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Militarism and Capital Accumulation

The Pentagon and Big Oil

By James Petras | October 25, 2014

There is no question that, in the immediate aftermath and for several years following US military conquests, wars, occupations and sanctions, US multi-national corporations lost out on profitable sites for investments. The biggest losses were in the exploitation of natural resources – in particular, gas and oil – in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and South Asia.

As a result some observers speculated that there were deep fissures and contradictory interests within the US ruling class. They argued that, on the one hand, political elites linked to pro-Israel lobbies and the military industrial power configuration, promoted a highly militarized foreign policy agenda and, on the other hand, some of the biggest and wealthiest multi-national corporations sought diplomatic solutions.

Yet this seeming ‘elite division’ did not materialize. There is no evidence for example that the multi-national oil companies sought to oppose the Iraq, Libyan, Afghan, Syrian wars. Nor did the powerful 10 largest oil companies with a net value of over $1.1 trillion dollars mobilize their lobbyists and influentials in the mass media to the cause of peaceful capital penetration and domination of the oil fields via neo-liberal political clients.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, the three major US oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, eager to exploit the third largest oil reserves in the world, did not engage in Congressional lobbying or exert pressure on the Bush or later Obama Administration for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. At no point did the Big Ten challenge the pro-war Israel lobby and its phony arguments that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction with an alternative policy.

Similar “political passivity” was evidenced in the run-up to the Libyan war. Big Oil was actually signing off on lucrative oil deals, when the militarists in Washington struck again – destroying the Libyan state and tearing asunder the entire fabric of the Libyan economy.

Big oil may have bemoaned the loss of oil and profits but there was no concerted effort,  before or after the Libyan debacle, to critically examine or evaluate the loss of a major oil producing region. In the case of economic sanctions against Iran, possessing the second largest oil reserves, the MNC again were notable by their absence from the halls of Congress and the Treasury Department where the sanctions policy was decided. Prominent Zionist policymakers, Stuart Levey and David Cohen designed and implemented sanctions which prevented US (and EU) oil companies from investing or trading with Teheran.

In fact, despite the seeming divergence of interest between a highly militarized foreign policy and the drive of MNCs to pursue the global accumulation of capital, no political conflicts erupted. The basic question that this paper seeks to address is: Why did the major MNCs submit to an imperial foreign policy which resulted in lost economic opportunities?

Why the MNCs Fail to Oppose Imperial Militarism

There are several possible hypotheses accounting for the MNC accommodation to a highly militarized version of imperial expansion.

In the first instance, the CEOs of the MNCs may have believed that the wars, especially the Iraq war, would be short-term, and would lead to a period of stability under a client regime willing and able to privatize and de-nationalize the oil and gas sector. In other words, the petrol elites bought into the arguments of Rumsfeld, Chaney, Wolfowitz and Feith, that the invasion and conquest would “pay for itself”.

Secondly, even after the prolonged-decade long destructive war and the deepening sectarian conflict, many CEOs believed that a lost decade would be compensated by “long term” gain. They believed that future profits would flow, once the country was stabilized. The oil majors entry after 2010; however, was immediately threatened by the ISIS offensive. The ‘time frame’ of the MNCs’ strategic planners was understated if not totally wrong headed.

Thirdly, most CEOs believed that the US-NATO invasion of Libya would lead to monopoly ownership and greater profits than what they received from a public-private partnership with the Gaddafi regime. The oil majors believed that they would secure total or majority control. In other words the war would allow the oil MNCs to secure monopoly profits for an extended period. Instead the end of a stable partnership led to a Hobbesian world in which anarchy and chaos inhibited any large scale, long-term entry of MNCs.

Fourthly, the MNCs, including the big oil corporations, have invested in hundreds of sites in dozens of countries. They are not tied to a single location. They depend on the militarized imperial state to defend their global interests. Hence they probably are not willing to contest or challenge the militarists in, say Iraq, for fear that it might endanger US imperial intervention in other sites.

Fifthly, many MNCs interlock across economic sectors: they invest in oil fields and refineries; banking, financing and insurance as well as extractive sectors. To the degree that MNCs’ capital is diversified they are less dependent on a single region, sector, or source for profit. Hence destructive wars, in one or several countries, may not have as great a prejudicial effect as in the past when “Big Oil” was just ‘oil’.

Six, the agencies of the US imperial state are heavily weighted to military rather than economic activity. The international bureaucracy of the US is overwhelmingly made up of military, intelligence and counter-insurgency officials. In contrast, China, Japan, Germany and other emerging states (Brazil, Russia and India) have a large economic component in their overseas bureaucracy. The difference is significant. US MNCs do not have access to economic officials and resources in the same way as China’s MNCs. The Chinese overseas expansion and its MNCs, are built around powerful economic support systems and agencies. US MNCs have to deal with Special Forces, spooks and highly militarized ‘aid officials’. In other words the CEOs who look for “state support” perforce have mostly ‘military’ counterparts who view the MNCs as instruments of policy rather than as subjects of policy.

