Western nations, attempted to capture South Ossetia in 2008, Russia had to intervene and repel the aggression. Subsequently, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations.

YELTSIN’S CHALLENGE

New star steals limelight

As Stalin and Trotsky, or Tony Blair and Gordon Brown could attest, your own archrival in politics is often on your team, pursuing broadly similar — but not identical aims — and hankering for the top seat.

But unlike those rivalries, the scenes in the fallout between Mikhail Gorbachev, and his successor, Boris Yeltsin played out not through backroom deals and media leaks, but in the form of an epic drama in front of a live audience of thousands, and millions sat in front of their televisions.

The two leaders were born a month apart in 1931, and followed broadly similar paths of reformist regional commissars – while Gorbachev controlled the agricultural Stavropol, Yeltsin attempted to revitalize the industrial region of Sverdlovsk, present-day Yekaterinburg.

Yet, Yeltsin was a definitely two steps behind Gorbachev on the Soviet career ladder, and without his leg-up might have never made it to Moscow at all. A beneficiary of the new leader’s clear out, though not his personal protégé, Yeltsin was called up to Moscow in 1985, and the following year, was assigned the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party, effectively becoming the mayor of the capital.

Yeltsin’s style dovetailed perfectly with the new agenda, and his superior’s personal style, though his personal relationship with Gorbachev was strained almost from the start. Breaking off from official tours of factories, the city administrator would pay surprise visits to queue-plagued and under-stocked stores (and the warehouses where the consumables were put aside for the elites); occasionally abandoning his bulletproof ZIL limo, Yeltsin would ride on public transport. This might appear like glib populism now, but at the time was uncynically welcomed. In the first few months in the job, the provincial leader endeared himself to Muscovites — his single most important power base in the struggles that came, and a guarantee that he would not be forgotten whatever ritual punishments were cast down by the apex of the Communist Party.

Boris Yeltsin, First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Moscow City Committee, at the official meeting celebrating the 70th anniversary of the October revolution.
RIA Novosti.

Boris Yeltsin, left, candidate member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, at lunch.
RIA Novosti.Voters’ meeting with candidate for deputy of the Moscow Soviet in the 161st constituency, First Secretary of the CPSU Moscow Town Committee, Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Boris Yeltsin, centre.
RIA Novosti.People’s deputy Boris Yeltsin. Algirdas Brazauskas (right) and chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council Mikhail Gorbachev on the presidium.
RIA Novosti.

But Yeltsin was not just a demagogue content with cosmetic changes and easy popularity, and after months of increasing criticism of the higher-ups, he struck.

During a public session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in October 1987, the newcomer delivered a landmark speech.

In front of a transfixed hall, he told the country’s leaders that they were putting road blocks on the road to Perestroika, he accused senior ministers of becoming “sycophantic” towards Gorbachev. As his final flourish, Yeltsin withdrew himself from his post as a candidate to the Politburo — an unprecedented move that amounted to contempt towards the most senior Soviet institution.

The speech, which he later said he wrote “on his lap” while sitting in the audience just a few hours earlier, was Yeltsin in a nutshell. Unafraid to challenge authority and to risk everything, with a flair for the dramatic, impulsive and unexpected decision (his resignation as Russian president in his New Year’s speech being the most famous).

Footage shows Gorbachev looking on bemused from above. He did not publicly criticize Yeltsin there and then, and spoke empathetically about Yeltsin’s concerns, but later that day (with his backing) the Central Committee declared Yeltsin’s address “politically misguided”, a slippery Soviet euphemism that cast Yeltsin out into the political wilderness.

Gorbachev thought he had won the round — “I won’t allow Yeltsin anywhere near politics again” he vowed, his pique shining through — but from then on, their historical roles and images were cast.

Gorbachev, for all of his reforms, now became the tame, prissy socialist. Yeltsin, the careerist who nearly had it all, and renounced everything he had achieved at the age of 54 and re-evaluated all he believed in. Gorbachev, the Politburo chief who hid behind the silent majority, Yeltsin the rebel who stood up to it. Gorbachev, the politician who spoke a lot and often said nothing, Yeltsin, the man of action.

Historically, the contrast may seem unfair, as both were equally important historical figures, who had a revolutionary impact for their time. But stood side-by-side, Yeltsin — with his regal bearing and forceful charisma — not only took the baton of Perestroika’s promises, but stole the man-of-the-future aura that had hitherto belonged to Gorbachev, who now seemed fidgety and weaselly by comparison.

While he was stripped of his Moscow role, Yeltsin’s party status was preserved. This had a perverse effect. No one stopped Yeltsin from attending high-profile congresses. No one prevented him from speaking at them. It was the perfect situation — he had the platform of an insider, and the kudos of an outsider. Tens of deputies would come and criticize the upstart, and then he’d take the stage, Boris Yeltsin vs. The Machine.

On June 12, 1990 Russia declared sovereignty from the USSR. A month later, Yeltsin staged another one of his dramatic masterclasses, when he quit the Communist Party on-stage during its last ever national congress, and walked out of the cavernous hall with his head held high, as loyal deputies jeered him.

In June 1991, after calling a snap election, Yeltsin became the first President of Russia, winning 57 percent — or more than 45 million votes. The Party’s candidate garnered less than a third of Yeltsin’s tally.

By this time Gorbachev’s position had become desperate. The Soviet Union was being hollowed out, and Yeltsin and the other regional leaders were now actively colluding with each other, signing agreements that bypassed the Kremlin.

The Communists and nationalists — often one and the same — had once been ambivalent about Gorbachev’s reforms, and anyway had been loath to criticize their leader. But inspired by Gorbachev’s glasnost, and with the USSR’s long term prospects becoming very clear, they now wanted their say as well. A reactionary media backlash started against him, generals pronounced warnings of “social unrest” that sounded more like threats, and some had begun to go as far as to earnestly speculate that Gorbachev was working for the Cold War “enemy.”

USSR IMPLODES

Failed coup brings down faded leader of fractured country

The junta that tried to take power in the Soviet Union on the night of August 18th is one of the most inept in the history of palace coups.

On August 18, all phones at Gorbachev’s residence, including the one used to control the USSR’s nuclear arsenal, were suddenly cut off, while unbeknownst to him, a KGB regiment was surrounding the house. Half an hour later a delegation of top officials arrived at the residence in Foros, Crimea, walked past his family to his office, in their briefcases a selection of documents for Gorbachev to sign. In one scenario, he would simply declare a state of emergency, and proclaim control over all the rebel republics, in another he would hand over power to his deputy Gennady Yanaev, due to worsening health.

Genuinely angry at their disloyalty, the Soviet leader called them “chancers”, and refused to sign anything, saying he would not have blood on his hands. He then showed them out of the house with a lengthy tirade — clearly recollected by all present in their memoirs — in which he crowned the plotters a “bunch of cocks.”

The plotters were not prepared for this turn of events. Gathering once again back in Moscow, they sat around looking at their unsigned emergency decree, arguing and not daring to put their names on the typewritten document. As midnight passed, and more and more bottles of whisky, imported from the decadent West they were saving the USSR from, was brought in, the patriots found their courage, or at least persuaded Yanaev to place himself at the top of the list of signatories. The Gang of Eight would be known as the State Committee on the State of Emergency. Accounts say that by the time they were driven to their dachas — hours before the most important day of their lives — the plotters could barely stand. Valentin Pavlov, he of the unpopular monetary reform, and the prime minister, drank so much he had to be treated for acute alcohol intoxication, and was hospitalized with cardiac problems as the events of the next three days unfolded.

But orders were issued, and on the morning of the 19th tanks rolled into Moscow. While news suggested that nothing had gone wrong — and at this point it hadn’t — the junta made it seem as if everything had. Not only were there soldiers on street, but all TV channels were switched off, with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake iconically played on repeat. By four o’clock in the afternoon, most of the relatively independent media was outlawed by a decree.

But for all their heavy-handed touch the putsch leaders did nothing to stop their real nemesis. Unlike most coups, which are a two-way affair, this was a triangular power struggle – between Gorbachev, the reactionaries, and Yeltsin. Perhaps, like Gorbachev, stuck in their mindset of backroom intrigue the plotters seemed to underrate Yeltsin, and the resources at his disposal.

Russia’s next leader had arrived in Moscow from talks with his Kazakhstan counterpart, allegedly in the same merry state as the self-appointed plotters. But when his daughter woke him up with news of the unusual cross-channel broadcasting schedule, he acted fast, and took his car straight to the center of Moscow. The special forces soldiers placed around his dacha by the conspirators were not ordered to shoot or detain him.

Yeltsin’s supporters first gathered just a few hundred yards from the Kremlin walls, and then on instruction marched through the empty city to the White House building, the home of the rebellious Russian parliament. There, in his defining moment and as the crowd (although at this early hour it was actually thinner than the mythology suggests) chanted his name, Yeltsin climbed onto the tank, reclaimed from the government forces, and loudly, without the help of a microphone, denounced the events of the past hours as a “reactionary coup.” In the next few hours, people from across Moscow arrived, as the crowd swelled to 70,000. A human chain formed around the building, and volunteers began to build barricades from trolleybuses and benches from nearby parks.

Military hardware in Kalininsky prospect after imposition of a state of emergency in August 1991.
RIA Novosti.

Muscovites block the way for military weaponry during the GKChP coup.
RIA Novosti.

Moscow residents building barricades next to the Supreme Soviet during the coup by the State EmergencyCommittee.
RIA Novosti.Thousands of people rallying before the Supreme Soviet of Russia on August 20, 1991.
RIA Novosti.

Though this seemed as much symbolic, as anything, as the elite units sent in by the junta had no intention of shooting, and demonstrated their neutrality, freely mingling with the protesters. Their commander, Pavel Grachev, defected to Yeltsin the following day, and was later rewarded with the defense minister’s seat. The Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov also supported Yeltsin.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin waves from the balcony of the Russian Parliament to a crowd of demonstrators protesting against the overthrow of Soviet President Gorbachev during the brief coup in August 1991, in Moscow August 20, 1991. The result, ironically, was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. REUTERS/Michael Samojeden IMAGE TAKEN AUGUST 20, 1991.
Reuters.

Realizing that their media blackout was not working, and that they were quickly losing initiative, the plotters went to the other extreme, and staged an unmoderated televised press conference.

Sat in a row, the anonymous, ashen-faced men looked every bit the junta. While Yanaev was the nominal leader, he was never the true engine of the coup, which was largely orchestrated by Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB chief, who, with the natural caution of a security agent, did not want to take center stage. The acting president, meanwhile, did not look the part. His voice was tired and unsure, his hands shaking — another essential memory of August 1991.

From left: the USSR Interior Minister Boris Pugo and the USSR Vice-President Gennady Yanayev during the press conference of the members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKCP).
RIA Novosti.

From left: Alexander Tizyakov, Vasily Starodubtsev, Boris Pugo, Gennady Yanayev, and Oleg Baklanov during the press conference of the State of Emergency State Committee (GKCP) members at the USSR Foreign Ministry.
RIA Novosti.

In another spectacularly poor piece of communications management, after the new leaders made their speeches, they opened the floor to an immediately hostile press pack, which openly quoted Yeltsin’s words accusing them of overthrowing a legitimate government on live television.

Referring to Gorbachev as “my friend Mikhail Sergeevich,” Yanaev monotoned that the president was “resting and taking a holiday in Crimea. He has grown very weary over these last few years and needs some time to get his health back.” With tanks standing outside proceedings were quickly declining into a lethargic farce in front of the whole country.

Over the next two days there was international condemnation (though Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat supported the coup) the deaths of three pro-Yeltsin activists, and an order by the junta to re-take the White House at all costs, canceled at the last minute. But by then the fate of the putsch had already been set in motion.

Meanwhile, as the most dramatic events in Russia since 1917 were unfolding in Moscow, Gorbachev carried on going for dips in the Black Sea, and watching TV with his family. On the first night of the coup, wearing a cardigan not fit for an nationwide audience, he recorded an uncharacteristically meek address to the nation on a household camera, saying that he had been deposed. He did not appear to make any attempt to get the video out of Foros, and when it was broadcast the following week, it incited reactions from ridicule, to suspicions that he was acting in cahoots with the plotters, or at least waiting out the power struggle in Moscow. Gorbachev likely was not, but neither did he appear to exhibit the personal courage of Yeltsin, who came out and addressed crowds repeatedly when a shot from just one government sniper would have been enough to end his life.

On the evening of August 21, with the coup having evidently failed, two planes set out for Crimea almost simultaneously from Moscow. In the first were the members of the junta, all rehearsing their penances, in the other, members of Yeltsin’s team, with an armed unit to rescue Gorbachev, who, for all they knew, may have been in personal danger. When the putschists reached Foros, Gorbachev refused to receive them, and demanded that they restore communications. He then phoned Moscow, Washington and Paris, voiding the junta’s decrees, and repeating the simple message: “I have the situation under control.”

But he did not. Gorbachev’s irrelevance over the three days of the putsch was a metaphor for his superfluousness in Russia’s political life in the previous months, and from that moment onward. Although the putschists did not succeed, a power transfer did happen, and Gorbachev still lost. For three days, deference to his formal institutions of power was abandoned, and yet the world did not collapse, so there was no longer need for his dithering mediation.

Gingerly walking down the steps of the airstair upon landing in Moscow, blinking in front of the cameras, Mikhail Gorbachev was the lamest of lame duck leaders. He gave a press conference discussing the future direction of the Communist Party, and inner reshuffles that were to come, sounding not just out-of-touch, but borderline delusional.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev addresses the Extraordinary meeting of the Supreme Soviet of Russian Federation in Moscow in this August 23, 1991 file photo.
Reuters.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev touch hands during Gorbachev’s address to the Extraordinary meeting of the Supreme Soviet of Russian Federation in Moscow, August 23, 1991. REUTERS/Gennady Galperin (RUSSIA).
Reuters.

Gorbachev resigned as the President of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.

“The policy prevailed of dismembering this country and disuniting the state, which is something I cannot subscribe to,” he lamented, before launching into an examination of his six years in charge.

“Even now, I am convinced that the democratic reform that we launched in the spring of 1985 was historically correct. The process of renovating this country and bringing about drastic change in the international community has proven to be much more complicated than anyone could imagine.”

“However, let us give its due to what has been done so far. This society has acquired freedom. It has been freed politically and spiritually, and this is the most important achievement that we have yet fully come to grips with.”

AFTERMATH

Praised in West, scorned at home

“Because of him, we have economic confusion!”

“Because of him, we have opportunity!”

“Because of him, we have political instability!”

“Because of him, we have freedom!”

“Complete chaos!”

“Hope!”

“Political instability!”

“Because of him, we have many things like Pizza Hut!”

Thus ran the script to the 1997 advert that saw a tableful of men argue loudly over the outcome of Perestroika in a newly-opened Moscow restaurant, a few meters from an awkward Gorbachev, staring into space as he munches his food alongside his 10 year-old granddaughter. The TV spot ends with the entire clientele of the restaurant getting up to their feet, and chanting “Hail to Gorbachev!” while toasting the former leader with pizza slices heaving with radiant, viscous cheese.

The whole scene is a travesty of the momentous transformations played out less than a decade earlier, made crueler by contemporary surveys among Russians that rated Gorbachev as the least popular leader in the country’s history, below Stalin and Ivan the Terrible.

The moment remains the perfect encapsulation of Gorbachev’s post-resignation career.

To his critics, many Russians among them, he was one of the most powerful men in the world reduced to exploiting his family in order to hawk crust-free pizzas for a chain restaurant — an American one at that — a personal and national humiliation, and a reminder of his treason. For the former Communist leader himself it was nothing of the sort. A good-humored Gorbachev said the half-afternoon shoot was simply a treat for his family, and the self-described “eye-watering” financial reward — donated entirely to his foundation — money that would be used to go to charity.

As for the impact of Gorbachev’s career in advertising on Russia’s reputation… In a country where a decade before the very existence of a Pizza Hut near Red Square seemed unimaginable, so much had changed, it seemed a perversely logical, if not dignified, way to complete the circle. In the years after Gorbachev’s forced retirement there had been an attempted government overthrow that ended with the bombardment of parliament, privatization, the first Chechen War, a drunk Yeltsin conducting a German orchestra and snatching an improbable victory from revanchist Communists two years later, and an impending default.

Although he did get 0.5 percent of the popular vote during an aborted political comeback that climaxed in the 1996 presidential election, Gorbachev had nothing at all to do with these life-changing events. And unlike Nikita Khrushchev, who suffered greater disgrace, only to have his torch picked up, Gorbachev’s circumstances were too specific to breed a political legacy. More than that, his reputation as a bucolic bumbler and flibbertigibbet, which began to take seed during his final years in power, now almost entirely overshadowed his proven skill as a political operator, other than for those who bitterly resented the events he helped set in motion.

Other than in his visceral dislike of Boris Yeltsin — the two men never spoke after December 1991 — if Gorbachev was bitter about the lack of respect afforded to him at home, he wore it lightly. Abroad, he reveled in his statesmanlike aura, receiving numerous awards, and being the centerpiece at star-studded galas. Yet, for a man of his ambition, being pushed into retirement must have gnawed at him repeatedly.

After eventually finding a degree of financial and personal stability on the lecture circuit in the late 1990s, Gorbachev was struck with another blow — the rapid death of Raisa from cancer.

A diabetic, Gorbachev became immobile and heavy-set, a pallor fading even his famous birthmark. But his voice retained its vigor (and accent) and the former leader continued to proffer freely his loquacious opinions on politics, to widespread indifference.

Gorbachev’s legacy is at the same time unambiguous, and deeply mixed — more so than the vast majority of political figures. His decisions and private conversations were meticulously recorded and verified. His motivations always appeared transparent. His mistakes and achievements formed patterns that repeated themselves through decades.

Yet for all that clarity, the impact of his decisions, the weight given to his feats and failures can be debated endlessly, and has become a fundamental question for Russians.

Less than three decades after his limo left the Kremlin, his history has been rewritten several times, and his role bent to the needs of politicians and prevailing social mores. This will likely continue. Those who believe in the power of the state, both nationalists and Communists, will continue to view his time as egregious at best, seditious at worst. For them, Gorbachev is inextricably linked with loss — the forfeiture of Moscow’s international standing, territory and influence. The destruction of the fearsome and unique Soviet machine that set Russia on a halting course as a middle-income country with a residual seat in the UN Security Council trying to gain acceptance in a US-molded world.

Others, who appreciate a commitment to pacifism and democracy, idealism and equality, will also find much to admire in Gorbachev, even though he could not always be his best self. Those who place greater value on the individual than the state, on freedom than on military might, those who believe that the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the totalitarian Soviet Union was a landmark achievement not a failure will be grateful, and if not sympathetic. For one man’s failure can produce a better outcome than another’s success.

RAISA

Passion and power

The history of rulers is littered with tales of devoted wives and ambitious women pulling strings from behind the throne, and Raisa was often painted as both. But unlike many storybook partnerships, where the narrative covers up the nuances, the partnership between Mikhail and Raisa was absolutely authentic, and genuinely formidable. Perhaps the key to Mikhail’s lifelong commitment, and even open deference to his wife, atypical for a man of his generation, lay in their courtship.

Raisa Gorbacheva, wife of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet Mikhail Gorbachev, in Paris during their official visit to France. Ria Novosti.

In his autobiography, Gorbachev recollects with painful clarity, how his first meeting with Raisa, on the dance floor of a university club, “aroused no emotion in her whatsoever.” Yet Gorbachev was smitten with the high cheek-boned fellow over-achiever immediately, calling her for awkward dorm-room group chats that went nowhere, and seeking out attempts.

— Raisa Gorbacheva
“We were happy then. We were happy because of our young age, because of the hopes for the future and just because of the fact that we lived and studied at the university. We appreciated that.”

It was several months before she agreed to even go for a walk through Moscow with the future Soviet leader, and then months of fruitless promenades, discussing exams at their parallel faculties. With candor, Gorbachev admits that she only agreed to date him after “having her heart broken by the man she had pledged it to.” But once their relationship overcame its shaky beginnings, the two became the very definition of a Soviet power couple, in love and ready to do anything for each other. In the summer vacation after the two began to go steady, Gorbachev did not think it below him to return to his homeland, and resume work as a simple mechanic, to top up the meager university stipend.

The two were not embarrassed having to celebrate their wedding in a university canteen, symbolically, on the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7, 1953. Or put off when the watchful guardians of morality at Moscow State University forbid the newlyweds from visiting each other’s halls without a specially signed pass. More substantial obstacles followed, when Mikhail’s mother also did not take to her daughter-in-law, while Raisa agreed to a medically-advised abortion after becoming pregnant following a heavy bout of rheumatism. But the two persevered. Raisa gave birth to their only child in 1955, and as Gorbachev’s star rose, so did his wife’s academic career as a sociologist. But Raisa’s true stardom came when Gorbachev occupied the Soviet leader’s post.

Soviet President and General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev, 2nd right, and Soviet First Lady Raisa Gorbacheva, right, at the meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, left, at the Soviet Embassy in London.
RIA Novosti.

Raisa Gorbacheva, the wife of the Soviet leader (left), showing Nancy Reagan, first lady of the U.S., around the Kremlin during U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s official visit to the U.S.S.R.
RIA Novosti.General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev (center left) and his spouse Raisa Gorbacheva (second from left) seeing off US President Ronald Reagan after his visit to the USSR. Right: The spouse of US president Nancy Reagan. The Hall of St. George in the Grand Kremlin Palace.
RIA Novosti.Raisa Gorbacheva (left), wife of the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and Barbara Bush (right), wife of the U.S. president, attending the inauguration of the sculptured composition Make Way for Ducklings near the Novodevichy Convent during U.S. President George Bush’s official visit to the U.S.S.R.
RIA Novosti.Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbacheva meets with Tokyo residents during Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachyov’s official visit to Japan.
RIA Novosti.The meeting between Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, President of the USSR and the heads of state and government of the seven leading industrial nations. From left to right: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, Norma Major, Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva and John Major.
RIA Novosti.Soviet president’s wife Raisa Gorbacheva at the 112th commencement at a female college. The State of Massachusetts. Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev’s state visit to the United States.
RIA Novosti.

In a symbol as powerful as his calls for international peace and reform at home, the Communist leader was not married to a matron hidden at home, but to an urbane, elegantly-dressed woman, regarded by many as an intellectual equal, if not superior to Mikhail himself. Gorbachev consulted his wife in every decision, as he famously told American TV viewers during a Tom Brokaw interview. This generated much ill-natured mockery throughout Gorbachev’s reign, but he never once tried to push his wife out of the limelight, where she forged friendships with such prominent figures as Margaret Thatcher, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush.

Raisa was there in the Crimean villa at Foros, during the attempted putsch of August 1991, confronting the men who betrayed her husband personally, and suffering a stroke as a result. It was also Raisa by Gorbachev’s side when they were left alone, after the whirlwind settled in 1991. Despite nearly losing her eyesight due to her stroke, Raisa largely took the lead in organizing Mikhail’s foundation, and in structuring his life. In 1999, with his own affairs in order, not least because of the controversial Pizza Hut commercial, and Russians anger much more focused on his ailing successor, Gorbachev thought he could enjoy a more contented retirement, traveling the world with his beloved.

CPSU Central Committee General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa at Orly Airport, France.
RIA Novosti.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (center), Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbacheva (right), Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Kazakh first lady Sara Nazarbayeva during Gorbachev’s working visit to Kazakhstan.
RIA Novosti.General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and his spouse Raisa Gorbachev (center) at a friendship meeting in the Wawel Castle during a visit to Poland.
RIA Novosti.Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa during his official visit to China.
RIA Novosti.An official visit to Japan by USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev. He with wife, Raisa Gorbachev, and Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu near a tree planted in the garden of Akasaka Palace.
RIA Novosti.Mikhail Gorbachev (center), daughter Irina (right) and his wife’s sister Lyudmila (left) at the funeral of Raisa Gorbachev.
RIA Novosti.Last respects for Raisa Gorbacheva, spouse of the former the USSR president in the Russian Fond of Culture. Mikhail Gorbachev, family and close people of Raisa Gorbacheva at her coffin.
RIA Novosti.Mikhail Gorbachev at the opening of the Raisa exhibition in memory of Raisa Gorbacheva.
RIA Novosti.

— Raisa Gorbacheva
“It is possible that I had to get such a serious illness and die for the people to understand me.”

Then came the leukemia diagnosis, in June of that year. Before the couple’s close family had the chance to adjust to the painful rhythm of hope and fear that accompanies the treatment of cancer, Raisa was dead. Her burial unleashed an outpouring of emotion, with thousands, including many of her husband’s numerous adversaries, gathering to pay their sincere respects. No longer the designer-dressed careerist ice queen to be envied, resented and ridiculed, now people saw Raisa for the charismatic and shrewd idealist she always was. For Gorbachev it made little difference, and all those around him said that however much activity he tried to engage in following his wife’s death, none of it ever had quite the same purpose.

“People say time heals. But it never stops hurting – we were to be joined until death,” Gorbachev always said in interviews

For the tenth anniversary of Raisa’s death, in 2009, Mikhail Gorbachev teamed up with famous Russian musician Andrey Makerevich to record a charity album of Russian standards, dedicated to his beloved wife. The standout track was Old Letters, a 1940s melancholy ballad. Gorbachev said that it came to him in 1991 when he discovered Raisa burning their student correspondence and crying, after she found out that their love letters had been rifled through by secret service agents during the failed coup.

The limited edition LP sold at a charity auction in London, and fetched £100,000.

Afterwards, Gorbachev got up on the stage to sing Old Letters, but half way through he choked up, and had to leave the stage to thunderous applause.

Two Cheers for Realism

April 19, 2022

Source

By Francis Lee

One of the unstated and extant features of the contemporary age has been the demise of the Westphalian Treaty. This arrangement had in times past regulated the relationship and clashes of interest among the great powers. We should remind ourselves that the key precepts of the system were preceded by the carnage of the 30 years’ war in Europe circa 1618-1648, and eventually agreed upon at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 – an arrangement which brought an end to the wars of the Reformation and agreed upon and binding on all parties. These precepts were:

‘’The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs and checking each other’s ambitions through a general equilibrium of power. No single claim to truth or universal rule had prevailed in Europe’s contests. Instead, each state was assigned the attribute of sovereign power over its territory. Each would acknowledge the domestic structures and religious vocations of its fellow states and refrain from challenging their existence. A recognition of the existence of sovereign states within their own clearly defined borders and sphere of influence.’’ * So argued Henry Kissenger (2014)

Alas this is no more, and the system had undergone a long decline throughout its inception for reasons which in time were to become obvious. It was earlier in the wake of World War I that the Westphalian system began to falter. US President Woodrow Wilson joined the war not so much to defend American territory as to “make the world safe for democracy”. If “democracy” was a religion, rather than an ideology or a system of government, then Wilson would not sound very different from the most zealous Crusaders of medieval Europe. Despite Wilson’s idea for a League of Nations failing to gain congressional approval at home, the leaders of Europe went ahead and formed the organization themselves. While the main purpose of the League was to make war obsolete, it utterly failed to do so.

The putative new world ‘order’ in the shape of the UN Charter was first established in 1945 and was an explicitly globalist organization. Whereas Westphalian nationalism held that each country was its own sovereign unit, post-war globalism instead held that certain concepts such as ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘civil rights’ were universal to all humanity, and therefore any nation that restricted such things lost the protections of sovereignty. All very noble but roughly translated this should read.

