Empire of Chaos: Ukraine Civil War and the Division of Iraq
The Imperial Powers often behave like a Juvenile Delinquent if their scheme to cause trouble in one location hits a stalemate they merely focus their attentions somewhere else. Or they seek to act when their opponent is preoccupied. Either way as the Ukrainian civil War continues we saw a spectacular shift on the grand chessboard in Southwest Asia as Isis militants launched an offensive in Iraq that threatens to engulf Baghdad. Some foolishly saw this as a major setback for American goals in the region. Yet another chapter in the failure of Bush's dream of a stable democratic Iraq arising like a Phoenix out of the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime. Clearly they mistake propaganda for actual policies and operate under the illusion that our half wit former Commander in chief was actually involved in formulating American foreign policy. American foreign policy has nothing to do with bringing stability to the world. Instead as should be Obvious after Iraq, Libya, and Syria to name some blatant examples the goal is to destabilize the world. Far from an accident what is happening in Iraq represents another move in the great game for control of Eurasia and ultimately the world. Nor should we be surprised by the spiraling horror in Ukraine from a political standpoint it's win win for the west either Putin further damages his image internationally by intervening or he eventually damages his image domestically by not intervening. In the meantime the US is solidifying it's hold on Europe pressuring it as with Iran to ignore it's economic and political interests and to obey. Cutting off it's own energy supply in the midst of economic crisis. Creating a constant state of crisis in which it can push forward it's insane objectives is standard operating procedure in the Empire of Chaos. First there was the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Now there is Putin's imaginary scheme to re-establish the Soviet Union and reoccupy the Warsaw pact. Either way Europe must ignore all common sense and act based on the fanciful lies of the US state department. Even if the International Atomic Energy Agency and even the CIA say it's all nonsense reality is ignored. For the accusations against Putin they don't even bother to try to manufacture evidence other then some occasionally passing out some phony satellite Photos showing Russia is about to invade at any moment of course as the months pass the fakes are exposed and no invasion materializes. Instead we have the blood and horror of a very uneven civil war. We have what was from the start a dirty war ie a war of terror upon civilians aimed at ending their support for the Anti-Fascist resistance.
Some hoped that Poroshenko would be less bloodthirsty then Yulia "Nuke the Russian" Timoshenko of course as I noted at the time there is only the illusion of choice in Western style "representative democracy." Despite apparently making some phony promises behind close doors to Putin about de- escalation his inauguration address was a mix of open declaration of war on the people of Novorossiya as they now call it along with Orwellian double speak about Independence and freedom signaling his slavish obedience to his US masters as well as his intent to brutalize his own citizens. Yet considering all the tanks, artillery, planes, and helicopters that the government has brought to bear on it's populace it has been slow to actually accomplish much besides generating an exponentially growing number of civilian casualties. Twitter is awash in pictures of dead women and children. The fact that they believe in the internet age that they can get away with supporting a regime that commits bloody war crimes in the heart of supposedly civilized Europe speaks to their overweening arrogance. Unfortunately some people in the west seem unable to sympathize with an Iraqi or an African victim; but you can expect the Ukraine situation to become an imperial PR disaster once the general public starts to see images of dead European civilians. The empire has created many new enemies and the Ukraine crisis has opened many new peoples eyes to the lies of the media and the barbarity of US foreign policy.
At the time of the Ukrainian election I predicted soon we'd loose track of all the terrible incidents and it would become a question of vague numbers. In the Ukraine civil war the question is already have hundreds died or have thousands. One particularly terrible incident at the start of june shows in gruesome detail the effect on civilians of a random airstrike on an apartment building by Ukrainian air force. The results are of course predictable blood flows
people are horribly wounded many die. Unfortunately we must look occasionally Directly at the horrors of war lest we come to accept the hollywood image of war as noble and exciting. No, war is terrible nothing more. There is zero difference between a so called anti-terror operation and an act of terrorism. There is nothing heroic about killing middle aged women in an air strike. See for yourself here. This is what America did to Iraq for nearly a decade, and is still doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and....
http://libya360.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/slavyansk-before-and-after-kiev-military-assault/
Besides a trail of Horrors we have also seen increasing sophistication in attacks by the self defense forces. Recently they brought down a transport plane killing 47 which sounds like something out of Afghanistan. Obviously it's a pretty troubling sign for the Ukrainian government that the rebels have been very effective in bringing down aircraft. More experienced people have joined the self defense forces both from Ukraine as well as volunteers from Russia who are reported to have entered the country while the border was in a state of complete collapse. According to Christoph German Chechen forces from restabilized Chechnya are operating in Ukraine and obviously if the Russian's are willing to turn a blind eye to volunteers they are probably providing increased covert support. After all assorted intelligence agencies, Mercenary firms, and an international brigade of fascists and terrorists have been operating in Ukraine for months now. Since Russia is being falsely accused in defiance of the copious evidence to the contrary of destabilizing Ukraine they probably sent a few advisors while the Border was unguarded (see my Chaos and Capitalism in Ukraine and Leaks, False Flags, destabilization in Ukraine and Turkey for the more on the destabilization of Ukraine) At least that is what is implied in the recent analysis of the situation at Vineyard of the Saker. I highly recommend his blog as he provides some excellent analysis from a military perspective Also he has frequent contributions from a Russian Veteran Juan that are equally valuable. here is a recent post on the Civil War in Ukraine
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/a-scorecard-for-us-lukewarm-war-on.html
It is becoming a terrible pattern last time I wrote about the Ukraine crisis I went to go check the names of two Journalists being held on false charges online and discovered a fresh outrage when one journalist was killed and his assistant wounded. now when I went to copy the link above I discovered this report from Ukraine by Juan
Kramatorsk as I write is being flattened, the entire city is under intense bombardment including Grad and Hurricane MLRS. Everything, industrial areas, shopping areas, infrastructure areas, living areas, is being flattened. We're going to have I think hundreds if not a thousand dead civilians. Is this the atrocity needed to bring in Russia? I don't know. Yet.
Clearly the Horror in Ukraine is escalating even further as I write. Doubtless this whole city is receiving collective punishment for recent losses by the murderous Kiev regime. Meanwhile there will be of course no punishment for the Mob that attacked the Russian Embassy instead they sent their foreign minister Andriy Deschytsia to join the crow and shout Putin Fucker a popular chant among Ukraine's ultranationalist soccer hooligans. Ukraine's orwellian democracy has no intention of bringing the fascist mobs that brought it to power under control. Russian diplomats say they feared that if the well armed and well organized fascist paramilitaries had broken in they wouldn't have been satisfied unless they had killed a few random diplomatic staff. Thus while the Kiev authorities wink at the crimes of the fascists they are determined to punish millions of civilians for the actions of a couple thousand self defense forces which unlike the fascist national guard do not terrorize the local populace or butcher policemen for refusing to fire on civilians. Here is a local account of the recent siege of Mauripol I came across on Vineyard of the Saker.
This, how the enemy is acting, we have observed in Mariupol. They surrounded the city, blocked it with checkpoints, using their equipment, and cut it off from any possibility of help. After that, their punitive units entered. These special units, composed of the so-called volunteers, who, in reality, are mercenaries, the Azov, Donbass and other [such battalions]. Once done, they clean-up the city of the few militia there and move on to the next city. And, meanwhile, a garrison is moved into this city, which takes up key positions, routes all the “malcontents,” and places them in filtration camps. … That is what awaits us.
In Ukraine's Orwellian democracy whole cities are held for questioning, after being starved into submission. The Ukrainian army intentionally destroy the water systems. They have been driving out civilians en masse by terrorizing them with artillery, airstrikes, and fascist death squads. Unfortunately it all sounds like Iraq during the American Occupation merely replace the fascist part with various ethnic and sectarian death squads. It was all part of an old plan to split Iraq into three separate countries. A Kurdish state, a sunni state and a shiite state. Sectarian war was deliberately stoked with the special help of that American tool of destabilization and psychological operations al Qaeda in Iraq. It was part of an Israeli strategy that had been adopted by the united states the lines of the middle east would be redrawn diverse countries would be split into homogenous little cantons. Lebanon was the first major test case, the divisions of beruit became legendary before the Israeli occupation's ruthlessness reunited the populace against them. Iraq was a major test case and somewhat more successful. Despite the best intentions of many Iraqis who wanted to unite against the Occupation of the US And it's allies the US covert war was able to intensify the divisions and play the different sides against each other. In Syria it was all the more blatant as the US did not even pretend to be doing anything other then trying to start a sectarian war in Syria by supporting Sunni Wahabi death squads. In fact as documented by Seymour Hersh back in 2007 the Syria war has it's roots in the so called surge when the US bought the support of the Sunni resistance in Anbar with Weapons and suitcases of cash.
In Syria as in Lebanon their attempts to instigate sectarian war have failed. The barbarous tactics and Idiotic fanaticism of the so called rebels have served to unite the Syrian populace against the various branches of Al Qaeda, and behind the cosmopolitan Syrian regime. After almost 3 years of defats which while causing untold suffering to Syria's people have come no closer to toppling Assad, the US has decided to up the Ante. Like events in Ukraine I see the Neo-Conservative faction as behind this as it fits perfectly into their plan's for a partition of Iraq. In fact within days an editorial had appeared in Foreign Affairs predicting the partition of Iraq. At the same time the realist faction is probably hoping that this will strengthen ties between the US and Iran. The neo-con faction on the other hand hope to use this new Isis controlled region to wage covert war on Iran and even if the realists have their way to bog the Iranian's down in fighting within Iraq in support of the Maliki government. Not only that but it sends a clear message to Afghanistan this is what will happen to You if you don't give us permission to stay indefinitely. Thus it offers something to both sides Zbigniew Brzezinski the "realist" foreign policy mastermind has long talked about the need to bring Iran into alliance with the US against Russia. Iran forms a vital economic and geo-strategic element in Russia and China's plan's for Eurasian integration. Brzezinski has even commented in that sly way of technocrats that perhaps instability in the region might lead Iran into closer ties with the US. Decoded this means that perhaps US can use it's pet terrorists to force Iran into an alliance. It was after all Brzezinski who masterminded the origins of the plan to create the afghan Mujahadeen that would give birth to Al Qaeda America's frenemy. In Pakistan a supposed enemy but in Chechnya a Friend. In Libya a friend but when it crossed over into Mali it became a supposed enemy. In Syria Isis is our Friend and Ally now it crosses into Iraq and it is an enemy. It is hard to imagine how our politicians and so called journalists keep a straight face while repeating this nonsense. Thus it takes a monumental amount of intentional blindness, stupidity, and amnesia to suddenly forget that ISIS is a pawn of the GCC monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar and that they in turn are pawns of the US NATO and Israel. Those treacherous, backwards monarchs who sold out from the start, first to the British, then the US, then the Israelis. They hope a shiite sunni war will make their peoples forget about the decades of treachery, decadence and brutality that their rule entailed. To believe that these spineless hedonists would act without the approval of the US, NATO, and Israel isn't credible. Instead I'd like to bring up a detail from history. In the 80's the US made an enormous weapons sale to the Saudi's as documented by Peter Dale Scott in the classic "Road to 9/11" money from this sale would be used to finance all sorts of covert operations related to the Afghan war and the Iran Contra affair. Recently the US Made the largest ever arms sale to Saudi Arabia we can guess that in similar fashion money was diverted from the sale in part to finance the creation of this massive ISIS enclave from which to wage war on Syria, and Iran and split Iraq into 3.
Of course more then simple common sense shows that this is was all a plan and not some accidental product of the Wars in Iraq and Syria. Just as before the 2003 invasion the US bought off the Iraqi commanders who agreed not to fight in Iraq clear evidence has emerged that the commanders gave orders not to resist. Not only that but the Kurds close allies of the US and Israel refused to help repel them. Some ask how could the American trained army collapse so quickly in reality it collapsed because it was American trained. The CIA always tries to subvert the army, police and intelligence of any country whether it is an ally or an enemy. (See Philip Agees "CIA diary") Clearly the US and other intelligence agencies were quite successful in secretly buying the allegiance of Important elements of Iraq's army. That is why a city with 50,000 soldiers based in it was over run by 1,500 ISIS members. Tragically they betrayed not just their country but their men 1,500 of whom were slaughtered by insurgents who took pictures of the carnage. Their time in Syria has taught them that every war crime is a glorious victory to be celebrated. As in Ukraine thousands of refugees flee in terror before death squads that have one thing in common an ideology of hate that allows them to kill people for the flimsiest of reasons. However in Iraq floods of refugees and people fleeing in terror are nothing new. Iraq has already gone through the policy of ethnic cleansing that Ukraine is about to experience millions became refugees millions became orphans a million people died. We can only hope that we do not see a repetition on that terrible scale in Ukraine.
Nationalist and religious resentments can be abstract until they are result in actual crimes. Then they take on a life of their own. By revitalizing old hatreds resulting from the crimes of the first two world wars the US and It's allies are setting in motion terrible forces in Ukraine. But this chaos being created is no accident. Instead it is the standard operating of the American Empire just as it was of our mentors the British. I recently read Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Out of Control" written over 20 years ago he had already noted cleavages that could be exploited in the future of Ukraine. He knew way back then how easy it would be to create a Civil War in Ukraine. He also hoped for an eventual breakup of Russia. Contrary to what the media portrays American foreign policy is not something presidents dream up on the spot. Instead as far back as the 19th century countries have engaged in long term strategic planning. The chaos in the world today is not caused by our rulers unthinking incompetence, instead it is a product of the goal of creating endless destabilization and War in an endless bid for world domination. The long war as they call it is merely one element in their strategy in what is called "the great Game," America's quest to conquer Eurasia, then the world. Russia and China are not their greatest fear however. Instead Brzezinski's primary concern is what he calls the great global awakening, he fears ordinary people like you and I learning the truth about Capitalism and Imperialism and rising up in United resistance against the Oligarchs and their Technocrats who control the World. We must all resist this Empire of Chaos that rules most of the world. It creates only Poverty, Hatred and War.
Sources
Besides the excellent Vineyard of the Saker Blog dealing with Ukraine I recommend these articles on Iraq.
Vineyard of the Saker
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.uk
First this classic Article by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is even more important and relevant now then ever
http://www.globalresearch.ca/plans-for-redrawing-the-middle-east-the-project-for-a-new-middle-east/3882
Watch his great documentary on Ukraine "Propaganda and the Ukraine crisis" and try to spread it around
http://www.globalresearch.ca/gtrv-full-length-documentarypropaganda-and-the-ukraine-crisis/5383677
Tony Cartalucci did an excellent article on ISIS and the recent events in Iraq
http://libya360.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/americas-covert-re-invasion-of-iraq/
Professor Michel Chossudovsky did an excellent article on events in Iraq
http://libya360.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/the-destruction-and-political-fragmentation-of-iraq/
Read the insane Yinon plan for yourself with commentary by an Israeli dissident
http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815
Finally Diana Johnstone Author of the definitive account of the Yugoslavia War "Fool's Crusade" wrote a great article on how the US is using the Ukraine crisis to increase it's hold on Europe.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/tightening-the-u-s-grip-on-western-europe-washingtons-iron-curtain-in-ukraine/5386090
Monday, June 16, 2014
Monday, June 9, 2014
Nazis and the CIA
Nazis, the Birth of the CIA, And the Secret Origins of Cold War Hysteria
The recent civil war in Ukraine has brought to world attention the willingness of the United States and it's NATO allies to employ Nazi's if it serves their interests. What a terrible century we seem to be living in where outrage after outrage has become normalized. Torture, assassination, mass surveillance, now Nazism have all apparently become acceptable tools of statecraft. Fascism is on the rise in Europe the oligarchs who are looting Europe hope that as standards of living plummet discontent can be channeled towards immigrant's and away from the ruling classes. Those who are poorest and hence most powerless to exercise any economic control are blamed for the state of the economy. In Ukraine we have the bloody conclusion to this type of thinking the corrupt Poreshenko regime doubtless hopes that by directing his supporters in Western Ukraine against the East and South of the Country and Russia they will forget the real reason for Ukraine's economic problems which is the 20 plus years of rule by thieving Billionaires. Perhaps they will not pay attention when the effects of the IMF structural adjustments destroy Ukraine's already ailing economy. Of course the slaughter also serves US strategic interests as they hope it will weaken Putin politically at home or tempt him to interfere which will help the US in it's quest to reduce the already servile European rulers into abject slavery. However just as this second cold war has begun with the west allying itself with Nazi Paramilitaries so too did the first Cold War. America's alliance with Nazis was vital in shaping both the CIA and the Cold War itself.
This article is a sequel to an article I wrote in March called America the CIA and Fascism. It is an expansion on a paragraph that discussed Operation Paperclip. Since then I've learned a great deal more thanks to Christopher Simpson's classic "Blowback" so if you're interested in the topic I'd highly recommend this book combining scholarly caution with relentless curiosity. It's difficult to say when exactly our story truly begins American corporations and elements of the government had relations with Nazi's before during and after the war. Instead I'll begin before the end of the war as german armies and their collaborators retreat before the relentless advance of the Red Army. These collaborators included regiments of the Waffen SS. The german's had hoped to use nationalism against the Soviet Union. They encouraged the rise of fascist movements in all the eastern countries which they controlled. This policy of encouraging nationalism to destabilize eastern Europe predated the Nazi's and was part of Long term German Strategic planning. In fact it was not abandoned after the war as Diana Johnstone documents in her "Fools Crusade" Germany played a key role in the early stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990's. After the World War II as we will see America hired many of the planners behind this policy to plan American foreign policy in Eastern Europe.
