So, fellow Americans, is our country the greatest on the earth? Watch these two videos before you reply.

---

Bill Black: A "Jihadist" Against the Banks?

While assisting the prosecution of JPMorgan and Countrywide in Florida by the Department of Justice, TRNN regular Bill Black was dismissed from the case by the assistant US Attorney, who described him as a "Jihadist" -   December 15, 2015

https://youtu.be/qikJavfo5Do
Original here

Days of Revolt: The Militarism of U.S. Diplomacy

In this episode of teleSUR's Days of Revolt, Chris Hedges and author Vijay Prashad trace the acceleration of U.S. militarism since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and discuss the consequences of U.S. domination over global affairs. - December 15, 2015

https://youtu.be/rFNjoy0kSV0
Original Here

If enough NATO nations decide to reject Washington's push for a war with Russia, there may be no war!

---

Polish General Waldemar Skrzypczak: “I retract everything I said about Ukraine”

Posted on Fort Russ
April 16. 2015
General Skrzypczak: “I retract everything I said about Ukraine”
By J.Hawk

Poland’s retired Land Forces commander and Deputy Defense Minister Waldemar Skrzypczak used to be in favor of arming and training the Ukrainian military. That was before the Rada passed the law glorifying the UPA–the same UPA that killed Skrzypczak’s uncle by pinning him to the door of a barn with a pitchfork. Now that Ukraine has shown its true colors, Skrzypczak has concluded that until Ukraine rids itself of its nationalism, it will be impossible for Poland to collaborate with that country in any meaningful fashion. I should note that Skrzypczak is an influential figure in Poland, a veteran military officer whose service included the command of an occupation zone in Iraq, and who has few peers when it comes to authoritativeness on national security matters.

http://www.fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/04/general-skrzypczak-i-retract-everything.html

Having worked in the highest levels of the US government for a long time, Paul Craig Roberts has experienced more than most. And with that background he views the current situation as "the most dangerous time of all for humanity." "Nuclear weapons are no longer restrained by the Cold War [Mutually Assured Destruction] doctrine. Washington has released them into pre-emptive first strike form." "The result is to maximize the chance of nuclear war."

---

A Middle East Holocaust — Paul Craig Roberts

---

March 30, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

A Middle East Holocaust — Paul Craig Roberts

Dear Friends: We have had a satisfactory response to our request for your support. As long as you support this site, I will as well. Without your support the website would not exist.

Foundations and corporations do not support truth-tellers. American foundations underwrite war and US imperialism. Foundations support subversion of countries that are not Washington’s puppet states. Your website has no foundation support, no corporate support; it only has your support.

I have been around for a long time and have experienced more than most. The current situation in my experience is the most dangerous time of all for humanity.

Nuclear weapons are no longer restrained by the Cold War MAD doctrine. Washington has released them into pre-emptive first strike form.

The targets of these pre-emptive strikes–Russia and China–know it, because Washington proudly proclaims its immorality in public documents describing its war doctrine.

The result is to maximize the chance of nuclear war. If you were Russia and China, and you knew that Washington had a war doctrine that permits a surprise nuclear attack, would you sit there waiting while Washington cranks up its anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda machine, demonizing both countries as a threat to “freedom and democracy”?

The fools in Washington are playing with nuclear fire. Noam Chomsky points out that in a less dangerous time than currently exists, we came very close to nuclear war. https://philosophynow.org/issues/107/Noam_Chomsky_on_Institutional_Stupidity

Harold Pinter, one of the last Western intellects, understood the danger in Western arrogance. He denounced the West’s crimes and called for the crimes to be subject to established law before it is too late for humanity.

“We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice.” Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech.

“An Iraqi Holocaust” by Gideon Polya http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230315.htm and “Genocide In Iraq” http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150315.htm provide abundant evidence for convicting Bush and Blair.

Dr. Gideon Polya is a professor of science in one of Australia’s leading universities. He has a moral conscience, something increasingly rare in the Western world.

His articles are based largely on the just published by Clarity Press two volume heavily documented Genocide in Iraq by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani. Abdul-Haq Al-Ani is a British-educated lawyer with a Ph.D. in International Law and a Ph.D. in electronics engineering. Tarik Al-Ani, is an architect, translator, and researcher.

Currently I am reading the two-volume work and intended to review it. But Professor Polya’s articles suffice as an introduction to Genocide in Iraq. Washington has committed a terrible crime in our name. Washington not only murdered Iraq, Washington has murdered the Middle East. Washington and its despicable vassals–”the Coalition of the Willing”–are responsible for a Middle East Holocaust.

For people in the Anglo-American world who have a moral conscience, the facts are soul-wrenching. The populations of the countries whose governments comprised “the Coalition of the Willing” are contaminated with war crimes committed by their governments in the Iraq Genocide. A progressive modern state was obliterated, and 2.7 million Iraqi people were murdered.

The crime was covered up with propaganda that demonized Saddam Hussein and created fear of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

The Iraqi genocide was based on a lie, and both Bush and Blair knew it. The two satanic leaders simply decided to destroy a people who they first demonized and marginalized.

Cheney and the neocons continue to justify the genocide and the illegal torture regime that they created in order to produce fake “terrorists” as a justification for their war crimes. The Western media, especially the New York Times, is also complicit in the Iraqi Genocide as are the insouciant Western peoples themselves who stood by cheering while millions of people were destroyed on the basis of a blatant and transparent lie.

What does the West represent? Greed? Lies? War? Torture? War Crimes? Selfishness, Intolerance? Destruction of life on earth?

The “Christian” West is a master at propaganda and self-deception. Look at the evangelical churches. They support a criminal, inhumane regime while professing to be followers of Christ.