Seventh, the recent decade has witnessed the rise of the financial sector as the dominant recipient of State support. As a result, big banks exercise major influence on public policy. To the extent that is true, much of what is ‘oil money’ has gone over to finance and profits accrue by pillaging the Treasury. As a result, oil interests merge with the financial sector and their ‘profits’ are as much dependent on the state as on exploiting overseas sites.

Eighth, while Big Oil has vast sums of capital, its diverse locations, multiple activities and dependence on state protection (military), weaken its opposition to US wars in lucrative oil countries. As a result other powerful pro-war lobbies which have no such constraints have a free hand. For example the pro-Israel power configuration has far less ‘capital’ than any of the top ten oil companies. But it has a far greater number of lobbyists with much more influence over Congress people. Moreover, it has far more effective propaganda – media leverage- than Big Oil. Many more critics of US foreign policy, including its military and sanctions policies, are willing to criticize “Big Oil” than Zionist lobbies.

Finally the rise of domestic oil production resulting from fracking opens new sites for Big Oil to profit outside of the Middle East – even though the costs may be higher and the duration shorter. The oil industry has replaced losses in Middle East sites (due to wars) with domestic investments.

Nevertheless, there is tension and conflict between oil capital and militarism. The most recent case is between Exxon-Mobil’s plans to invest $38 billion in a joint venture in the Russian Arctic with the Russian oil grant Rosneft. Obama’s sanctions against Russia is scheduled to shut down the deal much to the dismay of the senior executives of Exxon Mobil, who have already invested $3.2 billion in an area the size of Texas.

Conclusion

The latent conflicts and overt difference between military and economic expansion may eventually find greater articulation in Washington. However, up to now, because of the global structures and orientation of the oil industry, because of their dependence on the military for ‘security’, the oil industry in particular, and the MNCs in general, have sacrificed short and middle term profits for “future gains” in the hopes that the wars will end and lucrative profits will return.

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Report: Last Wednesday’s ‘light rail attack’ by Palestinian driver was a car accident

By Celine Hagbard | IMEMC News | October 26, 2014

As Israeli right-wingers continue to gather at the site of the death of a 3-month old baby on Wednesday, reports from the police investigating the incident and eyewitnesses on the scene indicate that the incident was a hit-and-run car accident, not a deliberate attack.

21-year old Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi had been at the clinic earlier on Wednesday complaining of a fever and illness. He had returned home and gone to bed, but then went back out and was driving too fast on a Jerusalem road when he ran into a group of pedestrians with his car.

He tried to flee the scene of the crash, but was shot dead by Israeli police.

While this incident has made media headlines throughout the world, a similar incident this past Sunday, in which two five-year old Palestinian girls walking home from school were hit by an Israeli settler vehicle, killing one and critically wounding the other, has not received much press.

The settler who killed the 5-year old girl also fled the scene of the crash – he was later apprehended by Israeli police, but was not charged with any crime. Israeli police determined (without interviewing any of the numerous Palestinian witnesses who were on the scene) that it was an accident, and no charges were filed.

Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi’s cousin Abed al-Shaludi told reporters with the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, “We believe that he was shot and killed in cold blood and there was no attempt to question him, and hear his side of the story, and that he deserves a funeral like everyone else.” The body of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi remains in Israeli police custody, and the family has not been able to hold the funeral yet.

The cousin of the deceased man added, “ I still believe that he had an accident. If he wanted to carry out an attack, why did he wait until he got there? The videos don’t show that it was definitely an attack, and he might have lost control of his vehicle. For the Israelis, that’s an attack, and they shoot him to death.”

A video posted on social media, filmed from an angle above the highway, shows the car crossing the center line and hitting pedestrians who were walking in the median.

A statement by the family of the driver, published on the Israeli news website Ynetnews, states, “We are certain that this was a regular car accident. Over the past few days he did not feel well and it could be due to his illness that he lost control of the wheel. Many similar accidents have occurred in many places and there was no suspicion of a terrorist attack.”

“A few days ago a Jewish settler knocked over two girls near Ramallah. He killed one and the other is in serious condition. The police immediately said it was a car accident. In our case they said the opposite in seconds. This is because the driver was an Arab driver. When a Jewish driver was involved in an accident the attitude was different and no one shot him.”

The U.S. government immediately labeled the incident a ‘terrorist attack’, with State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki saying, “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem.” She said that the baby who died in the incident was reportedly a U.S. citizen.

In the clashes that have followed Wednesday’s incident, another U.S. citizen child, 14-year old Orwah Hammad from New Orleans, was killed. He was shot in the head by Israeli forces on Friday. … Full article

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Coca Cola’s involvement in the Occupation of Palestine

Who Profits | October 26, 2014

The Central Bottling Company (CBC) or Coca Cola Israel is a manufacturer and distributor of soft drinks, dairy products and alcoholic beverages. CBC began its operation in 1967 upon receiving the Israeli franchise of Coca Cola products from Coca Cola International.

