[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 13 February 2016 15:29.
Jews may not flock to Russia upon Putin’s offer, as New Observer quotes Mikhail Skoblionok saying, but they’re already comfortably affixed there. The reason they may not flock there from other places is because the parasitic ways they established there have already desiccated the economy of that host -
European Jews will not take up Vladimir Putin’s recent offer to take “refuge” in Russia, even though the Russian Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are Jews, Mikhail Skoblionok, a leading member of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress has said.
Writing in the Tatar news website Realnoe Vremya, Skoblionok, (here in Russian, and here in English) who also is president of the Jewish National and Cultural Autonomy of Tatarstan, said that “a Jew of sound judgment won’t go to Russia.”
Putin made the offer last month in a meeting with members of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) that took place in the Kremlin. Moshe Vyacheslav Kantor, EJC president, complained to Putin about the rising anti-Semitism across Europe and the growing number of attacks against Jews.
Putin replied: “Let [the Jews] come to us then,” adding that “during the Soviet period they were leaving the country, and now they should return.”
Skoblionok, who represents the 10,000 Jews in the Republic of Tatarstan, a federal state of the Russian Federation in the Volga Federal District, expressed his doubt that Jews would take up Putin’s suggestion.
“To start with, I will describe the situation in Israel,” Skoblionok said.
“There is a tendency there: French Jews have been buying up apartments in Israel for the last five years. There are houses but the light is off. I am asking, ‘Why is the light off? Are these apartments empty?’
“People say that French Jews bought up these apartments and keep them in store. They are afraid that France will become a merely Muslim state so have prepared reserve flats,” he wrote, indicating that Jews were preparing to leave France in large numbers in the case of an emergency.
“My friends, who go to France, note that the Arab people are crowded into the country. Arabs will soon account for 80 percent of the population, like our Far East is populated by Chinese people,” he continued, in this case referring to the colonization of the far eastern regions of Russia.
“The population of ethnic French people is reducing in number; they are not reproducing, unlike the Arabs. The Muslims have large families there—sometimes a family has fifteen children,” Skoblionok pointed out.
“France lacks space, and Jews go to other countries where there is work and an opportunity to make money. The number of attacks based on national and religious beliefs is increasing in Europe. There is hysteria among the Arabs too. Europe fears a pogrom against Jews, and this feeling is strongly noticed in France,” he said.
Skoblionok then went on to discuss Putin’s proposal: “Vladimir Putin always knows what to do and say. But a Jew of sound judgement won’t go to Russia,” he said.
“I will explain why. Our country is at the height of an economic crisis. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor which does not exist in many other countries. The rich buy villas, hotels, and yachts abroad, while the poor simply have nothing to eat. A revolution may yet come about here,” he said—ignoring the fact that he is one of the “rich” himself, having become the oligarch head of the natural gas exploration and petroleum production company TAkPO CJSC in 1987—and then buying it when privatization came after the fall of Communism.
“The Jews all over the world know and have assessed this situation. This is why I don’t think that there will be a mad rush of Jews from the whole world to Russia.”
However, he then said that that there was no danger to Jews in Russia.
Under the heading “Country headed by Jews,” Skoblionok said that “in Russia, the attitude of both ordinary citizens and the government to the Jews is good.
“In addition, there are large numbers of Jews in the Russian government. [Prime Minister Dmitry] Medvedev has Jewish roots. [Deputy Prime Minister Arkady] Dvorkovich is Jewish. What attitude will they have to themselves?” he rhetorically asked.
Even so, he went on, in his own region of Tatarstan, “the situation is different. The regional government has no Jews [in it].”
He told of how a local synagogue had failed to be given land next to its building, even though they had won the rights to it in court.
This piece of land, he lamented, “will be up for auction. And we were told ‘go and buy it’ [instead of getting it for nothing].”
“What Jew will come here?” he concluded.
But where there is a will there is an oy vey! And where there is a vey! they can make a deal, such a deal.
Three Jewish fraudsters who fleeced investors out of £79.5milion and blew the cash on ‘Bentleys, yachts and million pound houses’ are facing years behind bars.
