It's All About Jews

Israel Now Faces New Rules Of Engagement In Syria

Leave a comment

Profile picture for user Tyler Durden

by Tyler Durden

Even as CNN is out with a new report condemning Iran for denying any responsibility or role in the latest massive exchange of fire between Israel and Syria, The New York Times has admitted (albeit buried deep in the story) that Israel was the actual aggressor and initiator of hostilities which threatened to spiral out of control overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning.

While CNN and most Israeli and mainstream media sources blame Iran for initiating an attack on Israel, on the very day of the early morning strikes (Thursday), the Times acknowledged, “The barrage [of Syria/Iran missiles] came after an apparent Israeli missile strike against a village in the Syrian Golan Heights late Wednesday.”

This is significant as Israel is seeking to cast Iran as an aggressor on its border which must be dealt with preemptively; however Syria’s response—which involved between 20 and 50 missiles launched in return fire—imposed new rules of engagement on a situation in which Israel previously acted with impunity.

Israeli F-15 fighter jet takes off in Negev desert. Image source: AFP via Middle East Eye

And though multiple international reports have pointed to strikes landing on the Israeli side, Israel has apparently been extremely careful in preventing photographs or video of any potential damage to see the light of day. According to professor of Middle East history Asad AbuKhalil, “Israel censor still hasn’t allowed any reports about casualties or damage.”

Up until recently, Assad had not taken the bait of Israeli provocation for years now in what we previously described as a kind of “waiting game” of survival now, retaliation later. But with the Syrian Army now victorious around the Damascus suburbs and countryside, and with much of Syria’s most populous regions back under government control, it appears that Assad’s belated yet firm response to the Israeli large scale attack has changed the calculus.

Even NYT admits towards end of the article that Israel initiated the exchange of fire:

“The barrage came after an apparent Israeli missile strike against a village in the Syrian Golan Heights late Wednesday.”

So why isn’t this the lead or headline???https://t.co/P0Nw9AqkXz

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) May 10, 2018

Damascus has now signaled to Israel that its acts of aggression will be costly as Syrian leadership has shown a willingness to escalate. But how did this new and increasingly dangerous situation come about, and which side actually has the upper hand?

* * *

Below is a dispatch authored and submitted by Elijah Magnier, Middle East based chief international war correspondent for Al Rai Media, who is currently on the ground in the region and has interviewed multiple officials involved in the conflict.

Israel hits Syrian and Iranian objectives and weapons warehouses again (evacuated weeks before) for the fourth time in a month. 28 Israeli jets participated in the biggest attack since 1974. Tel Aviv informed the Russian leadership of its intentions without succeeding in stopping the Syrian leadership from responding. Actually, what is new is the location where Damascus decided to hit back: the occupied Golan Heights (20 rockets were fired at Israeli military positions).

Syria, in coordination with its Iranian allies (without taking into consideration Russian wishes) took a very audacious decision to fire back against Israeli targets in the Golan. This indicates that Damascus and its allies are ready to widen the battle, in response to continual Israeli provocations.

But what is the reason why new Rules of Engagement (ROE) were imposed in Syria recently?

For decades there was a non-declared ROE between Hezbollah and Israel, where both sides were aware of the consequences. Usually, Israel prepares a bank of target objectives with Hezbollah offices, military objectives and warehouses and also specific commanders with key positions within the organization. Israel hits these targets, updated in every war. However, the Israelis react immediately against Hezbollah commanders, who have the task of supporting, instructing and financing Palestinians in Palestine, and above all the Palestinians of 1948 living in Israel. This has happened on many occasions where Hezbollah commanders related to the Palestinian dossier were assassinated in Lebanon.

Last month, Israel discovered that Iran was sending advanced low observable drones dropping electronic and special warfare equipment to Palestinians. The Israeli radars didn’t see these drones going backward and forward with their traditional radars, but were finally able to identify one drone using thermal detection and acoustic deterrence, to down it on its last journey.

In response to this, Israel targeted the Syrian military airport T-4 used by Iran as a base for these drones. But Israel was not satisfied and wanted to take further revenge, hitting several Iranian and Syrian targets during the following weeks.

Tel Aviv believed it could get away with repetitively hitting Iranian objectives without triggering a military response. Perhaps Israel really believed that Iran was afraid of becoming engaged in a war with Israel, with the US ready to take part in any war against the Islamic Republic from its military bases spread around Syria, in close vicinity to the Iranian forces deployed in Syria. Obviously, Iran has a different view from the Israelis, the Americans and even the Russians, who like to avoid any contact at all cost.

‘Israel retaliates’

The ridiculous trope that sums up ‘mainstream’ reporting on the Middle East. Israel: so often the victim, rather than the aggressor. Fake news. pic.twitter.com/bOfP0ANJmu

— Media Lens (@medialens) May 10, 2018

Regardless of how many Israeli jets took part in the latest attack against Iranian and Syrian objectives and how many missiles were launched or intercepted, a serious development has occurred: the Syrian high command broke all pre-existing rules and found no obstacle to bombing Israel in the occupied Golan Heights.

Again, the type of missiles or rockets fired by Syria against Israeli military objectives it is not important or whether these fell into an open space or hit their targets. What is important is the fact that a new ROE is now in place in Syria, similar to the one established by Hezbollah over Kiryat Shmona near the Lebanese border, when militants fired anti-aircraft cannons every time Israel violated Lebanese airspace in the 2000.

Basically Israel wanted to hit objectives in Syria but claims not to be looking for confrontation. Israel would have liked to continue provoking Syria and Iran in the Levant, but claims to be unwilling to head towards war or a battle. Israel would like to continue hitting any target it chooses in Syria without suffering retaliation.

But with its latest attack, Israel’s “unintended consequences” or provocation has forced the Syrian government to consider the occupied Golan Heights as the next battlefield. If Israel continues and hits beyond the border area, Syria will think of sending its missiles or rockets way beyond the Golan Heights to reach Israeli territory.

NEW MAP: #Israel strikes multiple targets in #Syria following rocket barrage pic.twitter.com/I3af5NzVO1

— Le Beck Int’l (@LeBeckInt) May 10, 2018

Actually, Hezbollah’s secretary general Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said a few years back: “Leave Lebanon outside the conflict. Come to Syria where we can settle our differences.” Syria, logically, has become the battlefield for all countries and parties to settle their differences, the platform where the silent war between Israel and Iran and its allies is finding its voice.

In Damascus, sources close to the leadership believe Israel will continue attacking targets. However, Israel knows now where Syria’s response will be.This is what Israel has triggered but didn’t expect. Now it has become a rule.

The Israeli Iron Dome is inefficient and unable to protect Israel from rockets and missiles launched simultaneously. Now the battle has moved into Syrian territory occupied by Israel to the reluctance of Tel Aviv, and Russia. Iran and Syria are not taking into consideration Russia’s concern to keep the level of tension low if Israel is not controlling itself. Syria recognizes the importance of Russia and its efficient role in stopping the war in Syria and all the military and political support Moscow is offering.

However, Damascus and Tehran have other considerations, especially the goal of containing Israel. They have trained over 16 local Syrian groups ready to liberate the Golan Heights or to clash with any possible Israeli advance into Syrian territory.

Israel triggered what it has always feared and has managed to get a new battlefield, the Golan heights. It is true that Israel limited itself to bombing weapons warehouses never hit before. It has bombed bases where Iranian advisors are based along with Syrian officers (Russia cleared most positions to avoid the embarrassment of being hit by Israel). It is also true that Israel didn’t regularly bomb Iranian military and transport aircraft carrying weapons to Syria, or the main Iranian center of control and command at Damascus airport. This means that not all parties are pushing for a wider escalation, so far.

Can the situation get out of control? Of course it can, the question is when?!?

It's All About Jews

Netanyahu and Putin in Moscow: Who Had the Bigger “Victory”?

1 Comment

Written by Adam Garrie

While in the Soviet Union, the 7 November celebrations of the anniversary of the Octomber Revolution and Victory Day on the 9th of May were co-equals when it came to sacred national holidays, in modern Russia, the 9th of May remains not only the most sacred national holiday but the most popular, even more so than Russia’s New Years Eve – a secular holiday which combines what in the west are both New Year’s and civic Christmas traditions.

It is in this context that one must view Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to “Israeli” leader Benjamin Netanyahu as the Russian President’s “guest of honour” for Victory Day.

The background

When it comes to Syria, the Russian military is helping the Arab Republics Ba’athist government that “Israel” has been trying to destroy for decades. This is a fact, but it nevertheless only tells a half truth. While the Russian military has in fact been helping Syria to fight Takfiri terrorism, Russia has not and according to its own limited mandate will not help Syria fight any defensive or offensive wars against a foreign government/regime.

In fact the opposite is true. Now that the war against Takfiri terrorism is winding down, Russia would prefer Syria to begin engaging in a political process to end the conflict. From Russia’s preferred point of view, such a process would include Syria’s diplomatic reconciliation with Turkey, Syria putting off settling the illegal “Israeli” occupation of the Golan Heights for sometime in the future and finally, Russia would rather see Syria work with other international and regional powers to force a US withdrawal from Syria, over direct attacks on US occupation forces in the country.

