NATO: Who’s the Aggressor? (I)

Michael Jabara CARLEY | 06.01.2016 | 00:00

There has been much discussion recently of NATO in the mainstream and alternate media. Why was NATO founded in the first place and why did it expand so rapidly after the collapse and dismemberment of the USSR in 1991. According to widely held views in the west, NATO originated as a defensive alliance against an aggressive, menacing Soviet Union after World War II. There is nothing unusual about this post 1945 representation of the USSR. Western negative perceptions of Russia date back to the 19th century, if not earlier. After the October Revolution of 1917 western Russophobia was exacerbated by the Red Scare. For three years the «Entente» powers tried to throttle the nascent Soviet republic. When the foreign intervention failed, the Entente constructed a cordon sanitaire through the Russian borderlands from the Baltic to Black Seas. The idea was to keep the Bolshevik revolution from spreading into central Europe. During the interwar years, Western-Soviet relations remained antagonistic. «Russophobia and Sovietophobia are a dense forest of hostility, into which no light penetrates», observed a Soviet diplomat in 1930. It was «a clash of two worlds», according to one historian. Who said the cold war only began after 1945? Even Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 failed to provoke a western reappraisal of relations with the USSR. France and Britain were unable to sort out their security priorities. Soviet diplomatic efforts to build an anti-Nazi alliance foundered on open or disguised western sympathies for fascism. The crisis of capitalism in the 1930s made fascism attractive, but so did western Sovietophobia. Even after the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the British government could not entirely shed its anti-Soviet enmity. War Office biases were so intense that British diplomats, who were not known for their love of Russia, warned of long-term damage to Anglo-Soviet relations. For a hundred years, said one Foreign Office official in 1944. Sovietophobia went right to the top of the British government. The prime minister, Winston Churchill, worried about Red Army victories. This was a surprising position since until June 1944 the Red Army did most of the fighting against the Wehrmacht. Cabinet colleagues were at times scandalised by Churchill’s anti-Soviet exclamations. In May 1945, a fortnight after VE-Day, the British Chiefs of Staff Joint Planning Committee produced the top secret Operation «Unthinkable», an outrageous, suicidal plan for a new Anglo-American war, backed by German troops in new uniforms, against the USSR. Across the Atlantic, the pragmatic President Franklin Roosevelt sought to calm Churchill and to rein in his own numerous Sovietophobes, though after his death in April 1945 they quickly recaptured control of US policy. Not that it was a hard sell for Harry Truman, FDR’s pedestrian successor and notorious Sovietophobe. The USSR paid a huge price for victory, no one knows the exact human cost, but estimates are around 27 million civilian and military dead, plus the physical destruction of much of European Russia from Stalingrad in the east, to the Northern Caucasus and the Crimea in the south, to Leningrad and other points to the north, all the way to the Soviet Union’s western frontiers. Some 70,000 cities, towns and villages were laid waste during the war, not to mention tens of thousands of factories, collective farms, schools, hospitals and other public buildings. While the United States became rich and suffered few casualties in comparison to the Red Army, the Soviet Union emerged from the war poor and devastated. The most urgent priority was reconstruction, and for that, Soviet generalissimo Joseph Stalin hoped for help from the Anglo-American allies. Yet in the west the USSR was regarded as a post-war threat to European security. The Russians had let victory go to their heads; they had to be put in their place. Stalin was aware of Anglo-American hostility, but tried nevertheless for a time to work with his putative «allies» without however sacrificing what he saw as Soviet vital interests. «I am not a propagandist», Stalin said