Spencer Steinberg, 45, Jolan Saunders, 39 and Michael Strubel, 53 claimed they had won a contract to supply electricals to the Olympic Village ahead of the 2012 London games.
They said Saunders Electrical Wholesalers Limited (SEWL) also supplied goods such as including trouser presses and kettles to major hotel chains. But it was just a shabby high street electrical retailer in east London – a ‘one man and a van operation’.
Victims were persuaded to invest hundreds of thousands over a period of two months so SEWL could meet urgent orders, then paid seemingly sky-high returns. They were then asked if they would ‘roll over’ their investment for another two months.
The trio used bogus accounts to impress clients into parting with their cash. Two investors parted with £2m after being shown fake company invoices that showed they were supplying the Olympic Village. Others were fooled after Saunders started using doctored invoices from the Park Plaza chain of hotels that suggested they were a major supplier.
The trio were not investigated until the scandal of United States investor and notorious fraudster Bernie Madoff hit the headlines in 2008, jurors heard. Steinberg and Strubel were unanimously convicted of conspiracy to defraud after a five month trial at Southwark Crown Court.They had denied the charges. Saunders earlier admitted conspiracy to defraud and acting as a company director while disqualified. There were tears and shouts of “oh no” from the public gallery as the verdicts were given. Judge Michael Grieve granted Steinberg and Strubel bail ahead of sentence but warned: “I am sure you are fully aware of the fact that it is a very serious offence of which you have been convicted and the inevitable sentence is going to be a custodial sentence.”
Opening the case prosecutor Sarah Forshaw said the trio raked in £79.5 of investor cash and “lived the life of Riley”. She said: “The defendants persuaded people to part with their money on the promise they were going to invest it for them in a good, profitable business, then effectively pocked the money themselves. ‘It made them rich, rich at the expense of people they defrauded – you will hear about Bentleys, Ferraris, Porsches and Rolls Royces, you will hear about yachts and million pound houses. ‘You will also hear about how it was that these defendants, for a times, lived the life of Riley.” She continued: “When their victims found out what these men had done, there were tears and expressions of regret from both of these defendants.
“Probably some of these tears were genuine, they knew by then they were in real trouble, they’d been found out. “Many of the investors from whom they had stolen money had been friends, they had trusted them. “These defendants had rather hoped that the fraud would continue for longer so that their closest friends and even some of their family members would not lose out when the scheme imploded as it did.” She added: “Genuine or not, these expressions of regret were as convincing as the lies they had told in order to persuade people, some of them professional business people, to part with their money – these people are con men and they do it well.”
One balance sheet for SEWL for the year ending 2008 showed revenues of around £100,000, but the following year’s accounts, showed a 2008 end-of-year revenue figure of £43.3million. A purchasing order of £4.71 for light bulbs for the Grosvenor Hotel was doctored to show an order for £47,000. Jeremy Stone, an old school friend of Saunders’ at the prestigious Chigwell School in east London, told how he lost £17 million in the scam. Saunders offered him the chance to invest in SEWL “out of the blue”, saying he needed to borrow £256,400 over 30 days to meet an urgent order. Mr Stone said: “My thought was that small business were struggling for investment, and it was somewhere [private] investors could step in and that could be a very profitable arrangement.”
He added that the first request had not been for a very large amount of money, and he also wanted to support a friend he had lost touch with over the previous few years.
Mr Stone brought in his father Martin, an accountant and management consultant, to carry out all the due diligence and to manage the family’s investment in SEWL. Over the next few years, SEWL apparently seemed so lucrative, Mr Stone employed his father and his sister on salaries of £200,000 and £80,000 respectively to manage the family’s relationship with the company. He invited 14 other business associates to join him in investing in the company. Mr Stone said they were sent hundreds of forged bank statements, invoices and other company documents to keep them on board. He was taking a summer holiday in the summer of 2010 when he received a call from his sister saying she had received a NatWest bank statement for SEWL showing assets of £5 million, with a recent in payment of £5,085,000. But instead of showing a bottom line of in excess of £10 million, the bank statement read £00.00.