In this sense, Russia’s strategy in Syria contradicts that of Iran. When contrasted with Russia, Iran is not only supportive of Syria’s stated mission of liberating the entire country from both terrorism and from the regular armies of foreign governments/regimes, but increasingly as foreign powers including “Israel” use Syria to escalate a war on Iran that they refuse to launch on Iranian soil, not only is Iran willing to fight back from Syrian soil but at this point, some elements of both the “Israeli” military and Iranian military are salivating at the thought of firing their latest missiles at each other over Syria. Some in Syria support this strategy too in the hope that Iran could help Syria recover its legal territory in the occupied Golan Heights.

While firefights such as last night’s cross-contact line missile attacks between “Israel” on one said and Syria + alleged “Iranian forces” on the other happen, Russia does nothing because all the sides involved know the stay out of the way of Russian forces. So long as they do, Russia will not react nor choose sides. In these matters Russia is de-facto neutral and if called upon to mediate between Syria and “Israel” or Iran and “Israel” Russia would happily do so, but Russia is not going to make such an offer if it knows that the sides involved are not ready for such mediation.

The optics and the illusions

With Netanyahu standing next to Putin on the most important day in the Russian calendar year, the message is clear that Netanyahu is considered deeply honourable by the Russian government, far more so than many western leaders who have repeatedly refused attendance at Russia’s Victory Day parades in an attempt to insult the Russian state and people. While this is clearly a sign of “Israel’s” strong relationship with Russia, it does have to be noted that as Netanyahu stood shoulder to shoulder with Putin, he would have heard the announcement that many of the soldiers marching past were young veterans of a conflict in Syria. In this sense, Russia could be accused of “trolling” the “Israeli” leader by demonstrating to him that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the men who liberated Europe from fascist rule have now liberated Syria from Takfiri rule. However, in actual fact, the realities on the ground in Syria which were largely created by Russia have already got “Israel” to make one of the biggest ever geopolitical concessions of its history, even though many have failed to notice.

Multiple “Israeli” officials have stated through gritted teeth that they are now willing to live next door to their arch nemesis President Bashar Al-Assad, so long as Al-Assad persuades Iran to take its military assets out of Syria. While Syria retains the right as a sovereign nation to be allied with and cooperate with any power it wants, when analysed through the prism of traditional “Israeli” ultimatums, this one is comparatively moderate. In order for Egypt to have its stolen Sinai peninsula returned from “Israel”, Egypt had to essentially give up the central part of its formerly Nasserist foreign policy and recognise “Israel” as a state. As a result, President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in broad daylight. In 1994, Jordan too surrendered to pressure and recognised “Israel” even though Jordanians are still cannot easily travel to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Al-Quds, even though the Jordanian King is the Mosque’s custodian.

But for Syria, Tel Aviv merely wants Iran’s military presence in all its real and imagined forms expunged from Syria and in exchange “Israel” will accept that under these conditions it lost in its proxy war to remove President Al-Assad from power. On the other end of this spectrum, these concessions from “Israel” have been followed up with increasingly vicious threats to “assassinate” the Syrian President if Iran retains its presence. That being said, the fact that “Israel” is willing to concede that it might have to live next to a country ruled by an Al-Assad family that has been the target of “Israeli” aggression and propaganda for deacdes, still represents the biggest concession “Israel” has made to an Arab Nationalist state in its history. The fact that such a concession came about is almost entirely due to Russia’s presence in Syria. This achievement of Russian diplomacy should not be ignored, although thus far it largely has been.

By inviting Benjamin Netanyahu to Victory Day, Russia is sending a big hint to Syria to accept “Israel’s” ultimatum and allow Iran a dignified way to shift its presence in Syria from a military one to a political one that is less focused on defending against “Israel’s” war fought against Iran on Syrian soil and more interested in ending all of the many aspects of the current Syrian conflict. This could also transform the “Israeli” + US war on Iran from a proxy war in Syria to a mere sanctions war as the US and its allies remain rightly afraid of attacking Iran in Iran.

This is not “5D chess” or mind games, its sending a strong message to both Syria and Iran to take the compromise that Russia has quietly set up. If Syria and Iran refuse, as is their right, Russia will not do anymore than it already has except for mediating a conflict that Russia tried to stop months ago.

Russia and “Israel’s” long term bilateral goals

a. For Russia

Far from merely using Netanyahu’s presence at Victory Day to send a message to Syria and Iran, Moscow does have long term plans with “Israel”. The last three decades of immigration to “Israel” have included a vast number of Russian speakers who naturally have some degree of cultural affinity with Russia. While western historians of Soviet Jewry often adopt the same anti-Moscow black propaganda as their gentile colleagues, in terms of the bilateral cultural ties between the countries of the wider post-Soviet space and “Israeli” Jews of Russian speaking origin, there is a far more circumscribed attitude to Soviet and Russian history. In this sense, while Jews of European origin who immigrated to Palestine dislike most mentions of their European backgrounds in anything other than an academic context, for the Russian speakers in “Israel”, many such individuals have varying degrees of pride in respect of Soviet heritage.

Not only is Soviet music, television and film popular among many Russian speaking “Israelis” consistently popular, but as it was the Soviet Army that liberated Europe, including Europe’s concentration camps where many European Jews were held, there is a clear historical affinity towards Russia from the perspective of any Jew who believes that even in 2018 Europe is too dangerous a place to live. Indeed Netanyahu has stated on multiple occasions that 21st century Europe is not a safe place for Jews to live. He has not and wouldn’t ever say such a thing about 21st century Russia.

Contrary to western propaganda, the Soviet Union was always a safe place for those of a Jewish background. While the USSR was a formally atheist state, no one was singled out because of their background as they were in Europe during that same period in time. Today, many “Israelis” including Netanyahu appear to be openly acknowledging this fact of history that remains distorted by western “historians” of all confessional and ethnic backgrounds.

This is part of Russia’s larger strategy to co-opt both “Israel” and the western pro-“Israel” Jewish lobby into having more favourable views to Russia. If “Israel” is America’s closest ally and one which can influence elements of US foreign policy far more easily than for example many of America’s close European allies (the JCPOA being case and point), if such an ally is also an ally of Russia, it means that the US cannot monopolise its relationship with “Israel” to form an anti-Russian axis. In this sense, while the overwhelmingly non-Jewish population of the United States is being fed a constant diet of black propaganda designed to defame Russia, if American Jews who are still generally pro-“Israel” (though not as strongly as in past decades) see that Vladimir Putin, a man that as Americans they are told to hate, is warmly embracing the leader of a country they generally respect if not love, the clear psychological message being sent is that “Russia cannot be all that bad”.

Many in alt-media may find this hard to realise but Russia is not an Arab country! Furthermore, most Russians are either Orthodox or non-religious. Only after that is there a small contented minority of patriotic Muslims and an even smaller contented minority of patriotic Jews. As such, Russia’s foreign policy values will be different than those of traditional Arab Nationalist states, as well as Revolutionary Islamic Republics like Iran. This will only be surprising by those stupid enough to believe that in helping Syria fight terrorism in order to maintain a safe Russian presence in the eastern Mediterranean, that Russia has somehow transformed itself into an Arab Nationalist state. This is not real geopolitical analysis, to paraphrase George H.W. Bush it is “voodoo geopolitical analysis”.

Instead, the reality is that Russia wants to and is using its partnership with “Israel” as a means of leveraging Arab states as well as countries like Iran so that they allow Russia to mediate disputes which are too heated for countries in the region to negotiate directly. In addition, Russia is positioning itself in such a way that it is confusing America’s cheap anti-Russian propaganda campaign in the minds of American Jews who are seeing that Vladimir Putin is far more pro-“Israel” than many in the US based alt-media. In an age where various Jewish groups further allege a rise in western antisemitism, it is a further soft power blow against American propaganda for such Jews to see that Vladimir Putin does not embrace the hateful causes that the liberal western establishment wrongly associate with him.

b. For “Israel”

“Israel” realises that as US influence in the Middle East wanes and as the days of the US as a single global superpower are over thanks to the re-emergence of Russia and China. Because of this Tel Aviv’s more worldly leaders know that they are going to need to diversify alliances in order to retain power in the region. As there aren’t any people of Chinese background living in “Israel”, Russia is the more natural of the two eastern superpowers for Tel Aviv, although Beijing and Tel Aviv also have very healthy relations.

This itself is one of the reasons that “Israel” wants to ram a pro-Zionist one-state solution in all but name down the throats of Palestinians as soon as possible, because while China and Russia do not share the one-state Palestine ideal of countries like Iran and Syria, they are in fact sincere about wanting a two-state solution that is equitable to Palestinians.

