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South Tyneside Stop the War / 73rd Anniversary of US Military Aggression against DPRK

« Last post by Roger on July 01, 2023, 08:59:59 AM »

73rd Anniversary of US Military Aggression against DPRK: Solidarity with the DPRK against the US
Workers Weekly RCPBML

June 25, 2023


   PHOTO: Korean Friendship Association UK protest outside the US Embassy in London on June 24th in solidarity with the DPRK against the US

PHOTO: South Korean protests against US military exercises

Sunday, June 25, marks the 73rd anniversary of the US-led military aggression against the Korean nation that started the 1950-1953 Korean War (1). This US-led coalition of aggression, under the flag of the United Nations, involved troops from 17 countries, with Britain as one of the leading forces. Aimed at occupying the whole of Korea, the war lasted three years until the US, Britain and the troops from the south of Korea were defeated and the US was forced to sign the armistice on July 27, 1953, 70 years ago next month. This weekend events are being held in Britain and around the world to start a month of expressing solidarity with the DPRK and against the US, and paying tribute to the heroic Korean people who continue to affirm their right to be by fighting for an independent and united Korea, and for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang mass rallies took place at different parts of the municipality on June 25, the day of struggle against U.S. imperialism. More than 120,000 working people and youth and students in the capital participated.

Today, the US with the south Korean military are marking this anniversary by once again staging five ongoing "combined joint firepower annihilation drills" targeting the DPRK. Four of these exercises were in June. Also, last week it was reported that the USS Michigan, one of the largest nuclear missile submarines in the world, "capable of launching special forces missions", was in south Korea as part of these exercises. The statements say it is part of the recent bilateral agreements on enhancing "regular visibility" of US strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula in "response to North Korea's advancing nuclear programme". That the DPRK defends itself against US nuclear weapons, which have always been present, if not "visible" on the Korean peninsula, is not a crime but is its right in the context of the ever-present US nuclear blackmail and threats. It is the right of all nations and peoples to defend their self-determination and peaceful development.

These ongoing military and nuclear weapons exercises on this 73rd anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War are not only the largest in many years but are accompanied by false claims that such exercises are "defensive" to the Republic of Korea (ROK). It is clear that they are now openly aimed, as they were in 1950, at waging war against the DPRK, at "occupation of Pyongyang" and at a "beheading operation". As they did before in 1950, the US and its allies wheel out the false claims that it is the DPRK that is the "aggressor" and threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Il Sung, President of the DPRK and Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army in the Korean War.

Condemning these exercises in April when they were announced, a KCNA commentary (2) pointed out that the exercises demonstrate that the hostility of the US to the DPRK has never been greater. The commentary added that this hostility is reminding the people and army of the DPRK of the aggression of June 1950, when they were subject to this war crime against the people of Korea, and is further arousing the greatest vigilance against the military and nuclear aggression posed by the US on the Korean Peninsula. On June 15, a representative of the Ministry of Defence of the DPRK issued a strong warning against the "combined joint firepower annihilation drill" targeting the DPRK.

In the Korean War, three million people died at the hands of the Anglo-US forces in Korea. The US carpet-bombed the DPRK and there was hardly a brick left standing in the cities and towns of the north. The US and their allies did not hesitate to use terrible chemical and biological weapons, and even thought of using nuclear weapons, provoking a wave of indignation throughout the world. Hundreds of thousands of civilians in the north and south of Korea were massacred. Civilians were buried alive, dismembered, burned to death and drowned. Many were forced to dig their own graves before being executed in the same manner that the Nazis massacred civilians, particularly those who resisted (3).

This was a time when the Korean people had made tremendous sacrifices to defeat the colonial occupation by the Japanese fascists and establish their legitimate right to independence. Already President Kim Il Sung, the leader of the armed struggle against the Japanese occupying forces, and the architect of the liberation of the country, had founded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on September 9, 1948. It was the US, Britain and their allies that could not tolerate the existence of an independent anti-fascist Korea, with its popular government and its determination to create a socialist society. It was the US, Britain and their allies that divided Korea and maintained their military occupation following the defeat of the fascist forces by the Koreans themselves.

The division of the one nation of Korea continues to this day with the US led punitive trade and economic sanctions, which also block "food and agricultural products" (4), threatening the well-being and lives of the people in the DPRK, which is a mountainous country with smaller areas of arable land than the south of Korea. With these illegal and inhumane sanctions, themselves an act of war, they hope to starve the people of the DPRK into submission and blame their socialist political system.

The dangerous militarisation of the Korean Peninsula by the US continues today as part of its hegemonic ambitions to dominate East Asia and also China. The US is conducting ongoing military and nuclear exercises on land, sea and in the air, in and around the Asian-Pacific Taiwan strait and South China Sea as well as around the Korean Peninsula. Britain has also joined the US in these dangerous military manoeuvres in the Asia-Pacific and on the Korean Peninsula into 2023. This year for the first time since the Korean War, Britain has deployed its Royal Marines to the Korean Peninsula to join the US in its war preparations against the DPRK. This act by the British government was an insulting provocation given that the former soldiers of the Royal Marines of 41 Independent Commando were the ones that had carried out amphibious raids behind north Korean lines between 1950 and 1951 as part of the armed forces of the US, fraudulently dispatched under the United Nations flag (5), which invaded and occupied Korea.