It was only then that the Stone family began to realise the company was not legitimate and launched their own investigations. They eventually went to the High Court to ask for a freezing order on the assets of Saunders, Steinberg and their business associates. Mr Stone told the court he ploughed £27 million into the scheme and had £10 million handed back in “returns”. Neither his family nor any of their co-investors have been able to recoup any of the outstanding money.
The trio ran the Ponzi scheme for four years between 2006 and 2010 until they were investigated by the Serious Fraud Office. Steinberg and Strubel claimed they had no reason to suspect the business was anything but legitimate. When the Bernie Madoff scandal broke in 2008, one investor told Steinberg he was “spooked” by the seemingly sky high returns he was getting from SEWL. Steinberg said he was not concerned because Madoff’s business was “a city company”. ‘It was a completely different business to Saunders. I didn’t think SEWL was a Ponzi scheme,’ he said.
Steinberg of Lodge End Radlett, Hertfordshire and Strubel of Princes Park, New Southgate, north London, were both convicted of conspiracy to defraud.
Saunders, of Almonds Avenue, Buckhurst Hill, Essex, admitted the same charge.
A sentencing date is expected to be fixed next week.
But what would we have done without thaaat light show….
Britain will spend 500 million pounds ($700 million) per year for the next five years to try and end deaths caused by malaria, the government said on Monday, announcing a partnership with Microsoft founder Bill Gates worth a total of 3 billion pounds.
Finance minister George Osborne announced the spending, to be funded from the country’s overseas aid budget, at an event with billionaire Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will also contribute around $200 million per year to the package.
“Across the globe over a billion people are infected with malaria and it’s a cause of both untold misery and lost economic potential,” Osborne said in a statement.
“That’s why, working with Bill Gates, I’m determined that Britain leads the world in the fight against this disease.”
In December, the World Health Organization’s annual malaria report showed deaths falling to 438,000 in 2015 - down dramatically from 839,000 in 2000 - and found a significant increase in the number of countries moving towards the elimination of malaria.
The U.N. now wants to cut new cases and deaths from malaria, a parasitic mosquito-borne infection, by 90% before 2030.
Osborne said some of the money would be spent in Britain to advance the science being used to combat the disease. The Gates Foundation first annual contribution will support research, development and regional efforts to eliminate the disease.
The Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 by Gates and wife Melinda to fight disease and poverty around the world.
Are you stupid or just evil, Bill? Just where we need big money directed - to compound Africa’s exploding population…
Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 25 December 2015 11:35.
The Swiss are blessed in their model of direct democracy - the fruit of an ancient and interesting history of popular expression. Uniquely in western Europe, modern Swiss politics are not simply the property of a nexus of interest groups, a dominant media, and a manipulative political class.
The electorate can and does impose its will in every walk of Swiss political life. Famous examples include the 1992 referendum decision not to join the European Economic Area, and the February 2014 vote against mass immigration. Now a motion for ending the power of private bank money generation has passed the threshold 100,000 signatures, and a referendum must follow. A date has yet to be set.
It is difficult to believe that any other electorate in Europe would be competent to pass an informed judgement on such a technical issue, or that many Western governments would ever tolerate such an offence against the Money Power.
Switzerland to vote on banning banks from creating money
Referendum on radical proposal to give central banks sole money creation power will be held after petition gains 110,000 signatures
Switzerland will hold a referendum to decide whether to ban commercial banks from creating money.
The Swiss federal government confirmed on Thursday that it would hold the plebiscite, after more than 110,000 people signed a petition calling for the central bank to be given sole power to create money in the financial system.
The campaign - led by the Swiss Sovereign Money movement and known as the Vollgeld initiative - is designed to limit financial speculation by requiring private banks to hold 100pc reserves against their deposits.
“Banks won’t be able to create money for themselves any more, they’ll only be able to lend money that they have from savers or other banks,” said the campaign group.
Under Switzerland’s direct democracy, a referendum can be held if a motion gains 100,000 signatures within 18 months of launching.
If successful, the sovereign money bill would give the Swiss National Bank a monopoly on physical and electronic money creation, “while the decision concerning how new money is introduced into the economy would reside with the government,” says Vollgeld.
The idea of limiting all money creation to central banks was first touted in the 1930s and supported by renowned US economist Irving Fischer as a way of preventing asset bubbles and curbing reckless lending.