In the wider context, while Russia and China may want a smaller Palestine than Iran and Syria, they certainly want a bigger Palestine than the United States and Saudi Arabia. This is why the forthcoming so-called “peace deal” authored by the US and Saudi Arabia which if signed by the Palestinian leadership would solidify a one-state “Israel” with a few bits of a disjointed Palestine sprinkled inside in the less important parts of the territory, would allow Tel Aviv to breath a sigh of relief because in a middle and late 21st century dominated by Russia and China, a real two-state solution would be back on the table and this would clearly give “Israel” less than any US/Saudi authored deal.

Be that as it may, “Israel” is in its own way acting pragmatically in courting a superpower that is rising. While the US will still be seen as the country that will do more for “Israel” as Washington is largely wantonly oblivious to the opinion of the Arab and Muslim world, Russia which is very keenly aware of Muslim and Arab public opinion will have to be the go-to superpower in future decades so far as Tel Aviv is concerned. Saudi Arabia is developing increasingly strong ties with Russia and China for the same reason.

The Arab World

Russia’s embrace of “Israel” does not equate to Moscow turning its back on the Arab World. By contrast, many of Russia’s former Arab allies have been ‘regime changed’ by the United States dating to a post-Cold War era when Russia was far weaker than it is today. Because of this, the all-weather Arab Nationalist friends of the USSR in the Arab World are mostly gone so instead, Russia is embracing a policy of multilateralism in the region where Moscow is able to have healthy relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, “Israel” and Palestine, Egypt and Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, etc…

Those who negatively contrast Russia’s multilateral win-win foreign policy aims of 2018 with the more ideological ‘bloc based’ foreign policy of the USSR have a fatal flaw in their analysis. Russia’s main rival, the United States isn’t living in the Soviet era anymore so why should Russia? The proper contrast to draw against Russia’s contemporary multilateral foreign policy is that of the contemporary United States. When it comes to that contrast, Russia is building a far more sustainable set of relationships than is the US.

While the US can barely make a friend without alienating someone else (fro example Washington trading Pakistan for India, Turkey for anti-Turkish regimes and terror groups, the Philippines for Vietnam etc), Russia is by contrast able to retain old allies while making new important partners.

In this sense, Russia is not going to abandon the Arab world but nor is Russia going to fight to liberate Palestine. Palestine is today as it always was, an Arab issue. While it is true that in the Cold War era, the USSR did side exclusively with Palestine between 1956 and the 1980s, the fact is that the USSR didn’t liberate Palestine then, even at a time when Moscow did ‘take sides’. In fact, far form liberating Palestine during the Cold War, during the decades in which Moscow took an openly pro-Palestine position, Palestine continued to shrink while “Israel” continued to grow. This reality means that it is important to separate Moscow’s Cold War rhetoric on Palestine from its actions – actions which de-facto led to nothing. If Moscow did not take it upon itself to liberate Palestine at the height of the Cold War, than why then should a far more geopolitically neutral Russia take on that task today?

The answer is that Palestine is today as it has always been a matter for the Arab world. If the Arab world remains too bitterly divided by western provocateurs to do anything for Palestine, why should a Russian government save Palestine, when frankly Moscow has errored in refusing to even save Russian men, women and children in Donbass? If Russia has been hesitant to liberate Donbass, Russia’s own version of the occupied territories, why should Russia sacrifice its pragmatic geopolitical stance for a moral cause that ought to be owned by the Arab world? The answer is self-evident.

Conclusion

The following points are therefore important to consider

–Russia and “Israel” have a strong relationship. It is imperfect but it is a lot better than many think it is. If non-Russians who expect Vladimir Putin to be the heir to Nasser cannot accept this, I suggest you seek psychiatric help.

–Russia needs “Israel” as a means of leveraging its mediation strategy against other partners including Syria and Iran.

–Russia needs “Israel” to expose the flaws in the western anti-Russian propaganda war by showing that Russia is friends with America’s best friend and that unlike western leaders who are confused by 21st century trends in antisemitism, Russia has no such conflicts of interests nor in approaches to history.

–“Israel” needs Russia as a key superpower partner in an age of declining US influence

–“Israel” needs Russia in order to de-escalate future tensions between “Israel” and anti-Zionist regional powers including Iran.

Adam Garrie

Adam Garrie is Director at Eurasia future. He is a geo-political expert who can be frequently seen on Nedka Babliku’s weekly discussion show Digital Divides, RT’s flagship debate show CrossTalk as well as Press-TV’s flagship programme ‘The Debate’. A global specialist with an emphasis on Eurasian integration, Garrie’s articles have been published in the Oriental Review, Asia Times, Geopolitica Russia, the Tasnim News Agency, Global Research, RT’s Op-Edge, Global Village Space and others.

Eastern Europe Awakening

Has Europe Rebelled?

Leave a comment

Via Oriental Review,

Washington’s current foreign-policy practice is a bit reminiscent of the golden era of the Ottoman Sublime Porte, in the sense that any visit by a leader of a vassal state is seen as nothing more than an opportunity for a public demonstration of his willingness to serve the great sultan or, in the modern context, to do the bidding of the master of the White House.

The visitor must also wear a big grin and speak passionately about how happy he is to have been given the opportunity to kiss the Sultan’s slippers. Or, to put it in the language of today, to be impressed with the leadership of the US and personally inspired by the energy of the American president. The Washington establishment can’t wrap its head around any other configuration, and therefore in the present era of America’s ebbing hegemony, the ideal visitors to the White House are the presidents of Ukraine or the Baltic countries. The other heads of states that come to Washington, including EU leaders and even some African presidents, act like insolent upstarts, who — from the standpoint of imperial tradition — do not stand to attention, tend to offer their flattery without fervor or exuberance, and, most importantly, do not race off to fulfill the wishes of the leaders of the empire.

Reception ceremony of the Conte de Saint Priest at the Ottoman Porte by Antoine de Favray 1767

The meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Donald Trump on April 27, 2018 served only to confirm that Washington does not need allies who have their own national interests: all allies must be guided by the concept of the unipolar hegemony of the US. Anyone who is uncomfortable with this is relegated to the circle of those who are seen as unfriendly to the White House. The Washington Post makes it clear that Germany falls into this latter camp: “Angela Merkel is becoming Europe’s weakest link.”

That article points out how serious the differences are between the two countries’ ruling factions. Both Germany’s political elite, and as well as the German population as a whole, are characterized very disparagingly: “German passivity is deeply ingrained. Berlin’s political class lacks strategic thinking, hates risk and has little spunk. It hides behind its ignominious past to justify pacifism when it comes to hard questions about defense and security issues.” The general decrepitude of the Bundeswehr and its equipment are criticized and mocked in the discussion of Germany’s refusal to take part in the missile attack on Syria carried out by the US, Britain, and France. And then the article even alleges that Germany’s Syrian policy has actually abetted the wrong side by granting asylum to almost a million refugees fleeing that country, thus supposedly allowing Bashar al-Assad to continue fighting.

In this context it becomes quite obvious that the specific issues that Merkel brought to the table in Washington were merely secondary concerns to her American partner. Germany’s Madam Chancellor had to traverse a distance of 10,000 kilometers to be granted a 20-minute conversation, from which it was clear that Trump had not altered his negative attitude toward questions so vital to the Germans as customs duties on steel and aluminum (set at 25% and 10%), Nord Stream 2, a loosening of the Russian sanctions for major German manufacturers, or the nuclear deal with Iran.

Angela Merkel had a difficult choice to make. Either Berlin declares war on all of Washington’s opponents, or it is dismissed once and for all as the “weakest link,” with all the ensuing consequences. But the first option would be a blow to Germany’s national interests. It is not just its international trade that would take the hit, but also its energy projects and German public opinion. She was given to understand that otherwise Germany would fail to meet the White House’s criteria for the role of America’s main partner in Europe.

Angela Merkel did not seem overly impressed. She sees the constraints that exist for her. The historical memory of the greatest defeat of the twentieth century still lingers. Hence the high level of wariness when it comes to invitations to join NATO’s military escapades. Nor has anyone there forgotten the 1980s, when Germany lived in intense fear of the USSR’s SS-20 missiles that could have incinerated that country in the blink of an eye. Germans have no desire to meekly toe the line of yet another US president, which could end up taking them back to those days.

Apparently this is why the head of the German government seemed to have armored herself with the mantra of “don’t give anything to Trump” during the negotiations in Washington.

If you look at things pragmatically, Trump needed to get a few concessions from Merkel. First of all, he needed the consent of the German chancellor to at least bring back the sanctions and hopefully to even agree to a war against Iran, because for the current Washington administration, a dissolution of the “Iran deal” and a subsequent war with Tehran is the biggest item on its foreign-policy agenda. Second, Trump had to “squeeze” Merkel on the issue of increasing Germany’s financial contributions NATO’s budget. According to the White House, Germany should be contributing 2% of its annual GDP to the alliance’s budget (or in other words, to the backlog of product orders for the US military-industrial complex). As Trump expressed it so poetically, “NATO is wonderful, but it helps Europe more than it helps us, and why are we paying the vast majority of the costs?” Third, the US needed to ensure that European leaders, and especially Merkel, capitulate in the tariff wars between the US and the EU, and, in a best-case scenario, to also secure the EU’s assistance in the trade war with China that Trump recently kicked off.

