NC | The invasion of the capital has also, however briefly, united almost
all of the governments of Latin America against right-wing
authoritarianism. Just about every head of state in the region, with the
notable exception, I believe, of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and
Guatemala’s Alejandro Giammattei, has expressed support for Lula’s
government and condemnation of the events of Sunday, Jan 8. They include
the heads of state of Uruguay, Ecuador, Costa Rica and the Dominican
Republic. Again, this would have been unthinkable just a few days ago.
The reason why this is important is that one of the key foreign
policy goals of Lula’s new government is to open a new chapter of
regional cooperation and integration in Latin America — something that
has been tried many times before and largely failed.
One of Lula’s first actions since taking office was to confirm the
return of Brazil to CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States), an intergovernmental mechanism for dialogue and political
agreements. It was set up in Caracas in 2011 with the implicit goal of
deepening Latin American integration and reducing the influence of the
United States on the politics and economics of Latin America. Lula will
officially ratify his decision to rejoin at CELAC’s seventh summit, to
be held in Buenos Aires on Jan 24.
As readers may recall, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador
(aka AMLO) proposed using CELAC as a vehicle to create in Latin America
something similar to the European Economic Community, the six-member
economic association formed in 1957 that would eventually evolve into
today’s 27-member European Union. But he also emphasised “the need to
respect national sovereignty and adhere to non-interventionist and
pro-development policies” as well as ensure that any resulting structure
is “in accordance with our history, our reality, and our identities.”
In his speech at the sixth CELAC summit, held in September 2021, AMLO
reiterated his hopes that CELAC would eventually supplant the widely
reviled Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) as the
main institution for intra-regional relations. He also invited Mexico’s
North American trade partners, the US and Canada, to join. Both are
already observer states, as too is China.
However, as I noted
at the time, it’s virtually impossible to even imagine senior
representatives of the US and Canadian governments sitting around a
table with leaders of countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua,
let alone debating regional policy with them. Lest we forget, just last
summer the Biden Administration scored a major diplomatic own goal by
refusing to invite the same three countries to the 9th Summit of the
Americas, in Los Angeles, which resulted in a number of other heads of
state refusing to attend.
Now, the Biden administration will have to contend with the
diplomatic blowback from the arrival of Bolsonaro and his lackey Torres
in Florida just days before Sunday’s insurrection. A number of members
of the progressive caucus, including AOC, have already called for Bolsonaro not be allowed refuge on US soil.
This places the Biden administration in a bit of a bind, since the US
has always served as a refuge for US-aligned heads of state and coup
plotters in Latin America. Plus, lest we forget, the US Justice
Department had an important hand
in the now-disgraced Operation Car Wash in Brazil, which led to the
downfall of Dilma Rousseff’s government, the imprisonment of Lula just
as he was preparing to run for office again, and the eventual election
of Bolsonaro.
washingtontimes | The world’s attention may be focused on the fighting in Ukraine
and the posturing over Taiwan, but there’s plenty to worry about closer
to home, the commander of U.S. military forces in Latin America said
Thursday.
The U.S. is also willing to replace Russian military firepower now used by armies in Latin America so it can be shipped to Ukraine to help Kyiv fight off Russian invaders, Army Gen. Laura Richardson, the head of U.S. Southern Command, told a Washington think tank.
“We have a lot at stake. This region matters,” Gen. Richardson said. “It has a lot to do with national security. We need to step up our game.”
While leftist regimes Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are considered firmly in Moscow’s camp, Gen. Richardson
said Washington is working with other countries in South America that
still use military hardware that originated in Russia, which she called her “No. 2 adversary in the region.”
“A total of nine [countries] have Russian
equipment in them and we are working to replace that Russian equipment
with United States equipment,” Gen. Richardson said in the online conversation hosted by the Atlantic Council.
Gen. Richardson
considers Russia and China, both of whom have reached out to Central
and South American states in recent years, to be “malign state actors”
in the region.
“This is very concerning to me — to see the
tentacles of the [People’s Republic of China] in the countries of the
Western Hemisphere,” she said. “We are very much in a strategic competition in the Western Hemisphere.”
China’s ever-expanding footprint in South
America has long worried U.S. strategists. Beijing’s trade footprint in
the region has grown from $18 billion in 2002 to $450 billion now. The
trade is predicted to be about $750 billion in the near future, she said.
Beijing has at least 30 port facilities
scattered throughout the region, including five located on the Pacific
and Atlantic sides of the Panama Canal. It operates a satellite tracking
station in Argentina that reports to the People’s Liberation Army and
has no oversight from local officials in Buenos Aires.
“I worry about these dual-use, state-owned enterprises that pop up” from China, Gen. Richardson said. “I worry about the dual-use capability, being able to flip them around and use them for the military.”
At least seven Chinese-owned banks are also
operating in Latin America, making heavy infrastructure investments that
outpace the U.S. presence. Much of the region is struggling
economically and Beijing is willing to write checks now. Even with
strings attached, it is a tempting deal that many are unable to pass up.
“The people are getting impatient. They need help now,” Gen. Richardson said. “We are just not investing in the region as we could or should be.”
Even as it struggles in Ukraine,
Moscow continues to cultivate relationships with countries like Cuba,
Venezuela and Nicaragua. High-level Russian delegations visited all
three countries just before the invasion of Ukraine 11 months ago, Gen. Richardson said.
“They will keep up those relationships for as long as they can to keep their foothold in the region,” she
said. “The more they can sow that insecurity [and] that instability,
they can keep countries looking away from the United States and away
from democracy.”
She said her
third major concern in Latin America is the drug cartels and other
transnational criminal organizations. The groups are responsible for
about $310 billion worth of criminal activity in the region every year,
including funds derived from narcotics trafficking and human smuggling.
