Washington Politicizes Football - By Paul Craig Roberts

I rest my case.......!!
_____________________________________________________________

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42036.htm


By Paul Craig Roberts

June 03, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - Washington’s attack on world soccer is following the script of Washington’s attack on the Russian-hosted Sochi Olympics. The difference is that Washington couldn’t stop the Olympics from being held in Sochi, and was limited to scaring off westerners with lies and propaganda. In the current scandal orchestrated by Washington, Washington intends to use its takeover of FIFA to renege on FIFA’s decision that Russia host the next World Cup.

This is part of Washington’s agenda of isolating Russia from the World. This Washington-orchestrated scandal stinks to high heaven. It seems obvious that the FIFA officials have been arrested for political reasons and that the recently overwhelmingly-reelected FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, was forced to resign by Washington’s threats to indict him as well. This can happen because Washington no longer is subject to the rule of law. In Washington’s hands, law is a weapon that is used against everyone, every organization, and every country that takes a position independent of Washington. This clears the deck for Washington and its British lapdog to take over FIFA, which henceforth will be used to reward countries that comply with Washington’s foreign policy and to punish those who pursue an independent foreign policy.

 

The only hope for South America, Asia, and Russia is to form their own World Cup and turn their backs on the corrupt West. It is astonishing that Russia, Asia, and South America so much desire to be part of the corrupt and immoral Western world. Why do countries wish to be associated with evil? Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and perhaps Argentina and Brazil have learned that being in the Western orbit means putting their country under Washington’s control.  Putin, Lavrov, and China’s leaders say that being associated with the West is like being associated with the plague. Yet they still want to be associated with the West. Why do Russia and China think that their self-esteem depends on Washington’s approval? FIFA is a Swiss-based organization. Yet the arrests of FIFA officials is based on a Washington-initiated “investigation” by the FBI. By asserting the universality of US law, Washington is asserting the authority of its police and prosecutors over sovereign countries.

Why did Switzerland, and why do other countries lay down in obedience to Washington’s assertion of the universality of its laws? Are the political leaders paid off or are they threatened with assassination or false indictments? What explains that of all countries on earth only Washington’s law is universal, acknowledged and bowed down before in other countries? Is if fear of retribution?

Possibly, but one answer is that the entire point of being a leader of a foreign country is to be made rich by kowtowing to Washington. One year out of office and Tony Blair was reported to be worth $50 million. Where did the money come from? No one wanted to listen to Blair’s speeches when he was Prime Minister. Why did Americans pay him six-figure sums to give speeches?

Putin can become rich, too. All he needs to do is to turn Russia over to Washington.

Here we are in an orchestrated soccer scandal hyped to the hilt by the presstitute media while all the real scandals go unremarked.

 

For example, a number of the mega-banks in the West have pleaded guilty to felony charges and only suffered fines. As Finian Cunningham has pointed out, the money laundering and price-rigging by the “banks too big to jail” dwarfs the alleged criminality at FIFA. The Securities and Exchange Commission actually issues waivers to the banks for their criminal activity. One dissenting SEC commissioner accuses her colleagues of encouraging “recidivism” by the constant issue of waivers. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-22/sec-commissioner-furious-sec-has-made-mockery-recidivist-criminal-behavior-banks

Washington itself cannot be believed as not a single significant statement out of Washington’s mouth since the Clinton regime has been true; yet, Washington still parades around as the arbiter of truth.

Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. Assad did not use chemical weapons. Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Russia did not invade Ukraine. But Washington convinced the world that its lies were true. It is almost a certainty that politicians up in arms over unsubstantiated charges that FIFA took bribes have themselves taken bribes. Just look at the bribes given to Congress by corporations to vote fast track for TTIP. Http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations-paid-us-senators-fast-track-tpp

Can anyone name even one leader of one EU country (other perhaps than Greece at the moment) who doesn’t take bribes from Washington? According to Udo Ulfkotte, no one can name even one British or EU newspaper that doesn’t take bribes from the CIA. How many UN votes are determined by Washington’s threats and bribes? Whether or not FIFA decisions are tainted by bribery, the purpose of the “investigation” is to cast doubt on the decision to hold the World Cup in Russia. The World Cup is a global spectacle and conveys prestige on the host country. Washington intends to deny this prestige to Russia. That is what the “investigation” is about.

