Stop Collision Course Against Russia! Respect Russia's Achievements For Peace and A More Cooperative!

With special reserves on issues touching  "Communism" we offer  Katherine Frisk's articlethe International Reporter  for serious discussion . Original title see below

Only those with their head in the sand are not aware that NATO, the western allies and the Wall Street bankers are determined to follow a course that will lead to World War 3. With Russia in particular and any other country that stands in their way. In a recent interview Vladimir Putin chided western journalists for the false narratives that are being published in the Main Stream Media press. He said: 

“We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.” 

More recently the highly respected film director Oliver Stone said:

“We’re going to war — either hybrid in nature to break the Russian state back to its 1990s subordination, or a hot war (which will destroy our country). Our citizens should know this, but they don’t because our media is dumbed down in its “Pravda”-like support for our “respectable,” highly aggressive government.” 

What I would like to do in this interview is focus on cycles of time, repetitive narratives from one century to the next that replay over and over again like the film Groundhog Day. This is in a sense, a Matrix with the myth, the story line passed on from one generation to the next, and each generation in turn performs the same stage show. As Shakespeare said, ‘each has their entrances and their exists.”

On the 9th of May 2015, Russia celebrated the Victory over Nazi Germany in World War 2. Saker wrote the most touching and deeply moving article Something truly amazing happened today and I quote:

“Defense Minister Shoigu made the sign of the Cross before the beginning of the celebrations:

This is an absolutely momentous moment for Russia.  Never in the past history had any Russian Minister of Defense done anything like it.  True, the old tradition was to make the sign of the Cross when passing under the Kremlin’s Savior Tower, if only because there is an icon of the Savior right over the gate.  However, everybody in Russia immediately understood that there was much more to this gesture than an external compliance to an ancient tradition.

The Russian journalist Victor Baranets puts it very wellwhen he wrote:”At that moment I felt that with his simple gesture Shoigu brought all of Russia to his feet.  There was so much kindness, so much hope, so much of our Russian sense of the sacred [in this gesture]“.  He is absolutely correct.  To see this Tuvan Buddhist make the sign of the Cross in the Orthodox manner sent an electric shock through the Russian blogosphere: everybody felt that something amazing had happened.”

Saker  also pointed out :

“For centuries Russian soldiers have knelt and asked for God’s blessing, before going into battle and this is, I believe, what Shoigu did today.  He knows that 2015 will be the year of the big war between Russia and the Empire (even if, due to the presence of nuclear weapons on both sides, this war will remain 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% military)”

So let’s go back to World War 2. Almost 30 million Russians died during that war. That is almost half of the total number of people killed on both sides, military and civilian from 1939 to 1945. A horrific figure that is not often quoted in western media or history books.

Question to Saker: What parallels do you see between Russia in 2016 and over 70 years ago?

Saker: 

The most disturbing and frightening parallel which I see between, say, 1938 and 2016 is the total arrogance and sense of superiority of the leaders of the Western world.  I know that this will sound crazy to many because Russians and Europeans are supposed to be of the same “race”, but my entire life experience has brought me to the conclusion that many, maybe most, westerners are deeply racist towards Russians, even if it is at an unconscious level.

Most westerners are deeply convinced that western civilization is the pinnacle of mankind and that while others have their good and even interesting features, westerners are still the most sophisticated, developed, evolved, refined, skilled, etc. and that those who do not belong to that so-called “western civilization” are inherently inferior, even if exotic or even charming.

Now think of Russia which was born from a rejection of the West (rejection of the Papacy in favor the the traditional Christianity of the early Church) and which then beat back wave after wave after wave of western invaders, be it military, or cultural or political.  This adds to the element of fear and the already existing racism and results in a deep seated phobia of everything truly Russian.

There is only one type of Russia which the West likes: a weak, subjugated, bleeding, disorganized and poor Russia to which the western Herrenvolk  can send humanitarian aid, advisors and other “bearers of civilization” (just like Hitler’s Kulturträgers)  to the eastern masses of Untermenschen.

You think that I am exaggerating?  Look at the way the American leaders are trying to treat Russia: like some kind of bad boy who did wrong and who must now face the consequences of his bad behavior.  The fact that all that grandstanding and lecturing has zero effect on the Kremlin or the Russian people does not seem to dissuade the Empire’s rulers who now sound like a broken record.  But this goes far beyond just leaders. There is a cultural, moral and even technological assumption of Russian inferiority which permeates the entire political discourse in the West.  This is why when a US built Boeing or a European built Airbus crashes the media speaks of a Boeing or Airbus crash. But when a Russian aircraft crashes, it is always a Russian built Antonov or Russian built Ilyushin which crashes, as if that explained anything.

This is one of the reasons why the folks in the West simply cannot wrap their minds around the current day reality that the Russian armed forces are substantially superior and generally more capable than their western counterparts.  Right now, not only does Russia have better submarines, better tanks, better aircraft, better air defense system, better electronic warfare, better artillery, better tactical missiles, etc but also a far better infantryman. True, the Russians are behind in other fields (surface ships, communications, satellite technology, etc.) and the superior Russian systems are only being introduced now and are still few in numbers, but they are more than enough to make it impossible for the US/NATO/EU to militarily “defeat” Russia in any conceivable conflict.