“They sow insecurity and instability in the
region, which allows the malign state actors such as [China] and Russia
to move in and to flourish,” Gen. Richardson said.
townhall |Left-wing Mexican
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador recently praised a visiting
President Joe Biden: "Just imagine: There are 40 million Mexicans in the
United States - 40 million who were born here in Mexico, (or) who are
the children of people who were born in Mexico!"
Why wouldn't Obrador be delighted? Since Biden took office in January
2021, America has allowed some 5-6 million illegal entries across its
southern border.
Obrador further congratulated the malleable Biden
whom he sees as a kindred but complacent left-wing spirit: "You are the
first president of the United States in a very long time that has not
built even one meter of wall."
Translated that means Mexico is
delighted the United States now cares little about the security of its
border, the disappearance of which is wonderful news for Mexico.
Note
that Mexico itself facilitates illegal transits across its southern
border - as long as such Central American and other global migrants keep
heading northward into the United States.
But when or if they
pause, try to stay in Mexico, commit crimes, or expect Mexican social
services, then almost immediately Mexico City sends thousands of troops
to close its border with Guatemala, deports the illegal crossers, and
revives talk of building a border wall of its own.
Biden has demolished America's southern border. His illegal nullification of U.S. immigration law is music to Obrador's ears.
But
it is a nightmare to Americans who poll overwhelming disapproval of the
subversion of their border security. They are exhausted by the influx
of death-dealing drugs. And they are furious over the hundreds of
billions of dollars diverted from their strapped social services to
attend to the needs of foreign nationals who have broken their laws.
A year ago plans were put in motion to draw Russia into a fight in the
Ukraine accompanied by economic ’shock and awe’
on the Russian economy that would cause Putin’s government to collapse
. This would help initiate a process that would lead to the break up of
the Russian Federation. These plans would have taken years to be
drawn up. Doubtless western officials and NATO
officers were checking out real estate prices in Moscow in
preparation for for their next assignments. So the Russians saw this as
nothing less than an existential fight for their very existence. You can
imagine how people in Washington would feel if there was a plan to
break up the United States into a couple dozen smaller countries.
Well it didn’t work out that way and the Russian economy is doing
just fine. So here is the problem. The Ukraine is
about to get crunched and no matter what hodgepodge of old military gear we send to them, it won’t make a difference. This being the
case, the collective west has now realized that the shoe is on the other
foot. They now think that it is an existential fight for organizations
like NATO. This being a NATO-Russia war, NATO finds that no matter what
they do they are on the verge of defeat. They keep on escalating but it
is the Russians that have escalatory dominance. Even if NATO decides to
openly send troops to the Ukraine, it won’t do much good as they have run
their arms and ammunition stockpiles down. Germany has two days worth of ammo for example
while France has only four.
Sure there are threats to use nukes but where? Russia won’t be the
first and so that leaves the US. They start bombing the Russian
Federation and the same day the US is just glass. And this includes the
Crimea and the Donbass along with the other new Oblasts. And are they
really going to drop one in the Ukraine after all their speeches about
trying to protect that country? Would they really just nuke the Ukraine?
Maybe they could drop one in the Mediterranean as a warning – but have
the entire planet get on their case. The trouble is nukes are the one
weapon that you can’t use, no matter how many you have.
We are now arriving at the moment when the West discovers that the fraud is over, the shake-down has failed, and everyone can see it.
What then?
Our entire economy needs a make-over. That’s the best-case scenario; a strategy that will restore the West as a constructive, useful entity in world affairs. That’s a viable future.
The likelier scenario is that the predation currently aimed at Russia and China will get re-directed toward the global south (they’re more vulnerable) and, more intensively, on North and Central America.
The economy won’t get fixed, extraction and despoliation will continue at roughly the current pace, and we’ll continue at-speed into the environmental and economic collapse
WATCH: 🇺🇸 SOUTHCOM Commander Laura Richardson describes how Washington is actively negotiating the sale of lithium in the Lithium Triangle through its U.S. embassies. pic.twitter.com/uQTvpSRHAH
Isaac Asimov was in no way a sophisticated stylist, but he was an intelligent man and wrote a short story, ‘The Winnowing,’ that
captures exactly the logic that would be wheeled into play —
…”Do you fail to see that the Earth is a
lifeboat? If the food store is divided equally among all, then all will
die. If some are cast out of the lifeboat, the remainder will survive.
The question is not whether some will die, for some
must die; the question is whether some will live.”
“Are you advocating triage-the sacrifice of some for the rest-officially?”
“We can’t. The people in the lifeboat are armed.
Several regions threaten openly to use nuclear weapons if more food is
not forthcoming.”
Rodman said sardonically, “You mean the answer to ‘you die that I may live’ is ‘If I die, you die.’…An impasse.”
“Not quite,” said Affare. “There are places on
Earth where the people cannot be saved. They have overweighted their
land hopelessly with hordes of starving humanity. Suppose they are sent
food, and suppose the food kills them so that
the land requires no further shipments.”
Rodman felt the first twinge of realization. “Kills them how?” he asked.
“The average structural properties of the
cellular membranes of a particular population can be worked out. An LP,
particularly designed to take advantage of those properties, could be
incorporated into the food supply, which would then
be fatal,” said Affare.
“Unthinkable,” said Rodman, astounded.
“Think again. There would be no pain. The
membranes would slowly close off and the affected person would fall
asleep and not wake up-an infinitely better death than that of
starvation which is otherwise inevitable-or nuclear annihilation.
Nor would it be for everyone, for any population varies in its
membranal properties. At worst, seventy per cent will die. The winnowing
out will be done precisely where overpopulation and hopelessness are
worst and enough will be left to preserve each nation,
each ethnic group, each culture.”