Pyongyang in 1953, the result of US-led barbarity in the Korean War

From the time of the Korean War until now, the US has refused to sign a peace treaty, which betrays its true aims on the Korean Peninsula. The DPRK, its leaders and people's government, far from being the threat to peace, have always stood for peaceful re-unification of the two Koreas and continue to take stands against the interference of the US and for peace worldwide. Unlike the US, Britain and other powers that condemn the DPRK's existence and its right to be, the DPRK has not invaded and occupied any country.

Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang

The interests of all peoples is to build their solidarity with the DPRK and the Korean people against the US to secure peace on the Korean Peninsula and to put an end to the more than 70 years of US-engineered division, militarisation, tension, and strife between north and south and oppose the criminal trade and economic sanctions against the DPRK. The peace-loving people of Britain must condemn British government for its support for these ongoing and large-scale military exercises and provocations against the DPRK and demand that Britain gets its marines and other forces out of the Korean Peninsula.

Today, when the US imperialists and their cohorts, such as Britain, are stepping up war preparations in the Asia-Pacific, it is more important than ever to remember the terrible tragedies visited upon the Korean people during that war that must never again be permitted. The working class and people must play their part to ensure that another war does not break out on the Korean Peninsula and that Britain ends its hostile stand towards the DPRK.

Notes
1. On June 25, 1950, after a whole series of incursions and military provocation against the DPRK, the forces from the south of Korea, placed under US command, crossed the 38th parallel, which separates the north from the south, with an objective to "disperse and disarm North Korea's People's Army" in order to "take Pyongyang in three days" (to cite Syngman Rhee, "President" of the South Korean puppet government at the end of 1949).

2. "War Maniacs' Reckless Move", KCNA commentary, April 2, 2023
http://www?kcna?kp/en/article/q/55cc18c6b08e669b07a7abf7b8c9dce3.kcmsf

3. All this was documented by the Commission of the Women's International Democratic Federation to Korea May 16-27, 1951. In their report We Accuse! the Commission condemned these crimes that were being committed against defenceless civilians and called for the UN to demand an end to all fighting, that all foreign troops be pulled out of Korea and for the Korean people to determine their own affairs.

4. Democratic People's Republic of Korea sanctions: guidance
https://www?gov?uk/government/publications/democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea-sanctions-guidance/democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea-sanctions-guidance

5. The US accused the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) of "starting the war" when it was they who were interfering in the internal affairs of Korea which, through the efforts of the people themselves, had won its independence by defeating the Japanese occupation in August 1945. First the US illegally divided Korea into north and south. It then mobilised the UN to intervene in a civil war which constituted foreign interference in the internal affairs of a country and is illegal under the UN Charter. The UN Security Council used the fact that the People's Republic of China had not yet been permitted to take its seat because the US was supporting the deposed Nationalist Chinese regime of Chiang Kai-shek that had taken refuge in Taiwan, and Russia was absent in protest of this refusal to seat the legitimate government of China, to adopt the resolution. The resolution to wage war on the Korean people was adopted in contravention of Article 32 of the UN Charter which calls for parties to the dispute to be present at the discussions of the problems. It is also in contravention of paragraph 3 of Article 27 of the UN Charter, which provides that a Security Council resolution is only valid if approved by a vote of Council members, including approval by all permanent Council members. Neither condition was met since, at the time, neither the Soviet Union nor China were present.

82

South Tyneside Stop the War / Declassified files expose British role in NATOs Gladio terror armies

« Last post by Roger on July 01, 2023, 08:57:56 AM »

Declassified files expose British role in NATOs Gladio terror armies
The Grayzone by Kit Klarenberg

June 19, 2023

   Newly declassified British Foreign Office files have added disturbing details to the history of Operation Gladio. The covert operation was uncovered in 1990, when the public learned that the CIA, MI6 and NATO trained and directed an underground army of fascist paramilitary units across Europe, deploying its assets to undermine political opponents, including through false flag terror attacks.

Among them was a young Silvio Berlusconi, the media oligarch who served as Italian Prime Minister in four separate governments between 1994 and 2011. Listed as a member of the P2, the secret Cold War-era cabal of political elites devoted to Gladio's aims, Berlusconi undoubtedly took some weighty secrets to the grave when he died this June 12th.

It is almost impossible to believe that inconvenient truths were not weeded from Britain's documentary record on Operation Gladio prior to declassification. Nonetheless, the recently released material is highly illuminating. Covering a fraught twelve month period after the first public disclosure of Gladio's existence, the papers illustrate how London's foreign intelligence apparatus kept a keen eye on the continent as events unfolded.

The papers not only shed fresh light on the conspiracy, they underline Gladio's relevance as British intelligence joins its America counterparts in contemporary plots involving secret partisan forces from Syria to Ukraine.

Various passages dotted across the tranche strongly suggest the British knew much more than they publicly admitted about egregious criminal deeds, including the attempted overthrow of an allied Italian government and the kidnap and murder of its leader.

A ‘clandestine resistance network' goes to work

Gladio consisted of a constellation of "stay behind" anti-communist partisan armies whose ostensible mission was to fend off the Red Army in the event of Soviet invasion. In reality, these forces committed countless violent and criminal acts as part of a "strategy of tension" designed to discredit the left and justify a security state clampdown.

As Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a Gladio operative jailed for life in 1984 for a car bombing in Italy that killed three police officers and injured two, explained:

You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people from outside the political arena. The reason was simple, force the public to turn to the state and ask for greater security People would willingly trade their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains or enter a bank. This was the political logic behind the bombings. They remain unpunished because the state cannot condemn itself.