Today in Ukraine we see an egregious example of this "nationals Policy". So let's use Ukraine during World War II as a sample of the types of people who were fleeing the Soviet Red Army. During the war Ukrainian Fascists were trained by what Simpson call's Germanys special forces the SS just like the American special forces today they trained death squads. Some Ukrainians served directly in the Waffen SS. Others joined the Ukrainian nationalist Guerrilla army OUN. They engaged in massacring leftists, Poles, Jews, and Russians. In every country in Eastern Europe locals were incorporated into the waffen ss while others formed their own fascist movements. The German's also managed to recruit an army of Russian's from their many Russian prisoners captured in the initial year of the invasion of the USSR. Prisoner's could either join or starve. The invasion of the Soviet Union was one of the most brutal attempted conquests in history Professor Daniel Ganser Quotes historian Andrew Wilson's figures: 7 million Soviet troops died 15 million Civilians died 14 million people wounded. America to give a comparison lost 300,000 troops with 600,000 wounded no civilians were killed. Despite their tremendous losses the Soviet's managed to turn the tide and it was only once the German forced were being steadily pushed back that the western powers launched the Normandy landing finally opening a Western Front. Members of German intelligence made plans to insure their future usefulness to the western Powers most famously Gehlen buried an enormous Cache of intelligence files that he used as a bargaining chip. Meanwhile those who had committed brutal war crimes on the Eastern Front all sought to be captured by the British, French, or Americans, so they could avoid punishment at the hands of the at ruthless Soviet intelligence agency the NKVD. Most likely they faced a bullet in the back of the head.
Meanwhile as soon as the war neared it's end all the victorious powers began a competition to capture as many German scientists as possible for future recruitment. The Nazi regime had pinned it's hopes on what it called wonder weapons but despite successfully developing an offensive long range rocket program and jet aircraft it was to late to change the course of the war. At Nordhausen where the V2 Rockets were constructed thousands of unfed salve laborers died. Despite this fact America recruited top Scientist's from this facility as well as many others. Most Famous were Werner Von Braun and General Walter Dornberger. Both were top Scientists at Nordhausen and since officially the US was not supposed to recruit scientists that had been involved in war crimes their records were simply whitewashed and they were brought to the United States where both had long and successful careers. Werner von Braun became a key NASA scientist while Dornberger fittingly had a long career in the US military industrial complex including a long stint at Bell. This pattern would be repeated again and again any attempt to screen potential recruits to exclude active Nazis or known war criminals would be sabotaged by those supposedly doing the vetting merely whitewashing the potential recruits record. Thus even scientists that had tested biological and chemical weapons on human subjects were recruited.
But the US did not just recruit scientists. Even before wars end Alan Dulles and other members of the OSS the wartime precursor to the CIA were making deals with high ranking SS members. The early CIA was made up of wall street lawyers of which Dulles was a prime example. Dulles managed to the defection of a High ranking SS member that led him to the capture of a massive amount of Wealth looted by the germans. The money would be used to finance off the books CIA operations for decades. For example the CIA used some of these funds it to subvert the Italian elections keeping the Popular Front made up of the Italian Communist party and the Italian Socialist party from winning the postwar elections. The most important recruitment the US made was Reinhard Gehlen he had been in charge of German intelligence on the Eastern Front. He still had thousands of contacts in Soviet occupied Eastern Europe and had buried a treasure trove of intelligence. He was recruited secretly at first by an Army intelligence officer who didn't want to risk being turned down by his superior by asking permission. He had Gehlen secretly retrieve the files. Soon however Gehlen had met with the head of Army intelligence General Edwin Siberd. Not only was he Recruited but he was immediately put in charge of reconstituting his network of spies. Prisoner of war camps became massive recruitment centers. Gehlen would go on to become the head of Western German Intelligence the BND. Historians estimated he provided 70% of the CIA's intelligence on the Eastern Bloc and the soviet Union. Back in Washington he was greatly trusted with dangerous consequences. Gehlen provided a completely alarmist and false picture to his American patrons. Most famously in 1948 he played a major role in increasing cold war tensions when he falsely predicted an imminent soviet Invasion. His intelligence proved to be the exact opposite of what was actually going on in Eastern Europe where the Red Army was demobilizing instead he claimed that they were massing for an invasion. He adopted the paranoid mentality of Nazi propaganda in which everywhere there was a disciplined communist conspiracy behind everything. Thus he would continuously feed the Cold War Paranoia of the west reinforcing cold war myths of a Soviet Union bent on world conquest and an international communist conspiracy behind every type of dissent or demand for progress or peace. Not only did he become the CIA's major source of intel he also supplied a little remembered man named Colonel John V. Grombach. As the cold war dawned Grombach who was head of the pentagon's Military Intelligence Service was locked in a bureaucratic turf war with the OSS RA division headed by Alfred Mcormack the OSS team was made up of respectable academics the experts in their field. Grombach on the other hand promoted the most paranoid theories as intelligence. Using dirt some from fascists he smeared the OSS RA division as being dominated by communists. They were dismissed and cold war hysteria became rampant. Grombach would go on to form his own private intelligence agency supplied mostly by Gehlen. He would go on to be the source for much of Joseph McCarthy's false accusations that would create hysterical witch hunts for communists in all areas of American life. Of course there were real soviet spies. One of them Heinze Felfe rose to be head of the Gehlen Org's (their nickname was the Org) Counter Intelligence where for decades he gave the Soviets everything he knew helping them to capture more and more of Gehlen's spy network, while at the same time sowing mistrust by falsely implicating loyal nazis as communists. Meanwhile british spy Kim Philby secretly working for the soviets had weekly lunches with the anglophile James Jesus Angleton head of the CIA counterintelligence division who accidentally gave away most of America's secrets. Western intelligence agencies are much better at organizing death squads and arranging coups then actually catching spies.
More insidiously the US recruited Nazi's who would come to be dominant in Academia secretly they would also work as top CIA analysts. This was known as Operation bloodstone and intellectuals including top SS researchers would be brought to the United States, along with experts in propaganda, and fascist politicians that would be rebranded in America as Freedom Fighters. For example Nicholas N. Poppe a german ethnographer and SS member became America's leading expert on central Asia. Midhat Frasheri a high level Albanian war Criminal became active in US politics. Many former Fascists would come to participate in what was called the captured nations movement. In the 50's the captive Nations Movement were part of a massive CIA PR campaign aimed (in blatant violation of it's charter) at the American Public. War criminals could be met with cheering crowds of ignorant americans. Largely forgotten now the CIA's campaign had a major effect on public opinion at the time and the CIA was able to promote the idea that containment was not enough all of Eastern Europe must be "liberated" in reality a cynical attempt to get more funding for their covert war on the Eastern Bloc and the USSSR. The press remained silent about the fascist background of these Freedom Fighters and as late as the 80's (Perhaps later my source was published in the late 80's) former fascists were active in the republican party. For example the GOP's Nationalities council was run by Hungarian fascist Laszlo Pasztor. The captives Nations Movement became an important pressure group opposing any easing of Cold War tensions.
Undoubtedly the most dramatic use the CIA made of former fascists was the recruitment of Guerrilla armies made up of former fascists who waged a now forgotten war on the communist east. The remnants of the former fascist proxy armies and Waffen SS divisions that had managed to escape west were secretly reorganized and trained to serve as guerrilla armies. They were organized under the cover of so called labor service companies. Thanks to television the image we have of the end of the war is cheering crowds on Paris streets welcoming american troops or perhaps a sailor kissing a beautiful woman amidst cheering crowds in times square New York. Thus it is easy to forget that Much of Europe lay in complete ruins starvation and disease were rampant. Prisoners of war were let loose merely to start cleaning up some of the rubble. Others were recruited to act as a temporary police force. All of the victorious allies used them. They provided the cover for the US to train and assemble armies of exiles. Some went on to form part of the first batch of recruits for US special forces, Some were maintained for future use, while others were sent back to their home countries to spy or wage a covert war. Back in Washington a national security council resolution 10/2 had been passed which authorized the beginning of a covert war on the soviet union and anything they branded communist (which could be anything they didn't like) anywhere in the world. According to the CIA this resolution is what puts them above all foreign and domestic laws. It was the brainchild of the architect of containment George Kennan who was a smart but also strange and sinister man. His writings are full of fascist sympathies, an obsession with Eugenics, and a hatred of democracy of which he once said should be compared to "One of those prehistoric monsters the size of this room with the brain the size of a pin." He was the architect of both the official policy of containment and the secret policy of covert war that led to the creation of the CIA and it's endless covert war on the planet. Ironically he would later be forced out of direct power by the domestic influence of the captive nations movement for whom containment was not enough. Under his Supervision Frank Wisner formed the OPC to carry out covert war. After being trained Guerrilla armies were sent back to their home countries to conduct a campaign of assassination and terrorism. Ukraine would prove the bloodiest example a CIA officer would brag that Ukrainian guerrillas killed over 35,000 people. They also made a failed attempt at a coup in Romania and waged a failed rebellion in Albania and a terror Campaign in Poland to name just some of their activities. They had even more sinister uses in mind for the Guerrillas a 1949 plan declassified in the 80's revealed that the American's planned to Air Drop these guerrilla forces into the Soviet Union after a month long nuclear attack that involved dropping 70 atomic bombs. The planners with typical understatement observed that this would lead to "resentment" among the populace who would fight back. Thus they planned to drop these Guerrilla armies in by plane in order to take control before the people could organize a resistance since the government would have been wiped out. Thus it is a myth that stay behind networks like Gladio were created for defensive purposes.
In addition to launching covert war the US also recruited fascists for their information war. Radio Free Europe and Radio liberty were filled with former fascist propagandists now working for the CIA. This often had counterproductive results as with good reason the American propaganda sounded a lot like the war time propaganda of Nazi Germany since it was produced by the same people. This actually served to increase peoples support for their socialist governments. The Eastern Bloc was also able to expose the fascist nature of the terror campaign the west was waging, further legitimizing them in the eyes of their citizens.
I'll conclude with an account of 3 famous Nazis the US employed. First there is Former SS Sturmbannfuhrer Alois Brunner he was put in charge of deporting jews to ghettoes and then concentration camps. He was an expert in psychological warfare brought in to terrify the target population into submission so that it would meekly obey orders to relocate. He even murdered children telling a german lawyer pleading on behalf of a group of french orphans that they were future terrorists. However instead of being tried at Nuremberg after the war he instead became head of the Gehlen org in the Middle East. With CIA Knowledge and encouragement Gehlen would also recruit Otto Skorzeny known to history as "Hitler's favorite commando". Most famously he once rescued Mussolini in a daring Commando raid. After the war Skorzeny led a band of mercenary commandos made up of fellow Nazis with experience in special operations. He was involved in a network to help nazis escape justice. He would perform all sorts of missions for the CIA and it's western allies he trained security services in Egypt, was involved in the uranium industry, would aid the biaffran rebels, perform assassinations, and deal arms. In the 70's Skorzeny would be a consultant to spanish dictator Francisco Franco on his own version of Operation condor where his opponents were attacked and killed all over the world. Truth really is stranger then fiction some times. It sounds like something out of a bad movie. Lastly there is Otto von Bolschwing, stationed in jerusalem he managed to cut a deal with a haganah (the militia that would form the core of the future israeli army) commander Fieval Polkes that in exchange for allowing jewish youth to train in Germany before moving to Israel, Polkes forces would spy on the british and give the information to the Germans. Pre-State Israel had a shifting attitude to Nazi Germany embarrassingly enough, depending on their relations with the british and the balance of power during the war I'll leave it at that. (see David Hirst's "Gun and the Olive Branch") Next Von Bolschwing would design a plan to strip jews of their assets which was implemented robbing untold numbers. Because of his experience as a spy stationed in Jerusalem he would go on to serve as the Notorious Adolf Eichman's adviser on jewish affairs. Then he would help organize a fascist coup in Romania and after which Local Fascists killed hundreds and engaged in the literal butchery of 70 local jews at a meat packing plant, who were skinned and hung up on meat hooks. He would be stationed in Romania but in the spring of 1945 he defected to the americans first giving them intel on German troop movements and the location of their rocket scientists. After the war he was put in charge of infiltrating agents into Hungary and Rumania for espionage and Covert war. The American's rewarded him for his service by whitewashing his record and allowing him into the US where he lived out his days. Thus thanks to the CIA major war criminals managed to escape justice, and "Hitler's commando" with his band of Nazi's were used in all sorts of shadowy operations many still unknown.
Clearly the US alliance with Nazis is nothing new nor is a simple oddity of history. The recruitment of Nazis had an impact on the formation of the CIA and special forces. Managing fascists was also extremely good for your Career in the CIA. A number of future CIA directors were involved with recruiting nazis or managing the covert armies made up of former fascists. Allen Dulles, Richard Helms and Bill Colby were all involved, and all rose to become future CIA directors and war criminals in their own right. Not only that but with a few adjustments fascist propaganda was used to instill cold war paranoia in the American public. The Gehlen organization would both feed the paranoia of the establishment and the McCarthyism of more extreme elements in America. Most dangerously the US would adopt Nazi foreign policy experts to help it design it's cold war strategies. In a word the recruitment of the Nazis contributed to the cold war hysteria that could have ended in nuclear war. Today in Ukraine the results could be equally disastrous. Already the fascist butchery is well under way with hundreds already dead. Only now we may be asked to fight a world war on behalf of Nazis instead of against them. At the very least the US rulers demand a new cold war on the behalf of Ukraine's fascist infested government. Fortunately in the internet age we are able to expose these attempts to disguise fascists as freedom fighters.
Source
I definitely recommend Christopher Simpson's information packed "Blowback" I was barely able to scratch the surface of the pervasive recruitment of Nazis and it's affects in America. He also provides great insights into the origins of the cold war.
The recent civil war in Ukraine has brought to world attention the willingness of the United States and it's NATO allies to employ Nazi's if it serves their interests. What a terrible century we seem to be living in where outrage after outrage has become normalized. Torture, assassination, mass surveillance, now Nazism have all apparently become acceptable tools of statecraft. Fascism is on the rise in Europe the oligarchs who are looting Europe hope that as standards of living plummet discontent can be channeled towards immigrant's and away from the ruling classes. Those who are poorest and hence most powerless to exercise any economic control are blamed for the state of the economy. In Ukraine we have the bloody conclusion to this type of thinking the corrupt Poreshenko regime doubtless hopes that by directing his supporters in Western Ukraine against the East and South of the Country and Russia they will forget the real reason for Ukraine's economic problems which is the 20 plus years of rule by thieving Billionaires. Perhaps they will not pay attention when the effects of the IMF structural adjustments destroy Ukraine's already ailing economy. Of course the slaughter also serves US strategic interests as they hope it will weaken Putin politically at home or tempt him to interfere which will help the US in it's quest to reduce the already servile European rulers into abject slavery. However just as this second cold war has begun with the west allying itself with Nazi Paramilitaries so too did the first Cold War. America's alliance with Nazis was vital in shaping both the CIA and the Cold War itself.
This article is a sequel to an article I wrote in March called America the CIA and Fascism. It is an expansion on a paragraph that discussed Operation Paperclip. Since then I've learned a great deal more thanks to Christopher Simpson's classic "Blowback" so if you're interested in the topic I'd highly recommend this book combining scholarly caution with relentless curiosity. It's difficult to say when exactly our story truly begins American corporations and elements of the government had relations with Nazi's before during and after the war. Instead I'll begin before the end of the war as german armies and their collaborators retreat before the relentless advance of the Red Army. These collaborators included regiments of the Waffen SS. The german's had hoped to use nationalism against the Soviet Union. They encouraged the rise of fascist movements in all the eastern countries which they controlled. This policy of encouraging nationalism to destabilize eastern Europe predated the Nazi's and was part of Long term German Strategic planning. In fact it was not abandoned after the war as Diana Johnstone documents in her "Fools Crusade" Germany played a key role in the early stages of the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990's. After the World War II as we will see America hired many of the planners behind this policy to plan American foreign policy in Eastern Europe.
Today in Ukraine we see an egregious example of this "nationals Policy". So let's use Ukraine during World War II as a sample of the types of people who were fleeing the Soviet Red Army. During the war Ukrainian Fascists were trained by what Simpson call's Germanys special forces the SS just like the American special forces today they trained death squads. Some Ukrainians served directly in the Waffen SS. Others joined the Ukrainian nationalist Guerrilla army OUN. They engaged in massacring leftists, Poles, Jews, and Russians. In every country in Eastern Europe locals were incorporated into the waffen ss while others formed their own fascist movements. The German's also managed to recruit an army of Russian's from their many Russian prisoners captured in the initial year of the invasion of the USSR. Prisoner's could either join or starve. The invasion of the Soviet Union was one of the most brutal attempted conquests in history Professor Daniel Ganser Quotes historian Andrew Wilson's figures: 7 million Soviet troops died 15 million Civilians died 14 million people wounded. America to give a comparison lost 300,000 troops with 600,000 wounded no civilians were killed. Despite their tremendous losses the Soviet's managed to turn the tide and it was only once the German forced were being steadily pushed back that the western powers launched the Normandy landing finally opening a Western Front. Members of German intelligence made plans to insure their future usefulness to the western Powers most famously Gehlen buried an enormous Cache of intelligence files that he used as a bargaining chip. Meanwhile those who had committed brutal war crimes on the Eastern Front all sought to be captured by the British, French, or Americans, so they could avoid punishment at the hands of the at ruthless Soviet intelligence agency the NKVD. Most likely they faced a bullet in the back of the head.
Meanwhile as soon as the war neared it's end all the victorious powers began a competition to capture as many German scientists as possible for future recruitment. The Nazi regime had pinned it's hopes on what it called wonder weapons but despite successfully developing an offensive long range rocket program and jet aircraft it was to late to change the course of the war. At Nordhausen where the V2 Rockets were constructed thousands of unfed salve laborers died. Despite this fact America recruited top Scientist's from this facility as well as many others. Most Famous were Werner Von Braun and General Walter Dornberger. Both were top Scientists at Nordhausen and since officially the US was not supposed to recruit scientists that had been involved in war crimes their records were simply whitewashed and they were brought to the United States where both had long and successful careers. Werner von Braun became a key NASA scientist while Dornberger fittingly had a long career in the US military industrial complex including a long stint at Bell. This pattern would be repeated again and again any attempt to screen potential recruits to exclude active Nazis or known war criminals would be sabotaged by those supposedly doing the vetting merely whitewashing the potential recruits record. Thus even scientists that had tested biological and chemical weapons on human subjects were recruited.