to an American interlocutor, «I am a man of business». Soviet military policy was unprovocative and the huge Red Army was demobilised to approximately 25% of its maximum wartime strength. Big political issues were Poland and Germany. Poland was settled along Soviet lines, but Germany was under joint Allied occupation and there Stalin could not obtain whatever he wished. Having been invaded twice by Germany over the span of little more than a quarter century, Stalin did not want to see the rebuilding of a German state hostile to the USSR. This was precisely what the United States had in mind. From 1946 onward the US government went about establishing a West German «partial state», integrated into a US dominated western anti-Soviet European bloc. Essentially, it was Churchill’s idea of building a new German counterbalance to the USSR, an idea first conceptualised in Operation «Unthinkable». The eventual Soviet countermove, the Berlin «blockade» in 1948, was a clumsy attempt to gain leverage over the United States to stop the establishment of a West German state. The so-called blockade did not work and served as a splendid pretext for setting up NATO in the following year. In Moscow NATO was viewed as an alliance aimed at the USSR. The West German entry into that alliance seemed like an obvious eventuality. Funded generously by the United States, the polarisation of Europe continued into the 1950s, and West Germany became a NATO member in May 1955. This development provoked the formation of the Warsaw pact, led by the USSR. Believing western propaganda about an aggressive Soviet Union, an ill-informed person might think that the Warsaw pact provoked the organisation of NATO and not the other way ‘round. After the collapse and dismemberment of the USSR, NATO ought logically to have been closed down. Even if you accept the NATO line that the alliance was organised for purely defensive purposes against a Soviet threat, there was no USSR and no threat after 1991. It is well known moreover that the US Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand «one inch» toward the east, a promise that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush did not keep. NATO post-Soviet expansion cannot logically be explained except as a movement to extend US hegemony eastward. It was an opportune moment. Russia was in turmoil and led by Boris Yeltsin who needed US backing to stay in power. Based on the principle «I can, therefore I will», NATO expanded quickly, inter alia, to include Poland and the Baltic states, former nesting grounds of interwar fascism and anti-Semitism and Russophobic to the core. In Eastern Europe, NATO membership became a license for impunity: SS uniforms and banners came out of mothballs in the Baltics and a new atavistic wave of Russophobia swept over Poland. NATO expanded to construct a new anti-Russian cordon sanitaire, suggesting that the US «Deep State» was not sure it had sufficiently weakened the much reduced Russian Federation. It was an insurance policy against any Russian resurgence, and an arm to be used against any state which failed to do US bidding. Such was the case of Yugoslavia, a multi-national state torn apart by ethnic conflict encouraged by the United States and NATO. If you look at a map of Yugoslavia in 1941 after its partition by Nazi Germany, you will see similarities with the US/NATO dismemberment of «former Yugoslavia». The west sided with neo-fascists in Croatia, Muslim fundamentalists in Bosnia and Kosovo, portraying its former wartime allies, the Serbs, as villains, aggressors, and perpetrators of genocide. US and NATO bombers attacked Serbia in 1999 to subdue resistance against the loss of the Serbian province of Kosovo. In a flagrant act of aggression, they blew up bridges, trains, and infrastructure and bombed Belgrade, killing civilians in the way. Clinton invoked the «Responsibility to Protect» (R2P), and claimed NATO represented the «international» community. These were audacious, bogus claims to justify military intervention. The underlying message to any apostate of US domination was submit or be destroyed. (to be continued) http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/01/07/nato-who-aggressor-ii.html

