Syrians Working To Preserve Jewish Cultural Heritage

Jewish Quarter, the Old City, Damascus…

It’s always encouraging when one comes upon some inspiring human enterprise, here in Syria or elsewhere, that refutes the worn shibboleths and clichés about how this or that group, or this or that religion, hates others and won’t cease targeting them until they are destroyed and burning in Hell.

In Syria today there is much evidence to refute the claims, often politically motivated, that Jewish cultural heritage sites are being singled out for destruction by rabid anti-Semites. One example of this is the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue in the neighborhood of Jobar, on the outskirts of Damascus. For centuries, Jobar has been inhabited by a peaceful, mixed community of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, many of whom often attended events together at the synagogue.

Reports this week in Zionist media about the destruction of the 400-year-old (not 2000-year-old, as claimed, erroneously, by one report in Israeli media) synagogue, along with the loss of all its contents, are similar to reports over the past three years which turned out to be patently false. This observer has been waiting for clearance to visit the site, to learn exactly what happened there this week, to assess its current condition and inventory its religious artifacts, which comprise part of Syria’s, and humanity’s, collective heritage.

One of the more virulent charges to come forth this week, particularly from the colonial Zionist regime occupying Palestine, is the mantra of ‘see what the hatred of those Arabs for the Jewish people has done.’ Admittedly it’s an effective fund-raising mechanism—as well as a handy intimidation tool—for the Zionist lobby, as it scrabbles to retain control of the US government and American public sentiment, a public which seems to be growing increasingly vexed by the lobby’s actions and which are finally pulling back from rubber-stamping the crimes of the apartheid regime.

Jobar is a suburb of Damascus, and location-wise the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue (measuring approximately 17 meters long by 15.7 meters wide) sits undeniably at a crossroads, in an area that has been occupied by rebel forces since the beginning of the Syrian conflict—which means it was sure to get damaged. With each shelling of the district over the past three years, claims were made that the synagogue had been destroyed by government forces. One such report, published on April fool’s day in 2013 by the Times of Israel and widely circulated by Zionist media outlets, claimed that, “The 2,000-year-old Jobar Synagogue in the Syrian capital of Damascus—the country’s holiest Jewish site—was looted and burned to the ground by government forces.” The report was patently false but got spread far and wide, despite the fact that there have been no government forces in Jobar since the conflict began. Two copy-cat reports followed later in 2013, but they were equally false. Nearly a year later, however, in March of 2014, media reports conceded that the synagogue was still standing, with only minor damage, and that its contents appeared to be in good condition.

This observer has received credible reports about certain stolen artifacts, including gold chandeliers, from the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue being offered for sale. It is well known in Syria that certain militia and other opportunists have been financing themselves by selling this country’s cultural heritage whenever and wherever they get the opportunity. There is in fact a multi-million-dollar black market in this type of illicit trade. Security agencies in Syria, in coordination with INTERPOL, have been alerted to the thefts of Jewish property, just as with thefts of other antiquities, and they periodically issue what are referred to as “watch for and confiscate” lists of stolen artifacts.

It is not true…based upon this observer’s many personal experiences in Syria…that Arabs hate Jews, although they would have plenty of reasons to, or that animosities between the two peoples are irreversible and irretrievable, and the reason I say this is that increasingly, in the Middle East as well as globally, people are beginning to distinguish between Jews as individuals (as “people of the book” and basically more or less like the rest of us) and fascist Zionism—an ideology being exposed as the greatest enemy and threat to Jews everywhere.

The latest, but so far unverified, information received by this observer from rebel sources claiming to have “contacts” in the Jobar Synagogue indicate that some early 20^th century artifacts, including gold chandeliers and icons, were stolen early on in the conflict, and also that the area surrounding the synagogue has been shelled sporadically over the past nearly two years, resulting in modest damage to the exterior walls. This information was obtained as of last month. Conditions may well have changed this week. Other Syrian sources indicate that there has been interior damage with some scattered rubble in the nave and prayer rooms of the temple. But there has been no confirmation to claims of thousands of manuscripts, including Bibles, being looted from Jobar. On the contrary, many documents, including Bibles and other artifacts, were transferred by the local Jobar Council, with the full cooperation of the Syrian government, to an Ottoman-era synagogue in the Old City of Damascus for safe keeping. The location, which this observer has visited and where many Jobar Synagogue artifacts are today in storage, is one of six areas in Syria currently listed on the World Heritage List of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The site currently has round-the-clock government security that continues to guard the Old City of Damascus. It is also one of the 11 synagogues that President Assad had promised in 2011 to repair and restore, but alas that’s a project that the rebellion has put on hold.

In light of all the unverified claims about the synagogue in Jobar, one is reminded again of the decade-long US/UK War against Iraq and the false reporting about what happened at certain archaeological sites in that country. Specifically we might recall the Iraqi Jewish artifacts that Ahmad Chalabi claimed he was able to ‘rescue’ for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Chalabi, of the ill-fated Iraqi National Congress, along with the Bush administration’s Coalition Provisional Authority, sought to gain some much needed good press for himself and pals Richard Perle, Nathan Sharansky, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, this after April 2003 reports of thousands of priceless ancient artifacts being looted from Iraqi museums. The war planners were being castigated for their failure to protect Iraq’s cultural treasures, and it soon became clear that some of Chalabi’s pronouncements regarding the fate of Jewish artifacts were false and politically self-serving. Discredited, Chalabi’s party did not win any seats in the December 2005 election.

Some suspect similar political grandstanding motives in the current reports about Jobar, and it may be a while before credible eyewitness accounts from the scene are gathered. At that point we will we know the truth about the fate of the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue and the whole of Jobar. A delegation, including a Jewish representative from Damascus as well as this observer, has been trying to visit the area, but armed conflict and the continued occupation of the synagogue by rebels has prevented us so far from gaining entry.

What’s important to note, though, is that the people of Syria and their government have made herculean efforts to avoid what happened in Iraq, and to assure the preservation of their global cultural heritage, of which Jewish antiquities is an important pillar. One example of these efforts is the fascinating case of the Dura-Europos Synagogue, discovered in 1932.

The synagogue in Dura Europos had survived in such good condition because of its location, near a small Roman garrison on the Euphrates River. Parts of the building, which abutted the main city wall, were requisitioned by the Roman army and filled with sand as a defensive measure against northern and eastern marauders. The city was abandoned after Rome’s fall, never to be resettled, and the lower walls of the rooms remained buried and largely intact until excavated. The archaeological dig discovered many Jewish wall-paintings and also Christian texts written in Hebrew. Especially interesting perhaps was the discovery of paintings in the synagogue depicting limited aspects of Mithraism, a religion practiced in the Roman Empire between the first and 4^th centuries and that was especially popular within the ranks of the Roman legions. Named for the Persian god Mithra, many Syrians followed the cult, as did some Roman senators who resisted the ‘new’ Christianity.

Itemized in the list below are specific Jewish-Syrian antiquities, including Old-Testament-themed paintings, this observer has verified as being under protection. Keep in mind, these are only a few examples, among many thousands, that I have been advised appear to be in excellent condition as of late May 2014:

• The Torah niche from the ancient Synagogue of Dura Europos on which are drawings of the Prophet Abraham, including the scene of his offering his son. Also beside them a drawing of the candle stick and the temple façade.
• A drawing featuring the Prophet Ezra reading a papyrus, Prophet Moses in the flames of boxthorn, the Ark of the Covenant in the hands of Philistines, and David anointed as a king by Samuel.
• A number of paintings with themes from the Old Testament
• A drawing of the pharaoh and Moses as a child, and a beautiful painting of Abraham between the two symbols of the sun and the moon.
• A drawing representing the story of Mordechai and Esther and Elijah bringing life back to a baby.

Despite the current and legitimate focus on Jobar, the record of the Syrian people on preserving their cultural heritage, especially during the current crisis, is admirable. Two weeks ago this observer visited the old city of Homs, and spent a fair bit of time at the Um Al-Zenar Church of Saint Mary, Church of the Holy Belt, which dates from 52 AD. Tradition has it that this seat of the Syriac Orthodox archbishopric contains a venerated relic, and indeed the Bishop spoke to me about it one day as he shoveled rubble from around the altar. The relic is claimed to be a section of the belt of St. Mary, the mother of Jesus, and is said to be hidden near a below-ground spring. One arrives at the spring by walking down a long, very narrow, pitch black set of stone steps. The Holy Water that can be found there, a small pond in essence, is filled with fragments of stone and wood chunks from the fighting, yet supposedly this water has curative powers. I scooped up a couple of handfuls, and it was indeed very refreshing, but did nothing, so far, to cure my leg problem.

Be that as it may, this observer was struck by the number of parishioners, along with volunteers from the neighborhood, mostly Muslims, covered in dust and soot as they worked at cleaning out the rubble. In the courtyard in front of the church this observer stoked a still smoldering heap of burned bibles and other church documents and icons which I was told rebels had torched as they prepared to vacate the compound earlier this month. Two days after I departed Homs, the Um Al-Zenar Church, though a partially burned out shell devoid of pews and religious artifacts, held its first Holy Communion since the conflict began.

From my experience, Syrians, without exception, are deeply connected with their cultural heritage and do not distinguish all that much among its origins. Many Syrians are proud to help others protect and rebuild their damaged religious and cultural sites, and in fact it seems to be a unifying factor among this besieged population. People this observer speaks with as he travels around Syria to visit archeological sites seem to blame both sides for the damage, but they tend to focus more on the task of restoring their heritage sites. Space does not allow me to enumerate the countless examples of this, but I will mention one.

This observer was served tea one day by some members of the Jewish community in the old City of Damascus, including my friend Saul, who claims to be the last Jewish tailor in Syria, as well as the lovely elderly ladies known as ‘the Jewish sisters’ and whose apartment is near where St. Paul, according to tradition, converted to Christianity. The view expressed by my hosts that day—and I believe them—is that Jewish cultural heritage in Syria is being respected, protected and preserved with the same care as Muslim, Christian, and pagan antiquities.

Why War Is Inevitable

Memorial Day is when we commemorate our war dead. Like the Fourth of July, Memorial Day is being turned into a celebration of war.

Those who lose family members and dear friends to war don’t want the deaths to have been in vain. Consequently, wars become glorious deeds performed by noble soldiers fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Patriotic speeches tell us how much we owe to those who gave their lives so that America could remain free.

The speeches are well-intentioned, but the speeches create a false reality that supports ever more wars. None of America’s wars had anything to do with keeping America free. To the contrary, the wars swept away our civil liberties, making us unfree.

President Lincoln issued an executive order for the arrest and imprisonment of northern newspaper reporters and editors. He shut down 300 northern newspapers and held 14,000 political prisoners. Lincoln arrested war critic US Representative Clement Vallandigham from Ohio and exiled him to the Confederacy. President Woodrow Wilson used WWI to suppress free speech, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt used WWII to intern 120,000 US citizens of Japanese descent on the grounds that race made them suspect. Professor Samuel Walker concluded that President George W. Bush used the “war on terror” for an across the board assault on US civil liberty, making the Bush regime the greatest danger American liberty has ever faced.

Lincoln forever destroyed states’ rights, but the suspension of habeas corpus and free speech that went hand in hand with America’s three largest wars was lifted at war’s end. However, President George W. Bush’s repeal of the Constitution has been expanded by President Obama and codified by Congress and executive orders into law. Far from defending our liberties, our soldiers who died in “the war on terror” died so that the president can indefinitely detain US citizens without due process of law and murder US citizens on suspicion alone without any accountability to law or the Constitution.

The conclusion is unavoidable that America’s wars have not protected our liberty but, instead, destroyed liberty. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”

Southern secession did pose a threat to Washington’s empire, but not to the American people.Neither the Germans of WWI vintage nor the Germans and Japanese of WWII vintage posed any threat to the US. As historians have made completely clear, Germany did not start WWI and did not go to war for the purpose of territorial expansion. Japan’s ambitions were in Asia. Hitler did not want war with England and France. Hitler’s territorial ambitions were mainly to restore German provinces stripped from Germany as WWI booty in violation of President Wilson’s guarantees. Any other German ambitions were to the East. Neither country had any plans to invade the US. Japan attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor hoping to remove an obstacle to its activities in Asia, not as a precursor to an invasion of America.

Certainly the countries ravaged by Bush and Obama in the 21st century–Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen posed no military threat to the US. Indeed, these were wars used by a tyrannical executive branch to establish the basis of the Stasi State that now exists in the US.

The truth is hard to bear, but the facts are clear. America’s wars have been fought in order to advance Washington’s power, the profits of bankers and armaments industries, and the fortunes of US companies. Marine General Smedley Butler said, “ I served in all commissioned ranks from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

It is more or less impossible to commemorate the war dead without glorifying them, and it is impossible to glorify them without glorifying their wars.

For the entirety of the 21st century the US has been at war, not war against massed armies or threats to American freedom, but wars against civilians, against women, children, and village elders, and wars against our own liberty. Elites with a vested interest in these wars tell us that the wars will have to go on for another 20 to 30 years before we defeat “the terrorist threat.”

This, of course, is nonsense. There was no terrorist threat until Washington began trying to create terrorists by military attacks, justified by lies, on Muslim populations.

Washington succeeded with its war lies to the point that Washington’s audacity and hubris have outgrown Washington’s judgment.

By overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine, Washington has brought the United States into confrontation with Russia. This is a confrontation that could end badly, perhaps for Washington and perhaps for the entire world.

If Gaddafi and Assad would not roll over for Washington, why does Washington think Russia will? Russia is not Libya or Syria. Washington is the bully who having beat up the kindergarden kid, now thinks he can take on the college linebacker.

The Bush and Obama regimes have destroyed America’s reputation with their incessant lies and violence against other peoples. The world sees Washington as the prime threat.

Worldwide polls consistently show that people around the world regard the US and Israel as the two countries that pose the greatest threat to peace. http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-biggest-threat-world-peace-america-1525008 and
http://www.jewishfederations.org/european-poll-israel-biggest-threat-to-world-peace.aspx

The countries that Washington’s propaganda declares to be “rogue states” and the “axis of evil,” such as Iran and North Korea, are far down the list when the peoples in the world are consulted. It could not be more clear that the world does not believe Washington’s self-serving propaganda. The world sees the US and Israel as the rogue states.

The US and Israel are the only two countries in the world that are in the grip of ideologies. The US is in the grip of the Neoconservative ideology which has declared the US to be the “exceptional, indispensable country” chosen by history to exercise hegemony over all others. This ideology is buttressed by the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines that are the basis of US foreign policy.

The Israeli government is in the grip of the Zionist ideology that declares a “greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates. Many Israelis themselves do not accept this ideology, but it is the ideology of the “settlers” and those who control the Israeli government.

Ideologies are important causes of war. Just as the Hitlerian ideology of German superiority is mirrored in the Neoconservative ideology of US superiority, the Communist ideology that the working class is superior to the capitalist class is mirrored in the Zionist ideology that Israelis are superior to Palestinians. Zionists have never heard of squatters’ rights and claim that recent Jewish immigrants into Palestine–invaders really–have the right to land occupied by others for millenniums.

Washington’s and Israel’s doctrines of superiority over others do not sit very well with the ”others.” When Obama declared in a speech that Americans are the exceptional people, Russia’s President Putin responded, “God created us all equal.”

To the detriment of its population, the Israeli government has made endless enemies. Israel has effectively isolated itself in the world. Israel’s continued existence depends entirely on the willingness and ability of Washington to protect Israel. This means that Israel’s power is derivative of Washington’s power.

Washington’s power is a different story. As the only economy standing after WWII, the US dollar became the world money. This role for the dollar has given Washington financial hegemony over the world, the main source of Washington’s power. As other countries rise, Washington’s hegemony is imperiled.

To prevent other countries from rising, Washington invokes the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines. To be brief, the Brzezinski doctrine says that in order to remain the only superpower, Washington must control the Eurasian land mass. Brzezinski is willing for this to occur peacefully by suborning the Russian government into Washington’s empire. ”A loosely confederated Russia . . . a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.” In other words, break up Russia into associations of semi-autonomous states whose politicians can be suborned by Washington’s money.

Brzezinski propounded “a geo-strategy for Eurasia.” In Brzezinski’s strategy, China and “a confederated Russia” are part of a “transcontinental security framework,” managed by Washington in order to perpetuate the role of the US as the world’s only superpower.

I once asked my colleague, Brzezinski, that if everyone was allied with us, who were we organized against? My question surprised him, because I think that Brzezinski remains caught up in Cold War strategy even after the demise of the Soviet Union. In Cold War thinking it was important to have the upper hand or else be at risk of being eliminated as a player. The importance of prevailing became all consuming, and this consuming drive survived the Soviet collapse. Prevailing over others is the only foreign policy that Washington knows.

The mindset that America must prevail set the stage for the Neoconservatives and their 21st century wars, which, with Washington’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine, has resulted in a crisis that has brought Washington into direct conflict with Russia.

I know the strategic institutes that serve Washington. I was the occupant of the William E.Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, for a dozen years. The idea is prevalent that Washington must prevail over Russia in Ukraine or Washington will lose prestige and its superpower status.

The idea of prevailing always leads to war once one power thinks it has prevailed.

The path to war is reinforced by the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Paul Wolfowitz, the neoconservative intellectual who formulated US military and foreign policy doctrine, wrote among many similar passages:

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

In the Wolfowitz Doctrine, any other strong country is defined as a threat and a power hostile to the US regardless of how willing that country is to get along with the US for mutual benefit.

The difference between Brzezinski and the Neoconservatives is that Brzezinski wants to suborn Russia and China by including them in the empire as important elements whose voices would be heard, If only for diplomatic reasons, whereas the Neoconservatives are prepared to rely on military force combined with internal subversion orchestrated with US financed NGOs and even terrorist organizations.

Neither the US nor Israel is embarrassed by their worldwide reputations as the two countries that pose the greatest threat. In fact, both countries are proud to be recognized as the greatest threats. The foreign policy of both countries is devoid of any diplomacy. US and Israeli foreign policy rests on violence alone. Washington tells countries to do as Washington says or be “bombed into the stone age.” Israel declares all Palestinians, even women and children, to be “terrorists,” and proceeds to shoot them down in the streets, claiming that Israel is merely protecting itself against terrorists. Israel, which does not recognize the existence of Palestine as a country, covers up its crimes with the claim that Palestinians do not accept the existence of Israel.

“We don’t need no stinking diplomacy. We got power.”

This is the attitude that guarantees war, and that is where the US is taking the world. The prime minister of Britain, the chancellor of Germany, and the president of France are Washington’s enablers. They provide the cover for Washington. Instead of war crimes, Washington has “coalitions of the willing” and military invasions that bring “democracy and women’s rights” to non-compliant countries.

China gets much the same treatment. A country with four times the US population but a smaller prison population, China is constantly criticized by Washington as an “authoritarian state.” China is accused of human rights abuses while US police brutalize the US population.

The problem for humanity is that Russia and China are not Libya and Iraq. These two countries possess strategic nuclear weapons. Their land mass greatly exceeds that of the US. The US, which was unable to successfully occupy Baghdad or Afghanistan, has no prospect of prevailing against Russia and China in conventional warfare. Washington will push the nuclear button. What else can we expect from a government devoid of morality?

The world has never experienced rogue states comparable to Washington and Israel. Both governments are prepared to murder anyone and everyone. Look at the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and the dangers thereof. On May 23, 2014, Russia’s President Putin spoke to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a three-day gathering of delegations from 62 countries and CEOs from 146 of the largest Western corporations.

Putin did not speak of the billions of dollars in trade deals that were being formalized. Instead Putin spoke of the crisis that Washington had brought to Russia, and he criticized Europe for being Washington’s vassals for supporting Washington’s propaganda against Russia and Washington’s interference in vital Russian interests.

Putin was diplomatic in his language, but the message that powerful economic interests from the US and Europe received is that it will lead to trouble if Washington and European governments continue to ignore Russia’s concerns and continue to act as if they can interfere in Russia’s vital interests as if Russia did not exist.

The heads of these large corporations will carry this message back to Washington and European capitals. Putin made it clear that the lack of dialogue with Russia could lead to the West making the mistake of putting Ukraine in NATO and establishing missile bases on Russia’s border with Ukraine. Putin has learned that Russia cannot rely on good will from the West, and Putin made it clear, short of issuing a threat, that Western military bases in Ukraine are unacceptable.

Washington will continue to ignore Russia. However, European capitals will have to decide whether Washington is pushing them into conflict with Russia that is against European interests. Thus, Putin is testing European politicians to determine if there is sufficient intelligence and independence in Europe for a rapprochement.

If Washington in its overbearing arrogance and hubris forces Putin to write off the West, the Russian/Chinese strategic alliance, which is forming to counteract Washington’s hostile policy of surrounding both countries with military bases, will harden into preparation for the inevitable war.

The survivors, if any, can thank the Neoconservatives, the Wolfowitz doctrine, and the Brzezinski strategy for the destruction of life on earth.

The American public contains a large number of misinformed people who think they know everything. These people have been programmed by US and Israeli propaganda to equate Islam with political ideology. They believe that Islam, a religion, is instead a militarist doctrine that calls for the overthrow of Western civilization, as if anything remains of Western civilization.

Many believe this propaganda even in the face of complete proof that the Sunnis and Shi’ites hate one another far more than they hate their Western oppressors and occupiers. The US has departed Iraq, but the carnage today is as high or higher than during the US invasion and occupation. The daily death tolls from the Sunni/Shi’ite conflict are extraordinary. A religion this disunited poses no threat to anyone except Islamists themselves. Washington successfully used Islamist disunity to overthrow Gaddafi, and is currently using Islamist disunity in an effort to overthrow the government of Syria. Islamists cannot even unite to defend themselves against Western aggression. There is no prospect of Islamists uniting in order to overthrow the West.