The two or three great powers had the ability and resolve to structure the world in their own image and in doing so maximise and extend the reach of their power. As for humanity and the subaltern classes and nations; they were to be subordinated to the interests of larger powers and serve those interests. End of.

The great powers would go through the motions in pursuit of their interests – they always do, but the outcome would be tailored to those interests. For example. In 1991, US President George H. W. Bush announced a war against Iraq, which had invaded and occupied the neighbouring nation of Kuwait. However, when push came to shove the great power(s) – in this instance the US – did not hesitate to use their formidable resources – including war, annexation and starvation – against the weaker smaller states who became the objects of war.

Cold War 1 lasted until the break-up of the USSR in 1991. This was manna from heaven for the imperial juggernaut who saw a game-changing opportunity to push ahead with its global hegemonic agenda whilst Russia was entering the Yeltsin disaster years. This was made perfectly clear in a ground breaking directive issued by the then US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy at that time (neo-conservative) Paul Wolfowitz. This was to become known as The Wolfowitz doctrine:  Not intended for initial public release, it was leaked to the New York Times on March 7, 1992. It read:

‘’Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat of the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defence strategy and requires that we endeavour to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.’’(1)

In short: Me Tarzan, you Jane. The US and its satellites were top of the pile and would remain so. Other potentially hostile states will be surrounded, threatened, and intimidated into accepting their subaltern status. This was described by Senator Edward Kennedy as “a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept.” (2) And just to rub salt into the wound the US and its vassal states expanded NATO to include former Soviet republics and ex Warsaw pact states and pushed right up to Russia’s western borders.

Suffice it to say this geo-political arrangement involved a complete rejection of Westphalian principles and has imposed global liberal practise of hegemony and interventionism under the command of the principal global hegemon, the United States. This pursuit of global hegemony represents the implementation of the belief in America’s so-called ‘Manifest Destiny’ – a divine providence to spread the liberal-democratic global order to the rest of the planet and usher in a global Shangri-La of peace, prosperity … and so on and so forth. Of course, this puts the world on a permanent war footing. This has been instanced by wars waged by the empire against Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia and Syria with more in the pipeline as well as a cyber-attack on Iran – the Stuxnet attack – and a number of colour revolutions paid for and organized by the US, Georgia and Ukraine being the most obvious and well-known. But the big prize is and always has been the Eurasian bloc. This of course may well involve a nuclear exchange, but hey, America’s intentions are noble and worth fighting for are they not? It should be understood that the United States is the indispensable, exceptional nation, the shining city on the hill. Blah, blah, blah.

What is particularly disturbing is that this absurd and dangerous doctrine has become akin to a religious orthodoxy. Comparable perhaps to the fanaticism of Wahhabist cults in parts of the Muslim world. It is suggestive of an infantile mindset which views international relations as a Manichean struggle between good and evil. Whether the non-adult proponents actually believe in this doctrine is a moot point. But the pervasiveness of this cult is all but total; this is a 21st century inquisition complete with heresy hunts and a fanatical priesthood of the media and their security handlers in the deep state, in their attempts to close down any other or any independent counter-narrative.

However, once the ideological stranglehold on policy has built up momentum it becomes very difficult to change course. In the language and ideology of neo-con exceptionalism, diplomacy is akin to appeasement, the West is threatened, Russia-Putin is on the rampage, proof (sic) of this was his ‘’invasion’’ of Ukraine. China also is becoming a threat to the western way of life; Carthage must be destroyed. Of course, every one of these assertions are extremely contentious and could/should be countered, but of course they are not; the dominant narrative shall not be profaned or challenged.

As the US and its vassals therefore prepare for war, its populations must be conditioned to believe and accept such an inevitable outcome. The propaganda machine has been stepped up to unprecedented levels. The message is simple. Our side = good, Their side = bad. Our side does good things, their side does bad things. Thus, the media – now an asset of the deep state – plays an essential role of propagating this political construction among the populations of the Anglo-Zionist heartlands.

All of which is very reminiscent of Orwell’s short novel Animal Farm. After the Animal Revolution and the eviction of Jones the Farmer, the sheep were instructed by the ruling group – the pigs – into reciting the goodness of the animals and the badness of humans. The short and endless bleat of the sheep went as follows: ‘’Four legs good, two legs bad,’’ repeated endlessly.

That is about the level of western foreign policy. Good guys, bad guys, white hats, black hats, no compromise, no surrender. Result war. The question we must now ask is has this menacing process gone too far to go into reverse? This of course remains an open question. But the thrust of neo-conservative foreign policy would suggest this war would be a logical outcome. Either that or the whole thing is a bluff. Up to this point the US performance in attacking recalcitrant weak states has not been a roaring success. The same goes for Israel. Bombing countries with no air defence or shooting Palestinian kids with sniper rifles is easy-peasy. Taking on Iran is a different matter entirely. The irresistible force seems to be meeting its immovable object.

From a realist as opposed to a neo-conservative foreign policy the idea of an American world empire is frankly deranged. Pursuit of this pipedream can only result in mutually assured destruction; yes, M.A.D. still applies. The United States and its minions might not like it, but it will have to learn to live with other great powers. Russia, China have legitimate spheres of influence and this should be respected. This will involve an end to the gross provocations in the South China Sea and in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics, not to mention the ongoing series of colour revolutions.

This is true in spades with regard to Israel – a country of a mere 8 million souls with an ambition to create a greater Israel from the Euphrates to the Nile. This objective, involving a ruthless ethnic cleansing has been unremittingly pursued since the British left Palestine in 1948. According to one David Ben-Gurion about how to deal with Palestinians in their midst: ‘’There is a need for strong and brutal reaction’’ (to Palestinian opposition) ‘’ … We need to be accurate about timing, place and those we hit. If we accuse a family, we need to harm them without mercy, women and children included, otherwise this is not an effective reaction … there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty.’’(3) This of course has been par for the course since the late 1940s. But Israel like its American sponsor, must learn to live within its own sphere of influence and not tempt fate by embarking on a Zionist crusade against its near neighbours. It would do well to remember that the Crusades were in their neck of the woods for nearly 200 years, but the invaders were finally driven out in 1291.

The liberal-imperialist Anglo-Zionist regime change ideology is supplemented by the appeal to ‘human rights’ and Responsibility to Protect – R2P. Human Rights apparently override national sovereignty. According to one Francis Fukuyama:

‘’Dictators and Human Rights abusers like Serbia’s Milosevic could not hide behind the principle of sovereignty to protect themselves as they committed crimes against humanity particularly in multi-ethnic states like Yugoslavia where the borders of the sovereign state in question were themselves contested. Under these circumstances outside powers, acting in the name of human rights and democratic legitimacy, had not just the right, but the obligation to intervene. (4)

There you have it. The ‘intervention’ a 78-day bombing offensive by NATO resulted in the deaths of in excess of 5000 civilians in Serbia and elsewhere. But of course, this was not a crime against humanity. Doublethink!? Of course, the glaring anomaly in the regime change R2P ideology lies in its inconsistency. But this is to be expected. It should always be borne in mind that the mission of the AZ-Empire is world domination, not coexistence or democracy. This, however, must never be openly admitted. The veneer of a crusade to make the world a Garden of Eden, is simply a cover for imperial aggrandisement.

‘’Liberal democracies have little difficulty in conducting diplomacy with illiberal states when they are acting according to realist dictates, which is most of the time. In those circumstances, liberal democracies do whatever is necessary to maximize their survival prospects, and that includes negotiating with authoritarian leaders. They sometimes even support or form alliances with murderous dictators as the US did in WW2 when it worked with Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi Germany, or when it cooperated with Mao Zedong after 1972 to contain the Soviet Union. Occasionally they even overthrow democratic regimes (all over Latin America – FL) which they perceive as being hostile. Liberal democracies go to great lengths to disguise such behaviour with liberal rhetoric, but in fact they are acting contrary to their own – professed – principles.’’ (6)

However, this unstable combination of outward authoritarianism and domestic democracy has inbuilt destabilising forces. Long ago it was pointed out by the Greek historian Thucydides that Empire and Democracy cannot co-exist in the long-term. Moreover, the methods of empire would be brought home to deal with the destabilising effects of empire on the state. (5)

Nowhere is this more an ever-present fact than in the great hegemon, the United States itself. It would appear that the United States polity has, at every level, descended into a variety of collective insanity. Witness Rachel Maddow, I know it’s difficult, but bear with me, asserting with complete conviction and sang-froid, night after night, that Donald Trump was a Russian agent! What made this worse was that no-one challenged this idiocy? Ms Maddow’s rant can be compared to the ‘two minutes hate’ in 1984 (only unfortunately it lasted for more than 2 minutes) and of the level of a latent pathology in the media in particular and the body politic more generally.

Speaking of Orwell, his essay Notes on Nationalism nailed this particular political phenomenon. He firstly made it clear that what he meant by nationalism was a more general description of particular religious, or political outlooks.

‘’By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – But secondly – and this is much more important – I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.’’

Thus Neo-Conservatism, Pacifism, Political Catholicism, Zionism, and curiously enough, Anti-Semitism, are all types of nationalism, broadly understood.

Of course, the unprepossessing Ms Maddow is a virulent specimen of this type of mental aberration. The nationalist has to perform the most intricate forms of mental gymnastics in order to believe that their particular beliefs are true and will not tolerate profanation. As Orwell writes:

‘’The nationalist does not only disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has the remarkable capacity of not even hearing about them …All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Conservative will defend self-determination in Europe but oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ’our’ side … Some nationalists are not far from clinical schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest, which have no connexion with the physical world … ‘’

Not far from clinical schizophrenia! I would say well ahead.

And there’s the rub. Realist foreign policy was often cruel and callous but rational, cold and calculating and unlike neo-conservatism it was at least generally non-ideological, which is to say, sane. Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, were ideological projects and Western Imperialism, particularly of the white settler variety, the US, UK Israel, Australia, NZ, were openly racist and murderous in both practise and theory.

In the present geopolitical configuration, it is difficult to assess the outcome of the Anglo-Zionist crusade against the Eurasian bloc. Russia and China are reading from a Westphalian text, the US is reading from a neo-conservative playbook, with its European allies being reluctantly dragged along. In this situation it is difficult to know how this titanic struggle will eventually pan out and to whose benefit. One of the problems which besets any appraisal lies in the fact that the Westphalian system depended upon dialogue with rational actors. These have become as rare as hen’s teeth, if not extinct species in the western centres of power. The US and its reluctant allies will seemingly not give up on its strategic objective of world domination and Russia and China are going to defend themselves. Something has to give, but what?

NOTES

(1)  Defence Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992)

(2)   Orlando Caputo Leiva and Marlene Medrano- Latin American Perspectives Volume. 34, No. 1, The Crisis of U.S. Hegemony in the Twenty-First Century (January 2007), pp. 9-15

(3) Quoted in Pappe, – Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine – p.69. For background on Ben-Gurion’s comment, see Ibid, 61-72. Quoted in – The Israel Lobby – John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt p.99, fn.95

(4) Francis Fukuyama – State Building, Governance and World Order in the 21^st Century – p.131.

Other US Realist Diplomats saw things somewhat differently. Commenting on the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe In 1996, the 92-year-old veteran US geopolitical realist, George Kennan, warned that NATO’s expansion into former Soviet territory was a “strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions.” I think it is the beginning of a new cold war … ‘’I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. NATO expansion was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.” (5) John J Mearsheimer – The Great Delusion, Liberal Dreams and International Realities – p.157.

The EU, Globalization and the Road to Serfdom

December 28, 2021

By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog

PART 1

It might be a good idea to start with some theoretical clarifications. Firstly, nationalism should not be confused with national sovereignty. Nations which are effectively ruled by outside agents – from Greece to Honduras – are not sovereign; they are colonies or vassals of some larger agency. And since they are not sovereign, the cannot be democratic, since decision making, and policies have been abrogated to an external ruling power. Secondly, nationalism: the term which in general is generally regarded as the all-weather bête noire by the orthodox left, can be and often is aggressive, racist, imperialistic, and so forth. But this is only half the story and there are ample reasons to believe that this view is both simplistic and narrowly focussed; ‘nationalism’ can be either a reactionary or a radical/progressive force, depending on the local and political circumstances. This is simply an historical fact. The latter phenomenon is particularly true of those nations which struggled under the yoke of imperialism – from Vietnam to Algeria both ex-French colonies – and who actively engaged in national repeat, national, liberation struggles involving a broad coalition of political forces

However, according to the conventional wisdom of the hyper-globalists both nation states and the whole concept of national sovereignty are now defunct. Their reasoning is based upon the following premises. 1.Most products have developed a very complex geography – with parts made in different countries and then assembled somewhere else – in which case labels of origin begin to lose their meaning. 2. Markets when left unfettered will arrive at optimal price, allocative, and productive efficiency. 3.This means that capital, commodities and labour should be free to move around the globe without let or hindrance to achieve these goals. 4. Any barriers to this process – capital controls, trade unions, exchange rate controls, welfare expenditures, minimum wage legislation, wages and even public goods – will result in price and allocative distortions. Q.E.D.

Such globalization has come to be seen and defined by its proponents as the ‘natural order’, almost a force of nature; an inevitable and inexorable process of increasing geographical spread and increasing functional integration between economic activities. This current orthodoxy goes by various other names, Washington consensus, market liberalisation, neo-liberalism and so on and so forth. In fact, there is nothing ‘natural’ about this stage of historical development, since the whole phenomenon has been politically driven from the outset. (Of which more later).

It is important to note, however, the difference between contemporary imperialism in its present stage – i.e., globalization – and the classical imperialism of pre-1914 vintage that Hobson, Lenin, Bukharin and Rosa Luxemburg were writing about. Classical imperialism was characterised by a shallow integration manifested in arms-length trade in goods and services through independent firms and international movement of portfolio capital and relatively simple direct investment. Note also that the British state granted Charters to investment entities such as the East India Company and the British South Africa Chartered Company to ‘develop’ (exploit) these colonial possessions. Thus, even at this early stage the British state actively intervened to facilitate and open up markets for British capital in India and Africa. This was the liberal epoch trade of the 19^th century. Full-on globalization did not develop, however, due to inter-imperialist rivalries and mercantilist policies being carried out by the competing imperial powers (which eventuated in WW1). The opening up and liberalization of markets – which did not at that time occur – was and still is the conditio sine qua non for the development of full-blown globalization, which even today is nowhere near total.

This generalised retreat from a classical liberal colonialism began with the First World War and lasted until the early 1970s. This statist phase of the global economy was universalized in the west after the aftermath of WW2 in the form of social-democracy and the welfare state. Suffice it to say that this period is long gone having been systematically deconstructed by the present neo-liberal counter-revolution which began circa 1979. The neoliberal phase really got going in the 1980s. This was the time of the Washington Consensus a set of ideological prescriptions based upon archaic Ricardian trade theory (comparative advantage) to be followed to the letter and by all and sundry. It was argued that this would result in an economic nirvana attendant on the removal of distortions to the market mechanism brought about by welfare capitalism. To repeat: the tripod on which neoliberalism is based consists of 1. The free-movement of labour and ‘flexible’ labour markets, 2. the free movement of capital and commodities which in essence means the loss of control of monetary policy, exchange rate policy and capital controls. The neo-liberal regimen also involves 3. downward harmonisation of wages and working conditions, involving fixed term contracts, zero-hour contracts, the weakening or in the case of the United States, the virtual elimination of trade unions, stagnant wages, structural unemployment, which in turn leads to increased indebtedness which benefits the rentier class, and ongoing and deepening structural inequality. This is sometimes called austerity, but this is putting the horse before the cart. Austerity is the effect not the cause of liberalised financial, labour and commodity markets.

The present stage of neo-liberal imperialism differs from the classical stage insofar as we currently live in a world of deep integration organized primarily within and between geographical and complex global production networks as well as other mechanisms. Moreover, a new factor became apparent in this Brave New World – financialization. There has been a massive increase in both the size and scope of financial markets, with money moving electronically around the world at unprecedented speeds, generating enormous repercussions and instability. The system of unlimited fiat currencies mainly used for purely speculative purposes is resulting in ongoing asset price bubbles particularly in stocks, bonds and property, as well as other financial instruments, e.g. derivatives.

To wit:

1. The surge of bank loans to Mexico in the 1970s – Th tequila crisis.
2. The bubble in stocks and Real Estate in Japan – 1985-89
3. The 1985-89 bubble in stocks and property in Norway, Finland and Sweden
4. The bubble in real estate, stocks and currencies in East Asia in 1992-97
5. The bubble in over the counter (OTC) stocks in the US, including hi-tech start-ups
6. The 2002-2008. The property bubble in the US, UK, Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Greek sovereign debt. (Manias, Panics and Crashes – Kindleberger and Aliber – 2011)

Additionally, the global institutions, which emerged from the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, the IMF, GATT/WTO, World Bank, and increasingly central banks around the world, play a crucial role of the construction of trade policies, co-ordination, guidance, as well as providing and enforcing legal statutes designed to keep the globalist ship afloat. But it should be understood that these institutions are highly politicised and ideologically driven and not disinterested arbiters of the common weal. This is amply illustrated by the recurring breakdowns in the various rounds of trade liberalization talks conducted by the WTO when what are perceived by the developing world (with some justification) as being unfair trade agreements foisted on the them by the more affluent and controlling developed states nations who control voting procedures. In passing, it should also be noted that the EU represents a regionalised version of these global institutional structures, the ECB, EC, Council of Ministers, Eurozone Finance Ministers, European Round Table of Industrialists and so forth. Moreover, there exists a revolving door – in career terms – between state institutions and private corporations. N.B. the ease of which big-time globalist financial honchos such as Henry (Hank) Paulson, Steve Mnuchin and Mario Draghi glide effortlessly between the leading US investment bank, Goldman Sachs, and the US Treasury Department and ECB.

Power to shape/control this system is concentrated in the hands of states and/or the newly emergent Transnational Corporations (TNCs). Of course, there is not going to be a simple answer to this as the relationship between these two pillars of modern imperialism is both fractious and permanently mutating. The received wisdom, as put forward by the various spokespersons for globalization, ranging from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) OECD, and IMF, to the globalist house journals – Financial Times, The Economist and Wall Street Journal – of the global Transnational Uberklasse is predictable enough. Namely that the state is always in a subservient position vis-à-vis the dominant TNCs.

This perhaps would qualify as a procrustean effort to make the facts fit the theory. Contrary to the image of the all-powerful TNC demanding fealty and obedience from prostrate states, the relationship is somewhat more symmetrical; corporations and states are always to a certain degree joined at the hip.

‘’ … they are both competitive and competing, both supportive and conflictual. They operate in a fully dialectical relationship, locked into unified but contradictory roles and positions, neither one nor the other partner completely able to dominate.’’ (Picciotto, S. 1991 The Internationalisation of the State – Capital and Class 43.43-63)

The widespread notion that a TNC can simply up sticks and move lock, stock and barrel to a more compatible venue if its home base no longer suits it purposes is fanciful in the extreme. All TNCs have home bases, national HQs. Here is where global strategy is determined; here is where top-end R&D is carried out; here is where design and marketing strategies take place; here is where the domestic market is situated and where long-term domestic suppliers are located; here is where overseas operations are conceived planned and carried through; here is where AGMs of the Corporations takes place with published accounts circulated to all shareholders; here is where the local workforce, at all levels, is recruited; here is where the political bureaucracy and the above mentioned institutions are situated and amenable to lobbying. Picking an obvious example, the US defence industries, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman are all based domestically and are not going to move out anytime soon.

It is unquestionably true that TNCs and states often have divergent goals: TNCs’ primary function is to maximise profits and enhance shareholder value, whereas the economic role of the state should be to maximise the economic welfare of its society. But although this conflictual relationship exists, states and TNCs need and lean on each other in a variety of ways. States might wish that TNCs are bound by allegiance to national borders – and in many ways they are (see above) – but total allegiance is not an option in a liberal capitalist economy. Indeed, it would be true to say that some states regard TNC (activities) as being complementary to their foreign policy. Here economic issues merge with geopolitical imperatives. For example:

‘’American political leaders have believed that the national interest has also been served by the foreign expansion of US corporations in manufacturing and services. FDI has been considered a major instrument through which the US could maintain its relative position in world markets, and the overseas expansion of TNCs has been regarded as a means to maintain America’s dominant world position.’’ (Gilpin, R. 1987 – The Political Economy of International Relations.)

On the other hand. Businesses, Corporations, TNCs, have always needed the state to provide the necessary infrastructure without which their operations would not be possible. This infrastructure includes what are sometimes called ‘public goods’ the built environment of roads, railways, airports, ports, canals, health services, education at all levels, a legal system, a centralised government with the power to tax and spend, as well as control monetary policy by a central bank, various procurement policies – in the US particularly involving the Military Industrial Complex – publicly funded research, which played an absolutely vital role in the development of the internet and Silicon Valley. In addition, there have been a range of cultural and political goods – the media for example – some of which were provided by the state, the BBC and public service broadcasting, and some by the market, newspapers and commercial television, albeit privately subsidised.

In short, the relationship between TNCs and states is complex and symmetrical and does not conform to the simplistic ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ globalist trope. In fact, the relationship has betimes been the other way around. During the post-war period both Japan and South Korea were at pains to block Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from overseas TNCs entering their economies, principally by operationalising import controls. This notwithstanding the fact that both countries were export orientated. The reasoning behind this policy was that the type nation-building mercantilism being which has been and is still the only way out of under-development could not work in an open liberalised economy. Similarly, Chinese development included inward FDI by overseas Corporations, BUT this time around the state-TNC roles were reversed. Automobile firms wished to invest in China for the simple reason of access to the world’s largest growing market which served as a powerful incentive for these firms to enter. But the Chinese government, consistent with its state-capitalist, mercantilist policies had complete control over such entry and adopted a policy of limited access to foreign firms. It is customary to imagine that TNCs always have the upper hand in the bargaining process, but this time it was different. Auto TNCs whose experience had conditioned them to play off states against each other, were subjected to the humbling experience of China who – given its control of FDI entry – was able to play off one TNC against another.

In fact, the East Asian development model – which for want of a better label I will call, state-capitalist mercantilism – has been successful in enabling states such as China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and possibly Thailand, and Malaysia to claw their way out of the trap of underdevelopment. This nation-building developmental strategy was first outlined by the German economist Freidrich List. The policy advocated imposing tariffs on imported goods while supporting free trade of domestic goods and stated the cost of a tariff should be seen as an investment in a nation’s future productivity – worked and was operationalised in the 19^th century by both Germany and the United States, with a view to breaking British industrial and trade hegemony, which it did. As for free-trade, that was a policy strictly for the losers who to this day stay under-developed. It is also worth adding that the East Asian development bloc did not seek permission from the imperialist behemoth to carve out their own place in the sun.

We can say, therefore, that ultimately the negotiating relationship and outcomes between states and TNCs will depend on the relative bargaining strength in any specific instance. It is argued that if nation states are capable of so much why does the record show that they have achieved so little.

Well, South Korea was about equal to Tanzania in terms of all the economic, social and cultural indictors in the 1950s when it was just recovering from the Korean war.

South Korea is now one of the developing world’s long-term success stories. The country is now classified by the World Bank as a high-income economy, with PPP income exceeding $29,000.00 in 2010. Korean consumer electronics and other goods – auto-vehicles, Kia and Hyundai – have become synonymous with high quality and low price. Even more impressive is Korea’s achievements in social development, in education, and health. Life expectancy is now over 75 and the country’s HDI was placed 26^th in 2004. As was the case in Japan inward investment was discouraged in favour of an infant protection industry and export led growth. Exports in such sectors as consumer electronics and auto-vehicles, and more recently in high technology have grown at an extraordinary rate. One very important reason for this has been a national strategy that has favoured the promotion of increasingly sophisticated exports and technology. Strong financial incentives for industrial firms to move up the value chain of skills and technology were built into most of the government’s policies. These policies included:

1. Currency Undervaluation: The effective exchange rate favoured cheaper exports and more expensive imports – an overt mercantilist approach

2. Preferential access to imported intermediate inputs needed to produce export goods

3. Targeted infant industry protection as a first stage before launching an export drive.

4. Tariff exemption on imports of capital goods needed in exporting activities

5. Tax breaks for domestic suppliers of inputs to exporting firms, which constitutes a domestic content incentive

6. Domestic indirect tax exemptions for successful exporters.

7. Lower direct taxation on incomes gained from exports.

8. The creation of public enterprises to lead the way in establishing a new industry.

9. The setting of export targets for firms.

(Todaro and Smith – Economic Development – 2009)

These policies were, of course, and still are, the exact opposite of the Ricardian free-trade comparative advantage model and are an anathema to any orthodox economists.

Herewith a development comparison Tanzania/South Korea.

Tanzania:

GDP, US$47,652 – GDP per capitaUS$857 – Education Expenditure US$1678.9, Govt Health Expenditure per capita US$24

South Korea:

GDP = US$1,411,042 – GDP per capitaUS$27,535 – Education Expenditure US$ 289,283.4 -Govt. Health Expenditure per capita US$159. (countryeconomy.com)

I think this is enough and don’t wish to labour the point, the gap is self-evidently enormous. But now the subsidiary question arises: what explains the divergent paths of development for two countries starting at the same point?

Well, according to the conventional wisdom ‘‘the incidence of wealth is only weakly related to the way in which the sovereign power of the state is exercised and is much more closely aligned to the ways in which states are aligned with the circuits of global capitalism.’’ Wrong! Political agency has everything to do with economic and social development, ‘‘and the way in which the sovereign power of the state is exercised.’’ If this were not the case East Asian development strategies would never have worked. Modernisation and development requires/required the indispensable political prerequisite of a modernising, nation-building ruling stratum which mobilises the whole nation in this revolution from above. This pattern has always been almost without exception the historical experience of capitalist development.

Such political and state institutions together with modernising class forces have/been and are, notably weak or even absent in what we generally refer to as the under-developed or developing world. ‘States’ (and I use this term advisably) such as Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo lack the political and social modern(ising), structures and institutions as we understand them which might bring about economic and social development. Crucially, the class structure of these societies is dominated by a comprador bourgeoisie, a self-aggrandising, self-serving elite whose interests are intertwined with the imperial overlord in the ongoing exploitation and looting of their own country. We also know that such nations are stuck in the production of raw materials and agricultural products – low value-added, low research-intensive, low-productivity, primary commodities – all of which are both price and income inelastic and have had a tendency toward price stagnation and decline in the long run – a structural deterioration in their terms of trade. (Oil may be an exception to this, but oil prices are notoriously volatile.) Thus, the unequal and increasing gap between the higher income and lower income countries. But is this the end of the matter? Well from a rigidly structuralist point of view it would seem to be. History, however, is an open ended and semi-voluntaristic process – as the famous quote goes, ‘Men make history, but do not do it as they please’ – and a number of possibilities for fundamental structural changes exist. But for real change to take place both economic and political/ideological conditions must be present.