Look at American “conservatives.” They support the militarized police state. They support the routine police murders of dark-skinned American citizens. They support every war Washington dreams up and even more. Indeed, there are not enough wars for the satisfaction of Congressional Republicans who now want war with Russia and with Iran.

Look at the Republicans in Congress and in state governments. They hate the environment. They love polluters. They worship Israel and Israel’s destruction of the Palestinians and the ongoing theft of the Palestinians’ country, a 60-year old activity. Just look at the map of shrinking Palestine. More is stolen each day.

Washington has supported this theft of an entire country. Yet, Washington is able to masquerade as a great defender of human rights. Whose rights? Washington’s and Israel’s. No one else’s rights count.

How does the world survive the American-Israeli aggression? Probably it will not. The evil is now directed at Iran, Russia, and China. These countries cannot be bombed year after year after year with no consequences to the bombers.

Iran is limited in its destructive ability. But Iran could destroy Saudi Arabia and Israel. Russia and China can destroy the US and all of Washington’s vassal states. The intensity of Washington’s propaganda war is driving the world to destruction.

How can it be stopped when Putin himself says over and over that Washington continually ignores every thing that the Russian government says. Putin is the peacemaker. Every peace proposal he brings is ignored by Washington whose response is to beat the drums of war louder.

Unless European governments recognize the danger in Washington’s aggression and dissolve NATO, planet earth hasn’t long to live.

The American public needs to understand the consequences of Washington’s illegality and criminality. On the one hand it means that those subject to Washington’s aggression have to endure war crimes, but on the other hand it means a growing hatred for America. As Washington’s easy targets are used up, Washington engages countries that can reply to force with force.

Unless the neoconservatives are ejected from the Obama regime and banned from inclusion in any future American government, mushroom clouds will go up over Washington, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago. The American mid-west, which hosts the ICBM silos, will become uninhabitable except by cockroaches.

Americans, and the populations of the American puppet states, desperately need to understand that Washington is incapable of speaking the truth about anything. Washington is an evil force. Washington is Sauron. Washington is Satan.

Look at Iraq. Look at Afghanistan. Look at Libya. Look at Syria. Look at Somalia. Look at Ukraine. Nothing but destruction comes from Washington. Will life on earth be Washington’s next victim?

---

How many Americans know anything about Russia? I've been there twice in 1991 (counting Latvia) for scientific conferences held only a few months before the fall of the Soviet Union. There I met for the first time many scientists whose names I knew well from reading their published works in my field. A number of them have since become life-long friends and occasional collaborators in research. In both Riga and Saint Petersburg I was invited into people's homes. It was truly hard times for them but they put out their best for me. I am happy to have had the opportunity to reciprocate when three of my former-Soviet colleagues came for a 1997 topical conference in Williamsburg, Virginia (see the four of us and my wife at our former home in the photo below). I am still working with Anatoly (far right) as authors or coauthors of each other’s works. Now, with the lying neocon US government forcing unjustified sanctions on Russia, I am pleased to read below of the flowering of a new Russian Renaissance ...one that includes Russian science students having four years of biology, chemistry, physics, and both integral and differential calculus BEFORE entering the university! In contrast most American children are now being taught to learn nothing more than how to pass a standard test …qualifying them for serfdom. Thus I celebrate the new Russia and cry for my once-great country.

---

Russia’s Remarkable Renaissance

By F. William Engdahl                                                                         Region: Russia and FSU Global Research, March 10, 2015                                            Theme: Culture, Society & History

New Eastern Outlook

Something remarkable is taking place in Russia, and it’s quite different from what we might expect. Rather than feel humiliated and depressed Russia is undergoing what I would call a kind of renaissance, a rebirth as a nation. This despite or in fact because the West, led by the so-called neo-conservatives in Washington, is trying everything including war on her doorstep in Ukraine, to collapse the Russian economy, humiliate Putin and paint Russians generally as bad. In the process, Russia is discovering positive attributes about her culture, her people, her land that had long been forgotten or suppressed.

My first of many visits to Russia was more than twenty years ago, in May, 1994. I was invited by a Moscow economics think-tank to deliver critical remarks about the IMF. My impressions then were of a once-great people who were being humiliated to the last ounce of their life energy. Mafia gangsters sped along the wide boulevards of Moscow in sparkling new Mercedes 600 limousines with dark windows and without license plates. Lawlessness was the order of the day, from the US-backed Yeltsin Kremlin to the streets. “Harvard boys” like Jeffrey Sachs or Sweden’s Anders Aaslund or George Soros were swarming over the city figuring new ways to rape and pillage Russia under the logo “shock therapy” and “market-oriented reform” another word for “give us your crown jewels.”

The human toll of that trauma of the total collapse of life in Russia after November 1989 was staggering. I could see it in the eyes of everyday Russians on the streets of Moscow, taxi-drivers, mothers shopping, normal Russians.

Today, some two decades later, Russia is again confronted by a western enemy, NATO, that seeks to not just humiliate her, but to actually destroy her as a functioning state because Russia is uniquely able to throw a giant monkey wrench into plans of those western elites behind the wars in Ukraine, in Syria, Libya, Iraq and well beyond to Afghanistan, Africa and South America.

Rather than depression, in my recent visits to Russia in the past year as well as in numerous discussions with a variety of Russian acquaintances, I sense a new feeling of pride, of determination, a kind of rebirth of something long buried.

Sanctions Boomerang

Take the sanctions war that the Obama administration has forced Germany, France and other unwilling EU states to join. The US Treasury financial warfare unit has targeted the Ruble. The morally corrupt and Washington-influenced Wall Street credit rating agencies have downgraded Russian state debt to “junk” status. The Saudis, in cahoots with Washington, have caused a free-fall in oil prices. The chaos in Ukraine and EU sabotage of the Russian South Stream gas pipeline to the EU, all this should have brought a terrified Russia to her knees. It hasn’t.

