Professor dedicated to “dismantling whiteness” to speak at Minnesota University

March 15, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

The University of Minnesota has invited a professor, who believes “whiteness” is an “existential threat” to the United States and needs to be “dismantled,” to be a guest speaker.

The lecture, titled “The Elephant in the Room: A ‘Grown-Up’ Conversation about Whiteness,” will be delivered by Lisa Anderson-Levy, an anthropology professor at Beloit College who believes that teaching is “a political act”.

Anderson-Levy is expected to share her thoughts on “the violence of whiteness” and suggest ways that colleges and government institutions can either perpetuate or interrupt this violence.

In the description of the talk, Anderson-Levy writes that “whiteness” poses an “existential threat to social, political and economic life” in the US, declaring her effort to “decenter whiteness” as “one of the most urgent social dilemmas of our time.”

“Analyzing and understanding the intersectional operation of whiteness has the potential to shift paradigms, if there is will and courage,” Anderson-Levy said.

She has been invited as part of a program used to “highlight successful alumni” of the university and the talk will be open to both students and university administrators.

Anderson-Levy, who is also a retired Air Force officer, co-leads a project at Beloit College that aims to strengthen “diversity, inclusivity, and equity.”

Western Hegemony's Collapse

A Travesty of Protectionism

March 14, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

By Michael Hudson

Trump’s series of threats this week was a one-two punch. First, he threatened to impose national security tariffs on steel and aluminum, primarily against Canada and Mexico (along with Korea and Japan). Then, he suggested an alternative: He would exempt these countries IF they agree to certain U.S. demands.

But these demands make so little economic sense that they should be viewed as an exercise in what academia used to call power politics. Or in Trump’s world, Us versus Them, a zero-sum game in which he has to show that America wins, they lose.

It won’t work. Trump’s diplomatic ploy with Mexico is to say that he’ll be willing to exempt them from the steel and aluminum tariffs if they agree to (1) build the wall that he promised to make them build, and (2) give other special favors to the United States. He can then go to American voters and say, “See, we won; Mexico lost.”

This is unlikely to elicit a Mexican surrender. Its president already has said that building a wall makes no sense, and cancelled the planned diplomatic visit to Washington last week. Giving in to Trump’s election promise to American voters (or more to the point, indulging in his own ego trip about the wall) would be political suicide. Trump would crow that he made Mexico bow to his bidding.

Matters aren’t much better in Canada. While some Pennsylvania and Ohio steel companies probably will try to make Trump look good by hiring back a few hundred workers if and when the tariffs are announced, Canada and other suppliers employees would have to be laid off. Canadian resentment already has been building up for decades, ever since the auto agreement of the 1960s and ‘70s that favored U.S. suppliers.

But the real economic problem comes from within the United States itself. If new steel workers are hired, they may be laid off in a few months. Most important is the bigger economy-wide picture: The Chamber of Commerce and other groups have calculated that the loss of jobs in steel- and aluminum-using industries will far outnumber the new hiring of steel and aluminum workers.

NPR on Wednesday had a maker of beer kegs explain that if the cost of steel goes up, he can’t afford to match the prices of foreign keg manufacturers who buy their raw materials cheaper – and do NOT have tariffs raised on higher manufactures.

There are many good arguments for protectionism. These arguments are in fact much better than the free-trade patter talk used to indoctrinate college economics students. Of all the branches of today’s mainstream economics, free-trade theory is the most unrealistic. If it were realistic, Britain, the United States and Germany never would have risen to world industrial power. (I review the fallacies of free-trade theory in Trade, Development and Foreign Debt.)

Economic history provides a long and successful pedigree of good arguments for protective tariffs. Britain created its empire by protectionism, stifling manufactures in the United States as long as it pursued free trade. After the Civil War ended, America built up its industry and agriculture by protectionism, as did Germany and France. (I discuss the strategy in America’s Protectionist Takeoff: 1815-1914.)

But as each of these nations became world leaders, they sought to pull up the ladder and prevent other countries from protecting their own industry and agriculture. So they changed to “free trade imperialism.” The aim of industrial leaders is to convince other countries not to regulate or plan their own markets, but to let the United States engineer an asymmetrical trade policy whose aim is to make other countries dependent on its food exports and monopoly exports, while opening their markets to U.S. companies.

Since the 1920s the protectionist economies that came to support free trade have rewritten history to white out how they got rich. The strategy of protectionism has been forgotten. Trump’s so-called protective tariffs against steel and aluminum are the antithesis to every principle of protectionism. That is why they are so self-destructive.

A really nationalistic trade strategy is to buy raw materials cheaply, and sell finished manufactured goods at a high value-added price.

The idea of industrial protectionism, from British free trade in the 19th century to U.S. trade strategy in the 20th century, was to obtain raw materials in the cheapest places – by making other countries compete to supply them – and protect your high-technology manufactures where the major capital investment, profits and monopoly rents are.

Trump is doing the reverse: He’s increasing the cost of steel and aluminum raw materials inputs. This will squeeze the profits of industrial companies using steel and aluminum – without protecting their markets.

In fact, other countries are now able to legally raise their tariffs to protect their highest-technology sectors that might be most threatened by U.S. exports. Harley Davidson motorcycles have been singled out. They also can block U.S. monopoly exports, such as bourbon and Levi blue jeans, or pharmaceuticals. Or, China can block whatever U.S. technology it decides it wants to compete with.

Trump’s tariff threats caused short-term aluminum prices to jump by 40 percent, and steel prices by about 33 percent. This raises the price of these materials to U.S. manufacturers, squeezing their profits. Foreign manufacturers will not have their material prices increased, and so can out-compete with U.S. steel- or aluminum-using rivals. The global oversupply in fact may make the price of steel and aluminum decline in foreign markets. So foreign industry will gain a cost advantage.

On top of that, foreign countries can legally raise tariffs in their own markets – for whatever industries they deem will best gain from this advantage.

Trump’s tariffs will not induce new capital investment in steel or aluminum

America’s logic behind protective tariffs after the Civil War ended the Southern free-trade policies was that tariff protection would create a price umbrella enabling U.S. manufacturers to invest in plant and equipment. Britain already had made these sunk costs, so the United States had to include the cost of capital in its revenue.

That’s how America built up its steel industry, chemical industry and other manufacturing industries.

But no steel or aluminum company is likely to invest more or hire more U.S. labor as a result of higher tariff revenues. These companies may raise their prices, but neither investment nor trickle-down effects are likely.

For one thing, aluminum is made out of electricity, and America is a high-cost producer. Alcan – America’s largest supplier – has a rip-off deal with Iceland, getting electricity almost for nothing.

For steel, it takes a long time to build a modern steel mill. No company will do this without an assured market. Trump’s tariff increases do not guarantee that.

America’s policy of breaking international agreements (we’re the “indispensable nation”)

Few companies, labor groups or banks in New York City have been willing to trust Mr. Trump in recent years. He should have called his book “The Art of BREAKING THE deal.” That’s how he made his money. He would sign an agreement with suppliers to his hotels or other buildings, and then offer only 80 cents (or less) on the dollar. He’d tell them, in effect: “You want to sue? That will cost you $50,000 to get into court, and then wait three or four years, by which time we’ll have made enough money to pay you on the cheap.”

Bank lenders had as much trouble getting paid as did Trump’s hapless suppliers. He made his fortune this way – so successfully that he seems to believe that he can use the same strategy in international diplomacy, just as he’s threatening to break the Iran agreement.

Will this work? Or are foreign economies coming to view the United States as “not agreement-capable”? In fact, will U.S. companies themselves believe that agreements signed today will still be honored tomorrow?

Trump’s national security ploy to bypass Congressional authority over trade policy

This is not the first time the United States has raised tariffs unilaterally. George W. Bush did it. And my 1979 book, Global Fracture, describes U.S. protectionism in the 1970s against other countries. America did it again and again.

But Trump has introduced some new twists. First of all, former U.S. protectionism had Congressional backing. But Trump has bypassed Congress, no doubt aware that steel-using and aluminum-using industries can mobilize Congressional support against Trump.

So Trump has used the one play available to the Executive Branch: the National Security umbrella. In a great mind-expansion exercise, he claims that it would be a loss of national security to depend on neighboring Canada, Mexico, or allies such as South Korea and Japan for steel and aluminum. If he can convince a kangaroo trade court, this loophole is indeed allowed under WTO rules (GATT Article XXI). The idea was to apply to times of war or other great crisis. But U.S. steel and aluminum production has been steady for over a decade, and there seems to be no military or economic crisis affecting national security.