NATO: Who’s the Aggressor? (II)

Michael Jabara CARLEY | 07.01.2016 | 00:00

See Part I The US quest for domination did not stop in «former Yugoslavia». After 9/11 in 2001 the US and NATO invaded Afghanistan, though the Afghan Taliban government had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks in the United States. To this day the war in Afghanistan goes on and none too well for the United States. No wonder Afghanistan is called «the graveyard of empires». Two years later it was the turn of Iraq though this was mostly an Anglo-American venture. The US government claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had «weapons of mass destruction» (WMD), ready to use. R2P was invoked again to justify the new war. A massive invasion led to the destruction of Iraq and the execution of Saddam. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died because of the US invasion or because of prior stringent economic sanctions. Millions became homeless. US authorities turned Iraq upside down in the hopes of finding proof of Iraqi WMDs. It was all a charade. There were no WMDs. On the gallows Saddam bravely accused his executioners of being traitorous US puppets. The United States claimed its objective was to establish «democracy» in Iraq. President Putin, who could no longer tolerate the bogus American narrative, called it «airstrike democracy». Submit or be destroyed was the real US message. Twelve years later there is no democracy in Iraq, only ruins, continued war and misery. In 2011 it was the turn of Libya, a rich, independent country, led by Muammar Gaddafi, who for the previous eight years had maintained constructive relations with the west. The US and NATO rolled out a new pretext for R2P. Gaddafi’s forces had attacked the civilian population, a claim as false and preposterous as the WMDs in Iraq. Russia and China abstained in a UN Security Council vote to approve a «no-fly zone», a position they came to regret, because NATO promptly used the resolution as a pretext for an all-out air war against the Libyan government. Libya was destroyed and Gaddafi, sodomised with a bayonet and murdered. The then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, like some ancient tribal barbarian (no offence intended to the latter) gloated and sneered over images of Gaddafi’s bloody corpse. It is reported that Putin has also seen the images and bowed his head in shame and anger. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya remains in ruins, chaos and misery. These are the works, says journalist Pepe Escobar, of the «Empire of Chaos», determined to maintain global hegemony, along with its trusty NATO sidekicks, at whatever cost. Profligate US/NATO violence did not end there. Encouraged by their «success» in Libya, the United States and some of its NATO «allies», notably France, Britain and Turkey, turned their sights on Syria and its leader Bashar al Assad. After Saddam and Gaddafi, they reckoned, it was Assad’s turn to swing. His days were counted, said US officials. That was back in 2011. The Syrian war continues with no end yet in sight. Like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, Syria is in ruins. It is fighting for survival against a US-NATO backed Jihadist invasion. As elsewhere, the United States and important NATO members have allied themselves with Muslim fundamentalists, who go by many names – Jaish al-Fatah, Ahrar ash-Sham, al-Nusra and Daesh, amongst others – but are cut from the same blood-drenched, terrorist cloth. Closer to Russian borders, the United States inspired the Georgian attack on South Ossetia in 2008 which ended in catastrophe for Georgia. «We have your backs», American officials told the Georgians, but apparently not. In 2014 the Ukraine became the next battlefield where the United States and European Union (EU) supported a fascist coup d’état against the lawfully elected government. The United States intends to make the Ukraine the buckle of its anti-Russian cordon sanitaire. As in Syria, however, complete success has so far eluded the United States, even though the usual signs of its presence, violence, ruin, and chaos, are everywhere to be seen. What is one to conclude about the conduct of the United States and NATO since 1991? In what way can NATO now be described as a «defensive» alliance? NATO was not abolished because the United States wanted to maintain its military domination in Europe and check any future, however remote resurgence of Russia. It also wanted to discourage any European movement toward political independence from Washington. When the EU discusses creation of an independent military force, for example, you can count on the United States to exercise its veto. An independent EU army, Washington knows full well, would undermine NATO and thus US domination. Ironically, the raison d’être of the EU was to re-establish European political and economic independence, but in fact it has done neither. NATO and the EU, as it presently functions, are institutions enforcing European vassalage to the United States. Instead of protecting European security, NATO has endangered it by dragging Europe into gratuitous US quarrels with Russia and into aggressive US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. European leaders like David Cameron, François Hollande, and Angela Merkel are US vassals, so much so that they have undermined their countries’ economic and security interests. What chains bind these leaders to the United States? Is it personal advantage? Are they afraid to act independently? Are European political and military bureaucracies too tightly bound to Washington? Is the Atlanticist «Deep State» too deeply entrenched? Or, are European leaders simply complacent, taking the easy way out and liking the narcotic pleasures of proximity to US «power»? Since 1991 the United States has become increasingly belligerent and reckless, like Wilhelmine Germany prior to World War I, but far more dangerous. Washington flaunts international law and makes war against or threatens those states which do not recognise US domination. American elites exhibit no remorse for the death and destruction they have wrought. Any why should they? No one can hold them to account. The EU and NATO serve as «international» cover to legitimise US behaviour. It’s the «international community», according to Washington. Observing these developments, President Putin has become a «truth-teller» challenging Washington’s self-interested, exceptionalist narratives. But he has not threatened Europe, or the United States. On the contrary, he urges broad-based security cooperation and has long proposed Russia-Europe political and economic integration. In spite of these proposals (or because of them, a cynic would say), US policy continues unchanged. When Russia therefore responds to the NATO military build-up in the Eastern Europe by strengthening its defences, don’t call it «aggression». Can Europeans put a brake on escalating tensions? It will not be easy. The best way, really the only way, is for Europe’s most influential powers to withdraw from NATO. It’s an audacious proposition, I admit, but Europe needs to stop being an American cat’s paw and to establish some political distance from Washington. Only Europe can effectively discourage the present course of US policy. Is it not time to break the long cycle of western Russophobia? Russia wants to be part of Europe, not against Europe. It’s a formidable country with formidable people, who would be strong allies in the tough fight which we now face against Daesh. Just remember what the Soviet people did during the Great Patriotic War. Ask the Germans; they’ll tell you. If you get to know the Russians, you’ll find they’re not a bad lot, who love, laugh and weep like any other people, but who will defend their country fiercely like no others. Sure, they have bad apples, but so do we. I for one would rather have Russians with me than against me. I ask in conclusion, what about you? http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/01/07/nato-who-aggressor-ii.html Michael Jabara CARLEY Michael Jabara Carley is professor of history at the Université de Montréal.  He has published widely on Soviet relations with the West.  Amongst these publications are 1939: The Alliance that Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Chicago, 1999) and Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations (Lanham, MD, 2014).  Professor Carley is working on a new book dealing with Soviet relations with the West and formation of the Grand Alliance against Nazi Germany.

