De la guerre civile en Irak

Bernhard Tomaschitz:

De la guerre civile en Irak

L’année 2014 sera terrible pour l’Irak

Comme en Syrie, l’Arabie saoudite attise le conflit

Près de onze années se sont écoulées depuis l’agression délibérée, contraire aux principes du droit des gens, que les Etats-Unis ont perpétrée contre l’Irak en 2003. Aujourd’hui, ce malheureux pays risque bien de sombrer dans le chaos et l’anarchie. Les combattants de l’ISIL (“Pour un Etat islamique en Irak et au Levant”), une organisation terroriste qui, dit-on, serait étroitement liée à Al Qaeda, ont pris le contrôle de vastes portions de la province occidentale d’Al-Anbar. Les attentats ponctuent chaque journée qui passe. Pourtant le premier ministre irakien Nuri al-Maliki reste serein. Il a confiance en ses troupes: “Nous vaincrons Al Qaeda”, affirme-t-il.

A Washington, on analyse la situation avec un oeil plus réaliste. Les Etats-Unis livrent des armes légères à l’armée irakienne, dans l’espoir qu’avec cet arsenal réduit cette armée, théoriquement alliée, va pouvoir à terme empêcher qu’un territoire assez vaste et cohérent de l’Irak et de la Syrie soit soustrait à l’influence des islamistes. Mais ce qu’il faut surtout rappeler c’est que des voix se font entendre à Washington qui critiquent le retrait des troupes américaines en 2011 et réclament dès lors un nouvel engagement combattant dans le pays ravagé par la guerre civile. Récemment donc deux sénateurs influents, John McCain et Lindsey Graham, ont déclaré: “Que les choses soient claires: la position du gouvernement, qui voulait aller dans le sens du gouvernement irakien et ne voulait pas maintenir les forces armées américaines au-delà de l’année 2011, était manifestement erronée”. Al-Maliki voit les choses autrement, bien sûr, et défend sa décision d’hier de faire partir le plus vite possible les soldats américains.

Al-Maliki n’est toutefois par entièrement innocent: il est partiellement coupable de la détérioration de la situation. Chef du gouvernement, il appartient à la majorité chiite de la population, que le régime de Saddam Hussein avait réduit à l’insignifiance politique. Al-Maliki s’est ensuite efforcé de marginaliser les sunnites. Par voie de conséquence, la loyauté de ces derniers envers le nouvel Etat irakien post-baathiste, pour autant qu’elle ait jamais existé, s’est évanouie comme neige au soleil. Cette disparition de toute loyauté sunnite a favorisé le développement de groupes comme Al Qaeda ou l’ISIL.

La politique actuelle d’Al-Maliki vise à amener les Américains à livrer davantage d’armes. Il a transmis à Washington une liste d’armements jugés nécessaires pour chasser les islamistes de la province d’Al-Anbar. Pourtant les armes arrivent depuis assez longtemps. En décembre 2013, le “New York Times” rapportait qu’une cargaison de 75 missiles anti-chars Hellfire était arrivée en Irak. Ensuite, le Pentagone s’est déclaré prêt à livrer en 2014 au gouvernement de Bagdad des chasseurs F-16, des hélicoptères Apache et, surtout, des dizaines de drones d’observation. Mais les experts militaires cités par le “New York Times” sont très sceptiques: même dotés de ces armements sophistiqués, ils doutent que l’armée irakienne soit capable de vaincre les insurgés sunnites.

Le ministre irakien des affaires étrangères, Hoshyar Zebar, quant à lui, a avoué qu’une intervention américaine directe, par le biais de drones, était de plus en plus envisageable “depuis quelques mois”. Si le conflit gagne en intensité, l’engagement de troupes américaines n’est pas une option à exclure, même si Kerry affirme encore aujourd’hui que “les godillots des GI’s” ne fouleront plus le sol irakien.

Cependant, il faut bien constater que les islamistes irakiens ne seraient pas aussi forts, comme leurs homologues syriens d’ailleurs, s’ils ne bénéficiaient pas d’un soutien massif des Saoudiens. Le royaume wahhabite du désert arabique joue effectivement un rôle clef dans ces conflits d’Irak et de Syrie. On sait qu’il est riche de sa rente pétrolière, que sa religion d’Etat est le wahhabisme, forme la plus rigide de l’islam, qu’il soutient partout dans le monde les tenants de ce rigorisme. Le 4 janvier 2014, l’agence iranienne de presse “Fars News Agency” écrivait: “Tandis que la Turquie a fermé de large portions de sa frontière aux terroristes et tandis que la Jordanie songe à restreindre le droit d’entrer et de circuler sur son territoire aux ressortissants saoudiens qui cherchent à entrer en Irak via le royaume hachémite de Jordanie, les frontières de l’Irak en plein désert sont à peine contrôlées par les militaires irakiens et les pistes de ce désert constituent dès lors les voies de pénétration pour le soutien logistique et militaire que l’Arabie saoudite apporte aux terroristes syriens”.

La question se pose quant au rôle douteux que joue ce grand allié des Etats-Unis au Proche Orient —le deuxième après Israël— souligne Andreï Akoulov du centre d’études stratégiques russe “Strategic Culture Foundation”: “L’Arabie saoudite constitue la principale menace pour la paix au Proche Orient. Les guerres régionales et les conflits religieux dans cette région du monde sont financées et armées par Ryad”. La tragédie syrienne, pour l’expert russe, est une “conséquence directe” de l’immixtion saoudienne, appuyée par les Etats-Unis. L’Irak, dès lors, devra faire face à “une nouvelle vague d’attentats à la bombe”, parce que les Saoudiens tentent de créer un équilibre régional à leur seul profit et au détriment de l’Iran.

L’Arabie saoudite est en mesure de pratiquer cette politique belligène tout simplement parce que celle-ci est la suite logique des guerres fomentées et déclenchées par les bellicistes néo-conservateurs qui ont tenu le haut du pavé à Washington sous la présidence de George W. Bush. Un autre expert russe, actif dans la même fondation, Nikolaï Bobkin, souligne la responsabilité des Etats-Unis dans l’éclosion du conflit. En effet, les interventions américaines, en Afghanistan d’abord, en Irak ensuite, “ont bouleversé l’équilibre fragile des forces et enclenché un processus de concurrence entre Iraniens et Saoudiens pour la maîtrise du Proche Orient”.

Une question cruciale demeure cependant ouverte: pendant combien de temps les Etats-Unis miseront-ils encore sur un allié qui contrecarre leurs intérêts au Proche Orient, bien plus intensément que ne le firent jamais les Iraniens? Voilà sans doute pourquoi, à court ou moyen terme, on voit se profiler un rapprochement entre Washington et Téhéran.

Bernhard TOMASCHITZ.

(article paru dans “zur Zeit”, Vienne, n°4/2014; http://www.zurzeit.at ).

Geopolitics & Oligarchy in the Ukraine Crisis

Geopolitics & Oligarchy in the Ukraine Crisis

By Kerry Bolton

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

The situation in the Ukraine follows the same scenario as sundry other states that have been brought into the globalist fold. The riots on the streets of Kiev and elsewhere amount to a “color revolution” of the sought that went like a dose of salts through the states of the former USSR, and recently through North Africa in the so-called “Arab Spring.”[1] Interestingly, there are presently globalist sponsored revolts in three states simultaneously: Venezuela,[2] Syria[3] and Ukraine; all associated with Russian interests. 

Ukraine: Target of Globalists

The “Cold War” against Russia as a world power since 1945, after Stalin scotched globalist plans for a world state under United Nations auspices,[4] only had a brief respite during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, Gorbachev having since shown his true colors as a globalist.[5] Hence the present crisis over the Ukraine does not represent a “return to the Cold War,” as foreign policy pundits have been claiming; the “Cold War” hardly stopped. The U.S. policy makers have stated plainly that post-Yeltsin Russia remains an enemy and that anyone who aims to reassert Russia as a world power – as Putin has – is a legitimate target of the USA.[6]

As we might expect, the Ukraine has been one of the states that is of much interest to the National Endowment for Democracy. One might see from NED’s financial program that here again NED has been avidly sponsoring young cadres in various sectors of society, including “educating” electorates on how to vote in the October 2o12 elections. This is flagrant interference in the political processes of what the globalists are now ranting in regard to the Ukraine sovereignty being under threat from Russia. The 2012 NED financial report (the latest published) lists the NGO’s in the Ukraine that received $3,380,834 during that year.[7] The amount represents the upper end of funds sent by NED throughout the world.

Ukraine was among the states targeted for a “color revolution” in 2004; the “Orange Revolution.” Hence, ever since it has not been regarded as sufficiently “democratic,” a euphemism for not being sufficiently under the influence of US/globalist hegemony. A symposium on the Ukraine held by the NED-linked International Forum for Democratic Studies laments that “following its failure to consolidate the democratic gains of the much-celebrated 2004 ‘Orange Revolution,’ Ukraine under the rule of authoritarian President Viktor Yanukovych has suffered numerous setbacks in its struggle to achieve a more democratic system.”[8]

Veteran globalist foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who continues to work at 86 for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, when interviewed by Ukrainian Pravda, a journal connected with NED, lauded the rioting youth that, as with other “color revolutions,” precipitated the present situation in the Ukraine. He has praised their sense of “nationhood,” as “an optimistic sign.”[9] Brzezinski speaks of “independent nationhood.” This praise of Ukrainian nationalism by Brzezinski is odd coming from someone who has spent decades, since his days as a young academic, condemning nationalism and asserting that international capitalism, founded upon a globalist elite that transcends territorial borders, is the next phase of historical evolution in a dialectical process. Brzezinski does not even believe in “independent nationhood.” He believes that it is passé.[10] However it is the line followed by all the other mouthpieces of globalization, including the USA and the E.U., and all the pontificators at the United Nations, who are condemning Russia and upholding this “Ukrainian nationhood.” None, of course, are champions of nationalism, which they regard as anathema. It is another means of undermining Russia as the primary state that remains in the way of the “brave new world,” or the “new world order” as it has been called. Hence, “nationalism” is only used as a dialectical strategy as part of a globalist agenda.

Brzezinski also alludes to what is the real bugbear of the globalists: the fear that Russia will lead a Eurasian bloc which, we might add, would also find allies across the world, from India, to Venezuela to Syria;[11] hence the simultaneous actions against the latter two states, fomented by the same forces that are backing the situation in the Ukraine. Brzezinski, as a principal spokesman for the globalists, talks of an “expansion of Europe.” Brzezinski openly states that the globalists want the Ukraine to be part of the E.U. as the start of a process that will integrate Russia also. He states that this is the wave of the future, and that a Russia-led “Eurasian union” will fail. However, if the E.U. represented a truly independent third force, it would have been targeted as avidly by the globalists as Russia and the previous Soviet bloc. Unfortunately, the E.U. has not emerged as a third force, but as an appendage of U.S. foreign policy, and its position on the present Ukraine situation is yet another example of this.

From Brzezinski’s statements, we can see why the globalists were so eager to oust theYanukovych regime, with the prospect of the Ukraine coming closer to Russia rather than opting for the E.U. The Ukraine is clearly an important part of the globalist agenda.

Brzezinski refers to Russia increasingly interfering in Ukrainian affairs, yet the interference of NED, funded by U.S. Congress, and other such agencies, is long and pervasive.

NED funding for a new “Orange Revolution” includes the rather obvious organization named Aplesin (meaning “Orange”), more formally entitled “Center of Progressive Young People, founded in 2001. Aplesin lists its “international financial partners” as the U.S. Embassy; NED; Freedom House; Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation[12]; International Relief and Development, another U.S.-based globalist front;[13] Princes Foundation Benefactors Ostrozki Ruslan Kraplych, a Ukrainian based organization receiving funding from Microsoft Ukraine and USAID; among others.[14]

The George Soros network of globalist subverters operates in the Ukraine through the International Renaissance Foundation.[15] The Foundation has been active is assisting rioters injured in fighting with authorities.

Oligarchs Given Fiefdoms

One of the first actions of the regime that ousted Yanukovych was to give Ukraine oligarchs their own fiefdoms. Suddenly, oligarchs have become “patriots” and “nationalists.” Rinat Akhmetov, the wealthiest of the oligarchs, head of the SCM group employing 300,000 people and spanning the entirety of the Ukraine, pledged to defend his homeland — although he had lived at One Hyde Park, London — in the event of a Russian invasion. The previous day two other oligarchs, Igor Kolomoisky and Serhiy Taruta, accepted governorships over two regions and responsibility for preparing defense against a Russian invasion. Kolomoisky, “a prominent member and supporter of the country’s Jewish community,” now heads the regional government of Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine. Taruta is governor of Donetsk, in the far east of the Ukraine. Another oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, rallied to the cause, “speaking on behalf of business circles.” Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, head of the Jewish community in Dnipropetrovsk, expressed his support for Kolomoisky, as the Jewish community likewise finds its Ukrainian nationalist voice.[16]

As for Akhmetov, he is said to have had influence over a bloc of forty members of the Ukraine parliament,[17] and one might wonder if it was this influence that was instrumental in the ouster of Yanukovych?

Petro Poroshenko, billionaire confectionery and automobile manufacturer, TV channel owner, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Trade and Economic Development, also headed Ukraine’s National Bank (2007-2012). He was a major supporter of the 2004 “Orange Revolution,” and chief campaign manager for Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine Bloc. Forbes’ recent profile states of Poroshenko that he “was a major supporter of anti-government protesters in the Ukraine.” He is a member of parliament and is considered a likely presidential contender. His business focus is on external markets, particularly in E.U. states, having been excluded from Russia.[18] Perhaps this explains his enthusiasm for Ukraine’s entry into the European market?

Victor Pinchuk is second wealthiest oligarch in the Ukraine, behind Akhmetov, and has impeccable globalist credentials. He is founder of EastOne LLC investment, London, a media magnate, and a proponent of Ukraine’s entry into the E.U. His international links include being an adviser for the Brookings Institution, and a friend of former U.S. president Bill Clinton, British prime minister Tony Blair, and globalist wire-puller George Soros. He founded the Yalta European Strategy (YES) to promote Ukrainian entry into the E.U.[19]

The stated aim of YES is to integrate the Ukraine into “key international systems.”[20] The Pinchuk Foundation is associated with the Open Ukraine Foundation, which focuses on youth leaders. Open Ukraine was founded by Arseny Yatsenyuk, Minister of Economics (2005-2006), Minister of Foreign Affairs (2007), and chairman of the Supreme Council (2007-2008). He headed the Front for Change party (2009-2012), and during the last half of 2012 headed the “United Opposition, ” also known as the All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland.

Co-founder of Open Ukraine is Dzhymala Zbigniew, director of the financial and industrial group Inter-Groclin.[21] Pinchuk is a member of the governing body of Open Ukraine. Other O.U. luminaries include corporate board directors such as Roman Speck, CEO of JSC Alfa-Bank. Association with the Front for Change party is continued through party leader Svetlana Wojciechowski.[22] “Partners” of Open Ukraine include the Victor Pinchuk Foundation; the veteran globalist think tank Chatham House; Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation (BST), “a project of the German Marshall Fund,” a U.S. entity founded in 1972 to promote “Atlantic relationships,” “in the spirit of the Marshall Plan;[23] NATO Information and Documentation Center; “Democracy, Public Affairs Section,” U.S. Embassy in the Ukraine; International Renaissance Foundation, the Soros Open Society front in the Ukraine; Embassy of Poland; Horizon Capital Advisers LLC, focusing on investments in Ukraine, Moldova and Belrus.[24]

Open Ukraine has made its position unequivocal, proclaiming the “eternal memory and glory of the heroes” involved in the riots causing the present crisis.[25]

The Front for Change, with its close relationship with the oligarchs and globalists, merged into the All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland in 2013. The Fatherland Union, or United Opposition, traces its origins to the 2004 “Orange Revolution.” What is being played out in the Ukraine now is the attempt to complete what was attempted in 2004.

IMF in Ukraine

Arseny Yatsenyuk has been appointed interim Prime Minister. An article in Forbes calls Yatsenyuk “Washington’s man.” Correspondent Kenneth Rapoza alludes to a leaked phone call where Victoria Nuland, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, told the Ukrainian ambassador that the USA wants “Yats” in. “Yats” was elected by the Ukraine parliament, with just one dissenting vote, despite previously being behind other opposition leaders as choice of prime minister, because he “had friends in high places and while he does not have strong support of the electorate, and would have no chance of winning an election, he is pro-IMF austerity and apparently the bulk of parliament is as well.”[26]

Yatsenyuk’s most immediate measure is to secure loans from the IMF and U.S. and E.U. banks. Yanukovych resisted IMF demands to raise taxes and devalue the currency.[27] Indeed, Yatsenyuk had stated that talks with the E.U. and the IMF are his top priorities.[28] An IMF team arrived in the Ukraine on March 4, Yatsenyuk having stated just prior to the delegation, that Ukraine would meet all IMF requirements.[29] The IMF had suspended loans to the Ukraine twice since 2008 because of the failure to carry out IMF policies. In December 2013 the IMF and the Ukraine failed to reach agreement in talks. The new government under the oligarchs has pledged to the IMF that it would undertake “wide ranging reforms,” according to the Fund’s spokesman Gerry Rice.

Yatsenyuk has stated he expects to be the most unpopular leader in Ukraine’s history, indicating that, in keeping with usual IMF demands, the first measures will include cuts in state subsidies, particularly for domestic energy consumption, and welfare. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wants to rush through a U.S. guaranteed loan of $1 billion, with the E.U. likely to offer a similar amount. Russia had previously promised $15 billion, an offer that has now been withdrawn.[30]

What the outcome will be is predictable: as in other states that have thrown themselves upon the IMF, Ukraine’s economy will be privatized; her resources thrown open to global predators, and the Ukrainian Nationalists, who are already at odds with the social democrats now running the Ukraine, will have provided some of the street fodder for a process that will see the Ukraine enslaved not to Russia, but to global plutocracy – unless Russia stands firm.

Notes

[1] K. R. Bolton, “Tunisian revolt, another Soros/NED jackup,” Foreign Policy Journal, January 18, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/01/18/tunisian-revolt-another-sorosned-jack-up/ ^[2]

[2] See for example, National Endowment for Democracy, “Venezuela,” 2012 annual report, http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/latin-america-and-caribbean/venezuela ^[3]

[3] K. R. Bolton, “Attack on Syria planned nearly two decades ago,” Foreign Policy Journal, September 16, 2013, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/16/attack-on-syria-planned-nearly-two-decades-ago/ ^[4]

[4] K. R. Bolton, Stalin: The Enduring Legacy (London: Black House Publishing, 2012), 125-139.

[5] K. R. Bolton, “Mikhail Gorbachev, globalist superstar,” Foreign Policy Journal, April 3, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/04/03/mikhail-gorbachev-globalist-super-star/ ^[5]

[6] K. R. Bolton, Stalin, op. cit., 137-139.

[7] National Endowment for Democracy, NED 2012 Annual report, http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/ukraine ^[6]

[8] “Ukraine’s Lessons Learned: From the Orange Revolution to the Euromaidan,” National Endowment for Democracy, February 12, 2014, http://www.ned.org/events/ukraine-lessons-learned-from-the-orange-revolution-to-the-euromaidan ^[7]

[9] Segei Leshchenko, “Zbigniew Brzezinski: Yanukovych understand that has no chance of fair elections. So went under the umbrella of Putin,” Ukrainian Pravda, January 15, 2014, http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/01/15/7009577/ ^[8]

Note that Leshchenko, who conducted the Brzezinski interview, is a NED Fellow.

[10] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s role in the technotronic era (New York: The Viking Press, 1970), 29.

[11] K. R. Bolton, Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific: emerging conflicts, new alliances (London: Black House Publishing, 2013), 174-180.