Even if Islam could do so, it would be pointless for Islam to overthrow the West. The West has overthrown itself. In the US the Constitution has been murdered by the Bush and Obama regimes. Nothing remains. As the US is the Constitution, what was once the United States no longer exists. A different entity has taken its place.

Europe died with the European Union, which requires the termination of sovereignty of all member countries. A few unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels have become superior to the wills of the French, German, British, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese peoples.

Western civilization is a skeleton. It still stands, barely, but there is no life in it. The blood of liberty has departed. Western peoples look at their governments and see nothing but enemies. Why else has Washington militarized local police forces, equipping them as if they were occupying armies? Why else has Homeland Security, the Department of Agriculture, and even the Postal Service and Social Security Administration ordered billions of rounds of ammunition and even submachine guns? What is this taxpayer-paid-for arsenal for if not to suppress US citizens?

As the prominent trends forecaster Gerald Celente spells out in the current Trends Journal, “uprisings span four corners of the globe.” Throughout Europe angry, desperate and outraged peoples march against EU financial policies that are driving the peoples into the ground. Despite all of Washington’s efforts with its well funded fifth columns known as NGOs to destabilize Russia and China, both the Russian and Chinese governments have far more support from their people than do the US and Europe.

In the 20th century Russia and China learned what tyranny is, and they have rejected it.

In the US tyranny has entered under the guise of the “war on terror,” a hoax used to scare the sheeple into abandoning their civil liberties, thus freeing Washington from accountability to law and permitting Washington to erect a militarist police state. Ever since WWII Washington has used its financial hegemony and the “Soviet threat,” now converted into the “Russian threat,” to absorb Europe into Washington’s empire.

Putin is hoping that the interests of European countries will prevail over subservience to Washington. This is Putin’s current bet. This is the reason Putin remains unprovoked by Washington’s provocations in Ukraine.

If Europe fails Russia, Putin and China will prepare for the war that Washington’s drive for hegemony makes inevitable.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest books are, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and How America Was Lost. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

They Fought For Our Freedom? American Veterans Abused By The Police State

It is easy to stand up and cheer for your favorite government activity. It is quite another to acknowledge what it means in the real world.

I almost never try to speak for other people. However, I think it is fairly safe to say that the average military recruit firmly believes that he joins the military so that you and I can live and breathe in freedom. To be sure, he had other reasons for joining, but I think the defense of liberty is a fairly common characteristic.

That is certainly what I thought when I was in Navy boot camp in Orlando, Florida, in 1983. After all, this is what I had been told all my life: sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines defend freedom.

But is this actually what they do?

Consider the following:

• This Marine lost both legs in an IED blast in Iraq. He claims he was forced by TSA to remove both prosthetic legs before he could board an airplane in Phoenix.
• This Vietnam veteran in Spicewood, Texas, had flashbacks to his combat experience during a marijuana raid at a friend’s house. What police claimed was marijuana turned out to be ragweed.
• Jared Goering, who served 19 years in the Army, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was kicked off the boardwalk in Wildwood, N.J. for walking with his service dog, Gator.
• Emily Yates, who served two tours with the Army in Iraq, was violently arrested by park police in Philadelphia for asking why she couldn’t play her banjo under some shade trees.
• Dimitrios Karras is a Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Read about the ATF raid on his business in National City, California.
• Martin Goldberg of Brooklyn is a World War II veteran whose apartment was subject to a drug raid. Later, the cops realized they had raided the wrong apartment. His 83-year-old wife was hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat as a result of the raid.
  
• In 1997, four sailors from the USS Saipan (LHA-2) were falsely accused of the rape and murder of a Norfolk, Virginia, woman. One spent eight-and-one-half years in prison while the other three were sentenced to life in prison. These three were pardoned in 2009. Even though the actual killer is serving a life sentence, four innocent men are still required to register as sex offenders and are still fighting to clear their names.
• was 18 and fresh out of Marine boot camp. On a trip home to Covina, California, he was hanging out with a few friends when he was arrested for resisting arrest and nothing else. He spent 21 days in Los Angeles County jail, even though he had harmed no one.
• Carlos Jaramillo is a former Marine combat instructor who lives in Onslow County, North Carolina. Watch what happened when he recorded a sheriff’s deputy who arrested him for no apparent reason.
• Noel Polanco was an unarmed 22-year-old National Guardsman who was shot and killed by New York City police at a traffic stop near LaGuardia Airport.
• John Laigaie, a retired Army master sergeant, was threatened at gunpoint by police while legally carrying a gun in a park in Bellingham, Washington.
• Homer Wright is an 80-year-old Army veteran who was charged with felony gun use after he shot a burglar who entered his home in Englewood, Illinois.
  
• Mark Schmidter, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Orlando, is for passing out jurors’ rights information on the steps of a local courthouse.
• Justin Ross of Ankeny, Iowa, was recently discharged from the Army. to enter his home executing a warrant for some items purchased with stolen credit cards. They did not find any of these items.
• Saadiq Long is an Air Force veteran who was placed on a TSA no-fly list. He had to battle for months to be removed from this list just so he could fly home from Qatar to visit his ailing mother.
• Chuck Benton of Long Grove, Iowa, served 22 years in the Army. He was arrested and charged simply for living in the same house with his son who was growing medical marijuana.
• Cody Donovan is a former Marine MP who lives in New Milford, N.J. He was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon after carrying a loaded gun into the Garden State Plaza mall when he attempted to help police apprehend the shooter.
  
• In 1932, 17,000 veterans marched on Washington to demand payment of bonuses they had been promised as a result of their service in World War I. Two were shot and killed by police. 55 were arrested and 135 were injured when the United States Army became an instrument of domestic law enforcement. Two of the chief enforcers were named MacArthur and Patton. Yes, those two.
• Mark England, an Army combat medic who saw action in Iraq and Kosovo was at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.
• Air Force Staff Sergeant Matt Pinkerton of Glen Burnie, Maryland, faces second degree murder charges after fatally shooting a home intruder in September.
• Leo Hendrick, an army veteran who lives in Northwood, Iowa, faces up to 30 days in jail and a $600 fine for raising chickens in his yard.
• Yes, the cops had a search warrant. However that in no way excuses their vandalizing the home of Army veteran Dan Neary of Lakewood, Washington.
• These World War II veterans were threatened with arrest for visiting a closed war memorial in Washington, D.C. during the October “shutdown.”
  
• These Vietnam veterans actually were arrested for visiting a New York City war memorial after curfew.
• Denis Reynoso was a disabled veteran who saw action with the Marines in Iraq. He was shot dead by police in his Lynn, Massachusetts, apartment.
• Nick Morgan, an Iraq veteran, was pulled out of a crowd by police in Hempstead, New York, and .
• Gary Shepherd of Broadhead, Kentucky was a Vietnam veteran. He used medical cannabis to relieve the pain in his left arm, which was crippled during the war. Shepherd was shot dead by a SWAT team, after they had threatened to cut down his cannabis plants.
• Valente and Manuel Valenzuela of San Antonio produced sufficient documentation to enlist, respectively, in the Army and Marine Corps. Both fought in Vietnam, where Valente won a Bronze Star. Now they are facing deportation to Mexico because of erroneous entries on their birth certificates.
• Jerome Murdough, a homeless Marine Corps veteran, died in a jail cell on New York’s Rikers Island after being arrested for trespassing. A heating malfunction caused the temperature in the cell to soar to 100 degrees.
• Kenneth Chamberlain was a retired Marine and Vietnam veteran living in White Plains, New York. Early one morning he set off his medical alert device. The first responders in this case were not medics, but rather .
  
• This organized to help legalize marijuana during the 2012 elections. They claim – and I believe them – that marijuana helps mitigate PTSD. If you support any punishment whatsoever for a combat veteran who heals himself with a plant that grows wild in some form within a few miles of you, I don’t care what you tell me. YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN FREEDOM!
• Stanley Gibson, a was by Las Vegas police in December, 2011.
• Army Specialist Michael Sharkey returned home from deployment in Afghanistan to find his home in New Port Richey, Florida, unlawfully occupied by two squatters. The local sheriff says that Sharkey has no grounds upon which to evict them.
• These veterans say they are being required to prove they are worthy of gun rights. Our rights are gifts from God that are inherent in our very humanity. We never have to prove to anybody that we have them.
• Dwight Edwards, a disabled Marine veteran of Afghanistan, says that cops in Queens brutally beat him for no reason.
• Army Staff Sgt. C.J. Grisham, who won the Bronze Star with Valor, was forcibly disarmed for no good reason by a policeman while on a hike with his son not far from Fort Hood, Texas.
  
• Brandon Raub, a Marine who was decorated for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, was forced to spend a week in a Virginia mental hospital over . (His interviewer here, John Whitehead, is a constitutional attorney, Vietnam infantry veteran and superlative anti-police state blogger.)
• Operation Vigilant Eagle is a project of the Department of Homeland Security that has led to numerous Iraq and Afghanistan veterans “finding themselves under surveillance, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, or arrested, all for daring to voice their concerns about the alarming state of our union and the erosion of our freedoms.” Indeed, merely being a “returning veteran” can have you designated as a potential terrorist.
  
• We will never know the whole truth about Navy veteran and former Los Angeles cop Christopher Dorner, who was the subject of a police manhunt and media witch hunt in 2013. He never got the chance to tell his story in court.
• Hector Barrios came to America in 1961. He was drafted and served as an infantry soldier in Vietnam. In 1996, he was busted for possessing marijuana, which he used to treat his PTSD. As a result, he was deported to his native Mexico where he died.
• Matthew Corrigan of Washington, D.C. was a first sergeant in the Army Reserve and a veteran of Iraq. His home was destroyed in a SWAT rampage because it was reported to the police that Corrigan had a gun.
• Jamie Dean was an Army veteran of Afghanistan was diagnosed with PTSD. Upset about his impending deployment to Iraq, Dean had an intense emotional outburst at his Maryland home in December 2006. Even though he neither harmed nor threatened anyone, he was shot and killed by a local SWAT team.
  
  
• Bennie Coleman, 76, is a retired Marine who lost his Washington, D.C., home because of a $134 tax lien that District authorities had sold to an investor.
• Jeremy Usher is a former Navy hospital corpsman who lives in Greeley, Colorado. He faces jail time for using medical marijuana to treat his PTSD.
• Brittany Ball, a 23-year-old soldier at Fort Jackson, S.C., was manhandled by a cop at a local bar, even though she had done nothing wrong.
• Air Force Airman First Class Michael Davidson was shot in the stomach by police in Opelika, Alabama, at the scene of a traffic accident.
• Benjamin Wassell sustained traumatic brain injuries while with the Marines in Iraq. The Buffalo-area resident was the first person charged with illegal gun sales under New York’s new SAFE Act.
  
• Erik Scott graduated from West Point in 1994 and served as a tank platoon leader. In 2010, he was gunned down and killed by police as he peacefully walked out of a Las Vegas Costco.
• Scott Olsen saw action with the Marines in Iraq. Later, he would join the Occupy Oakland movement. In October, 2011, suffered a fractured skull after being hit in the head with a projectile fired by police.
• Derek Hale served honorably with the Marines in Iraq. Although, he had committed no crime, he died after being tasered three times and then shot three times by police in Wilmington, Delaware.
• Roderick King, an Iraq war veteran, was arrested in Philadelphia after he and his friends had criticized a cop’s driving.
• Howard Dean Bailey, a Navy veteran, was deported to his native Jamaica when immigration authorities discovered he had taken a plea bargain in a marijuana case in Norfolk, Virginia.
  
• To be sure, the recently deceased folk singer Pete Seeger could not have been more of a leftist. However, he did serve three years in the Army after being drafted during World War II. He was sentenced to one year in jail after refusing to reveal his political connections to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956. He appealed this sentence, citing the First Amendment, and ultimately spent only four hours behind bars.
• Larry Kirschenman of Nogales, Arizona, served 22 years in the Army and was decorated for bravery in Vietnam. Learn how he was brutalized by Border Patrol agents when asking why he was .
• We will never know for sure what happened in Army veteran Matthew Stewart’s Ogden, Utah, apartment one night in January 2012, as he will never have his day in court. He was in prison awaiting trial on charges of shooting and killing one of the police officers who raided his apartment searching for marijuana. Stewart, whose guilt was never proven, committed suicide in his cell.
• Sergio Arreola is a cop in Los Angeles who served with the Marines in Iraq. He was beaten by the police in suburban Pomona for no good reason whatsoever.
• This former Army paratrooper is appealing to the New York state legislature to legalize medical marijuana. He has severe multiple sclerosis and is “forced to break the law to have some semblance of a bearable existence.”
  
  
• On May 5, 2011, a Tucson SWAT team approached the home of Jose Guerena, who had served two tours with the Marines in Iraq. Guerena grabbed his AR-15 as is his right, but did not fire. The SWAT team let loose with 71 rounds, 60 of which perforated Guerena’s body.
• Marty Maiden lived a few blocks from Guerena in Tucson. and saw action with the Army in Afghanistan. He posted a suicidal note on Facebook which prompted a call to the police, who shot him dead.
• Steve Lefemine is a West Point graduate who was arrested for protesting against abortion in a “no-demonstration zone” outside the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004. The 2nd Circuit U.S. Circuit Court justified the arrest based on a “compelling state interest in security”.
  
• Eileen Erickson’s husband Sid served in Vietnam and died of Agent Orange exposure. Erickson is now in the crosshairs of authorities in Venice, California, who want to tear down the tree house Sid built before he died.
• Listen to this with then-Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) about the benefits of medical marijuana. Listen to the totalitarian response.
• John Wrana, a 95-year-old Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, was by police in Forest Park, Illinois. His “crime”? Refusing medical attention.
• John Colaprete saw action in Vietnam as a Marine Corps officer. In 1994, his Virginia Beach home and restaurants were the object of paramilitary-style raids by the IRS. The raid was prompted by a false accusation by a former employee. While you need to watch this documentary in its entirety some time, .
  
• Boxing legend Joe Louis was also tyrannized by the IRS. The Brown Bomber enlisted in the Army in 1942 saying “Let us at them Japs.” Louis never saw combat, as he was assigned to the Special Services Division. While still a civilian, Louis fought some charity bouts and donated the proceeds to the Navy Relief Society. The IRS, however, viewed these proceeds as taxable income. IRS problems would plague him all his life.
• Adam Arroyo is a Hispanic veteran of the Iraq war who lives in Buffalo. Police shot and killed his dog while executing a drug warrant for a black man.
• Henry Taylor was a retired Air Force veteran in Louisville, Tennessee, who was shot dead by a local sheriff’s deputy while investigating a burglary at a rental property he owned.
• This is a fascinating article: When Johnny Comes Marching Home … He Goes to Jail. It is absolutely tragic how we chew up and spit out so many of those we send to “fight for our freedom.”
  
• Radio talk host Adam Kokesh won the Navy Commendation Medal as a Marine in Iraq. In recent years, he has been arrested several times for various non-violent protests. His most recent arrest happened after he loaded a shotgun in public in Washington, D.C. on July 4, 2013. On July 10, police violently raided his home and arrested him. He was incarcerated for four months without bond, bail or trial. He is currently on probation for two years. You may not like Kokesh’s demeanor or approve of all of his antics, but he has been very courageous when so many of his critics can’t be bothered to put down the remote.
  
• James Moore, my brothah from anothah mothah, walked away from a very lucrative engineering position in San Jose to re-enlist in the Army following 9/11. He sustained significant physical injuries as well as PTSD while serving in the Special Forces in Afghanistan. On the afternoon of March 25, 2008, Moore, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, was beaten to the point of flat lining by Denver police.
• One of the coolest people I have never met is Antonio Buehler. Buehler graduated from West Point in 1999, earned his Ranger tab, and saw action in Kosovo and Iraq. (He also sports a Stanford MBA.) Early in the morning on January 1, 2012, Buehler for taking a few pictures of Austin police manhandling a young woman outside a 7-11. Buehler has been arrested four times since. He heads the Peaceful Streets Project, whose members work to expose abuse, brutality and overreach both in Austin and .
  

There are no doubt numerous other injustices against veterans that I do not know about. Enough to fill a book. None of these things would have happened if America were a free society. As Kokesh puts it, “The greatest enemies to the Constitution are not to be found in the sands of some far off land but rather right here at home.”

I cannot speak to the specific political beliefs of most of the veterans I have mentioned here. Some may be pacifists, while others may make John McCain look like a hippie in Haight-Ashbury. No matter what their individual views may be, the freedom they risked their lives for was flagrantly violated on the streets of the land they fought to protect.

Society endlessly applauds sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines for “fighting for our freedom”. It is in no way disrespectful to say that this is not what they do. No foreign government or terrorist group poses any threat to our liberty. America accounts for about half of the world’s military spending. We have 300 ships in our Navy, plus thousands of planes, tanks and nuclear warheads as well as 300 million firearms in private hands. Nobody is going to invade us.

In a constitutional country, which America ceased to be 100 years ago, the job of the military – a vital and most noble one – is to defend the borders, shores and airspace. It cannot protect you from being tyrannized domestically. Indeed, throughout history, armies have been instruments of domestic tyranny. Our Constitution forbids a standing army for just this reason.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had enormous military establishments. How did things work out in these countries?

I am a Christian who believes liberty is a gift from God – Leviticus 25:10; II Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 5:1. To quote Jefferson, liberty is preserved not by military might, but by “eternal vigilance” against one’s own government at all levels. It is the grossest form of disrespect to send young men around the world to “fight for freedom” while relinquishing that freedom on the home front.

For several years, America has had the world’s highest incarceration rate. Since 2001, Americans have gladly accepted previously unthinkable intrusions on their freedom in the name of “safety” and “security”. These include, but are not limited to: warrantless searches and spying, the suspension of habeas corpus, sexual assault as a condition of travel, rampant , indefinite detention without any semblance of due process, severe restrictions on peaceful protest, massive ammunition purchases by DHS and surveillance drones in our skies watching our every move. Can predator drones be far behind?

And in every election 98 percent of voters put their stamp of approval on perpetuating this monstrosity.

On April 20, 2013, Boston and several surrounding towns got a serious taste of martial law. How many military veterans were on the receiving end of this? Is this what they signed up to fight for?

Stop thinking in clichés. Have a good hard look at everything your media and government tell you. This includes media outlets and parts of the government that you like. Study. Read. Ask questions. And learn that the defense of liberty is not the duty of the military. Rather, it is your duty and mine.

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• Special thanks to Radley Balko and William Grigg for providing several of the above stories.
• Read this article by John Whitehead.

Standard Procedure

Origin of the Master Model

The master plan for world domination we see playing out today was first proposed to the US at the end of World War I. However, there were no takers. People were too war weary. However, when the plan was again proposed at the end of World War II, it was accepted. Consequently, World War II quietly transitioned into the secret “war” to set up what has become known as the “new world order” — an absolute dictatorship over the entire planet.

The United States set up the School of the Americas to train future dictators and terrorists who would be sent out into the world to destroy sovereign nations and place them under US domination by installing puppet governments obedient to the United States. Many conquests were made quietly using clever economic tricks [2]. However, leaders who refused to submit quietly would see their entire country reduced to rubble and the land rendered unlivable by uranium dust scattered by US bombs. The message was clear: Submit to the United States or face total destruction.

A social model based upon the assumption that cleverness and power automatically convey the right to take anything desired from those who are less adept and unable to resist is not a sustainable model for harmonious social interactions. However, this is the chosen model. The mantra for this model, “A man’s true worth is measured by the amount of other peoples’ happiness that he can possess and destroy” [1], is essentially a call for a class war between the greedy elite and the innocent masses of the world who simply desire a peaceful existence.

Acquisitions

The United States looks at the rest of the world as a “resource”. If a country has something — oil, gold, minerals, etc. — that the US covets, it believes it has the right to take those things by whatever means necessary. In many cases the coveted resource is human slave labor. Let’s look at some representative examples:

Guatemala: The Banana Wars

With the cooperation of the dictator, United Fruit Company (US) owned almost half of the country and used the locals as slaves to harvest its Chiquita brand bananas. However, during the period from 1945-1954 new leaders made changes. They helped the poor and set up social security and health care. Then they took land away from United Fruit and gave it to the local people. United fruit complained to the CIA that its business interests were being interfered with by the “communist” government. Any government which shows kindness to the poor and weak is called communist by the US. The US attacked Guatemala — killed the elected leaders and many thousands of citizens — and established a puppet dictatorship which would obey the will of United Fruit. The people were returned to a state of slavery. The CIA trained death squads to make sure the people were crushed into submission.

Strip Mining in Africa [4]

In Africa, the International Monetary Fund — a puppet of the US — destroys a country with strip mining. The original country was self sustaining. People were able to grow lots of food and hunt animals. However, once the land was ruined by US corporations, it was unusable to plant crops and the native animals died. The people had to buy food from other countries with money loaned to them by the IMF which they could never hope to repay. Therefore, a once free and self supporting people were made debt slaves of the IMF. Once all the natural resources have been stolen, the corporations will simply pack up and leave the indigenous people to starve and die.

Countries Used as Trash Dumps [5]

Used computers and associated items are dumped in poor countries where starving barefoot children sift through the mess of hazardous waste and broken obsolete glass computer monitors hoping to find something they can sell to get enough money to stay alive another day. Property stickers show the waste is mainly from the US government and various US state governments.

Corruption of Trusted Sources

Reporters and News Organizations

The masses are conditioned to believe news they receive from establishment sources. In the earlier times, this assumption was often correct. It was considered so important by the founding fathers that freedom of the press was enshrined in the US constitution. However, times have changed.

Walter Cronkite was known as the “trusted voice”. No one knew he was also the official announcer at the secret Bohemian Grove meetings. The leaders of the world’s news organizations also attend this event. That is why, even though the meetings began over one hundred years ago, until recently no one knew this group even existed. President George W. Bush may have set a new record for bribing journalists to allow their trusted name to be used as the author of material actually written by government propaganda experts. Apparently, everyone has a price and the government, of course, has no problem when it comes to money.