Based on the results of the meeting, Washington received a polite refusal on all three points. Five years ago it would have been difficult to imagine this kind of situation, but now this is objectively the real-world state of affairs, and it is something that neither the political analysts in the US nor a significant faction of the European media class (which still views the European Union as a “big Puerto Rico”) can get used to. The significance of Puerto Rico is that it is a place outside the US borders, but that is in effect controlled from Washington, although it has no power to influence American policy. Incidentally, Washington’s official discourse in regard to the European Union has already undergone a radical transformation and, according to Trump himself, it seems that the EU was “formed to take advantage of the United States,” although prior to that the EU was painted in the official Western narrative exclusively in terms of its “ideals of freedom,” “protection of democracy,” and some kind of “pan-European destiny and values.”

The essence of today’s transatlantic relationship can be seen in the contacts between Washington and Paris. Despite the White House’s high hopes for France to prove its loyalty to the alliance, its leaders have been just as firm as Germany’s in standing up for their own interests. This mindset was evident in the stance taken by President Emmanuel Macron, who was quoted by Bloomberg as saying “we won’t talk about anything while there’s a gun pointed at our head.” European leaders insist that any discussions take place with everyone on an equal footing, which Washington cannot indulge as a matter of principle. Even lower-level European officials are using their economic power to threaten the US. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire claimed, “One thing I learned from my week in the U.S. with President Macron: The Americans will only respect a show of strength.” Needless to say, one does not speak to a real global hegemon in such terms.

No matter what the outcome of all the diplomatic and economic conflicts between the two shores of the Atlantic, it is already safe to say that Europe has broken free of Washington’s grip, and future relations between the US and the EU will become increasingly tense. We shall soon see whether Europe will take advantage of its current opportunity to reclaim the economic and political freedom that it lost at some point.

Military Affairs

Deep State, not Trump, is in Control of US, Russia is the Target – Assad

Leave a comment

Meeting with Donald Trump would be pointless because the deep state – not the president – controls the US, Bashar Assad said in an interview. He noted that the agenda of the deep state is to create conflict aimed against Russia.

In an exclusive interview with Athens daily Kathimerini, Assad said there was no reason to meet face-to-face with Trump, since the US president “says something today, and does the opposite tomorrow,” and is likely not even being in control of policy decisions.

“[W]e don’t think the president of that regime is in control,” Assad told the paper, referring to Trump. “We all believe that the deep state, the real state, is in control, or is in control of every president, and that is nothing new. It has always been so in the United States, at least during the last 40 years, at least since Nixon, maybe before, but it’s becoming starker and starker, and the starkest case is Trump.”

Assad also dismissed the possibility of a third world war breaking out in Syria, telling the Greek newspaper that Moscow’s levelheadedness has so far prevented a catastrophic escalation – even as the US aims to expand the conflict. Asked directly if he was concerned about the possibility of a third world war, Assad replied: “No, for one reason: Because fortunately, you have a wise leadership in Russia, and they know that the agenda of the deep state in the United States is to create a conflict. Since Trump’s campaign, the main agenda was against Russia, create a conflict with Russia, humiliate Russia, undermine Russia, and so on,” the Syrian president said.

Assad ended the interview by vowing to reunify Syria and restore its sovereignty, adding that the US, France, UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are ultimately responsible for the seven-year war and must be held accountable for supporting “terrorists” fighting in Syria.

Cultural/Ideological Divide

The West doth protest too much (about Russian protests)

Leave a comment

By Neil Clark

The condemnation by the EU, and others in the West, of police ‘violence’ at an unauthorised opposition rally in Russia, stands in stark contrast with the line taken when protesters are dealt with forcefully in Western countries.

“The detention of over a thousand demonstrators and violence used against them by the Russian authorities across the country today threaten the fundamental freedoms of expression, association and assembly in the Russian Federation,” the European Union said in response to events on Saturday.

Pretty principled stuff, eh? Unfortunately, principles go out of the window when the demonstrations take place closer to home. Think back to the anti-austerity protests which spread across Europe a few years ago.

An Amnesty International report in April 2014 found that the Spanish government was using fines, harassment, and excessive force to limit the right to protest.

“With threats of fines or threats of being beaten, the government is trying to stigmatise and criminalise people who are just practising their rights,” the report said.

It cited the case of one Ester Quintana, who was hit by a rubber bullet fired by the police, which caused her to lose her left eye.

‘The police act with complete impunity, while peaceful demonstrators and leaders of social movements are continually harassed, stigmatized, beaten, sometimes arrested to face criminal charges, imprisonment and fines.”Amnesty’s Europe and Central Asia deputy programme director, Jezerca Tigani, said.

Yet the police actions in Spain brought about no fierce condemnation from the EU, or indeed from others who are usually so quick to castigate Russia.

It was a similar story last October when there was a crackdown on pro-independence protesters in Catalonia. Nearly 900 people were injured, some seriously, in clashes with the authorities. “In several cases, the actions of National Police and Civil Guard officers involved excessive and unnecessary use of force, and the dangerous use of riot control equipment, injuring hundreds of peaceful protesters,” John Dalhuisen of Amnesty said.

Examples cited included one officer beating a woman round the neck and face on at least two occasions and another officer punching a man in the face.

The EU did issue a statement, but only 24 hours later. It’s instructive to compare its wording with the one it issued at the weekend about Russia.

It’s very first sentence declared: “Under the Spanish Constitution, yesterday’s vote in Catalonia was not legal.”

Only in the fourth and final paragraph was there an allusion to the protests – but there was no denunciation of the Spanish authorities. The statement said: “We call on all relevant players to now move very swiftly from confrontation to dialogue. Violence can never be an instrument in politics.”

So while the violence was directly laid at the door of the Russian authorities in one statement, in the other, it was presented as applying to “all relevant players.”

To literally add insult to injury, First Vice President of the European Commission Franz Timmerman declared: “It is a duty for any government to uphold the rule of law. This sometimes requires the proportionate use of force.”

But as we saw in Ukraine in 2014, some governments are more equal than others when it comes to being allowed to use “the proportionate use of force.” Hardcore ultra-nationalists and bona fide neo-Nazis provided the cutting edge to protests against the democratically-elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. But while it was OK for protesters to use violence, the government wasn’t supposed to respond. “This is Ukraine’s moment to meet the aspirations of its people or disappoint them,” declared Victoria Nuland of the US State Department.

Just imagine if protesters occupied or blocked government buildings in Washington, as they did in Kiev? You can be sure the US State Department’s line would be rather different.

The double standards are glaring and are there for all to see. Put simply, if the protests are against a government which the Western elites approve of, then brutality by the authorities will be ignored, or even justified, on the grounds that ‘law and order’ must be maintained. In this scenario, it’ll be the protesters who are smeared as ‘thugs’ and ‘anarchists’ – even if they’re all waving joss-sticks and are sandal-wearing disciples of Mahatma Gandhi. But if the protesters are demonstrating against an administration which the Western elites want removed, then anything goes. The protesters can be as violent as they like, they can smash up statues, or even in the case of the US-sponsored ‘regime change’ op against the Socialist government in Yugoslavia in 2000, set fire to government buildings, but they will never be condemned. In this scenario, it’s the government who will be warned: don’t you dare respond with force!

The hypocrisy over unauthorised protests is also off the scale. If I tried to organise, through social media, an unauthorised march against the NeoCon war lobby through central London culminating in a protest outside Parliament, I’d very likely be arrested. Here is the UK lawabout “letting the police know” about public marches.

It’s the same situation I’d imagine in all other Western nations. To hold a march you must notify the authorities and obtain official permission. But when this happens in Russia, there are expressions of outrage.

People should be able to protest where they want – say those who oppose such a right in their own country. In fact, the Russian authorities say they offered the anti-Putin demonstrators several choices of venue at the weekend, including Sakharov Avenue, where a big protest had already taken place earlier in the week. But opposition figure Alexei Navalny urged his supporters to go somewhere else.

Now, you can either support the right to protest anywhere, or you can oppose it. But what you can’t do – unless you’re a Weapons Grade hypocrite – is support the right to protest anywhere in Russia, but not the same right in Britain, France, or the US. The respective cases of Pussy Riot and Trenton Oldfield are illuminative.

The former were lauded in Western establishment circles after they were arrested and sentenced to two years in jail for bursting into Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and performing an obscenity-laden song which attacked the Orthodox Church’s support for Putin. Madonna, Sting, Peter Gabriel, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were among the celebs who voiced their support for the “prisoners of conscience,” who were released before term.