So what I see is this: the West is on a collision course with Russia and yet nobody seems to discuss this and when they do, they express all the confident optimism of a drunken idiot who wants to take on a Grizzly bear in a fist fight: the bear might not show any reaction until the drunken idiot jumps over the fence, but once he enters the bear’s territory his life expectancy will be measured in seconds.

An infinite arrogance which completely blinds the western leaders to the immense risks of their policies is what I see in common between 1938 and 2016.  And I find that very, very frightening.  There is also a major difference: in 1938 Russia was not ready for war and the regime in power did not enjoy anywhere near the 80%+ Putin enjoys today.  But today Russia is ready for war, it seems that at least 80% of the talkshows are about the confrontation with the West and the risks of war, while the military is almost constantly involved in very large scale strategic exercises preparing for major war.

On all levels, the Russian society is being prepared for war while in the West, nobody seems to be paying any attention to this (other than absolutely imbecile talks about a Russian invasion of Latvia or Estonia…).  There is also a consensus in Russia that if Hillary gets into the White House the chance of a real war will sharply go up.  I agree with that assessment.

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Katherine: 2017 will be the 100 th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. What most people are unaware of, is that the same Wall Street bankers who funded the 2014 Ukrainian coup and funded Hitler in World War 2, even though the USA was supposedly on the side of the Allies, were the same group of people who funded Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks. To quote from The Creature From Jekyell Island:

the cartoon “..portrays Karl Marx with a book entitled Socialism under his arm, standing amid a cheering crowd on Wall Street. Gathered around and greeting him with enthusiastic handshakes are characters in silk hats identified as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, John D. Ryan of National City Bank, Morgan partner George W. Perkins and Teddy Roosevelt, leader of the Progressive Party.

What emerges from this sampling of events is a clear pattern of strong support for Bolshevism coming from the highest financial and political power centers in the United States; from men, who supposedly were “capitalists” and who according to conventional wisdom should have been the mortal enemies of socialism and communism.”

I have heard from other sources that somewhere around 100 million people died under the Bolsheviks between 1917 and 1939, or is that an exaggeration?

Question: Why did the USA, a country that supposedly believes in freedom and democracy, support communism in Russia?  Their anti-communist stance was after all, the raison d’être for funding wars, coups and revolutions to overthrow communist inclined governments in South America, Africa, Europe and other countries around the world through overt and covert CIA and Operation Gladio involvement for the next 100 years, and replace them with fascist military dictatorships. (A few examples Brazil – Branco; Chile- Pinochett; Argentina- Videla; Indonesia- Suharto; Congo- Sese Seko; Greece’s – “reign of the colonels”; Zimbabwe-Mugabe;) What political and economic parallels do you see from 100 years ago that are applicable today?

Saker: 

First, the issue of the real number of victims of the Communist regime in Russia is an extremely contentious one.  Those interested could look at this article where I touched upon this issue.  I think that the 100 million people figure is absolutely ridiculous, that is for sure.  The real figures are much much less than that, but they are still horrible and should not be dismissed either.  Frankly, this is an issue for historians to decide and I don’t find it helpful to insist on a specific figure.  What we can say for sure is that the victims of the Bolshevik regime were counted in the millions, that is for sure.  This “in the millions” is both safe enough and vague enough to be useful for discussion purposes, especially when covering the entire period from 1917 to 1991.

Second, US Jewish bankers did finance and support Trotsky just as the British supported Lenin.  The former did that as an act of revenge against and hatred for Russia due to what they perceived as the anti-Jewish policies of the Russian Czars.  The latter wanted to subvert Russia from the inside to weaken her on the outside.  This is pretty straightforward.

The concepts of “Freedom and Democracy” versus “Communism” were always just facades, a facade to make the US imperialism look noble and a facade to justify interventions worldwide.

What is taking place today is not very different: we do have an imperial financial system which seeks to subvert Russia from the inside to make her weak on the international stage.  We also have US Jews, now rebranded as “Neocons”, pursuing a hate-based racist crusade against Russia as an act of revenge for what they perceive was the anti-Jewish policies of the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin.  Those interested can read about this here.

So just as we had an AngloZionist conspiracy against Russia 100 years ago we have a different variant of the same AngloZionist conspiracy today.  What changed most over the past century is the rest of the planet, especially the emergence of China and the general collapse of the EU

__________________________________

Katherine: Now let’s go back to over 200 years ago. The  Patriotic War of 1812 when Napoleon invaded Russia. He had as allies the Duchy of Warsaw, Kingdom of Italy, Naples, Confederation of the Rhine, Baden, Bavaria, Berg, Saxony, Westphalia, Austria, Prussia, Swiss Confederation, Napoleonic Spain, Denmark–Norway.

That was a formidable united front against one country. The line up looks very similar to the current European Union and the NATO allies today.

Question: Who funded this army and why? And what parallels do you see 100 years later with World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, World War II and the current tinder box that Russia and Europe find themselves in 2016?

Saker: 

You are right, this all looks very similar doesn’t it?  I would just toss in the Crimea war, which I like to call the “Grand Ecumenist War” against Russia in which you had secular Freemasons, Papists, Protestants and Ottoman Muslims all united against Orthodox Russia.

The main reason for the regular re-emergence of anti-Russian coalition is the mistaken belief in the West that there is safety in numbers.  The Russians know the exact opposite: in military terms, coalitions suck.  Badly.  The western leaders are fundamentally cowards who rule over people who have long lost the warrior-culture which is so central to any society which can stand up and defend itself, even against a superior enemy. The people in the West have come to believe that high-tech wins wars and they have forgotten that what wins wars is not high tech, but willpower and the help of God.  Those interested in this topic can read this article.