In modern market economies, central banks control the creation of banknotes and coins but not the creation of all money, which occurs when a commercial bank offers a line of credit. Central banks aim to influence the money supply with monetary policy and regulatory tools.
The SNB was established in 1891, with exclusive power to mint coins and issue Swiss banknotes.
But over 90pc of money in circulation in Switzerland now exists in the form “electronic” cash created by private banks, rather than the central bank.
“Due to the emergence of electronic payment transactions, banks have regained the opportunity to create their own money,” said the Swiss Sovereign Money campaign.
“The decision taken by the people in 1891 has fallen into oblivion.”
Referenda on monetary matters are not new in Switzerland. Last year, the country voted by more than 78pc to reject a law calling for the central bank to increase its gold reserves from 7pc to 20pc.
Unlike the gold vote - which was seen as a precursor to re-introducing the Gold Standard in Switzerland - economists have been more supportive of the idea of “sovereign money” as a way to stabilise the economy and prevent excess credit growth.
Iceland - which saw its bloated banking system collapse in spectacular fashion in 2008 - has also touted an abolition of private money creation and an end to fractional reserve banking.
Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were found brutally murdered in September last year.
From the moment their bodies were discovered on a Thai beach on 15 September last year, the investigation into the deaths of British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller has been a muddled affair.
Information from the police has been hazy, contradictory and sparse.
Miss Witheridge, 23, from Norfolk, and 24-year-old Mr Miller, from Jersey, were found bludgeoned to death on the southern island of Koh Tao.
The first officers on the scene were local police with rudimentary training and apparently no idea how to seal off a crime scene, with tourists wandering through it for days afterwards.
Thailand’s best-known forensic scientist, Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand, whose institute was not allowed any involvement in the investigation, testified at the trial that the crime scene had been poorly managed and evidence improperly collected.
Instead of limiting their comments to what they knew about the crime, the Thai police threw out a barrage of speculation about who the culprit might be. It could not have been a Thai, they said at first, and focused their efforts on the Burmese migrant worker community.
The case has brought widespread media attention to Thailand and the island resort.
At one point they highlighted a British friend of Mr Miller as a possible suspect, then just as quickly dropped him. The initial team of investigators hinted they were looking at someone from a powerful family on Koh Tao. Then their commander was abruptly transferred and all official talk of this family’s involvement was dropped.
Other flaws were exposed once the trial started in July, including the police’s failure to test Miss Witheridge’s clothes or the alleged murder weapon, a blood-stained hoe, for DNA.
A year later Dr Pornthip tested the hoe and found the DNA of two people on the handle, but none matched the defendants.
The court heard several CCTV cameras near the crime scene were not working and cameras by the pier were not inspected to see whether anyone had fled by boat after the crime.
Both defendants have also testified they were beaten and threatened into making confessions. No lawyers were present during the sessions and translators were of dubious reliability.
These factors raised serious questions over the integrity of the prosecution case. The most important question though, hung over one piece of evidence which did tie the defendants to the crime: the alleged match between their DNA, and that recovered from semen found on Miss Witheridge’s body.
Less than three days after the crime, police announced they had extracted the DNA profiles of two men from the semen. They also said these matched DNA found on a cigarette butt near the scene.
In court, a police officer testified those samples were received on the morning of 17 September and started DNA extraction at 08:00 local time. This seems unlikely as the pathologist only started his autopsy at 11:00. The successful profiling of two men was announced at around 22:00.
It suggests remarkably rapid analysis, in less than 12 hours, from samples in which at least three people’s DNA - the victim and the two men - were mixed.
The DNA profiles were used to match cheek swabs taken from the two Burmese defendants after they were detained on 2 October.
Jane Taupin, a renowned Australian forensic scientist brought in by the defence team, questioned the plausibility of working this quickly, saying extracting DNA from mixed samples was difficult and time-consuming.
Ms Taupin was not allowed to testify, one of several inexplicable decisions by the defence, but she highlighted several important aspects of DNA testing which neither the defence team, the police, nor the judges appeared to understand.
How DNA testing works
Questions surrounding the alleged guilt of Wai Phyo and Zaw Lin in the murder of the young British couple.