[12] In December 2013, the Foundation was calling on the USA and E.U. to freeze the bank accounts of the “Yanukovych regime.” The sponsors of the Foundation include the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, E.U., and NED, among others. The stated purpose of the Foundation, founded in 1999, is to make the Ukraine into a “market economy,” “to integrate the Ukraine into Euro-Atlantic structures,” based on the experiences of Poland, and to involved the Ukraine in fomenting regime change in Russia and former Soviet bloc states.

[13] http://www.ird.org/our-work/by-region/europe/ukraine ^[9]

[14] See links at http://www.cpmapelsin.com.ua/partners?lang=en ^[10]

[15] Open Society Foundations, http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/offices-foundations/international-renaissance-foundation ^[11]

[16] Roman Olearchyk, “Akhmetov joins Ukraine oligarchs in pledging to protect homeland,” Financial Times, March 2, 2014, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a99fc964-a189-11e3-a29e-00144feab7de.html#axzz2uwAezm48 ^[12]

[17] Edward Malnick, “The Ukrainian oligarchs living it large in London,” The Telegraph, London, February 23, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10655081/The-Ukrainian-oligarchs-living-it-large-in-London.html ^[13]

[18] “Petro Poroshenko,” Forbes, March 2014, http://www.forbes.com/profile/petro-poroshenko/ ^[14]

[19] See “About Victor Pinchuck,” Victor Pinchuck Foundation, http://pinchukfund.org/en/about_pinchuk/biography/ ^[15]

[20] Yalta European Strategy, http://pinchukfund.org/en/about_pinchuk/biography/ ^[15]

[21] Open Ukraine, “Founders,” http://openukraine.org/ua/about/founders ^[16]

[22] Open Ukraine, “Governing bodies,” http://openukraine.org/ua/about/management ^[17]

[23] “About the GMF,” http://www.gmfus.org/about-gmf/ ^[18]

[24] Co-founded in 2006 by Jeffrey C. Neal, formerly chairman of Merrill Lynch, and a board member of the Chicago Council of Global Affairs. Founding partner and CEO is Natalie A. Jaresko, who formerly worked for the U.S. State Department, and as chief economic adviser to the U.S. embassy in the Ukraine. See Horizon Capital, http://www.horizoncapital.com.ua/our-team ^[19]

[25] http://openukraine.org/ua/news/733-vichna-pamjaty-i-slava-gerojam ^[20]

[26] Kenneth Rapoza, “Washington’s Man Yatsenyuk setting Ukraine up for ruin,” Forbes, February 27, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2014/02/27/washingtons-man-yatsenyuk-setting-ukraine-up-for-ruin/ ^[21]

[27] Ibid.

[28] “Talks with E.U., IMF are new Ukrainian government’s top priorities,” ITAR/TASS, February 27, 2014, http://en.itar-tass.com/world/721208 ^[22]

[29] “IMF mission in Kiev to assess economic situation in Ukraine,” ITAR/TASS, March 4, 2014, http://en.itar-tass.com/world/721953 ^[22]

[30] Sandrine Rastello and Terry Atlas, “IMF history with Ukraine leaders may cloud aid negotiations,” Bloomberg News, March 1, 2014, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-28/imf-history-with-reneging-ukrainian-leaders-may-cloud-fresh-aid.html ^[23]

 

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Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/03/geopolitics-and-oligarchy-in-the-ukraine-crisis/

Gerhard Schröder tacle les Occidentaux

Gerhard Schröder tacle les Occidentaux

Ex: http://aucoeurdunationalisme.blogspot.com

 

Gerhard Schröder s’était déplacé pour parler de l’avenir de l’Union européenne – mais c’est l’avenir de l’Ukraine qui s’est imposé à l’ancien chancelier allemand comme le sujet dominant d’une intervention hier à Paris organisée par l’ambassade d’Allemagne. Le prédécesseur d’Angela Merkel s’est en effet très vite saisi de l’occasion pour sévèrement critiquer la position prise par la France et d’autres puissances occidentales envers la Russie dans la crise ukrainienne.

 

 

Par Leo Klimm

 

Selon Gerhard Schröder, isoler la Russie ne fait qu’aggraver les risques d’une escalade militaire.

 

« Dans une telle crise, toute mesure qui nous prive de possibilités de discussion est une fausse décision », dit-il en se référant à la menace d’exclure la Russie du cercle des puissances économiques, le G8.

 

Tout en préconisant une solution diplomatique pour rétablir l’intégrité territoriale de l’Ukraine, l’ex-chancelier s’en est pris à l’Union européenne et à l’Otan. L’organisation de défense nord-atlantique avait réuni son conseil ce week-end.

 

« L’Otan n’a pas de fonction politique. L’Otan n’oeuvre pas pour plus de confiance mais ne fait que créer des craintes. » Quant à l’Union européenne, elle a, selon lui, contribué au déchirement de l’Ukraine en rendant un accord d’association incompatible avec une union douanière entre Kiev et Moscou.

 

« L’Ukraine est un pays culturellement divisé et l’Union européenne n’en a pas assez tenu compte », a estimé Gerhard Schröder qui s’exprimait devant des politiques et des chefs d’entreprises français.

Le social-démocrate, qui a exclu tout rôle de médiateur, entretient des liens amicaux avec le président russe Vladimir Poutine. Il est aussi président du conseil de NordStream, société contrôlée par le géant russe Gazprom, qui alimente l’Allemagne en gaz. Face à la question de savoir si l’Allemagne pourrait se permettre d’être plus ferme vis-à-vis de Moscou malgré sa dépendance énergétique, Gerhard Schröder a répondu :
« Les boycotts doivent être employés de telle façon qu’on n’en subisse pas soi-même le plus grand préjudice. »

Pour lui, la solution de la crise passe par un dialogue direct entre les pouvoirs russes et ukrainiens au sein de l’OSCE.

lesechos.fr

http://fortune.fdesouche.com/331421-gerhard-schroder-tacle-les-occidentaux#more-331421

Tune Out the War Party!

 

Tune Out the War Party!

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian troops into Crimea, our war hawks are breathing fire. Russophobia is rampant and the op-ed pages are ablaze here.

Barack Obama should tune them out, and reflect on how Cold War presidents dealt with far graver clashes with Moscow.

When Red Army tank divisions crushed the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956, killing 50,000, Eisenhower did not lift a finger. When Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall, JFK went to Berlin and gave a speech.

When Warsaw Pact troops crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, LBJ did nothing. When, Moscow ordered Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to smash Solidarity, Ronald Reagan refused to put Warsaw in default.

These presidents saw no vital U.S. interest imperiled in these Soviet actions, however brutal. They sensed that time was on our side in the Cold War. And history has proven them right.

What is the U.S. vital interest in Crimea? Zero. From Catherine the Great to Khrushchev, the peninsula belonged to Russia. The people of Crimea are 60 percent ethnic Russians.

And should Crimea vote to secede from Ukraine, upon what moral ground would we stand to deny them the right, when we bombed Serbia for 78 days to bring about the secession of Kosovo?

Across Europe, nations have been breaking apart since the end of the Cold War. Out of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia came 24 nations. Scotland is voting on secession this year. Catalonia may be next.

Yet, today, we have the Wall Street Journal describing Russia’s sending of soldiers to occupy airfields in Ukraine as a “blitzkrieg” that “brings the threat of war to the heart of Europe,” though Crimea is east even of what we used to call Eastern Europe.

The Journal wants the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush sent to the Eastern Mediterranean and warships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet sent into the Black Sea.

But why? We have no alliance that mandates our fighting Russia over Crimea. We have no vital interest there. Why send a flotilla other than to act tough, escalate the crisis and risk a clash?

The Washington Post calls Putin’s move a “naked act of armed aggression in the center of Europe.” The Crimea is in the center of Europe? We are paying a price for our failure to teach geography.

The Post also urges an ultimatum to Putin: Get out of Crimea, or we impose sanctions that could “sink the Russian financial system.”

While we and the EU could cripple Russia’s economy and bring down her banks, is this wise? What if Moscow responds by cutting off credits to Ukraine, calling in Kiev’s debts, refusing to buy her goods and raising the price of oil and gas?

This would leave the EU and us with responsibility for a basket-case nation the size of France and four times as populous as Greece.

Are Angela Merkel and the EU ready to take on that load, after bailing out the PIIGS — Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain?

If we push Russia out of the tent, to whom do we think Putin will turn, if not China?

This is not a call to ignore what is going on, but to understand it and act in the long-term interests of the United States.

Putin’s actions, though unsettling, are not irrational.

After he won the competition for Ukraine to join his customs union, by bumping a timid EU out of the game with $15 billion cash offer plus subsidized oil and gas to Kiev, he saw his victory stolen.

Crowds formed in Maidan Square, set up barricades, battled police with clubs and Molotov cocktails, forced the elected president Viktor Yanukovych into one capitulation after another, and then overthrew him, ran him out of the country, impeached him, seized parliament, downgraded the Russian language, and declared Ukraine part of Europe.

To Americans this may look like democracy in action. To Moscow it has the aspect of a successful Beer Hall Putsch, with even Western journalists conceding there were neo-Nazis in Maidan Square.

In Crimea and eastern Ukraine, ethnic Russians saw a president they elected and a party they supported overthrown and replaced by parties and politicians hostile to a Russia with which they have deep historical, religious, cultural and ancestral ties.

Yet Putin is taking a serious risk. If Russia annexes Crimea, no major nation will recognize it as legitimate, and he could lose the rest of Ukraine forever. Should he slice off and annex eastern Ukraine, he could ignite a civil war and second Cold War.

Time is not necessarily on Putin’s side here. John Kerry could be right on that.

But as for the hawkish howls, to have Ukraine and Georgia brought into NATO, that would give these nations, deep inside Russia’s space, the kind of war guarantees the Kaiser gave Austria in 1914 and the Brits gave the Polish colonels in March 1939.

Those war guarantees led to two world wars, which historians may yet conclude were the death blows of Western civilization.

The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan

Ukraine: comprendre la position russe

Ukraine: comprendre la position russe

par Guillaume Faye

Ex: http://www.gfaye.com

Les ”événements” d’Ukraine ont une origine : c’est la proposition de l’Union européenne d’une association commerciale et économique, prélude à une entrée de l’Ukraine dans l’UE puis dans l’OTAN, qui a tout déclenché. Le président Ianoukovitch (aujourd’hui déchu) a accepté cette proposition, du fait de la situation financière de son pays. Le pouvoir russe ne pouvait que réagir à ce qu’il ressentait comme une provocation, c’est-à-dire faire sortir l’Ukraine de sa sphère d’influence pour l’arrimer à l’Occident, le binôme UE-USA. Les Russes ont alors fait une contre-proposition d’aide financière à l’Ukraine. Le gouvernement ukrainien a cédé et dénoncé l’accord avec l’Europe, pour se retourner vers la proposition du Kremlin.

Ce fut là l’amorce de l’explosion, de la révolte, pilotée par le nationalisme ukrainien anti-russe et ”pro-européen”, selon le vocabulaire journalistique. Au terme d’émeutes qui ont fait environ 150 morts (niveau très inférieur aux anciens affrontements d’Irlande du Nord) (1), ce que les Russes appellent un coup d’État a été opéré. Le parlement ukrainien (Rada) s’est retourné et a destitué V. Ianoukovitch, qui avait pourtant été élu au suffrage universel, mais qui, il est vrai, n’a jamais été apprécié par le Kremlin.  

La Russie profite évidemment de ces événements pour reprendre le contrôle de la Crimée, cédée à la république soviétique d’Ukraine (geste purement symbolique) par Nikita Krouchtchev en 1954 et peuplée majoritairement de russophones. La réalité géopolitique est la plus forte et la réaction de Poutine est très compréhensible –  bien qu’il outrepasse la légalité internationale – puisque la flotte russe du Sud est stationnée à Sébastopol. Le Kremlin ne peut pas, stratégiquement, admettre que l’Ukraine, dont l’est et le sud sont russophones et russophiles et qui fut le berceau de la Russie, tombe dans le ”camp occidental”, c’est-à-dire pour Poutine, l’ensemble UE-Otan sous influence américaine.  

Il est certain que M. Ianoukovitch était un satrape et un autocrate, mais pas plus que 60 % des dirigeants des pays du monde. Et son régime n’avait rien à voir (comme d’ailleurs celui de la Russie) avec les despotismes qu’on observe en Chine, au Venezuela, dans maints pays d’Asie, d’Afrique ou arabo-musulmans, avec lesquels le ”monde libre” autosatisfait, celui des Droits de l’homme, entretient les meilleures relations. La présentation par les politiciens et les médias occidentaux de l’affaire ukrainienne comme un combat pour la démocratie (avec toujours BHL qui vient faire le clown aux premières loges) est complètement erronée. Il s’agit d’enjeux géostratégiques au sein d’un pays, l’Ukraine, coupé en deux entre une population pro-russe et russophone et une population anti-russe et pro-occidentale. Une situation tragique au cœur de l’Europe, qu’il ne fallait surtout pas envenimer.

À cet égard, l’Union européenne a joué un rôle de provocatrice irresponsable, donnant un coup de pied dans la fourmilière, en proposant à l’Ukraine une adhésion à terme (2). De même, le parlement ukrainien, retourné, après l’établissement du nouveau régime provisoire, a voté la suppression du russe comme langue officielle dans un pays en partie russophone, ce qui ne constitue pas vraiment une preuve de démocratie. Voilà qui a apporté sur un plateau d’argent des arguments à M. Poutine : ce dernier accuse le nouveau régime, illégal à ses yeux,  de nationalisme et de ”fascisme” et aussi de menacer la sécurité des russophones dont la Russie se veut la garante.     

Mais le pire est l’impudence de la réaction du gouvernement  américain. Le président Obama et le secrétaire d’État John Kerry  (sur lesquels  se sont alignés les socialistes français, devenus encore plus atlantistes que la droite chiraquienne et sarkoziste) ont menacé la Russie de sanctions économiques et de l’exclure du G8 en lui signalant qu’elle violait le droit international et la Charte de l’ONU par son intrusion militaire dans un pays souverain.  M. Kerry  a parlé de l’ « invasion et de l’occupation de l’Ukraine ». Il a déclaré : « au XXIe siècle, vous ne devriez pas vous comporter comme au XIXe siècle en envahissant un autre pays. »  Le secrétaire général de l’Otan,  Anders Fogh Rasmussen, comme pour ajouter à la provocation (qu’est-ce que l’Otan, après tout, vient faire là-dedans ?) a précisé : « ce que fait la Russie en Ukraine viole les principes de la Charte des Nations unies. Cela menace la paix et la sécurité en Europe. La Russie doit cesser ses activités militaires et ses menaces ». 

Quel invraisemblable culot…Les Etats-Unis ont envahi l’Irak sous un prétexte mensonger sans aucun mandat de l’ONU, dont ils ont allègrement violé la Charte, en y laissant une situation de chaos, et ils se permettent de donner des leçons à la Russie. On croit rêver. Cette nervosité occidentale s’explique aussi par la claque diplomatique prise par les chancelleries sur l’affaire syrienne face à la Russie.

Un point important mérite d’être remarqué : à l’inverse de la France socialiste qui s’aligne sur Washington  (3), l’Allemagne de Mme Merkel adopte une position ”gaullienne” et s’impose comme la meilleure interlocutrice de la Russie, la plus apte à négocier la sortie de crise. M. Frank-Walter Steinmeïer, ministre des Affaires étrangères, a rejeté la proposition américaine d’exclure la Russie du G8, position réaliste, opposée à celle du Quai d’Orsay, du Foreing Office et du secrétariat d’État américain. 

On peut tirer de tout cela des conclusions provisoires, parce que la crise ukrainienne n’est pas terminée.

1) Il est vraiment dommage que tels conflits éclatent en Europe, entre Européens de même souche (en l’occurrence entre Slaves apparentés) alors qu’une invasion colonisatrice, extra-européenne, que nous connaissons bien, a déjà commencé.  Cela fait penser à la guerre civile d’Irlande du Nord. On s’écharpe entre nous alors que nos ennemis réels sont tout autres.

2) L’Ukraine n’est probablement pas un pays viable à moyen terme. Sa partition, avec le rattachement de l’est et du sud à la Russie est à la fois une évidence politique et un problème insurmontable pour l’ordre international.  C’est toute la question de la doctrine des nationalités qui fonde le droit international public. L’Ukraine éclatera, tôt ou tard. Le droit cède toujours devant les faits. Cedat lex reibus.

3) Cette crise ukrainienne  va relancer la guerre froide contre la Russie, ce qui est une erreur dramatique. 

4) Les Ukrainiens qui se disent ” pro-Européens”  n’ont aucune idée de ce qui les attend s’ils adhèrent à l’Union européenne : une immigration incontrôlable bien pire que la menace russe fantasmée, une perte des protections frontalières et d’une partie de la souveraineté. 

NOTES

(1) Aucune enquête sérieuse n’a déterminé qui étaient les responsables des morts, ni qui étaient les snipers (tireurs solitaires) qui ont tué des manifestants. La responsabilité du régime de Ianoukovitch n’est pas établie. Les médias occidentaux n’ont jamais identifié les tireurs.

(2) L’entrée de l’Ukraine dans l’UE serait un casse-tête économique. Faire miroiter cette possibilité relevait d’une manœuvre politique, que le Kremlin a interprétée comme une provocation.

(3) M. Hollande a été reçu comme un roi de la Lune à Washington par M. Obama (visite d’État) et s’est fait totalement embobiner. Flatté comme un caniche, il voulait redorer son blason mais n’a rien compris au film : remettre la France dans le droit chemin de l’atlantisme au moment où l’Allemagne s’en détache et vise un partenariat  économique majeur avec la Russie.

Das heimtückische Spiel der EU mit der Ukraine

Ewald Stadler

Das heimtückische Spiel der EU mit der Ukraine

The Partitioning of Iraq

The Partitioning of Iraq: Will the Country Remain on the Map?

Anton VESELOV

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

Recently news from Iraq has all but disappeared from the reports of world news agencies. As if on command, the largest Western media outlets have begun to strictly measure out coverage of events in this country. The multistage Iraqi scheme, which has required colossal expenses and huge casualties, is failing, and the situation is threatening to go completely out of control and progress in an entirely different direction than that which was scripted.

The occupation of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath party marked the beginning of massive repressions of those who had held more or less significant posts in the previous regime. However, soon minor functionaries began to be subject to persecution, and then ordinary citizens, mostly from among Sunnites. The ruling Shiite bloc of Nouri al-Maliki has conducted an openly discriminatory policy toward Sunnites throughout the years of its governance. More than once the state bureaucracy, the armed forces, the police and intelligence agencies have been purged of people who confess Sunni Islam. All attempts by various political forces, including on the parliamentary level, to start a dialog for the purpose of national harmony have been left unanswered by the authorities, and peaceful demonstrations all end the same way: with crackdowns and numerous casualties. Purges, raids and «preventative arrests» took on such proportions that a backlash was inevitable.

Over 9,000 people were killed in Iraq in 2013, and over 1000 in January 2014 alone. Propagandistic attempts to blame everything on the machinations of outside forces and hosts of foreign al-Qaeda insurgents are no longer working: it is becoming obvious that the country is in the grip of a civil war. It is becoming increasingly more violent and is sweeping over more and more regions of the country, increasing casualties and limiting possibilities to choose a future. 

Iraq is experiencing a very dramatic period in its history, when the disintegration of the country could become a reality at any moment. Iraqi Kurdistan is already essentially no longer under Baghdad's control and is self-sufficient, with almost all of the agencies, symbols and attributes of an independent state. The situation with regard to security in the provinces of Baghdad, Salah ad-Din, Ninawa, Diyala and several others is extremely tense; the armed conflicts and terrorist attacks which take place each month number in the triple digits. The situation has become most acute in the country's largest province by area, al-Anbar. Since December of last year fierce battles have been being fought there between the government forces, which in Iraq are called the «Shiite Militia of al-Maliki» and local Sunnite tribes who have despaired of gaining equal rights through peaceful means. 

