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76

For Your Information / Britain's Incorrigible Warmongering Towards Russia

« on: August 01, 2016, 09:12:49 PM »

Britain's Incorrigible Warmongering Towards Russia
 Finian Cunningham, strategic-culture.org 
Jul 31
 
 The long-awaited Chilcot Inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq War (2003-2011) was published in July with much criticism leveled at the government under prime minister Tony Blair. There seems to be a national consensus that Britain's war on Iraq is now a cause of deep shame and that future British governments should be chastened from embarking on similar warmongering.

On the contrary, however, Britain's strident role in pushing NATO's aggression towards Russia – again on the basis of trumped-up «intelligence» claims, as with its earlier invasion of Iraq – shows in fact that nothing has been learnt from the Chilcot Inquiry. Britain, shamefully, remains an incorrigibly belligerent state that acts as if it is above international law.

It remains to be seen if the new British Prime Minister Theresa May and her Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson can bring some sanity to Britain's anti-Russia policy that was pushed by David Cameron and Philip Hammond. Hammond's slavish following of Washington's hostile agenda was particularly baleful. The outlook does not seem promising as can be gleaned from the systemic nature of British pro-Washington's conduct, as revealed by the long-running Iraq imbroglio.

Sir John Chilcot, who led the seven-year official inquiry into the Iraq war, said the central question it addressed was whether the war was necessary. It concluded that the war was not necessary. Diplomatic options were not exhausted, it said, adding that the decision to go to war was based on flawed claims of Saddam Hussein's Iraq posing an imminent threat.

Chilcot's report was not constituted to be a legal examination of the war or the British government's decision to join the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. So the question of whether Blair or his government acted criminally did not arise under the parameters of the inquiry.

Nevertheless, the findings are certainly potentially damning and could form the case for a future prosecution. If Blair's claims made in 2002 and 2003 that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction «within 45 minutes» were, according to Chilcot, «not justified» then that raises prosecutable issues that the former premier misled his nation and parliament into voting for an «unnecessary war».

Blair's secret memo to US President George W Bush in 2002 that he would follow his policy «whatever» also indicates that the decision to go to war was political and pre-ordained, regardless of the intelligence facts, as Chilcot's report indicates. That provides additional grounds for future prosecution.

The British inquiry, which was set up by Blair's prime ministerial successor Gordon Brown in 2009 and is estimated to have cost £10 million ($13 million), goes a long way to vindicate many anti-war campaigners who have consistently accused Blair of being an indictable war criminal. Families of British servicemen killed during the occupation of Iraq reacted to the Chilcot report with angry demands for Blair to be held to account for his disastrous decision to go to war.

For his part, Blair continues to maintain that he «acted in good faith» and «for the best interests of the country».

Despite Blair's assertions of probity, there is wide public acceptance, following the Chilcot report, that Britain's invasion of Iraq was an unmitigated catastrophe. Not only were scores of British lives lost needlessly, but Iraqi society was destroyed with the loss of perhaps more than one million people. The legacy of regional terrorism is greater than ever and it was spawned by Blair and Bush's war, as Chilcot explicitly noted.

Today, many Britons recognize that their country's international standing and foreign policy has been fatally marred by the war. It has been described as the worst setback for Britain's international image since the fiasco of the Suez Crisis in 1956 when Britain (and France) were defeated by Egypt's Nasser. Sixty years on, that latter debacle still haunts Britain's establishment, as it is seen to have marked the precipitous decline of Britain as a colonial world power.

Sir John Chilcot said of his report just prior to publication that its lessons will serve to check future British governments from launching reckless wars. He said the central lesson of the report would be that «it will not be possible in the future to engage in a military or indeed a diplomatic endeavor on such a scale and such gravity without careful challenge analysis and assessment and collective political judgement being applied to it».

The British official double-think is staggering. Amid solemn expiations over Iraq and calls for future restraint on matters of war, this same country is one of the main advocates for military build-up by the NATO alliance in Eastern Europe against alleged Russian aggression.

Britain's former Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who is now the finance minister in May's new cabinet, as well as Britain's military leaders sound like broken records with their repeated claims that Russia is a threat to Europe's security. One British general has even predicted that a nuclear war could break out with Russia in the next year. Hammond's successor at the foreign office, Boris Johnson, will be worth listening to closely to discern if there is any change in attitude towards Russia. It is doubtful.

The comparison with Iraq could not be more bitterly ironic. British claims of Russian aggression are based on the same «flawed» or «politicized» intelligence, which is likewise used to whip up a media frenzy that justifies warmongering. British troops are prominent in the unprecedented NATO build-up currently underway in Poland and the Baltic states.

Russia's Defence Ministry has denounced the NATO escalation as «hysterical Russophobia» that is based on negligible evidence of Russian threat, and solely on tendentious and highly disputable claims by Washington, London and other Western governments that Moscow «annexed» Crimea in 2014. The same goes for Western claims of alleged Russian «invasion» of Eastern Ukraine. No proof has ever been presented, only sensational claims keenly peddled by Western news media outlets.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that NATO claims of Russia's imminent invasion of Easter Europe are «detached from reality».

Of course, proof of purported Russian malfeasance is not the real issue. What is important is the relentless propaganda narrative of Russia as security threat, which in turn is used to justify NATO expansionism and the flow of lucrative arms sales for Washington and London.

Ahead of the NATO summit in Poland on July 8-9 it was reported that Warsaw is to buy the US Patriot missile system «to deter Russian aggression» – with a price tag of $5.6 billion. The maker is US firm Raytheon, which is one of the biggest lobbyists in Washington, among other Pentagon-connected companies.

The danger from NATO's provocative militarism on Russia's border and from Russia's legitimate counter defense measures is that an all-out war is not only a combustible risk, any conflict would likely spiral into a nuclear one. The risk of World War III is not hyperbole, with nuclear weapon destructive power thousand-folds greater than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Britain's government, military and media establishments share onerous responsibility for the grave deterioration in relations between NATO and Russia.

One would think that the death and destruction wrought on Iraq by Britain might serve as a check on its belligerence towards Russia. Especially given that the consequences of a war with Russia would be inestimably greater than the abomination that was Iraq.

No, not a bit of it. In essence, Britain remains an unreconstructed, unapologetic, belligerent rogue state that behaves beyond the rule of law. It is a repeat-offender without ever being prosecuted. It has learnt nothing from Iraq, despite the pious claims of the Chilcot Inquiry.

That is why British political leaders, like Tony Blair, and their aides should be prosecuted to the full extent of international law. Warmongering governments that are unaccountable will continue to be warmongering governments, as the present British-NATO aggression towards Russia proves. (Same for the Americans, of course.)

If Tony Blair, over Iraq and Afghanistan, and David Cameron, over Libya, were put in the dock of a war crimes trial the chances are that present and future British governments would be a lot less gung-ho and incorrigible in their reckless trashing of law.

The real lesson from the Chilcot Inquiry is the imperative need to apply the rule of law and prosecute war crimes. Then, future wars might at last be avoided.

British citizens should mobilize even more strenuously to demand that. The present international legal structures might not be amenable. The International Criminal Court in The Hague said following Chilcot's publication that it has «no jurisdiction» over Britain's war on Iraq or in regard to Blair's conduct in particular. Why not? The ICC shows no such reluctance when going after African alleged war criminals.

Still, British citizens should push their own justice system to act accordingly given the new evidence of the Chilcot Inquiry. If they think Iraq was a catastrophe, how much more cataclysmic would be a war with Russia? A war that its leaders are once again recklessly agitating for.

77

For Your Information / Anglo-America: Regression and Reversion in the Modern World

« on: June 01, 2016, 04:26:57 PM »

Anglo-America: Regression and Reversion in the Modern World
 By Prof. James Petras, globalresearch.ca 
May 31


 What does it mean when the US and British financial systems launder hundreds of billions of dollars of illicit funds stolen by world leaders while their governments turn a ‘blind eye', and yet the very same Anglo-American officials investigate, prosecute, fine and arrest officials from rival governments, rival banks and political leaders for corruption?

What does it mean when the US government expands a world-wide network of nuclear missiles on bases stretching from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Gulf States to Japan, surrounding Russia, Iran and China, while the very same US and NATO officials investigate and condemn rival defense officials from Russia, China and Iran, as military threats to peace and stability?

What does it mean when Anglo-American economic officials devote decades to raising the age of retirement, reducing working and middle class household income, cutting workers compensation, expanding part-time work, setting the stage for mass layoffs slashing unemployment and health benefits and reducing social spending by the hundreds of billions of dollars and then turn around and investigate and threaten rival countries, like China and Argentina with loss of markets, investment and employment for not doing the same thing ?

The meaning of Anglo-America's long-term, large-scale structural regression is clearly evident across the world. From Europe to Latin America and from Asia to Africa, socio-economic and politico-military agendas have been reversed.

Since the end of the Second World War there had been incremental gains in labor rights, stable employment, poverty reduction and working conditions.

Recently, these have all been reversed: Longer working days and weeks with reduced salaries and benefits; unstable temporary work replaces stable employment; employer-funded pensions are eliminated and replaced by multi-billion dollar corporate tax cuts and off-shore tax evasion.

Systematic structural swindles by the leading financial institutions have forced employees to delay retirement for years in order to ‘self-finance' their own meager ‘pensions', some expecting to ‘die at the job'.

