Pelshval

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Category: Foreign policy

Was Victoria a liability?

17.03.2024 /

Ms Nuland “retired” at the age of 62. I suppose she could afford it.

Few people noticed her until her famous 2014 “fuck the EU” in a dialogue with the US Ambassador in Ukraine was leaked. The dialogue exposed US involvement in Ukraine in 2014.

She was

  • acting Deputy Secretary of State
  • former CEO of the the “think tank” Center for a New American Security (CNAS) which, according to Wikipedia as at 14 March 2024, was funded by “[n]early 30 defence contractors, including Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon; NATO; several foreign governments, including Taiwan and United Arab Emirates; the oil companies BP and Chevron; investment banks including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase; technology firms, such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft; the U.S. Department of State, and two different Pentagon offices.” (cf. Glenn Diesen’s book The Think Tank Racket.)
  • board member of National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
    which is frankly funded mainly by the US government. While CIA operations used to be entirely covert, they are now to some extent conducted through innocently sounding organisations such as the” National Endowment for Democracy”.
  • married to Robert Kagan.

    The two of them were identified, already in 2015, as a dangerous duo devoted to the Military Industrial Complex.

I suggest you take a look at Robert Wright’s article in Responsible Statecraft: A case study in American propaganda (June 12, 2022). I am going to quote a single innocuous sentence from that article, which I think is very well worth reading:

But there are two things about the Institute for the Study of War that you may not know.

Search, please do, for the numerous occurrences of the word “Kagan” in that article. I have no insight into how much they have invested in the “military industrial complex” or how much money is paid out to them every time the USA engages in a new military project. I leave that to your imagination.
Anyway, Victoria is gone.

Alas, neocon delusions of US global supremacy are not, so do not count our chickens …

She has been replaced by Kurt M. Campbell who,

  • for a time, was a vice president of the “think-tank” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) which, according to Wikipedia as at 19.03.2024, has received major funding from defence contractors such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon Company and General Atomics, etc., etc….
  • co-founded and was CEO of the “think tank” Center for a New American Security (CNAS) which, as we know, was funded by “[n]early 30 defence contractors, including Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon; NATO; several foreign governments, including Taiwan and United Arab Emirates; the oil companies BP and Chevron; investment banks including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase; technology firms, such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft; the U.S. Department of State, and two different Pentagon offices.”

The Wikipedia article about him suggests he might be more interested in China than in Russia. We shall soon see, I fear, when they step up the military pressure around Taiwan.

We are speaking, by the way, of the assistant, or “deputy” if you will, Foreign Minister, not the “Defence” Minister.

Transparency

20.11.2023 /

A former president whom I dislike – I forget which of them it was, because I dislike them all – used to refer to presidents that he disliked as “mad dogs”. Now the difference between a human and a canine mad dog is that you can put the latter on a leash or out of its misery, but you definitely cannot do so with presidents, though I wish you could. Actually, I do not generally approve of the death penalty, but when it comes to certain top dogs … I say no more.

Because as mad dogs go, those who drag their country into a needless war are just about as despicable as the lowliest creatures on earth although, of course, those who commit a genocide – one of which we are currently witnessing – really take the cake.

Leaving aside the genocide (about which I have no words, just tears), we have now all been apprised that the Ukraine war could have been avoided. Or rather… have we? Have you read about the Schulenburg report in your daily paper? Have you heard of the Schulenburg report on the news? I bet you haven’t because the Schulenburg report is terribly embarrassing for the US and for that country’s abject satellites in NATO. And no, I did not hear about it or read about it in my own country’s news outlets, of course, but in the alternative media.

One example of “alternative media” is Conter which claims it “provides anti-establishment news and analysis in Scotland”. Among the questions raised by Conter is precisely: why has the general population so little a say about the wars engaged in or supported by their nation, to their – the general population’s – detriment. The British government firmly supports Israel’s ongoing genocide, while the huge demonstration that the home secretary wanted to see banned included placards that cried “NOT IN OUR NAME!” She called it an example of “hate marches … [in] the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion”.

I put to you, that the tide that is rising, particularly in the UK – apart from suppression of information and free speech – is poverty. I’m sure you know about that, too.