The scandal triggered in Western capitals by the exposure of Gladio dominated mainstream headlines for months. The European parliament responded by passing a resolution condemning the existence of a "clandestine parallel intelligence and armed operations organization which escaped all democratic controls, may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of member states and have at their disposal independent arsenals and military resources thereby jeopardizing the democratic structures of the countries in which they are operating."

The resolution called for independent judicial and parliamentary investigations into Gladio in every European state. But aside from inquiries in Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland, nothing of substance materialized. What's more, investigators heavily redacted their findings while avoiding having them translated them into English. This may help explain why the historic scandal has been largely forgotten.

In this context, the newly declassified documents may be one of the most valuable primary sources to date offering new insights into the origins and internal workings of NATO's secret terror militias in Italy.

Take for example an aide-mémoire (see it here) prepared by Francesco Fulci, Italy's permanent representative to the UN, which was shared at a "super-restricted" November 6th 1990 meeting of the North Atlantic Council, NATO's principal political decision-making body, then forwarded to senior British officials at home and abroad.

Based on a note provided by Rome's then-premier Giulio Andreotti to "the Head of the Italian Parliamentary Commission investigating terrorist incidents," the aide-mémoire begins by noting that following World War II, Western intelligence agencies devised "unconventional means of defence, by creating in their territories a hidden network of resistance aimed at operating, in case of enemy occupation, through information gathering, sabotage, propaganda and guerrilla warfare."

According to the aide-mémoire, authorities in Rome began laying the foundations of such an organization in 1951. Four years later, Italian Military Intelligence (SIFAR) and "a corresponding allied service"—a reference to the CIA—then formally agreed on the organization and the activities of a "post-occupation clandestine network":

Gladio] was; formed by agents active in the territory who, by virtue of their age, sex and activities, could reasonably avoid eventual deportation and-imprisonment by the foreign occupiers; easy to manage even from a command structure outside the occupied territory; at a top secret level and hence subdivided into ‘cells' so as to minimize any possible damage caused by defections, accidents or network penetration.

The "clandestine resistance network" was subdivided into separate branches, covering information operations, sabotage, propaganda, radio communications, cypher, reception and evacuation of people and equipment. Each of these structures was to operate autonomously,

with liaison and coordination ensured by an external base.

SIFAR established a dedicated, secret section to recruit and train Gladio operatives. Meanwhile, it maintained five "ready deployment guerrilla units in areas of special interest" across Italy which awaited activation on a continuous basis.

"Operational materials", including a wide variety of explosives, weapons—such as mortars, hand grenades, guns and knives—and ammunition were stashed in 139 secret underground caches across the country. In April 1972, "to improve security," these arsenals were exhumed, and moved to offices of the Carabinieri, Rome's military police, near the original sites.

Only 127 of the weapons storehouses were officially recovered. The aide-mémoir states that at least two "were very likely taken away by unknown persons" at the time they were buried, in October 1964. Who these operatives were and what they did with their stolen arms is left to the imagination. British involvement in the coup effort

Fulci was eventually quizzed by attendees of the North Atlantic Council summit "as to whether Gladio had deviated from its proper objectives." In other words, beyond operating strictly as a "stay behind" force, to be activated in the event of Soviet invasion. While "he could not add to what was in the aide-mémoire," Fulci confirmed "weapons used in some terrorist incidents had come from stores established by Gladio."

This may reflect the fact that political violence was one of Gladio's "proper objectives." A June 1959 SIFAR report unearthed by historian Daniele Ganser confirms guerrilla action against "domestic threats" was hardwired into the operation from its inception. In the Italian context, this entailed systematically terrorizing the left.

As the Italian Communist party surged in polls ahead of the country's 1948 election, the CIA pumped money into the coffers of the Christian Democrats and an attendant anti-communist propaganda campaign. The cloak-and-dagger effort was so successful in preventing the outbreak of a left-wing government in Rome that Langley secretly intervened in every one of Rome's elections for at least the next 24 years.

Yet the covert CIA operations were insufficient to prevent Italians from occasionally electing the wrong governments. The 1963 general election saw the Christian Democrats prevail again, this time under the leadership of left-leaning politician Aldo Moro, who sought to construct a coalition with the Socialists and Democratic Socialists. Over the next year, protracted disputes erupted between these parties over what form their administration would take.

In the meantime, SIFAR and CIA black ops specialists such as William Harvey, known as "America's James Bond," cooked up a plot to prevent that government from taking office. Known as "Piano Solo," it dispatched Gladio operatives for a false flag assassination attempt on Moro that would deliberately fail.

According to the plan, the kidnapper was expected to claim they were ordered to kill Moro by communists, thereby justifying the violent seizure of multiple political party and newspaper headquarters, along with the imprisonment of troublesome leftists at the Gladio chapter's secret headquarters in Sardinia. The plan was ultimately aborted, though it remained on the table throughout 1964.

Moro became Prime Minister without incident and governed until June 1968. Piano Solo fell under official investigation four years later, yet the results were not published until the public first learned of Gladio's existence. Though the findings omitted any reference to Britain's role in the planned coup, the newly released documents strongly suggest London's involvement.

Doomed Italian PM Aldo Moro's photo while in captivity of the Red Brigades

Italy's then-President Francesco Cossiga requested the ministry hand over "details of UK stay behind measures in 1964," according to a detailed February 1991 Foreign Office memo on recent developments in the scandal.