‘’History has shown that the vicious circles of poverty and underdevelopment can be effectively attacked only by qualitatively changing the production structures of poor and failing states. A successful strategy implies an increasing diversification away from sectors with diminishing returns (traditional raw materials and agriculture) to sectors with constant and increasing returns (technology, intensive manufacturing and services) creating a new and more complex division of labour and new social-economic structures in the process. In addition to breaking away from subsistence agriculture, this will create an urban market for goods, which will further induce specialization and innovation, bring in new technologies, create both alternative employment and the economic synergies that unite a nation state. The key to economic development is the interplay between the sectors with increasing and diminishing returns in the same labour market.’’ (How Rich Countries got Rich, Why Poor Countries Stay Poor – Erik Reinert).

Thus, if you wish to bake a cake these are the ingredients. But comprador bourgeoisies and their imperial sponsors have other priorities and preoccupations, nation-building and economic development are not among them.

PART 2

Turning to the EU the regional prototype for the globalization project, it was Patrick Buchanan, an American conservative who once correctly stated in ‘The American Conservative’ that the US Congress ‘is an Israeli occupied zone’’ by which he meant of course that Israel and the Israeli Lobby, both external and internal, has had a huge input into the framing and operation of US foreign policy. In a similar vein the EU is also occupied territory under the tutelage of US imperialism. (This process of blatant meddling in European affairs by the US-CIA started with ‘Operation Gladio’ in the late 1940s) but the perceived enemy was not merely Soviet communism, but also sotto voce European social and political theory and practise, notably, Gaullism and social-democracy, both of which have long since been politically cleansed with the EU being reconfigured as neo-liberal, and (since the alignment of the EU security structures have been aligned with NATO) neo-conservative vassal states overseen and represented by odious little Petainist/Quisling occupation regimes. This is only too apparent when the fawning behaviours of May, Macron and Merkel vis-à-vis the US are observed. Whenever the US master says jump, the Europeans will reply ‘how high’ And this is even more pronounced by the newly arrived Eastern European states. A group which Dick Cheney once described as the ‘new Europe.’ By which meant the political force which was operationalised to fundamentally change the political direction of the EU in the late 20^th century. Euro-widening was meant to prevent euro-deepening, and it worked a treat.

The ongoing Americanisation of Europe carries with it the toxic values of liberal individualism, market liberalisation, structural inequality, a philosophy of winner takes all, and a rapacious/murderous imperialism. A nightmare Hobbesian world of a ‘war of everyman against everyman’; John Stuart Mill also weighed in with considerable disdain writing ‘I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that of trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels, which forms the existing type of social life are the most desirable lot of humankind … (J.S.Mill – Principles of Political Economy).

The Americanisation process has been going on for the last half century. It degrades Europe, causes it to regress, forces it to abandon everything in its progressive past contribution to the capitalist stage of production the antidotes which it allowed it to resist the liberal poison and promote democracy and equality despite it.

‘’Old Europe’’ has nothing to learn from ‘’Young America.’’ There will be no progress possible on any European project as long as the US grand strategy is not foiled.’’ (The Liberal Virus – Samir Amin)

One particular crisis in the EU – the unfolding to the denouement of the Greek debacle – has presented an archetypal learning curve for an understanding of the structural problems involved in the EU and occasioned a virtual industry of copious tracts which purport to explain the crisis, and I have no wish to repeat the whole sorry tale here. I would say, however, that if Syriza was in earnest in taking on the Troika it would have required not just an imaginary backing of a long-defunct and toothless euro social-democracy, but also a withdrawal from the euro – certainly a leap into the unknown. Assuredly this would have been a high-risk policy – and no-one should be under the illusion that there is any easy way out. The trouble is that social-democracy has vanished into history; the soft-options specialists. The SPD (Germany) PS (France) PASOK (Greece) PSOE (Spain) are political organizations which might (occasionally) refer to themselves as social-democrats, or even on occasion ‘socialists’ but of course they are nothing of the sort. ‘By their works shall thee know them.’

And,

‘’ … Syriza’s strategy was not only long-run but also attempted to incorporate the social virtues of Europe’s once dominant social-democratic heritage. What Syriza did not adequately understand, however, was that heritage was now history, buried deep under the refuse pile of new neo-liberal values.’’ (Looting Greece – Jack Rasmus)

Now we have Varoufakis going on to declare that the ‘nation is dead’. Well, that is certainly true of Greece, which is now to all intents and purposes a colony with the grotesque spectacle of Syriza now playing a governing role in a regime that at one time it stridently opposed. The assertion that nations as such are no longer sovereign – a statement which is wrong both theoretically and empirically – but has a limited application. Truth be told some states are more sovereign than others, and the sovereign nations call the shots vis-à-vis the vassal/colonies which are not sovereign. (One wonders if the United States, or Israel or indeed Syria which has been engaged in physically defending its sovereignty for some time, are not sovereign. I think they are, but Mr Varoufakis may wish to differ) Greek sovereignty and democracy disappeared when the Troika and EU finance ministers and French and German banks forced the surrender and took over the running(-down) of the Greek economy. But this was inevitable in a liberal internationalist globalist economy; open borders will simply mean that TNCs will be free to exploit the productive resources of any country in the world – particularly labour – in order to maximise their economic power at the expense of society’s. In other words, societies with open markets, will be unable to impose any effective controls to protect themselves from the rapacious incursions of TNCs as Polanyi pointed out long ago.

So, what does the ‘supra-national’ solution offer other than comforting words.

Try the following.

‘’DiEM2025 stands today as an attempt to learn the lessons of defeat, and to prepare for future struggles for building a stronger network, not of globalists, but left-wing internationalists whose strategies for advance include the dislocation of imperialist economic chains, as well as real progress in building the capacities of national societies to strengthen democracy and provide for the well-being of their nations.’’

All of which strikes this writer as a series of clichés and meaningless abstractions. Please note, the dog-eared phraseology, ‘learn the lessons of defeat’ ‘prepare for future struggles’ ‘strengthen democracy’ and ‘provide for the well-being of their populations.’ You might as well throw in motherhood and apple pie whilst you’re at it.

Then comes the dawn of realization that ‘a future Labour government which -assuming of course that the next government will be Labour – attempting to carry out its declared programme of bringing some elements of the economy under national control ‘’will come under the assault not only from the EU, but also Washington.’’ Really! Never occurred to me that! What does a Labour government do in this hypothetical situation? Surrender, Syriza style. No, we apparently need a Europe-wide supra-national strategy based upon what policies exactly? We must assume, according to the orthodoxy, that the nation state is either dead or dying, an article of faith of the globalist left and the Washington Consensus. Ergo, the policy the ‘left internationalists’ is one of inter alia ‘strengthening democracy’ – all very noble. But provided that the neo-liberal tripod of the three freedoms of movement – capital, labour, commodities – remains in place, political change will not take place. And provided the institutional infrastructure of globalized capitalism – the IMF, WTO, World Bank, the EU are overseeing and enabling the neoliberal project economic and political change will not take place. It is not the shackles of nationalism that give rise to the bureaucratic monstrosity which is the EU but precisely the opposite. The neo-liberal imperatives of open borders, liberalized markets, flexible labour markets and freedom of movement of labour, capital and commodities, might have had something to do with it. Unless these political/ideological roadblocks are addressed the status quo will continue and continue to deteriorate.

In terms of alliance building, political convergence between states cannot be constructed at regional (for example the EU) or even less so at global levels even if it is not achieved firstly at the level of nations. Because whether we like it or not, nations define and manage concrete realities and challenges, and it is only at these levels that changes in the social and political balance of forces to the advantage of the popular classes will or will not occur. Changes at the regional and global level may reflect national advances and certainly facilitate them – but nothing more.

In order to stop the onward march of globalist neoliberalism governments and state must regain control of their economies. There is no single way to achieve this critical goal, but without it hemispheric co-operation will remain little more than an empty rhetorical flourish. Moreover, everywhere electorates are looking to governments to be a counterweight to footloose corporations. It is this intuitive perception to rein-in markets that will increasingly occupy centre-stage between pro and anti the coming decade. For social-political movements the nation-state continues to be the chosen instrument for the organization of society. However much social institutions will have to adapt to new global pressures, what is not in doubt is that the nation-state remains the crucible for equality seeking movements the world over. Efficiency, profitability and competitiveness have not won the hearts and minds of the peoples worldwide.’’ (States Against Markets – Boyer and Drache)

Reform of the EU, which I understand to be the goal of the campaign of pro-EU aligned leftist factions, fails to take into consideration the fact that the EU cannot be reformed since its whole ideological structure and constitution is built upon neo-liberal technocratic assumptions which can clearly be identified in the interior belief-systems of the bureaucracy and consequently the daily practise and deliberations of its internal institutions. Being explicitly designed on a neoliberal model which was cemented by legal statutes have made such changes impossible.

‘’Any belief that the EU can be ‘democratised’ and reformed in a progressive direction is a pious illusion. Not only would this require an impossible alignment of left movements/governments to emerge simultaneously at the international level. On a more fundamental level, a system that was created with the specific aim of constraining democracy cannot be democratised. It can only be rejected.’’ (Thomas Fawzi – Lexit Digest)

Reinforcing the conservative structure of the EU’s political institutions, and here I have in mind the European Parliament, are dominated by two powerful blocs.

1. An alliance of political parties, centre-left and centre-right which form the usual centrist mish-mash, the extreme centre, as it has been called. This centrist bloc is composed predominantly of euro-enthusiasts and who command a working majority in the European parliament and other EU institutions. 2. The geo-political alliance – i.e., the infusion of members of the ‘New Europe’ into the EU, who were generally very pro-American and fanatically Russophobic, this along with the parallel expansion and incorporation of these new states into NATO has served to undermine some of the earlier Gaullist and social democratic traditions in Europe.

It seems clear, therefore, that the pro-EU bloc which dominates the political, economic and strategic agenda of the EU, in addition to the permanent institutional structures which are mandated to carry out existing policies, will continue to do so for any foreseeable future despite the pipe-dreams of the ‘left-wing internationalists’. Even Varoufakis has admitted that this approach is frankly ‘utopian’ – and if this is the case, the Remainer left can only play games and give a leftish veneer in an attempt to reform what they apparently believe is an unstoppable historical development (globalization). (Lexit Digest)

Having said all this the final outcome of this imbroglio may include elements of piecemeal reform and/and or outright rejection, which is what usually happens. We shall see. But it would be useful perhaps to have an open dialogue between all parties involved rather than highly partisan and misleading attempts to smear and shout down opponents – and we are all guilty to a degree in this respect – who may have something positive to offer.

Reconsidering Regionalism in the United States

November 10, 2021

By Walt Garlington for the Saker Blog

The existential questions regarding the future of the present American union continue to grow more complex and more dire:

What comes after liberalism?

Can nationalism restore unity and purpose?

At the heart of these questions and others like them is a problem that has plagued the States since their independence in 1776: the belief that a political ideology is enough to create a homogenous cultural identity. Early on, Thomas Jefferson was writing about an ‘extensive’ ‘empire of liberty’; John Adams, about America as mankind’s second chance at the paradise of Eden. These strands of political mysticism merged into a messianic melody sung into existence by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address in which the cause of union and its preservation became a sacred act that all future generations of Americans must take part in if representative government is to remain and ‘not perish from the face of the earth.’

Our eyes have been full of the stars of these philosophical dreams for many years. Until lately – when the weakness of a political creed as a foundation for a lasting culture is being exposed. But this is to our benefit as we can now place the emphasis where it should have been all along: on the various regional cultures that exist within the United States. These have a lasting character; it is on these that we should build our future.

Certain books are foundational for beginning this process of rebuilding, as they reveal the origins and the durable characteristics of those who settled the various regions (reviews of some of these books are linked):

Albion’s Seed by David H. Fischer;

The Nine Nations of North America by Joel Garreau;

American Nations by Colin Woodard; and

Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States: The Attack on Leviathan by Donald Davidson, which made Dr Russell Kirk’s list of ten essential conservative books – high praise indeed.

Through works like these we can begin to see the main cultural materials with which we can build: for New England, the traditions of the east of England (Essex, East Anglia); for the South, the traditions of southwest England (Wessex, etc.), the borderlands of Scotland and England, Northern Ireland, and parts of Africa, France, and Spain; for the Great Plains, the German and Scandinavian cultures; for the desert Southwest, Spanish is a major influence; Hawai’i carries the traditions of the native Pacific islanders, and on from there.

A unified culture is what gives rise to a unified nation, tribe, society, etc. This is what the regions possess, but it is precisely what the United States taken together have always lacked. To the extent that there is such a thing, it is, as Dr. Clark Carlton once said in one of his Faith and Philosophy podcasts (which sadly seem to have disappeared into the cyberspace ether), merely the vapid secular consumerism that overtook all the States after New England and her northern children won the victory in the War between the States. If we add to this the political mysticism mentioned above, we will be very close to the definition of that sad little creature called ‘American culture’.

The idea of separating the current union into smaller, regional confederations is not new. Below is a list of some past proposals to that end provided by Mr Terry Hulsey:

• The Vermont Republic (1777)

• The New York proposal by its Senator Rufus King and Oliver Ellsworth to dissolve the Union (1794)

• Opponents of Jefferson’s 1803 Louisiana Purchase, notably Josiah Quincy III

• The New England secessionists during the War of 1812

• The Hartford secessionists and their supporters in the Essex Junto (1814-15)

• The secessionism of Federalist and former President John Quincy Adams (1839)

• Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and the New England Anti-Slavery Conventions (1834, 1844, 1858)

• The proposed secession of five Middle Atlantic states (1860).

But if the union is to remain in existence, it should be reformed such that it resembles much more the Articles of Confederation or the United Nations, a federation in which the coordinating authority has few powers that it can wield over the region-nations that are part of it, and in which each of those participating will have a veto that it can use to stop any action – legislative, executive, or judicial – from going into effect.

Such a sweeping decentralization (or separation) will yield great benefits at home and abroad. Domestically, it will help put an end to the deeply polarizing cultural battles that constantly inflame anger and tension between the progressive cultures of New England and the West Coast and the more conservative/traditional cultures of the South and Midwest; each region would be able to decide those matters for herself rather than facing the prospect of one or more of the other sections forcing its beliefs about drug legalization, transgender rights, law and order, abortion, etc., upon her.

Internationally, it would help reduce the risk of needless wars by taking out of geopolitics the hegemonic-messianic behavior of the swaggering Indispensable Nation that has tasked itself with converting all the world to its liberal, democratic creed.

Yes, the regional cultures which we have written about have grown very faint after decades of living within the corrosive atmosphere of liberalism. Yet the alternative – attempting to trudge along under the existing paradigm – is worse, for it is a fantastical chimera based on false and failing economic, political, and religious ideas. But our forefathers in these various cultural spaces have left us with plenty of material to help us in our work of restoration: poems, novels, histories, biographies, theological works, geographies, music, recipes, and the like. With these and with a determined will and God’s help (for He is a God of Resurrection), each section can nurse its native life back to health.

The end of the current union seems inevitable for a number of reasons: The instability inherent in the ideology of selfish individualism that reigns in most parts of it; the plans of the globalist technocrats to dismantle it, as detailed by their spokesmen like Jacques Attali in his book A Brief History of the Future; prophecies by Orthodox Saints like the holy Elder Ephraim of Arizona; and so on. Prudence would have us prepare properly to meet this event that seems likely to occur, rather than be caught flat-footed as the maelstrom approaches.

The advantages of reinvigorated regionalism are many; the drawbacks are few. Let the Great Reorganization begin.

أنطون سعاده حلم مشرقيّ وشهيد حي

ناصر قنديل

–

لم يُنجِب المشرق شخصيّة عبقريّة ونضاليّة بمكانة أنطون سعاده، فقد عرف الشرق أبطالاً خاضوا معارك أسطوريّة وحققوا انتصارات تاريخيّة، أو سقطوا في ملاحم استشهادية، كما عرف الشرق قادة سياسيين نقلوا واقع كياناته ودوله من مراحل إلى مراحل، وكتبوا سيَرَهم بأحرف من نور، وعرف الشرق قادة حركات مقاومة أنجزوا ما عجزت الجيوش عن إنجازه، وعرف الشرق مفكّرين وكتّاب وفلاسفة ألمعيّين تركوا بصماتهم في الفكر الإنساني، لكن هذا الشرق لم يعرف شخصاً جمع كل ذلك في سيرة حياته القصيرة بمثل ما جسّدها أنطون سعاده.

–

قُدّمت عقائد ومشاريع فكرية سياسية لشعوب المنطقة، عالج بعضُها قضية التحرر من الاستعمار كأولويّة وتفوّق في رسم معاملها، وعالج بعضُها قضية الوحدة وأبدع، وعالج بعضُها قضية العدالة الاجتماعية وتفوّق، وعالج بعضُها قضية الأمراض الاجتماعية وشكل الدولة القادرة على توحيد النسيج الوطني، فوقع بعضُها في العداء مع الدّين، ووقع بعضُها الآخر في محاولة توفيق هشّة بين مفهوم الدين ومفهوم الدولة، لكن التجربة الحية لكل هذه العقائد قالت باستحالة بلوغ مرتبة متقدّمة من الإنجاز في أيّ من هذه العناوين، رغم الإنجاز الأولي المحقق، ما لم يلاقيه تناسب في الإنجاز في العناوين الأخرى، فكانت عقيدة سعاده وحدَها التي نجحت بتقديم الأجوبة المتكاملة على الأولويّات المتزامنة والمتلازمة، وبصورة تفادت خلالها الوقوع في ثنائيّات قاتلة، فتجاوزت الفِخاخ التي وقع فيها الآخرون، فهي متصالحة مع الدين وليست دينيّة، وهي مدنيّة وليست إلحاديّة، وهي نوع من اشتراكيّة لا تلغي المبادرة الفردية، ونوع من رأسمالية لا تلغي دور الدولة، ووحدويّة بحدود المدى الجغرافيّ الأضيق، وتحررية الى المدى الأبعد الذي يمثله اليقين بأمة عظيمة لا تعاني عقدة النقص تجاه الغير شرقاً وغرباً، لكنها تنطلق في التحرّر من فلسطين والصدام الوجوديّ مع كيان الاستيطان الغاصب.

–

خلال عقود الاحتلال التي عاشها لبنان، تعرّف اللبنانيون على فكر سعاده حزباً مقاوماً، وخلال عقد المواجهة التي خاضها السوريّون مع الإرهاب عرفوا عقيدة سعاده منظومة وحدة اجتماعيّة وسلم اجتماعي، ومقاومين يستشهدون الى جانب الجيش السوري دفاعاً عن وحدة وسيادة سورية، وفي ذروة الأزمات المحيطة بدول المنطقة اقتصادياً وأمنياً، قدّمت عقيدة سعاده مشروع وحدة الحياة بين كيانات المشرق، وما عُرف بالتشبيك الذي دعا إليه مفكّرون كثيرون ليس إلا بعضاً مما قدّمه سعاده.

–

عرف سعاده أهميّة الجماعة المنظّمة، وعرف أهمّية دم الشهادة، فتلازما مع مسيرته قائداً حزبياً وشهيداً لقضيته وحزبه، وعرف الأخطبوط الداخليّ والخارجيّ الممسك بالسيطرة على بلاد المشرق مبكراً أن سعاده وفكره وحزبه خطر داهم، فتضامنوا وتفاهموا على التخلّص منه بصورة دراميّة لا تزال بصماتها توقظ ضمائر الأحرار، ورغم مضي عقود على ما كتبه سعاده في كل ميدان سيكتشف مَنْ يقرأه ومَن يُعيد قراءته، أنه كتب لهذه الأيام، وأن أضعف الإيمان هو العرفان، وللعرفان موجبات، أولها دعوة الجيل الشاب للتعرّف على مفكّر من لحمه ودمه يشكل عبقريّة استثنائيّة وشخصيّة أسطوريّة، يباهي بها شعوب الأرض، ومن العرفان أن ينهض محبّو سعاده وتلامذته بما يليق بالصورة التي يستحقّها لإعادة تقديمه مخلّصاً يحمل مشروعاً يستطيع أن ينهض بلبنان وسورية وكيانات المشرق نحو التقدّم، وفكر سعاده نسخة علمانيّة غير مستوردة لا تتعارض مع الإسلام والمسيحيّة، ونسخة اقتصادية اجتماعية صُنعت في بلادنا تقدّم حلولاً جذرية لمشكلاتنا، ومشروع مقاومة تتّسع لكل مقاوم بوصلته فلسطين، ومشروع وحدة تتّسع مع أتباع عقيدته، للقوميين العرب والإسلاميين والأمميين، فوحدة بلاد الشام توفر لكل هؤلاء قلعة حرّة تتسع لمشاريعهم التحرّرية والوحدويّة والإنسانيّة.

No, Anees, the novel is still long لا يا أنيس.. الرواية ما تزال طويلة

No, Anees, the novel is still long

We disagreed a lot, but we agreed on what was going on with Palestine.

حياة الحويك عطية

Source: Al-Mayadeen Net

I knew him 50 years ago when the whole nation was rising, and I last met him in Damascus.

No, Anis, the novel is still long, and we will all leave before it is over, and there are generations that have not yet been born.

I was in my third year of law school, in my second year in the Syrian National Social Party, and at the height of the enthusiasm to break all the sectarian, class and isolationist fences of any kind, when I read that the Islamic schools of “Makassed” ask for a part-time French language school, which I was doing in the school of Jisr al-Basha camp.

I made my request, and everyone laughed at me: Can you believe that “Makassed” will choose Maronite to be the first Christian schoolteacher in its classes!? I was chosen. That was the decision of the late Shafiq Al Wazzan. I flew with joy, from breaking the regional barrier to breaking the sectarian barrier.

It was the days of the big dream, and we were young, living it with certainty.  Between “purposes” and their atmospheres, especially the “Union of Students of Purposes”, the faculty of law and its atmosphere, party work, and the association of all of this with Palestinian work.

Najah Wakym

Our partisan nervousness existed and strong, reinforced by early youth, but our national and national compass was clear and stronger than all the nervousness.

Therefore, we were inspired by the elections of Najah Wakim, who defeated Naseem Majdalani in his constituency, the young Christian Jubaili who had just graduated from the Arab University of Beirut, who presented himself as the candidate of the party or the political current (Nasiriyah) and youth, and without any funding, defeated the traditional and sectarian leadership in its own backyard.

Zaher al-Khatib

Like him, Zaher al-Khatib’s breakthrough was in Al-Shuf. (The two became the only deputies to vote against the humiliating May 17 agreement with the Israeli enemy) . 

In this battle, I met Anis al-Naqash, and I did not know that it was Mazen. I knew that he was a fighter in the ranks of the Student Union and in Fatah, and that he was close to Abu Jihad. I felt interested when I was told in the party that he was the nephew of Dr. Zaki Al-Naqash, the man who was with Anton Saada in the founding phase, and then moved away to become a national Islamic destination distinguished by his seriousness and boldness.

He was a Fathawi par excellence, but his name was attached to the Popular Front at one point, specifically the two martyrs Kamal Khair Bek and Wadih Haddad, to come shock after 40 years in his confessions during a dialogue with his friend Sakher Abu Fakhr, and another television interview, that he did not go to Kamal, and to Wadih Haddad, except by order of Abu Jihad, to show him all that Haddad was planning, and then to prevent what Abu Jihad was rejecting.

Therefore, he recounted in detail his role in the thwarting of the Vienna Process Why? Because the front used to see that this kind of external operation was the one that shocked international public opinion, telling him that the Palestinian people exist, and Palestine is not a land without a people for a people without a land. Whereas, “Fatah”, which he is from, and Abu Jihad is its second man, she believed that some operations harm the security and image of the Palestinian resistance, and that assassinations, especially diplomacy, are not a useful method for a resistance that wants to gain Arab and international public opinion. Anis was risking himself to implement these visions. Compliance or conviction?

In both cases, he was a fighter, but on the ground, the choice of forming resistance cells was inevitable, and there is no dispute about it. Accordingly, Anis was the first to work on this in southern Lebanon after the secret organization in Beirut.

George Ibrahim Abdullah

I haven’t seen him since that time in Beirut until the late 1990s. I thought he wouldn’t be released from life imprisonment (in a break in Damascus, in 2015 he touted me how he put his strategy in prison so that no one would forget him, so that he would not be a victim of the improvement of Franco-Iranian relations in the days of Mitterrand). And he came out. Leaving the abandoned militant George Ibrahim Abdullah.

In 2002, we met on the plane from Beirut to Doha. We didn’t exchange a word. The besieged Iraq was a wall between us. Our meetings were repeated in Doha for Al-Jazeera programs, until we openly opened the discussion in a breakfast session. I was surprised by his acceptance of the harsh controversy. I did not deny that the Iran-Iraq war was a Western American fabrication. I had translated hundreds of documents proving this (especially the Elysee diaries during the era of Mitterrand, in which Western officials were arranging for the continuation of the war until the two sides were exhausted), but I did not accept leaving Iraq for its siege and for the obvious plot, it is the wall of the nation, and I, who covered, on the ground, presence, study, follow-up and translation, every stray and present around it from 1980 until two months before the occupation of 2003.

We disagreed a lot, but we agreed on the issue of Palestine. This man believed with strange optimism that Palestine is an issue that cannot be erased. One way or another, there will always be surprises that will return them to their rightfulness. What he did not say explicitly is that he considers that the tried methods have failed and must be renewed. I asked him sincerely: Is it the search for an alternative that led you and Munir Shafiq to the Islamic option? He smiled cunningly, and said, “Maybe yes, maybe not.

As a result of his relationships, it was once said that he was influenced by Anton Saadeh, and once by Mao Zedong, especially with his proximity to Munir Shafiq, and once by Marx and Lenin, and even by Michel Aflaq, until he admitted that he had read them all and learned from them all, but his real teachers were his responsible in the field resistance from the age of 15 to the gray. Let us say, the security resistance, because most of his tasks were in this area, whether it was dialogue diplomacy or the dangerous field. As he admitted, his first course was in Egypt, and we don’t know what’s next.

The Levantine Confederation – Conflict of Identities and Policies

In Damascus, we met repeatedly, and worked in a joint book. I confronted him with that, and he admitted to me that the events in Syria changed a lot for everyone and crystallized a lot. He told me about his project The Levantine Confederation , so I told him: In principle, the axis is a thing and the nation is something, and if it mixes, it ruins everything, then the problem does not lie only in geography. Unless sectarian and ethnic sub-identities dissolve, geography only expands the arena of conflict. He surprised me with approval. He considered Syria a matter of life or death. He told me: Palestine will end if Syria ends. I told him: I remember Jean-Pierre Schweinmann when he wrote in 1991 about an American plan to Lebanonize Iraq. Now, we must not allow Syria to be stirred. this is the most important. This alone is a bet for the survival or demise of Palestine.

Today, I cry heartily. I knew him while we were a young generation collecting from their pocket money for the resistance, and the generation of our young people today left between those who live as martyrs to prevent death and those who beg the NGOs and the embassies to enjoy the dollars and sell the homeland and the concerns of the citizens.

I knew him as we delivered a young Christian to parliament for a Sunni constituency without the cost of a penny. A young man with whom we disagree ideologically and patricianly, but we support him and we are winning. We differ from dozens of trends, but we meet on the big goals. We know that the Communists and Charles de Gaulle fought together to liberate the country from Nazism, and they know that they will later disagree on the social program, without disbelieving each other.  I knew him as a young generation that succeeded in breaking sectarian walls, and we were appointed to Palestine. And here he is leaving with the walls rising, and the eye on the nation from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon to Palestine.   