 

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following

A Superpower in denial

The inevitable decline of the US as the only global Superpower, is well underway, as witnessed in the piece below. While expanding their military bases across the globe since World War II, the US has consistently pursued a policy for a military-industrial complex to ensure dominance the world over, and to prevent any competitor from challenging their superiority.

This has led to the decline and neglect of US internal policies for growth of social, economical and political significance. The rise of Russia and China as direct competitors who are expanding their global presence through economic and military trade, has left the US out in the cold.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42010.htm

US Resorts to the Viagra of Militarism
By Finian Cunningham

May 31, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "SCF" -  The behaviour of the United States is the archetypal response of a tyrant whose days are numbered. Or an empire that is crumbling before its very eyes. In denial of demise, it wields a still formidable military power in a bid to compensate for impotence in all other spheres: culturally, morally, economically, politically, the once virile giant is but a shell of its former self. Instead of bowing out gracefully to the realities of a changing world, Washington is using militarism like viagra to postpone the inevitable. 

 

Following the Second World War, American world leadership was indisputable. «Pax Americana» – a world order under US financial and political terms – appeared to reign supreme. But even in those halcyon days, trouble was in store for the more perceptive of American planners.

In a secret memo, PSS/23, written in 1948 and declassified in 1974, the eminent US State Department planner George Kennan had this to say of the emerging global order and in particular US relations with Asia: «We must be very careful when we speak of exercising ‘leadership’ in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore, we have about 50 per cent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 per cent of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia… In the face of this situation… We should cease to talk about vague — and for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratisation. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better». Note how Kennan, who also authored the Cold War policy of «containment» toward the Soviet Union, is encumbered with conceited notions of «American exceptionalism» – natural leadership, idealism and so on. Nevertheless the revealing apprehension in Kennan’s words is the realisation that American economic dominance was disproportionate and unsustainable. He admitted with refreshing candidness that such an inherent imbalance of resources and global human needs would have to increasingly rely on brute power in order to maintain the disparity.

 

To reiterate Kennan: «The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better». Indeed, that day seems to be have arrived. Almost in every continent, America is abandoning any semblance of diplomacy and instead is trying to use raw, unilateral, military force to assert its perceived – albeit unjustified – rights to dominance.  Washington’s sanctioning and threatening of Venezuela, Iran, Russia – the latter through unprecedented NATO war manoeuvres – are prime examples. The arraignment of FIFA football officials in Switzerland last week over alleged corruption at the behest of American law enforcement authorities is another example of how Washington views itself as having the prerogative to impose its will regardless of foreign jurisdictions.  US deteriorating relations with China are the latest manifestation of America’s self-declared «manifest destiny» to behave like a global hegemon. Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter at the weekend stepped into the sensitive issue of territorial disputes between China and its Asian neighbours. Ashton’s steps were those of someone wearing hobnail boots. He «demanded» that China immediately cease all its land reclamation projects in the South China Sea. 

 

Only weeks before, US Secretary of State John Kerry made similar high-handed demands while visiting Beijing. Previously, US Admiral Harry Harris lambasted China for building «a great wall of sand» in the South China Sea – a strategically important global trade route.

Washington is increasingly and openly jettisoning its erstwhile image of «neutral broker» and adopting a provocative partisan position, accusing China of militarism and expansionism that is allegedly threatening American regional allies in the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan. Newly burnished «defence pacts» are giving the US the automatic «right» to go to war to «protect» partners if its «vital interests are threatened». The increasing deployment of American navy, warplanes and missile systems – under the guise of «protecting its partners» – is fuelling militarisation of the territorial disputes.  China, for its part, says that its own military presence in the region is to protect its voluminous trade routes. Beijing has pointedly refused to cease its maritime development projects, mainly land reclamation in shoals and reefs that it says are strictly within its territorial limits. 