La France est aujourd’hui en état de guerre

Attentats du 13 novembre

Communiqué de Civitas

L’Institut Civitas présente ses condoléances aux familles et aux amis
des victimes de ces effroyables attentats de Paris qui endeuillent la
France entière. Nos prières accompagnent toutes celles et tous ceux dont
la vie a été volée ce soir du 13 novembre 2015. L’Institut Civitas fera
célébrer une messe de requiem à leur intention.

Par-delà la peine et le deuil, le devoir de justice impose d’identifier
et de punir les coupables de ces actes odieux.

Or, les coupables ne sont pas uniquement ceux qui ont appuyé sur la
gâchette d’une arme ou fait usage d’une ceinture d’explosifs.

Les coupables sont aussi ceux qui, de manière irresponsable, ont
organisé le chaos au Proche et au Moyen-Orient puis ont facilité, voire
orchestré, le développement d’organisations djihadistes (Front al-Nosra,
Etat Islamique,...) en Irak et en Syrie.

De nombreux personnages politiques français, de droite comme de gauche,
portent une grave responsabilité dans cette situation en ayant contribué
directement ou indirectement au financement et à l’armement de factions
islamistes dans le cadre de manœuvres géopolitiques d’apprentis sorciers
aux côtés de prétendus alliés d’une coalition mondialiste et des
pétro-monarchies du Golfe.

De la même façon, les personnages politiques français, de droite comme
de gauche, portent une grave responsabilité dans l’invasion migratoire
qui déferle sur l’Europe et affecte durement la France, et qui facilite
l’entrée sur notre territoire d’individus aguerris au terrorisme et aux
techniques de guerre.

La France est aujourd’hui en état de guerre, par la responsabilité même
de ceux qui ont pour mission de la gouverner et de la protéger.

Il faudra bien qu’un jour le tribunal de l’Histoire s’en souvienne.