As we have earlier detailed, Putin and an increasing number of influential Russian industrialists, some of the same who a few years ago would have fled to their posh London townhouses, have decided to stand and fight for the future of Russia as a sovereign state. Oops! That wasn’t supposed to happen in a world of globalization, of dissolution of the nation-state. National pride was supposed to be a relic like gold. Not in Russia today.

On the first anniversary of the blatant US coup in Kiev that installed a hand-picked regime of self-professed Neonazis, criminals, and an alleged Scientologist Prime Minister Andriy Yansenyuk, hand-picked by the US State Department, there was a demonstration in downtown Moscow on February 22. An estimated 35,000 to 50,000 people showed up—students, teachers, pensioners, even pro-Kremlin bikers. They protested not against Putin for causing the economic sanctions by his intransigence against Washington and EU demands. They protested the blatant US and EU intervention into Ukraine. They called the protest “Anti-Maidan.” It was organized by one of many spontaneous citizen reactions to the atrocities they see on their borders. Internet satirical political blogs are making fun of the ridiculous Jan Paski, until last week the fumbling US State Department Press Spokesperson.

Not even an evident False Flag attempt in the London Financial Times and Western controlled media to blame Putin for “creating the climate of paranoia that caused” Boris Nemtsov’s murder is being taken seriously. Western “tricks” don’t work in today’s Russia.

And look at US and EU sanctions. Rather than weakening Putin’s popularity, sanctions have caused previously apolitical ordinary Russians to rally around the president, who still enjoys popularity ratings over 80%. A recent survey by the independent Levada Center found 81 percent of Russians feel negatively about the United States, the highest figure since the early 1990s “shock therapy” Yeltsin era. And 71 percent feel negatively about the European Union.

The renaissance I detect is evident in more than protests or polls, however. The US-instigated war in Ukraine since March 2014 has caused a humanitarian catastrophe, one which the US-steered German and other western media have blocked out of their coverage. More than one million Ukrainian citizens, losing their homes or in fear of being destroyed in the insane US-instigated carnage that is sweeping across Ukraine, have sought asylum in Russia. They have been welcomed as brothers according to all reports. That is a human response that has untold resonances among ordinary Russians. Because of the wonders of YouTube and smart phone videos, Russians are fully aware of the truth of the US war in eastern Ukraine. Russians are becoming politically sensitive for the first time in years as they realize that some circles in the West simply want to destroy them because they resist becoming a vassal of a Washington gone berserk.

Rather than bow to the US Treasury’s Ruble currency war and the threat that Russian banks will be frozen out of the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) international interbank clearing system, something likened to an act of war, on February 16, the Russian government announced that it had completed its own banking clearing network in which some 91 domestic credit institutions have been incorporated. The system allows Russian banks to communicate seamlessly through the Central Bank of Russia.

That is inside Russia among banks that otherwise were vulnerable even domestically to a SWIFT cut. Russia joined the Brussels-based private SWIFT system as the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989. Today her banks are the second largest users of SWIFT. The new system is inside Russia. Necessary, but not sufficient, to protect against SWIFT cutoff. The next step in discussion is joint Russia-China interbank clearing independent of SWIFT and Washington. That is also coming.

The following day after Russia’s “SWIFT” alternative was announced as operational, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping said China will build up its strategic partnership with Russia in finance, space and aircraft building and “raise trade cooperation to a new level.” He added that China plans to cooperate more with Russia in the financial area and in January Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said that payments in national currencies, de-dollarization, were being negotiated with China. China realizes that if Russia collapses, China is next. Failing empires try desperate measures to survive.

Russians also realize that their leaders are moving in unprecedented ways to build an alternative to what they see as a morally decadent and bankrupt American world. For most Russians the disastrous decade of poverty, chaos and deprivation of the Yeltsin era in the 1990’s was reminder enough what awaits should Russia’s leaders again prostitute themselves to American banks and corporations for takeover, Hillary Clinton’s infamous “reset” of US-Russian relations she attempted when Medvedev was President. Russians see what the US has done in neighboring Ukraine where even the Finance Minister, Natalia Jaresko, is an American, a former State Department person.

Russia and its leaders are hardly trembling behind Kremlin walls. They are forging the skeleton of a new international economic order that has the potential to transform the world from the present bankruptcy of the Dollar System. Moscow and Beijing recently announced, as I discussed in a previous posting, their project to create a joint alternative to the US credit rating monopoly of Moody’s, S&P and Fitch. President Putin’s travel agenda in the past year has been mind-boggling. Far from being the international paraiah Washington and Victoria Nuland hoped for, Russia is emerging as the land which has the courage to “just say No!” to Washington.

Russia’s president has been in Cyprus where possible basing for the Russian navy was discussed, in Egypt where General al-Sisi warmly welcomed the Russian leader and discussed significant economic and other joint cooperation. Late last year Russia and the BRICS states agreed to form a $100 billion infrastructure bank that makes the US-controlled World Bank irrelevant. The list grows virtually every day.

The special human side

For me, however, the most heartening feature of this Russian renaissance is in the generation which is today in their late thirties to early forties—young, highly intelligent and having experience of both the depravity of Soviet communist bureaucracy but as well of the hollow world of US-led so-called “free market capitalism.” I share some examples from the many Russians I have come to know in recent years.

What is unique in my mind about this generation is that they are the hybrid generation. The education they received in the schools and universities was still largely dominated by the classical Russian science. That classical Russian science, as I have verified from many discussion with Russian scientist friends over the years, was of a quality almost unknown in the pragmatic West. An American Physics professor from MIT who taught in Moscow universities in the early 1990s told me,

“When a Russian science student enters first year university, he or she already has behind them 4 years of biology, 4 of chemistry, of physics, both integral and differential calculus, geometry…they are starting university study at a level comparable to an American post-doctoral student.”