 

In response to Washington’s latest ultimatums, Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the US, expressed his country’s alarm at the way Washington is «escalating» tensions in the region and making it «less stable». Cui told the Wall Street Journal that US demands were «very surprising to us». The ambassador added that «the US has overreacted to the situation and is escalating the situation». China’s perplexity is readily understandable. While Washington accuses Beijing of «militarism» in the region, it is the US that has recently encroached on China’s territory with warships and reconnaissance planes in what appears to be «an attempt to provoke and escalate the situation,» said Cui.  The Chinese diplomat added: «And the US is also making a lot of statements, making false accusations against China and taking sides in the territorial disputes in the region. That will really make the situation in the region less stable. So we are worried about such overreaction from the United States».

 

The analogy here with Russia is salient. The US and its NATO allies are conducting numerous «war games» at ever-increasing scale and frequency around Russia’s territory – from the Baltic to the Black Sea and in between – and yet Washington upends this provocative reality by accusing Moscow of militarism and expansionism. As Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said, central to Washington’s problem is that it cannot come to terms with the changing multipolar nature of the world. The rise of China as the world’s largest economy and its expanding economic presence in Africa, Asia and Latin America go hand in hand with the growing importance of Russia, India and other emerging nations. The new Silk Roads of global trade that China in particular is paving are a sign of America’s diminishing role as a global power centre. Unable to deal with its own demise, Washington is resorting to the viagra of militarism to effect an image of virility that it no longer possesses in practice. 

 

The multipolar world is being formed under legitimate relations and circumstances of trade and investment. It is only the decrepit US and its hanger-on European allies that view these changes as illegitimate. It is subjective and politicised. Rather than accepting the new global reality, Washington is seeking to postpone the inevitable by contriving confrontations with perceived rivals – China and Russia in particular.  Or, as US planner George Kennan admitted back in 1948, Washington is dispensing with fictitious notions of democracy and human rights and is now, by necessity, having to deal in raw power concepts – that is militarism. However, the very real danger is that the senile old power that US capitalism has become might detonate a world war from reckless denial of its own demise. 

 

Somebody needs to take away the viagra and slip a sedative into its cup of coca.

© Strategic Culture Foundation

Patrolling The Hood From (China) Sea To Shining Sea by Pepe Escobar (Asia Times)

The madness that is the Obama Administration!

##############################################

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41992.htm
 

 

May 29, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Asia Times" -  If only Mad Men in real life were like Don Draper – channeling his true inner self, after many a rocky season, to finally click on “I’m OK, you’re OK.” Instead, we have a bunch of (Pentagon) madmen provoking every major geostrategic competitor all at once.

 

The Masters of War at the self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration are now announcing they’re ready to dispatch military aircraft and ships within 18 kilometers of seven artificial islands China has built up in the Spratly Islands. Beijing’s response, via the Global Times, couldn’t be other than There Will be War; “If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a U.S.-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea … The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’.”  According to Beijing, two lighthouses on Huayang Reef and Chigua Reef — sites of reclamation works — were built “to improve navigation safety in the South China Sea.” There’s no evidence China will cease its island-building work even with U.S. warships hangin’ out in the naval hood. Will the U.S. Navy go heavy metal and unleash “friction” to prevent civilian Chinese vessels from moving around? Does the U.S. Navy expect Beijing to just roll over and collapse? What the Global Times implies is that China will definitely strike back if the Americans come within 18 kilometers of the islands.

Beijing already has electronically jammed Global Hawk long-range surveillance drones spying on the Nansha Islands. And Beijing is contemplating setting up an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea once the work on the seven artificial islands is completed.
 