Capitalist regression has been implemented by arbitrary state dictates and authoritarian decrees, erasing any pretense of democratic procedures and constitutional laws.

The regressive and retrograde leader-states from the imperial centers impose their conditions on follower regimes like Mexico and Russia forcing them to reverse their legacy of social progress while blackmailing these regimes' oligarchs with the loss of lucrative markets, access to tax and money-laundering havens and impunity for their crimes and swindles.

Anglo-America: Historic Reversion

For the past three decades, the US and Great Britain have led the global drive to undermine labor's advances. First, the economic structure sustaining labor organizations were dismantled and fragmented. Then organized labor was decimated, co-opted and corporatized.

Capital proceeded to reverse labor and social welfare legislation and lower wages, in order to impose longer workdays and destabilize employment.

The mass media re-packaged the regression cycle as ‘economic reform', a euphemism, which disguised the re-concentration of power, wealth and income over the last three decades.

The growth of inequality and the concentration of wealth and assets to the 1% became ‘the standard' for the Anglo-American era. However, class organization and the vicissitudes of class struggles continued to constrain efforts to impose unchallenged Anglo-American capitalist rulership throughout the world.

The first decisive blow against social reform resulted from the systematic Anglo-American breakdown of the former USSR and allied nations of the Warsaw Pact in East Europe. This was followed by the endogenous dissolution of Communist Party rule in China, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Baltic and Balkan states and their conversion into capitalist satellites. Social welfare, full employment, public pensions and health systems were shredded; labor lost all its rights except one – the right to emigrate to the West as cheap labor.

From Russia to Latvia and Poland to Bulgaria and Romania, there were massive layoffs, plant closures and the total dissolution of social security networks driven by the Anglo-America neo-liberal onslaught. The Atlantic Alliance brought their new Eastern satellites to social submission.

Until the second decade of the 21st century, Western Europe's centers for the defense of the progressive social agenda were in France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal. The social agenda in Latin America and China faced the Anglo-America offensive even earlier.

France: The Strategic Key to Anglo-American Social Regression

France has been the center where the Anglo-American regressive attack on socio-economic policy and Southern Europe's resistance has been playing out.

By 2015 the regressive alliance had overturned all progressive social policy in the former communist bloc countries. Their alliance with Germany's finance sector give them tight control of the EU and they successfully decimated the progressive social programs and labor legislation in Greece, Spain and Portugal.

France became the centerpiece for Western capitalism's drive to incorporate Italy into the regressive orbit. The conquest of France and Italy would completely reverse 70 years of incremental labor gains after the defeat of fascist capitalism.

The assault on France's progressive social agenda is spearheaded by the retro-Socialist President Francois Hollande and his troika of authoritarian hyper-capitalist ministers: Financial Minister Michel Sapin, Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron.

The strategy of relying on a ‘nominal socialist' to destroy the social welfare state is a classic ‘Trojan Horse' operation. Hollande's virulent anti-labor policy is implemented by decree under a joint plan developed in association with France's leading industrialists.

The imposition of the regressive policy in France began in stages. It first established the retrograde political leadership with Valls, a notorious authoritarian police-state official willing to over-ride any democratic niceties. The Economy Minister, Emanuel Macron, a millionaire investment banker, is a direct associate of the financial elite, with no qualms in slashing labor programs. The Finance Minister Michel Sapin, a long-time accomplice of the French bureaucratic-capitalist elite, is prepared to slash pensions and public services while reducing job security in order to lower the cost of labor to capital.

Once the Hollande and his troika took control of the centers of political power, (and after militarizing French society in response to the terrorist attacks), the regime launched its anti-labor offensive to shred the progressive social agenda. Its first target was its most formidable – the mass of the French working class.

Declaring ‘anti-ISIS' martial law powers, Hollande adopted an outright authoritarian strategy, bypassing the elected French Parliament in the legislature and imposed ‘rule by decree' with the announcement of a highly regressive labor law against the French people.

The dictatorial labor decree was a first step to weaken organized labor's capacity to protect wages and job security in order to give a powerful impetus to employer control over the French labor force.

Once Hollande's labor decree established capitalist supremacy, his Troika would be in a decisive position to reverse seventy of incremental social advances.

The joint Hollande-Troika-capitalist bloc emasculated the legislature, leaving a weak, bleating chorus of so-called ‘left Socialists' to bemoan their political impotence. Then an entirely new business anti-labor code was rolled out, which included the right of bosses to hire and fire workers at will, extend the workday , lengthen the work week, undermine labor's bargaining power and restrain strikes and job actions. This would open the way for a wave of irregular and contingent jobs for new workers . . . Using the pretext of terrorist attacks, the French capitalist class had begun to rule by decree to further expand and deepen their long planned assault on labor.

Hollande's troika and France's capitalists are lowering corporate taxes and employer contribution to social payments. Regulations that restrained the concentration of elite power were eliminated.

With curfews and ‘anti-terrorist' militarized police in the streets, French business elite could now freely begin to to imitate the Anglo-American capitalist elite and impose an iron-fisted New Order.

Without labor constraints on French capital, the bosses are is free to relocate factories and investments any and everywhere, under the most favorable wage, tax, employment and environmental conditions.

No longer required to invest in French industry, the business elite can transfer capital from industry to financial sectors, allowing hundreds of billions of euros to be laundered in off shore tax havens.

The Hollande troika will now also establish its own version of ‘Security and Exchange investigators' to prosecute and fine its rival Anglo-American financial swindlers, just as the Anglo-Americans pursue their French competitors today.

The Hollande regime's regressive social agenda has opened the door for an even more extreme Presidential prototype to follow and Alain Juppe is waiting.

The rabid Republican Party presidential candidate, Alain Juppe, promises to go ‘whole hog' in utterly destroying the French welfare state, as it has existed since the fall of fascism. If elected president, Juppe promised to slash 100 billion euros from the budget – double the amount that the Hollande regime currently seeks to cut. Juppe has pledged to eliminate 250,000 civil service jobs in all vital social sectors; to delay the retirement age from 62 to 65; eliminate the 35-hour workweek; facilitate worker layoffs and decimate unemployment benefits. Finally, Juppe has promised French capital that he would implement their entire business agenda, cut taxes for business and bankers and eliminate the tax on inheritance implemented nearly four decades ago.

In other words, the Hollande regime's assault on labor and embrace of business has opened the door for the rise of the extreme right. Moreover, Hollande has manipulated the incidents of Islamist terrorism to assume arbitrary decree powers wiping out any pretense of a democratic government. The terrorist incidents are arguably related to Hollande's colonialist embrace of the ‘regime change' assaults against the secular nationalist governments of Libya and Syria and his policy of sending (or tolerating the recruitment of) marginalized French youth of North African ancestry to fight in the ensuing civil wars. This has further strengthened the rise of the extreme right in France.

As the Socialist and Republicans compete for dictatorial powers to serve business' regressive agenda, the nationalist, protectionist and social reformist policies of the National Front are emerging as the populist alternative in the coming presidential race. Anti-fascist rhetoric has worn thin and important sectors of the working class will turn to the National Front in defense of their jobs and social legislation. The anti-immigration rhetoric of the National Front is now part of the political vocabulary of the Republicans as well as Prime Minister Valls.

The only alternative to a power grab by the French hard right is a mass general strike and sustained street battles in order to resist the reaction by decree.

As throughout history, popular struggles in France begin in the streets – among the trade unions and young workers angrily facing low wages, austerity and the grim prospect of ‘permanently' temporary jobs.

The outcome of the intensifying French labor-capital conflict will have a decisive impact on the future of labor throughout Europe, especially among all Left unionists.

Latin America: The Labor-Capital Showdown

Beyond Europe, the Anglo-American onslaught against labor and the working class resonates most directly in Latin America and to a lesser extent in Asia and Africa.

The first country to fall victim to capital's attack was Mexico with the implementation of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). By the early 1990's NAFTA had demolished the independent Mexican trade unions, crippled social legislation, eliminated subsidies to small corn farmers, forced peasants into debt, reduced minimum wage, doubled poverty levels and turned the majority of the labor force into landless, indebted, casual workers. On the other hand, NAFTA has been a bottomless source of wealth as capitalists accumulate double and triple digit profits and absolute power to hire and fire employees. Mexico's government, under Anglo-American capital, has allowed the illicit transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars of Mexican assets to US, English and other overseas banks, which have become immense money-laundering operations. The proximity of Mexican drug cartels to the US banks has facilitated the extension of their networks into the US market. The horrific expansion of drug cartel death squads, linked to Mexico's political leaders, dates from the 1990's and the signing of NAFTA. This bloody nexus has consolidated neoliberal political power in Mexico and weakened the possibility of a viable mass electoral alternative.

Anglo-American dominance in Latin America in the 1990's led to an entire panoply of regressive policies: privatizing and denationalizing the most lucrative natural and state resources, banks and industries; reducing wages and social spending for labor while increasing the concentration of capital. By 2001 however the Anglo-American edifice collapsed throughout South America with the demise of its neo-liberal political leadership.

From Venezuela in 1999, to Argentina in 2002, Brazil 2003, Bolivia 2006 and Ecuador 2007, left and center-left parties capitalized on their mass support and were elected into power. They took advantage of global economic conditions with the rising commodity prices, booming Chinese markets and new regional alliances to fund a variety of progressive social agendas, including increased social expenditures, guaranteed pensions, family allowances, minimum wages, wage increases for public sector and expanded labor rights.