The main advantage the US had over, for example, the Iraqis was the fact that they succeeded in convincing Iraqi of the futility of resisting the almighty USA.  But with nations and cultures like Russia, Iran, Hezbollah or even Vietnam, the USA is faced with an enemy who is not at all convinced of the US superiority and who is willing, sincerely and truly willing, to die for his country and people.  That is something which the US military has never learned how to cope with.

And then, consider this: during WWI Russia imploded due to the combined effects of the February and October revolutions.  During WWII, the Soviet regime was largely unpopular and much of the ruling elites were themselves russophobic (this would change during the course of the war).

But today Russia is united.  And ready in military and civilians terms.  Even Russian banks have recently completed a series of exercises on how to continue to function in case of war.  Will the West try again, one last time or will cool heads prevail in the West?  I don’t know.

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Katherine: Now let’s go back to almost 1,000 years ago. I first interviewed Saker in July 2015. Orthodox Christianity is by and large not understood in the West, least of all by me at the time, though I am learning. Saker enlightened both my readers and myself in  An Insight Into Orthodox Christianity.

Another very informative article that he wrote was : Another Crusade? : Ukrainian nationalism – its roots and nature in February 2014 during the coup in Kiev and the beginnings of the outbreak in the civil war between western Ukraine and eastern Ukraine. In that article he went back to 1204, Pope Innocent III, the fourth crusade and the sacking of Constantinople by mercenaries who were funded by the Jewish Del Banco bankers in Venice. He said:

“Most people mistakenly believe that the Crusades only happened in the Middle-East and that they were only directed at Islam.  This is false.  In fact, while the official excuse for western imperialism at that time was to free the city of Jerusalem from the “Muslim infidels” the crusades also were aimed at either exterminating or converting the “Greek schismatics” i.e. the Orthodox Christians.  The most notorious episode of this anti-Orthodox crusade is the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, during the 4th Crusade, in which the city was subjected to three days of absolutely grotesque pillaging, looting and massacres by the western “Christians” who even looted and burned down Orthodox churches, monasteries and convents, raped nuns on church altars and even placed a prostitute on the Patriarchal throne.  This outpouring of genocidal hatred was hardly a fluke, but it was one of the earliest manifestation of something which would become a central feature of the mindset and ideology of the Latin Church.

1242 – The Northern Crusades of Pope Gregory IX:

Unlike his predecessor who directed his soldiers towards the Holy Land, Pope Gregory IX had a very different idea: he wanted to convert the “pagans” of the North and East of Europe to the “true faith”.  In his mind, Orthodox Russia was part of these “pagan lands” and Orthodox Christians were pagans too.  His order to the Teutonic Knights (the spiritual successors of the Franks who had pillaged and destroyed Rome) was to either convert or kill all the pagans they would meet (this genocidal order was very similar to the one given by Ante Pavelic to his own forces against the Serbs during WWII: convert, kill or expel).  In most history books Pope Gregory IX has earned himself a name by instituting the Papal Inquisition (which has never been abolished, by the way), so it is of no surprise that this gentleman was in no mood to show any mercy to the “Greek schismatics”.  This time, however, the Pope’s hordes were met by a formidable defender: Prince Alexander Nevsky.”

Today what was the Byzantine Empire and Orthodox Christian Russia is currently under attack by Daesh, or commonly known as ISIS. Syria has some of the oldest Orthodox Christian communities in the world going back to the 1st century A.D. who still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Russia in turn, since September 2015, has given President Assad full military support in fighting these terrorists.

Question: What parallels do you see almost 1000 years ago, including the vast tapestry of The Patriot War of 1812, World War I ,the Bolshevik Revolution, World War II and the current situation that could very well lead the whole world into World War III?

Saker: 

The West has always been more than happy to try to use Islam against Russia, there is nothing new here.  This is the old divide and rule technique – the Russians and the Muslims fight each other down to the last Russian and Muslim and then we, the Western 1%er will finally get to rule the world unopposed.

In a way, Islam and Russia present a very similar type of threat not only to the West’s international and financial order, but also to the western social, political and moral order too.  Both Russia and Islam present an alternative civilizational model, one which is based on values fundamentally different to the ones truly underlying the western political order.

I would argue that China and Latin America also have this potential, that they are developing it right now, but that they have not yet reached the “political escape velocity” to openly dare reject the West with it’s so-called ‘values’.

This is why pitting Muslims against Russia and vice-versa is so important for the Empire.  I would say that to some degree, this has been an effective policy with the Srebrenica pseudo-genocide as a cornerstone, but this policy is now hitting a number of walls.

The first one is that the Muslim world is extremely diverse and hard to unite.  Next to Wahabi liver-eaters you will find a myriad of other non-Wahabi Sunnis, Shia, Sufis who all reject the Wahabi model and for whom the Wahabi model is, in fact, no less a mortal threat than for non-Muslims.

Second, people like Vladimir Putin, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Nursultan Nazarbaev, Ramzan Kadyrov, Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Assad and many others are seeing through the Empire’s ploy and are refusing to be baited by it.  Historically, the Ottomans have always been a rabid and even genocidal enemy of Orthodoxy, and the modern Saudi-inspired Wahabis are no better, but the rest of the Islamic world is objectively an ally of Russia just as Russia is an objective ally of the Islamic world.