“To deliberately kill billions-”
“We would not be killing. We would merely supply
the opportunity for people to die. Which particular individuals would
die would depend on the particular biochemistry of those individuals. It
would be the finger of God.”
“And when the world discovers what has been done?”
“That will be after our time,” said Affare, “and
by then, a flourishing world with limited population will thank us for
our heroic action in choosing the death of some to avoid the death of
all.”
globalnews | Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says
she recognizes her privilege after being criticized for drawing
parallels between her decision to cut her family’s Disney+ subscription
to save money and the efforts of Canadians to make ends meet amid
soaring costs of living.
“I want to start by recognizing that I am a very privileged person,” said Freeland when questioned by reporters in Milton, Ont., on Monday.
“Like
other elected federal leaders, I am paid a very significant salary … I
really recognized that it is not people like me — people who have my
really good fortune — who are struggling the most in Canada today.”
Freeland faced criticism for being “out of touch” after telling Global News’ The West Blockon Sunday that her family cut their Disney+ subscription to save money.
Freeland said the government is working on finding savings in the
federal budget and there is “$6 billion more to go,” adding that she
thinks “every mother in Canada” is using the same approach to cut costs.
“And I want to say to all of those mothers, I believe that I need to
take exactly the same approach with the federal government’s finances
because that’s the money of Canadians,” said Freeland in the interview.
Freeland
said on Monday that people who are struggling to keep up with the high
cost of living are low-income Canadians who “have to make difficult
choices” about what food to buy and how to cover their rent.
On Nov. 3, the federal government released its fall fiscal update, with plans such as advance payment on worker’s benefits and elimination of student loan interest.
Freeland said the recognition that low-income Canadians are
struggling in this economy shaped the federal government’s fall economic
statement, contributing to the decision to “focus government resources
on helping the most vulnerable,” which also drove the decision to double
the GST tax credit.
The government also recognizes young people
are also struggling, which is why they decided to eliminate permanently
the federal interest on Canada students and Canada apprentice loans,
said Freeland.
ncregister | Canadian food bank clients and disabled retirees facing financial
insecurity are now considering doctor-assisted suicide to avoid living
in poverty, several sources have reported.
“Based
on the definitions in the Canadian law, nearly anyone with a chronic
medical condition, such as people with disabilities, can be approved for
euthanasia,” Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia
Prevention Coalition, told CNA Dec. 12.
“Therefore
people with disabilities are requesting euthanasia based on poverty,
homelessness, or an inability to receive needed medical treatment, but
they are approved for euthanasia based on their disability,” he added.
Meghan
Nicholls, CEO of the Mississauga Food Bank in Mississauga, an Ontario
city west of Toronto, said demand has increased by 60% since the start
of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her food bank network now serves 30,000 people
per year, she reported in a Nov. 30 commentary for the Canadian news
magazine Maclean’s.
For the first time,
according to Nicholls, beneficiaries are reporting that the cost of
food has put them into financial insolvency.
“We’re
at the point where clients on these programs are telling us they’re
considering medically assisted death or suicide because they can’t live
in grinding poverty anymore,” she said in the Maclean’s report. “A
client in our Food Bank 2 Home delivery program told one of our staff
that they’re considering suicide because they’re so tired of suffering
through poverty. Another client asked if we knew how to apply for MAID
(medical assistance in dying) for the same reasons.”
“We
can’t underestimate the effect that poverty has on someone’s mental
health. Our clients live with constant worry and cut corners on needed
items like medication, fresh food, or warm clothes — constantly living
under that stress takes its toll mentally, emotionally, and physically,”
Nicholls said.
“When
people start telling us they’re going to end their life because they
can’t live in poverty anymore, it’s clear that we’ve failed them,” she
added.
Nicholls told
Canada’s The Catholic Register that leaders of other food banks in
Canada have not heard clients speak of plans to take their own lives.
“I
don’t know if that’s a bit of an anomaly or if it’s just because we
operate this home delivery program. We do have a chance to connect with
clients directly, and that kind of relationship might open us up for
people to share a little bit more vulnerably than perhaps some other
food banks.”
Schadenberg said assisted suicide has become very easy to access in Canada.
“We
need to understand that many people with disabilities live in poverty
and find themselves having difficulty receiving necessary medical
treatment and yet according to the law they have no difficulty being
approved for death by euthanasia,” he told CNA. “Clearly this has led to
an epidemic of death, of despair, in Canada. Deaths based on cultural
abandonment but sold to the population under the false guise of
freedom.”
In 2021, over
10,000 Canadians died by euthanasia, also called medical aid in dying or
doctor-assisted suicide. This is 10 times the number who died by
euthanasia in 2016, when the procedure was first legalized.
welcometohellworld | Autumn Harris' lungs were so filled with fluid they weighed four
times what a normal person's lungs should weigh during her autopsy. The
thirty four year old died in an Alabama prison in 2018 after going
untreated for pneumonia by medical staff for weeks according to a
malpractice lawsuit filed by her father in 2020 that will finally get a
hearing next year. Six years of waiting for the possibility that maybe
someone will be held responsible for his daughter's death.
Harris had been arrested because she missed a misdemeanor court hearing over an alleged theft of $40 Alabama.com reported.
State
investigators interviewed women Harris was being held with and one said
she got so sick toward the end that she started to hallucinate and was
calling one of them momma.
If you are poor please do not make a
mistake of any kind. Please do not fuck up in such and such a way
leading you to need $40 very badly or to miss a court date. Do not fuck
up even once despite the entire world being littered with boobytraps
just waiting for you to make a false step. The floor is lava but not in
the way that usually means. If you are poor almost every fuck up you
might make carries with it a potential death sentence in this country.