The Anglo-American power elite was in retreat and isolated, but it was far from defeated. They retrenched and prepared to re-mobilize their strategic business, banking and political allies when the opportunity arose. They counter-attacked when global and regional conditions turned unfavorable to the social regimes.

The assault on Latin America was preceded by the Anglo-American neo-liberal take-over of Northern Europe from the 1990's to the first decade of the 21st century. This was followed by the sweep and grab of the Balkans and Southern Europe. The combined Anglo-American-EU-NATO offensive now seeks to reverse the last social-welfare regimes in Europe: France and Italy with the help of President Hollande and Prime Minister Renzi.

Simultaneously the Anglo-American offensive has been launched throughout Latin America. Their goal is to recover the imperial prerogatives, political power and economic privileges lost during the previous decade. The primary Euro-American target is the ‘golden triangle', Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. These countries constitute a global center of immense oil and agro-mineral wealth.

The Argentine neo-liberal restoration took off in December 2015 with the election of far-right President Mauricio Macri (image left). His junta wasted no time in stripping the state of its social legislation, dismantling job security through large-scale layoffs and assuming authoritarian rule by decree to devalue Argentina's currency by 40% and to eliminate state subsidies and raising the price for gas, electricity, transport, and water between 300 and 800 %.

The regressive offensive was in full force. Next, Brazil's twice elected President Dilma Rousseff was ‘impeached' and essentially overthrown by a bizarre legislative right-wing coup-d'état, designed to reverse a generation of progressive regulatory, labor and employment legislation. It was also secretly designed to halt corruption investigations against many right-wing politicians.

Venezuela is next. It will be the scene of a full-scale-elite coup-d'état with imperial backing, to overthrow the government of President Maduro and end decades of progressive social advances under the Chavista governments.

While in France and Italy, the great social reversal is being implemented by internal enemies from the ‘progressive' political parties ("Trojan Horses"), in Latin America the reversal is led by openly hostile class enemies who depend on the arbitrary exercise of executive power. The drive to put a definitive end to the ‘welfare state' in Europe and Latin America is marked by the use of dictatorial decrees, (in the style of Mussolini in the 1920's) as exercised by Argentina's elected President Marci in January 2016 and Brazil's ‘Interim (Coup) President' Temer in April 2016. Meanwhile capitalist lockouts, hoarding and sabotage are being used to crush Venezuela's elected government.

This epochal confrontation has spread across Africa and Asia. China's capitalist offensive has seen a four-fold increase in the number of new billionaires in less than a decade, at the expense of hundreds of millions of workers stripped of their rights and social programs.

South Africa, under the ANC government, turned its back on social gains promised by the liberation struggle and has imposed regressive social legislation and repressive anti-labor decrees. A corrupt class of black and white billionaires now rule by guns and clubs over the black working class.

In Africa and the Middle East, the social welfare states of the nationalist regimes in Iraq and Libya have been completely shredded through imperialist military intervention and civil war. Their once advanced societies have been thrown back into ethno-tribal warfare with no remaining modern social institutions in those two blighted, resource-rich nations.

Wither the Class Struggle: Historical Reversal and Class Revolt?

The Anglo-American offensive to reverse decades of social advance has captured most of Europe. They have incorporated or coopted the Social Democratic parties and are moving swiftly toward dismantling the decade-long center-left welfare states in Latin America.

In Africa, the centerpiece of Anglo-Americanization is South Africa, the continent's most advanced bastion of international capitalism.

In Asia, China, the second most important capitalist economy in the world, has been leading the struggle to overturn the social agenda of the revolutionary past.

Large-scale, prolonged class resistance in several decisive centers is emerging to confront this Anglo-American process of reversion. The class confrontation however takes specific characteristics in each country.

In France, the major protagonists of street fighting and marches are young unemployed or casual workers, members of the strategic transport and oil unions and student-workers facing a bleak future of marginal employment and a shredded social safety net.

Trade unions and farmers' association have joined the street struggles on numerous occasions, possibly in preparation for a general strike.

In Latin America, the center of the class struggle is Argentina. Power-mad President Macri immediately imposed regressive policies against all sectors of the working class. His actions managed to unite the four major trade union confederations, multiple retirees associations and small businesspeople bankrupted by exorbitant charges on gas and electrical use and regional neighborhood federations. The widespread growth of job actions among public sector employees points to a general strike.

The regressive assault on long-term social legislation in Brazil immediately followed the thinly disguised capitalist coup. The ousting of President Rousseff has provoked street demonstrations, led by the huge rural landless workers movement (MST), the confederation of industrial and service workers (CUT), social movements of the homeless workers and the recipients of Lula's poverty programs. New revelations, based on taped conversations among the coup plotters reveal their plans to oust the incumbent President Rousseff in order to derail official investigations into their own corruption scandals. This has enraged the general public.

With the initial take-over, the Brazilian political-financial elite has prepared to launch its full-scale reversal of pensions and employment laws and wage guarantees. The pro-business leadership plans to slash corporate and wealth taxes and to appoint business executives to all leading ministries. The deep corruption scandal and the mass demonstrations suggest the rightwing power grab may not survive.

The regressive offensive in Venezuela has severely crippled the national economy and deeply eroded living standards of the vast majority of the working class. The rightist Congress, backed by the US and allied with international mass media, industry and multinational banks, are trying to force the resignation of Socialist President Maduro.

Maduro has declared a state of emergency and mobilized the armed forces. He called on the military and popular militia to defend the constitutional order and has threatened to mobilize the workers to "take control of the means of production". Still, the leftist government vacillates over arming the militias and workers. A wide gap remains before the word and the deed.

In the meantime Venezuela's right wing and left-wing mass mobilizations face each other in the streets seething with class hatred and waiting to engage in a decisive confrontation. The military thus far remains constitutionalist and on the side of the elected president.

In South Africa, the corrupt pro-business ANC led by President Zuma (image right) murdered dozens of striking mine workers. It has impoverished millions of shantytown residents, while increasing the wealth and power of the black-white elite. On April 30, 2016, 1.1.million South African activists, including civil society and community organizations and trade unions covering the mining, manufacturing and service sectors have organized to form a new confederation linked with informal, unemployed and poor workers. The South African Workers Summit replaces the moribund and corrupt labor confederation, COSATU, the ‘labor desk' for the neo-liberal ANC regime. The new confederation will co-ordinate mass struggles and reclaim social programs as a central part of the anti-capitalist revolution.

In China, the growth and consolidation of the world's second largest concentration of billionaires has led to the proliferation of large-scale industrial workers' strikes, walkouts and confrontations with factory bosses, company unions and government officials. China is becoming the epicenter of Asia's working class struggles. Chinese workers have forced the government to investigate and jail over 200,000 corrupt officials, high and low, and to concede substantial wage increases and social compensation to factory workers. Fearing more social upheaval, China's billionaires and multi-millionaires have transferred hundreds of billions of dollars of stolen assets abroad in a buying spree of high-end property in the ‘safe' Anglo-American "heartland" of world reaction.

The continued advance of working class struggles against the public and private oligarchs has forced the Chinese Prime Minister to reform elite privileges and prosecute large-scale banking swindles and illegal seizure of farmland. Especially important, millions of workers have successfully secured double-digit wage increases and the right to legally live in urban/industrial and construction centers.

As it gains momentum, class struggle in China can become the centerpiece for a wider Asian social transformation and a great leap forward to socialist values.

Conclusion

The Anglo-American drive to establish a global regressive social order has pushed billions of workers on five continents into destitution, insecurity and lifelong exploitation. The capitalist world rules by fiat and violence, declaring that social regression and worker repression are the ‘wave of the future'. For the elite, the proper order of the universe is being ‘restored'!

In response, new working class organizations have emerged and engage directly to defend their historic social advances and economic rights.

In the course of defending their past progressive social legacy, the new working class militants can clearly see the imperative to challenge and overthrow the entire political and economic order. From France to Latin America, from China to South Africa, class struggle is defining the present and future of class relations.

78

For Your Information / British Government Whitewashes Fascist Bandera Cult in Ukraine

« on: April 19, 2016, 12:25:29 PM »

British Government Whitewashes Fascist Bandera Cult in Ukraine

The British government through its Embassy in Kiev is funding a so-called "peace-building school" in Ukraine. This so-called "peace building" consists of sanitising and glorifying the historical role of the Nazi-collaborator, Stepan Bandera, whose crimes against humanity in World War Two - not least against the Polish and Russian peoples and Jews - are well documented.

Held in Krasnoarmiysk, 50 kilometres from the contact line with the forces of the Donetsk People's Republic, an event sponsored by the British Embassy in Kiev entitled "Stepan Bandera: Myths and Reality" brought teachers from the Ukrainian Peacebuilding School together with leading Ukrainian Army Officers, local citizens, teachers and children in an ideological lecture about Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

The Donetsk education project of the Ukrainian Peacebuilding School in Krasnoarmiysk is run by the infamous Nataliya Zubar, Chair of the Maidan Monitoring Information Centre, who has been linked with publishing a hit-list of pro-Russian activists. Both Zubar and her other project the Peacekeeper website and the OUN Battalion have also been linked to killing of Ukrainian anti-fascist journalist, Oles Buzyna. The guest speaker at the meeting was from "The Committee of State Ideology" an organisation run by the Executive Committee of the Ukraine Rada (national parliament).