Through its fully owned subsidiary – The Central Company for Sales and Distribution, CBC holds a regional distribution center in the Atarot settlement industrial zone. The Atarot distribution center is responsible for marketing the company’s beverages to the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. Simultaneously, the Palestinian franchisee – The National Beverages Company (NBC) is denied access to East Jerusalem, which therefore constitutes a captive market for the Israeli distributor.

In 2006 CBC purchased Tabor Winery – an Israeli winery that owns vineyards near mount Shifon in the occupied Golan Heights. Grapes from the Shifon vineyards are used in Tabor’s white wines.

CBC also owns Tara (Milco Industries), whose subsidiary, Meshek Zuriel Dairy (81%), holds a dairy farm and a head office in the settlement of Shadmot Mehola in the Jordan Valley.

See the company’s page on Who Profits database

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 1 Comment

Israel bans Palestinians from settlers’ buses in West Bank

MEMO | October 26, 2014

Israeli authorities have bowed to pressure from Jewish settlers and ordered a ban on Palestinians from using Israeli-run buses in the West Bank, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Sunday.

According to the paper, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has issued instructions to the civil administration in the Israeli army to ban Palestinian workers from traveling by Israeli-run buses upon their return from their work places inside Israel to the West Bank.

The ban will go into effect at the beginning of next month, the paper said, noting that it came following intensive pressures from the settlers in the northern West Bank.

The paper said the settlers sought for the past year to prevent Palestinians from travelling in their buses for security reasons.

It noted that the decision contradicts the stance of the Israeli army leadership which asserted that the Palestinian workers do not pose any security risk because they already go through a security check before being given permits to enter Israel.

Palestinians in northern West Bank who work inside Israel need to pass through the Eyal checkpoint near Qalqilya city, where they are subject to security screening.

“Every day in the morning, we pass through Eyal checkpoint for security check, which takes more than two hours,” Ahmad al-Toor, 44, told Anadolu Agency.

“Upon our return, we use settlers’ buses in the West Bank, which pass near our villages,” he added.

“During our return trips, we are subject to frequent harassments by the settlers,” he added. “But standing for additional two hours under security pretexts when we return is too exhausting.”

The Israeli authorities has issued permits to nearly 150,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank to work inside Israel.

About 500,000 Israelis now live in more than one hundred Jewish-only settlements built since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. The Palestinians want these areas, along with the Gaza Strip, to establish their future state.

International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “occupied territories,” considering all Jewish settlement building on the land illegal.

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Staged ‘terror’ in Ottawa pretext for police state

By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media |October 25, 2014

Two headlines in the Zionist-controlled National Post sum up the Orwellian nature of this week’s phony “wave of terror” in Canada.

One headline read: “Conservatives’ new anti-terror laws likely to mirror ‘immensely controversial’ U.K. legislation.”[1]

The other said: “Conservatives mulling legislation making it illegal to condone terrorist acts online.”[2]

According to the articles, Harper and his deranged neocon colleagues are looking to use the conspicuously timed shooting in Ottawa as an excuse to strengthen the State’s surveillance and police powers.

One article reported: “The Conservatives are understood to be considering new legislation that would make it an offence to condone terrorist acts online. … Sources suggest the government is likely to bring in new hate speech legislation that would make it illegal to claim terrorist acts are justified online. The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on Thursday that Canada’s law and policing powers need to be strengthened in the areas of surveillance, detention and arrest. He said work is already under way to provide law enforcement agencies with ‘additional tools’ and that work will now be expedited.”

The National Post revealed that Harper’s draconian proposed edicts were prepared in advance: “The Conservative MP said the new legislation was crafted before this week’s events and is not ‘trauma tainted.’” This is reminiscent of America’s freedom-obliterating “Patriot Act” which was written well in advance of 9/11, and railroaded through Congress a week after the synthetic disaster.

None of this is the least bit surprising and was totally predictable. My Non-Aligned Media colleague Joshua Blakeney and I had repeatedly warned readers over the past few weeks that the Canadian government was about to stage an event to justify joining America’s sham crusade against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and to silence dissidents at home.

Everything came to pass as predicted.

In an October 18 article entitled “Terror-scaremongering designed to erode freedoms, stamp out dissent” I wrote:

“As expected, the recent fabricated ISIS terror scare that swept the headlines of Canada’s Zionist-owned media is being used by the neocon regime in Ottawa to give Canada’s spy agency CSIS more sweeping powers to spy on citizens and protect the identities of informants.

“The Canadian government’s informants are more than likely responsible for spurring or otherwise concocting the very ‘terror’ plots CSIS claims to have foiled — just like its counterpart in the US has been caught doing time and time again. … Problem, reaction, solution — the Machiavellian methodology never fails.