This South China Sea exceptionalist adventurism could alarmingly get out of hand. Couple it with the “patrolling” of the Western Pacific – as the U.S. and Australia are about to be joined by re-militarizing Japan in their regular bi-annual war games. The result is a Shangri-La Dialogue – the regional security summit held every year in Singapore, starting this Friday — even hotter than usual. Assorted agent provocateurs better not mess with Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Staff, who will be the guest star of the show.

 

All about the Maritime Silk Road

The latest escalation happens just as Beijing releases it new Military White Paper outlining in detail a new defensive strategy — which is now, for all practical purposes, defensive/offensive in Full Spectrum AirSeaLandCyber Space mode (the full text is included here). Pentagon planners, eat your collective hearts out; the “pivoting to Asia” is about to meet its match. Among the highlights, we now know China “will not attack unless we are attacked, but we will surely counterattack if attacked” – which is a blueprint for what may happen next in the South China Sea. Beijing will be focused on “winning informationized local wars” (a whole lotta electronic jammin’ goin’ on). And the PLA Navy will gradually shift its focus from “offshore waters defense” to a mix of “offshore waters defense and open seas protection.” Welcome to the (China) sea to shining sea doctrine. Zhang Yuguo, senior colonel with the general staff department of the PLA, clearly enjoyed himself at his press conference when he stressed, “Some countries adopt preemptive strategies, emphasizing preventive intervention and taking initiative in attack. Ours is totally different.” And then came the Sun Tzu-style clincher; “Being ‘active’ is only a kind of means and ‘defense’ is our fundamental purpose.” For those who insist in not getting the message, the white paper is the graphic proof China is now positioning itself as an aspiring great sea power. It’s genetic, really — as China displayed the world’s greatest naval fleet at least two centuries before Christopher Columbus, duly employed by the Ming dynasty to explore Asian, Indonesian archipelago, African and Middle Eastern shorelines. And guess what they were up to then; “win-win” trade/commerce, allied with cultural interchange. Make business, not war. Centuries later, it’s all remixed in the New Silk Road(s), or One Belt, One Road project.

 

And don’t forget Urfa

Beijing’s strategy for the South China Sea has always been clear. Everyone – no discrimination — will have right of passage. All disputes – from oil and gas exploration to fishing rights — are to be solved bilaterally within the cadre of ASEAN. And the whole process has absolutely nothing to do with Washington.

The U.S. government insists the China nine-dash-line does not comply with international law. That’s risible; the line was actually dreamed up by the Chinese nationalists of the Kuomintang two years before the birth of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

 

Washington argues that implementation of the nine-dash-line will allow China to control navigation in the South China Sea. Once again, Beijing does not want control, but more business, which is already a fact, as 80% of commercial traffic is by Chinese vessels.

There’s no way Beijing will back down from bilateral negotiations inside ASEAN – as the South China Sea is a key element of the Maritime Silk Road. What Beijing wants is “win-win” deals with everyone, from Vietnam to Philippines, especially in terms of exploring all that submerged energy wealth.
 

As for Washington — as it is seen from Beijing – the paramount obsession is to remain the naval hegemon everywhere from the Western Pacific to the Straits of Malacca and the Indian Ocean.

Cue to the white paper reminding everyone and his neighbor that the South China Sea is not an American lake, as much as the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea are not Japanese-American lakes, and the Indian Ocean is not an American Ocean.  There’s no contest. All these crucial developments were studied in detail early this week at the 11^th round of the China-Russia strategic consultation in Moscow – when Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi, a very active, policy-making second foreign minister, sat face-to-face with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. As the Pentagon huffs and puffs, Beijing releases its no-nonsense military doctrine; the Russians and Chinese finesse their strategic partnership; and they get their act together for the crucial, upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Urfa this summer.
 

Expect the bunch of madmen to go bonkers. Oh yes, no more romantic sea cruises from now on.