On December 28, commando and army forces conducted yet another operation to wipe out the tent camps of protesters by force. Casualties were numerous. The next day a member of parliament from the al-Anbar province who tried to act as a mediator in negotiations with Baghdad was arrested, despite his parliamentary immunity; the legislator received gunshot wounds when his house was stormed, and his brother and four bodyguards were killed. Local sheikhs issued a call to arms. Support arrived from other provinces to aid their brothers in faith. A day later the army and police had been driven from many districts and the armed opposition had taken control of almost all of the al-Anbar province, including the provincial capital Ramadi and the large city of Fallujah, which in Iraq is glorified as «the stronghold of the spirit and the symbol of resistance» - American troops were only able to enter the city a year and a half after their «declaration of victory», having lost over 400 men in battle.

Despite the arrival of reinforcements (according to some reports, another 90,000 troops and policemen were deployed to the province), the many attempts by government forces, commando troops and the police to enter the cities did not meet with success, and in mid-January a siege began: the suburbs are completely blocked off, and residential neighborhoods are coming under intensive fire from artillery, tanks and helicopters. There have been numerous civilian casualties, but those who attempt to leave the battle zone cannot do so, as the bridges on the main highways which connect the cities with neighboring provinces have been blown up, and the back roads have been blocked by the army under the pretext of «preventing the spread of terrorism». The province is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster; On February 6 the head of the UN Mission in Iraq, Nikolai Mladenov, stated that international funds have started sending urgent deliveries of essential commodities to al-Anbar (the first delivery is to be enough for 45,000 people). On February 9 Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq appealed to the European Union to immediately send humanitarian aid to al-Anbar… 

On April 30 there are to be parliamentary elections in Iraq, after which there will probably be some changes. The country has come to a dead end. The parliament is dysfunctional; many members do not participate in sessions as a sign of protest against the government's policies, and the lack of a quorum makes it impossible to make decisions. The draft of the country's 2014 budget has not yet been discussed, and many other important bills are in limbo as well. A huge number of vitally important projects which have not been confirmed and have not received funding remain on paper, while the giant revenues from oil and gas go into accounts opened in the U.S. 

Many in Iraq have a good idea of where this money goes after that; that is why the Ministry of Finance's refusal to observe a law passed in 2013 which was to increase the amount allocated to provincial budgets for oil extracted there from $1 to $5 per barrel for 2014 caused a storm of protest among local authorities. Governors and provincial councils started actively developing coordinated measures for influencing the government. Judging by official statements, provincial leaders are determined and intend to get the draft budget for 2014 revised by any means available. 

On January 11 in al-Diwaniyah, al-Qadisiyyah province, the «Middle Euphrates Convention» was convened with the participation of the governors of five provinces; the convention demanded «the fair distribution of revenues in proportion to the population». On January 25 in Basra, the capital of Iraq's oil extraction, a conference was held with the participation of official representatives of eight oil and gas producing provinces, as well as the parliament's petroleum committee. The next day the governor of Basra, Majid al-Nasrawi, announced that he had filed suit against the Ministry of Finance for its violation of the 2013 law. It is worth noting that the Basra provincial council gave official permission to hold meetings and demonstrations condemning the actions of the country's government and urged everyone to work toward securing «the lawful rights of the residents of the province, which has the richest resources in the country but is at the bottom of the list with regard to prosperity».

According to many analysts, the personal authority, influence and political weight of Nouri al-Maliki and the State of Law Coalition he leads have dropped noticeably. Accusations of authoritarianism, wholesale corruption, inability to maintain security even in the center of the capital (the average number of terrorist attacks with human casualties in Baghdad has grown over the past three years from 70 to 110 per week), and a lack of desire to seek compromise, along with unceasing attempts to physically eliminate his opponents, all seriously reduce Nouri al-Maliki's chances to occupy the post of prime minister and supreme commander in chief for a third time.

Iraqi leaders over the past 10 years have behaved like favored minions. Many former functionaries of the «new democratic government» have already found refuge in prestigious areas of London, starting with the first Minister of Defense, Hazim al-Shaalan (who was once accused of stealing one and a half billion dollars in just the first year in his post). Many current officials have also foresightedly acquired real estate there. According to data from the parliamentary anti-corruption committee, the amount of money embezzled from the treasury and sent abroad is approaching 200 billion dollars.

Foreseeing developments which could be dangerous for them, the current authorities are seriously concerned about preserving the status quo (this is called «continuity of reforms») in order to prevent power from shifting into the hands of their opponents. Recently feverish attempts have been being made to get out of the crisis, including by generating rather unexpected initiatives.

For example, in Baghdad they have officially began talking about redrawing the administrative map of the country, increasing the number of provinces from 18 to 30. Their willingness to do this is supported by a number of official statements, one of which (dated January 21, on the formation of 4 new provinces) was unexpected even for the residents of the municipal district of Fallujah itself, to say nothing of the leadership of the al-Anbar province. The cunning of the idea of fragmentation is that it simultaneously accomplishes several aims, namely:

- dismembering «rebellious» provinces with mostly Sunnite populations while at the same time attempting to bring representatives of the tribes which have joined the Sahwa («Awakening») movement to power; in particular, it has already been decided to turn a number of municipal districts in the provinces of al-Anbar, Salah ad-Din and Ninawa into provinces;

- knocking some of the trumps out of the hands of the leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan by turning 4-5 municipal districts into separate provinces, which would lead to a reduction in the territory and population of the current autonomous region and a diminishing of its weight and influence on the country's political arena. And this regards not only the disputed territories in the provinces of Wasit, Diyala, Ninawa and Kirkuk, but also the «traditionally Kurdish» Dohuk and as-Sulaymaniyyah;

- changing the overall alignment of forces in the country by putting loyal people into the leadership of the newly formed provinces. At the municipal elections in 2013 the ruling coalition lost gubernatorial posts even in such strategically important provinces as Baghdad and Basra, retaining fewer than half of the gubernatorial seats, and that with restrictions.

However, considering the weakness of the state machinery and the growing centrifugal tendencies of the local authorities, the process could get out of control, and the repartitioning of territories could bring about the opposite effect, causing entire regions to split off and create autonomous regions (following the example of Kurdistan). For example, the governor of the Ninawa province has already stated that if practical steps are taken to split municipal districts off from the province as has been announced, all efforts will be made to turn the province into an autonomous territory. This statement received widespread support, including from the oil-rich South. In the provinces of Basra and Maysan there have already been demonstrations in support of giving the status of provinces to several municipal districts, including those located in oil-producing regions, with the subsequent formation of a «Southern Confederacy» on the model of Kurdistan.

Today practically all the conditions have been created for the transformation of Iraq into a federative state with dozens of provinces grouped into 3-4 autonomous territories (tentatively Shiite, Kurdish and Sunnite ones) on the basis of tribal connections, religious affinity and economic interests, with severe restriction of the powers of the Center.

Outwardly such a program seems difficult to implement; in order to legislatively formalize such decisions there will need to be parliamentary conciliatory commissions, committees, secondary legislation, etc., to say nothing of amendments to the country's constitution. However, if one looks at the matter more attentively, the thought arises that perhaps that is the common interest of the key players who are influencing developments.

The West, headed by the United States, as well as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and obviously Israel, have an interest in keeping Iraq from ever again rising to the position of a powerful regional state; they need it to remain a manageable supplier of high-quality petroleum with minimal costs for extraction and export, and also to serve as a bargaining chip in resolving problems of another order.

Most likely the future state structure of Iraq and the country's fate are being decided now not in Baghdad, but in back room negotiations between «very interested parties»... There have been many examples in the history of the Middle East where states appeared or disappeared from the political map during a game of bridge, and the borders between them were drawn with an ordinary ruler. In spite of all the technological achievements of the past decades, in geopolitics and geo-economics little has changed since then.

_________________________________ 

* The Sahwa movement was created by the U.S. in the beginning of the occupation by paying off tribal sheikhs in exchange for their non-resistance. Many Iraqis to this day see the members of Sahwa as traitors and collaborators, and they are one of the main targets of armed attacks.

US Agents Incite Civil War in Venezuela

Nil NIKANDROV

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

Leopoldo López, the leader of radical opposition Popular Will (El Movimiento Voluntad Popular), has taken a decision to hand himself over to government forces. What has made him do so? Upon getting the news the arrest warrant was issued, he went in hiding, then tried to escape abroad. He changed his mind after the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (el Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional - SEBIN) made public a taped phone conversation. Two men from a Miami-based ultra-right emigrant group discussed the plans to physically liquidate Lopez and then shift the blame on the government of Nicolas Maduro. 

A number of terrorist groups were sent to Venezuela, they had accomplices in the ranks of Lopez’s team. The residence of US Central Intelligence Agency in Caracas knew about the terrorists’ plans. It never moved a finger to protect Lopez. He was doomed to face cold blooded and politically motivated action undertaken against him to serve the United States’ interests. Conspirators hoped this «sacred sacrifice» would give an impetus to the process of the country’s destabilization and make people hit the streets. The assassination had to cement the leading position of Enrique Capriles, an old time rival of Lopez, among the opposition ranks. 

Tensions run high in Venezuela. Lopez has created many problems for the ruling regime. At that, Diosdado Cabello Rondó, the President of the National Assembly (parliament), personally called the family of Lopez to give a warning about the imminent threat. The wife of Lopez said in an interview with CNN that she had no doubt the recording was genuine. The Lopez family knew well the people involved in the bugged conversation. Lopez was personally accompanied by Diosdado Cabello on his way to the Palace of Justice. He was given guarantees that the investigation of the events on February 12 would be just and impartial. The actions on the part of radical opposition leaders resulted in human loss of life, damage to administrative buildings and city’s infrastructure, including metro (underground). No doubt Lopez is guilty because it was him who called for «resolute actions». He is in high security prison now, the inquiry is underway. 

Talking to PDVSA (Petroleum of Venezuela, the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company - Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.) employees, President Nicolas Maduro said that Venezuelan reactionaries, who get funds from Miami, planned to assassinate ultra-right politician Lopez, their own fellow traveler, and spark a civil war in the country. Maduro remembered that the plotters have established a multi-million fund to provide for the activities of extremists, militants and murderers. Nevertheless, he said Leopoldo Lopez will be protected. The President said his father and mother were against them (Bolivarians) but deep inside their hearts they realized that the authorities were saving their son’s life. Maduro said another group of US diplomats was expelled from the country, claiming they gave promises to grant preferential visas and used their consulate cover to infiltrate universities and incite further students’ unrest. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said the three were: second secretary, Breeann Marie McCusker, and Vice Consuls Jeffrey Gordon Elsen and Kristofer Lee Clark. The expulsion does not create any serious problems for US special services using embassy cover, the operatives strength exceeds 200. Technically it is hard enough to keep them under the SEBIN surveillance. It’s not excluded that the number of diplomats will be limited to prevent subversive actions. No doubt such a step will decrease the intensiveness of the CIA and other hostile agencies operating in the country. 

Venezuelan political scholars unanimously say the United States embassy in Caracas is the main coordinating center of large-scale anti-government plot. The strategic goal of Washington is to establish control over the Venezuela’s riches – its mineral resources. The mission to be accomplished by conspirators is to shake the foundations of regime and smear its leadership, first of all President Nicolas Maduro, the successor of Hugo Chavez. It’s is becoming more evident that Washington is pursuing the goal of sparking a bloody civil war in Venezuela which would serve as a pretext for direct military intervention of the Empire. The springboards of the US armed forces Southern Command are already deployed along the Venezuelan border in Columbia, the countries of Central America and the Caribbean… 

The 4th operational fleet regularly hones its capability to block the Venezuelan coastline and prevent any attempts of the ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Peoples’ Trade Treaty, Spanish - Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América - Tratado de los Comercios de los Pueblos) to lend a helping hand. 

The economic war has been raging since the regime of Chavez came to power, it started to pick up steam during the Maduro’s tenure. The Venezueal media reports that huge piles of counterfeited goods from Venezuela, especially food and petrol, are daily comfiscated at the border with Columbia, Gayana and Brazil. Entrepeneurs are dissatisfied with the government actions aimed at preventing the process to get out of hand. So they hide everyday life goods. According to the so called Bolivarian people’s intelligence, there are secret caches of sugar, vegetable oil, milk powder etc. The commodities are immediately confiscated and sold through Mercal, a network of state-owned shops. As a result, the arsons are on the rise, they set of fire the «people’s» shops selling goods at low prices. 

The government is opposed by Fedecámaras (the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce (Spanish: la Federación de Cámaras y Asociaciones de Comercio y Producción de Venezuela) composed of chambers of commerce in twelve basic trade groups: banking, agriculture, commerce, construction, energy, manufacturing, media, mining, ranching, insurance, transportation, and tourism. They have their own TV channels and radio stations, newspapers and established internet-web portals. Up to 80% of media outlets belong to the opponents of the government. To no avail Chavez and Maduro tried to reach a compromise with their owners. The anti-government slander campaign never stops. Time and again influential mass media outlets follow the CIA instructions. Maduro and Diosdado Cabello regularly come under attacks, even direct threats, as they are predicted to follow the fate of Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi. The threats are tainted with fascist ideology; they are addressed to the families of Bolivarians, including children. This information terrorism is directed against all the politicians, who have fallen out of favor with the Empire, including the post-Soviet space. There is a question in Spanish often asked by internet users – what country will Maduro find safe haven in when toppled by the people’s uprising? The very same question is asked now about Ukrainian President Yanukovych. 

The law enforcement agencies prevent many attempts to create hot beds using the «Maidan technology» and «relevant Ukrainian experience» of toppling the legal government. Specially trained groups of young people are used after they receive training in Miami, Costa-Rica, Panama and other countries. Scores of burnt cars and buses, roadblocks, barricades erected…More and more often police reports tell about the crimes committed without any motivation, random shots fired at passers-by to incite public discontent because the government is unable to stop the criminals going on a rampage. Before this kind of tactics had been used by Mexico and Mexico drug cartels, now it is honed further by the US Central Intelligence Agency… 

Finally, there is a coordination of activities aimed at overthrow of governments in Venezuela, Ukraine and Russia’s allies. Could it be an attempt to take revenge for the failure in Syria? 

Le conflit en Ukraine : moralisme et réalité

Le conflit en Ukraine : moralisme et réalité

 

 

par Xavier Moreau 

 

Ex: http://www.realpolitik.tv

Article de Xavier Moreau initialement publié sur le site de L’Homme Nouveau le 21 février 2014.

Nous avons publié sur ce site [ndrl : L'Homme Nouveau] jeudi 20 février un appel de Myroslav Marynovych, vice-recteur de l’université catholique d’Ukraine, à propos des événements se déroulant dans son pays. Xavier Moreau, géo-politicien, spécialiste de la Russie et collaborateur du site Realpolitik.tv, apporte ici en réponse une autre vision. On pourra trouver ses autres analyses sur le sujet sur Realpolitik.tv, le site de géopolitique créé par Aymeric Chauprade.

Nous avons beaucoup écrit sur l’Ukraine, en essayant d’expliquer l’enjeu géopolitique qu’elle représente pour les États-Unis, la Pologne, l’Allemagne et la Russie. Le conflit qui secoue le pays n’est pas une lutte des gentils manifestants contre les méchants policiers. Nous pourrions, pour répondre du berger à la bergère à Myroslav Marynovych, donner les liens internet où l’on voit les policiers ukrainiens torturés, assassinés, brulés vifs…  mais se jeter les morts et les blessés à la figure ne ferait pas avancer ce débat. Nous nous contenterons donc, de rappeler à Myroslav Marynovych quelques règles de base de la démocratie française, qui pourraient inspirer ses partisans :

– Si une décision du Président ou du Parlement de notre pays, légalement et légitimement élus, ne nous satisfait pas, nous avons le droit de manifester et de voter contre eux aux élections suivantes. Les prochaines élections ukrainiennes ayant lieu en 2015, Myroslav Marynovych n’aura pas longtemps à attendre.

– Le fait d’être, le weekend, entre 100 000, 500 000 ou 1 000 0000 à occuper une place de la capitale ne change pas la première règle, un million de Français peuvent en témoigner.

– Le fait d’être, en semaine, 2000 désœuvrés et armés, ne nous autorise pas non plus, à remettre pas en cause la première règle.

– Si nous dépassons la zone ou l’horaire qui nous sont attribués pour notre défilé, la police nous dispersera. En France, ce sera plus brutalement qu’à Maïdan la première nuit.

– Si quelques milliers de manifestants se barricadent sur la place des Invalides, la police donnera l’assaut immédiatement, jettera les manifestant en prison et condamnera lourdement les meneurs. En France, il est inconcevable, contrairement à l’Ukraine, que les policiers français se fassent incendier par des « cocktails molotov » sans réagir, même si les manifestants sont soutenus par des capitales étrangères.

– Le gouvernement français n’autorisera jamais des bandes armées à occuper une place de la capitale parisienne et à la transformer en camp retranché.

– Comme la plupart des manifestants pacifiques du week-end, Myroslav Marynovych est visiblement mal informés sur l’accord de coopération proposée à l’Ukraine. Il n’a JAMAIS été question de supprimer le régime des visas. Il ne s’agissait pas non plus d’une première étape vers l’adhésion, ni même d’une candidature. Il s’agissait d’ouvrir les frontières ukrainiennes à l’UE et d’adapter la législation ukrainienne aux dizaines de milliers de normes européennes, ce qui prendrait à l’Ukraine une dizaine d’années. Après cela, elle pourrait en effet prétendre à être candidate à l’intégration.

– Même si les Européens prennent des sanctions, cela ne changera rien à la réalité de cet accord, dont vous oubliez qu’il a été préparé par l’ancien gouvernement et souhaité par votre Président. Ce que vous devez réclamer à l’Union Européenne et qui provoquera la signature immédiate de cet accord par Viktor Ianoukovitch, c’est 15 milliards de dollars. Sans cet argent votre pays est en banqueroute immédiate, le hrivna s’effondre, les fonctionnaires ne sont plus payés, les services publics disparaissent.

– En 1993, Jean-Pierre Chevènement rappelait déjà à Bernard-Henri Lévy, que le rôle d’un intellectuel est de rendre les événements intelligibles et non pas d’attiser les tensions en jouant sur l’émotion. En tant qu’intellectuel, votre rôle est d’inviter vos compatriotes à respecter la démocratie et à choisir leur destin dans le bureau de vote et pas dans la rue.

 

Leave Ukraine Alone!

Leave Ukraine Alone!

By Ron Paul

Ron Paul Institute

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

Last week Ukraine saw its worst violence since the break-up of the Soviet Union over 20 years ago. Protesters occupying the main square in the capitol city, Kiev, clashed with police leaving many protesters and police dead and many more wounded. It is an ongoing tragedy and it looks like there is no end in sight.

The current conflict stems from a divide between western Ukraine, which seeks a closer association with the European Union, and the eastern part of the country, which has closer historic ties to Russia.

The usual interventionists in the US have long meddled in the internal affairs of Ukraine. In 2004 it was US government money that helped finance the Orange Revolution, as US-funded NGOs favoring one political group over the other were able to change the regime. These same people have not given up on Ukraine. They keep pushing their own agenda for Ukraine behind the scenes, even as they ridicule anyone who claims US involvement.

A recent leaked telephone conversation between two senior government officials made it clear that not only was the US involved in the Ukrainian unrest, the US was actually seeking to determine who should make up the next Ukrainian government! 

Senator John McCain, who has made several trips to Ukraine recently to meet with the opposition, wrote last week that the US must stand up to support the territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea.

Why are US government officials so eager to tell the Ukrainians what they should do? Has anyone bothered to ask the Ukrainians? What if might help alleviate the ongoing violence and bloodshed, if the Ukrainians decided to re-make the country as a looser confederation of regions rather than one tightly controlled by a central government? Perhaps Ukraine engaged in peaceful trade with countries both to the west and east would benefit all sides. But outside powers seem to be fighting a proxy war, with Ukraine suffering the most because of it.

