[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.
The vote to leave the EU began as a cry for liberty and ended as a rebuke to the establishment
A Leave supporter holds up a Union Jack flag after the result of the EU referendum outside London’s Downing Street Friday. Photo: Neil Hall/Reuters
The world is looking at Britain and asking: What on Earth just happened? Those who run Britain are asking the same question.
Never has there been a greater coalition of the establishment than that assembled by Prime Minister David Cameron for his referendum campaign to keep the U.K. in the European Union. There was almost every Westminster party leader, most of their troops and almost every trade union and employers’ federation. There were retired spy chiefs, historians, football clubs, national treasures like Stephen Hawking and divinities like Keira Knightley. And some global glamour too: President Barack Obama flew to London to do his bit, and Goldman Sachs opened its checkbook.
And none of it worked. The opinion polls barely moved over the course of the campaign, and 52% of Britons voted to leave the EU. That slender majority was probably the biggest slap in the face ever delivered to the British establishment in the history of universal suffrage.
Mr. Cameron announced that he would resign because he felt the country has taken a new direction—one that he disagrees with. If everyone else did the same, the House of Commons would be almost empty. Britain’s exit from the EU, or Brexit, was backed by barely a quarter of his government members and by not even a tenth of Labour politicians. It was a very British revolution.
A Chinese ban on interracial marriage is largely a step in the right direction, but it is troubling that the rule would not extend to men for a few reasons: they have a disproportionate male population which, like black women, tend to be shunned in interracial partner selection. Similar as with Muslims, this frustrated excess male population can create an explosive effect in interaction with other populations.
From a European man’s perspective, the Chinese situation is complicated, since it can relate to the Chinese banning of interracial marriage - to blacks in particular, recognizing that in terms of feminine qualities and those sublimated qualities necessary to create a reasonable and sufficiently complex civilization, that blacks are not offering anything near sufficient exchange.
China Bans Interracial Marriages For Females; No Plans To Restrict Men
The Supreme People’s Court of China today passed legislation that will ban Chinese women from marrying non-Chinese men, with the law coming into effect at the beginning of 2018. The policy had been fiercely debated for a number of months before it finally won approval from the required number of legislators earlier today. Civil rights groups in China have condemned the restriction, pointing out that it discriminates against women by still permitting males to enter into interracial marriages.
“We strongly urge the People’s Court to reconsider this new law, and repeal the legislation before it comes into force.” A small group of protesters staged a rally outside the courthouse in central Beijing today, but were soon dispersed by authorities. Following decades of the one-child policy, China is now faced with a shocking gender imbalance – for every girl below the age of 18 in China, there are now three boys. “The law was introduced in order to promote social harmony,” commented one of the People’s Courts legislators. “We need to ensure there are enough Chinese women available for marriage; otherwise there is a high probability of increased levels of rape and other violence.” One of the more controversial aspects of the new law is the fact that Chinese men are not banned from marrying women of other races. “Because we have such a shortage of women in China, we need to make sure Chinese men have as many opportunities as possible to find a bride.”
The news comes as a positive to matchmaking businesses that introduce prospective brides from neighboring countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, to Chinese men. “I had feared that they might also ban men from interracial marriage,” commented the owner of a successful matchmaking business in China’s Fujian Province. “Thankfully common sense has prevailed, although by banning Chinese women from marrying foreigners, my business will have more competition.” Meanwhile, industry groups representing ESL teachers in China have also criticized the new policy. “The majority of teachers are male, and most end up wedding local women,” said a spokesperson for a chain of English-teaching cram schools in Shanghai. “If our teachers are banned from marrying Chinese girls, they may not stay in the country as long, and we risk losing talented staff.”
European men might see a bit more legitimacy obtaining to intermarriage with more civilized peoples - viz., Asians - casting it more in terms of the accountability necessary to sustain important qualities and quantities of native populations. However, while broaching European group delimitation with blacks, Jews and probably Arabs would entail prohibition in any number, broaching an accountable number and quality with any group would entail exclusion from citizenship. Nevertheless, Europeans are not primarily accountable to bear excesses and imbalances in Asian populations - the Asians are.
Lucas Jurando, a recently married Spanish student living in Sweden was pushed onto the tracks in a Stockholm subway station, and was crushed by a train.
The suspect, a Black homeless beggar, is believed to have randomly pushed him, and is charged with attempted murder.
Jurando is still alive, but his neck and skull was broken, and his foot had to be amputated. He has been married to a Costa Rican woman since April 2016.