The meeting opened with the speaker chillingly stating: "Today - probably not for the first time in Donetsk region - but for the first time in the town of Krasnoarmeisk - we are holding this kind of event. And during the event we should do our part to refute the myths - Soviet myths - about the fighters for the independence of Ukraine. We should do everything so that the truth about Stepan Bandera and those he surrounded himself with, their path of self-sacrifice, be known to every Ukrainian. We invited here not only local citizens, but also history teachers, school librarians - those who should convey to the children the real history, and not a mythology imposed by the Soviet government."

In May 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the "de-communisation law" as a direct consequence of which Ukraine's largest political party, the Communist Party, has been banned and the Soviet history of Ukraine is being officially replaced by a false version of history based on the ideology of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera - with the assistance of the British government.

We call on the working class and people to condemn the British government's support for these historical falsifications, and for Britain to withdraw all military and economic assistance to the government of Ukraine.

(Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine)
 http://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-16/ww16-10/ww16-10-04.htm

79

News Items / UK not going to Libya , but has boatload of crack troops quietly floating around

« on: April 15, 2016, 07:48:05 PM »

UK not going to Libya , but has boatload of crack troops quietly floating around Med
Published time: 15 Apr, 2016 13:44RT NEWS

UK officials deny troops will go to Libya, refusing to comment on current SAS operations. Yet a shipload of commandos, intelligence operators and landing craft specialists is quietly positioned within striking distance of the war-torn North African state.

The existence of the 150-strong amphibious Special Purpose Task Group (SPTG) was revealed on Thursday by the IHS Jane’s defense website, which claims to have seen a Royal Marines briefing document.

While it is normal for Royal Navy vessels to have a ‘ship’s company’ of commandos aboard, the SPTG is an unusual case.

Quietly formed in December 2015, the unit consists of a company of Royal Marine Commandos and attached personnel from army commando artillery and engineer units.

It also has soldiers from the 17 Port and Maritime Regiment – an army unit which contains landing craft specialists – and marines from the shadowy 30 Commando military intelligence unit which specializes in “information exploitation.”

The SPTG departed Southampton’s Marchwood military port in January aboard the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) landing vessel Mounts Bay for what the briefing document terms "contingency operations in the Mediterranean.”

On Tuesday the Mounts Bay was reported to be in Gibraltar for routine maintenance, so it did not have to leave its area of operations to return to the UK.

Between setting sail and docking in in Gibraltar, the MOD claims the ship was carrying out anti-trafficking operations in the Aegean by “identifying smugglers taking migrants to Greece and passing the information to the Turkish coastguard so they can intercept these boats.”In earlier reports, the presence aboard the RFA Mounts Bay - or even existence - of the SPTG do not appear have not been mentioned. The unit was only added to the Royal Navy’s standing deployment Wikipedia page on Thursday.

However, the special purpose of the Special Purpose Task Group is not entirely clear given the range of warfighting equipment on-board.

Before maintenance at Gibraltar’s Gibdock, a local newspaper reported that up to 42 land vehicles were unloaded from the ship which is apparently charged with seaborne anti-people-smuggling operations.

The images of the unloading also appear to show a military crane and an Oshkosh bulk fuel transporter being lifted from the Mounts Bay onto a ferry.The deployment has been reported during a row between MPs about what the UK’s plans for Libya are.

It had been thought that the arrival in Tripoli in March of the new UN-brokered unity government could see UK troops deployed as part of a 6,000-strong Italian led brigade - a move blasted by both politicians and high-ranking military veterans of 2011 Libyan war.

On Thursday the Libyan united government publicly turned down UK troops out of fear that Western backing would make them appear to be foreign puppets and that outside forces would serve to unite warring militias.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been asked for comment.

On Thursday, the outspoken chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Crispin Blunt, argued that government should come clean on the presence of UK Special Forces in Libya and attacked Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond for being “less than candid” about UK military activity there.

While the government refuses to comment on Special Forces operations as matter of policy, it was reported by the Guardian on 25 March that leaked conversations between King Abdullah of Jordan and senior US Republicans confirmed the SAS’s presence in Libya since at least January 2016.
 

80

News Items / Red-handed. UK military trained Saudis as they rained fire on Yemen, says Reprie

« on: April 15, 2016, 07:40:42 PM »

Red-handed. UK military trained Saudis as they rained fire on Yemen, says Reprieve
Published time: 15 Apr, 2016 15:17RT NEWS


UK military personnel have delivered a series of three-week courses on “international targeting” to the Saudi forces currently engaged in pummeling Yemen, a Freedom of Information (FoI) request shows.

The revelations were made following a request by the human rights NGO Reprieve. The organization is now urging the UK government to stop providing military support.

While the MoD has long claimed its role is purely advisory, the revelations lay bare the closeness with which the two countries operate.It now appears courses were being run by RAF officers as recently as 2015 on “international targeting” over three separate three-week blocks.

This included training on the Storm Shadow missile, which is launched from aircraft to destroy enemy bunkers.

Gunnery instruction on targeting and locating enemy gun batteries was also carried out by a seven-strong detachment of personnel from the Royal Artillery.

The artillery team delivered 52 hours of training to Saudi gunners and included a senior major, a captain, a sergeant major and a sergeant.

The MoD said the course had been delivered to “a mixed group of soldiers and officers” from the Royal Saudi Land Forces RSLF) field artillery.

Saudi personnel have also visited the UK for training.
The military said their personnel were not involved in “carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen or selecting targets, and are not involved in the Saudi targeting decision-making process.”They stressed, as they have on numerous occasions, that the UK military “provide guidance on best practice techniques, including advice to help continued compliance with international humanitarian law.”

Reprieve case worker Omran Belhadi said: “Claims by ministers that Britain is helping the Saudi government abide by the law are disingenuous.”

He pointed out that legal training on rules of engagement and the laws of war did not seem to have sunk in if, indeed, it was delivered.

“Extensive British ‘targeting training’ has done nothing to prevent the bombing of schools, hospitals and weddings, and the deaths of thousands of Yemeni civilians,” Belhadi told the Guardian.
 

81

News Items / US plans to send heavy arms to Syria

« on: April 13, 2016, 11:02:35 PM »

US plans to send heavy arms to Syria
 PressTV 
Apr 13

 The United States and its regional allies have prepared plans to supply more-powerful weapons to militants fighting the Syrian government, amid concerns that a landmark ceasefire is threatening to fall apart.

US officials said the so-called Plan B is aimed at providing vetted "moderate" militant units with weapons system that would enable them to launch attacks against Syrian government aircraft and artillery positions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

US-backed militants carried out a series of attacks in central and southern Syria on Monday even as the Damascus government was observing a ceasefire and holding talks with opposition groups to end the years-long conflict.

A ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia went into effect on February 27 across Syria. The truce agreement does not apply to Daesh and al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front. A new round of discussions is to resume between the two sides in Geneva this week.

Concern has been growing that the recent uptick in violence is putting intense strain on the fragile truce.

US Secretary of State John Kerry floated the idea of a "Plan B" for the first time late in February, stressing that partitioning of Syria was on the table if the ceasefire collapsed.

The preparations for the "Plan B" were discussed at a secret gathering of intelligence chiefs in the Middle East before the ceasefire went into effect and in exchanges between intelligence services, the Journal said.

During those sessions, the CIA gave assurances to allies that they would be given approval to expand arms shipments to Syria's "moderate" militants.

Coalition members reportedly agreed to the outlines of the plan, but the White House must approve the list of proposed weapons systems before they can be sent to Syria.

"The agreement is to up the ante, if needed," a senior US official said. Militants carry their weapons as they walk along a street in a town in eastern Damascus, May 6, 2015. (Reuters photo)

The plan for introducing more sophisticated weapons into the Syrian battlefield is perceived as being part of a broader behind-the-scenes effort by the US to counter its adversaries in the conflict.

US officials have privately warned their Russian counterparts that the armed opposition will persist in Syria and that a return to full-scale fighting could put further strain on Russian pilots there, according to the Journal.

In addition, Pentagon officials said in recent weeks that the White House was looking to "greatly increase" the number of special forces deployed in Syria. The US military also said that it had resumed training new units of militants operating in the country.

The discussions for a possible escalation of the proxy war in Syria have been fueled to a large extent by a relatively successful Russian campaign in the country.

 

82

News Items / Russia warns of offensive by terrorists in Syria

« on: April 13, 2016, 10:37:52 AM »

 Russia warns of offensive by terrorists in Syria
 Xinhua 
MOSCOW, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Russian Defense Ministry on Monday warned that Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group is planning a large-scale offensive in Syria.

 "It is known that Jabhat al-Nusra is to launch a large-scale offensive in order to cut off the road linking Aleppo to (the Syrian capital of) Damascus," said Sergei Rudskoi, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Main Operational Directorate.

Rudskoi said 8,000 militants of the terrorist group have gathered in the southwest of Aleppo, and up to 1,500 militants in the north of the city.

Armed terrorist groups also appeared in several towns in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib and other regions, with tank and vehicles equipped with large-caliber machine guns, he said.

"Russian defense department addressed to U.S. counterparts by different channels for quelling such actions because it could destabilize the situation," Rudskoi said in a statement.

Noting that Jabhat al-Nusra is performing active warfare using these forces, Rudskoi urged necessary measures to stop terrorists' actions and prevent the siege of northern Syrian regions.