 

Copyright 2015 Asia Times Holdings Limited

FIFA in the sandwich of geopolitical foes

The latest corruption scandals within FIFA as investigated by the FBI in the US, has some shady pretexts and motives. The sudden scandals come in the wake of the impending election of a new FIFA president on the 29 May 2015; that’s two days before the election takes place.  It’s been alleged that the investigations have been on-going for three years and spans a period of 17 years, since 1998. Why stop there, why not include the investigations from beyond 1998 and include the 1994 World Cup. This should in all intents and purposes, be included due to the fact that in 1994, soccer was struggling to compete as a recognised national sport in the US. The support of the game could not compete with the support of baseball, basketball, or American Football. This then begs the question, that if the support of the game is not that prominent, how did they win the bid to host the tournament?

The US prosecuting authorities uses the excuse of unethical business practices, corruption, fraud, etc. as their motive for the investigations, which they claim, is unacceptable in US Society; yet they failed to prosecute a single individual who caused the global recession in 2008, through the sub-prime mortgage crises in the States. The overwhelming evidence gathered from the investigations of various big corporate banks, clearly exposed fraudulent financial deals being made by these banks to global financial partners, which in turn triggered the collapse of global markets, when the US housing bubble burst in late 2006, and early 2007.  Instead of authorities arresting and convicting these fraudsters, the US Federal reserve helped bailout the banks, because in the words of the Obama Administration; “they were too big to fail”. Conveniently, no-one could be convicted for their part in the collapse. So, the excuse of ethics, sound business practices, etc. does not hold water, as a motive.

Another question posed by journalists, who instinctively smelled a rat when news of the arrests broke, was the fact that the FBI was investigating the corruption scandal, with extradition and indictment of the suspects to the US to stand trial for their alleged crimes on US soil. Although the investigations were on-going for three years, the authorities still cannot confirm if these alleged crimes were committed on US soil, or similarly produce any evidence thereof. Why was the US administration taking the lead and digging their noses in matters not remotely related to politics, when there are other bodies mandated to investigate and rule on corruption in sport. The fact that the FIFA headquarters are based in Switzerland, the Swiss authorities should be taking the lead in investigations and the FBI should provide evidence and assist where necessary, and within their mandate. Not the other way around.

So what really is the US administration’s angle behind the FIFA corruption scandal?

It’s a known fact that Russia is hosting the 2018 World cup, and Qatar is hosting it in 2022. There have recently been reports about two prominent US Senators, deriding Sepp Blatter for his unwavering support for the Russian Federation; probably because the country’s economy is in a very healthy state, and thus the huge profits FIFA is bound to make from a tournament there. From a US perspective, the derision by the two senators, ties perfectly in with all the Russian bashing and Putin demonising in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. The fact that the Obama Administration and his neocon cohorts are embarrassingly losing this battle, they have no other card to play, to hurt the Russian economy or anything that Russia represents. Hence, their feeble attempt to upset the election of the FIFA president on the 29^th May, and thus cause some chaos in  planning of the tournament in Russia.

Why the U.S. “war on terra” is a fraud - Pepe Escobar

By Pepe Escobar ; Courtesy of Asia Times

 

A new scathing report by the Nobel prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility has revealed that more than 1.3 million people were killed only during the first ten years of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. What was formerly known as GWOT — or, in Dubya-speak, “war on terra” — was Orwellianized by the Obama administration into “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO).

Crucially, the report does not even cover OCO’s trail in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen (one war “won” by NATO/AFRICOM; one ongoing civil war; and two targets of Obama’s nefarious “kill list”.) Moreover, the figures on AfPak and Iraq are far from being the latest. And the total estimate of lethal casualties is considered “conservative”.

 

The record shows that this OCO killing machine ran amok for almost 15 years against whole swathes of the planet — not to mention burning trillions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds — and had absolutely zero effect in containing terrorism. Rather the contrary; Asia Times readers are aware of how I’ve defined GWOT as the gift that keeps on giving.