Cossiga apparently made this enquiry as a result of a judge "whose investigations into unsolved terrorist attacks first brought Operation Gladio to light," and who took the "unprecedented step" of demanding the president testify about the conspiracy under oath. By this point, Cossiga had admitted learning of the "stay behind" force while serving as a junior Defense Minister in 1966.

His Foreign Office query strongly suggests British intelligence played a role in Piano Solo, and that the Italian President was well-aware of the plot. "one or more of Moro's kidnappers was secretly in touch with the security apparatus"

On March 16th 1978, a unit of the leftist militant Red Brigades kidnapped Moro. He was on his way to a high-level meeting where he planned to give his blessing there to a new coalition government that relied on communist support, when the kidnappers violently extracted him from his convoy. Five of Moro's bodyguards were murdered in the process.

After almost two months in captivity, when it became clear the government would neither negotiate with the Red Brigades nor release any of its jailed members in return for Moro, the kidnappers executed the former Italian Prime Minister. His bullet-riddled corpse was left in a car trunk to rot, and for authorities to find.

Moro's murder has inspired widespread and well-founded suspicions that Gladio operatives infiltrated the Red Brigades to push the group to commit excessively violent acts in order to foment popular demand for a right-wing law-and-order regime. More than perhaps any other incident, his killing fulfilled the objectives of the security state's strategy of tension.

Whether or not Moro was a casualty of Gladio, a declassified November 5th 1990 Foreign Office memo authored by Britain's then-ambassador to Rome, John Ashton, makes it clear that London knew much more about the case than has ever been disclosed publicly by any official source. (Read the full Ashton note here).

circumstantial evidence MR Online"There is circumstantial evidence one or more of Moro's kidnappers was secretly in touch with the security apparatus at the time; and that the latter deliberately neglected to follow up leads which might have led to the kidnappers and saved Moro's life," Ashton declared.

What's more, according to the British diplomat, the presidential crisis committee responsible for attempting to rescue Moro was part of the notorious P2—the "subversive Masonic lodge" composed of political elites loyal to Gladio.

According to Ashton, P2 was just one of many "mysterious right wing forces" striving "by terrorism and street violence to provoke a repressive backlash against Italy's democratic institutions" under the "strategy of tension." And President Cossiga was completely unaware it had infiltrated his crisis committee.

In April 1981, magistrates in Milan raided the villa of Licio Gelli, an Italian financier and self-identified fascist who founded P2. There, they uncovered a list of 2,500 members which read like a "Who's Who" of Italian politicians, bankers, spooks, financiers, industrialists, and senior law enforcement and military officials. Among the cabal's most prominent members was Silvio Berlusconi.

Moro's "historic compromise," under which the communists "made possible Andreotti's government", would be the party's "final step before their own entry into government." Ashton stated that this development "was anathema to P2," which was "then in virtual control of Italy's security apparatus," and also to many non-P2 establishment politicians, and also to the U.S.," and sought to "eliminate once and for all any possibility that the Communist Party might achieve national power."

Ashton acknowledged "circumstantial evidence" of "US support for P2." In reality, P2 founder Gelli was so well-connected to Washington's national security and intelligence apparatus, the CIA's Rome station had explicitly charged him with establishing an anti-communist parallel government in Rome.

Subsequent investigations showed how Henry Kissinger helped oversee the recruitment of 400 high-ranking Italian and NATO officers as P2 operatives in 1969. The U.S. was so grateful for Gelli's anti-communist purge that it made him a guest of honor at the inauguration ceremonies of U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Ashton concluded his revealing note by noting the truth about Washington's involvement in Rome's bloodspattered "Years of Lead" would "probably never be known." The full extent of Britain's involvement in terrorist attacks, government overthrows, destabilization campaigns and other heinous skullduggery under the aegis of Operation Gladio, not merely in Italy but throughout Europe, will almost certainly remain a secret as well, and by design.

It was not until 1993 that the public learned how the U.S. and British gifted munitions to Gladio operatives to foment bloody acts of terror across Italy. As Francesco Fulci told his NATO friends at the "super-restricted" meeting, Washington and London supplied the perpetrators of mass casualty attacks including the 1980 bombing of Bologna Centrale railway station, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200.

Those responsible for these hideous crimes have eluded justice in almost every case. Several of the Bologna massacre's chief suspects, including committed fascist and confirmed MI6 asset Robert Fiore, escaped to London. Britain refused to extradite him and his co-conspirators despite their convictions in absentia for violent crimes.

The extensive experience British intelligence obtained in Operation Gladio raises questions about the lessons the MI6 has applied to current covert operations in theaters of conflict. As The Grayzone revealed in November 2022, British military and intelligence veterans have trained and sponsored a secret partisan terror army in eastern Ukraine to carry out acts of sabotage in Crimea and other majority-Russian areas. The plan called for the training of cells of ideologically dedicated Ukrainians to "shoot, move, communicate, survive."

83

For Your Information / FSB spooked the CIA on Prigozhin coup

« Last post by Roger on June 30, 2023, 08:05:19 PM »

FSB spooked the CIA on Prigozhin coup
Indian Punchline

June 26, 2023


   June The CNN, followed by the New York Times, broke the story on Sunday that the US and western intelligence were indeed aware of the failed coup attempt on Friday night by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group of Russian military contractors, "for quite some time and making preparations for such a move, including by massing weapons and ammunition."