Alain Escada,
Président de Civitas

Saudi Execution Sword Takes Swipe at Washington

Finian CUNNINGHAM | 07.01.2016 | 00:00

The Saudi execution of senior Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr is but the latest in a series of provocations towards regional rival Iran. The furious reaction from Shiite Iran to the beheading of Nimr – a renowned Islamic scholar – and the severance of diplomatic ties between the two countries appears to be a calculated winding up of tensions by the Sunni Saudi rulers. But the real objective for Saudi Arabia is more likely to embroil its political patron in Washington in a sharper regional conflict – a conflict that would also lead to a conflagration with Russia. The reaction of Washington to the execution of Saudi-born cleric Nimr al-Nimr was one of «surprise», according to the New York Times. That suggests the Saudi rulers went rogue on the move. The Times noted that the Obama administration is worried that the cleric’s death could «jeopardize diplomatic efforts in the region» – which is probably exactly what the Saudi regime wants. Nimr was executed at the weekend along with four other Shiite activists and over 40 alleged members of the terror group Al-Qaeda. It was the biggest mass execution in the kingdom for over three decades. The state killing of Nimr along with condemned Al-Qaeda terrorists only adds to the insult towards Iranian leaders who referred to the cleric as a «martyr» and a man of peace. Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei vowed that «God’s vengeance would strike the Saudi rulers»; Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah denounced the sentence as «an assassination»; while Iraqi Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali Sistani said that the killing of 56-year-old Nimr was «an unjust aggression». Nimr had become a household name among Shiite Muslims across the world because of his courageous defiance of the House of Saud, whom he lambasted as despots and openly called for its overthrow. The cleric upheld the democratic rights of Saudi’s minority Shiite community which has long protested persecution under the radical Sunni rulers. Nimr had peacefully agitated during the 2011 Arab Spring revolt, but was arrested by the Saudi authorities in 2012 and convicted of a range of charges, including terrorism, which carried the death sentence. Supporters and international rights groups accused the Saudi rulers of trumping up the charges and of gross miscarriage of justice. Iran was particularly vocal in protesting the sentencing of Nimr and when his appeal against execution was rejected in October 2015, Tehran warned the Saudi rulers then that there would be dire consequences if they carried out the capital punishment. That the Saudis went ahead with the execution – in spite of widespread protests – seems to be a calculated bid to antagonize Iran. The next grim step to watch for is whether the Saudis proceed with the execution of Nimr’s nephew, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who is also on death row, on charges over his involvement in the 2011 street protests in Saudi’s Shiite populated eastern province. Again, that case has also drawn international condemnation as a travesty of justice, especially because the youth was only aged 17 years when he was first incarcerated. Under the Saudi judicial system, Ali Mohammed could be executed any day, his particular sentence involving gruesome crucifixion. That would be sure to really explode regional tensions among Shiite Muslims as it would be seen as another gratuitous political killing. What we have to appreciate is the wider context of decades-long political rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, going back to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The autocratic House of Saud has always viewed the Islamic Republic of Iran as a subversive threat in the region. Much of the Saudi fears are due to a paranoid insecurity about their own precarious political system, relying as it does on a dynastic hold on power by one family – the Al Sauds – and their draconian application of Sharia law under a fundamentalist Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam. The Arab Spring protests in 2011 amplified Saudi fears of instability. Iran was blamed for instigating subversion in two countries that the Saudi rulers consider to be their backyard: Bahrain and Yemen. Saudi accusations against Iran were overblown in both cases. There is no evidence that Iran was fueling popular protests in either Bahrain or Yemen against incumbent rulers patronized by Riyadh. In Yemen, when the mainly Shiite Houthi uprising finally succeeded last year in overthrowing the Saudi-backed regime, the Saudi rulers typically made hysterical claims that Iran was fomenting trouble in its Arab Peninsula southern neighbor. On that unsubstantiated basis, the Saudis mobilized a military coalition of other Sunni Arab countries to launch a war on Yemen, beginning on March 26 last year, which continues unabated. Both Washington and London have supported the Saudi-led war on Yemen, with supply of warplanes, munitions and logistics, even though as the New York Times noted: «But Western diplomats say the Saudis vastly overstated the Iranian role, at least at the war’s start. Nonetheless, a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition, backed by the United States, has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes». Yemen can be considered as the first major provocation towards Iran over the past year. It is noteworthy that the Saudis launched the war one week before the signing of the interim nuclear deal in Lausanne, Switzerland, between Iran and Washington and other world powers in the so-called P5 + 1 group. That deal and the subsequent finalization of an accord in Vienna in July has vexed the Saudi rulers intensely as they fear that normalization of relations will only bolster Iranian influence in the Middle East. It is reasonable to assume that the Saudi-led conflict in Yemen was aimed at derailing the P5+1 process and its ongoing fragile implementation. Nine months of non-stop Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen have been interspersed with tendentious allegations by Riyadh that Iran is agitating and arming the Houthi rebels. There is no evidence for such material support, although to be sure as a Shiite-dominated power Tehran has openly voiced diplomatic backing for the Houthis. Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei has frequently excoriated the Saudi action in Yemen as «genocidal crimes». A second major provocation came in September when more than 450 Iranians were killed in a stampede during the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage near Medina in Saudi Arabia. Although the tragedy appeared to be a monumental accident, Tehran was furious at the way the Saudi authorities reportedly showed disrespect towards the Iranian crush victims by delaying the repatriation of their corpses. The five-year war in Syria is another source of Saudi-Iranian rivalry. The Saudi regime has backed an array of insurgent networks, which have been linked to terrorist jihadists in the Islamic State group and the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra. Washington and other Western powers, Britain and France, are also implicated in this covert war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Iran has been a staunch ally of Assad’s Syria as being part of the region’s anti-imperialist resistance bloc, which also includes Lebanon’s Hezbollah. With Russia’s dramatic military intervention since September in support of its long-time strategic ally in Syria, the war dynamic has been transformed in favor of the Assad government and the Syrian Arab Army. The foreign-backed insurgency is decidedly on the retreat in large part because of Russian air power and Iranian and Hezbollah troops fighting alongside the Syrian army. The losing tide against the foreign-backed insurgency in Syria has evidently shifted Washington’s calculations towards a political process for pursuing its objective of regime change. US Secretary of State John Kerry has noticeably stepped up the diplomatic efforts over the past three months, along with Moscow, to convene peace talks on the Syrian conflict. Those talks are to begin later this month in Geneva. Remarkably, Washington and its British and French allies have dropped their erstwhile demand that Assad must quit power immediately. Thus, the West appears to have moved towards Russia and Iran’s position which is that any peace process in Syria should not be conditioned on the political future of Assad, whose fate, they say, depends on the electoral choice of the Syrian people as a matter of sovereign right. The Western powers, it can be averred, still want regime change in Syria for their geopolitical ambitions in the region, in particular for extending hegemonic power and isolating both Russia and Iran. Nevertheless, realizing that the covert military option of forcing regime change in Syria is waning due to Russia and Iran’s intervention, Washington, London and Paris appear to be «giving peace a chance» in the altogether cynical calculation that they might achieve at the negotiating table what they failed to achieve on the battle field. Not so the Saudis. Or, it can be added, the Turkish regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With their Salafist/Wahhabi Islamist affiliations and deeper investment in the insurgent mercenaries, both Riyadh and Ankara still persist in demanding that the Syrian leader must stand down as a precondition for any political settlement. From the Saudi viewpoint, Washington appears to be giving too many concessions to Syria and its arch-enemy Iran. For the Saudi rulers, the peace talks due to begin in Geneva are a vexing reminder of the P5+1 nuclear accord that Washington signed up to with Iran. Neither the P5+1 nuclear deal nor the Geneva peace talks on Syria may actually bear much fruit for Iranian interests and those of its allies. But from the House of Saud’s paranoid perspective – which sees Iran as its nemesis – these developments, however tentative, are absolutely anathema to Riyadh. This probably explains the provocative execution of the cleric Nimr al-Nimr. It is but the latest in a series of acts by Saudi Arabia aimed at goading Iran and its regional Shiite allies into a more inflammatory conflict. If Iran were to hit back militarily at Saudi Arabia that would inevitably draw in the United States as Riyadh’s primary Western ally. The Saudis have been itching for Washington to launch military strikes on Syria going back to at least the suspicious chemical weapons atrocity near Damascus in August 2013, when President Obama reneged at the last minute – much to Saudi ire back then. If Saudi Arabia can provoke an Iranian military response – and the provocations have been unrelenting over recent months – then the House of Saud stands to kill several birds with one stone. It gets America to go to war for regime change in Syria and against Iran at the same time. However, what the reckless Saudi rulers don’t seem fazed by is that such an escalation would inevitably lead to an international conflagration with Russia.