One of the most tragic aspects of British politics is the unbelievable hijacking of the Labour Party, cf. Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files. Protesters on the streets and the growing ranks of increasingly poor Britons have nobody to speak for them, only a bunch of mad dogs at the top.

So when Boris Johnson effectively put a final stop to the peace deal reached between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022, the British population had no idea. They still don’t. They had no idea that the USA and NATO with Boris Johnson as a temporary figurehead were going to cost so many lives and the destruction of an entire country. Will Boris Johnson ever be held accountable by Ukraine, by the Britons? Will Biden and all the other presidents I don’t like be held accountable for the innumerable wars they have authorised? (not Trump, I admit.)

Will anybody ever be held accountable for the de-industrialisation of Germany as a result of the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline? (You may think the rising tide of poverty was due to Brexit. Alas, see the fate of the rest of EU in the Arte documentary Working but Poor.)

At the top of the EU pyramid is the slender figure of blond Ursula, always humbly dressed and coiffed, a Saint Ursula as it were, a symbol of western rule of law and transparency.

“Transparency” is a byword for what “we” stand for, and as such, it is a stroke of marketing genius. Transparency is something we associate with gleaming crystal, gems and – yes – “us” and what “we” stand for: truth, and honest endeavour. What a wonderful piece of work “we” are, almost reminiscent of Fabergé, we, the beautiful, pure egalitarian Democracies.

However, most of us now know that nothing is less transparent than the machinations of the EU bureaucracy except, of course other bureaucracies, most of which are designed to keep the top-dogs-that-be at the top. Unfortunately, as things stand, that is all we know.

We don’t know how to change this state of affairs.

John Mearsheimer

05.07.2023 /

John Mearsheimer is a prominent political scientist and scholar within the so-called realist school of thought. For years he warned USA not to even think about inviting Ukraine into NATO. His prophesies were fulfilled, as we have seen, and for that he has been “punished”, as it were, banished from mainstream media. Like so many other critics of US foreign policy, he has become a Substack fugitive.

Interestingly, he was the author of a rather curious book published in 2011: Why Leaders Lie. According to Wikipedia, the book maintains:

….that leaders do not lie much to other countries, and that democratic leaders are actually more likely to lie to their own people than autocrats…. Mearsheimer argues that leaders are most likely to lie to their own people in democracies that fight wars of choice in distant places. The author says that it is difficult for leaders to lie to other countries because there is not much trust among them, especially when security issues are at stake, and you need trust for lying to be effective. He concludes that it is easier for leaders to lie to their own people because there is usually a good deal of trust between them.

Mearsheimer suggests that most political lies fall into one of five categories: inter-state lies, fear-mongering, strategic cover-ups, nationalist myths, and liberal lies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Leaders_Lie, as on 5 July 2023

In his article in Substack of 23 June this year (Substack invites you to subscribe, but allows you to “continue reading” if you don’t want to), Mearsheimer paints a very gloomy picture of the outcome of the Ukraine war. Unlike Jeffrey Sacks, another prominent statesman now banned from mainstream media, he more or less discounts the possibility of a peace accord. Ever. I must say I deeply hope he is wrong, but his arguments are compelling, and he certainly was right about his pre-war warnings.

The article is interesting also due to the very numerous references he cites.

Obedience

12.06.2023 /

To be honest, I know next to nothing about conditions for the press in Russia. I expect there is little if any room for dissent. Would-be critical journalists are up against not only powerful people, but also Government, as the Navalnyj example has demonstrated so dramatically. But then again, Russians don’t expect a free press. Critics were brutally persecuted under the czars (e.g. Dostoevskij was sentenced to death) less so under Lenin, it is true, but certainly under Stalin. Then there was a brief “thaw”, before business as usual resumed with Leonid Brezhnev, as dreadfully dreary a chap as you ever saw. Russians don’t expect a free press. They never had it and they doubt they ever will. People in Russia find out, somehow, what they need to know.

That’s the difference between here and there: knowing what you need to know.