“… Like Canada, Australia and Britain are endeavoring to empower their spook agencies as well as stiffen their fraudulent “anti-terror” laws in the face of phony ISIS ‘terror plots’ that bear all the hallmarks of intelligence psyops. That is what the ISIS sham threat is all about — creating a bogus pretext so our governments can strip us of our liberties and stamp out dissent.”[3]

The Canadian government and media had been hyping the ISIS ‘terror threat’ for some time, preconditioning the public to accept the inevitability of an attack on home soil. The true masterminds of the Ottawa attack — where one Canadian reservist solider was killed — designed it as a mind control mechanism to steer public opinion in favour of the US-led coalition against ISIS which Harper signed on to several weeks ago. Harper gave a laughable emotive speech on the day of the shooting, mimicking President George W. Bush’s bombastic rhetoric right after 9/11 (“they hate us for our freedoms,” “this is an attack on our values,” etc.) If anybody hates us for our freedoms it is our own government which is bending over backwards as I write this to extinguish what pittance of freedom we have left.

The government’s “lone gunman” narrative is all too familiar and prototypical of psychological warfare operations of this nature. Evidence has emerged indicating that US and Canadian intelligence had been monitoring both the Ottawa shooting suspect and the Quebec man who allegedly ran over two Canadian soldiers with his car on October 20 for quite some time.[4]

Another textbook indication of the manufactured nature of the events this week was revealed by Adrienne Arsenault of CBC who reported that the Canadian authorities had been running war games exercises simulating ISIS attacks in Quebec, “another city” and the specter of ISIS militants of Canadian origin returning to Canada.

Far from being caught by surprise by this week’s dubious attacks, Arsenault told CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge that,

“[Canadian authorities] may have been surprised by the actual incidents but not by the concepts of them. Within the last month we know that the CSIS, the RCMP and the National Security Task Force … ran a scenario that’s akin to a war games exercise if you will where they actually imagined literally an attack in Quebec, followed by an attack in another city, followed by a tip that that ‘hey some foreign fighters are coming back from Syria.’ So they were imagining a worst case scenario. We’re seeing elements of that happening right now. … [Canadian authorities] may talk today in terms of being surprised but we know that this precise scenario has been keeping them up at night for awhile.”[5]

This follows a pattern of identical occurrences during the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks in New York and London where American and British authorities had been running war games drills mirroring the actual events that unfolded later in the day. The “drills” seem to be test-runs for the actual attacks.

Earlier this year Edward Snowden revealed that Canadian intelligence was heavily involved in the “Five Eyes” spy apparatus which is neck-deep in illegal espionage activities against Canadians. It is nonsense to suggest our intelligence agencies weren’t aware of what was coming.

This is the standard modus operandi of Western intelligence agencies who have perpetually used informants to incite and provocateur ‘terror incidents’ that are utilized by the State to sanction massive military and intelligence budgets and unlimited powers to spy on the citizenry. Niall Bradley of Signs of the Times explained that the infamous ‘Toronto 18’ terror cell that was comprised of 18 hapless adolescents who were accused and convicted of conspiring to commit a wave of terror across Canada in 2006 was entirely led, guided and “handled” by a career CSIS operative named Mubin Shaikh. Without Shaikh there would have been no ‘Toronto 18’.[6]

Whatever the truth is about the Ottawa shooting, the Harper regime and its Zionist puppet masters are the only ones who stand to gain from it. The timing of it is far too convenient for Harper who has used it to swing public opinion behind his foolhardy decision to prostitute Canada’s military for Obama’s fraudulent campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Everybody in the know understands that ISIS — much like its Orwellian predecessor al-Qaeda — is the CIA’s Frankenstein monster, armed, trained, funded and deployed by Western and Israeli secret services. ISIS is the West and the West is ISIS. So whatever terrorism is blamed on ISIS, our governments ultimately stand behind it.

Notes

[1] John Ivison, “Conservatives’ new anti-terror laws likely to mirror ‘immensely controversial’ U.K. legislation,” National Post, Oct. 24, 2014. http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/24/conservatives-new-anti-terror-laws-likely-to-mirror-immensely-controversial-u-k-legislation/

[2] John Ivison, “Conservatives mulling legislation making it illegal to condone terrorist acts online,” National Post, Oct. 24, 2014. http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/23/conservatives-mulling-legislation-making-it-illegal-to-condone-terrorist-acts-online/

[3] Brandon Martinez, “Terror-scaremongering designed to erode freedoms, stamp out dissent,” Non-Aligned Media, Oct. 18, 2014. http://nonalignedmedia.com/2014/10/terror-scaremongering-designed-erode-freedoms-stamp-dissent/

[4] Niall Bradley, “Ottawa under attack: ‘ISIS’ assault on Canadian capital another false-flag terror event,” Signs of the Times, Oct. 22, 2014. http://www.sott.net/article/287783-Ottawa-under-attack-ISIS-assault-on-Canadian-capital-another-false-flag-terror-event

[5] “Canadian authorities ran war game drills depicting ISIS attack scenarios,” Non-Aligned Media, Oct. 23, 2014. http://nonalignedmedia.com/2014/10/canadian-authorities-ran-war-game-drills-depicting-isis-attack-scenarios/

[6] See note 4.