I knew him 50 years ago when the whole nation was rising, and I last met him in Damascus. We couldn’t leave the hotel, because the shelling was coming out of Ghouta. We left only when It was liberated. Yesterday, friend Ahmed al-Darzi said that Anis wrote on a paper two days before his departure: I am finished, the novel isdead!!   

No, Anis, the novel is still long, and we will all leave before it ends, but there are generations that have not yet been born.  

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لا يا أنيس.. الرواية ما تزال طويلة

عرفته قبل 50 عاماً حين كانت الأمة كلها تنهض، والتقيته آخر مرة في دمشق. لا يا أنيس، الرواية ما تزال طويلة، وسنرحل كلّنا قبل أن تنتهي، وهناك أجيال لم تولد بعد.

اختلفنا كثيراً، ولكننا اتفقنا على ما يخص فلسطين

كنت في سنتي الجامعيّة الثالثة في كليّة الحقوق، وفي سنتي الثانية في الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي، وفي عز مرحلة الحماس لتكسير كل الأسوار الطائفية والطبقية والانعزالية، من أي نوع كانت، حين قرأت أنّ مدارس “المقاصد” الإسلامية تطلب مدرّسة لغة فرنسية بدوام جزئي، وهو ما كنت أقوم به في مدرسة مخيم جسر الباشا.

قدمت طلبي، وضحك الجميع مني: هل تصدقين أن “المقاصد” ستختار مارونية لتكون أول مدرّسة مسيحية في صفوفها!؟ وتم اختياري. كان ذلك قرار المرحوم شفيق الوزان. وقد طرت فرحاً، من كسر الحاجز الإقليمي إلى كسر الحاجز الطائفي. 

كانت أيام الحلم الكبير، وكنا صغاراً نعيشه بيقين التحقّق.  بين “المقاصد” وأجوائها، وخصوصاً “اتحاد طلاب المقاصد”، وكلية الحقوق وأجوائها، والعمل الحزبي، وارتباط كل ذلك بالعمل الفلسطيني. كنت أسمع بـ “مازن”؛ النموذج النشط وصاحب القدرة التنظيمية الكبيرة. كنا نعرف أن معظم الأسماء حركية، ولكننا لم نكن نأبه بمعرفة من وراءها. المهم هو الأفق الذي يكمن أمامها. 

كانت عصبيّاتنا الحزبية موجودة وقوية، يعزّزها الشباب المبكر، ولكن بوصلتنا القومية والوطنية كانت واضحة وأقوى من كل العصبيات. لذلك، هلّلنا لانتخابات نجاح واكيم الّذي هزم نسيم مجدلاني في دائرته؛ الشاب الجبيلي المسيحي الذي كان قد تخرج للتو من جامعة بيروت العربية، والذي طرح نفسه مرشح الحزب أو التيار السياسي (الناصرية) والشباب، ومن دون أي تمويل، فهزم الزعامة التقليدية والطائفية في عقر دارها. ومثله كان اختراق زاهر الخطيب في الشوف. (أصبح الاثنان النائبين الوحيدين اللذين تجرّآ على التصويت ضد اتفاقية 17 أيار المذلّة مع العدو الإسرائيلي). 

في هذه المعركة، التقيت أنيس النقاش، ولم أعرف أنه مازن. عرفت أنه مناضل في صفوف الاتحاد وفي “فتح”، وأنه قريب من أبو جهاد. شعرت بالاهتمام عندما قيل لي في الحزب إنه ابن شقيق الدكتور زكي النقاش؛ الرجل الذي كان مع أنطون سعادة في مرحلة التأسيس، ثم ابتعد ليصبح مقاصدياً قومياً إسلامياً متميزاً بجديته وجرأته. 

بعدها، سمعنا الكثير عن أنيس. كان فتحاوياً بامتياز، ولكن اسمه التصق في فترة ما بالجبهة الشعبية، وتحديداً بالشهيدين كمال خير بيك ووديع حداد، لتأتي الصدمة بعد 40 سنة في اعترافاته خلال حوار مع صديقه صخر أبو فخر، وحوار تلفزيوني آخر، بأنه لم يذهب إلى الجبهة، وإلى كمال، وإلى وديع حداد، إلا بأمر من أبو جهاد، ليطلعه على كل ما كان يخطط له حداد، ومن ثم ليمنع ما كان يرفضه أبو جهاد.

وعليه، روى بالتفصيل دوره في إفشال عملية فيينا. لماذا؟ لأن الجبهة كانت ترى أنّ هذا النوع من العمليات الخارجية هو الذي يصدم الرأي العام الدولي، ويقول له إن الشعب الفلسطيني موجود، وفلسطين ليست أرضا بلا شعب لشعب بلا أرض. في حين أن “فتح”، وهو منها، وأبو جهاد رجلها الثاني، كانت تعتقد أن بعض العمليات يسيء إلى أمن المقاومة الفلسطينية وصورتها، وأن الاغتيالات، وخصوصاً الدبلوماسية، ليست أسلوباً مفيداً لمقاومة تريد كسب الرأي العام العربي والدولي. كان أنيس يخاطر بنفسه لتنفيذ هذه الرؤى. امتثالاً أم قناعة؟ 

في الحالين، كان مقاتلاً، أما على الأرض، فكان خيار تشكيل خلايا مقاومة هو المحتوم، والذي لا خلاف حوله. وعليه، كان أنيس أول من عمل على ذلك في جنوب لبنان بعد التنظيم السري في بيروت. 

لم أره منذ تلك الفترة في بيروت وحتى أواخر التسعينات. اعتقدت أنه لن يخرج من السجن المؤبد (وفي جلسة استراحة في دمشق، عام 2015 حكى لي بطرافة كيف وضع استراتيجيته في السجن كي لا ينساه أحد، وكي لا يكون ضحية تحسن العلاقات الفرنسية الإيرانية أيام ميتران). وخرج.. ليبقى المناضل المتروك جورج إبراهيم عبد الله. 

في عام 2002، التقينا في الطائرة من بيروت إلى الدوحة. لم نتبادل كلمة واحدة. كان العراق المحاصر جداراً بيننا. تكررت صدفة لقاءاتنا في الدوحة لبرامج “الجزيرة”، إلى أن افتتحنا النقاش بصراحة في جلسة فطور. فوجئت بتقبله الجدل القاسي. لم أنكر أن الحرب العراقية الإيرانية هي افتعال أميركي غربي. كنت قد ترجمت مئات الوثائق التي تثبت ذلك (وخصوصاً يوميات الإليزيه في عهد ميتران، وفيها كيف كان المسؤولون الغربيون يرتبون لاستمرار الحرب إلى أن ينهَك الطرفان)، ولكنني لم أتقبل أن يترك العراق لحصاره وللمؤامرة الواضحة، فهو الجدار الاستنادي للأمة، وأنا التي غطيت، حضوراً ميدانياً ودراسة ومتابعة وترجمة، كل شاردة وواردة حوله منذ 1980 وحتى شهرين قبل احتلال 2003. 

اختلفنا كثيراً، ولكننا اتفقنا على ما يخص فلسطين. كان هذا الرجل مؤمناً بتفاؤل غريب بأن فلسطين قضية لا يمكن أن تشطب. وبطريقة أو بأخرى، ستتفجر دائماً مفاجآت تعيدها إلى حقها. ما لم يقله بصراحة أنه يعتبر أن الأساليب المجربة فشلت ولا بدَّ من جديد. سألته بصدق: هل البحث عن البديل هو ما دفعك ومنير شفيق إلى الخيار الإسلامي؟ ابتسم بمكر، وقال: ربما نعم، وربما لا.

نتيجة علاقاته، كان يقال مرة إنه تأثر بأنطون سعادة، ومرة بماو تسي تونغ، وخصوصاً مع قربه من منير شفيق، ومرة بماركس ولينين، وحتى بميشال عفلق، إلى أن اعترف بأنه قرأهم جميعاً وتعلم منهم جميعاً، ولكن معلميه الحقيقيين هم مسؤولوه في المقاومة الميدانية مذ كان صبياً في الخامسة عشرة من عمره وحتى الشيب. ولنقل، المقاومة الأمنية، لأن معظم مهامه كانت في هذا المجال، سواء كانت دبلوماسية حوارية أو ميدانية خطرة. وكما اعترف، كانت أول دوراته في مصر، ولا ندري ما بعدها. 

في دمشق، التقينا مراراً، وعملنا في كتاب مشترك. واجهته بذلك، واعترف لي بأن أحداث سوريا غيرت الكثير لدى الجميع وبلورت الكثير. حدثني عن المشرقية، فقلت له: مبدئياً، المحور شيء والأمة شيء، وإذا اختلطا، خرب كل شيء، ثم إن المشكلة لا تكمن فقط في الجغرافيا. ما لم تذب الهويات الفرعية، الطائفية والعرقية، فالجغرافيا توسع ساحة الصراع فحسب. فاجأني بالموافقة. كان يعتبر سوريا قضية حياة أو موت، قال لي: ستنتهي فلسطين إن انتهت سوريا. قلت له: أتذكر جان بيير شفينمان عندما كتب في العام 1991 عن خطة أميركية للبننة العراق. الآن، يجب ألا نسمح بعرقنة سوريا. هذا هو الأهم. هذا وحده رهان بقاء أو زوال فلسطين.

اليوم، أبكي بحرقة. عرفته ونحن جيل شباب يجمع من مصروف جيبه للمقاومة، ورحل وجيل شبابنا اليوم بين من يثوي شهيداً لمنع الموت ومن يتسول الـ “أن جي أوز” والسفارات لينعم بالدولارات ويبيع الوطن وهموم المواطنين. عرفته ونحن نوصل شاباً منا مسيحياً إلى البرلمان عن دائرة سنية ومن دون كلفة قرش. شاب كنا نختلف معه عقائدياً وحزبياً، ولكننا ندعمه ونهلل لفوزه. نختلف بين عشرات الاتجاهات، ولكننا نلتقي على الأهداف الكبرى. نعرف أن الشيوعيين وشارل ديغول قاتلوا معاً لتحرير البلاد من النازية، وهم يعرفون أنهم سيختلفون في ما بعد على البرنامج الاجتماعي، من دون أن يكفّر أحدهما الآخر.  

عرفته ونحن جيل شباب ينجح في تكسير الأسوار الطائفيّة، وعيننا على فلسطين. وها هو يرحل والأسوار تعلو، والعين على الأمة من العراق إلى سوريا إلى لبنان إلى فلسطين.   

عرفته قبل 50 عاماً حين كانت الأمة كلها تنهض، والتقيته آخر مرة في دمشق. لم نستطع مغادرة الفندق، لأن القصف كان ينهمر من الغوطة. لم نغادر إلا وقد تحررت. يوم أمس، قال الصديق أحمد الدرزي إن أنيس كتب على ورقة قبل رحيله بيومين: أنا انتهيت، ماتت الرواية!!   

لا يا أنيس، الرواية لا تزال طويلة، وسنرحل كلّنا قبل أن تنتهي، لكن هناك أجيال لم تولد بعد.  

فيديوات ذات صلة

مقالات ذات صلة

• أنيس النقاش: الطريق إلى «الكونفدرالية المشرقية»
• أنيس النقّاش.. الرواية لم تمت
• النقّاش.. المعاني كثيرة والرمز واحد
• البوصلة والطريق الثوري
• الكاتب أحمد الدرزي: أنيس النقاش كان مهمومًا بكيفية إنقاذ سوريا وكان له دوراً أمنيًا وعسكريًا
• قرار حاسم للراحل النقاش غيّر وجه عملية اختطاف وزراء “أوبك” في فيينا

It is not about Trump or Biden

NOVEMBER 22, 2020BY GILAD ATZMON

By Gilad

It is about Urban vs. Rural

It is about Globalist vs. Nationalist

It is about Cosmopolitans vs. Patriots

It is about Tribal vs. Universal

It is not about Democrats or Republicans 

It is about Identitarians vs. Americans

It is about the ‘as a’ people vs. Authenticity 

It is about a ‘Great Reset’ vs. longing for greatness

It is about Jerusalem vs. Athens

It is really about the ‘last days of the Weimar Republic’ all over again. 

Throughout its history, capitalism has been using different tactics to suppress opposition. 

At one stage it was the fantasy of an inevitable revolution. It is indeed the threat of that rebellious spirit which contributed to the evolvement of the welfare state, yet the promised revolution never materialized. 

 It doesn’t take a genius to gather that in historical perspective, those senses of freedom, productivity and hope which became Western emblems during the post-World War II era, had very little to do with our humanist desires and whims. Our ‘freedom’ was manufactured to titillate the poor human fellows behind the Iron Wall. The Cold War which threatened to wipe out civilization was just the means towards capitalist growth. Accordingly, it would be right to argue that we owe our post-war sense of ‘freedom’ to the USSR and Stalin. The more oppressive communism was, the more liberal the West pretended to be. Once the Soviet bloc evaporated, there was no need to sustain our ‘freedom.’ There was no one to ‘titillate’ with Coca Cola and McDonalds. A new Battle Zone was required to divert the masses’ attention from their true eternal oppressors.

Once again it was the so-called ‘Left’ that provided the goods. Instead of the old Left mantra that called to unite us into a proletarian angry fist regardless of our race, skin color, gender or ethnicity, the ‘New Left’ introduced a completely new hymn. Against the most basic Left universal ethos, the New Left taught us to think and speak ‘as a’: ‘as women,’ ‘as a gay,’ ‘as trans,’ ‘as a Jew,’ ‘as a Latino,’ ‘as a Black.’ We practically learned to fight each other instead of uniting into one people. Instead of eliminating differences, we built new ghetto walls emphasizing and celebrating every possible dividing line (White/Black, male/female, heterosexual/LGBTQ etc.). Instead of identifying Wall Street, MSM propaganda and the technology giants as our fierce global enemy, these actually became the catalysts and cash suppliers in a war we, the people, foolishly declared upon ourselves.

In this new ‘Left’ Identitarian amalgam, every ‘as a’ voice is welcome except the White one. Is it because anyone really believes that ‘White people’ are categorically or collectively bad? I doubt it. It is simply because the so-called ‘White’ was picked to play the ‘role’ of the Soviet bloc. The ‘White’ has become the new imaginary ‘evil.’ 

As things stand no one in America can unite the nation: neither Biden nor the DNC can introduce a harmonious solution as the above are actually extensions of the problem. Biden and the DNC are inherently tied to Wall Street, Soros, the MSM and technology giants that formulated and sustain this tragic battle. Trump and the GOP of course, cannot do much either, because in the eyes of his many opponents Trump himself is the core of this entire disaster.  He is clearly ‘too white’ on top of being a ‘man’ and if this is not enough, he is also an abrasive narcissist. 

What we see in America is practically the Weimar Republic all over again.

The public is losing its trust in the democratic process and democratic institutions. Poverty and public unrest is spiking. The national press and media are becoming more and more detached from larger segments of the population. Amidst all of this, Wall Street is booming. The two sides of this divide cannot tolerate each other. They are removed demographically, spiritually, culturally and intellectually.  Democracy is becoming a nostalgic notion in the USA and this shouldn’t take us by a big surprise as democracy and freedom are not and never have been prime capitalist goals or values. Democracy and liberty were the means, not the goal. They were there to serve mammonism.* But not anymore; back in November 2016 Wall Street gathered that democracy is in the way. The City of London came to the same conclusion after the Brexit referendum.

If America wants to save itself, it may have to grasp its conditions first. It better transcend itself beyond the fake battle between Trump and Biden or between the Democrats and the GOP. America should figure out who is pushing it into the abyss of civil war.  America should figure out who works so hard and successfully, so far, to split it and every other Western country in the middle.

If Orwell’s 1984 carries any prophetic merit, it is easy to figure out who is taking care of the Big Brother’s role. What you may want to do next is figure out who is/what is the current Immanuel Goldstein? Who controls the opposition?    

* Mammonism the obsessive pursuit of material wealth and possessions.

Win-Win vs Lose-Lose: The Time Has Come for the World to Choose

Matthew Ehret October 21, 2020

It is a tragedy of our age that society has been locked in a zero-sum operating system for so long that many people living in the west cannot even imagine a world order designed in any other way… even if that zero sum system can ultimately do nothing but kill everyone holding onto it.

Is this statement too cynical?

It is a provable fact that if one chooses to organize their society around the concept that all players of a “great game” must exist in a finite world of tension as all zero-sum systems presume, then we find ourselves in a relatively deterministic trajectory to hell.

You see, this world of tension which game masters require in today’s world are generated by increasing rates of scarcity (food, fuel, resources, space, etc). As this scarcity increases due to population increases tied to heavy doses of arson, it naturally follows that war, famine, and other conflict will rise across all categories of divisions (ethnic, religious, linguistic, gender, racial etc). Showcasing this ugly misanthropic philosophy during a December 21, 1981 People Magazine Interview, Prince Philip described the necessity of reducing the world population stating:

“We’re in for a major disaster if it isn’t curbed-not just for the natural world, but for the human world. The more people there are, the more resources they’ll consume, the more pollution they’ll create, the more fighting they will do. We have no option. If it isn’t controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation, and war.”

When such a system is imposed upon a world possessing atomic weapons, as occurred in the wake of FDR’s death and the sabotage of the great president’s anti-colonial vision, the predictably increased rates of conflict, starvation and ignorance can only spill over into a global war if nuclear superpowers chose to disobey the limits and “norms” of this game at any time.

Perhaps some utopian theoreticians sitting in their ivory towers at Oxford, Cambridge or the many Randian think tanks peppering foreign policy landscape believed that this game could be won if only all nation states relinquished their sovereignty to a global government… but that hasn’t really happened, has it?

Instead of the relinquishing of sovereignty, the past decade has seen a vast rise of nationalism across all corners of the earth which have been given new life by the rise of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and broader multipolar alliance. While these impulses have taken on many shapes and forms, they are united in the common belief that nation states must not become a thing of the past but rather must become determining forces of the world’s economic and political destinies.

The Case of the Bi-Polar USA

Unfortunately, within the USA itself where nationalism has seen an explosive rise in popularity under President Trump, the old uni-polar geopolitical paradigm has continued to hold tight under such neocon carryovers as Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Esper, CIA director Gina Haspel and the large caste of Deep State characters still operating among the highest positions of influence on both sides of the aisle.

While I genuinely believe that Trump would much rather work with both Russia, China and other nations of the multipolar alliance in lieu of blowing up the world, these aforementioned neocons think otherwise evidenced by Pompeo’s October 6 speech in Japan. In this speech, Pompeo attempted to rally other Pacific nations to an anti-Chinese security complex known as the Quad (USA, Australia, Japan and India). With his typically self-righteous tone, Pompeo stated that “this is not a rivalry between the United States and China. This is for the soul of the world”. Earlier Pompeo stated “If the free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will change us.”

Pompeo’s efforts to break China’s neighbours away from the Belt and Road Initiative have accelerated relentlessly in recent months, with territorial tensions between China and Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Indonesia and Brunei being used by the USA to enflame conflict whenever possible. It is no secret that the USA has many financial and military tentacles stretching deep into all of those Pacific nations listed.

Where resistance to this anti-China tension is found, CIA-funded “democracy movements” have been used as in the current case of Thailand, or outright threats and sanctions as in the case of Cambodia where over 24 Chinese companies have been sanctioned for the crime of building infrastructure in a nation which the USA wishes to control.

Pompeo’s delusional efforts to consolidate a Pacific Military bloc among the QUAD states floundered fairly quickly as no joint military agreement was generated creating no foundation upon which a larger alliance could be built.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi accurately called out this regressive agenda on October 13 saying:

“In essence [the Indo-Pacific Strategy] aims to build a so-called Indo-Pacific NATO underpinned by the quadrilateral mechanism involving the United States, Japan, India and Australia. What it pursues is to trumpet the Cold War mentality and to stir up confrontation among different groups and blocs and to stoke geopolitical competition. What it maintains is the dominance and hegemonic system of the United States. In this sense, this strategy is itself an underlying security risk. If it is forced forward it will wind back the clock of history.”

China Responds with Class

China’s response to this pompous threat to peace was classy to say the least with Wang Yi teaming up with Yang Jiechi (Director of China’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission) who jointly embarked on simultaneous foreign tours that demonstrated the superior world view of “right-makes-might” diplomacy. Where Wang Yi focused his efforts on Southeast Asia with visits to the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Laos, Thailand and Singapore, Yang Jiechi embarked on a four-legged tour of Sri Lanka, the UAE, Algeria and Serbia.

While COVID assistance was a unifying theme throughout all meetings, concrete economic development driven by the Belt and Road Initiative was relentlessly advanced by both diplomats. In all bilateral agreements reached over this past week, opportunities for cooperation and development were created with a focus on diminishing the points of tension which geopolticians require in order for their perverse “game” to function.

In Malaysia, the $10 billion, 640 Km East Coast Rail link was advanced that will be completed with China’s financial and technical help by 2026 providing a key gateway in the BRI, as well as two major industrial parks that will service high tech products to China and beyond over the coming decades.

After meeting with Wang Yi on October 9, Indonesia’s Special Presidential Envoy announced that “Indonesia is willing to sign cooperation documents on the Belt and Road Initiative and Global Maritime Fulcrum at an early date, enlarge its cooperation with China on trade and investment, actively put in place currency swap arrangements and settlements in local currency, step up the joint efforts in human resources and disaster mitigation, and learn from China’s fight against poverty.”

In Cambodia, a major Free Trade Agreement was begun which will end tariffs on hundreds of products and create new markets for both nations. On the BRI, the New International Land-Sea Trade corridor and Lancang-Mekong Cooperation plans were advanced.

In the Philippines, Wang Yi and Foreign Minister Locsin discussed Duterte’s synergistic Build Build Build program which reflects the sort of long term infrastructure orientation characteristic of the BRI which are both complete breaks with the decades-long practices of usurious IMF loans which have created development bottlenecks across the entire developing sector.

In Thailand Wang Yi met with the Thai Prime Minister where the two accelerated the building of the 252 km Bangkok-Korat high speed rail line which will then connect to Laos and thence to China’s Kunmin Province providing a vital artery for the New Silk Road.

In the past few years, the USA has been able to do little to counter China’s lucrative offers while at best offering cash under the rubric of the Lower Mekong Initiative established under the Hillary-Obama administration in preparation for the Asia Pivot encirclement of China that was unleashed in 2012. This was done as part of a desperate effort to keep China’s neighbors loyal to the USA and was meant to re-enforce Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership which Trump thankfully destroyed during his first minutes in office.

Yang Jiechi’s Four-Legged Tour

In Sri Lanka, a $90 million grant was offered by China which will be devoted to medical resources, water supplies and education and which the Chinese embassy website stated “will contribute to the well being of Sri Lankans in a post-COVID era”. Another $989 million loan was delivered for the completion of a massive expressway stretching from Central Sri Lanka’s tea growing district to the Port of Hambanota. While this port is repeatedly used by detractors of the BRI like Pompeo as proof of the “Chinese debt trap”, recent studies have proven otherwise.

In the UAE, the Chinese delegation released a press release after meeting with Prince Zayed al-Nahyan stating: “Under the strategic guidance of President Xi and the Abu Dhabi crown prince, China will enrich the connotation of its comprehensive strategic partnership with UAE, cement the political trust and support, promote alignment of development strategies, and advance high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road.”

In Algeria, Yang offered China’s full support for the New Economic Revival Plan which parallels the Philippines’ Build Build Build strategy by focusing on long term industrial growth rather than IMF-demands for privatization and austerity that have kept North Africa and other nations backward for years.

Finally in Serbia which is a vital component of the BRI, the Chinese delegation gave its full support to the Belgrade-Budapest railway, and other long term investments centered on transport, energy and soft infrastructure, including the expansion of the Chinese-owned Smederevo Steel Plant which employs over 12 000 Serbians and which was saved from bankruptcy by China in 2016. By the end of the trip, Prime Minister Brnabic announced: “Serbia strongly supports China both bilaterally and multilaterally, including President Xi Jinping’s Access and Roads Initiative and the 17+1 Cooperation Mechanism, in the context of which most of Serbia’s infrastructure and strategy projects will be realized”

The Spirit of Win-Win Must Not Be Sabotaged

Overall, the spirit of the growing New Silk Road is fast moving from a simple east-south trade route towards a global program stretching across all of Africa, to the Middle East, to the High Arctic and Latin America. While this program is driven by a longer view of the past and future than most westerners realize, it is quickly becoming evident that it is the only game in town with a future worth living in.

While China has committed to the enlightened idea that human society is more than a “sum of parts”, the Cold Warriors of the west have chosen to hold onto obsolete notions of human nature that suppose we live in a world of “each vs. all”. These obsolete notions are premised on the bestial idea that our species is destined to do little more than fight for diminishing returns of scraps in a closed -system struggle for survival where only a small technocratic elite of game masters calling themselves “alphas” control the levers of production and consumption from above.

Thus far, President Trump has distinguished himself from other dark age war hawks in his administration by promoting a foreign policy outlook centered on economic development. This has been seen in his recent victories in achieving economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, and endorsing the Alaska-Canada railway last month. With the elections just around the corner and the war hawks flying in full force, it is clear that these piecemeal projects, though sane and welcomed are still not nearly enough to break the USA away from its course of war with China and towards a new age of win-win cooperation required for the ultimate survival of our species.

What would it take for proponents to say: ‘The Great Lockdown was wrong’?

April 28, 2020

By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog

There must be SOME criteria where the proponents of the Great Lockdown could say, “In hindsight, this was wrong.”

It is obviously hysterical to insist that admitting a policy mistake is totally, completely impossible. German fascists are not wiping out Poland, after all.

I mean, what if a secret global doomsday machine in Poland gets triggered if global GNP falls below a certain threshold, wiping out humanity? Certainly then all would agree, “The Great Lockdown turned out to be a mistake,” right?

Absurd extremes aside, the coronavirus overreaction has turned into a major test case for today’s Western worship of both technocracy and scientific secularism. Since 1980 they have insisted that national cultures should not play any shaping role in public policy because Westerners have discovered a system of “universal values” which should guide all national governments.

(The Western system is – of course – actually based on aristocratic/bourgeois neoliberalism & neo-imperialism.)

A corollary is that a technocratic 10% should be implementing these values with zero lower-class input into public policy formation. A second corollary is that science is the one, true, rightly-guided, infallible way. In April 2020 the doctors and professors are always right, and US President Donald Trump is always wrong.

But… then how do we explain this written – not spoken – declaration from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, as reported by AP? This was published on April 24, during the truly fake-news controversy regarding Trump and injecting disinfectants.

“Given that countries currently in ‘summer’ climates, such as Australia and Iran, are experiencing rapid virus spread, a decrease in cases with increases in humidity and temperature elsewhere should not be assumed,” the researchers wrote earlier in April in response to questions from the White House Office of Science and Technology.”

But Iran is not in summer – they are in the northern hemisphere, so Iran is in spring.

Australia is in the southern hemisphere – it is in autumn.

In fact, due to the tilting of the earth, if the northern hemisphere is in spring then the southern hemisphere can only be in autumn, never in summer. Spring in the north and summer anywhere else is an impossibility.

Not only am I not a rightly-guided epidemiologist, I am not even a scientist and yet I know this. Heck, maybe even Trump knows this.