They grew up in a Russia where it was common for young girls to learn classical ballet or dance, for all children to learn to play piano or learn a musical instrument, to do sports, to paint, as in classical Greek education of the time of Socrates or Germany in the 1800s. Those basics which were also there in American schools until the 1950s, were all but abandoned during the 1980s. American industry wanted docile “dumbed-down” workers who asked no questions.

Russian biology, Russian math, Russian physics, Russian astrophysics, Russian geophysics—all disciplines approached their subject with a quality that had long before disappeared from American science. I know, as I grew up during the late 1950’s during the “Sputnik Shock,” where we were told as high school pupils we had to work doubly hard to “catch up to the Russians.” There was a kernel of truth, but the difference was not lack of American students working hard. In those days we worked and studied pretty hard. It was the quality of Russian scientific education that was so superior.

Teaching of the sciences especially, in Russia or the Soviet Union, had been strongly influenced by the German education system of the 1800s, the so-called Humboldt Reforms of Alexander von Humboldt and others.

The strong ties in Russian education with classical 19th Century German culture and science went deep, going back to the time under Czar Alexander II who freed the serfs in 1861, following the example of his friend, Abraham Lincoln. The ties were deepened to German classical culture later under Czar Alexander II prior to the 1905 Russo-Japanese War when the brilliant Sergei Witte was Transport Minister, then Finance Minister and finally Prime Minister before western intrigues forced his resignation. Witte translated the works of the German national economist Friederich List, the brilliant opponent of England’s Adam Smith, into Russian. Before foreign and domestic intrigues manipulated the Czar into the disastrous Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907 against Germany a pact which made England’s war in 1914 possible, the Russian state recognized the German classical system as superior to British empiricism and reductionism.

Many times I have asked Russians of the 1980s generation why they came back to Russia to work after living in the USA. Always the reply more or less, “The US education was so boring, no challenge…the American students were so shallow, no idea of anything outside the United States…for all its problems, I decided to come home and help build a new Russia…”

Some personal examples illustrate what I have found: Irina went with her parents to Oregon in the early 1990s. Her father was a high-ranking military figure in the USSR. After the collapse he retired and wanted to get away from Russia, memories of wars, to live his last years peacefully in Oregon. His daughter grew up there, went to college there and ultimately realized she could be so much more herself back in Russia where today as a famous journalist covering US-instigated wars in Syria and elsewhere including Ukraine, she is making a courageous contribution to world peace.

Konstantin went to the USA to work as a young broadcast journalist, did a master’s degree in New York in film and decided to return to Russia where he is making valuable TV documentaries on dangers of GMO and other important themes. Anton stayed in Russia, went into scientific and business publishing and used his facility with IT to found his own publishing house. Dmitry who taught physics at a respected German university, returned to his home St Petersburg to become a professor and his wife also a physicist, translates and manages a Russian language internet site as well as translating into Russian several of my own books.

What all these Russian acquaintances, now in their late 30s or forties share is that they were born when the remnants of the old Soviet Russia were still very visible, for better and for worse, but grew to maturity after 1991. This generation has a sense of development, progress, of change in their lives that is now proving invaluable to shape Russia’s future. They are also, through their families and even early childhood, rooted in the old Russia, like Vladimir Putin, and realize the reality of both old and new.

Now because of the brazen open savagery of Washington policies against Russia, this generation is looking at what was valuable. They realize that the stultifying bureaucratic deadness of the Soviet Stalin heritage was deadly in the USSR years. And they realize they have a unique chance to shape a new, dynamic Russia of the 21st Century not based on the bankrupt model of the now-dying American Century of Henry Luce and FD Roosevelt.

This for me is the heart of an emerging renaissance of the spirit among Russians that gives me more than hope for the future. And, a final note, it has been policy among the so-called Gods of Money, the bankers of London and New York, since at least the assassination in 1881 of Czar Alexander II, to prevent a peaceful growing alliance between Germany and Russia. A prime aim of Victoria Nuland’s Ukraine war has been to rupture that growing Russo-German economic cooperation. A vital question for the future of Germany and of Europe will be whether Germany’s politicians continue to kneel to the throne of Obama or his successor or define their true interests in closer cooperation with the emerging Eurasian economic renaissance that is being shaped by President Putin’s Russia and by President Xi’s China.

Ironically, Washington’s and now de facto NATO’s “undeclared war” against Russia has sparked this remarkable renaissance of the Russian spirit. For the first time in many years Russians are starting to feel good about themselves and to feel they are good in a world of some very bad people. It may be the factor that saves our world from a one world dictatorship of the bankers and their military.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

So this is where Paul Craig Roberts disappeared to last week. Invited to address an important conference of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow! His first day's endeavor was to explain to Russian government officials and the Russian people why Washington has recently destroyed the friendly relations between America and Russia that Ronald Reagan and President Gorbachev succeeded in establishing. His second day was devoted to explaining how America has become a police state catalyzed by 9/11 and the concomitant loss of the Constitution and the civil liberties it protected. So all Americans should also read these lectures.

---

The Neoconservative Threat To World Order — Paul Craig Roberts

---

February 26, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

The Neoconservative Threat To International Relations
Paul Craig Roberts

For the illustrated version go here: http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-trust-now-shattered-russia-u-s-world-annihilation-threatened/

This week I was invited to address an important conference of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Scholars from Russia and from around the world, Russian government officials, and the Russian people seek an answer as to why Washington destroyed during the past year the friendly relations between America and Russia that President Reagan and President Gorbachev succeeded in establishing. All of Russia is distressed that Washington alone has destroyed the trust between the two major nuclear powers that had been created during the Reagan-Gorbachev era, trust that had removed the threat of nuclear armageddon. Russians at every level are astonished at the virulent propaganda and lies constantly issuing from Washington and the Western media. Washington’s gratuitous demonization of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has rallied the Russian people behind him. Putin has the highest approval rating ever achieved by any leader in my lifetime.