If you asked most Americans how they feel, my bet is that you would discover they are sick and tired of the US government getting involved in every crisis that arises. Certainly the American people want none of of this intervention in Ukraine. They understand, as recent polls have shown, that our interventionist foreign policy is only creating more enemies overseas. And they also understand that we are out of money. We could not afford to be the policemen of world even if we wanted to be.

And I bet if we asked the Ukrainians, a vast majority of them would prefer that the US — and Russia and the European Union — stay out their affairs and respect their sovereignty. Is it so difficult to understand why people resent being lectured and bribed by foreign governments? All we need to do is put ourselves in the place of the Ukrainians and ask ourselves how we would feel if we were in the middle of a tug-of-war between a very strong Canada on one side and a very strong Mexico on the other. We would resent it as well. So let’s keep our hands off of Ukraine and let them solve their own problems!

See the Ron Paul File

Extension du système mondialiste

L’ALLIANCE DU PACIFIQUE

Extension du système mondialiste

Auran Derien
Ex: http://metamag.fr

 

L’Alliance du Pacifique (Chili, Pérou, Colombie, Mexique) a été le cadre, début février, d’une signature commune pour éliminer, entre eux, les droits de douane. Juan Manuel Santos, président de la République de Colombie, partisan de l’alliance avec les Etats-Unis, a immédiatement affirmé que le développement de la région en serait favorisé. Cette Alliance pèse 215 millions d’habitants et obéit à la logique des regroupements promue par les organismes financiers.

Qui a intérêt aux regroupements ?

L’intégration recherchée a rarement des bases géopolitiques ou culturelles. Dans les accords de libre-échange, les produits industriels qui sont contrôlés par les multinationales n’ont pas besoin d’être protégés par des droits de douane. Entre les normes, les brevets, le conseil, les subventions de toutes sortes, le produit rapporte suffisamment. Les pays d’Amérique Latine, ayant peu investi dans la recherche et l’éducation sont facilement convaincus d’ouvrir leurs frontières pour contribuer, modestement, à une phase non essentielle d’élaboration d’un produit (exemple : l’aviation). Un pays perd lentement et sûrement la maîtrise de son destin et se retrouve désarticulé comme un puzzle renversé. L’Organisation Mondiale du Commerce se charge d’ailleurs de détruire ce qui reste de politique de développement endogène. Elle offre aux multinationales la possibilité de vassaliser tranquillement les pays de l’Alliance du Pacifique en imposant la vente des activités économiques.

 

Un mécano sans finalités.

 

Les membres de l’Alliance du Pacifique se vantent toujours d’attirer des investissements étrangers. Pour compenser l’influence occidentale, nous avons indiqué que la Chine était en passe de devenir leur deuxième fournisseur derrière les Etats-Unis. La zone de libre-échange prévue regroupe, en plus des quatre pays de l’Alliance, l’Australie, le Canada, le Japon, la Malaisie, Singapour et le Vietnam. Qu’y-a-t-il de commun entre ces cultures, qui puisse fonder une civilisation de paix et de justice ? Rien!

Les multinationales vont et viennent, comme l’aciériste Arcelor-Mittal qui a signé un accord de cinq ans avec le groupe canadien Evrim Resources pour exploiter le minerai de fer qui pourrait encore s’exploiter au Mexique. La rédaction des accords est toujours très technique et très précise pour favoriser les procès, régulièrement gagnés par les multinationales face aux Etats. Les textes des accords de libre-échange sont systématiquement fondées sur trois négations: aucune différence entre les investisseurs (étrangers ou autochtones); aucune contrainte de transfert technologique, aucun apport obligatoire de devises, pas de consommations intermédiaires locales. Enfin, les cadres viennent du vaste monde sans aucun lien avec la culture locale. Au total, l’investissement direct ne profite pas à la communauté; les marchandises circulent sans entraves et sans vérification ; tous les autochtones sont traités avec le plus profond mépris.

La globalisation de l'économie est acceptée et votée car on  fait croire que cela aidera le reste du monde à se développer. Mais la réalité confirme que les financiers nous plongent dans la crise. Toutes les zones disparates de libre-échange créées dans le monde n’ont qu’un seul objectif : assurer des super-profits et, en passant, payer de hauts salaires à des fonctionnaires dévoués.

La génération qui vient devra en finir avec ce monde. 

 

Eurasianism

Mark Hackard

 

Ex: http://www.geopolitica.ru

 

Russian emigre philosopher and geopolitician Pyotr Nikolaevich Savitsky (1895-1968) was a leading figure of the classical Eurasianist movement that flourished after the Bolshevik Revolution and during the inter-war years. In this excerpt from a 1925 essay, Savitsky expounds the Eurasianist worldview, one based on traditional spiritual values rather than the modern materialists’ reign of quantity.

 

Eurasianists join those thinkers who reject the existence of universal progress…If a line of evolution runs differently through various spheres, then there can be no general ascending movement, no gradual and unbending general improvement; one or another cultural medium, improving in one area (from one point of view), often degrades in another and from another point of view. This position is applicable, in particular, to the European cultural medium: it has bought its scientific and technical “perfection,” from the point of view of the Eurasianists, with ideological and most of all religious impoverishment. The duality of its achievements is distinctly expressed in relation to the economy. Over the course of long centuries in the history of the Old World, there existed a certain singular correlation between the ideological-moral-religious principle on the one hand and the economic principle on the other. More precisely, there existed some ideological subordination of the latter principle to the former.

 

Namely the permeation of the whole approach to economic issues by the religious-moral moment allows some historians of economic theories (for example, the old mid-nineteenth century German-Hungarian historian Kautz, whose works up to now haven’t lost a certain significance) to unite into one group – by their relation to economic problems – such varying texts as Chinese literary fragments, the Iranian code of the Vendidad, the Mosaic law, the works of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle and the medieval Western theologians. The economic philosophy of these texts is in a well-known sense the philosophy of a “subordinate economy;” the connection between satisfaction of our economic requirements with the general principles of morality and religion is emphasized within all of them as something necessary and proper.

 

The economic philosophy of the European “new era” is opposed to these views. Not always by direct words, but more often by the foundations of worldview, the new European economic philosophy asserts the cycle of economic phenomena as something self-sufficient and of autonomous value, containing and drawing from within itself the objectives of human existence. It would be a sign of spiritual blindness to negate the enormity of those purely cognitive achievements and successes in understanding and viewing economic phenomena that the new political economy has accomplished and accumulated. Yet acting as an empirical science and indeed in a certain and greater degree being such, in a whole host of its attitudes, the new political economy has influenced intellects and epochs as a metaphysic…

 

Just as the economic ideas of the ancient legislators, philosophers and theologians are tied to certain metaphysical conceptions, the economic ideas of the new economists are also tied to them. But if the metaphysics of the first was a philosophy of “subordinate economics,” then the metaphysics of the second is a philosophy of “militant economism.” The latter is in some way the ideological price that the new Europe has paid for the quantitatively tremendous economic growth she has experienced in modernity, especially in the last century. There is something instructive in this picture – both at the close of the Middle Ages and in the course of the new era, the ancient wisdom of moral testament, immemorial and restraining the egotistical instincts of man through words of exhortation and denunciation, the philosophy of “subordinate economics” is crumbling under the offensive of the new modern ideas, with the theory and practice of militant economism conceitedly asserting itself.

 

Historical materialism is the most consummate and dramatic expression of the latter. There is far from an accidental link between the philosophy of subordinated economics on the one hand and militant economism on the other, as we observe in empirical reality, with a certain attitude to questions of religion. If the philosophy of subordinated economics always serves as an appendage to one or another theistic worldview, then historical materialism is ideologically bound to atheism.

 

Like a wolf in fairy tales, the atheistic essence once hiding in historical materialism has now cast off the diversionary sheepskin of empirical science that had covered it: the atheist worldview is perpetrating its historical triumph in Russia, and state power in the hands of atheists has become an instrument for atheist propaganda. Not examining the question of historical responsibility for what has happened in Russia and not wishing to relieve anyone of this responsibility, the Eurasianists at the same time understand that the essence Russia assimilated and implemented, due to the susceptibility and excitability of her spiritual being, is not a Russian essence at its source and spiritual origin. The Communist witches’ Sabbath ensued in Russia as the completion of a more than two-hundred year period of europeanization.

 

To admit that the spiritual essence of Communist rule in Russia is, in a special manner, the reflected ideological essence of Europe’s new era is to make an assertion that is empirically founded to a high degree. (Here we must consider the following: the origin of Russian atheism in the ideas of the European Enlightenment; the importation of socialist ideas into Russia from the West; the connection of Russian Communist “methodology” with the ideas of French Syndicalists; and the significance and “cult” of Marx in Russia.) But having seen the ideological essence of European modernity in the form that was brought to its logical conclusion, Russians, not accepting Communism and at the same time not having lost the ability to think logically, cannot return to the basis of Europe’s latest ideology.

 

In the consciousness of the Eurasianists, there flows from the experience of the Communist Revolution a certain truth, simultaneously old and new – a healthy social community can be based only upon the indissoluble tie of man with God. An irreligious community and an irreligious sovereignty must be rejected; this rejection predetermines nothing in relation to concrete legal-constitutional forms, and there may exist as such a form, in the conception of the Eurasianists, of “separation of Church and state,” for example. Yet essentially, it is nevertheless highly significant that perhaps the first government by a consistently atheistic Communist power that had turned atheism into the official faith proved to be an “organized torment,” in the prophetic words of the profound nineteenth-century philosopher Konstantin Leontiev, a system of shock and destruction of “the common good” (in the name of which Communist power was established) and such an outrage upon the human person that all images pale and all words are powerless in the portrayal of a terrible, unprecedented and blasphemously bestial reality.

 

And we reiterate: the circumstance that the first consistently atheist power proved itself the dominion of the bestial is hardly an accident. Historical materialism, and the atheism that supplements it, deprives man’s primarily animal instincts of their restraint (including the primarily economic instincts, which amount to robbery). The basic defining force of social existence in the conditions of materialism and atheism’s ideological dominance turns out to be hate and delivers its deserved fruits: torment for everyone. And sooner or later it cannot but bring the final fruit – torment to the tormenters.

 

Russia enacted the triumph of historical materialism and atheism, but those laws that manifested in the course of her Revolution concern far from her alone. The cult of primarily economic interest and every sort of animal primacy has also germinated abundantly in the consciousness of peoples outside of Russia, and neither can it be the basis for a long-lived and successful society beyond her borders. The destructive forces gathering in these conditions will sooner or later overcome the power of social creation here, as well. One has to approach the problem in all its depth and breadth. The pressure of the materialist and atheist outlook must be opposed with an ideological essence overflowing with valuable and weighty content. There can be no hesitation. With still unheard-of directness and unbending resolve, on the broadest front and everywhere, it is necessary initiate and lead the struggle with everything associated even in the slightest degree with materialism and atheism. The evil must be traced back to its roots; we need to literally uproot it. It would be a superficial and powerless attempt to fight only with the most pronounced manifestations of historical materialism and atheism, or Communism alone. The problem is set deeper and at a more essential level. War must be declared upon militant economism wherever it might reveal itself. In the name of our religious worldview we must gather our forces, and with ardent feeling, clear thought and the fullness of understanding, combat the specific spirit of the new Europe.

 

Since the Continent has arrived at that historical and ideological frontier where it is at present, we can assert with great probability that in some period of the future, one of two outcomes will occur. Either the cultural medium of the new Europe will perish and scatter as smoke in tortuously tragic upheaval, or that “critical,” in the terminology of the Saint-Simonians, epoch that began in Europe with the close of the Middle Ages should come to an end and be replaced by an “organic” age, an “age of faith.” Past a certain measure, one cannot trample with impunity ancient wisdom, for in it is truth – not on the basis of elevating primarily selfish human instincts into the higher principle upheld in the philosophy of militant economism, but on the basis of an enlightened religious feeling of restraint and control of these instincts, thereby achieving a practicable higher measure of the “common good” on earth. A society given over to exclusive concern for worldly goods will sooner or later be deprived of them; such is the terrible lesson that shows through from the experience of the Russian Revolution.

 

The Eurasianists attempt to conclusively and thoroughly clarify and comprehend this experience, extract all the lessons streaming out of it, and be fearless in the matter. This is in contradistinction to those who have in confusion and timidity reeled from Communism’s beastly image, yet have not refused that which composes the basis or root of Communism; those who seizing the plough, look back; who try and pour new wine into old skins; who, having seen the new truth of Communism’s repulsiveness, are not strong enough to denounce the old abomination of militant economism, whatever forms the latter might assume.

 

Private faith is insufficient – the believing person should be conciliar. The Eurasianists are men of Orthodoxy. And the Orthodox Church is the lamp that illuminates them; they call their compatriots to Her, to Her Sacraments and Her Grace. And they are not troubled by the terrible sedition that has arisen in the heart of the Russian Church through the incitement of the atheists and theomachists. Spiritual strength will be sufficient, the Eurasianists believe; the struggle leads to enlightenment.

 

The Orthodox Church is the realization of higher freedom; its principle is concord, as opposed to the principle of authority that dominates in the Roman Church that separated from her. And it seems to the Eurasianists that in the stern matters of the world, one cannot make do without stern authority, but in matters of spirit and the Church, only grace-filled freedom and concord are good instructors. In some spheres of its worldly affairs, Europe demolishes the efficacy of authority and introduces a tyrannical power. The Orthodox Church has for long centuries been a light only to those nations who stayed faithful to her; she shined with the truths of her dogma and with the exploits of her ascetics.

 

At present, perhaps, a different period approaches: the contemporary Orthodox Church, continuing the succession of the ancient Eastern Church, received from her a whole unprejudiced approach to forms of economic life (so contradictory to the techniques of the Western Church, for example, which for long centuries fought against the collection of interest) and to the achievements of human thought. And therefore, it may be that within the framework of the new religious epoch, namely the Orthodox Church in the greatest measure is called to consecrate the achievements of the latest economic technology and science, having purified them from the ideological “superstructure” of militant economism, materialism and atheism, just as in her time, in the age of Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian, within the framework of a genuine and inspired “age of faith,” the ancient Church was able to consecrate a quite complex and developed economic way of life and considerable freedom in theological and philosophical thought. In contemporary economic life and empirical science, whatever its development, there is nothing that would exclude the possibility of their existence and prosperity in the depths of the new epoch of faith. The combination of modern technology with the ideology of militant economism and atheism is in no way either obligatory or unavoidable.

 

From the religious outlook, economic technology, whatever the limit of its possibilities might be, is a means of realizing the Testament laid by the Creator into the foundation of the human race: “and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Empirical science, from the religious point of view, is the uncovering of a picture of God’s world – whereby through the advance of knowledge, the wisdom of the Creator is ever more fully and completely revealed…

 

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Ukraine- Crimée : de l’insurrection à la guerre

Ukraine- Crimée : de l’insurrection à la guerre

 

L’Europe gagne un boulet et une crise

Jean Bonnevey
Ex: http://metamag.fr

L’insurrection l’a emporté. Comme partout, quand un  régime autoritaire cède, il s’effondre et il est dévoré par sa propre meute. Rien n’est plus répugnant que le résistant de la 13ème heure se transformant en vengeur.

Certains saluent la victoire de la démocratie et de la liberté. En fait il y a bien, pour le moment un, échec de Poutine. Mais cet échec ne peut changer l’essentiel. L’Ukraine est liée au monde russe plus qu’à l’Europe de Bruxelles. Une Europe qui va devoir payer le prix fort pour éviter un effondrement de ceux qu’elle a soutenu pour chasser le pouvoir pro-russe.

Un pays lourdement endetté

L'Ukraine a besoin de 35 milliards de dollars d'aide internationale sur deux ans et a souhaité obtenir un premier versement dans les jours ou les semaines qui viennent, annonce lundi le ministère des Finances dans un communiqué dont l'agence Reuters a eu copie. « La représentante de la diplomatie européenne, Catherine Ashton, va discuter des mesures nécessaires à prendre pour stabiliser l'économie du pays », a indiqué la Commission européenne. Cet appui reste cependant conditionné à la conclusion d'un accord avec le Fonds monétaire international.

Les Ukrainiens vont vite déchanter et comprendre que la pseudo liberté politique passe par  une vraie servilité économique. En décembre dernier, le président russe Vladimir Poutine avait promis de fournir une aide de 15 milliards de dollars (11 milliards d'euros) et de réduire les tarifs du gaz vendu à l'Ukraine après la décision de son homologue ukrainien Viktor Ianoukovitch de ne pas signer un accord d'association avec l'Union européenne. Une première tranche d'aide a été débloquée, mais suite aux récents évènements, la Russie a suspendu l'octroi d'un second versement. « En cas d'accord avec le FMI, d'autres aides internationales pourraient se mettre en place et aider l'Ukraine à se redresser », a souligné un haut fonctionnaire américain. Le nouveau pouvoir sera donc totalement dépendant non plus de Moscou mais de Washington et Bruxelles.

Plus encore que de la banqueroute, la communauté internationale redoute, dans l'immédiat, que la crise creuse le fossé entre l'Est russophone et russophile, majoritaire, et l'Ouest nationaliste et ukrainophone. Sous le règne de l'Union soviétique, les russes ont immigré en masse dans l'est du pays,  qui a fait l'objet d'une rapide industrialisation. L’Ouest est historiquement plus tourné vers la Pologne. Le Premier ministre polonais Donald Tusk, en première ligne, estimait  d'ailleurs, samedi soir, qu'il existait des forces menaçant l'intégrité territoriale de l'Ukraine.

Alarmés, la chancelière allemande Angela Merkel et le président russe Vladimir Poutine ont d'ailleurs souligné l'importance pour l'Ukraine de préserver son intégrité territoriale, lors d'un entretien téléphonique, a indiqué le porte-parole du gouvernement allemand. « Une partition de l'Ukraine ou le « retour de la violence » ne sont dans l'intérêt ni de l'Ukraine, ni de la Russie, ni de l'Union européenne, ni des Etats-Unis », a  assuré une proche conseillère de Barack Obama, Susan Rice. Certes mais, les JO terminés, Poutine va retrouver tous ses moyens.

Le conflit pourrait rebondir en Crimée

Région peuplée principalement de russophones, la Crimée a été rattachée en 1954 à l'Ukraine qui faisait alors partie de l'Union soviétique. Il s'agissait d'une décision purement formelle, car le transfert de ce territoire a été effectué à l'intérieur du même Etat. Après la chute de l'URSS en 1991, la Crimée est restée au sein de l'Ukraine, mais a reçu le statut de région autonome. « La Crimée demandera à se séparer de l’Ukraine en cas de renversement du pouvoir légitime dans le pays », a déclaré le président du parlement régional de la Crimée Vladimir Konstantinov, ajoutant que cette question ne se posait pas pour le moment.

« Nous n'avons qu'une seule voie à suivre: dénoncer la décision du Comité central du PCUS concernant le rattachement de la Crimée [à l'Ukraine]. Un pays a transmis la Crimée à un autre pays, nommé Ukraine, en signe d'amitié éternelle. Nous voyons bien ce qui est advenu à cette amitié. Et si un pays cesse d'exister, les actes juridiques le concernant sont déclarés nuls et non avenus », a affirmé M. Konstantinov à Moscou lors d'une réunion de la fraction libérale-démocrate au parlement russe. Les représentants de la communauté russe et du parti communiste de l’Ukraine se sont exprimé lors de l'événement. Les orateurs se sont opposés à l’entrée de l'Ukraine dans l'Union européenne, et ont appelé à la sortie de la Crimée du pays.

La crise n’est pas finie.

Ukraine: L’UE a soutenu un putsch contre un gouvernement démocratiquement élu

Ex: http://zejournal.mobi

Par Aymeric Chauprade

Le coup de force organisé par les États-Unis et l’Union européenne soutenant Tiagnibok (seul leader qui contrôlait les émeutiers) pendant les Jeux de Sotchi (les Russes ayant alors les mains liées) a donc fonctionné et débouché à l’effondrement du pouvoir légal la veille de la fin des Jeux (le 23 février).