There was no such support for Trenton Oldfield. If you haven’t heard of him, that’s not surprising because his case, unlike Pussy Riot’s, didn’t receive international coverage. The Australian was arrested after disrupting the annual Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race in London. Rightly or wrongly, he wanted to make a public statement about elitism and poverty – but didn’t get as much sympathy as the Russian punk-rockers. He went to prison for six months and was threatened with deportation.

“Britain was one of the first countries to come out in support of Pussy Riot — so we thought people would stand up for the same thing here,” Oldfield’s wife Deepa said in a newspaper interview.

But she was disappointed. Instead, she noted how politicians intervened to increase her husband’s charge.

If we are serious about protecting free speech then it’s not just about allowing people to protest. It’s about not denying them platforms either. While UK Neocons were attacking Russia for “anti-democratic clampdowns,” there was also glee from the same Neo-McCarthyite witch-hunters that the venue hosting a conference in Leeds critiquing mainstream media coverage of the Syrian conflict had bowed to pressure and decided to cancel the event.

Among the invited speakers were a former British ambassador and two university professors. Imagine the outcry if this blatant act of censorship had happened in Nizhny Novgorod. But it occurred in the UK, so let’s pretend not to notice. The sad truth is that the right to protest, the right to dissent, the right to espouse genuinely anti-Establishment views, is gravely threatened in the West. Before pointing our fingers at Russia, we need to get our own house in order. As the old proverb goes, Medice, cura te ipsum.

Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66

Cultural/Ideological Divide

Karl Marx sacrificed logic on the altar of his desire for revolution

Leave a comment

Karl Marx sacrificed logic on the altar of his desire for revolution
Global Look Press

By Steve Keen

Karl Marx, the committed revolutionary, once proved that the revolution need not happen. What did he do next?

Marx was a committed revolutionary, so much so that when reflecting on his life, he said that if he had it all to do over again, he would still be a revolutionary but would not marry, to save his wife from having to suffer the privations of life with him.

There were, of course, many committed revolutionaries in the 19th century. What set Marx apart from them all was that he had proven that revolution not only would happen, but had to happen. It was inevitable.

And then, one day, he proved, using a significant advance in his own economics, that revolution did not have to happen: that the inexorable force he had believed pushed in that direction was the outcome of a flaw in his own theory. When the flaw was corrected, the force was gone, and not only was revolution not inevitable, it might not even be necessary. How do you think he reacted?

He fudged, of course.

He distorted his logic to hide the result, while still continuing to use, in all other respects, the blinding new insight that both extended his logic, and revealed the fatal flaw in his earlier beliefs.

I can vividly imagine when he came to these revelations, because they are recorded live in his own handwriting. It happened one day in January 1858, as he wrote what became known as The Grundrisse: the ‘rough notes’ of his re-readings of the great economists as preparation for writing his magnum opus, Capital. By sheer chance, as he was reading Quesnay, Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and many more, a friend dropped in with Marx’s own annotated copy of his philosopher master Hegel’s treatise Logic. Marx re-read it, and he started doing something he hadn’t done in 13 years: he began to think and write like a Hegelian philosopher.

The change in the language is dramatic, like reading the gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson as he transits from one drug (say, cocaine) to another (marijuana) over a few paragraphs.

Until this point, the Grundrisse reprised the dry logic and prose of his adopted Ricardian methodology. Using this logic, years earlier, Marx had answered a question that Ricardo himself had never solved: if everything was bought at its value, and sold at its value, how did capitalists make a profit?

Following Smith and Ricardo, Marx argued that the use-value of a commodity played no role in setting its price. Instead, for these classical economists, price was determined by the cost of production.The intersecting demand and supply curves of Marshall were not for them. Decades earlier, they asserted that the long-term cost of producing an item determined the price for which it was sold.

Demand, in effect, set quantity only: price was determined by the cost of production. That in turn resolved itself to the amount of labour used to produce something. As Smith famously said:

If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should naturally exchange for or be worth two deer. It is natural that what is usually the produce of two days’ or two hours’ labour, should be worth double of what is usually the produce of one day’s or one hour’s labour.

Ricardo elaborated this slightly, noting that:

“Suppose the weapon necessary to kill the beaver, was constructed with much more labour than was necessary to kill the deer… one beaver would naturally be of more value than two deer.”

But these were explanations of relative prices: they were not explanations of how those relative prices enabled capitalists to make a profit.

Smith and Ricardo simply assumed that they did: Marx proved that they did, by taking advantage of a unique characteristic of labour. For every other commodity, the buyer bought and got the commodity itself. But for labour, the capitalist buyer purchased labour-time: the capacity to work in a factory for, say 12 hours a day (a typical working day in Marx’s time). What he paid for this was the cost of production of the labourer him/herself: the means of subsistence. But these means of subsistence might only take, say, 6 hours of labour-time to produce. The gap between the amount paid to the worker (equivalent to six hours of labour) and the product enjoyed by its capitalist purchaser (12 hours of labour) was the source of the physical surplus of outputs over inputs generated in production, and this gap was unique to labour. In Marx’s words in 1847:

The labourer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power; the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labour, the productive activity of the labourer, the creative force by which the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed.

With labour as the only source of surplus, and hence profit, Marx also hypothesized that competition between capitalists would lead to them mechanizing production more and more over time, leading to a higher ratio of machinery to labour (he called it the “organic composition of capital”) and therefore a lower rate of profit. Though he saw seven countervailing tendencies that might slow it down, this “Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall” was the inexorable force that Marx thought would lead, first to social conflict, then to the breakdown of capitalism, and finally to the rise of socialism. Whereas others before him had championed socialism as a preferable form of social organisation to capitalism, Marx believed he was the “Scientific Socialist” who had proven that socialism had to come about.

And then he re-read Hegel, re-acquainted himself with his dialectical philosophical roots, started writing in dialectical pairs, of foregrounds and backgrounds and unities, and found a far superior way to analyse capitalism.

This revolution in Marx’s thought was misunderstood by most Marxists. Some ignored it completely, and described it as Marx “coquetting [flirting] with the Hegelian mode of expression.” This is rather like physicists rejecting Einstein because he “coquetted with the quantum mechanics mode of expression” to solve the problem of the photovoltaic effect.

Others confused Marx’s approach with the mumbo jumbo of “thesis, antithesis, synthesis.” This is not only virtually impossible to pronounce (you try saying it five times in a row without sounding like Daffy Duck), let alone apply, but also it belongs to Fichte, not to Hegel or Marx.

Marx’s dialectic is best abbreviated as “Society-Unity-Foreground-Background-Tension.” Everything exists in a given society, and is a unity in its own right. But society will focus upon one aspect of that unity, bringing it into the foreground. That necessarily pushes the other aspects of the unity into the background. Since the unity can’t exist without its background as well as its foreground aspects, that sets up a tension, which can transform the unity, and perhaps society itself, over time. It’s a philosophy of change, and ideally suited as a foundation approach to analyzing the economy, in contrast to the stale equilibrium foundations of modern neoclassical economics.

Marx’s first appreciation of this technique occurs in a two-page-long footnote, which starts with this opening sentence on page 267 of the Penguin edition of The Grundrisse:

“* Is not value to be conceived as the unity of use value and exchange value? In and for itself, is value as such the general form, in opposition to use value and exchange value as particular forms of it? Does this have significance in economics?”

This insight became the foundation of his economics from this point forward. He could now justify the Classical School argument that commodities exchange at their cost of production. The commodity was the key social unity in capitalism, and it had two aspects, use-value and exchange-value. Capitalism focuses upon exchange value, putting that in the foreground, and use value in the background. The former determines the price paid for a commodity, the latter is what motivates the exchange in the first place: a seller parts with the use-value of a commodity, which he doesn’t need, to get its exchange-value, which he wants; the buyer pays its exchange-value and gets its use-value.

Marx’s immediate application of this insight was to develop a positive reason as to why labor was the source of profit: rather than relying on how labor differed from all other commodities, he now used what it had in common with them. Normally use-value is qualitative, and exchange-value is quantitative, and the two are incommensurable for that reason alone. But in production, the use-value that motivates the buyer to buy a commodity is quantitative: its capacity to produce other commodities for sale. With both use-value and exchange-value quantitative, there will be a difference between these two “intrinsically incommensurable magnitudes” (Capital I. Ch. 19) that is the source of surplus.

Marx’s best statement of this in relation to labor was in Capital I itself:

“The daily cost of maintaining it [Labour], and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things. The former determines the exchange-value of the labour power, the latter is its use-value. The fact that half a [working] day’s labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day… The seller of labour power, like the seller of any other commodity, realises its exchange value, and parts with its use-value.”

He thus had a far more satisfying, positive proof as to why Labour was a source of surplus. But was it the only source? What about machinery as well?

In the Grundrisse, when he was still enthralled by his new methodology, he applied it correctly to machinery:

“It also has to be postulated (which was not done above) that the use-value of the machine [is] significantly greater than its value; i.e. that its devaluation in the service of production is not proportional to its increasing effect on production.”

But Gadzooks! This means that machinery can be a source of surplus as well. And if so, then an increasing “organic composition of capital” has no implications for the levels of surplus and profit: they could go up just as well as go down when production became less labour-intensive. The “Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall” disappears. Socialism is no longer inevitable.