“I was alerted by a scream in the area. Before that, it seemed the platform was calm and there was no indication of the quarrel or dispute. It seems to have taken place suddenly” an anonymous witness told Swedish news site Fria Tider.
“She screamed for her husband, it was a heartbreaking scene that will not be forgotten for a while. Many people around were badly affected by the event, especially around the accident site. We were concerned and bewildered not knowing what to do.”
Jurando has apparently blocked his friends on Facebook who vote for Sweden Democrats, the only major political party in Sweden which wants to end mass immigration.
Jurando’s wife is also an “anti-racist” who has posted things like “In your next life you might be the boat refugee.”
There is a lesson to be learned here. You can donate money to Africa, you can adopt Guatemalan orphans, you can spend your time complaining about White “privilege” in countries that have traditionally been full of White people.
But – at the end of the day, you are still White. You are still seen as the enemy of both the Western elite which wants to annihilate White areas, and certain non-White people who believe you to be their oppressors.
The truth is, “anti-racist” is really just a code word for anti-White.
Liberia only allows Black people to be citizens, but you’ve never heard any “anti-racists” complain about that.
David Duke is no friend of Poland; neither was Hitler or Friedrich
On many occasions David Duke has claimed that Nazi Germany was offering genuine peace - “22 peace offers” - to the West and only wanted back some places taken from Germany by The Versailles Treaty. He says nothing about the truth of the matter, which was that Hitler had obvious tactical reasons to not want to fight on two fronts and have his agenda for lebensraum in the east interfered with.
The peace offers were an obvious ruse to anybody. It is clear that Hitler was a war monger, had in mind lebensraum up to the Urals and intended to kill those Slavic peoples who fought against his plan to subject them as helots.
There is no excuse for ignoring that and for David Duke to present himself and Nazi Germany as sympathetic to Poland.
He completely ignores the fact that Poland had already fought and defeated the Soviets - who were on their way to Germany had they not been stopped by Piłsudski at Warsaw.
He talks about Soviet atrocities as if it is an either/or between the Soviet killing and the Nazi killing. Typical of Nazophiles, he edits the time line of events as it suits him - focusing after the Nazis stabbed Poland in the back with the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact.
Here is what Duke says on May 24, in a conversation with Professor Kevin MacDonald:
David Duke (sympathetic tone): Isn’t it true that hundreds of thousands of Poles were shipped-off to gulags, were stripped of any job, even a way to make a living, because they might have been seen as an enemy of Jews or enemies of the communist regime in Poland and the communist regime was absolutely controlled by Jews.
And in fact when the communists came into Poland it wasn’t the Germans who executed Polish prisoners. In fact the Germans, after they won, they paroled most of the Polish officers. They didn’t even keep them in prison during the whole war.
Sure, they were “liberators” of Poland. Where is Lana to add chorus?
Duke continues: The communists came in and we had the Katyn forest massacre; where they literally murdered 15,000 of the cream, of really intelligentsia of the young men of Poland; massacred them in the Kaytn forest. During the time of ‘46, the communists were putting people in prison, they were torturing Poles; they were sending people to the gulags even in Siberia from their own homeland. They were killing an awful lot of people; and the Jews were right at the head of this and that was the reason why the people in those areas rose up to fight the Jews; because of this horrific horror that was going on that was much worse than any program that was committed.
Kevin MacDonald corrects him: “pogroms”, then adds..
Much worse. The fact is that the Jews [inaudible] on the Soviet Union and when they came in in 1939; the fact is that they supported communism, they hated Polish nationalism and that there were so many Jews in the government, especially in the secret police and so on. It was really something that was made to order for anti-Jewish reaction. And it was there, I think it was 1967, they finally deposed this very Jewish dominated government; and quite a few of them just left for Israel. They weren’t really Poles they didn’t feel any uh, you know, feeling towards Poland and they just left for their homeland.