Tags: Iran Middle East Russia Saudi Arabia Syria US https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2547444817428395222#editor/target=post;postID=2625923913776817302

Lichtblicke trotz um sich greifender Finsternis

 Wir leben wirklich in finsteren Zeiten. Eine logische Spät-Folge der Zertrümmerung der sozialistischen Errungenschaften, die wir frag-und kampflos preisgegeben haben. Wir alle waren mehr oder weniger blind  und  konnten nicht wahrhaben, dass historische Veränderungen voller Widersprüche verlaufen, viel Zeit brauchen und immer mit dem Widerstand jener zu rechnen ist, die sich als Verlierer begreifen. Stalin hatte das ehedem mit dem liebevoll-freundlichen  Bild  von den "blinden Kätzchen" eben doch richtig benannt.

Die heutigen Kräfteverhältnisse in der Welt sind aber anders gelagert als 1939 oder 1941. Damals stand  die SU praktisch alleine da. Heute gibt es zwar die SU nicht mehr, die an ihrer späten Wurmstichigkeit zugrunde ging, aber es  finden dafür  geostrategische Umgewichtungen von unerhörter Größenordnung statt. Unterschätzen wir nicht die Bedeutung Chinas und seiner allseitig ausgreifenden Kooperationsbereitschaft. Der wichtigste  Partner, Putins Russland, ist zwar kein sozialistisches Land, aber doch immerhin patriotisch geeint. Das ist in Zeiten des gewollt herbeigeführten Staatsverfalls nicht wenig.  Von  Zustimmungsraten um die 80 Prozent  können westliche  Politiker nur träumen. Das geostrategisch gewichtige eurasische Land hat sich  zu unser aller Glück aus einer abgrundtiefen Talsohle wiedererhoben. Obwohl die progressiven Entwicklungen in Lateinamerika  der Zeit wieder einmal rückläufig  erscheinen, sollte auch das uns nicht irre machen.  Die großen tektonischen Veränderungen hält das nicht auf.  Aber natürlich, das Imperium schläft auch  nicht. Das genau zeigt sich an Saudi Arabiens jüngster Provokation! Hinter der natürlich einschlägige Kreise stehen. Aber die umsichtigen Politiken Russlands und  des Iran werden auch hier für Mäßigung sorgen. Unsere Aufgabe ist es, nicht schwarz zu malen, sondern die Zeichen der Zeit  in vorwärts weisendem Sinne zu deuten, nur das gibt Kraft. Es ist  dies auch durchaus  realtitätsgerecht.

Das Imperium der USA ist schon im Wanken. Das sehen alle unabhängigen Analytiker. Wir müssen  also die Gegenkräfte stützen, argumentativ, das ist unser möglicher Beitrag. Erinnern wir uns an Lenins Fähigkeit die großen Linien zu sehen: Zwei Schritte vorwärts einer zurück, das ist immer noch ein Schritt vorwärts. Die  mit Hilfe der Klassiker erworbene Analysefähigkeit sollten wir uns auch in diesen  wahrlich finsteren Zeiten  bewahren, sie ist unseres wertvollstes Pfund. Und vergessen wir nicht den Blick hinaus weit über den transatlantischen Tellerrand.

In diesem Sinne Kopf hoch und positiv gedacht. Ihre Irene Eckert

Satirische Streitschrift Krokodil Januarausgabe

80 Seiten Inspiration. Es ist herausgegeben u.a. von vier AF-Mitgliedern und versteht sich als notwendige Grundsatzschrift über die Freiheit des Denkens - bissig - streitbar - schön und wahr und (manchmal) satirisch:

Rubriken: Alles Theater mit Harry Heine, Vorhang auf für Peter Kleinert und die NRhZ, Eiablage
 