Both sides here need to “clean house”: the Russians need to free themselves from the toxic influence of the pro-US Atlantic Integrationists inside the Kremlin and “liberal” supporters in Russia (less than 5% of the population) and the Sunni Muslims need to sever their often too cozy ties with both the Wahabis and the Ottomans.

This process has already begun in Russia and I have high hopes that it will also take place inside the Muslim world.

____________________________________________

Katherine: Last question. Do you think Europe and Russia will ever reach the stage where they abandon the script, take the red pill, escape the matrix and walk away from this repetitive groundhog day narrative that has been so destructive to so many people for over 1,000 years?

Saker: 

Yes, of course this is possible, even likely, but only in the future.  For that to happen the Europeans need to liberate themselves from the ideological claws of the AngloZionists and their propaganda machine.

Second, the Europeans need to give up their artificial European identify and see themselves for what they really are: north Europeans, Central Europeans, Eastern Europeans and Mediterranean Europeans. The Mediterranean one, is one which is especially dear to me and it immensely saddens me that it is now diluted into this ridiculous and faceless “EU European” pseudo-identity.

Furthermore, a new European identify, far more diverse and religious than today, will eventually have to emerge from the chaos following the collapse of the EU.  At this point in time, the Europeans might possibly re-embrace their racist and imperialist worldview, but I doubt it.  I find it much more likely that Europe will give up its dreams of grandeur and embrace a much more low-key but human worldview which will accept diversity and pluralism without feeling threatened.

Last, but most definitely not least, the entire capitalist economic model and ideology will have to be replaced with a sustainable and socially civilized economic model.  This will take time, a lot of time, but I don’t see Europe, or the US, for that matter, sustaining their current delusional policies forever and ever.

Eventually reality, in the form of a Russian missile or simply of massive economic collapse, does catch up to everybody, no matter how deep their delusions.  

In truth, in its 1000 years long history (yes, modern Europe was born in the Middle-Ages, not from the Roman or Greek civilizations) the Western civilization has shown itself to be both magnificent and abhorrent.  It is sometimes hard to believe that J.S. Bach and Adolf Hitler were born of the same civilization, but it is true.

The peoples of Europe will have to find their way, a new way, from these contradictions and this will be hard, but the good news is that if they give up their messianic delusions they will have the rest of mankind as an ally and a friend.

Original Title:

Take The Red Pill Or Fight World War 3. – Interview With The Saker http://thesaker.is/take-the-red-pill-or-fight-world-war-3-interview-with-the-saker/

5125 ViewsSeptember 18, 2016 64 Comments 

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US Desperately Pumps ‘Humanitarian’ Smokescreen for Failing Syria Ceasefire

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM | 18.09.2016 | OPINION

Washington’s lie about seeking a genuine ceasefire in Syria is in danger of being exposed for the world to see. So, hilariously, a charade is being hurriedly orchestrated in order to hide this ignominy. As usual, the Syrian government is being scapegoated for the real cause of violence in the country. That real cause is Washington’s state-sponsored terrorist-fueled war for regime change.

After four days of continuing deadly breaches by US-backed «rebels» since the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire deal was implemented last Monday, Washington and the dutiful Western mainstream media are preparing the inevitable excuses.

Rather than focusing on ongoing «rebel» violence in contravention of the truce, US Secretary of State John Kerry fingered the Syrian government for preventing humanitarian access to insurgent-held eastern Aleppo as the reason for why the ceasefire is in danger of collapsing.

Kerry accused the Syrian government of causing «unacceptable repeated delays» in delivery of humanitarian aid convoys to the northern city. Some 300,000 people are estimated to be stuck in dire conditions in the eastern side of Aleppo, which has become a key battleground in the five-year war.

Western media reports followed suit with Reuters reporting: «Syria ceasefire deal in balance as Aleppo aid plan stalls». Another publication, USA Today, made the more pointed claim: «The regime has broken its pledges on the distribution of life-saving supplies».

So, in Washington’s artful spin of events, it is the Syrian government of President Bashar al Assad which is reneging on the ceasefire arrangement by blocking food and medical supplies to starving civilians. This, of course, plays handily into the broader Western narrative that the Syrian «regime» is the ultimate villain of the piece. The vile Assad is mercilessly denying children food and water, goes the spin.

Based on that premise, Washington is giving notice that it will not follow through on its ceasefire commitment to join with Russian air forces for targeting terror groups like ISIS (Daesh) and al Nusra Front. Those anticipated «joint operations» between US and Russian aircraft were supposed to be the highlight of the ceasefire plan worked out last weekend in Geneva by Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

But that supposed «breakthrough» is now in doubt. McClatchy News reported at the end of the week: «US to Russia – Syria military cooperation not guaranteed».

US State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters four days into the truce: «If, by Monday we have continued to see reduced violence and no humanitarian access, there will be no Joint Implementation Center [with Russian military]».

Washington is mendaciously trying to pretend that there have been no breaches of the ceasefire and that the whole problem revolves around «no humanitarian access» being granted by the Syrian authorities. If the US does indeed backtrack from its stated prior commitment to cooperate with Russian forces for targeting terror groups then it is safe to assume that the entire ceasefire «deal» will be dead, even as a rhetorical concept.