And it all started way before 9/11 — and the official Dubya enshrinement of GWOT.

 

Where’s my jihadi visa?

One just needs to read Michael Springmann’s book Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts that Rocked the World. Springmann, a former State Department official, currently practices law in the Beltway. Crucially, he was the head of the visa section of the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia between 1987 and 1989. Until, as part of a very convoluted story, he lost his job; and embarked on the long and winding road towards becoming a whistleblower.

Springmann’s revelation that the Jeddah consulate was a CIA base comes as no surprise — as the free flow of visas was essential to the so-called “Arab Afghans” who were engaged in the 1980s jihad against the former USSR.

 

And the ball kept rolling. While researching his book, Springmann also found out that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 got their visas in Saudi Arabia; 11 in Jeddah and 4 in Riyadh. Springmann discovered these visas were approved by one Shayna Steinger – “hired directly out of Columbia University with a master’s degree as an FSO4, which is a very high rank for somebody right out of school with no background, experience, or training. And she was supposed to have given very questionable answers to the 9/11 Commission investigating what went on in Jeddah.”

 

After 9/11, Springmann also tried to get in touch with the FBI to tell his story. He’s still waiting for their call (Lars Schall’s interview with Springmann is here.)

Springmann has no doubt the whole genesis of the “war on terra”, pre-9/11, was a racket involving the CIA and the State Department. As he writes, “the international terrorists the United States recruited for wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia thirty-odd years ago are still involved in the fighting elsewhere today. Bosnia wasn’t the only place those saddle tramps and gunslingers were employed. The visas the State Department issued to them then are now tied to the current administration’s continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The fanatics I saw get travel papers during my time at Jeddah are either directly involved in or trained those directly involved in fighting U.S. forces today.”

 

Talk to the RAND

There’s nothing new under the GWOT/OCO sun. GWOT/OCO is a mere rebranding of what the Pentagon in the early “axis of evil” days of the Cheney regime called the Long War. And its future was duly conceptualized later on in 2008 by the RAND Corporation report Unfolding the Future of the Long War.

RAND clearly prescribed what has become the new normal. Washington supports the petrodollar GCC racket – House of Saud on top – whatever happens, always in the interest of containing “Iranian power and influence”; diverts Salafi-jihadi resources toward “targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East,” especially in Iraq and Lebanon, hence “cutting back … anti-Western operations”; and keeps propping up al-Qaeda — and ISIS/ISIL/Daesh — GCC sponsors and “empowering” viciously anti-Shi’ite Islamists everywhere to maintain “Western dominance.”

 

Technically, the Long War is a fabulous bonanza for the industrial-military complex. Geopolitically, it cuts both ways; it wreaks havoc via Divide and Rule across the Muslim world, and is also a war by proxy on Iran.

Few will remember that the Long War concept was first formulated in the “axis of evil” era by the Highlands Forum, a relatively obscure, neo-con infested Pentagon think tank. Not accidentally the RAND Corporation is a major “partner”.

 

And now, with Long War practitioners such as current Pentagon supremo “Ash” Carter, his deputy Robert Work, and Pentagon intelligence chief Mike Vickers, in charge of the self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration’s military strategy, continuity is the new normal.

And diversification, of course. Nick Turse’s new book, Tomorrow’s Battlefield: US. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa reads like a hallucinatory trip along the Pentagon’s pivot to virtually the whole continent, fully deploying OCO to fight “terra” via AFRICOM.

OCO is forever. Happy trails, and have a good kill.

 

 

Author: Pepe Escobar April 30, 2015

Asia Times News & Features, Empire of Chaos, Pepe Escobar

AFRICOM, Global War on Terror, NATO, Pepe Escobar

 

A Russian message to the morons in the White House!