Marx’s reaction to this shock discovery was to employ verbal gymnastics until such a time that he could fool himself that he had reconciled the two approaches (I’ll spare you the details, but you can check them out here, here or here). He then set about fooling everyone else, and finally declared emphatically—and falsely—that:

However useful a given kind of raw material, or a machine, or other means of production may be, though it may cost £150… yet it cannot, under any circumstances, add to the value of the product more than £150.

With this false statement swallowed by Marx’s followers, the belief in the inevitability of socialism continued. Accidents of history led to his Russia’s Bolshevik followers attempting to impose socialism on feudal Russia, and the rest is a very unfortunate history.

Marx also ruined his intellectual legacy with this subterfuge. His most fervent followers continue to champion the “Labour Theory of Value,” ignoring what Marx saw as his major advance over Smith and Ricardo. Though Marx’s many political and social critiques of capitalism continue to resonate today, his analytic contribution was to hobble his successors with defending an inane approach to economics that stymies their ability to analyse capitalism, rather than enhancing it.

So Marx’s legacies for his first 200 years are very poor indeed. His fallacious pre-Hegelian ideas led to a social experiment with hideous consequences that we are still, to some degree, living with today. His distortion of his own analytic method led his economic intellectual followers to waste their time trying to solve pointless conundrums in the equally pointless Labour Theory of Value.

It could have been otherwise. In his own PhD thesis on Hegel’s philosophy, Marx noted that a philosopher could undermine his own work, and that it was the duty of his followers to amend his error:

“It is conceivable that a philosopher should be guilty of this or that inconsistency because of this or that compromise; he may himself be conscious of it. But what he is not conscious of is that in the last analysis this apparent compromise is made possible by the deficiency of his principles or an inadequate grasp of them. So if a philosopher really has compromised it is the job of his followers to use the inner core of his thought to illuminate his own superficial expression of it.”

In the end, Marx was as human as Hegel: he sacrificed his own logic on the altar of his desire for revolution. Not only his family suffered for that devotion.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Theresa May’s Lies Must Stop

Leave a comment

Authored by Matthew Jamison via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It would seem that the so-called British prime minister Theresa May, leader of the Conservative Party [who heads up a minority Tory Government only kept in power through a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party] has forgotten that there is such a matter as reality backed up by solid strong evidence and grounded inrational fact. It has been a consistent theme of my writings over the last near two years now that Theresa May is not only a light weight with little leadership talents, but also unhinged and dangerous. Indeed, Mrs. May has become something of a loose cannon on deck deluding herself to the truth of the matter that she badly messed up the General Election of 2017 and just about everything else she inherited as prime Minister and her time is long overdue to leave 10 Downing Street.

One of the more alarming aspects of the near two-year-old nightmarish May Ministry has been the near total casual evisceration of consistent truth telling and consistency of position regarding fundamental political and philosophical questions of judgement and values which goes to the heart of Leadership. It has not just been the near complete collapse of the UK Government’s negotiating position vis-à-vis Brussels and Michel Barnier. It has not been the incompetent and disastrous fashion Mrs. May has governed losing one Cabinet minister after another in rapid succession. It has not just been the lies that Theresa May has poured forth internally.

It has been the growth under Theresa May and her Home Office of almost Nazi styleblack op false flag operations and exercises – conducted by Mrs. May’s personal Gestapo MI5 – as an instrument of government policy in order to control and manipulate the uneducated masses of the UK and turn the mass of the UK population into an even more disgusting Peter Bazgallete Endemol style Big Brother feeding frenzy dump. The distortion of mass public opinion in the UK and the dumbing down across all sections of society has been deeply disturbing and frustrating to watch, but not the least bit surprising. In Theresa May’s extreme and increasingly desperate quest to hold on to the title and position of prime Minister, May has become even far more dangerous than I ever could have imagined. Theresa May is such a shallow empty third rate politician she will say anything and do anything to hold on to power just for the sake of it to spite her internal Tory Party enemies such as George Osborne. After less than two years in the job Theresa May has managed to achieve the unthinkable. She has made Gordon Brown’s Premiership look like a model for stable Government.

May, after botching badly her gift of an early General Election from the powers that be in Washington DC, has basically conducted the most embarrassing and weak negotiation in modern political history with the European Union 27. Unable to deliver the massive majority that elements in DC and Berlin/Brussels were banking on, May has had to resort to increasingly wild, desperate and highly dangerous tactics to remain in Downing Street, attempting desperately to shore up and re-invigorate her obviously dying leadership and crumbling administration. Which brings us to the subject of Russia, a country and people I have tremendous respect and admiration for and has been treated terribly by the West where I grew up. I am appalled at how the Russian people have been treated and spoken of and harassed and targeted by the right wing English Tory Government of Theresa May. Where to begin with? Hillary Clinton’s pathetic whinging and moaning blaming her loss on the Russians? Theresa May’s bigoted, xenophobic, dangerous anti-Russian rhetoric? The EU’s expansion and NATO encroachments right up to the borders of Russia itself in violation of understandings and promises made at the end of the last Cold War? The ‘shock’ doctrine capitalism of the West injected without proper thought and planning post-Gorbachev? Theresa May, let us be blunt, is in the pocket of certain deeply anti-Russian forces in Washington DC and Brussels. This group of ‘foreign policy’ and ‘national security’ experts and their allies who [seem to be everywhere] hate Russia. For what reason I think I know and it has all the hallmarks of Nazism…. all over it. It stinks to hell of Nazism.

Let us be very clear, Russia is not a threat to the UK and has not interfered or attacked UK vital national interests. Russia is not interested in attacking the UK or UK interests. Russia is not an enemy of all civilised freedom loving peoples. It is in fact a great guardian of them. And it has been treated terribly by the West, misunderstood and disrespected beyond belief. The so-called poisoning of Sergei Skripal was just that, so-called. It never happened. Sergei Skripal was not poisoned with Novichok. The nerve agent, if one was even used which I highly doubt, did not come from Russia. The chemical nerve agent is not Russian and did not come from Russian Labs. The Russian State and Russian Government had nothing to do with it. No Russian agents, assets, personnel were involved in this most disgusting, appalling, freak show pathetic English MI5/6 spectacle of Salisbury. One wonders since the English always boast non-stop about how great their country is and how their intelligence and security services are the best in the world. In fact they are rubbish. How could Britain’s so-called domestic security service, the all seeing [supposedly], all hearing [supposedly], all knowing [supposedly] all mighty [supposedly] MI5 allow a chemical nerve agent like Novichok into the UK and then allow it to be transported to Salisbury and then administered first in Yulia Skripal’s car, then it became the Mill Pub, then it became Zissi Reastaurant, then MI5/6 finally, finally settled on….the door handle. If this had really occurred like the English State and Establishment want us to believe and would have us believe then all of Salisbury would be dead by now if it had really been Novichok. It never happened. The whole Skripal affair was made up by the wildly anti-Russian CIA/BND controlled Theresa May and her English Nazi style lackeys whether they be in the English Government, media, local authorities, police or population at large – and their pay masters in DC and Brussels.

The whole Salisbury/Skripal affair was made up, plotted, stage managed and produced by British, American and German intelligence services. Everything the UK Government under Theresa May said about the Salisbury affair was pure lies, scripted and made up as talking points sent from Washington DC and Brussels. Everything May said, and Boris Johnson, and Amber Rudd and Philip Hammond with regards to Russia and the Salisbury affair was pure lies. The entire story the English put forward regarding the Salisbury affair kept changing and there were terrible inconsistencies. The whole episode from start to finish was a classic English Monty Python circus act. The Salisbury-Skripal affair was pure English Tory lies. Besides Theresa May who ran the Home Office when all these terrible things [apparently] were going on, knew all about it, did not lift a finger to stop it, did not put up a fight or even resign and lead a rebellion from the backbenches. Theresa May authorised everything she now claims is a terrible threat to UK National Security. The woman must go. .

The world was told by the British prime Minister the nerve agent used was a military grade Novichok chemical only from Russia. The creator of Novichok said if exposed to it you either die a painful slow death or if you do miraculously survive you will be a vegetable the rest of your life. So how come Yulia Skripal is up and singing and dancing and checking herself out of the hospital? And what about Sergei Skripal? I’ve lost track? Is he still in intensive care in the hospital? Or has he been able to miraculously recover and check himself out? And the police officer also made a very speedy recovery. The police have still not been able to find any suspects even though there is a huge and expensive massive police operation under way. The majority of the English police like MI5 are utterly useless. The Chief Executive of Porton Down stated that Porton Down was unable to verify that the Novichok chemical agent came from Russia. The OPCW review was completely flawed and biased against the Russian Government.