Duke: Let’s talk about the beginnings of the war and what happened here; in terms of the second world war. We can actually just start off by the fact that during the 1920s and 30s that tens of millions of people were liquidated; murdered in Russia; murdered in Ukraine; Jews dominated the secret service and the NKVD; and the other communist apparatus that tortured countless numbers of Russians; murdered millions of people; in Ukraine alone there was something like 7 or 11 million people that died, starved to death, women, children, elderly ...and this was all done, of course, in peace time. This was not done under the aegis of war; but for some reason, the anger of the media, the international media over which the Jews have control, like the New York Times, and the movie industry of this country, the entertainment industry of America and Europe, which were also heavily influenced; weren’t saying the big evil of the world was communism, they were saying the big evil was the Germans. And when the war began of course, it wasn’t just the Germans attacking the Poles over the city of Danzig and a few other issues, the Bolsheviks came in, the communists came in from the east, took about half of Poland, and where the Germans treated the Polish prisoners of war decently, we find out later that the Russian, not really Russian, but the Jewish led Bolsheviks of the time; and the Jewish led murderers, commissars literally caused the mass murder of the entire Polish army officer corps; of the country - 15,000 at Katyn. And yet, we had a media and we had governments of the west by the west who had so much influence by the Jews, they weren’t saying that we should declare war on Russia; Britain and France, they didn’t declare war on Russia, no - they declared war on Germany. A war that ultimately took the lives of 55,000 million of Europeans and really caused the communist take-over of half of Europe; and countless millions more who were victims. What are your thoughts on that sir?
[Note: WN typically do not manage to consider that maybe Hitler should not have invaded Eastward; after having already been granted the valuable Sudetenland and having been told that there would be war if he invaded further; while the Sudetenland was precious to Czech and perhaps contestable on historical grounds].
Unfortunately, KM endorses Duke’s totally one sided and highly selective account of history:
KM: Absolutely. I think um, in general, what these Jewish organizations will respond to all that is that “these people were not really Jews”, they didn’t identify as Jews so a big part of my work, when I wrote a chapter on Jews and the Left in The Culture of Critique… but these people did identify as Jews, it takes some close reading of the issues.. you have to go in there and show that it does make a difference.
The next day, May 25, David Duke has a program titled, “Dr. Duke interviews the leader of TradCatKnight who destroys Christian Zionist Lies.” Duke, the “friend of Poland”, talks with a Polish Catholic guy, who uses all these bizarre interpretations of the Abrahamic religion, talking about how the true Christianity will emerge and the Jewish head of the NWO will emerge in Israel, etc. - some anti-Christ figure from The Book of Revelation, no doubt, causing us all to get into a highly rational war on behalf of the true Jews.
David Duke is taking advantage of this Abrahamic fool, who has his eyes on scripture and his interpretations, not on this world, the world Jews care about; and this world, where they once led a Soviet Revolution that was even more murderous than Nazi Germany, but this world, where Nazi Germany mirrored Judaism, their unanimity for one people - Germanics - and not only a demonstrated willingness, but the protracted realization of killing that led to the killing of 55,000 million Europeans because Hitler could not cooperate with nationalists to the east, but started a war that might even out-do his idol, Friedrich the Great, in his eastward territorial conquests - and in which he aspired not only to rid his realm of Jews, but to take-over and subjugate the lands and the people of the lands eastward, up to the Urals; quite willing to destroy anyone who would oppose those objectives.
Roman Dmowski, wise to the need to exclude Jews but his nationalism was too right-wing.
Were there Jewish elements which had infiltrated Germany’s neighboring countries? Yes. Were there native nationalist elements in those countries which were aware that this alien and nefarious element needed to be purged - yes. Were they aware of the danger and willing to fight the Soviets? Also yes. It was incumbent upon a statesman to work with those elements. Lebensraum and a plan for subjugation of Slavic peoples does not accord with the principle of ethnonationalism; nor did Nazi Germany represent White nationalism - it represented Prussio-German imperialism.
In terms of truth, trust and relations, it is not going to do any good proceeding with the denial of Nazi Germany’s imperfection.
One of the difficulties with the philo-Nazism of WN is that they partake of one of its cottage industries - blaming Poland, itemizing Germany’s “superiority in every way” and cataloging Poland’s “perfidy”.
You don’t build good relations that way, you start wars through reciprocally escalating diatribe - when you have to be on constant vigil against a people who believe in their infallible right to destroy you, that makes it extremely difficult to say, hey, you know, my side had this, that or the other thing wrong, could have done better here and here is/was the way to correct that: which I would like to do - but it’s hard when the other side is making itself into another side rather than a partner, by constantly dishonestly insisting that it was perfect, a victim and that your side was pure evil or perfidy without circumstance.
Józef Piłsudski - wise and capable against the Soviets, but his nationalism was too civic, allowing for Jewish inclusion
If I were dealing with a more reasonable audience than Nazophilic WN, the place where I would go next in criticism of the Poland of the era would be this - of Piłsudski’s pragmatic brand of nationalism, which was (much) more propositional than it should have been.
Although Piłsudski respected Germans and German nationalism - good; and although he despised the Soviet Union and fought them successfully - also very good; he did not yet appreciate the need to eject the YKW from Polish nationalism. He believed that it was a practical necessity to include them in order to have sufficient fighting strength. And so long as Hitler had imperialistic designs of lebensraum, that, the necessity to include the YKW, could have been true in some unfortunate, short term sense. Roman Dmowksi (the father of Polish nationalism) however, recognized the perfidy of enfranchising Jews into the Polish nation. While he was more anti-German than Józef Piłsudski, his disputes with Germany were not imperialistic, but local - regarding Poznan, Leszno, Pila, Bydgoszcz, Torun, Gdansk and a bit beyond Gdansk, into Pomerania. But not even this was anywhere near as far west as the Polish/German border is today. Even by Dmowski’s designs, Germany still included Breslau (Wroclaw), Stettin (Szczecin), Konigsberg (Kaliningrad); in fact everything not far west of the towns he sought to reclaim.
It does no good to say that Hitler’s only dispute and designs were to win these particular areas for Germany, that Hitler was only taking defensive measures against the Soviets (as Duke constantly claims) and that it was all the fault of Poland. Hitler wanted lebensraum and not only did he design to take all of Poland, all of Czechoslovakia, all of Belarus, all of Ukraine and Russia up to the Urals; not only did he ignore the fact that there were staunch anti-Jewish and anti-Soviet forces in all of these places, he was perfectly willing to turn their people into slaves where he temporarily succeeded; into helots or material for Germanicization at best, were his designs to hold sway; and perfectly willing kill them if they fought for their ethno-states.
Ten thousand Italian patriots turned out today to take part in an anti-invasion and anti-European Union protest march though the main thoroughfares of Rome, organized by the Casapound Italia organization.
The turnout, replete with flags and ordered formations, started at the main Rome “reception center” for invaders at the Piazza Vittorio square, before moving off in the direction of the Colosseum.
Along the way, the disciplined crowd chanted numerous slogans such as “Stop the invasion! This is my home.”
The crowd carried flags, let off tricolor flares, and carried banners reading “Italy rise, fight and win,” “First the Italians,” and “Defend Italy with the spirit of the heroes of the Piave.” (The latter slogan is a reference to the June 1918 World War I battle which resulted in a decisive victory for Italy.)
The rally, held under the slogan of “Casapound Defend Italy,” was completely peaceful. At the speeches which were made at the end point, near the Colosseum, movement leader Gianluca Iannone—sporting an impressive beard—said that the parade was being done in conjunction with similar events in other European cities.
“We want a strong state to take care of our citizens and our children, we are against privatization, we want priority for the Italian people, and we are against uncontrolled immigration,” Iannone said.
Today’s “Victory Day” parade in Moscow is an exercise in hypocrisy—because it ignores the fact that the Soviet Union was allied to the Nazis for nearly two years of World War II—and invaded five neighboring states itself before the war with Germany broke out.
The Russian “celebrations” ignore the fact that the Soviet Union helped Nazi Germany with the invasion of Poland in 1939, invaded Finland in November 1939, and invaded Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in June 1940.
The Soviet invasion of Poland started without a formal declaration of war on September 17, 1939. The invasion took place in line with a treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, signed by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on August 23, 1939.
The agreement—known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, contained a public and a secret clause.
The public clause was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—but the secret clause, never made public until 1946, contained an agreement to divide the territories of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet “spheres of influence,” anticipating potential “territorial and political rearrangements” of these countries.
Stalin and Ribbentrop after the signing of the Soviet–Nazi German pact. August 23, 1939.
The last page of the Additional Secret Protocol, bearing Ribbentrop’s and Molotov’s signature, dealing with the division of Poland and other Eastern European nations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
It was on this basis that the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939—sixteen days after the Nazi invasion—and ended up occupying the eastern part of the Polish state.
The Western Allies—so quick to declare war on Nazi Germany for invading Poland—simply ignored the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland. Soviet and German soldiers in Lublin, Poland, 1939.
German and Soviet soldiers meet in jointly occupied Brest. German and Soviet officers shaking hands following the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union.
Soviet parade in Lviv, 1939. At the joint victory parade held by the Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest, September 22, 1939, at the end of the invasion of Poland.At the center Major General Heinz Guderian and Soviet Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein.