DNA analysis is a complex procedure which requires meticulous care and documentation. Contrary to popular belief, it does not offer “perfect matches”, only statistical probabilities.
Almost all DNA - 99.9% - is likely to be the same between two people. That distinct 0.1% is made up of what are known as “short tandem repeat” sequences. These are isolated and examined for patterns which offer a statistical likelihood of a match to other DNA samples.
Usually a reference sample from a third party is also analysed.
The statistical likelihood of the match must be demonstrated in court, with full documentation showing methodology, proof the samples have not been contaminated and peer review.
In the Koh Tao case, the prosecution provided only a one-page summary of their DNA tests, some of it handwritten, with parts crossed out and corrected, along with four supporting pages.
“The case files of the Thai forensic lab should have been provided to the defence,” Ms Taupin said.
“This is so the scientific data contained within, and used to provide conclusions, could be examined for a scientific review.
“The essence of scientific method is the testing and review of hypotheses. If these are not viewed, or even stated, then this does not inspire confidence in the scientific analysis.
“A one-page table with alterations is not a suitable document to provide to a court. A report should not have alterations, especially handwritten ones, with no explanation as to why they were altered.”
There were other problems too. The date of the original DNA analysis was said to have been 17 September, but the report submitted to court was dated 5 October. This was two days after the police had announced a positive match with the two Burmese defendants. That unexplained discrepancy inevitably raises suspicion that perhaps the result was manipulated.
These weaknesses in the prosecution case should have given the defence a field day in court, but they were not raised until the closing statement.
The two police forensic witnesses were not cross-examined over the doubtful timings nor the scrappy and incomplete DNA documentation.
Had Ms Taupin been called, she could have exposed these flaws. Instead, she had to sit in the lawyers’ room, largely ignored, and then fly home without testifying. Whatever views the three judges formed of the quality of the prosecution’s evidence, it was never properly challenged in court.
I have asked one of the defence lawyers about their bafflingly non-adversarial tactics. He did not offer a convincing explanation.
Perhaps they were nervous of being seen to take too much advice from a foreigner, for fear they would lose sympathy from the judges.
Everyone in that court was aware how much Thailand’s reputation was on the line, and discrediting the police in such a public way might have felt like a dangerous step to take. We just don’t know.
This remains one of a number of frustrating unknowns about this murder case. These can only have added to the suffering of the victims’ families.
How could these kinds of ‘oversights’ actually come to manifest in Thailand? Not only are questions raised regarding the two Burmese migrant worker suspects, but additional questions are raised about the context giving rise to the murder and flawed investigation. A look at the context, where members of wealthy and powerful families on Koh Toh had grounds or had created grounds for the crime, directs inquiry further into how such persons manage to create these grounds, to cover their interests and manipulate the justice system.
The political situation in Thailand since 2014 would have to be taken into consideration. The Shinawatra government had enjoyed popular support from the public because its socioeconomic base was the working class in cities and the rural semi-peasant farmers, also known as the red shirts, who it was responsive to and whose policies it catered to. When the yellow shirts, the royal family, the military and international liberals decided that they want to overthrow the Shinawatra government in a coup, they installed particular military personnel and politicians who were beholden to rich liberal businessmen and bankers in the south of the country, who then proceeded to do whatever they wanted to do.
It doesn’t require much imagination to see how it could be that the justice system, the safety of tourism, priorities and perceptions of international relations would become structurally compromised as a result.
The conflict between the yellow shirts and the red shirts, and the multinational implications of it, as well as the domestic issues it centred around such as the national health service, rice subsidies, forced prostitution and human trafficking, as well as the divergent social basis of the yellow shirts when compared to the red shirts, is something that will be covered in a future article on the subject.
One thing is clear in summary though, and it is that the most degenerate social tendencies and the most retrograde economic forces were able to rise to preponderance after the effective yellow shirt victory during the coup in 2014.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 15 December 2015 18:40.
There are war mongers operating behind the scenes of power whose motives highly resemble those of the Cold War era: Russia, adjacent geopolitical objectives, resource acquisition and control are seen as central problems which require strong military force.