After withdrawal of its main air forces deployed in Syria since September 2015 to help the war-torn country fight terrorists, Russia is still striking terrorist targets and keeping coordination with the U.S.-led coalition forces.
 

83

For Your Information / Odessa commemorates WW2 liberation from Nazi Germany

« on: April 13, 2016, 10:34:53 AM »

Odessa commemorates WW2 liberation from Nazi Germany
 New Cold War 
April 11, 2016

 Several thousand residents of Odessa, Ukraine held a march and ceremony in central Odessa on April 10, 2016 to commemorate the 1944 liberation of the city from Nazi Germany occupation by the Soviet Red Army. Commemoration in Odessa on April 10, 2016 of 1944 liberation of city from Nazi Germany

Commemoration in Odessa on April 10, 2016 of 1944 liberation of city from Nazi Germany

The march gathered at the monument to the city's liberation. Other commemorations took place in the city on the same day.

Following the central ceremony (pictured), many participants gathered at Kulikovo Field in the center of the city to honour the victims of the arson attack by neo-Nazis on May 2, 2014. Dozens of protesters opposing the coup government in Ukraine were killed that day. Kulikovo Field lies adjacent to the Trade Union House where the murderous arson attack took place.

Right-wing gangs attacked the gatherings at the war memorial and at Kulikovo Field. They also attacked a commemoration march by anarchist groups in the city. A well known leader of anarchists in Odesssa, Vyacheslav Azarov, was injured and hospitalized. His attackers were briefly detained by police and then released.

A report on the day's events, with several videos, is published here on the website of the UK-based Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine (UK).

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News Items / UK special forces and MI6 involved in Yemen bombing, report reveals

« on: April 13, 2016, 10:29:29 AM »

 UK special forces and MI6 involved in Yemen bombing, report reveals

    Investigation appears to contradict official UK claims

Richard Norton-Taylor   The Guardian

Monday 11 April 2016 16.03 BST
Last modified on Monday 11 April 2016 16.04 BST

Britain’s MI6 and special forces have played a crucial and sustained role in covert US-led counter terrorism operations in Yemen. Their role has included identifying targets for drone strikes, according to a detailed, in-depth, investigation.

Drone strikes are particularly controversial because they have been responsible for civilian deaths in Yemen.

The disclosures are not entirely surprising. Britain has had a long and close diplomatic and intelligence relationship with Yemen, which borders on Britain’s chief ally in the region, Saud Arabia.

What is significant - and for British parliamentarians and journalists, frustrating - is that the detailed disclosures are the result of report by a US-based current affairs channel, Vice News.

It would have been much more difficult to get British officials to talk here, given the official blanket ban on comments about special forces operations or intelligence matters.

“The British have been in Gulf states for decades. They have a reservoir of knowledge, contacts, and expertise that is very important,” a former senior CIA official, responsible for operations in Yemen, told Vice News. “If you look at what capabilities each side has, that starts to tell you something about precisely where the actionable intelligence is coming from.”
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Once the official secret was outed, some Britons were apparently encouraged to talk. “Our station people were pretty shit-hott”, said one.

British personnel serving in Yemen said the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (a special forces unit), seconded to MI6, were responsible for training Yemen forces fighting al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP).

Secondment also allowed British military personnel to help with the drone strikes, but under the aegis of intelligence operations controlled by the Foreign Office, which is responsible for MI6, according to the Vice News report.

All this made their presence deniable by the UK Ministry of Defence which in 2014 told human rights group Reprieve: “The UK does not provide any military support to the US campaign of Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) strikes on Yemen.”
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Reprieve said the investigation appeared to contradict years of denials by the UK about involvement in US operations in Yemen. “Even more disturbing”, said Jen Gibson, a Reprieve lawyer, “the UK has copied wholesale the US model of outsourcing the military to the intelligence agencies in order to hide their involvement and avoid any accountability.”

The Vice News report appears to contradict David Cameron’s comment in the Commons in January that British “personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen or selecting targets and we’re not involved in the Saudi targeting decision-making process.”

Unless, of course, by “are not involved” he, or those drafting his parliamentary answers, meant “not at that very moment” and that the denial referred specifically and only to anti-Houthi operations, not anti-AQAP ones.

On a trip to London in January, the Saudi foreign minister said British and American military officials were in the command and control centre for Saudi air strikes on Yemen, and had access to lists of targets. However, he said they do not play any role in choosing them.

What is clear in all this fog is that British spooks and special forces have been very active in Yemen, without our knowledge.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch warned in a report on Monday of the need to maintain human control over weapons systems and ban fully autonomous weapons, known as “killer robots”.

85

For Your Information / Monaco raids Unaoil offices over global oil corruption probe

« on: April 03, 2016, 09:44:41 PM »

Monaco raids Unaoil offices over global oil corruption probe

Reuter April 1st

Authorities in Monaco raided the offices of energy services company Unaoil and the homes of its directors after Britain sought help investigating alleged corruption in the global oil industry.

Monaco's government said in a statement on its website that it acted after receiving an urgent request for international judicial assistance in criminal matters from Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Unaoil directors were questioned by Monaco police on Tuesday and Wednesday, the government said.

Joint reports by Australia's Fairfax Media and the Huffington Post said that the U.S. Department of Justice and anti-corruption police in Britain and Australia had launched a joint investigation into the activities of Unaoil.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the allegations against Unaoil, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.

Monaco-based Unaoil provides industrial solutions to the energy sector in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, according to its website.

"Due to recent developments it would be inappropriate for the company to comment at this time," a Unaoil spokesman said in an emailed statement.

The chairman of Unaoil Group, Ata Ahsani, could not be reached for comment.

The media reports, citing hundreds of thousands of emails, also link several multinationals to corrupt practices, including claims of bribery and bid rigging to win oil contracts in countries such as Kazakhstan and Iraq.
 
Italian oil major Eni (ENI.MI), one of the companies mentioned in the report, indicated that it would hold an internal inquiry into the allegations.

"We do not comment on the results of possible internal investigations," a spokesman for ENI said.

The alleged behaviour of some of its employees was to the detriment of the group and clashed with its code of ethics, the spokesman said.

"None of the people mentioned in the articles are currently employed by Eni," the spokesman said in an emailed response to Reuters about the report.
 
The media reports said U.S. construction giant KBR Inc (KBR.N), which until 2007 was owned by oilfield services provider Halliburton Co (HAL.N), paid Unaoil millions of dollars from 2004 until at least 2009.

KBR said it does not tolerate illegal or unethical practices and is committed to complying with all applicable laws.

"We take any allegations of corruption and unethical business practices seriously," KBR said in a statement.

Halliburton declined to comment.
 
A spokesman for Britain's SFO said it was "aware of the allegations," but would not comment further.

Agencies in Australia were aware of allegations of the involvement of a number of Australian companies in foreign bribery matters, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

The AFP said it was conducting ongoing investigations into a number of allegations, but declined to comment specifically on the focus of its probes.

WorleyParsons (WOR.AX) and Primary Health Care (PRY.AX), both named in the media reports, denied any relationship with Unaoil.

Australia's opposition party leader Bill Shorten said he will push for a senate inquiry into global bribery when parliament resumes this month. He said the "revelations" were "deeply disturbing."


(Reporting by Byron Kaye, Jane Wardell and James Regan in Sydney; additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington, Mica Rosenberg in New York and Terry Wade in Houston,; Rachel Armstrong in London and Stephen Jewkes and Oleg Vukmanovic in Milan; editing by Susan Fenton, G Crosse and Chizu Nomiyama)

86

News Items / Tyrannical aggression’: 1,000s protest Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen 1 year on

« on: March 28, 2016, 11:33:12 PM »

Tyrannical aggression’: 1,000s protest Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen 1 year on

RT

Published time: 27 Mar, 2016 00:47

Yemenis hold placards bearing portraits of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh during a protest against the Saudi-led coalition, on March 26, 2016, in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. © Mohammed Huwais

Yemenis hold placards bearing portraits of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh during a protest against the Saudi-led coalition, on March 26, 2016, in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. © Mohammed Huwais / AFP


Thousands of people took to the streets of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, to denounce the Saudi-led coalition, which launched a military operation in the country on this day a year ago.


The demonstrators were waving Yemeni nation flags and carrying banners, the largest of which read: “Together Against Tyrannical Saudi aggression,” as the coalition’s warplanes flew above the crowd on Sanaa’s Sabaeen Square at supersonic speeds, in what AFP called “an apparent show of force.” 

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched an intervention in Yemen on March 26, 2016, in an attempt to reinstate President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to power after he was ousted by Houthi rebels, who still control Sanaa and vast parts of the country.


A man shouts for help to salvage his furniture after his house was destroyed by a Saudi-led air strike in Yemen's capital Sanaa, February 25, 2016. © Mohamed al-Sayaghi'Unlawful civilian deaths in Yemen': HRW urges US, UK, France to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia
As many as 6,300 people have been killed since the coalition began carrying out airstrikes in Yemen, more than half of whom were civilians, according to the UN.

The rally in the capital was organized by the party of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was Yemen’s president from 1990 to 2012, and is a present ally of the Houthis.

Speaking at the gathering, Saleh reiterated his call for direct talks to be held with Saudi Arabia, but not Hadi’s exiled government.

There was also a large anti-Saudi protest in the northern part of Sanaa, which was organized by the Houthi administration.