Washington’s reckless and irresponsible destruction of the trust achieved by Reagan and Gorbachev has resurrected the possibility of nuclear war from the grave in which Reagan and Gorbachev buried it. Again, as during the Cold War the specter of nuclear armageddon stalks the earth.

Why did Washington revive the threat of world annihilation? Why is this threat to all of humanity supported by the majority of the US Congress, by the entirety of the presstitute media, and by academics and think-tank inhabitants in the US, such as Motyl and Weiss, about whom I wrote recently?

It was my task to answer this question for the conference. You can read my February 25 and February 26 addresses below. But first you should understand what nuclear war means. You can gain that understanding here: http://thebulletin.org/what-would-happen-if-800-kiloton-nuclear-warhead-detonated-above-midtown-manhattan8023

The Threat Posed to International Relations By The Neoconservative Ideology of American Hegemony, Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta Conference, Hosted by Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Moscow, February 25, 2015, Hon. Paul Craig Roberts

Colleagues,

What I propose to you is that the current difficulties in the international order are unrelated to Yalta and its consequences, but have their origin in the rise of the neoconservative ideology in the post-Soviet era and its influence on Washington’s foreign policy.

The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the only constraint on Washington’s power to act unilaterally abroad. At that time China’s rise was estimated to require a half century. Suddenly the United States found itself to be the Uni-power, the “world’s only superpower.” Neoconservatives proclaimed “the end of history.”

By the “end of history” neoconservatives mean that the competition between socio-economic-political systems is at an end. History has chosen “American Democratic-Capitalism.” It is Washington’s responsibility to exercise the hegemony over the world given to Washington by History and to bring the world in line with History’s choice of American democratic-capitalism.

In other words, Marx has been proven wrong. The future does not belong to the proletariat but to Washington.

The neoconservative ideology raises the United States to the unique status of being “the exceptional country,” and the American people acquire exalted status as “the indispensable people.”

If a country is “the exceptional country,” it means that all other countries are unexceptional. If a people are “indispensable,” it means other peoples are dispensable. We have seen this attitude at work in Washington’s 14 years of wars of aggression in the Middle East. These wars have left countries destroyed and millions of people dead, maimed, and displaced. Yet Washington continues to speak of its commitment to protect smaller countries from the aggression of larger countries. The explanation for this hypocrisy is that Washington does not regard Washington’s aggression as aggression, but as History’s purpose.

We have also seen this attitude at work in Washington’s disdain for Russia’s national interests and in Washington’s propagandistic response to Russian diplomacy.

The neoconservative ideology requires that Washington maintain its Uni-power status, because this status is necessary for Washington’s hegemony and History’s purpose.

The neoconservative doctrine of US world supremacy is most clearly and concisely stated by Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative who has held many high positions: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Director of Policy Planning US Department of State, Assistant Secretary of State, Ambassador to Indonesia, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank.

In 1992 Paul Wolfowitz stated the neoconservative doctrine of American world supremacy:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

For clarification, a “hostile power” is a country with an independent policy (Russia, China, Iran, and formerly Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad).

This bold statement struck the traditional American foreign policy establishment as a declaration of American Imperialism. The document was rewritten in order to soften and disguise the blatant assertion of supremacy without changing the intent. These documents are available online, and you can examine them at your convenience.

Softening the language allowed the neoconservatives to rise to foreign policy dominance. The neoconservatives are responsible for the Clinton regime’s attacks on Yugoslavia and Serbia. Neoconservatives, especially Paul Wolfowitz, are responsible for the George W. Bush regime’s invasion of Iraq. The neoconservatives are responsible for the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi in Libya, the assault on Syria, the propaganda against Iran, the drone attacks on Pakistan and Yemen, the color revolutions in former Soviet Republics, the attempted “Green Revolution” in Iran, the coup in Ukraine, and the demonization of Vladimir Putin.

A number of thoughtful Americans suspect that the neoconservatives are responsible for 9/11, as that event gave the neoconservatives the “New Pearl Harbor” that their position papers said was necessary in order to launch their wars for hegemony in the Middle East. 9/11 led directly and instantly to the invasion of Afghanistan, where Washington has been fighting since 2001. Neoconservatives controlled all the important government positions necessary for a “false flag” attack.

Neoconservative Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who is married to another neoconservative, Robert Kagan, implemented and oversaw Washington’s coup in Ukraine and chose the new government.

The neoconservatives are highly organized and networked, well-financed, supported by the print and TV media, and backed by the US military/security complex and the Israel Lobby. There is no countervailing power to their influence on US foreign power.

The neoconservative doctrine goes beyond the Brzezinski doctrine, which dissented from Detente and provocatively supported dissidents inside the Soviet empire. Despite its provocative character, the Brzezinski doctrine remained a doctrine of Great Power politics and containment. It is not a doctrine of US world hegemony.

While the neoconservatives were preoccupied for a decade with their wars in the Middle East, creating a US Africa Command, organizing color revolutions, exiting disarmament treaties, surrounding Russia with military bases, and “pivoting to Asia” to surround China with new air and naval bases, Vladimir Putin led Russia back to economic and military competence and successfully asserted an independent Russian foreign policy.

When Russian diplomacy blocked Washington’s planned invasion of Syria and Washington’s planned bombing of Iran, the neoconservatives realized that they had failed the “first objective” of the Wolfowitz Doctrine and had allowed “the re-emergence of a new rival . . . on the territory of the former Soviet Union” with the power to block unilateral action by Washington.