The video of the 70 year Celebratory parade in the Beautiful Square, Moscow, that sent shivers down the spines of the US neocon warmongers! So much so, that John Kerry met with Putin and Lavrov to apologise for not attending!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrSzCnz9Sic#t=2141

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41806.htm

Obama’s Petulant WWII Snub of Russia

Russia will celebrate the Allied victory over Nazism on Saturday without U.S. President Obama and other Western leaders present, as they demean the extraordinary sacrifice of the Russian people in winning World War II – a gesture intended to humiliate President Putin, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

May 10, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - President Barack Obama’s decision to join other Western leaders in snubbing Russia’s weekend celebration of the 70^th anniversary of Victory in Europe looks more like pouting than statesmanship, especially in the context of the U.S. mainstream media’s recent anti-historical effort to downplay Russia’s crucial role in defeating Nazism.

Though designed to isolate Russia because it had the audacity to object to the Western-engineered coup d’état in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, this snub of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – like the economic sanctions against Russia – is likely to backfire on the U.S. and its European allies by strengthening ties between Russia and the emerging Asian giants of China and India.

Notably, the dignitaries who will show up at this important commemoration include the presidents of China and India, representing a huge chunk of humanity, who came to show respect for the time seven decades ago when the inhumanity of the Nazi regime was defeated – largely by Russia’s stanching the advance of Hitler’s armies, at a cost of 20 to 30 million lives.

Obama’s boycott is part of a crass attempt to belittle Russia and to cram history itself into an anti-Putin, anti-Russian alternative narrative. It is difficult to see how Obama and his friends could have come up with a pettier and more gratuitous insult to the Russian people.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel – caught between Washington’s demand to “isolate” Russia over the Ukraine crisis and her country’s historic guilt in the slaughter of so many Russians – plans to show up a day late to place a wreath at a memorial for the war dead.

But Obama, in his childish display of temper, will look rather small to those who know the history of the Allied victory in World War II. If it were not for the Red Army’s costly victories against the German invaders, particularly the tide-turning battle at Stalingrad in 1943-1944, the prospects for the later D-Day victory in Normandy in June 1944 and the subsequent defeat of Adolf Hitler would have been much more difficult if not impossible.

Yet, the current Russia-bashing in Washington and the mainstream U.S. media overrides these historical truths. For instance, a New York Times article by Neil MacFarquhar on Friday begins: “The Russian version of Hitler’s defeat emphasizes the enormous, unrivaled sacrifices made by the Soviet people to end World War II …” But that’s not the “Russian version”; that’s the history.

For its part, the Washington Post chose to run an Associated Press story out of Moscow reporting: “A state-of-the-art Russian tank … on Thursday ground to a halt during the final Victory Day rehearsal. … After an attempt to tow it failed, the T-14 rolled away under its own steam 15 minutes later.” (Subtext: Ha, ha! Russia’s newest tank gets stuck on Red Square! Ha, ha!).

This juvenile approach to pretty much everything that’s important — not just U.S.-Russia relations — has now become the rule. From the U.S. government to the major U.S. media, it’s as if the “cool kids” line up in matching fashions creating a gauntlet to demean and ridicule whoever the outcast of the day is. And anyone who doesn’t go along becomes an additional target of abuse.

That has been the storyline for the Ukraine crisis throughout 2014 and into 2015. Everyone must agree that Putin provoked all the trouble as part of some Hitler-like ambition to conquer much of eastern Europe and rebuild a Russian empire. If you don’t make the obligatory denunciations of “Russian aggression,” you are called a “Putin apologist” or “Putin bootlicker.”

Distorting the History

So, the evidence-based history of the Western-sponsored coup in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, must be forgotten or covered up. Indeed, about a year after the events, the New York Times published a major “investigative” article that ignored all the facts of a U.S.-backed coup in declaring there was no coup.