But the US did not just recruit scientists. Even before wars end Alan Dulles and other members of the OSS the wartime precursor to the CIA were making deals with high ranking SS members. The early CIA was made up of wall street lawyers of which Dulles was a prime example. Dulles managed to the defection of a High ranking SS member that led him to the capture of a massive amount of Wealth looted by the germans. The money would be used to finance off the books CIA operations for decades. For example the CIA used some of these funds it to subvert the Italian elections keeping the Popular Front made up of the Italian Communist party and the Italian Socialist party from winning the postwar elections. The most important recruitment the US made was Reinhard Gehlen he had been in charge of German intelligence on the Eastern Front. He still had thousands of contacts in Soviet occupied Eastern Europe and had buried a treasure trove of intelligence. He was recruited secretly at first by an Army intelligence officer who didn't want to risk being turned down by his superior by asking permission. He had Gehlen secretly retrieve the files. Soon however Gehlen had met with the head of Army intelligence General Edwin Siberd. Not only was he Recruited but he was immediately put in charge of reconstituting his network of spies. Prisoner of war camps became massive recruitment centers. Gehlen would go on to become the head of Western German Intelligence the BND. Historians estimated he provided 70% of the CIA's intelligence on the Eastern Bloc and the soviet Union. Back in Washington he was greatly trusted with dangerous consequences. Gehlen provided a completely alarmist and false picture to his American patrons. Most famously in 1948 he played a major role in increasing cold war tensions when he falsely predicted an imminent soviet Invasion. His intelligence proved to be the exact opposite of what was actually going on in Eastern Europe where the Red Army was demobilizing instead he claimed that they were massing for an invasion. He adopted the paranoid mentality of Nazi propaganda in which everywhere there was a disciplined communist conspiracy behind everything. Thus he would continuously feed the Cold War Paranoia of the west reinforcing cold war myths of a Soviet Union bent on world conquest and an international communist conspiracy behind every type of dissent or demand for progress or peace. Not only did he become the CIA's major source of intel he also supplied a little remembered man named Colonel John V. Grombach. As the cold war dawned Grombach who was head of the pentagon's Military Intelligence Service was locked in a bureaucratic turf war with the OSS RA division headed by Alfred Mcormack the OSS team was made up of respectable academics the experts in their field. Grombach on the other hand promoted the most paranoid theories as intelligence. Using dirt some from fascists he smeared the OSS RA division as being dominated by communists. They were dismissed and cold war hysteria became rampant. Grombach would go on to form his own private intelligence agency supplied mostly by Gehlen. He would go on to be the source for much of Joseph McCarthy's false accusations that would create hysterical witch hunts for communists in all areas of American life. Of course there were real soviet spies. One of them Heinze Felfe rose to be head of the Gehlen Org's (their nickname was the Org) Counter Intelligence where for decades he gave the Soviets everything he knew helping them to capture more and more of Gehlen's spy network, while at the same time sowing mistrust by falsely implicating loyal nazis as communists. Meanwhile british spy Kim Philby secretly working for the soviets had weekly lunches with the anglophile James Jesus Angleton head of the CIA counterintelligence division who accidentally gave away most of America's secrets. Western intelligence agencies are much better at organizing death squads and arranging coups then actually catching spies.
More insidiously the US recruited Nazi's who would come to be dominant in Academia secretly they would also work as top CIA analysts. This was known as Operation bloodstone and intellectuals including top SS researchers would be brought to the United States, along with experts in propaganda, and fascist politicians that would be rebranded in America as Freedom Fighters. For example Nicholas N. Poppe a german ethnographer and SS member became America's leading expert on central Asia. Midhat Frasheri a high level Albanian war Criminal became active in US politics. Many former Fascists would come to participate in what was called the captured nations movement. In the 50's the captive Nations Movement were part of a massive CIA PR campaign aimed (in blatant violation of it's charter) at the American Public. War criminals could be met with cheering crowds of ignorant americans. Largely forgotten now the CIA's campaign had a major effect on public opinion at the time and the CIA was able to promote the idea that containment was not enough all of Eastern Europe must be "liberated" in reality a cynical attempt to get more funding for their covert war on the Eastern Bloc and the USSSR. The press remained silent about the fascist background of these Freedom Fighters and as late as the 80's (Perhaps later my source was published in the late 80's) former fascists were active in the republican party. For example the GOP's Nationalities council was run by Hungarian fascist Laszlo Pasztor. The captives Nations Movement became an important pressure group opposing any easing of Cold War tensions.
Undoubtedly the most dramatic use the CIA made of former fascists was the recruitment of Guerrilla armies made up of former fascists who waged a now forgotten war on the communist east. The remnants of the former fascist proxy armies and Waffen SS divisions that had managed to escape west were secretly reorganized and trained to serve as guerrilla armies. They were organized under the cover of so called labor service companies. Thanks to television the image we have of the end of the war is cheering crowds on Paris streets welcoming american troops or perhaps a sailor kissing a beautiful woman amidst cheering crowds in times square New York. Thus it is easy to forget that Much of Europe lay in complete ruins starvation and disease were rampant. Prisoners of war were let loose merely to start cleaning up some of the rubble. Others were recruited to act as a temporary police force. All of the victorious allies used them. They provided the cover for the US to train and assemble armies of exiles. Some went on to form part of the first batch of recruits for US special forces, Some were maintained for future use, while others were sent back to their home countries to spy or wage a covert war. Back in Washington a national security council resolution 10/2 had been passed which authorized the beginning of a covert war on the soviet union and anything they branded communist (which could be anything they didn't like) anywhere in the world. According to the CIA this resolution is what puts them above all foreign and domestic laws. It was the brainchild of the architect of containment George Kennan who was a smart but also strange and sinister man. His writings are full of fascist sympathies, an obsession with Eugenics, and a hatred of democracy of which he once said should be compared to "One of those prehistoric monsters the size of this room with the brain the size of a pin." He was the architect of both the official policy of containment and the secret policy of covert war that led to the creation of the CIA and it's endless covert war on the planet. Ironically he would later be forced out of direct power by the domestic influence of the captive nations movement for whom containment was not enough. Under his Supervision Frank Wisner formed the OPC to carry out covert war. After being trained Guerrilla armies were sent back to their home countries to conduct a campaign of assassination and terrorism. Ukraine would prove the bloodiest example a CIA officer would brag that Ukrainian guerrillas killed over 35,000 people. They also made a failed attempt at a coup in Romania and waged a failed rebellion in Albania and a terror Campaign in Poland to name just some of their activities. They had even more sinister uses in mind for the Guerrillas a 1949 plan declassified in the 80's revealed that the American's planned to Air Drop these guerrilla forces into the Soviet Union after a month long nuclear attack that involved dropping 70 atomic bombs. The planners with typical understatement observed that this would lead to "resentment" among the populace who would fight back. Thus they planned to drop these Guerrilla armies in by plane in order to take control before the people could organize a resistance since the government would have been wiped out. Thus it is a myth that stay behind networks like Gladio were created for defensive purposes.
In addition to launching covert war the US also recruited fascists for their information war. Radio Free Europe and Radio liberty were filled with former fascist propagandists now working for the CIA. This often had counterproductive results as with good reason the American propaganda sounded a lot like the war time propaganda of Nazi Germany since it was produced by the same people. This actually served to increase peoples support for their socialist governments. The Eastern Bloc was also able to expose the fascist nature of the terror campaign the west was waging, further legitimizing them in the eyes of their citizens.
I'll conclude with an account of 3 famous Nazis the US employed. First there is Former SS Sturmbannfuhrer Alois Brunner he was put in charge of deporting jews to ghettoes and then concentration camps. He was an expert in psychological warfare brought in to terrify the target population into submission so that it would meekly obey orders to relocate. He even murdered children telling a german lawyer pleading on behalf of a group of french orphans that they were future terrorists. However instead of being tried at Nuremberg after the war he instead became head of the Gehlen org in the Middle East. With CIA Knowledge and encouragement Gehlen would also recruit Otto Skorzeny known to history as "Hitler's favorite commando". Most famously he once rescued Mussolini in a daring Commando raid. After the war Skorzeny led a band of mercenary commandos made up of fellow Nazis with experience in special operations. He was involved in a network to help nazis escape justice. He would perform all sorts of missions for the CIA and it's western allies he trained security services in Egypt, was involved in the uranium industry, would aid the biaffran rebels, perform assassinations, and deal arms. In the 70's Skorzeny would be a consultant to spanish dictator Francisco Franco on his own version of Operation condor where his opponents were attacked and killed all over the world. Truth really is stranger then fiction some times. It sounds like something out of a bad movie. Lastly there is Otto von Bolschwing, stationed in jerusalem he managed to cut a deal with a haganah (the militia that would form the core of the future israeli army) commander Fieval Polkes that in exchange for allowing jewish youth to train in Germany before moving to Israel, Polkes forces would spy on the british and give the information to the Germans. Pre-State Israel had a shifting attitude to Nazi Germany embarrassingly enough, depending on their relations with the british and the balance of power during the war I'll leave it at that. (see David Hirst's "Gun and the Olive Branch") Next Von Bolschwing would design a plan to strip jews of their assets which was implemented robbing untold numbers. Because of his experience as a spy stationed in Jerusalem he would go on to serve as the Notorious Adolf Eichman's adviser on jewish affairs. Then he would help organize a fascist coup in Romania and after which Local Fascists killed hundreds and engaged in the literal butchery of 70 local jews at a meat packing plant, who were skinned and hung up on meat hooks. He would be stationed in Romania but in the spring of 1945 he defected to the americans first giving them intel on German troop movements and the location of their rocket scientists. After the war he was put in charge of infiltrating agents into Hungary and Rumania for espionage and Covert war. The American's rewarded him for his service by whitewashing his record and allowing him into the US where he lived out his days. Thus thanks to the CIA major war criminals managed to escape justice, and "Hitler's commando" with his band of Nazi's were used in all sorts of shadowy operations many still unknown.
Clearly the US alliance with Nazis is nothing new nor is a simple oddity of history. The recruitment of Nazis had an impact on the formation of the CIA and special forces. Managing fascists was also extremely good for your Career in the CIA. A number of future CIA directors were involved with recruiting nazis or managing the covert armies made up of former fascists. Allen Dulles, Richard Helms and Bill Colby were all involved, and all rose to become future CIA directors and war criminals in their own right. Not only that but with a few adjustments fascist propaganda was used to instill cold war paranoia in the American public. The Gehlen organization would both feed the paranoia of the establishment and the McCarthyism of more extreme elements in America. Most dangerously the US would adopt Nazi foreign policy experts to help it design it's cold war strategies. In a word the recruitment of the Nazis contributed to the cold war hysteria that could have ended in nuclear war. Today in Ukraine the results could be equally disastrous. Already the fascist butchery is well under way with hundreds already dead. Only now we may be asked to fight a world war on behalf of Nazis instead of against them. At the very least the US rulers demand a new cold war on the behalf of Ukraine's fascist infested government. Fortunately in the internet age we are able to expose these attempts to disguise fascists as freedom fighters.
Source
I definitely recommend Christopher Simpson's information packed "Blowback" I was barely able to scratch the surface of the pervasive recruitment of Nazis and it's affects in America. He also provides great insights into the origins of the cold war.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Russia From Gorbachev to Putin
Russia After the Fall of the Soviet Union
The most important and least understood event of recent times was the fall of the Soviet Union. Seemingly no one bothers to look into it because they believe they already know the answers. Most commonly cited is the failure of communism which cannot work we are told. Others believe it was a simple triumph of freedom of democracy. While there is some truth to both in that the Soviet system produced strange economic problems of it's own, and people were tired of state censorship and longed for the forbidden glamorous media and products of the west. Still as we shall see if life in the soviet union could be stagnant the introduction of free market reforms would prove absolutely catastrophic. As for freedom Yeltsin actually reversed many of the democratic reforms of Gorbachev so he could ram through his western dictated and Oligarch favored Free Market reforms. I can't claim to have discovered the why. I can only comment in passing that the role of western intelligence in subverting and destabilizing Russian society has been vastly underestimated. One need only look at Chechnya which was the site of a US, Israel, GCC, and NATO etc, backed destabilization attempt reminiscent of Syria a continuation of the covert GLADIO B war on central Asia that began in the mid 70's. Chechnya was also the source of the dominant faction in the mafia wars that raged in the early 90's. More prosaically US soft power gave it's usual disastrous economic advice. The fall began actually in the Gorbachev era with his westward looking advisers, sometimes creating intentional disasters. It was Gorbachev's ill conceived war on Alcohol to name just one example that caused an explosion of Organized crime and state corruption. These tendencies would be carried to explosive extremes in the Yeltsin Era.
The real cause strictly speaking of the collapse of the Soviet Union is known if seldom mentioned it was a power grab by Yeltsin. A brief note on Yeltsin I'll say Yeltsin did this or Yeltsin did that it is purely for the sake of brevity. Most so called world "Leaders" don't actually make policy their advisers do. In Yeltsin's case this is even more true. He was more like some hapless medieval monarch then a modern leader he was constantly drunk and completely out of touch with reality. Whichever faction could gain the favor of his fickle daughter would make the policies. But back to the immediate cause for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was in charge of the Soviet Union his vision of the future was that the Soviet Union would become a Scandinavian style socialist democracy. Yeltsin had come to power in Russia he was popular for his role in resisting a half hearted attempt by certain elements of the KGB to prevent the coming collapse of the USSR. In order to seize power from Gorbachev he met with the heads of Ukraine and Belarus and they agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union they would each rule their own domains. It was totally Illegal but of course the west was overjoyed and the matter was quickly forgotten. Next in order to push through his "reforms"; which actually meant selling out the entire country to a small number of his supporters; he waged a literal war on his own Parliament shelling it with Tanks and artillery. Over 1000 people were killed according to some reports although the official number is only 100. Again he was lionized sometimes in order to save Democracy you must destroy it. The people he was firing upon were called hardliners and gullible western readers believed them to be Crypto-Stalinists. In reality they merely objected to slashing benefits and favored a slower approach to privatization. Still the Orwellian western Media managed to portray the most blatantly undemocratic thing you can do the armed suppression of the Parliament, as a triumph of democracy. It was in the Yeltsin years that the President assumed the imperial powers that Putin is so harshly criticized for possessing. After destroying his opposition Yeltsin pushed forward a new constitution that Gave himself vast powers. As for a so called free press this was nothing more then a Corporate press. The press became a tool of the oligarchs and during the 1996 election they used it to keep the Communists from winning the election. With the help of amphetamine injections for Yeltsin to help him function despite his alcoholism Yeltsin became the center of a massive propaganda campaign dwarfing anything since the Stalin years. On the other hand the media could produce quite interesting dirt when the oligarchs were squabbling. The strategy of leaked tapes we see today in the Ukraine Media war definitely had it's origins in 90's Russia's media wars between dueling oligarchs. They all had their own privatized spy agencies.
The economic "reforms" were a disaster. The very word reform is of course a triumph for money power. Reform used to be meant to curb the abuses of capitalism, Now reform is a codeword for enabling the abuses of Corporate power. When Clinton reformed Wall street he empowered the kleptocrats. When he reformed welfare he destroyed it. I mention him simply cause he and Yeltsin pretended friendship but whenever Yeltsin asked for anything it was refused. Russia's economic reforms were clearly part of western Geo-Strategy the Chaos and suffering they produced were not accidental byproducts but part of an ongoing plan for the complete dismemberment of Russia. To give some Idea of the suffering of the Ordianry People in the City of Moscow alone 300,000 people became homeless. Paul Klebnikov a free market Idealist points out that statistical analysis shows that over 3 million people died as a result of the so called free market reforms. While communism may have failed to provide store shelves full of the latest fashions it is an objective fact that under capitalism there was a massive increase in poverty disease, ignorance and crime. A joke circulating Russia in 1992 went Question: "What did capitalism accomplish in one year that Communism couldn't accomplish in 70." Answer: "Make communism look good."
Meanwhile for those with the right connections they made fortunes, although they lived in constant fear of their own life. Over 800,000 former soldiers and athletes became hired muscle. To be a Businessman first you needed the backing and protection of an organized crime group this was called "having a roof". Of course the big money was in having the right government connections to get in on looting the country. One man came to epitomize the era Boris Berezovsky. You'd think upon receiving some massive state enterprise and becoming an instant corporate mogul you might try to make it into a success. This is the naive belief of free market economists. In todays world that sort of thinking is for suckers. Instead the goal is to gain control of a company without actually owning it then you start up some more companies that you can use to swindle the first company. You set up financial holding companies that charge exorbitant fees. You sell off the companies products to one of your companies for less then they cost to make then resell them for way more. Berezovsky for instance used his influence with the car company Autovaz to sell him cars for less then they cost to make and then he resold them at huge profit. Then he'd pay off the board of directors by making them partners in the looting process. The more companies he destroyed the more money he made. He had close connections to Chechen mafia from the start and survived an assassination attempt by the Russian mafia. He was a citizen of Russia, Israel, and the US. From car dealer he rose to be a major player in the Media, the Oil industry, metals, and cars. He also left quite a trail of bodies on his way to the top. Being an Obstacle to his plans usually meant ending up mysteriously dead. Unless of course you were powerful enough to resist him. The Oligarchs engaged in bitter rivalries and would try to bring one another down in disgrace. A fall from grace could mean imprisonment or death. As for the normal people in this new democracy they were regarded as beneath contempt. It was the Custom of the Oligarchs in the Early days to drive on the sidewalks with absolutely no regard for the lives of the Pedestrians. Later they had their own special roads reserved for the political and economic elite. Since the Oligarchs lived life in constant danger they were into extravagant spending and luxury. While millions starved they spent fortunes on mansions flashy clothes foreign cars and trophy wives. Like their western counterparts they liked to party hard. Mostly though they were concerned with their machiavellian life and death struggles with one another as well as stealing as much money as possible and shipping it overseas. Increasingly they didn't want to even be in Russia and spent their times on the beaches in the south of France or their London homes.