Yet Mrs. May seemed to be rather enjoying her pseudo-role as the new found Amazonian suffragette Wonder Woman FemiNazi, the instrument of the Americans and Germans to take down the ‘Evil Empire’ of the brilliant and visionary President Vladimir Putin who unlike Theresa May has got his country back strongly and proudly on its strong feet. I suppose Mrs. May was desperate for a ‘Falklands’ style moment to rescue her dying leadership, and for a brief time it seemed to be working. Mrs. May had successfully wiped off the media agenda any mention of the crucial and critical final stages of the UK-EU divorce negotiations. There had been a flurry of right wing press briefing against Jeremy Corbyn in the lead up to the Salisbury affair just like before the Manchester bombing during the General Election of 2017 which May called. May and her backers had calculated – that in order to bolster her position, take the fight to the Russians [which Mrs. Clinton was supposed to have done], weaken Jeremy Corbyn [which she failed to do fatally last year], change the UK narrative on Brexit and impress May’s supporters – a black op false flag trashing Russia and the Russian people and the great Russian President on the eve of President Putin’s historic fourth election victory and the glorious World Cup in Moscow – would do the trick nicely for Mrs. May’s position. As I have been writing consistently, if Mrs. May is so desperate and crazy and power mad to hold on to her position that she is willing to start a war with a vastly superior and vastly stronger country like Russia, she has completely lost the plot and must go.

After May’s appalling power grab at the EU27 Council Summit in March she could not believe her luck. The EU27 were all lined up behind her as the anti-Russian warrior princess egging her on to do their bidding in their unofficial war against Russia. This would be the new security role for Britain in Europe once out of the EU, the anti-Russian Trojan horse leading a robust and united anti-Russian global coalition in Europe and beyond to effect regime in the Kremlin on behalf of the EU and their American allies. Unfortunately for Mrs. May the wheels started to come off this unbelievable, wacky, crazy, ridiculous and extremely dangerous Anti-Russian foreign policy with another false flag black op in Syria this time. From Salisbury and all the lies the English told there we jumped to the sands of the Middle East and all the lies that the Americans have told there along with the British. I could not believe what was going on before my very eyes.

For a split second it looked like the world was on the brink of an all out war between American and Russia in the Middle East. Do Mrs. May and her supporters really want to start a Third World War in the Middle East just so she can pretend to be prime minister for a year or two more? Douma was carried out by German secret service intelligence, the BND, in conjunction with the CIA and MI6. Again, this was not the fault of the Russians or Assad Syrian forces, but rather US backed rebels. However, the consequences of Douma are even more profound geopolitically than what happens in some provincial English town. Theresa May has succeeded in driving a wedge between Trump and President Putin and has successfully destroyed any hope of a rapprochement and detente between Washington DC and Moscow. That is bad for the peace and security of the international order. Thanks Theresa! The world came very close to a possible nuclear confrontation between America and Russia, completely unthinkable during the last Cold War, in the sands of the Middle East only a couple of weeks ago. In this New Cold War, which is merely a preparation and build up phase to a much bigger confrontation, all the rules of the old Cold War have changed. I have never felt more ashamed and more embarrassed about being a British citizen in my life.

The anti-Russian bigotry and racism and xenophobia displayed by the English and their Government against the Russian people and Russian interests is not something I will ever forget and has been deeply disturbing, troubling and deeply concerning. I wonder where all this anti-Russian war mongering is leading? Meanwhile back on the domestic home front after the near clash between the USA and Russia was avoided, May’s Government has been crumbling. May lost a senior Remain supporter, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd, and has boxed herself into a corner with her ‘good friends’ in the DUP who now realise May was just using them for her own ends and was prepared to drop them quickly once she had achieved what she was ordered to achieve by DC and Brussels. It will be fascinating to observe who survives this Theresa May Tory English MI5 car crash of Her Majesty’s Government. But what I have seen of heard and experienced in England of the anti-Russian bigotry is something that will remain with me for a lifetime.

Cold War

Does Russia Know What’s Up? Trump Has Invited Putin to the White House

Leave a comment

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

I find myself wondering if Russia understands the Washington criminal with whom Russia is so desperate to negotiate peace and understanding.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is excited that Trump has invited Putin to the White House “to jointly curb the arms race.”

Of course the US military/security complex wants to curb an arms race in which Russia is 30 years ahead. Will the Russian government in all its delusions and romanticized view of the US and its vassals again be sucked into meaningless agreements that leave Russia exposed to annihilation?

How can Russia expect any agreement with Washington or any European country to mean anything when in front of Russia’s very eyes the US, alone in the world, is breaking the agreement the US made with Iran with regard to Iran’s enrichment of uranium?

Why does Lavrov want to negotiate another agreement with Washington that Washington will break as it has every other negotiated agreement with Russia since the Clinton regime. Does the Russian Foreign Ministry find it difficult to learn from experience?

Russia has the winning hand, but does not know how to play it. The caution with which the government operates encourages more provocations, whereas a more decisive policy would discourage provocations.

Washington interprets Russia’s conciliatory behavior as weakness, and now also so does the tiny country of Israel. Believe it or not, Israel has issued an ultimatum to Russia. Israel, a country so small that it can be wiped out by conventional weapons alone has now ordered the world’s primary military power to get out of the way of Israel’s illegal military attacks on Syria.

A country that can be given an ultimatum by Israel, whose army was twice routed and utterly defeated by a small Lebanese militia, has no respect in the West. This is Russia’s problem. Even the militarily impotent British talk about going to war with Russia as if that is a riskless undertaking.

As long as the Russian government conveys indecisiveness and weakness in its responses to extreme provocations, the provocations will continue to push the world to World War 3.

*

This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Big Mac Index suggests America in decade-long depression

Leave a comment

Written by Peter Diekmeyer, Sprott Money News

U.S. GDP grew at a 4.6% clip in current dollar terms during the first quarter, according to U.S. Government officials at the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

On the surface, the data makes sense.

Businesses across the country saw sales rise. Workers got salary increases. Trump must be right, America is becoming great again, the experts seem to suggest.

But are they right?

Not if you measure U.S. economic output based on the number of Big Macs the country’s annual GDP can buy.

Measured that way, America has been in a Great Depression for the past decade.

Burgernomics: the Big Mac index applied to GDP

“Burgernomics” is hardly new. The Economist Magazine’s Big Mac Index has been using the famous hamburger as a light-hearted proxy to determine the purchasing power parity value of global currencies for decades. The idea is to see whether the market values of existing exchange rates adequately measure what people can buy with that money.

A Big Mac, which is made the same way in most countries around the world, and whose recipe has changed little during the past thirty years, provides an excellent tool.

However, the Big Mac also provides a good proxy for how much Americans’ real national output has changed.

In addition to its famous ingredients (two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions on a sesame seed bun), the burger also contains substantial inputs related to rent (purchase entitles the buyer a seat at the restaurant for an hour or so), labour and taxes (which comprise a huge portion of business costs).

America is in a Great Depression right now

Measured in official terms, U.S. GDP came in at $19.4 trillion in 2017. That’s a 33% increase over the $14.5 trillion recorded in 2007.

However, those $14.5 trillion could buy 4.25 trillion Big Macs back in 2007 when they cost just $3.41 each.

By 2017, the price of a Big Mac had risen to $5.06, so the $19.4 trillion in GDP that year equated to only 3.83 trillion of the burgers.

That suggests that U.S. GDP, as measured in Big Mac terms, fell by 10% between 2007 and 2017.

b31be817e8c2947563f4f19eb7a5fe4e.png

ShadowStats, stagnant wages and the two-income trap

The idea of measuring U.S. GDP in Big Mac terms is, of course, far from fully-baked.

However, the results tie in with a lot of other anecdotal data points.

John Williams, of ShadowStats, for example has for years tracked how the U.S. Statistical agencies have changed their data calculations. The reasons cited by the officials always sound good, but their net effect is to make government statistics look a lot better than they actually are.

Williams calculates that U.S. inflation (which came in at 2.36% during March) was running at 5.9% based on the way the government calculated the data back in 1990, and at 10.1% based on 1980 methodologies. The official U.S. unemployment rate of 4.14% during March is actually 21.7% when calculated using ShadowStats’ alternative measure.

Other research, also by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, shows that real wage gains for U.S. workers in many categories have actually fallen during recent decades. For example, a typical 27-year-old man earned more in 1969 than he did three decades later.

Trust the experts?

That said, questioning the methodology of U.S. government experts is tricky business.

Academic economists and those that work at the big banks all use the numbers, generally with little or no question.

Those that do question the numbers, such as ShadowStats and the economists at the Mises Institute in Auburn Alabama, tend to be ignored or shut out of mainstream media.

For example, the latest BEA data release saw no prominent experts rise to question the data.

As such, average Americans will need to do their own calculations to figure out whether their government’s numbers are trustworthy.

Those that do so in a booth at their local McDonald’s will get a relatively good indication as to which way the wind is blowing.

Note: neither the Economist Magazine, nor McDonald’s Restaurants responded to requests to confirm data and findings done for this article.