What is insufficient in John Marshall’s investigative critique and whistle blowing article, however, is a failure to make clear the facts that:
1) The particular people, including at NATO, behind these strategies - viz., war with Russia, control in the Middle East and the borders of Russia - do not identify as White; and are not acting with White (i.e., European peoples) interests in mind first and foremost.
2) In normal ethno-nationalist terms, Russia is, in fact, a problematic nation, which is not circumscribed to their, let alone to our common White/European interests; not committed to cooperation in geopolitical ordering; border and demographic defense; and provisioning of The European Ethno-National Region and its necessary alliance with The Asian Region and its Ethno-Nations.
The point is, these are very real, not trumped-up concerns, and White Nationalism must take the helm in cooperation with Asian Nationalisms to handle these concerns.
I will venture an outline of why that is and how it might come about in few days. I will do this in anticipation that Kumiko will contribute her considerable insight to correct oversights, flesh-out a myriad of details and augment points where emphasis is needed.
My perspective on this is that we’ve got the stuff of war at hand all around us already. It is now up to us to wrest the lines from the hands of Jews and others who do not identify with Whites, to shape and craft the battle lines in White Nationalist interests instead. I will argue that that will require European and Asian cooperation and, in terms of their prior imperialist overreaches and capacity to offer cooperation, a significantly chastened U.S. and Russia.
First, a look at how “obscure people’ can start wars” by John Marshall - talking about Victoria Nuland and her fellow Jewish and neocon cohorts, though, of course, he does not name the YKW as such:
Exclusive: Official Washington’s anti-Russian “group think” is now so dominant that no one with career aspirations dares challenge it, a victory for “obscure” government bureaucrats, like Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, as Jonathan Marshall explains.
History isn’t just made by impersonal forces and “great men” or “great women.” Sometimes relatively obscure men and women acting in key bureaucratic posts make a real difference.
Thus, the international crisis in Syria traces back in part to the decision of President Barack Obama’s first ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, to reject peaceful rapprochement with the Damascus regime in favor of “radically redesign[ing] his mission” to promote anti-government protests that triggered the civil war in 2011.
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 7, 2014. (U.S. State Department photo)
In much the same way, Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland did her best to foment the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch against the democratically elected Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych, “while convincing the ever-gullible U.S. mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for ‘democracy,’” as journalist Robert Parry wrote last July.
Nuland, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and wife of neoconservative luminary Robert Kagan, helped achieve in Ukraine the kind of “regime change” that her husband had long promoted in the Middle East through the Project for a New American Century.
Nuland now has a new counterpart in the Department of Defense who bears close watching for signs of whether the Obama administration will keep escalating military confrontation with Russia over Eastern Europe, or look for opportunities to find common ground and ease tensions.
On Dec. 14, Dr. Michael Carpenter started work at the Pentagon as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, with added responsibilities for the Western Balkans and Conventional Arms Control. He replaced Evelyn Farkas, who stepped down in October.
Farkas was a firebrand who accused Russia of “shredding international law and conventions that have held firm for decades.” In a call to arms straight out of the early Cold War, she wrote, “Russia’s challenge is so fundamental to the international system, to democracy and free market capitalism that we cannot allow the Kremlin’s policy to succeed in Syria or elsewhere.”
In a remarkable display of “projection” — ascribing to others one’s own motives and actions — she declared that “Russia has invaded neighboring countries, occupied their territory, and funded NGOs and political parties not only in its periphery but also in NATO countries.” Its goal, she asserted, was nothing less than “breaking NATO, the EU and transatlantic unity.”
Farkas declared that the United States must continue its military buildup to deter Russia; provide “lethal assistance” to countries on Russia’s periphery, including Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova; and step up economic sanctions “to pressure Russia . . . so that U.S. national security interests and objectives prevail.”
With people like that helping to shape official policy over the past three years, it’s no wonder U.S.-Russia relations have hit such a low point. Might her replacement, Michael Carpenter, take a less confrontational approach?
Carpenter moved to the Pentagon from the office of Vice President Joe Biden, where he was special adviser for Europe and Eurasia. Previously he ran the Russia desk at the National Security Council and spent several years in the Foreign Service.