The attack on Russia began. Washington had spent $5 billion over a decade creating non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine and cultivating Ukrainian politicians. The NGOs were called into the streets. The extreme nationalists or nazi elements were used to introduce violence, and the elected democratic government was overthrown. The intercepted conversation between Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador in Kiev, in which the two Washington operatives choose the members of the new Ukrainian government, is well known.

If the information that has recently come to me from Armenia and Kyrgyzstan is correct, Washington has financed NGOs and is cultivating politicians in Armenia and the former Soviet Central Asian Republics. If the information is correct, Russia can expect more “color revolutions” or coups in other former territories of the Soviet Union. Perhaps China faces a similar threat in Uyghurstan.

The conflict in Ukraine is often called a “civil war.” This is incorrect. A civil war is when two sides fight for the control of the government. The break-away republics in eastern and southern Ukraine are fighting a war of secession.

Washington would have been happy to use its coup in Ukraine to evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base as this would have been a strategic military achievement. However, Washington is pleased that the “Ukraine crisis” that Washington orchestrated has resulted in the demonization of Vladimir Putin, thus permitting economic sanctions that have disrupted Russia’s economic and political relations with Europe. The sanctions have kept Europe in Washington’s orbit.

Washington has no interest in resolving the Ukrainian situation. The situation can be resolved diplomatically only if Europe can achieve sufficient sovereignty over its foreign policy to act in Europe’s interest instead of Washington’s interest.

The neoconservative doctrine of US world hegemony is a threat to the sovereignty of every country. The doctrine requires subservience to Washington’s leadership and to Washington’s purposes. Independent governments are targeted for destabilization. The Obama regime overthrew the reformist government in Honduras and currently is at work destabilizing Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina, and most likely also Armenia and the former Central Asian Soviet Republics.

Yalta and its consequences have to do with Great Power rivalries. But in the neoconservative doctrine, there is only one Great Power–the Uni-power. There are no others, and no others are to be permitted

Therefore, unless a modern foreign policy arises in Washington and displaces the neoconservatives, the future is one of conflict.

It would be a strategic error to dismiss the neoconservative ideology as unrealistic. The doctrine is unrealistic, but it is also the guiding force of US foreign policy and is capable of producing a world war.

In their conflict with Washington’s hegemony, Russia and China are disadvantaged. The success of American propaganda during the Cold War, the large differences between living standards in the US and those in communist lands, overt communist political oppression, at times brutal, and the Soviet collapse created in the minds of many people nonexistent virtues for the United States. As English is the world language and the Western media is cooperative, Washington is able to control explanations regardless of the facts. The ability of Washington to be the aggressor and to blame the victim encourages Washington’s march to more aggression.

This concludes my remarks. Tomorrow I will address whether there are domestic political restraints or economic restraints on the neoconservative ideology.

Paul Craig Roberts, Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta Conference, Moscow, February 26, 2015

Colleagues,

At the plenary session yesterday I addressed the threat that the neoconservative ideology poses to international relations. In this closing session I address whether there are any internal restraints on this policy from the US population and whether there are economic restraints.

Just as 9/11 served to launch Washington’s wars for hegemony in the Middle East, 9/11 served to create the American police state. The Constitution and the civil liberties it protects quickly fell to the accumulation of power in the executive branch that a state of war permitted.

New laws, some clearly pre-prepared such as the PATRIOT Act, executive orders, presidential directives, and Department of Justice memos created an executive authority unaccountable to the US Constitution and to domestic and international law.

Suddenly Americans could be detained indefinitely without cause presented to a court. Habeas corpus, a constitutional protection which prohibits any such detention, has been set aside.

Suddenly people could be tortured into confessions in violation of the right against self-incrimination and in violation of domestic and international laws against torture.

Suddenly Americans and Washington’s closest allies could be spied on indiscriminately without the need of warrants demonstrating cause.

The Obama regime added to the Bush regime’s transgressions the assertion of the right of the executive branch to assassinate US citizens without due process of law.

The police state was organized under a massive new Department of Homeland Security. Almost immediately whistleblower protections, freedom of the press and speech, and protest rights were attacked and reduced.

It was not long before the director of Homeland Security declared that the department’s focus has shifted from Muslim terrorists to “domestic extremists,” an undefined category. Anyone can be swept into this category. Homes of war protesters were raided and grand juries were convened to investigate the protesters. Americans of Arab descent who donated to charities–even charities on the State Department’s approved list–that aided Palestinian children were arrested and sentenced to prison for “providing material support to terrorism.”

All of this and more, including police brutality, has had a chilling effect on protests against the wars and the loss of civil liberty. The rising protests from the American population and from soldiers themselves that eventually forced Washington to end the Vietnam War have been prevented in the 21st century by the erosion of rights, intimidation, loss of mobility (no-fly list), job dismissal, and other heavy-handed actions inconsistent with a government accountable to law and to the people.

In an important sense, the US has emerged from the “war on terror” as an executive branch dictatorship unconstrained by the media and barely, if at all, constrained by Congress and the federal courts. The lawlessness of the executive branch has spread into governments of Washington’s vassal states and into the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, all of which violate their charters and operate outside their legal powers.

Jobs offshoring destroyed the American industrial and manufacturing unions. Their demise and the current attack on the public employee unions has left the Democratic Party financially dependent on the same organized private interest groups as the Republicans. Both parties now report to the same interest groups. Wall Street, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and the extractive industries (oil, mining, timber) control the government regardless of the party in power. These powerful interests all have a stake in American hegemony.

The message is that the constellation of forces preclude internal political change.

Hegemony’s Archilles heel is the US economy. The fairy tale of American economic recovery supports America’s image as the safe haven, an image that keeps the dollar’s value up, the stock market up, and interest rates down. However, there is no economic information that supports this fairy tale.