Big Mac index suggests America in decade-long depression

Military Affairs

How Russian electronic warfare systems interfere with the US military in Syria

Leave a comment

A publication on April 26 in Vzglyad, the Moscow online analytical website, reveals with open sources, including American ones, how this option would work. This is an unofficial translation into English.

The EW Krasukha systems well-tested in real combat in Syria

By Andrei Rezchikov and Nikita Kovalenko

“Because of the actions of our unidentified enemy today, our military in Syria are in the most aggressive electromagnetic environment on the planet," said the American general. It is clear that such an enemy means Russia, actively using the means of electronic warfare in Syria. What are Russian electronic warfare systems capable of and why are Americans so afraid of them?

General Raymond Thomas, the head of the special operations command of the US armed forces complained at the closed Symposium GEOINT 2018 that “opponents” are jamming the system of American aircraft in Syria. He did not specify which “opponents” he means, but called the current situation in electronic warfare “the most aggressive in the world”. However, the publication Drive, quoting the general, expressed confidence that this is about Russia.


Left: General Raymond Thomas speaking at GEOPOINT 2018, which took place between April 22 and 25. Listen to his speech and read the DRIVE report of April 25 at http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20404/american-general-says-adversaries-are-jamming-ac-130-gunships-in-syria Right: DRIVE’s published photograph of the Russian Krasukha-4 electronic warfare system.

“They test us every day, suppress our communications, disable our (fire support aircraft) AC-130,” added Raymond Thomas.

Earlier, the NBC TV channel, citing unnamed US officials, reported that Russia has blocked the radio signals of US drones in Syria, which has significantly affected US military operations. The Russian military allegedly began to interfere with US drones “after a series of alleged chemical attacks in Eastern Ghouta.”

The editor of the magazine Arsenal of the Fatherland, Alexei Leonov, does not believe that in Syria there was an unprecedented situation in terms of the use of electronic warfare. “In fact, it has not affected the habit of Americans to fight with a weak opponent. After 1991, the United States led all its military conflicts against states whose EW [Electronic Warfare systems] were very weak or not used at all,” he told Vzglyad.

In the assessment of Leonov, the US is now clearly inferior to Russia in the effectiveness of EW systems, primarily for the reason that the Americans stopped paying these technologies due attention. Back in the 1990s, during the first war in the Persian Gulf, the Americans actively used electronic warfare equipment because at the time the Iraqi army was quite developed, and it was necessary not to allow their air defense and intelligence to detect the accumulation of American troops in the main targeting direction, the expert recalled.

But they began to relax, and since then they have developed only one effective electronic warfare system based on the F-18 aircraft to cover aviation units, Leonov said. “Russia did not stand still. And now the Americans, when they have watched our electronic warfare systems, they have recognized that they are among the best in the world”, he added.

“The characteristic of American means of communication is that they work in the K-band. We know this range, so this range was configured in the electronic warfare systems that could be jamming the signal and to catch all the communications,” said Leonov. In addition, Americans in Syria mainly use airborne electronic warfare systems; in Russia they are deployed in ground systems. “Ground systems will always be more powerful and stronger than air ones due to the energy supply,” the source says.

This has long been said by a former head of electronic warfare for the US Army Laurie Buckhout. “Our most serious problem is that we have not fought for several decades in conditions of suppression of communication, so we do not know how to fight. We not only do not have tactics, techniques and procedures for their implementation, but even the preparation for the conduct of hostilities in the absence of communication."

In the Federation Council it was noted after the statements of General Thomas that Moscow has nothing to do with the failure of electronic systems of American aircraft in Syria. “I do not know who they mean by opponents, but Russia has nothing to do with this, these claims are unfounded”, RIA Novosti was told by the first Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, Yevgeny Serebrennikov.

However, the fact that Moscow denies involvement in the impact on US military equipment does not mean that Russia does not use electronic warfare in Syria at all. In particular, to repel the recent raid of drones which tried to attack the Russian airbase at Khmeimim, along with Pantsir-S anti-aircraft missile and gun complexes, EW was extensively operated. According to a source of Izvestia in the Main Operational Directorate (GOU) of the General Staff, after detecting the danger at a distance of about 10 km, the electronic warfare system silenced the GPS signal over a certain area, disabling the navigation and control system of the drones.

A British expert on the Russian armed forces Roger McDermott sees the superior effectiveness of Russian electronic warfare in repelling the drone attack. He is convinced that Russia maximizes the ability of electronic warfare, achieving impressive results. According to him, unlike NATO, Russia has integrated military command, communications, intelligence, space, cyber and electronic warfare.

In early January, 13 drones with homemade bombs attacked the Khmeimim airbase and the naval base at Tartus; seven of them were destroyed by Pantsir-S, and another six were intercepted by EW units. Some experts have also assumed that during the recent US missile strike on Syria radio-electronic means of suppression were used to intercept some of the cruise missiles, as a consequence of which many missiles simply did not reach their targets. At the same time, some military experts have questioned this, given the complexity of the signal suppression systems of these Tomahawks.

What kind of electronic warfare means is Russia using in Syria? Detailed information about this is unavailable in the open press because of the increased secrecy surrounding this topic. However, the press has often received fragmentary information, much of it thanks to the activity of Syrian bloggers who have repeatedly photographed examples of Russian weapons. This is how the transfer to Khmeimim was reported of the ground-based jamming system Krasukha, along with Mi-8 helicopters equipped with active interception system Richag-AB. In late March, the Russian Defence Ministry transferred to Syria the latest model of electronic warfare helicopters, Mi-8 MTPR-1.


Official Defence Ministry video presentation of Russian EW equipment: https://vz.ru/politics/2018/4/26/919811.html
The Mi8 MTPR-1. For a detailed review from 2015, read this.

About the EW [operations in Syria] too little is known. The Krasukha was unveiled in 2011. Several modifications were created. The most powerful option – Krasukha-4 – ‘silences’ airborne aircraft radars, including drones and cruise missiles. A killer electronics system Richag-AB refers to the latest developments and entered service only in 2016. It disables not only the navigation devices of aircraft, but also drones and cruise missiles.

According to some observers, the EW intelligence complex Moskva-1 is designed for a detection and tracking range of 400 kilometers for overhead sources of radiation at different radio frequency ranges.

In addition, as Vzglyad has reported, EW-equipped SU [Sukhoi] aircraft are deployed in Syria in various modifications. In particular, there is the well-known myth about the suppression of [radar and fire-control] systems of the American destroyer USS Donald Cook by the Khibiny system, which has been designed to block radio-electronic signals. As noted by experts, in fact the capacity of this system is quite limited; it is not enough to ‘stun’ American destroyers.

What, then, can EW really do? Military expert Dmitry Drozdenko in an interview with RT noted that such means muffle the channels of communication, and introduce blockages in the frequencies used by the US military to exchange information. “As a result, information is not received between the control centers and combat units; in fact, the armed forces are blinded. If a radar installation searches for a target and tracks the space around it, it sees not only the real targets, but also a large number of false ones,” he explained.

Lenkov said that all the electronic warfare systems work on one principle: perform the tasks of intelligence, that is, determine the frequency and modes of communication and navigation, and their whereabouts. After that, the signal begins to jam. “The power of the signal is more than the transceiver, and therefore it makes for reliable jamming of communications, intelligence and navigation,” the expert said.

As pointed out by US General Thomas, the AC-130 aircraft is particularly vulnerable to our EW attack. The Lockheed AC-130 is a flying gunship for direct support of land force divisions on the battlefield, based on the transport plane C-130 and equipped with several artillery pieces. This aircraft is very dependent on backup from supporting units, and if you block its communication channels, at night it will not be able to identify its objective, or in the afternoon to distinguish other [hostile] forces from its own. This means that if [the AC-130] can attack, there will be a high risk of hitting the allied forces.

Moreover, according to the general, there is a danger of impact by Russian electronic warfare even on the EC-130H Compass Call. One of the tasks of the EC-130H is to detect the EW suppressors of the enemy and transfer data about them to the allies for counter-strikes. However, the electronic warfare equipment of the enemy is able to crack it in order to lure the American forces to attack their own.

Blocking with the help of EW signal transmitters and GPS receivers can not only make it impossible for aircraft and warships to attack targets, but also create problems with their navigation, said the American. In addition, radio-electronic weapons may interrupt the communication of operators with drones, which can lead to their loss.

In addition, General Thomas stressed that for the time being Russia is not operating EW in Syria at full capacity. If Russia starts [to do that], the United States will lose all its communication in the region. The former head of electronic warfare for the US Army Laurie Buckhout adds that the US does not have such extensive capabilities for electronic warfare as Russia has.

“We have very good radio intelligence, and we can listen to everything. But we do not have one- tenth of their capabilities to disable equipment,” she said.

Where and for what reason do American generals produce such self-criticism and such laudatory notes about the Russian systems? This may well be aimed, for example, at trying to extract additional funds for the military budget. Hearings on that in the Senate, by the way, were just held on Thursday.

Source: https://vz.ru/politics/2018/4/26/919811.html