Suppose Trump gets away with it. Other countries can play this “national security” game. Any economic activity can be deemed national security, because every economy is an overall system, with every given part affecting all the others. So Trump has opened the door for overall asymmetrical jockeying for position. The most likely arena may be high-technology and military-related sectors.

Back in the 1980s this was called “Uncle Sucker” patter talk – acting as if the United States was the exploited party, not the exploiting actor in international trade and investment. Ultimately at issue is how much policy asymmetry the rest of the world is willing to tolerate. Can the United States still push other countries around as it has done for so many years? How far can America push its one-sided agreements before other countries break away?

Each foreign country threatened with loss of steel or aluminum exports has a more high-tech industry that it would like to protect against U.S. competition. The response is likely to be asymmetrical.

And here at home, how long will higher manufacturing industries back Mr. Trump and his policy that makes a travesty of “smart” protectionism?

Military Affairs

The USA Needs a War to Survive

March 13, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

By Lacyon Days:

The USA needs a War to survive, if they can’t force in a single world currency (their plan all along) they’ll collapse into never-ending debt with never-ending inflation rendering them hopelessly bankrupt.

They’ve had a plan for well over sixty years that if they can gain full world military dominance they can then introduce/force a single world currency (What this is ALL about) …The effect as such would see the US overnight become completely debt free (explains the enormous military overspending and explains their willingness to allow China to purchase so many US bonds) and would see them achieve full global military control as well as full global financial control (a very nice achievement many might argue – in other words for those people that don’t know). That effectively means ‘American Tyranny’ and that’s no different from Nazi tyranny.

The trick is that the US dollar is the world ‘reserve currency’ and is currently used by most other countries to purchase their oil/gas/energy etc, meaning that billions if not trillions of dollars are kept by countries for their energy purchasing, which allowed the US to print more and more dollars without showing the true rate of Inflation that would normally arise from such massive currency printing. Now, because so much of the US currency sits in vaults all over the world as a reserve currency in order to purchase countries’ energy, it would never find its way into the actual US economy meaning the US could hold their level of Inflation right down from what it really should be.

Here’s the huge problem we’re now seeing: countries like Russia, China, Iran, lots of Europe and many more now want to sell/buy their energy in different currencies not just the US dollar, meaning that each country who now trades in other currencies, whether it be the Yuan, the Ruble or the Euro will start to dump the dollars they held for energy purchasing and will replace them with the currency they’re going to use. The problem for the US is when those billions if not trillions of dollars start to filter back into the US economy (as is now happening) the Inflation now explodes as it can’t be hidden anymore. It would see the likes of a loaf of bread skyrocket to over $200 and would bankrupt them United States overnight. This is exactly why we’re seeing this attempt to drag Russia into a war because obviously, they didn’t believe Russia could become a threat to them again and they can’t force a single currency with the likes of Russia and her nuclear threat saying get lost.

They nearly had it done with the collapse of the USSR…What a bonus that was, it meant they could do it without war!!

But they messed that right up because they took their eye off one man – Putin.
The United States REALLY believed they had finished off Russia after the collapse of the USSR to the point Russia could never be a threat to them again, they helped keep Russia in a state of pandemonium through Yeltsin’s reign believing they had sealed Russia’s fate to the toilet.

When Putin came to power the US could not work him out, but when they invaded Iraq and Putin (craftily as it bought him time) did not veto them they believed they had Russia under their control and Putin was just a pushover like Yeltsin. (History will see Putin’s tactic of not vetoing the Iraq invasion as genius as it really fooled the US and that really damaged their plans).

Because while the US was invading countries all over the world with no one to stop them, Putin was quietly building Russia an extremely effective military defence and upgraded all Russian weaponry to a level able to hold its own if not beat any nation on the planet.

The US blind to this, carried on as they used NATO to murder Gadaffi, as they kept Iraq destabilised by transferring known terrorist commanders into Iraq from Guantanamo Bay in the hundreds to help keep it in chaos.

They then set their sights on Syria, and were preparing for a ground invasion as with Iraq when all of a sudden Putin vetoed that action! That stunned the US, stopped them in their tracks and they then took a close look at Russia again.

When the US understood how they misread Putin they then set out to demonise him in the West and globally the propaganda got so bad it could have been written by a spotty American teenager going through puberty.

But it left the US unable to use ground troops in Syria.

This is when we saw the US and the EU start in Ukraine, we saw the US CIA and their neo-nazi recruited thugs start the marches and protests in Ukraine.

America, if you all remember were all upbeat about Yanukovich winning the Presidency because he had shown an interest in joining the EU, it was only when he decided to go to Russia and ask for a loan, and stated he was trying to work on a closer relationship with Russia, did all this really kick off, then these CIA-led thugs murdered people, started murdering random people at will, they bombed Kiev while claiming Yanukovich was a thief a tyrant and Putin’s puppet (yet they said none of this when he showed an interest in the EU, all these accusations only started after he asked Russia for support) they forced Yanukovich to flee to Russia in fear of his life.

They then got the parliament to impeach him/Yanukovich (who were obviously under threat to do so, as the vote came back 300+ to zero).

The West who have caused all the trouble in Ukraine (knowingly and purposely, as Victoria Nuland’s phone call revealed to the world) blame Russia and in effect Illegally issue sanctions against Russia for something they have not been able to prove or even attempted to prove as in reality it’s just a financial tool used many times by the US and its vassals but it shows Russia how far they’re prepared to go to force war.

In Syria the US decided to use proxy’s in the form of terrorists, they recruited, trained, armed, paid and then sent these terrorists into Syria to murder people, everyday normal people, working people, people just like you or I, they murdered people in the streets, they took over towns and cities through Syria by murder and butchery. I remember seeing them stood on street corners dressed in black standing around burnt out cars with their rifles at their sides, there were bodies of naked raped women and their children just lying murdered on the side of the roads.

They were the Free Syria Army, only at that time nobody knew they were recruited, trained, armed and very well paid by the US, we only found that out after Russia went into Syria three years after.

Yes, that’s right, the US is responsible for all the devastation, murder, rape, and terrorism of people just like us, they caused it purposely, and don’t forget this was all long before the so-called ISIS crossed over in from Iraq!

This is ALL about America’s attempt at global military and financial dominance. And with this insane EU/NATO stance, it seems that if the US collapses then so does the Euro and maybe the Pound.

Things have dramatically changed and changed to such an extent it sees us becoming exactly what we fought two worlds wars to prevent.
That’s the bottom line of what we’re really facing.

Putin knows all he needs is time, he must avoid getting into a war with the US but never lay down to them. He knows sooner rather than later it’s all got to start to collapse, so he’ll try to avoid war and let them crumble (After all Russia had to start again, they did not cause a war, they just collapsed) but the US know that’s what he’s doing, so we see them provoke and provoke Russia, they’ve non-stop encroached further and further towards Russia’s borders using NATO’s ridiculous excuse of protecting the Baltic’s from Russian aggression.

Putin knows exactly what the US wants and has always known this was coming, everything he’s done shows this very clearly. If not for his wisdom the US would have already provoked WW3.

If any of this had happened at any other time In history you can be positive the former USSR would have fired nuclear weapons at the US already, and with every damn right to do so.

We’ve witnessed Putin three times clearly warn them to stop this nonsense and the US have purposely ignored him every time. Because the US doesn’t want compromise, they don’t want talks, they don’t want peace, they must have war or collapse!

This is the truth no one wants to admit! You only need to remember … For all Western governments and media to be following the same scripted lies (unprecedented in history) you simply must know the reason is huge! …It Is!

Cultural/Ideological Divide

‘Something Ominous’ Happening to Men in America

March 13, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

Breitbart

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson launched his series about men in America and how statistics show men are falling behind their female counterparts in many areas.

He warned “something ominous” was underway regarding men in this country, which Carlson argued was not given the attention it deserves by media and academia.

Transcript as follows:

You hear a lot in America about the “war on women,” but it’s men in America who are failing. We have some shocking statistics:

The signs are everywhere. If you’re a middle-aged man, you probably know a peer who has killed himself in recent years. At least one. If you’re a parent, you may have noticed that your daughter’s friends seem a little more on the ball than your son’s. They get better grades. They smoke less weed. They go to more prestigious colleges. If you’re an employer, you may have noticed that your female employees show up on time, whereas the young men often don’t. And of course, if you live in this country, you’ve just seen a horrifying series of mass shootings, far more than we’ve ever had. Women didn’t do that. In every case, the shooter was a man.