It
sounds facile and obvious to say that kind of shit doesn't it? It's
almost like what's the point? You know it and I know it and people
walking through the obstacle course on hard mode know it better than
anyone.
I guess we have to keep saying it anyway.
We're all
of us walking through the obstacle course to be clear it's just at
varying degrees of difficulty. Unless some of you reading this happen to
be rich in which case can I have $50,000?
Marquette | The wholesale destruction of Jews and other ethnic minorities
in Europe by Nazi Germany before and during World War II has been
widely and justly condemned as a crime against humanity. Literally
thousand of books and articles have been written on this particular
genocide, highlighted by extensive testimony presented to the
Nuremberg criminal trials after the war.
We have been conditioned since World War II to believe that
such a horrible human tragedy cannot, or at least should not, happen
again. Particularly in the Western World, schooled in the Judeo-
Christian ethic, we believe that another Holocaust could not happen and
particularly not in the United States. It cannot happen here, we saybecause we live under democratic forms of government and our U.S.
Constitution guarantees us protection of our lives as a God-given right.
Until this current century, we were no doubt justified in relying
on these guarantees to our human existence. But will these guarantees
survive the very dangerous new trends in the Western world's regard for
the protection of life? Is a new and different kind of Holocaust in the
offing, not against Jews or other minorities, but a Holocaust against the
elderly, the chronically ill, the terminally ill and the disabled, right here
in our own country? This proposition might appear preposterous at
first glance, but the issue is important enough to merit a closer look.
It is a surprising historical fact that in the United States, we are
wittingly or unwittingly following the same steps that led Germany to
the disastrous conclusion that some lives are "life not worthy of life"
and can be legally extinguished to suit the needs of society and the
desires of the family and the state. Germany progressed from the
adoption of genetics theories in the last century to sterilization to
abortion to euthanasia to the indiscriminate murder of ethnically and
politically undesirable races and aliens. Except for timing, the United
States is proceeding along the identical path, with only the legalization
of euthanasia. or assisted suicide, remaining before the flood gates
open. Indeed, we are now facing this last and fatal step on the "slippery
slope".
In January 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court began to hear, on
appeal, oral arguments for Vasco v. Quill and Washington v.
Glucksberg, the New York and Washington cases which struck down
anti-assisted suicide laws in each state earlier in 1996.
If the U.S. Supreme Court follows the unfortunate precedent
which it established in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in which it
created with very questionable constitutional basis a new "right" to
abortion, then they may now create another new "right" to assisted
suicide. If this happens, we will have taken the final step toward
undermining the very foundation of our American democracy in which
the government has the constitutional responsibility both to protect the
lives of its citizens and not destroy those lives.
Ideas do have consequences and the legalization of assisted
suicide would have momentous implications for the future of American
society, families, medicine and the ultimate evaluation of the worth of
a human life, as well as the very foundations of our American form ogovernment. Ultimately, the lives of our citizens may well be
subordinated to the desires and interests of the government, which will
decide directly or indirectly who will live and who will die. In fact,
some U.S. authorities already are beginning to talk about the future
demands on the resources of Medicare and Medicaid to maintain
patients who might be kept alive for many years by modem medical
technology, at great public expense, unless they can be dispensed with
through assisted suicide.
It is well known that in the Netherlands today, where assisted
suicide is widely practiced, serious abuses are being perpetrated against
people who have not given their consent. In almost one-half of the
assisted suicide cases in the Netherlands, the decision is being made by
third parties without consulting the patient or the family. If the state or
its agents can kill targeted people at will, then democracy as we know
it will have perished. The next Holocaust, if and when it comes, will
thus not be of the same character as the Nazis'. But the end result will
be the same, namely, the wholesale killing of undesirables whether they
be unborn, partially born, old, ill, or just tired of living.
Let us review the historical steps that both Germany and the
United States have passed through since Darwin's theory of evolution
originated in the middle 1850s and jolted the scientific world, including
scholars, philosophers and even some misguided theologians. We will
see how the seeds of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany preceded the
Hitler era by several generations
WaPo | How
quickly do times of apparent peace become times of conflict; seemingly
stable world orders come crashing down; the hopes of many for
improvement of the human condition are dashed and replaced by fear and
despair.
For
the first dozen years after World War I, the three powerful democracies
— the United States, Britain and France — were in substantial control
of world affairs, economically, politically and militarily. They
established the terms of the peace settlement, redrew the borders of
Europe, summoned new nations into being, distributed pieces of defunct
empires, erected security arrangements, determined who owed what to
whom, and how and when debts should be paid. They called together the
conferences that determined the levels of armaments the major nations
could possess.
All
this was possible because they had won the war; because the United
States and Britain controlled the banks and the seas; because France
wielded predominant military power on the European continent. With this
power, the three Western democracies sought to establish and consolidate
a world system favorable to their interests and preferences. They
argued over how best to do this, and they became increasingly estranged
from each other in these years. But they all wanted a stable, prosperous
and peaceful Europe. They all sought to preserve their global empires,
or, in the United States’ case, its hemispheric hegemony. They all
sought to defend the liberal, capitalist economic system that enriched
and protected them and in which they believed. None doubted the
rightness of their vision of international order or much questioned the
justice of imposing it.
And
there had been successes, certainly from their point of view. By the
second half of the 1920s, the world had grown less violent and
marginally less miserable. In Europe especially, economies were
recovering, living standards were rising, general violence was down from
the immediate postwar years, and the dangers of war and aggression
seemed as low as they had been in decades. Internationally, trade had
risen by more than 20 percent, despite growing protectionism, driven
largely by the American economic boom. Nations spent more time
discussing measures for peace than preparing for war. The League of
Nations had come into its own. Germany seemed to be on a moderate,
democratic course. In general, the threat of a return to autocracy and
militarism seemed low. Democracy seemed to be ascendant.