In Five Eyes countries and Europe, people honestly believe they enjoy a free press. All over the world, we watch and ridicule the circus of US politics with its plethora of partisan media outlets, dissent, vitriolic criticism of the currently ruling Democratic Party and even the President, on all sorts of issues. Yet, US citizens can’t seem to find out what they need to know. Else, why is 50–90 per cent of the population there just getting poorer? Why is the top decile just getting very much richer, year by year, regardless of whether the president is from one or the other party?

Have I quoted this guy before?:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Chomsky, of course. Not that I agree with everything he has written – far from it! In the field of linguistics, for instance…. be that as it may

Take the issue of abortion as an example, a tremendously hot topic in the USA. In effect, if abortions are prohibited, premarital sex will basically be off bounds. Think about it, that is really hot stuff! True, there are contraceptives, but they are not fool-proof or without side-effects. For the Democratic Party, the assault on abortion rights (supported almost exclusively by voters of the Republican Party) must be conceived as a blessing, because many traditionally Republican voters will secretly cast their ballots for the “other side”, the Dems, not least since the two parties no longer differ all that much on key issues.

Both parties are, after all, neo-liberal to the core and basically also militaristic. How much of US tax payers’ money has disappeared, under Biden, into the abyss of an extremely corrupt Ukraine, with support from most of the Republican Party? I am not going to look it up for you. I’m tired of producing facts that are blithely disregarded.

Why do I go on and on, you ask, about the USA? I keep harping, you say, about US iniquities although I live in Europe. True. Guilty as charged. WHY? Because European NATO member states are US vassals, that’s why.

So yes, let’s look at those of us who live in Europe? Do we know what we need to know? “As long as it takes,” Biden said, but what he seems to have meant was: “no matter what it takes”. Do we, in Europe, understand Biden’s and Stoltenberg’s gamble? Have we, in all our European Democracies, been asked what we think about being the playthings of US attempts to crush a rival? We were told only that:

1) “Every country must be allowed to decide what kids to invite to its birthday party” and

2) “He punched first.”

Repeated every day, many times a day, over I-have-lost-count-of-the-number of days, these two puerile arguments have turned Europe into a gigantic kindergarten.

Do we who live in Europe know that we would be well advised to enjoy every last drop of what may prove to be our last months or maybe even weeks? Do we realise we should be making peace with family members we haven’t spoken to for years? Do we understand that we should imagine ourselves terminally ill? In plain words: What would you do, if you knew you might die within the next six months?

In the late 1970-s, I ridiculed USSR animosity to US chewing gum and Levies. Now I understand that the USSR had every reason to fear what we now understand as US “soft power”. Europe flew right into the net of soft power and is now – forgive my French – a Eunuch.

I put to you, though I may be wrong, that holding dissenting views here, in Norway, is now more personally damning than it is in Russia. A friend of mine who has actually survived being a dissenter in a dictatorship, said: This is worse than in a dictatorship, because, there, you had at least fellow-dissenters. Here, in Norway, none are visible. Here, in Norway, if you disagree with the US/NATO destruction of Europe, you shut up.

In this country, Norway, nobody who is not suicidal will dare publish, in any paper – academic, journalistic or otherwise – any criticism of the US/NATO proxy war against Russia.

You will know, by now, that I maintain that the Ukraine issue is not as simple as the New York Times or Klassekampen would have us believe.

So I end my diatribe with a link to a source I happen to trust more than I trust the CIA or even the New York Times:

The article is called: “Where do you get your Ukraine news?”

The cost of war

29.01.2023 /

One of the first victim’s of war is, as we know, “truth”: Freedom of the press and freedom of information get throttled. This applies to Russia, and it applies in equal measure, if more subtly, to the West.

One of the latest sequels in the “Twitter Files” is about Hamilton 68, which:

was and is a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation.” It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC “disinformation expert”) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

The tool, launched in 2017, “identified” some 644 Twitter accounts.

There are two components to the dashboard featured here. The first section, “Overt Promotion of Content”, highlights trending content from Twitter accounts for media outlets known to be controlled by the Russian government. The second section, “Content Tweeted by Bots and Trolls”, highlights themes being pushed by Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence campaigns.