Something ominous is happening to men in America. Everyone who pays attention knows that. What’s odd is how rarely you hear it publicly acknowledged. Our leaders pledge to create more opportunities for women and girls, whom they imply are failing. Men don’t need help. They’re the patriarchy. They’re fine. More than fine.

But are they fine? Here are the numbers:

Start with the most basic, life and death. The average American man will die five years before the average American woman. One of the reasons for this is addiction. Men are more than twice as likely as women to become alcoholics. They’re also twice as likely to die of a drug OD. In New Hampshire, one of the states hit hardest by the opioid crisis, 73 percent of overdose deaths were men.

But the saddest reason for shortened life spans is suicide. Seventy-seven percent of all suicides are committed by men. The overall rate is increasing at a dramatic pace. Between 1997 and 2014, there was a 43 percent rise in suicide deaths among middle-aged American men. The rates are highest among American Indian and white men, who kill themselves at about ten times the rate of Hispanic and black women.

You often hear of America’s incarceration crisis. That’s almost exclusively a male problem too. Over 90 percent of inmates are male.

These problems are complex, and they start young. Relative to girls, boys are failing in school. More girls than boys graduate high school. Considerably more go to and graduate from college. Boys account for the overwhelming majority of school discipline cases. One study found that fully one in five high school boys had been diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder, compared with just one in 11 girls. Many were medicated for it. The long-term health effects of those medications aren’t fully understood, but they appear to include depression in later life.

Women decisively outnumber men in graduate school. They earn the majority of doctoral degrees. They are now the majority of new enrollees in both law and medical schools.

For men, the consequences of failing in school are profound. Between 1979-2010, working-age men with only high school degrees saw their real hourly wages drop about 20 percent. Over the same period, high school educated women saw their wages rise. The decline of the industrial economy disproportionately hurt men.

There are now 7 million working-age American men who are no longer in the labor force. They’ve dropped out. Nearly half of them take pain medication on any given day. That’s the highest rate in the world by far.

Far fewer young men get married than did just a few decades ago, and fewer stay married. About one in five American children live with only their mothers. That’s double the rate in 1970. Millions more boys are growing up without fathers. Young adult men are now more likely to live with a parent than with a spouse or partner. That is not the case for young women. Single women buy their own homes at more than twice the rate of single men. More women than men now have drivers licenses.

Whenever gender differences come up in public debate, the so-called wage gap dominates the conversation. A woman makes 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s the statistic you’ll hear a lot. It’s repeated everywhere. But that number compares all American men to all American women across all professions. No legitimate social scientist would consider that a valid or meaningful measure. The number is both meaningless and intentionally misleading. It’s a talking point.

Once you compare men and women with similar experience working the same hours in similar jobs for the same period of time — and that’s the only way you can measure it — the gap all but disappears. In fact, it may invert. One study using census data found that single women in their 20s living in metropolitan areas now earn 8 percent more on average than their male counterparts. By the way, the majority of managers are now women. Women on average are scoring higher on IQ tests than men are.

Eveb physically men are falling behind. A recent study found that almost half of young men failed the Army’s entry-level physical fitness test during basic training. Fully seventy percent of American men are overweight or obese, as compared to 59 percent of American women.

Perhaps most terrifyingly, men seem to be becoming less male — fundamentally, measurably. Sperm counts across the west have plummeted, down almost 60 percent since the early 1970s. Scientists don’t know why. Testosterone levels in men have also fallen precipitously. One study found that the average levels of male testosterone dropped by 1 percent every year after 1987. And it is unrelated to age. The average 40-year-old-man in 2017 would have testosterone levels 30 percent lower than the average 40-year-old man in 1987.

There is no upside to this trend. Lower testosterone levels in men are associated with depression, lethargy, weight gain and decreased cognitive ability. Nothing like this has ever happened to a population this big. You’d think we’d want to know what exactly is going on and how to fix it. Yet the media ignore the story. It’s considered a fringe topic.

Nor is it a priority in the scientific research establishment. We checked and couldn’t find a single NIH-funded study on why testosterone levels are falling. We did find a study on, quote, “Pubic Hair Grooming Prevalence and Motivation Among Women in the United States.”

So, those are the numbers and they paint a very clear picture: American men are failing, in body, mind, and spirit. This is a crisis. Yet our leaders pretend it’s not happening. And in fact, they tell us the opposite is true: Women are victims, men are oppressors. To question that assumption is to risk punishment. Even as women far outpace men in higher education, for example, virtually every college campus supports a women’s studies department, whose core goal is to attack male power. Our politicians and business leaders internalize and amplify that message. Men are privileged. Women are oppressed. Hire and promote and reward accordingly.

That would be fine if it were true. But it’s not true. At best, it’s an outdated view of an America that no longer exists. At worst, it’s a pernicious lie.

Either way, ignoring the decline of men doesn’t help anyone. Men and women need each other. One cannot exist without the other. That’s elemental biology, but it’s also the reality each of us has lived, with our parents and siblings and friends. When men fail, all of us suffer. How did this happen? How can we fix it? We hope this series answers those questions.

Cold War, Original Thinking

The New Commonwealth

March 11, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

By Claudiu A. Secara

The New Commonwealth

For anyone who has followed closely the events in Eastern Europe for the past thirty years, the systematic absence of one possible scenario from the mainstream media dialog is baffling – namely that today’s Russian troubles may be only a shield behind which a more powerful regeneration is in progress. The New York Times Magazine, August 10 1997, brings up one of many questions to which modern history awaits a convincing answer. On the occasion of former Defense Secretary McNamara’s revisiting Vietnam, it reminds us of one such unelucidated inconsistency: “If the reason [for the war in Vietnam] was to fight communism, why did the U.S. not help China in 1949, or why did the U.S. not help the Batista regime in Cuba in 1959?”
There are indeed significant and puzzling inconsistencies in the story of the Soviet Union’s “collapse.” Consider the artfulness, bordering on the Machiavellian, and the lengthy effort that went into its demise and one has sufficient grounds for a different tale. The process of “collapse,” basically from 1983 on, came about as the country’s establishment applied blow after blow to the highly coherent and resilient Soviet system. The most intriguing aspect of this incredible series of events is that behind it was the political will of the elite – the Soviet elite who had decided that the Soviet system must be dismembered, while the so-called disgruntled masses played a minor role. That amounts, but only on a superficial look, to the impression that the elite itself might have voluntarily decided to dismantle and demobilize its own lines of defense and submit to a condition of servitude to the rest of the world. On the contrary, I am not only in agreement those who ascribe perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet system to the Soviet elite, but I suggest that today’s troubles are not a result of a failed perestroika but are only Phase II of a highly successful perestroika.
From socialism to capitalism and back to a superior form of socialism is how the old Marxist dialecticians would phrase it. By compromising both models – the old communist orthodoxy as well as the newer aspirant, casino capitalism – the power establishment makes it possible to bring the country safely back to socialist capitalism.
But if one accepts this hypothesis, then it becomes the premise of an unsettling line of reasoning. The elite of the second most powerful corporation in the world, the Soviet Union, must have had a self- serving reason to take such risks and must as well have had the opportunity to reformulate its modus operandi.
If this is so, the further implication would be that the “collapse” was possible not in reaction to a stronger U.S. but precisely because the other superpower also showed every sign of weakness and crisis so that it could not mount any credible offensive, economically or militarily, while the Soviet Union went through its own version of the Great Depression en route toward economic restructuring and political modernization.
The most plausible interpretation of the series of international issues of the 1980s (the new economic assertiveness of Western Europe and Japan, the war in Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq craze, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the world debt crisis, etc.) is that they were already setting the framework for a future covenant – “the new world order” – between the former superpowers, to their mutual advantage. That presupposes an early, even pre-1980, agreed armistice and rethinking of the exhausting confrontation.
If Russia was in a position to let down its guard to the extent that we are witnessing today, it was only because it found itself not in a weak position but in the strongest military-strategic position in its history, free from imminent outside threat as enshrined at Helsinki in the 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Given its control of the world’s richest reserves of oil, gas, nuclear material, and raw materials, together with its educated professionals, an unmatched nuclear arsenal*, space technology leadership, etc. – all Russia needed was to repackage its system as a benevolent system, to make it into a soothing and attractive social and economic model, to launch a successful public relations scheme. To succeed at that would be worth the costs and the risks!
From such a strategic viewpoint one may infer that the dismantling of the Soviet Union was only the first step of the former Soviet elite’s new policy of Soviet “market” outreach to the West as well as to the South.
In the west, Western Europe today seems at its zenith; however, its fate may well have been determined by (1) its military emasculation (by the Treaty of European Conventional Arms Reduction, the 1988 Soviet-U.S. Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement and START II) and (2) its dependency on Russian-controlled oil and gas. In the south, oil producing Iran and Iraq, isolated by the United States’ Middle East diplomacy, are quietly and slowly sliding further into the deadly embrace of the northern bear.**
The centuries long Russian-Anglo-American love-hate relationship has been evolving dramatically from late 1978 until today, that is clear. However, one might notice that it is being redesigned in such a way as to accommodate in the long run a more assertive, more successful and more powerful Russia overlording its European and southern peripheries.
A first sketch of such an analysis I presented in 1992 at the ISA conference in Atlanta. For a more detailed analysis of the historical background, of the economic, military and political circumstances of such a probable scenario, you are invited to read the following pages.
New York, August 21, 1997
—————————————-
Notes:

According to Komsomolskaya Pravda on August 7, 1997: “More than $12.8 billion has been allocated for funding our programs for the creation of new types of weapons this year (the entire military budget amounts to $19 billion).” According to sources from Rosvooruzheniye, a military related consortium, the present high-priority strategic programs include: “Topol-M2 mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (an upgraded version of the SS-25 missile, which was put into mass production at the end of last year); a new tactical nuclear arms system capable under combat conditions of firing nuclear warheads over a distance of 400 kilometers (the system was tested successfully at the end of 1995); ultra-small nuclear warheads weighing less than 90 kilograms, which are already being manufactured; seven Borey-class submarines armed with the D-31 new ballistic missiles.
In addition, Russia’s military laboratories are developing laser and radio-frequency weapons.”
** Notice the events taking place unremarked in the mainstream press:
– In March 1997, the Iraqi parliament ratified a 23–year oil contract with Moscow allowing a Russian oil consortium headed by LUKoil to develop reserves estimated at 7–8 billion barrels in Iraq’s southern Qurna oil field, Iraqi media reported. Russia is to spend $200 million on activities related to the project and extend credit worth $100 million to Iraq.
– In August 1997, Interfax reported a joint venture between Russia and Iran to construct a major trade port in the village of Olya in Astrakhan Oblast, in the Volga delta, 95 kilometers from Astrakhan and 45 kilometers from the Caspian coast. On completion, the port will handle 10 million tons of freight annually. The first new facilities, scheduled to be completed by 2000, will have an annual capacity of 2 million tons.
– In August 1997, Russian oil companies concluded a series of deals with Baghdad to buy more than 30 million barrels of Iraqi oil under the UN’s so-called “food for oil” arrangement. Among them, Zarubezhneft, LUKoil, Rosneft, and Alfa-Eko led the way; each will buy more than 5.5 million barrels of oil.

Cold War

Still Raising Questions: How Angela Merkel Started Her Career In German Politics

March 9, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

Submitted by Socrates F. Bach,

Angela Merkel is considered to be the world’s most powerful woman and perhaps Europe’s most powerful person. She’s about to be re-elected as Germany’s Chancellor for the fourth consecutive time. Her policies have provoked a lot of debate, from Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy over the Eurozone bailouts onto her refugee policies.

What has received much less attention is how she entered politics. A number of biographies have been written about her, with the most critical one perhaps being “the first life of Angela M”, written in 2013 by a journalist for Die Welt who later joined the rightwing populist AfD party. This centered on how she was a member of the FDJ, the communist youth organization, when she was at school, and how she later served as cultural secretary for the FDJ while working as a physicist at the Academy of Sciences, leading to Merkel denying this role included propaganda.

To be fair to her: in any case, she wasn’t a politically active avid Communist trying to make a career in the German Democratic Republic. That however changed with the “Wende”, the period during which the Berlin wall fell and Eastern Germany was absorbed into the West.

During that period, Merkel made a blitz career in politics, morphing from a stuffy Eastern German researcher in November 1989 to entering the German Bundestag in 1990, in order to be appointed shortly after as Minister for Women and Youth in the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in January 1991.

What’s really intriguing here is how she achieved this.

Merkel’s first job in politics

Her first job in politics wasn’t a great success. In February 1990, she had become the spokeswoman of the “Democratic Awakening”, an East German political movement and political party which was founded in October 1989. The party didn’t do well in the first democratic Eastern German elections in 1990, only collecting 0.9% of votes. This was because its chairman, Wolfgang Schnur, had to confess to having been an informer for the feared and ruthless Ministry for State Security (Stasi) for more than two decades. A few days before the election, he had to resign, as this wasn’t exactly a great sales pitch for an Eastern German pro-democracy movement. The man was later criminally convicted as well.

How did Merkel end up there? According to her predecessor as party spokeswoman for Democratic Awakening”, Christiane Ziller, who stepped down along with some other more left leaning people over the decision of the party convention to adopt a more conservative program, “there wasn’t any democratic legitimacy [as to how Merkel was appointed], as far as I know. Her appointment was one of these discretionary decisions by Schnur”, the later disgraced party chairman. Ziller, who otherwise speaks positively about Merkel in an interview with die Welt and later joined the German greens, mentions how Merkel “remained a stranger within the opposition network in the German Democratic Republic”.

Merkel had joined the opposition movement Democratic Awakening only after the Berlin wall fell, on 9 November 1989. She has never claimed to have been an active dissident before the wall fell.

The Democratic Awakening was based on existing politically active church groups and that’s where Merkel’s father, Horst Kasner, comes in. He was a pastor, who had moved from Hamburg to East Berlin in 1954, when already a lot of people had fled the Communist regime. Eastern German official documents describe him as “an opponent” of the regime, but later his nickname seems to have evolved into “red Kasner”, as he was then campaigning for the Eastern German Church to be split off from the Western Germany Evangelical Church in a bid to reconcile Christianity and “socialism”, as the Communists called their ideology. This was very much something the Eastern German regime desired, as cutting Church ties with the West would strengthen their grip on the Church, which was a vehicle to oppose the regime.

Some sources describe Merkel’s father as someone who toed the regime line within the Eastern Germany Church community, although it must be said that other sources contradict this. Gerd Langguth, a former European Commission representative in Germany, takes the former line and when writing the obituary of Merkel’s father in Die Welt, he points out that, unlike the children in other pastors’ families, the higher education of Kasner’s children, including Angela Merkel, was not impeded, a sign that he may have been quite friendly towards the regime. He writes that Kasner may well have taken this conciliatory stance for the good of his children. One biography of Merkel even claims that she enjoyed special treatment at school thanks to her father’s connections. It’s hard to know of course, and can we really blame a father to do everything for his children?

Instead of speculating, let’s stay to the facts. One of these facts is that Wolfgang Schnur, the leader of the first Eastern German opposition party who was later unvealed as a Stasi, has been pretty clear that he employed Angela Merkel because her father was a lifelong friend.

Schnur was active in the Synod of the Federation of the Protestant Churches in the GDR and as an attorney he defended many Eastern German political dissidents in the 1980s. This may have helped this Stasi man to infiltrate so deeply into the Eastern German opposition movement that he emerged as one of its leaders when the wall came down. For what it’s worth: he has claimed to be acting against Stasi advice in joining the opposition movement.

In any case, perhaps unknowingly, Merkel has her first job in politics to thank due to the regime connections of her father.

Merkel’s second job in politics

After that, also for Merkel’s second jobs in politics she ends up working for a politician who didn’t only have to step down over suspected Stasi links but who also comes out of the world of Eastern-German Church politics. That is Lothar de Maiziere, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Eastern Germany.

When Merkel had to find a new way in politics after the Democratic Awakening had been crushed in March 1990 due to the Stasi – connections of its leader, she was appointed as deputy spokesman for Lothar de Maiziere, in April 1990, who was the leader of the Eastern German Christian Democration Union, a so-called “bloc party”, whose function it was to serve as a pretense of real democracy. He had just won the first democratic elections in Eastern Germany and was about to become Prime Minister. In a later interview, Lothar de Maiziere recalls how German Chancellor Kohl was easy to be convinced to merge the Eastern German CDU into the Western German one, despite some protest in his party, because, according to de Maiziere, “in all areas of the GDR we had an office (…) and we were able to conduct a comprehensive electoral campaign. The Chancellor was always open to such considerations”. Also the liberal party decided so, given the high number of members and despite some resistance.