READ MORE: Saudi airstrike on Yemeni market had no apparent military reason – UN

On Friday, rebel leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi gave an address on national TV dedicated to the first anniversary of the Saudi-led campaign.

“One year on, we look at the outcome of this aggression... It was said to be aimed at helping and serving the Yemeni people. [But] this help came in the form of criminal killings and genocide,” al-Houthi said.

He expressed hope that efforts to end the Saudi-led intervention will be “successful,” but warned that if they fail, “we are ready to make sacrifices...it is important to confront aggression if it continues.”


‘Missiles’ delivered to Downing Street in protest at British arms used in Yemen war (VIDEO)
UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheik announced earlier this week that the Houthis and forces loyal to Hadi have agreed to a cessation in hostilities beginning at midnight on April 10, which is to be followed by peace talks in Kuwait starting April 18.

The Shia Muslim Houthis, who are claimed to be backed by Iran, captured the capital city of Sanaa in September of 2014, and went on to take large parts of the country, but fighting still remains fierce in many of Yemen’s regions.

Since intervening in its neighbor’s conflict, the Saudi-led coalition has been slammed by various human right groups for causing civilian casualties.

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the US, France, and the UK to suspend all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia until it ends its airstrikes and investigates bombings resulting in unlawful civilian deaths.

HRW says it has documented 36 illegal airstrikes conducted by the Saudi-led forces in Yemen, some of which may amount to war crimes.

The coalition’s air campaign has targeted schools, hospitals, and homes, with “no evidence they were being used for military purposes,” killing at least 550 civilians.

Even Riyadh’s allies in Washington have voiced concerns over civilian deaths amid the Saudi-led operation.

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For Your Information / Serbia marks anniversary of start of NATO bombing (LINK FOR PHOTOS)

« on: March 25, 2016, 11:13:54 PM »

 Serbia marks anniversary of start of NATO bombing (LINK FOR PHOTOS)
 B92.net 
Mar 24


 http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society.php?yyyy=2016&mm=03&dd=24&nav_id=97466

17 years ago today NATO forces began their air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ), at the time consisting of Serbia and Montenegro.

The bombing, which lasted 78 days, severely damaged infrastructure, commercial buildings, schools, health institutions, media houses and cultural monuments.

The attacks on Serbia started and were carried out without the approval of the UN Security Council, which was a precedent.

The order was given to U.S. General Wesley Clark, who at the time commanded allied forces, by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.

Clark later wrote in his book entitled "Modern Warfare" that the planning of the war was already under way in mid-June in 1998 and was completed in August of that year.

The country was attacked as the alleged culprit for the humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo and Metohija (the immediate cause were the events in Racak) and the failure of negotiations on the future status of the province that were conducted in Rambouillet near Paris.

After the Serbian Assembly confirmed the decision not to accept foreign troops on its territory and suggested that UN forces should oversee a peaceful solution to the Kosovo conflict, NATO on March 24, 1999 at 19:45 CET began itsair strikes, using cruise missiles and aviation, attacking several locations in Serbia and Montenegro.

19 countries of the western military alliance started their campaign from the ships in the Adriatic and four air bases in Italy.

According to the estimates of the government of Serbia, at least 2,500 people, of whom 89 children, were killed during the attacks (according to some sources, the total death toll was nearly 4,000), while more than 12,500 people were wounded and injured.

The total damage done to the country's economy and infrastructure was estimated at the time at USD 100 billion. NATO's war losses in manpower and equipment have never been made public.

The authorities in Belgrade claimed that dozens of aircraft were shot down, which has never been confirmed. The Russian agency APN said that NATO lost over 400 soldiers and more than 60 aircraft, while then U.S. President Bill Clinton said in a speech on June 10 1999 that NATO suffered "no casualties."

The Museum of Aviation in Belgrade has the remains of the destroyed F-117 and F-16 aircraft, UAVs, and cruise missiles.

Almost every town in Serbia had been targeted during the 11 weeks of the air strikes.

The bombing destroyed and damaged 25,000 housing units, 470 km of roads and 595 kilometers of railways.

The attacks also damaged 14 airports, 19 hospitals, 20 health centers, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges, while 38 were destroyed.

During the aggression NATO carried out a total of 2,300 airs trikes on 995 facilities across the country, while 1,150 combat aircraft launched nearly 420,000 missiles.

NATO also launched 1,300 cruise missiles, dropped over 37,000 cluster bombs, which killed some 200 people and wounded hundreds, and used prohibited ammunition with depleted uranium.

A third of the electrical power capacity of the country was destroyed, two oil refineries, in Pancevo and Novi Sad bombed, while NATO forces used the opportunity to for the first time deployed the so-called graphite bombs to disable the power system.

After several attempts to end the war by diplomatic means, the bombing ended with the signing of the Military Technical Agreement in Kumanovo on June 9, 1999, after which the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and Serbian police (MUP) started withdrawing from Kosovo and Metohija.

That day, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244, sending 37,200 KFOR soldiers from 36 countries to the province, with the task of keeping the peace, security, and ensuring the return of refugees until a broad autonomous status has been defined for Kosovo.




 

88

For Your Information / US, NATO Lie to Justify Genocide and Destruction in Yugoslavia (MAP)

« on: March 24, 2016, 06:10:39 PM »

US, NATO Lie to Justify Genocide and Destruction in Yugoslavia (MAP)
 Vijoleta Gordeljevic, telesurtv.net 
Mar 23


 Seventeen years ago today, on March 24, 1999, NATO began a 78-day deadly and devastating U.S.-backed intervention of Yugoslavia. It was the first time in history that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization decided they would attack a country without the approval of the U.N. Security Council. The day U.S. and their NATO allies turned night into day by bombing Yugoslavia.

 Nineteen countries took part in the aggression led by the United States that was supposed to stop the repressive activities of the Slobodan Milosevic government and to establish a framework for its Southern province, Kosovo, under international law. Milosevic was president of Serbia from 1989 to 1997, and of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000.

 The attack was carried out under the former U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration and the rationale that it would prevent a "humanitarian disaster in Kosovo," a "genocide of Kosovar Albanians" caused by Milosevic and "comparable to Nazi atrocities in the Second World War."

 It was not the first, nor the last time, in subsequent years in different parts of the globe that U.S.-backed interventions would be initiated under the premise of a "preventive war."


 Map outlining the states of former Yugoslavia, including Kosovo. | Photo: International Criminal Tribunal

 In the case of Yugoslavia, various parties later agreed that the alleged "genocide" never happened and that instead it was just another excuse to dismantle the socialists as well as federal dimensions of a unitary Yugoslav state and to break the country into ever-smaller pieces by bombing its people into submission.

 OPINION: NATO War Crimes in Afghanistan: A Never Ending Story

 This way, NATO's bombing caused a much larger catastrophe than it averted.

 The illegal bombing destroyed and damaged 25,000 homes, 300 miles of roads and close to 400 miles of railways. Many public buildings were damaged, including 14 airports, 19 hospitals, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges.

 The attacks killed at least 5,000 people (some sources claim it was closer to 18,000), injured 12,500, and left the area contaminated with depleted uranium, a chemical element internationally banned which to date is still causing childhood cancer rates to spike all over the Balkans.

 The bombing of Yugoslavia was made possible by a number of public lies which were spread in an attempt to justify intervention into an internal conflict, which was eventually exploited by foreign powers to advance policy goals.

 Myth 1: US-NATO Attacked After Milosevic Refused Talks

 In 1999, Kosovo was a region of Yugoslavia where ethnic Albanians were the majority. And because Kosovo was part of Yugoslavia, the U.S.-backed NATO campaign violated international law.

 While the U.S. government claimed that negotiations on Kosovo with Milosevic had failed and that the ongoing discrimination against Kosovo Albanians represented genocide, later statements by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright proved that there were no negotiations.

 The U.S. gave Milosevic an ultimatum, telling him, firstly, to grant autonomy to Kosovo. Secondly, to allow NATO to station 30,000 ground troops in Yugoslavia and, lastly, to allow a NATO-conducted referendum for Kosovo's independence from Yugoslavia.

 Milosevic made it clear that he would not allow a foreign-occupying army in Yugoslavia because it would be a gross violation of the country's sovereignty and their independence.

 NATO began bombing the country without further negotiation attempts.

 Myth 2: Milosevic, a Danger that Needed to Be Stopped

 It was well understood by NATO leadership that the bombing was not a response to the huge crimes in Kosovo, but rather their cause.

 At the time bombing started, there were two potential diplomatic options for discussion, which included two proposals. One by NATO and another by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

 As Noam Chomsky once explained, "After 78 days of bombing, a compromise was reached between them, suggesting that a peaceful settlement might have been possible, avoiding the terrible crimes that were the anticipated reaction to the NATO bombing."

 The Bill Clinton administration was also wildly inconsistent in its practice of humanitarian interventions. The U.S. launched two military campaigns against Serbia while ignoring more widespread slaughter in Rwanda or justifying the Russian assault on Chechnya during the same period of time.

 Myth 3: US-NATO Wanted to Protect Human Rights

 A United Nations court has ruled that Serbian troops did not carry out genocide against ethnic Albanians during Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of aggression in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999.

 John Norris, who was Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott's communications director during the Clinton Administration wrote a book in which he explains the real purpose of the war from his point of view. Norris explains that the bombing had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians.