Meanwhile while most of the populace struggled merely to survive, and the Oligarchs engaged in their power struggles the US and NATO were not idle. Secretly the cold war had always been a one sided thing. Far from struggling to take over the world the USSR was trying to be accepted by the west. Gorbachev thought that if he showed his willingness to cooperate Russia could become a partner with the west. Famously he offered no resistance to the reunification of Germany on the condition that their would be no eastward NATO expansion. Gorbachev was a fool. Far from seeing the end of the cold war as an opportunity for cooperation with Russia, US Strategic planners instantly realized that the balance of power had changed and they set out to take full advantage. The most horrendous example of this was in Europe was Yugoslavia where the US and NATO intentionally started a civil war.(read Fools Crusade By Diana Johnstone) The country was dismembered. In the newly created Kosovo the US Built a Massive military base camp Bondsteel. Mores subtly they merely expanded NATO all over Eastern Europe. In fact as documented by analysts Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and also by Rick Rozoff on his Stop NATO Website NATO is expanding globally. As early as Bush I the doctrine had arisen that America was now the sole superpower and must ensure no new rivals. However when the Wolfowitz plan was revealed it sounded so sinister that it was disavowed. Then during Bush II it was unveiled again and has become known as the Bush doctrine. It was Clinton who probably did most to put it in practice. During his administration NATO signed preliminary agreements with most of the former Warsaw pact countries. This included Estonia and Latvia where people were denied the right to vote based on their ethnicity Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and Belarusians were all openly denied their civil rights. They were also right on Russia's border which is more important from a Geo-Strategic standpoint. While Yeltsin drank his way through the 90's Russia was surrounded by enemies. Quite strange things were happening in the former soviet satelites. In Lithuania and the Czech republic returning to capitalism wasn't enough for the new elites they decided to restore feudalism by turning back the clock to pre World War One conditions when the nobility owned the land, millions were thrown off their land so it could be returned to the descendants of the aristocracy. Nor is Ukraine the only country that has seen fascist resurgence in Estonia and other places they hold rallies celebrating the SS Veterans of their land.
Thus Russia around the year 2000 was in a state of chaos. The standard of living kept dropping, poverty, crime chaos disease, starvation. The government was the plaything of corrupt Oligarchs. It was increasingly surrounded by NATO. It's allies were under attack. Actually no matter what things were about to change. The Oligarchs did not know this however. They were afraid that foreign policy mastermind Yvgeny Primakov would become president they threw their backing behind Vladimir Putin believing he would be the perfect puppet. Vladimir Putin had been a KGB agent stationed in Eastern Germany when the berlin wall fell. After the failed KGB coup (he wasn't involved) he resigned and became an aide to a St. Petersburg politician. He was hard working and reliable and he eventually began to work for the Yeltsin Government. He helped destroy some Yeltsin Rivals and Berezovsky decided that he should be the next President. The Oligarchs launched another public relations campaign glorifying Putin. When Chechnya attacked Dagestan possibly at Berezovsky's urging, who did not just have connections with the Chechen Mafia but with the separatist government and the terrorists there backed by the usual suspects. Putin who clearly understood that Chechnya was an attempt to begin dismembering Russia and who hated the fact that Yeltsin had granted them Autonomy after a failed war brutally cracked down. Thus from becoming a virtual unknown he became popular overnight. This was because the Chechens launched over the top terrorist attacks targeting Huge numbers of civilians at a time and were wildly unpopular. Many accusations blaming these attacks on Putin were generated by Berezovsky by the way who had far more connection to the Chechens.
Thus the Oligarchs thought they were installing an obedient puppet. They vastly underestimated the resentment the patriotic Putin felt about what had happened to Russia during the Yeltsin and the Gorbachev years. When some Oligarch would challenge him he would make clear on a number of Occasions that he regarded all of them as thieves. The age of impunity was over and oligarchs began to end up in jail. Even Berezovsky did not escape punishment. He made it clear to the rest that they would be able to maintain their fortunes only if they did not interfere in Russian politics.
He attempted to rebuild Russia's international prestige. He adopted the so called Primakov doctrine named after his created by his opponent in the Presidential race. Primakov docrine meant that Russia should seek Eurasian integration and Build strong alliances with China, india and Iran. India prefers to align itself with the west but created closer ties with Iran and China. He also centralized control by personally appointing the governors. While Putin's government is less democratic Russia is far less Chaotic then during the Yeltsin years. Also unlike Yeltsin who the west praised as a paragon of democracy he has yet to open fire on the parliament. Many of his powers come from the Yeltsin Constitution which was praised by the west at the time. He regained control of the Russian energy sector which like the US he regards as a strategic asset. Standards of living began to rise again although the damage has yet to be repaired. Thus Putin is extremely Popular in Russia and is supported by the majority of the Population despite the Insinuations of the western Media. Actually after the Yeltsin Years the Russian word for democracy became a slang term for shitty. A democratic restaurant or club meant a run down place that let in anybody. Meanwhile they began to refer to proper democracy as Shitocracy. Apparently the two words sounds similar in Russian. The attempted Color Revolution to prevent Putin from returning to the presidency in 2012 was a dismal failure. All those wonderful sounding concepts that they dreamed of before the fall of the Soviet Union had turned out to be dangerous illusions. Western style representative democracy is a joke far from rule of the People it really means rule of the oligarchs the few. The Russians found that out the hard way.
As for the west it is unclear if people will ever wake up to this fact. What happened in Russia is happening in the west only slower. Poverty is on the rise all over the world. Our stock exchange Oligarchs may have to be more subtle then Berezovsky in their thefts but they are destroying companies and looting countries all the same. Capitalism is Eating itself all in the name of a purely abstract form of wealth numbers on a computer screen. Meanwhile Putin is demonized for three main reasons. First the crackdown on Oligarchs. People actually have the nerve to turn the fact that these thieves who caused untold human suffering remember three million people died before their time(see godfather pages 105-109) , into a human rights case. Thus cracking down on traitorous billionaires who subvert the political sytem is considered undemocratic. Second Putin has banned foreign funding for NGO's ruining Washington's "double track policy." It's an innocuous name but what it literally boils down to is we'll negotiate with you when it serves our interests while secretly working to overthrow you. This is not an exaggeration but in Diplomatese it is called "working with Democratic Forces" these are just the sort of democratic forces that Victoria Nuland Bragged the US had given 5 billion to over the past 20 years. In other words democratic forces means NGO's created by the NED and often secretly infiltrated by the CIA that try to lay the groundwork for a color revolution. Third Putin is demonized for standing in the way of US plans for Global Hegemony. Putin opposed the Iraq War along with France thus the lack of Security Council Authorization and the "illegal" nature of the war harped on by liberals as if as long as the security council says it's OK it's fine to kill a million people in an aggressive war. When the US wanted to invade Iran in 2008 Russia threatened War. Then again in 2013 Russia threatened to defend Syria plus it provided a Face saving diplomatic solution. Two countries escaped untold destruction because of Putin's actions, this is the real reason why the US is starting Cold War 2.0.
Thus while Putin is no angel, at least he makes some effort to rule in the interests of the Russian people. That the US wants to Destroy Russia isn't just some theory but has been written about time and again by Zbiegniew Brzezinski and other top technocrats. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the US has been on an Imperial rampage. They want to create a huge war zone across the Eurasian Landmass they call it the arc of crisis. Read and read between the lines of Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard. Russia and China on the other hand would like to see a stable and peaceful Eurasia. Whatever the failings of the two countries it is the US and it's many client States that are trying to take over the world. It's official policy. To see Russia and China as the aggressors and to buy into the absurd Orwellian propaganda being spewed in the press is to turn truth on it's head. It was not Russia and China that have recently invaded countries all over the world it was the US. We should also given what happened in Russia's economy begin to Question the free market orthodoxy. It's time to set the historical record straight free market capitalism produces a few billionaires while impoverishing the population. Everyone says Communism was a failure but Capitalism proved an even greater failure. The US and it's NATO allies with their "Western" consensus are spreading Poverty and War all over the planet.
Sources
First I highly recommend Paul Klebnikov's "Godfather of the Kremlin" a biography of Berezovsky. A true believer in the free market he went to Russia to witness what he believed would be a brilliant success. Instead he ended up chronicling a disaster. It does a great Job of explaining the complex process of looting a nation. It also manages to expose the Byzantine world of Russian Politics. I also read Angus Roxburgh's "The Strongman Vladimir Putin and the struggle for Russia" I don't really recommend it the author is a TV reporter which explains his willful ignorance and naivety. It is interesting for some of the interviews and gossip it provides. The Russians make it clear they know what the US is up to but are dismissed by the author as paranoid. Nor do the American officials bother to disguise their Arrogance and sinister intentions. He condemns Putin but says not one word condemning Bush for torture, mass surveillance, and aggressive war. Typical. Then there is "Blackshirts & Reds Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism." By Michael Parenti. He discusses the differences between Fascism and Communism then provides a concise account of the fall of the USSR. I definitely recommend it. You can listen to his speech based on his book here http://www.greanvillepost.com/audio/AudioPageParenti/Michael%20Parenti%20-%20Reflections%20On%20The%20Overthrow%20Of%20Communism/
I also read/watched one of Adam Curtis' multimedia blogposts. Here http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_years_of_stagnation_and_th it's definitely original at least. It's about punk Rock, the collapse of Communism and Putin's avant garde former media adviser Vladislav Surkov. Basically I'm conflicted on Adam Curtis he makes interesting work but he can also be superficial and cowardly. I guess you have to walk a tightrope when you work at the BBC. But at least he often says something completely new and unearths events no one else is interested in. I also watched his documentary The Engineers Plot it's on Youtube and deals with the failure of central planning in the Soviet Union. You can watch it as a standalone episode. It's the first of a series Pandoras Box but if you haven't seen his later documentary series like "Century of the Self" , "Age of Nightmares" or "the trap" watch those instead first as they are brilliant. You should be able to find them all free online. If your looking for Independent courageous Documentaries go check out metanoia-films.org Scott Noble's movies are Amazing and he doesn't pull punches. He has great series like The Power Principle and Counter Intelligence, plus single movies like Human Resources or Rise Like Lions.
The most important and least understood event of recent times was the fall of the Soviet Union. Seemingly no one bothers to look into it because they believe they already know the answers. Most commonly cited is the failure of communism which cannot work we are told. Others believe it was a simple triumph of freedom of democracy. While there is some truth to both in that the Soviet system produced strange economic problems of it's own, and people were tired of state censorship and longed for the forbidden glamorous media and products of the west. Still as we shall see if life in the soviet union could be stagnant the introduction of free market reforms would prove absolutely catastrophic. As for freedom Yeltsin actually reversed many of the democratic reforms of Gorbachev so he could ram through his western dictated and Oligarch favored Free Market reforms. I can't claim to have discovered the why. I can only comment in passing that the role of western intelligence in subverting and destabilizing Russian society has been vastly underestimated. One need only look at Chechnya which was the site of a US, Israel, GCC, and NATO etc, backed destabilization attempt reminiscent of Syria a continuation of the covert GLADIO B war on central Asia that began in the mid 70's. Chechnya was also the source of the dominant faction in the mafia wars that raged in the early 90's. More prosaically US soft power gave it's usual disastrous economic advice. The fall began actually in the Gorbachev era with his westward looking advisers, sometimes creating intentional disasters. It was Gorbachev's ill conceived war on Alcohol to name just one example that caused an explosion of Organized crime and state corruption. These tendencies would be carried to explosive extremes in the Yeltsin Era.
The real cause strictly speaking of the collapse of the Soviet Union is known if seldom mentioned it was a power grab by Yeltsin. A brief note on Yeltsin I'll say Yeltsin did this or Yeltsin did that it is purely for the sake of brevity. Most so called world "Leaders" don't actually make policy their advisers do. In Yeltsin's case this is even more true. He was more like some hapless medieval monarch then a modern leader he was constantly drunk and completely out of touch with reality. Whichever faction could gain the favor of his fickle daughter would make the policies. But back to the immediate cause for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was in charge of the Soviet Union his vision of the future was that the Soviet Union would become a Scandinavian style socialist democracy. Yeltsin had come to power in Russia he was popular for his role in resisting a half hearted attempt by certain elements of the KGB to prevent the coming collapse of the USSR. In order to seize power from Gorbachev he met with the heads of Ukraine and Belarus and they agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union they would each rule their own domains. It was totally Illegal but of course the west was overjoyed and the matter was quickly forgotten. Next in order to push through his "reforms"; which actually meant selling out the entire country to a small number of his supporters; he waged a literal war on his own Parliament shelling it with Tanks and artillery. Over 1000 people were killed according to some reports although the official number is only 100. Again he was lionized sometimes in order to save Democracy you must destroy it. The people he was firing upon were called hardliners and gullible western readers believed them to be Crypto-Stalinists. In reality they merely objected to slashing benefits and favored a slower approach to privatization. Still the Orwellian western Media managed to portray the most blatantly undemocratic thing you can do the armed suppression of the Parliament, as a triumph of democracy. It was in the Yeltsin years that the President assumed the imperial powers that Putin is so harshly criticized for possessing. After destroying his opposition Yeltsin pushed forward a new constitution that Gave himself vast powers. As for a so called free press this was nothing more then a Corporate press. The press became a tool of the oligarchs and during the 1996 election they used it to keep the Communists from winning the election. With the help of amphetamine injections for Yeltsin to help him function despite his alcoholism Yeltsin became the center of a massive propaganda campaign dwarfing anything since the Stalin years. On the other hand the media could produce quite interesting dirt when the oligarchs were squabbling. The strategy of leaked tapes we see today in the Ukraine Media war definitely had it's origins in 90's Russia's media wars between dueling oligarchs. They all had their own privatized spy agencies.
The economic "reforms" were a disaster. The very word reform is of course a triumph for money power. Reform used to be meant to curb the abuses of capitalism, Now reform is a codeword for enabling the abuses of Corporate power. When Clinton reformed Wall street he empowered the kleptocrats. When he reformed welfare he destroyed it. I mention him simply cause he and Yeltsin pretended friendship but whenever Yeltsin asked for anything it was refused. Russia's economic reforms were clearly part of western Geo-Strategy the Chaos and suffering they produced were not accidental byproducts but part of an ongoing plan for the complete dismemberment of Russia. To give some Idea of the suffering of the Ordianry People in the City of Moscow alone 300,000 people became homeless. Paul Klebnikov a free market Idealist points out that statistical analysis shows that over 3 million people died as a result of the so called free market reforms. While communism may have failed to provide store shelves full of the latest fashions it is an objective fact that under capitalism there was a massive increase in poverty disease, ignorance and crime. A joke circulating Russia in 1992 went Question: "What did capitalism accomplish in one year that Communism couldn't accomplish in 70." Answer: "Make communism look good."
Meanwhile for those with the right connections they made fortunes, although they lived in constant fear of their own life. Over 800,000 former soldiers and athletes became hired muscle. To be a Businessman first you needed the backing and protection of an organized crime group this was called "having a roof". Of course the big money was in having the right government connections to get in on looting the country. One man came to epitomize the era Boris Berezovsky. You'd think upon receiving some massive state enterprise and becoming an instant corporate mogul you might try to make it into a success. This is the naive belief of free market economists. In todays world that sort of thinking is for suckers. Instead the goal is to gain control of a company without actually owning it then you start up some more companies that you can use to swindle the first company. You set up financial holding companies that charge exorbitant fees. You sell off the companies products to one of your companies for less then they cost to make then resell them for way more. Berezovsky for instance used his influence with the car company Autovaz to sell him cars for less then they cost to make and then he resold them at huge profit. Then he'd pay off the board of directors by making them partners in the looting process. The more companies he destroyed the more money he made. He had close connections to Chechen mafia from the start and survived an assassination attempt by the Russian mafia. He was a citizen of Russia, Israel, and the US. From car dealer he rose to be a major player in the Media, the Oil industry, metals, and cars. He also left quite a trail of bodies on his way to the top. Being an Obstacle to his plans usually meant ending up mysteriously dead. Unless of course you were powerful enough to resist him. The Oligarchs engaged in bitter rivalries and would try to bring one another down in disgrace. A fall from grace could mean imprisonment or death. As for the normal people in this new democracy they were regarded as beneath contempt. It was the Custom of the Oligarchs in the Early days to drive on the sidewalks with absolutely no regard for the lives of the Pedestrians. Later they had their own special roads reserved for the political and economic elite. Since the Oligarchs lived life in constant danger they were into extravagant spending and luxury. While millions starved they spent fortunes on mansions flashy clothes foreign cars and trophy wives. Like their western counterparts they liked to party hard. Mostly though they were concerned with their machiavellian life and death struggles with one another as well as stealing as much money as possible and shipping it overseas. Increasingly they didn't want to even be in Russia and spent their times on the beaches in the south of France or their London homes.
Meanwhile while most of the populace struggled merely to survive, and the Oligarchs engaged in their power struggles the US and NATO were not idle. Secretly the cold war had always been a one sided thing. Far from struggling to take over the world the USSR was trying to be accepted by the west. Gorbachev thought that if he showed his willingness to cooperate Russia could become a partner with the west. Famously he offered no resistance to the reunification of Germany on the condition that their would be no eastward NATO expansion. Gorbachev was a fool. Far from seeing the end of the cold war as an opportunity for cooperation with Russia, US Strategic planners instantly realized that the balance of power had changed and they set out to take full advantage. The most horrendous example of this was in Europe was Yugoslavia where the US and NATO intentionally started a civil war.(read Fools Crusade By Diana Johnstone) The country was dismembered. In the newly created Kosovo the US Built a Massive military base camp Bondsteel. Mores subtly they merely expanded NATO all over Eastern Europe. In fact as documented by analysts Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and also by Rick Rozoff on his Stop NATO Website NATO is expanding globally. As early as Bush I the doctrine had arisen that America was now the sole superpower and must ensure no new rivals. However when the Wolfowitz plan was revealed it sounded so sinister that it was disavowed. Then during Bush II it was unveiled again and has become known as the Bush doctrine. It was Clinton who probably did most to put it in practice. During his administration NATO signed preliminary agreements with most of the former Warsaw pact countries. This included Estonia and Latvia where people were denied the right to vote based on their ethnicity Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and Belarusians were all openly denied their civil rights. They were also right on Russia's border which is more important from a Geo-Strategic standpoint. While Yeltsin drank his way through the 90's Russia was surrounded by enemies. Quite strange things were happening in the former soviet satelites. In Lithuania and the Czech republic returning to capitalism wasn't enough for the new elites they decided to restore feudalism by turning back the clock to pre World War One conditions when the nobility owned the land, millions were thrown off their land so it could be returned to the descendants of the aristocracy. Nor is Ukraine the only country that has seen fascist resurgence in Estonia and other places they hold rallies celebrating the SS Veterans of their land.