Lothar’s cousin and Germany’s current Interior Minister Thomas de Mazière was also appointed to his cabinet in April 1990, closely working together there with Merkel. Thomas comes from the West-German wing of the family that had been estranged from the Eastern-German wing. Merkel and him both go back a long way, especially as Merkel appointed Thomas de Mazière to serve as her chief of staff when she became Chancellor in 2005.

According to Thomas, in 1990, he would have recommended his uncle to hire Merkel. Thomas had been impressed by her qualities at the press conference where Schnur’s resignation as the leader of “Democratic Awakening” was declared. That party was in an electoral association called “Alliance for Germany with Lothar de Mazière’s CDU. In a joint interview with his cousin, Lothar de Mazière makes clear that even before his cousin’s recommendation, Merkel had already impressed him, as she “was very good at moderating” between the “squabbling” different parties of the association.

Oddly, in this particular interview, Lothar de Mazière doesn’t mention that his father, Clemens de Mazière, and Merkel’s father knew each other. It’s also very likely that Lother himself knew Merkel’s father personally, as both had been prominent in Eastern German Church politics for years.

Lothar de Maizière’s father Clemens was the Eastern German Church’s lawyer, where he worked closely together with Merkel’s father to split the Eastern German Church off from its Western German counterpart. As said, this was a policy desired by the Eastern German regime. Clemens de Maizière was a shrewd Stasi-operator who apparently even betrayed his own family. After the war, Clemens had swiftly converted from Nazism to Communism as he had once belonged to Adolf Hitler’s “Sturmabteilung”, with membership number 3952867. Just to give a bit of background on politics in Communist Eastern Germany.

As mentioned, Merkel’s father may well only have cooperated with the regime to prevent worse and for the good of his family. He may not even have been aware that Clemens de Maizière was a Stasi man. If that would be the case, how tragic it must have been when his daughter’s boss and Clemens’ son, Lothar de Maizière, was accused of having been a Stasi operator in December 1990, resulting in his resignation as Eastern German Prime Minister. Lothar de Maizière would have worked for the Stasi since 1981, the year after his father Clemens, a long-time Stasi asset, had passed away, as he also took over his father’s role of the Eastern German Church’s lawyer. Before he went into active politics, Lothar de Maizière, was the vice president of the synod of the Association of Protestant Churches in the GDR. How likely is it that he would not have known Merkel’s father?

In a nutshell: Merkel may well have gotten her second job because the Democratic Awakening had been in a pre-election alliance with the Eastern German CDU and because she did such an impressive job dealing with journalists when the Democratic Awakening was in crisis. But apart from that, there is something very intriguing about the direct and indirect connections between her father and her first two political bosses.

Did Merkel use her father’s Church policy connections to get her first two jobs in politics, twice working for people who had to resign over Stasi allegations? Did her father know or suspect they were? Did Merkel herself know or suspect? Questions abound. According to one critical biography of Merkel, right after the wall had fallen, she actually started to emancipate herself from her father who was “deeply enmeshed into the system of German Democratic Republic”. One example is how she did not join the social democrats, like her mother, but the Democratic Awakening, which had an alliance with Helmut Kohl’s conservatives.

Shouldn’t this have been investigated more deeply? Lothar de Mazière is still alive. Despite all the indications, he maintains he wasn’t secret Stasi agent “Czernie”. Then, it was De Maiziere’s government which ordered the destruction of Stasi computer tapes. The West-German government hadbeen warned even before the elections in March 1990 about possible Stasi connections of the CDU lead candidate in Eastern Germany but because of his membership of the CDU, this may not have been thoroughly researched, according to Stasi-expert and Die Welt-journalist Uwe Müller.

Both Schnur and Lothar de Mazière emerged as leaders of the Eastern German opposition movement before having to step down because of Stasi accusations. Both brought Angela Merkel to the fore. There are the Stasi archives, the many people who were involved in the Democratic Awakening and Eastern Germany’s CDU, people within Eastern Germany’s Church community. Doesn’t this deserve more investigation?

Maybe the only thing that can be concluded here will be that Merkel was lucky enough to be able to use her father’s dodgy political connections to launch her career. To be fair, without wanting to claim that no proper evidence can be presented to counter that claim: everything points in that direction. Isn’t that something interesting?

This is almost 30 years later. But has there been a proper debate in Germany over the role of the Stasi and its network during and after the unification of Germany? Even if the regime’s network would have only played a very minimal, almost accidental role in kickstarting Angela Merkel’s career: shouldn’t this be out in the open?

It’s commonly accepted that in the “East Block” countries that abandoned Communism, there was a lot of continuity also after 1990. Not only are there Putin and his KGB buddies who are ruling Russia. The frustration that many who were high up in Communist Poland haven’t seen their careers squashed is at the heart of Poland’s rule of law reforms – or at least the Polish government uses this public concern as the excuse to crack down on a justice system. One in four Eastern Germans was a member of the Stasi, which has been described as “worse than the Gestapo” by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, The Christian democratic, liberal and social democratic “bloc parties” of Eastern Germany– which must have been infested with Stasi influences – were absorbed into Western Germany’s political system. Is it really surprising that the old elites managed to help each other in the politically turbulent period when Germany was unified?

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Trump Trade Wars Are A Perfect Smokescreen For A Market Crash

March 8, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com

First, I would like to say that the timing of Donald Trump’s announcement on expansive trade tariffs is unusual if not impeccable.

I say this only IF Trump’s plan was to benefit establishment globalists by giving them perfect cover for their continued demolition of the market bubbles that they have engineered since the crash of 2008.

If this was not his plan, then I am a bit bewildered by what he hopes to accomplish. It is certainly not the end of trade deficits and the return of American industry. But let’s explore the situation for a moment…

Trump is in my view a modern day Herbert Hoover. One of Hoover’s first actions as president in response to fiscal tensions of 1929 was to support increased tax cuts, primarily for corporations (this was then followed in 1932 by extensive tax increases in the midst of the depression, so let’s see what Trump does in the next couple of years). Then, he instituted tariffs through the Smoot-Hawley Act. His hyperfocus on massive infrastructure spending resulted in U.S. debt expansion and did nothing to dig the U.S. out of its unemployment abyss. In fact, infrastructure projects like the Hoover Dam, which were launched in 1931, were not paid off for over 50 years. Hoover oversaw the beginning of the Great Depression and ended up as a single-term Republican president who paved the way socially for Franklin D. Roosevelt, an essential communist and perhaps the worst president in American history.

This is not to say Hoover was responsible for the Great Depression. That distinction goes to the Federal Reserve, which had artificially lowered interest rates and then suddenly raised them going into the economic downturn causing an aggressive bubble implosion (just like the central bank is doing right now). But Hoover did actually aid the Fed in their undermining of economic stability by pursuing policies which were poorly timed.

I’m hitting readers with all of this because I am growing rather tired of the contingent of Trump apologists in the liberty movement scrambling to defend every single Trump action no matter how illogical. These people should know better. Sorry, but Trump is not “playing 4D chess” against the globalists. His primary initiatives have only served so far to create a useful distraction away from the globalists.

The disturbing key to all of this is the fact that many of Trump’s policies are things that I and many others have argued for in the past. The problem is, he is implementing them out of order and with bad timing, which will only make such policies appear destructive in the end, rather than constructive.

In terms of the implementation of tariffs, the people who are defending this action at this time do not seem to understand the basics of international trade. Tariffs can only be enacted from a position of economic strength and resource development. This strength comes from internal self-sufficiency in production; meaning, in order for the U.S. to force a trade balance (which is what tariffs are supposed to do) the U.S. must have a strong industrial base and MUST be capable of producing most if not all necessary goods and goods in broad demand.

The fact is, U.S. manufacturing has been utterly outsourced by the very corporations Trump just gave a 10% tax cut to, and rebuilding that industrial base would take decades. Why? Because there are no incentives for corporations to bring manufacturing back.

As I already stated, Trump is instituting potentially solid policies but he is doing so out of order. Tax cuts for corporations should have been enacted only as an incentive for manufacturing jobs to be returned to America. Instead, corporations got tax cuts for absolutely nothing. And will those tax cuts go towards more jobs or innovation? Nope. They will be going to pay off unprecedented corporate debts, and stock buybacks, most of which were accrued through borrowing from the Federal Reserve.

