As per one of the comments, I would love to see the CIA fronting iGREENS go off script and do a VW hitjob by forcing Toyota to make a full pickup recall. Oh phukkmeee!! There would be a Ranch wet team on iGREEN think tank premises within the hour.
Take it away.
"
Uncle Volodya says, “That’s the thing you learn about values: they’re what people make up to justify what they did.”
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant
facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a
nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood
in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
– John F. Kennedy, 20th Anniversary of
The Voice Of America, February 26th, 1962
A nation that is afraid of its people. Once there would have been no
doubt about who that was not, as witnessed by the statement above. And
once upon a time, “western values” was an honest-to-goodness aspiration,
not a punch line. But that was a long time before the boyish President
spoke that probably-heartfelt confidence to young postwar America – a
country that was growing so fast, both in its economy and its foreign
influence, that you could almost feel the ground tremble beneath your
feet.
How far do you want to go back? As the newborn Soviet Union began to
think urgently about restarting production in a country ravaged by World
War I and then three years of brutal and destructive civil war, it
urgently needed western equipment and machinery to rebuild its
shattered factories and to modernize, to move forward. The Soviet Union
was on the gold standard, producing a gold coin called the
Chervonets. It would pay in gold for modern machinery.
Except the west wouldn’t take it.
Why not? Because a competing currency backed by gold reserves
threatened the reach of an emerging financial empire dominated by the
American dollar and the British pound sterling. The
Chervonets
disappeared, to be replaced by a rouble which was not backed by gold.
The Soviet Union was then recognized by the west, and shortly
thereafter, in 1925, it announced again its wish to accelerate
industrialization, and to purchase western equipment and machinery. The
west refused again to accept gold, and agreed the only mediums of
exchange could be oil, timber and grain. In 1933 the west introduced the
Russian Goods Import Prohibition Act. The only means of payment
entertained – Soviet grain.
Stalin’s government was faced with a choice: either to give up
restoring industry, so capitulating to the West, or continue
industrialising, leading to a dreadful internal crisis. If the
Bolsheviks took grain away from the peasants, there was the very great
probability of a famine which, in turn, might lead to internal unrest
and removal from power. So no matter what Stalin chose, the West would
remain victorious. Stalin and his entourage decided to force their way
through and stop at nothing.
You know what happened. The Holodomor, which Ukraine frequently
refers to as a deliberate genocide of Ukrainians, although Ukraine was
heavily agrarian – the breadbasket of the Soviet Union – and it stands
to reason it was hardest hit.
1939-1945: another war. The Soviet Union was allied with the west
against Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. As it ground to a bloody
close, America was presented with an almost unbelievable set of
circumstances, not long after
The Voice of America celebrated
in the quote above was just getting started. The war was over. Europe
was devastated; much of its youth sleeping forever in the earth where
they fell, its cities smashed and ruined, its factories and production
facilities charred rectangular craters in the lunatic moonscape
signature of relentless bombing. A weary and soul-shocked people turned
their faces to rebuilding. But how?
America!!! Although the young United States had paid its dues in
casualties and war dead, the country itself was untouched. Moreover, its
factories and plants and manufacturing facilities were revved up and
running at full-bore, accustomed to providing for a world at war. If
America played its cards right, it could become the dominant world power
for as far as the eye could see, and its allies would be beholden to it
for their very existence.
And Germany. What should be done about Germany, the host of the Nazi
cancer that had clearly intended to spread and spread if it had not been
ripped out and stamped upon by the allies? That was a matter of no
small concern to Stalin, because the USSR had borne the brunt of the
crushing juggernaut of German metal and artillery and hate. Had mad
Hitler not elected to open a second front, he might well have prevailed
in Europe and been able to negotiate from a position of strength. But
the USSR had paid a terrible price;
more than 25 million dead,
more than any country in the war, and some of its cities little more
than smoldering piles of tumbled bricks. Obviously, the Soviets had not
invited this. So who was going to pay for it?
The obvious answer was Germany, and the Potsdam Agreement
gave the Soviet Union claim to 25% of German assets.
The western allies were to get 75% to divide between them, and Germany
was obviously going to get nothing. But somewhere along the line, the
plan changed. As the reference points out, “
the important point was
that the absolute amount of that theoretical asset was within the
discretion of the Allied Control Council to determine. Given the de
facto acceptance of Soviet and Western spheres of influences, the
Western Occupation Powers had the ultimate decision-making power in
dividing up Germany industrial assets.” And the United States
decided that the Soviet Union was trying to increase its own power at
the expense of Germany; and, dash it, that just wasn’t fair.