Thus Russia around the year 2000 was in a state of chaos. The standard of living kept dropping, poverty, crime chaos disease, starvation. The government was the plaything of corrupt Oligarchs. It was increasingly surrounded by NATO. It's allies were under attack. Actually no matter what things were about to change. The Oligarchs did not know this however. They were afraid that foreign policy mastermind Yvgeny Primakov would become president they threw their backing behind Vladimir Putin believing he would be the perfect puppet. Vladimir Putin had been a KGB agent stationed in Eastern Germany when the berlin wall fell. After the failed KGB coup (he wasn't involved) he resigned and became an aide to a St. Petersburg politician. He was hard working and reliable and he eventually began to work for the Yeltsin Government. He helped destroy some Yeltsin Rivals and Berezovsky decided that he should be the next President. The Oligarchs launched another public relations campaign glorifying Putin. When Chechnya attacked Dagestan possibly at Berezovsky's urging, who did not just have connections with the Chechen Mafia but with the separatist government and the terrorists there backed by the usual suspects. Putin who clearly understood that Chechnya was an attempt to begin dismembering Russia and who hated the fact that Yeltsin had granted them Autonomy after a failed war brutally cracked down. Thus from becoming a virtual unknown he became popular overnight. This was because the Chechens launched over the top terrorist attacks targeting Huge numbers of civilians at a time and were wildly unpopular. Many accusations blaming these attacks on Putin were generated by Berezovsky by the way who had far more connection to the Chechens.
Thus the Oligarchs thought they were installing an obedient puppet. They vastly underestimated the resentment the patriotic Putin felt about what had happened to Russia during the Yeltsin and the Gorbachev years. When some Oligarch would challenge him he would make clear on a number of Occasions that he regarded all of them as thieves. The age of impunity was over and oligarchs began to end up in jail. Even Berezovsky did not escape punishment. He made it clear to the rest that they would be able to maintain their fortunes only if they did not interfere in Russian politics.
He attempted to rebuild Russia's international prestige. He adopted the so called Primakov doctrine named after his created by his opponent in the Presidential race. Primakov docrine meant that Russia should seek Eurasian integration and Build strong alliances with China, india and Iran. India prefers to align itself with the west but created closer ties with Iran and China. He also centralized control by personally appointing the governors. While Putin's government is less democratic Russia is far less Chaotic then during the Yeltsin years. Also unlike Yeltsin who the west praised as a paragon of democracy he has yet to open fire on the parliament. Many of his powers come from the Yeltsin Constitution which was praised by the west at the time. He regained control of the Russian energy sector which like the US he regards as a strategic asset. Standards of living began to rise again although the damage has yet to be repaired. Thus Putin is extremely Popular in Russia and is supported by the majority of the Population despite the Insinuations of the western Media. Actually after the Yeltsin Years the Russian word for democracy became a slang term for shitty. A democratic restaurant or club meant a run down place that let in anybody. Meanwhile they began to refer to proper democracy as Shitocracy. Apparently the two words sounds similar in Russian. The attempted Color Revolution to prevent Putin from returning to the presidency in 2012 was a dismal failure. All those wonderful sounding concepts that they dreamed of before the fall of the Soviet Union had turned out to be dangerous illusions. Western style representative democracy is a joke far from rule of the People it really means rule of the oligarchs the few. The Russians found that out the hard way.
As for the west it is unclear if people will ever wake up to this fact. What happened in Russia is happening in the west only slower. Poverty is on the rise all over the world. Our stock exchange Oligarchs may have to be more subtle then Berezovsky in their thefts but they are destroying companies and looting countries all the same. Capitalism is Eating itself all in the name of a purely abstract form of wealth numbers on a computer screen. Meanwhile Putin is demonized for three main reasons. First the crackdown on Oligarchs. People actually have the nerve to turn the fact that these thieves who caused untold human suffering remember three million people died before their time(see godfather pages 105-109) , into a human rights case. Thus cracking down on traitorous billionaires who subvert the political sytem is considered undemocratic. Second Putin has banned foreign funding for NGO's ruining Washington's "double track policy." It's an innocuous name but what it literally boils down to is we'll negotiate with you when it serves our interests while secretly working to overthrow you. This is not an exaggeration but in Diplomatese it is called "working with Democratic Forces" these are just the sort of democratic forces that Victoria Nuland Bragged the US had given 5 billion to over the past 20 years. In other words democratic forces means NGO's created by the NED and often secretly infiltrated by the CIA that try to lay the groundwork for a color revolution. Third Putin is demonized for standing in the way of US plans for Global Hegemony. Putin opposed the Iraq War along with France thus the lack of Security Council Authorization and the "illegal" nature of the war harped on by liberals as if as long as the security council says it's OK it's fine to kill a million people in an aggressive war. When the US wanted to invade Iran in 2008 Russia threatened War. Then again in 2013 Russia threatened to defend Syria plus it provided a Face saving diplomatic solution. Two countries escaped untold destruction because of Putin's actions, this is the real reason why the US is starting Cold War 2.0.
Thus while Putin is no angel, at least he makes some effort to rule in the interests of the Russian people. That the US wants to Destroy Russia isn't just some theory but has been written about time and again by Zbiegniew Brzezinski and other top technocrats. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the US has been on an Imperial rampage. They want to create a huge war zone across the Eurasian Landmass they call it the arc of crisis. Read and read between the lines of Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard. Russia and China on the other hand would like to see a stable and peaceful Eurasia. Whatever the failings of the two countries it is the US and it's many client States that are trying to take over the world. It's official policy. To see Russia and China as the aggressors and to buy into the absurd Orwellian propaganda being spewed in the press is to turn truth on it's head. It was not Russia and China that have recently invaded countries all over the world it was the US. We should also given what happened in Russia's economy begin to Question the free market orthodoxy. It's time to set the historical record straight free market capitalism produces a few billionaires while impoverishing the population. Everyone says Communism was a failure but Capitalism proved an even greater failure. The US and it's NATO allies with their "Western" consensus are spreading Poverty and War all over the planet.
Sources
First I highly recommend Paul Klebnikov's "Godfather of the Kremlin" a biography of Berezovsky. A true believer in the free market he went to Russia to witness what he believed would be a brilliant success. Instead he ended up chronicling a disaster. It does a great Job of explaining the complex process of looting a nation. It also manages to expose the Byzantine world of Russian Politics. I also read Angus Roxburgh's "The Strongman Vladimir Putin and the struggle for Russia" I don't really recommend it the author is a TV reporter which explains his willful ignorance and naivety. It is interesting for some of the interviews and gossip it provides. The Russians make it clear they know what the US is up to but are dismissed by the author as paranoid. Nor do the American officials bother to disguise their Arrogance and sinister intentions. He condemns Putin but says not one word condemning Bush for torture, mass surveillance, and aggressive war. Typical. Then there is "Blackshirts & Reds Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism." By Michael Parenti. He discusses the differences between Fascism and Communism then provides a concise account of the fall of the USSR. I definitely recommend it. You can listen to his speech based on his book here http://www.greanvillepost.com/audio/AudioPageParenti/Michael%20Parenti%20-%20Reflections%20On%20The%20Overthrow%20Of%20Communism/
I also read/watched one of Adam Curtis' multimedia blogposts. Here http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_years_of_stagnation_and_th it's definitely original at least. It's about punk Rock, the collapse of Communism and Putin's avant garde former media adviser Vladislav Surkov. Basically I'm conflicted on Adam Curtis he makes interesting work but he can also be superficial and cowardly. I guess you have to walk a tightrope when you work at the BBC. But at least he often says something completely new and unearths events no one else is interested in. I also watched his documentary The Engineers Plot it's on Youtube and deals with the failure of central planning in the Soviet Union. You can watch it as a standalone episode. It's the first of a series Pandoras Box but if you haven't seen his later documentary series like "Century of the Self" , "Age of Nightmares" or "the trap" watch those instead first as they are brilliant. You should be able to find them all free online. If your looking for Independent courageous Documentaries go check out metanoia-films.org Scott Noble's movies are Amazing and he doesn't pull punches. He has great series like The Power Principle and Counter Intelligence, plus single movies like Human Resources or Rise Like Lions.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
"Democracy" in Ukraine
Ukraine's Orwellian "Democracy"
Has any word been so abused as "Democracy" it has been used as a justification for poverty war and injustice. That is because it was co-opted long ago by the Corporations, Intelligence Agencies, Lying politicians. It has lost all meaning Ukraine is only the latest example. Democracy means rule by the people. It's greek in Athens those qualified to vote a small proportion of the populace as women, slaves, and foreigners were all disqualified, actually did make decisions. Modern historians dwell on the undeniable hypocrisy of all those it excluded just like say America or Britain which only slowly allowed the majority of the population to vote. Instead one should point out that in Athens at least those allowed to vote were able to actually make the decisions in society. In Athens they decided whether to go to war or not. In a true democracy the rich walk around in fear read Ancient Philosopher/Historian Plutarch's life of Nicias for one example. Failure to properly contribute to society could lead to expulsion or Death. Any one individual with to much power could be voted into exile. This is the origin of the word Ostracism.
Contrast this with life in one of our sham modern democracies the rich and powerful have complete impunity. We don't even know their names in most cases. In America the endless series of wars are consistently unpopular but there is seemingly nothing the majority can do to change the countries course. The Rich loot everyone with impunity. We are given the choice between bad and worse. It's the same through out the so called first world democracies. No matter what the people want or think every country is becoming a neo-liberal police state. These are the lucky countries not targeted for complete destruction and failed state status like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Congo. Or living in Western Backed Dictatorships like Uganda or Rwanda praised by the state department as one party democracies. You have to Laugh. Democratic seems to mean little more then that the US State department approves of the subservience of a nation. Anything they don't like is Undemocratic especially any form of direct democracy. Democracy has thus become a word for Oligarchy (rule by the few) or Plutocracy (Rule by the rich).
This brings us to Ukraine. The people of Crimea voted in massive numbers to secede. The west shook it's head in horror. The people of Eastern and Southern Ukraine voted massively in favor of Autonomy from the Oligarchs and Nazi's in Kiev. Again this was condemned. Now the people of Ukraine will be given the chance to choose between 2 billionaires who took part in overthrowing of Ukraine's legitimate Government. 1st the Mad Gas Princess Yulia Tymoshenko who was caught on tape threatening to assassinate Vladimir Putin and Nuke Eastern Ukraine and Russia. The other Choice is the so called Chocolate billionaire Poroshenko long time Friends with Milheil Saakashvili the president of Georgia who nearly started World War 3 by Launching an unporovoked attack on Russian Peace Keepers in South Ossetia. They have both been looting the country for years Tymoshenko was in Jail for good reason. It's sort of like if Obama was overthrown in a coup by the republicans and the American's held an election a couple of months later between two republicans. At least the old system gave some balance between those oligarchs with ties to Russia representing eastern and southern Ukraine, and those who take orders from the IMF and CIA. It shouldn't be forgotten that this is the second Ukrainian color revolution so the both the Oligarchs have twice taken orders from the US and EU to overthrow the government. In a genuine democracy they would be shot as traitors. Unfortunately there are no genuine democracies. Thus one of them will be rewarded with the Presidency instead.
Of course the phony elections are the least of the problems with Ukraine's sham democracy. Not only are the people of Ukraine given no real choice in the elections. They are being Butchered in retaliation for having voting against the Neo-Colonization of Ukraine. Voting is an act of terrorism in the new Ukraine. At least that Dangerous sort of Voting that allows the people for once to say "NO!" NO to Fascism, No to IMF Structural Adjustments that will impoverish everyone, NO to becoming just another Pawn on the US-NATO grand chessboard. We should learn from their example it is long past time we had a chance to say NO to the future they have planned out for us. NO more race to the bottom and social disintegration. NO more spreading death and destruction all over the Earth. Obviously the referendum can be a dangerous tool in the hands of the people.
All over the south and East People voted NO. Now they are being murdered by their own government for it. The media brand them Pro-Russians, or worse still Militants. Meanwhile Fascist murderers are referred to as Activists. It's starting to sound a lot like Syria. Unfortunately their situation is worse. In Syria Assad has not fallen there is a Military to protect the people against the US Israel NATO GCC backed death squads. The people of Eastern and Southern Ukraine have no one to rely on but themselves. Their self defense forces are outmatched by the fascist forces. Cities are being shelled with artillery and attacked with mortars. Many Ukrainian Army units have refused to murder Civilians. The government has increasing come to rely on the recruitment of Neo-Nazi thugs into the So called National Guard. These Fascist butchers not only slaughter Civilians they have also been murdering Police and Military units that have refused to kill Civilians.
Shortly after Hitler's rise to power he staged what is known as the night of the long knives. The Ruling elite in Germany had brought him to power and now wanted proof he was not some rabble rouser. Like the Kiev government he had a band of thugs known as the Brown shirts instrumental in his rise to power. Like Right sector in Kiev today they went about Bullying anyone who dared to Criticize their insane views, and attacked anyone working for genuine social change. However unlike the Kiev Government these days he decided that he would demonstrate his Reliability by eliminating them after all he had a regular army at his command now. In a single night he launched a brutal crackdown. The Kiev government by contrast has launched a reverse night of the long knives. It has been Murdering it's own troops for refusing to commit war crimes. Instead it has come to Rely on the Fascist National Guard. If it happened in Syria it would be front page news but since the new Government is aligned to the US and NATO interests they have been given free reign. In Lugansk a column of troops was stopped by some protestors and they began to talk. Their innate Humanity triumphed and they decided not to wage war on their own people. Instead they decided to dessert and defend their people not attack them. In Ukraine's Orwellian democracy this is terrorism. As they left in a bus with some of the local people they were treacherously machine gunned to death.
Even more dramatic events took place outside of Donetsk. Video has emerged of Ukrainian troops being Murdered by a helicopter assault by their own Government. This time they were not even deserting. They had been assigned to man a checkpoint a couple of days before. Upon discovering that Ukraine's war on terror was nothing more then an attack on the local population they refused orders to attack a nearby town. The government decided to make an example of them. It used it's Fascist National guards unit to attack the Unit. Like the Odessa Massacre it was caught on Video. In one video Government helicopter gunships can be seen firing missiles at the checkpoint. Another shows National guard stationed outside the burning wreckage. So far the government has proven competent at only one thing staging memorable and well documented atrocities. Like Odessa the corporate media tried to pretend it was unclear what happened. In other words they tried to blame the local people for the whole thing. Yet the video evidence is clear in Ukraine it is a Crime not to be a bloodthirsty Fascist. It is a crime punishable by death. Welcome to Nulandistan. This is the new face of "Democracy" in the 20th Century.
Meanwhile the Kiev Governments war continues. Every day more people are killed for the crime of Saying NO! Children huddle in basements while their own government shells them with artillery. The people have had some victories. Early in the conflict they shot down 4 helicopters. Fascist National Guard Units have been ambushed. Still they are outgunned. Foreign mercenaries are being used to train and Coordinate Fascist National Guard Units. No doubt western special forces are secretly in the country. This is sort of situation is what they were created for Covert dirty War. Bloody counter insurgencies. Just a guess though unlike the mercenaries they haven't been caught yet to my knowledge. Wouldn't want to imitate the new york times by turning mere suspicion into indisputable fact. Either way ex special forces are employed in and often even run mercenary firms. Training right wing death squads is their stock and Trade. Expect more atrocities.
Not content with waging war on their own people, the Kiev regime is also waging a war on free press. The same week as the massacre three Journalists were arrested. Actually talk about Irony just as I went to check the spellings on their names I discovered that in an unrelated incident 2 journalists had just been killed. Such is the Nature of the escalating Terror in a US funded CounterInsurgency War. Everyday some new outrage until we loose track of all the horror and merely count the massive numbers dead. After a year or two the only question will be have hundreds of thousands died or was it millions. Who even Remembers Indonesia where Millions perished. Who Pays attention to the Congo where millions have perished and continue to perish. But more Irony still like the Universe telling me not to be so grim the two Russian Journalists still being held have just been released. Graham Phillips, Oleg Sidyakin, and Marat Saichenko were arrested on phony charges and held for days. Graham Phillips was first to be released. The two journalists from life news were released a couple days later. Unfortunately on May 24 the day of their release Italian Journalist Andrea Rochelli and his Russian interpreter Andrey Mironov were shot and killed by the Ukrainian Army in Slavyansk French photographer William Roguelon was wounded by a mortar in the same incident. In democratic Ukraine it is a crime not to kill. It is also now a crime to report on the killing. I salute all the journalists risking their lives in Ukraine to tell the truth. Go find Graham Phillips Blog. Check out his YouTube Channel for raw footage of what's going on in Ukraine.
Whatever the Outcome the Elections will be a Sham. Choosing between two Billionaires is no choice. Since the elections give no chance for the populace to vote on whether they think the new government is legitimate or not they do not Make the coup appointed regime any more legitimate. Real democracy is the right to say NO! In the west we have lost that right. In most countries opposition parties sold out long ago. We must start all over again with the task of creating a genuine opposition in our countries. Meanwhile we must stand together and support the people of Eastern and Southern Ukraine as they shout NO. Abandoned by the World they stand alone against the forces of war, Fascism and Greed. We too must shout NO in the Face of this Unfolding horror story and in the face of the disgusting lies from the Media and the Politicians. Fascism is not Democracy. Oligarchy is not Democracy. The people have allowed the rich few to steer the world towards disaster for far to long.
Sources
Tony Cartaluccis excellent account of the massacres of troops http://libya360.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/ukraine-descends-into-chaos-ahead-of-sham-elections/
This article by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya contains some great footage of Nazi National Guard Units shooting people for crimes like Voting or Protesting. http://www.globalresearch.ca/welcome-to-nulandistan-a-videographic-essay-of-what-the-us-and-eu-have-unleashed-on-ukraine/5381838
Mahdi Darius Nazmeroaya just released a documentary on Ukraine
http://www.globalresearch.ca/gtrv-full-length-documentarypropaganda-and-the-ukraine-crisis/5383677
Has any word been so abused as "Democracy" it has been used as a justification for poverty war and injustice. That is because it was co-opted long ago by the Corporations, Intelligence Agencies, Lying politicians. It has lost all meaning Ukraine is only the latest example. Democracy means rule by the people. It's greek in Athens those qualified to vote a small proportion of the populace as women, slaves, and foreigners were all disqualified, actually did make decisions. Modern historians dwell on the undeniable hypocrisy of all those it excluded just like say America or Britain which only slowly allowed the majority of the population to vote. Instead one should point out that in Athens at least those allowed to vote were able to actually make the decisions in society. In Athens they decided whether to go to war or not. In a true democracy the rich walk around in fear read Ancient Philosopher/Historian Plutarch's life of Nicias for one example. Failure to properly contribute to society could lead to expulsion or Death. Any one individual with to much power could be voted into exile. This is the origin of the word Ostracism.