Admittedly, the level of violence in Aleppo and across the country subsided when the US-Russian ceasefire pact came into effect on September 12. Russian and allied Syrian forces halted their campaign of air strikes. Opposition violence appeared to abate too. Nevertheless, the truce was reportedly violated multiple times by anti-government militias, not just in Aleppo, but in other locations, such as Latakia, Hama and Homs.

Furthermore, there was no apparent distinction between so-called US-backed moderate rebels and recognized terror groups in carrying out these violations. All insurgents groups were engaging in sporadic attacks – in contravention of the putative ceasefire.

Credible Russian military reports confirmed that Syrian army units had observed the truce and had begun demilitarizing a major access road into eastern Aleppo. Syrian troops are being replaced by Russian units to safeguard the route. However, it is the militants who are refusing to withdraw from the Castello Road area, which would provide the humanitarian aid convoys access to the city.

Indeed, insurgent factions openly declared that they would continue shelling and sniping in the Castello Road precisely in order to prevent the aid convoys arriving because they opposed the ceasefire accord even being implemented.

Russia has correctly criticized the US as using a «verbal smokescreen» to conceal why the ceasefire is failing. The point is that Washington has negligible control over its declared moderate rebels. In fact, there is no control because in practice there is no distinction between the myriad illegally armed insurgents.

Like the ceasefire called earlier this year in February, this latest one is breaking down because all the militants continue to breach any cessation. As Lt General Vladimir Savchenko, chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria, points out, the US-backed opposition is using the ceasefire simply as an opportunity to rearm and regroup.

And Washington’s policy is impotent about altering that. The CIA and Washington’s allies in Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey armed the anti-government insurgents, including the known terror groups. The regime-change conspirators created a veritable Frankenstein monster over which they now have little control even to the point of getting it to at least appear to be complying with a ceasefire for tactical reasons. 

The latest ceasefire is floundering like the previous attempt because Washington’s assertions about «moderate rebels» dissociating from «terror» groups is total and utter humbug.

Risibly, as one could have predicted, John Kerry’s bombastic appeal last weekend for US-backed «rebels» to «separate» from the extremists so that American and Russian forces could then get on with the task of eliminating the terrorists has been subsequently shown to be the consummate delusion that it is.

Washington and its allies are being caught out spectacularly in their lies over the Syrian conflict. The stone-cold truth is that they have been sponsoring terrorist proxies for the criminal purpose of regime change.

So conspicuous and damning is Washington’s nefarious role in Syria’s conflict – which has resulted in 400,000 dead and millions turned into desperate refugees – that this crime has to be covered up at all costs. But covering it up is becoming futile because of the increasing glaring reality.

Syria’s ceasefire is flawed because Washington, the supposed co-architect of the truce along with Moscow, is not motivated by finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The conflict is all about regime change and deploying terrorist agents to achieve that. That is why the ceasefire is failing – yet again.

The unbearable truth about Washington and its criminal gang of state-sponsors of terrorism has to be concealed from public view. And that is why Washington and the dutiful Western media lie machine are cranking up the «explanation» for the ceasefire unravelling as being due to the fault of the Syrian «regime» and its Russian ally for not delivering on humanitarian commitments.

This American smokescreen has been pumped out for nearly six years in Syria. It is really galling to hear the likes of John Kerry and Barack Obama talk about «human suffering» and the need for humanitarian ceasefires.

The suffering and violence in Syria will stop when Washington is seen for the criminal regime that it is. That day is coming. The American smokescreen is dissipating with each passing day because of its absurd contradictions.

And the terrorists – state sponsors and proxies alike – are finally being exposed.

Tags: Al Qaeda  Russia  Syria  US http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/09/18/us-desperately-pumps-humanitarian-smokescreen-failing-syria-ceasefire.html

Einspruch gegen TTIP, CETA und Kriegspolitik!

Widerstand gegen Imperialismus und Krieg ist nötig und möglich!

Auf zu einer großem Friedensmanifestation am 8. Oktober in Berlin

Berlin am 17. 09. 2016 von Irene Eckert

Aus Protest gegen die geplanten Handelsabkommen TTIP und CETA sind am Samstag in Deutschland mehr als 100.000 Menschen auf die Straße gegangen, laut Polizeiangaben. Die Veranstalter teilten gar mit, bundesweit seien 320.000 Menschen zu den Demonstrationen gekommen. Aufgerufen Zu den Kundgebungen hatte ein breites Bündnis aus Gewerkschaften, Umweltverbänden und kirchlichen Gruppen und das ist gut so. Die bunte Menschenmasse, die etwa in Berlin trotz strömendem Regen die Straßen füllte, verdeutlicht einmal mehr, dass Einigkeit stark macht und dass die Menschen bereit sind zum Widerstand, ganz gegen die Unkenrufe pseudo-friedensbewegter Kräfte, die so tun, als wären die deutschen Bürger eine Herde von Lämmern.

Der Widerstand gegen TTIP und CETA ist aber auch friedenspolitisch von großer Relevanz. Sind diese als Oktroy gedachten Vereinbarungen doch nur die wirtschaftliche Seite der US-gesteuerten Eindämmungsversuche gegen China, Russland und Europa. So absurd sich das zunächst anhören mag. Unter dem verharmlosenden Etikett von Freihandelsabkommen wird Stellung bezogen zu einer Embargo-Politik, die ergänzend zu den nach wie vor bestehenden Sanktionen gegen den Iran, Russland, Syrien, selbstverständlich auch Nordkorea, unliebsamen Konkurrenten der Krieg erklärt wird. Dieser Krieg wird wahnwitziger Weise vom US-Imperium auf allen Ebenen zielgerichtet vorbereitet. Das mediale Trommelfeuer gegen Russland, den angeblichen Aggressor und der NATO-Aufmarsch an seinen Grenzen ist ein anderer Aspekt derselben völkerrechtswidrigen, unheilvollen Politik.