Der Hauptfeind steht im eigenen Land
von Anneliese Fikentscher und Andreas Neumann 
Der Diener Gauck in den USA – Reklame für die Unterwerfung
von Ulrich Gellermann 
Wunder gibt es immer wieder 
Elias Davidsson über den gefährlichen Kult um den 11. September 2001 
US-Imperialismus schießt auf Anthroposophen – Warum?
von Anneliese Fikentscher und Andreas Neumann 
Un-Taten lassen Opfer zu Tätern werden
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"Shock and Awe" – Neue Terrorwelle in Paris
Irene Eckert stellt am 15.11.2015 die Frage nach der Verantwortung 
Hände falten
von Siegfried Baudach 
Drahtzieher benennen
Stellungnahme der "Mütter gegen den Krieg Berlin-Brandenburg" zu den Anschlägen von Paris, 15.11.2015 
Schluss mit der Missachtung der nationalen Souveränität Syriens
von Klaus von Raussendorff 
Für die sofortige Einstellung russisch-syrischer Angriffe auf US-Territorium!
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Anzeige wegen Vorbereitung eines Angriffskrieges
initiiert von Dr. Yavuz Özoguz 
Verbrecherische Ja-Sager
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An die Soldaten des Syrien-Kommandos
von Ulrich Gellermann und Hartmut Barth-Engelbart 
Der Galgen wartet – Bundestag beschließt Bomben auf Syrien
von Ulrich Gellermann 
Wiederholungstäterin
Hartmut Barth-Engelbart über Sahra Wagenknecht, die Syriens Präsidenten Assad wiederholt als "Diktator" bezeichnet 
NIE mehr Krieg
von Xavier Naidoo 
NIE mehr Krieg! Was tun?
von Anneliese Fikentscher und Andreas Neumann 
Am Horizont zieht Krieg auf
Paul Craig Roberts fragt, ob er noch zu stoppen ist 
Strategisch gelenkte Flüchtlingsströme als Waffe im Krieg
von Leonid Savin, 26.10.2015 
Anti-Russischer Propaganda entgegentreten, ist Friedensarbeit
von Irene Eckert 
Gerade deswegen
von Afsane Bahar 
Mythos 'islamistischer Terrorismus': Produktion, Vermarktung und Verwendung
von Elias Davidsson 
Denk Mal
von Hartmut Barth-Engelbart     
Wikipedia: Kafkaeske Prozesse
von Katrin McClean 
Zuhause
von Afsane Bahar 
Schmidt-Schnauze schwankend zwischen Anti- & Avanti-Atlantiker bis zum Exitus
Hartmut Barth-Engelbart zum Tod von Altkanzler Helmut Schmidt 
Uneingeschränkte Unterstützung
Klaus Hartmann zu Hartz IV-Sanktionen und Hungerstreik von Ralph Boes 
Liebe Theaterbesucher
von Werner Lutz – aus dem Deutschen Einheit(z)-Textdienst 
Letzte Meldung: Die Fortpflanzung Müttern zuzurechnen, wird als „Hass-Verbrechen“ verboten! 
von Claudia von Werlhof 
Unkalkulierbar
von Jane Zahn 
Der friedensliebende Vorschlaghammer
Kalendergeschichte des kölnischen Widerstandsforschers Erasmus Schöfer 
Deutscher Albtraum
von Krokus 
Hysterische Zeiten, die angeblich freier nie waren
von Ronny Seiler 
Die Bedeutung der Nation für eine revolutionäre Strategie
von Andreas Wehr 
Liquidatoren von "links": Instrument der Gegenaufklärung
von Klaus Hartmann 
Und: Spalten von Opfern nach rassistisch-faschistischen Rasse-Kategorien +++ ZDF annektiert Bethlehem +++ Solidarität mit Palästina und Walter Herrmann +++ Lieber Götz Aly +++ Abknallen und danach helfen und lachen +++ Unsere Verbündeten finanzieren den Terror – das weiß jeder! +++ Ungesetzlicher Aggressionskrieg +++ Warum sollte Marine LePen keinen VW-Phaeton fahren? +++ Ablenkungsmanöver der herrschenden Hooligans +++ KZs für Flüchtlinge? KZs für das Volk? +++ CO2 – hereingelegt? +++ Zu guter Letzt: Meere 
Siehe auch: http://www.das-krokodil.com/

hier ist auch zu erfahren, wie DAS KROKODIL zu bestellen ist...

Mit besten Grüßen und Wünschen zum Neuen Jahr

Anneliese Fikentscher und Andreas Neumann

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  Arbeiterfotografie - Forum für Engagierte Fotografie
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