Copyright 2014 Brandon Martinez

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Treating Putin Like a Lunatic

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | October 25, 2014

When reading the New York Times on many foreign policy issues, it doesn’t take a savant to figure out what the newspaper’s bias is. Anything, for instance, relating to Russian President Vladimir Putin drips of contempt and hostility.

Rather than offer the Times’ readers an objective or even slightly fair-minded account of Putin’s remarks, we are fed a steady diet of highly prejudicial language, such as we find in Saturday’s article about Putin’s comments at a conference in which he noted U.S. contributions to chaos in countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

That Putin is correct appears almost irrelevant to the Times, which simply writes that Putin “unleashed perhaps his strongest diatribe against the United States yet” with his goal “to sell Moscow’s view that American meddling has sparked most of the world’s recent crises.”

Rather than address the merits of Putin’s critique, the Times’ article by Neil MacFarquhar uncritically cites the “group think” of Official Washington: “Russia is often accused of provoking the crisis in Ukraine by annexing Crimea, and of prolonging the agony in Syria by helping to crush a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s last major Arab ally. Some analysts have suggested that Mr. Putin seeks to restore the lost power and influence of the Soviet Union, or even the Russian Empire, in a bid to prolong his own rule.”

Yes, “some analysts” can be cited to support nearly any claim no matter how wrongheaded, or you can use the passive tense – “is often accused” – to present any charge no matter how unfair. But a more realistic summary of the various crises afflicting the world would note that Putin is correct when he describes past U.S. backing for various extremists, from Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East and Central Asia to neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

For example, during the 1980s, the Reagan administration consciously encouraged Islamic fundamentalism as a strategy to cause trouble for “atheistic communism” in Afghanistan and in the Muslim provinces of the Soviet Union.

To overthrow a Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan, the CIA and its Saudi collaborators financed the mujahedeen “holy warriors” who counted among their supporters Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden. Some of those Islamists later blended into the Taliban and al-Qaeda with dire consequences for the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

By invading Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush toppled a secular dictator, Saddam Hussein, but saw him replaced by what amounted to a Shiite theocracy which pushed Iraq’s Sunni minority into the arms of “Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” which has since rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or simply the Islamic State. Those extremists now control large swaths of Iraq and Syria and have massacred religious minorities and Western hostages, prompting another U.S. military intervention.

Obama’s Interventions

In Libya in 2011, President Barack Obama acquiesced to demands from “liberal interventionists” in his administration and authorized an air war to overthrow another secular autocrat, Muammar Gaddafi, whose ouster and murder have sent Libya spiraling into political chaos amid warring Islamist militias. It turns out Gaddafi was not wrong when he warned of Islamist terrorists operating around Benghazi.

Similarly, Official Washington’s embrace of protests and violence aimed at removing another secular Arab leader, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, contributed to the bloody civil war that has devastated that country and created fertile ground for the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, the official al-Qaeda affiliate.

Though Obama balked at demands from neocons and “liberal interventionists” that he launch an air war against the Syrian military in 2013, he did authorize secret shipments of weapons and training for the supposedly “moderate” Syrian rebels who have generally sided with Islamist fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Many of these same neocons and “liberal interventionists” have been eager to ratchet up the confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program, including neocon dreams to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” also a desire of hardliners in Israel.

In some of these crises, one of the few international leaders who has cooperated with Obama to tamp down tensions has been Putin, who helped negotiate conflict-avoiding agreements with Syria and Iran. But those peaceful interventions made Putin an inviting target for the neocons who began in fall 2013 arranging a coup d’etat in Ukraine on Russia’s border.

As Obama and Putin each paid too little attention to these maneuvers, neocons such as National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland went to work on the Ukrainian coup.

However to actually overthrow Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the coup makers had to collaborate with neo-Nazi militias which were organized in western Ukraine and dispatched to Kiev where they provided the muscle for the Maidan uprising. Neo-Nazi leaders were given several ministries in the new government, and neo-Nazi militants were incorporated into the National Guard and “volunteer” militias dispatched to crush the ethnic Russian resistance in the east.

Putin for the Status Quo

The underlying reality of the Ukraine crisis was that Putin actually supported the country’s status quo, i.e. maintaining the elected president and the constitutional process. It was the United States along with the European Union that sought to topple the existing system and pull Ukraine from Russia’s orbit into the West’s.

Whatever one thinks about the merits of that change, it is factually wrong to accuse Putin of initiating the Ukraine crisis or to extrapolate from Official Washington’s false conventional wisdom and conclude that Putin is a new Hitler, an aggressor seeking to reestablish the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire.

But the Times and other major U.S. news outlets have wedded themselves to that propaganda theme and now cannot deviate from it. So, when Putin states the obvious – that the U.S. has meddled in the affairs of other nations and that Russia did not pick the fight over Ukraine – his comments must be treated like the ravings of a lunatic unleashing some “diatribe.”

Among Putin’s ranting was his observation, according to the Times article, that “the United States supports ‘dubious’ groups ranging from ‘open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.’