Während Russlands Diplomatie unermüdlich darum bemüht ist, sowohl in Syrien als auch in der Ukraine die gefährliche Eskalationsspirale zu entschärfen und die Außenminister der beiden Großmächte Lavrow und Kerry um die Einhaltung mühsam austarierter Waffenstillstandsabkommen ringen, zielt das Pentagon darauf ab, alle Verhandlungserfolge wieder zu torpedieren.

Dessen ungeachtet hat in New York die UN-Vollversammlung begonnen. Die Vereinten Nationen bleiben der Ort an dem gewaltfreie Konflikt-Lösebemühungen zum Erfolg geführt werden können. Die UN-Charta bietet dafür die richtige Plattform. Wir können gewiss sein, dass die großen anti- hegemonialen Kräfte China, Iran, Russland und ihre Kooperationspartner in Asien, Afrika und Lateinamerika auch in diesem Jahr alle Kräfte darauf richten werden, dem gemeinsam Anti-Terrorkrieg einen neuen Impuls zu verleihen. Sie werden auch mit Vorschlägen nicht sparen, eine multipolare, offene, gerechtere Weltordnung anzuvisieren. Die Umsetzung jedweder Friedensordnung, die wegführen muss vom unipolaren Vorherrschaftsstreben ist aber auf eine wachsame Weltöffentlichkeit angewiesen. Diese Öffentlichkeit muss sich die konstruktiven Vorschläge zu eigen machen, die heilsamen Kräfte in der Welt erkennen und benennen und sich endlich vom alten Feindbilddenken befreien. Auch die Gleichsetzung von Opfer und Aggressor, von Delinquent und Verteidiger muss beendet werden.

Die alte Ordnung ist brüchig geworden. Mit jedem Tag wird sichtbarer, dass die Vereinigten Staaten und ihre sogenannte westliche Wertegemeinschaft ein baufälliges Konstrukt sind. Das Geheimhaltungsgebot, das die Amerikaner den Russen bei der jüngsten Syrienabmachung abverlangen, findet seine Parallele in der Wirtschafts- und Handelspolitik wie sie mit CETA und TTIP verewigt werden soll. Die Verfahrensweise ist undemokratisch, das Ergebnis die endgültige Entrechtung der Völker. Der Hegemon glaubt an seinen Exzeptionalismus und an seine militärische Macht, mit deren Hilfe es ihm schon viel zu lange gelungen ist, dem Rest der Welt seinen Willen aufzudrängen. Diese Ära aber geht zu Ende. Neue Kräfte sind am Erstarken. Chinas Wirtschaftskraft verschafft der volkreichsten Nation der Erde zu einem immer selbstbewussteren Auftreten. Der G20 Gipfel in Hangzhou machte dies jüngst vor aller Welt erneut deutlich. Der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten musste ohne den üblichen roten Teppich durch die Hintertreppe sein Flugzeug verlassen. Ehrengast der grandiosen Veranstaltung war der russische Präsident Putin. China entsandte kürzlich eine hochrangige Militärdelegation nach Syrien und ist dort zu deutlicherem Engagement bereit.

Die Drohungen der stark angeschlagenen Präsidentschaftskandidatin Hillary Clinton nach ihrer erhofften Nominierung Syrien endgültig zu „befrieden“, laufen ins Leere. Sie wird sie nicht realisieren können. Die mit ihrer Hilfe inthronisierten Vasallen in Kiew werden sich ebenfalls umorientieren müssen. Auch die neuerliche Stütze durch einen wieder einmal ungerechtfertigten IWF-Kredit wird ihnen nicht mehr aus ihrer selbst verschuldeten Misere helfen.

Worauf es ankommt ist, Volkes Stimme überall lauthals und mächtig Gehör zu verschaffen und sich auf die richtigen Verbündeten zu stützen. Mit den Amerikanern im Schlepptau ist kein Staat mehr zu machen. Die beiden Präsidentschaftskandidaten bringen den Zustand dieser einst großen Nation trefflich zum Ausdruck: eine kranke, ältliche Frau, die ihrem Karriereziel alles geopfert hat und die sich völlig in den Fängen des militärisch-industriellen Establishment und von ausländischen Geldgebern wie Saudi-Arabien befindet und ein Multimilliardär und Immobilienhai, der von den eigenen Leuten gehasst und gechasst wird, weil er die NATO für obsolet hält und mit Russland kooperieren will.

Um uns auf eine große Manifestation für den Frieden am 8. Oktober in Berlin gut vorzubereiten,

müssen wir uns diese Zusammenhänge ins Bewusstsein rufen und sie unter die Menschen bringen.

Kooperation statt Konfrontation!

Beendet die unheilvolle Sanktionspolitik!!

Votiert für nationale Souveränität statt Vasallentreue!