 The U.S. decided to bomb because Serbia, the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the U.S.-run neoliberal programs, and which was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms.

 Myth 4: KLA, a Genuine Liberation Army

 The Kosovo Liberation Army was an ethnic-Albanian "paramilitary organization" that sought the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia.

 Before the bombing there had been killings on both sides which were distributed between the KLA attacking from Albania and the Yugoslavian security forces.

 In 1998, the KLA was considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., but one year later the CIA financed them, while Albright offered them training in the U.S. "in order to get the Albanians' ... acceptance (of the peace plan)," and in hope to transform the KLA "from a guerrilla group into a police force or a political entity, much like the African National Congress did in South Africa."

 A building in central Belgrade hasn't been rebuilt after missiles hit in April 1999 during NATO's bombing | Photo: Reuters

 NATO's illegal intervention revealed the dangers of "humanitarian imperialism" and how the criteria permitting such interventions has become more self-serving both in Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan and Iraq.

89

For Your Information / History as Propaganda: Why the USSR Did Not ‘Win' World War II (I) and (II)

« on: March 22, 2016, 04:56:18 PM »

History as Propaganda: Why the USSR Did Not ‘Win’ World War II (I)

Michael Jabara Carley, strategic-culture.org 

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/03/19/history-as-propaganda-why-the-ussr-did-not-win-world-war-ii-i.html


The title of this article is intended to be ironic because of course the Red Army did play the predominant role in destroying Nazi Germany during World War II. You would not know it, however, reading the western Mainstream Media (MSM), or watching television, or going to the cinema in the west where the Soviet role in the war has almost entirely disappeared.

If in the West the Red Army is largely absent from World War II, the Soviet Union’s responsibility for igniting the war is omnipresent. The MSM and western politicians tend to regard the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941 as the Soviet Union’s just reward for the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it, the USSR «brought their own fate upon themselves when by their Pact with [Joachim von] Ribbentrop they let Hitler loose on Poland and so started the war…» Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the USSR, was Stalin’s fault and therefore an expatiation of sins, so that Soviet resistance should not be viewed as anything more than penitence.

Whereas France and Britain «appeased» Nazi Germany, one MSM commentator recently noted, the USSR «collaborated» with Hitler. You see how western propaganda works, and it’s none too subtle. Just watch for the key words and read between the lines. France and Britain were innocents in the woods, who unwisely «appeased» Hitler in hopes of preserving European peace. On the other hand, the totalitarian Stalin «collaborated» with the totalitarian Hitler to encourage war, not preserve the peace. Stalin not only collaborated with Hitler, the USSR and Nazi Germany were «allies» who carved up Europe. The USSR was «the wolf»; the West was «the lamb». These are not only metaphors of the English-speaking world; France 2 has promoted the same narrative in the much publicised television series, «Apocalypse» (2010) and «Apocalypse Staline» (2015). World War II erupted because of the non-aggression pact, that dirty deal, which marked the beginning of the short-lived «alliance» of the two «totalitarian» states. Hitler and Stalin each had a foot in the same boot.



MSM «journalists» like to underscore Stalin’s duplicity by pointing to the abortive Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations in the summer of 1939 to create an anti-Nazi alliance. No wonder they failed, how could the naïve French and British, the lambs, think they could strike a deal with Stalin, the wolf? Even professional historians sometimes take this line: the 1939 negotiations failed because of Soviet «intransigence» and «duplicity».

If ever Pot called Kettle black, this has to be it. And of course the trope of the Pot and the Kettle is a frequent device of western or MSM propaganda to blacken the USSR and, by implication, to blacken Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. There is just one problem with the western approach: the MSM «journalist» or western politician or historian who wants to incriminate Stalin for igniting World War II has one large obstacle in the way, the facts. Not that facts ever bother skilled propagandists, but still, perhaps, the average citizen in the West may yet have an interest in them.

Consider just a few of the facts that the West likes to forget. It was the USSR which first rang the alarm bells in 1933 about the Nazi threat to European peace. Maksim M. Litvinov, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, became the chief Soviet proponent of «collective security» in Europe.



He warned over and over again of the danger: Nazi Germany is a «mad dog», he said in 1934, «that can’t be trusted with whom no agreements can be made, and whose ambition can only be checked by a ring of determined neighbours». That sounds about right, doesn’t it? Litvinov was the first European statesman to conceive of a grand alliance against Nazi Germany, based on the World War I coalition against Wilhelmine Germany. Soviet would-be allies, France, Britain, the United States, Romania, Yugoslavia, even fascist Italy, all fell away, one after the other, during the mid-1930s. Even Poland, Litvinov hoped, could be attracted to collective security. Unlike the other reluctant powers, Poland never showed the slightest interest in Litvinov’s proposals and sought to undermine collective security right up until the beginning of the war.

Litvinov reminds me of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in his thankless dealings with the Russophobic West. During the interwar years, the Russophobia was mixed with Sovietophobia: it was a clash of two worlds between the West and the USSR, the Silent Conflict, Litvinov called it. When things were going badly, Litvinov appears occasionally to have sought consolation in Greek mythology and the story of Sisyphus, the Greek king, doomed by Zeus to push forever a large rock to the top of a mountain, only to see it fall back down each time. Like Sisyphus, Litvinov was condemned to pointless efforts and endless frustration. So too, it seems, is Lavrov. The French philosopher, Albert Camus, imagined that Sisyphus was happy in his struggles, but that’s an existentialist philosopher for you, and Camus never had to deal with that damned rock. Litvinov did, and never could stick it on the mountaintop.

My point is that it was the West, notably the United States, Britain, and France – yes, that’s right, the same old gang – which dismissed Litvinov’s repeated warnings and spurned his efforts to organise a grand alliance against Nazi Germany.



Dominated by conservative elites, often sympathetic to fascism, the French and British governments looked for ways to get on with Nazi Germany, rather than to go all out to prepare their defences against it. Of course, there were «white crows», as one Soviet diplomat called them, who recognised the Nazi threat to European security and wanted to cooperate with the USSR, but they were only a powerless minority. The MSM won’t tell you much about the widespread sympathy for fascism amongst conservative European elites. It’s like the dirty secrets of the family in the big house at the top of the hill.

Poland also played a despicable role in the 1930s, though the MSM won’t tell you about that either. The Polish government signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1934, and in subsequent years sabotaged Litvinov’s efforts to build an anti-Nazi alliance. In 1938 it sided with Nazi Germany against Czechoslovakia and participated in the carve-up of that country sanctioned by the Munich accords on 30 September 1938. It’s a day the West likes to forget. Poland was thus a Nazi collaborator and an aggressor state in 1938 before it became a victim of aggression in 1939.

By early 1939, Litvinov had been rolling his rock (let’s call it collective security) up that wretched mountain for more than five years. Stalin, who was no Albert Camus, and not happy about being repeatedly spurned by the West, gave Litvinov one last chance to obtain an alliance with France and Britain. This was in April 1939. The craven French, rotted by fascist sympathies, had forgotten how to identify and protect their national interests, while the British stalled Litvinov, sneering at him behind his back.



So Sisyphus-Litvinov’s rock fell to the bottom of the mountain one last time. Enough, thought Stalin, and he sacked Litvinov and brought in the tougher Vyacheslav M. Molotov.

Still, for a few more months, Molotov tried to stick the rock on the mountaintop, and still it fell back again. In May 1939 Molotov even offered support to Poland, quickly rejected by Warsaw. Had the Poles lost their senses; did they ever have any? When British and French delegations arrived in Moscow in August to discuss an anti-Nazi alliance, you might think they would have been serious about getting down to business. War was expected to break out at any time. But no, not even then: British instructions were to «go very slowly». The delegations did too. It took them five days to get to Russia in an old, chartered merchantman, making a top speed of 13 knots. The British head of delegation did not have written powers giving him authority to conclude an agreement with his Soviet «partners». For Stalin, that must have been the camel breaking straw. The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was signed on 23 August 1939. The failure of the negotiations with the British and French led to the non-aggression pact, rather than the other way around.

Sauve qui peut motivated Soviet policy, never a good idea in the face of danger, but far from the MSM’s narrative explaining the origins of World War II. Good old Perfidious Albion acted duplicitously to the very end. During the summer of 1939 British government officials still negotiated for a deal with German counterparts, as if no one in Moscow would notice. And that was not all, the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, boasted privately to one of his sisters about how he would fool Moscow and get around the Soviet insistence on a genuine war-fighting alliance against Nazi Germany. So who betrayed who?

Historians may debate whether Stalin made the right decision or not in concluding the non-aggression pact. But with potential «partners» like France and Britain, one can understand why sauve qui peut looked like the only decent option in August 1939. And this brings us back to Pot calling Kettle black. The West foisted off its own responsibilities in setting off World War II onto Stalin and the Soviet Union.



History as Propaganda: Why the USSR Did Not ‘Win' World War II (II)
 Michael Jabara Carley, strategic-culture.org 
Mar 20
 

 See Part I: http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/03/19/history-as-propaganda-why-the-ussr-did-not-win-world-war-ii-i.html

While MSM lays the blame on Stalin's «alliance» with Hitler for starting World War II, it takes the opposite tack in the fighting of the war by ignoring the Soviet role in destroying Nazi Germany. The Red Army is practically invisible.