What we do not know is at what point Russian intelligence got wind of it. The Kremlin acted forcefully, decisively and with foresight in real time to scotch the coup attempt within hours. By Saturday evening, the foreign intelligence chief Sergey Narishkin announced that the coup attempt had failed. The Russian authorities were waiting for Prigozhin to make his move.

It is only natural that Russian intelligence kept a strong presence right inside the Wagner tent all through. Damn it, it is a war zone where Russia's fate is hanging in the balance. The lyrics of the famous Sting song come to mind: ‘Every breath you take / And every move you make / Every bond you break / Every step you take / I'll be watching you '

And the Chorus sings, thereupon: ‘Oh, can't you see / You belong to me? / How my poor heart aches / With every step you take '

Just as the CIA or most intelligence organisations do, the FSB also psychoanalyses the remarks of their targets for profound meanings. They do that routinely and have trained analysts who do only that.

It wouldn't have escaped the attention of Russian intelligence analysts that Prigozhin's ranting and ravings from Donetsk from last autumn and winter began originally on the operational aspects of the Bakhmut war front in Donetsk oblast, but incrementally began acquiring political overtones, culminating finally in his incredible statement that the raison d'être of the special military operation in Ukraine since February 2022, was all baloney.

Even more strangely, this man who physically witnessed the Battle of Bakhmut, came to the bizarre conclusion that Kiev or Nato had no mala fide intentions toward Donbass or Russia.

Therefore, the ‘known known' here is that the Russian intelligence was under instructions to be in ‘listening mode,' give the eddies a free flow in the Battle of Bakhmut where Wagner was in the driving seat. (Interestingly, though, at some point, much to Prigozhin's annoyance, Moscow also began deploying regular troops selectively on the Bakhmut front alongside the Wagner fighters. )

On Saturday, top US intelligence officials sprang into action to brief the media as it emerged that Russian authorities were literally waiting with a road map to squash Prigozhin's coup attempt. Even the Chechen militia was put on standby.

The crucial element in the deal struck with Prigozhin has been that he will not be prosecuted but must simply get lost. And where else could his exile be arranged better on Planet Earth than in Belarus under the benevolent eyes of President Alexander Lukashenko?

Now, we may get to know at some point from Lukashenko, who struggles to keep secrets for long, as to when exactly would Putin have taken him into confidence on a ‘need-to-know basis.' It strains credulity that such a complex dealmaking was possible within a clutch of hours via tortuous 3-way negotiations between Moscow, Minsk and Rostov-on-Don even as the renegade Wagner column was approaching Moscow.

An intriguing sub-plot here is that amidst all this heavy traffic, Lukashenko also negotiated with Nurusultan Nazarbayev, the former Kazakh dictator who headed a pro-western regime in Astana and was ousted from power after reigning for nearly three decades, following the failure of a similar US-backed coup attempt like Prigozhin's in the winter of 2021-2022, which too was crushed with the help of the CSTO forces (Russian troops) led by a Russian general.

On the previous day, in fact, Putin had spoken with two Central Asian leaders — Kazakh President Jomart Tokayev and Uzbek President Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev. Did he share any crucial intelligence? In fact, both these countries have been facing western plots for regime change lately. By the way, Given Moscow's preoccupations in Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping has stepped in to take a hands-on role to consolidate the stability and security of the Central Asian region. (Please see my recent articles — China takes leadership role in Central Asia ; An "Axis of Seven" to supplement SCO ; and, Russia, China take holistic view of the Pamirs and Hindu Kush.

Clearly, something was seriously afoot in Kazakhstan, which is sandwiched between Russia and China and is the most crucial piece of real estate in geopolitical terms in Central Asia.

In all probability, this was what the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken alluded to when he told ABC on Sunday that the situation with the attempted coup in Russia "is still developing I don't want to speculate, and I don't think we saw the final episode." That said, however, Blinken has piled up a consistent record for being horribly wrong on his assessments on Russia — starting from the deathly blow the ‘sanctions from hell' were expected to give to the Russian economy; Putin's hold on power; Russia's catastrophic defeat in Ukraine; Russian military's deficiencies; Kiev's inexorable military victory, and so on.

In this case, he has reason to feel embittered particularly because of the spectacular unity of the Russian state, political elite, media, regional and federal bureaucracy, and the military and security establishment in rallying behind Putin. Arguably, Putin's political stature is now unchallengeable and unassailable in Russia and the Americans have to live with that reality long after Joe Biden's departure from the scene.

Going forward

The Kremlin has adopted a very thoughtful strategy. From available details so far, it has the following five key elements:

Principally, the top priority is to avoid bloodshed so that life moves on and the focus on the war in Ukraine, which is at a tipping point, doesn't suffer; In immediate terms, get the few renegade Wagner fighters and Prigozhin to leave Rostov-on-Don and return to their camps in Lugansk; Clinically separate Prigozhin from the rest of Wagner Group (In fact, not a single Wagner commander or officer joined his revolt); Offer immunity to the bulk of the Wagner Group — except the participants in the coup, of course — and facilitate their formal integration into the defence ministry. That is, the logic behind the creation of Wagner Group by the Defence Ministry (and an unnamed top secret internal security agency) holds good still, but it will no longer be a quasi-state force, but will have a habitation and name and led by designated professional military commanders instead of free-wheeling fortune hunters like Prigozhin.) Get Prigozhin to leave for Belarus, which was not difficult once he realised that he should request mercy from none other than Putin (who agreed to the oligarch's safe passage to Belarus.)