The Israel Lobby, the Syrian War and the Meaning of Empire by Andrew Stewart

EDITOR'S CHOICE | 17.09.2016 (BLUE AND ITALIC LINES STRESS BY BLOGGER  )

Andrew Stewart is a documentary film maker and reporter who lives outside Providence

There seems to be a series of debates going on in activist circles these days that are inter-connected, the continued plight of Alison Weir and her abysmal treatment by various NGOs  and the issue of who to stand in solidarity with in regards to Syria. Both are informed essentially by one foundational theoretical point, the argument over the role of the neocons in Washington and the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), with a significant group of people seeing everything going on in the region rooted in the PNAC policy suggestions that led us down the road to the war on Iraq and continued the brutalization of the Palestinians under George W. Bush.

I think that, when we get right down to it, the ideas about PNAC are symptomatic of a kind of racism that needs to be squashed and by this I do not mean racism against white people, usually bandied about in the canard of anti-Semitism. No, what I refer to is a fundamental and irreconcilable delusion about America that only Dr. Gerald Horne and a few other scholars like Constance and Ned Sublette have dared challenge.

What defines the debate around Syria right now is whether or not the opposition to Assad, which has been linked to various American NGOs, is a proxy for the United States and whether the events in Syria were part of a typical imperial espionage effort to destabilize the country in the name of American interests. The evidence for this position is very clear, the PNAC agenda included the ouster of the Baath government. However, many argue that the PNAC agenda has ceased to define American policies in the region since Obama took office and such arguments are a mechanical imposition of the opposition to the war on Iraq’s logic onto a conflict that is fundamentally different. Perhaps it bears mentioning that a certain familiarity occurs to me when comparing the debate of support to the Syrian opposition with that of whether the Kosovo Liberation Army was a legitimate opponent of Milosevic.

To my mind, this claim about PNAC is the most mistaken diagnosis of power relations in regards to the Pentagon I have come across in a long time. What we are dealing with is a chicken-and-egg scenario, a question of whether PNAC controlled the Pentagon or whether the Pentagon created PNAC.

To better understand this, we need to go back a century to the start of World War I, the event that caused the entire set of dominoes that have led us here. The question then becomes why did that war happen?

In this regard, the record is monumentally clear. After the unification of Germany and the creation of the first modern welfare state under Bismarck, the German government began to strengthen diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire, including in regards to energy markets. The two governments began to formulate a Berlin to Baghdad railway that would have transported oil between those two cities. This was simply unacceptable to the interconnected financial and energy corporations based in London and on Wall Street. This point is key to understand, finance and oil companies are in reality one large conglomeration and have been at least since the transition from coal to oil in the 19th century, if not earlier. One needs only look to the convoluted and intertwined family trees of John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Nelson W. Aldrich to see how deeply this goes.

It is key to understand these points because it informs the exact reason why the American government first allowed funding of the British and French war efforts before sending troops “over there”. Reams and reams of copy exist now that have obscured this understanding and instead lay the cause of the war on everything from the death of an obscure Austrian princeling to the capitulation of the Second International to colonialism in the Balkans to infinity and beyond. All these events were symptomatic of this fear of the Berlin-Baghdad railway within the oil-finance industrial complex.

The oil-finance industrial complex has had designs on the historic Levant and those same energy markets now for a century. It is a long term goal of the people who own and run America. As such, we need to understand that PNAC was a public relations campaign for this industrial complex that articulated the desires of Wall Street. To suggest that PNAC dictates policy to the Pentagon and not the other way around is based in the delusion that America is a functional parliamentary democracy and not an imperial project whose consolidation dates back to the Civil War. Neocons and neoliberals are press agents disguised as parliamentarians who do the bidding of Wall Street. It perhaps is worth mentioning here also the exact meaning of those words. The neo- prefix does not mean ‘new’ as it does in the word ‘neo-Nazi’. Instead, it designates that politician in question has embraced neoclassical economics, a set of policies and theories that redistributes the wealth of the public sector and 99% of humanity into the coffers of 1% that control the finance capital sector by inverting Keynesian economics. Indeed, while the differences between necons and neoliberals on domestic American social policies were quite profound (abortion, sexual orientation, Affirmative Action), their policies in international colonial policies were identical. In this sense we should identify various implementations of neoliberal policies by foreign politicians as acts of soft-power imperialism driven by Wall Street.

In this sense, Wall Street does want to see the ouster of the Assad government because it would benefit their profits. It is a basic fact that Bashar al-Assad, just like Slobodan Milosevic, is not a saint. For all the copy that can be generated about how the war on Yugoslavia was an imperial conquest (true fact), Milosevic was a former financial official who had enacted austerity programs to appease the WTO/World Bank cartel (also true fact), a point brought home by this fantastic lecture by Michael Parenti from 1999. After the collapse of the USSR, Yugoslavia ceased to be a useful buffer between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and the financial parasites moved in for the kill. They were able to get their man Slobo into power but at a certain point he threw up his hands and said ‘nope, that’s my limit, not going further‘. And at that point it was bombs away. This is roughly akin to the way the US has treated Assad since he took power, he did the West’s dirty work in terms of torture and neoliberal policy implementations up to a certain point and then said ‘enough!‘, at which point our man in Damascus became our enemy.

And in this sense also the Israel lobby is another public relations firm not for the Jewish State but for the oil-finance industrial complex. The Zionist movement was a small, sectarian effort lacking any internal coherency or unity until the British enlisted them as a proxy of colonial efforts in Palestine on behalf of the oil-finance industrial complex after World War I. It was only with backing from finance and the oil companies that Zionism was able to gain any footing in Palestine, their efforts had been futile and scattershot in the approximately two decades prior to the outbreak of the First World War. The suggestion that Zionism has somehow hijacked American imperial policy is ridiculous.