Even
those who openly defied the new order had to move cautiously. The
Soviets promoted their revolution abroad but not so aggressively as to
challenge the dominant powers, and they wound up settling for “socialism in one country.”
Benito Mussolini, ruling an Italy surrounded in the Mediterranean by
British and French naval power and dependent on the United States for
financial support, thought it best to play the responsible European
statesman. The 1920s were his “decade of good behavior.”
Adolf
Hitler, too, proceeded with caution as he ascended to power in the
early ’30s. Impressed by the United States as “a giant state with
unimaginable productive capacities” and by Anglo-American domination of
the global economy, and well aware of the role it had played in
selecting Germany’s past governments, he worked at first to soften
Washington’s opposition to his rise. He reached out to the U.S.
ambassador, gave numerous interviews to prominent American media
figures, including William Randolph Hearst, in the hope of making “the
personality of Adolf Hitler more accessible to the American people.” He
promised to pay Germany’s “private debts” to American bankers and went
out of his way to assure the English-speaking world that his national
socialist movement would gain power only in a “purely legal way”
in accordance with the “present constitution.” After taking power, he
told the press and his own officials to play down the campaigns of
antisemitism that began immediately. He sought to keep German rearmament
under wraps in what he called the “perilous interval” during which the
“whole world” was “against us.” Until the economy recovered and German
rearmament was further along, he feared that the national socialist
revolution could be crushed at any time by the superior power of the
democracies.
It
was remarkable how quickly the winds were shifting, though. An American
journalist identified the moment when history pivoted. “In the first
five years after the World War,” he wrote, “the nations of Europe, on
their backs and seeking American aid, took all pains to avoid offending
us and therefore appeared to give careful and weighty consideration to
our altruistic advice. The succeeding five years have changed that.”
One
indicator of the shifting trends was the declining fortunes of
democracy throughout Europe. It was inevitable that some of the new
democracies, implanted in lands that had never known such a form of
government, would not survive. The rise of dictatorship in various forms
in Hungary (1920), Italy (1925), Lithuania, Poland and Portugal (1926),
Yugoslavia (1929), Romania (1930), Germany and Austria (1933), Bulgaria
and Latvia (1934), and Greece (1935) had many internal and external
causes, including the global depression that began around 1930. But the
overall decline of European democracy from the second half of the 1920s
onward, and the turn away from democracy in Japan, also reflected the
declining influence and appeal of the great-power democracies and their
order.
Liberal
democracy was not just losing ground. It faced a potent challenge from a
vibrant and revolutionary anti-liberal doctrine that attracted
followers and imitators throughout Europe and beyond. Americans, British
and French during World War I and for decades afterward assumed that
Bolshevism posed the greatest threat to liberal democracy. But
Bolshevism proved less easily exported than both its proponents and its
opponents believed. Ostracized by the rest of Europe, the Soviet Union
turned inward to wrestle with the transformation of its society. When
democracies fell in the 1920s and ’30s, they fell to the Right, not the
Left.
21stcenturywire | There is a small but highly influential and powerful faction
embedded throughout Washington’s top political institutions and policy
think tanks, who’s primary objective is the promotion of region and
global military conflicts.
They will not rest unless the world is on fire, and the share prices of ‘defense’ corporations like General Electric, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Blackstone Group, and Carlyle Group
– are hitting record highs. To do this they must also keep Israel
relevant, if not the center of attention, regarding US foreign policy.
They want war, and they want it often and they will do anything to see it happen…
From US-Russia.org
– Here‘s what Robert Parry, the American investigative journalist who
broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated
Press and Newsweek, has to tell us about the Robert
Kagan-Victoria-Nuland couple and their hold on Obama, whose foreign
policy seems to be outsourced to these two Washington
ideologue-opportunists.
According to Parry, the couple’s latest project is to sink Minsk-2
and lay the ground for further U.S. military-industrial-complex
profiteering at the expense of the EU, of the U.S. national security
itself, and of peace in Europe.
The Background
Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of
State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has
sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia –
and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so
America can meet these new security threats. [….]
Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to
benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s
brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife
Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of
War.
Yet it weren’t for Nuland’s efforts as Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs, the Ukraine crisis might not exist. A neocon
holdover who advised Vice President Dick Cheney, Nuland gained
promotions under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and received
backing, too, from current Secretary of State John Kerry.
Confirmed to her present job in September 2013, Nuland soon undertook an extraordinary effort to promote “regime change”
in Ukraine. She personally urged on business leaders and political
activists to challenge elected President Viktor Yanukovych. She reminded
corporate executives that the United States had invested $5 billion in
their “European aspirations,” and she literally passed out cookies to
anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square.
Working with other key neocons, including National Endowment for
Democracy President Carl Gershman and Sen. John McCain, Nuland made
clear that the United States would back a “regime change” against
Yanukovych, which grew more likely as neo-Nazi and other right-wing
militias poured into Kiev from western Ukraine.
In early February 2014, Nuland discussed U.S.-desired changes with
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (himself a veteran of a
“regime change” operation at the International Atomic Energy Agency,
helping to install U.S. yes man Yukiya Amano as the director-general in
2009).
Nuland treated her proposed new line-up of Ukrainian officials as if
she were trading baseball cards, casting aside some while valuing
others. “Yats is the guy,” she said of her favorite Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Disparaging the less aggressive European Union, she uttered “Fuck the
EU” – and brainstormed how she would “glue this thing” as Pyatt
pondered how to “mid-wife this thing.” Their unsecure phone call was intercepted and leaked.[….]
Though there was no evidence that Putin had instigated the Ukraine
crisis – and indeed all the evidence indicated the opposite – the State
Department peddled a propaganda theme to the credulous mainstream U.S.
news media about Putin having somehow orchestrated the situation in
Ukraine so he could begin invading Europe. Former Secretary of State
Clinton compared Putin to Adolf Hitler. [….]