Will this stock buyback bonanza even generate new highs in the Dow? Probably not. But I’ll explain why that is later.

If Trump had given tax incentives for corporations to bring manufacturing back into the U.S., and then given those corporations a few years to make the shift, only then would tariffs have been an effective action. But as the situation stands now, we have minimal tangible production in this country, and, historic debts held by the same overseas competitors that Trump is now seeking to “teach a lesson.”

Debt is the next issue which needs to be addressed before tariffs can ever be implemented in a practical way. In terms of national debt, rather than setting up a plan to reduce U.S. debt expenditures, Trump is increasing debt by reducing taxes while at the same time increasing spending. Trump did not take a hard stand on the debt ceiling debate as he originally claimed he would, and so, the debt train continues unabated.

Who is going to purchase this debt, I wonder? Over the past several years the largest buyer of U.S. treasury debt was the Federal Reserve through fiat money creation. Now, the Fed has tapered quantitative easing and is dumping their balance sheet at a rate faster than anyone expected. The Fed is pulling the plug on its artificial support of the economy.

The next largest buyers are major foreign central banks in countries like China, Japan and to some extent the supranational EU. If the debt buyers of last resort are now the very same countries Trump is seeking to enact tariffs over, how do you think this little theater will end? Yes, with a dump of U.S. treasury bonds and perhaps the dollar as world reserve by those nations.

But what about the U.S. consumer? Isn’t the consumer market in America so enticing that nations like China would “never dare” dump U.S. debt or the dollar? No, not really. If we are talking about a trade “war,” then a country like China, which has a vast manufacturing base and which has also been building up its own domestic consumer market, would be willing to make the sacrifice. America would be hurt far more by the threat of debt default and the loss of the dollar’s international buying power than China ever would be by the loss of American consumers. With tariffs being implemented, they may lose the American consumer anyway.

Our retail market is hardly as appetizing as it was 10 years ago given the decade of drudgery Americans have endured, with the largest number ever of working age citizens no longer participating in the jobs market, as well as real worker wages in continued decline while the American consumer is now more indebted than at any other time in history.

All of these negative effects are weighing down our economy while the Federal Reserve is quickly deflating the fraudulent markets that the establishment used during the Obama administration to argue that America was “in recovery.” Of course, alternative economists have known since the beginning that this was a lie, and that the only thing propping up the economy and stock markets was central bank manipulation.

The Fed under Jerome Powell has made it crystal clear that they WILL be raising interest rates and cutting the Fed balance sheet, perhaps more than their dot plots had indicated in the past. Without low rates and a steadily rising balance sheet we have already seen the results. Stocks in particular have gone crazy compared to the past few years, dumping nearly 10% one week, spiking about half that the next week. One thing is certain, the supposedly endless bull market induced by the Fed years ago is now over. Stocks are in heart attack mode.

It is no coincidence that the first two times the Fed reduced its balance sheet the Dow plunged over 1,000 points. The latest dump of $23 billion at the end of February resulted in a drop of around 1,500 points. It is too early in this process to know what the trend will be, but it seems to me that stocks are being steam valved down every month. With a marked decline just after a balance sheet dump, followed by a less impressive dead cat bounce the week after.

In the meantime, Trump’s “trade war” is now being blamed in the mainstream for the decline in stocks that the Fed is actually responsible for. As I have always said, Trump is the ideal scapegoat for the inevitable economic crisis the central bankers have staged. Trump’s tariffs might exacerbate the problem, just as Hoover’s policies did in the beginning of the Great Depression, but the blame rests squarely on the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world. Will the average person understand this dynamic once the dust settles on our financial system? Probably not.

So, to summarize, while Trump has indeed set in motion policies that conservatives in general tend to approve of, he has done so in an impractical way that will ultimately be blamed for a market crash the Fed created. If conservative ideals such as limited government and sovereign trade protection get the blame for an unprecedented economic crisis then this could sabotage conservatism for generations to come. If elections are still even a factor as this crisis unfolds, the chances of the public accepting a socialistic nightmare regime after Trump exits the White House are high. And, the banking elites that conjured the whole mess will escape once again without any punishment.

The question we must ask is this – Is Trump aware that his policies are creating a perfect distraction for those same banking elites? I believe we will know for certain the answer to that before 2018 is over.

Cold War

Moldova’s Conflict: Unfreezing, In a Good Way? A mood of realism around the Transdniestria conflict, supported by Russia, is leading to areas of de facto integration. The Moldovan government is cautious, but this is an opportunity for more international engagement.

March 7, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

Carnegie Europe
http://carnegieeurope.eu
March 6, 2018

By Thomas de Waal
De Waal is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region.

The word “frozen” is applied misleadingly to the series of half-dozen unresolved conflicts in the post-Soviet space. None of them are properly frozen, especially in eastern Ukraine and Nagorny Karabakh, where people continue to be killed.

There was a literal deep freeze last week on both sides of the Dniester River, in both official government-controlled “right-bank Moldova” and Transdniestria, the slither of breakaway territory that is patronized by Moscow. Even the statue of Karl Marx outside the government building in the Transdniestrian capital Tiraspol seemed to shiver in icy subzero temperatures.

But in political terms the Transdniestrian conflict is also not frozen-and for a better reason. Things are moving under the surface, in a positive direction.

The Transdniestria conflict dates back to 1992, when the industrialized, generally Russian-speaking left-bank territory broke away from newly independent Moldova by force, with the support of Soviet troops. Since then, there has been a fierce ideological conflict between the two sides on many issues; but there has also been behind-the-scenes cooperation and almost no violence.

The “five-plus-two” negotiation process-which includes Moldova and Transdniestria, plus Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and the EU, and is run by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)-stalled for many years. That process restarted properly last November with the reopening for traffic of the long-closed Gura Bicului Bridge between the two sides of the river. That broke the ice, allowing the two sides to resolve several other long-standing disputes from a list of eight technical questions identified several years ago by the OSCE as priorities. They include the functioning of eight schools teaching the Moldovan language in the Latin script in Transdniestria.

On February 28, the two sides closed one more deal, agreeing a mechanism under which students’ diplomas from the university in Tiraspol can receive an “apostille”-official certification-from the Ministry of Justice in Moldova. That will allow European universities to accept individual Transdniestrian students to study with them, even if they do not recognize the university itself as a valid institution.

Resolution of two other issues on the list remains deadlocked. They are how to register Transdniestrian number plates that will allow cars from the territory to travel in Europe, with the consent of the Moldovan authorities; and an agreement on a single telecommunications market between Transdniestria and right-bank Moldova.

Mediators say that resolution of those two issues would be a template for agreement on public administration documents and economic convergence between the two-but they underline that it is Chisinau, not Tiraspol, which is being more stubborn.

Why the progress?

Some commentators, in Ukraine and beyond, like to warn that Russian-backed Transdniestria may threaten Ukraine from the west or that the rebel regions in eastern Ukraine may end up becoming a “second Transdniestria.”

But the East-West geopolitical template that fits Ukraine does not apply fully here. In my conversations on both banks of the river last week, everyone was keen to stress how different Moldova and Ukraine are.

“We have a mission here to create a zone of stability, not conflict,” Transdniestria’s de facto foreign minister, Vitaly Ignatiev, told me. Transdniestria, he said, was very different from the two rebel territories in eastern Ukraine.

In Chisinau, Ion Stavila, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large with responsibility for the conflict, agreed that their situation was very different from Ukraine, suggesting that the Ukraine conflict had made the Transdniestrians more flexible. “They feel pressure because of the geopolitical situation in the region,” he said.

There are two interrelated reasons for the progress.

Since December 2016, the de facto president of Transdniestria has been Vadim Krasnoselsky, the candidate of the Sheriff group, a conglomerate with a de facto monopoly of most business in the territory.

Sheriff has a more pragmatic, business-oriented attitude toward the conflict than its predecessors. Political rhetoric has dropped as a host of economic problems-emigration, poverty, and a big social benefits budget-have threatened Transdniestria with what one local called a looming “catastrophe.”

So long as certain “red lines” are maintained-Transdniestria keeps its Russian ideological orientation, and the small number of Russian troops still in the territory are maintained-that means the new authorities in Tiraspol are prepared to build many elements of a de facto common state with Moldova. In particular, Transdniestria, always the industrial base of Soviet Moldova, has joined the European Union’s Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with Moldova. Its factories now export far more to the EU and right-bank Moldova than they do to Russia.