The joke that Israel is the fifty-first state carries in it a kernel of truth, the fact that American federal policies are not overridden by state policies, it is the other way around. Now, has Israel gotten a bit pushier than preferred over the past quarter century? Yes, there is no doubt about that, the Likud party has become so obnoxious that they border on megalomaniacal. But the events leading up to the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014 are instructive here. After worldwide condemnation for the slaughter, culminating in Ban Ki Moon and other American puppets speaking out, President Obama called Bibi Netanyahu and told him it was time to stop and the slaughter ended immediately. That is significant because it tells us who controls what in the US-Israel relationship. The Israel Lobby is an American public relations firm that uses blackmail to hinder debate within the halls of power. But Obama stopped Protective Edge, meaning he controls Netanyahu.

The idea that Zionism controls America is based in a romantic narrative of governance that is racist. The unstated thesis of the entire argument is “Once upon a time America was a benign, good place and then Zionism hijacked our foreign policy, taking us down a path we would otherwise not have walked.”

But that is pure white supremacist fantasy, a Disney vision of history. Gerald Horne makes clear in his The Counterrevolution of 1776 that America was not a step forward for human decency, instead it was a militant rebellion against the advances of abolition that were taking power in the British Parliament. The commodities targeted by ‘taxation without representation’ were slave-produced ones. The Founders were creating a garrison state to preserve chattel slavery and its political economy. Abraham Lincoln used his American Indian policies to field train the vanguard of American imperial policy that would be implemented in Latin America and the Pacific over the next fifty years. To suggest that Zionism has hijacked American policy is to fundamentally deny that America has been an empire since 1865, something that Gore Vidal spent his entire life disproving through his excellent and quite humorous series of historical novels, Narratives of Empire. In reality, Zionism learned a few things from American imperial policy and implemented mirrors of these policies on the Palestinians. Those who doubt this would do well to engage in an Edward Said-styled literary comparison of any history of the Nakba and Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

I think part of this issue also stems from the fact that some activists still cannot get over the fact that we never had a functional democracy. They yearn for their idealized American democracy while refusing to acknowledge that, if black and brown voices did not matter in 1776, that means the entire edifice of electoral politics and American parliamentarism is a clever and well-funded farce, defined as an ideological state apparatus by the French philosopher and quasi-Maoist Louis Althusser. This apparatus is quite powerful and underwrote why many activists jumped on the Shachtmanite Chairman Bernie Sanders bandwagon in the last eighteen months.

For those of you who have lives, Max Shachtman was the Trotskyist who went in the opposite direction of people like Ernest Mandel or Tariq Ali. While Mandel and others like him said that one should try to reform the Communist bloc, Shachtman said that the Soviet Union was beyond hope, a total failure that was irredeemable. From here he encouraged his disciples Irving Howe, Bayard Rustin, and Michael Harrington to take the skeleton of the old Norman Thomas Socialist Party and create the Democratic Socialists of America, a left caucus of the Democrats that was intended to push the party of American labor to the left and a European-styled model of social democracy while promoting a Cold War liberal foreign policy that was by 1968 to the right of both Noam Chomsky and Walter Cronkite regarding Vietnam. Perhaps it bears mentioning that, even though Harry Clark cites Harrington’s formulation of the word ‘neoconservative’, we should lay a good deal of blame at Harrington’s feet for promulgating hasbara in the 1970’s and ’80’s about how Israel’s Labor Party was a model for the Democrats to emulate despite the fact the highest level of illegal settlement expansion took place under Labor governments.

We should also seriously interrogate the notion of politicians and look to Marx himself for inspiration when dealing with Assad and Putin. He knew exactly what Abraham Lincoln was and was not as a white former railroad lawyer and son-in-law of a slave-owning family. Yet his journalism for Horace Greeley and letters to the president would make you think that the Great Emancipator was a premonition of Lenin. That is not because he was blind to Lincoln’s many massive flaws. Instead it was because he saw the Union Army as an engine of historical progress despite the flaws. Does Vladimir Putin have similar flaws? Yes, many, but his challenge to NATO and the imperial project is objectively a progressive goal and effort despite the flawed engine that delivers it. For those who would rebut me with accounts of Putin’s crimes (??? BLOGGER), which I do not doubt, just take a look at the depravity of Sherman’s march to the sea, a massive moving line of marauders who killed quite a few black and white men and raped quite a few black and white women. Yet Marx called their actions “matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.” This is the difference between English empirical thinking and German dialectical thinking. In the former, the morality of the individual actors is key. In the latter, the outcome of the actions in history, despite the individual actors and their flaws, is all that matters.

The way to control American policy is through direct action politics, or, to quote Howard Zinn, “What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in- and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.” Electoral politics is able to be used as a tool to further radicalize voters into militant activists. The delusion otherwise dismisses the fact that abolitionists ended slavery and not legislators, who were forced by abolitionists to pass laws.

counterpunch.org

Pres. Assad in liberated Daraya "You are sad and vanquished, we are happy."

Syria’s Assad sends a message to Western officials from recaptured city – English Subs

1882 ViewsSeptember 14, 2016 10 Comments

The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world

http://thesaker.is/syrias-assad-sends-a-message-to-western-officials-from-recaptured-city-english-subs/