Amid the barrage of “information warfare” aimed at both the U.S. and
world publics, a new Cold War took shape. Prominent neocons, including
Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New
American Century which masterminded the Iraq War, hammered home the
domestic theme that Obama had shown himself to be “weak,” thus inviting
Putin’s “aggression.”
In May 2014, Kagan published a lengthy essay in The New Republic
entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” in which Kagan castigated
Obama for failing to sustain American dominance in the world and
demanding a more muscular U.S. posture toward adversaries.
According to a New York Times article about how the essay
took shape and its aftermath, writer Jason Horowitz reported that Kagan
and Nuland shared a common world view as well as professional ambitions,
with Nuland editing Kagan’s articles, including the one tearing down
her ostensible boss.
Though Nuland wouldn’t comment specifically on her husband’s attack
on Obama, she indicated that she held similar views. “But suffice to
say,” Nuland said, “that nothing goes out of the house that I don’t
think is worthy of his talents. Let’s put it that way.”
Horowitz reported that Obama was so concerned about Kagan’s assault
that the President revised his commencement speech at West Point to
deflect some of the criticism and invited Kagan to lunch at the White
House, where one source told me that it was like “a meeting of equals.”
[See “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”]
How to sink Minsk-2
And, whenever peace threatens to break out in Ukraine, Nuland jumps in to make sure that the interests of war are protected.
Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President
Francois Hollande hammered out a plan for a cease-fire and a political
settlement, known as Minsk-2, prompting Nuland to engage in more
behind-the-scenes maneuvering to sabotage the deal.
In another overheard conversation — in Munich, Germany — Nuland mocked the peace agreement as “Merkel’s Moscow thing,” according to the German newspaper Bild,
citing unnamed sources, likely from the German government which may
have bugged the conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel
and then leaked the details.
Picking up on Nuland’s contempt for Merkel, another U.S. official called the Minsk-2 deal the Europeans’ “Moscow bullshit.”
Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the
practical impact of the Ukraine war on Europe: “They’re afraid of damage
to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia.” According to the Bild
story, Nuland also laid out a strategy for countering Merkel’s
diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis.
“We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them,” Nuland reportedly said.
NATO Commander Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove was quoted as saying
that sending more weapons to the Ukrainian government would “raise the
battlefield cost for Putin.” Nuland interjected to the U.S. politicians
present that “I’d strongly urge you to use the phrase ‘defensive
systems’ that we would deliver to oppose Putin’s ‘offensive systems.’”
Nuland sounded determined to sink the Merkel-Hollande peace
initiative even though it was arranged by two major U.S. allies and was
blessed by President Obama. And, this week, the deal seems indeed to
have been blown apart by Nuland’s hand-picked Prime Minister Yatsenyuk,
who inserted a poison pill into the legislation to implement the Minsk-2
political settlement.
The Ukrainian parliament in Kiev added a clause that, in effect,
requires the rebels to first surrender and let the Ukrainian government
organize elections before a federalized structure is determined. Minsk-2
had called for dialogue with the representatives of these rebellious
eastern territories en route to elections and establishment of broad
autonomy for the region.
Instead, reflecting Nuland’s hard-line position, Kiev refused to
talks with rebel leaders and insisted on establishing control over these
territories before the process can move forward. If the legislation
stands, the result will almost surely be a resumption of war between
military forces backed by nuclear-armed Russia and the United States, a
very dangerous development for the world. [See “Ukraine’s Poison Pill for Peace Talks.” ]
uprootedpalestinians | It’s interesting to take a look at the word “kagan” in terms
of its etymology. Is the word perhaps derived from another language? Did
its use originate in another country?
The answer to that is yes on both counts. The words comes
from Khazaria, a kingdom which once existed in what is today Ukraine and
which underwent a mass conversion to Judaism in about the 8th or 9th
century AD. Ashkenazi Jews today are descendents of the Khazars, and as I
discussed in an article I wrote last year, the leader or head of state of the Khazar kingdom was not referred to as a “king”, but rather as the “kagan.”
It’s just a little something I thought might interest readers.
In the post I put up yesterday, I mentioned that Robert Kagan
was one of the founders of the Project for a New American Century, a
group of neocons who organized themselves in 1997 and who are probably
most famous today for having composed a report entitled “Rebuilding
America’s Defenses.” That document envisioned a “new Pearl Harbor”
befalling the United States, and was released in September of 2000. One
year later 9/11 happened.
Kagan and William Kristol were the two co-founders of PNAC. You can go here
to see a list of others who have been involved with the organization.
Nuland’s husband is the only “Kagan” but other names on the list are
“Abrams,” “Cohen,” “Decter,” “Gaffney,” “Podhoretz,” and “Wolfowitz”–all
Jewish. That’s not to say there weren’t a few Gentiles in the merry
little klan. Jeb Bush and Dick Cheney are there as well.
Like Nuland, Elliot Abrams also seems to be cheer leading for war with Russia, as do Kristol, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, and Frank Gaffney.
These and others collectively are building a momentum toward war with
Russia, and President Obama seems for the most part to be going with the
flow.
It does seem very much as if America has a ruling class of
“Kagans.” And equally, it seems Obama either can’t or won’t stand up to
them. But then after all, they’re “kagans” and he’s only a “president.”
Below is an interesting little piece written by Kevin MacDonald and
posted last year on February 9, less than two weeks before Viktor
Yanukovych, the legitimate, democratically elected president of Ukraine,
was ousted from power.