Real median household income has not grown for years and is below the levels of the early 1970s. There has been no growth in real retail sales for six years. The labor force is shrinking. The labor force participation rate has declined since 2007 as has the civilian employment to population ratio. The 5.7 percent reported unemployment rate is achieved by not counting discouraged workers as part of the work force. (A discouraged worker is a person who is unable to find a job and has given up looking.)

A second official unemployment rate, which counts short-term (less than one year) discouraged workers and is seldom reported, stands at 11.2 percent. The US government stopped including long-term discouraged workers (discouraged for more than one year) in 1994. If the long-term discouraged are counted, the current unemployment rate in the US stands at 23.2 percent.

The offshoring of American manufacturing and professional service jobs such as software engineering and Information Technology has decimated the middle class. The middle class has not found jobs with incomes comparable to those moved abroad. The labor cost savings from offshoring the jobs to Asia has boosted corporate profits, the performance bonuses of executives and capital gains of shareholders. Thus all income and wealth gains are concentrated in a few hands at the top of the income distribution. The number of billionaires grows as destitution reaches from the lower economic class into the middle class. American university graduates unable to find jobs return to their childhood rooms in their parents’ homes and work as waitresses and bartenders in part-time jobs that will not support an independent existence.

With a large percentage of the young economically unable to form households, residential construction, home furnishings, and home appliances suffer economic weakness. Cars can still be sold only because the purchaser can obtain 100 percent financing in a six-year loan. The lenders sell the loans, which are securitized and sold to gullible investors, just as were the mortgage-backed financial instruments that precipitated the 2007 US financial crash.

None of the problems that created the 2008 recession, and that were created by the 2008 recession, have been addressed. Instead, policymakers have used an expansion of debt and money to paper over the problems. Money and debt have grown much more than US GDP, which raises questions about the value of the US dollar and the credit worthiness of the US government. On July 8, 2014, my colleagues and I pointed out that when correctly measured, US national debt stands at 185 percent of GDP. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/08/deteriorating-economic-outlook/

This raises the question: Why was the credit rating of Russia, a country with an extremely low ratio of debt to GDP, downgraded and not that of the US? The answer is that the downgrading of Russian credit worthiness was a political act directed against Russia in behalf of US hegemony.

How long can fairy tales and political acts keep the US house of cards standing? A rigged stock market. A rigged interest rate. A rigged dollar exchange value, a rigged and suppressed gold price. The current Western financial system rests on world support for the US dollar and on nothing more.

The problem with neoliberal economics, which pervades all countries, even Russia and China, is that neoliberal economics is a tool of American economic imperialism, as is Globalism. As long as countries targeted by Washington for destabilization support and cling to the American doctrines that enable the destabilization, the targets are defenseless.

If Russia, China, and the BRICS Bank were willing to finance Greece, Italy, and Spain, perhaps those countries could be separated from the EU and NATO. The unraveling of Washington’s empire would begin.

---

This event may yet save us from nuclear war. Nevertheless..."The US president, Barack Obama, has faced rising calls at home to send military aid to Ukraine." Why and by whom the rising calls? Answers: Because the U.S. government in now controlled by neocons determined to start a nuclear war with Russia, and their claim that Russia has attacked Ukraine has been a blatent lie promolgated by the despicable "mainstream media." The slogan of the New York Times used to be "All the News That's Fit to Print." Now it might be "All the Faux News the Neocons want the American Public to Believe." Three cheers for Merkel, Hollande, and Putin!

---

Ukraine ceasefire deal agreed at Minsk talks

Ceasefire will come into force on Sunday, but Hollande and Merkel say much work still to be done after marathon overnight negotiations.                                                                                Original Here


Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, says fighting will end at midnight on 15 February and that both the Ukrainian government and separatist rebels will withdraw heavy weapons from the front line

The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany have reached a ceasefire deal after 17 hours of talks in Minsk, Belarus, on the Ukrainian conflict.

The ceasefire will come into force on Sunday as part of a deal that also involves the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line.

Russian president Vladimir Putin was the first to announce the deal, saying: “We have agreed on a ceasefire from midnight 15 February.”

Putin added: “There is also the political settlement. The first thing is constitutional reform that should take into consideration the legitimate rights of people who live in Donbass. There are also border issues. Finally there are a whole range of economic and humanitarian issues.”

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who helped to broker the deal alongside the French president, François Hollande, said “we now have a glimmer of hope”, but added that the leaders were under no illusions and that “there is very, very much work still to do”.

Merkel also confirmed that Putin put pressure on the separatists to agree a truce.

Hollande said the deal covered all the contentious issues, including border control, decentralisation, and the resumption of economic relations, but also warned that much more needed to be done to resolve the crisis.

Hollande and Merkel will ask the European Union to support the agreement later on Thursday.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini sounded a note of caution, saying the Minsk agreement was important but not definitive. She added that she did not expect EU leaders to discuss sanctions against Russia at their summit on Thursday after the deal.

The main points of the agreement are:

Ceasefire to begin at midnight on 15 February Heavy weapons withdrawn in a two week period starting from 17 February Amnesty for prisoners involved in fighting Withdrawal of all foreign militias from Ukrainian territory and the disarmament of all illegal groups Lifting of restrictions in rebel areas of Ukraine Decentralisation for rebel regions by the end of 2015 Ukrainian control of the border with Russia by the end of 2015

The participants also agreed to attend regular meetings to ensure the fulfilment of the agreements, a Russian-distributed document said. 

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, said: “The main thing which has been achieved is that from Saturday into Sunday there should be declared without any conditions at all a general ceasefire.”

Speaking after the talks, Donetsk rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko called the treaty a “major victory for the Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics”. Luhansk leader Igor Plotnitsky said they would “give Ukraine a chance, so that the country changes its constitution and its attitude”.