On 22 June 1941, more than 3 million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union on a front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Seas. The Red Army was caught flat-footed largely because Stalin would not believe his own intelligence reports which accurately warned of the German invasion. Stalin invited one particularly valuable Soviet agent in Berlin to «go f*** his mother» («...Mozhet poslat' ... 'istochnik' ... k *** materi») when he warned that invasion was imminent. It was an open secret in Europe that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union.

Stalin seems to have been the only government leader not to believe it. US and British intelligence reckoned that the Red Army could not hold out for more than three or four weeks. That was the German estimate too.

During the first six months of fighting the Red Army lost three million soldiers; 177 divisions had to be written out of the Soviet order of battle. But instead of quitting after three or four weeks, as expected, the Red Army kept fighting through thick and thin, in spite of unimaginable catastrophes, the worst of which was the fall of Kiev in September 1941. To add to the horrors, the Germans sent in einsatzgruppen, death squads, to kill communists, Jews, Soviet officials, intellectuals, or anyone who got in their way. Women were stripped naked and forced to queue while waiting be to shot. Ukrainian and Baltic collaborators lent a hand. Hundreds of thousands, then millions of Soviet civilians died.

Yet the war was no walk in the park for the Wehrmacht.

It made large territorial gains but at the loss of an estimated 7,000 casualties a day. This was a new experience for the Germans who until then had destroyed every adversary they faced with relatively little loss to themselves. Poland was essentially beaten in four days; France, in six. The British army was run out of Europe, first at Dunkirk, where it left all its arms, and then in Greece and Crete which were fresh British fiascos. There were also others later on in North Africa. The Wehrmacht was finally beaten at the battle of Moscow in December 1941, long after British and US intelligence said the war in the east would be over. It was the first time the Wehrmacht had suffered a strategic defeat.

Blitzkrieg against the USSR had failed.

The British were happy to have a fighting ally who didn't after all surrender in three or four weeks. Churchill broke out cigars and cognac when he got the news of the German invasion and made an inspiring speech on BBC. But in that summer of 1941 the British government hesitated to call the Soviet Union «ally» and Churchill was adamant that BBC would not play the Soviet national anthem, the Internationale, on Sunday evenings with those of other British allies. Churchill only relented on this point after the battle of Moscow.

1942 was another year of sorrow and sacrifice for the Soviet Union. Everyone knew that the Red Army was carrying the main burden of the war against Germany.

In the autumn Soviet forces fought with their backs against the Volga in Stalingrad. Someone said Stalingrad was Hell. «No, no», another replied, «it was ten times worse than Hell». The Red Army won this ferocious battle, and the last German soldiers surrendered on 3 February 1943, fifteen months before the Normandy landings in France. On that date there was not a single US or British division fighting on the ground in Europe, not one. In March 1943 the tally of German and Axis casualties was enormous: 68 German, 19 Romanian, 10 Hungarian and 10 Italian divisions were mauled or destroyed. That represented 43% of Axis forces in the east. Many historians and contemporaries from clerks in the British Foreign Office to President Franklin Roosevelt in Washington thought that Stalingrad marked the turning of the tide of war against Hitler.

You won't read much about all this in MSM, though some historians in the west have gotten the story right. MSM will tell you that the Red Army could not have defeated the Wehrmacht without US Lend Lease worth billions of dollars. What MSM will not say is that most Lend Lease arrived only after Stalingrad where Hitler's fate had been sealed. They won't tell you either that already in 1942 Soviet industry was out-producing Nazi Germany in various categories of armaments, long before Lend Lease supplies began to make a difference. The United States paid the price of war in Studebaker trucks and aluminium, and ogromnoe spasibo, thank you very much, Russians replied, but the Soviet Union paid in rivers of blood and tears.

The British government tried to convince public opinion, which understood the importance of the Red Army fight against Hitler, that it was doing something to contribute to the common cause.

This was the «strategic bombing» of Germany, though it was not very strategic or accurate either. A British study indicated that one bomber out of three came within 8-9 kilometres of hitting its target. So the British and Americans started bombing cities and killing large numbers of civilians. In raids on Hamburg in 1943, for example, they killed 40,000 people. Berlin was also hit with increasing loss to the civilian population.

Well, I guess that was worth something in terms of Red Army morale.

By mid-1943, Red Army morale was just fine. In July the battle of Kursk marked the beginning of a great counter-offensive which led to the liberation of Kiev and further north Smolensk in the autumn of 1943. The Wehrmacht was kaiuk, finished, a year before the Normandy landings. The Red Army became an unstoppable juggernaut. Na zapad!, to the west, was its war cry.

What Stalin really wanted was a second front in France.

The Americans and British made promises which they could not or would not keep. Churchill was schizophrenic about the Soviet Union, sometimes he considered it an ally; at other times, he called the Russians «barbarians» and Bolsheviks who had to be kept out of Eastern and Central Europe. His idea was to invade Italy (September 1943), not France, move quickly north up the Italian boot, then pivot eastward to keep the Red Army out of the Balkans. It seemed like a great idea on paper, but in reality, it was a flop. Allied forces didn't get to Rome until June 1944. Italy proved to be a drag on Allied resources, more than it did on the Wehrmacht. Stalin kept pressing for a real second front in France, the shortest route into the German heartland, and he finally got a real commitment for it at the Teheran conference in the autumn 1943. This was Operation Overlord.

Of course, if you live in the west, the Normandy landings were the crucial event of World War II which sealed Hitler's fate. Everyone in the west has heard of Operation Overlord, but just ask a class of university students, as I do, if they have ever heard of Operation Bagration which started two weeks later. Instead of students' raised hands to signal knowledge of Bagration, I get puzzled looks. While the western Allies were cooped up in the Normandy pocket, the Red Army smashed the centre of German lines in the east and advanced in a matter of weeks some 500 kilometres to the west. German propagandists denied the gravity of the Wehrmacht's defeat, and so to mock them, the Red Army marched 57,000 German POWs, part of the Bagration harvest, through the streets of Moscow in July 1944. It was the only way Germans could see the Soviet capital.

Ken Burns, the skilled American documentary film maker, declared in The War, about the US experience of World War II, that «without American power and without the sacrifice of American lives, the outcome of the struggle in Europe would have been very different». This is true, though perhaps not in the sense that Burns intended. Without «American power», the Red Army would have had the honour of planting its red battle flags on the Normandy beaches, liberating all of Europe with the support of anti-fascist resistance movements. This was just the outcome that Churchill, for one, was determined to avoid.

After Overlord and Bagration, it was only a matter of time before Nazi Germany collapsed, and everyone knew it.

The stronger the certainty of victory over Nazism, the weaker became the Grand Alliance against it. Roosevelt died in April 1945 and within a fortnight US policy began to shift toward anti-Soviet hostility. In London Churchill asked his Russophobic generals for a war plan against the Soviet Union. It was to be American and British forces, stiffened by German divisions presumably without Nazi insignia, which would confront the Red Army. A top secret document was actually drafted, «Operation Unthinkable», the first version of which was circulated a fortnight after VE Day. «The overall or political object», Churchill's generals wrote, «is to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and British Empire». The Russians might «submit to our will» or they might not, but «if they want total war, they are in a position to have it». Oh my, what boasting. The plan was half-baked, unworkable, and utterly reprehensible. Eventually, it was shelved. «Unthinkable» marked the beginning of what would become a public campaign which has continued to this day to transfer the war's origins to Stalin's responsibility and to render imperceptible the Red Army role in destroying the Wehrmacht. Just consult any western poll of who «won» World War II. In the west most people think it was the Americans. This distortion of reality helps to assure the misgivings of some Eastern Europeans who appear to think that the war against Nazi Germany was a horrible mistake. If only Hitler had not been so unreasonable.

In some ways, nothing has changed since 1945: the United States and its loyal amanuensis Britain are still trying to impose their will on Russia. General Buck Turgidson-Breedlove, a contemporary Dr Strangelove and commander of NATO forces in Europe, said only a few weeks ago that NATO was ready «to fight and win» a war against Russia. It sounds like «Unthinkable» all over again. The European parliament and the OSCE are in the forefront of propaganda depicting Stalin as the chief associate of Hitler in setting off World War II. Remember Stalin, forget the Red Army is the West's main strategy for transforming the history of World War II into a Russophobic narrative. You can understand why the West pursues this strategy; the real history of the origins and conduct of World War II does not fit into the fairy story of the western lamb and the Soviet wolf. The victory of the Red Army and Soviet peoples over Nazi Germany is so remarkable and so inspiring that even the multifarious, well-funded efforts of three generations of western propagandists have been unable to efface it. And they never will


 

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For Your Information / National Kurdish Movement rejects any divisive or federal project in Syria

« on: March 21, 2016, 03:39:36 PM »

National Kurdish Movement rejects any divisive or federal project in Syria
 Syrian Arab News Agency 
20 March? 2016

 Damascus, SANA – The National Kurdish Movement for Peaceful Change voiced rejection of any divisive or federal project in Syria, stressing that the one-sided declaration made by those who met at al-Remailan city in Hasaka province is illegal and violates the Syrian constitution.

In a statement issued on Saturday, the Movement said that such a declaration, and particularly at this time, is unwise and irrational, as Syria is still in a state of war against terrorists, and such a declaration strengthens enemies and weakens those who are fighting these enemies.

The Movement called on all Kurdish forces and other forces to never trust promises regardless of the side that makes them, be it the United States or other sides in the West, as such sides only serve their personal interests and the interests of Israel.