When Ronald Reagan reportedly ordered the death of investigative reporter Jessica Savitch [6], the message to independent journalists was clear: Go against the official party line an you’re done!

Today, dedicated journalists face mysterious deaths and strange single car accidents but a few survive long enough to give us a glimpse of truths we would otherwise never know. They are true heroes.

Churches

Churches are everywhere. Unfortunately, legitimate Spiritual teachers are not. People look at churches either as harmless or with some sort of conditioned hypnotic respect. Churches send out “missionaries”. However, the “mission” of these missionaries may not be so clear. If you wanted to infiltrate a foreign country, these people would be an ideal asset.

Churches are not Spiritual centers. At best, all they want is your money. At worst, they are Satanic and you are in severe Spiritual danger if you come under their influence and control.

The Catholic Church has been a trusted asset of the US intelligence community for quite some time. Significant information obtained by priests during confessions is routinely passed on to the government.

This agreement predates the internet by many years. Because the church has branches in almost every country, it has great potential for covert activities. For example, if you need to get an operative who is in danger out of a country, they can go to a Catholic church for “confession”. Once the door is closed, they can exit through a secret passage, be disguised in robes and spirited safely out of the country. Church secrecy is at least on a par with US secrecy. Also, the Catholic church and the US shadow government share the same Satanic value system and engage in child rape and ritual killings.

Doctors and the Medical Industry

Medicine in the United States is an industry. It is no longer a profession. Its corporate model puts profit above all else. If some patients accidentally benefit they are the lucky ones.

The medical community has a rigid hierarchical structure and effective mechanisms for enforcing secrecy. Essentially, its model closely resembles the military chain of command structure. This makes it a perfect partner for the government in the area of secret human experiments.

For example, when the government was doing radiation experiments on humans, a doctor or someone dressed as a doctor would just walk up to unsuspecting patients and inject them with radioactive material. They were then secretly followed for years to see what would happen. Eventually, some of those who survived were told the truth. Most people used in the MK Ultra and subsequent secret projects were never notified.

Hospitals are set up to protect themselves. Staff may appear to be dedicated, smiling people who truly care about you. However, they are basically prostitutes who are being nice because you are worth money to them. When they make mistakes they have a “loss prevention” department staffed by clever lawyers who are trained to protect the financial interests of the hospital by denying everything and fabricating believable coverups. They are trained to do whatever is necessary. The staff will all agree to support whatever lies are needed. They know their job and their financial future depends upon maintaining strict secrecy.

The only people who receive legitimate medical care are the select elite cleared to accesstop secret medicine. These people always get excellent care because the doctors work for the shadow government and mistakes on their part are simply not tolerated.

Infiltrations

Countries which have the resources to sustain an intelligence community generally try to get operatives (spies) into other countries so they can directly observe activities. When real people gather intelligence, this is called human intelligence or HUMINT. The US, of course, does this too. However, you may not be aware of the extent to which the US also infiltrates itself. The central government really does not trust anyone.

Essentially all local police departments, state offices and state governors have a covert federal agent working close by pretending to be just another employee. Also, every US neighborhood has an informer who reports to the federal government. Large corporations, which tend to behave like “mini governments”, need to be infiltrated and kept under observation. Colleges and universities are also monitored.

Here is how this spy network operates: The NSA likes to recruit young kids right out of college. When they are hired and sworn to secrecy they still do not know what their assignment will be. They must agree to do this assignment without first being told what it is.

Some agents, like John Perkins [2], are assigned to work in other countries. However, others are assigned to work inside the US. Their assignment could be to go to some state and apply to join the local police department. They would pretend to be just a regular person looking for a job. They would take the necessary training and spend their life as a local policeman so they could directly observe other local police from the inside and report to the NSA. Since they are actually an employee of the NSA, presumably they get to keep both salaries and, eventually, both retirements. All significant local police forces in the US are infiltrated this way.

Additionally, some agents will be assigned to get a job on the state governor’s staff as well as in major local state agencies. A CIA or NSA agent is always on the staff at major colleges and universities. The same goes for major corporations.

Senior level agents are allowed to have special TV receivers in their homes linked to the secret government TV network. This way everyone stays on the same page. The channels on this network actually broadcast the truth. TV channels available to ordinary people contain only government approved propaganda mixed with “bread and circuses” presentations to make sure the sheeple stay asleep and content.

Fronts

The US government is involved in illegal activities internationally and domestically. If it performed these activities overtly in the name of the United States, there would be serious consequences under both international and local laws. To avoid this situation, the US government operates thousands of “front organizations” which appear to be private but are actually shadow operatives of the US.

For example, John Perkins [2] explained that he was recruited, hired and trained by the NSA. He was an NSA agent. However, for his cover as an economic hit man, he “officially” worked for a “private” company called Charles T. Main. This company was a government front to shield the US because the activities the NSA trained Perkins to do were illegal.

This is standard operating procedure for the US as well as other countries and many corporations. It shields them from legal recourse by providing deniability for the crimes they actually direct and commit.

Generally, when the US wants to influence other sovereign countries, it creates harmless looking NGO’s which appear to be independent but are actually fronts for covert activities.

Domestically, colleges and universities — especially those with associated medical schools and hospitals — are great places to conceal a variety of covert projects such as the MK Ultra series of human experiments which, reportedly, continue today using new cover names. The US also likes to create non-profit corporations which exist only to provide classified services to the United States. A good example would be the Institutes for Defense Analysis (IDA). The US, reportedly, is its only client.

Programming

Mass media “programming” is actually programming you. It has developed into a subtle form of mind control. Before radio and television, special interests recognized that motion pictures could be used to alter public opinion in their favor. Perhaps, for example, you wanted to attack labor unions. When radio and later television came along providing access to national and international audiences, the temptation to exploit these technologies became irresistible. Originally, the US government recognized this and set up fairness rules to prevent monopolies from taking over the broadcast media and blocking opposing viewpoints. All this ended, unfortunately, when Ronald Regan canceled all the fairness regulations. Today, a handful of powerful corporations own and control essentially all content delivered by radio and television.

Television is the main vehicle for mass indoctrination. It is said that people watching TV actually fall into a light hypnotic trance. The “entertainment” you see on TV does not “just happen to be there”. It is very carefully planned and timed to attract and influence targeted audiences. It is said that if some event were to somehow shut down all television broadcasts the government would experience a severe crisis because it would lose control over the minds of the masses.

TV creates sort of a “hive mind” among the masses and keeps everyone coordinated and tuned into the official party line. Without this, people would have no choice but to start thinking for themselves and forming independent opinions. Clearly, this would be a disaster.

The radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” and the later movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” are said to be CIA psychological experiments to judge how the general public would react to some type of ET contact.

Today, broadcasting is not just a one way event. Because people react to events and use social media to express these reactions, the effect of specific propaganda can be analyzed in real time. Since the government now intercepts all electronic communications, it is able to see general opinions and then tweak algorithms to maximize the desired effect of propaganda. This ability makes TV a two-way communications system although most people, of course, do not realize this and have no concept of the level of sophistication these technologies have reached.

Information Theory

Information Theory is the name of a relatively new branch of science which became popular in the 1960′s. It covers a broad range of technologies. Basically, it is the science of the flow of information and how that flow can be selectively controlled so that information flows only in desired pathways. As you may have already guessed, governments love this sort of stuff.

ECM

ECM stands for Electronic Counter Measures. In general, these are techniques to disable other electronic devices. Basically, it is electronic warfare. When the secret service is active in an area, for example, they will selectively jam all radio frequencies except for the specific frequencies they are using so that no one else can communicate.

World leaders, who are generally terrified of “threats” materializing from practically anywhere, like to travel with ECM generators running just in case “someone” from “somewhere” was trying to target them for “some reason”. Basically, they are paranoid whack jobs.

People familiar with aviation tell the story of how Tony Blair, while traveling to or near a commercial airport, reportedly caused a commercial jet to crash because all the ECM garbage he was transmitting jammed the plane’s navigation system. Of course, the British government would never admit this.

Secure Communication With Submarines

Since submarines were invented, communicating with them has been a problem because conventional radio waves will not travel underwater. Therefore, early submarines had to get close enough to the surface to put up some kind of antenna in the air to send or receive radio messages. Obviously, this could pose a problem if you did not wish to be discovered and located. After all, the motivation to create submarines in the first place was the feeling that they would be able to move about the planet secretly. However, newer technologies now make this impossible.

To solve the problem of reliable secure communication without the need to surface, scientists learned that sea water was essentially transparent to a special type of Argon laser. To set up the current communications network, it was decided to use several satellites with each satellite sending only part of an encrypted communication signal. The complete signal could only be received at a specific point underwater where all the laser beams intersected. Intercepting only one or two beams would prove useless. This communications system is considered to be impossible to intercept.

Quantum Entanglement

Returning to the submarine issue for a moment, before modern communications were perfected, there was a search for some reliable method to send a signal to a submerged submarine that could not be detected. This was considered necessary in a war situation to secretly transmit an attack command. What they originally did was to locate a couple of people who could communicate telepathically. One would be at the command base and the other on the submarine. Doing a bit more research, it was determined that this type of communication is instantaneous and somehow operated outside of time. Radio waves travel at the speed of light.

Quantum entanglement is a process which uses technology to send and receive signals outside of space-time. Now, why would you possibly want to do this? Well, if you had a base or a colony on a planet in some other solar system light years away, you would not want to wait years for messages to be received. Following this thread — and adding some basic common sense — why would you want to dedicate resources to search for habitable planets in distant solar systems when you had already “proven” it would be impossible to ever get there? Could it just be that someone is not coming clean with whole story?

The Separation Barrier

This is a model of the separation barrier which insulates the ruling class from the slave class. It is essentially “intellectual apartheid”. The question is, why is it there. It takes considerable effort, money and manpower to maintain this artificial barrier. What is the reasoning behind not having a level playing field for everyone? Why does this idea absolutely terrify the elite? What are they afraid of?

The Pirate Story

This is a summary of a story told years ago on a radio broadcast most likely by Paul Harvey:

Ordinary people were afraid. The Earth was flat so they dare not venture far from home. Periodically, a pirate ship would come. They did not know how it got there or from where it came. It brought treasures they had never seen. The Chief Pirate would encourage the young men to study and specialize in specific skills. He wanted them to become educated but only in one narrow area. The Chief Pirate knew the world was not flat and how to navigate to other lands. However, this knowledge was never discussed. This “top secret” knowledge or the “big picture of the known world” would only be given to the Chief Pirate’s son who would inherit his title and someday become the Chief Pirate.

This story is about the origin of the concept we call compartmentalization — the process of controlling the slave masses by only allowing them to know specific bits of the truth while the leaders are allowed to know total truth.

ELITE RULING CLASS SECURITY CLEARANCES SECRET POLICE ASSASSINS SURVEILLANCE — SIGINT HUMINT COMINT SPY SATELLITES SPY DRONES SMART ELECTRIC METERS INTERNET SURVEILLANCE NEIGHBORHOOD SPIES PLENTIFUL STREET DRUGS PSYCHIATRIC FORCED DRUGGING GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD FLUORIDATED WATER COORDINATED TELEVISION PROPAGANDA DEGRADED PUBLIC EDUCATION LOCAL MILITARIZED POLICE SLAVE CLASS

Leaders can only maintain their status if there are slaves. Otherwise, everyone would be equal and operate on a level playing field. This means “leaders” would have to pull their own weight like everyone else. Clearly, this would be intolerable. Leaders love beautiful and exotic things but don’t want to do the work needed to create these things. They probably could not even plant a garden much less build the various “ivory towers” where they like to live surrounded by servants. If left on their own they would very likely starve. This is why it is so important to create and maintain the complex separation barrier.

Why don’t people who live above the separation barrier ever “come down” and talk to the people below the barrier? Well, other than the obvious fact that they would likely be killed or jailed for espionage or treason, there is another, simpler, reason.

Would you like to spend your days sitting in an open field with kindergarten kids looking for four leaf clovers? Probably not. You have progressed beyond that. The slaves below the separation barrier cannot even imagine the world of those who live above the barrier. In fact, the elite do not even consider the slaves human. They call them “disposable biological units”. The United Nations prefers the slang term “the herd”. Slaves can be easily bred in quantities needed and programmed to do desired tasks. Then, they can be easily disposed of when no longer useful. That’s how they look at you. So, why would they want to make friends with you?

The Mars Example

There is an interesting event playing out today that you may have noticed. This concerns the recruitment and selection of people to be sent to Mars. There are simulation projects where volunteers are locked away to imitate the long voyage to Mars. They are being told that this is a one way trip and they can never hope to return to Earth.

What you are witnessing is the selection process for the “seed people” who will be used to breed the future slave class on Mars. In a situation similar to the period when most believed the Earth was flat and you would fall off if you tried to go to sea, these people are convinced that the only way to get to mars is to ride a rocket on a perilous journey taking years. Because they truly believe this, when they get to Mars, they will teach this crap to their kids along with other misconceptions like it is impossible to go faster than the speed of light and other associated obsolete scientific principles. They will have no
desire to ever return to Earth or go anywhere else because they truly believe it is not possible. They will be contented slaves.

Of course the truth is that there are already secret colonies on Mars. It is not that hard to get there using antigravity and other secret propulsion methods and it is quite likely possible to simply walk through some kind of wormhole device and come out on Mars.

However, the slaves will never know this. Just as it is done on Earth, there will be an artificial separation barrier. The insiders will know the truth and will be physically hidden from the slaves. There will be secret police and other methods — the same as are used on Earth — to make sure no slave ever escapes from the “information prison”. Business as usual will continue.

Reinforcement of Ignorance

Governments and their oligarchs love to keep their subjects in a cloud of ignorance. Back in the days when people believed the Earth was flat, the inner circle ruling class knew it was round. Maintaining the deception was convenient because it kept the slaves from developing any desire to travel far from home.

Nothing has changed all that much today. Consider, for example, all the fuss over the missing MH370 plane. You are being played for a sucker. It is impossible for that plane to have “disappeared”.

The US DoD spy satellite system reportedly consists of ten constellations of satellites. Each constellation has over seven thousand satellites. They see and record everything that happens on this planet. The floor of the oceans can be seen just as clearly as the land areas. The resolution of the system is better than one square millimeter. Also, everything is recorded so you can go back in time and play past images.

This is a picture of a common electric lamp. Take this lamp and throw it in the ocean — any ocean anywhere on this planet. The spy satellite system will locate it, give you the coordinates and give you a photo at least as good as the one above. That is the capability of the system. So, clearly, it is impossible not to know the location of something as large as a Boeing 777 plane. All the TV publicity is a choreographed play. You are being scammed and you need to wake up and realize this fact.

Murders and Assassinations

To ensure a strong empire, dissent must be crushed. The United States trains assassins and carries out both domestic and foreign murders and assassinations on a regular basis. You may be familiar with the classic movie scenes where a black limousine with tinted windows drives by a target with thugs shooting machine guns. Although this would accomplish the task, it is a bit too obvious in a country that advertises itself to be a free, civilized democracy. Someone might catch on and begin to doubt the party line. Consequently, these things must be done quietly.

Inside the US, murders are reportedly carried out by a group known as “FBI Division Five”. Other agencies likely have the responsibility for foreign assassinations. However, the basic techniques used would be similar.

Typically, an agent would wake up every day and connect to the top secret internet to see who he was assigned to kill that day. There would be several options. If it was important to eliminate the target immediately, a fast acting chemical agent would be selected which, for example, would cause the target to die within a few hours of a “natural” heart attack.

However, if time was not critical and the government just wanted the target out of the way, you might want to select one of the cancer causing agents such as those likely used to eliminate Hugo Chavez and Senator Ted Kennedy.

There is also a third possibility. This involves character assassination instead of actual murder. Consider, for example, a person who has gained a lot of public recognition talking about, say, free energy. If you simply kill the person, there could be blowback and talk that he was silenced by the government. In such cases, it is easier to use a chemical agent designed not to kill but, rather, to cause states of mental confusion resulting in obviously strange behavior. This would be coordinated with the government controlled mainstream press to make sure everyone became convinced the person was a nut and would therefore ignore anything said without regard to the truth or validity of the message.

Once the appropriate chemical has been selected, you need to load it into the secret delivery system and locate your target. To find your target you will connect to the top secret internet and pinpoint the location of the target through their cell phone. You can also activate all the cameras and microphones in electronic gadgets connected to the internet associated with the target in case you wish to look around the target’s home and hear in real time what is taking place.

Of course, this will not help you locate the target when it is time to actually do the hit. So, you need to get the top secret profile data which will show any predictable habits of the target. Everyone is constantly tracked through their cell phones and profiles are logged and stored. In this case, the profile shows that the target has a favorite restaurant and goes there for lunch every day around 11:30. Now, you know exactly what to do. You go to the restaurant, hang out until you see your target, and get in line behind the target. Now, all you need to do is slightly bump into the target to deliver the chemical. Generally, the targets never even notice.

This mission is now complete. If it is early enough, you can check back in to the top secret system to see who you are supposed to kill next. Just another day. Just a routine job.

Money

Money is an imaginary force. It is used to motivate and control slaves. Real forces effect all life forms. However, only people respond to money. The only reason they do is because they have been artificially programmed to do so.

Money can be created in unlimited quantities by those adept in the use of this force. The physical world is finite, however the world of imagination is not. There is no limit to the quantity of money that can be imagined into existence. Money can also be imagined out of existence.

Let’s assume that one day the entire financial system simply disappeared. If you lived in a rural area and had a nice veggie garden, some friendly chickens, collection facilities for rain water and a few photocells for electricity, you would not notice this. The veggies would continue to grow. Rain would periodically fall. The chickens would lay eggs as usual. The sun would continue to shine. However, if you lived in a city environment, you would be devastated.

Before money, people lived in small hunter-gatherer groups. The concept of ownership did not exist. People worked and survived as a group. Men and women were equal. Everyone contributed to the community. Resources were shared equally. The concept of “mine” and “yours” did not exist. Women generally became pregnant only once about every three years although there was no birth control. Later, when the concept of money entered the consciousness, women were seen as having less value because men were paid for work but women were not paid to raise and care for kids. Society has changed, however, the downgraded status of women has not.

Money systems have always been manipulated by clever people. When gold was used as money, people learned they could dilute pure gold with silver or maybe even lead to come up with something that looked like pure gold and had the correct weight but was a fraud. A king suspected he was being scammed but had no way to prove it. He called on the great minds of the time for help. This led to what is known as the Archimedes’ principle which is better known today as “specific gravity”. This principle made it possible to compare a sample known to be pure gold to a questionable sample and prove the unknown sample was not pure gold. Likely, some clever crook lost his head once this test became known.

There is a general belief that gold is the ultimate reference for all money. However, secrets concerning the exact quantity of gold make this a perilous assumption. Reportedly, the United States stole a tremendous quantity of physical gold from Japan towards the end of World War II. This gold exists off the books. To make matters worse, Japan was not all that concerned. Japan had been using gold bars as ballast on its ships because they were compact and heavy. They thought nothing of throwing the bars overboard as necessary. Japan used platinum as a money reference and the US never got that. This should make one rethink all the hype about the value of gold. It may be a lot more plentiful than we have been led to believe. Also, the secret off the books stashes of gold would allow its relative value to be manipulated at will just like other commodity markets.

The Financial Axis of Evil [3]

This is the model of the financial axis of evil which rules this planet. It consists of three main branches as shown above. Collectively, they are known as “The Empire of the City”. Briefly, here is how this system operates:

The London financial district is in London, Washington D.C. is in the United States and the Vatican is in Italy. However, these three places are not part of the countries where they exist. They are independent “city states” and have their own laws and constitution. They are, effectively, “mini countries” inside of other countries and fly their own flags. The city state of London is a private corporation and pays no taxes to actual London or to Britain. The city state of London is the master power center and is controlled by the Rothschild family which considers itself to be the legal owner of this planet. The Vatican is the largest private land owner in the world and the first true multinational corporation with installations (churches) and secret agents (The Knights of Malta) everywhere. They control through the power of fear of the unknown and practice black magic. Washington D.C. relies upon brute military force. All three closely cooperate combining their specialties of financial trickery, witchcraft and military might. Of course, all three worship Satan as their Master.

Slavery

Slavery is alive and well throughout the world. The US constitution prohibits slavery, however, most americans live in slave-like conditions.

It is said that it will take the average college student until age fifty to pay back their student loan.

The constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery addressed the concept of physically owning another person. However, it did not address the issue of holding another person in bondage as a debt slave. It also did not consider the concept of private for profit prisons who force inmates to work as slaves. These systems exist today and are perfectly legal.

Actually, a recent report from prestigious Princeton University has reclassified the US government as an oligarchy — a country run by and for the rich elite. Former US President Carter has stated that the United States “no longer has a functioning democracy”. So much for the Founding Father’s dream. Speaking of dreams, check out the free you tube video titled “The American Dream”.

Other forms of slavery are illegal but still flourish. Sex slaves are always in demand. Traffickers are sometimes caught but you need to realize that your leaders use sex slaves and also routinely abuse young girls and boys. Sometimes they are also killed during occult rituals. No one ever talks about this and these people are never punished. This has been the normal way of life for Satan worshipers for many years and nothing has changed or is likely to ever change in the future. Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, Eyes Wide Shut, covers this subject. Some believe this intense dramatization of how the elite really live may have cost him his life.

People still have some rights left in the United States but other countries are a different story. Qatar is doing construction for the World Cup. The event is not scheduled until the year 2022, however they have already killed 1200 slaves [7] by working them to death. People are lured from poor countries with the promise of jobs and money. When they arrive, their passports are confiscated and they are forced to work until they literally drop dead. If the World Cup is actually held in Qatar in 2022, there will be glamorous TV coverage and no one will remember or care about all the dead slaves. The show must go on.