But despite the celebratory words, the fledgling peace process remained very fragile. Zakharchenko warned that all “responsibility will be on Petro Poroshenko”, and that the peace process would fall through if Kiev violated the new agreements, Russian news agency Interfax reported.

“All the points require additional approval, and for this reason there will be no meetings and new agreements if any violations take place,” Zakharchenko said.

http://youtu.be/_vGK63sbiks

Residents of Donetsk, where civilians have continued to be killed by shelling this week, greeted the news of the peace agreement with cautious optimism. A small group of people rallied outside the rebel government’s headquarters in the Donetsk regional administration building, and a woman on stage declared that “today is a holiday.”

More hardcore supporters of the rebels were disappointed with the new agreement. The popular Russian nationalist publication Sputnik i Pogrom called the Minsk treaty a “betrayal of all that the rebels fought for, including some of our readers” and derided the “clownish half-autonomous status” offered to the breakaway republics.

Earlier, Ukraine had played down speculation about a possible ceasefire agreement, accusing Russia of imposing “unacceptable” conditions.

At one point during the negotiations Putin signalled his apparent frustration at the lack of progress by snapping a pen or a pencil.

More than 5,300 people have died since April in the conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in two eastern provinces, and the bloodshed rose sharply in recent weeks.

Although the Minsk agreement represents a breakthrough in a long-frustrated peace process, several key points will be difficult and time-consuming to achieve.

It remained unclear what actions were to be taken in Debaltseve, the current major point of contention between the warring sides in eastern Ukraine. Pro-Russian fighters have been trying to take the town and its railroad junction from Ukrainian forces in weeks of heavy fighting, with violence escalating in the buildup to the peace talks.

The rebels have said they have Debaltseve surrounded, while the Ukrainian military has repeatedly denied this. But a volunteer battalion commander said on Thursday morning that Kiev’s forces were storming Lohvynove, a town located along the only highway leading out of Debaltseve to Ukrainian positions, suggesting that the troops really were surrounded.

Speaking to Russian channel RT, Putin said he had ordered “military experts” to look into how to solve the situation in Debaltseve peacefully. The Minsk agreement stipulates that the rebel republics withdraw their forces from the demarcation line laid down in the September ceasefire, and that Kiev withdraws its forces from the current de facto frontline.

“If it really is surrounded, then according to the normal logic of things, those who are surrounded will make attempts to break out, and those who are outside will make attempts to organise a corridor for the surrounded troops to leave,” Putin said.

“Look what the Russians are now bargaining for,” tweeted Ukrainian foreign ministry representative Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday, with a link to rebel claims that they had Debaltseve surrounded. “Without Debaltseve, the [Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics] are in a transportation bind.”

Another particularly difficult point to implement will be re-establishing Kiev’s control of the border, through which Russian volunteers, arms and allegedly troops have been coming to the rebels’ aid. Many of the border crossings with Russia are under rebel control, and the boundary between the two countries is notoriously porous anyway. Poroshenko said Kiev will only restore full control of the border by the end of 2015.

The US president, Barack Obama, has faced rising calls at home to send military aid to Ukraine, but European leaders fear it would only aggravate the violence. Russia, meanwhile, faces a severe economic downturn driven in part by sanctions the west has imposed for supporting the separatists with troops and equipment, which Moscow vehemently denies it is doing.

The urgency felt by all sides appeared to be underlined by the extraordinary length and discomfort of the talks between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany. They sat down with each other Wednesday evening in the Belarusian capital and the talks continued as sunrise neared on Thursday.

In a diplomatic blitz that began last week, Merkel and Hollande visited Kiev and Moscow to speak to Poroshenko and Putin, paving the way for the marathon session in Minsk.

This interview with Paul Craig Roberts provides an excellent history of the neocons in the U.S., beginning with their prosecution by Ronald Reagan, their turning loose by George H. W. Bush, their acceptance by all presidents since then, and finally, when they have become totally insane, they have been given carte blanche by the U.S. government as they prepare to kill us all by provoking a nuclear war with Russia.

---

http://youtu.be/Il-Bbw6XJVc
Russia and the Neocon March to World War 3 with Paul Craig Roberts

The LIP TV




Published on Jan 30, 2015
The Neocon march to World War III with Russia is explored with retired Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts. How George W. Bush and Dick Cheney managed to embolden the far right towards reckless endangerment of global peace, and how Russia has become the focus of the static is discussed. The possibility of global economic collapse, plus the Reagan administration figure talks about how the political landscape has changed for the worse in this uncensored political discussion on Buzzsaw, hosted by Sean Stone.

GUEST INFO:
Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy. President Reagan appointed Dr. Roberts Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and he was confirmed in office by the U.S. Senate. From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. After leaving the Treasury, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

ADD’L LINKS: 
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/ 
http://thelip.tv/ 
http://thelip.tv/show/buzzsaw/Buzzsaw 
Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlaaQ... 
Buzzsaw Short Clips Playlist: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdp0I... 
https://www.facebook.com/EnterTheBuzz... 
https://www.facebook.com/thelip.tv 
http://www.youtube.com/theliptv

EPISODE BREAKDOWN: 
00:01 Welcome to Buzzsaw 
00:20 Introducing Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of Treasury. 
01:15 Is the antagonization of Russia something Reagan would have supported? 
02:45 Neoconservatives who were fired by Reagan and pardoned by George Bush Sr.
07:15 Neoconservative mindset to destabilize anyone who opposes the United States.
07:45 Do neoconservatives want to eliminate the possibility of a bi-partisan world? 
23:55 Are we on the brink of another economic collapse? 
29:25 Thank you and goodbye.

Category                         News & Politics
License                          Standard YouTube License