“‘Why do they support such people,’ he asked the annual gathering known as the Valdai Club, which met this year in the southern resort town of Sochi. ‘They do this because they decide to use them as instruments along the way in achieving their goals, but then burn their fingers and recoil.’

“The goal of the United States, he said, was to try to create a unipolar world in which American interests went unchallenged. …

“Mr. Putin … specifically denied trying to restore the Russian Empire. He argued Russia was compelled to intervene in Ukraine because that country was in the midst of a ‘civilized dialogue’ over its political future when the West staged a coup to oust the president last February, pushing the country into chaos and civil war.

“‘We did not start this,’ he said. ‘Statements that Russia is trying to reinstate some sort of empire, that it is encroaching on the sovereignty of its neighbors, are groundless.’”

Of course, all the “smart people” of Official Washington know how to react to such statements from Putin, with a snicker and a roll of the eyes. After all, they’ve been reading the narratives of these crises as fictionalized by the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc.

Rationality and realism seem to have lost any place in the workings of the mainstream U.S. news media.

~

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is the CIA Running a Defamation Campaign Against Putin?

The latest hot topic in the Russian media. Russian politicians are talking about it. Historical precedent and behavior of Western media suggests that they are.

RI Interview | October 24, 2014

The Saker

A major topic in the Russian media is mystification with how Putin is portrayed in the Western media.

Wildly popular at home, and seen as a decent, modest, an admirable person, and Russians don’t understand how there can be such a disconnect with Western impressions.

Recently, leading Russian commentators and politicians have been suggesting that this can only be explained by a deliberate campaign to defame Putin, by governments or other groups.

Yesterday, at a briefing to foreign journalists, Sergey Ivanov, Putin’s chief of staff, arguably the 2nd most powerful man in Russia, spoke of an “information war” consisting of “personal attacks” on Putin.

The western media hit a new low…

The day before another member of Putin’s inner circle, Vyasheslav Volodin, made similar remarks, telling foreign journalists “an attack on Putin is an attack on Russia.”

The logic, they argue, is that by defaming the leader of a country, you weaken his power domestically by undermining popular support for him, and internationally, by rallying popular opinion to support policies against that country.  The ultimate goal, they argue, is to weaken the country itself. They also talk about regime change.

They argue that if one looks at the facts, that there is evidence of ongoing character assassination which cannot be explained by a vague popular zeitgeist in the West, but is more likely the result of a dedicated effort to introduce this defamation into the news flow.

Newsweek has been one of the most virulent Putin-bashers for years

The issue of manipulation of news by intelligence services has been in the news recently with revelations that the CIA and German Secret Service (GSS) have long-running programs to influence how media executives and top journalists convey and interpret the news, including direct cash payments.

Here are some examples they point to:

  • Portraying him as a scheming dictator trying to rebuild a repressive empire.
  • Claiming he personally ordered the murder of a number of journalists, and personally ordered a KGB defector to be murdered with radiation poisoning.
  • Frequently citing unsubstantiated rumors he is having an affair with a famous gymnast.
  • Allegations that he has stashed away billions for his personal benefit, without providing evidence.
  • Recent article in newsweek claiming he leads a luxurious and lazy lifestyle, sleeping late.
  • Recent article in NYT focusing on a supposed personal arrogance.
  • Hillary Clinton mentioning in speech after speech that he is a bad guy, a bully, that one must confront him forcefully.
  • Frequently using pejoratives to describe his person – “a jerk and a thug” (Thomas Friedman this week in the NYT)
  • Mis-quoting him on his regret about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
  • Articles about a supposed super-luxury villa built for him in southern Russia.
  • The over-the top headlines in the western media (they were worst of all in Germany) portraying him personally responsible for murdering the victims of MH17.
  • And soft stuff – magazine covers making him look sinister, monstrous, etc.

RI sat down with The Saker, a leading analyst of Russia in international affairs, and asked him what he thinks:

———————————–

So, is there any credence to this line of thinking, or is this conspiracy theorists running wild?

There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the US is waging a major psyop war against Russia, although not a shooting war, for now, and that what we are seeing is a targeted campaign to discredit Putin and achieve “regime change” in Russia or, should that fail, at the very least “regime weakening” and “Russia weakening”.

So this is a US government program?

Yes, Putin is absolutely hated by certain factions in the US government two main reasons:

1.  He partially, but not fully, restored Russia’s sovereignty which under Gorbachev and Yeltsin had been totally lost … Russia then was a US colony like Ukraine is today … and,

2.  He dared to openly defy the USA and its civilizational model.

… a free and sovereign Russia is perceived by the US “deep state” as an existential threat which has to be crushed.    … this is a full-scale political assault on Russia and Putin personally.

So what the Russians are saying, that the constant personal attacks against Putin in the global media are partly the result of deliberate efforts by US intelligence services, … basically, planted stories…

Yes, absolutely

It seems like “Operation Mockingbird” all over again…  Are you aware of other instances aimed at Putin?