The Times didn’t even mention the notorious, intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in early February 2014 in which Nuland was handpicking the future leaders, including her remark “Yats is the guy,” a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who – after the coup – quickly became prime minister. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]

Even George Friedman, the president of the Washington-Establishment-friendly think-tank STRATFOR, has said publicly in late 2014: “Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d’état organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history.”

Beyond simply ignoring facts, the U.S. mainstream media has juggled the time line to make Putin’s reaction to the coup – and the threat it posed to the Russian naval base in Crimea – appear to be, instead, evidence of his instigation of the already unfolding conflict.

For example, in a “we-told-you-so” headline on March 9, the Washington Post declared: “Putin had early plan to annex Crimea.” Then, quoting AP, the Post reported that Putin himself had just disclosed “a secret meeting with officials in February 2014 … Putin said that after the meeting he told the security chiefs that they would be ‘obliged to start working to return Crimea to Russia.’ He said the meeting was held Feb. 23, 2014, almost a month before a referendum in Crimea that Moscow has said was the basis for annexing the region.”

So there! Gotcha! Russian aggression! But what the Post neglected to remind readers was that the U.S.-backed coup had occurred on Feb. 22 and that Putin has consistently said that a key factor in his actions toward Crimea came from Russian fears that NATO would claim the historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, representing a strategic threat to his country.

Putin also knew from opinion polls that most of the people of Crimea favored reunification with Russia, a reality that was underscored by the March referendum in which some 96 percent voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia.

But there was not one scintilla of reliable evidence that Putin intended to annex Crimea before he felt his hand forced by the putsch in Kiev. The political reality was that no Russian leader could afford to take the risk that Russia’s only warm-water naval base might switch to new NATO management. If top U.S. officials did not realize that when they were pushing the coup in early 2014, they know little about Russian strategic concerns – or simply didn’t care.

Last fall, John Mearsheimer, a pre-eminent political science professor at the University of Chicago, stunned those who had been misled by the anti-Russian propaganda when he placed an article in the Very-Establishment journal Foreign Affairs entitled “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault.”

You did not know that such an article was published? Chalk that up to the fact that the mainstream media pretty much ignored it. Mearsheimer said this was the first time he encountered such widespread media silence on an article of such importance.

The Sole Indispensable Country

Much of this American tendency to disdain other nations’ concerns, fears and points of pride go back to the Washington Establishment’s dogma that special rules or (perhaps more accurately) no rules govern U.S. behavior abroad – American exceptionalism. This arrogant concept, which puts the United States above all other nations like some Olympian god looking down on mere mortals, is often invoked by Obama and other leading U.S. politicians.

That off-putting point has not been missed by Putin even as he has sought to cooperate with Obama and the United States. On Sept. 11, 2013, a week after Putin bailed Obama out, enabling him to avoid a new war on Syria by persuading Syria to surrender its chemical weapons, Putin wrote in an op-ed published by the New York Times that he appreciated the fact that “My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust.”

Putin added, though, “I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism,” adding: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. … We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

More recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov drove home this point in the context of World War II. This week, addressing a meeting to mark the 70^th anniversary of Victory in Europe, Lavrov included a pointed warning: “Today as never before it is important not to forget the lessons of that catastrophe and the terrible consequences that spring from faith in one’s own exceptionalism.”

The irony is that as the cameras pan the various world leaders in the Red Square reviewing stand on Saturday, Obama’s absence will send a message that the United States has little appreciation for the sacrifice of the Russian people in bearing the brunt – and breaking the back – of Hitler’s conquering armies. It is as if Obama is saying that the “exceptional” United States didn’t need anyone’s help to win World War II.

President Franklin Roosevelt was much wiser, understanding that it took extraordinary teamwork to defeat Nazism in the 1940s, which is why he considered the Soviet Union a most important military ally. President Obama is sending a very different message, a haughty disdain for the kind of global cooperation which succeeded in ridding the world of Adolf Hitler.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A specialist on Russia, he served as chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch during his 27 years as a CIA analyst. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).