Video below: Wehrmacht and Red army parade, Brest, Poland, September 22, 1939:
The only memorable public comment on the double invasion of Poland was a cartoon by David Low which appeared in a British newspaper, showing Hitler and Stalin greeting each other over the corpse of Poland
The German copy of the secret clause was discovered after the war, and first published in the United States by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 22, 1946, and in Britain by the Manchester Guardian.
It was also part of an official US State Department publication, Nazi–Soviet Relations 1939–1941, published in January 1948.
Despite this, it remained the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the secret clause. It was only acknowledged as a fact in 1989, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was finally published in its Russian format in 1992.
Putin even went on to question the existence of the secret clause, saying that “people still argue about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.”
The invasion of Poland was only the first Soviet military aggression of World War II.
In September and October 1939, the Soviet Union compelled the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to agree to “mutual assistance pacts” which allowed for the establishment of Soviet military bases in those countries.
On June 15, 1940, while the Western Allies were distracted by the German offensive against France, the Soviet Union militarily occupied Lithuania.
The next day, Latvia and Estonia also received Soviet ultimatums, which were quickly followed by military occupation.
Lithuania was formally incorporated into the Soviet Union on August 3, Latvia on August 5, and Estonia on August 6. The deposed presidents of Estonia (Konstantin Päts) and Latvia (Karlis Ulmanis) were imprisoned and deported to the USSR and died later in Soviet gulags.
While all this was going on, the Soviet Union also invaded the neutral nation of Finland on November 30, 1939.
This time, there was at least some half-hearted international reaction: the League of Nations passed a resolution condemning the invasion as illegal, and the Soviet Union was expelled from the League on December 14, 1939.
Red Army soldiers display a captured Finnish state flag, 1940.
Initially, the invasion went poorly, and the Finnish army held the Soviet offensive at the border. However, a renewed attack forced the Finns to capitulate in March 1940.
In terms of that treaty, Finland ceded 11 percent of its surface area—and 30 percent of its economy—to the Soviet Union.
Soviet Tupolev SB bombers above Helsinki November 30, 1939.
It was during the Soviet invasion of Finland that the term “Molotov cocktail” was coined. The improvised gasoline “bomb,” usually just a glass bottle, was given its name as an insulting reference to Soviet foreign minister Molotov, who was responsible for the setting of “spheres of interest” in Eastern Europe under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Molotov had earlier declared on Soviet state radio that Soviet air force’s bombing missions over Finland were actually “airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbors.”
As a result, the Finns dubbed the Soviet bombs as “Molotov bread baskets”—and when the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the “Molotov cocktail” as “a drink to go with the food.”
The Nazi-Soviet pact lasted until June 22, 1941, when Hitler launched the invasion of the Soviet Union. That invasion, as is well known, ended in catastrophe for Germany.
Nonetheless, the fact that the Soviet Union was an official ally—and an aggressive invader of five neutral neighbors during the first stage of the Second World War, makes the Russian “Victory Day” parades hollow and hypocritical.
If Russia—or the West, for that matter—were sincere in celebrating the end of the tragic conflict known as the Second World War, they would give equal prominence to the Soviet Union’s role in fermenting that conflict.
But, because the controlled media and the establishment have made an art out of double standards and hypocrisy, the focus remains solely on Germany—and ignores the crimes of communism.
The election process is currently underway in Ireland and the so called “nationalist” political party Sinn Féin is out campaigning and drumming up votes.
The insane anti-White duplicity of this party can best be demonstrated by looking at their support for the Palestinians. On the one hand they show 100% support for this group and their right to a homeland.
Sinn Féin rally
But on the other hand they have no problem selling out the indigenous White Irish peoples homeland as long as it gets them some votes (the secondary consideration) and keeps them inline with the anti-White narrative (the primary consideration). Never mix the two up. Too many times we hear people saying “it’s all about the votes”. Nope, it’s a small part about the votes and a LARGE part about turning White countries non-White in the name of “diversity”.
As they say, a picture speaks 1000 words and here is Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams out posing for votes.
Let’s not forget that prominent members of this group were actively involved in the violent struggle against the British. But yet today they are the ones out advocating a “diverse” Ireland made up of “new Irish”.
Edmund
Anti-White madness like this only starts to make sense once you factor in the White geNOcide
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.
Chinese laundry commercial washing away the fraud of anti-racism
Roman Dmowski, wise to the need to exclude Jews but his nationalism was too right-wing.
Józef Piłsudski - wise and capable against the Soviets, but his nationalism was too civic, allowing for Jewish inclusion