Indeed, one reason why many in Chisinau are nervous about closing the deal drafted by the OSCE on an integrated telecoms market is that it would give the Sheriff-run Transdniestrian mobile phone company IDC roaming rights with Moldovan customers-thereby allowing a powerful economic player to begin to operate on the right bank of the river.

The other reason for progress is that-in sharp contrast to Ukraine- Russia has supported the five-plus-two talks. (As another sign that geopolitical dynamics work differently here, it should be noted in parenthesis that Michael Scanlan, the OSCE ambassador in Chisinau, who has been knocking heads together and effecting the diplomatic breakthrough, is, like his predecessors in that position, an American.)

Moscow has cut its direct funding to Tiraspol (maybe Ukraine is too expensive) and appears to have told Krasnoselsky that his government must work to achieve special status inside Moldova. The Russians are not altruists of course. They have another agenda, seeing political opportunities in Moldova as the governing PDM party, which has declared itself “pro-European,” and its de facto leader, Vlad Plahotniuc, have been tarnished by a string of corruption scandals.

Moscow seems to be focused on supporting the declaredly pro-Russian president of Moldova and leader of the Socialist Party, Igor Dodon, in the parliamentary elections at the end of 2018. Those elections are another reason why Chisinau is stalling on doing a deal. The Moldovan authorities see no benefit in being generous when the votes of the nationalist electorate are up for grabs.

More than anything, this reveals that the deepest issue in this conflict is: What kind of state does Moldova want to be, and where does Transdniestria fit into this state-building process? That is a long-term process. In the meantime, the mood of realism is a time of opportunity. It gives more space for international engagement with Transdniestria and more of a chance to integrate its economy and people into a world they have been isolated from for 25 years.

Carnegie Europe is grateful to the Government Offices of Sweden and the Robert Bosch Stiftung for their financial support of this publication.

Military Affairs

The Avangar Glider

March 6, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

‘…RE: The Avangar glider.

I don’t think the engineering is that difficult…’

Oh my…

Here is a little more coherent explanation…

Ceramic composites…the primary challenge is the heat load generated by skin friction heating…

Let’s put some numbers to those temperatures…

A plasma is by definition a gas with an electric charge…for air, which is composed of mostly nitrogen [~3/4] and oxygen [~1/4]…the temperature at which ionization occurs is about 9000 C…

The process happens by first N2 and O2 molecules separating [dissociating] into O an N atoms…

ie O2 —> 2 O at 2000 4000…

Then those N and O atoms begin to lose an electron at even higher temps…

ie O —> O+ & e-…T > 9000…

This is an incredibly high temperature that no known material can withstand…reinforced carbon carbon is used on spacecraft and is good to about 2000 C…

Now spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere are designed to slow down as they begin encountering air drag at the upper atmosphere [where the air is still quite thin…]

They do this by using blunt leading edge shapes…here is how a typical capsule looks like…

The Space Shuttle similarly uses its blunt underbody to slow down…

An ICBM warhead also inevitably slows down somewhat…but not because it is designed to…it is designed to plummet right in…but still retains a lot of speed as it approaches the ground [it is not designed to hit the ground but to air-burst…]

But it spends a lot less time going that fast…giving the heat less time to transfer into its surface… and even then the heat load is a major challenge…

Now with a gliding warhead…you obviously do not want to slow it down like you would the space shuttle…which comes down to land at airplane like speeds…it would be easy to shoot down…

But the glider is also going to spend a lot more time flying through the thick air down low…so the heat transfer will have more time to build up…

So here we bring in the other big part of the puzzle…which is the shockwave…in that illustration of the capsule above…the shock wave is seen just in front of the convex blunt curvature of the body…

Fortunately…that shock wave also shields the heat…the temps behind the shockwave are much lower…a serendipitous fact of the physical world without which space travel…or at least the re-entry part…would be impossible…

Even so…those heat loads are truly huge…

Now the shockwave geometry clearly mimics the body shape…as seen in that capsule…with a glider you are still going to have a shockwave…but because it is designed to glide it must be more aerodynamic…ie its lift must be greater than its drag…

That means the shape of the shockwave…and its proximity to the body…which is very important…may not be so ideal…

This is a very large challenge in terms of aerodynamics and thermodynamics…

Then you have other issues…how are you going to control the flight path…having a gyro is fine…but you need actual control surfaces on the craft…ie movable ‘flippers’ if you will…

Those will require some kind of mechanical or hydro-mechanical actuation…where does the power for that come from…?

What about shielding those mechanical pieces from the heat…?

As you can see it gets complicated pretty fast…

Military Affairs

The Implications of Russia’s New Weapon Systems

March 6, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

FB says:

I would note that there is a lot of shock and anger in the US media…not only the aspect of ‘Russian Aggression’…but also the idea that the Russians have made a major technology leapfrog over the US…

This is because for decades the US media and govt have loudly touted US and Western technology as far superior to that of the Soviet Union and Russia…

As with any propaganda theme of the West…this canard was eagerly accepted by all…the media…the public…the so-called ‘experts’ etc…

In a culture and at a historical time where ‘technology’ is fascinating to people…[despite the fact that they do not understand even the basic physical and technical side of it]… it is seen as a source of national power…

We have arrived at this point in time where it’s all about the technology…and the corollary…

‘…Our technology is the best in the world…especially our military technology…’

Of course…those who are technically literate and do in fact understand from a professional perspective the aerospace technology in particular…and will have likely been exposed to Russian and Soviet technical circles [such is the nature of science…it is and has always been an interactive, multinational field…]

…So for those people the Putin announcement of March 1, really does not come as a big surprise at all…many would who are familiar with the vast scientific and technical potential of this nation…are not shocked to see some very significant technical breakthroughs…

Still, speaking as one such individual, who has long taken the view that the Russians have the people and institutional tradition to pull of some amazing technological advances in aerospace, in particular…the magnitude of the leap described in the Putin address is still difficult to process…

If these technologies are as mature as Putin has implied…then this is massive news in the aerospace domain…

I will only highlight one of the new weapons systems here…the Kinzhal air-launched, hypersonic anti-ship missile…

What we know so far…it is an air-launched, maneuvering missile with an unprecedented range of 2,000 km [1,080 nautical miles]…and an unprecedented speed of Mach 10…[7,600 mph at sea level]…

If true…this is an astounding leap in cruise missile technology…ie if we consider here that ‘cruise’ means a maneuverable missile as opposed to one that flies on a simple ballistic trajectory like any piece of artillery…

Let us compare to what is out there now…the Kh22 anti-ship missile was put into service in 1962…56 years ago…

Like the Kinzhal it is air-launched…carried by the Tupolev Tu22M supersonic long-range bomber…

The missile weighs 5,800 kg and has a range of 600 km [324 nm]…with a maximum speed of M4.6 [3,500 mph]…

This was the original Soviet carrier-killer…there is nothing remotely similar in the West…the updated version that entered service in 2016… the Kh32 boasts an increased range of 1,000 km [540 nm]…and a slight increase in speed to M5…

So clearly the groundwork for a ‘super-sized’ version of this kind of anti-ship missile has been in place for a long time…

Both the Kh models are powered by liquid fuel rocket engines and employ a flight trajectory where the missile first climbs to a high altitude…27 km [90,000 ft] for the KH22…and 40 km [130,000 ft] for the Kh32…

…then either dives at the target to achieve its maximum M4.6 speed [M5 for Kh32]…maneuvering all the way to the target to make it harder to knock out with air defenses…

…or, alternately, making a shallow dive at M3.5 and then approaches the target flying close to the water surface at a height of 500 ft…

Below is a picture of the KH22 carried by a Tu22M3

We see one Kh under the starboard wing and another in a conformal [ie half-buried] position under the fuselage…the port wing would carry a third Kh…

The below graphic shows the two flight profiles of the Kh…

And here we see a ‘friendly’ cockpit tour of the Tu22M by USN Admiral Charles R. Larson…Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet…during the Cold War…

So we see that the new Kinzhal missile claims twice the range and twice the speed of the existing Kh32…

We know nothing about the propulsion system of this missile nor its flight characteristics…ie how high does it go…and how does it make its final approach to the target…?