Victoria Nuland’s Family Ties: The Permanent Government in Action
Intertwined Jewish power families are an important aspect of Jewish
history, cementing business relationships by creating networks of close
relatives who married only among themselves—e.g., the Court Jews of
17th- and 18th-century Europe (seehere, pp 150-152). We see echoes of that in the contemporary world, as among the neocons.
As with the other Jewish intellectual movements I have
studied, neoconservatives have a history of mutual admiration, close,
mutually supportive personal, professional, and familial relationships,
and focused cooperation in pursuit of common goals. For example, Norman
Podhoretz, the former editor ofCommentary,
is the father of John Podhoretz, a neoconservative editor and
columnist. Norman Podhoretz is also the father-in-law of Elliott Abrams,
the former head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (a
neoconservative think tank) and the director of Near Eastern affairs at
the National Security Council. Norman’s wife, Midge Decter, recently
published a hagiographic biography of Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, whose number-two and number-three deputies at the Pentagon,
respectively, are Wolfowitz and Feith. Perle is a fellow at the AEI. He
originally helped Wolfowitz obtain a job with the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency in 1973. In 1982, Perle, as Deputy Secretary of
Defense for International Security Policy, hired Feith for a position as
his Special Counsel, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Negotiations Policy. In 2001, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz
helped Feith obtain an appointment as Undersecretary for Policy. Feith
then appointed Perle as chairman of the Defense Policy Board. This is
only the tip of a very large iceberg. “Neoconservatism as a Jewish movement” (p. 32)
Ethnic networking and ties cemented by marriage are on display in theflapover
Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s phone conversation with
Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. As VDARE’sSteve Sailerputs it, Nuland is a member of
a talented, energetic [Jewish] family that is part of the
Permanent Government of the United States. It doesn’t really matter who
wins the Presidential election: some Kagan-Nuland will be doing
something somewhere in your name and on your dime.
The Kagan connection is via her husband, Robert Kagan. As noted byYour Lying Eyes, “Robert and brotherFredseem
to have strategically implanted themselves in key policy-making
positions within the Democratic and Republican party apparatus. Robert
is embedded at Brookings, while Fred is ensconsed at AEI.”
So we have another Jewish neocon family tree, beginning
with Donald Kagan, a Yale historian whose history of the Peloponnesia
War has been used by neocons as a rationale for invasions of countries
Israel doesn’t like (see Sailer). Donald Kagan was also a signatory to a
2002 letter to George W. Bush put out by Bill Kristol’s Project for the
New American Century (PNAC) equating threats to Israel (Iran, Syria,
Iraq) with threats to the U.S.
The next generation, Fred Kagan (American Enterprise
Institute) and Robert Kagan (Brookings) are neocon stalwarts as well.
(E.g., Donald, Robert and Frederick are allsignatoriesto the neocon manifesto,Rebuilding America’s Defenses(2000),
put out by PNAC.) They and their wives, are all graduates of elite
universities and well entrenched in the neocon thinktank/government
infrastructure. Fred’s wifeKimberly(nee Kessler) is the head of the Institute for the Study of War and holds typical neocon positions.
And although U.S. policy toward Ukraine likely stems from other
issues besides the neocon hostility toward Russia (the latter due toissuessuch
as Putin’s crackdown on the oligarchs and Russia’s support of Israel’s
enemies, Iran and Syria), there be little doubt that Nuland’s energetic
support of the pro-EU opposition to the Yanukovych government dovetails
with the attitudes of her neocon network. Our Permanent Government at
work.
BAR | One of the most positive things to emerge from the Collective West's
war in Ukraine is that it helped to expose elements of the U.S. left
that have always had a soft, sentimental spot for the West. The
arrogance of these Westerners who signed on to this call for more war
(see below) is reflected in the fact that they don't even feel compelled
to explain how their morally superior commitment to Ukrainian
self-determination against "Putin's" war is reconciled with the various
statements from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former French
President Francois Hollande and before them, former Ukrainian president
Petro Poroshenko revealing that the Minsk agreement was just a delaying
tactic to prepare for war.
We ask the Network as we have been asking Zelensky and Biden, the
co-coordinators of the White Lives Matter More Movement, how this phase
of the conflict that started in 2014 became Putin’s war? Do we just
dismiss as Kremlin propaganda that the Russian Federation felt
threatened by what appeared to be the de-facto incorporation of Ukraine
into NATO as the Ukrainian army was built into the most formidable
fighting force in Europe outside of Russia?
Did the Russians not have any legitimate security concerns with NATO
missiles facing them from Romania and Poland, a mere six minutes away
from Moscow, and that Ukraine was also making a pitch for “defensive”
missiles in Ukraine? And how does the Network characterize the conflict
in Eastern Ukraine that started in 2014 and produced over 14,000 deaths
when the Ukrainian coup government attacked its own citizens, if the
current conflict started in February 2022? What happened to the fascist
issue in Ukraine that was written about for years but with even more
urgency after the coup in 2014? Did the Kremlin plant those stories in
the Western press?
We understand that these are questions that the organizers of the
Ukrainian Network will never answer because they do not have to. As
Westerners they can just postulate an assertion and it is accepted. The
Network and the Western bourgeoisie declare that the war in Ukraine is
Putin’s war and it becomes objective truth - because that is what the
West can do and can get away with. It’s called power – white power
perhaps?
The Ukrainian Solidarity Network is the ultimate expression of social
imperialism that has become so normalized in the U.S. and Western
Europe that it is no longer even recognized. An example from the
statement makes the argument that Ukraine has the “right to determine
the means and objectives of its own struggle.” That is a recognized left
position. But the social imperialists of the West do not extend that
principle and right to nations in the global South. In fact, we ask the
signers of this call to explain when the coup government of Ukraine
became the representatives of the Ukrainian nation and recognized the
sovereign will of the people?