Carpenter has kept a low public profile, with few publications or speeches to his name. One of his few quasi-public appearances was this April at a symposium on “Baltic Defense & Security After Ukraine: New Challenges, New Threats,” sponsored by The Jamestown Foundation.
His prepared remarks were off the record, but they were greeted warmly — “you’ve hit it right on the head” — by discussant Kurt Volker, former NATO ambassador under President George W. Bush and foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain. McCain has demanded that the United States arm Ukraine to fight Russia and he helped inflame the Ukraine crisis by meeting with the anti-Semitic leader of the country’s right-wing nationalist party for photo-ops in 2013.
During a short Q&A session at the symposium, captured on video, Carpenter declared that “Russia has completely shredded the NATO-Russian Founding Act,” a choice of words strikingly reminiscent of Farkas’s denunciation of Russia for “shredding international law.” He accused Russia of “pursuing a neo-imperial revanchist policy” in Eastern Europe, inflammatory words that Sen. McCain lifted for an op-ed column in the Washington Post a couple of months later. Carpenter also indicated that he would personally favor permanent NATO bases in the Baltic states if such an escalation would not fragment the alliance.
The fact that Carpenter chose to make one of his few appearances at the The Jamestown Foundation is itself highly telling. According to IPS Right Web, which tracks conservative think tanks, the foundation’s president, Glen Howard, “is the former executive director of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, a largely neoconservative-led campaign aimed at undermining Russia by bolstering U.S. support for militant nationalist and Islamist movements in the North Caucasus.” He has also been consultant to the Pentagon and to “major oil companies operating in Central Asia and the Middle East.”
The foundation was formed in 1984 by “a leading Cold Warrior close to the Reagan administration,” with the blessing of CIA Director William Casey, to provide extra funding for Soviet bloc defectors to supplement meager stipends offered by the CIA. Its board members today include former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and previous board members included Dick Cheney and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a prominent neoconservative activist.
All this matters hugely for several reasons. Increased confrontation with Russia, particularly along its highly sensitive Western border, will continue to poison relationships with Moscow that are crucial for achieving U.S. interests ranging from Afghanistan to Iran to Syria. Ratcheting up a new Cold War will divert tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into military spending at the expense of domestic priorities.
Most important, the action-reaction cycle between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe is dramatically increasing chances for an unwanted, unneeded and disastrous war involving the world’s great nuclear powers. Ian Kearns, director of the European Leadership Network, noted in a recent commentary for the Arms Control Association:
“Despite protestations by both sides that the exercises are aimed at no particular adversary, it is clear that each side is exercising with the most likely war plans of the other in mind. The Russian military is preparing for a confrontation with NATO, and NATO is preparing for a confrontation with Russia. This does not mean either side has the political intent to start a war, but it does mean that both believe a war is no longer unthinkable. . . .
“Too few appear to recognize that the current cocktail of incidents, mistrust, changed military posture, and nuclear signaling is creating the conditions in which a single event or combination of events could result in a NATO-Russian war, even if neither side intends it.”
In such a way, the actions of relatively minor figures in history – if their provocations are not reined in – can lead the world to cataclysm.
Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Monday, 14 December 2015 03:40.
A still pond
Every action has reflections that ripple outward, like when a pebble is cast into a still pond. The enactment of free trade agreements such as NAFTA and, soon to come, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, have additional effects that are only seen in the criminal underworld. Every opening up of trade that occurs, also is an opening up of the potential for the transport of contraband of various sorts.
One of the webs of associations that have grown and become more complex over the past decade is the international drug trade, particularly those groups who interface with the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. As of December 2015, the components of the international drug trade surrounding the Sinaloa Cartel are as follows:
Sinaloa Cartel and associates (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Philippines, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Nicaragua)
Gente Nueva (Mexico)
Artistas Asesinos (Mexico)
Los Mexicles (Mexico)
Los Antrax (Mexico)
Mara Salvatrucha (Mexico, Canada, United States)
Cosa Nostra (Transatlantic)
French Mafia (Transatlantic)
FARC (Colombia)
United States DEA
Elements of Mexican government
Elements of Columbian government
Elements of Taiwanese government
Elements of Myanmar government
Elements of Laotian government
Elements of Japanese government
Elements of British government
Elements of Kosovo government
Elements of Afghan government
Kurdish Workers Movement (Middle East)
Albanian-connected syndicates (Europe, Caucasus)
Russian Mafia (Russia, Central Asia, Europe)
Chicago street gangs (Chicago)
Yamaguchi-gumi (Japan, Transpacific)
Inagawa-kai (Japan, Transpacific)
Sumiyoshi-kai (Japan, Transpacific)
The Seven Star Mob (South Korea, Transpacific)
The H.S.S. Mob (South Korea, Transpacific)
14K (Hong Kong, Transpacific)
Sun Yee On (Hong Kong, Transpacific)
The United Bamboo Gang (Taiwan, United States)
Celestial Alliance (Taiwan, China)
etc.
Ordinarily I’d draw up a map of how these all interact, along with mainstream news sources, but that would be a time-consuming task, and illustrating how they are all together is not the main purpose of this article. I provide that list only to say that they are together.
The alleged email
With Sinaloa Cartel sitting in the middle of that enterprise with the most to lose and most to gain from the success of the expansion of their operations and the linkages that they are cultivating around the world, it is not surprising that when this amalgamation of interests wishes to take on a human voice without disguise or artifice, it manifests as an email from Joaqin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, which allegedly reads as follows:
As drugs are not a part of the organizations ideology for a Muslim State, ISIS fighters have been destroying shipments of drugs from the cartels.
The cartels have made it clear that ISIS just made a huge mistake by destroying their shipments. It’s clear from the leaked emails that they are not only extremely mad, but are definitely willing to step up and take the organization out if they continue to mess with their business.
Here’s part of the leaked email:
“You [ISIS] are not soldiers. You are nothing but lowly pussies. Your god cannot save you from the true terror that my men will levy at you if you continue to impact my operation.”
“My men will destroy you. The world is not yours to dictate. I pity the next son of a whore that tries to interfere with the business of the Sinaloa Cartel. I will have their heart and tongue torn from them.”
[...]
To the pious Islamist readers out there, and I know you are out there, be aware of this when you set out on your jihad. Whether that email is real or a creative mock-up of what such an email would look like if it were to be composed, it is basically an accurate reflection of what the mood must be among the high ranks of the various criminal syndicates around the world.
And do not doubt that hearts and tongues will be torn out. So think twice before getting involved. Do you really want your heart and tongue torn out?
With what army?
ISIL fighters have managed to negatively impact the bottom line of weapons manufacturers, oil services companies, agribusinesses, and now drug cartels and those who are invested in the movements of drugs around the world. That has ramifications.
For example, if Yamaguchi-gumi were ever to be listed as a ‘legitimate’ business conglomerate on the Japanese market instead of as multiple companies with obfuscated revenue streams and connections to ‘legitimate’ banks, it would actually be the second-largest private equity group in Japan. And in the west, this same logic applies, as many might remember from the situation involving Citigroup, and Barclays, and Bank of America, and so on.
Some people may have heard of the idea that the world revolves around guns, oil, grain, and drugs. They are right, it does. And some may ask, “What army will open the way for drugs to traverse the Middle East without interception again? The criminal organisations don’t have an army.”
Actually, there is an army which will accomplish that task, although it is not one assembled for that specific purpose. I wonder if anyone can guess which army that is?
Chess and not checkers
The world really is an interesting place, and people sometimes end up with really interesting unintentional-allies. In the coming period, I would propose that it would be prudent for ethno-nationalist groups to adopt a rhetorically nuanced approach to the drug war—much like the one I’m taking in this post—one which takes into account that the criminal syndicates have a potential to be a pseudo-ally to the NATO war effort because of shared interests, although not shared ideals.
People like Donald Trump and his supporters seem not to understand this dynamic, because they seem to want to fight ISIL and the Sinaloa Cartel at the same time. For what purpose? Surely it would always be more sensible to make good use of the cartels against ISIL. Government piggybacking on the trade—which is to say, standing on both sides of the trade—would also generate money from the fact that contraband tends to have enormous profit margins because it is illegal, and piggybacking would also enable the government to understand the market better and to mitigate the trade’s most socially-harmful side-effects ahead of time.