More on that in a bit…but first let’s look at the overall picture…

The primary target for this missile would not be USN aircraft carriers but Aegis missile cruisers and destroyers carrying the SM3 ballistic missile defense interceptors [BMD]…as Andrei has pointed out…

This is the real concern for Russia…the US already has over 64 Arleigh-Burke class destroyers in service plus 22 Ticonderoga class cruisers…for a total of 86 large Aegis-equipped warships in service…

According to the US Missile Defense Agency…five of those cruisers and 28 destroyers are BMD capable…for a total of 33 ships as of 2017…the plan is to bring that number to over 70…

There is also the Aegis Ashore installation in Romania [operational] and Poland which will soon be operational…

Clearly that is a very large missile defense infrastructure that could pose an existential threat to Russia…

The other side of this equation is the US’ longstanding drive for nuclear first-strike capability against Russia…

The scenario would unfold like this…the USN Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines would launch a surprise strike against Russian silo-based ICBMs…strategic bomber bases…and any Russian ballistic missile subs in port…with the Trident 2 sub-launched ICBM…

The retaliatory strike by Russia would be neutralized by the US missile defense…relying largely on the Aegis SM3 interceptor…which can be located on ships close to Russia’s coast…[as well as the Aegis Ashore installations in Eastern Europe]…

This kind of first-strike has been openly discussed in US policy circles for more than a decade…

‘…According to our model, such a simplified surprise attack would have a good chance of destroying every Russian bomber base, submarine, and ICBM…’

—Foreign Affairs, Volume 85, number 2…

That from 2006…and this from 2013…

‘…On March 1, the Strategic Studies Quarterly, a journal published by the U.S. Air Force’s Air University, published an article admitting what…the Russians, have long been warning against: that U.S. strategic policy under the Obama Administration is seeking to create the capability to launch a first strike against Russia and/or China, without fear of nuclear retaliation..’

Clearly Putin’s announcement of these new weapons is to bring a reality check to such unhinged individuals…who may in fact represent the consensus in Washington to this day…

The threat as outlined in the above scenario is very real…the Trident 2 can cover 1,850 km [1,000 nm] in just 12.5 minutes…

That’s with what is called a minimum energy trajectory or MET…which is the trajectory angle for maximum range for a given amount of rocket energy…

The US has been exploring depressed trajectory [DT] ICBM flights which would reduce the 1,850 km flight time to just 7.2 minutes…

The Trident 2 ICBM has a much greater maximum range [up to 10,000 km] but the obvious advantage is to get as close as possible before launching…it is estimated that a US sub several hundred km offshore in international waters could hit the most inland Russian missile silos and bomber bases with a maximum range of about 3,000 km…

A 3,000 km DT launch would have a flight time of only 10 minutes…

It is not clear whether the US has achieved the depressed trajectory capability, as this type of flight path results in increased heat loading [due to atmospheric friction]…and also reduced accuracy…due to unpredictable atmospheric effects like air density and winds aloft…

It is also unclear just how well the SM3 interceptor actually works…prominent critics like MIT’s Prof. Ted Postol, a weapons expert and former science adviser to the pentagon…have pointed out that the SM3 flight test ‘success’ has been overstated and doubts that the system is actually capable of bringing down an enemy missile in an actual combat scenario…

We also note that out of the 33 Aegis BMD equipped warships…17 are in the Pacific Fleet [plus five more such Japanese navy ships…yet the US has not attempted to shoot down a North Korean missile…many of which have overflown Japan…

However…whatever the failings of the current system may or may not be…the rational assumption is that sooner or later this capability will in fact be functional…the same assumption can be made for the depressed trajectory launch of Trident 2 submarine ICBMs…

Here is how the Aegis SM3 is supposed to work…

This shows that the SM3 is designed to intercept a ballistic missile two distinct phases of flight…the ascent portion of the target flight…starting right after rocket burnout and as the target is ascending in space on its ballistic trajectory…

And secondly…the descent portion of the flight…where the target missile has passed its midpoint apogee and is descending toward the target…

Now here is the important part that somehow got lost in the original post…

We see here that intercepting the target ballistic missile in the ascent phase requires the placement of the Aegis SM3 interceptors close to where the target missile is launched…

In the case of Russia…that would mean getting those Aegis ships near to Russia’s coast or the Aegis Ashore installations in Eastern Europe…

If the intent was to intercept those target missiles on the descent part of the flight…the Aegis ships would be placed near the US…and Aegis Ashore would be placed right in the US…not Eastern Europe…

So by understanding how midcourse missile defense works we see also the intent of those ballistic missile interceptors…they are aimed squarely at Russia…

The other part that got lost in my original post was my introductory remarks about the Iskander ground-launched missile…which is suggested by Andrei as the possible building block for the Kinzhal…

To briefly recap about what is known about the Iskander…it weighs 3,800 kg…two tons less than the Kh22 and has about the same range…500 km…

This range limitation as noted already is likely artificial in order to meet the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF] which limits intermediate range missiles to 500 km maximum range…

Which means adding a longer fuel section…it is a solid-fuel rocket so can be modular…can increase the range…

The missile carries a warhead of up to 800 kg…so it is definitely able to sink a large warship with a direct hit…the Kh22 used a 1,000 kg warhead…which is said to have made a quite massive hole…

‘…Soviet Tests showed that a Kh-22MA equipped with 1,000 kg (2,205 lb) RDX warhead and with an approach speed of 800 m/s (Mach 2.4), used against an aircraft carrier, will make a 22 m2 (240 sq ft) hole, and the warhead’s cumulative jet will burn through internal ship compartments up to a depth of 12 m…’

That’s with an approach speed of just M2.4…with a higher approach speed the kinetic energy itself would be greater…kinetic energy increases by the square of speed…so just doubling impact speed to ~M5 would quadruple the kinetic energy…M10 would mean 16 times the kinetic energy on impact…[in comparison to the Kh22 impacting at M2.4…

Although it should be noted here that the likely impact speed would certainly be less than M10…perhaps half that I would estimate…due to drag in the thick air down low…we see the same with the Kh22…[the M5 is a top speed…not impact speed…which is not actually given]…

In any case…it means a smaller warhead than that used on the Kh22 would actually be adequate…freeing up more fuel payload…

As I noted already…the Iskander is fully maneuverable throughout its flight…suing both gas dynamic [ie thrust vector by means of paddles in the exhaust gas stream]…and aerodynamic control…ie by means of control surfaces like movable fins…

Also as noted the MiG31 is the ideal platform for this missile…the Tu22 is bigger and can carry three Kh22/32…which is 18 tons…but it does not have the speed or altitude capability of the MiG31…

Also important is that the MiG31 is designed to cruise at M2.4…it is the only aircraft in existence…since demise of the Concorde to cruise supersonically at high Mach number…neither the Tu22 nor the bigger Tu160 heavy bomber is designed for sustained supersonic…only dashes…

This is true of all combat aircraft…

For instance the F22 is designed for only a 100 nm sprint in its supercruise at M1.8…

So the bottom line as far as the Kinzhal is concerned is that this is probably the most likely of the weapons mentioned by Putin that is closest to actual use…all the pieces are definitely there…the Iskander technology is well proven and has seen combat…2008 Georgia war…

The MiG31 has been a uniquely powerful aircraft for three decades now and is a perfect match for this type of missile…

As for the other weapons…certainly the nuclear powered cruise missile is intriguing…but we will leave that for another day…lots to unpack there…

Algora Blog

Monthly Archives: March 2018

Professor dedicated to “dismantling whiteness” to speak at Minnesota University

A Travesty of Protectionism

A really nationalistic trade strategy is to buy raw materials cheaply, and sell finished manufactured goods at a high value-added price.

Trump’s tariffs will not induce new capital investment in steel or aluminum

America’s policy of breaking international agreements (we’re the “indispensable nation”)

Trump’s national security ploy to bypass Congressional authority over trade policy

The USA Needs a War to Survive

‘Something Ominous’ Happening to Men in America

The New Commonwealth

Still Raising Questions: How Angela Merkel Started Her Career In German Politics

Submitted by Socrates F. Bach,

Merkel’s first job in politics

Merkel’s second job in politics

Trump Trade Wars Are A Perfect Smokescreen For A Market Crash

Moldova’s Conflict: Unfreezing, In a Good Way? A mood of realism around the Transdniestria conflict, supported by Russia, is leading to areas of de facto integration. The Moldovan government is cautious, but this is an opportunity for more international engagement.

The Avangar Glider

The Implications of Russia’s New Weapon Systems

Nonfiction for the Nonplussed

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Submitted by Socrates F. Bach,

Merkel’s first job in politics

Merkel’s second job in politics

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Nonfiction for the Nonplussed