The last element is utterly fascinating. The Kremlin is extremely annoyed with Prigozhin for his seditious behaviour but is also aware — presumably on the basis of intelligence inputs — that he has been manipulated by western powers. Of course, there is going to be a price to pay. Prigozhin will never get back his towering stature as an oligarch with a personal fortune of $1.2 billion or the fabulous lifestyle he led.

But at least, the 62-year old oligarch is spared a possible twenty-year prison term. This is of a piece with Putin's handling of oligarchs in general. (Read my article The Rise and fall of a Russian oligarch.)

Make no mistake, Lukashenko will eventually make Prigozhin sing — sooner rather later — and the song will be transmitted live to the Kremlin. And that accounts for the great nervousness in Washington, which has raised the spectre of nuclear war, etc. to give the spin to distract attention from the CIA's plot to destabilise Russia. The irrepressible Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov calls it a "turbulent stream of consciousness."

To be sure, now that the CIA-MI6- Prigozhin plot has failed, out of its debris, new western narratives will be born like a Phoenix out of the ashes. And the US' sleeping cells abroad, including in the Indian media, will parrot that narrative.

But, not for long. For, what lies ahead is the manifestation of the steely resolve of the Kremlin — and Putin himself — to seek an all-out military solution to the Ukraine crisis. Putin declared last week — most likely in anticipation of the storm brewing on the horizon — that the war will be over when no Ukrainian army will be left on the battlefield, or NATO weapons.

Read the official transcript of a videoconference that Putin took last Thursday, in the immediate run-up to Prigozhin's coup attempt, with the full quorum of the Security Council (post-Soviet Russia's ‘Politburo'), which gives a flavour of the mood in the Kremlin and will provide some clues to what to expect on the battlefields of Ukraine, going forward. It is a huge signal in advance to the "collective West" that nothing will be forgotten.

84

South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...

« Last post by Phil Talbot on June 24, 2023, 08:59:43 PM »

cross-chan[n]ell small boats filled with people: asylum/freedom-seekers ... or ... economic migrants ... ?

85

South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...

« Last post by Phil Talbot on May 28, 2023, 03:39:53 PM »

Maurice Bowra [Homer, London, 1972, 80ff] - quoted in J.V. Luce, Homer and the Heroic Age, Futura p/b, 1979, p52 - suggests three possible reasons for people, or nations, being led to view their past as 'heroic':
1. when conquered [they] 'console themselves for lost grandeur by exalting the past to spread glory';
2. when leaving homeland for some new home overseas a people 'keeps touch with its past by glorifying it in legends';
3. when 'a political system disintegrates, and success and dominion give place to dissolution and decay'.
+
Britain and the 'heroic' age?
Dunkirk Myth?
Sense that, post-WW2, 'success and dominion' gave place to 'dissolution and decay' - or, at least, gradual decline into 'mediocrity'.
Dunkirk [& Battle of Britain] as last act of Britain's 'heroic age' - after which national imperialistic 'energy' used up; 'Dunkirk spirit' died; slow 'decline' [or 'civilization'?] ... expansion ends ... contraction begins ... contraction ends ... expansion begins ...
'Hard Power'? 'Soft Power'?

86

South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...

« Last post by Phil Talbot on May 28, 2023, 12:54:51 PM »

1940

Robert Hewison, Too Much, p301:

' ... the romanticism of the war years showed ... that people were searching for some kind of healing and reintegrating myth, "a myth", as John Lehmann put it, in 1944, "in which we in England felt we were about to recapture for one moment of astonishing intensity, in 1940, when everything seemed to be falling into place"

and what happened in 1940?

... a real threat of 'absolute' defeat - The End - avoided ...

and nb, unifying effects of shared external 'enemy' ... whatever the internal differences, common acceptance of need to see off external threat ... brings us together ...

... what separates 'us' from each other is seen as less than what separates 'us' from 'them' ...

+nb primitive nationalism ... and blood rites ... 'our blood' ... 'their blood' ... nations 'forged' in blood-letting rituals ...

All Nationalism involves some sort of 'blood letting'.

Gruesome quotes from/by Franz Fanon, etc, about 'slashing the hands that control us', etc

... shedding the blood of the 'other' ... killing the occupying power ... or preventing the foreigners from occupying 'our' land ..,

87

South Tyneside Stop the War / Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...

« Last post by Phil Talbot on May 28, 2023, 04:15:22 AM »

Focussing in on Dunkirk - but not the 'Dunkirk Spirit' British 'nationalistic' kitsch sort of stuff. Instead, a 'rescue' attempt/effort, not a 'triumph' ...

88

For Your Information / From King Charles' Coronation to the Birth of Europe's Fourth Reich

« Last post by Roger on May 05, 2023, 09:48:55 AM »

From King Charles' Coronation to the Birth of Europe's Fourth Reich
Declan Hayes, Strategic Culture


   Let us, who walk on two legs and not four, salute those unsung legions who fell to make this knock-off Caesar appear to be great.

Although MI5's BBC outlet recently gave us a full roadmap to King Charles 111's Coronation, this article aims to add further to the festivities by discussing its religious hypocrisy, the charlatans who will be in attendance and its wider strategic significance as midwife to Europe's Fourth Reich.

First off, former banker and Banderite apologist Justin Welby, who styles himself as the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, will decree that Charles is the boss of bosses, the Don Corleone of their Anglican Cult, and as such, is the Defender of Their Protestant Faith, a title first bestowed on the philandering King Henry V111 by Pope Leo X in 1527, which the Anglican cultists quickly hijacked for their own mercenary reasons. Although that is bad enough, it is their attempt to co-opt other, more genuine and established faiths into their Coronation pantomime that riles me, as it riled Stephen Karganovic.