Contrast this with life in one of our sham modern democracies the rich and powerful have complete impunity. We don't even know their names in most cases. In America the endless series of wars are consistently unpopular but there is seemingly nothing the majority can do to change the countries course. The Rich loot everyone with impunity. We are given the choice between bad and worse. It's the same through out the so called first world democracies. No matter what the people want or think every country is becoming a neo-liberal police state. These are the lucky countries not targeted for complete destruction and failed state status like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Congo. Or living in Western Backed Dictatorships like Uganda or Rwanda praised by the state department as one party democracies. You have to Laugh. Democratic seems to mean little more then that the US State department approves of the subservience of a nation. Anything they don't like is Undemocratic especially any form of direct democracy. Democracy has thus become a word for Oligarchy (rule by the few) or Plutocracy (Rule by the rich).
This brings us to Ukraine. The people of Crimea voted in massive numbers to secede. The west shook it's head in horror. The people of Eastern and Southern Ukraine voted massively in favor of Autonomy from the Oligarchs and Nazi's in Kiev. Again this was condemned. Now the people of Ukraine will be given the chance to choose between 2 billionaires who took part in overthrowing of Ukraine's legitimate Government. 1st the Mad Gas Princess Yulia Tymoshenko who was caught on tape threatening to assassinate Vladimir Putin and Nuke Eastern Ukraine and Russia. The other Choice is the so called Chocolate billionaire Poroshenko long time Friends with Milheil Saakashvili the president of Georgia who nearly started World War 3 by Launching an unporovoked attack on Russian Peace Keepers in South Ossetia. They have both been looting the country for years Tymoshenko was in Jail for good reason. It's sort of like if Obama was overthrown in a coup by the republicans and the American's held an election a couple of months later between two republicans. At least the old system gave some balance between those oligarchs with ties to Russia representing eastern and southern Ukraine, and those who take orders from the IMF and CIA. It shouldn't be forgotten that this is the second Ukrainian color revolution so the both the Oligarchs have twice taken orders from the US and EU to overthrow the government. In a genuine democracy they would be shot as traitors. Unfortunately there are no genuine democracies. Thus one of them will be rewarded with the Presidency instead.
Of course the phony elections are the least of the problems with Ukraine's sham democracy. Not only are the people of Ukraine given no real choice in the elections. They are being Butchered in retaliation for having voting against the Neo-Colonization of Ukraine. Voting is an act of terrorism in the new Ukraine. At least that Dangerous sort of Voting that allows the people for once to say "NO!" NO to Fascism, No to IMF Structural Adjustments that will impoverish everyone, NO to becoming just another Pawn on the US-NATO grand chessboard. We should learn from their example it is long past time we had a chance to say NO to the future they have planned out for us. NO more race to the bottom and social disintegration. NO more spreading death and destruction all over the Earth. Obviously the referendum can be a dangerous tool in the hands of the people.
All over the south and East People voted NO. Now they are being murdered by their own government for it. The media brand them Pro-Russians, or worse still Militants. Meanwhile Fascist murderers are referred to as Activists. It's starting to sound a lot like Syria. Unfortunately their situation is worse. In Syria Assad has not fallen there is a Military to protect the people against the US Israel NATO GCC backed death squads. The people of Eastern and Southern Ukraine have no one to rely on but themselves. Their self defense forces are outmatched by the fascist forces. Cities are being shelled with artillery and attacked with mortars. Many Ukrainian Army units have refused to murder Civilians. The government has increasing come to rely on the recruitment of Neo-Nazi thugs into the So called National Guard. These Fascist butchers not only slaughter Civilians they have also been murdering Police and Military units that have refused to kill Civilians.
Shortly after Hitler's rise to power he staged what is known as the night of the long knives. The Ruling elite in Germany had brought him to power and now wanted proof he was not some rabble rouser. Like the Kiev government he had a band of thugs known as the Brown shirts instrumental in his rise to power. Like Right sector in Kiev today they went about Bullying anyone who dared to Criticize their insane views, and attacked anyone working for genuine social change. However unlike the Kiev Government these days he decided that he would demonstrate his Reliability by eliminating them after all he had a regular army at his command now. In a single night he launched a brutal crackdown. The Kiev government by contrast has launched a reverse night of the long knives. It has been Murdering it's own troops for refusing to commit war crimes. Instead it has come to Rely on the Fascist National Guard. If it happened in Syria it would be front page news but since the new Government is aligned to the US and NATO interests they have been given free reign. In Lugansk a column of troops was stopped by some protestors and they began to talk. Their innate Humanity triumphed and they decided not to wage war on their own people. Instead they decided to dessert and defend their people not attack them. In Ukraine's Orwellian democracy this is terrorism. As they left in a bus with some of the local people they were treacherously machine gunned to death.
Even more dramatic events took place outside of Donetsk. Video has emerged of Ukrainian troops being Murdered by a helicopter assault by their own Government. This time they were not even deserting. They had been assigned to man a checkpoint a couple of days before. Upon discovering that Ukraine's war on terror was nothing more then an attack on the local population they refused orders to attack a nearby town. The government decided to make an example of them. It used it's Fascist National guards unit to attack the Unit. Like the Odessa Massacre it was caught on Video. In one video Government helicopter gunships can be seen firing missiles at the checkpoint. Another shows National guard stationed outside the burning wreckage. So far the government has proven competent at only one thing staging memorable and well documented atrocities. Like Odessa the corporate media tried to pretend it was unclear what happened. In other words they tried to blame the local people for the whole thing. Yet the video evidence is clear in Ukraine it is a Crime not to be a bloodthirsty Fascist. It is a crime punishable by death. Welcome to Nulandistan. This is the new face of "Democracy" in the 20th Century.
Meanwhile the Kiev Governments war continues. Every day more people are killed for the crime of Saying NO! Children huddle in basements while their own government shells them with artillery. The people have had some victories. Early in the conflict they shot down 4 helicopters. Fascist National Guard Units have been ambushed. Still they are outgunned. Foreign mercenaries are being used to train and Coordinate Fascist National Guard Units. No doubt western special forces are secretly in the country. This is sort of situation is what they were created for Covert dirty War. Bloody counter insurgencies. Just a guess though unlike the mercenaries they haven't been caught yet to my knowledge. Wouldn't want to imitate the new york times by turning mere suspicion into indisputable fact. Either way ex special forces are employed in and often even run mercenary firms. Training right wing death squads is their stock and Trade. Expect more atrocities.
Not content with waging war on their own people, the Kiev regime is also waging a war on free press. The same week as the massacre three Journalists were arrested. Actually talk about Irony just as I went to check the spellings on their names I discovered that in an unrelated incident 2 journalists had just been killed. Such is the Nature of the escalating Terror in a US funded CounterInsurgency War. Everyday some new outrage until we loose track of all the horror and merely count the massive numbers dead. After a year or two the only question will be have hundreds of thousands died or was it millions. Who even Remembers Indonesia where Millions perished. Who Pays attention to the Congo where millions have perished and continue to perish. But more Irony still like the Universe telling me not to be so grim the two Russian Journalists still being held have just been released. Graham Phillips, Oleg Sidyakin, and Marat Saichenko were arrested on phony charges and held for days. Graham Phillips was first to be released. The two journalists from life news were released a couple days later. Unfortunately on May 24 the day of their release Italian Journalist Andrea Rochelli and his Russian interpreter Andrey Mironov were shot and killed by the Ukrainian Army in Slavyansk French photographer William Roguelon was wounded by a mortar in the same incident. In democratic Ukraine it is a crime not to kill. It is also now a crime to report on the killing. I salute all the journalists risking their lives in Ukraine to tell the truth. Go find Graham Phillips Blog. Check out his YouTube Channel for raw footage of what's going on in Ukraine.
Whatever the Outcome the Elections will be a Sham. Choosing between two Billionaires is no choice. Since the elections give no chance for the populace to vote on whether they think the new government is legitimate or not they do not Make the coup appointed regime any more legitimate. Real democracy is the right to say NO! In the west we have lost that right. In most countries opposition parties sold out long ago. We must start all over again with the task of creating a genuine opposition in our countries. Meanwhile we must stand together and support the people of Eastern and Southern Ukraine as they shout NO. Abandoned by the World they stand alone against the forces of war, Fascism and Greed. We too must shout NO in the Face of this Unfolding horror story and in the face of the disgusting lies from the Media and the Politicians. Fascism is not Democracy. Oligarchy is not Democracy. The people have allowed the rich few to steer the world towards disaster for far to long.
Sources
Tony Cartaluccis excellent account of the massacres of troops http://libya360.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/ukraine-descends-into-chaos-ahead-of-sham-elections/
This article by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya contains some great footage of Nazi National Guard Units shooting people for crimes like Voting or Protesting. http://www.globalresearch.ca/welcome-to-nulandistan-a-videographic-essay-of-what-the-us-and-eu-have-unleashed-on-ukraine/5381838
Mahdi Darius Nazmeroaya just released a documentary on Ukraine
http://www.globalresearch.ca/gtrv-full-length-documentarypropaganda-and-the-ukraine-crisis/5383677
Friday, May 16, 2014
The Destruction of Iraq
How to Destroy a Nation: Iraq
The invasion and destruction of Iraq in 2003 enraged the world. No event since the Vietnam War probably inspired more anti-war opposition or alternative media or underground press as it was known in the Vietnam Era. I was among those steadily radicalized. The Orwellian idiocy of the Bush administration and the Media which labeled an invasion a liberation, created massive opposition. Little appreciated at the time was that the invasion was only the latest phase in a long term plan to destroy Iraq. It's no exaggeration to call it a plan either or rather plans, Iraq is only one piece on the chessboard of Southwest Asia (the Middle East) plans with Names such as the Yinon Plan, the Clean Break, made by such infamous groups as PNAC. Unfortunately studying the plans in depth would require an entire article in themselves. I highly recommend you search for Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya's work on the subject he has a genius for deconstructing attempts to stir up ethnic and religious rivalries. Here is one classic example
http://www.globalresearch.ca/plans-for-redrawing-the-middle-east-the-project-for-a-new-middle-east/3882
Basically these plan's call for redrawing the map of the middle East along sectarian and Ethnic lines. They originated in Israel. Divide and conquer was a maxim developed by the Romans to destabilize the people along their boarders much like the Americans, NATO and Israel today they sent out cash to stir up trouble. The European imperialists adopted similar strategies to maintain control of their overseas empires. Israel paranoid about it's small geographic size and frankly hungry for expansion became even more obsessed with this strategy. Most empires have more interests in stability but Israel and increasingly the US seek to sow Chaos and failed states all over the world. Ukraine is only the latest example. The plan in Southwest Asia is to break up Iraq, Iran, Syria, even allies like Turkey or Saudi Arabia into smaller warring states. Despite being Targets the Saudi's and Turkey are major partners of Israel the US and NATO in sowing hatred and chaos in the region and in fact in an Arc of crisis stretching from Africa throughout Eurasia and involving covert NATO wars on Russia and China. (See Christoph Germann's indispensable New Great Game Roundup site for weekly updates on these little known events in Central Asia.)
Destroying Iraq was thus part of a much greater plan. It had a central importance in this attempt by Israel, America, NATO and the GCC monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar to stir up Conflict between Sunni and Shia between Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Baluchs, Persians, Baluchis, Pashtuns etc. Iraq's fate was interwoven with that of Iran. An important start for the destruction of Iraq was 1979. The shah fled on January 16, 1979. The Iranian revolution came to power. Saddam Hussein also came to power in 1979 he had been an important Baath party official and cousin of Iraq's ruler Ahmed Hassan al Bakr. There was some opposition within the Baath party to his rise to power on August 8 1979 he crushed that opposition in a brutal and theatrical purge. The CIA and the US made him a close ally. The next year with American support he launched an invasion of Iran. The Israeli's doubtless rejoiced the utility of the Iran Iraq war in stirring up Shia and Sunni tension in the region was explicitly stated in Plan Yinon which came out in early 1982. Before we see the complete destruction of Iraq now would be the appropriate time to discuss the state of Iraq on the Eve of War. Although the Baath party was brutal and ruthless with any challenge to it's rule, It also ruled over an Iraq that was the most educated in the region, Health care was also the best in the region. Iraq was a secular country it's people were fond of drinking and they remain notorious chain smokers. Women were well represented in the professions and Iraq had a large and educated middle class. Thirty years later education has been decimated, health is in ruins, starvation violence and chaos reign.
The war Iran Iraq war played a vital role in this plan to destabilize Southwest Asia. It went on for almost a decade. A million people died. Tensions were stirred between Shia and Sunni in Iraq as some prominent clerics openly supported Iran. Brutal repression by the regime created lasting hatreds. The long war doubtless demoralized the Iraqi army which was to fold so quickly in 1991 and 2003. Iraq was able to win using chemical weapons supplied by American and European corporations. The CIA provided satellite intelligence on where and when to deploy chemical weapons. Meanwhile they had also begun to sell Israeli weapons to Iran in the hopes that american hostages might be freed. Israel had been supplying Iran all along part of their traditional strategy of allying with non arabs in the region. Iran had managed to alienate the Soviets and the US. Secretly of course the Iranian revolution and the Nicaraguan revolution also in 1979 probably served a vital role in then US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's great game scheming. Thus the US supplied one side of the conflict while it's supposed ally supplied the other. This served to weaken both states. There was a tremendous amount of death and destruction.
No sooner had Iraq won the war then the US began scheming to provoke another one this time with Kuwait. Kuwait had been created by the British solely to steal Oil and weaken Iraq strategically. The British and French literally redrew the Map of the Middle east during World War One. I'm reminded of the arrogance of the renaissance pope who divided Africa and the Americas up between Spain and Portugal (Portugal got Brazil and Africa Spain the rest of the Americas.) Like the Pope they didn't bother to consult or even inform the local inhabitants. Now the US pushed the Kuwaiti's to act in a provocative manner. They sabotaged Oil prices when Saddam needed the revenues to rebuild, they demanded payment for debts while refusing to pay their own debts. They also drilled into Iraqi territory to steal Oil. They refused any attempt at negotiation a standard US proxy game (Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine ) what Pepe Escobar calls "The Drop Dead School of Diplomacy". Meanwhile US Ambassador April Glaspie (who would go on to supervise dirty wars in Africa) basically told Saddam that the US wouldn't care if He invaded but in Diplomatese for the sake of plausible deniability. Saddam took the bait and did what every Iraqi leader had wanted to do since the 1958 revolution overthrew the british Puppet king Faisal. He invaded Kuwait, probably he planned to give most of it back except certain disputed areas, after he had wrung some concessions out of the Kuwaitis.
Instead of course he was vilified as the new Hitler. America's cold war rival The Soviet Union had now Fallen and Russia was receiving A first hand lesson in how to destroy a nation from the new Hyper-Power the US's economic advisers and intelligence agencies. President Bush wanted to demonstrate his "new world order" (a phrase popular among so called foreign policy experts like the CFR and Conspiracy theorists) Basically the complete destruction of Iraq would show the world what would happen to them if they got out of line, also allowing the Military Industrial Complex to demonstrate it's value in the post cold war world. Of course secretly it was also a war on behalf of the Israel Lobby. Saddam had the largest military in the region of course it's power was an illusion but that's never stopped what I like to call the "Hysterical school of politics" as practiced in Israel where years of Media brainwashing have convinced the Israeli public that they are liable to exterminated at any moment. For example the furor over Iran's nonexistent Nuclear weapons (Israel is One of the worlds top Nuclear Powers) or the infamous nonexistent Iraqi weapons of Mass Destruction. Whether or not Iraq truly posed a threat Israel wanted it destroyed. It wants all it's neighbors destroyed eventually.
Iraq was subjected to a 3 month attack by much of the world. New military strategies were played out where vital civilian Infrastructure was destroyed. Nafeez Ahmed has documented in his "Behind The War on Terror" how the Pentagon did studies on the effects of destroying Iraq's water Sanitation facilities discovered millions would die then deliberately destroyed the water sanitation facilities. All of the elements of Civilized life were attacked and in 3 months the war did more damage then the entire 9 year Iran Iraq War. Targeted were Hospitals, Civilians packed air raid Shelters, apartments, Food warehouses the Electricity Grid, and everything else. Meanwhile the media with it's talent for turning truth on it's head pretended that the US and it's huge alliance of countries used their precision weaponry, to avoid harming civilians. The smart bomb was the Hero of the Day.
After the war there were US Inspired uprising by the Shia in the South and the Kurds in the North. The US cynically abandoned the Shia uprising to it's fate they didn't want to tip the balance of power in Iran's direction. The kurds on the other hand they protected and Israel and America began to feed their dreams of a Kurdish homeland. The Kurds have the tragic history of constantly being used and abandoned by various powers in the region. Most recently America and Iran had abandoned them in the mid 70's after Iran had been using them as a proxy force against Iraq. Iraq agreed to the Shah's terms in a boarder dispute and the Kurds were brutally suppressed with thousands killed. This inspired Kissinger's famous understatement "Covert action should not be confused with Missionary work." Of course unfortunately I must observe that often Missionary work is Covert Action whether of the traditional religious sort or their NGO "humanitarian" descendants. In any case the nearly independent Kurdish region would be a valuable asset in attempting to split up Iraq and was Used as a base in attempts to Destabilize the Iraqi government. The Iraqi Kurds would become clients of the US and Israel. Despite being betrayed yet again in the mid 90's they remain valuable US allies. The Kurds can be used to destabilize Syria, Turkey, and Iran as well as Iraq. Of course that doesn't mean that all Kurds in the region are US allies it depends on the country and faction.
More important for the immediate future of Iraq were the brutal sanctions imposed. They aimed to prevent the repair of Iraq. Through sheer ingenuity the Iraqi's managed to get their electricity back up in only 3 months by Canibalizing old parts. Their water treatment system could not be brought back. Food could not be imported. Disease and starvation ran rampant over 2 million people died. The economy was destroyed and the educated began to flee the country. Economic hardship increases tensions in society, the IMF was just as vital in destabilizing Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or today Ukraine as the CIA and the NED. What was imposed on Iraq resembled a medieval siege not mere Austerity, Nafeez Ahmed includes an Amazing alphabetical list but it's 2 pages long so You'll forgive me for not reproducing it here just a few examples: books, pencils, baskets, spoons, telephones, toothbrushes, watches, dishwashers, hats, music cds, trash cans. Most importantly they banned chlorine needed to purify the water. Just imagine every item in your house and or work and you'll have a good idea of what was banned.
Under the influence of the sanctions Iraqi society rapidly changed. Before the war Iraqi children's major health problem was obesity now it was malnutrition. That and the effects of treating water tainted with Raw sewage. The sanctions continued up until the 2003 invasion and Occupation. By the time of the invasion a new Iraq had increasingly taken shape. From secular it had become far more religious. This could have unintended consequences this was when Moqtada Al Sadr's father Mohammed Sadiq al Sadr. was allowed to establish a mass movement by Saddam before being brutally executed the second of the Sadr Martyrs the first was his Father in Law Muhammed Baqr al-Sadr. Muqtada would play a major role in forcing the US to abandon it's plan's to permanently occupy Iraq. There is a tendency to demonize all islamists even in the alternative media. Not all islamists are head chopping Tafkiri pawns of the US Israel and the GCC. Hezbollah, Iran and the Sadrists have provided effective resistance to empire. Still the general trend was towards more sectarian tension. After the invasion although Muqtada would denounce it he would be unable to stop his followers from being involved in the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad.
Iraq was also poor desperate, with Crime on the rise. It was a hollow shell. This did not stop it being portrayed in the Media as a threat to the world once again Saddam Hussein was portrayed as a new Hitler about to blow up New York or Washington with an Atom Bomb. The media did not point out the absurdity and yet another war began. They called it a war even though the Iraqi army made secret deals not to fight. Pepe Escobar who bravely was in Iraq shortly after the invasion observed that if only the American's had agreed to leave within six months and to hold elections their might not have been the massive resistance that emerged. But America thought out of the chaos it could create an Iraq to it's liking or at least that's what they pretended. Personally I think the Goal was simply to Create a massive disaster in Southwest Asia that would destabilize Iran, Syria, Turkey in accord with the Yinon Plan and other such plans.
Amazingly despite pouring Billions into the country the economic situation got even worse then it was during the sanctions period. Actually not amazing the corporations and Iraq's new and typical puppet government simply stole all the money. Amazingly despite all the troops of the sole hyperpower the country careened into chaos. Actually not amazing America's Saudi Allies were funding the Sunni Resistance, doubtless with secret CIA, Mossad involvement. Meanwhile the US was training and funding the Shiite Death Squads of the Badr brigade. The US military was just another particularly viscous faction that shot any Iraqi it came across this is not an exaggeration they warned everyone to stay out of their path or die. They also destroyed whole cities like Fallujah. Like Vietnam Iraq became an Overt and Covert battlefield. The same Phoenix program tactics of death lists and Death squads. Combined with good old fashioned American firepower the death toll was over a million. Casualty numbers have always been politicized in the Ancient world the enemies casualties were exaggerated your own played down. Today enemy Casualties are always reduced allied proxies casualty numbers (like Syrian rebels) increased and labeled civilian casualties. Special forces and mercenary deaths are omitted. They also love to blame the people their proxies kill on the enemy. Thus any Casualty number is always unreliable. Still by my rough estimates at least 3 and half million Iraqis have died as a result of the wars and sanctions. Millions more became homeless refugees.
Three years after the end of the occupation the covert war continues. The US NATO Israel and the GCC are funding Sunni terrorists to destabilize Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. They also supply the Maliki government with weapons although he is to close to Iran for their liking. The Kurds continue to seek to Break away. The disintegration of Iraq continues and I wouldn't be surprised to see yet a third invasion some day. For now our crazy strategic goals have been achieved from a strong State Iraq has become weak, an Educated country has become ignorant, a secular country has become a hotbed of intolerance, an orderly albeit Tyrannical country has become totally Chaotic. a prosperous country has become poor, a healthy country has become sick. Here it should be remembered that every country that the US and NATO attack they leave behind a radioactive legacy from their depleted Uranium munitions literally waging war on the populations genes causing massive increases in deformity, disease and infant mortality. Imperialism is waging war on humanity itself. We must fight for a future in which their are no more destructions of entire nations like Iraq. Unfortunately all over the world from Venezuela, to Thailand, to Syria, Afghanistan, the Congo and Ukraine more nations have been targeted for complete social destruction.
Sources I read Patrick Cockburn's Iraq trilogy Out of the Ashes, The Occupation, and Muqtada al Sadr they have major mainstream Biases (For example throughout Out of the Ashes written in 1998 he gives the impression that Iraq really did still have weapons of mass destruction) still they paint a vivid picture of the Chaos that ensued. Nafeez Ahmed gives an excellent account of the Period between 1991 and 2003. He also correctly pointed out before the invasion that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Pepe Escobar's Iraq reports are both Beautiful and Terrifying available free on Asia Times website. He was there in 2003 then again during the surge. He also wrote a book on Iraq called red Zone Blues. Read every article of this modern Day Marco Polo. And of course read Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya for a deep Geopolitical and sociological view of things. I'm almost done reading all of his articles in the archives of Global Research they provide a real education on geopolitics. I apologize for oversimplifying his complex views.
The invasion and destruction of Iraq in 2003 enraged the world. No event since the Vietnam War probably inspired more anti-war opposition or alternative media or underground press as it was known in the Vietnam Era. I was among those steadily radicalized. The Orwellian idiocy of the Bush administration and the Media which labeled an invasion a liberation, created massive opposition. Little appreciated at the time was that the invasion was only the latest phase in a long term plan to destroy Iraq. It's no exaggeration to call it a plan either or rather plans, Iraq is only one piece on the chessboard of Southwest Asia (the Middle East) plans with Names such as the Yinon Plan, the Clean Break, made by such infamous groups as PNAC. Unfortunately studying the plans in depth would require an entire article in themselves. I highly recommend you search for Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya's work on the subject he has a genius for deconstructing attempts to stir up ethnic and religious rivalries. Here is one classic example
http://www.globalresearch.ca/plans-for-redrawing-the-middle-east-the-project-for-a-new-middle-east/3882
Basically these plan's call for redrawing the map of the middle East along sectarian and Ethnic lines. They originated in Israel. Divide and conquer was a maxim developed by the Romans to destabilize the people along their boarders much like the Americans, NATO and Israel today they sent out cash to stir up trouble. The European imperialists adopted similar strategies to maintain control of their overseas empires. Israel paranoid about it's small geographic size and frankly hungry for expansion became even more obsessed with this strategy. Most empires have more interests in stability but Israel and increasingly the US seek to sow Chaos and failed states all over the world. Ukraine is only the latest example. The plan in Southwest Asia is to break up Iraq, Iran, Syria, even allies like Turkey or Saudi Arabia into smaller warring states. Despite being Targets the Saudi's and Turkey are major partners of Israel the US and NATO in sowing hatred and chaos in the region and in fact in an Arc of crisis stretching from Africa throughout Eurasia and involving covert NATO wars on Russia and China. (See Christoph Germann's indispensable New Great Game Roundup site for weekly updates on these little known events in Central Asia.)
Destroying Iraq was thus part of a much greater plan. It had a central importance in this attempt by Israel, America, NATO and the GCC monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar to stir up Conflict between Sunni and Shia between Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Baluchs, Persians, Baluchis, Pashtuns etc. Iraq's fate was interwoven with that of Iran. An important start for the destruction of Iraq was 1979. The shah fled on January 16, 1979. The Iranian revolution came to power. Saddam Hussein also came to power in 1979 he had been an important Baath party official and cousin of Iraq's ruler Ahmed Hassan al Bakr. There was some opposition within the Baath party to his rise to power on August 8 1979 he crushed that opposition in a brutal and theatrical purge. The CIA and the US made him a close ally. The next year with American support he launched an invasion of Iran. The Israeli's doubtless rejoiced the utility of the Iran Iraq war in stirring up Shia and Sunni tension in the region was explicitly stated in Plan Yinon which came out in early 1982. Before we see the complete destruction of Iraq now would be the appropriate time to discuss the state of Iraq on the Eve of War. Although the Baath party was brutal and ruthless with any challenge to it's rule, It also ruled over an Iraq that was the most educated in the region, Health care was also the best in the region. Iraq was a secular country it's people were fond of drinking and they remain notorious chain smokers. Women were well represented in the professions and Iraq had a large and educated middle class. Thirty years later education has been decimated, health is in ruins, starvation violence and chaos reign.
The war Iran Iraq war played a vital role in this plan to destabilize Southwest Asia. It went on for almost a decade. A million people died. Tensions were stirred between Shia and Sunni in Iraq as some prominent clerics openly supported Iran. Brutal repression by the regime created lasting hatreds. The long war doubtless demoralized the Iraqi army which was to fold so quickly in 1991 and 2003. Iraq was able to win using chemical weapons supplied by American and European corporations. The CIA provided satellite intelligence on where and when to deploy chemical weapons. Meanwhile they had also begun to sell Israeli weapons to Iran in the hopes that american hostages might be freed. Israel had been supplying Iran all along part of their traditional strategy of allying with non arabs in the region. Iran had managed to alienate the Soviets and the US. Secretly of course the Iranian revolution and the Nicaraguan revolution also in 1979 probably served a vital role in then US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's great game scheming. Thus the US supplied one side of the conflict while it's supposed ally supplied the other. This served to weaken both states. There was a tremendous amount of death and destruction.
No sooner had Iraq won the war then the US began scheming to provoke another one this time with Kuwait. Kuwait had been created by the British solely to steal Oil and weaken Iraq strategically. The British and French literally redrew the Map of the Middle east during World War One. I'm reminded of the arrogance of the renaissance pope who divided Africa and the Americas up between Spain and Portugal (Portugal got Brazil and Africa Spain the rest of the Americas.) Like the Pope they didn't bother to consult or even inform the local inhabitants. Now the US pushed the Kuwaiti's to act in a provocative manner. They sabotaged Oil prices when Saddam needed the revenues to rebuild, they demanded payment for debts while refusing to pay their own debts. They also drilled into Iraqi territory to steal Oil. They refused any attempt at negotiation a standard US proxy game (Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine ) what Pepe Escobar calls "The Drop Dead School of Diplomacy". Meanwhile US Ambassador April Glaspie (who would go on to supervise dirty wars in Africa) basically told Saddam that the US wouldn't care if He invaded but in Diplomatese for the sake of plausible deniability. Saddam took the bait and did what every Iraqi leader had wanted to do since the 1958 revolution overthrew the british Puppet king Faisal. He invaded Kuwait, probably he planned to give most of it back except certain disputed areas, after he had wrung some concessions out of the Kuwaitis.
Instead of course he was vilified as the new Hitler. America's cold war rival The Soviet Union had now Fallen and Russia was receiving A first hand lesson in how to destroy a nation from the new Hyper-Power the US's economic advisers and intelligence agencies. President Bush wanted to demonstrate his "new world order" (a phrase popular among so called foreign policy experts like the CFR and Conspiracy theorists) Basically the complete destruction of Iraq would show the world what would happen to them if they got out of line, also allowing the Military Industrial Complex to demonstrate it's value in the post cold war world. Of course secretly it was also a war on behalf of the Israel Lobby. Saddam had the largest military in the region of course it's power was an illusion but that's never stopped what I like to call the "Hysterical school of politics" as practiced in Israel where years of Media brainwashing have convinced the Israeli public that they are liable to exterminated at any moment. For example the furor over Iran's nonexistent Nuclear weapons (Israel is One of the worlds top Nuclear Powers) or the infamous nonexistent Iraqi weapons of Mass Destruction. Whether or not Iraq truly posed a threat Israel wanted it destroyed. It wants all it's neighbors destroyed eventually.
Iraq was subjected to a 3 month attack by much of the world. New military strategies were played out where vital civilian Infrastructure was destroyed. Nafeez Ahmed has documented in his "Behind The War on Terror" how the Pentagon did studies on the effects of destroying Iraq's water Sanitation facilities discovered millions would die then deliberately destroyed the water sanitation facilities. All of the elements of Civilized life were attacked and in 3 months the war did more damage then the entire 9 year Iran Iraq War. Targeted were Hospitals, Civilians packed air raid Shelters, apartments, Food warehouses the Electricity Grid, and everything else. Meanwhile the media with it's talent for turning truth on it's head pretended that the US and it's huge alliance of countries used their precision weaponry, to avoid harming civilians. The smart bomb was the Hero of the Day.
After the war there were US Inspired uprising by the Shia in the South and the Kurds in the North. The US cynically abandoned the Shia uprising to it's fate they didn't want to tip the balance of power in Iran's direction. The kurds on the other hand they protected and Israel and America began to feed their dreams of a Kurdish homeland. The Kurds have the tragic history of constantly being used and abandoned by various powers in the region. Most recently America and Iran had abandoned them in the mid 70's after Iran had been using them as a proxy force against Iraq. Iraq agreed to the Shah's terms in a boarder dispute and the Kurds were brutally suppressed with thousands killed. This inspired Kissinger's famous understatement "Covert action should not be confused with Missionary work." Of course unfortunately I must observe that often Missionary work is Covert Action whether of the traditional religious sort or their NGO "humanitarian" descendants. In any case the nearly independent Kurdish region would be a valuable asset in attempting to split up Iraq and was Used as a base in attempts to Destabilize the Iraqi government. The Iraqi Kurds would become clients of the US and Israel. Despite being betrayed yet again in the mid 90's they remain valuable US allies. The Kurds can be used to destabilize Syria, Turkey, and Iran as well as Iraq. Of course that doesn't mean that all Kurds in the region are US allies it depends on the country and faction.
More important for the immediate future of Iraq were the brutal sanctions imposed. They aimed to prevent the repair of Iraq. Through sheer ingenuity the Iraqi's managed to get their electricity back up in only 3 months by Canibalizing old parts. Their water treatment system could not be brought back. Food could not be imported. Disease and starvation ran rampant over 2 million people died. The economy was destroyed and the educated began to flee the country. Economic hardship increases tensions in society, the IMF was just as vital in destabilizing Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or today Ukraine as the CIA and the NED. What was imposed on Iraq resembled a medieval siege not mere Austerity, Nafeez Ahmed includes an Amazing alphabetical list but it's 2 pages long so You'll forgive me for not reproducing it here just a few examples: books, pencils, baskets, spoons, telephones, toothbrushes, watches, dishwashers, hats, music cds, trash cans. Most importantly they banned chlorine needed to purify the water. Just imagine every item in your house and or work and you'll have a good idea of what was banned.
Under the influence of the sanctions Iraqi society rapidly changed. Before the war Iraqi children's major health problem was obesity now it was malnutrition. That and the effects of treating water tainted with Raw sewage. The sanctions continued up until the 2003 invasion and Occupation. By the time of the invasion a new Iraq had increasingly taken shape. From secular it had become far more religious. This could have unintended consequences this was when Moqtada Al Sadr's father Mohammed Sadiq al Sadr. was allowed to establish a mass movement by Saddam before being brutally executed the second of the Sadr Martyrs the first was his Father in Law Muhammed Baqr al-Sadr. Muqtada would play a major role in forcing the US to abandon it's plan's to permanently occupy Iraq. There is a tendency to demonize all islamists even in the alternative media. Not all islamists are head chopping Tafkiri pawns of the US Israel and the GCC. Hezbollah, Iran and the Sadrists have provided effective resistance to empire. Still the general trend was towards more sectarian tension. After the invasion although Muqtada would denounce it he would be unable to stop his followers from being involved in the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad.
Iraq was also poor desperate, with Crime on the rise. It was a hollow shell. This did not stop it being portrayed in the Media as a threat to the world once again Saddam Hussein was portrayed as a new Hitler about to blow up New York or Washington with an Atom Bomb. The media did not point out the absurdity and yet another war began. They called it a war even though the Iraqi army made secret deals not to fight. Pepe Escobar who bravely was in Iraq shortly after the invasion observed that if only the American's had agreed to leave within six months and to hold elections their might not have been the massive resistance that emerged. But America thought out of the chaos it could create an Iraq to it's liking or at least that's what they pretended. Personally I think the Goal was simply to Create a massive disaster in Southwest Asia that would destabilize Iran, Syria, Turkey in accord with the Yinon Plan and other such plans.
Amazingly despite pouring Billions into the country the economic situation got even worse then it was during the sanctions period. Actually not amazing the corporations and Iraq's new and typical puppet government simply stole all the money. Amazingly despite all the troops of the sole hyperpower the country careened into chaos. Actually not amazing America's Saudi Allies were funding the Sunni Resistance, doubtless with secret CIA, Mossad involvement. Meanwhile the US was training and funding the Shiite Death Squads of the Badr brigade. The US military was just another particularly viscous faction that shot any Iraqi it came across this is not an exaggeration they warned everyone to stay out of their path or die. They also destroyed whole cities like Fallujah. Like Vietnam Iraq became an Overt and Covert battlefield. The same Phoenix program tactics of death lists and Death squads. Combined with good old fashioned American firepower the death toll was over a million. Casualty numbers have always been politicized in the Ancient world the enemies casualties were exaggerated your own played down. Today enemy Casualties are always reduced allied proxies casualty numbers (like Syrian rebels) increased and labeled civilian casualties. Special forces and mercenary deaths are omitted. They also love to blame the people their proxies kill on the enemy. Thus any Casualty number is always unreliable. Still by my rough estimates at least 3 and half million Iraqis have died as a result of the wars and sanctions. Millions more became homeless refugees.
Three years after the end of the occupation the covert war continues. The US NATO Israel and the GCC are funding Sunni terrorists to destabilize Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. They also supply the Maliki government with weapons although he is to close to Iran for their liking. The Kurds continue to seek to Break away. The disintegration of Iraq continues and I wouldn't be surprised to see yet a third invasion some day. For now our crazy strategic goals have been achieved from a strong State Iraq has become weak, an Educated country has become ignorant, a secular country has become a hotbed of intolerance, an orderly albeit Tyrannical country has become totally Chaotic. a prosperous country has become poor, a healthy country has become sick. Here it should be remembered that every country that the US and NATO attack they leave behind a radioactive legacy from their depleted Uranium munitions literally waging war on the populations genes causing massive increases in deformity, disease and infant mortality. Imperialism is waging war on humanity itself. We must fight for a future in which their are no more destructions of entire nations like Iraq. Unfortunately all over the world from Venezuela, to Thailand, to Syria, Afghanistan, the Congo and Ukraine more nations have been targeted for complete social destruction.
Sources I read Patrick Cockburn's Iraq trilogy Out of the Ashes, The Occupation, and Muqtada al Sadr they have major mainstream Biases (For example throughout Out of the Ashes written in 1998 he gives the impression that Iraq really did still have weapons of mass destruction) still they paint a vivid picture of the Chaos that ensued. Nafeez Ahmed gives an excellent account of the Period between 1991 and 2003. He also correctly pointed out before the invasion that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Pepe Escobar's Iraq reports are both Beautiful and Terrifying available free on Asia Times website. He was there in 2003 then again during the surge. He also wrote a book on Iraq called red Zone Blues. Read every article of this modern Day Marco Polo. And of course read Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya for a deep Geopolitical and sociological view of things. I'm almost done reading all of his articles in the archives of Global Research they provide a real education on geopolitics. I apologize for oversimplifying his complex views.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Ukraine, Lies, and Death
Ukraine's Civil War From Comedy to Tragedy
American wars always begin as comedies with the cheap actors (If they had talent or charisma they would have gone to Hollywood not Washington) spouting absurd lies, logical impossibilities and turning Truth on it's head with a willfulness bordering on Madness. While declaring a desire for Peace they instead make war. The victim is portrayed as the aggressor, helpless countries are portrayed as threats. In the end one laughs or one would go Crazy. Thus I'll start with the embarrassing comedy of the New York Times and the State department passing off CIA black Propaganda as inviolable Truth. Shouldn't be a surprise the New York Times has been covering for the CIA since the start, many of it's reporters doubtless were the CIA. As for the state department well it's the CIA's biggest open secret that half the State Department are really CIA. Still aren't they they concerned for their credibility?
First concerned that increasing numbers of people were aware of the Fascist nature of the coup which in Orwellian fashion is painted as a democratic uprising. Clearly they miss the old days when their was no Internet no Press Tv, and especially no RT blasting Images around the world of Fascists throwing Molotov Cocktails at Police, Beating and kidnapping journalists and launching brutal Mob beatdowns of opposition Presidential Candidates. It should be remembered that the CIA has had a presence in Ukraine since the 40's and is responsible for keeping the Fascist movement alive there till the present day. However CIA director Brennan's visit upped their numbers, in addition to brutal counterinsurgency experts they apparently included, experts in media manipulation. They concocted a flier calling on Jews in Donetsk to register in a manner evoking the holocaust. First they had some masked Nazis masquerade as Donetsk self defense forces and hand out the fliers. Unfortunately before the media uproar could begin the flier was debunked. That didn't stop Kerry from going in front of the world and denouncing the phony Document. Then the New York Times ran with the thoroughly debunked story. After spending months pretending not to be able to see any evidence of Nazis in Ukraine despite the fact that they are in the Cabinet, they printed a story that had been thoroughly debunked. They were forced to retract the whole story.
Next the CIA in liaison with Ukrainian came up with some transparently phony intelligence claiming to show Proof that the demonstrations demanding referendums, were masterminded by Russian special Forces. The State department vouched for them and the New York Times ran with the story. Earlier they had produced a fantastical article about Putin's mysterious invisible shadow army which had supposedly invaded Eastern Ukraine. They Ignored the endless reports that after the Kiev Coup many in the armed forces who are poorly paid by Ukraine's Kleptocrats had been deserting. Instead in our age of Spy satellites, and total NSA electronic surveillance Putin supposedly managed to launch a special Forces invasion invisible to Western Intelligence. Now they had proof that Putin's invisible army existed. Except before printing the pictures they must have noticed something strange the people in the pictures only looked similar So they decided to downgrade the resolution of the photos in a word they made them blurry. In blurry pictures one guy with a beard looks like another someone with a mustache looks like someone else with a mustache. Within days they were forced to retract this story as well. Veteran journalist Robert Parry was exiled from the Mainstream press for reporting honestly about the Iran Contra scandal. He pointed out that the New York Times may be abandoning their absurd accusations about Putin's invisible army. Recently they printed interviews with self defense forces revealing they were not Russian Special Forces but Ukrainian Veterans. I doubt if they will change their policy of blaming Putin for the predictable results of Installing Nazis and Plutocrats into power in a violent coup. Such however is the Arrogance of empire they are always shocked that there is anyone courageous enough to resist them. It's the same from Vietnam to Iraq. In their shock and surprise that any one would dare to resist them they concoct all sorts of silly theories about what is going on. In Iraq they blamed Shadowy remnants of Saddam's Regime. The Russians were traditional scapegoats. Wherever people in the world rose up against Poverty, Racism or Injustice Moscow was always to blame. I guess some things never change.
The civil War began with comedy. For once soldiers allowed their humanity to overcome their training and refused to open fire on protestors. The government in their arrogance had sent them off to kill their fellow citizens on an empty stomach. The people of Slovyansk fed them and Instead of using their APC's to crush dissent as ordered the army let the people use them for Joy rides. Such moments are all too rare in History. It is all too common for Armies to wage war on their own populace. Hardly a day goes by for example when the American police don't murder someone. For one brief moment humanity prevailed. The initial counter terror campaign collapsed thousands of troops deserted. The regime in Kiev seemed on the brink of collapse. At the very least it was clear that it had no legitimacy in the eyes of many of it's military.
To buy time the brief appearance of diplomatic tactics were necessary. Technically it was not an agreement merely a joint statement the geneva accords. Apparently everyone signed hoping to interpret it differently. The Russians pretended it was a Peace agreement forcing both sides to refrain from conflict and eventually disarm. They also hoped to slyly make the point that they couldn't stop what was happening in Ukraine if they wanted to. The Kiev Junta pretended it was an agreement of total surrender for the Protestors. They cynically continued launching attacks despite the easter holidays. Not only did they not restrain their military they openly continued recruiting Right Sectors Nazi Paramilitaries into their forces. America pretended the agreement meant that Russia would use all of it's influence to force the protestors to stop Protesting their Fascist new government. Russia supposedly could convince all those workers that were about to be fired that it was all for the best. Supposedly they could convince them not to worry about being persecuted by Bloodthirsty Nazi thugs or Moderate politicians who talked about Nuking them. The people of Eastern Ukraine were not asked what they thought of course the people seldom are when it matters.
Obviously the people of Eastern Ukraine were not foolish enough to disarm the self defense groups that protected the protestors when they were about to come under attack from Fascist Paramilitaries and the Ukrainian Army. Low intensity war began within a few casualties. Then the first great War Crime in the Ukrainian civil war. Took place. Odessa, in world war II it was the site of brutal Massacres by the Ukrainian fascists. Over 30,000 died at the hands of people celebrated today by Right Sector and Svoboda. Now Odessa will live in infamy again at least until something even more terrible happens. The CIA's dirty hands were all over this I suspect. It's a part of psychological operations it's called exemplary terror. Doubtless it's as old as history the Egyptians and the Assyrians engaged in it. It was standard Policy in Greece and Rome. You publicly massacre a large group of people to send the simple message this is what will happen if you resist. It's been part of American Counterinsurgency doctrine since the spanish American war in the Philippines. In Iraq to give one recent example they destroyed the most of the city of Fallujah after it successfully forced America to withdraw it's forces. Western public opinion wouldn't tolerate a whole Ukrainian city being punished that way yet.
Instead we have this smaller scale Odessa Massacre. The details that have emerged regarding provocateurs cooperating with Police plus the actions of the police on the day show the whole thing was carefully coordinated. Protestors were attacked and forced into a Union building. Initially it seemed that they then died after the fascists lit the building on fire and prevented them from leaving. However new photographic evidence shows that many were brutally slaughtered inside and that the fires were lit to cover up the evidence. One particularly terrible image shows a strangled pregnant woman. Other photos show that people were shot and their bodies doused with gasoline. See these gruesome photos if you want here you'll probably regret it though.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-neo-nazi-thugs-supported-by-kiev-regime-killed-odessa-inhabitants-photographic-evidence/5380504
The only response the Mainstream Media and World leaders have is to pretend that what happened was unclear. The Wall Street Journal even claimed that the protestors lit themselves on fire by accident. Unfortunately for them the entire event was caught on Video and is readily available online. We have a responsibility to never let the world forget this first great crime of the Ukrainian Civil. Remember Odessa. Fascist mobs cheered as their fellow Ukrainians were burned suffocated and shot.
New crimes by Ukraine's Fascist Junta continue. Independent journalist Graham Philips whose work you should definitely follow has been targeted with a 10,000 dollar bounty for his kidnapping and execution. He is charged with being a Russian Spy. Reports in Fars new Agency claim that Saudi Arabia is sending Jihadi's from Syria to Kiev. As if Nazi thugs weren't brutal enough. Kiev was caught preparing to create a false flag attack on their border with forces masquerading as Russian troops. Over 30 people have been killed in Slovyansk. The Ukrainian military is spraying peoples neighborhoods with bullets from helicopter gunships. Graham Philips tweeted photos showing the streets literally red with blood, houses and shops covered with bullet holes.
From it's absurd beginning with first the failed propaganda offensive in the press, and the collapse of it's first "anti-terror" campaign things are now becoming deadly serious. The Nazi's have literally lit the fires of civil war. The tragedy has only just begun.
American wars always begin as comedies with the cheap actors (If they had talent or charisma they would have gone to Hollywood not Washington) spouting absurd lies, logical impossibilities and turning Truth on it's head with a willfulness bordering on Madness. While declaring a desire for Peace they instead make war. The victim is portrayed as the aggressor, helpless countries are portrayed as threats. In the end one laughs or one would go Crazy. Thus I'll start with the embarrassing comedy of the New York Times and the State department passing off CIA black Propaganda as inviolable Truth. Shouldn't be a surprise the New York Times has been covering for the CIA since the start, many of it's reporters doubtless were the CIA. As for the state department well it's the CIA's biggest open secret that half the State Department are really CIA. Still aren't they they concerned for their credibility?
First concerned that increasing numbers of people were aware of the Fascist nature of the coup which in Orwellian fashion is painted as a democratic uprising. Clearly they miss the old days when their was no Internet no Press Tv, and especially no RT blasting Images around the world of Fascists throwing Molotov Cocktails at Police, Beating and kidnapping journalists and launching brutal Mob beatdowns of opposition Presidential Candidates. It should be remembered that the CIA has had a presence in Ukraine since the 40's and is responsible for keeping the Fascist movement alive there till the present day. However CIA director Brennan's visit upped their numbers, in addition to brutal counterinsurgency experts they apparently included, experts in media manipulation. They concocted a flier calling on Jews in Donetsk to register in a manner evoking the holocaust. First they had some masked Nazis masquerade as Donetsk self defense forces and hand out the fliers. Unfortunately before the media uproar could begin the flier was debunked. That didn't stop Kerry from going in front of the world and denouncing the phony Document. Then the New York Times ran with the thoroughly debunked story. After spending months pretending not to be able to see any evidence of Nazis in Ukraine despite the fact that they are in the Cabinet, they printed a story that had been thoroughly debunked. They were forced to retract the whole story.
Next the CIA in liaison with Ukrainian came up with some transparently phony intelligence claiming to show Proof that the demonstrations demanding referendums, were masterminded by Russian special Forces. The State department vouched for them and the New York Times ran with the story. Earlier they had produced a fantastical article about Putin's mysterious invisible shadow army which had supposedly invaded Eastern Ukraine. They Ignored the endless reports that after the Kiev Coup many in the armed forces who are poorly paid by Ukraine's Kleptocrats had been deserting. Instead in our age of Spy satellites, and total NSA electronic surveillance Putin supposedly managed to launch a special Forces invasion invisible to Western Intelligence. Now they had proof that Putin's invisible army existed. Except before printing the pictures they must have noticed something strange the people in the pictures only looked similar So they decided to downgrade the resolution of the photos in a word they made them blurry. In blurry pictures one guy with a beard looks like another someone with a mustache looks like someone else with a mustache. Within days they were forced to retract this story as well. Veteran journalist Robert Parry was exiled from the Mainstream press for reporting honestly about the Iran Contra scandal. He pointed out that the New York Times may be abandoning their absurd accusations about Putin's invisible army. Recently they printed interviews with self defense forces revealing they were not Russian Special Forces but Ukrainian Veterans. I doubt if they will change their policy of blaming Putin for the predictable results of Installing Nazis and Plutocrats into power in a violent coup. Such however is the Arrogance of empire they are always shocked that there is anyone courageous enough to resist them. It's the same from Vietnam to Iraq. In their shock and surprise that any one would dare to resist them they concoct all sorts of silly theories about what is going on. In Iraq they blamed Shadowy remnants of Saddam's Regime. The Russians were traditional scapegoats. Wherever people in the world rose up against Poverty, Racism or Injustice Moscow was always to blame. I guess some things never change.
The civil War began with comedy. For once soldiers allowed their humanity to overcome their training and refused to open fire on protestors. The government in their arrogance had sent them off to kill their fellow citizens on an empty stomach. The people of Slovyansk fed them and Instead of using their APC's to crush dissent as ordered the army let the people use them for Joy rides. Such moments are all too rare in History. It is all too common for Armies to wage war on their own populace. Hardly a day goes by for example when the American police don't murder someone. For one brief moment humanity prevailed. The initial counter terror campaign collapsed thousands of troops deserted. The regime in Kiev seemed on the brink of collapse. At the very least it was clear that it had no legitimacy in the eyes of many of it's military.
To buy time the brief appearance of diplomatic tactics were necessary. Technically it was not an agreement merely a joint statement the geneva accords. Apparently everyone signed hoping to interpret it differently. The Russians pretended it was a Peace agreement forcing both sides to refrain from conflict and eventually disarm. They also hoped to slyly make the point that they couldn't stop what was happening in Ukraine if they wanted to. The Kiev Junta pretended it was an agreement of total surrender for the Protestors. They cynically continued launching attacks despite the easter holidays. Not only did they not restrain their military they openly continued recruiting Right Sectors Nazi Paramilitaries into their forces. America pretended the agreement meant that Russia would use all of it's influence to force the protestors to stop Protesting their Fascist new government. Russia supposedly could convince all those workers that were about to be fired that it was all for the best. Supposedly they could convince them not to worry about being persecuted by Bloodthirsty Nazi thugs or Moderate politicians who talked about Nuking them. The people of Eastern Ukraine were not asked what they thought of course the people seldom are when it matters.
Obviously the people of Eastern Ukraine were not foolish enough to disarm the self defense groups that protected the protestors when they were about to come under attack from Fascist Paramilitaries and the Ukrainian Army. Low intensity war began within a few casualties. Then the first great War Crime in the Ukrainian civil war. Took place. Odessa, in world war II it was the site of brutal Massacres by the Ukrainian fascists. Over 30,000 died at the hands of people celebrated today by Right Sector and Svoboda. Now Odessa will live in infamy again at least until something even more terrible happens. The CIA's dirty hands were all over this I suspect. It's a part of psychological operations it's called exemplary terror. Doubtless it's as old as history the Egyptians and the Assyrians engaged in it. It was standard Policy in Greece and Rome. You publicly massacre a large group of people to send the simple message this is what will happen if you resist. It's been part of American Counterinsurgency doctrine since the spanish American war in the Philippines. In Iraq to give one recent example they destroyed the most of the city of Fallujah after it successfully forced America to withdraw it's forces. Western public opinion wouldn't tolerate a whole Ukrainian city being punished that way yet.
Instead we have this smaller scale Odessa Massacre. The details that have emerged regarding provocateurs cooperating with Police plus the actions of the police on the day show the whole thing was carefully coordinated. Protestors were attacked and forced into a Union building. Initially it seemed that they then died after the fascists lit the building on fire and prevented them from leaving. However new photographic evidence shows that many were brutally slaughtered inside and that the fires were lit to cover up the evidence. One particularly terrible image shows a strangled pregnant woman. Other photos show that people were shot and their bodies doused with gasoline. See these gruesome photos if you want here you'll probably regret it though.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-neo-nazi-thugs-supported-by-kiev-regime-killed-odessa-inhabitants-photographic-evidence/5380504
The only response the Mainstream Media and World leaders have is to pretend that what happened was unclear. The Wall Street Journal even claimed that the protestors lit themselves on fire by accident. Unfortunately for them the entire event was caught on Video and is readily available online. We have a responsibility to never let the world forget this first great crime of the Ukrainian Civil. Remember Odessa. Fascist mobs cheered as their fellow Ukrainians were burned suffocated and shot.
New crimes by Ukraine's Fascist Junta continue. Independent journalist Graham Philips whose work you should definitely follow has been targeted with a 10,000 dollar bounty for his kidnapping and execution. He is charged with being a Russian Spy. Reports in Fars new Agency claim that Saudi Arabia is sending Jihadi's from Syria to Kiev. As if Nazi thugs weren't brutal enough. Kiev was caught preparing to create a false flag attack on their border with forces masquerading as Russian troops. Over 30 people have been killed in Slovyansk. The Ukrainian military is spraying peoples neighborhoods with bullets from helicopter gunships. Graham Philips tweeted photos showing the streets literally red with blood, houses and shops covered with bullet holes.
From it's absurd beginning with first the failed propaganda offensive in the press, and the collapse of it's first "anti-terror" campaign things are now becoming deadly serious. The Nazi's have literally lit the fires of civil war. The tragedy has only just begun.
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