Matt Taibi addendum

The existence of the tool was revealed by Twitter to a few independent reporters, one of whom was Matt Taibi. Twitter had uncovered that the accounts were held by real, mostly US Americans who held views that the intelligence community disliked, including those of the chief editor of Consortium News, a site I hold in high regard.

The fact that Hamilton 68 has been exposed, does not mean that suppression of information has ceased. You will find few expressions of dissent against NATO’s engagement in Ukraine. Yet, that very engagement is costing not only freezing Europeans and US tax payers – but the entire world – vastly more than most of us realise.

The world, yes, it’s still there, but reading the news in Europe or the USA, you wouldn’t think so.

The arrogance of US/NATO/EU politicians is bamboozling. What planet do they think they inhabit? If I haven’t miscalculated, the population of
USA + Europe (including Russia’s 146 million) + Oceania = 14.3 % of all humans.

Sarang Shidore from the Quincy Institute For Responsible Statecraft writes:

The ongoing Ukraine war has exposed the waning influence of the United States in the vast arc of the world stretching from Latin America to Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands known as the Global South.

Most [states of the Global South] are unconvinced or alienated by Washington’s rhetoric of “democracy v. autocracy” and the “rules–based order.” They feel particularly threatened by U.S. policies of secondary sanctions designed to limit or end their ties with U.S. rivals. But the current U.S. strategy is inadvertently pushing the Global South toward Beijing and Moscow. This is an unforced error Washington can ill afford.

But unchecked by popular dissent – since dissent about US and NATO intervention in Ukraine is suppressed – the US/EU merely proceed in suicidal fashion to pour gasoline on the Ukraine conflagration. One “red line” after another has been crossed and before long we may see the gift of F-16s to Ukraine.

There have been many Hollywood films about war heroes… alas, and there are many primitive human beings. There are still men who batter women, and there are still men, and women too, who find war sexy.

Meanwhile there is the matter of social cohesion, the unravelling of it, that is. Have you noticed? There are strikes in France, and massive protests – no wonder! In the UK there are strikes, and in Spain protesters in Madrid recently numbered somewhere between 31.000 and 300.00 (depending on who was counting).

US/EU media hardly refer to this growing social unrest otherwise than playfully: “Man ‘loses testicle’ after being clubbed by police at France pension protests“, “When are nurses next on strike? Full list of strike dates in 2023 as ambulance workers walk out today” and “Spain’s far-right Falange group faces hefty fine for public homage to fascists“).

So who is protesting, and for what? There is no doubt that resentment against “austerity” policies (now called “fiscal restraint”), and anger about the subsequent reduction of living standard, for which none of us feel we are to blame, will benefit political parties of various colours, not least those of the far right.

Traditional leftist parties feel betrayed and confused because much of the anger is often directed at them.

Glenn Greenwald recently wrote about the prominent leftwing German politician Sahra Wagenknecht, who has become so very popular on the Right. Greenwald explains that the disenchantment with leftwing parties is

a problem she blames in part on the left’s abandonment of class politics in favor of elite cultural agendas that are either irrelevant or hostile to the lives and value systems of ordinary Germans, especially those who are religious.

You will find his extremely interesting interview with Sara Wagenknecht here. (It starts after 12:22 minutes)

In this context, I would also urge you to take a look at Thomas Piketty’s analysis of the protests in France (in English).

You may be able to suppress information, but you cannot suppress – at least not for long – what people feel, if they feel cold and wet and hungry. The unravelling of social cohesion tends eventually to lead to mayhem – or to put it bluntly – bloodbaths.

Finally, on the topic of what this war is costing us all – let me refer to the greatest issue of all, that of accelerating ecological breakdown.

I ask you: Is not the so-called GREEN German Minister of Foreign Affairs one of the most aggressively Neocon politicians in Europe? Under her reign, a village has been destroyed to allow coal mining, universally considered detrimental to environmental requirements. She obviously has personal reasons for hating Russia – we all have personal issues – but she is not representing GREEN interests.

Be that as it may, I fear that Europe under NATO leadership will self-destruct, taking Africa with it down the drain.

Thomas Piketty, on the other hand, maintains that he is an optimist. In his books he has demonstrated that Europe has managed to clean up its acts in the past, and he suggests that it can do so again. See his article: Redistributing wealth to save the planet

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