First off, the BBC tells us that the circus will include "Greek Orthodox music in memory of the King's father, Prince Philip", whom the late Princess Diana, Queen of Hearts, dubbed as Phil the Greek. But Phil the Greek abandoned the Faith of his Fathers and, more importantly, of his sainted mother, Princess Alice to embrace, in name at least, the string of high-class Anglican mistresses marrying the late Queen Elizabeth brought him. Though it would be a stretch of the English language to call me a Royalist, I have the profoundest respect for Princess Alice, who can be seen here, dressed in the habit of a Greek Orthodox nun, at the wedding of Queen (then Princess) Elizabeth to her wayward, penniless and generally useless son.

Given Princess Alice's resistance to Nazis in her native Greece and her support of the Greek Jews and Orthodox Christians during the Nazi Occupation, I have no doubt that she would stand foursquare with the Orthodox faithful of Syria, Ukraine and Jerusalem, where she is buried in its Russian Orthodox Cathedral alongside her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna who is a saint in the (Russian) Orthodox Church.

If King Charles really wishes to honour the Orthodox faithful, then he could invite Patriarch Kirill to say a prayer for his granny or, if he was not suitable, my good friend Archbishop Theodosius Hanna, whom the Israelis regularly crucify, would make an excellent compromise.

But no. Shortly before I got Patriarch Aphrem of the Syriac Orthodox Church to address the Irish Parliament, this man of God, who had only recently survived an attempted assassination in his native Syria, opened the Cathedral of St Thomas in London which King Charles, to his credit, attended and to which the late Queen, to her credit, sent a telegram of congratulations. However, the CIA, not to be left out of festivities, got Umar al-Qadri, a semi-literate Irish-based Pakistani-Dutch imam, who spends an inordinate amount of time State-side with his Yankee pals, to do his song and dance routine on St Thomas' High Altar. Not only did this usurper not belong there but, once Patriarch Aphrem and the rest of the Syrian delegation arrived in Ireland, the theologically illiterate Al-Qadri, on the word of his Yankee handlers, made all kinds of incendiary theological accusations against the Syrian delegation, which was headed by its then Grand Mufti, one of our era's leading Quranic scholars.

Though ignoramuses like al-Qadri belong nowhere near King Charles' Coronation, these are the types of ecumenical oafs MI5 recruit to give credence to this Coronation circus. Clowns like that utter imbecile Clown Prince Zelensky, whose thugs are terrorising the Orthodox Christians Princess Alice so faithfully and courageously served. King Charles, if he wants to be a King rather than just a play-acting Zelensky-style plastic King, should call out Ukraine, Israel and all others who mock the religion of Princess Alice, Archbishop Hanna, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, and St Philoumenous and who persecute its faithful in ways the gone-to-seed Westerners, who will pack the pews of Westminster, can never even begin to appreciate, just as they cannot and will not even bring themselves to utter a prayer, let alone a pardon, for Catholic pacifist Julian Assange who, less than a mile away from their Coronation jamboree, lies chained in prisons dark but still in heart and conscience free just as other faith-driven English Catholics did in times gone by.

Given that Ursula von der Leyen would sell whatever remains of her soul for a chance to be in the spotlight, religious clowns will not be the only jokers in attendance. Seated like house-trained puppies on their pews will be the gangster separatists of Scotland and Ireland, Ireland's and Scotland's Sopranos, compared to whom even Hunter Biden and his Nazi bio labs look law-abiding. Though these Celtic Sopranos should, like the red and black bearskin soldiers who will pepper the proceedings, be aptly described as Soldiers of the King, they lack the courage, honesty and integrity of those countless Tommies who fell for King and Country in some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.

Those thieving, self-serving, child-raping curs don't even deserve that patch. They are there to network, to climb MI5's greasy pole, to skim and to keep the whole corrupt system the trappings of Royalty personify ticking over.

Co-opted as they are, these Scottish and Irish gangsters are way out of their depth. MI5 know that the jig is up for their Royalty, at least in the form the late Queen Elizabeth knew it. And so they are re-inventing the Royal circus show to make it more relevant, not only to the English and Australian blue rinses who lap all this vomit up but also to the World Economic Forum, the CIA and the EU prison yard's other shot callers, who care no more about King Jug Ears than do most of his subjects. Their objective is, as it has always been, to opiate us all into their cages, to herd and blinker us, so as we are sheep to this, their Judas goat.

Let's hope that the rain keeps off and King Charles and his Loyal Scottish and Irish skivvies have a good day of it, and that Ursula von der Leyen gets plenty of selfies to justify our American friends keeping that old mare in clover and, if God wills it, that Clown Prince Zelensky and al-Qadri manage to gatecrash the proceedings and bore all and sundry to death with their flat earth dirges.

But, in all this, let's recall that marvellous hymn of those English Catholics who kept true to the Faith of Our Fathers' Holy Faith and who, though "chained in prisons dark, were still in heart and conscience free." Let's recall the Irish Fenians, who put the fear of God and more into Queen Victoria, Joyce's "flatulent old bitch". Let's remember how James Connolly, who fought alongside Fenian fanatic Tom Clarke against the Soldiers of the King in 1916, not only castigated the flunkeys of Royalism in this fabulous essay but quite accurately positioned the role of monarchy in our society.