Unaccountably, Stalin declined an American offer to participate in The
Marshall Plan, and contribute resources to rebuild Europe before the
Soviet Union – incredibly unreasonable man. American leaders put it down
to Stalin being reluctant to disclose just how much wealth the Soviet
Union had.
Ambitions for Germany was the issue at which their paths divided. The
Soviet Union wanted the rich industrial assets of the Ruhr, and
considered itself entitled to them. The United States had other plans.
Already, despite its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, the USA was
pondering how it could become the preeminent world power, and those
plans did not include a potential rival. The USA had already determined
that Germany – the former enemy whose Nazi ideology was denounced at
Nuremberg – should be rebuilt as a counterweight to America’s erstwhile
ally, the Soviet Union.
Even at this early juncture, the odd western reluctance
to fully condemn Naziism – as if an ideology that could so powerfully
motivate a nation could not be completely bad, and might even have its
uses – was noticeable if you were looking for it. America had a
prominent place at the Nuremberg Trials. Thomas Dodd – father of the
present-day Chris Dodd, thirty-year United States Senator from
Connecticut, who retired from politics only in 2011 – was a prosecutor
at Nuremberg.
His notes recount
that Winston Churchill was opposed to the condemned Nazis even getting a
trial, and favoured summary execution, and that the Soviets concurred.
But at the opposite end of the spectrum was the senior American judge,
Francis Biddle, the former U.S. Attorney-General whose resignation had
been demanded by Truman earlier that year. Biddle, while still
Attorney-General, had been publicly opposed to prosecution of the Nazis
for crimes committed before the war. The two most famous quotes
attributed to Biddle are, “
I’m for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps“, and, prophetically indeed, “
The Constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime president“.
That curious reluctance to condemn Naziism would bear bitter fruit
just this year, when the United States, accompanied only by Canada and
Ukraine,
opposed a Russian-sponsored UN resolution to ban glorification of Naziism.
Indeed, some suggest the United States entered the war against the
Nazis only to preserve and exploit an historic opportunity to dominate
the world. United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
supported eugenics before the Nazi ideology did, finding in a 1927
decision, “
It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to
execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their
imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from
continuing their kind… Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The Nazis actually quoted Holmes at Nuremberg, in their defense.
1990. The west, and especially Washington, wants a
unified Germany under a single flag, and for a reunited Germany to join
NATO. Such a reunited country, strategically situated and a major
industrial power, will become the driving force of a new Europe. The
Soviets were understandably nervous about NATO expansion. Did the west
ever promise there would be no further NATO expansion eastward?
Previously classified British and German documentation
examined by Der Spiegel suggests
“the
West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that
NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland,
Hungary or Czechoslovakia.” Moreover, German Foreign Minister (in
1990) Hans-Dietrich Genscher reassured the Soviet Union that the
west “intended to cooperate with the Soviet Union in bringing about
change, not act as its adversary.”
In the decade or so that followed, NATO
added another 12 nations to its membership. “So what?” is the western attitude – we didn’t sign anything. In a
re-election campaign speech in 1996, Bill Clinton announced,
“NATO
defended the West by deterring aggression. Even more, through NATO,
Western Europe became a source of stability instead of hostility. France
and Germany moved from conflict to cooperation. Democracy took
permanent root in countries where fascism once ruled. I came to office
convinced that NATO can do for Europe’s East what it did for Europe’s
West: prevent a return to local rivalries, strengthen democracy against
future threats, and create the conditions for prosperity to flourish.
That’s why the United States has taken the lead in a three part effort
to build a new NATO for a new era. First, by adapting NATO with new
capabilities for new missions. Second, by opening its doors to Europe’s
emerging democracies. Third, by building a strong and cooperative
relationship between NATO and Russia.”
How’d that effort pan out? Adapting NATO with new
capabilities for new missions? Check. Opening its doors to “Europe’s
emerging democracies”? Check. Building a strong and cooperative
relationship between NATO and Russia? Are you kidding? Who believed
that?
Russia, heir to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact – at least inasmuch as it inherited all the Soviet Union’s debt – is the raison d’etre
for NATO. No bogeyman to scare the kiddies with, and people will begin
to ask, “Ummm….why do we spend so much on defense if we are surrounded
by friends?”
Russia was finally admitted to the World Trade
Organization (WTO), in 2012, after trying for 19 years, and had to
endure the humiliation of being lectured by the likes of U.S. Senator
Bill Frist on Russia’s “disregard for human rights and the rule of law”
just two months after the photographs of hapless and innocent prisoners
tortured in Abu Ghraib by American servicemen and CIA contractors hit
the papers. But Chad, Niger, Sierra Leone, Mali and Burkina Faso – the
world’s five poorest countries – were members of the WTO since the mid
90’s. Not to mention Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most repressive
countries, where women are not allowed to do anything public without the
attendance of a male relative. But Russia needed to crawl and beg for
another seven years after Saudi Arabia was a member in good standing.