Associated Press, the largest news-gathering organisation in the world, obviously made the same elementary mistake as these scientists. It is very possible that in their rabid desire to discredit Trump the journalists cared more about over-exaggerating his clearly off-the-cuff science than fact-checking.

My point here is not to say “gotcha, you are dumb” – my point is to say that this is precisely why socialist democracy (which relies on consensus) is so much more valuable than Western technocratic individualism. You see: God, in His wisdom, made humans imperfect – and that includes epidemiologists and we journalists.

That is why the West’s choice to rely solely on epidemiologists, and also a mainstream media which is supposed to be always ever-skeptically vetting everyone’s declarations, is a fundamentally flawed approach to handling the corona response. Combine this with a Western system where politicians are forced to be always either in electioneering mode or fund-raising mode, and you get a system which uncritically bows to very mistake-prone earthly authorities.

I find it stunning that US polls have consistently pegged general support for the lockdowns to be at 80%, and that an unthinkable 95% of Democrats say the measures don’t go too far. Considering all the poverty, the refusals to loan to Main Street, the delays in government aid, the exponentially-increasing certainty of prolonged economic chaos – Americans are still not fed up? I can only theorise that the US people have been so propagandised by a lack of “contrarian voices” – contrarian because they dare to say that the needs of the lower classes must be voiced and implemented – that they have been terrified into submission by their media. Democrats are obviously the least open to different ideas – we see how fantastically total their groupthink is.

But back to my main point: what are the realistic criteria where people would say – as people must often do if we are to have a civilised society which progresses – “I was wrong”?

I can’t think of any which would be acceptable… and that shows the massive hysteria of the Western response

Please note that “I was misled” is certainly acceptable.

After all, just turn on your television and you are almost guaranteed to see a journalist nodding along to whatever an epidemiologist is saying – these two classes have been given the key to socioeconomic policy. In the corona hysteria these two have worked in tandem, and both must be judged according to the huge power they have been given.

As late as March 20th The New York Times fake-leftist bien-pensant Nicolas Kristof quoted “one of the best disease modellers in the world” declaring that the best-case scenario in the US was “about 1.1 million deaths”, with the worst-case being “2.2 million deaths”. They even put the latter in the sub-headline. Because he is such an awful, unreadable journalist Kristof does not make it clear if these two scenarios are the result of everyone doing absolutely nothing to combat coronavirus (an absurdity, which only an ivory tower academic would waste time studying) – I assume that is the case. However, many others may not make that assumption because Kristof leads the reader to believe (and maybe he believes this – he is not clear) that despite all the personal protective gear, ventilators, new hospital beds and everything else that US society could throw at corona, then we should still expect over 1 million deaths. Thus, both scientists and Kristof conclude: “If anything, we’re still underreacting.”

It turns out the epidemiologist’s numbers were indeed based on the idea that everyone did absolutely nothing. Well, thanks for getting dumb journalists all worked up over nothing! And I guess epidemiologists can’t write Kristof’s article for him but it’s certain that this power tandem failed at the top.

I’m not surprised, because I always doubted 2.2 million and here’s one reason why: MSM journalists seem to forget that recent history is not kind to US epidemiologists: In 2014 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted 1.4 million Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone. There were only 28,616 total cases. If this was Iran or China we could just accuse them of a cover-up, but alas…. And those are two countries with far, far less resources to throw at a virus. On April 3 satirical website The Onion re-ran Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What’s Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions – they are indeed more credible than The New York Times.

So what are the criteria for a fact-based backtracking?

Frankly, I don’t think the Great Lockdown supporters have thought about this at all, and that should cause them some worry.

This question has clearly been repeatedly shot down to the point where everyone self-censors, which is the most effective form of censorship. The question itself has been deemed to be proof of being a far-right neo-fascist: A Google search reveals What If the Pandemic Policymakers Are Wrong? Will health experts become the latest elite deemed “too big to fail”? That’s a great sub-headline – I’d nick it, but this article is almost completely written already. What’s too bad is that this article is from the website American Greatness, LOL.

So just asking “what if” puts me on the far-right? Well, I did just sign off on the cover to my latest book on socialism so, LOL, I could debate that rather at length. However, asking “but what if”, providing a modicum of contrarian views, being skeptical – this is what objective journalism is in any nation.

I am willing to question my faith: One article idea in my “to do” basket is, “What do socialists do if the bailouts actually work?” I am not so self-righteous, smug and smothering that I refuse to honestly ask and answer that question – it’s at least possible they will… because the question is not mathematical and because that history is not yet written.

Can Great Lockdown supporters question themselves? I doubt they can or even want to respond.

What I fear is this: that many Great Lockdown supporters are so self-righteous, out of touch and indoctrinated that they will genuinely believe that “even preventing one death made it worth it”. This is the view of a child, not an adult citizen who should know that any “War on Dying” is nothing but a joke. That is the exact view of a lowest-common denominator American politician – are REALLY trying to be like them? “Whatever you say” politicians are the third wheel on the tricycle which is steering Western, pro-upper-class corona policy.

To answer my own question: Because the virus was supposed to be so extraordinary, extraordinary measures have been taken. So it’s gone far beyond only total deaths – the accurate counting of which appears to be already hopelessly muddled.

If corona pricks the Western bubble economy (Condensing the data leaves no doubt: Fear corona-economy more than the virus) and “Great Depression 2” becomes a real thing – was it worth it?

If major aspects of the current drastic reduction in political rights get normalised – just as France prolonged a “temporary” state of emergency for two full years, and then Emmanuel Macron legalised it into common police practice – was it worth it?

If the US bows to Dr. Anthony Fauci, their nation’s leading technocrat on infectious diseases, and permanently “breaks that custom” of shaking hands to show warmth and friendship to strangers or if France ends the la bise hello kisses – was it worth it?

There are economic, political and cultural shockwaves stemming from the Great Lockdown – maybe their proponents didn’t foresee them, or maybe they were misled, but these things cannot be ignored because they, too, will cause death and pain.

You don’t want to talk about those things? No problem.

You don’t even have to answer the simple question the headline poses – too many people getting bossed around these days already.

***********************************

Corona contrarianism? How about some corona common sense? Here is my list of articles published regarding the corona crisis, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!

Capitalist-imperialist West stays home over corona – they grew a conscience? – March 22, 2020

Corona meds in every pot & a People’s QE: the Trumpian populism they hoped for? – March 23, 2020

A day’s diary from a US CEO during the Corona crisis (satire) March 23, 2020

MSNBC: Chicago price gouging up 9,000% & the sports-journalization of US media – March 25, 2020

Tough times need vanguard parties – are ‘social media users’ the West’s? – March 26, 2020

If Germany rejects Corona bonds they must quit the Eurozone – March 30, 2020

Landlord class: Waive or donate rent-profits now or fear the Cultural Revolution – March 31, 2020

Corona repeating 9/11 & Y2K hysterias? Both saw huge economic overreactions – April 1, 2020

(A Soviet?) Superman: Red Son – the new socialist film to watch on lockdown – April 2, 2020

Corona rewrites capitalist bust-chronology & proves: It’s the nation-state, stupid – April 3, 2020

Condensing the data leaves no doubt: Fear corona-economy more than the virus – April 5, 2020

‘We’re Going Wrong’: The West’s middling, middle-class corona response – April 10, 2020

Why does the UK have an ‘army’ of volunteers but the US has a shortage? – April 12, 2020

No buybacks allowed or dared? Then wave goodbye to Western stock market gains – April 13, 2020

Pity post-corona Millennials… if they don’t openly push socialism – April 14, 2020

No, the dollar will only strengthen post-corona, as usual: it’s a crisis, after all – April 16, 2020

Same 2008 QE playbook, but the Eurozone will kick off Western chaos not the US – April 18, 2020

We’re giving up our civil liberties. Fine, but to which type of state? – April 20, 2020

Coronavirus – Macron’s savior. A ‘united Europe’ – France’s murderer – April 22, 2020

Iran’s ‘resistance economy’: the post-corona wish of the West’s silent majority (1/2) – April 23, 2020

The same 12-year itch: Will banks loan down QE money this time? – April 26, 2020

The end of globalisation won’t be televised, despite the hopes of the Western 99% (2/2) – April 27, 2020

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Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the upcoming ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’.

ماذا يُغيّر «كورونا» في العالم؟

سعاده مصطفى أرشيد

انطلاقاً من قواعد النسبية وأن لا وجود لخير مطلق أو شر مطلق في العالم المحسوس، وبعيداً عن مالتوس ونظريته السكانية، وعن نظريات المؤامرة التي تزدهر في مثل هذه الأوقات، نتساءل ونحن نرى هذا الوباء يفترس النفوس البشرية، ويذهب بالناس وآمالهم وأحلامهم وأموالهم باتجاهات مجهولة، فهل يمكن الأخذ بنسبية الأشياء والقول إنّ الوباء من الممكن له أن يكون سبباً في انفراج بعض من أزمات عالمنا العربي ومشرقنا المثقل بالهموم، والتي لا تقلّ وحشية وفتكاً وبالآثار المدمّرة على مستقبل أبنائنا من الوباء. وهل ستكون سبباً في تغيّر دولي شامل، عندما ينهار هذا العالم ويقوم على أنقاضه عالم جديد، خاصة بعد أن رأى الجميع أنّ هنالك ما هو أخطر من الحرب، فهذا الفيروس الذي لا يُرى بالعين المجردة وإنما يحتاج إلى تكبيره بالمجاهر المخبريّة الدقيقة عشرات آلاف المرات، أصبح أقوى وأخطر من كلّ أنواع البنادق والطائرات الحربية والصواريخ الذكية والقنابل الذرية والهيدروجينية وما يليها من أسلحة الموت والدمار.

منذ سقوط الاتحاد السوفياتي وتفككه في مطلع التسعينيات من القرن الماضي ترافق مع انهياره سقوط النظام العالمي الذي ساد منذ الحرب العالمية الثانية، وهو نظام القطبية الثنائية، ليصبح العالم أمام نظام القطب الواحد بقيادة الولايات المتحدة الأميركية. خضع العالم للنظام الجديد الذي أبدى قوة وجبروتاً وأثبت أنه يملك قوى غير مسبوقة في مجالات السياسة والاقتصاد والعلم والتسلح، إضافة إلى انعدام في القيم ووصلف ووقاحة وقدرة غير مسبوقة أيضاً في الكذب وتزييف الحقائق التي كان العالم مضطراً إلى تصديقها ولو على مضض كما رأينا في روايته عن أسلحة الدمار الشامل الوهمية في العراق، على سبيل المثال لا الحصر، وما ترتب على هذا الادّعاء من تدمير بلد عمره يزيد عن ستة آلاف عام بثرواته وآثاره وسكانه، لم يكن بالمكان تصوّر أن يمارس هذا القدر من التوحّش على أعتاب القرن الحادي والعشرين وفي ظلّ التطور في عالم الاتصال ونقل الأخبار. صمد نظام القطب الواحد حتى الآن أمام محاولات عديدة جادة لإقامة نظام متعدد الأقطاب، ولا زال يرفض التخلي عن أحاديته فيما الأطراف الأخرى لا زالت تحاول فرض رؤيتها وتحقق بعض النجاح، وإذا كان عالم ما بعد وباء كورونا ليس كما قبله، فإنّ فرصة تلوح في الأفق لبداية أفول النفوذ الأميركي الأحادي، لصالح نظام دولي جديد متعدّد الأقطاب، يضع حداً للنظام القديم وانحطاطه وتغوّله على العالم، خاصة مع الأداء السيّئ للإدارات الأميركية المتعاقبة قبل الإدارة الحالية والأسوأ فيها هذه الإدارة. لن تبدي إدارة ترامب الاهتمام بالشعب الأميركي وسلامته، بفقرائه وعماله وأقلياته، وقد تجاوز عدد المصابين بالوباء حاجز المئة ألف عند كتابة هذا المقال، وإنما بالأثرياء منه وبأرباحهم وامتيازاتهم. لن تهرع هذه الإدارة للوقوف مع العالم الذي تقوده، أو حتى مع أصدقائها وحلفائها الذين داروا في مجالها المغناطيسي منذ عام 1945، ماذا سيكون مصير هذا الحلف بعد أن رأى الطليان والإسبان وباقي الأعضاء في حلف الناتو كيف تعاملت الإدارة الأميركية معهم في أزمة الوباء؟ وماذا تجدي القواعد الأميركية والمناورات العسكرية المشتركة طالما يتمّ التخلي عنهم بدلاً من دعمهم والوقوف إلى جانبهم في الحرب ضدّ كورونا؟ الرئيس الأميركي وإدارته غير منشغلين بمصير الطليان والإسبان وغيرهم وإنما يشغلهم بقاء الرئيس الفنزويلي الذي اختاره شعبه بملء إرادته الحرة لوراثة ابو فنزويلا الحديثه الراحل تشافيز، وقد أعلنت الإدارة الأميركية عن مكافأة 15 مليون دولار لمن يدلي بمعلومات تساهم باعتقال الرئيس مادورو بتهم لا يصدّقها أحد.

أما في القارة العجوز والتي تنازلت عن دورها للولايات المتحدة بسبب ما لحق بها من خراب نتيجة الحرب العالمية الثانية، فقد كان لها محاولات مبكرة للانفكاك عن الولايات المتحدة، وكان للرئيس الفرنسي المتميّز شارل ديغول رؤيته التي ترفض أن ترى فرنسا خارج نادي الكبار، ولكنه أدرك أنّ ذلك لا يمكن أن يكون إلا إذا استطاعت حشد أوروبا من خلفها والى جانبها، فعمل جاهداً على إنشاء المجموعة الأوروبية (السوق الأوروبية المشتركة) والتي مرّت بمراحل تطوّر عديدة حتى انهيار الاتحاد السوفياتي، حيث اعلن عن ولادة الاتحاد الأوروبي وتمّ توقيع اتفاقية ماسترخت، في هذا الاتحاد تتنازل الدولة القومية العضو لصالح الاتحاد عن سياساتها الخارجية والدفاعية والنقدية وفي الصيد البحري والزراعة، وتكثف التعاون في السياسات القانونية والداخلية، وإثر ذلك استبدلت العملات القومية باليورو وتم توحيد تأشيرات الدخول لدول الاتحاد باتفاقية (شنغن). حافظ الاتحاد على وحدته وتماسكه برغم الإزعاج البريطاني الذي خرج من الاتحاد عام 2016.

لم تثن الرياح والعواصف الاتحاد منذ عام 1992 لا بل استطاع الثبات والمواجهة، إلى أن أتى الوباء ليصيبه كما أصاب بني الإنسان، فقد انكشفت عوراته وهشاشته وظهر أنه كان يختفي وراء قشرة رقيقة، وأنه اتحاد الضرورة والمصالح العاجلة أكثر منه اتحاد القناعة والمصير المشترك والعقيدة الراسخة، فمثلما أحبطت الولايات المتحدة إيطاليا وباقي دول حلف الناتو، نرى أنّ دول الاتحاد بدورها قامت بدور شبيه في إحباط الطليان الذين لم يجدوا عند شركائهم الدعم والمساندة، وأكثر ما صدر عن هؤلاء الشركاء ما نسب إلى المستشارة الالمانية إنجيلا ميركل من أنها تتعاطف بشدة مع المواطنين الإيطاليين في أزمتهم، ولكنها لم تضف إلى تعاطفها شيئاً من (القطران) على شكل دواء أو معدات أو غذاء أو مال أو أيّ شيء يدعو المواطنين الإيطاليين للصمود في وجه المحنة التي يواجهون لدرجة جعلت من رئيس الوزراء الايطالي يحذر من أنّ الاتحاد الأوروبي قد يفقد مبرّرات وجوده بسبب التقاعس الذي أبداه الشركاء في الاتحاد في نجدة بلاده.

هكذا يبدو وضع الاتحاد هشاشة وضعفاً وبوادر انحلال، وستعود الأمم الاوروبية إلى قومياتها الأصلية وتدع أوهام بناء عالم أوروبي قادر على نطاح القوى التي تطلّ برأسها لقيادة العالم، وقريباً قد يختفي اليورو ويعود الألماني إلى المارك والفرنسي إلى الفرنك والنمساوي إلى الشلن والإيطالي إلى اللير.

*سياسيّ فلسطينيّ مقيم في الضفة الغربيّة.

Bibi in Banderastan, or the importance of words

[this column was written for the Unz Review]

Israeli Prime Minister made it to Kiev today, where he was greeted by the (pseudo) “traditional” Ukronazi slogan “Glory to the Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”. For somebody like me who dislikes Zionism and Nazism just about the same, it was a sweet irony to see an Israeli Prime Minister officially traveling to the Nazi-occupied Ukraine to commemorate the massacre of Jews at Babii Iar greeted by the very same slogan which the Jews murdered at Babii Iar heard from their Banderite executioners while they were being shot.

STOP!

Do you already hear the choir of voices protesting: how can anyone expecting to be taken seriously write a paragraph about the civil war in the Ukraine with all the following words: Ukronazi, Zionism, Nazism, Nazi-occupied, Jews and Banderite?

That is a very good question.

But I have a better one!

How can anyone expecting to be taken seriously write a paragraph about the civil war in the Ukraine WITHOUT all the following words: Ukronazi, Zionism, Nazism, Nazi-occupied, Jews and Banderite?

Let’s begin with the first question. The obvious implied criticism behind the first question, is very simple and it assumes that there is a profound and inherent contradiction between everything Nazi and Jews/Zionism. Speaking about a “Nazi Jew” or a “Nazi Zionist” is just as nonsensical as speaking about dry water or and diamonds raining from the sky!

Except that both dry water and diamonds raining from the sky do exist in real nature, so let’s not jump to conclusions too fast and see which contradictions are real, and which ones are only apparent.

I won’t even go into the (deliciously controversial) topic of the historical fact of the collaboration of the German National Socialists with various Zionist organizations which, rather naively, thought that a nationalist like Hitler would understand their own nationalism and help them to emigrate to Palestine. But this goes even further than that as Hannah Arendt said, in her superb book “Eichmann in Jerusalem” (see excerpt here or, even better, read the full book (for free!): various Jewish organizations continued to work with/(for?) the Nazis well into the so-called “Holocaust”.

[Sidebar: to be honest, I don’t think that we, safely sitting in the comfort of our homes, should be too quick to condemn these Jewish organizations. Yes, of course, many of them were “naive” (and I am being polite here), but others must have realized that European Jews are in a great deal of danger and must be evacuated at any cost and if the only way to achieve such an evacuation was to deal with the Nazis, then so be it! This is no different than offering a bribe to a jail guard to obtain some kind of favor. Thus I think that Jewish organizations which today categorically deny having collaborated with the Nazis are mistaken on not one, but two grounds: first, the truth is coming out and it is impossible to suppress it and, second, there is nothing shameful in swallowing your disgust to save a person. Except that for the racially deluded minds of modern Zionists, such an admission would take the air out of their silly notion of racial superiority. Hence the categorically crimethink nature of speaking about this]

No, what I want to suggest here is very different: in our 21^st century, most of the 20^th century terminology has lost its meaning. What is a liberal (no, not Hillary!)? What is a Communist (no, not Obama!)? What is a Christian (no, not the Pope!)? What is a democrat (no, not Kamala Harris!)? What is a patriot (no, most definitely not Trump!)? What is a tyrannical dictator (nope, not Putin!)?

You think that I am being facetious here?

Then explain to me how a rabidly Takfiri regime like the one in Saudi Arabia can get help from Zionist Israel? Or how the “democratic West” gave its full support to Takfiris in Chechnia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya and Syria? How is it that during the so-called “Global War on Terror”, (which was supposed to be officially waged against al-Qaeda and its various local subsidiaries, in retaliation for 9/11) the various Takfiri groups only got stronger? Yet what we really see is that the US provides training, financing, coordination and even close air support for pretty much every al-Qaeda type out there?

There are two phenomena which explain this gradual dissolution of meanings into meaningless and insipid categories: first, the correct meaning of many terms has been covered by a thick layer of ideological imperatives and, second, most 21^st century politicians couldn’t care less what any word really means. All they care about is framing the discussion in a way which makes it easy for them to obfuscate their numerous crimes.

The truth about the Ukraine is very simple: yes, there are bona-fide Nazis in the Ukraine and, yes, they have a lot of influence due to their quasi monopoly on violence and total collapse of the state. True, these hardcore Ukronazi freaks are a rather small minority, but one which is well organized, well funded and fully prepared to use violence.

“Jewbanderite“

There are also a lot of Zionists in the Ukraine. And while these folks silently hate each other, they hate (and fear!) Russia much, much more; just like mobsters can fight each other, but can unite against any common threat (such as, say, an honest police chief).

Oh, and yes, there are also plenty of very influential Jews in the Ukraine (Kolomoiskii and Zelenskii being the two best known ones right now) and they have the full backing of the AngloZionist Empire and all of the Zionists interests in the West. And I think that most folks fully understand that. The real reason behind all the protests about me using terms such as “Ukronazi” stems from a very different cause.

The problem is that you get a lot of ruffled feathers when you suggest that the USA, which is supposed to be some kind of “land of the free and the home of the brave” aka “the indispensable nation” is found in bed with the self same folks who the US propaganda machine paints as arch-villains: Nazis, of course, but also Takfiris. As for the Zionists, it would be wrong to say that the US of A is “in bed” with them. No, it’s even worse: the much-maligned and ridiculed term of ZOG (as in “Zionist Occupation Government”) is much more accurate, but it offends those who rather think of themselves as “rulers of the world” than the voiceless serfs of a regime of foreign occupation!

US Americans love to thump their chests while mantrically chanting some nonsense along the lines of “USA is number 1!” and they get really mad when they are told that “the party is over” which I did in this article in which I wrote:

Both US Americans and Europeans will, for the very first time in their history, have to behave like civilized people, which means that their traditional “model of development” (ransacking the entire planet and robbing everybody blind) will have to be replaced by one in which these US Americans and Europeans will have to work like everybody else to accumulate riches

And, just by coincidence, Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote an article entitled “American Capitalism Is Based On Plunder” in which he explained that US foreign policy is basically driven by a plunder imperative and that if that imperative cannot be realized abroad, it will be implemented at home (I wonder if he will be accused of being anti-American or even of “Communism”? It is quite striking to see a paleo-conservative like Paul Craig Roberts basically paraphrasing Lenin and his statement that “imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism” (a historical truism which the western propaganda system is doing its best to bury, obfuscate, ridicule and the like).

Writing things like these typically result in a barrage of ad hominems which, by itself, is quite telling (usually the same 2-3 folks, some probably remunerated for their efforts) There is a Russian saying that “the hat of the head of the thief is burning” (see here for an explanation of this rather weird expression) and this is exactly what is happening here: the folks protesting the loudest are always the ones who are most unwilling to stop the planetary plunder, messianic arrogance and imperial hubris in which they were raised. It is not only their livelihoods which are threatened by such talk, but even their very identity. Hence the very real and very high level of rage they feel.

Finally, there are all the Nazi sympathizers who absolutely hate Jews and for whom any notion of Nazi and Zionist collaboration are just as much a case of crimethink as it is for Zionist Jews to admit that they have collaborated with bona fide Nazis many times in the past.

However, if we set aside silly ideological shackles, we can immediately observe that the kind of ideology of racial superiority which the Nazis are known for can also be found in the Judaic (religious) and Zionist (secular) ideologies. In fact, both National-Socialism and Zionism are just two amongst many more types of European nationalisms which have their root in 19^th century ideological categories.

Let’s try a different approach: what do Ukie “dobrobats”, al-Qaeda forces in Syria, KLA units in Kosovo and Israeli settlers in Palestine have in common? Correct! They are all first and foremost *thugs* who all prey on the weak and defenseless. In other words, they are the perfect tool to force civilians to surrender and accept some kind of foreign rule. That foreign rule is, in each case, the one of the AngloZionist Empire, of course. This, in turn, means that their official ideologies are almost irrelevant, because in reality they are all servants of the Empire (whether they understand it or not).

Conclusion one: it’s all a big lie!

Yes, it is a big lie. All of it. And this is how we end up with an Israeli Prime Minister who, by any criteria, is not only a Fascist, but also a Nazi as long as we make it clear that his brand of Nazism is a Jewish one, not a Germanic one. And it’s not just Bibi Netanyahu who does not mind dealing with Ukronazis, so the the the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine (see here for details). As for the said Ukronazis, they are now trying hard to deny that Bandara and his gang massacred Jews during WWII. As for Zelenskii, he is most definitely not a Nazi, but he has already caved in to the Ukronazi ideology (i.e. a form of Nazism which substitutes myths about “ancient Ukrs” to the more traditional Germanic myths about the Aryan-Germanic “race”). Then there is Kolomoiskii who is simply a typical Jewish mobster who has no personal ideology whatsoever and who has no love for the bona fide Ukronazis, but who is being very careful about how to purge them from power lest they beat him yet again. And above them all, we have the leaders of the Empire who use ideological categories as slurs but who don’t give a damn who they back as long as it is against Russia.

Against this background it is worth asking a simple question: do these words even matter? Do they still have any kind of meaning?

Conclusion two: yes, words do still matter!

I believe that they do, very much so! This is precisely why the legacy corporate ziomedia and those brainwashed by it freak out when they see expressions such as “AngloZionist”,“Ukronazi” or even the rather demure “Israel Lobby”. When somebody comes up with a powerful and correct descriptor, say like “ZOG” – the propaganda machine immediately kicks into high gear to shoot down in flames whatever author and article dared to use it. In fact, there are at least two types of wannabe word censors which typically show up:

TYPE ONE: the real McCoy. These are the sincere folks (whether of the Nazi or Zionist persuasion) who are truly outraged and offended that such “hallowed” words as Nazi/Zionist (pick one) can be combined with “abominations” such as Nazi/Zionist (pick the other one). These are all the Third Reich nostalgics, the defenders of a “White Christian West” and all the rest of them neo-Nazis.

TYPE TWO: the paid trolls. These are the folks whose task it is to obfuscate the real issues, to bury them under tons of vapid ideological nonsense; the best way to do that is to misdirect any discussion away from the original topic and sidetrack it into either a barrage of ad hominems or ideological clichés.

Seriously, what we are witnessing today is a new age of censorship in which government and corporations work hand in hand to crush (ban, censor, demonetize, algorithmically purge and otherwise silence) all those who challenge the official ideology and its many narratives. It would be naïve to the extreme to assume that the so-called “alternative media” and blogosphere have been spared such an effort at silencing ideological heresies.

Next time these self-appointed enforcers of the politically correct doxa come out, try this experiment: when you read their comments, don’t just look at what they write, but also try to guess why they write what they write and then mentally place a T1 or T2 sign next to their comments and you will soon see that they follow a careful pattern 🙂

The Saker

Vladimir Putin Interview With Oliver Stone

South Front

22.07.2019

Vladimir Putin answered questions from American film director, screenwriter and producer Oliver Stone. The interview was recorded on June 19, 2019 in the Kremlin (source):

Oliver Stone: So, I interviewed Mr Medvedchuk. It was in Monte Carlo. He gave us a very interesting interview. He gave us his view of the Ukraine. I gather that you’re close with him.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: I would not say that we are very close but we know each other well. He was President Kuchma’s Chief of Staff, and it was in this capacity at the time that he asked me to take part in the christening of his daughter. According to Russian Orthodox tradition, you can’t refuse such a request.