Speaking of which, Friday May 5th is the 42nd anniversary of the death by hunger strike of Bobby Sands, for whom I voted early and often, and for whom I led a series of high-profile protests, all in the face of systematic Sinn Féin sabotage. No doubt, those Sinn Féin leaders assigned to Licking the Royal Bum in London will throw Sands and his brave comrades a few shibboleths, empty words from empty people who serve Empire, the same Empire Connolly castigated when, from the steps of Liberty Hall he, and his fellow heroes of the Irish Citizen Army declared: We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland.

And so it is today in the words of Shakespeare's King Henry V with "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers". There are, as the late Queen Elizabeth proclaimed, dark and sinister forces afoot in England's green and pleasant land which is now a part of Europe's evolving Fourth Reich consumed, as its Third Reich predecessor was, with slaughtering Slavs, opiating the Chinese and making its own children be the modern-day equivalent of the Famine Queen's chimney sweeps. No more than the Famine Queen's own sullen subjects should we be beguiled by the Coronation's pomp and circumstance that sugar-coat the Fourth Reich's war crimes in Ukraine, Sudan, Syria and even England's own green and pleasant land of corrupt politicians, fake clerics and this empty Royalist pomp and circumstance.

Like Queen Victoria's chimney sweeps, Britain's coal miners and England's Tolpuddle and Tyburn martyrs, we have a choice in this. Sure, those of us who like a bit of pomp and circumstance can marvel at the marching bands and the broad posteriors and bursting seams of the multi-chinned pot bellies packing the pews of Westminster. We can watch Welby anoint Charles in this oh so English version of Hollywood's The Godfather before getting on with our day and settling in for the English Premier League's 3pm kick-offs.

Though we can marvel at these circuses, we should be in no doubt about their function or the role Ursula von der Leyen and a thousand other flunkeys play in them, as they Judas Goat us along into their Fourth Reich, which already has a strong Neanderthal axis in the CIA's fascist spawning grounds of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic pimple states.

This Fourth Reich, as seen from Kiev and Jerusalem, demands an absolute monopoly on power; out-of-court reprisals; blanket censorship; the liquidation of almost all independent media and the destruction of all political opposition; an all-encompassing total state propaganda; and an active search for traitors, Orthodox Christians and fictional Russian spies, saboteurs and sports people.

For all the bullshit that King Charles' handlers get him to spin, here is the reality. The CIA's Radio Free Europe (sic) boasts that Poland's fascist regime refused to allow Vitalia Diatchenko fly to a tennis tournament because she is a Russian citizen. Twitter and the CIA's other media outlets rigged it so that Creepy Joe Biden won the U.S. Presidential election, just as they are currently rigging the 2024 election to ensure Trump does not win and Robert Kennedy Junior goes the way of his assassinated uncle, Jack, and his assassinated father, Bobby.

Don't be fooled or co-opted by King Jug Ears. He is but a mask, America's Mickey Mouse even down to the ears. The reality this Royal swan song masks is being played out in Kiev's Kristallnacht and in the killing fields of Eastern Ukraine, where Russian Orthodox soldiers are fighting the same Satanic forces their grandfathers faced 80 years ago,. It is being played out in the narrow back streets of Bethlehem, whose Orthodox Christians are mired under the Israeli yoke and in Gaza, whose Orthodox Christians suffer the same unspeakable privations as their Sunni friends, neighbours and relatives. In Sudan, where MI5's intrigues continue the genocidal work of Gordon of Khartoum and in a thousand other places, whose tragedies are celebrated in the finery King Charles and his moll, Queen Consort Camilla, so ignorantly adorn themselves with.

Let King Jug Ears adorn himself with his Star of Africa, his Cullinan diamonds, his St Edward Diamond, his Black Prince ruby as well as his throne of plundered amethysts, sapphires, garnets, topazes and tourmaline gems and as he plonks his well-polished, Anglo-Saxon posterior down on Scotland's Stone of Destiny, think of the fate of all of those who have suffered as this"rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born", of Julian Assange who rots in King Charles' dungeons for defending the Syriac Orthodox Christians of Iraq, of Alina Lipp, Germany's own Bambi, of Darya Dugina, Vitalia Diatchenko and so many other Russian Orthodox Christians, of the French Catholics who will be battered off Parisian streets as King Jug Ears performs his sluggish pantomime, of the Congo's legions of child slaves who mine cobalt for King Charles' self-serving Green Energy initiatives, of all of those who stand with Clarke and Connolly, with the Tolpuddle and Tyburn martyrs, with the Orthodox Christians far away in dear old Cyprus or in Kenya's dusty land and who tell King Charles, his moll Camilla and his whole entourage to stick their sham c

Let the blue rinses enjoy their day, the bands, the marching, the finery and the distended bellies of the great and mighty. But let us, who walk on two legs and not four, salute not this MI5 charlatan but those unsung legions who fell to make this knock-off Caesar appear to be great. That, at least, is what I will be doing on this Saint Jug Ears Day and every day "from this day to the ending of the world".

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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...

« Last post by Phil Talbot on February 28, 2023, 11:34:52 PM »

Peace Now, Stop the War Online International Rally, February 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_nPNRswYIs&t=45s

90

South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...

« Last post by Phil Talbot on February 28, 2023, 10:38:19 PM »

AntiWarFilms?
1. Things to Come, 1936
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knOd-BhRuCE