Therefore, it is not a mere coincidence that the main signatories of
this Network statement pledging undying support to Ukraine and its
project, are also some of the same “left” forces in the forefront of
giving left legitimacy to the charge leveled by Western imperialism that
the struggling socialist oriented national liberationist states like
Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia are nothing more than “authoritarian”
states more interested in power than socialist construction. Some of
those forces also cheered on the NATO attack against Libya, passionately
defended Western intervention in Syria and have been silent on Western
plans to violently invade Haiti.
For the contemporary neocons in the leadership of the Ukrainian
network, their commitment to abstract principles, and certainty that
they know more than everyone else, objectively place them in the same
ideological camp with Obama, Biden, NATO strategists, the Zelensky
clown, and Boris Johnson. But they will argue that their positions are
different, since they represent something they call the left.
For a number of individuals who signed on to this pro-Western,
pro-war letter, they are in a familiar place. However, I suspect a few
of the individuals on that list were probably confused or not paying
attention, not thinking about who they would be affiliated with when
they signed on.
That of course, is not the case for some of the key supporters of
this initiative. Individuals like the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins, Eric
Draitser of Counterpunch, and Bill Fletcher who normally I would not
name specifically but because these individuals and the tendency they
represent embody the worst of the arrogant, Western left that in so many
cases (not all) objectively provides ideological cover ( rightism with
left phraseology) for the imperialist program of Western capital - they
should not be allowed continued left respectability without challenge.
These individuals certainly have not hesitated in offering criticisms
of those of us who never wavered from our strategic priority to defeat
our primary enemy - the Western white supremacist colonial/capitalist
patriarchy. For us everything else represents secondary contradictions
at this specific historical moment. And is why we reject the arguments
these forces advance about fighting dual imperialisms as
anti-dialectical nonsense and a political cover.
BAR | As the Left in the US struggles to hold to a clear ideological line
against the US empire in its proxy war using Ukraine against Russia, the
understanding of how this conflict arose has been lost amid the
discourse of needing to either present a “balanced” view of the
conflict, or to accuse anti-imperialists who indicate US/EU/NATO’s
complicity, as “Putin’s apologists.” This kind of mealy-mouthed,
spineless analysis is expected from those who always support the empire
and its bloody deeds. But these days, more and more of this criticism of
anti-imperialists is coming from some of the so-called US left. This
group is engaged in a bizarre public display of supporting Ukraine, a
display that defies logic and the facts surrounding the conflict.
As an example, the Ukraine Solidarity Network
was created by Howie Hawkins, one-time Green Party presidential
candidate and alleged leftist, and has been signed onto by dozens of
people who are prominent in some way in US progressive politics. Among
the Network’s absurd positions are their demand for reparations for the
people of Ukraine, their support for Ukraine’s right to receive as many
arms as they can without question or strings attached, and their demand
for the IMF to cancel Ukraine's debts.
Are these demands made on any basis of fact? No. When you consider
that information about actual events that led up to this conflict are
easily located with the most cursory search, there is no way that anyone
can conclude that Ukraine is the victim of some terrible crime
committed by Russia, let alone that they are owed reparations and
deserve all the weapons they could want to fight them.
What’s more, the paper trail that documents the lead-up to this
conflict includes sources that are the publications of the empire,
so-called mainstream, sources that are neither left-leaning nor anti-war
in any substantive way. This, I believe, lends a level of credibility
to their documentation that some would easily dismiss as “biased” if it
were provided in left-leaning sources.
For example, if members of the Ukraine Solidarity Networkhad bothered to look, they could have found this February 24, 2022 article from the Yale MacMillan Center, which details the scuttled negotiations to completely avoid the conflict in Ukraine.
The article pointedly notes that:
“More than anything else, it was the refusal of Ukraine to
implement the provisions of Minsk 2 – especially the provision that
would give the predominantly Russian-speaking regions a special
constitutional status – that caused Russia to threaten military action
against Ukraine. Time after time in recent weeks, Putin and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov made it clear in meetings and press
conferences that the key to resolving the situation in and around
Ukraine was the full implementation of Minsk 2.”
An unprovoked attack on Ukraine? Even the empire admits that this is
not true, and goes further to document that the conflict could have been
avoided entirely had Ukraine simply adhered to the agreement they
signed. Furthermore, the same article confirms that the civil war
between Kiyv and those Russian-speaking regions in Ukraine - Donbas and
Luhansk - that began in 2014 was also an important factor in this
current conflict, as more than 700,000 of the people in those regions
were granted Russian citizenship while they “...for eight years now,
have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev (Kyiv
in Ukrainian) regime.”
If the Yale MacMillan Center can acknowledge the centrality of these
issues to this currency conflict, how is that these Latte Leftists
dismiss them as insignificant?
But why did Ukraine refuse to adhere to the agreements, one might
ask? This is actually an important piece of information that also has a
very clear answer if anyone is interested in knowing it. An article in Modern Diplomacy
reveals that, at least according to the former Chancellor of Germany
Angele Merkel, the leaders who signed onto the Minsk Accords who were
not representing Russia (the leaders of Germany, France, and Ukraine) never had any intention of adhering to the agreements,
as they were just a ploy to “...buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this
time to become stronger, as you can see today,” Merkel said, “Ukraine
in 2014-2015 and Ukraine today are not the same.”
Rejuvenation Pills
-
No one likes getting old. Everyone would like to be immorbid. Let's be
careful here. Immortal doesnt include youth or return to youth. Immorbid
means you s...
Death of the Author — at the Hands of Cthulhu
-
In 1967, French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes wrote of
“The Death of the Author,” arguing that the meaning of a text is divorced
from au...
9/29 again
-
"On this sacred day of Michaelmas, former President Donald Trump invoked
the heavenly power of St. Michael the Archangel, sharing a powerful prayer
for pro...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