In 2013, the Kremlin
proposed a meeting between representatives of the Eurasian Union and the European Union,
on the possibility of Ukraine being a member – an interface, of sorts –
of both. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso refused to
even meet with the EAU representatives because he considered it a rival
trading bloc. So instead Ukraine got Maidan and riots and a government
of fascist ideologues and a cratering currency and the complete
depletion of its financial reserves and a civil war, and lost Crimea.
And now Russia is in Syria, fighting alongside the
Syrian government to roll back a determined and stubborn push by the
west to unseat its democratically-elected leader using the vehicle of
Islamic fundamentalist militias, which the United States has admitted to
training, funding and arming. Over the past year the USA has also
invited itself into Syria, ostensibly to conduct air strikes against the
very same Islamic State which steadily advanced and continued to take
more and more ground throughout the bombing campaign against it in which
75% of American planes returned from their missions without having
dropped any bombs, because they
could not get permission from their commands to engage.
At the same time, the U.S. government provided vehicles to “moderate
Syrian rebels” which were fitted with radio gear which would
allow militia members to call in U.S. air strikes!
A recent shamefaced admission by Washington revealed that there were
only 4 or 5 militants remaining of those the USA had armed and trained
at a cost of approximately $500 million; the rest had either been
captured by al Nusra or had defected to it with their new weapons. Still
Washington persists with the fiction that there is any such entity as
the “Free Syrian Army”, although it collapsed in the spring and its
remnants were absorbed into al Nusra, which is al Qaeda in Syria and a
terrorist organization that
tortures and executes prisoners. The west was ready to go with its activists’ casualty reports
before the first Russian strike element was even wheels-up, and thus far the propaganda attempts
have been clumsy.
Although Washington and its allies weep and tear their
clothing with anguish over the deaths of Syrian civilians, a year ago
Washington
lifted the restrictions on U.S. air strikes in which civilians might be injured. Said U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger, “
I
did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn’t get
details…But nothing is perfect,” and whatever civilian deaths resulted
from the U.S. strikes are “much less than the brutality of the Assad
regime.”
Echoing that meme is the unbelievable statement from Human Rights Watch’s despicable Director, Kenneth Roth.
He tweeted,
“Kunduz attack is awful, but recall that Assad attacks hospitals
deliberately all the time”. The occasion on which he was commenting was
an airstrike
by American coalition aircraft on the hospital
of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in Kunduz,
Afghanistan. The USA quickly shifted the blame to Afghan authorities,
who were alleged to have said 10-15 Taliban fighters were hiding in the
building or compound in which it was located.
First, there is no evidence that Assad’s government
forces have ever attacked a hospital deliberately, not even once, never
mind “all the time”. The tweet was quickly deleted, but screen caps
remain so that he cannot deny he said it. And this is symptomatic of the
knee-jerk excusing by western policymakers of every western atrocity
perpetrated in war over the last couple of decades – unfortunate, but
let’s keep our perspective, people: remember, the animals we are
fighting do this ten times before breakfast. Second, what the hell kind
of control is that? When Afghanistan speaks, you better jump; yuk, yuk,
yessir, boss. If Afghanistan calls in an airstrike by U.S. aircraft,
don’t you check to see what they asked you to bomb? Especially since the
coordinates of the hospital had been transmitted several times to
military authorities? If Afghan authorities called in an airstrike on
the U.S. Embassy and said it was justified because a dozen terrorists
were hiding in the building, would you roll in and bomb it flat?
Predictably, the best NATO Secretary-General Jens
Stoltenberg – who was nearly dancing with rage just yesterday over
supposed Russian violations of Turkish national airspace and flinging
himself about uttering all kinds of threats – could come up with on the
hospital disaster was that he was “
deeply saddened“. No condemnation of the perpetrators, no fervent promises of a detailed investigation…
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question question is, what are you doing for others?” ; Martin Luther King. “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it”; Eleanor Roosevelt. “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government”;
Thomas Jefferson. Somewhere along the rocky road of human progress, the
west lost its way. Values still exist on an individual basis; very much
so, and western citizens are among the world’s most caring and
compassionate. But on a national level, both integrity and values are
just words used – like “freedom” and “democracy” – to justify forcing
our way of life on others for the gain of our own exclusive club. How
disappointed our forbears quoted above would be, to see what we have
become. If anyone saw the future of western society clearly, it was
George Orwell.
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”"
Majestic
JAKARTA/BONN/PULLACH