(Editors Note:  Operation Mockingbird was a CIA program started in the 1950s to influence the US media, which was gradually exposed by investigative journalists starting in the late 60s, culminating in sensational televised congressional hearings in 1975 which shocked the nation, forcing the program’s termination.  Critics maintain that the same tactics have continued since, under different programs. Wikipedia)

Yes, of course.  Since this defamation has very little traction with the Russian public  … Putin’s popularity is higher than ever before .., there is an organized campaign to convince them that Putin is “selling out” Novorussia, that he is a puppet of oligarchs who are making deals with Ukrainian oligarchs to back-stab the Novorussian resistance…

… So far, Putin’s policies in the Ukraine have enjoyed very strong support from the Russian people who still oppose an overt military intervention…

… but if Kiev attacks Novorussia again – which appears very likely – and if such an attack is successful – which is less likely but always possible – then Putin will be blamed for having given the Ukrainians the time to regroup and reorganize.

Warm and fuzzy…

So you are saying that if the Ukrainian military strengthens its position enough to deliver a serious blow to the East Ukrainians, the US can use this as a method to strike at Putin’s support base…

Yes, that’s right …  there are a lot of “fake patriots” in Russia and abroad who will reject any negotiated solution and who will present any compromise as a “betrayal”.  They are the “useful idiots” used by western special services to smear and undermine Putin.

Is it limited to government special ops, or are there other groups who might have an interest in doing this?

Yes, well here is something that most people in the west don’t appreciate… there is a major behind-the scenes struggle among Russian elites between what I call the “Eurasian Sovereignists” (basically, those who support Putin) and what I call the “Atlantic Integrationists” (those whom Putin refers to as the “5th column).

The western media talks about this as the struggle between Russian liberals and conservatives, reformers and reactionaries, right?

Well its sort of like that, but not exactly…

The former see Russia’s future in the Russian North and East and want to turn Russia towards Asia, Latin America and the rest of the world, while the latter want Russia to become part of the “North Atlantic” power configuration.

The Atlantic Integrationists are now too weak to openly challenge Putin – whose real power base is his immense popular support – but they are quietly sabotaging his efforts to reform Russia while supporting anti-Putin campaigns.

Regarding the revelations of CIA activities in Germany, do you think this is going on in other countries, in the US?

I am sure that this is happening in most countries worldwide.  The very nature of the modern corporate media is such that it makes journalists corrupt.

As the French philosopher Alain Soral says “nowadays a reporter is either unemployed or a prostitute”.  There are, of course, a few exceptions, but by and large this is true.

This is not to say that most journalists are on the take.  In the West this is mostly done in a more subtle way – by making it clear which ideas do or do not pass the editorial control, by lavishly rewarding those journalists who ‘get it’ and by quietly turning away those who don’t.

If a journalist or reporter commits the crime of “crimethink” he or she will be sidelined and soon out of work.

There is no real pluralism in the West where the boundaries of what can be said or not are very strictly fixed.

Ok, but is it like what has been revealed in Germany, …similar specific operational programs in France, the UK, Italy, Latin America, etc.

Yes, one has to assume so – it is in their interests to have them and there is no reason for them not to.

As for the CIA, it de-facto controls enough of the corporate media to “set the tone”.  As somebody who in the past used to read the Soviet press for a living, I can sincerely say that it was far more honest and more pluralistic than the press in the USA or EU today.

Joseph Goebbels or Edward Bernays could not have imagined the degree of sophistication of modern propaganda machines.

If the US is doing it, can’t one assume other governments are too?  Are the Russians doing it against western leaders?

I think that all governments try to do that kind of stuff.  However, what makes the US so unique it a combination of truly phenomenal arrogance and multi-billion dollar budgets.

The US “deep state” owns the western corporate media which is by far the most powerful media on the planet.  Most governments can only do that inside their own country … to smear a political opponent or discredit a public figure, but they simply do not have the resources to mount an international strategic psyop campaign.  This is something only the US can do.

So foreign governments are at a great disadvantage in this arena vis-a-vis the US?

Absolutely.

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Fragile fact-checking: How the media fell in and out of love with the Sikorski ‘revelations’

By Bryan MacDonald | RT | October 22, 2014

What’s worse than a junior neocon? A junior neocon trying to make a name for himself. Ben Judah’s meteoric rise, aided by his staunch anti-Russian credentials in a climate of fear, has imploded as quickly as it began.

As I learnt the hard way, when you are a young man in a hurry it’s easy to trip up. The first few times you’ll, probably, be forgiven but once it becomes a trend, even the most ardent supporters will abandon you. The fewer redeeming features you possess, the faster it’ll happen. When it has the potential to create an international diplomatic crisis, I can only assume it’s fatal to that once promising career.