Qatar, incidentally, sponsors Al Jazeera TV network.

Adaptation Techniques

The status quo of today will never change because the people who created it will never die. Because of top secret medicine, when men like Henry Kissinger, who heads the Bilderberg Group’s steering committee, get too feeble to function, they will simply go to one of the secret locations and use the temporal reversal device to regress back to about twenty years old. Their memories will be unaffected. Then they will get new identities and continue on. This process can be repeated indefinitely.

Because you can never change the status quo, your best hope for a lifetime of reasonable quality is to find clever ways to live in this world with as much independence as possible.

One method of adaptation is autonomous and semi-autonomous communities. If the community is registered as a religious institution it is automatically shielded from most government interference by the US constitution. It pays no taxes and can pretty much write its own rules by simply calling whatever it wants to do “religious doctrine”. Many small semi-autonomous groups exist where people who share a common set of values find ways to quietly live out their lives pretty much on their own terms. The government does not seem interested in bothering these smaller groups as long as they live peacefully and are not doing anything that the government perceives to be a threat.

The Amish people are a good example of an autonomous group. You would probably not want to live as they do, however, before you completely dismiss them, you may want to look at some definite advantages in their chosen lifestyle.

Remember, these are the people who reject technology. They just might have made the correct choice. Technology, at first, seemed like a good idea. However, now that people are addicted to technology they are also enslaved by technology. Everything they do is monitored and recorded by the government. Privacy no longer exists. It did not have to be this way.

Technology, in itself, is not evil. However, it can be quite evil if you live under a government run by sociopathic control freaks which, unfortunately, you do. In the Amish world, electronic surveillance does not exist because electronic devices do not exist. The constant propaganda from TV has no effect on people who do not have TV. A horse does not report its position to a GPS satellite and is not controlled by a computer.

Also, the people are generally healthy and do not suffer from many diseases common to the mainstream population. They are not being poisoned by fluorinated water or additives found in processed food because they don’t use these things. Also, they get lots of physical exercise.

Without totally withdrawing from the world, there are some positive steps you can take. By now you know never to drink fluorinated water or use any personal product containing fluoride such as many brands of toothpaste. To minimize harmful food additives, look for Kosher food which is marked with either the encircled “K” or “U” (Ultra Kosher). These foods have less or no harmful additives. The Jewish community is very protective of its people and the Mossad is widely considered to be the best intelligence service in the world. Therefore, they would have the inside scoop on everything including food and do not want to see their people harmed.

Whatever you decide to do, you definitely do not want to be part of so called mainstream society. These people are doomed. They are sheep (sheeple) slowly walking to the slaughter house. Don’t go there!

---

references and credits

[1] DVD “The American Ruling Class”. ASIN: B001HM2CE2.

[2] John Perkins. Book: Confessions of an Econemic Hit Man; DVD (free on you tube): “Apology of an Economic Hit Man”; RT interviews.

[3] See the free you tube videos titled “The Red Shield”.

[4] DVD: “The Wages of Debt”, RT Intl. Also available for purchase.

[5] DVD “Terra Blight”, RT Intl. Also available for purchase.

[6] Interview with John Judge of Veterans Against Military Psychiatry.

[7] Also search using the phrase “qatar slaves world cup”.

© 2014 W C Vetsch. All rights reserved.

Source: Walter C. Vetsch  |  3108.info | War Is Crime

The Ukraine In Turmoil

Imagine: you are dressed up for a night on Broadway, but your neighbours are involved in a vicious quarrel, and you have to gun up and deal with the trouble instead of enjoying a show, and a dinner, and perhaps a date. This was Putin’s position regarding the Ukrainian turmoil.

The Russians have readjusted their sights, but they do not intend to bring their troops into the two rebel republics, unless dramatic developments should force them.

It is not much fun to be in Kiev these days. The revolutionary excitement is over, and hopes for new faces, the end of corruption and economic improvement have withered. The Maidan street revolt and the subsequent coup just reshuffled the same marked deck of cards, forever rotating in power.

The new acting President has been an acting prime minister, and a KGB (called “SBU” in Ukrainian) supremo. The new acting prime minister has been a foreign minister. The oligarch most likely to be “elected” President in a few days has been a foreign minister, the head of the state bank, and personal treasurer of two coups, in 2004 (installing Yushchenko) and in 2014 (installing himself). His main competitor, Mme Timoshenko, served as a prime minister for years, until electoral defeat in 2010.

These people had brought Ukraine to its present abject state. In 1991, the Ukraine was richer than Russia, today it is three times poorer because of these people’s mismanagement and theft. Now they plan an old trick: to take loans in Ukraine’s name, pocket the cash and leave the country indebted. They sell state assets to Western companies and ask for NATO to come in and protect the investment.

They play a hard game, brass knuckles and all. The Black Guard, a new SS-like armed force of the neo-nazi Right Sector, prowls the land. They arrest or kill dissidents, activists, journalists. Hundreds of American soldiers, belonging to the “private” company Academi (formerly Blackwater) are spread out in Novorossia, the pro-Russian provinces in the East and South-East. IMF–dictated reforms slashed pensions by half and doubled the housing rents. In the market, US Army rations took the place of local food.

The new Kiev regime had dropped the last pretence of democracy by expelling the Communists from the parliament. This should endear them to the US even more. Expel Communists, apply for NATO, condemn Russia, arrange a gay parade and you may do anything at all, even fry dozens of citizens alive. And so they did.

The harshest repressions were unleashed on industrial Novorossia, as its working class loathes the whole lot of oligarchs and ultra-nationalists. After the blazing inferno of Odessa and a wanton shooting on the streets of Melitopol the two rebellious provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk took up arms and declared their independence from the Kiev regime. They came under fire, but did not surrender. The other six Russian-speaking industrial provinces of Novorossia were quickly cowed. Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa were terrorised by personal army of Mr Kolomoysky; Kharkov was misled by its tricky governor.

Russia did not interfere and did not support the rebellion, to the great distress of Russian nationalists in Ukraine and Russia who mutter about “betrayal”. So much for the warlike rhetoric of McCain and Brzezinski.

Putin’s respect for others’ sovereignty is exasperating. I understand this sounds like a joke, — you hear so much about Putin as a “new Hitler”. As a matter of fact, Putin had legal training before joining the Secret Service. He is a stickler for international law. His Russia has interfered with other states much less than France or England, let alone the US. I asked his senior adviser, Mr Alexei Pushkov, why Russia did not try to influence Ukrainian minds while Kiev buzzed with American and European officials. “We think it is wrong to interfere”, he replied like a good Sunday schoolboy. It is rather likely Putin’s advisors misjudged public sentiment. « The majority of Novorossia’s population does not like the new Kiev regime, but being politically passive and conservative, will submit to its rule”, they estimated. “The rebels are a small bunch of firebrands without mass support, and they can’t be relied upon”, was their view. Accordingly, Putin advised the rebels to postpone the referendum indefinitely, a polite way of saying “drop it”.

They disregarded his request with considerable sang froid and convincingly voted en masse for secession from a collapsing Ukraine. The turnout was much higher than expected, the support for the move near total. As I was told by a Kremlin insider, this development was not foreseen by Putin’s advisers.

Perhaps the advisors had read it right, but three developments had changed the voters’ minds and had sent this placid people to the barricades and the voting booths:

1. The first one was the fiery holocaust of Odessa, where the peaceful and carelessly unarmed demonstrating workers were suddenly attacked by regime’s thugs (the Ukrainian equivalent of Mubarak’s shabab) and corralled into the Trade Unions Headquarters. The building was set on fire, and the far-right pro-regime Black Guard positioned snipers to efficiently pick off would-be escapees. Some fifty, mainly elderly, Russian-speaking workers were burned alive or shot as they rushed for the windows and the doors. This dreadful event was turned into an occasion of merriment and joy by Ukrainian nationalists who referred to their slain compatriots as “fried beetles”. (It is being said that this auto-da-fé was organised by the shock troops of Jewish oligarch and strongman Kolomoysky, who coveted the port of Odessa. Despite his cuddly bear appearance, he is pugnacious and violent person, who offered ten thousand dollars for a captive Russian, dead or alive, and proposed a cool million dollars for the head of Mr Tsarev, a Member of Parliament from Donetsk.)

2. The second was the Mariupol attack on May 9, 2014. This day is commemorated as V-day in Russia and Ukraine (while the West celebrates it on May 8). The Kiev regime forbade all V-day celebrations. In Mariupol, the Black Guard attacked the peaceful and weaponless town, burning down the police headquarters and killing local policemen who had refused to suppress the festive march. Afterwards, Black Guard thugs unleashed armoured vehicles on the streets, killing citizens and destroying property.

The West did not voice any protest; Nuland and Merkel weren’t horrified by this mass murder, as they were by Yanukovich’s timid attempts to control crowds.

The people of these two provinces felt abandoned; they understood that nobody was going to protect and save them but themselves, and went off to vote.

3. The third development was, bizarrely, the Eurovision jury choice of Austrian transvestite Conchita Wurst for a winner of its song contest.

 

The sound-minded Novorossians decided they want no part of such a Europe.

Actually, the people of Europe do not want it either:

It transpired that the majority of British viewers preferred a Polish duo, Donatan & Cleo, with its We Are Slavic. Donatan is half Russian, and has courted controversy in the past extolling the virtues of pan-Slavism and the achievements of the Red Army, says the Independent.

The politically correct judges of the jury preferred to “celebrate tolerance”, the dominant paradigm imposed upon Europe.

This is the second transvestite to win this very political contest; the first one was Israeli singer Dana International.

Such obsession with re-gendering did not go down well with Russians and/or Ukrainians.

The Russians have readjusted their sights, but they do not intend to bring their troops into the two rebel republics, unless dramatic developments should force them.

RUSSIAN PLANS

Imagine: you are dressed up for a night on Broadway, but your neighbours are involved in a vicious quarrel, and you have to gun up and deal with the trouble instead of enjoying a show, and a dinner, and perhaps a date. This was Putin’s position regarding the Ukrainian turmoil.

A few months ago, Russia had made a huge effort to become, and to be seen as, a very civilized European state of the first magnitude. This was the message of the Sochi Olympic games: to re-brand, even re-invent Russia, just as Peter the Great once had, as part of the First World; an amazing country of strong European tradition, of Leo Tolstoy and Malevich, of Tchaikovsky and Diaghilev, the land of arts, of daring social reform, of technical achievements, of modernity and beyond — the Russia of Natasha Rostova riding a Sikorsky ‘copter. Putin spent $60 billion to broadcast this image.

The old fox Henry Kissinger wisely :

Putin spent $60 billion on the Olympics. They had opening and closing ceremonies, trying to show Russia as a normal progressive state. So it isn’t possible that he, three days later, would voluntarily start an assault on Ukraine. There is no doubt that… at all times he wanted Ukraine in a subordinate position. And at all times, every senior Russian that I’ve ever met, including dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky, looked at Ukraine as part of the Russian heritage. But I don’t think he had planned to bring it to a head now.

However, Washington hawks decided to do whatever it takes to keep Russia out in the cold. They were afraid of this image of “a normal progressive state” as such Russia would render NATO irrelevant and undermine European dependence on the US. They were adamant about retaining their hegemony, shattered as it was by the Syrian confrontation. They attacked Russian positions in the Ukraine and arranged a violent coup, installing a viciously anti-Russian regime supported by football fans and neo-Nazis, paid for by Jewish oligarchs and American taxpayers. The victors banned the Russian language and prepared to void treaties with Russia regarding its Crimean naval base at Sebastopol on the Black Sea. This base was to become a great new NATO base, controlling the Black Sea and threatening Russia.

Putin had to deal quickly and so he did, by accepting the Crimean people’s request to join Russian Federation. This dealt with the immediate problem of the base, but the problem of Ukraine remained.

The Ukraine is not a foreign entity to Russians, it is the western half of Russia. It was artificially separated from the rest in 1991, at the collapse of the USSR. The people of the two parts are interconnected by family, culture and blood ties; their economies are intricately connected. While a separate viable Ukrainian state is a possibility, an “independent” Ukrainian state hostile to Russia is not viable and can’t be tolerated by any Russian ruler. And this for military as well as for cultural reasons: if Hitler had begun the war against Russia from its present border, he would have taken Stalingrad in two days and would have destroyed Russia in a week.

A more pro-active Russian ruler would have sent troops to Kiev a long time ago. Thus did Czar Alexis when the Poles, Cossacks and Tatars argued for it in 17^th century. So also did Czar Peter the Great, when the Swedes occupied it in the 18^th century. So did Lenin, when the Germans set up the Protectorate of Ukraine (he called its establishment “the obscene peace”). So did Stalin, when the Germans occupied the Ukraine in 1941.

Putin still hopes to settle the problem by peaceful means, relying upon the popular support of the Ukrainian people. Actually, before the Crimean takeover, the majority of Ukrainians (and near all Novorossians) overwhelmingly supported some sort of union with Russia. Otherwise, the Kiev coup would not have been necessary. The forced Crimean takeover seriously undermined Russian appeal. The people of Ukraine did not like it. This was foreseen by the Kremlin, but they had to accept Crimea for a few reasons. Firstly, a loss of Sevastopol naval base to NATO was a too horrible of an alternative to contemplate. Secondly, the Russian people would not understand if Putin were to refuse the suit of the Crimeans.

The Washington hawks still hope to force Putin to intervene militarily, as it would give them the opportunity to isolate Russia, turn it into a monster pariah state, beef up defence spending and set Europe and Russia against each other. They do not care about Ukraine and Ukrainians, but use them as pretext to attain geopolitical goals.

The Europeans would like to fleece Ukraine; to import its men as “illegal” workers and its women as prostitutes, to strip assets, to colonise. They did it with Moldova, a little sister of Ukraine, the most miserable ex-Soviet Republic. As for Russia, the EU would not mind taking it down a notch, so they would not act so grandly. But the EU is not fervent about it. Hence, the difference in attitudes.

Putin would prefer to continue with his modernisation of Russia. The country needs it badly. The infrastructure lags twenty or thirty years behind the West. Tired by this backwardness, young Russians often prefer to move to the West, and this brain drain causes much damage to Russia while enriching the West. Even Google is a result of this brain drain, for Sergey Brin is a Russian immigrant as well. So are hundreds of thousands of Russian scientists and artists manning every Western lab, theatre and orchestra. Political liberalisation is not enough: the young people want good roads, good schools and a quality of life comparable to the West. This is what Putin intends to deliver.

He is doing a fine job of it. Moscow now has free bikes and Wi-Fi in the parks like every Western European city. Trains have been upgraded. Hundreds of thousands of apartments are being built, even more than during the Soviet era. Salaries and pensions have increased seven-to-tenfold in the past decade. Russia is still shabby, but it is on the right track. Putin wants to continue this modernisation.

As for the Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states, Putin would prefer they retain their independence, be friendly and work at a leisurely pace towards integration a la the European Union.

He does not dream of a new empire. He would reject such a proposal, as it would delay his modernisation plans.

If the beastly neocons would not have forced his hand by expelling the legitimate president of Ukraine and installing their puppets, the world might have enjoyed a long spell of peace.

But then the western military alliance under the US leadership would fall into abeyance, US military industries would lose out, and US hegemony would evaporate. Peace is not good for the US military and hegemony-creating media machine. So dreams of peace in our lifetime are likely to remain just dreams.

What will Putin do?

Putin will try to avoid sending in troops as long as possible. He will have to protect the two splinter provinces, but this can be done with remote support, the way the US supports the rebels in Syria, without ‘boots on the ground’. Unless serious bloodshed on a large scale should occur, Russian troops will just stand by, staring down the Black Guard and other pro-regime forces.

Putin will try to find an arrangement with the West for sharing authority, influence and economic involvement in the failed state. This can be done through federalisation, or by means of coalition government, or even partition. The Russian-speaking provinces of Novorossia are those of Kharkov (industry), Nikolayev (ship-building), Odessa (harbour), Donetsk and Lugansk (mines and industry), Dnepropetrovsk (missiles and high-tech), Zaporozhe (steel), Kherson (water for Crimea and ship-building), all of them established, built and populated by Russians. They could secede from Ukraine and form an independent Novorossia, a mid-sized state, but still bigger than some neighbouring states. This state could join the Union State of Russia and Belarus, and/or the Customs Union led by Russia. The rump Ukraine could manage as it sees fit until it decides whether or not to join its Slavic sisters in the East. Such a set up would produce two rather cohesive and homogeneous states.

Another possibility (much less likely at this moment) is a three-way division of the failed Ukraine: Novorossia, Ukraine proper, and Galicia&Volyn. In such a case, Novorossia would be strongly pro-Russian, Ukraine would be neutral, and Galicia strongly pro-Western.

The EU could accept this, but the US probably would not agree to any power-sharing in the Ukraine. In the ensuing tug-of-war, one of two winners will emerge. If Europe and the US drift apart, Russia wins. If Russia accepts a pro-Western positioning of practically all of Ukraine, the US wins. The tug-of-war could snap and cause all-out war, with many participants and a possible use of nuclear weapons. This is a game of chicken; the one with stronger nerves and less imagination will remain on the track.

Pro and Contra

It is too early to predict who will win in the forthcoming confrontation. For the Russian president, it is extremely tempting to take all of Ukraine or at least Novorossia, but it is not an easy task, and one likely to cause much hostility from the Western powers. With Ukraine incorporated, Russian recovery from 1991 would be completed, its strength doubled, its security ensured and a grave danger removed. Russia would become great again. People would venerate Putin as Gatherer of Russian Lands.

However, Russian efforts to appear as a modern peaceful progressive state would have been wasted; it would be seen as an aggressor and expelled from international bodies. Sanctions will bite; high tech imports may be banned, as in the Soviet days. The Russian elites are reluctant to jeopardize their good life. The Russian military just recently began its modernization and is not keen to fight yet, perhaps not for another ten years.

But if they feel cornered, if NATO moves into Eastern Ukraine, they will fight all the same.

Some Russian politicians and observers believe that Ukraine is a basket case; its problems would be too expensive to fix. This assessment has a ‘sour grapes’ aftertaste, but it is widespread. An interesting new voice on the web, The Saker, promotes this view. “Let the EU and the US provide for the Ukrainians, they will come back to Mother Russia when hungry”, he says. The problem is, they will not be allowed to reconsider. The junta did not seize power violently in order to lose it at the ballot box.

Besides, Ukraine is not in such bad shape as some people claim. Yes, it would cost trillions to turn it into a Germany or France, but that’s not necessary. Ukraine can reach the Russian level of development very quickly –- in union with Russia. Under the EC-IMF-NATO, Ukraine will become a basket case, if it’s not already. The same is true for all East European ex-Soviet states: they can modestly prosper with Russia, as Belarus and Finland do, or suffer depopulation, unemployment, poverty with Europe and NATO and against Russia, vide Latvia, Hungary, Moldova, Georgia. It is in Ukrainian interests to join Russia in some framework; Ukrainians understand that; for this reason they will not be allowed to have democratic elections.

Simmering Novorossia has a potential to change the game. If Russian troops don’t come in, Novorossian rebels may beat off the Kiev offensive and embark on a counter-offensive to regain the whole of the country, despite Putin’s pacifying entreaties. Then, in a full-blown civil war, the Ukraine will hammer out its destiny.

On a personal level, Putin faces a hard choice. Russian nationalists will not forgive him if he surrenders Ukraine without a fight. The US and EU threaten the very life of the Russian president, as their sanctions are hurting Putin’s close associates, encouraging them to get rid of or even assassinate the President and improve their relations with the mighty West. War may come at any time, as it came twice during the last century – though Russia tried to avoid it both times. Putin wants to postpone it, at the very least, but not at any price.

His is not an easy choice. As Russia procrastinates, as the US doubles the risks, the world draws nearer to the nuclear abyss. Who will chicken out?

(Language editing by Ken Freeland)

The Liberal Media’s Donald Sterling Race-Baiting

Never let a racial crisis go to waste is, I suppose, the credo of the Machiavellian mainstream media. Since the release of the Don Sterling audio, liberals haven’t missed a chance to play the race card for all its worth. One of the worst offenders is a New York Daily News columnist named Harry Siegel, who — in a piece of pablum bearing a picture of NBA owners portrayed as Klansmen — bemoans the lack of Diversity™ in league ownership and management. Unfortunately for Siegy, his points, which start with the Klan hoods, only get worse from there.

A man with a conscience (malformed though it is), Siegel laments that the NBA is “a league where three-quarters of the players are black, but fewer than half the coaches and not even a fifth of the league office staff are black, as of October, 2013, and every majority team owner except Michael Jordan is white.” But there’s an easy remedy.

Institute a quota ensuring that whites, and other races, get proportionate representation among NBA players.

This would make the league approximately 63 percent white, 17 percent Hispanic, 13 percent black and 6 percent Asian. The remaining one percent can be represented by Clint Eastwood’s empty chair on the sidelines, and we can throw in a primordial dwarf if it makes the Diversity™ didacts feel better.

And why not? Why should proportionality go only one way? The bias here lies in self-righteously bloviating about Diversity™ when whites dominate an area while acting as if you don’t even notice it when blacks do.

Of course, liberals would say that the players have earned their positions. But how do we know the owners haven’t? After all, some individuals definitely seem to have a gift for building financial empires. This isn’t to say that every rich person makes his fortune through respectable means. Heck, some people even make millions dribbling a ball around.

But it seems that liberals, prejudiced to the core, only have a problem with it when the “wrong” groups succeed. With the contraception con spent, Barack Obama (PBUH) has used his Teleprompter recently to rail against the male/female wage gap — and he wasn’t talking about the one where young urban women earn 8 percent more than their male peers (because they’re 50 percent more likely to graduate college; I don’t think ol’ Barry mentions this gap, either). Libs could also cite how NBA owners are inordinately Jewish, but that narrative won’t work yet. And the highest-earning religious group in the nation is Hindus, but, last I heard, colleges weren’t schooling mush-head kids in “Hindu privilege.”

But talking about those things might be “publicly toxic”; you know, in the sense that Siegel said he’s sure that Sterling is “not the only owner whose private thoughts are publicly toxic.” No doubt. And I’m certain this is limited to rich white NBA owners, or at least white people in general. It also occurs to me, however, that people can develop a tolerance for certain toxins, such as when black ex-basketball players suggest all-black leagues or black civil-rights hustlers call a city “Hymietown.” And, in keeping with the toxicological principle “The dose makes the poison,” tolerance for toxins disgorged by whites stands at about .010 parts per million.

Then there are the millions, of dollars, that Siegel laments the NBA players are not getting, writing that theirs is a “league where the 360 or so athletes who, in fact, make the game, split its proceeds about 50-50 with ownership.” Note that he also dismissed the owners, who allegedly believe they make the game, as “[w]ealthy men…[who] think highly of their own contributions.”

Now, some might say that the fans make the game; after all, you earn zilch without a market. But what is Siegel’s point? Wouldn’t the proceeds split be much the same in the virtually all-white NHL? And how is that different from any corporation or successful business? A person doesn’t invest his heart and soul and risk capital in a venture without the carrot of a possibly handsome return; not even liberals such as Little Big Gulp (a.k.a. Michael Bloomberg), Warren Buffet and Donald Sterling do that.

So it sounds as if Siegel is lamenting economic freedom, as if he’d prefer a Marxist model (this certainly would have the upside of not enriching men who dribble balls and pundits who dribble ideas). Of course, nothing is stopping the players from pooling their resources and trying to buy into their team.

But perhaps most telling about Siegel’s article is what could be akin to a Freudian slip. A recurrent theme of his is that “we” can feel good about ourselves for taking the principled stand against Sterling, but there is much work yet to do. He writes, “We can all take a moment and pat ourselves on the back for not being as horrible as this appalling old man,” and later, “Once we’re done feeling good about not being Sterling…,” it’s time to beat the Diversity™ drum. But he also self-righteously states that Sterling’s “obscene behavior…has been well documented” and asks, “how could this have gone on for so long?”

What this gets at is the phoniness of the left. Let’s be clear on something: the “we” here isn’t me. It’s not most of you readers, the Heritage Foundation, Catholic Church or Southern Baptist Convention.

It is the left.

Notoriously liberal Mark Cuban, who now calls Sterling “abhorrent,” said in 2009, “I like Donald. He plays by his own rules.” (Translation: a lib who becomes a liability to the cause is “abhorrent.” A lib who is getting away with it “plays by his own rules.”) Black actor Leon Isaac Kennedy called Sterling “a prince among men.” The NAACP gave him an award and was set to bestow another. And ex-NBA commissioner David Stern, who some libs now criticize for not only tolerating the owner but even rewarding him, is, like Sterling, a Democrat donor.

The “we,” libs, is you.

It’s not conservatives. It’s not white people. It’s you.

You anointed yourselves arbiters and overseers of acceptable racial commentary; “racism” is your hang-up, your defined One Deadly Sin, your great litmus test. Don’t blame “society” — upholding yourprinciples is your responsibility.

So most of the lib outrage over “racism” is, when not downright phony, motivated by selectively triggered emotion. It’s a ploy used to tear down tradition and traditionalists on specious grounds and win the culture war. It’s not for lib-enablers, such as late Senator Robert Byrd, who’d been in the KKK; blacks such a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton; Bill Clinton with his Obama-coffee remark; or fat cats who make big donations — until it’s time to throw them under the bus.

As for Siegel, if he’s so concerned about Diversity™, perhaps he could turn his columnist slot over to a minority. After all, the vast majority of columnists are white, Siegy, and you wouldn’t want some future writer to have to lament, “how could this have gone on for so long?”

So What If Cliven Bundy Is A “Racist”?

For the record, I don’t believe Cliven Bundy is a “racist.”

For the record, I don’t even care.

Such indifference to that damnable failing, that thing we all know is the worst thing one can be, must make me a damnable man. But I am flexible. I just want equality. I’m perfectly willing to demonize “racists,” provided we give other sinners equal time.

I just want to hear, for example, “Forget the facts of the matter! The man is lustful!” or “Don’t listen to that miscreant. He’s guilty of sloth!” Or let’s say a fellow posits an opinion on, oh, taxation. Our very intellectual response could be, “Hey, didn’t I hear you talkin’ to your girlfriend about how you scarfed down four cheeseburgers at the barbecue and binged on ice cream in your easy chair? Look, everyone, he’s a glutton!”

This isn’t to say that being a bigot — the word “racist” is in quotation marks because it’s an invention of leftist language manipulators — is a good thing. Not at all. But neither is being lustful, slothful or gluttonous. Yet people who couldn’t name three of the Seven Deadly Sins and are thoroughly guilty of at least six, will claim they can disqualify a person, and his point of view, from debate based on their assessment of his moral state. What blindness — and hubris.

Bigotry is simply a sub-category of wrath, one part of one-seventh, not the moral end-all and be-all. And even if Bundy did have racial hang-ups, would it follow that he was wrong about his case or on federal power in general? Can a man be flawed, and even sinful, but yet right on a matter? Can he still have virtues? Albert Einstein could be lewd and lascivious, Galileo an irascible jerk, Ernest Hemingway was a drunkard.

This isn’t to say, as certain people with poor character once averred, that character doesn’t matter. It’s not to say a person’s vices can’t speak to motivations; it’s valid to point it out if a judge who rules that pornography has First Amendment protections habitually views porn himself. But it’s not valid to fixate on the allegedly “racist” tendencies of a judge who rules that racial commentary enjoys such protections (at least not within the context of analyzing the ruling). The difference is that since the former is wrong, there’s good reason to believe that his personal inclinations corrupted his judgment on the matter; with the latter judge, however, dwelling on the supposed flaw in question would only serve to discredit a legitimate ruling.

The point is that we all have flaws, yet all can be correct about a whole host of things. I wouldn’t have wanted Einstein to care for a teenage daughter or be president, but I wouldn’t deny that E=mc2.

Of course, it really is true that some flaws are more unequal than others — there is a hierarchy of sin — but moderns’ sense of proportion is highly askew. G.K. Chesterton said that a “Puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.” Today we have Impuritans, complete reprobates worshipping at hedonism’s altar, who pour their indignation onto others in a vain attempt to wash their own souls clean of sin. But there is much more to being a “good” person than simply not being bigoted.

To further illustrate this askew sense of proportion, consider again the gluttony example. Gluttony is a sin, no doubt. But now let’s say that our society considered it the ultimate disqualifier. Let’s say we might scrutinize a person, asking “What are his food bills?” “Do cookbooks figure too prominently in his library?” “Does he wile away excessive time watching Emeril Live?” “Is he the one who cleared the buffet table like a hurdler?” And imagine we visited pariah status on the person after deeming him guilty.

Would you think this society’s greater fault was gluttony — or being hung-up about it? I’d think it exhibited a gluttonous zeal for eradicating gluttony.

The problem is that man always swings from one extreme to another. The early to mid 20th century saw the embrace of eugenics and racial-superiority dogma, which was then discredited by the loathsome Nazis. But now we just as zealously impose a dogma denying the reality of group differences and mandating equality of outcome among races.

This tendency toward true extremism — meaning, extreme deviation from Truth — brings to mind C.S. Lewis’ observation that evil always tries to persuade us to exaggerate our flaws, telling the militant he’s too pacifistic and the pacifist that he’s too militant. As an example, today we have Impuritans who, awash in the Great Sexual Heresy, will still lament how “Puritan” America is so sexually “repressed.” Evil tells the pervert he’s too prudish, just as it tells self-hating whites that they’re too anti-black.

But what we should be is anti-“racism.” I don’t mean what you think. We need to oppose both the word and the concept — at least how the latter is often conceptualized.

Bigotry is bad by definition, and that definition is commonly agreed upon. But “racism” often has a different meaning, one whose influence is readily apparent in the reaction to Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s much reported comments. Al Sharpton, who once used the term “white interlopers” and once said, “White folks was in caves while we were building empires…,” called for a boycott of the NBA. Former hoop star Larry Johnson reacted to a man who didn’t want blacks around by saying he didn’t want whites around, as he suggested creating an all-black basketball league. Spike Lee told CNN he wished that white NBA players would speak out against Sterling, which is a bit like John Gotti having wished that someone would speak out against racketeering. And Barack Obama took time away from destroying our world standing, healthcare system, social policy and economy to say that “comments reportedly made by Sterling are ‘incredibly offensive racist statements,’ before casting them as part of a continuing legacy of slavery and segregation that Americans must confront,” wrote CBS DC. He then opined, “When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything; you just let them talk” (you don’t have to do anything except, I suppose, “confront” a “legacy of slavery and segregation”). But, okay, I’ll just let Obama talk.

Now, opportunism is often a factor in such hypocrisy, but there is something else: a striking sense of entitlement. This is why many black people will condemn a white person for making a bigoted comment with an equally bigoted comment without batting an eye; when whites are bigoted, it’s “racist”; when blacks are, it’s something else. And, in fact, this idea is encapsulated in the definition of “racism” I alluded to earlier. It’s one you’ve probably heard:

Only whites can be “racist” because a prerequisite for “racism” is not only bigoted intent, but the power to act upon it.

And, actually, they’ll get no argument from me. As I’ve said before, the left originated the word “racism,” so they may define it. They may have it.

And if they ask, I’ll tell them where they can stick it.

The problem is that conservatives, being conservative — meaning, conserving yesterday’s liberals’ social victories — parrot the word. It’s another example of how, forgetting that the side defining the vocabulary of a debate, wins the debate, conservatives slavishly use the Lexicon of the Left.

Of course, eventually this will all be left in the dustbin of history. Movements, peoples and civilizations come and go, and we’ll get over our fixation with one part of one-seventh of the Deadly Sins. And then man will swing to another extreme, as he goes on to the next great mistake.

U.S. Media Ignores Putin’s Peace Plan

“Let me repeat again, that in Russia’s view, the blame for the crisis in Ukraine lies with those who organized the coup d’etat in Kiev on February 22-23… But whatever the case, we must look for a way to solve the situation as it is today….And, as I said, what is needed is direct, full-fledged and equal dialogue between the Kiev authorities and the representatives of people in southeast Ukraine….I don’t know whether a Geneva-2 round of talks.. is realistic. (But) I believe that if we want to find a long-term solution to the crisis, there must be an open, honest and equal dialogue . That is our only option.”

-Russian President Vladimir Putin, press statement, OCSE meeting, Moscow, May 7, 2014

So many lie beneath the eternal granite
But of those honored by this stone
Let no one be forgotten
Let nothing be forgotten.

-Olga Berggolts, “Leningrad”

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a proposal for ending the violence in Ukraine at an OCSE (Organization for the Cooperation and Security in Europe) in Moscow. Unfortunately, most Americans never heard what he had to say because the media failed to publish his statement. The reason for the omission is fairly obvious, the media doesn’t want people to know that Putin is not the ghoulish, authoritarian caricature he’s portrayed to be, but a levelheaded pragmatist who wants a swift and peaceful resolution to the crisis. Here is what he said:

“We think the most important thing now is to launch direct dialogue, genuine, full-fledged dialogue between the Kiev authorities and representatives of southeast Ukraine. This dialogue could give people from southeast Ukraine the chance to see that their lawful rights in Ukraine really will be guaranteed.”

Does that sound like a bloodthirsty “KGB thug” who’s driven by dreams of territorial expansion and empire-building or does it sound like a responsible leader who wants to facilitate a cease-fire until cooler heads prevail?

Did you know that Putin called for a “genuine…dialogue between the Kiev… and representatives of southeast Ukraine”? Don’t you think the media should publish critical information like that so people can decide for themselves how they feel about Putin? Or do you think the media is entitled to withhold whatever information they choose as long as it benefits their corporate bosses? Is that how a free press is supposed to work?

Putin made a number of concessions in his speech that are worth noting. For example, he agreed to move his troops away from the Ukrainian border which has been a bone of contention with the Obama administration since the Kiev crackdown began more than two weeks ago. Putin agreed to withdraw his army even though he may have weakened Russia’s defenses in the process. This is no small matter, in fact, it’s a question national security which is a president’s primary responsibility and one that Putin does not take lightly, especially now that neo Nazi-crackpots are roaming the countryside armed to the teeth and threatening to kill ethnic Russians wherever they find them. But Putin made the concession anyway hoping that his good-faith gesture would help put an end to the violence. Here’s what he said:

“We have withdrawn our forces and they are now not on the Ukrainian border but are carrying out their regular exercises at the test grounds. This can be easily verified using modern intelligence techniques, including from space, where everything can be seen. We helped to secure the OSCE military observers’ release and I think also made a contribution to defusing the situation.”

Does that sound like a man who’s lying?

Of course not, which is why the media doesn’t want you to hear what he has to say. Because it doesn’t jibe with the “Putin is Satan” trope.

Putin is a plain-speaking guy who shoots from the hip and says what he means. He’s not a bullshitter. People know that, which is why the media won’t publish what he says. It’s because they’re afraid that people will believe him and all their jingoistic, pro-war propaganda will be for naught. The fact is, people have a sense of what the truth sounds like. Call it intuition, call it whatever you like. But people know the difference between a guy like Putin and a dissembling fraud like Kerry. That’s just the way it is.

Putin also asked representatives of the southeastern regions of Ukraine to postpone the referendum scheduled for May 11.

Why would he do that? After all, if he really wanted to rebuild the Russian Empire, as his critics say, then he’d want the balloting to take place so he could show the world that the people in the East reject the junta government and demand greater autonomy from Kiev. But that’s not what Putin wants. What he wants is an end to the carnage, which is why he asked the people to postpone the voting so the government wouldn’t have an excuse for launching another bloody crackdown. Putin doesn’t want to see Ukraine ripped to shreds and reduced to Iraq-type anarchy by external enemies who are using it as a staging-ground for their own geopolitical ambitions. He wants to restore stability and security. He wants the hostilities to stop. Here’s what he said:

“We are asking representatives of the southeastern regions of Ukraine and federalization supporters to reschedule the referendum scheduled for May 11.”

Okay, so he moved his troops back from the border and called on pro-Russian activists to put off the vote on greater political autonomy. That’s two significant concessions, right? But, why is Putin doing this?

Does he have something up his sleeve? Is he trying to lull his enemies to sleep before he orders a full-blown blitz on Kiev?

Be serious. Putin doesn’t want to take over Ukraine, that’s just neocon hogwash. He has his own problems to deal with. He’s not going to add to them by annexing a broken, basket-case failed state that’s rapidly sliding into a major Depression. Why would he do that?

Then why is he so eager to make concessions? Is it because he’s scared? Maybe he’s afraid of a confrontation with NATO and the US so he’s caving in before war breaks out on his western flank?

Is that it? Is Putin a coward?

According to the western media he is, but that’s because the coverage has focused exclusively on his willingness to move his troops which makes it look like Washington’s hardline policies (sanctions, threats, saber-rattling) are actually working instead making things worse. Which they are. What’s been left out of the reporting is Putin’s plan to end the violence. That never gets mentioned because the media doesn’t want Putin to look like a peacemaker. That doesn’t serve their interests at all.

Putin’s not afraid. He’s not going to end up like Gadhafi or Saddam. But he is worried. He’s worried that the US is going block access to his biggest market, the European Union. Russia can’t simply reroute its gas from west (EU) to east (China) as many of the pundits seem to think. That’s nonsense. Russia needs Europe, just as Europe needs Russia. There is a strong, natural business/trade relationship between the two that Washington wants to sabotage so it can be the big cheese in Central Asia. That’s what this is all about, right? The pivot to Asia.

So, yes, Putin’s interest in peace is not entirely altruistic. It’s also about money too. Big money. But, so what? What difference does that make? So Putin is not as pure as the driven snow. Big deal. The fact is, he’s still pushing for peace, which is not only beneficial for Moscow, but Europe and Ukraine as well. The only one that doesn’t benefit from peace is Washington, which is why the media is suppressing information that promotes de-escalation. It’s because Washington wants a war. War is the vehicle for breaking up the Russian Federation into tiny statelets that pose no threat to US military bases spread throughout Asia. War is the means by which Washington can make its pivot, surround China, and control its future growth. War paves the way for establishing US outposts in Ukraine and subverting greater economic integration between Russia and Europe. War is US policy because war advances US interests. Period.

Washington cannot achieve its strategic or economic objectives without a confrontation. That’s why the present situation so worrisome, because –judging by the scalding rhetoric emerging from the White House, the US State Department, and all the major media– Obama is going to continue to provoke Moscow until he gets the reaction he wants. If 40 dead in Odessa doesn’t do the trick, then the next provocation will be 400, or 4,000, or 400,000. Whatever it takes. It doesn’t matter. As Madeleine Albright noted some time ago when she was asked if the sanctions on Iraq were worth the half million lives they cost, she answered without the slightest hesitation, “We think the price is worth it.”

Whatever it takes. That’s US foreign policy in a nutshell.

Here’s more from Putin:

“The responsibility for what is happening in Ukraine now lies with the people who carried out an anti-constitutional seizure of power,.. and with those who supported these actions and gave them financial, political, information and other kinds of support and pushed the situation to the tragic events that took place in Odessa. It’s simply blood-chilling to watch the footage of those events.”

Try to imagine Obama saying something like that. Try to imagine Obama even caring about the people who died in Odessa. It’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? By now, Obama has seen the same videos as Putin. He’s seen the people hurtling themselves out of windows to escape the flames. He’s seen the victims being pummeled to death on the streets by neo Nazi goons. He’s seen the charred remains of the people who were incinerated in the fire. But he’s said nothing. He hasn’t even offered his condolences to the families who lost loved ones. He’s remained stone silent since the incident took place believing that any reference to the massacre would only undermine US policy. His callousness is all part of a political calculation. People don’t matter, what matters is the policy. Obama is no different than Albright or any other high-ranking member of the US political establishment in that regard. They’re all the same. Life means nothing to any of them. All that matters is the objectives of their constituents.

So, what does Putin really want?

Here’s what he says: “Russia urgently appeals to the authorities in Kiev to cease immediately all military and punitive operations in southeast Ukraine. This is not an effective means of resolving internal political conflicts and, on the contrary, will only deepen the divisions.”

“Cease all military and punitive operations”? In other words, he wants peace.

Unfortunately, Obama’s crew strangled Putin’s peace plan before it ever left the cradle. Just yesterday, the US-backed puppet regime in Kiev promised to step up attacks on protestors in the east. According to Defense Secretary Andriy Parubiy:

“The counter-terrorist operation will continue unhindered, despite the presence of terrorist and insurgent groups in the Donetsk region.”

As for Putin’s appeal for peace, puppet-PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk swiftly dismissed it as “hot air.”

So, there you have it. The threat of peace has been skillfully avoided giving Obama’s fascist friends the green light to pursue their strategy of tearing Ukraine apart, killing untold thousands of civilians, and deploying NATO to Russian’s western perimeter.

And that’s why Putin’s speech was blacked out by the media, because it conflicted with Washington’s plan to launch another war.

The Russians Are Coming … Again … And They’re Still Ten Feet Tall!

So, what do we have here? In Libya, in Syria, and elsewhere the United States has been on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. But not in Ukraine. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in Ukraine the United States is on the same side as the neo-Nazi types, who – taking time off from parading around with their swastika-like symbols and calling for the death of Jews, Russians and Communists – on May 2 burned down a trade-union building in Odessa, killing scores of people and sending hundreds to hospital; many of the victims were beaten or shot when they tried to flee the flames and smoke; ambulances were blocked from reaching the wounded. Try and find an American mainstream media entity that has made a serious attempt to capture the horror.

And how did this latest example of American foreign-policy exceptionalism come to be? One starting point that can be considered is what former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Robert Gates says in his recently published memoir: “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, [Defense Secretary Dick Cheney] wanted to see the dismemberment not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.” That can serve as an early marker for the new cold war while the corpse of the old one was still warm. Soon thereafter, NATO began to surround Russia with military bases, missile sites, and NATO members, while yearning for perhaps the most important part needed to complete the circle – Ukraine.

In February of this year, US State Department officials, undiplomatically, joined anti-government protesters in the capital city of Kiev, handing out encouragement and food, from which emanated the infamous leaked audio tape between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, former US ambassador to NATO and former State Department spokesperson for Hillary Clinton. Their conversation dealt with who should be running the new Ukraine government after the government of Viktor Yanukovich was overthrown; their most favored for this position being one Arseniy Yatsenuk.

My dear, and recently departed, Washington friend, John Judge, liked to say that if you want to call him a “conspiracy theorist” you have to call others “coincidence theorists”. Thus it was by the most remarkable of coincidences that Arseniy Yatsenuk did indeed become the new prime minister. He could very soon be found in private meetings and public press conferences with the president of the United States and the Secretary-General of NATO, as well as meeting with the soon-to-be new owners of Ukraine, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, preparing to impose their standard financial shock therapy. The current protestors in Ukraine don’t need PHDs in economics to know what this portends. They know about the impoverishment of Greece, Spain, et al. They also despise the new regime for its overthrow of their democratically-elected government, whatever its shortcomings. But the American media obscures these motivations by almost always referring to them simply as “pro-Russian”.

An exception, albeit rather unemphasized, was the April 17 Washington Post which reported from Donetsk that many of the eastern Ukrainians whom the author interviewed said the unrest in their region was driven by fear of “economic hardship” and the IMF austerity plan that will make their lives even harder: “At a most dangerous and delicate time, just as it battles Moscow for hearts and minds across the east, the pro-Western government is set to initiate a shock therapy of economic measures to meet the demands of an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund.”

Arseniy Yatsenuk, it should be noted, has something called the Arseniy Yatsenuk Foundation. If you go to the foundation’s website you will see the logos of the foundation’s “partners”.  Among these partners we find NATO, the National Endowment for Democracy, the US State Department, Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs in the UK), the German Marshall Fund (a think tank founded by the German government in honor of the US Marshall Plan), as well as a couple of international banks. Is any comment needed?

Getting away with supporting al-Qaeda and Nazi types may be giving US officials the idea that they can say or do anything they want in their foreign policy. In a May 2 press conference, President Obama, referring to Ukraine and the NATO Treaty, said: “We’re united in our unwavering Article 5 commitment to the security of our NATO allies”. (Article 5 states: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them … shall be considered an attack against them all.”) Did the president forget that Ukraine is not (yet) a member of NATO? And in the same press conference, the president referred to the “duly elected government in Kyiv (Kiev)”, when in fact it had come to power via a coup and then proceeded to establish a new regime in which the vice-premier, minister of defense, minister of agriculture, and minister of environment, all belonged to far-right neo-Nazi parties.

The pure awfulness of the Ukrainian right-wingers can scarcely be exaggerated. In early March, the leader of Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) called upon his comrades, the infamous Chechnyan terrorists, to carry out further terrorist actions in Russia.

There may be one important difference between the old Cold War and the new one. The American people, as well as the world, can not be as easily brainwashed as they were during the earlier period.

Over the course of a decade, in doing the research for my first books and articles on US foreign policy, one of the oddities to me of the Cold War was how often the Soviet Union seemed to know what the United States was really up to, even if the American people didn’t. Every once in a while in the 1950s to 70s a careful reader would notice a two- or three-inch story in the New York Times on the bottom of some distant inside page, reporting that Pravda or Izvestia had claimed that a recent coup or political assassination in Africa or Asia or Latin America had been the work of the CIA; theTimes might add that a US State Department official had labeled the story as “absurd”. And that was that; no further details were provided; and none were needed, for how many American readers gave it a second thought? It was just more commie propaganda. Who did they think they were fooling? This ignorance/complicity on the part of the mainstream media allowed the United States to get away with all manner of international crimes and mischief.

It was only in the 1980s when I began to do the serious research that resulted in my first book, which later became Killing Hope, that I was able to fill in the details and realize that the United States had indeed masterminded that particular coup or assassination, and many other coups and assassinations, not to mention countless bombings, chemical and biological warfare, perversion of elections, drug dealings, kidnapings, and much more that had not appeared in the American mainstream media or schoolbooks. (And a significant portion of which was apparently unknown to the Soviets as well.)

But there have been countless revelations about US crimes in the past two decades. Many Americans and much of the rest of the planet have become educated. They’re much more skeptical of American proclamations and the fawning media.

President Obama recently declared: “The strong condemnation that it’s received from around the world indicates the degree to which Russia is on the wrong side of history on this.”  Marvelous … coming from the man who partners with jihadists and Nazis and has waged war against seven nations. In the past half century is there any country whose foreign policy has received more bitter condemnation than the United States? If the United States is not on the wrong side of history, it may be only in the history books published by the United States.

Barack Obama, like virtually all Americans, likely believes that the Soviet Union, with perhaps the sole exception of the Second World War, was consistently on the wrong side of history in its foreign policy as well as at home. Yet, in a survey conducted by an independent Russian polling center this past January, and reported in the Washington Post in April, 86 percent of respondents older than 55 expressed regret for the Soviet Union’s collapse; 37 percent of those aged 25 to 39 did so. (Similar poll results have been reported regularly since the demise of the Soviet Union. This is fromUSA Today in 1999: “When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.”)

Or as the new Russian proverb put it: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth.”

A week before the above Post report in April the newspaper printed an article about happiness around the world, which contains the following charming lines: “Worldwide polls show that life seems better to older people – except in Russia.” … “Essentially, life under President Vladimir Putin is one continuous downward spiral into despair.” … “What’s going on in Russia is deep unhappiness.” … “In Russia, the only thing to look forward to is death’s sweet embrace.”

No, I don’t think it was meant to be any kind of satire. It appears to be a scientific study, complete with graphs, but it reads like something straight out of the 1950s.

The views Americans hold of themselves and other societies are not necessarily more distorted than the views found amongst people elsewhere in the world, but the Americans’ distortion can lead to much more harm. Most Americans and members of Congress have convinced themselves that the US/NATO encirclement of Russia is benign – we are, after all, the Good Guys – and they don’t understand why Russia can’t see this.

The first Cold War, from Washington’s point of view, was often designated as one of “containment”, referring to the US policy of preventing the spread of communism around the world, trying to blockthe very idea of communism or socialism. There’s still some leftover from that – see Venezuela and Cuba, for example – but the new Cold War can be seen more in terms of a military strategy. Washington thinks in terms of who could pose a barrier to the ever-expanding empire adding to its bases and other military necessities.

Whatever the rationale, it’s imperative that the United States suppress any lingering desire to bring Ukraine (and Georgia) into the NATO alliance. Nothing is more likely to bring large numbers of Russian boots onto the Ukrainian ground than the idea that Washington wants to have NATO troops right on the Russian border and in spitting distance of the country’s historic Black Sea naval base in Crimea.

The myth of Soviet expansionism

One still comes across references in the mainstream media to Russian “expansionism” and “the Soviet empire”, in addition to that old favorite “the evil empire”. These terms stem largely from erstwhile Soviet control of Eastern European states. But was the creation of these satellites following World War II an act of imperialism or expansionism? Or did the decisive impetus lie elsewhere?

Within the space of less than 25 years, Western powers had invaded Russia three times – the two world wars and the “Intervention” of 1918-20 – inflicting some 40 million casualties in the two wars alone. To carry out these invasions, the West had used Eastern Europe as a highway. Should it be any cause for wonder that after World War II the Soviets wanted to close this highway down? In almost any other context, Americans would have no problem in seeing this as an act of self defense. But in the context of the Cold War such thinking could not find a home in mainstream discourse.

The Baltic states of the Soviet Union – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – were not part of the highway and were frequently in the news because of their demands for more autonomy from Moscow, a story “natural” for the American media. These articles invariably reminded the reader that the “once independent” Baltic states were invaded in 1939 by the Soviet Union, incorporated as republics of the USSR, and had been “occupied” ever since. Another case of brutal Russian imperialism. Period. History etched in stone.

The three countries, it happens, were part of the Russian empire from 1721 up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, in the midst of World War I. When the war ended in November 1918, and the Germans had been defeated, the victorious Allied nations (US, Great Britain, France, et al.) permitted/encouraged the German forces to remain in the Baltics for a full year to crush the spread of Bolshevism there; this, with ample military assistance from the Allied nations. In each of the three republics, the Germans installed collaborators in power who declared their independence from the new Bolshevik state which, by this time, was so devastated by the World War, the revolution, and the civil war prolonged by the Allies’ intervention, that it had no choice but to accept the fait accompli. The rest of the fledgling Soviet Union had to be saved.

To at least win some propaganda points from this unfortunate state of affairs, the Soviets announced that they were relinquishing the Baltic republics “voluntarily” in line with their principles of anti-imperialism and self-determination. But is should not be surprising that the Soviets continued to regard the Baltics as a rightful part of their nation or that they waited until they were powerful enough to reclaim the territory.

Then we had Afghanistan. Surely this was an imperialist grab. But the Soviet Union had lived next door to Afghanistan for more than 60 years without gobbling it up. And when the Russians invaded in 1979, the key motivation was the United States involvement in a movement, largely Islamic, to topple the Afghan government, which was friendly to Moscow. The Soviets could not have been expected to tolerate a pro-US, anti-communist government on its border any more than the United States could have been expected to tolerate a pro-Soviet, communist government in Mexico.

Moreover, if the rebel movement took power it likely would have set up a fundamentalist Islamic government, which would have been in a position to proselytize the numerous Muslims in the Soviet border republics.

Notes

1. See RT.com (formerly Russia Today) for many stories, images and videos
2. Robert Gates, Duty (2014), p.97
3. If this site has gone missing again, a saved version can be found here.
4. Voice of Russia radio station, Moscow, April 18, 2014; also see Answer Coalition, “Who’s who in Ukraine’s new [semi-fascist] government”, March 11, 2014
5. RT.com, news report March 5, 2014
6. CBS News, March 3, 2014
7. Washington Post, April 11, 2014
8. USA Today (Virginia), Oct. 11, 1999, page 1
9. Washington Post print edition, April 2, 2014; online here

A Russophobic, Failed State Ruled By Fascists Obama’s New Ukraine

“While Russia has been making efforts to de-escalate and resolve the crisis, the Kiev regime has chosen to launch airstrikes on peaceful residential areas, literally destroying the last hope for preserving the Geneva accords.” Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman

“The crisis in Ukraine is not the result of ‘Russian aggression,’ but of a criminal strategy by the US and its European allies to install a hostile regime on Russia’s borders in Ukraine and, ultimately, dismember Russia itself.” Johannes Stern, NATO boosts military build-up against Russia as protests spread in east Ukraine, WSWS

Fighting broke out on Friday in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk when Kiev’s coup government deployed military helicopters to fire on the city while troops and armored vehicles stormed checkpoints. At the time this article went to press, two helicopters had been shot down killing at least two pilots while one was captured. In an impassioned statement on Russian TV, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, appealed to allies in the EU to do whatever they could to persuade Ukrainian authorities to call off the operation and stop the violence.

“We are calling on the European capitals, the United States of America to give an assessment of the current events and are of course calling on those carrying out airstrikes on residential areas to…immediately end the punitive operation and any violence against its own people…”

So far, there has been no response from Washington although it’s clear that the Obama administration had a hand in organizing the crackdown. Not only were the State Department and CIA directly involved in the putsch that removed democratically-elected president Viktor Yanukovych from office, but Washington has also been implicated in punitive operations directed against ethnic Russian protestors in east Ukraine. Both CIA Director John Brennan and Vice President Joe Biden visited Kiev just hours before two previous crackdowns were ordered by imposter-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blandly noted, It’s clear that Washington is “calling the shots”.

On Thursday, it looked like violence might be avoided when coup-President Oleksandr Turchynov said that he had lost control of the situation. In an exasperated message to the media, Turchnov said, “It is hard to accept but it’s the truth, but the majority of law enforcers in the east are incapable of performing their duties.”

Turchynov was referring to the fact that Ukrainian troops have refused to attack their own countrymen. The mutiny has reportedly spread from elite airborne units to local police who sympathize with the protestors. The only group that’s willing to carry out Washington’s proxy war is the Right Sector neo-Nazis who helped topple the Yanukovych government. Just last week, members of this openly fascist party, commemorated “the perpetrators of the massacre of Yanova Dolina,” where “600 Poles were murdered by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in what is now Bazaltovoye. The massacre marked the beginning of ethnic cleansing in what is now western Ukraine, where tens of thousands of Poles were killed within a few months.” (World Socialist Web Site)

These are Obama’s new allies in America’s war against Russia. Now check this out from Reuters:

“The International Monetary Fund warned that if Ukraine lost territory in the east it would have to redesign a $17 billion bailout of the country, probably requiring additional financing.” (Ukraine attacks rebel city, helicopter shot down, Reuters)

Tell me, dear reader, when was the last time you heard of the IMF threatening to withhold funds if a political leader didn’t wage war on his own people? Anyone with half a brain can see that the IMF is just acting on orders from the White House. This is Obama’s war. His fingerprints are all over the policy. Obama is determined to draw Russia into a bloody guerilla war that leaves Ukraine in the same condition as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria.

Here’s a clip from the New York Times:

“Through stealth and misdirection, and in defiance of Western sanctions, Russia has managed to achieve its immediate goal of what Western and Ukrainian officials believe is rendering Ukraine so chaotic that it cannot guarantee order, mend its teetering economy or elect new leaders to replace Mr. Turchynov.” (Not Getting Through to Mr. Putin, New York Times)

Putin wants a “chaotic” failed state on Russia’s border? Have you ever read such nonsense in your life?

Putin didn’t topple the Ukrainian government. The US State Department did. (Victoria Nuland’s hacked phone calls prove it.) And Putin didn’t violate the Geneva agreement less than 24 hours after the deal was signed by launching a crackdown on civilian protestors in the east. That was US-puppet Yatsenyuk. Nor did Putin deploy the military to surround cities, cut off their water supplies and deploy helicopter gunships to fire missiles at civilian infrastructure and terrorize the local population. That was the work of Obama’s fascist junta in Kiev. Putin had nothing to do with any of the trouble in Ukraine. It’s all part of the US “pivot to Asia” strategy to encircle and (eventually) dismember Russia in order to seize vital resources and control the flow of energy to China. Washington wants to reduce Ukraine to Mad Max-type pandemonium to justify establishing NATO bases on Russia’s perimeter. It’s all part of the plan to control Central Asia and rule the world.

Putin has acted as peacemaker throughout the crisis, but Obama is determined to provoke the Russian president by attacking and killing ethnic Russians. Consider the statement by Russia’s Foreign Ministry following the helicopter incident on Friday morning:

“As we have warned many times before, the use of the army against its own people is a crime and is leading Ukraine to catastrophe…By supporting the organizers of the Kiev coup in their strategy of violently putting down protests, the US and EU are taking on a huge responsibility, essentially closing the door to a peaceful solution to the crisis.” (Putin says Geneva agreement no longer viable after Ukrainian military action, Guardian)

It’s clear now that Obama merely used the Geneva agreement to buy time to move troops and military hardware to Poland and the Balkans. It’s also clear that Obama invited German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Washington so that it would appear that Europe is united behind the US in its proxy war on Russia. But what does Obama hope to achieve by stirring up this hornet’s nest? He knows that Putin cannot afford to back down on Crimea, so what’s the point? And, more importantly, what is Ukraine going to look like when Washington is finished using it as a staging-ground for its geopolitical landgrab? Here’s an insightful piece by Russian academic, Andrei Fursov, who thinks he knows what Obama wants and explains the impact the policy is going to have on Ukraine for years to come.

“The Americans need controlled chaos and civil war…Moreover, it is clear that this country (post-coup Ukraine) is intended to be absolutely anti-Russian, nationalist, Banderite and neo-Nazi. So the dual goal of establishing this anti-Russian state is to constantly apply pressure on the Russian Federation…

As Bismarck (said) ‘We must cultivate among the Ukrainians, a people whose consciousness is altered to such an extent, that they begin to hate everything Russian.’ …

Thus we are talking about a historical psy-op, an information-psychological sabotage, whose purpose is to establish Russophobic Slavs… They are the means to separate Ukraine from Russia and to oppose Russia as a kind … totalitarian empire. This was all devised under the Galician Project, on which the intelligence services of Austro-Germany and Kaiser German worked, followed by the intelligence service of the Third Reich, later – CIA and BND…

Banderastan, if that’s what Ukraine is fated to become, as designed by the puppet-masters across the ocean, is to be an oligarchic, terroristic, Russophobic state…An oligarchic Banderite…oligarchy is the ideal vehicle for external control. Clearly, this will suit both the oligarchs and the West.” (Battleground Ukraine: A Comprehensive Summary, Zero Hedge)

So, there it is: Divide and rule. We saw the Bush administration pull it off with the Shia and Sunnis in Iraq, and now Obama wants to do the same with the Ukrainians and Russians. Same strategy, different continent.

This is Obama’s plan for the “New Ukraine” a fascist-ruled failed state that follows Washington’s directives and puts pressure on Russia thorough endless provocations, belligerence, and war. Ukraine will be Washington’s pit bull in the East, separating Moscow from crucial sources of revenue and thwarting efforts at greater EU-Russia economic integration. This is how Washington hopes to insert itself into Eurasia, to improve its prospects in the Great Game, and to establish global hegemony into the next century.

(Note: “Banderite” refers to Stepan Bandera, who was a Ukrainian nationalist leader who collaborated with the Nazis. Bandera headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) According to the World Socialist Web Site: “The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out numerous massacres of the Polish population in western Ukraine…The UPA served as a military executive organ of the OUN. It was founded in the spring of 1943 and recruited primarily from Nazi collaborators who were previously active in the SS.”)

Vladimir Putin Caesar And Our Great Geo-Political Turning Point

We are witnessing, I believe, a turning point in geopolitical history, one future historians may analyze as we have the Roman Empire’s fall. Vladimir Putin is making a move — and it’s not just against Ukraine. It may not be just a move against Eastern Europe. It’s not even, perhaps, just a move against US world dominance.

There was a time when the USSR was the “evil empire, a godless Golgotha. But that was then. Now, in 2013-14, Putin has seen fit to say, in his December State of the Nation speech, “Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. …Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”

This roughly coincided with Russia’s enactment of laws prohibiting homosexual propaganda and was a salvo against both the West’s Great Sexual Heresy and what enables it: moral relativism.

In another shot at relativism, Putin averred, “Society is now required…to accept without question the equality of good and evil, strange as it seems, concepts that are opposite in meaning.”

The Russian president then took aim at multiculturalism: “Today, many nations are revising their moral values and ethical norms, eroding ethnic traditions and differences between peoples and cultures.”

And now we’re seeing the release of Russian Culture War 2.0. In a document called “Foundations of the State Cultural Policy,” the Kremlin is doubling down and writes, “Russia must be viewed as a unique and original civilization that cannot be reduced to ‘East’ or ‘West.’ …A concise way of formulating this stand would be, ‘Russia is not Europe.’” The document goes on to state that Russia rejects “such principles as multiculturalism and tolerance” and “projects imposing alien values on society.”

No, this is not your grandfather’s Russia.

But it very well may be your great-grandfather’s.

There are a few different things, I suspect, going on here. The 20 years after the Cold War’s end had been a period of relative co-operation between Russia and the West, but you can’t define yourself by going along (to get along) with the world’s cultural hegemon; you can’t be band leader by playing second fiddle. So Putin is defining his nation as the un-morally-wild West. In addition, he knows that to rally a people behind you, you need a boogeyman, your Eurasia, the “Nappy” (Napoleon) who will “get you,” British children, if you’re not good.

Yet it isn’t just that Putin is restarting the Cold War. Nor is he just an old-line KGB Bolshevik, as some stuck in commentary amber have suggested. He’s smart enough to realize that Marxism is, as the kids today would say, just so “played.”

He more likely wants to be the next czar.

What’s my theory? Try this on for size: It isn’t just that Putin wants to restore lost Russian glory.

He sees a chance to be a historic figure.

Note here that you don’t have to be good to be historic; Roman statesman Cicero called Julius Caesar an “ambitious villain,” but Caesar’s name is far better known than Cicero’s. And let’s consider what might be Putin’s calculation: the West has long been the world’s cultural trend-setter, spreading an increasingly un-Christian creed to all corners of the Earth. Of course, not everyone is on board. The Islamic abode wants nothing to do with it, but it’s Muslim; sub-Saharan Africa is largely opposed, but it lacks clout. As for South America, in addition to lacking clout it’s confused; and while China is gaining power, it’s largely pagan and non-committal on the culture war.

Enter the second Vladimir the Great.

Putin doesn’t just see a chance to define himself — and to unite the Russian people behind him — via opposition to the West, as his Marxist comrades once did.

He sees a chance to do it as today’s Charlemagne.

There’s an unsatisfied market for Christendom’s standard bearer, and Putin perceives an opportunity to exploit it. China won’t do it, Africa can’t, South America wouldn’t and couldn’t. But just as the original Vladimir the Great Christianized the Kievan Rus’, just as Charlemagne forged and helped Christianize modern Europe, Putin has a chance to lift the cross — and himself — high.

And the West is a gift that keeps on giving insofar as this goes. Our cultural Marxists are on the march, smell blood and will not stop. They will continue spending us into insolvency, perverting us into prone position, relativizing us into risibility and “immigrationizing” us into irrelevance. Even now, not satisfied with placing another great nail in marriage’s coffin, our militant secularists are making moves to legitimize pedophilia and bestiality. It’s onward Luciferian soldiers.

And for Putin, it’s onward Christian soldier. As our degradation advances, Russia’s star can rise commensurately. Putin knows the West is in decline. He sees the demographic trends, that the US is transforming into a Third World/Hispanic nation and Western Europe into a Third World/Muslim continent. He knows that if there is another superpower in the near future, it will be Russia or China. And he knows what card he has to play to win this game.

Of course, while we could argue about whether the Christian-soldier solution is tactic and strategy or just tactic, it is so obviously prudent that it’s inconceivable Putin wouldn’t have pursued it. Just consider the benefits, starting with justification of Russian expansionism. If you’re a typical Russian, might not the idea that “the West is decadent, debauched, exhausted and effete” justify, in your mind, a Russian manifest destiny? Might it not be natural and wholly in accordance with man’s nature to believe that your moral superiority gives you the right to dominate? Note that this is the theory that helped justify the colonial powers’ imperialism: they were bringing civilization to a world of darkness. And it’s what we do to this day, applying secular values as standard. How often have we heard intervention in the Islamic “stan” du jour justified by pointing out that its rulers oppress women and are intolerant? The judgments are different, but the desire to claim the moral high ground is the same.

Then consider foreign relations. The USSR used to jockey for world influence with us; whereas before they had to market Marxism, however, now they can peddle purity. Standing against decadent Western secular-imperialism can win Russia many friends in Africa and even the Middle East, and most of the Far East will go with the dominant power.

Lastly, even if Putin is a functional atheist — even if his road to Heaven is paved with bad intentions — he surely knows that if Russia wants to prosper, Western secular/hedonist isms must be rejected. And why wouldn’t he know? As Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov and others have , it was his erstwhile Marxist buddies who encouraged those movements in the West for the purposes of undermining our civilization.

But we’re doing a very good job of undermining it ourselves, and Putin is more concerned with building his own. Pat Buchanan recently wrote about this and pointed out that Putin may very well view his realm as “The Third Rome:”

The first Rome was the Holy City and seat of Christianity that fell to Odoacer and his barbarians in 476 A.D. The second Rome was Constantinople, Byzantium, (today’s Istanbul), which fell to the Turks in 1453. The successor city to Byzantium, the Third Rome, the last Rome to the old believers, was — Moscow.

Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.

…Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.

Note here that the term “czar” is derived from the Latin word Caesar. And while Putin may be just as satisfied to be Julius or Augustus as Constantine, I’m quite sure that Marxism is no longer his bag. That would be playing second fiddle again — and the last thing the Russians want to be is like us.

Willful Blindness: Abraham Foxman And The Armenian Genocide

Few would expect a survivor of the Holocaust to be the face of genocide denial. Imagine the surprise of Suffolk Law School’s student body when its administration’s chosen commencement speaker turned out to be just that.

Abraham Foxman, the long-time director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization dedicated to eradicating anti-Semitism and bigotry and protecting civil rights, seems a figure beyond reproach. Yet Foxman has invited controversy to Suffolk University for his unwillingness to recognize the 1915 Armenian Genocide – an event which saw an estimated 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Turks – and his campaign to defeat Congressional acknowledgement of said genocide.

Criticism of Foxman has centered on this disconnect, that a man who lived through the attempted extermination of an entire race now denies that truth of another. Many at Suffolk are unwilling to participate in that hypocrisy.

Suffolk’s Students Speak Out

Shortly after Foxman was announced as their 2014 speaker, Suffolk Law students . Amy Willis, President of the university’s National Lawyers Guild chapter, told the Boston Globe that “Suffolk claims to embody diversity and be a place for all people, but this clearly is a speaker who does not embody those values.”

This stance was reflected in  as the keynote speaker, as well as to deny him the honorary Juris doctorate he is slated to receive. The petition states that Foxman’s presence “not only insults students and their families, but also insults the very foundation of Suffolk Law as a safe place of diversity and acceptance.” As arguments for his removal, the petition enumerates Foxman’s refusal to explicitly label the Armenian Genocide as a genocide as well as his support for  in the interest of “national security.”

What Is Genocide?

Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” in 1944 to describe the magnitude of premeditated racial extermination, citing  as the prime example. After the war, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, .

In the Convention, genocide is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” which includes “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The mention of “intent” is significant in this definition. Foxman’s 2007 statement (described below) would go out of its way to avoid labeling the Turkish pogrom as intentional, admitting only that its “consequences” were “tantamount” to genocide. To the casual observer, it is perhaps a negligible distinction. From a legal standpoint, it is strategically evasive.

What Is the Armenian Genocide?

This definition applies to the systematic slaughter of Armenians by the Turkish government that began in 1915. To understand how this genocide came to be, a brief summary of the two nations’ history is required.

Existing in various forms for approximately 3,000 years of recorded history, Armenia was the first nation to declare Christianity its national religion. It remained Christian under the several empires that conquered it, including the Muslim caliphate of the Ottoman Turks. From the 15th century onward, Armenians and their fellow “infidels” were allowed to continue their religious practices, though subjected to higher taxes, fewer rights and ethnic discrimination. For the Armenians, this culminated in the Hamidian Massacres of 1894-1897. This state-sponsored pogrom was instituted by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in retaliation for Armenians’ attempts to win civil rights.

By the start of World War I, political tensions between Armenians and a new Turkish government were even more strained. Armenia itself had been divided by warring empires, with Russia claiming the east and Turkey claiming the west. Duty-bound, both sides fought for their respective empires.

This dichotomy of loyalty enabled the Turks to concoct a pretext that veiled their ultimate goal of an ethnically and religiously uniform empire. A purge would enable them to  the “Christian element” and seize the wealth and property of suspected insurgents. On April 24, 1915, the Turkish government authorized the arrest and execution of several hundred Armenian intellectuals. From that point, the executions would continue for eight years, shrouded under the fog of the Great War.

Turkish soldiers and mercenaries acting under the general outfit of “Special Operations” murdered hundreds of thousands of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, marching them through the Anatolian and Syrian deserts without food, water or clothing. “Infidels” not sentenced to hard labor camps were drowned in rivers, thrown off cliffs,  and burned alive. Property was seized, women were raped and dispatched to Turkish harems, and many children were kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam.

The number of survivors is a matter of debate, but of a population of 2 million indigenous Armenians, it is estimated that upwards of 1.5 million were slaughtered in Turkey between 1915 and 1923. Even today, almost a century later, the Euphrates River is filled with the bones of dead Armenians, as author Peter Balakian, , can attest.

Stark,  exist to document the savagery of the Armenian massacre. Yet still Turkey denies its own legacy.

Turkey and Foxman’s Denials

Article 301 of the Turkish penal code  to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation or the Turkish government. To acknowledge an “Armenian Genocide” is the most egregious insult possible.

Because Turkey was the first nation in the Middle East to establish diplomatic relations with Israel and remains an instrumental ally of the West, the United States is unwilling to rock that political boat. Even when a resolution was proposed by the 110th Congress to recognize the Armenian Genocide, then President George W. Bush publicly opposed the measure. He was not the first, and current President Barack Obama’s silence on the issue suggests he will not be the last.

And this has been . His public opposition to Armenian recognition has been out of loyalty to Israel. “Our focus is Israel,” he has said. “If helping Turkey helps Israel, then that’s what we’re in the business of doing.” It seems absurd to the point of tragedy that a man who lived under Nazi oppression can answer the question of Armenian genocide with, “It was wartime. Things get messy.”

But in 2007, . Speaking for himself and the ADL, he stated that, “We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against Armenians as massacres and atrocities,” ending with decision that “the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide.”

But “tantamount to genocide” without intent is not genocide. This calculated elision of “intent,” its palpable absence, is an insult to the Armenian community. The ADL’s defenders decry this as splitting hairs, but they overlook the importance of legacy and how powerfully a single word can affect it. It was important enough to prompt a dozen Massachusetts cities to pull out of the ADL’s “No Place for Hate” anti-bias program. It was important enough that when Andrew H. Tarsy, a regional director for the ADL, acknowledged the genocide as true genocide, .

Unfortunately for Suffolk Law School, and all those who expect the ADL to uphold its own morality, Abraham Foxman represents a willful blindness – to look the other way on a hundred-year-old crime – for the sake of political expediency.

It is the opinion of Suffolk University President James McCarthy that Foxman, despite students’ protests,  Moreover, it is the University’s hope that Foxman’s “life of public service will inspire our graduates as they embark on their professional careers.”

This does beg the question of what recognition the Syrian desert’s uncounted dead deserve, or what their lives may have inspired, but the answers are unlikely to be found in Foxman’s commencement speech.

Western Secularism vs. Russian Christian Revival

When defending Western Civilization, some confuse that secular humanism, practiced as the current dominate popular culture, represents that lineage. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The decadence and decline in the West is undeniable. Yet the heritage upon which European civilization is based, owes a profound debt of gratitude to the societies that developed out of the brute force of empire and adopted principles of natural law and individual dignity. A direct correlation to the gospel of Christ becomes the centerpiece of this glorious tradition of universal brotherhood, that keeps man’s inhumanity to man in check.

The well-documented failures of institutions and regimes would have been far worse if left to the devices of pagan appetites or atheist’s hubris. However, the memory of the eternal struggle is short lived in the minds of most people. Confusion reigns because of a lack of knowledge, perspective and especially will, to admit that the New World Order is the invention of satanic factions that lust for control of the entire planet and beyond.

Therefore, the extraordinary essay by Pat Buchanan, Putin vs. Cultural Marxism: Whose Side Is God on Now?, is a required penance for all those who have sinned.

“In his Kremlin defense of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Russia is a Christian country, Putin was saying.This speech recalls last December’s address where the former KGB chief spoke of Russia as standing against a decadent West:

“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”

With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.”

Before dismissing Putin as just a KGB thug, read Vladimir Putin Nemesis of the New World Order. Then do your own research on Marx and Lenin’s clan of Khazar Bolsheviks. Finally, transcend the issue just about the motives of Putin and focus on the Christian roots of the Russian population.

The Orthodox Revival in Russia by Fr. Seraphim Rose cites the experiences and significance of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Father Dimitry Dudko.Solzhenitsyn spoke of Gulag—a secular term; Fr. Dimitry speaks of Golgotha—the Christian understanding of the Soviet experience. The central part of Fr. Dimitry’s—and contemporary Russia’s—message to us is that all the sufferings inflicted by atheism have a meaning—we can find Christ in them… Here are a few passages of Fr. Dimitry’s teaching:

“In our land has occurred Golgotha; the torments of all the martyrs begin gradually to cleanse the air… The present crucifixion of Christ in Russia, the persecutions and mockings only lead to the resurrection of faith in men… This gives us strength, firmness, makes us better than we are now… Let us imagine the state of our martyrs. Did the thought of sinning occur to them at this moment? No matter what kind of sinners they may have been in this minute they become saints… And those who suffer for those condemned to death also become better. How many martyrs there have been in Russia—and therefore, how many holy feelings! Will these holy feelings really give no fruit? And perhaps we live and will live only by the feelings of the holy martyrs, being supported by them… In our country now is Golgotha. Christ is crucified. Golgotha is not merely sufferings, but such sufferings as lead to resurrection and enlighten men… Our time can be compared only with the first three centuries of Christianity, and perhaps then it was even easier; then they did not yet know all the refinements of subtle torture… If one compares the religious state here and in the West, the balance is on our side. Why? Because here we have Golgotha, and there they don’t. Does an abundance of material goods give a religious rebirth? … Here we have nothing, but if people believe they are ready to die for their faith.”

Fr. Rose provides his assessment:

“His truthfulness and fiery faith have made many enemies—sadly enough, even among Orthodox Christians. Some have found him too emotional, too apocalyptic, too messianic—and it is true that such a fiery, urgent, Orthodox preaching hasn’t been heard in Russia and probably the whole Orthodox world since the days of St. John of Kronstadt; many Orthodox people have become self-satisfied with their “correct and proper” Orthodoxy and are somehow offended when Orthodoxy is preached and communicated so warmly to everyone who will listen.”

Can you just imagine such a discussion in the western media or even among Dispensationalist Christians, who are preoccupied in taking up the sword to champion Zionism? Any comparison between the West and Mother Russia would be incomplete without the insight of the audacious Brother Nathanael Kapner, Putin’s Purge Of The Rothschild Money Changers.In a televised Christmas message on January 7 2008 Putin said:

“The Russian Orthodox Church contributes to the promotion of moral values in society. One should not completely draw a line between the culture and the church. Of course by law in our country the church is separate from the state. But in the soul and the history of our people it’s all together. It always has been and always will be.” — Here.

Brother Nathanael leaves nothing unsaid in PUTIN VS JEWS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER.

“By 2006 Putin had paid off Russia’s debt to the Rothschilds. Russia’s financial dependence on the Jewish financiers was now over. Putin could then establish what became his Russian Unity Party’s 2007 campaign slogan: Putin’s Plan Means Victory For Russia! This slogan continues to make the New World Order Jews very nervous…Here.”

While these sentiments are several years old, make no mistake about it, they are even truer today, with the efforts of the BRICS Development Bank to replace the IMF.

For a more current description, look to Pastor Scott Lively in Report from Moscow, and a summary of a reversal of roles, read on.

“Russia is today experiencing a Christian revival and is decidedly NOT communist. Some 30,000 churches have been built in the last year, and the ones in Moscow are reportedly overflowing with worshippers on Sundays. Most of the church is Orthodox, which is steeped in tradition, but at the same time relevant to the modern society.”

“How incredibly ironic it is that Russia is now our best hope for stopping the conquest of the world by the “progressives.” On Father Dimitri’s television show, I made the point that the Americans and the Soviets both won and both lost the Cold War. The Americans broke the Soviet system through economic strategies and tactics. But before they collapsed, the Soviets poisoned the United States with Cultural Marxism, promoting moral degeneracy and family breakdown through so-called “progressive” ideology. Today, post-Soviet Russia is re-emerging as a Christian nation, while the United States is becoming a “Gay Soviet Union.” What a strange turn of events.”

 

Echoing this conclusion is the report In Russia, a religious revival brings new life to Orthodox media. “After 70 years of state-imposed atheism and 20 years that have run the gamut from glasnost to post-Soviet chaos to a revival of Russian pride, Russians have increasingly embraced their Orthodox roots.” The video  is to the point.The Latin Papacy has lost its spiritual way often over the millenniums and the Scofield Christian-Zionist apostate bible thumpers betray the Gospel of Christ with their devotion to the Talmud perversion of the Old Testament. Both need to seek repentance. Once the enemy of Christianity, when Russia was Rothschild’s USSR, today a revival of Christianity has started.

Western Secularism, which encapsulates the immoral ethos that underpins the globalist economic model, based upon a rejection of authentic Christian teaching, is the downfall of humanity.

If Russia can salvage their society from atheist communism, surely the West has the ability to humble themselves and repent for their depraved chutzpah and wicked ways. The Totalitarian Collectivism that has destroyed the Christian culture on both sides of the Atlantic must return to their traditional roots.

Michael Hoffman on ‘Usury in Christendom’ is essential, ‘…freedom from interest on money, is essentially the battle for freedom from the Money Power’. The West has become the “Money Changers”, because the temple has subverted commerce by heretical destruction of faith and separation from God. By destroying traditional Christian religious belief, the secular body is defenseless. Such a message is radical to most, because it is reactionary to the spiritual non-believer.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has spoken of the “fruitfulness of cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and government and public institutions and called the revival of Orthodox Christianity in Russian in the past two decades a miracle.” The West needs a spiritual revival of its own conception. If the Russia Bear can be tamed, what prevents the American eagle from souring once again?

Secession Movements Intensify

All the attention over the epoch vote by Crimean’s to leave the Ukraine makes for a timely review of other separatist factions that are seeking a similar resolution. The List of active separatist movements in Europe is exhaustive. The immediate impression is that a pervasive discontent, shared by legions of subjects, who want independence and self-determination, will be hard to derail. When European autocratic and aristocrats ruled, the only option was revolution. Today the descendants of the old regimes still wheeled power under the guise of democratically elected authorities. However, separatist sentiment does not mean the same to every splinter group.

Examine Europe’s Latest Secession Movement: Venice, for a telling indicator.

“An organization representing a coalition of Venetian nationalist groups, held an unofficial referendum on breaking with Rome. Voters were first asked the main question -“Do you want Veneto to become an independent and sovereign federal republic?” -followed by three sub-questions on membership in the European Union, NATO, and the eurozone . . .

As the referendum’s organizers announced the results: 2,102,969 votes in favor of independence—a whopping 89 percent of all ballots cast—to 257,266 votes against. Venetians also said yes to joining NATO, the EU, and the eurozone.”

Note the significance of wanting to be part of NATO and the EU.

Next, look at the more widely reported effort, in the land of “Braveheart” William Wallace. Scottish secession remains unlikely, but momentum is with the schismatics provides a more stately viewpoint from the Commonwealth.

“After months of comfort for the pro-unionist ‘Better Together’ campaign, the most recent polls point to a tighter race with 40 percent of Scots supporting secession. With six months to go, the momentum appears to be with those seeking an amicable divorce.

Scottish independence would not lead to a republic. Queen Elizabeth II (I of Scotland) would remain head of state, a smart move by the ‘Yes’ campaign to de-radicalize independence and make the electorate feel more comfortable with a vote for change. The debate has therefore become more focused on incrementalism, with plans for an independent Scotland retaining both membership of NATO and the European Union, a common currency with the rest of the UK, and open borders.”

A video from the Carnegie Council gives a spin in , which plays down the urgent motivation for “FREEDOM” for an evolutionary approach.

An essay out of Wharton, Is Secession the Answer? The Case of Catalonia, Flanders and Scotland, points out the obvious, while illustrating the problematic.

“It may seem paradoxical in an age of global communications, but the revival of regionalism “is a global phenomenon,” notes Jacob Funk Kierkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington, D.C. think tank. Today’s high-speed technologies, including the Internet, “enable people to start a campaign and get out their message” quickly and repeatedly to like-minded people who might have harbored such desires in private.

Beyond its unique constitutional challenges, Catalonia faces another hurdle: The eurozone has a de facto veto over its independence. “If Catalonia becomes independent, will they [still] be part of the eurozone?” Kierkegaard asks, adding that, if Catalonia votes to secede, the EU response could be that “you will have to issue your own currency, and your banks will have no access to the European Central Bank. You won’t automatically have a seat on the ECB governing council.”

The Spanish situation, by contrast, the establishment would have you believe the militant Basques ETA nationalists harbor violent resolve. The YouTube , reports that the EU labels this movement as terrorists. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the Catalan Sovereignty Claim Blocked by Spain Constitutional Court, is but a spillover effort to discredit the Catalonia’s claim. “Sovereignty is “not contemplated in our constitution for nationalities and regions that make up the state” and no one can break the principle of the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation,” the ruling said.Such illustrations, all exhibit unique local concerns and grievances, while sharing a basic distrust of national authority. What stands out is an anserine eagerness to remain part of the EU and NATO. This factor may be a distinctively European trait, which seems to be lacking in the proper understanding that the surrender of national authority to a body of central banksters, social technocrats and empire military mercenaries, is the fundamental cause of popular dissatisfaction.

Pat Buchanan in the article, Is Red State America Seceding?, provides numerous other European examples of discontent, then goes on to cite secession initiatives in the United States. It is striking that our countries unique experience has a shape difference from the blue-blooded patricians’ clashes that mark the history of Europe. Because of this difference, the indigenous cultures on the continent have never developed the same passion of individual liberty, which is inborn in the American revolutionary spirit.

Applying the same principles defended in the View from the Mount essay, Secession Movement Ready to Take Hold, would serve our European cousins well, in breaking up the EU and their NWO oppression.

“Governments fall, while a consensual nation state can still survive. With the destruction of an accepted traditionalistic national identity, time-honored heritage becomes the target of dictatorial “do gooders” who facilitate subjugation of independent self-governing states.

Blowing out the candles of federal absolutism is the imperative of our age. Secession is not a dirty word, but is an indispensable solution. Dissolving the union of the suppressed, under the auspices of the subverted elite, is the path to social freedom and human liberty.”

Libertarian and author L. Neil Smith argues, “What happened in America in the 1860s was a war of secession, a war of independence, no different in principle from what happened in America in the 1770s and 1780s.” Compare most of the secession movements in the 21th century as half measure efforts that are not willing to take on the yoke of the globalist central banking financial system. The lessons presented in the Radical Reactionary article, Representation, Secession and Taxation, should be applied and adopted by the European secession movements.

“As discontent rises and practical solutions evaporate, that dirty historic sentiment begins to bubble to the surface, SECESSION. Russell D. Longcore　provides a standard, when secession is a vital and justified option that many would accept.”Secession should be solemnly deliberated by the elected representatives and the state citizens. Secession should be initiated at the moment that any state reaches the point at which it will no longer accept the despotic tyranny and laws coming from the US Federal Government in Washington, DC. Or, secession should be initiated upon a collapse of the Dollar, or the imposition by Washington DC of martial law in the event of social upheaval.”

Discontent is not enough to overthrow the tyrants, who have definitively proven, that a European Union based upon top down authoritarianism is a lawful substitute for locally ruled government based upon common ethics and cultural heritage.

The dramatic rise in opposition to the ruling elites is most encouraging in the eternal struggle against despotism. However, the European socialist welfare model has produced generations of soft stock and irresponsible subjects. Surrendering national sovereignty was the monumental failure of the post war era. Open borders to a confederation of dissimilar ethnic groups, attracts the disparate and incongruent, which builds even more pressure for secession.

As it stands today, the prospects for successful secession movements to attain their independence and autonomy are slim because each are fragmented. The correct and necessary element for separation, must be based upon, the dissolution of the European Union and the elimination of the central banking system, under the control of the international banksters.

Countries need to exercise their proper authority to coin their own currencies and maintain low taxation levels that fund minimum governmental functions.

While such a goal and objective is justified, the globalist controllers will not allow a serene exit from the monolith that they created. Marginal regional self-rule may eventually be reluctantly recognized, only if the basic leviathan structure remain intact and accepted by disgruntle camps. Notwithstanding, that approach can and will never bring about a restoration of national self-determination.

It is time for secession movements to unit and coalesce around a few fundamental principles, which they all share. The regional concerns are issues for local administration. Taking on the monster of globalist governance is a universal task.

Consequently, the undertaking domestically is to build ground swell defiance that moves past a modest grassroots opposition to incorporate the bulk of the rapidly declining middle class. This genuine moral majority must be willing to marginalize the federal government and restore the rightful authority of individual state jurisdiction.

If timid and docile Europeans are engaging in secession movements in such significant numbers, what is the excuse for industrious and energetic Americans from doing the same? This was the country for the home of the brave. Now is the time to restore that outlook with direct action.

Institutionalized Tyranny

What happens when an institution becomes more important than the cause for which the institution was formed? How long should people who believe in the cause remain loyal to such an institution? And at what point does loyalty to such an institution comprise an abandonment of the cause itself?

I’m afraid the majority of Americans have been institutionalized in a manner not unlike the way prisoners are institutionalized after a long period of confinement. After a point, a prisoner is so conditioned to accepting the circumstances of his confinement that, should he be released from confinement, he truly would be unable to cope. Such seems to be the mentality of a majority of us today.

Christians have been institutionalized. The reason and purpose of the church or Christian organization is no longer relevant. Generations have grown up reciting the same liturgies, regurgitating the same prayers, and rehearsing the same programs until the reason for it all doesn’t even matter. But take the institution away from them, and they would not be able to cope.

The Pharisees despised the Lord Jesus because He challenged the religious institutions that had come to govern people’s lives. I am convinced if Jesus came to America today, He would be just as despised by the vast majority of our religious leaders as He was by the Pharisees.

The Church that Jesus built in the Book of Acts owned no buildings, was indebted to no lenders, took no tax benefits from the civil government, had no denominational hierarchy, and identified itself with no ecclesiastical brand. And the Church was just as persecuted by the religious establishment as Christ was.

One of the reasons one may know that the modern church is so unlike Christ and the apostles is by the persecution that it never experiences. Just as the Pharisees were bosom buddies with the Roman Empire’s governing elite, so are our religious leaders today. Caesar was very generous in sharing the fruit of his tyrannically-extracted bounty with his allies in the Jewish Sanhedrin. And they were happy to return the favor by insisting that the Hebrew people submit to Caesar’s harsh rule over their lives.

The Pharisees also enjoyed a cozy relationship with the moneychangers. The moneychangers were descended from a long line of corrupt banking interests that dated all the way back to the Edomites. We are not talking about your friendly local banker here. These were highly organized, well-positioned money-manipulators. Jesus was so incensed with their manipulation and theft within in the Temple that he used physical violence to remove them from the property. He is recorded as doing this twice in the Gospel narratives. Note that after the second time in which it is recorded that He drove out the moneychangers (with a whip, no less), the Pharisees soon had Jesus crucified. There is no question that one of the reasons Pilate ordered Jesus to be scourged with a whip was in direct retaliation for the manner in which Jesus whipped the moneychangers. Remember, the moneychangers were from a very well-ensconced, elitist national (and even international) organization.

And lest you think all of this is irrelevant to today, the moneychangers are still very much with us. The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and other members of the international banking elite, are the direct descendants of the moneychangers of Jesus’ day. And if you ever have an opportunity to ask one of them about it, they will proudly admit it.

Yes, the Pharisees institutionalized religion. This accomplished two things: 1) it helped enslave the people, 2) it helped make them rich. The institutionalized church is accomplishing much the same things today.

The establishment church is doing as much to enslave people as any other institution in the world. Our political institutions and educational institutions have nothing on the church for making good little subjects and serfs to the all-powerful state. And if you don’t think that a host of church leaders are not reaping the spoils from assisting our taskmasters, you’re not paying attention.

Many, if not most, of these big-name TV evangelists have as many houses and yachts and Swiss bank accounts as any big-name Hollywood actor or politician. In some cases, more. Most of these big-church pastors are bathing in luxury. Many of them take the kinds of vacations that only CEOs of the biggest corporations or presidents could afford. Do you really think that the IRS rules and regulations governing these non-profit corporations, called churches, really bother these church leaders? Get real!

No wonder all of these “successful” preachers are constantly teaching their congregations to always submit to the government. No wonder they have no interest in abandoning their 501c3 tax-exempt status. They are in the exact same position as were the Pharisees of old. And they are just as effective in helping to enslave people today as were the Pharisees.

The institution of the church–along with its programs, formalities, buildings, rituals, etc.,–has become more important than the purpose for which the church was created. Instead of preaching the liberating message of the Cross, which frees men from the fetters of sin–and that includes sinful political and financial fetters–the church is preaching a message of subjugation and enslavement. It is teaching people to submit to all kinds of oppression, including religious oppression.

Some of the most oppressed and subjugated people in the world are religious people. There are churches and Christian colleges that are every bit as tyrannical as anything coming out of East-bloc or Muslim countries. About the only thing missing is physical torture and execution. Spiritually, however, the oppression is the same.

How could real men who love the liberty they have in Christ allow themselves–and especially their wives–to be told how to dress, how to wear their hair, what kind of music to listen to, what kind of vacations to take, what restaurants they may or may not eat at, what forms of entertainment they may or may not participate in, etc., etc., ad infinitum?

I tell you the truth: many Christians in America are already slaves. To talk to them about freedom is a complete waste of time. The chains of tyranny are already clamped around their hearts. Why should it matter to them if chains are clamped around their necks? When they talk about “defending the faith,” they are talking about defending the institution. They are slaves to the institution. And the same is true for many unchurched Americans.

What is more important: liberty, or the government that is supposed to secure liberty? To a sizeable number of Americans today, it is more important to preserve the institution than the freedoms that the institution was created to protect.

Our Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [the God-given rights of life, liberty, etc.], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Did you see that: “any form of government”? ANY FORM. The form of government is only as good as its ability to secure liberty.

I hear a lot of politicians and media personalities talking about “American exceptionalism.” This is a potentially dangerous mindset. If one means that America is exceptional in our history and the manner in which our Constitution and Bill of Rights were established to protect liberty, well and good. But if it means that America has carte-blanche to do anything it wants–no matter how unconstitutional or tyrannical–because it is “exceptional,” it is a bunch of hooey.

What difference does it make if we have a 50-State Union or not? There is a bill in the California legislature that would divide that State into six states. Five counties in Western Maryland are trying to secede from Baltimore. Ten northern counties in Colorado are trying to secede from Denver. If a State refuses to secure the liberties of the people of that State, they have every right under God to separate. The State is not nearly as important as the liberties of the people within the State.

The spirit of secession is actually growing like wildfire all over the world. In recent history, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo all separated from Yugoslavia. Transnistria broke free from Moldova. Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free from Georgia. The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. And now Crimea is separating from Ukraine.

To be sure, not every country that secedes from another country is motivated purely by the love of liberty. But for those of us in America, the issue that has propelled the desire to separate from one country or one State has always been liberty. It was the love of liberty that created the United States and that created the free and independent states of Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, and West Virginia–all of which seceded from existing U.S. states.

Furthermore, what difference does it make if Washington, D.C., is our federal capital, or, if say, Helena, Montana, would become the federal capital of a mountain state confederation of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Northern Colorado, eastern Washington and Oregon, the Dakotas, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, and Alaska? Or if Austin was the federal capital of an independent Republic of Texas? Preserving some sort of political union (especially if it is a forced and coerced union) is not nearly as important as preserving liberty.

Again, it is not the political institution that is important. What is important is the liberty that the political institution is supposed to secure.

Many great minds in this country are already philosophizing over the possibility that secession is an idea whose time has come–again. A few years ago, Walter Williams wrote, “Like a marriage that has gone bad, I believe there are enough irreconcilable differences between those who want to control and those want to be left alone that divorce is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.

“Americans who wish to live free have two options: We can resist, fight and risk bloodshed to force America’s tyrants to respect our liberties and human rights, or we can seek a peaceful resolution of our irreconcilable differences by separating. That can be done by peopling several states, say Texas and Louisiana, control their legislatures and then issue a unilateral declaration of independence just as the Founders did in 1776. You say, ‘Williams, nobody has to go that far, just get involved in the political process and vote for the right person.’ That’s nonsense. Liberty shouldn’t require a vote. It’s a God-given or natural right.

“Some independence or secessionists movements, such as our 1776 war with England and our 1861 War Between the States, have been violent, but they need not be. In 1905, Norway seceded from Sweden, Panama seceded from Columbia (1903), and West Virginia from Virginia (1863). Nonetheless, violent secession can lead to great friendships. England is probably our greatest ally and we have fought three major wars together. There is no reason why Texiana (Texas and Louisiana) couldn’t peaceably secede, be an ally, and have strong economic ties with United States.

“The bottom line question for all of us is should we part company or continue trying to forcibly impose our wills on one another?”

See William’s column here:

Hear! Hear!

In the eyes of God, marriage is the most sacred of all unions. It is far more sacred than any political union. If our Creator has authorized the separation of a husband and wife under certain circumstances in which one party violated the sacred terms of the holy contract (and He has), who among us has the audacity to say that political unions may not be abandoned when government commits political adultery by forsaking its oath to the people?

Again, are we more interested in preserving an institution or the liberty that the institution is supposed to secure?

As an institution, the Church at large is apostate. Yet, millions of Christians continue to prop up an institution that has abandoned the purpose for which it was created. They are more interested in preserving the forms and liturgies and tapestries and buildings of the institution. And, all the while, they are being spiritually enslaved by the very institution they are helping to prop up.

And as an institution, the U.S. federal government is apostate. Yet, millions of citizens continue to make excuses for it, justify it, and condone it. They are more interested in preserving the agencies and entities and power of the institution. Yet, all the while, they are being enslaved by the very institution they are helping to prop up.

What happens when an institution becomes more important than the cause for which the institution was formed? When the institution is civil government and the cause is liberty, tyranny is what happens.

Putin’s Triumph

Nobody expected events to move on with such a breath-taking speed. The Russians took their time; they sat on the fence and watched while the Brown storm-troopers conquered Kiev, and they watched while Mrs Victoria Nuland of the State Department and her pal Yatsenyuk (“Yats”) slapped each other’s backs and congratulated themselves on their quick victory. They watched when President Yanukovych escaped to Russia to save his skin. They watched when the Brown bands moved eastwards to threaten the Russian-speaking South East. They patiently listened while Mme Timoshenko, fresh out of gaol, swore to void treaties with Russia and to expel the Russian Black Sea Fleet from its main harbour in Sevastopol. They paid no heed when the new government appointed oligarchs to rule Eastern provinces. Nor did they react when children in Ukrainian schools were ordered to sing “Hang a Russian on a thick branch” and the oligarch-governor’s deputy  dissatisfied Russians of the East as soon as Crimea is pacified. While these fateful events unravelled, Putin kept silent.

He is a cool cucumber, Mr Putin. Everybody, including this writer, thought he was too nonchalant about Ukraine’s collapse. He waited patiently. The Russians made a few slow and hesitant, almost stealthy moves. The marines Russia had based in Crimea by virtue of an international agreement (just as the US has marines in Bahrain) secured Crimea’s airports and roadblocks, provided necessary support to the volunteers of the Crimean militia (called Self-Defence Forces), but remained under cover. The Crimean parliament asserted its autonomy and promised a plebiscite in a month time. And all of a sudden things started to move real fast!

The poll was moved up to Sunday, March 16. Even before it could take place, the Crimean Parliament declared Crimea’s independence. The poll’s results were spectacular: 96% of the votes were for joining Russia; the level of participation was unusually high – over 84%. Not only ethnic Russians, but ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars voted for reunification with Russia as well. A symmetrical poll in Russia showed over 90% popular support for reunification with Crimea, despite liberals’ fear-mongering (“this will be too costly, the sanctions will destroy Russian economy, the US will bomb Moscow”, they said).

Even then, the majority of experts and talking heads expected the situation to remain suspended for a long while. Some thought Putin would eventually recognise Crimean independence, while stalling on final status, as he did with Ossetia and Abkhazia after the August 2008 war with Tbilisi. Others, especially Russian liberals, were convinced Putin would surrender Crimea in order to save Russian assets in the Ukraine.

But Putin justified the Russian proverb: the Russians take time to saddle their horses, but they ride awfully fast. He recognised Crimea’s independence on Monday, before the ink on the poll’s results dried.  The next day, on Tuesday, he gathered all of Russia’s senior statesmen and parliamentarians in the biggest, most glorious and elegant St George state hall in the Kremlin, lavishly restored to its Imperial glory, and declared Russia’s acceptance of Crimea’s reunification bid. Immediately after his speech, the treaty between Crimea and Russia was signed, and the peninsula reverted to Russia as it was before 1954, when Communist Party leader Khrushchev passed it to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

This was an event of supreme elation for the gathered politicians and for people at home watching it live on their tellies. The vast St George Hall applauded Putin as never before, almost as loudly and intensely as the US Congress had applauded Netanyahu. The Russians felt immense pride: they still remember the stinging defeat of 1991, when their country was taken apart. Regaining Crimea was a wonderful reverse for them. There were public festivities in honour of this reunification all over Russia and especially in joyous Crimea.

Historians have compared the event with the restoration of Russian sovereignty over Crimea in 1870, almost twenty years after the Crimean War had ended with Russia’s defeat, when severe limitations on Russian rights in Crimea were imposed by victorious France and Britain. Now the Black Sea Fleet will be able to develop and sail freely again, enabling it to defend Syria in the next round. Though Ukrainians ran down the naval facilities and turned the most advanced submarine harbour of Balaclava into shambles, the potential is there.

Besides the pleasure of getting this lost bit of land back, there was the additional joy of outwitting the adversary. The American neocons arranged the coup in Ukraine and sent the unhappy country crashing down, but the first tangible fruit of this break up went to Russia.

A new Jewish joke was coined at that time:

Israeli President Peres asks the Russian President:

•        
• Vladimir, are you of Jewish ancestry?

•       

• Putin: What makes you think so, Shimon?

•        

• Peres: You made the US pay five billion dollars to deliver Crimea to Russia. Even for a Jew, that is audacious!

Five billion dollars is a reference to Victoria Nuland’s admission of having spent that much for democratisation (read: destabilisation) of the Ukraine. President Putin snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and US hegemony suffered a set-back.

The Russians enjoyed the sight of their UN representative Vitaly Churkin coping with a near-assault by Samantha Power. The Irish-born US rep came close to bodily attacking the elderly grey-headed Russian diplomat telling him that “Russia was defeated (presumably in 1991 – ISH) and should bear the consequences… Russia is blackmailing the US with its nuclear weapons,” while Churkin asked her to keep her hands off him and stop foaming at the mouth. This was not the first hostile encounter between these twain: a month ago, Samantha entertained a Pussy Riot duo, and Churkin said she should join the group and embark on a concert tour.

The US Neocons’ role in the Kiev coup was clarified by two independent exposures. Wonderful Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek showed that the anti-Russian campaign of recent months (gay protests, Wahl affair, etc.) was organised by the Zionist Neocon PNAC (now renamed FPI) led by Mr Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria “Fuck EC” Nuland. It seems that the Neocons are hell-bent to undermine Russia by all means, while the Europeans are much more flexible. (True, the US troops are still stationed in Europe, and the old continent is not as free to act as it might like).

The second exposé was an interview with Alexander Yakimenko, the head of Ukrainian Secret Services (SBU) who had escaped to Russia like his president. Yakimenko accused Andriy Parubiy, the present security czar, of making a deal with the Americans. On American instructions, he delivered weapons and brought snipers who killed some 70 persons within few hours. They killed the riot police and the protesters as well.

The US Neocon-led conspiracy in Kiev was aimed against the European attempt to reach a compromise with President Yanukovych, said the SBU chief. They almost agreed on all points, but Ms Nuland wanted to derail the agreement, and so she did – with the help of a few snipers.

These snipers were used again in Crimea: a sniper shot and killed a Ukrainian soldier. When the Crimean self-defence forces began their pursuit, the sniper shot at them, killed one and wounded one. It is the same pattern: snipers are used to provoke response and hopefully to jump-start a shootout.

Novorossia

While Crimea was a walkover, the Russians are far from being home and dry. Now, the confrontation moved to the Eastern and South-Eastern provinces of mainland Ukraine, called Novorossia (New Russia) before the Communist Revolution of 1917. Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his later years predicted that Ukraine’s undoing would come from its being overburdened by industrial provinces that never belonged to the Ukraine before Lenin, – by Russian-speaking Novorossia. This prediction is likely to be fulfilled.

Who fights whom over there? It is a great error to consider the conflict a tribal one, between Russians and Ukrainians. Good old Pat Buchanan made this error saying that “Vladimir Putin is a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethno-nationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern.” Nothing could be farther away from truth: perhaps only the outlandish claim that Putin is keen on restoring the Russian Empire can compete.

Putin is not an empire-builder at all (to great regret of Russia’s communists and nationalists). Even his quick takeover of Crimea was an action forced upon him by the strong-willed people of Crimea and by the brazen aggression of the Kiev regime. I have it on a good authority that Putin hoped he would not have to make this decision. But when he decided he acted.

The ethno-nationalist assertion of Buchanan is even more misleading. Ethno-nationalists of Russia are Putin’s enemies; they support the Ukrainian ethno-nationalists and march together with Jewish liberals on Moscow street demos. Ethno-nationalism is as foreign to Russians as it is foreign to the English. You can expect to meet a Welsh or Scots nationalist, but an English nationalist is an unnatural rarity. Even the English Defence League was set up by a Zionist Jew. Likewise, you can find a Ukrainian or a Belarusian or a Cossack nationalist, but practically never a Russian one.

Putin is a proponent and advocate of non-nationalist Russian world. What is the Russian world?

Russian World

Russians populate their own vast universe embracing many ethnic units of various background, from Mongols and Karels to Jews and Tatars. Until 1991, they populated an even greater land mass (called the Soviet Union, and before that, the Russian Empire) where Russian was the lingua franca and the language of daily usage for majority of citizens. Russians could amass this huge empire because they did not discriminate and did not hog the blanket. Russians are amazingly non-tribal, to an extent unknown in smaller East European countries, but similar to other great Eastern Imperial nations, the Han Chinese and the Turks before the advent of Young Turks and Ataturk. The Russians did not assimilate but partly acculturated their neighbours for whom Russian language and culture became the gateway to the world. The Russians protected and supported local cultures, as well, at their expense, for they enjoy this diversity.

Before 1991, the Russians promoted a universalist humanist world-view; nationalism was practically banned, and first of all, Russian nationalism. No one was persecuted or discriminated because of his ethnic origin (yes, Jews complained, but they always complain). There was some positive discrimination in the Soviet republics, for instance a Tajik would have priority to study medicine in the Tajik republic, before a Russian or a Jew; and he would be able to move faster up the ladder in the Party and politics. Still the gap was small.

After 1991, this universalist world-view was challenged by a parochial and ethno-nationalist one in all ex-Soviet republics save Russia and Belarus. Though Russia ceased to be Soviet, it retained its universalism. In the republics, people of Russian culture were severely discriminated against, often fired from their working places, in worst cases they were expelled or killed. Millions of Russians, natives of the republics, became refugees; together with them, millions of non-Russians who preferred Russian universalist culture to “their own” nationalist and parochial one fled to Russia. That is why modern Russia has millions of Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, Tajiks, Latvians and of smaller ethnic groups from the republics. Still, despite discrimination, millions of Russians and people of Russian culture remained in the republics, where their ancestors lived for generations, and the Russian language became a common ground for all non-nationalist forces.

If one wants to compare with Israel, as Pat Buchanan did, it is the republics, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Estonia do follow Israeli model of discriminating and persecuting their “ethnic minorities”, while Russia follows the West European model of equality.

France vs Occitania

In order to understand the Russia-Ukraine problem, compare it with France. Imagine it divided into North and South France, the North retaining the name of France, while the South of France calling itself “Occitania”, and its people “Occitans”, their language “Occitan”. The government of Occitania would force the people to speak Provençal, learn Frederic Mistral’s poems by rote and teach children to hate the French, who had devastated their beautiful land in the Albigensian Crusade of 1220. France would just gnash its teeth. Now imagine that after twenty years, the power in Occitania were violently seized by some romantic southern fascists who were keen to eradicate “800 years of Frank domination” and intend to discriminate against people who prefer to speak the language of Victor Hugo and Albert Camus. Eventually France would be forced to intervene and defend francophones, at least in order to stem the refugee influx. Probably the Southern francophones of Marseilles and Toulon would support the North against “their own” government, though they are not migrants from Normandy.

Putin defends all Russian-speakers, all ethnic minorities, such as Gagauz or Abkhaz, not only ethnic Russians. He defends the Russian World, all those russophones who want and need his protection. This Russian World definitely includes many, perhaps majority of people in the Ukraine, ethnic Russians, Jews, small ethnic groups and ethnic Ukrainians, in Novorossia and in Kiev.

Indeed Russian world was and is attractive. The Jews were happy to forget their schtetl and Yiddish; their best poets Pasternak and Brodsky wrote in Russian and considered themselves Russian. Still, some minor poets used Yiddish for their self-expression. The Ukrainians, as well, used Russian for literature, though they spoke their dialect at home for long time. Nikolai Gogol, the great Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, wrote Russian, and he was dead set against literary usage of the Ukrainian dialect. There were a few minor Romantic figures who used the dialect for creative art, like Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka.

Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Even ethnic-Ukrainians do not use and do not know Ukrainian. In order to promote its use, the Ukrainian government bans Russian schools, forbids Russian TV, even librarians are not allowed to speak Russian with their readers. This anti-Russian position of Ukraine is exactly what the US wants in order to weaken Russia.“

Putin in his speech on Crimea stressed that he wants to secure the Russian world – everywhere in the Ukraine. In Novorossia the need is acute, for there are daily confrontations between the people and the gangs sent by the Kiev regime. While Putin does not yet want (as opposed to Solzhenitsyn and against general Russian feeling) to take over Novorossia, he may be forced to it, as he was in Crimea. There is a way to avoid this major shift: the Ukraine must rejoin the Russian world. While keeping its independence, Ukraine must grant full equality to its Russian language speakers. They should be able to have Russian-language schools, newspapers, TV, be entitled to use Russian everywhere. Anti-Russian propaganda must cease. And fantasies of joining NATO, too.

This is not an extraordinary demand: Latinos in the US are allowed to use Spanish. In Europe, equality of languages and cultures is a sine qua non. Only in the ex-Soviet republics are these rights trampled – not only in Ukraine, but in the Baltic republics as well. For twenty years, Russia made do with weak objections, when Russian-speakers (the majority of them are not ethnic Russians) in the Baltic states were discriminated against. This is likely to change. Lithuania and Latvia have already paid for their anti-Russian position by losing their profitable transit trade with Russia. Ukraine is much more important for Russia. Unless the present regime is able to change (not very likely), this illegitimate regime will be changed by people of Ukraine, and Russia will use R2P against the criminal elements in power.

The majority of people of Ukraine would probably agree with Putin, irrespective of their ethnicity. Indeed, in the Crimean referendum, Ukrainians and Tatars voted en masse together with Russians. This is a positive sign: there will be no ethnic strife in the Ukraine’s East, despite US efforts to the contrary. The decision time is coming up fast: some experts presume that by end of May the Ukrainian crisis will be behind us.

English language editing by Ken Freeland.

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