Oliver Stone: Oh, you cannot refuse it?

I thought it was a big honour for you to be the godfather of his daughter.

Vladimir Putin: It is always a great honour to be a godfather.

Oliver Stone: Well, how many children are you godfather to?

Vladimir Putin: I will not give a number but several people.

Oliver Stone: Wow. Is it like a hundred or three hundred?

Vladimir Putin: No, no, are you serious? Certainly not. Just a few.

Oliver Stone: Otherwise I would ask you to be the godfather for my daughter.

Vladimir Putin: Does she want to become an Orthodox Christian?

Oliver Stone: Ok, we’ll make her that.

Vladimir Putin: You have to ask her.

Oliver Stone: As long as she stands in church, right?

Vladimir Putin: Of course. How old is she?

Oliver Stone: She is 22 now.

Vladimir Putin: Is she a believer?

Oliver Stone: Yes, she is a believer. She is raised Christian.

Vladimir Putin: I see.

Oliver Stone: You know, young people in America sometimes, they are different.

Vladimir Putin: Young people are different everywhere.

Oliver Stone: They are spoiled to some degree in the western world.

Vladimir Putin: It depends. The older generation always says that about the younger generation.

Oliver Stone: Yeah, I know, I know. That’s true. But I don’t know what is going on with the American culture. It’s very strange right now.

Vladimir Putin: Is there an American culture?

Oliver Stone: As you know, I’ve been very rebel all my life. Still am. And I have to tell you, I’m shocked by some of the behaviours and the thinking of the new generation. It takes so much for granted. And so much of the argument, so much of the thinking, so much of the newspaper, television commentaries about gender, people identify themselves, and social media, this and that, I’m male, I’m female, I’m transgender, I’m cisgender. It goes on forever, and there is a big fight about who is who. It seems like we miss the bigger point.

Vladimir Putin: They live too well. They have nothing to think about.

Oliver Stone: Yeah, but it’s not a healthy culture.

Vladimir Putin: Well, yes.

Oliver Stone: Years ago when we were talking about homosexuality, you said that in Russia we don’t propagate it.

Vladimir Putin: Not exactly. We have a law banning propaganda among minors.

Oliver Stone: Yes, that’s the one I’m talking about. It seems like maybe that’s a sensible law.

Vladimir Putin: It is aimed at allowing people to reach maturity and then decide who they are and how they want to live. There are no restrictions at all after this.

Oliver Stone: Ok. Mr Medvedchuk proposed recently, you know, a plan for solving the tensions in Ukraine between east and west. You know about this?

Vladimir Putin: To be honest, we do not talk so often. He has more free time than I do. But we meet from time to time, especially in connection with his efforts to get detainees released. He devotes much time to this.

He also told me something about his plans on Donbass but I do not know the details. At any rate, I consider it absolutely correct that he calls for direct dialogue with the people who live in Donbass. There is not a single example in recent history when a crisis was settled without direct contact between the sides to the conflict.

He says he thinks it is necessary to fully implement the Minsk agreements and I cannot help but agree with this as well. So, I know the elements of his proposals. He speaks about them in public and I agree.

Oliver Stone: Ok. They have a new president now. Has anything changed in Ukraine? Or still the same?

Vladimir Putin: Not yet. After all, the recent election was clearly a protest vote. A fairly large number of people supported the newly-elect President in central Ukraine, in the east and the south. And these are all people who sincerely seek a settlement in any event. During his election campaign President Zelensky continuously spoke about his readiness to do everything to solve this crisis. And then literally just yesterday, while in Paris, I think, he said suddenly he does not believe it is possible to hold talks with what he called separatists. This is clearly at odds with what he said during his election campaign.

Oliver Stone: So no change?

Vladimir Putin: Unfortunately, none for the time being.

Oliver Stone: Do you think there’s any revulsion? I mean, you were telling me about Ukraine and Russia. Do you think there is any reason for this hatred of Russia in Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin: You know, our relationship is not easy at the moment. This is the result of the grievous events linked with the coup d’état. The other part of this story is propaganda by the current government in Ukraine, which blames Russia for all the tragic events that ensued.

Oliver Stone: Well, historically, do you see these two countries coming together again?

Vladimir Putin: I think this is inevitable. At any rate, the cultivation of normal, friendly and, even more than friendly, allied relations is inevitable.

Oliver Stone: Yeah. Mr Medvedchuk would be a good liaison.

Vladimir Putin: I believe so. But our positions, our points of view, differ on many things. Mr Medvedchuk was born in the family of a man that was said to be convicted during the Soviet times for nationalist activities. He was born in Siberia, where his family and his father virtually lived in exile.

Oliver Stone: What’s the connection?

Vladimir Putin: Connection between what?

Oliver Stone: All this story to my question?

Vladimir Putin: The connection is that he has his own ideas about Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. For example, I believe that Russians and Ukrainians are actually one people.

Oliver Stone: One people, two nations?

Vladimir Putin: One nation, in fact.

Oliver Stone: You think it is one nation?

Click to see the full-size image

Vladimir Putin: Of course. Look, when these lands that are now the core of Ukraine, joined Russia, there were just three regions – Kiev, the Kiev region, northern and southern regions – nobody thought themselves to be anything but Russians, because it was all based on religious affiliation. They were all Orthodox and they considered themselves Russians. They did not want to be part of the Catholic world, where Poland was dragging them.

I understand very well that over the time the identity of this part of Russia crystallized, and people have the right to determine their identity. But later this factor was used to throw into imbalance the Russian Empire. But in fact, this is the same world sharing the same history, same religion, traditions, and a wide range of ties, close family ties among them.

At the same time, if a significant part of people who live in Ukraine today believe that they should emphasise their identity and fight for it, no one in Russia would be against this, including me. But, bearing in mind that we have many things in common, we can use this as our competitive advantage during some form of integration; it is obvious. However, the current government clearly doesn’t want this. I believe that in the end common sense will prevail, and we will finally arrive at the conclusion I have mentioned: rapprochement is inevitable.

Oliver Stone: I don’t think Mr Medvedchuk would agree. He would say: two nations, similar people. That what he would say, take a strong line on that.

Vladimir Putin: He doesn’t. That is what I am saying.

Oliver Stone: That’s what I’m saying. He does not agree.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, of course. This is what I am saying: our positions on some things, important ones, are different. But at the same time, he speaks in favour of establishing good relations with Russia in order to use these competitive advantages in the economy. He shows how today the Ukrainian economy is completely destroyed because it has lost the Russian market and, most importantly, cooperation in industry. Nobody needs Ukrainian industrial goods on Western markets, and that goes for agriculture too: very few goods are purchased. Round timber is in demand, but soon there will be no timber in Ukraine at all. It’s not like the vast expanses of Siberia.

For example, Europe often takes some steps towards Ukraine – or did so until recently – with, say, permitting purchases of round timber. And this is just one example. In fact, there are many more.

Oliver Stone: Well, someone told me today that Mr Medvedchuk’s party, For Life Party, is up 12 percent in the polls. So he is building a party that has a following, it seems to me.

Vladimir Putin: If so, that is good. To be honest, I don’t know. But if kit is true, that is good.

If so, we can only welcome this because he and his partners in the party stand for restoring relations with Russia. How could we not welcome that? Of course, we welcome it. I have known him for a long time. He keeps his word. If he says something, he does it.

Oliver Stone: So, he is a very courageous man, I think. His villa was bombed, his offices were bombed. He is under threat all the time. He is hanging in there, staying in his country.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, this is true because he has convictions. I mentioned that his father was a Ukrainian nationalist and was convicted by a Soviet court for this. Strange as it may seem but the founders, many founders of Ukrainian nationalism advocated good relations with Russia. They said good relations were necessary for the development of Ukraine itself.

Oliver Stone: When was that?

Vladimir Putin: This was in the 19^th century. They came out for Ukraine’s independence but said that Ukraine must preserve good, friendly relations with Russia. Mr Medvedchuk adheres to similar ideas. This is why he has convictions. I may not agree with his position on something but I always respect it.

Oliver Stone: Yeah, two nations he says. When I hear the words “Ukrainian nationalism,” I get worried, because I think of Stepan Bandera and people who have convictions too.

Vladimir Putin: Me, too.

Oliver Stone: Ukrainian nationalism is dangerous too.

Vladimir Putin: In general nationalism is a sign of narrow-mindedness but I do not want to offend Mr Medvedchuk.

Oliver Stone: It’s words.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, but in any event, he is in the category of people who advocate independence, the consolidation of an independent Ukraine, but at the same time believe that it is easier to achieve this by pursuing cooperation with Russia. And I think he is largely right.

Oliver Stone: You’re very clear.

You talked about the coup d’état. Just want to revisit that because there has been a lot more research done. It seems that research has revealed that there were shooters, snipers at the Maidan. The forensics with the angle of shooting, bodies of the police and the protestors. It was all very badly investigated. Not at all really. But what evidence we have seems to point to there being, they say, Georgian shooters, people from Georgia. And I’ve heard that. Have you heard anything more on the Russian front?

Vladimir Putin: No but I know what you are talking about. I know that the authorities headed by President Yanukovych at that time did not use the army and were not interested in giving any excuse to the opposition to use force. And, as Mr Yanukovych told me repeatedly, it did not even occur to him to use force and the military against civilians, even against those who had already taken up arms. I completely rule out that he could have done this, but those who were looking for a pretext to stage a coup could have well done it, of course.

Oliver Stone: I remember you were telling me about the Obama phone call, Obama and you had an agreement that there would be no firing on the last day. And he gave you a promise that he would…

Vladimir Putin: You know, while Obama is no longer President, there are certain things we do not discuss in public. At any rate, I can say that the US did not follow through on the agreements that we reached during this phone call. I will stop there without going into detail.

Oliver Stone: Yes. So recently, you know Russia has been obviously accused and accused over and over again of interference in the 2016 election. As far as I know there is no proof, it has not turned up. But now in the US there has been an investigation going on about Ukraine’s interference in the election. It seems that it was a very confusing situation, and Poroshenko seems to have been very strongly pro-Clinton, anti-Trump.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, this is no secret.

Oliver Stone: Do you think there was interference?

Vladimir Putin: I do not think that this could be interpreted as interference by Ukraine. But it is perfectly obvious that Ukrainian oligarchs gave money to Trump’s opponents. I do not know whether they did this by themselves or with the knowledge of the authorities.

Oliver Stone: Where they giving information to the Clinton campaign?

Vladimir Putin: I do not know. I am being honest. I will not speak about what I do not know. I have enough problems of my own. They assumed Mrs Clinton would win and did everything to show loyalty to the future US administration. That is nothing special. They wanted the future President to have a good opinion of them. This is why they allowed themselves to make unflattering statements about Trump and supported the Democrats in every possible way. This is no secret at all. They acted almost in public.

Oliver Stone: You do not want to go any further on that because you do not have any information?

Vladimir Putin: You know, this would be inappropriate on my part. If I said something more specific, I would have to put some documents, some papers on the table.

Oliver Stone: You understand that it has huge implications because Mr Trump would be very grateful?

Vladimir Putin: I did not interfere then, I do not want to interfere now, and I am not going to interfere in the future.

Oliver Stone: But that is a noble motive. Unfortunately, the world has degenerated in these two years, with all this backbiting and accusations, dirty fighting. Anyway…

Vladimir Putin: There are no rules at all. It is no holds barred.

Oliver Stone: Well, you have rules. You say no interference.

Vladimir Putin: I have principles.

Oliver Stone: Ok. But you seem to have rules based on those principles.

Vladimir Putin: Well, yes.

Oliver Stone: Ok. Well, you are fighting with one hand tied behind your back.

Vladimir Putin: Why? You mean, because of these principles?

Oliver Stone: Yes. If you knew something about the election, it would tilt the balance in a very weird way.

Vladimir Putin: I think this is simply unrealistic. I have said so many times.

Oliver Stone: What is unrealistic?

Vladimir Putin: To change anything. If you want to return to US elections again – look, it is a huge country, a huge nation with its own problems, with its own views on what is good and what is bad, and with an understanding that in the past few years, say ten years, nothing has changed for the better for the middle class despite the enormous growth of prosperity for the ruling class and the wealthy. This is a fact that Trump’s election team understood. He understood this himself and made the most of it.

No matter what our bloggers – or whoever’s job it is to comment on the internet – might say about the situation in the US, this could not have played a decisive role. It is sheer nonsense. But our sympathies were with him because he said he wanted to restore normal relations with Russia. What is bad about that? Of course, we can only welcome this position.

Oliver Stone: Apparently, it excited the Clinton people a lot. The Clinton campaign accumulated the “Steele dossier.” They paid for it. It came from strange sources, the whole “Steele dossier” issue. Some of it comes from Ukraine. They also went out of their way, it seems to me, with the CIA, with Mr Brennan, John Brennan, and with Clapper, James Clapper, and Comey of the FBI. They all seem to have gotten involved, all intelligence agencies, in an anti-Trump way.

Vladimir Putin: They had levers inside the government, but there is nothing like that here. They applied administrative pressure. It always gives an advantage in countries such as the USA, some countries of Western Europe, about 2 percent on average, at a minimum.

Oliver Stone: Two percent? What are you talking about?

Vladimir Putin: Yes. According to experts, those with administrative pressure they can apply always have a 2 percent edge. You can look at it differently. Some experts believe that in different countries, it can vary, but in countries such as the United States, some European countries, the advantage is 2 percent. This is what experts say, they can be wrong.

Oliver Stone: I do not know. I heard of the one percent, but it seems to get more like 12 percent.

Vladimir Putin: That is possible, depending on how it is used.

Oliver Stone: Well, you are not disagreeing. You are saying that it was quite possible that there was an attempt to prevent Donald Trump from coming into office with a soft, I will call it a soft coup d’état?

Vladimir Putin: In the USA?

Oliver Stone: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: It is still going on.

Oliver Stone: A coup d’état is planned by people who have power inside.

Vladimir Putin: No, I do not mean that. I mean lack of respect for the will of the voters. I think it was unprecedented in the history of the United States.

Oliver Stone: What was unprecedented?

Vladimir Putin: It was the first time the losing side does not want to admit defeat and does not respect the will of the voters.

Oliver Stone: I would disagree. I would say it happened in 2000, that the Republicans lost the popular vote, they lost Florida, and they did not accept that, and they had a coup d’état in their way, a soft coup d’état also. And they put Bush in.

Vladimir Putin: But this was a court decision, as far as I remember.

Oliver Stone: Yeah, in a way, but the court decision was blocked. There was a vote going on. And if you remember the Brooks brothers’ riot, all those Republicans rushed to electoral offices in Miami, and they prevented the vote from going through in a county, in one of those major counties. It was a key factor. It was not like the Russian revolution. It was a minor event, but it was big. It shifted the momentum, totally. I remember that night. Then they referred it to the Supreme Court. Also, and the same thing in January 2017, when the intelligence assessment was released, what was it, January 7^th,, a few days before Trump was to be inaugurated, the intelligence assessment actually said that the intelligence agencies suspected Trump would have been colluding with Russia. That is even bigger. That is an attempt at a coup d’état, because the electors in America still had the right to overturn the election vote.

Vladimir Putin: This is what they call unscrupulous application of administrative pressure.

Oliver Stone: Ok, ok, ok. Well, listen, it seems to be going on a lot more than we know. Talking about America and Russia, I have not seen you since the Kerch Strait. Any comments on that?

Vladimir Putin: No, I do not, as we have repeatedly said. The former President, Mr Poroshenko, staged this provocation intentionally during the election campaign. He was aware that people in the country’s east and south would not vote for him, and he used this provocation to escalate the situation and then declare a state of emergency there. I have reason to believe that he was going to declare a state of emergency in the entire country, and possibly to postpone the election as a result. Generally speaking, he was trying to hold on to power at all costs, and he was seeking any means to execute this plan. This was the regime’s death throes.

As far as I remember, recently the newly appointed Chief of the Ukrainian army’s General Staff has made a statement that offers roughly the same interpretation of events but perhaps using milder language.

Oliver Stone: Who gave that interpretation?

Vladimir Putin: Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Oliver Stone: Ok, but beyond Poroshenko, the United States has a shadow here. The United States knows what he is doing, and supported it.

Vladimir Putin: Absolutely.

Oliver Stone: It is the creation of a strategy of tension that worries me enormously. I have seen this happen in so many places now. I think I read on Monday, the Russian bombers, the Russian SU-57 escorted, what was it, the B-52 bomber, a nuclear bomber, US bomber, close to the Russian borders.

Click to see the full-size image

Vladimir Putin: The Su-57 aircraft are just entering service. This is a fifth-generation jet fighter. It was the Su-27 that was mentioned.

Oliver Stone: Do you think that is normal?

Vladimir Putin: Actually, it is sad, probably, but this is common practice. US aircraft did not enter our airspace, and our aircraft did not conduct any high-risk maneuvers.

But generally speaking, this is not great. Just look where the Baltic or Black seas are located, and where the USA is. It was not us who approached US borders, but US aircraft that approached ours. Such practices had better stop.

Oliver Stone: In this continuing strategy of tension, there was a report in The New York Times last week that the Obama Administration, before they left office, put in what they call a cyber warfare device. It was inserted in Russian infrastructure in January 2017.

Vladimir Putin: This is being discussed almost openly. It was said Russia would be punished for interfering in the election campaign. We do not see anything extraordinary or unexpected here. This should be followed closely. That is the first thing.

The second is I believe that we only need to negotiate how we are to live in this high-tech world and develop uniform rules and means of monitoring each other’s actions. We have repeatedly proposed holding talks on this subject to come to some binding agreement.

Oliver Stone: Continuing that theme of strategy of tension, how is Russia affected by the US-Iranian confrontation?

Vladimir Putin: This worries us because this is happening near our borders. This may destabilize the situation around Iran, affect some countries with which we have very close relations, causing additional refugee flows on a large scale plus substantially damage the world economy as well as the global energy sector. All this is extremely disturbing. Therefore we would welcome any improvement when it comes to relations between the US and Iran. A simple escalation of tension will not be advantageous for anyone. It seems to me that this is also the case with the US. One might think that there are only benefits here, but there will be setbacks as well. The positive and negative factors have to be calculated.

Oliver Stone: Yeah. Scary.

Vladimir Putin: No, this is not scary.

Oliver Stone: You sound very depressed, much more depressed than last time.

Vladimir Putin: Last time the situation concerning Iran was not like this. Last time nobody said anything about getting into our energy and other networks. Last time the developments were more positive.

Oliver Stone: The situation is worse now?

Vladimir Putin: Take North Korea, they have also rolled back a bit. Trade wars are unfolding.

Oliver Stone: Venezuela.

Vladimir Putin: Venezuela as well. In other words, regrettably, the situation has not improved, so there is nothing special to be happy about. On the other hand, we feel confident. We have no problems.

Oliver Stone: Well, you are an optimist, and always have been?

Vladimir Putin: Exactly.

Oliver Stone: You are a peacemaker.

Vladimir Putin: Absolutely spot on.

Oliver Stone: So obviously, you have to get together with the Americans, and the Chinese, and the Iranians. I know.

Vladimir Putin: Just do not put the blame on us. Lately no matter what is happening, we always get the blame.

Oliver Stone: Well, the irony is that Mr Trump came to office promising that he was not going to interfere in other countries. He made this overall strategy, he was against the wars that we have started, and ever since he has been in office, it has got worse. Why, one wonders? Is he in charge, or are other people pushing these agendas?

Vladimir Putin: I think he is against this now, too. But life is complicated and diverse. To make the right decision it is necessary to fight for what you believe in.

Oliver Stone: Yeah, conviction.

It is your fourth term, are you getting tired?

Vladimir Putin: No, if I had been tired, I would not have run for the fourth term.

Oliver Stone: Ok. Listen, can I find out something? Let’s take a pause. I just want to ask my director if he wants to ask any more things about Ukraine. Five minutes?

Vladimir Putin: The director always has the final word; after all, he is the one calling the shots.

Oliver Stone: Thank you.

I think we are fine.

Vladimir Putin: Very well. Are we done?

Thank you so much.

Oliver Stone: Thank you, sir.

Vladimir Putin: Are you going back to the States?

Oliver Stone: I am very worried about you.

Vladimir Putin: Why?

Oliver Stone:I can see there are so many problems. It weighs you down. It is sad to see. It is a tough situation.

Vladimir Putin: It is all right. We have seen worse.

Oliver Stone: Russian bombes in Syria. What has happened to Skripal? Where is he?

Vladimir Putin: I have no idea. He is a spy, after all. He is always in hiding.

Oliver Stone: They say he was going to come back to Russia. He had some information.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, I have been told that he wants to make a written request to come back.

Oliver Stone: He knew still and he wanted to come back. He had information that he could give to the world press here in Russia.

Vladimir Putin: I doubt it. He has broken the ranks already. What kind of information can he possess?

Oliver Stone: Who poisoned him? They say English secret services did not want Sergei Skripal to come back to Russia?

Vladimir Putin: To be honest, I do not quite believe this. I do not believe this is the case.

Oliver Stone: Makes sense. You do not agree with me?

Vladimir Putin: If they had wanted to poison him, they would have done so.

Oliver Stone: Ok, that makes sense. I don’t know. Who did then?

Vladimir Putin: After all, this is not a hard thing to do in today’s world. In fact, a fraction of a milligram would have been enough to do the job. And if they had him in their hands, there was nothing complicated about it. No, this does not make sense. Maybe they just wanted to provoke a scandal.

Oliver Stone: I think it is more complicated. You know, you think I am much too much of a conspiracy guy.

Vladimir Putin: I do not believe this.

Oliver Stone: I have seen things. I do.

Vladimir Putin: You should not. Take care of yourself.

Oliver Stone: Can we get a picture?

Remark: This is a great honour for us. Can we take a picture with you?

Vladimir Putin: With pleasure.

When Jews Invoke The Holocaust

July 01, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

by Gilad Atzmon

30 Jewish protesters were arrested on Sunday outside a privately managed ICE detention centre in New Jersey, which has been used to hold undocumented immigrants.

Invoking the Holocaust, demonstrators described the facilities in which immigrants are being held as concentration camps and spoke of the immigrant children who have died while being held by ICE. The Jewish protesters travelled from cities all over the USA. They were holding signs and singing and chanting in Hebrew and English.

                                                Never Again Action @NeverAgainActn

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: TWO HUNDRED JEWS SHUT DOWN ELIZABETH DETENTION CENTER, 36 ARRESTED, SAY “NEVER AGAIN IS NOW”

Full press release: https://www.neveragainaction.com/press/for-immediate-release-two-hundred-jews-shut-down-elizabeth-detention-center-36-arrested-say-never-again-is-now …

Donate to support legal fees: http://bit.ly/NeverAgainFund 

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The Jews behind the protest say about themselves, “we are  #JewsAgainstICE because #NeverAgainMeans never again for anyone.” This sounds good enough to me and I have no criticism of the official objective behind this humanist protest. Yet the Jewish nature of the gathering raises some crucial and necessary questions:

 Are these Jewish protestors willing to describe Gaza as a concentration camp?

 Will the Jewish activists protest in front of the Israeli embassy invoking the holocaust, pointing out that the Palestinians are subject to long-term genocidal policies?

 Will these Jewish protestors allow gentile pro Palestinian activists, for instance,  to equate Israel with Nazi Germany or maybe invoke the holocaust is a Jews-only domain?

 Would the activists consider a Jewish protest in front of Goldman Sachs headquarters or George Soros’ offices, pointing at the carnage these investors inflicted on states and millions of people around the globe?

 How far are these well-meaning Jewish protestors willing to go to identify problems that might be related to Jewish exceptionalism, nationalism or racism?

 But the Jewish protest raises a much deeper question. What kind of people make a conscious and collective effort to look humane and empathic? I guess one possible answer is that we are dealing with people who accept that some of the actions and politics associated with their tribe are deeply disturbing.

 Newsweek reports that “the protest brought together Jews with a range of religious leanings, creating what Alona Weimer, a member of New York ‘s Yeshivat Hadar, described as an atypical cross-section of attendees for a demonstration.” Once again, it is not Judaism or a meta-Jewish ethos that unites these diverse good Jews and Tikkun Olam enthusiasts. One may wonder: what is it then that bonds this Jewish ‘cross-section’? Is it the phantasy of Jewish humanist DNA? Is it the Jewish revolutionary spirit, or is it the controlled opposition gene?

Unless Jews learn to fight for humanity as ordinary people, these questions may keep surfacing.

Gilad Atzmon on The Public Space

June 01, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

I discussed with Jean-Francois Gariépy a wide range of issues to do with Israel, Jewish ID Politics, Nationalism and Race. Though JF and myself disagree on some fundamental matters, this one hour discussion is fascinating, enlightening and most important, open and tolerant.

Victory Day 2019 in Lugansk People’s Republic (updated)

May 15, 2019

by George Eliason, Special Correspondent for the Saker Blog in Novorussia

Victory Day 2019 in Lugansk People’s Republic

For the last five years, I was given the opportunity to break a lot of news and human interest stories from Donbass. More specifically, I’ve lived in what became Lugansk People’s Republic since 2012 and I’ve been writing from there since the trouble started before the Ukrainian coup happened.

The video from Victory day offers a unique perspective on Russian affairs in that the interviews are with boots to ground leadership and the topic is Russian integration. Along with the day’s events and the meaning behind them is an interview with a Russian regional Deputy and the Victory Day speech by the mayor of Novoborvitsyi , LNR.

Russian Deputy Valentine Vasilchenko discusses how people on both sides of the border have a long integrated history.

I asked Russia’ Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dimitry Polanskiy to comment on LNR’s Novoborovitsyi Mayor Desatnikov and Rovstov Raion Deputy Vasilichenko’s statements.

DP –I find such cross-border contacts natural and indispensable for people living side by side for many years and being one ethnical group. We never prevented our citizens to contact their Ukrainian counterparts, we are not doing it now.

I am sure that our recent initiative on expedient passportization of inhabitants of Donetsk and Lugansk will contribute to this natural process. We are glad that it was warmly welcomed by the concerned people – the queues to the issuing centers are very long and people are very grateful to Russia for such a step.

The ambassador’s comments clearly show a top to bottom commitment of the part of Russia to ease the burden placed on the people of LNR and DNR by Ukraine’s war on them.

Although I’ve written a lot about the village I live in, this is the first occasion I’ve had to spend Victory Day locally. So, what’s Victory Day in LNR DNR look like without all the machines of war and soldiers that go along with military parades?

The story goes back to the reality Donbass faced during the Great War (WWII) from 1941 to 1943. There was no army here fighting for the people.

There were no war machines. No tanks. No planes. No soldiers.

The men that were fighting age were long gone and Nazi Germany occupied the region. They tortured and murdered the citizenry with the help of their most willing, brutish, and bloody ally; the OUN UPA.

During these years, a group of children with the help of a few Soviet soldiers that got caught behind the lines sabotaged the Nazi war effort.

They were called the Young Guards. They are famous because of the sacrifice they made for their neighbors and countrymen who couldn’t defend themselves. They were Donbass famous child partisans.

From 1941 until February 1943 Donbass was under occupation. In January 1943, only one month before the region was liberated, most of the Young Guard was caught. Some were flayed alive (skinned) in Rovenki. Most were thrown down a mine shaft and some of those were still living when they were thrown in.

These young heroes exemplify the absolute best qualities youth anywhere could possess.

In Novoborovitsyi, Victory Day 2019 centered around the story of one such 14 year old named Petr Skreptsov who ran messages from the local partisans to the Soviet army in that time frame. He was eventually caught. He and his family were tortured and stabbed with bayonets by the nationalists.

The video tries to capture the essential commemoration of all these events.

While our journalism effort transitions into video, I hope you’ll overlook some of the technical flaws.

How could a serious war effort be mounted against the Nazis and Bandera’s OUN UPA without technical support? Or how about without any of the material or weaponry you would expect in a war zone against an overwhelmingly superior force that was completely armed?

Once you grasp that story, it’s only a small step to understanding how Donbass did it again in 2014 against a standing army. The Ukrainian army may have been inadequate but the logistics chain was in place.

Lugansk People’s Republic’s Victory Day is a commemoration of the drive and spirit that made the Donbass region famous from the days of the Tsars through to 2019.

While this isn’t a war of child partisans, the children, mothers with babes, and the elderly that suffer the most.

Poroshenko, while claiming to be the leader of the country LDNR citizens reside in, made it clear that the children could sit in root cellars under the threat of artillery instead of going to school. Zelenskiy is embracing the same philosophy.

The reason is both are in debt to the OUN for their respective position as presidents. Under Zelenskiy, no change is possible.

The Victory Day celebration is supposed to remind people about the dangers of nationalism and fascism. Worldwide it is celebrated by every country that was allied in WWII. The problem in the west is remembering the importance of those sacrifices lost meaning.

In Donbass, we are living daily watching local people making those sacrifices again.

Victory Day 2019 in LNR commemorates a commitment to a real future which means leaving Ukraine behind. LNR’s direction is clear. It’s Russia. Victory! Победа!

How was it possible for a Jewish candidate to win the 2019 Ukrainian presidential bid if Ukraine is a rigidly nationalist country?

May 01, 2019

by George Eliason, Special Correspondent for the Saker Blog in Novorussia

How was it possible for a Jewish candidate to win the 2019 Ukrainian presidential bid if Ukraine is a rigidly nationalist country?

Although the investigation isn’t complete, I have uncovered all the working parts that make an impossible story not only plausible but show the election results as the only logical conclusion.

As I was sorting through all the information about the election, I came across the one person whose presence on Zelensky’s team as a spokesman told me worlds about what was really going on with the election.

He represented groups responsible for millions of Holocaust deaths in WWII. These groups also killed millions of their own people who were fellow Ukrainians with abandon. According to their own words, they have been waiting to do this again since 2003 when they figured out they cannot convert most families that suffered torture under nationalists to become part of them.

The Russian perspective on passports

Giving foreign passports to Ukrainians isn’t a new or controversial thing. It’s been going on since 2015 when Hungary decided to protect the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine. According to EA DAILY, Poland handed out Polish Cards which simplifies immigration by identifying the holder as a Pole. And Romania is offering the same easy passports for Ukrainians.

For the last 4 years, indignation has been in short supply though. The same can be said about secession talk from the same ethnic groups in those regions. Even Galicia, the birthplace of Ukrainian nationalism wants to get away from Kiev these days. Once again, western indignation is on vacation for the holidays.

On April 25^th, 2019 Russia offered passports to the people of Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR) and DNR. I contacted Dmitry Polanskiy, the Russian Federation’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN about the passports and who can possess one.

Ambassador Polanskiy, without getting too far ahead, is the passport separate from Russian citizenship? I don’t understand how but it would make sense.

Ambassador Polanskiy– In a nutshell – the process lasted some time and ended with President signing this document. No specific timing. And they don’t have to denounce their UA citizenship, so in principle, it changes nothing for UA. If they chose additional RU passport they will get things that they didn’t have for five yrs – social payments, medical service, etc.

As for Zelenskiy – we need to see. There have been so many conflicting signals during the election campaign. He (Zelensky) will be judged by his actions.

The passport is the same. But in other cases applicants have to denounce their citizenship if they apply for a Russian one.

Ambassador, how do you plan on dealing with the foreigners in the region that have LDNR passports? Are they exclusion from this?

Ambassador Polanskiy– It is stipulated that the decree applies only to Ukrainian citizens living in LDNR.

Following this is the RF’s decision to possibly expand the offer of Russian passports to every Ukrainian that wants one. As you’ll soon see, the implied protections may go beyond what anyone is thinking right now.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy winning the 2019 Ukrainian election is equivalent to a Jew whose family was marked for death becoming Fuehrer in a Nazi Germany within 100 years of Adolf Hitler, providing Hitler won the Great War, of course.

When you consider the unlikelihood of this, Barrack Obama comes to mind. He became the US president within 143 years of African Americans being bought and sold and killed almost at will.

In Zelenskiy’s case, the real Ukrainian nationalist Politik has finally kicked in and the neo-nationalists are about to get an abject lesson in the stark realities of OUN politics.

What’s really interesting is that any Jewish leader that takes issue with these statements is in danger of being rightfully labeled a Holocaust denier. From 2014 on, Jewish leaders have been enamored with Waffen SS Galizien and deny the significance the OUN, UPA, police, and citizen battalions have in the Holocaust.

The only fair thing to say is the Ukrainians have been open about all of this since 1918. Remember that date. It was when the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) was declared by the revolutionary Rada located in the Teacher’s House, in Kyiv. The importance of the Teacher’s House is that it is where Ukrainian and Diaspora nationalist leaders go to renew and celebrate their commitments to Fascist Chauvinistic Nationalist politic.

Since that’s the case, going forward Ukraine’s Nazi political parties will clearly explain why Ukraine has always been a fascist chauvinistic nationalism in their own words. Many of the proof documents are in Ukrainian. The pages can be translated here.

The short summary is in 1991 Ukraine declared independence. The last president of the Ukrainian Government in Exile (UNR), Mykola Plavyuk, decided the form of government the modern state of Ukraine would have. He transferred the UNR powers and symbols of state to the new Ukrainian government.

When Ukraine failed to live up to its end of the bargain, in August 2004, Plavyuk and the other OUN nationalist Diaspora leaders expressed their dissatisfaction by creating the Orange revolution in November 2004.

The problem with it was it wasn’t violent and earthshaking. No real changes were made and within a few months, no one cared.

Plavyuk, who founded the Ukrainian World Congress and was the current OUNm world leader moved to Ukraine. He was the leader of CYM Ukrainian scouting. Both CYM and PLAST were used to develop children into nationalist terrorist operatives from the time of the 1918 failed government all the way through the Cold War. PLAST was opened in W. Ukraine and CYM in Central and East Ukraine to develop the operatives that would eventually pull off a violent revolutionary coup against the same elected president they prevented from sitting in 2004- Victor Yanukovych ten years later.

In 2018, the current Ukrainian nationalist Diaspora leaders declared the Orange Revolutionaries failed again. This time it was after the violent and earthshaking coup that was supposed to bring in the OUN’s government. After the coup, all the current leaders under Poroshenko’s watch did was enrich themselves and take half measures. The verdict from the OUN was in long before the 2019 election happened.

“These people have had a chance to become Ukrainian George Washingtons and they’ve wasted it”

The 2019 Ukrainian election highlights the danger when an overt chauvinistic nationalism that fails to destroy local opposition is never dealt with decisively. Because the overt part was soundly rejected by the majority population, Ukraine needed a new rapprochement with OUNb, OUNm, and OUNz nationalist groups and signatory groups like the UCCA (Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America) or UWC (Ukrainian World Congress).

In 1991, if given an option, the rabidly nationalist Ukrainian Diaspora would have opted to support the Soviet Union for a few more years because they were totally unprepared to set up the government they preserved in the Diaspora for over 70 years on Ukrainian soil. In all that time, the Diaspora had next to no impact on the lives of people in Ukraine who only knew them as Hitler’s thugs and murderers.

Understood in this light, the civil war in Ukraine can only make sense. In 2019, the average Ukrainian voter wasn’t voting for Zelenskiy who never bothered to make a campaign appearance or voice a position on anything indicating he was running. It was a vote against overt nationalism and Poroshenko’s EuroMaidan inaugurated government that brought in the beginning of the Ukrainian Diaspora’s trademark nationalism.

Regardless of who won the election, it was to the people of Ukraine that were lied to in 1991, 2004, 2014, and yet again given hope only to watch it smashed.

Why do Ukrainian Diaspora nationalists hold this much weight?

The government of Ukraine belongs to the UNR and politicians in Ukraine live and die at its discretion. Below, both the Diaspora and current Ukrainian leaders tell that story in their own words.

There were terms and conditions attached to receiving the symbols of the UNR in 1991. One of them was the type of government would conform to the model Simon Petliura’s government left the UNR. This is the model the Diaspora carried from 1919-1992. This is the only model for Ukraine and the combined OUN delivered this.

If the government stepped away or signaled it might go against the UNR, labeling the leadership pro-Soviet or post 1991, pro-Russian is a death sentence for the traitor who fails on nationalist chauvinist grounds.

Volodomyr Zelenskiy -Ukrainian Nationalism’s 1^st Jewish Nazi Leader?

This is the year of Stepan Bandera OUNb leader and the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) in Ukraine. Monuments are going up all over to commemorate Waffen SS soldiers and death camp lever pullers as well as mass murder events the OUN and UPA committed across Ukraine.

This is the Ukraine Zelenskiy is in charge of and he sees Stepan Bandera as a cool hero for Ukrainians.

The Jerusalem section (Jewish quarter) of Vinnitsya, one of Ukraine’s larger cities, is where Ukrainian leaders decided to commemorate Simon Petliura. He was the leader of the failed 1918 UNR government. Petliura murdered about 100,000 Jews in one year during continuous pogroms in Ukraine while failing to establish his government.

It isn’t known how many more Christian Ukrainians the nationalists murdered. Will Zelenskiy follow this example?

With a civil war Zelenskiy has no intention of stopping ready to flare up, the idea that rabid Diaspora nationalists in the OUN groups UCCA and UWC have this much control over a Ukraine where they consider the people to be waste or worse, as ex-Soviets; should have the world in an uproar.

These groups have no natural ties to the Ukrainian people. In fact, the Lvov region is as close as most of their leaders ever got and it was in Poland at the time. Most WWII and Cold War Ukrainian nationalist leaders and people are Polish. Ukrainian was a political membership at the time, not a nationality.

What makes Volodomyr Zelensky dangerous is that no one is willing to see a Jewish president acting on behalf of a Stepan Bandera, Simon Petliura, or Roman Shukehvych coming. Poroshenko reeks of corruption and it’s obvious he doesn’t care about his country or people. It’s easy to see that disaster coming.

The people behind the Zelenskiy government see all non-nationalist Ukrainians as people that tortured their own parents. The Ukrainians that want power were told to look at all non-OUN families this way.

If you had the chance for revenge on someone that you were told tortured or murdered your family and you didn’t have to worry about any legal or social fallout, what would you do?

These WWII Nazi leftovers live to see every person related to the Allies of WWII that isn’t a nationalist tortured, murdered, or relocated.

This is why Russia’s offer of passports in Donbass and Ukraine is important to protect civilians. The following proofs are given in list form from different major sources that shaped the policies described above.

Ukraine- All OUN Nationalist Groups Agree on that Ukraine Started In 1918

The first few accounts show precise agreement describing what Ukraine is. Ukraine is the continuation of Simon Petliura’s fascist chauvinist regime. The last account which contains parts of an interview with the last UNR president about the transfer of state and how Ukrainian leaders disappointed the OUN and Diaspora is chilling. He’s angry the cleansing hasn’t started in Ukraine yet and then threatens them if they don’t make things right.

Bogdan Chervak is the world leader of OUNm or Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Melnyk).

“The UNR had its own army, currency, public administration bodies, flag, emblem, and was recognized internationally. It was a full-fledged state which we, unfortunately, failed to preserve. And our enemies know this. This is why the propaganda of the so-called ‘Russian World’ is aimed at convincing the world that Ukraine has never been a state and what is going on today is temporary. But the history of the Ukrainian Revolution, particularly of the UNR, shatters these stereotypes. It shows that Ukrainians had a state of their own as far back as the early 20th century. We proclaimed and took up arms for it, but we lost it due to Russian aggression. In 1991, we in fact restored Ukraine’s independence that dates back to the UNR times.

The events in Russia aimed to preserve the empire by modernizing it a little. At the same time, the goal of the Ukrainian Revolution was to establish a Ukrainian state. While in the 1st Universal the Central Rada declared its political goal to gain autonomy for Ukraine as part of a democratic federative Russian republic, it proclaimed the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) in the 3rd Universal.”

Ukrainian presidential continuity through the Diaspora 1917-2005

“But after the Bolsheviks strangled Ukrainian independence, the struggle for its restoration extended beyond the borders of Ukraine by the State Center of the UPR in the exile, which for 72 years (!) Continuously represented the Ukrainian Republic at the international level. State independence of Ukraine was restored on August 24, 1991. Solemnly constituting its powers on August 22, 1992, the State Center of the UPR in exile led by the last President of the UPR, Mykola Plavyuk, made a historic statement that “proclaimed on August 24 and approved by the people of Ukraine on December 1, 1991, the Ukrainian state continues to state national traditions of the UNR and is the successor of the Ukrainian People’s Republic “. Democratic traditions and state symbols of the UPR have inherited modern Ukraine.

Therefore our flag is blue and yellow, the coat of arms – Tryzub, the anthem – “Ukraine has not died yet …” Even the name of the Ukrainian hryvnia currency is inherited from the time of the UPR.”

This shows clearly all the symbols of the Ukrainian state were given by the UPR in 1992.

August 22, 2002, UKRAINIAN WORLD COORDINATION BOARD UKRAINIAN WORLD COORDINATING COUNCIL– In 1918, an independent sovereign Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed by the fourth session of the Central Rada (at the historic Teacher’s House in Kiev). After the struggle and defeat, the UNR government continued to work in exile. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in history, when non-stateless people retained their own State Center, Government, President. They carried out a major mission of uniting all Ukrainian emigrants in the world so that they did not assimilate, not disappear, support Ukrainians in their great Ukraine, tortured and destroyed repressions and the famine of the brutal Soviet system. 

And here – a remarkable day on August 24, 1992, when in the Mariinsky Palace, the President of the UPR, Mykola Plavyuk transfers the authority of the National Center of the Ukrainian People’s Republic to the nation-elected President of Ukraine and signs of state power – a flag and a seal. This important act testified to the continuity of the Ukrainian statehood … The Great Citizen of Ukraine Mykola Plavyuk lives for Ukraine. He believes in Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, and his faith is effective, active. He holds high the flag of Ukrainian nationalism, the highest manifestation of patriotism, great sacrificial love for his native land. He is a real hero of Ukraine.”

The transfer of power, legitimacy, and state by Plavyuk has conferred on the basis that it is the 1918 UNR that is transferred to its rightful place as the government of Ukraine.

WW II mass murderer Stetsko lay in state at Teacher’s Building in Kyiv which was home to 1918 government

When WWII OUNb Bandera leader Slava Stetsko died in 2003, OUNm world leader and former president of the UNR president Mykola Plawiuk (Plavyuk) was there to honor his colleague.

“The next day, prior to the funeral procession to Baikove Cemetery, Mrs. Stetsko’s body lay in state at the Teachers Building in Kyiv, which had served as the session hall for Ukraine’s Central Rada during Ukraine’s short-lived independence beginning in 1918.

Representatives of local OUN groupings from Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, and Ternopil attended in large numbers. Mykola Plawiuk, leader of the OUN-Melnyk faction paid his respects at the Teachers Building.”

This Interview with last UNR president Mykola Plavyuk ties everything together.

Ukraine, being an integral part of the empire under the name of the USSR, nevertheless had its own President. But he was abroad. When August 24 was proclaimed, and on December 1, 1991, a nationwide referendum confirmed the restoration of the Ukrainian state, the last President of the exile was obliged to act in accordance with a historical document signed by Simon Petliura. Why did he transfer his powers to Leonid Kravchuk, how he perceives the present realities, which sees the prospect of our state … These and other questions on the eve of Independence Day are answered by Mykola Plavyuk, the last President of Ukraine in the exile. 

2004 Interview with Mykola Plavyuk, OUNm leader, founder of the Ukrainian World Congress, and last UNR Diaspora president

– Mr. Mykola, twelve years ago, on behalf of the Government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, you passed the attributes of power to the first publicly elected President of Ukraine. What induced you to take such a step?

Plavyuk- It is true: in August 1992, the State Center of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile ended its activities. The relevant statement was signed by me as the President of the UPR, Michael Voskoboinik as chairman of the Ukrainian National Council and Ivan Samilenko, the head of the UNR government in the exile. We made our credentials to the hands of the President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk. Our move is due to the decision of the Labor Congress of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of 1919 and the decision of the Head of the Directorate of the UNR Simon Petliura, which obliged the President and the Government of the UNR to end its activities since the restoration of Ukraine’s state independence and the election of its people in a manner. As you know, this happened on December 1, 1991. We could not continue the activities of the DPU of the UPR abroad, because it would harm independent Ukraine. Is not it clear? How would the world perceive our ruling? if we did not recognize an independent Ukrainian state? USA, Canada, and others would recognize, and we – no?”

 According to the best available Ukrainian sources, just like everyone else, the OUN Diaspora was caught with their pants down when Ukraine declared independence. They had no mechanisms in place to jump in and build their state on top of Soviet society. 

Plavyuk- But this state, let’s face it, is rather the continuation of the Ukrainian SSR, and not the UNR? Those who fought for the Ukrainian state are not honored. And vice versa: those who fought against it, tortured the Patriots – in the rank of heroes. 

Today, we see this sentiment played out in Ukraine. WWII heroes that fought against Nazi Germany and the OUN or UPA are criminalized. Their pensions are taken. Nazi SS, UPA, the police battalions that were so eager to engage in mass murder are being rehabilitated and given pensions and hero status.

Plavyuk – The then President Leonid Kravchuk publicly stated that modern Ukraine is the successor to the national traditions of the UPR, documented January 22, 1918 and 1918.

We have executed the decisions of the Labor Congress and the Directory of the UNR. On the contrary, I am happy that it was enough to work in 70 years worthy political activity aimed at restoring Ukraine’s state independence …
The authorities and the people of Ukraine, who chose it, are responsible for the current state of Ukraine.

Plavyuk– I am glad that for thirteen years state traditions have been consolidated in Ukraine, and a new generation of qualified personnel who is able to manage the new Ukrainian state has grown. The growth of understanding among our people is comforting, that the Ukrainian state should be national, and the Ukrainian nation – its owner. 

Mykola Plavyuk moved to Ukraine after transferring the government and helped nationalist scouting groups to get off the ground.
Plavyuk– I worry that the modern Ukrainian government does not fulfill its obligations to the Ukrainian people and cares about its personal or clan interests. And its policy is not consistent and does not always correspond to the interests of the Ukrainian people.
But today, quite often, our Ukraine is called non-Ukrainian …
Therefore, my work is realized in accordance with the slogan “OUN – for national and social justice in an independent national Ukrainian state”.

Plavyuk- It is unlikely that the current generation of compatriots(political leaders) will survive when this slogan is embodied in the concrete actions … 

Plavyuk was clearly calling for a nationalist revolution in August 2004. He threatened Ukrainian leaders to get in line with UNR politics or else. The Orange Revolution started 3 months later in November 2004. It was supposed to deSovietize and clean up corruption. All it did was make Nazi rhetoric politically popular in Kiev.

Because Plavyuk was a leader in the CYM children’s scout movement (it developed political nationalists) he was able to help develop a robust politic based scouting culture. CYM was brought into Eastern Ukraine where it had no record. PLAST, which is CYMs counterpart was kept in the west where it was developed in the 1920s. Both groups taught children sabotage, bomb building, and murder during WWII and after. Until the 1980s both groups were considered terrorist organizations worldwide.

For another 10 years, a lot of focus and NGO money went into developing both scouting groups in Ukraine to prepare leaders for the next revolution. This was called EuroMaidan.

The link from OUN Nazi murderers to President-elect Volodomyr Zelenskiy

Across the history of Ukraine, we see the Diaspora nationalists considering only themselves and only their nationalism worthy of Ukraine. From WWII through the 2014 coup every other political leanings have been met with violence.

“These people have had a chance to become Ukrainian George Washingtons,” says Yurash. “And they’ve wasted it.”

Sviatoslav Yurash is a name I’ve kept an eye out for since the near the beginning of January 2014 when he walked onto EuroMaidan and demanded to be the international spokesman. And they let him.

After that, if you wanted to interview or speak to Aresniy Yatsenyuk, Petr Poroshenko, Oleh Tianhybok, or Vlad Klitchko; you went through Yurash.

Within days he was also the spokesman for Pravy Sektor and Dimitro Yarosh. Following the coup, he became the spokesman for Assistant Defense Minister Yarosh, Defense Minister Parubiy, and the Ukrainian Army.

I did mention he was a 17-year-old college student who dropped out to go to the protest, didn’t I?
Yurash made it clear that he was never paid for his trouble. He also started the website Euromaidanpr which pumps out a lot of Ukraine’s propaganda. He coordinates with 3 Chalupa sisters through the site and its sister website InformNapalm.com which they use to provide propaganda to western outlets.

As a thank you for volunteering, Sviatoslav Yurash was given a job as the Deputy Director of the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC)Kiev office.

The UWC was founded in 1967 by an OUNm leader Andriy Melnyk supporter named Mykola Plavyuk who later became its president as well as the last Diaspora UNR president. The UWC was recognized by the United Nations Economic and Social Council as a non-governmental organization with special consultative status. Today it has ties with 61 countries and represents a Diaspora of 20 million Ukrainians.

The Atlantic Council has a contract with the UWC to promote its interest which it does in spades. When the article “Why Poroshenko Doesn’t Deserve a Second Term” came out, it meant it was already over. The fat lady sang. The cows came home. The song was over.

Sviatoslav Yurash is Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s spokesman and is one of his top advisors. What does that tell you about the election?

Russia chose the perfect time to introduce RF passports in Donbass and Ukrainian expansion of the passport program will help to stabilize the region. If people don’t start paying closer attention to the back story with this election, we are in for one hell of a ride.

The Waves of Time

JANUARY 19, 2019

by Jimmie Moglia for The Saker Blog

That all the world is a stage and all men and women merely players is a familiar and generally accepted proposition. But many, prompted by curiosity and helped by new information previously unknown or uneasily available, would like to know more about the play they are the unwitting players thereof.

Which transforms the frame of mind of the curious into that of a historian. In turn, this exposes him to the immediate problem of interpretation. Interpretation of the historical facts themselves, often accompanied by a likely change of his worldview, following the discovery of new facts. For historians themselves can modify their views, when forced by the train of circumstances.

Here is an example. Friedrich Meinecke was an eminent German historian, with an unusually long life span, during which a series of revolutionary and extraordinary changes affected the fortunes of Germany. His books reflect four different Meinecke(s), each the spokesman of different times, and each speaking through one of his major works.

In his first, “World Citizenship and the Nation State,” published in 1907, Meinecke sees the embodiment of German national ideals in Bismarck’s Reich. And like many 19^th and 20th century thinkers, he identifies nationalism with the highest form of universalism.

Here is dramatic evidence of the revolution of the times. In the parlance of current Western European & American elites, nationalism, rather than a higher form of universalism, is labeled as ‘fascism’ or ‘racism’. And since the characterization is ludicrous, a new word has been coined, ‘populism’, to demean and disgrace the idea.

In his second book, “The Idea of the Raison d’Etat,” (published in 1925), Meinecke speaks with the divided and bewildered mind of an observer of the Weimar Republic – where the world of politics has become an arena of unresolved conflict between the reason-of-state and morality. Morality, of itself, seems external to politics, but in the last resort it affects the life and security of any state. For morality is written in the human heart, even of those who hold it in contempt.

To frame the issues in today’s terms, since the end, in the 1950s, of the “Legion of Decency” act in American Cinema,” Hollywood’s productions have set the standard, planted the roots and sowed the of seeds of shame and iniquity, in just about all domains of collective and personal behavior.

In the Weimar Republic, as we know, it was the state of universal degradation, promoted, inculcated and imposed upon Germany after her defeat in WW1, that prompted the birth and growth of National Socialism.

In his “Development of Historicism” (published in 1936), Meinecke laments the idea of a certain view of history, which seems to recognize that whatever is, is right.

In our days, examples of this ‘historicism’ are many, from the totally unbelievable official explanation of 9/11, to the physical destruction of the Middle East, the ongoing farce in Ukraine, the grotesque Russophobia, the idea that Western European and North-American states can exist without borders, and so on.

Finally, in 1946, after seeing his country defeated and leveled to the ground, he published “The German Catastrophe,” where he exposes the belief that history is at the mercy of blind and inexorable forces.

That the times we live-in weigh on our thoughts and judgment is as obvious as saying that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun. Nevertheless, our individual evolving point of view also influences the selection of the facts needed to produce an acceptable explanation of causes and effects, or of causes and defects as the case may be.

That is, the historian and the facts of history are necessary to one another. For a historian without his facts is futile; and facts without a historian are dead and meaningless.

Finally – and I hope the strenuous reader will forgive the long preamble, though I hope there is method in the meandering – not all facts are historical. History begins when the historian selects certain facts and declares them endowed with historical value.

But the distinction between historical and unhistorical facts is not rigid or constant. Any fact may become historical, once its relevance and significance is recognized. If so, that fact generates its own historical wave, whose effects may be felt after a long time and with enormous power, unimaginable when the fact occurred.

In nature an analogy is the tsunami, where, at the point of origin, the waves are only about 3 feet high. But travelling at incredible speed across incredible distances, they finally release their apocalyptic energy on touching land.

As someone ‘curious about history’ and not a professional historian, I experienced a change of outlook on historical events when the United States declared war on Iraq and destroyed it. For I knew the country well and I could personally attest that all that was said about Iraq by the organs of mass persuasion, was false. And while accepting the inherent murkiness of politics, I could not reconcile myself to the idea that the two Bushes, one of whom is dead, could be some of the lyingest knaves in Christendom.

As it is universally accepted, the US destroyed Iraq to satisfy Israel’s ambitions. And given that curiosity is the mother of explanation, I took up the doubtful challenge of locating the original historical fact, the trigger and the source of the wave-of-time, which eventually led to the Iraqi Armageddon and beyond.

In this and similar instances, opinion reigns supreme. Other ‘curious about history’ may choose another episode or fact, and with good reason. But sometimes, lesser-known events, singularly representative of the reality and culture of an era, can offer a perspective different from the conventional and usual narratives.

In the instance, I pinpoint the source of the topic wave-of-time in Napoleon’s emancipation of the Jews in France, following the French Revolution.

Actually, already in 1791, in the midst of the Revolution, the National Assembly had granted Jews full citizenship. It was hoped that, by so doing, Jews would stop acting like a separate nation within France. But soon there were complaints that the Jews were stuck in their old ways, particularly in Alsace and Lorraine, where their majority lived. Their ‘old ways’ referred to usury, or, as we would say today ‘financial engineering’, or ‘banking shenanigans’.

The situation remained fluid and uncertain till Napoleon, converted from a servant of the Republic into an Emperor, convened, in 1807, what he called the Great Sanhedrin, to resolve the controversial issues arisen from the emancipation. The Great Sanhedrin refers to the governing body of the Jewish community, notably during the Roman Empire.

To a council of 71 Jewish leaders and rabbis, Napoleon posed 12 questions about their laws and customs. Some questions were amusing – for example, were Jews allowed to have more than one wife? The main issue, however, was whether Jews born in France, and now treated by law as citizens, would regard France as their country. They answered that there was nothing inherent in their religion preventing the full integration of the Jewish community into French life. This was enough to confirm their full recognition and emancipation, along with an obligation to take up French names.

Perhaps Napoleon ignored that if a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, a Shylock, by any other name would still call for his pound of flesh.

In fact, there was immediate widespread opposition to the move, in French-ruled Europe and in France itself. Even one of Napoleon’s famous generals, Francois Christophe de Kellerman, whose name is inscribed in the Arc de Triomphe, recommended strongly that the Jews be prohibited from dealing in commerce.

With easy hindsight, Napoleon, like all who like to anticipate futurity and exalt possibility to certainty, might or should have avoided this adventure, so linked to chance. For, in this and other similar instances, disappointment must always be proportionate to the breath of the original hopes.

The pressure became so intense that soon Napoleon restricted the terms of emancipation, via the so-called “Infamous Decree” of 1808. The decree annulled, reduced or postponed all debts with Jews, and imposed a ten-year ban on any kind of Jewish money-lending activity.

As an aside, the official public face of a notable politician or ruler, often conflicts with his private persona, as seen in his diaries or confidential papers. In a letter to his brother Jérome Napoleon, dated 6 March 1808, Napoleon writes, “I have undertaken to reform the Jews, but I have not endeavored to draw more of them into my realm. Far from that, I have avoided doing anything which could show any esteem for the most despicable of mankind.”

“Give me ten thousand eyes, and I will fill them with prophetic tears” – said Cassandra predicting the fall of Troy. The most Cassandra-like admonition given to Napoleon came from his uncle, Cardinal Fesh, who told him, “Sire, by giving the Jews equality as Catholics, you wish for the end of the world to come.”

But the onrush of events, including Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, inaugurated a new era. When an atheistic ideology, molded in the Age of Enlightenment, and strengthened by the impact of the French Revolution, took hold and spread at large throughout Europe.

For the 19^th century saw an upsurge of anti-clerical movements and ideologies in the Western world. This is not a wholesale defense of organized religion. Nevertheless, religion also acts as a bulwark of the moral law. And irrespective of specific customs or ceremonies, religion – without disrespect – is metaphysics for the people, an intelligible intimation of eternity, an unthreatening glimpse of the infinity, a psychological safeguard from the despair of mortality.

In this context, it is not accidental that the rebirth of Russia, earlier ravaged, debased and plundered by the dissolvers of the Soviet Union, has seen the resurgence of her religion, which was dormant but never died.

Compare this with America, with her enforced and compulsive secularization, the banning of religion in schools and the prohibition of public display of religious symbols.

But I digress. Let’s return to the subject at hand. After 1815, Jewish supremacy, especially in the banking field, asserted itself in Europe, spearheaded by the ubiquitous House of the Rothschilds. In the second part of the century, England even had a Jewish Prime Minister, Disraeli.

During that time, with a pronouncement that today seems impossible, the Vatican declared that any country that abolishes the Christian religion will be run by Jews.

It’s worth transcribing an extract from a 1890 issue of “Civilta’ Cattolica,” the key media organ of the Jesuits and the Vatican,

“The XIXth century will end, in Europe, leaving her in the throngs of a very sad issue, of which the XXth century will feel consequences so calamitous, as to induce her (Europe) to drastically deal with it. We refer to the improperly-called “Semitic Question,” that more accurately should be called “Judaic Question” – which is connected via an intimate link, to the economic, moral, political and religious conditions of Europe.

How fervid at present and how much this question perturbs the major nations, is manifest by the common cry against the invasion by Jews in all spheres of public and social life; by the leagues formed to slow its advance in France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Russia, Rumania and elsewhere. By the calls for action in various Parliaments – by the large number of newspaper articles, books and pamphlets that are constantly printed, all showing the need to stem the growth of this plague, and to combat it, showing evidence of its very pernicious consequences….

Naively, some try to show that the ”Judaic Question” is the result of a (Christian) hatred of the (Judaic) religion or sect. Mosaism (read ‘religion inspired by Moses) in itself could not be an argument for hatred…. for it was the antecedent of Christianity… But for centuries Judaism has turned its back on Mosaism, exchanging it with the Talmud, quintessence of that pharisaism, many times blasted by Christ…. And although Talmudism is an integral element of the Jewish question, we cannot say that (Talmudism) is all that relevant to it (Judaic question). For in Talmudism the Christian nations detest not so much the theological part, almost reduced to insignificance, but the moral one, that contradicts the elementary principles of natural ethics…. “

Incidentally, and as another aside, it is customary to describe the roots of European culture as “Judeo-Christian.” Many contend that a better description would be the “Greek-Christian” tradition, as certain important tenets of Christianity are actually derived from Plato. For example, he suggested that a trinity of forces shapes the cosmos and he struggled with the idea of a Being, purely incorporeal, executing a perfect model of the universe and molding with his hand what was but a rude chaos of random forces.

As an explanation, or at least a theory, Plato considered the divine nature of the universe under three modifications. There was indeed a first cause, the Reason or Logos, the soul of the universe, along with three subdivisions.

Readers may recall the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” where ‘word’ is an imperfect and narrow translation of the Greek ‘logos.’ For one of the meanings of ‘logos’ is indeed ‘word’, but not with sense that we usually attribute to it. A better translation could possibly be, “In the beginning was the Reason of the Universe.”

Plato conceived of 3 original principles, incorporated in the Logos, different, but linked to each other by a mysterious generation.

The important point is that the mystical and mysterious concept of the Trinity is the Christian rendering of Plato’s idea. The Trinity may still remain mysterious, but at least the mind can understand a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit, better than Plato’s more symbolic rendering.

Back to the main subject. During the early XXth century three events, distinct but important affected the wave-of-time begun with Napoleon.

One was the establishment of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 1913 – at first in America but now practically extended and enforced worldwide.

In fairness to its founders and all subsequent members, it should really have been called the ‘Jewish Anti Defamation League.’ Though by astutely avoiding the qualifying adjective, ‘ADL’ suggests impartiality, thus evading suspicion among the majority of the gentiles, who rarely or superficially follow the details of political events and institutions.

The actual purpose of the now ubiquitous and wealthy ADL was and is to aggressively prevent any criticism of Zionism and Israel, by crushing the critics, destroying their career, often depriving them of a livelihood and even removing them from the Congress or the Senate.

Observers may have noticed that when the Prime Minister of Israel addresses a US joint session of Senate and Congress, he routinely receives a record number of standing ovations. And, after an ovation, no one wants to be the first to sit down – presumably but also probably – for fear of being suspected of weaker Pro-Zionist sentiments.

Readers familiar with the Communist world will easily detect the stunning similarities between the new-speak of Communist Eastern Europe and ADL’s new-speak and thought-crime – in America but also in Europe and the English-speaking world at large.

As an example, in December 2018, the owner of a pleasant yet unostentatious house in the Italian provincial city of Aosta, installed a metal gate at the end of his driveway. The gate carried a decorative wrought-iron winged eagle, reminiscent of a National Socialist emblem, though without a swastika or other disturbing symbols.

But it was enough for a rabbi in Turin, 100 km away (and presumably a member of a local ADL chapter), to have a judge issue a search warrant and dispatch the Italian police to execute it against the shocked, bewildered and disbelieving house-dweller.

The police carried a thorough search of the premises, removed his computer, various personal effects and books from his library. In the end all the ‘incriminating’ evidence they found – besides the eagle on the gate – consisted of some books about the history of WW2.

Curiously, the event leading to the founding of the ADL had nothing to do with defamation and all to do with the sexual assault and murder of Mary Phagan, a 13-year old girl in Atlanta, Georgia. Mary worked for the National Pencil Company, and in May 1913 went to her place of work to collect her $1.20 earnings from the company superintendent Leo Frank. She was never seen again. Her body was later found in the basement of the company, mutilated, bruised and with her undergarments torn off. She had been strangled and Frank was the most likely suspect.

At the trial, Frank pleaded innocent and declared himself a victim of hate. But after a thorough investigation, Frank was found guilty. That is when Adolf Kraus, president of the Jewish-American order of B’nai B’rith founded the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Its charter reads:

“The immediate object of the league is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.”

Sometime later the outgoing governor of Georgia commuted the sentence from death by hanging to life imprisonment. But the leaders of the town were enraged by what they rated a corruption of justice. They dragged Frank from the courthouse and hanged him.

Ever since, Leo Frank is viewed by the ADL as a kind of patron saint; a man whose death serves as a reminder of the depths of depravity to which men can sink when in the grip of xenophobic hatred.

Today, as universally acknowledged, the ADL is the lay arm of the Zionist inquisition and a patently obvious instrument for censorship and the abolition of free speech.

The second momentous event I referred to was the publishing of the so-called Scofield Reference Bible. Which is a Bible annotated by Cyrus Scofield, a man of questionable background though an able manipulator of souls and money.

Scofield and his Bible are responsible for the birth and expansion of Christian Zionism. If there was ever a contradiction in terms, Christian Zionism is one. It created a class of unpaid and obedient political eunuchs at the service of the Zionist state.

Specific and central to Christian Zionist belief is Skofield’s comment on Genesis 12:3 (the words in Italics are the comment). ‘I will bless them that bless thee.’ In fulfillment closely related to the next clause, ‘And curse him that curseth thee.’ Wonderfully fulfilled in the history of the dispersion. It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Jew—well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.”

Though a struggling born-again preacher, Scofield became a member of the exclusive New York ‘s Lotus Club, where he was befriended by the Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermeyer. Untermeyer was instrumental in having Scofield’s annotated bible published.

In Scofield’s biography, written by Joseph Canfield, we read that Scofield’s theology was “most helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermeyer’s projects—the Zionist Movement.”

Israel holds the Christian Zionists in utter contempt. The Talmud considers Christ a heretic boiling in excrement for eternity, and his mother a whore. Jehovah allows goys to exist so as to be like donkeys in the service of the chosen people.

But according to Fundamentalist preaching, at some unspecified time in the future, there will be what they call a ‘rapture,’ during which the Messiah will return to earth and all Jews will convert to Christianity.

If Fundamentalism were played on a stage it would be condemned as improbable fiction. Even Greek-Roman paganism contains more truth than Fundamentalism and its absurd ‘dispensations,’ as they define their ranting.

For the extravagance of the Grecian mythology proclaimed clearly that the inquirer, instead of being scandalized or satisfied with the literal sense, should diligently explore the occult wisdom, which had been disguised, by the prudence of antiquity, under the mask of myth and the display of follies practiced by the quizzical dynasty of the Olympian Gods.

The Fundamentalists are a large congregation. Israel supplies their leaders with money, endowments and private planes, while feeding and securing their lavish lifestyle.

The third event, whose momentousness and importance is gradually being recognized, was Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s launching of the plan for the creation of the European Union, with extraordinary, new and revolutionary characteristics.

He was the son of the Austrian Ambassador to Japan, Heinrich Coudenhove-Kalergi, who was also a great friend of Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.

In the 1920s Heinrich’s son, Richard Kalergi, published a few books, the most important of which is “Praktischer Idealismus,” never, as far as I know, printed in English. The book is important because what Kalergi prophesied, promoted and predicted about the fate of Europe is occurring under our own eyes.

Kalergi envisioned a unified Europe, invaded by Africans, who would miscegenate with Europeans, creating a new negroid population, similar in appearance to the characters depicted on the inside walls of Egyptians pyramids and tombs. Ruling over them would be a class of “the best of the Jews” some of whom would intermarry with the best of the European nobility.

In his autobiography Kalergi states that when his book was printed, it came to the attention of the Jewish banker Schiff, who along with the American Jewish banker Warburg generously financed him to carry out his plan. From then on Kalergi would undertake a massive lobbying operation, which – temporarily halted during WW2 – was restarted immediately afterwards.

An Italian history professor, Matteo Simonetti, has published a very interesting book, titled “Kalergi, La Prossima Scomparsa Degli Europei” (Kalergi, The Forthcoming Disappearance of the Europeans) – available at Amazon. In his book, Prof. Simonetti included the most critical pages of Praktischer Idealismus translated from the German. What transpires is even worse than the disappearance of the Europeans.

I quote directly from the translation. At pages 21-22-23 of Praktischer Idealismus we find that “the future race, negroid-caucasian will be composed by people without character, without scruples, weak in their will, without respect (for one another) and untrustworthy. The new race will replace the multiplicity of people with a multiplicity of individuals.”

As for the ruling Jews, Kalergi describes them as “close in blood”, whose “strength of character and sharpness of spirit” predestines them to become “the race of (the new) Europe’s spiritual leaders,“ the “carriers of the nobility of spirit,”…. endowed of superior intelligence, a race of lords (Herrenrasse)… the chosen people (pages 28, 33, 49-51 in the original German book).

But it gets worse. The only free marital union will apply to “the most noble of men and women.” Inferior men and women will mate with their societal equivalent. The “erotic style” of the lower classes will be casual mating. Only the upper classes will enjoy the free formation of families.

The new cultivated nobility of the future will emerge from the divine laws of erotic eugenics. “It is here, in social eugenism, where the new nobility will achieve its historical mission of excellence” (pages 55-57).

The new miscegenated race of the lower classes will live in “factory-cities,” where the factory will be the new “cathedral of work”, the center and object of devotion of the new race of miscegenated goys (page 110).

As for the elimination of genders, Kalergi hints at the formation of a Brave-New-World society. “Today men of both sexes (sic) command political and economic power. The emancipation of woman is but the triumph of the feminine man over the real feminine woman. With the emancipation, the feminine sex is mobilized for a technical war and regimented into the army of labor.” (page 119)

As for democracy, Kalergi says it is an instrument to be discarded, as soon as the new Jewish nobility will be established and in charge. (page 36).

In summary, there we have it – the predicted apocalyptic end of the tsunami – helped and driven by the ADL (at work to criminalize free speech), the fundamentalists (a docile army of spiritual eunuchs in the service of Israel), and the Kalergi Plan (a Europe of Negroids ruled over by Jews).

As universally acknowledged, Jewish elites and politicians are at the forefront of the push for illegal immigration and the abolition of borders, worldwide.

And the Left, deprived of its reference class, the proletariat, has made of the migrants a sort of fig leaf to prove that they still side with the weak. Indeed, migrants are the new proletariat, because their identity (or consciousness thereof) is not here, but elsewhere. But the original inhabitants of the poorer districts of Europe and elsewhere have the right not to be uprooted from their customs by a culturally heterogeneous immigration. The migrants do not reside in London’s Chelsea, New York’s Upper East Side or the posh districts of other cities. Nor they steal the jobs of bank managers and corporate directors.

The chosen elites have decided that people are ugly, dirty, bad and xenophobic because they do not want to accept migrants by the millions. But it is the people who bear the weight of immigration and the loss of manual work.

During the latter years of neo-liberalism and turbo-capitalism, the cultural devaluation of labor has been possible thanks to the reserve army made up of migrants. It is logical that the chosen elites favor immigration. It frees them from relocating in the cesspits of despair, by bringing cesspits and despair to the ugly and xenophobic locals, along with the prospect of a Kalergi-type future.

We cannot know precisely how far the wave-of-time, traced back to Napoleon, has travelled towards its end. For the laws of probability, true in general, fail in the details. But given the essentially unchallenged progress of the wave, I doubt whether the collective consciousness of the European peoples will wake up and prompt them to react effectively in self-defense.

Until historically recently, the Catholic Church provided protection. It preached and prohibited violence against the chosen people, but expected them not to corrupt the culture of the host nation. And she gave them the option of conversion. By converting to Christianity, all true or pretended forms of discrimination would be instantly removed.

But the Catholic Church has lost power and unity. In recent Catholic pronouncements, it is even stated that Jews no longer need to convert to be “saved.” And in current religious ceremonies the brethren are invited to “pray for our elder brothers in the Abrahamic religion.”

Therefore, given that time comes stealing by night and day, I must reluctantly observe that the very shortness of time and the failure of hope will tinge with a deeper shade of brown the evening of our current historical times, and the last act of the play performed on the current historical stage.

With Regard to War, Trump Doesn’t Talk the Talk or Walk the Walk

WAYNE MADSEN | 18.11.2018 |

Last week, Donald Trump disgraced himself before his French hosts, US and Allied military veterans, and the entire world by remaining inside the residence of the US ambassador to France and snubbing a memorial service for US dead in World War I.

Donald Trump, who is undoubtedly the least intelligent man to ever occupy the White House, failed to understand the importance of the 100^th centenary observations in France held to mark the armistice that concluded World War I. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns along the Western front in France fell silent. The war was entirely preventable but had been spurred on by nationalist fervor whipped up by kings, emperors, prime ministers, and foreign ministers who sent armies into battle to fight for the “honor” of their nations.

It was unbridled nationalism that led to World War I and it was nationalist feelings bent on revenge for being vanquished in World War I that ultimately led to World War II. Left unchecked, similar nationalist feelings being fanned today may lead to World War III.

The irony of World War I was that the monarchs of warring parties Britain, Russia, and Germany were all related. King George V of the United Kingdom was the first cousin of German Kaiser Wilhelm. King George and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia were also first cousins. And the Tsar and Kaiser were third cousins. Nevertheless, the nationalistic passions between Germany and its ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Habsburgs; Serbia and its protectors Russia and France; and the Ottoman Empire, allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary; and the United Kingdom, later allied with the United States led to the first modern world war.

In 1914, the ground was set for a conflagration. All that was needed to set off the tinderbox was a flame. That match was struck in 1914 when Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg throne, and his wife, Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg, were assassinated in Sarajevo, in Austrian-ruled Bosnia, by a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. Austria-Hungary not only blamed Serbia and a Serb terrorist group, the Black Hand, for carrying out the assassination but also implicated the Russian military attaché’s office in Belgrade, Serbia. Accusations that Serbia and Russia were behind the assassinations of the Archduke and Duchess were unfounded. Nevertheless, this “conspiracy theory” of 1914 eventually led to the direct deaths of almost 20 million people around the world. Add the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which is believed to have been spread by troops returning home from the war fronts, and the indirect war dead count climbs to an additional 100 million.

Compare the Sarajevo conspiracy theory of 1914 to several that exist today, including accusations that Russia perpetrated biological warfare attacks on individuals in England and that Russian forces shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 over Ukraine, and we see the same irresponsible allegations about state-sponsored acts of violence that triggered World War I. In 1914, warfare led to the use of chemical and, quite possibly, biological weapons. World War II, the cause of which is nested in World War I’s aftermath, led to the use of nuclear weapons. It is unthinkable what a World War III might lead to.

Since Russia was Serbia’s patron, the Austro-Hungarians believed Serbia’s protector, Russia, and even Romania were behind the assassination plot. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Since Russia and France were pledged to defend Serbia, they declared war on Austria-Hungary, prompting Germany to honor its alliance with the Habsburgs and declare war on Serbia, Russia, and France. Eventually, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Greece, and Britain entered the war in an alliance with Russia and France. The Ottoman Empire backed the Central Powers of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria. The United States entered the war in 1917 on the side of Britain and France.

For all the warring parties, “the other” meant their “nefarious” enemies. Extreme nationalism took an ugly turn. For the Austrians and Germans, “the other” was the “barbaric” Slavs. For the British, French, Russians, Italians, and, eventually, the Americans, “the other” was the “beastly” Germanic “Huns.” For the Ottoman Turks, “the other” was the nomadic, “uncivilized,” and “cruel” Arabs. The Greeks and Serbs, “the other” was the Ottomans Muslim “hordes” ready to re-occupy the Balkans and eradicate Christianity. And, so it went, until over 18 million military and civilian personnel were killed. World War I was the result of blaming “the other” for whatever atrocity could be conjured up by the propaganda machinery of the era. It was a case of extreme nationalism running rampant. At the end of the conflict, the royal houses of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire fell, but the nationalistic blame game continued.

Aspirant peoples, with nationalism as their trumpet, rose from the battlefields of World War I to demand independence. Some of these nations, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia), were recognized at Versailles. Others, like Kurdistan, the Emirate of Darfur, the Dervish State of Somaliland, Tuareg Confederation, Zayan Confederation of the Berbers, the Emirate of Jabal Shammar (moderate rivals of the Saudis), Balochistan, and Vietnam, were not granted independence, a decision that would lead to war outbreaks later in the 20^th century.

At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, statesmen, including US President Woodrow Wilson, gathered to draw new borders, grant aspirant nations their independence, and establish an international body – the League of Nations – to serve as a place for dialogue to prevent war. However, the Treaty of Versailles also, inadvertently, laid the ground for World War II. Wilson could never convince the isolationist “America Firsters” in the Republican Party to commit the United States to membership of the League of Nations. America’s absence from the League denied the organization the universality it desired. Today, President Donald Trump is ripping up treaty after treaty, withdrawing from various United Nations agencies and agreements, and sending troops to the US southern border to meet a bogus threat that Central American asylum seekers are planning an “invasion” of the United States. Trump, who fancies himself as an American “nationalist,” has seen “the other” in women and children escaping political violence and economic stagnation in countries where dictators and death squads are propped up by the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency.

Brutal reparations demanded from Germany by the victorious Allies at Versailles, as well as German disarmament, gave rise to someone who would blame “the other” for Germany’s miseries, which were accentuated by the economic depression of the 1920s.

For Adolf Hitler, a wounded veteran of the “war to end all wars,” “the other” was the “Jews,” aided and abetted by Bolsheviks and “international bankers.” Hitler blamed them all for Germany’s surrender in World War I and its subsequent economic collapse. The world failed to learn the lessons of World War I.

At a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to mark the 1918 armistice, French President Emmanuel Macron told the collected world leaders, including an uncomfortable Trump, that “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.” Macron hosted a November 11-13 Paris Peace Forum for 84 world leaders in Paris for the World War I centenary. They included Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Moroccan King Mohammed VI, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The forum’s itinerary, including a keynote speech by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, touched on topics ranging from climate change and rising nationalism to abusive corporations and human rights.

In addition to skipping a ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside of Paris, where the remains of thousands of American soldiers who died at the Battle of Belleau Wood are buried, Trump boycotted the Paris Peace Forum.

Trump, like the doomed monarchs of early 20^th century Europe, the fascist dictators who rose to power in the interbellum period, and the tyrants of today, blames “the other” for everything he can imagine.

Trump wanted nothing to do with the Paris Peace Forum. His former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is finalizing plans, along with Belgian, French, German, Austrian, Brazilian, British, white South African and Rhodesian, Hungarian, Serbian, Canadian, Australian, and fascisti Italian far-right wingers, to establish a Fascist International, called “The Movement,” in Brussels early next year. It is among these far-right wing politicians where Trump will feel most at home. One hundred years after the end of World War I, we should all have progressed to a point where we no longer pay heed to the Trumps, Bannons, and others who find always find blame in “the other.”

Tags: World War I

حزبان يتزاملان الطريق… وحزب ثالث

نوفمبر 17, 2018

ناصر قنديل

– في هذه الأيام يحتفل حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي في سورية بذكرى إعادة التأسيس التي تمثلها الحركة التصحيحية التي قادها الرئيس الراحل حافظ الأسد، وأرست لسورية قواعد القوة والحضور التي خاضت بها حروبها وانتصرت، ولا زالت تنتصر، ويحتفل الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي بذكرى تأسيس الحزب على يد الزعيم الراحل أنطون سعادة. وهذا التزامن الذي قد يبدو مجرد مصادفة بلا معنى يستحق التوقف أمامها، يصير له معنى ونكهة خاصة عندما نرى الحزبين اللذين تنافسا وتخاصما لعقود بعد تأسيسهما، قد تصالحا وترافقا الطريق وتزاملا بعد إعادة التأسيس التي قادها الرئيس حافظ الأسد لحزب البعث، والمراجعات التي أجراها القوميون لكثير من محطات تتصل بتصويب موقعهم في جبهات الصراع منذ رحيل المؤسس أنطون سعاده.

– جوهر ما جمع الحزبين كان ما هو جوهر عقيدتيهما، حشد طاقة الأمة نحو بوصلة الصراع الوجودي الذي يمثله التحدي الصهيوني التقسيمي والعدواني، ولا مشكلة في أن يرى القوميون الأمة بحدود سورية التاريخية وهي القاعدة الجغرافية والتاريخية التي يعتبرها البعث نواة النهضة العربية، كما لا مشكلة في أن يرى البعث الأمة بحدود ما بين المحيط والخليج وهو ما يعتبره السوريون القوميون الاجتماعيون وفقاً لنظرية مؤسس حزبهم سعاده إطاراً لا غنى عنه لتنسيق وتكامل استراتيجي في المدى الحيوي للأمة السورية. وكان هذا الجوهر للتلاقي المستمر والمتواصل في مسيرة الحزبين، رغم تجمّد بعض الحزبيين هنا وهناك على نكء نقاش عبثي حول قضايا عقائدية في زمن امتزجت فيه دماء البعثيين والقوميين في معارك الدفاع عن سورية بمثل ما سبق وامتزجت في معارك المقاومة والدفاع عن لبنان.

– في منتصف الطريق تلاقى الحزبان مع حزب ثالث يقود مسيرة المقاومة اليوم هو حزب الله، الذي يحمل نظرية الأمة الإسلامية، ولم يفسد الخلاف في الودّ قضية. فالحزب الثالث، الأول في المقاومة حول التلاقي إلى عقيدة، عندما استبدل معادلة العمل الحزبي القائمة على وحدة الهوية وتعدّد الأهداف بمعادلة وحدة الهدف والهويات المتعددة، فكان أمينه العام أول من إبتكر مصطلح الأمتين العربية والإسلامية، فيما كان الإسلاميون والعروبيون يقتتلون لنصف قرن تحت عنوان أمة عربية أم أمة إسلامية، وحول حزب الله هذا المفهوم العملي والنظري للتلاقي إلى نظرية كاملة، بتمييز الإسلام المقاوم عن الإسلام التكفيري الذي تموضع في المشروع المناهض للأمة سواء كانت سورية أم عربية أم إسلامية، فنشأت جبهة مقاومة قومية إسلامية عالمية، في مواجهة جبهة موازية تضم عرباً ومسلمين ولبنانيين وسوريين، وتقف واشنطن على خط نهايتها، ويختصر التهاون مع خطر الاحتلال جوهر هويتها، وصولاً إلى الاستعداد بالتصريح والتلميح للتعاون مع كيان الاحتلال.

– الجيش العقائدي الذي صنع النصر في سورية هو جيش البعث، وحزب الله الذي شارك في صناعة النصر السوري وصنع النصر المقاوم في لبنان هو حزب العقيدة الإسلامية، والحزب السوري القومي الإجتماعي الذي شارك في صناعات الانتصارات وقدّم التضحيات في كل الجبهات هو حزب عقيدة سعاده القائمة على الإيمان بالأمة السورية وأهليتها للوحدة وقدرتها على الانتصار، وقد جمعتهم بوصلة واحدة حاضرة بقوة في كل مفردة هي فلسطين.

– الاحتفال في هذه الأيام هو احتفال لفلسطين بوصلة لا تعدّل وجهتها قوة.

 

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