Quelles leçons pouvons-nous tirer ?

1) Les récents événements dramatiques démontrent qu’il n’existe aucune solution politique viable et durable pour l’Ukraine dans les frontières actuelles car l’Ukraine est divisée géopolitiquement.

2) Le président Ianoukovitch qui a quitté le pouvoir de lui-même, et afin que le bain de sang cesse, avait certes des torts sérieux (corruption, incapacité à agir dès le début de la crise) mais il avait été élu démocratiquement (aucune contestation de l’OSCE) et était le président légal. C’est donc un coup de force, un coup d’État même, qui l’a poussé vers la sortie et ce coup d’État a bel et bien été soutenu par l’Union européenne.

3) Le sang a coulé parce que l’opposition a tiré la première à balles réelles sur les forces de l’ordre. Les premiers morts ont été des policiers. Qu’aurait fait un gouvernement occidental si des manifestants avaient tiré à balles réelles sur ses forces de l’ordre? On se souvient que l’autoritaire M. Valls aura quand même fait jeter en prison des petits jeunes de la Manif pour tous ou de Jour de Colère pour un simple jet de canette !

4) Dans cette situation dramatique, l’Union européenne et les États-Unis portent une très lourde responsabilité. Ils ont encouragé la rébellion qui a débouché sur la violence ; ils ont cautionné un coup d’État contre un gouvernement démocratiquement élu.

5) La trame de fond de cette affaire, ne l’oublions pas, est, premièrement l’affrontement entre les États-Unis et la Russie, les premiers voulant otaniser l’Ukraine, les seconds voulant y conserver leur influence stratégique.

C’est, deuxièmement, un affrontement historique entre l’Allemagne qui a toujours voulu contrôler (Hitler) l’ouest de l’Ukraine (ce qui explique les néo-nazis de Svoboda) et la Russie qui tente de refouler cette influence (ce qui explique les slogans anti-nazis des ouvriers de Donetsk).

6) L’affaire ukrainienne, après la Syrie, la Libye et tant d’autres depuis 1990, apporte la démonstration que l’antifascisme et l’antisémitisme sont une posture pour les partis dominants en France et non un combat réel, posture qui ne vise qu’à diaboliser les forces politiques réellement alternatives. Ce n’est en effet pas une conviction puisque, au nom de l’Union européenne, ces partis inféodés aux oligarchies pro-américaines ont soutenu les néo-nazis ségrégationnistes et antisémites de Svoboda, le fer de lance du coup de force contre le gouvernement légal d’Ukraine.

Une fois de plus, l’Union européenne prouve qu’elle n’est rien devant les tendances lourdes de l’Histoire et les enjeux de puissance. Sa rhétorique sur la démocratie et les droits de l’Homme est instrumentalisée. Les gesticulations bellicistes de BHL en sont l’illustration pathétique.

L’Ukraine face au réel

L’opposition est divisée : que peut-il y avoir de commun en effet entre Ioulia Timochenko et les néo-nazis de Svoboda ?

Les différents clans d’opposants vont devoir faire face à la réalité économique et géopolitique :

- banqueroute de Naftogaz, la compagnie gazière

- plus de service public, fonctionnaires non payés, caisses vides. L’UE ne donnera pas suffisamment. Donc Iatsenouk va devoir aller mendier l’argent russe et on imagine comment il sera accueilli.

- chaos dans l’Ouest de l’Ukraine où des bandes ont pris le contrôle.

- qui fera partir les extrémistes qui tiennent Maïdan ?

Le retour à la Constitution de 2004 n’arrangera rien. Bien au contraire. Leonid Kuchma sentant le vent tourner en sa défaveur pendant la Révolution orange, avait imaginé une constitution perverse qui diluait tout les pouvoirs si bien que personne ne dirigeait vraiment l’Ukraine.

Revenir à cette Constitution sera une catastrophe quand on connaît la fragilité géopolitique intérieure de l’Ukraine et ses difficultés économiques. Selon Standard&Poors, l’Ukraine fera défaut sur sa dette (elle doit rembourser 13 milliards de dollars cette année) si la Russie arrête son aide, ce qui est désormais probable.

Que peut-on souhaiter ?

Pour ramener la paix, il ne reste qu’une solution viable. Diviser l’Ukraine en deux États. Une Ukraine de l’Ouest tournée vers l’Allemagne, la Pologne et donc l’Union européenne. Ce sera l’Ukraine pauvre, nous serons perdants, sauf les Allemands qui vont y trouver une main d’oeuvre à bas coût pour continuer à maintenir leur avantage compétitif sur nous.

Une Ukraine de l’Est, indépendante ou rattachée à la Russie (après tout les habitants y sont russes) avec la Crimée bien sûr, éminemment stratégique pour Moscou.

Conclusion

Nous ne sommes qu’au début du chaos ukrainien et l’Union européenne porte une très lourde responsabilité. Manipulée par les États-Unis, l’Union a voulu exclure la Russie, acteur essentiel dans la zone, du règlement. Rappelons qu’après le Sommet de Vilnius de novembre 2013, le Kremlin a proposé de régler la question de l’Ukraine lors d’une conférence qui aurait rassemblé les Ukrainiens, les Russes et les Occidentaux.

La crise ukrainienne est donc une nouvelle preuve de l’échec de l’Union européenne. L’Union européenne n’est pas un facteur de paix, elle est un facteur de guerre.

 - Source : Realpolitik.tv

Ukraine: coup d'Etat ou début du "grand coup"?

L'Ukraine, guerre civile

 

Coup d'Etat ou début du ''grand coup'' ?

Michel Lhomme
Ex: http://metamag.fr

 

L'Ukraine paralyse la diplomatie européenne. Ce qui s'est passé sur la scène internationale depuis l'affront russe aux Etats-Unis à propos de la Syrie, démontre qu'il s'agit pour l'Empire US de se venger et de reprendre la main. Les Européens éclairés ont bien compris où l'on veut en venir, où l'on veut mener l'Europe, à son corps défendant. L'Europe est  impuissante, prise au piège de sa dérive occidentaliste. Elle se révèle comme la somnambulique de la place Maidan, kidnappée par les événements et ayant compris que tôt ou tard, elle se retrouvera en Ukraine, dans une Ukraine dépecée ou coupée en deux mais une Ukraine divisée dont elle devra porter le Sud pauvre à bout de bras, servi sur un plateau rouillé par l'idéologie démocratique. 

Victime de sa crédulité aux médias et ignorant les soubresauts des diplomates européens et des intellectuels du mondialisme comme BHL ou Daniel Cohn-Bendit, il faudra pour l'Histoire retenir le nom de l'ambassadeur américain à Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt et diffuser en boucle sa conversation avec Victoria Nuland. Comme dans un roman de Gérard de Villiers, c'est Victoria Nuland qui donne ses instructions à l'Ambassadeur américain sur la façon de se comporter pour qu’ Arseni Iatseniouk devienne rapidement le nouveau chef du gouvernement, pour que Vitaly Klitschko, favorisé pourtant par l'Union Européenne et la chancelière allemande Angela Merkel, soit expulsé, et comment tout cela devrait ensuite "coller" à l'ONU ! « Fuck The UE », a souligné Mme Nuland dans sa détermination à imposer en Ukraine la stratégie américaine du chaos. Que faut-il aux analystes de plus transparent ?

L'administration Obama est donc bien derrière la tentative de coup d'Etat contre le président élu, Victor Ianoukovitch. Selon l'économiste russe Sergueï Glaziev, conseiller du président Poutine sur l'Ukraine, ce sont environ 20 millions de dollars qui ont été dépensés ces dernières semaines pour armer les combattants de rue dans la perspective du coup d'état pro-américain. Obama aurait-il décidé de jouer quitte ou double ? Il attend, semble-t-il, le faux pas de Poutine, l'intervention imminente de la Russie pour fournir le prétexte à une confrontation. Si les choses continuent sur un tel chemin, nous pouvons être en quelques jours, conduits dans un ''grand coup''.

Tout repose sur la Russie et sa maîtrise froide de la situation. Il semblerait que sa doctrine soit pour une fois plus chinoise que russe, reposant sur le non-agir, le laisser-faire stratégique de Lao-Tseu, belle tactique déconcertante pour les stratèges du Pentagone. Laisser faire, s'asseoir et regarder les manipulations occidentales jusqu'à ce que la guerre civile ukrainienne se propage ? Dans l'effondrement économique qui est le sien, l'Etat étatsunien y résisterait-il ? Diplomatiquement, les Etats-Unis ont violé le Mémorandum de Budapest de 1994, qu'ils avaient signé avec l'Ukraine et la Russie, où celle-ci acceptait d'abandonner en partie l'arsenal nucléaire soviétique ukrainien tout en s'engageant conjointement à la responsabilité pour la sécurité et la souveraineté de l'Ukraine. L'ingérence des États-Unis, dans le problème ukrainien est de fait une violation manifeste et flagrante de cet accord. C'est déjà en soi une déclaration de guerre.

 

Par ailleurs, la République autonome de Crimée, russophone, a pris acte le 19 février d'une sécession possible de l'Ukraine. Un appel de la Crimée à la Douma d'Etat russe a même été enregistré demandant à la Russie d'être le garant de l'inviolabilité du statut de la Crimée. Compte tenu du Mémorandum de Budapest et de l'appel imminent du Parlement de Crimée, une intervention russe en Ukraine aurait alors un fondement juridique. Une intervention russe en Ukraine pour ''sauver'' la Crimée est l'un des scénarios russes posés sur la table. Poutine ayant compris la stratégie du chaos appliquée par les Etats-Unis en Ukraine, cherche l'épreuve de vérité avec les USA, ce moment fatal où les Etats-Unis seront obligés de reconnaître leurs vrais objectifs à savoir l'encerclement systématique de la Russie par l'élargissement à l'Est de l'OTAN et l'entrée de l'Ukraine dans une Union Européenne devenue un pur satellite appauvri du mondialisme transatlantique en construction. 

Cette politique du changement de régime par l'idéologie démocratique est pourtant l'exacte continuité de la politique américaine depuis la dissolution de l'Union soviétique.  L'Histoire du monde devra être jugée demain sur l'histoire de cet empire anglo-américain, basé sur une relation spéciale avec Israël, pour une vision et une suprématie hégémonique sur le continent européen. Angela Merkel et la Pologne ont compris tardivement qu'ils avaient tout à y perdre. Peu ont relevé le fait significatif que  Victoria Nuland, la porte-parole du Département d'Etat, est mariée à Robert Kagan, le co-fondateur du Projet pour le Nouveau Siècle Américain c'est-à-dire qu'elle est l'épouse de l'auteur de la Bible de l'idéologie impérialiste des néo-conservateurs. Robert  Kagan, c'était le propagandiste zélé de la guerre en Irak où à l'époque, Victoria Nuland était conseillère en politique étrangère, adjointe au vice-président Dick Cheney, l'ambassadeur américain à l'OTAN de 2005 à 2008. 

On sourit à voir la presse française faire maintenant l'éloge de Maidan, la Place de l'Indépendance à Kiev, occupée par les manifestants. Ils évoquent comme hier Tahrir ou les places arabes et turques, un ''agora'', un "espace physique" anti-autoritaire, un espace où l'on pourrait respirer «l'esprit de la Maidan " malgré le froid et le gel, les plaques de verglas et les matraques. On sourit parce qu'on sait regarder les images, on reconnaît la symbolique de certains ''boucliers'', on a lu les papiers de Svoboda et de toutes les organisations néo-nazies qui gravitent autour des barricades érigées. Toute avant-guerre est d'ailleurs trouble (qui manipule qui ?) mais surtout, elle reste noircie de contre-vérités officielles La tentative de prise de contrôle de l'Ukraine doit donc être considérée dans le contexte du système de défense antimissile américain en cours de déploiement en Europe centrale et orientale et dans celui de la doctrine de la "Prompt Global Strike". 

Sommes-nous à deux doigts de tester grandeur nature cette théorie ? La doctrine militaire américaine repose sur la croyance théorique que les capacités nucléaires de l'adversaire pourraient être neutralisées par une première frappe nucléaire. En ce qui concerne cette doctrine jointe souvent chez les Américains à la doctrine de la "Air-Sea Battle," la Russie et la Chine ont parfaitement fait entendre ces derniers temps que, si nécessaire, ils déploieront leurs arsenaux nucléaires. Si donc l'Allemagne et d'autres pays européens ne veulent pas se laisser entraîner dans un conflit armé, ils doivent s'identifier dès à présent. Ils doivent faire entendre fortement la voix d'une renaissance de la puissance européenne. Ils doivent désigner par son nom, le caractère impérialiste de l'Etat américain. Ils doivent souligner la nature de la tentative de coup d'Etat en Ukraine. C'est maintenant que l'Europe de la puissance doit se lever. Nous en sommes malheureusement loin.

En savoir plus : Entretien avec Alexandre Douguine sur l'Ukraine

Naufrage de la diplomatie US

Naufrage de la diplomatie US: amateurisme, incompétence, corruption

Ex: http://dedefensa.org

Il s’agit effectivement de la diplomatie US, mais nombre des points de l’analyse de l’ancien analyste de la CIA Philip Giraldi, dans Antiwar.com le 18 février 2014, pourraient évidemment être repris pour la diplomatie des pays du bloc BAO en général. Il y a, dans ce cas, solidarité, unité et émulation, sans doute grâce à la vertu des principes néolibéraux de concurrence : c’est au meilleur qui sera le pire.

 

Giraldi part de l’exemple désormais fameux de Victoria Nuland, dite Victoria Nuland-Fuck, et sa fameuse conversation sur l'Ukraine interceptée et rendue publique. Plus encore que de l’impudence, du suprématisme, etc., – même si ces attitudes sont tout de même présentes, – il faut y voir incompétence et amateurisme, juge-t-il. (Pour Geraldi, l’interception de la conversation de Nuland est moins due aux capacités de ceux qui l’ont interceptée qu’à son manque total de professionnalisme, qu’à son ignorance de toutes les règles de sécurité : amateurisme, tout cela.) Ainsi Geraldi dénonce-t-il l’impuissance et l’incompétence générale d’une diplomatie réduite à sa caricature, à peine camouflées par la rhétorique simpliste des neocons...

 

«Why is the United States so reluctant to negotiate with other countries and so prone to leap immediately to the option of using force or chicanery in lieu of a more deliberative foreign policy? It might partly be because we Americans are not very good at the subtlety and give-and-take that diplomacy requires, but it could also be because our framework for operating, which shapes what we do and how we do it, is hopelessly skewed. One might even argue that the dominant neoconservative way of thinking has thoroughly infected both parties’ perceptions of how a foreign policy is supposed to work, leading official Washington to see everything in terms of “us and them” while at the same time exonerating every American misstep by citing the largely bogus national security argument to explain places like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.»

 

Geraldi détaille le modus operandi d’un tel processus, si catastrophique, constamment dans l’erreur, constamment mis à jour dans son impuissance et son incompétence. S’il développe le cas de Nuland, des neocons, etc., c’est parce qu’ils sont comme archétypiques de ce qu’est devenue cette non-diplomatie US. Les effets ne peuvent être que catastrophiques, et ils sont, effectivement, constamment renouvelés dans le mode catastrophique. Il s’agit d’une transformation de substance de cette diplomatie US, désormais complètement investie par les tares du Système considérées comme des vertus, et sans cesse plus développées, accentuant sans cesse les vices de fonctionnement et les effets catastrophiques. L’équation surpuissance-autodestruction est parfaitement rencontrée.

 

Gealdi termine par une autre pratique fondamentale, qui est la corruption de cette diplomatie par le pouvoir exécutif US lui-même. Ces pratiques ont toujours existé mais elles étaient jusqu’ici contenues dans des normes acceptables. Les postes de convenance d’ambassadeurs des USA donnés à des soutiens politiques et financiers du président sans compétence particulière se situaient, avec les précédents présidents, autour de 25% des attributions, et en prenant garde à préserver les ambassades importantes aux professionnels. Avec Obama, on approchait les 40% lors du premier terme, et on dépasse les 50% pour son deuxième terme.

 

«Ideologues like Victoria Nuland, who might serve as a poster child for what is wrong with the US government, constitute only one element in the dysfunctional White House view of the world and how to interact with it. Former Senior State Department official James Bruno asks "Why does America send so many stupid, unqualified hacks overseas?" For the first time since the Second World War more than half of all US Ambassadors overseas are political appointees rather than career diplomats, yet another instance of President Barack Obama’s saying one thing while running for office and doing another thing when actually in power. Bruno describes an ambassador to Sweden lying drunk in the snow, the current hotel chain owner nominee for Norway who did not know the country was a constitutional monarchy, and a TV soap opera producer pick for Hungary who had no idea what interests the US might have in the country. One Obama appointee Seattle investor Cynthia Stroum actually was forced to resign after running her embassy in Luxembourg into the ground, verbally abusing her staff and spending embassy funds on personal travel and alcohol.

 

»All of these splendid examples of American officialdom have one thing in common: they gave a lot of money to the Obama campaign. Raising $1.79 million is now the going price for an ambassadorship. Good work Mr. Obama. You promised transparency and have again exceeded all expectations by appointing ambassadors whose lack of qualifications would embarrass the head of state of a banana republic. With Victoria Nuland firmly at the helm of our ship of state in Europe and working to overthrow a friendly government while a group of rich but clueless clowns heads our embassies every American will henceforth know that he or she can sleep safe at night.

 

»Bei freien Wahlen befürchten USA und UN Assad-Sieg in Syrien«

»Bei freien Wahlen befürchten USA und UN Assad-Sieg in Syrien«

Ex: http://sachedesvolkes.wordpress.com

Unter diesem Titel erschien am Freitag auf der Seite des Internetportals http://www.globalresearch.ca ein Artikel von Daniel McAdams, der zuvor vom konservativen Ron-Paul-Institute des gleichnamigen früheren republikanischen US-Präsidentschaftskandidaten veröffentlicht wurde:

Einen (…) Blick hinter die Vorhänge erlaubte das Interview des iranischen Botschafters im Libanon, Ghazanfar Roknabadi, Mitte der Woche in der angesehenen libanesischen Zeitung Daily Star. Darin ging es unter anderem um den jüngsten Bombenanschlag auf die iranische Botschaft in Beirut und die wachsende Bedrohung der Region durch die zunehmende Zahl dschihadistischer Gruppen in Syrien.

Dann ließ Roknabadi die diplomatische Bombe platzen. Er erzählte dem Daily Star, daß der Westen die iranische Regierung unter erheblichen Druck gesetzt hatte, den syrischen Präsidenten Baschar Al-Assad davon abzuhalten, bei den nächsten Präsidentschaftswahlen wieder zu kandidieren. Als Syriens einziger regionaler Verbündeter hat Iran vermutlich ziemlich viel Einfluß auf die Assad-Regierung. Wörtlich sagte Botschafter Roknabadi: »Bei seinem Besuch in Iran im letzten Sommer hat Feltman (UN-Untergeneralsekretär für politische Angelegenheiten) die iranische Regierung gebeten, Assad davon zu überzeugen, nicht zu den nächsten Präsidentschaftswahlen anzutreten. Die iranischen Beamten fragten ihn: ›Wo liegt das Problem, wenn er antritt?‹ Feltman antwortete: ›Wenn er antritt, wird er die Wahlen gewinnen‹«.

Feltman ist nicht irgendein UN-Bürokrat, sondern ein Beispiel für die Drehtür zwischen der US-Regierung und der UNO. Von August 2009 bis Juni 2012 war er US Staatsekretär für den Nahen Osten im US-Außenministerium. Von Juli 2004 bis Januar 2008 war er als Botschafter der Vereinigten Staaten im Libanon gewesen, und davor hatte er Washingtons Politik im »befreiten« Irak umgesetzt.

Auch in dem (…) skandalösen Telefonat zum Umsturz in der Ukraine zwischen US-Unterstaatssekretärin Victoria Nuland und dem US-Botschafter in der Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt spielte Feltman eine wichtige Rolle. In dem Ukraine-Drama sprachen sich Feltmans ehemalige Kollegen vom US-Außenministerium dafür aus, daß man ihm bei der Auswahl eines verläßlichen UN-Beamten vertrauen könnte, der (als Sonderbeauftragter der UNO für die Ukraine) den von Nuland und Pyatt mit der ukrainischen »Opposition« ausgeheckten Deal zusammenkleben soll.

Wenn Botschafter Roknabadis Aussagen stimmen, dann bestätigen sie den zynischen Syrien-Regimewechsel-Trick der US-Regierung. (…) Von Gaza bis Ägypten, von Afghanistan bis Libyen und Irak: Was die US-Demokratisierungsbemühungen am meisten zu fürchten scheinen, ist echte Demokratie. Da ist es kein Wunder, daß US-Außenminister Kerry verzweifelt an seiner absichtlichen Fehlinterpretation des Syrien-Kommuniqués von »Genf I« festhält und ohne jegliche Beweise behauptete, daß es sich dabei um ein Vereinbarung zwischen den Unterzeichnerstaaten für einen Regimewechsel in Damaskus handelt. Assad muß von der Bildfläche verschwinden, weil die USA Angst vor seiner Popularität in Syrien haben.

Übersetzung: Rainer Rupp

The Conspiracy in Venezuela

The Conspiracy in Venezuela, or the Maidan with a Latin American Twist

Nil NIKANDROV

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

Attempts to destabilize Venezuela have not ceased, despite the efforts of the Nicolas Maduro government to start a dialog with the opposition. The latest attempt to test the regime's mettle was an opposition demonstration on February 12 in front of the Attorney General's office in the center of Caracas. Among the demonstrators' demands were the immediate release of those arrested for participation in street riots in the cities of Tachira and Merida and early elections.

During these riots, rocks and Molotov cocktails rained down on the police. Several police cars were engulfed in flames. Groups of young men started storming the doors of the Attorney General's office and trashing the entryways to the Parque Carabobo subway station and the rides at a nearby children's park. Many of the attackers were in masks and bulletproof vests and had metal rods in their hands. Some were carrying firearms. There were injuries, and two or three people were killed, but even at the height of the confrontation the police only used rubber bullets and teargas.

The violent demonstration was organized via the Internet by the radical opposition group Popular Will (Voluntad Popular). Their leader, Leopoldo Lopez, is a long-time committed believer in overthrowing the existing regime by force. The Attorney General has given orders for his arrest. By all appearances, Lopez has gone underground in order to hide in the U.S. (it is well known that he is collaborating with the CIA). Yet another warrant was issued for the arrest of retired vice admiral Fernando Gerbasi, the former ambassador of Venezuela in Bogota. He headed the organization of disturbances in the territory bordering on Colombia. Participants in attacks on police and arson against state institutions have been put on the wanted list.  

The parallels between the events of February 2014 and the attempt to overthrow President Chavez in April 2002 are obvious. At that time mass popular demonstrations and timely action by the military units which remained loyal to the president ensured the quick neutralization of the rebels.  The Venezuelan media has been writing a lot about the striking similarity between the «spontaneous protests» in their country and the Kiev Maidan.

In Venezuela U.S. intelligence uses students and Colombian paramilitares, members of militant groups which participate in the cleanup of territories under the control of FARC and ELN guerillas, as cannon fodder... Now the paramilitares are gradually moving across the border into the Venezuelan states of Zulia, Barinas and Merida, blending into Colombian communities and waiting for marching orders. In November 2013 Jose Vicente Rangel described the preparations for subversive operations in Venezuela on his television show «Confidential» (Confidenciales). During a recent trip to Miami, Leopoldo Lopez visited a center for training fighters in Los Cayos, led by Cuban immigrants. A group of Venezuelan «cadets» demonstrated their shooting achievements to Lopez; pictures of President Maduro were used as targets. Lopez promised to provide funds for training additional snipers in order to guarantee «the restoration of democracy and freedom» in Venezuela. A center for communication between the Venezuelan conspirators and U.S. intelligence is also operating there in Miami. The Venezuelan side of the conspiracy includes ex-Minister of Defense Narvaez Churion and former leaders of the punitive agency DISIP from the time of the Fourth Republic. 

The situation in Venezuela is complicated by the drawn-out financial and economic war, planned from the United States. Instances of food being stolen from the state-run Mercal grocery store chain and then being sold on the black market at artificially high prices have become more frequent. Smuggling causes enormous damage to the country's food security. Hundreds of mafia organizations are operating on the long border with Colombia, transporting goods subsidized by the Venezuelan government into Colombian territory. Colossal quantities of gasoline, diesel, lubricants, tires, and auto parts are being exported. In many cases gasoline simply does not make it to filling stations on the Venezuelan side. The paramilitares provide security for the smuggling operations, even to the point of eliminating Venezuelan customs and military personnel sent to guard the border. 

Venezuelans are accustomed to generous state paternalism: free medical care, mass construction of «people's houses», a free education system, and thousands of state scholarships for those who seek to acquire knowledge in foreign universities. However, in recent months consumer euphoria has often been marred by various types of interruptions of electricity and water and deficits of food and other goods.  All of this is the result of deliberate sabotage organized in the classic traditions of the CIA. It is not for nothing that Walter Martinez, the popular host of the television program Dossier, told his viewers about how the overthrow of the government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 was planned with the participation of the American corporation ITT. The conspirators were especially thorough in planning commercial sabotage and the creation of speculative demand for all goods.  The methods used for destabilizing Venezuela today are a precise repetition of the Chilean scenario, which led to a bloody massacre and the dictatorship of Pinochet. 

Much hatred has built up toward Venezuela. The threat of civil war is constantly being discussed in the media. Against this backdrop, President Maduro continues to patiently advocate dialog, the seeking of mutual understanding and domestic detente. Here one cannot but mention the destructive influence of persons connected with Zionist circles in the U.S. and Israel on the situation. They control the banking system and trade and have thoroughly infiltrated the Venezuelan media, inciting acts of «civil protest» and creating a climate of psychological terror with regard to leading government figures. Practically all the hostile clichés which were used in American - Zionist propaganda against Chavez are now being used against Maduro... 

The Venezuelans have money, but spending it is becoming increasingly difficult. Even buying airline tickets to spend one's vacation somewhere abroad has become a problem. The Venezuelan media, 80% of which is under the control of the opposition, blame President Maduro and his supporters for the «universal discomfort». Supposedly they have gotten carried away with «socialist experiments» in the economy. In fact, neither Chavez nor Maduro has touched the principles of the capitalist economy. Not because they did not dare to, but because they understood that taking radical steps would be premature, especially after an attempt to amend the country's constitution to suit the purposes of socialist reforms. The referendum on this issue showed that about half of voters were against the idea. There was no consensus in the ranks of the ruling United Socialist Party either. Chavez' decision to carry out his program of socialist reforms gradually, at a moderate pace, was never implemented due to his premature death. 

Anti-government propaganda, coordinated by subversive centers from the U.S., is fully exploiting the theory of the growth of corruption in the country and the complicity of the «red Bolivarian bourgeoisie» in it. This is directed first and foremost against the former associates of Chavez who have closed ranks around Maduro, remaining faithful to the Bolivarian ideology and its triad of «the people - the army - the leader». The CIA and opposition spin doctors are trying to drag those among the youth with whom the propaganda «war on corruption» resonates out onto the Venezuelan barricades. The coordination of these activities is being carried out through several channels, but everything leads back to the U.S. embassy in Caracas. 

Compared to his predecessor Kelly Keiderling, who was exposed by Venezuelan counterintelligence as a coordinator of subversive operations in the country, the current U.S. charge d'affaires Phil Laidlaw, also a career CIA agent, shows more imagination in his attempts to stir up a color revolution in Venezuela which would then become a civil war. On Laidlaw's initiative, letters of solidarity with the «Maidan activists» aimed at Venezuelan students were published on the Internet: «We admire your courage! Freedom and democracy come first!» I would not be surprised if in the near future Mr. Laidlaw were to organize the deployment of several detachments of fighters from the Kiev Maidan to some secret CIA air base in Venezuela to aid in the fight against the «Maduro dictatorship».

Lebanonization Strategy

Israel and Saudi Arabia’s Priorities in Syria. Covert Militarism and the “Lebanonization Strategy”

By Phil Greaves

Ex: http://www.globalresearch.ca

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-and-saudi-arabias-priorities-in-syria-covert-militarism-and-the-lebanonization-strategy/5369324

Current developments both inside and outside of Syria have shown that the primary sponsors of the extremist-dominated insurgency – namely, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Israel and Turkey – aren’t quite ready to throw in the towel.

One may be forgiven for thinking the Obama administration had decided to abandon the policy of regime change following the failed attempt to incite intervention, through the chemical weapons casus belli in August. But the harsh reality remains that the above mentioned alliance is indeed continuing its covert military support of the insurgency, in one form or another, in the full knowledge the vast majority of rebels are religious fundamentalists with a sectarian agenda, and vehemently opposed to any form of democracy or political pluralism.

 Primarily, the continued support is a product of the American Empires’ overarching strategy of Full Spectrum Dominance over resource-rich and strategically placed regions of the globe, via subversion, economic and military aggression; a policy imposed to varying degrees upon any state unwilling to accept full US subordination. This aggressive US stance is by no means exclusive to periods of heightened tension or crises; it is a permanent one, brought forward to its violent climax purely through Machiavellian opportunism. In Syria’s case, the Arab uprisings provided the United States and its allies the perfect opening to set in motion the subversive plans they had been working on since at least 2006. The possibility of removing an opposing government that refuses to abide by American/Israeli diktat was simply too good a chance to be missed. Accordingly, and from a very early stage, the US made attempts to facilitate and support the violent elements in Syria, while its media arms were busy conflating them with localised legitimate protesters.

Since the US took the typically reckless decision to support, widen and exacerbate the militant elements, the policy has been an abject failure. Clearly, from the tone espoused by Western diplomats and propagandists, and the oft-repeated slogan of “Assad’s days are numbered”, they expected swift regime change. These desires were largely based on American hubris and the hope that the Libya No Fly Zone scenario would gain traction in the UN security council.

Contrary to such desires, Russia and China’s anger regarding NATO’s destruction of Libya and Gaddafi’s assassination, meant that any similar resolutions put forward on Syria would face immediate veto. In turn this has proven to be a turning point in the modern relationship between the permanent members of the security council, the full ramifications of which are yet to materialise. Moreover, it proved to be a turning point in the Syrian crisis itself; knowing Russia and China would block any attempts to give NATO its second outing as Al Qaeda’s airforce, the US once again chose the policy of further covert militarism, drastically increasing funds and weapons deliveries to the rebels – parallel to the sectarian incitement campaigns espoused by Salafi-Wahhabi clerics across the Gulf – in the hope they could overturn the Syrian army through terrorism and a brutal sectarian war of attrition.

As a consequence of the failure to remove Assad or destroy the Syrian government and its apparatus, the Obama administration, reluctant and politically incapable of engaging in overt acts of aggression, is employing a realpolitik strategy; using primarily covert militarism to appease the desires of NeoConservative hawks in Congress, and its more zealous regional influences emanating from Riyadh and Tel Aviv, while avoiding the possibility of being dragged into another overt military intervention.

In turn, this double-edged strategy feeds the false public perception of the American Empire, which the pseudo-pragmatists and neoliberal propagandists are so eager to uphold and is so fundamental to US Empire-building; that of an inherently altruistic force, acting as global arbiter, grudgingly subverting, invading, bombing, and intervening in sovereign nations affairs for the good of all mankind. As long as this false perception is upheld, the sharp-edge to the grotesque charade of US realpolitik – that of covert militarism and state-sponsored terrorism – continues unabated. Clearly, the US Empire is in no rush to end the bloodshed in Syria, its priorities, as they have been since the start of 2011, are to remove, or at least severely disable and weaken the Syrian government and state, regardless of the consequences to the civilian population.

By using its control of state-funding, the arms flow, and therefore the strength and capabilities of the insurgency as a whole, the Obama administration has employed futile carrot and stick tactics in attempts to pressure the Syrian government during the current negotiations phase into acceding to US demands and giving up its sovereignty – with both the US-led alliance, and Syria and its international allies, primarily Russia and Iran, in the full knowledge the rebels lack both the domestic support, and manpower necessary, to oust Assad or defeat the Syrian army alone. Recent reports allude to the stick of US Democracy having its most recent outing in the form of “new”  and improved weapons supplies to the rebels, allegedly including MANPADS. This comes immediately off the back of the designed-to-fail Geneva “peace” talks and can be interpreted as a direct result of Washington’s failure to enforce their objectives: the stick is an endless supply of state-sponsored terrorism, the carrot is turning off the tap.

Whether the “new” arms shipments actually increase the rebels ability to inflict damage on the Syrian government remains to be seen, and is highly improbable at this stage as the Syrian army moves into the Qalamoun mountains to liberate the rebel-held town of Yabroud, in turn securing vital transit and logistical routes from Lebanon. The likely outcome of an increased arms flow to the rebels in the south, as evidenced at every interval of US-instigated militarization, will be a repeat of the same devastating results: more civilian displacement, adding to the already critical refugee crisis; more rebel destruction of civilian infrastructure, adding to further food and utility shortages; and many more lives lost.

“Lebanonization” a substitute for regime change?

As is proving to be the case, if the United States and its allies are incapable of removing the Syrian government via proxy forces without an increasingly unpopular Western military intervention, and Assad’s position and domestic support remain steadfast, then a Lebanonization strategy may well be the substitute “optimal scenario” the US and its allies are now working toward.

 Encouraging, exacerbating, and inciting division between Arabs has been the long-term strategy for the Zionist establishment since the colonialists first usurped Palestinian land in 1948 – with specific effort made toward fomenting conflict along sectarian lines. The strategy of division is directed toward any Arab state or government that refuses to abide by Zionist demands. Israeli strategist Oded Yinon’s now infamous “A strategy for Israel in the 1980′s” – dubbed the Yinon Plan – provides perhaps the clearest account of Israel’s intentions toward its Arab neighbours:

The total disintegration of Lebanon into five regional local governments is the precedent for the entire Arab world … The dissolution of Syria, and later Iraq, into districts of ethnic and religious minorities following the example of Lebanon is Israel’s main long-range objective on the Eastern front. The present military weakening of these states is the short-range objective. Syria will disintegrate into several states along the lines of its ethnic and religious structure … As a result, there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state, the district of Aleppo will be a Sunni state, and the district of Damascus another state which is hostile to the northern one. The Druze – even those of the Golan – should forma state in Hauran and in northern Jordan … the oil-rich but very divided and internally strife-ridden Iraq is certainly a candidate to fill Israel’s goals … Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation … will hasten the achievement of the supreme goal, namely breaking up Iraq into elements like Syria and Lebanon.

When viewed in this context, it can be no coincidence that US Secretary of State John Kerry is desperately pursuing a fait accompli with the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Contrary to the sickening media portrayal of the US as impartial peacebroker, Kerry’s eagerness to pursue a “deal” at this moment in time is a direct result of the Syrian conflict, and the divisions within the resistance camp it has created. The US and Israel are now attempting to force through an Israeli-oriented “peace deal” with the corrupt PA that will inevitably be both a failure, and against the Palestinians interests. Staunch allies of Palestinian resistance, currently bogged down fighting Al Qaeda ideologues in Syria and defusing car-bombs bound for Dahiyeh, are in no position to support the Palestinians against Israel in their hour of need, the US and Israel fully grasp the importance of isolating genuine Palestinian resistance from the few Arab states and actors it receives support. In his latest speech, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah reminded his listeners of this very crucial issue:

“the US Administration is seeking, along with the Zionist Administration to put an end to the Palestinian cause, and it considers that this is the best time for that because the Arab and Islamic worlds are absent today, and every country is occupied with its own problems.”

In a similar fashion, the US has used the Syrian conflict as a lever against Iran in the nuclear negotiations, Washington’s longstanding attempts to pacify and subordinate an independent Iran has undoubtedly played a major role in US policy on Syria – perhaps the defining role. Consequently, both the Palestinian and Iranian conflicts with Israel and the United States are now, as they have always been intended to some extent in US calculations, inextricably linked to resolving the Syrian crisis.

True to form, Israel’s evident glee at the destruction in Syria and overt preference for the removal of Assad and the Syrian government, with the devastation that would entail, has proven at times hard for them to conceal. Furthering the point, just one of many examples of Israeli-rebel collusion came in a recent report from the National (falsely portraying the rebels Israel is “reaching out” to as ostensibly “moderate”) which relayed that hundreds of rebels have received treatment in Israeli hospitals and been sent back into Syria with up to a $1000 in cash. Israel have made further efforts to consolidate contacts with the rebels in the south, regardless of the level of fundamentalism, and cooperated with rebel factions during the Israeli bombings on Latakia and Damascus.

 In a feeble attempt to whitewash this collusion, Israeli propagandists are busily spreading the misinformation that Israel is facilitating the Druze community in the south of Syria; yet the Druze community are firmly allied with the Syrian government. In reality, Israeli attempts to cultivate relations with the communities and rebels in the south should be correctly viewed as attempts to create enforced “safe-zones” around the occupied Golan Heights, in furtherance of the Zionists land-grabbing expansionist aspirations. Accordingly, Israel’s fraudulent neutrality is completely exposed by their collusion with the rebels to meet their own interests, and overt acts of aggression against the Syrian army.

There are many other indications that allude to prominent factions of the US alliance being preferable of, and encouraging an outcome of division, most notably Israel, but simple logic determines that Saudi Arabia, Israel’s most vital strategic partner in the region, and the actor from within the US alliance that possesses the most material influence and political will to support fundamentalists and terrorism, would also approve of the disintegration of the Syrian state, primarily viewing it as a blow to “Shi’a expansion”. The Saudi and Gulf fixation on sectarian themes, to mask what are essentially politically oriented conflicts, is also intentionally built to intensify the strategy of division in multi-ethnic, religiously plural societies – as evidenced in virtually every country fundamentalist Gulf proxies have been unleashed upon, most recently in Libya.

Yet even the Saudi’s have limits to their own capabilities and decisions, ultimately they rely on the military largesse and protection of the United States, and will therefore reign in the terrorist networks if push comes to shove. Hence, the recent Saudi attempts to dissociate from Al Qaeda and the various extremists fighting in Syria can be seen as largely cosmetic and for public consumption. In reality, the Saudi leadership see Al Qaeda and its extremist confrères as malleable proxies of no real threat to themselves, while constituting a critical component of Saudi foreign policy and covert aggression.

 Of far higher importance to both Israel and Saudi Arabia’s confluent interests in the region, which in turn play a critical role in US calculations, are the very states the fundamentalist proxies are currently being sponsored to wage war upon; namely, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah. The disintegration of the resistance axis is the utmost priority for the states that drive US policy in the Middle East, the supposed “threat” faced by militant fundamentalist ideologues, originally created, and intermittently sponsored by the US and its allies, is merely an afterthought.

 The US Empire, in its efforts to contain, and therefore dominate and control such a strategic and resource-rich region, is more than content to allow its reactionary and sectarian clients to incite the conflict necessary to subvert, fracture and divide the inevitable power a unified Middle East could claim: if only their progressive aspirations and unity were not repeatedly “set back” by Zionist occupation and manufactured antagonism.

Phil Greaves is a UK based writer on UK/US Foreign Policy, with a focus on the Arab World, post WWII. http://notthemsmdotcom.wordpress.com/

Copyright © 2014 Global Research

«Tout homme raisonnable doit souhaiter à l’Ukraine stabilité, paix et prospérité»

Ex: http://www.horizons-et-debats.ch

km. Dans les pays germanophones, ceux qui actuellement donnent une information objective et équilibrée à propos de l’Ukraine ont peu d’occasions de présenter leur position dans les médias. Ceux qui lisent les grands médias y rencontrent une campagne chargée d’émotions où tout est mis au pas. Même là où des responsables de la politique occidentale parlent de temps en temps de la nécessité de «compromis» et d’«entretiens avec la Russie» – à l’instar de l’ancien stratège Zbigniev Brzezinski lors de la Conférence de sécurité de Munich – de telles déclarations ne semblent pas très crédibles, car les activités et les paroles sont contradictoires. Une des personnes qui a encore accès aux médias occidentaux et orientaux est le spécialiste de la Russie Alexander Rahr. Alexander Rahr est directeur de recherche du Forum germano-russe, Senior Advisor de la Wintershall Holding GmbH et membre du centre de débats internationaux «Waldai», né d’une initiative russe, traitant, lors de ses réunions annuelles, de la politique intérieure et extérieure de la Russie. Les deux textes ci-dessous sont des extraits d’interviews d’Alexander Rahr, accordés à l’agence de presse russe Ria Novosti et à la station de radio Deutschlandfunk.

«Tout homme raisonnable doit souhaiter à l’Ukraine stabilité, paix et prospérité. Il doit également lui souhaiter que les hommes politiques trouvent un langage et des intérêts communs et qu’ils puissent se mettre d’accord pour stopper cette crise inutile et créée artificiellement.»

«Janoukovych n’a pas violé la législation comme l’avait fait le gouvernement ukrainien il y a dix ans, dont l’aboutissement fut une révolution, suite à des manipulations électorales. Il s’est simplement opposé à la signature d’un document et l’a reportée. Il a obtenu des crédits russes, dont il avait un urgent besoin, crédits que l’Occident ne pouvait lui offrir. Voilà pourquoi je suis d’avis qu’une seconde révolution serait un non-sens.

[…] Le problème consiste aussi dans le fait que l’UE n’a actuellement pas envie de se mettre à la table de négociations avec la Russie. L’Europe se trouve pour de nombreux points du côté de l’opposition. Elle veut faire de Janoukovych une sorte de malfaiteur au sein des autorités ukrainiennes. Je pense que l’Occident crée ainsi une situation explosive. […]»

Source: Alexander Rahr dans une interview accordée à Ria Novosti le 24/1/14

«Nous devons apprendre à coopérer différemment avec des centres de pouvoir, telles la Chine et la Russie, parce qu’ils se renforcent et ne s’affaiblissent pas.»

«Je pense, qu’il y a une chose qu’il faut s’imaginer différemment que durant les années 90. La Russie n’est plus une grande puissance défaillante mais un pays qui a retrouvé le chemin vers le haut. La Russie construit à l’Est de l’Europe – indépendamment de ce que nous voulons, nous ne pouvons pas l’en empêcher – une Union eurasienne. Cette Union eurasienne, il faudra bien qu’elle crée à longue échéance une base de coopération avec l’Union européenne. Sinon, on continuera d’être pris dans la guerre froide. Je pense que les deux parties ont fait de graves erreurs en Ukraine; les Russes avec leur guerre commerciale mais également l’Union européenne – c’est ce que Mme Merkel a avoué dans sa déclaration gouvernementale – a commis l’erreur de forcer l’Ukraine à choisir. Il doit être possible d’offrir à un pays comme l’Ukraine deux options, tant une association avec l’Union européenne qu’une coopération étroite avec l’Union eurasienne. […]

L’Union eurasienne ne peut se faire sans l’Ukraine. Mais à l’heure actuelle, l’Union eurasienne que Poutine et le président kazakhe Nazarbaïev construisent, n’est à la base pas dirigée contre l’Union européenne en soi, mais c’est la tentative de créer un modèle d’intégration à l’Est de l’Europe qui pourrait, une fois ou l’autre signer un accord de zone de libre-échange avec l’Union européenne.

Pour l’Ukraine, nous devons trouver une solution commune avec les Russes. Ils ont autant d’influence sur l’Ukraine que l’Occident, que l’Union européenne, c’est pourquoi il faut trouver les points communs. […]

A mon avis, l’Occident se voit toujours et encore dans la position du vainqueur des années 90. De notre point de vue, nous avons gagné la guerre froide et voyons toujours et encore un élève sage dans un pays telle la Russie. Cela a changé. Le monde n’est plus mono-polaire, mais multipolaire. Nous allons devoir apprendre à coopérer différemment avec des centres de pouvoir, telles la Chine et la Russie, parce qu’ils se renforcent et ne s’affaiblissent pas, comme nous l’avions pensé jusqu’à présent.»    •

Source: Alexander Rahr dans une interview accordée au Deutschlandfunk le 28/1/14
(Traduction Horizons et débats)

Syrie: La Russie met fin aux illusions américaines

Ex: http://zejournal.mobi

Les paris américains de pousser la Russie à exercer des pressions sur la délégation syrienne à la conférence de Genève II, pour l'amener à modifier ses positions de principes, ont échoué. La profonde déception de Washington est apparue dans les comptes rendus de la réunion tripartite, vendredi à Genève, entre la Russie, les Etats-Unis et Lakhdar Brahimi. Lors de cette rencontre, le vice-ministre russe des Affaires étrangères, Guennadi Gatilov, a fait preuve d'une grande fermeté en s'opposant aux Américains et à la partialité de l'émissaire international.

Le déroulement des négociations de Genève prouve l'absence de tout compromis déjà convenu, comme l'ont cru certains milieux politiques et diplomatiques dès le début de la conférence. Il doit être clair à tous les analystes que la relation entre la Russie et l'Etat syrien est bâtie sur un solide partenariat et une alliance, et non pas sur le suivisme, comme c'est le cas dans la relation entre les oppositions syriennes et leurs maitres américains, arabes et occidentaux.

Le dossier syrien est l'espace dans lequel sont en train de se former les nouvelles équations de partenariat entre les deux pôles russe et américain. Dans ses efforts visant à retrouver sa place sur la scène internationale, la Russie se base sur un solide roc, assuré par la résistance de l'Etat syrien, la progression de ses troupes sur le terrain et un vaste soutien populaire que même les pires ennemis de la Syrie ne peuvent plus nier.

Dans ses efforts visant à construire ce nouveau partenariat international, la Russie agit d'égal à égal avec les Occidentaux, même si au début de la conférence, elle a fermé les yeux sur le retrait de l'invitation adressée à l'Iran et la limitation de la représentation de l'opposition syrienne à la seule délégation de la Coalition nationale. Les Russes ont fait tomber, vendredi, d'un seul coup, les illusions américaines, en soutenant à fond la position de la délégation gouvernementale syrienne qui est intransigeante dans les priorités: la lutte contre le terrorisme doit passer avant toute autre question politique, car elle constitue le pilier de tout futur accord inter-syrien.

Washington tente d'imposer le concept développé par Richard Haass d'un partenariat international... dirigé par les Etats-Unis!

C'est ce que les Américains tentent de faire en Syrie, en essayant d'orienter vers ce concept le processus politique et diplomatique engagé pour régler la crise dans ce pays. Mais cette tentative va à contre-courant des rapports de force sur le terrain, qui permettent à l'Etat syrien, qui tire sa force de son armée et du soutien d'une grande partie de la population, de placer le monde devant deux alternatives: un compromis bâti sur un partenariat dans la lutte contre le terrorisme, appuyé par des résolutions internationales fermes contre tous les Etats impliqués dans le soutien aux mouvements terroristes; ou la solution militaire grâce aux propres moyens de l'Etat syrien, qui imposerait un fait accompli sur le terrain.

Grâce à ses renseignements et aux sondages d'opinion qu'il a menés, l'Occident sait pertinemment que la popularité du président Bachar al-Assad est inébranlable. Le fait que le président syrien soit la cible des Etats-Unis n'a fait que renforcer sa popularité et son image de leader populaire incarnant la volonté syrienne de résister au terrorisme et de défendre l'indépendance et la souveraineté nationales.

La Russie a voulu adresser un message fort de solidarité avec la Syrie, son peuple et son leader, lequel s'est attiré l'admiration des hommes libres de ce monde avec sa volonté de résistance.

La position de Moscou a été aidée par une gestion intelligente et courageuse des négociations de Genève par la délégation gouvernementale. Ce n'est pas un hasard que des manifestations de soutien au président Assad, à la délégation gouvernementale à Genève et à l'armée arabe syrienne, aient lieu dans les régions syriennes perturbées. Les images des foules à Deraa, Deir Ezzor et les autres villes du pays sont éloquentes.

La Russie est convaincue qu'elle est la cible du terrorisme takfiriste parrainé par des pays évoluant dans l'orbite américaine. Elle est aussi victime de pressions en Ukraine et dans d'autres régions, qui constituent sa zone d'influence historique. Le ministre russe des Affaires étrangères, Serguei Lavrov, s'est dressé devant l'arrogance américaine et face au projet de bouclier anti-missile, qui constitue une menace directe pour les équilibres mondiaux. Ce projet est explicitement dirigé contre la Russie et son allié iranien.

Cela signifie que la priorité de l'Etat syrien de combattre le terrorisme est aussi celle de défendre la Syrie, la sécurité de ses alliés et la stabilité du monde. Il est tout à fait naturel que la position de la Russie à la conférence de Genève soutienne cette priorité, défendue par la délégation gouvernementale syrienne, surtout que l'Etat syrien a pris en compte, ces trois dernières années, et à plus d'une reprises, les intérêts de son allié russe.

La relation entre la Russie et la Syrie est bâtie sur une alliance organique et stratégique, basée sur la crédibilité, la compréhension et le respect mutuel. La Syrie est un partenaire essentiel de la Russie et non pas un pays vassal, à l'instar de la relation entre les Etats-Unis et leurs "alliés".

Pour toutes ces considérations, l'illusion du compromis russo-américain convenu d'avance est tombée vendredi à Genève... et s'est évaporé avec elle les plans  américains de faire primer "le transfert du pouvoir" sur la lutte contre le terrorisme.

L'armée arabe syrienne se chargera, sur le champ de bataille, de convaincre ceux qui sont encore bercés par ces illusions, que tous leurs paris sont perdants.

- Source : Al Manar (Liban)

Soviet-Afghan War Lesson

Soviet-Afghan War Lesson: Political Problems Never Settled by Force

By Sergey Duz
The Voice of Russia

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

25 years ago, the almost 10-year long deployment of the limited contingent of Soviet forces in Afghanistan drew to a close. Experts have since been at variance about the assessment of the Afghan campaign, but they invariably agree that it was the biggest-scale (and actually quite ambiguous, obviously for that reason) foreign policy action throughout the post-war history of the Soviet Union.

The last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan on February 15th 1989 as part of the Soviet 40th Army, which was the backbone of the limited contingent. The Soviet troops withdrew under the command of the 40th Army legendary commander, Lieutenant-General Boris Gromov. He managed to brilliantly carry out the withdrawal, with the US now trying to use his experience to more or less decently pull out of Afghanistan following the more than 20 years of actually useless occupation of that country. This is what an expert with the Centre for Modern Afghan Studies, Nikita Mendkovich, says about it in a comment.

“The Americans will have to rely heavily on intercontinental delivery means, because the troops are being evacuated to another region, to another continent. Back in 1989, it was largely a ground-force operation. The Soviet troops pulled out by land via Central Asia. The basic problem of any operation of this kind is security. Huge masses of troops and a great number of military vehicles are moving along the roads, so they should be guaranteed against likely attacks. To attain the objective, one can either reinforce local garrisons that will remain deployed in Afghanistan after the pull-out of the bulk of the troops and will cover the withdrawal, or reach agreement with the enemy not to attack the leaving troops, because this is not in the enemy’s interests”.

There are both similarities and numerous differences between the Soviet and American campaigns in Afghanistan. The main difference is that the Soviet Union did manage to achieve its goal, whereas with the United States it is no go. The Soviet troops were to render assistance to the Afghan government in settling the home policy situation. Secondly, the Soviet troops were to prevent external aggression. Both objectives were fully attained.

The Soviet political leadership felt that the revolution of April 1978 had no right to lose. Ideological reasoning was reinforced by geopolitical considerations. This predetermined Moscow’s decision to send troops, says editor-in-chief of the National Defence magazine, Igor Korotchenko, and elaborates.

“The Afghan campaign was inevitable if seen from the perspective of defending the Soviet Union’s national interests. It may seem odd, but Afghans are still nostalgic about the times when Soviet troops were deployed in their country. Even former field commanders can’t help but show some sort of liking for the Soviet Union, for the Soviet Army. We were no invaders; we helped build a new Afghanistan. The Soviet troops built tunnels, ensured the operation of water-supply systems, planted trees, built schools and hospitals, and also production facilities. The Soviet troops were indeed performing their international duty, they accomplished quite a feat. When the Soviet troops pulled out, Najibullah had a strong Afghan Army under his command. He remained in control of the situation in Afghanistan for 12 or 18 months. His regime fell when the Soviet Union cut short its material supply for Kabul. The current Afghan regime of Karzai will certainly prove short-lived; it’s no more than a phantom. The US troops will hardly pull out with their heads held high, the way the Soviet soldiers did”.

But then, some people disagree that all Afghans were happy about the Soviet military presence. The Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin pointed out the danger of the Soviet troops getting drawn into guerrilla warfare. He said in late 1979 that the invasion of Afghanistan “would trigger drastically negative many-sided consequences”. “This would essentially become a conflict not only with imperialist countries, but a conflict with the proper Afghan people. Now, people never forgive things like that”, Kosygin warned, and proved correct. This is what the chairman of the Common Afghan Centre in St. Petersburg, Naim Gol Mohammed, says about it in a comment.

“The people of Afghanistan have their own traditions, mentality and culture. The belligerent Pashtun tribes have never taken orders from anyone. These tribes never take to foreign troops. The locals revolted against the Soviet troops. The Soviet troop withdrawal in 1989 was followed by a period of anarchy. Government agencies were non-operational. The Soviet Union supplied Afghanistan with whatever was required quite well. But once the Soviet troops were out, the supplies were brought to a halt. That was bad. But the Soviet Union made the right decision, for it is impossible to defeat Afghans on their own soil”.

Quite a few experts insist that however tragic or pointless the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan may seem, it had largely influenced the shaping of the new Russia’s optimal foreign policy. Moscow is perfectly aware today that no use of force can help resolve political problems, that these can only have a negotiated settlement. Moscow is trying to put the idea across to the main geopolitical players today. This is the most important lesson that should be learned from what experience the Soviet Union gained in Afghanistan.

Reprinted from The voice of Russia.

The Salvadorian Elections and Beijing’s Rise Star in Central America

Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

The Salvadorian corruption scandal involving Francisco Flores, who was president of El Salvador from 1999 until 2004, has opened the door for the diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China by the next government in San Salvador, which the FMLN failed to ascertain under the term of President Mauricio Funes. The graft involving Flores has created the appropriate political opportunity for El Salvador’s Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) to formally cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan (formally known as the Republic of China)), if an FMLN president is elected in March 2014. 

This diplomatic question additionally exposes the behind the scenes coordination that is taking place between Beijing and Taipei. This paints a picture of a cordial path towards Chinese unification between Taiwan and mainland China and not one of rivalry. Neither Beijing nor Taipei has put major obstacles in the other’s way, recognizing that ultimately there will be one China.

Francisco Flores and the Salvadorian Oligarchy

Francisco Flores was president of El Salvador when the Nationalist Republican Alliance, mostly commonly called by its Spanish acronym ARENA, was ruling the Central American republic. He is a member of the corrupt US-aligned Salvadorian oligarchy that cheapened El Salvador by reducing it to the de facto status of a US colony by following orders from Washington, DC. Exemplifying this relationship, it was under the presidential term of Flores that El Salvador would send hundreds of troops to help the United States and the United Kingdom during their illegal occupation of Iraq.

The Salvadorian oligarchy has for all purposes operated as a comprador elite class, which means that they have ultimately served as the local representatives or managers of foreign corporations, governments, and interests. In this case the Salvadorian oligarchy has acted collectively as a comprador elite class serving the elites of the United States, which themselves are more precisely described as parasitic elites due to the fact that they have siphoned off most the local wealth and resources of the countries they have subverted to their influence. Historically, these US elites penetrated the power structures and hierarchies of Latin America once the influence of the original Spaniard parasitic elites at the top of the economic hierarchy in the Western Hemisphere was eroded. Many Latin American countries even had a US official or minister overseeing their government and daily affairs.

Under Flores and ARENA, El Salvador lost its monetary sovereignty. The colon, El Salvador’s national currency, was removed by order of Flores and his ARENA government. They replaced the colon with the US dollar as the official currency of El Salvador. Thus, El Salvador joined the ranks of the various territories of the US, East Timor, Panama, and Ecuador as a place where the US dollar is official currency.

Under ARENA’s rule numerous unfair private business monopolies were established by law for ARENA members and supporters. It was illegal and next to impossible to buy medication from anyone except Alfredo Cristiani, the oligarch who was the ARENA president of El Salvador prior to Armando Calderón Sol and later Funes. Cristiani not only initiated the neoliberal economic restructuring of El Salvador, but also used his private monopoly on medication to always overcharge users and to even sell expired medication with impunity. It was the same with fertilizer and other agricultural products too, which were placed under Cristiani’s private monopoly. The ARENA government would allow no competition whatsoever. Moreover, Cristiani privatized the Salvadorian banking system letting his family use Cuscatlan Bank, which is now owned by Citibank, to expand their influence across Central America.

Albeit political corruption still lingers in El Salvador, the criminal basis of the previous ARENA governments is explicitly acknowledged by the reports and files of their own police administrations. Police intelligence files testify that every president, justice minister, and police director was tied to organized crime until the FMLN took over the government in San Salvador. Moreover, Alfredo Cristiani, the sweetheart of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, is widely recognized as the father of organized crime in El Salvador.

The Authors of the Salvadorian Option

Before ARENA was officially formed, these oligarchs used the Salvadorian military and police to wage a vicious war, with the outright involvement of the US government and Pentagon, against El Salvador’s indigenous people, peasants, poor, intellectuals, unions, Roman Catholic Church, and anyone demanding democracy and equal rights. The brutal repression and consequential civil war in El Salvador was part of the Salvadorian oligarchy’s efforts to maintain control over Salvadorian society. 

It was under the rule of these oligarchs that the infamous Salvador Option was spawned by US-aligned death squads that would exterminate whole villages in slow, cruel, and grotesque ways. Ice picks would be used to stab out eyes and deform faces while limbs would be systematically torn by horses or vehicles. The murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in San Salvador, who was killed while giving a mass, is one of their most well-known acts. The man behind Romero’s murder, Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, would become the founder of ARENA.

The murder of Archbishop Romero, however, was merely one of the many atrocities that these oligarchs committed with Washington’s full knowledge, support, and involvement. Salvadoran military leaders were trained by the infamous School of the Americas and by the Pentagon and many of the torture and murder techniques that the death squads had used were taught to them by the US military. Moreover, countless Salvadorian guerilla fighters remember fighting US troops and hearing US orders on the radios to bomb the jungle and villages of El Salvador in English or Spanish.

Almost all of El Salvador’s indigenous population would be exterminated by these oligarchs. Entire families would be murdered while their properties would be plundered or destroyed. Not even children and animals would be spared. Both rape and the desecration of graves would be systematic and common practices.

One of the worst massacres was committed on December 11, 1981. This massacre took place in the village of El Mozote in the Department of Morazan. Eight hundred unarmed civilians, including children, were systematically tortured, humiliated, raped, and killed by a US-trained special operations unit.

Washington would send people like James Steele and John Negroponte to Anglo-American occupied Iraq to recreate the reign of terror that the US helped author in El Salvador. The exact same patterns and tactics of murder and torture would emerge in occupied Iraq, exposing the US as the source behind the death squads in both El Salvador and Anglo-American occupied Iraq. 

Taiwanese Bribery?

While the National Assembly or Legislative Assembly of El Salvador was conducting an investigation on past corruption it discovered that 10 million US dollars had personally gone to bank account of Francisco Flores. When Flores was questioned by the National Assembly about the large amount of money his responded by saying that the money had come from the Taiwanese government and that he had actually taken more than 10 million dollars from Taiwan. It was after this that Flores tried to flee El Salvador or tried to make it look like he had fled. Flores did this after he was ordered to reappear in front of the National Assembly again on the eve of the first round the 2014 Salvadorian presidential elections.

The funds that Francisco Flores had taken were actually part of a set of secret payments being made by Taiwan annually. Taiwan has very close ties to El Salvador and Central America. Aside from the US-sponsored states of Latin America, the Taiwanese government also joined the US and Israel to support the oligarchs in El Salvador against the FMLN during the Salvadorian Civil War. 

The secret payments made by Taiwan to Flores were originally established to prevent El Salvador from recognizing the government in Beijing as the legitimate government of China. While the payments may have originally been anti-Beijing or a Taiwanese award for the recognition of Taiwan instead of the government in mainland China, they appear to have been sustained with less and less anti-Beijing sentiments. The continued Taiwanese payments were maintained to sustain advantageous treatment of Taiwanese business interests and to win economic concessions in El Salvador, including a monopoly over the Salvadorian geothermal sector that is completely owned by Taiwan.

It is also worth noting that the Salvadorian government and Taipei have been exchanging information over the corruption scandal. This is in part due to the fact that Chen Shui-bian was the Taiwanese president whose government sent Flores the funds. Shui-bian and his wife are now in jail due to corruption convictions in Taiwan and there is probably a parallel probe in Taipei examining the role of Shui-bian and his associates. 

China’s Rising Star

The People’s Republic of China is an increasingly important player in Latin America. One important project that involves China is the creation of a mega canal connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean, like a second Panama Canal. This second Panama Canal, however, will be based in Nicaragua and called the Great Canal of Nicaragua… The Nicaraguan government even signed an agreement in 2012 with a freshly formed Hong Kong-based company, called the Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company Limited, run by a Chinese telecommunications businessman magnet for attracting international investments for building the canal. The project is due to start in a matter of months.

When the FLMN had Mauricio Funes elected as president, they had him immediately establish diplomatic relations with Cuba when he was inaugurated on June 1, 2009. The previous ARENA government refused to have ties with Havana and was helping the US blockade Cuba and to oppose Venezuela and its regional allies. The FLMN additionally established diplomatic relations with Vietnam, Cambodia, and Russia. They failed to do so, however, with the People’s Republic of China due to multiple factors. 

The failure to recognize Beijing was due to opposition by President Funes, who is now the outgoing president of El Salvador. Mauricio Funes, a former CNN employee and popular local broadcaster, was merely endorsed by the FLMN. Funes is not a member of the FMLN as some outside of El Salvador assume. Under the agreement that Funes had with the FMLN, the portfolios of the Salvadorian cabinet were divided between the FMLN and non-FMLN individuals (popularly called the “Friends of Funes”) selected President Funes. Under this power sharing agreement, Funes would control strategic issues, national economics, and the secretariat for political reforms while the FMLN would manage the portfolios responsible for healthcare, education, and security. It was under this framework that Funes was able to stall recognition of the People’s Republic of China and to hinder the economic and political reforms that the FMLN wanted. 

By the time that the Salvadorian government did reach out to officials in Beijing, the Chinese government was cool to the idea of establishing diplomatic ties. This was most probably because of the delay, which the Chinese government could have viewed as an insult to Beijing’s dignity. Although the FMLN as a political party has direct links to the People’s Republic of China through the FMLN’s international affairs office and has delegations invited to Beijing, the FMLN will look at ways to establishing formal diplomatic ties with Beijing when the FMLN win the 2014 presidential elections in March’s second round of voting. In this context, a second FMLN presidential term provides the opportunity for the FLMN to rectify the mistake and recognize Beijing quickly under a new chapter when Vice-President Salvador Sanchez becomes El Salvador’s next president.

The Salvadorian government and the FMLN have made it clear to Taiwan that El Salvador ultimately intends to recognize the Beijing as the legitimate government of China. What is interesting to note is that there has been no opposition from Taiwan against this decision. Nor will the severing of diplomatic ties between San Salvador and Taipei end Taiwan’s trade ties with El Salvador. There is even some type of silent coordination between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China in regards to this trajectory that falls into the framework of Chinese unification. 

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is currently travelling in Central America. Presently he is in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) stronghold of León inside Nicaragua. He was an international observer in El Salvador during the first round of the presidential elections in February 2014 and held discussions with Salvadorian officials about Salvadorian economics and foreign policy.

 

L’Algérie dans le viseur des USA

 

L’Algérie dans le viseur des USA

François Charles

Ex: http://www.lautreafrique.info

Il y a déjà plusieurs mois que les Etats-Unis, après avoir classé l’Algérie comme « pays à risque pour la sécurité des diplomates », ont implanté des installations militaires avec contingents de marines, à la pointe sud de l’Espagne, sans cacher le moins du monde leurs intentions interventionnistes vers le nord de l’Afrique.

Sachant par ailleurs, que les Etats-Unis visent désormais la région frontalière située entre le sud tunisien et l’Algérie: « Signe que les Etats-Unis sont décidés à agir, le Pentagone vient de récupérer, dans le sud de la Tunisie, une ancienne base désaffectée qui doit être rénovée pour intervenir sur le théâtre libyen, affirme une source diplomatique à Tunis.  (le Figaro, 1er février 2014), le moins qu’on puisse dire, même s’il n’est question pour l’instant que d’intervenir en Libye, est que l’ogre se rapproche…

Menaces de punition pour n’avoir pas suffisamment soutenu l’intervention militaire française au Mali ? Projet de déstabilisation d’un dernier bastion encore par trop indépendant de l’influence US ?

Toujours est-il que, après les maliens et au vu de l’état de tension régnant dans toute la sous-région, les algériens sont fondés à nourrir de grandes inquiétudes.

Une intervention militaire annoncée

500 marines, huit avions militaires de combat…Les Etats-Unis ont ainsi déployé, depuis l’été 2013, une force militaire d’intervention conséquente, dans la petite ville de  Moron en Espagne. Si le stationnement de militaires américains sur le sol espagnol n’est pas un scoop, ce qui est nouveau en revanche est la spécificité dédiée à cette nouvelle implantation. L’aveu du gouvernement espagnol à ce sujet est d’ailleurs de taille :  » permettre à l’armée américaine d’intervenir dans le nord de l’Afrique en cas de troubles majeurs ». On ne saurait, en effet,  être plus clair !

Aujourd’hui, alors que les USA viennent de faire une demande officielle au gouvernement Rajoy d’augmenter de moitié le contingent des marines déjà en place, appelé « Force de riposte pour la crise en Afrique », on apprend, par le quotidien espagnol El Pais, que sont prévus d’importants mouvements de la marine militaire US sur les côtes espagnoles :  » Le 11 février prochain le destroyer américain USS Donald Cook arrivera avec ses 338 membres d’équipage à la base navale de Cadix. Un second navire, USS Ross arrivera en juin et deux autres, USS Porter et USS Carney, en 2015. Au total, ce seront 1100 marines, avec leurs familles, qui s’installeront sur la base de Cadix ».

Interrogé à propos de toutes ces manoeuvres et implantations militaires, Gonzalo de Benito, secrétaire d’Etat espagnol aux affaires étrangères, se contentera de commenter :  » Quelles opérations réaliseront ces marines suréquipés ? Je ne peux pas le dire car ces forces sont pas venues pour des opérations précises mais pour des contingences qui peuvent se produire… »

Entre menaces et langue de bois, on mesure combien ces bruits de bottes sont à prendre au très sérieux.

Que ce soit en Italie ou en Espagne, au Nord Mali ou au Niger, qu’elles soient françaises ou US, force est de constater que les implantations militaires se multiplient dans la région proche Maghreb.

L’humanitaire d’abord et puis… la guerre

Toutes les interventions extérieures qui ont procédé, et y tendent encore, à ce processus de désintégration territoriale et politiques des nations, notamment africaines… ont toujours été précédées de campagnes ultra-médiatiques menées sur le terrain de « l’humanitaire ». On connaît parfaitement le déroulé des opérations : « humanitaires » et ONG signalent, généralement là où on le leur dit, une situation dramatique pour les civils, y dénoncent des famines en cours ou à venir, identifient des multitudes de génocides (ou risque de), abreuvent les opinions publiques d’images-choc et finalement… les grandes puissances se voient  »contraintes », à leur corps défendant s’entend… d’intervenir au nom du « droit à la vie des populations concernées ». CQFD en Libye, en Côte d’Ivoire, en Centrafrique, au Mali…tous désintégrés, découpés et finalement partitionnés.

C’est ainsi que, après avoir rôdé il y a fort longtemps son procédé  au Biafra et en Somalie, tous deux désintégrés (1), le  »bon » docteur Kouchner, devenu ministre français de gauche et de droite, allait inventer en ex-Yougoslavie, elle aussi désintégrée,  la version définitive du « droit d’ingérence » ! Invention qui, après avoir montré toute son efficacité dans l’implosion des Balkans, allait faire florès aux quatre coins d’une planète soumise à la globalisation impériale.

De l’Irak des « armes de destruction massive » à la Libye du « sanguinaire » Kadhafi  » meilleur ami de la France, de la Syrie au Mali, de la Côte d’Ivoire à la Centrafrique… on s’aperçoit que c’est surtout au nombre de guerres menées, en son nom, sur le continent qu’on peut mesurer les résultats de cette politique « humanitaire ».

Afrique du Nord, Algérie et Tunisie clairement visées

Qu’on n’oublie pas que le département américain des affaires étrangères a récemment classé l’Algérie dans sa trop fameuse liste des pays « à risque sécuritaire pour les diplomates ». Par ailleurs, au même moment, sous forme d’amendements, était rediscutée au Congrès américain la loi anti-terroriste avec comme objectif affiché de permettre l’intervention des Forces Armées, sans consultation préalable en…Afrique du Nord ! Tiens donc…

Les ONG humanitaires dont on a déjà dit l’empressement à « appeler les grandes puissances » et leurs armées au secours, sont depuis longtemps à pied d’oeuvre en Algérie. Selon la centrale syndicale UGTA (Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens) ces ONG mènent campagne dans le but de diviser et opposer les populations entre elles : Nord contre Sud, Berbères contre Arabophones, salariés contre chômeurs… En tête de liste de ces « humanitaires » on trouve les ONG telles que Freedom House, Canvas, NED…dont les liens avec la CIA sont un secret de polichinelle. (2)

L’UGTT les accuse nommément d’infiltrer les mouvements sociaux aux fins de « les dévoyer et de les conduire vers des actions violentes, cherchant ainsi à créer une situation  de troubles pouvant justifier une intervention extérieure »  et encore  » Alors que les jeunes manifestent légitimement pour la création  d’emplois, contre la précarité et l’exploitation, les jeunes animateurs de Canvas leur proposent de régler la question de l’emploi dans un cadre séparatiste, du Sud de l’Algérie, c’est à dire là où se trouvent les grandes richesses minières, pétrolières et gazières. »  Comme par hasard, serait-on tenté d’ajouter ou plutôt…comme d’habitude. (3)

Insécurité et troubles sociaux provoqués en de ça des frontières, insécurité généralisée provoquée au delà. La méthode est connue. Les USA qui s’appuient déjà sur la déstabilisation régionale pour justifier le déploiement de leurs dispositifs militaires en Méditerranée ne manqueront pas de prendre demain le prétexte des troubles sociaux ou « du danger pour les diplomates » pour intervenir directement.

Ne serait-il pas légitime, pourtant, de poser la question de la responsabilité des grandes puissances, et très précisément de celle des USA, dans la prolifération des activités terroristes armées dans toute cette région d’Afrique ? N’est-ce pas, et ce n’est pas là le moindre des paradoxes, au nom de cette insécurité que les USA, par OTAN et France interposées, ont décidé de faire exploser la Libye en 2011 ? N’est-ce pas pour les mêmes raison que l’armée française est entrée en guerre au Mali en 2012. Deux interventions qui, rappelons le, loin de ramener la paix, ajoutant la déstabilisation à la déstabilisation, ont fait du Sahel, et de toute la sous-région, une véritable poudrière.

Ces nouvelles menaces US inscrites dans le cadre de la stratégie dite des « dominos », si chère à l’ancienne administration Bush, doivent être prises très au sérieux. On le voit, les prétextes même les plus fallacieux, ne manquent pas et ne manqueront pas, dans un avenir proche, pour une intervention militaire extérieure. Les grandes puissances ne s’arrêteront pas, bien au contraire, devant les risques de désintégration régionale et leurs conséquences meurtrières pour les peuples.

Déjà, c’est toute la région qui subit l’incroyable prolifération des armes due à l’explosion de l’état Libyen et au flux continu d’armements en tout genre, totalement irresponsable, à destination d’islamistes extrêmes en Syrie. Les ondes de choc de cette situation on les connait au Mali où une France militairement dépassée se montre très (trop) bienveillante à l’égard de séparatistes très bien équipés, en Algérie où ressurgit une certaine forme de terrorisme islamiste qu’on pensait éradiquée et jusqu’en Tunisie où sévissent désormais des groupes paramilitaires se réclamant de l’Islam et où, dans le même temps, le pouvoir laisse impunis les assassinats d’opposants politiques.

Il apparaît de plus en plus clairement aux populations concernées que ces menées dislocatrices dirigées contre des états souverains n’ont pour objectif que de laisser des nations affaiblies aux mains de supplétifs, divisées et impuissantées, incapables de résister aux appétits des multinationales.

C’est bien pourquoi les états d’où sont originaires ces multinationales s’entendent si bien, au gré de leurs intérêts et quoi qu’ils en disent, avec les islamistes les plus furieux, qu’il s’agisse aujourd’hui du Sahel et de la Syrie ou de la Libye hier. Autrement dit, à chacun son pré-carré, à chacun ses profits et ses caisses bien remplies.

Décidément, jamais les « vieilles chimères », portées par les pères fondateurs des Indépendances, comme  le « panafricanisme » ou « l’Afrique aux africains »… jetées depuis aux oubliettes de l’histoire, ne semblent pourtant avoir été autant d’actualité.

De toutes les manières et quoi qu’il en soit des débats urgents qu’impose la situation dramatique infligée au continent, l’actualité dicte que l’Algérie ne se voit pas dicter sa conduite sous intervention militaire.

Notes:

1/ Après le Biafra, Bernard Kouchner expliquera qu’il convient de « convaincre » d’abord les opinions publiques. S’en suivirent alors les opérations à grand spectacles comme « un sac de riz pour la Somalie », « un bateau pour le Vietnam »…les dissensions avec MSF, son départ et la fondation de Médecins du monde.

2/  UGTA Alger le 28 juin 2013 in Fraternité journal du PT algérien

3/ Sur le rôle néfaste des « humanitaires », des ONG et la dislocation des nations, voir www.lautreafrique.info (« Banque Mondiale et ONG déstabilisent les états »)

Vladimir Odintsov :

The USA’s Asia Policy is Shifting

Ex: http://journal-neo.org

 

The February 5th discussion in Congress of the issue of the United States’ Asia policy came as a clear confirmation of the course taken by Washington influence by hawks: transitioning from the balanced approach of the past to solving territorial disputes in the Pacific Rim to a tougher stance, one including the use of force. The intent of updating future US activities in Asia is reflected in the very name of the congressional subcommittee hearing: “America’s Future in Asia: From Rebalancing to Managing Sovereignty Disputes.” It wholly confirmed Washington’s decision of transitioning to a position of imperial dictatorship in that area of the world, where in recent times the US has regularly expressed grievances against China regarding the recently announced Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), which includes a number of islands in the South China Sea.

According to reports of various foreign observers, a fairly obvious tension in relations between the two countries has appeared in recent days, despite Washington’s outward declaration of willingness to develop a bilateral cooperation with China in a number of arenas. In the view of many analysts, this is largely due to a shift in US military strategy and its particular emphasis on the strengthening of its strategic presence in the Pacific region as a means of combating Chinese expansion in Asia. The sharpest of these confrontations are in the field of military strategy and of competition for influence over regional economic trade unions. The underlying motive for this is clear: each year 5.3 trillion dollars of the trade turnover takes place in the South China Sea, with US trade accounting for 1.2 trillion of the total amount.

A session of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives termed “China’s Maritime and Other Geographic Threats” held on October 30th, 2013 is a clear indication of the growth of anti-Chinese sentiment in the American political establishment. This session, chaired by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, witnessed a significant rise in the inciting of military confrontation with China in the Pacific Rim region, as well as a quest by US politicians to further strengthen US expansion in that part of the world by military confrontation with China, looking to Japan for support.

Giving testimony before a congressional subcommittee on February 5th, the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Daniel Russel, stated that the United States is acting against “China’s incremental efforts to assert control over the area contained in the so-called “nine-dash line” (i.e. China’s territorial demands in the South China Sea)”. He added, “I think it is imperative that we be clear about what we mean when the United States says that we take no position on competing claims to sovereignty over disputed land features in the East China and South China Seas…we do take a strong position that maritime claims must accord with customary international law…”

This assertion, repeated several times during his testimony before Congress and in a briefing for foreign journalists which took place on February 4th in the US Department of State Foreign Press Center, may indicate significant changes in US foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region. Before Russel’s testimony the United States officially announced its neutrality in respect to maritime disputes in the South China Sea, which was used by American diplomats primarily as a denial of the military component of Washington’s policy in the region. The White House now, however, takes a “strong position” on the issue and intends to use certain provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – which the US itself has not yet joined – to place increased pressure on China and to denounce Beijing’s maritime demands.

Adjusting for the adoption of its modified position in the Pacific Rim region Washington “aided” the Philippine government in bringing a judicial lawsuit against China before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which will review the issue on March 30th of this year in Hague. This step, however, is clearly a link in Washington’s coordinated military propaganda campaign against China, as the same day that Russel gave testimony before Congress the New York Times published an interview with president of the Philippines Aquino, in which he compared Beijing’s territorial demands in the South China Sea with Hitler’s 1938 seizure of the Czech Sudetenland, equating China’s activities with those of Nazi Germany. In support of Aquino’s inflammatory comparison, on February 6th of this year The Atlantic temporarily carried an article with a critique of China.

When, with the clear sanction of the White House, the US media begins comparing a country with Nazi Germany, it becomes obvious that the American war machine is gaining momentum in its preparations for the next war, in which military industry circles have long been interested. The “informational support” of such a shift in US foreign policy was provided in the form of speeches delivered by a number of congressmen before congressional subcommittee hearings on maritime disputes, which took place last week. Testimony was brought by congressmen Ami Bera, Steve Chabot, Randy Forbes, Brad Sherman and a number of others in support of a forceful US position and of confrontation with Beijing over disputed territories in the Pacific Rim region.

Meanwhile, an active relocation of the US submarine fleet in the Pacific Ocean is underway, as well as the modernization and expansion of the US military base on Guam, its largest base in the Western Pacific since World War II, although the military equipment there is already sufficient for large-scale military activities, according to a number of military experts. The building of additional military bases on the South Korean Island of Jeju, the Australian Cocos Islands and the expansion of its base on the Diego Garcia Islands is clearly in the Pentagon’s interest. Singapore has already given permission for the use of its Navy base, Chang, for better control over the Malacca Strait, through which 80% of its Chinese oil imports arrive…

Under such circumstances, the true agenda of US vice-president Biden and US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns’ visits to the region becomes increasingly clear, as well as that of the upcoming visits of Secretary of State John Kerry, Minister of Defense Chuck Hagel and a number of other high-level US officials. The US’s political balancing act in the Pacific Rim region is truly shifting.

Vladimir Odintsov, a political observer, exclusively for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.