On Sunday, the niche US journal Politico published a piece which, briefly, rocked the Russia-related media world. In a rambling, rabble-rousing diatribe by Ben Judah came a, seemingly amazing, scoop – Vladimir Putin had allegedly proposed, in a 2008 Moscow meeting, that Russia and Poland divide Ukraine between them. The source for this, supposed, latter-day Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was given as ex-Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. Carl Bildt was also included – but the less said about him the better – in a veritable neocon tea party. After reading about the ostensible carve-up, I was wondering what century I was in.

Following some nonsense about Napoleon, Sikorski was quoted as saying: “He (Putin) wanted us (Poland) to become participants in this partition of Ukraine.”

“This was one of the things that Putin said to my prime minister, Donald Tusk, when he visited Moscow. He went on to say Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lwow (sic) is a Polish city and why don’t we just sort it out together? Luckily Tusk didn’t answer. He knew he was being recorded,” Sikorski, supposedly, added.

If true, the only word could have been ‘wow.’ However, I doubted it right away. The author was not credible (previously he’d written a Newsweek lead which read like an audition for a post at Hello! Magazine) and the comment about recording seemed odd. It’s par-for-the-course in bilateral talks, especially in situations of mutual distrust, for both parties to record conversations – and there’s few relationships as chary as Moscow-Warsaw.

This is done to counter misquotations later and I’ve known about the practice since my cub reporter days in Dublin. John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov have become famous this year for their garden walks in Moscow and Paris. They don’t do it because they are horticulture enthusiasts – it’s an opportunity to speak candidly without fear of leaks.

The fictional piece attempts to argue that Vladimir Putin would, somehow, trust a Eurocentric leader like Donald Tusk with such a cunning plan. That raised the alarm. Did Judah and Politico really believe serious analysts would swallow this? No matter what mud is hurled at Putin, it rarely comes with the word ‘stupid’ emblazoned across it.

You don’t rise from being a minor KGB agent in East Germany to head of the FSB by being dopey. You do it by being, extremely, clever. An exceedingly savvy Russian President would hardly make a proposal to divvy up Ukraine to a, noted, pro-Western Polish PM. In fact, unless the Russian intelligence services were having a New Year’s Party that extended into May, Putin would have been well briefed on Tusk.

There are a few more wing-nut positions in the piece. The elected Russian government is described as an “imperialist dictatorship,” Never mind that for a Brit to be accusing anybody of imperialism is beyond parody, it takes some imagination to dream up that kind of nonsense.

Judah goes on to state that “European leaders, intimidated by his charisma and outspoken views on Russia, chose not to appoint him as Europe’s high representative for foreign affairs earlier this year.” It’s clear that it was something a trifle more troubling than Sikorski’s pizzazz that stymied that bid. The clue is in the article.

The desultory screed then gets bogged down with information from Kremlin ‘sources’ – who conveniently agree with the author on his anti-Russia and Putin views. The two are not synonymous – many decent western journalists dislike the current Moscow government but love the country. Judah, clearly, is fond of neither. Anyway, I don’t buy the veracity of these ‘sources’ but, luckily, I have a genuine insider in my circle of acquaintances. I asked him if I was wrong in doubting whether Judah’s ‘moles’ are not skin blemishes or figments of the imagination? “No, I don’t think he has reliable sources there,” was the succinct reply.

On Tuesday, my initial hunch was proven right. Sikorski distanced himself from Judah and claimed “his memory had failed him.” He clarified that there had been no bilateral meeting at all between Tusk and Putin in Moscow in 2008. Information about Putin’s meetings is freely available online and his own website has an archive dating back to the year 2000. There is a record of a February 2008 visit by Tusk to Moscow available there.

Sikorski tweeted that “the interview with Politico was not authorised, and some of my words have been over-interpreted.” These comments might seem odd to foreign ears (not authorised) but experienced journalists know that this is Polish custom – and, indeed, German. It’s known as ‘copy approval’ in the UK, something which is granted more often than people think. It’s quasi standard practice for controversial interviews with big hitters.

Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, from the same party as Sikorski, criticised him: “I will not tolerate this kind of behaviour. I will not tolerate this kind of standards that Speaker Sikorski tried to present at today’s (news) conference.” This was after the ex-Foreign Minister had, initially, dodged questions before being rolled out again and, finally, opening up. Political opponents want him fired, saying there is no room in politics for what they called “irresponsibility.”

I usually conclude columns of this nature with warning of how dangerous such – often deliberately – erroneous western media commentary is. Not this time. All bar the biggest lunatics in the American press have washed their hands of this nonsense, so there’s no need.

As of midnight Tuesday, London time, Politico had still not retracted any of the allegations their piece made. The article’s foot-note read “Ben Judah is author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin.” Yes, that 88 per cent approval rating Putin. I’m off now to work on my book – “How America Fell Out Of And Then Into Love With Barack Obama.” Yes, that 40 per cent approval rating Obama.

READ MORE: Sikorski U-turn: Polish ex-FM backtracks on scandalous ‘divide Ukraine’ claim

Bryan MacDonald is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and teacher. He wrote for Irish Independent and Daily Mail. He has also frequently appeared on RTE and Newstalk in Ireland as well as RT.

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment