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mardi, 14 décembre 2010

La stratégie américaine pour influencer les minorités en France

france_islamique11.jpg

La stratégie américaine pour influencer les minorités en France

Confirmation du diagnostic

Ex: http://www.polemia.com/

 

Wikileaks a permis de lever le voile sur ce qui était déjà une évidence : les Américains sont clairement engagés dans une stratégie d’influence de vaste ampleur vis-à-vis des minorités en France. Pour les lecteurs de ce blog, et notamment de l’article du 16 septembre dernier (« Les banlieues françaises, cibles de l’influence culturelle américaine »), il ne s’agit pas là d’une découverte mais d’une confirmation : oui, il y a une claire et nette entreprise de manipulation des minorités en France par les Américains. Les opérations mises en œuvre sont scrupuleusement planifiées, suivies et évaluées.

Tel est le constat auquel on parvient à la lecture du rapport de l’actuel ambassadeur des Etats-Unis en France, Charles Rivkin, envoyé le 19 janvier 2010 au Secrétariat d’Etat américain, sous le titre : EMBASSY PARIS – MINORITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY (Ambassade de Paris – Stratégie d’engagement envers les minorités). Je vous propose donc une sélection et une traduction d’extraits de ce rapport.

Voici le plan de ce rapport dont le vocabulaire offensif ne laisse pas de doute sur l’ambition des actions initiées :

a. Résumé
b. Arrière-plan : la crise de la représentation en France
c. Un stratégie pour la France : nos objectifs
d. Tactique 1 : S’engager dans un discours positif
e. Tactique 2 : Mettre en avant un exemple fort
f. Tactique 3 : Lancer un programme agressif de mobilisation de la jeunesse
g. Tactique 4 : Encourager les voix modérées
h. Tactique 5 : Diffuser les meilleures pratiques
i. Tactique 6 : Approfondir notre compréhension du problème
j. Tactique 7 : Intégrer, cibler et évaluer nos efforts.

Lire la suite de l’article, en pdf, à l’adresse suivante :
http://www.polemia.com/pdf_v2/RapportRivkin.pdf

Benjamin PELLETIER
04/12/2010
http://gestion-des-risques-interculturels.com/risques/la-...
L’article original comporte le texte anglais des citations.

Voir : Vol A 93120 : Washington-La Courneuve
http://www.polemia.com/article.php?id=2820

Correspondance Polémia 09/12/2010

"Homo Americanus, rejeton de l'ère postmoderne" de T. Sunic

« Homo americanus, rejeton de l'ère postmoderne » de Tomislav Sunic

Ex: http://www.polemia.com/ 

 

homo%20americanus.jpg« (…) Tout dans l’Amérique est une copie grotesque de la réalité », constate l’universitaire et géopoliticien Tomislav Sunic dans Homo americanus, rejeton de la postmodernité, passionnante étude que viennent de publier les éditions Akribeia. « L’Amérique postmoderne fonctionne depuis 1945 comme une photocopie géante de la métaréalité ; non l’Amérique telle qu’elle est, mais l’Amérique telle qu’elle devrait être dans le monde entier. La seule différence est que, au XXIe siècle, l’histoire (…) est passée à la vitesse supérieure. Les événements se succèdent de façon désordonnée et foncent à toute allure vers un chaos total » – ce « chaos total » que l’idéologue néo-conservateur Michael Ledeen, pilier de la World Jewish Review et l’un des principaux inspirateurs de George W. Bush dans la guerre contre l’Irak, appelait de ses vœux dès 2001 car il y voyait le seul moyen d’instaurer un gouvernement mondial.

De l’Ancien Testament au totalitarisme mou

Les Européens de l’Est sont-ils les meilleurs observateurs de « l’hyperréalité » américaine ? Le philosophe hongrois Thomas Molnar avait jeté voici plus de trente ans un fameux pavé dans la mare atlantiste avec un livre prémonitoire, Le Modèle défiguré : l’Amérique de Tocqueville à Carter (PUF 1978) avant de récidiver en 1991 avec L’Américanologie : Triomphe d’un modèle planétaire ? paru aux éditions de l’Age d’homme.

Né en 1921, Thomas Molnar s’est éteint en juillet 2010, mais la relève est assurée par Tomislav Sunic qui, comme son grand ancien magyar, a longtemps enseigné aux Etats-Unis et connaît parfaitement son sujet, l’Homo americanus. Un spécimen dont les gênes s’inscrivent dans ceux des Pères Fondateurs, fondamentalistes puritains nourris de l’Ancien Testament et qui s’empressèrent donc d’ « enlever au christianisme les éléments transcendants et sacrés qu’il avait hérités du paganisme », réduisant « le message chrétien aux seuls préceptes moraux élémentaires d’une bonne conduite ». Ce qui amène tout naturellement à l’adoration d’une déesse démocratie d’ailleurs phantasme et au culte de la Political Correctness, le Politiquement Correct, fondement de la Pensée Unique et donc de l’autocensure.

Mais les origines bibliques de l’Homo americanus ont d’autres conséquences. Pour Sunic, en particulier depuis la Guerre de Sécession et la défaite du Vieux Sud encore si européen à tant d’égards, « le rêve américain est le modèle de la judaïté universelle, qui ne doit pas être limitée à une race ou à une tribu particulière (…) L’américanisme est conçu pour tous les peuples, toutes les races et les nations de la terre. L’Amérique est, par définition, la forme élargie d’un Israël mondialisé (…) Cela signifie-t-il que notre fameux Homo americanus n’est qu’une réplique universelle de l’Homo judaicus ? »

En tout cas, cela le conduit à accorder, souvent au mépris de ses propres intérêts vitaux, un « soutien inconditionnel à Israël ». « C’est en Europe – poursuit le géopoliticien croate – et dans son centre, l’Allemagne, que la politique parabiblique américaine atteignit son paroxysme durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale » – et d’abord, souligne-t-il, parce que « l’Allemagne était sur le point de jouer un rôle majeur en Europe et en Asie et de contester à l’Amérique l’accès aux sources d’énergie des pays du pourtour méditerranéen et du bassin pacifique ». Six décennies et demie plus tard, estime-t-il, « il n’est pas étonnant que l’islamisme soit la cible de l’Amérique postmoderne », laquelle menace l’Iran chiite après avoir anéanti l’Irak laïc.

Vers « l’américanisation du monde » ?

Tomislav%20Sunic%20Radio%20(small).jpg« Pendant que les Juifs russes inventent le socialisme et que les Juifs autrichiens découvrent la psychanalyse, les Juifs américains participent, au tout premier rang, à la naissance du capitalisme américain et à l’américanisation du monde », a reconnu, cité par Sunic, Jacques Attali dans Les Juifs, le monde et l’argent (Fayard 2002). Il est donc logique que Homo americanus et Homo sovieticus aient présenté tant de points communs tels le non-respect des Conventions de Genève sur les prisonniers de guerre ou l’envoi des dissidents dans des hôpitaux psychiatriques – sort réservé en 1945 à Ezra Pound, le plus grand poète états-unien jugé trop favorable au fascisme italien. Et logique aussi que « l’américanisation du monde », y compris du monde ex-soviétique (par le truchement de certains oligarques patrons de presse), soit menée tambour battant.

On sait le travail de sape effectué dans nos banlieues (*) par l’ambassade des Etats-Unis en France dont le locataire actuel est Charles Rivkin qui, dans un câble du 5 janvier 2010 envoyé à Washington, se réjouissait du fait que « la France, sur une longue période, ne réussit pas à améliorer les perspectives de ses minorités et à leur offrir une véritable représentation politique ». On sait aussi les efforts des media et des maîtres du prêt-à-penser pour imposer les mœurs et les lois américaines dans les domaines législatif, judiciaire, culturel, architectural ou économique ainsi que dans la vie courante afin d’aboutir à l’avènement et à la généralisation de ce que Sunic appelle « la variante tardive d’Homo americanus, l’Homo americanus européen », « non seulement à l’Ouest mais aussi dans l’Est postcommuniste ».

Toutefois, ajoute avec impartialité l’universitaire croate, « on aurait tort de rejeter uniquement sur l’Amérique et l’américanisme la responsabilité du climat de “politiquement correct” qui a englouti la scène intellectuelle européenne. L’atmosphère d’inquisition actuelle (…) est due aux propres divisions idéologiques européennes, qui remontent à la Seconde Guerre mondiale et même à la Révolution française ».

Bien vu, mais celle-ci ne fut-elle pas due en grande partie aux « idées nouvelles » venues d’outre-Atlantique après l’engagement de la France et de certaines de ses élites (La Fayette entre autres) auprès des Insurgents américains voulant briser les derniers liens avec l’Europe pour assumer leur destin de « peuple élu » ? A nous aujourd’hui de tout mettre en œuvre pour assumer notre destin d’Européens, héritiers d’Athènes et de Rome, mais aussi de la Reconquista, contre tous les totalitarismes messianiques.

Claude Lorne
06/12/2010

Tomislav Sunic, Homo americanus. Rejeton de l’ère postmoderne, avant-propos de Kevin MacDonald, professeur de psychologie à l'Université d'Etat de Long Beach en Californie, traduit de l’anglais par Claude Martin (édition originale : Homo americanus. Child of the Postmodern age, BookSurge Publishing, 2007), Edition Akribeia, 2010, 288 pages, 25 €, ou 30 € franco.

A commander à Akribeia, 45/3 route de Vourles, 69230 St-Genis-Laval ou sur www.akribeia.fr.

Note de la rédaction :
(*) « Vol A 93120 : Washington-La Courneuve »
et « La stratégie américaine pour influencer les minorités en France. Confirmation du diagnostic »
 

Correspondance Polémia -  06/12/2010

dimanche, 12 décembre 2010

Extremistische moskeeganger blijkt FBI infiltrant

Fou_de_dieu.jpg

Extremistische moskeeganger blijkt FBI infiltrant

Ex: http://georgeorwell1984.wordpress.com/

Een bezoeker van een Californische moskee putte zich zo uit in het promoten van de Heilige Oorlog tegen de VS, dat de andere moskeegangers zich een beetje zorgen begonnen te maken. Men besloot om de extremist aan te geven bij de FBI, maar hij bleek een informant te zijn. Dat meldt de Washington Post.

 

De FBI had ‘Farouk al-Aziz’, die de codenaam Oracle meekreeg, naar de moskee gestuurd in de hoop om extremisten en kandidaat-terroristen uit hun tent te lokken. De man woonde op regelmatige basis diensten bij in het islamitisch centrum in Irvine, in ware spionagestijl uitgerust met een cameraatje in een knoopsgat en een microfoontje aan zijn sleutelhanger.

Nu de operatie aan het licht is gekomen, doet de devote Aziz – in werkelijkheid is hij de veroordeelde valsemunter Craig Monteilh ! – een boekje open over de feiten. Hij beschuldigt de FBI ervan dat ze een grote samenzwering op touw zette om de moskee aan te pakken. “Men heeft me over een periode van 15 maanden 177.000 dollar betaald, belastingvrij”, zegt hij. “Mijn opdracht was bewijs te vinden voor een strafzaak waarmee men een lid van de moskee kon vervolgen, maar men heeft alles gewoon laten vallen.”

De bekentenissen van de man zorgden voor beroering in de plaatselijke moslimgemeenschap. “We voelen ons verraden”, zegt Shakeel Syed, hoofd van een koepelvereniging van zo’n 75 Californische moskeeën. “De FBI huurt een veroordeelde crimineel in, leidt hem op en stuurt hem als infiltrant naar onze moskeeën. Toen de operatie mislukte, lieten ze hem vallen. Het lijkt wel een scenario van een slechte soapserie!”

FBI-verantwoordelijken proberen de gemoederen te bedaren. “Dit is niet onze gewone manier van werken”, verzekert een woordvoerder. “Onze meest beproefde werkwijze is nog steeds rekenen op steun, samenwerking en het vertrouwen van de verschillende gemeenschappen die we dienen en trachten te beschermen.”

samedi, 11 décembre 2010

Ezra Pound, maître d'une poésie romanesque et brutale

Ezra Pound, maître d'une poésie romanesque et brutale

Ex: http://racinescharnelles.blogspot.com/

Qu'on ne s'y trompe pas. Malgré son prénom aux consonances bibliques et les airs de prophète qu'il prenait volontiers vers la fin de sa vie, Ezra Pound n'a été ni dans son œuvre ni dans son existence l’enfant de cœur tourmenté par la notion de péché ou d'humilité. Dis­sident de l'Amérique, du mauvais goût et des valeurs approximatives d'un pays où la Bible et le dollar tiennent lieu de référence, Pound l'est déjà dès son plus jeune âge. « J'écrirai, déclare-t-il à l'âge de 12 ans, les plus grands poèmes jamais écrits ». En cette fin de XIXe siècle, en plein Wild West américain, il se découvre une vocation poétique pour le moins incongrue si l'on en juge par les préoccupations de ses compatriotes de l'époque, plus soucieux de bâtir des empires financiers que de partir en guerre contre des moulins à vent. Pendant des années, en subissant les vexations des cuistres, il va se consacrer à l'étude du provençal et à l'art des ménestrels et troubadours précurseurs de la littérature moderne.

Des poèmes comme "L'arbre", témoins, comme le note Tytell, d'un paga­nisme croissant, et sa haine de l'Amérique sont le signe avant-coureur que sa vie entière allait devenir un défi lancé aux systèmes occidentaux et une dénonciation de la religion moderne qu'il tenait pour la servante de ces systèmes. Les conflits incessants avec le monde universitaire qui lui refuse quelque chaire, l'ordre moral et l'étroitesse d'esprit de ses contemporains vont avoir pour conséquence le départ de Pound pour l'Europe. Venise, tout d'abord, où il s'exerce au dur métier de gondolier, puis Londres, où son talent va enfin éclore. C'est pour lui le temps des amitiés littéraires avec George Bernard Shaw, puis James Joyce, T.S. Eliot.

Le Londres aux mœurs victo­riennes ne nuit en rien pour l'heure à l'effervescence d'un génie que l'on commence à voir poindre ici et là dans les revues auxquelles il collabore. La guerre de 14 éclate et nombre des amis de Pound n'en reviendront pas. « C'est une perte pour l'art qu'il faudra venger », écrit-il, plus convaincu que quiconque que cette guerre est une plaie dont l'Europe aura bien du mal à cicatriser. Peu après, il se met à travailler à un nouveau poème, « un poème criséléphan­tesque d'une longueur incommen­surable qui m'occupera pendant les quatre prochaines décennies jusqu'à ce que cela devienne la barbe ». Les Cantos, l'œuvre maîtresse et fondamentale de Pound, était née.

Puis, las de la rigueur anglaise et des Britanniques qu'il juge snobs et hermétiques à toute forme d'art, Pound décide de partir pour la France.

Il débarque dans le Paris léger et enivrant de l'après-guerre lorsque brillent encore les mille feux de l'intelligence et de l'esprit. Les phares de l'époque s'appellent Coc­teau, Aragon, Maurras et Gide. Pound s'installe rue Notre-Dame­-des-Champs et se consacre à la littérature et aux femmes. À Paris toujours, il rencontre Ernest Hemingway, alors jeune joumalis­te, qui écrira que « le grand poète Pound consacre un cinquième de son temps à la poésie, et le reste a aider ses amis du point de vue matériel et artistique. Il les défend lorsqu'ils sont attaqués, les fait publier dans les revues et les sort de prison. »

La France pourtant ne lui convient déjà plus. À la petite histoire des potins parisiens, il préfère l'Histoire et ses remous italiens. L'aura romanesque d'un D'Annun­zio et la brutalité de la pensée fas­ciste l'attirent comme un aimant.


Pound obtient une tribune à la radio de Rome. L'Amérique, « Jew York » et Confu­cius vont devenir ses chevaux de bataille. Pendant des années, le délire verbal et l'insulte vont tenir lieu de discours à Pound, un genre peu apprécié de ses compatriotes...

En 1943 le régime fasciste s'écroule, mais la République de Salo, pure et dure, mêlera la tragédie au rêve. Les GI's triomphants encagent le poète à Pise avant de l'expédier aux États-Unis pour qu'il y soit jugé. « Haute trahison, intelligence avec l'ennemi », ne cessent de rabâcher ses détracteurs nombreux. Pound échappe à la corde mais pas à l'outrage d'être interné pendant douze ans dans un hôpital psychiatrique des environs de Washington. Lorsqu'on lui demanda de quoi il parlait avec les toubibs, il répondit : « D'honneur. C'est pas qu'ils y croient pas. C'est simplement qu'ils n'en ont jamais entendu parler. »
Le 9 juillet 1958, le vieux cowboy revient à Naples et dans une ultime provocation répond à l'attente des journalistes par le salut fasciste, dernier bras d'honneur du rebelle céleste.

• Ezra Pound, le volcan solitaire, John Tytell, Seghers.

mercredi, 08 décembre 2010

"Les Etats-Unis à l'origine des tensions au sein de la zone euro"

« Les Etats-Unis à l’origine des tensions au sein de la zone euro »

Ex: http://fortune.fdesouche.com/

dollar-euro-le-rapport.jpgL’Allemagne serait, en partie, à l’origine de l’envolée des taux d’intérêt sur les obligations portugaises et espagnoles de ces derniers jours. En cause, les récentes déclarations d’Angela Merkel sur l’éventualité de faire participer les créanciers privés en cas de restructuration de la dette publique de certains pays de la zone euro.

 

Arturo Bris, professeur de finance à l’IMD de Lausanne, partage cet avis. Lors d’une conférence qui s’est tenue jeudi au sein de la haute école de gestion, il n’a pas hésité à déclarer que l’Allemagne maintenait volontairement « au bord du précipice » les pays en proie à des difficultés – Irlande en tête. Selon lui, « les crises irlandaise, grecque, portugaise et espagnole sont une bonne chose pour l’économie allemande puis­qu’elles maintiennent l’euro à un niveau relativement bas – par rapport au dollar – et qu’elles profitent ainsi aux exportations allemandes ». Berlin aurait donc tout intérêt à ce que la situation européenne reste tendue.

Mais si l’Allemagne profite du « statu quo » en Europe, Arturo Bris relativise toutefois son rôle dans la crise actuelle. Car le moteur de l’Europe est confronté à un certain dilemme : son économie a beau profiter d’un euro faible, les Allemands ont de plus en plus l’impression de payer de leurs poches les sauvetages à répétition des autres pays européens. De plus, le marché européen est le troisième, en termes de grandeur, pour les exportations allemandes.

Pour le professeur espagnol, les principaux fautifs sont à rechercher de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique. Washington serait donc « à l’origine des confrontations que l’on observe actuellement en Europe ». Ou, plus particulièrement, sa politique monétaire. « Affaiblir le dollar a été la pire des choses pour la dynamique européenne », constate Arturo Bris. Si les Etats-Unis ont souffert de la crise grecque et de la hausse du dollar qui s’en est suivie, ils se seraient rattrapés grâce à leur politique monétaire et à l’injection de 600 milliards de dollars dans leur économie d’ici à la fin de 2011 (QE2).

 

Malgré tout, le professeur de finance reste optimiste. Dans les différents scénarios qu’il a présentés jeudi à son audience, l’implosion de l’euro – qualifiée « d’armageddon » – est considérée comme très improbable. « Les chiffres ne sont pas dramatiques et personne n’est en train de faire faillite », martèle-t-il. Et Arturo Bris a de bons arguments. Il fait notamment remarquer que le taux d’endettement de l’Espagne – 55% du PIB – fait bien pâle figure aux côtés des 190% du Japon et des 120% des Etats-Unis.

Le problème serait donc avant tout un problème de crédibilité. « Les gouvernements européens, à l’instar du Portugal et de l’Espagne, ont annoncé tout un tas de mesures ces dernières années sans jamais les respecter. Or, aujour­d’hui, sous la pression des marchés, ces gouvernements sont enfin obligés de réagir », observe-t-il avec satisfaction.

Le Temps

Washingtons geopolitischer Albtraum: China und Russland verstärken die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit

Washingtons geopolitischer Albtraum: China und Russland verstärken die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit

F. William Engdahl

Ex: http://info.kopp-verlag.de/

 

Jenseits aller fraktionellen Auseinandersetzungen, die im Kreml zwischen Putin und Medwedew geführt werden mögen, mehren sich in jüngster Zeit eindeutige Hinweise darauf, dass sich Peking und Moskau nach langem Zögern darauf orientieren, die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit zu stärken. Ausschlaggebend dafür mag auch die offenkundige Desintegration der USA als alleiniger Supermacht gewesen sein. Wenn sich der gegenwärtige Trend fortsetzt, dann wird Washingtons schlimmster geopolitischer Albtraum wahr: Einigkeit zwischen den Staaten auf der eurasischen Landmasse, die gemeinsam in der Lage sind, die Hegemonie Amerikas als Wirtschaftsmacht herauszufordern.

 

 

Ein genauer Blick auf die Karte zeigt, warum die wirtschaftliche Kooperation zwischen Russland und China Washington Kopfschmerzen bereitet

 

Wie es in einem chinesischen Sprichwort heißt, leben wir in »interessanten Zeiten«. Gerade noch sah es so aus, als bewegte sich Moskau unter Präsident Medwedew stärker auf Washington zu: Medwedew hatte eingewilligt, den umstrittenen Verkauf von S-300-Raketenabwehrsystemen an den Iran auf Eis zu legen und schien einer Kooperation mit Washington über Fragen der NATO einschließlich eines möglichen Raketenschildes nicht abgeneigt. Doch jetzt haben sich Moskau und Peking auf eine ganze Reihe von Maßnahmen verständigt, die weitreichende geopolitische Auswirkungen haben können, nicht zuletzt auf die Zukunft Deutschlands und der Europäischen Union.

Nach Gesprächen auf höchster Ebene haben Chinas Premierminister Wen Jiabao und sein russischer Amtskollege Wladimir Putin kürzlich in St. Petersburg öffentlich mehrere Projekte angekündigt, die in den westlichen Mainstream-Medien, die zurzeit von den Wikileaks-Skandalen geradezu besessen sind, relativ wenig Beachtung gefunden haben. Es war das siebte Mal in diesem Jahr, dass hochrangige Vertreter der beiden Länder zu Gesprächen zusammenkamen. Das allein ist schon ein Hinweis auf wichtige Entwicklungen.

Bisher gibt es kaum nennenswerte chinesische Investitionen in Russland, die wenigen Ausnahmen erfolgen zumeist in Form von Darlehen. Direkte und Portfolio-Investitionen in reale Projekte sind nach wie vor unbedeutend. Auch russische Investitionen in China sind bislang unbedeutend, doch das soll sich nun ändern. Mehrere russische Unternehmen sind bereits an der Börse in Hongkong gelistet; im Rahmen des Aufbaus gemeinsamer Technologieparks in Russland und China werden inzwischen eine Reihe russisch-chinesischer Hochtechnologie-Investitionsprojekte verfolgt.

Der Dollar wird fallengelassen

Unter anderem gaben die beiden Premierminister bekannt, man habe sich darauf geeinigt, im bilateralen Handel auf den Dollar zu verzichten und auf die eigenen Währungen zu setzen. Außerdem wurden potenziell weitreichende Vereinbarungen bezüglich Energie, Handel und die wirtschaftliche Modernisierung entlegener Regionen im Fernen Osten Russlands getroffen.

Chinesische Quellen berichteten in der russischen Presse, sie hielten diesen Schritt für Anzeichen engerer Beziehungen zwischen Peking und Moskau; der Dollar solle nicht infrage gestellt werden. Unbekümmert kündigte Putin an: »Wir haben beschlossen, bei der Abwicklung des Handels auf unsere eigenen Währungen zu setzen.« Der chinesische Yuan werde mittlerweile auf dem chinesischen Interbankenmarkt gegen russische Rubel gehandelt, während der Renminbi, der bis vor Kurzen noch als chinesische Inlandswährung nicht konvertibel war, laut Putin auch bald in Russland gegen den Rubel gehandelt werden könne.

Bisher war der gesamte Handel zwischen beiden Ländern in US-Dollar abgewickelt worden. Mit

Putin und Wen haben sich bei ihrem jüngsten Treffen auf mehr als nur die Rettung des Tigers geeinigt

Beginn der US-Finanzkrise 2007 und angesichts der extremen Volatilität des Dollar und des Euro hatten beide Länder nach Wegen gesucht, den Warenverkehr demnächst unabhängig vom Dollar abzuwickeln – mit möglicherweise weitreichenden Folgen für Letzteren. Um die Struktur des Handels zu optimieren und neue Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten zu eröffnen, haben die beiden Länder die Chinesisch-Russische Handelskammer für Maschinenbau- und Elektronikprodukte eingerichtet. Das Greenwood-Welthandelszentrum, das von einem chinesischen Unternehmen gebaut wird, soll 2011 als Ausstellungs- und Handelszentrum für chinesische Produkte in Russland eröffnet werden und als öffentliches Forum zur Stärkung des nicht-staatlichen Handels zwischen Russland und China fungieren.

Der bilaterale Handel zwischen Russland und China wächst zurzeit kräftig. In den ersten zehn Monaten dieses Jahres erreichte er ein Volumen von fast 35 Milliarden Euro, das bedeutet gegenüber dem Vorjahr einen Anstieg um 45 Prozent. Insgesamt wird für das ganze Jahr ein Handelsvolumen von 45 Milliarden Euro erwartet, womit beinahe wieder das Niveau vor der Finanzkrise erreicht wird. Beide Seiten wollen den Handel in den kommenden Jahren deutlich ausweiten; in Russland gehen einige von einer Beinahe-Verdopplung in den nächsten drei Jahren aus.1 Deshalb hat die Frage, ob der Dollar dabei umgangen wird, einiges Gewicht. Wenn mehr Länder der Shanghai Cooperation Organization – der 2001 von Russland und China gegründeten Organisation aus sechs eurasischen Staaten – diesem Beispiel folgen, so würde der Dollar in seiner Rolle als Weltreservewährung erheblich geschwächt.

Seit der Dollar 1944 im Bretton-Woods-Abkommen als zentrale Währung des Welthandelssystems etabliert wurde, beruhte die Hegemonie der USA auf zwei unabdingbaren Säulen: erstens der militärischen Dominanz und zweitens der Rolle des Dollars als Weltreservewährung. Durch die Kombination von Militärmacht und strategischer Bedeutung des Dollar beim Handel mit Öl, anderen wichtigen Rohstoffen und im Finanzwesen allgemein war Washington in der Lage, die eigenen Kriege um die weltweite Vorherrschaft mit „dem Geld anderer Leute“ zu finanzieren.

Kooperation im Bereich Energie

Auch im Bereich internationaler Energie-Kooperation wurden interessante Abkommen unterzeichnet. Die beiden großen eurasischen Mächte Russland und China planen, den vom Dollar unabhängigen bilateralen Handel auf interessante Weise auszubauen, besonders im Bereich Energie, in dem China erhebliche Defizite und Russland ebenso erhebliche Überschüsse nicht nur an Öl und Gas aufzuweisen hat.

Beide Staaten wollen die Zusammenarbeit bei der Nutzung der Kernenergie ausbauen. zunächst sollen in China mit russischer Hilfe Kernkraftwerke gebaut und gemeinsame russisch-chinesische Projekte zur Urananreicherung entwickelt werden, die den Standards der Internationalen Atomenergiekommission entsprechen. In Drittländern soll Uran gefördert werden; außerdem soll in China ein ganzes Netz von Ölraffinerien gebaut und entwickelt werden. Das erste Projekt, das chinesische Kernkraftwerk Tianjin, ist bereits unter Dach und Fach. Vereinbart wurde der Kauf von zwei russischen Kernreaktoren für Tianjian, den modernsten Kernkraftwerk-Komplex in China.

Auch der Export russischer Kohle nach China wird voraussichtlich 2010 über 12 Millionen Tonnen erreichen und in Zukunft weiter steigen.

Chinesische Ölgesellschaften investieren in die Nachrüstung russischer Projekte zur Exploration, Entwicklung und Verarbeitung von Erdöl, in Joint Ventures mit staatlichen und privaten russischen Unternehmen. Die Inbetriebnahme einer russisch-chinesischen Pipeline ist für Ende 2010 geplant.

Noch nicht abgeschlossen sind Preisverhandlungen über russisches Gas, das nach China geliefert wird; doch auch hier wird in den nächsten Monaten eine Einigung erwartet. Russland verlangt für das von Gazprom gelieferte Gas denselben Preis, der auch europäischen Kunden in Rechnung gestellt wird; Peking fordert einen Preisnachlass.

Große Industrie-Entwicklungsprojekte

Auf der Liste stehen auch gemeinsame industrielle Investitionen in den entlegenen Regionen entlang der 4200 km langen Grenze zwischen Sibirien und dem Fernen Osten Russlands und der chinesischen Region Dungbei. Dort hatte die Sowjetunion in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren, vor dem Bruch mit China, Hunderte Fabriken der Leicht- und Schwerindustrie gebaut. Diese sind in der Zwischenzeit modernisiert und mit neuer chinesischer oder importierter Technik ausgerüstet worden, aber das solide industrielle Fundament aus der Sowjetära besteht noch. Dies wird nach Auskunft russischer Analysten zu regionaler Zusammenarbeit auf einem höheren technischen Niveau beitragen, besonders zwischen den Distrikten Chabarowsk und Primorye sowie den Regionen Chita und Irkutsk, dem Gebiet Transbaikal und ganz Sibirien sowie auf chinesischer Seite der Provinz Heilongjiang und anderen Provinzen.2

2009 haben sich China und Russland außerdem ein bis 2018 terminiertes Programm für die gemeinsame Entwicklung Sibiriens und des Fernen Ostens sowie den nordöstlichen Provinzen Chinas geeinigt. Es umfasst Dutzende von Kooperationen zwischen bestimmten Regionen zur Entwicklung von 158 Industrieanlagen im russisch-chinesischen Grenzgebiet, vor allem von Betrieben der Holzverarbeitung und der chemischen Industrie, beim Straßenbau, der sozialen Infrastruktur und Landwirtschaft sowie mehrere Projekte für den Export von Energie.

Die Russlandreise von Premierminister Wen folgte auf den dreitätigen China-Besuch des russischen Präsidenten Medwedew im September, bei dem dieser gemeinsam mit Präsident Hu Jintao das lange geplante grenzüberschreitende Pipeline-Projekt von Skoworodina in Ostsibirien nach Daqing in Nordost-China in Gang gebracht hatte. Ende 2010 wird erstmals russisches Öl nach China fließen, und zwar mit einer Rate von 300.000 Barrel pro Tag. Der im vergangenen Jahr geschlossene Liefervertrag hat eine Laufzeit von 20 Jahren und ein Volumen von 20 Milliarden Euro.

Russland strebt an, auf den schnell wachsenden asiatischen, besonders den chinesischen Energiemarkt vorzustoßen; Peking will die Energiesicherheit erhöhen, indem Quellen und Versorgungsrouten diversifiziert werden. Durch die neue Pipeline wird sich der Export von russischem Öl nach China, der bisher über eine langsame und teure Eisenbahnroute erfolgt, verdoppeln. Russland wird damit neben Saudi-Arabien und Angola zum dritten wichtigen Rohöl-Lieferanten für China – für beide Seiten ein wichtiger geopolitischer Gewinn.

Bei einer Pressekonferenz in St. Petersburg erklärte Premierminister Wen, die Partnerschaft zwischen Peking und Moskau habe eine »nie dagewesene Ebene« erreicht; er gelobte, dass beide Länder »nie zum Feind des anderen« werden sollten. Seit dem chinesisch-sowjetischen Bruch während des Kalten Krieges ist Washingtons Geopolitik darauf gerichtet, einen Keil zwischen die beiden Staaten zu treiben und damit ihren Einfluss über den weiten eurasischen Raum auszuhebeln.

Wie ich bereits in früheren Beiträgen betont habe, bleibt Russland allen wirtschaftlichen Problemen zum Trotz die einzige Macht, die gegenüber Washington über eine glaubwürdige nukleare Abschreckung verfügt. Davon ist die militärische Macht Chinas, die ja hauptsächlich zur Selbstverteidigung aufgebaut wurde, noch Jahre entfernt. Die einzige Wirtschaftsmacht, die die schwindende wirtschaftliche Macht der USA herausfordern kann, ist China. Offenbar hat man verstanden, wie gut sich beide ergänzen. Vielleicht wird Wikileaks demnächst peinliche Details über diese Zusammenarbeit »aufdecken«, die Washingtons geopolitischen Absichten entgegenkommen. Für den Augenblick jedoch bedeutet die wachsende Wirtschaftskooperation zwischen China und Russland für Washington den schlimmsten geopolitischen Albtraum, und das genau zu dem Zeitpunkt, wo der weltweite Einfluss Washingtons schwindet.


1 Sergei Luzyanin, Russian Chinese economic cooperation serves the longterm domestic goals, RIA Novosti, 26. November 2010, unter http://en.rian.ru/valdai_op/20101126/161505920.html

2 Ebenda

 

mardi, 07 décembre 2010

Breve nota sulle rivelazioni di "Wikileaks"

Breve nota sulle rivelazioni di “Wikileaks”

Daniele SCALEA

Ex: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/

Le recenti rivelazioni di “Wikileaks”, a detta del ministro Frattini, rappresenterebbero «l’11 settembre» della diplomazia, la manovra di chi vorrebbe «distruggere il mondo» colpendo il fondamento della diplomazia, ossia la reciproca fiducia tra gl’interlocutori.

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Tale valutazione è probabilmente esagerata. È nozione comune che la diplomazia sia l’arte della dissimulazione, ed includa la menzogna e l’inganno tra le sue tecniche. E gran parte delle rivelazioni di “Wikileaks” non sono altro che la conferma di fatti già risaputi da tutti gli addetti ai lavori, e da quella parte più informata e consapevole dell’opinione pubblica.

Ciò non toglie che sottrarre centinaia di migliaia di documenti riservati ad una grande potenza non sia cosa da poco. Tanto che riesce difficile credere che davvero “Wikileaks” possa essere riuscita ad impossessarsi di tali documenti, a pubblicarli, a farne parlare il mondo intero, eppure ad essere ancora disponibile on line ed il suo portavoce Julian Assange ancora libero, vivo e vegeto – è difficile credere a tutto questo, senza assumere che dietro a “Wikileaks” si nasconda un’operazione di intelligence. Probabilmente proveniente dagli USA stessi, ossia da una parte del suo establishment, che ha messo in imbarazzo l’amministrazione Obama – ma più che altro Hillary Clinton, ch’è sì una ministra di Obama ma anche la sua principale rivale in seno al Partito Democratico – ma fatto in modo che Washington, tra tutte le capitali coinvolte dalle rivelazioni, fosse quella che ne esce meno peggio. Infatti, un vantaggio di essere la potenza egemone è quello che tutti gli altri paesi sono ansiosi di piacerti. Se la fuga di notizie avesse riguardato, ad esempio, l’Italia, ciò avrebbe rovinato i rapporti di Roma col mondo intero. Avendo riguardato gli USA, ha prima di tutto rovinato l’immagine di quegli statisti di cui si parla male nelle rivelazioni. Rivelazioni che, per l’appunto, sembrerebbero concernere prima di tutto il giudizio della diplomazia statunitense su vari statisti mondiali, e quello di paesi terzi sui propri vicini. Vediamo qualche esempio di come le rivelazioni di “Wikileaks” mettano in imbarazzo gli altri paesi più degli USA.

Di Ahmadinejad si ripete l’immancabile refrain del “nuovo Hitler” e si asserisce che avrebbe armi in grado di colpire Russia e Europa. In più, si conferma la notizia, già trapelata mesi fa, che l’Arabia Saudita ed altri paesi arabi avrebbero chiesto agli USA di attaccare l’Iràn. Ahmadinejad dovrà giustificare in patria l’isolamento regionale del paese. La situazione è così scottante che si è subito prodigato per tacciare di falsità i documenti statunitensi.

Erdoğan è dipinto come un fanatico islamista pieno di conti in Svizzera. Nuovi succulenti argomenti per l’opposizione laicista in Turchia.

Chávez e la Fernandez-Kirchner sono descritti come dei pazzi. Anche in questo caso, le opposizioni interne ringraziano.

Della Cina si dice che condurrebbe azioni di pirateria informatica – un messaggio rivolto soprattutto all’Europa, dove già si sospettava Pechino in tal senso – e che mediterebbe di scaricare l’alleato nordcoreano. Facile immaginare che i prossimi colloqui tra Pechino e Pyongyang saranno meno cordiali del solito.

Dei giudizi su Berlusconi sarà superfluo ragguagliare i lettori. Ci permettiamo però d’evidenziare un paio di cose. Berlusconi ha indispettito gli USA per i suoi rapporti troppo stretti con Putin: ciò era affermato sulle pagine di “Eurasia” – e non solo sulle nostre, a dire la verità – già da parecchio tempo. A parte il nodo Berlusconi-Putin, l’Italia è tirata in ballo da un documento secondo cui Frattini avrebbe criticato pesantemente l’atteggiamento della Turchia. Questo è molto più grave, perché potrebbe incrinare i rapporti con Ankara. Probabilmente è stata proprio questa notizia ad innervosire a tal punto Frattini. È comunque interessante che “Wikileaks” tiri in ballo, per il nostro paese, proprio i rapporti con Russia e Turchia, ossia i due paesi che il direttore Graziani, nel suo ultimo editoriale [1], indicava come i necessari punti di riferimento della politica estera dell’Italia. Ciò fa supporre che l’analisi della diplomazia statunitense confermi quella di “Eurasia”, pur da una prospettiva opposta.

E chiudiamo proprio con la Russia. A parte le scontate e per nulla originali né imbarazzanti valutazioni sul rapporto Putin-Medvedev, della Russia si afferma che sarebbe uno Stato legato a filo doppio con la mafia nazionale. Questo sì è un giudizio pesante. Ed arriva proprio a proposito d’un paese con cui Obama sta cercando di distendere i rapporti dopo le tensioni dell’era Bush. A breve i parlamentari di Washington dovranno decidere se ratificare o meno il nuovo trattato START con la Russia, ed il fatto che i loro diplomatici considerino mafioso l’interlocutore non depone a favore dell’approvazione.


* Daniele Scalea, redattore di “Eurasia”, è autore de La sfida totale [2] (Fuoco, Roma 2010)

dimanche, 05 décembre 2010

Interview with Greg Johnson

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Interview with Greg Johnson

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

1. Being a man of ideas, has literature played an important role in your life? What would you say were the texts that proved key in your personal and intellectual development? And why?

History and philosophy played more of a role in shaping my outlook than literature. In fact, I can’t name a single work of fiction, qua fiction, that has shaped my worldview. But works of fiction have provided me with concrete and vivid exemplifications of otherwise abstract ideas. I love philosophical novels. Plato’s dialogues, of course, qualify both as literature and philosophy.

Plato has had the greatest influence on my outlook, particularly the Republic, but also the Gorgias, Phaedrus, Symposium, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. Rousseau’s philosophical novel Emile also influenced my thinking profoundly. I love Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but classical liberalism, capitalism, and even individualism ultimately undermine aristocratic and heroic values.

The philosophers who have shaped me the most are Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Machiavelli, Vico, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, William James, Heidegger, Guénon, Evola. Alan Watts has had a huge impact as well, as have the Tao te Ching and the Upanishads.

Wagner’s music dramas are in a class by themselves, as texts somewhere between philosophy and literature/myth, married to some of the greatest music ever written. They are profound, and have influenced me profoundly.

Savitri Devi is also hard to categorize. She combines philosophy, history, religion, politics, and myth. She too has had a great influence on me.

As for literature proper: The writers I loved most as a child are ones I still love today: Poe, Tolkien, Kipling, and old illustrated compendiums of Greek and Norse mythology. Frank Herbert’s Dune books have also remained favorites. I like them more every time I return to them.

Later on I came to love Homer, Shakespeare, Blake, Goethe, Schiller, Baudelaire, Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Yeats, Wallace Stevens, and Philip Larkin as poets and dramatists.

In terms of novels and stories, my favorite writers came to include Dostoevsky, Hugo, Flaubert, D. H. Lawrence, H. P. Lovecraft, Flannery O’Connor, and Yukio Mishima.

There are also “non-greats” whose voices I consistently enjoy: Edith Sitwell, Truman Capote, Evelyn Waugh.

I read a lot of Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and Aldous Huxley in my teens. Someday I want to revisit them. I think Bradbury will stand the test of time.

Literary criticism is very important to me. My favorite critics are D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Camille Paglia, and H. L. Mencken.

I have very little time to read fiction now, unfortunately. The last novel I read was Mister! I read too much non-fiction and spend too much time staring at the computer screen. I just can’t add more reading on top of that. So my primary form of intellectual recreation is watching movies and operas and listening to music.

2. I first became aware of you following your appointment as editor of The Occidental Quarterly. However, I understand you had already been active as a dissident writer for a number of years, during which you wrote under various pen names. What, in your particular case, made you opt in favor of pen names? And why did you decide eventually to do away with them?

When I wrote under pen names, I was working for people who would fire me if they knew my real views.

When I took the TOQ job, I was told I would have to use my own name. At the time, I was explained that since TOQ is the would-be flagship of the intellectual wing of the Anglophone movement, it would not be suitable to edit it under a pen name. I accepted that argument at face value and took the plunge. At that point, I crossed the Rubicon. After about a year, all my old professional “friends” and contacts simply melted away.

At the Counter-Currents/North American New Right site, I am consolidating all of my writings under two names: Greg Johnson for all the political articles and Trevor Lynch for most of the movie and television reviews.

3. The internet and ‘the real world’ are often presented as diametrical opposites, with the former cast as phony and the latter as the only thing that counts. But, isn’t the internet as real as the so-called real world? I say this because behind the keyboards and in front of the screens sit real people, whose behaviour in the ‘real world’ is both a cause and a result of what happens on the internet. I am aware of the argument against: many real people adopt fake online identities, but, ultimately, in the long run it is next to impossible for people not to betray their own thoughts and feelings online. Fake identities aside, is not the internet perhaps the most honest record of what is actually on people’s minds? Is not ‘the real world’ in fact phonier, since many don’t say what is on their minds in face-to-face situations for fear of social disapproval, professional consequences, or ostracism?

There have been recent studies that suggest that people lie more on the internet than in real life. But to some extent I agree with you: the internet is like the voting booth, and in its privacy and anonymity people can be more honest about controversial matters. In more mundane matters, usually connected to online dating and banal narcissism, the internet is a vast sewer of lies and imposture.

All this relates to the “ethics” of pen names. To me, it is purely a matter of individual discretion. I recommend pen names to those who want to communicate ideas but can’t under their own names. After all, it is the ideas that matter in the end, not the authors.

Yes, cowardly and dishonorable people often hide behind pen names. But narcissistic jackasses also write under their own names. To me, the most important consideration is to get as much truth as possible circulating out there. The labels and brands are less important than the content.

4. Your tenure as TOQ editor saw a number of innovations: an active online presence was developed and articles and reviews appeared that covered a much wider spectrum of cultural spaces than ever before. What were your aims for the TOQ during this period?

My aim was to make TOQ a metapolitical journal for a North American New Right, the goal of which was to lay the foundations of the White Republic. There were, however, limitations built into TOQ from the beginning that made that difficult.

A problem was that the journal did not have clearly articulated goals. There were basic topics and parameters in the founding documents, which were drawn up by Sam Francis, Louis Andrew, William Regnery, and Kevin Lamb: TOQ was to deal with biological race differences as well as the Jewish Question. TOQ was not to bash homosexuals. TOQ was to be neutral on religion.

The de facto editorial line, however, can be divined from the interview published with Alain de Benoist. Only about half the actual interview was published. Everything critical of scientific materialism and Christianity was dropped. Benoist, I imagine, was quite disgusted. I certainly was when I learned about it. (I plan to publish the discarded portions in the first volume of North American New Right.)

Now, to his credit, the original Editor Kevin Lamb frequently crossed these boundaries. When I took over as Editor, I quickly learned that I had to edit as if I had a scientific materialist over one shoulder and a religious fundamentalist over the other. I too went beyond those strictures. I made some improvements in the design and editing of the journal, but ultimately I did not do anything radically different than Lamb.

5. The term ‘metapolitics’ is often used within the intellectual class, and no doubt there are some who think it is all pretentious nonsense. Please explain this term for the layman, and why metapolitics is important. Why not just straight politics?

Metapolitics deals with foundational questions connected to politics, questions from history, philosophy, religious studies, the arts, and the human sciences.

One way of understanding the distinction between metapolitics and politics is in terms of values.

A political leader has to appeal to the existing values and attitudes of his constituency. The reason why White Nationalist politics is premature is that it offends the values of the electorate. (David Duke’s one win was a fluke. It won’t be allowed to happen again.) We can’t get what we want, because our people don’t want what we want. They think our goals are immoral. They also think they are incoherent and impractical.

They think these things, because our enemies have carefully laid the metapolitical foundations for the power they enjoy. They control academia, the school system, publishing, the arts, the news and entertainment media, and they have remade the American mind to their liking. My aim is to change people’s sense of what is politically desirable and right, and their sense of what is politically conceivable and possible.

That means that we have to explore ideas that would offend the majority of people.

6. So metapolitics is not the province of impractical bookworms, then. How does it relate to politics?

Metapolitics is about laying the foundations for political change. There are three levels to our struggle. (1) The metapolitical struggle to change values, culture, worldviews. (2) The metapolitical struggle to create a white community, and not just a virtual community, but an actual, real world, face-to-face community. A counter-culture needs to be embodied in a counter-community. (3) The political struggle for actual political power. In the end, we want political power, because we want to make the survival and flourishing of our people the law of the land, a matter of explicit policy, indeed the fundamental law and policy.

But metapolitics is not compatible with political activity within the present system and at the present time. Why? Because the prevailing metapolitical consensus rejects White Nationalism as immoral and impossible. This means that pushing our agenda in the present system is ultimately futile. Any gains will be at tremendous cost and will be easily reversed. You can swim against the current, but it is exhausting, and as soon as you run out of energy, the current will sweep you back to where you started. You can’t build the political superstructure before you lay the metapolitical foundations.

This is not to say that it is impossible for a deep-cover White Nationalist to pursue political power. I hope a lot of them are.

Nor is it impossible for system politicians to support initiatives that White Nationalists can support. For me, the only political issue in the United States that I care about is immigration, and there is reason for hope on that front. Politicians who are close to the right bank of the mainstream are pushing initiatives that might slow or halt the onslaught of illegal immigration. It is far short of what White Nationalists want—namely, a race-based immigration policy—but it would give us time by putting back the date when Whites become a minority in the United States. Given how disorganized and kook-infested the White Nationalist movement is in the United States, we need all the time we can get. Thus if it is possible for a White Nationalist to push immigration policy in the right direction, I say do it, so long as you do not divert our community’s resources into the political mainstream.

What I reject utterly is the idea that White Nationalists—a tiny, despised, poorly funded, poorly led minority—should divert any of our scare political capital into the mainstream at the cost of building up our own institutions and community. The mainstream is capable of taking care of itself. We need to take care of ourselves. If we don’t articulate our message and build our community, nobody else will.

We can’t buy mainstream politicians. They would flee from and denounce us if they knew who we are. Thus spending our political capital on people like that and expecting White Nationalist results is analogous to taking one’s capital to Las Vegas and playing craps as opposed to building one’s own business that will provide long-term steady income.

Gambling, of course, is more fun than hard work, and the political system, like Las Vegas, is full of people who will be your friend and stroke your ego as long as you have money to blow. But the house always wins in the end, so White Nationalists who put their capital behind system politicians end up cleaned out, burned out, and useless to our cause.

7. Does not the inherent need for dissimulation in politics make it incompatible with free enquiry and open intellectual debate?

Yes, I will grant that. And if I thought that the time for political struggle were at hand, and if I thought that someone had come up with the perfect “Noble Lie,” I would fall right in line.

But White Nationalist politics is premature. Yet the main impediment I encounter is giddy people thinking that the time for political struggle is at hand, and the only thing standing in the way of that are people like me who insist on talking about things like the problems of Christianity, European idears like fascism and (horrors!) National Socialism, etc. After all, these ideas won’t play in Peoria! They tell us that we need to shut down such discussions so our enemies don’t use them to scare away the voters.

Well, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see where this is going. The first thing we need to do is stop publishing articles that might offend mainstream Republican types. So we can’t publish articles about Black Metal, because that is “Satanic,” or Traditionalism because it is “occult,” or paganism because it is pagan. And we can’t be critical of capitalism either.

But you can’t stop there. Nothing offends Christian fundamentalists more than Darwinism, so scientific race studies and evolutionary psychological studies of the Jews are out too. Why talk about race and Jews at all, for that matter? Isn’t that divisive? Why not just get people riled up about “unfairness” and “double standards” against “European Americans” based on our “skin color”? Maybe we should just talk about restoring the Constitution.

In short, why not just close up shop? That is the ultimate end of this lemming-like stampede into the safe, respectable oblivion of mainstream conservatism.

The trouble with the mainstream, though, is that our enemies have done the metapolitical engineering work necessary to divert the conservative mainstream away from the turbines of political power and into the irrigation ditches of irrelevance.

So until the time is ripe for political struggle, I think that it is best to have the most open and free-wheeling intellectual debate possible. That is the only way we will create an intellectually exciting and morally credible metapolitical movement.

Besides, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle or the toothpaste back in the tube. For instance, even if I shut up tomorrow about the damaging effects Christianity has had on our racial survival, our enemies could still use that to scare Christians about Godless or Satanic racists. So we might as well keep the conversation going.

Besides, racially-conscious Christians will never reform their churches unless we constantly scourge them to do it. Otherwise, they tend to be far more interested in shutting down criticism in our camp than in confronting anti-White hatred in their churches.

Maybe metapolitical debate is folly from the point of view of political expediency. But as William Blake put it, the fool, if he persists in his folly, becomes wise. So we will persist.

We aren’t going to shut up and blend in, so people in the mainstream had better figure out ways of making us work to their advantage, if only by using us as boogey men to make them seem moderate by comparison.

8. Revolutionising the collective consciousness is probably one of the most difficult tasks that can be attempted, because for the most part people are not conscious of how they thinking is pre-determined by implicit rules and taken-for-granted notions that, because they seem self-evident truths, act to make ideology invisible. Truly unfettered intellectual debate feels threatening because it seeks to break out of that cognitive cage. Worse, this cage is so insidious that it even affects those who already are outside of the mainstream. What are the most common everyday manifestations you have encountered of the barriers to unfettered intellectual debate?

I can think of three.

First, there are people who read Counter-Currents/North American New Right and TOQ before them who imagine themselves being confronted with quotes from these publications on the campaign trail, or in a press conference, or on trial, or during pillow talk. (Not that they are politicians or otherwise likely to be interviewed by the press, but they have vivid imaginations.) They imagine themselves being tried before the court of today’s public opinion for holding heretical beliefs. And they are scared.

Well, they should be scared. That is the whole necessity for metapolitical struggle in the first place: to change prevailing public opinion. And to change public opinion, one must first have the courage to disagree with it, to buck it, to say things that might offend the public and that demagogues and lawyers can easily twist into a noose before a baying lynch mob.

A second perennial confusion is what Guillaume Faye calls the misapplication of the “apparatus logic” of a political party to an intellectual movement or publication. I try to survey the full variety of intellectual and cultural currents on the racialist right. Well of course somebody out there disagrees strongly with everything that I publish. Only a schizophrenic could hold Darwinian evolutionism and Guénonian devolutionism in the same mind, for instance.

But I routinely hear from people saying that I shouldn’t have published something, or that I need to remove something potentially offensive from the site. My standard reply is: If you don’t agree with something, write a rebuttal and we will publish that too.

Frequently, the reaction is incomprehension and anger. I realized that I am dealing with people who think in terms of a single intellectual orthodoxy in which offending opinions are not debated but simply made to disappear. It is the mentality that gave us the Inquisition and the Gulag.

Third, there is the related confusion that I call “representation logic”: the idea that everything published in a magazine represents the views of everybody else in the magazine, or everybody who subscribes to it, or everybody who donates to it. The consistent application of that sort of thinking would shut down all intellectual discussion.

For example, when I published Derek Hawthorne’s review of Jack Donovan’s Androphilia, I had one reader write in and say that he could not be part of the North American New Right because he wasn’t homosexual—as if everybody else who reads the site or writes for it were! Another fellow wondered if we were all “Satanists” because I published something by Julius Evola on Aleister Crowley. It doesn’t work that way.

9. When my essay about Black Metal appeared at TOQ Online, it elicited the highest number of comments ever seen for a TOQ article. Why do you think TOQ readers felt so strongly about such an obscure form of music? And why do you think people who obviously never heard the music felt entitled to have such strong opinions about it?

First of all, let me say that I thought very highly of that article. I was proud to have it appear in our pages. I knew nothing about Black Metal, so I was very happy to find such a sophisticated and well-informed perspective on it.

I wish I could find similarly high quality articles on the Neofolk scene and other white subcultures. We need to know what is out there and what works. We need to establish connections with these communities. Your article is a model of the sort of work that I want to publish in North American New Right (hint, hint).

I would have thought that White Nationalists would have been delighted to discover such a vast musical subculture in which radical white racial consciousness is the norm. Unfortunately, that was often not the case. I received more criticism for that article than anything else I published.

Christians (and gallant atheists who throw their honesty in the mud so Christians need not dirty their feet) were shocked at the associations with Satanism, paganism, and National Socialism. Others with premature fantasies of political activism were worried about how it would play in Peoria. Most of it was just bad faith posturing.

10. After editing TOQ, you founded a publishing house, Counter-Currents. What are your aims with this new enterprise? What can we expect from, and what would you like to make happen with, Counter-Currents in the next five to ten years?

Counter-Currents publishes North American New Right, which is a metapolitical journal that aims at laying the foundations for a white ethnostate in North America. North American New Right has two formats.

First, there is our webzine, at the Counter-Currents website, www.counter-currents.com, which publishes something new every day. The reason we publish online is because it increases the availability and thus the impact of an article, and it makes it immediately available to the public. Our goal is to save the world, after all. If something contributes to that end, it is worth publishing right away.

Second, we will publish an annual print volume, which contains the best of the website and additional articles, reviews, interviews, etc. This will be a handsome book along the lines of the journals Tyr or Alexandria: The Journal of Western Cosmological Traditions. The first volume, for 2010, will go to press in March 2011.

We also plan to publish around six books a year. Our format is to publish short books that can be read in a day, say in the range of 120 to 160 pages, with 200 being the upper limit. All our books will be published in limited numbered, hardcover editions of 100 copies plus standard hardcover and paperback editions.

Our first two volumes are Michael O’Meara’s Toward the White Republic and Michael Polignano’s Taking Our Own Side. Forthcoming volumes include works by Julius Evola, Alain de Benoist, Kerry Bolton, and Edmund Connelly.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right focuses on philosophy, political theory, religion, history, the arts, and popular culture with a White Nationalist metapolitical slant, and a special emphasis on whites in North America, since this is where we are located. We do not focus on science, policy studies, or the daily news cycle. We are not a political activist group, but a politically aware publishing house.

11. During the summer you wrote “Learning from the Left,” to which I responded with an article of my own, “Learning from the Right,” both on The Occidental Observer. In my article, I enumerated what I considered to be the failed strategies of the right. What are, in your opinion, the failed strategies of the right? And, having learnt from them, what do you propose should be the Right’s focus/approach in the coming decade?

I will speak specifically of the American scene.

I think the greatest failure of the post-WW II racial right is not dealing with the Jewish Question, whether through ignorance or cowardice. Instead, the tendency has been to use euphemisms, circumlocutions, and proxies to speak about the enemy: liberals, socialists, cultural Marxists, etc. But you cannot fight an enemy whom you refuse to name and understand. Is it any surprise that people have not been eager to follow leaders who reek of cowardice and moral confusion?

Next is the failure to identify what we are fighting for, again whether through ignorance or cowardice. We are fighting for the survival of white people in North America. Again, the tendency has been to use euphemisms, circumlocutions, or proxies: the Constitution, free enterprise, Christianity. The most preposterous one that I have heard is the claim that we are “the descendants of non-duophysite Christians as of 1492.” Of course this is not a definition of anything, just a euphemism for white Europeans, not Arabs or Jews. But why not just come out and say that? Is it any surprise that a movement where this passes for cleverness has gotten nowhere?

The third great failure is ceding the whole realm of culture and ideas to the Jews and trying to fight a merely political battle, which leads inevitably to the buffoonery of cornpone populism as an attempt to make an end run around the establishment’s lock on thinking people. But it just hasn’t worked. It might have worked 60 years ago, but it didn’t. But today Jews control the whole realm of explicit culture, for the thinking and unthinking alike.

Whites in North America will not be able to regain control of our destiny until we (1) openly avow and defend our racial identity and interests, (2) openly identify the leading role of the organized Jewish community in setting our race on the path to degradation and death, and (3) lay the metapolitical foundations for political power, which includes (a) spreading our message through the whole realm of culture and ideas and (b) fostering a concrete, real-world, racially-conscious white community.

12. As an intellectual, your theatre of war is the realm of ideas. Yet, people are seldom, if ever, persuaded through reason. Those who adopt dissident views adopt them because they were already innately pre-disposed toward them, and events facilitated a process of becoming truer to themselves. What does that mean for dissident intellectuals, from a political-strategical point of view?

Rational persuasion does not presuppose a blank slate model or an idea of reason as “pure” and unconditioned by factors other than truth. Maybe all reasoning is in the end is getting people to become aware of what they are already predisposed to believe. Which is implies that those people who lack that predisposition will never believe, no matter how good your argument may be.

Well, if that is so, then universalism is out. Democracy is out. Egalitarianism is out. But that sounds fine to me.

If we can persuade 5% of our people of the truth of our cause and get another 20% to identify with the program in essentially irrational or sub-rational ways, we can dominate the rest. Perhaps we can win the loyalty of 50% by delivering prosperity, security, and peace. Even if 25% can never get with the program, no matter what we do, because they have innate predispositions to reject it, they would just have to grumble and put up with the New Order. If their attitudes are genetic, then our eugenics program can target those traits and try to make them less prevalent in every future generation.

These numbers are arbitrary, but I think they communicate an important truth: a small minority of true believers, if it wins the allegiance of a somewhat larger minority of people who merely hold the right opinions without good reasons, can dominate the whole of society, essentially buy the loyalty of the majority, and completely disempower its die-hard opponents.

The real question for me is how to gain that second group, the larger minority of people who hold the right opinions but not necessarily for rational reasons. That is why metapolitics has to go beyond reason—beyond philosophy, beyond science—and engage myth, religion, and art.

One of my aims for Counter-Currents/North American New Right is to foster and promote a white artistic movement. I have done some writing on this topic, but my ideas are not yet ready for publication. The essence of the program, though, has two main parts.

First, we need to expose young, racially-conscious white artists to the great exemplars of the past. You don’t have to go back too far before one discovers that practically all great thinkers and artists are “right wing extremists” by present-day standards. Beyond that, many of the greatest artists of the 20th century were on our side as well. That is a tradition that we need to recover.

Second, we need to gather together white artists and foster them by creating a community of artists and critics. Critics can play an important role, even critics who are not artists themselves. Eventually, this will become the topic of a series of articles and reviews, which I then will bundle into a book.

13. The typical Right winger excels at critiquing what is wrong with modern Western society, but falls well short when it comes to imagining a future society in which the Right’s intellectual traditions comprise the mainstream of culture. William Pierce’s single broadcast, “White World,” set against his hundreds of other broadcasts, epitomizes this condition. Surely the future must not simply be a futile (and impossible) return to the 1930s. The Left, on the other hand, has always had a utopian vision. Describe a future society where Savitri Devi’s texts are canonical university textbooks, read without controversy.

This is why I think we need to cultivate artists. Artists project worlds. Harold Covington’s Northwest Quartet novels, for example, are enormously effective at communicating ideas. His novel The Hill of the Ravens is set in a future Northwest Republic, as are parts of A Distant Thunder.

Of course film is even more effective at communicating ideas than books. Film really is the realization of Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk.

Savitri Devi was politically to the right of Hitler. I guess the best image of a world where she is read without controversy is the final chapter of her Impeachment of Man: “Race, Economic, and Kindness: An Ideal World.”

14. Finally, how would you like to be remembered in 100 years? And how do you think you will be remembered by the enemy?

In truth, my initial reaction to your question is that I would like to be forgotten.

Human egoism is such an ugly thing. Narcissism is such a devastating personality trait in our movement—particularly the histrionic, “drama queen” variety. But there is a normal, healthy desire to be remembered that gets trampled and crushed by pathological narcissists stampeding toward what they imagine to be the stage of history and the spotlight of eternal glory. Of course in reality they end up telling the same stories to ever-dwindling meet, eat, and retreat groups; posturing on Facebook; or telling lies on internet forums.

I am less concerned with how I am remembered than by whom: I hope our people are alive and flourishing in a hundred years, and many centuries after that. As for our enemies: Frankly, I hope they lose their will to survive, suffer a demographic collapse, and eventually disappear. That is the sort of world in which I would like to be remembered.

I want to accomplish the goals I have set out above, and I would like them to contribute to that world. I want to leave the world a better place than I found it. I want to be part of the chain that carries what is best in our race and civilization onward and upward. Whether I am remembered or forgotten, I will still have played that role; it will be part of the permanent record of the cosmos, as unalterable as the laws of mathematics. That is more important than living on in other people’s memory.

Source: http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/news241120100028...

jeudi, 02 décembre 2010

Les fuites surprenantes de Wikileads

wikileaks.jpg

Les fuites surprenantes de Wikileaks

Le billet de Patrick Parment

Ex: http://synthesenationale.hautetfort.com/

Les révélations du site Wikileaks ne manquent pas de surprendre, moins en raison de la teneur des propos que de leur saisie. Que l’on puisse pirater des documents confidentiels de l’administration américaine en dit long sur la sécurité de ces systèmes informatiques et pose le problème de leur accès. Bienvenue donc au pays des pirates. A ce petit jeu, on se demande bien ce qui va bien pouvoir rester secret face aux avancées technologiques. Le moindre homme politique qui pisse de travers se retrouve désormais sur Youtube par les vertus d‘un téléphone portable.

Reste la teneur des propos évidemment. On s’aperçoit à la lecture de quelques extraits parus dans la presse que le petit monde de la diplomatie n’est pas aussi guindé qu’il y paraît. On se lâche ici aussi. Sur le fond, rien de très neuf, les ambassadeurs vénitiens en poste dans les différentes capitales européennes, dès le XIIIème siècle, faisaient exactement la même chose et envoyaient rapport sur rapport à la Sérénissime qui était, alors, avec Rome, les villes les mieux informées d’Europe.

Cela dit, sur le fond, on y trouve surtout la confirmation de ce qu’il nous est donné de penser sur ces messieurs qui nous gouvernent : leurs faiblesses, leurs limites et l’idée qu’ils se font du monde. Pour ce qui nous concerne, les Américains considèrent Sarkozy comme un roi nu, susceptible et autoritaire. Et que David Levitte considère l’Iran comme un Etat fasciste ne surprendra guère. En revanche, on est pour le moins étonné des options d’un certain Damien Loras, conseiller diplomatique en charge de la Russie qui avance : « Les dirigeants russes manquent de vision suffisante à long terme pour leur pays, et, au lieu de cela, se concentrent sur un horizon à six mois et sur leurs intérêts commerciaux. » Et d’ajouter que d’ici quatre ou cinq ans, « la Russie ne pourra plus subvenir à la demande européenne » en matière d’énergie. Voici une opinion discutable, car on n’a pas le sentiment que Vladimir Poutine inscrive son action dans une vision à court terme. Par ailleurs, concernant ses ressources, la Russie dispose à elle seule de plus du tiers des ressources mondiales dont le pétrole et le gaz. N’y aurait-il pas là une forme d’intox dans la mesure où la politique étrangère élyséenne est franchement pro-américaine. Ce qui n’est pas le moindre des paradoxes dans la mesure où l’on apprend par la même source que Barack Obama s’intéresse assez peu à l’Europe et que ses regards se portent plutôt vers le Sud-Est asiatique. Quoi de plus normal d’ailleurs pour ce métis Américain qui n’a aucune vision culturelle de l’Europe – faute de racines européennes comme nombre de ses prédécesseurs – et qui vit au quotidien le rachat des Bons du Trésor par les banques chinoises. Il faut dire aussi que pour les diplomates américains en poste à Moscou, le couple Medvedev-Poutine, c’est Robin et Batman dans le film du même nom. On saisit tout de suite la portée de la métaphore.

Sur le fond, donc, cela ne fait que confirmer le sentiment que l’on a que l’Amérique est un continent qui s’éloigne de plus en plus de l’Europe et qu’il serait grand temps que l’on coupe le cordon ombilical. Mais, pour se faire, il faudrait une vraie conscience européenne, ce qui n’est pas le cas aujourd’hui avec toute la bande de guignols qui s’agitent au nom d’une Union européenne qui est totalement étrangère à la réalité des peuples.

La CIA, mécène de l'expressionnisme abstrait

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La CIA, mécéne de l’expressionnisme abstrait

Ex: http://www.voltairenet.org/

L’historienne Frances Stonor Saunders, auteure de l’étude magistrale sur la CIA et la guerre froide culturelle, vient de publier dans la presse britannique de nouveaux détails sur le mécénat secret de la CIA en faveur de l’expressionnisme abstrait. La Repubblica s’interroge sur l’usage idéologique de ce courant artistique.






 

Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko. Rien moins que faciles et même scandaleux, les maîtres de l’expressionnisme abstrait. Un courant vraiment à contre-courant, une claque aux certitudes de la société bourgeoise, qui pourtant avait derrière elle le système lui-même. Car, pour la première fois, se confirme une rumeur qui circule depuis des années : la CIA finança abondamment l’expressionnisme abstrait. Objectif des services secrets états-uniens : séduire les esprits des classes qui étaient loin de la bourgeoisie dans les années de la Guerre froide. Ce fut justement la CIA qui organisa les premières grandes expositions du New American Painting, qui révéla les œuvres de l’expressionnisme abstrait dans toutes les principales villes européennes : Modern Art in the United States (1955) et Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century (1952).

Donald Jameson, ex fonctionnaire de l’agence, est le premier à admette que le soutien aux artistes expressionnistes entrait dans la politique de la « laisse longue » (long leash) en faveur des intellectuels. Stratégie raffinée : montrer la créativité et la vitalité spirituelle, artistique et culturelle de la société capitaliste contre la grisaille de l’Union soviétique et de ses satellites. Stratégie adoptée tous azimuts. Le soutien de la CIA privilégiait des revues culturelles comme Encounter, Preuves et, en Italie, Tempo presente de Silone et Chiaramonte. Et des formes d’art moins bourgeoises comme le jazz, parfois, et, justement, l’expressionnisme abstrait.

Les faits remontent aux années 50 et 60, quand Pollock et les autres représentants du courant n’avaient pas bonne presse aux USA. Pour donner une idée du climat à leur égard, rappelons la boutade du président Truman : « Si ça c’est de l’art, moi je suis un hottentot ». Mais le gouvernement US, rappelle Jameson, se trouvait justement pendant ces années-là dans la position difficile de devoir promouvoir l’image du système états-unien et en particulier d’un de ses fondements, le cinquième amendement, la liberté d’expression, gravement terni après la chasse aux sorcières menée par le sénateur Joseph McCarthy, au nom de la lutte contre le communisme.

Rothko-.jpg

Pour ce faire, il était nécessaire de lancer au monde un signal fort et clair de sens opposé au maccarthysme. Et on en chargea la CIA, qui, dans le fond, allait opérer en toute cohérence. Paradoxalement en effet, à cette époque l’agence représentait une enclave « libérale » dans un monde qui virait décisivement à droite. Dirigée par des agents et salariés le plus souvent issus des meilleures universités, souvent eux-mêmes collectionneurs d’art, artistes figuratifs ou écrivains, les fonctionnaires de la CIA représentaient le contrepoids des méthodes, des conventions bigotes et de la fureur anti-communiste du FBI et des collaborateurs du sénateur McCarthy.

« L’expressionnisme abstrait, je pourrais dire que c’est justement nous à la CIA qui l’avons inventé —déclare aujourd’hui Donald Jameson, cité par le quotidien britannique The Independent [1]— après avoir jeté un œil et saisi au vol les nouveautés de New York, à Soho. Plaisanteries à part, nous avions immédiatement vu très clairement la différence. L’expressionnisme abstrait était le genre d’art idéal pour montrer combien était rigide, stylisé, stéréotypé le réalisme socialiste de rigueur en Russie. C’est ainsi que nous décidâmes d’agir dans ce sens ».

Mais Pollock, Motherwell, de Kooning et Rothko étaient-ils au courant ? « Bien sûr que non —déclare immédiatement Jameson— les artistes n’étaient pas au courant de notre jeu. On doit exclure que des gens comme Rothko ou Pollock aient jamais su qu’ils étaient aidés dans l’ombre par la CIA, qui cependant eut un rôle essentiel dans leur lancement et dans la promotion de leurs œuvres. Et dans l’augmentation vertigineuse de leurs gains ».   


Traduction: Maria-Ange Patrizio


Pour en savoir plus, le lecteur se reportera à l’étude initiale de Frances Stonor Saunders, dans le chapitre 16 de son livre Who Paid the Piper ? (Granta Books, 1999), version française traduite par Delphine Chevalier sous le titre Qui mène la danse ? (Denoël, 2003).


 

[1] « Modern art was CIA ’weapon’ », par Frances Stonor Saunders, The Independent, 22 octobre 2010.

 


L'ombra progressista della CIA

L'ombra progressista della CIA

Ex: http://www.noreporter.org/   

 

L'Agenzia sostenne l'espressionismo astratto di Pollock & co

Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko. Per niente facili e anche scandalosi, i maestri dell'Espressionismo astratto. Corrente davvero controcorrente, una spallata alle certezze estetiche della società borghese, che però aveva dietro il sistema stesso. Perché, per la prima volta, trova conferma una voce circolata per anni: la Cia finanziò abbondantemente l'Espressionismo astratto. Obiettivo dell'intelligence Usa, sedurre le menti delle classi lontane dalla borghesia negli anni della Guerra Fredda. Fu proprio la Cia a organizzare le prime grandi mostre del "new american painting", che rivelò le opere dell'Espressionismo astratto in tutte le principali città europee: "Modern art in the United States" (1955) e "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century" (1952). Donald Jameson, ex funzionario dell'agenzia, è il primo ad ammettere che il sostegno agli artisti espressionisti rientrava nella politica del "guinzaglio lungo" (long leash) in favore degli intellettuali. Strategia raffinata: mostrare la creatività e la vitalità spirituale, artistica e culturale della società capitalistica contro il grigiore dell'Uonione sovietica e dei suoi satelliti. Strategia adottata a tutto campo. Il sostegno della Cia privilegiava riviste culturali come "Encounter", "Preuves" e, in Italia, "Tempo presente" di Silone e Chiaromonte. E forme d'arte meno borghesi come il jazz, talvolta, e appunto, l'espressionismo astratto.
I fatti risalgono agli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta, quando Pollock e gli altri esponenti della corrente non godevano di stampa favorevole negli Usa. Per chiarire il clima nei loro riguardi, basti qui ricordare una battuta del presidente Truman: "Se questa è arte io sono un ottentotto". Ma proprio il governo americano, ricorda Jameson, in quegli anni si trovava nella difficile posizione di chi doveva promuovere l'immagine del sistema americano e in particolare di un suo caposaldo, il Quinto Emendamento, la libertà di espressione, gravemente appannato dopo la caccia alle streghe condotta dal senatore Joseph McCarthy nel nome della lotta al comunismo. Per fare questo, era necessario lanciare al mondo un segnale di senso opposto al maccartismo, forte e chiaro. E di questo fu incaricata la Cia, che in fondo avrebbe operato assecondando una sua coerenza. In quel periodo, paradossalmente, l'agenzia rappresentava una enclave 'liberal' in un mondo che virava decisamente a destra. Diretta da funzionari e agenti il più delle volte usciti dalle migliori università, spesso collezionisti d'arte, artisti figurativi o scrittori in prima persona, la Cia rappresentava il contraltare dei metodi, delle convinzioni bigotte, della furia anticomunista dell'Fbi e dei collaboratori del senatore  McCharty. "L'espressionismo astratto potrei dire che l'abbiamo inventato proprio noi della Cia - dice oggi Donald Jameson, citato dal britannico Independent - dopo aver dato un occhio in giro e colto al volo le novità a New York, a Soho. Scherzi a parte avemmo subito molto chiara la differenza. L'espressionismo astratto era il tipo di arte ideale per mostrare quanto rigido, stilizzato, stereotipato fosse il realismo socialista di rigore in Russia. Così decidemmo di agire in quel senso". Ma Pollock, Motherwell, de Kooning e Rothko sapevano? "Naturalmente no - chiarisce Jameson - gli artisti non erano al corrente del nostro gioco. E' da escludere che tipi come Rotkho o Pollock abbiano mai saputo di essere aiutati nell'ombra dalla Cia, che tuttavia ebbe un ruolo essenziale nel lancio e nella  promozione delle loro opere. E nell'aumento vertiginoso dei loro guadagni".
 

 

 


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mardi, 30 novembre 2010

Summit di Lisbona: la NATO si proclama forza militare globale

nato.jpg

SUMMIT DI LISBONA: LA NATO SI PROCLAMA FORZA MILITARE GLOBALE


DI RICK ROZOFF
rickrozoff.wordpress.com

Ex: http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/

Dal vertice recentemente concluso della NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in Portogallo Washington ha ottenuto tutto quello che chiedeva ai suoi 27 alleati della Nato -almeno 20 partner della NATO che forniscono truppe per la guerra in Afghanistan- all'UE e alla Russia.

L'Alleanza Atlantica controllata dagli USA ha approvato senza riserve e anche senza delibere il piano americano che prevede di includere tutta l'Europa nel sistema missilistico di intercettazione mondiale del Pentagono e della sua Missile Defense Agency (MDA). La dichiarazione del vertice afferma: "La NATO manterrà una giusta combinazione di forze di difesa convenzionali, nucleari, e missilistiche. La difesa missilistica diventerà parte integrante della nostra posizione di difesa globale.". [1]

Nell'adottare il suo nuovo Concetto Strategico ha anche autorizzato un’analoga operazione di guerra informatica su scala continentale in combinazione con il nuovo USA Cyber Command del Pentagono -e per tutti gli scopi pratici sotto la sua direzione.



Ha inoltre ribadito l’impegno della coalizione sull’articolo 5 per rendere l'assistenza militare collettiva a ogni Stato membro sotto ipotetico attacco e esteso il concetto di attacco per includere categorie non-militari come computer, energia e minacce terroristiche. Il Concetto Strategico "riconferma il legame tra le nostre nazioni per difendere l’un l'altra contro l'attacco, anche contro nuove minacce alla sicurezza dei nostri cittadini". [2]

"I membri della NATO presteranno sempre reciproca assistenza contro un attacco, a norma dell'articolo 5 del Trattato di Washington. Tale impegno rimane fermo e vincolante. La NATO scoraggerà ogni minaccia di aggressione e difenderà da essa e dai problemi emergenti dove si minaccino la sicurezza fondamentale dei singoli alleati o l'Alleanza nel suo complesso".

Sia pure in mancanza di minacce militari convenzionali -come pure di quelle nucleari-, ovvero anche senza rischi di carattere militare nei riguardi dei membri della NATO nordamericani ed europei, altri pericoli –se pianificati- serviranno come base per l'attivazione dell'articolo 5. Essi includono attacchi o minacce alle reti di computer:

" Cyber-attacchi ... possono raggiungere una soglia tale da minacciare la prosperità nazionale ed euro-atlantica, la sicurezza e la stabilità", afferma la NATO, per cui i suoi membri sono obbligati a "sviluppare ulteriormente la capacità di prevenzione, individuazione, difesa e recupero dai cyber- attacchi, anche mediante l'uso del processo di pianificazione della NATO di rafforzare e coordinare le capacità nazionali di cyber-difesa, portando tutti gli organismi della NATO sotto cyber-protezione centralizzata .... "

"Dipendenza" europea dal petrolio e dal gas naturale russo e il controllo delle vie marittime strategiche e rotte commerciali:

"Alcuni paesi della NATO diventeranno più dipendenti dai fornitori esteri di energia e, in alcuni casi, dalla fornitura estera di energia e di reti di distribuzione per il loro fabbisogno energetico. Dato che una quota sempre maggiore del consumo mondiale è trasportato in tutto il mondo, le forniture di energia sono sempre più a rischio di perturbazione".

E diverse altre questioni neanche lontanamente connesse a faccende militari [3]:

"Vincoli vitali ambientali e delle risorse, tra cui rischi per la salute, il cambiamento climatico, scarsità d'acqua e il fabbisogno energetico crescente condizioneranno ulteriormente il futuro contesto di sicurezza nelle aree di interesse per la NATO e avranno il potenziale per incidere in misura significativa nella pianificazione e nelle operazioni della NATO".

La NATO ha anche ribadito il suo impegno a mantenere armi nucleari tattiche americane in Europa, con il Concetto strategico che dichaira: "finché ci sono armi nucleari nel mondo, la NATO rimarrà una alleanza nucleare".

E l'alleanza si è allineata con il cambiamento della Casa Bianca e il Pentagono da un impegno precedente per il "taglio" delle truppe Usa e Nato in Afghanistan a partire dall'anno prossimo per quello che Washington ha di recente definito un progetto "provvisorio" e "aspirazionale", di una strategia "transitoria" che potrebbe vedere forze militari occidentali ancora sulla scena della nazione asiatica 15 o più anni dopo il loro arrivo. La dichiarazione del vertice di Lisbona afferma: "La transizione sarà basata sullo stato di fatto, non fissata da un calendario, e non equivale al ritiro delle truppe ISAF".

Non c'è nessuna nazione o gruppo di nazioni che ponga alla NATO una sfida seria, nessuno costituisce una minaccia per l’unico blocco militare del mondo, e quasi nessuno ancora si frappone alla sua espansione globale. "Tuttavia, nessuno dovrebbe dubitare della determinazione della NATO se la sicurezza di uno dei suoi membri dovesse essere minacciata... La dissuasione, basata su un adeguato mix di capacità nucleari e convenzionali, resta un elemento centrale della nostra strategia globale .... Finché esistono armi nucleare, la NATO rimarrà una alleanza nucleare".

"La garanzia suprema della sicurezza degli alleati è fornita dalle forze nucleari strategiche dell'alleanza, in particolare quelle degli Stati Uniti; le forze strategiche nucleari indipendenti del Regno Unito e della Francia, che hanno un loro ruolo di dissuasione, contribuiscono alla deterrenza complessiva e alla sicurezza degli alleati».

Formalizzando i cambiamenti internazionali degli ultimi undici anni -in Europa, Asia, Africa e nel Mare Arabico– il nuovo Concetto Strategico della NATO obbliga tutti gli stati membri e decine di partner a “sviluppare e mantenere forze convenzionali robuste, mobili e dispiegabili per svolgere sia i compiti dovuti dall’articolo 5 che le operazioni delle spedizioni dell'alleanza, comprese nella NATO Response Force", e "garantire la più ampia partecipazione possibile degli alleati alla pianificazione della difesa collettiva in ruoli nucleari, nella costruzione del tempo di pace delle forze nucleari".

Invocando il semi-sconosciuto slogan che dal 1989 è stato impiegato nell’anticipazione e poi nella realizzazione dei progetti per subordinare tutta l'Europa sotto il comando militare della NATO [4], i capi di stato dell’alleanza a Lisbona la settimana scorsa hanno anche approvato il completamento dei piani di espansione che interessano i Balcani e l'ex Unione Sovietica:

"Il nostro obiettivo di un'Europa libera e integra e della condivisione di valori comuni, sarebbe meglio servito dalla eventuale integrazione nelle strutture euro-atlantiche di tutti i paesi europei che lo desiderano.

"La porta per l'adesione alla NATO rimane completamente aperta a tutte le democrazie europee che condividono i valori della nostra alleanza, che sono disposti e in grado di assumersi le responsabilità e gli obblighi di adesione, e la cui inclusione possa contribuire alla sicurezza comune e alla stabilità".


In particolare, la NATO "continuerà a sviluppare l’associazione con l'Ucraina e la Georgia nelle Commissioni NATO-Ucraina e NATO-Georgia, sulla base della decisione della Nato al summit di Bucarest del 2008" e "favorire l'integrazione euro-atlantica dei Balcani occidentali". Una menzione particolare è stata fatta riguardo la Bosnia, la Macedonia, il Montenegro e la Serbia.

La Commissione NATO-Georgia è stata istituita nel settembre del 2008, il mese dopo la guerra dei cinque giorni tra la Georgia e la Russia, che fu iniziata dal governo di Mikhail Saakashvili a Tbilisi, una settimana dopo che 1000 soldati Usa completarono l’esercitazione militare Immediate Response 2008 NATO Partnership for Peace, mentre le truppe e le attrezzature americane erano ancora in Georgia.

La decisione del vertice di Bucarest su un'eventuale adesione piena della Georgia e dell'Ucraina nella NATO e la creazione della Commissione NATO-Georgia ha dato luogo ad un Annual National Program per accelerare l'integrazione della Georgia nella NATO. Il percorso tradizionale di adesione, un Membership Action Plan (MAP), non è stato presentato alla Georgia nel 2008 a causa di due disposizioni NATO: una è quella per cui gli Stati membri non possono essere coinvolti in persistenti dispute territoriali (per questo motivo, per esempio, a Cipro non sarebbe stata data un MAP se fosse stata sul punto di aderire al Partenariato per la Pace) e l’altra che non ci possono essere forze militari straniere -vale a dire non-NATO- sul suolo di un potenziale socio.

Il governo georgiano rivendica le ormai indipendenti nazioni di Abkhazia e Ossezia del Sud come proprie e due anni fa ci sono stati piccoli contingenti di peacekeepers russi in entrambi i paesi. La Commissione NATO-Georgia e NATO e l’Annual National Program della NATO -un veicolo unico per integrare Georgia (e Ucraina) nella NATO bypassando i vincoli di cui sopra di un MAP - sono completati dalla Carta per il Partenariato Strategico (Charter on Strategic Partnership) Stati Uniti-Georgia la quale fu annunciata poco dopo la guerra del 2008 e firmata il 9 gennaio 2009. (La consimile Carta per il Partenariato Strategico Stati Uniti-Ucraina è stata firmata tra il segretario di Stato Condoleezza Rice e il ministro degli Esteri ucraino Volodymyr Ogryzko il 19 dicembre 2008).

La tesi di molti osservatori, compreso chi scrive, è che l'attacco georgiano in Ossezia del Sud il 7 agosto 2008 sarebbe stato, in caso di successo, immediatamente seguito da uno in Abkhazia, eliminando in tal modo gli ostacoli di cui sopra al pieno sviluppo della NATO nel Caucaso meridionale.

Il Parlamento della NATO, nella sessione autunnale dell'Assemblea in Polonia, il 12-16 novembre ha approvato una risoluzione che chiama l'Abkhazia e l'Ossezia del Sud "territori occupati", che ha portato il Ministero degli Esteri dell'Abkhazia a rispondere:

"La NATO è un'organizzazione che ha contribuito alla militarizzazione intensiva della Georgia per molti anni, fomentando la mentalità revanscista della leadership georgiana, che ha portato nell’agosto 2008 a spargimenti di sangue in Ossezia del Sud". [5]

Il presidente Barack Obama ha tenuto un colloquio col georgiano Saakashvili, a margine del vertice di Lisbona il 19 novembre.

I piani della NATO per una penetrazione più a est e a sud di ciò che molta gente pensa che sia l'Europa non sono limitati al Caucaso.

Il vertice di Lisbona, approvando la nuova dottrina della coalizione, ha anche affermato per la prima volta senza mezzi termini che la portata della NATO è tanto ampia quanto il mondo stesso:

"La promozione della sicurezza euro-atlantica è meglio garantita attraverso una vasta rete di relazioni con i paesi partner e organizzazioni in tutto il mondo".

Il presidente Obama e gli altri 27 capi di Stato della NATO hanno approvato il nuovo Concetto Strategico, che inoltre afferma:

"Siamo fermamente impegnati nello sviluppo di relazioni amichevoli e di cooperazione con tutti i paesi del Mediterraneo, e abbiamo intenzione di sviluppare ulteriormente il Mediterranean Dialogue nei prossimi anni. Attribuiamo grande importanza alla pace e alla stabilità nella regione del Golfo, e intendiamo rafforzare la nostra cooperazione nella Istanbul Cooperation Initiative".

Il Mediterranean Dialogue comprende la NATO e sette paesi in Africa e in Medio Oriente: Algeria, Egitto, Israele, Giordania, Mauritania, Marocco e Tunisia.

La Istanbul Cooperation Initiative del 2004 [6], mira al potenziamento delle partnership del Mediterranean Dialogue al livello di quelle del programma NATO "Partenariato per la Pace, che ha preparato 12 nazioni in Europa orientale per la piena adesione a partire dal 1999: Albania, Bulgaria, Croazia, Repubblica Ceca , Estonia, Ungheria, Lettonia, Lituania, Polonia, Romania, Slovacchia e Slovenia.

Viene anche consolidato il legame con i sei membri del Gulf Cooperation Council - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Arabia Saudita e gli Emirati Arabi Uniti - in qualità di partner militari della NATO. Giordania ed Emirati Arabi Uniti sono paesi contributori ufficiali di truppe (Troop Contributing Nations –TCN) per la International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan della NATO, come sono membri del Partenariato per la Pace della Georgia e dell'Ucraina nell’ex spazio sovietico e in Bosnia, Macedonia e Montenegro nei Balcani.

Lo scorso fine settimana la NATO ha promesso di "approfondire la cooperazione con gli attuali membri del Mediterranean Dialogue e di essere aperta all’inclusione in esso di altri Paesi della regione" e di "sviluppare un più profondo partenariato per la sicurezza con i nostri partner del Golfo e di rimanere pronti ad accogliere nuovi partner nella Istanbul Cooperation Initiative". Cioè, includere tutto il Medio Oriente e l'Africa settentrionale nella sua più ampia connnessione militare con un occhio alle nazioni come l'Iraq [7], Libano, Palestina, Yemen, Libia, Somalia, Gibuti, Etiopia, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Ciad e anche il Kenya.

La dichiarazione del summit ha confermato la prosecuzione dell'Operazione Active Endeavour, "l’operazione marittima nel Mediterraneo per il nostro articolo 5", l’operazione Ocean Shield al largo del Corno d'Africa, il trasporto aereo di di truppe ugandesi in Somalia per i combattimenti e il sostegno alla Forza africana in attesa e la Training Mission NATO in Iraq.

Oltre ai dettagli dei piani di espansione in Europa, Asia e Africa una dopo l’altra, la NATO ha annunciato che ora è una formazione politico-militare internazionale. La dichiarazione del vertice ha espresso "profonda gratitudine per la dedizione, la professionalità e il coraggio dei più di 143.000 uomini e donne provenienti da paesi alleati e partner, che vengono dispiegati nelle operazioni e le missioni della NATO".

La sua nuova dottrina afferma anche: "unica nella storia, la NATO è un’alleanza di sicurezza che mette in campo forze militari in grado di operare insieme in qualsiasi ambiente; capace di controllare operazioni dovunque attraverso la sua struttura di comando militarmente integrata...."

La NATO Response Force (NRF) della coalizione "fornisce un meccanismo per generare una elevata prontezza e un pacchetto di forze tecnologicamente avanzate costituito da elementi di terra, aria, mare e delle forze speciali che può essere schierato rapidamente in operazioni ovunque sia necessario." [8]

La NRF è stata proposta dall'allora Segretario alla Difesa Usa Donald Rumsfeld, nel settembre del 2002 e formalizzato in occasione del vertice NATO di Praga nel novembre dello stesso anno. Essa ha effettuato la sua prima esercitazione a fuoco, la Steadfast Jaguar su grande scala del 2006, nella nazione dell'Africa occidentale dell'isola di Capo Verde. Alla fine dell'anno fu affermato che essa aveva piena capacità operativa formata da un massimo di 25.000 uomini "fatto di componenti di terra, aria, mare e delle forze speciali... in grado di svolgere missioni in tutto il mondo attraverso l'intero spettro delle operazioni." [9]

Alludendo in parte alla NRF, il nuovo Strategic Concept dichiara:

"Dove la prevenzione dei conflitti non abbia esito, la NATO sarà preparata e in grado di gestire le ostilità in corso. La NATO ha capacità uniche di gestione dei conflitti, compresa la facoltà senza pari di implementare e sostenere vigorose forze militari in campo".

Essa impegna inoltre i Paesi membri a "sviluppare ulteriormente la dottrina e le capacità militari per organizzare gli interventi, tra cui quelli per anti-insurrezione, stabilizzazione e ricostruzione".

A Lisbona, Obama ed i suoi colleghi capi di Stato hanno convenuto che:

"Noi, i leader politici della NATO, siamo determinati a continuare il rinnovamento della nostra alleanza in modo che sia adatta allo scopo di affrontare le sfide alla sicurezza del 21° secolo. Siamo fermamente impegnati a conservare la sua efficacia come l’alleanza politico-militare di maggior successo del mondo".

L’unica coalizione militare mondiale non protegge l'Europa da minacce chimeriche nucleari e missilistiche o dalle questioni che sono meglio affrontate dai rispettivi membri della sua magistratura, dalle forze di sicurezza interna ed ambientali,dai ministeri e dipartimenti dell'immigrazione, dell'energia, della salute pubblica e dalle unità di crisi.

Impiega piuttosto il continente europeo come una base operativa per le campagne e gli dispiegamenti militari ovunque altrove.

Tale ruolo è stato consolidato con l'integrazione militare di Stati Uniti, NATO e Unione europea [10]. Il 19 novembre il presidente della Consiglio europeo della UE, Herman Van Rompuy, si è rivolto ai leader della NATO a Lisbona e ha detto "la capacità delle nostre due organizzazioni per plasmare le nostre future condizioni di sicurezza sarebbe enorme se lavorassero insieme. È ora di abbattere le pareti restanti tra loro". [11]

La nuova dottrina della NATO del 21° secolo, afferma:

"L’Unione europea è un partner unico ed essenziale per la NATO. Le due organizzazioni condividono la maggioranza dei soci, e tutti i membri di entrambe le organizzazioni condividono valori comuni. La NATO riconosce l'importanza di una difesa europea più forte e più capace. Accogliamo con favore le entrata in vigore del trattato di Lisbona, che fornisce un quadro per rafforzare le capacità dell'UE di affrontare le sfide comuni.

"Alleati non comunitari rappresentano un significativo contributo a tali sforzi. Per il partenariato strategico tra la NATO e l'UE, il loro pieno coinvolgimento in queste iniziative è essenziale. La NATO e l'UE possono e devono giocare ruoli di rafforzamento in modo complementare e reciproco".


La NATO ha anche acquisito un nuovo partner in Eurasia, uno con il territorio più grande del mondo, che si estende dal Baltico e il Mar Nero fino al Pacifico: la Russia. Il soggetto di un altro articolo.

Rick Rozoff
Fonte: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com
Link: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/lisbon-summit-nato-proclaims-itself-global-military-force/
22.11.2010

Traduzione per www.comedonchisciotte.org a cuar di ETTORE MARIO BERNI

1) North Atlantic Treaty Organization Lisbon Summit Declaration http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_68828.htm?mode=pressrelease

2) Strategic Concept For the Defence and Security of The Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation http://www.nato.int/lisbon2010/strategic-concept-2010-eng.pdf

3) Thousand Deadly Threats: Third Millennium NATO, Western Businesses Collude On New Global Doctrine Stop NATO, October 2, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/thousand-deadly-threats-third-millennium-nato-western-businesses-collude-on-new-global-doctrine

4) Berlin Wall: From Europe Whole And Free To New World Order Stop NATO, November 9, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/berlin-wall-from-europe-whole-and-free-to-new-world-order

5) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 18, 2010

6) NATO In Persian Gulf: From Third World War To Istanbul Stop NATO, February 6, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/nato-in-persian-gulf-from-third-world-war-to-istanbul

7) Iraq: NATO Assists In Building New Middle East Proxy Army Stop NATO, August 13, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/iraq-nato-assists-in-building-new-middle-east-proxy-army

8) North Atlantic Treaty Organization Allied Command Operations http://www.aco.nato.int/page349011837.aspx

9) North Atlantic Treaty Organization The NATO Response Force http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49755.htm

10) EU, NATO, US: 21st Century Alliance For Global Domination Stop NATO, February 19, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/eu-nato-us-21st-century-alliance-for-global-domination

11) EUobserver, November 21, 2010

samedi, 27 novembre 2010

Kauft China künftig keine US-Staatspapiere mehr?

Kauft China künftig keine US-Staatspapiere mehr?

F. William Engdahl

Ex: http://info.kopp-verlag.de/

 

Unter Hinweis auf die jüngste Entscheidung der US-Notenbank Federal Reserve, weitere 600 Milliarden Dollar zu drucken, um die taumelnden Wall-Street-Banken und den Immobiliensektor zu stützen, hat die chinesische Ratingagentur Dagong vor wenigen Tagen das Kreditrating für amerikanische Staatsanleihen heruntergestuft. Wenn die People’s Bank of China, die chinesische Zentralbank, dieser Einschätzung folgt und entsprechend weniger US-Staatspapiere kauft, dann stehen dem Dollar harte Zeiten bevor. Es kommt nicht überraschend, dass sich New Yorker Hedgefonds und Spekulanten genau in diesem kritischen Moment anschicken, eine neue Runde finanzieller Kriegsführung gegen Europa zu richten, dieses Mal wegen der prekären Lage einiger irischer Banken.

 

 

AnleihenpapierUSDollar.jpgDie Kreditrating-Agentur Dagong Global Credit, Chinas konservative Antwort auf das Monopol der von Amerika kontrollierten Agenturen Moody’s und Standard & Poor’s, hat vor wenigen Tagen die Qualität der Staatsverschuldung der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika heruntergestuft; sie betrachtet die jüngste »Quantitative Lockerung« als absichtliche Abwertung des Dollar.

Dagong bewertet die amerikanischen Versuche, sich durch die Ausgabe von Anleihen den Weg aus den Schulden zu bahnen, mit großem Vorbehalt. Die Agentur kritisiert vor allem die, wie sie sagt, konkurrierende Abwertung der Währung und prognostiziert für die USA eine »lang anhaltende Rezession«.

In ihrer Erklärung heißt es: »Um die Krise im eigenen Land zu bewältigen, greift die US-Regierung zu der extremen wirtschaftlichen Politik, den US-Dollar um jeden Preis abzuwerten; dieser Schritt weist auf das tiefsitzende Problem in der Entwicklung und im Managementmodell einer nationalen Ökonomie hin. Es könnte für die USA schwierig werden, den richtigen Weg zu finden, die US-Wirtschaft wiederzubeleben, wenn die Regierung die Ursache der Kreditklemme und das Entwicklungsgesetz einer modernen Kreditwirtschaft nicht erkennt und weiterhin in dem Denken des traditionellen Wirtschaftsmanagement-Modells verharrt; es ist ein Anzeichen dafür, dass die wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung in eine längerfristige Rezessionsphase eintritt.«

Auf gut Deutsch: Die staatliche chinesische Ratingagentur erklärt, dass sie das Vertrauen in die Stabilität der enormen Bestände an Treasury Bonds, den amerikanischen Staatspapieren, verloren hat. China hat in den vergangenen Jahren Japan als größten Halter amerikanischer Staatsanleihen verdrängt, es wird geschätzt, dass die People’s Bank of China US-Staatspapiere im Wert von 1,4 Billionen Dollar hält.

In ihrer Analyse kommt die Agentur Dagong zu dem Schluss: »Die Gesamtkrise, in die die Welt aufgrund dieser Abwertung des US-Dollars gestürzt werden könnte, macht einen Wirtschaftsaufschwung in den USA noch weniger wahrscheinlich. Da sich keiner der für die US-Wirtschaft maßgeblichen Wirtschaftsfaktoren erkennbar verbessert hat, ist es möglich, dass die USA ihre geldpolitische Lockerung ausweiten, was den Interessen der Gläubiger zuwiderläuft.« Mit Letzteren ist eindeutig China gemeint.

In der Erklärung heißt es noch: »Angesichts der derzeitigen Lage könnten für die Vereinigten Staaten in den kommenden ein bis zwei Jahren nicht vorherzusagende Solvenzrisiken bestehen. Dementsprechend erteilt Dagong die Bewertung ›Ausblick negativ‹ für das in- und ausländische Kreditrating der Vereinigten Staaten.«

Die Herabstufung ist ein echter Paukenschlag, sie entspricht der wachsenden Sorge, die westliche Fondsmanager, einschließlich der amerikanischen Großbank Merrill Lynch, in den vergangenen Tagen bezüglich der Aussichten für die Inhaber von Staatspapieren zum Ausdruck gebracht haben.

Dagong genießt hohes Ansehen als unabhängige Kreditrating-Agentur, die eine konservativere Sicht vertritt als die bekannteren amerikanischen Agenturen. Bis vor Kurzem galt die amerikanische Staatsverschuldung als über jede Kritik erhaben, doch nach Aussage unabhängiger Analysten verschlechtert sich die Lage und wird sich auch in Zukunft weiter verschlechtern.

Just in dem Moment, in dem der Dollar erneut unter Verkaufsdruck gerät, wenden sich amerikanische Hedgefonds und Spekulanten gegen den Euro, dieses Mal geht es gegen Irland als das schwächste Glied. Genauso wie im vergangenen Dezember – als dem Dollar eine schwere Krise drohte – plötzlich auf wundersame Weise die griechische Krise losbrach, was den Dollar kurzfristig entlastete, so entdecken Hedgefonds jetzt, da sich eine neue Dollarkrise anbahnt, dass Irland genauso wie Griechenland die Zahlungsunfähigkeit drohen könnte. Einige Frankfurter Banker sprechen zutreffend von »finanzieller Kriegsführung«. Voller Naivität neigen die Regierungen der EU-Länder zu der Annahme, die New Yorker Finanzmärkte hielten sich an die offenen und transparenten »Spielregeln«. Die jüngsten kritischen Äußerungen von Finanzminister Schäuble über die Währungs- und Wirtschaftspolitik der USA lassen darauf schließen, dass man in Berlin kritisch überdenkt, was wirklich gespielt wird.

Bleiben Sie dran, denn hier bahnt sich ein größeres Drama in den atlantischen Beziehungen an.

 

vendredi, 26 novembre 2010

US-Geheimprojekt: Luftschiffe als Spionage- und Kampfmaschinen

US-Geheimprojekt: Luftschiffe als Spionage- und Kampfmaschinen

Udo Schulze

Ex: http://info.kopp-verlag.de/

 

Trotz erheblicher ökonomischer Probleme und offiziell gesenkter Rüstungsausgaben lässt US-Präsident Barack Obama horrende Summen für neue Geheimprojekte ausgeben. Insgesamt 917 Millionen US-Dollar wurden für die Entwicklung zweier Luftschiffe bereitgestellt. Ziel der als Cargo-Lifter (Luftschiffe zum Transport sperriger Güter) getarnten Zeppeline sind die Verbesserung der Überwachung von Truppenbewegungen und die Bekämpfung feindlicher Raketen.

 

 

Schon im kommenden Jahr sollen die Luftschiffe zumindest am Himmel über den USA ihre ersten Praxistests bestehen und bis zum Sommer in Serie gehen. Allein 517 Millionen Dollar hat das Pentagon der Firma Northrop Grumman für den Bau eines Spionage-Luftschiffs zur Verfügung gestellt. Heraus kam ein wahres Wunderwerk der Technik. Ausgestattet mit vier extrem starken und leisen Dieselmotoren erreicht der Zeppelin Höhen wie ein normales Flugzeug. Mit seiner hochkomplizierten Kameratechnik liefert er der Bodenstation Fotos und Videoaufnahmen von Zivilisten und militärischen Gegnern. Besonders bei Dunkelheit ist das Luftschiff auch in geringer Höhe aufgrund seiner Geräuscharmut vom Boden aus kaum zu erkennen. Ein einziges dieser Fluggeräte übernimmt die Funktion von zwölf militärischen Drohnen, wie sie heute in Afghanistan eingesetzt werden. Ein weiterer Vorteil gegenüber einer Drohne besteht darin, dass das Luftschiff einem Hubschrauber ähnlich in der Luft stehen bleiben kann – und das bis zu drei Wochen! Ein Leckerbissen für Militärs, können sie damit doch fremde Truppenbewegungen sowie Stationierungen von Waffensystemen über Wochen hinweg in ihrer Entwicklung beobachten und entsprechend reagieren. Die Gefahr eines solchen Spionage-Luftschiffs besteht in der nichtmilitärischen Nutzung durch Geheimdienste, die damit bequem ganze Städte in Echtzeit überwachen können.

Ebenfalls im kommenden Jahr steigt ein weiteres Luftschiff aus den USA auf. Speziell für die US Air Force hat Lockheed Martin für 400 Millionen Dollar einen Zeppelin entwickelt, der alles bisher in diesem Bereich Dagewesene schlägt. Das Gefährt wurde als reine Kampfmaschine gebaut und kann seinen elektronischen Blick bis zu 600 Kilometer weit schweifen lassen – immer auf der Suche nach feindlichen Raketenbasen oder Truppen. Sind diese erst einmal identifiziert, greift das Luftschiff die Ziele so lange mit Raketen an, bis herannahende US-Kampfjets nicht mehr gefährdet sind und die »Feinarbeit« erledigen können. Eine Entwicklung, unterstützt von Friedensnobelpreisträger Barack Obama.

 

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mercredi, 24 novembre 2010

The Tyrant who is Obama's Role Model

 

discours-de-lincoln.jpg

The Tyrant who is Obama's Role Model

Jan von FLOCKEN

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

Translated by Greg Johnson

When Barack Obama was officially inaugurated as President of the United States, the ceremony was charged with symbolism. The figure of Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, seemed omnipresent. Remember that 2009 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Lincoln, who has become a kind of patron saint of Western democracy. Obama was not merely content to retrace Lincoln’s route, in the spring of 1861, departing from Philadelphia, passing through Baltimore, to arrive at the White House in Washinghton D.C. When he took the oath of office, Obama also insisted on placing his hand on the 156 year old velvet-covered Bible that “Old Abe” had used, swearing “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

No one, though, has violated the Constitution more than Lincoln . . .

These attempts to draw parallels between the legendary statesman and the young president who is now America’s new hope, inadvertently stirred up all sorts of uncomfortable memories. Indeed, no President of the United States in the last 220 years has violated the Constitution and suppressed the basic rights of citizens more than Lincoln. His mandate was deployed under the bloody banner of a civil war between the Northern and Southern states. The latter left the Union in 1860–61 and founded their own state, the Confederacy. The American Constitution by no means prohibited secession of this type since it was only in 1868 that the Supreme Court ruled to the contrary. Initially, the two parties accepted the secession of the South. Thus it was that Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune and political friend of Lincoln, wrote in his newspaper, on November 9th, 1860: “I hope we will never have to live in a Republic maintained by bayonets.”

But it was these very bayonets that Lincoln used shortly after taking office. He seized the first excuse he found: in fact, an exchange of fire around Fort Sumter, which actually belonged to the Confederacy. This incident, which caused only some slight injuries, was used as pretext for a de facto declaration of war against the South, namely an appeal for 75,000 volunteers on April 15th, 1861. Lincoln then ordered an economic embargo against the Confederacy. The appeal and embargo were two serious political errors because they prompted the immediate secession of four hitherto neutral states: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

In Maryland—which, by tradition, leaned toward the Confederacy, but which was to remain in the Union because of its proximity to Washington, D.C.—the population protested en masse against Lincoln’s warmongering. Lincoln immediately suspended the Constitutional principle of “Habeas Corpus” which protects the citizen from arbitrary arrest and guarantees his right to be heard by a judge within a short time. Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, and Baltimore, where Barack Obama went to follow Lincoln’s footsteps, were placed under martial law. On May 13th, 1861, the mayor of Baltimore, the chief of police, and all the members of the city council, were arrested, without any legal pretext, and were imprisoned until the end of the war in 1865. Ironically, among these political prisoners was the grandson of Francis Scott Key, who had composed the American national anthem, which sings the praises of “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

When the Maryland legislature condemned these illegal and tyrannical actions, Lincoln immediately arrested 31 legislators, who were imprisoned from three to six months without trial. This forceful action clearly violated the sixth amendment to the Constitution, according to which any defendant is entitled to an immediate public trial by an independent jury. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney, the man before whom Lincoln had officially sworn his oath on the Bible, ordered the President make null and void these arrests because they too obviously violated the principles of the Constitution. The President had arrogated powers that are the sole prerogative of Congress. Following the admonitions of Roger B. Taney, Lincoln issued an order encouraging all public authorities to purely and simply ignore the judgment of the Supreme Court, which itself constitutes, obviously, a manifest violation of the Constitution. One observer, otherwise favorable to Lincoln, the German democrat Otto von Corvin, correspondent of the Times, noted at the time that Lincoln’s antics reminded him of a “village schoolmaster.”

In the course of the war, there were other infringements of the Constitution. The most notable of these occurred in June 1863, when Virginia was partially occupied by Northern soldiers, and a new state, West Virginia, was proclaimed, in violation of the Constitution’s stipulation that no new state can be created or established out of the territory of another.

All these assaults on the Constitution are excused today under pretext that Lincoln liberated the slaves. However, in the summer of 1862, a half year before the official proclamation of their emancipation, the President still held that: “If I could save the Union, without having to free even one slave, I would do it.”

Maintaining the Union eventually cost the lives of 600,000 people.

Americans should hope that in the future, Obama will be satisfied to imitate Lincoln only on festive occasions. For let us not forget that shortly after taking office in January, Obama said: “My politics consists in not having politics.”

Originally published in German in Junge Freiheit, no. 16, 2009

00:15 Publié dans Histoire | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : etats-unis, obama, histoire, abraham lincoln, démocratie, tyrannie | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

lundi, 22 novembre 2010

Obama e le strategie di dominio mondiale

obamappPPP.jpg

Obama e le strategie di dominio mondiale

Più i preparativi di guerra si faranno febbrili, più l’economia a stelle e strisce spiccherà il volo

Angelo Spaziano

Ex: http://www.rinascita.eu/

Barack Obama ha subito una clamorosa débàcle alla Camera, dove il partito democratico è andato in minoranza. E anche al Senato “l’asinello” è collassato, pur mantenendo per un pelo la leadership. Il primo presidente nero nella storia americana è stato trombato perfino nel suo collegio senatoriale dell’Illinois e nella roccaforte dell’Ohio. Tuttavia, andrebbero fatte alcune importanti considerazioni al riguardo. Prima di tutto, va tenuto conto che per tradizione l’affluenza alle urne in occasione del rinnovo del Parlamento Usa è alquanto più contenuta rispetto alle presidenziali. E’ chiaro infatti che i primi a precipitarsi ai seggi nel mid term siano soprattutto gli scontenti della conduzione governativa nei due anni appena trascorsi. In secondo luogo c’è da calcolare che Barack Obama, pur generosissimo con i grandi trust bancari nazionali, saziati a profusione con vertiginosi benefit, è andato incautamente a falcidiare gli interessi delle lobby delle assicurazioni sanitarie e degli speculatori di borsa.


Era logico che alla prima occasione questi signori gli avrebbero presentato il conto. La riforma del welfare infatti ha esteso lo scudo del sistema sanitario di Stato a un 43 per cento di cittadini che non potevano permettersi la copertura assicurativa a pagamento. Aver sottratto tutta quella enorme massa di manovra alle fameliche mascelle delle “mutue” private era un gesto che non poteva non provocare feroci rappresaglie nei confronti dell’audace presidente. Peggio che mai è andata in materia finanziaria. Qui Obama, pur cedendo alle pressioni esercitate dai grandi trust bancari salvandoli dal tracollo, memore degli errori compiuti in passato da questi epigoni di Shylock, ha varato una riforma che, di fatto, ha posto sotto tutela le operazioni di scambio dei derivati e il capitale investibile a disposizione dagli istituti. Come se non bastasse, c’è stato pure il ritiro da Baghdad e quello ventilato, possibile entro il prossimo anno, da Kabul. Il che, pur giustificando il premio Nobel in bianco concessogli il giorno successivo l’elezione, significa essersi messo in rotta di collisione con la potente corporazione dei fabbricanti di cannoni. Anche la sfortuna ha rivestito un ruolo molto rilevante in questa prima parte di mandato obamiano. Non va dimenticato infatti il catastrofico impatto mediatico esercitato sugli americani dalla goffa gestione dell’emergenza inquinamento da idrocarburi sulle coste della Louisiana. Uno stillicidio di tre mesi durante i quali l’incessante fuoriuscita di greggio dal pozzo in avaria sul fondo del Golfo del Messico ha funzionato da doccia scozzese sulle istanze ecologiste degli statunitensi della costa sud, illusi e delusi a fasi alterne. Questa logorante guerra dei nervi ha scavato un fossato intorno all’immagine di Obama, che ha fatto la stessa figura che fece Bush con l’uragano Katryna, allorché mezza New Orleans rimase sommersa dal Mississippi. Da queste consultazioni quindi Obama è uscito con le ossa rotte, e c’era da aspettarselo. Il primo a rendersene conto è stato proprio lui, che all’improvviso si è dichiarato pronto a scendere a compromessi proprio con quegli avversari politici che ha sempre tenacemente combattuto con tutte le sue forze. Molto probabilmente, perciò, assisteremo a una marcata correzione della rotta fin qui seguita dall’inquilino della Sala Ovale, un fuoriclasse sfortunatamente azzoppato dalla congiuntura socioeconomica assai sfavorevole. Alla Casa Bianca potrebbero anche cadere delle teste. I democratici infatti spingono affinchè ci siano dei cambiamenti radicali. In primo luogo vogliono che Obama riveda l’incarico di diversi suoi collaboratori, fino a licenziarne alcuni. Il primo candidato a rischiare il posto potrebbe essere il segretario al Tesoro Tim Geithner. L’economia statunitense infatti, malgrado la forte svalutazione del dollaro non accenna a riprendere la marcia, e risulta troppo debole per garantire nuova occupazione. E Geithner, secondo gli elettori, è uno dei principali responsabili della situazione.


Ma, a ben pensarci, un modo per uscire dal tunnel della recessione ci sarebbe pure, anche se il rimedio rischia di essere peggiore dello stesso male. La storia patria, Franklin Delano Roosevelt e la Grande Depressione lo hanno insegnato. Del resto sta scritto sui libri di scuola e sulla manualistica di tutte le università del mondo. Come si concluse, alla fine, la crisi economica scaturita dal venerdì nero di Wall Street del 1929? Con la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, puntualmente scoppiata dieci anni dopo il crac. E’ qui che Obama potrebbe trovare la quadra per ribaltare completamente i pronostici e farsi rieleggere per un secondo mandato. Col beneplacito repubblicano e l’appoggio popolare, infatti, il presidente nero sarebbe in grado di mettere una volta per tutte una croce sopra le velleità iraniane di accedere nell’esclusivo club dell’atomo. Ciò gli gioverebbe assai politicamente, perché lo squadrone repubblicano marcerebbe compatto al suo fianco. E più i preparativi di guerra si faranno febbrili, più l’economia stellestrisce spiccherà il volo. Spendere in guerre, infatti, crea sempre posti di lavoro e stimola l’economia. Il secondo conflitto mondiale fece uscire gli Usa dalla depressione perché lo sforzo bellico comportò una massiccia mobilitazione d’interi settori produttivi della società civile. Non sarebbe la prima volta che dalle parti dello zio Sam ci si lanciasse in simili avventure pur di risolvere gravi turbative di natura economica. Infatti, malgrado il Pentagono stia cercando di tagliare miliardi di sovvenzionamenti per affrontare con l’adeguato rigore l’austerità di bilancio, gli yankee sembrano avere tutta l’intenzione di “spezzare le reni” all’Iran. Anche se scatenare un simile pandemonio per un vantaggio politico di così corto respiro sarebbe da folli e irresponsabili. Il programmato ritiro dai fronti di guerra iracheno e afgano, che sembra fatto apposta per concentrare tutte le forze disponibili in un altro teatro, i pacchi postali al tritolo provenienti dalla Grecia e dallo Yemen e diretti verso occidente, l’allarme su probabili attacchi di Al Qaeda, le misure di controllo sempre più ferree nei porti e aeroporti forse sono i primi inquietanti annunci di una perversa strategia geopolitica di dominio mondiale. Se così sarà, si salvi chi può.


18 Novembre 2010 12:00:00 - http://www.rinascita.eu/index.php?action=news&id=4992

Maschke: "Die Deutschen werden zu Vasallen der USA ohne Lohn"

Archives: 1999 - Ex: http://www.platzdasch.homepage.t-online.de/

"Die Deutschen werden zu Vasallen der USA ohne Lohn"

N-KFOR-Kosovo-1.jpgHerr Maschke, hat Gregor Gysi recht, wenn er davon spricht, daß Deutschland einen Angriffskrieg gegen Serbien führt?

Maschke: Ja – unbedingt. Die Frage eines Angriffskrieges zwischen zwei Staaten ist ja kaum zu klären. Jedoch hat in diesem Fall ein Angriff auf deutsches Territorium nicht stattgefunden, und so müßte der Paragraph 26 des Grundgesetzes greifen, wonach ein Angriffskrieg eben verboten ist. Es gibt aber auch andere juristische Probleme. Es ist durch das Eingreifen eindeutig die Charta der Vereinten Nationen verletzt. Im Artikel 2 Absatz 4 ist allen Mitgliedern die Anwendung von und Drohung mit Gewalt untersagt. Dies bezieht sich auf zwischenstaatliche Gewaltanwendung, nicht auf innerstaatliche Gewalt oder Bürgerkriegslagen. Dann ist auch wichtig, daß hier ein Bruch des Nordatlantikvertrages stattfindet. Er erlaubt nur Verteidigung für den Fall, daß ein Mitglied angegriffen worden ist. Es ist jedoch kein Nato-Mitglied angegriffen worden. Auch hinsichtlich des Gelöbnisses des deutschen Soldaten ist dieser Krieg ein Problem, da er nur dafür einstehen soll, die Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu verteidigen. Einsätze außerhalb des Bundesgebietes dürfen nicht der Kriegsführung dienen. Selbst bei einer Legalisierung des Eingriffs der Nato durch die UNO bestünde das Problem, daß der Nordatlantikpakt eben keine regionale Organisation ist wie zum Beispiel die OSZE. Die Nato darf im Auftrag der UNO eigentlich gar nicht handeln, sondern die OSZE müßte selbst ihre Truppen zusammenstellen.

Nun werden Ihnen Kritiker entgegenhalten, Sie führten eine reine Formeldiskussion. Warum kann man Rechtsfragen nicht so lässig behandeln, wie es hier geschieht?

Maschke: Man kann ja gerne den Sinn des modernen Völkerrechts bezweifeln. Das tue ich übrigens auch.

Warum?

Maschke: Weil das moderne Völkerrecht militärische Interventionen erleichtert. Es geht relativ leger mit der Einmischung um. Der momentane Bruch des Völkerrechtes durch die Nato zerstört dieses Völkerrecht jedoch, basiert aber auf einer Art radikalisierten Fortschreibung dieses Rechtes. Wenn jetzt überhaupt keine Barrieren für eine Intervention bestehen, dann ist eine völlig willkürliche Lage da, die sich einer internationalen Anarchie nähern kann. Dann kann künftig überall beliebig interveniert werden, mit Hinweis auf die äußerst deutbaren Menschenrechte. Die dienen dann als Tarnung für imperialistische Interessen.

Wenn ich die Interpretationsmacht habe und auch die notwendige militärische Interventionskraft, dann kann ich überall auf der Welt meinen politischen Willen durchsetzen. Dies wird zu einem recht merkwürdigen Rechtsnihilismus führen. Zwar ist das Völkerrecht nicht der wichtigste Faktor in einer Theorie der internationalen Beziehungen. Die langfristigen Folgen für die zwischenstaatlichen Beziehungen sind aber nicht absehbar. Man muß Gysi in diesem Punkte uneingeschränkt recht geben.

Warum legen die Politiker überhaupt so viel Wert darauf, den Begriff "Krieg" zu vermeiden, und warum sprechen sie in bestem Orwell-Deutsch von "Friedensmaßnahmen", Interventionen etc.?

Maschke: Weil nach der UN-Charta ein Krieg verboten ist! Wenn ich den Kriegszustand anerkenne, hat das auch alle möglichen wirtschaftsrechtlichen, völkerrechtlichen und auch versicherungsrechtlichen Folgen. Die Tabuisierung hat ihren Sinn, weil das Völkerrecht aufbaut auf dem Gewaltverbot, auf dem Kriegsverbot. Man will nicht wahrhaben, daß man den Krieg wieder verrechtlichen muß und daß Krieg und Frieden korrelative Begriffe sind.

Wir müssen also jetzt vom Kosovo-Krieg sprechen.

Maschke: Natürlich! Krieg ist die bewaffnete Auseinandersetzung zwischen zwei kämpfenden Parteiungen. Es gibt auch Theorien, daß der Wille des einen genügt,um Krieg zu konstituieren. Natürlich ist der Konflikt auf dem Balkan ein Krieg. Wir wissen aus der Kriegsgeschichte, daß der Krieg alle möglichen Formen annehmen kann. "Der Krieg ist ein Chamäleon", sagt Clausewitz. Es ist interessant, daß sich der common sense durchsetzt und die Menschen immer wieder ganz unbefangen von Krieg sprechen.

Sie haben Anfang der 90er Jahre die deutsche Beteiligung am Golfkrieg der Amerikaner schärfstens kritisiert. Worin unterscheidet sich der Krieg gegen Serbien wesentlich vom Krieg gegen den Irak?

Maschke: Zunächst ist es ein europäischer Krieg. Der Golfkrieg diente dazu, eine antiamerikanische, arabische Großraumbildung zu verhindern. Dies natürlich auch im Hinblick auf und im Interesse Israels. Hier geht es im Prinzip darum, daß Europa unfähig ist, amerikanische Interventionen in Europa zu verhindern. Nicht nur das – Europa macht diese Interventionen mit, jedoch eher als Juniorpartner, als Vasall. Die amerikanischen Interessen sind ganz offensichtlich: Aufbau eines Groß-Albaniens und die Produktion von Flüchtlingen. Diese sind für Europa – auch wegen ihres kriminellen Potentials – bedenklich und spielen politisch immer die fünfte Kolonne der USA. Wir, Deutschland, unterstützen diesen Prozeß, was ich für eine ganz fantastische Leistung halte.

Die Idee der Strafaktionen aus der Luft ist so alt wie der Völkerbund.

Maschke:: Die Idee entwickelte sich als sogenannte Luftpolizei im Rahmen des Völkerbundes. Als Beispiel mag da England gelten, dem es gelang, mit einer "Imperial Police" solche Strafaktionen durchzuführen. Eine französische Idee war es, eine internationale Luftpolizei zu gründen. Auch der italienische Luftkriegstheoretiker Douhet glaubte, daß man mit wenigen Schlägen aus der Luft auf die Hauptstadt den Feind in die Knie zwingen könnte. Die Idee des Luftkrieges nach den großen Schlachten des Ersten Weltkrieges war es, Kriege zu begrenzen und kontrollierbar zu machen.

Dies hat auch eine Rolle bei der Gründung der UNO gespielt. Auch hier war die Rede von integrierten Luftstreitkräften, die allerdings nicht zustande kamen. Dies ist im Prinzip die Weiterentwicklung der Idee von großen Blockade-Flotten aus dem 19. Jahrhundert. Es hängt aber auch zusammen mit der Überschätzung der Möglichkeiten der Luftwaffe. Es stellt sich schließlich jedesmal die Frage, welche Ordnung man am Boden herstellt.

In Deutschland spricht man von einer humanitären Katastrophe, die sicherlich nicht wegzudiskutieren ist und die beschämen muß. Das alleine hat aber noch selten internationale Streitkräfte auf den Plan gerufen. Um welche großräumigen Interessen geht es in diesem Konflikt?

Maschke: Ich denke, es geht einfach um die Beherrschung und Kontrolle Europas durch die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Wenn dort jemand hätte intervenieren müssen, dann die Europäer – die sich bekanntlich nicht einig sind. Unter anderem, weil London und Paris der Auffassung zu sein scheinen, daß ihnen ein schwaches Deutschland bekommt. So setzen diese auch auf die amerikanische Karte. Sie glauben, auch innerhalb der Europäischen Union vorwiegend nationale Interessen verfolgen zu können. Wenn wir, die Deutschen, europäische Interessen verfolgen wollen, müßten wir jedoch alles daran setzen, die Amerikaner aus diesem Konflikt herauszuhalten. In Wirklichkeit sind wir eher die weiche Eintrittsstelle für amerikanische Intervention und Penetration aller Art in Europa. Vor diesem Hintergrund kann man auch nur die Nato-Osterweiterung sehen. Deutschland ist hier der amerikanische Lieblingsvasall, der von der Intervention gar nichts hat.

Kehren nun die Konflikte wieder zurück, die zum Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges geführt haben?

Maschke: Der Balkan war stets nur in Ruhe zu halten durch einen Hegemon, und dieser mußte die Füße auch irgendwie auf dem Boden haben. Dies war Rußland, Österreich-Ungarn oder das Deutsche Reich. Auch dieser Konflikt wurzelt jedoch im Prinzip im Diktat von Versailles. Wir können nach Irak schauen und wir können nach Jugoslawien schauen: Wir finden ständig die Folgen des Diktates von Versailles und des Ersten Weltkrieges – nicht die des Zweiten. Damals hat man eben auf einem Völkerrecht aufgebaut, das dem jetzigen gleicht. Dessen jetziger Bruch ist – seine Fortsetzung! Je weiter wir gehen, um so mehr entfernen wir uns vom richtigen Standpunkt.

Gibt es Parallelen zwischen dem Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges und der jetzigen Mächtekonstellation?

Maschke: Es fehlt hier der Gegenpart und die internationale Konfrontation. Es könnte eine gewisse lokale Ausweitung geben, es enthält aber keinen Zündstoff für einen Weltkrieg.

Haben die USA mit dem Nato-Einsatz nicht auch das Ziel, Rußland endgültig aus Europa herauszudrängen?

Maschke: Sicher. Das paßt auch zur Nato- und EU-Osterweiterung. Wir haben uns jetzt selbst eingekreist und können nicht mehr die russische Karte spielen – Rußland wird wieder erstarken ...! Das ist wirklich keine große Meisterleistung.

Wäre eine deutsch-russische Initiative zur Befriedung des Kosovo und Disziplinierung der Serben nicht erfolgversprechend gewesen?

Maschke: Das wirkt etwas science-fiction-haft. Hier muß man die Potenz der Regierung in Deutschland und der deutschen Politiker bedenken.Wir reden zwar davon, wir müßten Verantwortung übernehmen und erwachsen werden. Dies bedeutet jedoch nur, daß wir von der bisherigen Abstinenz Abschied nehmen. Es läuft lediglich darauf hinaus, daß wir zu Mitläufern und Vasallen geworden sind. Dies haben wir schon im Golfkrieg gesehen. Erwachsen werden heißt nun Eingliederung in uns widerstrebende fremde Interessen. Das kann ja wohl nicht Sinn der Übung sein.

Welche Auswirkungen wird dieser erste wirkliche Krieg in Europa seit 1945 auf die Kräfteverhältnisse haben?

Maschke: Dies bedeutet zunächst die ständige Präsenz der Vereinigten Staaten in Europa. Sie werden den Einigungprozeß Europas vorantreiben – und Europa wird so eine riesige, durch Grenzen nicht mehr geteilte Penetrationssphäre der USA. Dies wird bedeuten, daß sich Rußland andere Partner suchen muß, sei es China oder Indien. Man kann Rußland natürlich durch Kreditpolitik kujonieren, aber das wird Grenzen haben.

Europa ist mit der Einführung des Euro kurz davor, wirtschaftlich zum bedrohlichsten Konkurrenten der USA zu werden. Soll es da politisch ausgeschaltet wird?

Maschke: Die EU ist kein Konkurrent für die USA, denn Amerika ist auf allen Ebenen, sei es militärisch, ökonomisch und vor allem massenkulturell, in Europa präsent. Die europäische Einigung hätte Sinn, wenn man die USA ausschlösse oder zurückdrängen würde. So ist es praktisch nur ein riesiges Lateinamerika de luxe für die USA. Es ist die alte Diskussion: Wollen wir eine europäische Einigung Europas oder eine amerikanische Einigung Europas?

Warum beteiligen sich Frankreich und Großbritannien an diesem Vorgehen der USA?

Maschke: Weil beide den deutschen Einfluß auf dem Balkan fürchten.

Sie schädigen sich doch aber selbst.

Maschke: Ja, weil jede Aktion, die Amerika nach Europa hineinbringt, im Prinzip alle Europäer und eine europäische Einigung Europas schädigt.

Der Angriff der Nato mußte die UNO brüskieren. Bedeutet dies jetzt auch das Ende dieser Organisation?

Maschke: Die UNO ist in den letzten Jahren zunehmend von den Vereinigten Staaten instrumentalisiert worden. Als das nicht mehr ging, hat man versucht, sie zu umgehen. Dies kann beliebig wiederholt werden. Die UNO hat heute gar keine Vermittlungsmacht mehr. Man kann sich heute fragen, ob man nicht zum Naturzustand zurückkehrt. Man kann sagen, daß das Ganze eine größere Simplizität und Ehrlichkeit in die internationalen Beziehungen bringt. Diese nähert sich sozialdarwinistischen Vorstellungen – was nicht beruhigend sein kann.

Das Recht des Stärkeren wird also im Prinzip als Recht der Weltpolizei USA verkauft?

Maschke: Wenn ich jetzt hingehe und argumentiere, es gebe etwas jenseits des Völkerrechts, dann habe ich natürlich Probleme, anderen den Bruch des Völkerrechtes vorzuwerfen. Wenn heute eine westliche Macht den Chinesen Vorhaltungen macht wegen Tibet, dann können die nur mit einem Fragezeichen antworten – nach Kosovo.

Gäbe es überhaupt eine andere Lösung für das Problem des Kosovo, Massenvertreibungen und Massaker zu verhindern?

Maschke: Wenn man interessiert ist an einer Ordnung auf dem Balkan, müßte man mit Bodentruppen eingreifen und eine Art Protektorat errichten. Wichtig ist, welche Folgen die jetzige Handlung hat. Das jetzige Handeln verschärft das Flüchtlingsproblem – und ich vermute, daß dies den USA aus den geschilderten Gründen sehr gut zupaß kommt, aber nicht uns. Die Luftschläge werden keine Lösung bringen, und es wird auch weiter Terror geben, selbst wenn die jugoslawische Armee im Kosovo auf Null gebracht ist. Man kann nicht immer so tun, als hätten alle Konflikte eine eindeutige Lösung. Der Konflikt Israels mit seiner Umgebung hat auch keine Lösung – solche Konflikte haben allenfalls eine Geschichte.

Es gab Ideen, die Albaner – ähnlich wie die Kroaten – massiv zu bewaffnen.

Maschke: Das bedeutet natürlich, daß trotz einer massiven Bewaffnung der Albaner das Verhältnis sehr ungleichgewichtig geblieben wäre. Das zweite wäre, man hätte sich aus dem Konflikt gleichsam verabschieden müssen. Das ist etwa bei dem Konflikt in Süd-Vietnam so gewesen. Dann wäre immer noch die Frage, ob sich die Albaner aus ihren Schwierigkeiten hätten befreien können. Sie hätten immer versucht, jemanden mit in diesen Konflikt hineinzuziehen.

Sie kennen Joschka Fischer als Frankfurter Sponti und haben sich oft mit ihm gestritten. Ist die Wandlung des Friedenskämpfers und Pazifisten zum Außenminister und Angriffskrieger konsequent?

Maschke: Ja. Das ist nicht inkonsequent, denn wenn die Feindschaft der Pazifisten zu den Nicht-Pazifisten groß genug ist, müssen sie – frei nach Carl Schmitt – auch zum Krieg schreiten. Das ist hier der Fall, nur nennen sie es anders. Wir kennen auch die Formeln bereits zur Genüge, sie sind bekannt seit Wilson – wir führen keinen Krieg gegen das deutsche Volk, wir führen keinen Krieg gegen das serbische Volk etc. Im Ernstfall spaltet sich der Pazifismus: der eine Teil sagt, Gewalt kann man nur mit Gewalt begegnen, die andern reagieren wie Ströbele – und sagen, wir wollen es generell nicht. Es gab nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg die Formel "Krieg gegen den Krieg". Jetzt heißt es Aktion gegen den Krieg oder friedenserzwingende Maßnahmen gegen den Krieg. Selbst der "Krieg gegen den Krieg" ist den Pazifisten jetzt zu kriegerisch – terminologisch! Das ist nicht überraschend. Aber in der Kriegsgeschichte des Jahrhunderts war immer festzustellen, daß sich die Pazifisten in solch einer Situation spalten – und die größere Fraktion wird "kriegerisch".

Glauben Sie, daß die Grünen an dieser Frage zerbrechen werden?

Maschke: Es kommt vor allem darauf an, wie lange das dauert. Welche Folgen das für Deutschland hat, wenn es bedeutende Verluste für Deutschland gibt. Wenn es nur kurz ist, wird man dies vergessen – und es werden sich nur sehr kleine Gruppen abspalten.

Ist es nicht seltsam, daß während des Golfkrieges Anfang der neunziger Jahre massenhaft Leute gegen die USA und den Krieg auf die Straße gegangen sind und jetzt kaum jemand zu sehen ist?

Maschke: Es ist sicherlich ganz wesentlich, wer an der Regierung ist. Obwohl man versucht hat, zum Beispiel Hussein zu satanisieren, scheint das nicht so erfolgreich gewesen zu sein wie bei den Serben.Gegen die Serben existiert ein parmanenter Groll, zumal sie erklärte Deutschlandfeinde sind. Der serbische Haß auf Deutschland ist unbezweifelbar, und es gibt einen antiserbischen Affekt in den Medien und einen Affekt für Kroatien. Hinzu kommt, daß ein Entsetzen entsteht, daß die Greuel durch die Serben mitten in Europa geschehen. Wenn das bei den Irakis geschieht, ist das nicht so verwunderlich. Der Europäer ist in seinem Selbstverständnis aufgeklärt und pazifiziert. Das gilt auch für die Serben. Die haben Telefone, Autos, sprechen Deutsch oder Englisch und scheinen zivilisiert, tragen Schlipse. Dann ist man ganz erstaunt, wenn die sich irgendwelche Körperteile abschneiden. Das paßt zu einem Gelben, Braunen, Schwarzen, aber nicht zu einem Europäer. Hier ist die Empörung dann plötzlich größer.

Inwieweit ist überhaupt die Bundesregierung Herr der Lage, wer gibt den Takt vor? Von wem und wie wird über den möglichen Bodenkrieg entschieden?

Maschke: Über den Bodenkrieg werden die entscheiden, die ihn auch durchsetzen wollen – auf parlamentarischem Wege. Da sehe ich Schwierigkeiten. Entscheiden wird es der Hegemon des Bündnisses – die USA. Und dieser kann das auch alleine machen. Doch werden wir das wahrscheinlich wieder mitmachen, weil wir unfähig sind, uns gegen die Vereinigten Staaten zu stellen. Die Grundregel scheint da ganz einfach: Wir tun das, was die USA für richtig halten.

Können sich die Deutschen überhaupt noch aus dem Einsatz zurückziehen? Es heißt ja, wer sich einmischt, übernimmt Verantwortung.

Maschke: Interessant ist ja die Erklärung von Johannes Rau. Er hatte den Einsatz gebilligt und gesagt, er hoffe, daß unsere Soldaten in Zukunft nicht öfters bei solchen und ähnlichen Aktionen mitmachen müssen.Wenn man sich die Konfliktlage in der Welt ansieht und die amerikanische Forderung nach Lastenteilung betrachet, kann man sich vorstellen, daß es eine Multiplizierung ähnlicher Konflikte gibt, bei denen wir des öfteren die Gefährten der USA sein werden. Insgesamt ist dies eine Salamitaktik. Wir machen erst auf dem Niveau mit, dann auf dem Niveau u.s.w. Das bedeutet am Schluß: "Germans to the front" – ohne daß wir wirklich Einfluß nehmen können. Wir haben auch keine eigene Taktik, dies mit einer allmählichen Einflußsteigerung zu verbinden. Wir sind Vasallen ohne Lohn. Das ist unsere Form der Fellachisierung bzw. Selbst-Fellachisierung.


"Die Friedensbewegung und die immer noch zu ängstlichen Politiker und Militärs stehen dem [der totalen Erlösung]  immer noch im Wege, aber auch sie werden dem geheimen Wunsch aller, den alle leugnen, nicht mehr lange widerstehen können. Letzteres ist in etwa die Quintessenz des jungen Münsteraner Philosophen Ulrich Horstmann, dessen Essay in der moralparfümierten geistigen Landschaft der Bundesrepublik durch seine Radikalität und seine elegante Schnoddrigkeit auffällt. Der gelegentlich dekadent-pathetische Ton [...] mindert das bösartige Lesevergnügen ein wenig. Und ist es nötig, daß Horstmann, ganz braver Sohn der Alma Mater, all die Scharteken der Außenseiterphilosophen mitschleppt? Doch so leistet er immerhin eine Anthologie der Sehnsucht nach dem Ende. [...] Ist denn das Zuendeführen des Werkes in Horstmanns Sinn ohne solche Spekulationen denkbar? Die Ausrottung der Menschheit wird unter humanitären Parolen erfolgen oder sie wird nicht gelingen. Horstmann scheut leider den Gedanken, ob nicht die von ihm geforderte Ausbreitung des anthropofugalen Denkens - aufgrund der dann entstehenden Gleichgültigkeit - das größte aller Hindernisse für die anthropofugale Sehnsucht wäre. [...] Die Pointe ist [...], daß das anthropofugale Denken gerade keine Garantie dafür bietet, daß ‚unsere Spezies bis auf das letzte Exemplar' vertilgt wird. Wer will, daß die Qual aufhört, legt sich eher aufs Sofa, als daß er den Helmriemen festzieht. Horstmanns Programm wird nicht von seinesgleichen verwirklicht werden, sondern von den Täternaturen, die es immer noch gibt."

Günter Maschke: Daß wir besser nicht da wären. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16.8.1983

vendredi, 19 novembre 2010

AFRICOM nel cuore della guerra per il petrolio

africom4resized.jpg

AFRICOM nel cuore della guerra per il petrolio
 
da Amadou Fall   

 

Ex: http://www.campoantiimperialista.it/

 

Dopo aver incassato il rifiuto di quasi tutti gli stati africani, il comando degli Stati uniti per l'Africa sembrava essere destinato a rimanere a Stoccarda, in Germania. Di fatto, continua ad essere molto presente e attivo nel continente africano. AFRICOM, sotto la copertura dell'aiuto umanitario, lotta al terrorismo e mantenimento della pace, si sposta in un crescente numero di paesi dove conduce manovre militari, programmi formativi e di assistenza.

Questi movimenti vanno in parallelo alla diminuzione della presenza della Francia nella sua vecchia area d'influenza. In mancanza di una vera e propria base dove collocarsi, AFRICOM è stato ripensato come strumento che consiste in una trama di piccole installazioni intorno alla base americana di Gibuti. Dispone di una forza permanente di circa 1.800 uomini. Per le emergenze, dispone di una base navale in Kenia e altre due in Etiopia.

La rete si sta estendendo in Africa equatoriale con la presenza a Kisangani, nel cuore di Ituri, Provincia orientale, Repubblica democratica congolese (RDC). "Si tratta di formare un esercito più professionale, che rispetti l'autorità civile e garantisca la sicurezza del popolo congolese. Ciò che facciamo qui come in altri luoghi d'Africa, d'accordo con i governi sovrani, è nell'interesse dei popoli. Agli USA e alla comunità internazionale interessa che il popolo congolese viva in pace ed abbia la possibilità di un futuro migliore", diceva il generale William Ward.

Un ritornello ben noto. Tutti sanno che l'attivismo militare nordamericano non è garanzia di sicurezza. La collaborazione fra USA ed Etiopia ha raggiunto i suoi fini militari, ma ha generato una delle peggiori crisi umanitarie in Somalia. A Ituri, vittima di un conflitto interetnico dal 1999, che ha già fatto 50.000 morti e 50.000 sfollati, l'ingerenza americana ha buone probabilità di aggravare la situazione. E' questa la paura che sta dietro il rifiuto degli stati africani di ospitare la base di AFRICOM. Dovrebbe essere l'Unione africana ad assumersi l'impegno del mantenimento della pace e della lotta contro il terrorismo.

Ma la vera ragione della presenza di AFRICOM in Congo e in altri posti dell'Africa è il petrolio. Lo aveva già detto senza reticenze un ufficiale del generale Ward nel febbraio 2008: proteggere la libera circolazione delle risorse naturali dell'Africa verso il mercato globale è uno dei principi di fondo di AFRICOM. Il rifornimento petrolifero degli Stati uniti e il problema della crescente influenza cinese sono le sfide più importanti agli interessi statunitensi. Pur se la preoccupazione degli USA è condurre una guerra contro il terrorismo planetario, la creazione di un comando specifico per l'Africa spiega la natura dell'implicazione nordamericana nel gioco delle grandi potenze riguardo ai mercati africani. AFRICOM ha come finalità prioritaria quella di garantire il rifornimento petrolifero africano agli Stati uniti, per non dipendere troppo dal Medio Oriente.

La base di Gibuti permette il controllo della rotta marittima da cui transita un quarto della produzione mondiale petrolifera e il dominio della fascia petrolifera che attraversa l'Africa fino al Golfo di Guinea, dopo aver attraversato il Ciad e il Camerun. Un nuovo sito in Uganda fornisce agli Stati uniti la possibilità di controllare il Sud del Sudan. Le zone di Nigeria, Gabon, Guinea e RD Congo, ricche di petrolio e di gas sono nel mirino USA.

La Provincia orientale del Congo è in ebollizione, e tra le multinazionali desiderose di ottenere le concessioni per lo sfruttamento e lo stato congolese sono già nate della questioni. Sotto l'ombra di AFRICOM, gli americani sono lì per il petrolio e i minerali, vitali per l'industria elettronica e informatica. Dopo essersi accaparrati i minerali del Katanga, dove un consorzio sfrutta più della metà delle risorse minerarie, e dopo essersi assicurati il controllo di quelle del Kivu, Washington ora vuole il pezzo più grosso della torta, il petrolio di Ituri e per estensione, dei Grandi Laghi.

 
Fonte: http://www.fundacionsur.com/spip.php?article7422
Traduzione dallo spagnolo per www.resistenze.org a cura del Centro di Cultura e Documentazione Popolare

 

jeudi, 18 novembre 2010

Big Brother et Mickey Mouse

Big Brother et Mickey Mouse

Par François Bousquet

La gauche a toujours aimé se faire peur en se jouant des films d’horreur. Le ventre est encore fécond d’où a surgi la bête immonde, n’est-ce pas !

On connaît le refrain, il scande un demi-siècle d’antifascisme parodique. On le croyait inusable, mais il a vieilli. Il faut dire que la bête immonde a profondément mué. Elle ne porte plus des cornes, mais des Ray Ban. La chirurgie esthétique a adouci ses traits. Chemin faisant, on est passé des années 40 au CAC 40. C’est beaucoup plus fun. Il manquait un nom à cette nouvelle bête. Raffaele Simone lui en a trouvé un, c’est « le Monstre doux », titre de son dernier livre***, qui a fait pas mal de remous en Italie à sa sortie en 2009, dans un pays berluscosinistré. L’ouvrage n’est pas sans intérêt, même s’il n’apporte rien de nouveau, en tout cas rien qui n’ait déjà été dit par Tocqueville. Ce monstre doux, c’est l’Occident qui virerait à droite, selon Simone, mélange de Big Brother et de Mickey Mouse.

On a beau savoir qu’on ne prête qu’aux riches (et donc à la droite), on ne voit pas trop ce qu’elle vient faire ici, fût-elle génétiquement modifiée. Certes, la gauche a perdu la main, on le concède volontiers à l’auteur, mais elle a encore presque toutes les cartes. Ceux d’entre vous qui travaillent dans l’édition, le journalisme, l’éducation, la culture, en savent quelque chose. Elle est le pays légal figé dans une posture avant-gardiste, montrant la voie à des populations contrariées qui la désavouent dans les urnes. Ce désaveu attriste Raffaele Simone. Il ne le comprend pas. C’est pourtant bien simple : la gauche est confrontée à l’usure du pouvoir. Comme toutes les machines idéologiques longtemps dominantes, elle parle dans le vide. Pour autant, on ne sache pas que la droite l’ait remplacée, ou alors une droite aux hormones made in USA. Non, ce qui triomphe aujourd’hui, c’est la société du spectacle, le marché, l’hyperconsommation, l’obésité, le télévoyeurisme, etc. Qu’est-ce que la droite a à voir avec ça ? Raffaele Simone ne nous le dit pas.

Notre monde est résiduellement politique. Les libéraux et les libertaires, longtemps minoritaires de part et d’autre de l’échiquier politique, ont vampirisé ce qu’il restait de droite et de gauche historiques. Leurs mots d’ordre sont devenus notre quotidien. Jouissez, consommez, panurgez. L’un des maîtres à penser de la géopolitique américaine, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a appelé cela l’âge du « tittytainment », contraction d’« entertainment » (divertissement) et de « tit » (le sein, au sens d’allaitement maternel). Mais Juvénal, qui était meilleur poète que Brzezinski, a donné pour toujours la formule à succès des empires sur le déclin : panem et circenses. Des barres chocolatées et des jeux télévisés, ça a moins de gueule que les jeux du cirque, mais ça n’est guère différent.

François Bousquet

Source : Le Blog du Choc du Mois [1].

*** Raffaele Simone, « Le Monstre doux. Pourquoi l’Occident vire-t-il à droite ? », « Le Débat », Gallimard, 192 p. 17,50 €.


Article printed from :: Novopress.info France: http://fr.novopress.info

URL to article: http://fr.novopress.info/71930/big-brother-et-mickey-mouse-par-francois-bousquet/

URLs in this post:

[1] Le Blog du Choc du Mois: http://blogchocdumois.hautetfort.com/archive/2010/10/25/big-brother-et-mickey-mouse.html#more

mercredi, 17 novembre 2010

EU und China knüpfen engere Verbindungen, USA unterstützen Indien

EU und China knüpfen engere Verbindungen, USA unterstützen Indien

F. William Engdahl / ex: http://info.kopp-verlag.de/

 

In den vergangenen Wochen hat die Volksrepublik China einzelnen EU-Ländern bemerkenswerte wirtschaftliche Offerten unterbreitet. Im Lichte der offenen Kritik, die China an der amerikanischen Zentralbank Federal Reserve und am US-Finanzministerium wegen deren jüngster abenteuerlicher Geldpolitik erhebt, ist diese Öffnung ein deutliches Anzeichen dafür, dass sich China, die am schnellsten wachsende Wirtschaftsnation der Welt, von einer Orientierung, die bislang hauptsächlich auf die USA ausgerichtet war, nun in Richtung EU bewegt. Dies würde weitreichende Auswirkungen haben.

 

 

Chinas Staatspräsident Hu Jintao hat soeben dreitägige Gespräche mit dem französischen Präsidenten abgeschlossen, bei denen sich beide Seiten auf neue Wirtschafts- und Handelsverträge in einem bisher noch nie erreichten Umfang von über 20 Milliarden Euro geeinigt haben. Es geht um Kernenergie, Luftfahrt, Finanzen, Energieeffizienz und Umweltschutz. Ein wichtiger Bereich ist die Beteiligung Frankreichs an Chinas ehrgeizigem Programm zur Ausweitung der Nutzung der Kernenergie. Nach Angaben des beteiligten französischen Kraftwerkbauers Areva werden die Beziehungen zu den chinesischen Partnern auf dem größten Kernkraftmarkt der Welt durch diese Verträge auf eine neue Stufe gehoben. China wird außerdem 100 neue Airbus-Maschinen kaufen.

Frankreich rollt für Chinas Präsident Hu den roten (!) Teppich aus, während China engere Verbindungen zur EU knüpft.

Präsident Hu folgte einer Einladung des französischen Präsidenten, der Anfang dieses Jahres China besucht hatte. In Paris trafen die beiden Staatschefs innerhalb von drei Tagen fünf Mal zu Gesprächen zusammen. Frankreich hat Hu buchstäblich einen »roten Teppich« ausgerollt und ihn mit allen Ehren empfangen. Die beiden Präsidenten unterzeichneten eine umfassende Erklärung, in der sie sich zur Festigung der strategischen Partnerschaft zwischen den beiden Ländern verpflichten.

Beide Länder sind ständige Mitglieder des UN-Sicherheitsrates mit Vetorecht, was politisch von großer Bedeutung ist. China ist darauf bedacht, Verbündete zu finden, um bestimmte Initiativen der USA blockieren zu können, wie beispielsweise zusätzliche Sanktionen gegen den Iran, der ein wichtiger Erdöllieferant für China ist. Außerdem wolle man sich gemeinsam mit Frankreich der Frage des iranischen Atomprogramms, der Entnuklearisierung der koreanischen Halbinsel und des Konflikts in Afghanistan annehmen. In Washington wird man darüber sicher nicht erfreut sein.

Die jetzt getroffene Vereinbarung stellt auch für Sarkozy und Frankreich eine bedeutende Wende dar, denn noch vor den Olympischen Spielen vor zwei Jahren hatte Frankreich für die amerikanischen Destabilisierungsversuche in China Partei ergriffen und den Dalai Lama und die mit amerikanischer Hilfe angefachten Unruhen in Tibet unterstützt. Eindeutigerweise schätzt die französische Wirtschaft bessere Beziehungen zu China jedoch als wichtiger ein als solche zu den USA, denn die US-Wirtschaft rutscht immer tiefer in die Depression, während China boomt.

 

Anschließend in Portugal

Im Anschluss an den Frankreich-Besuch reiste Präsident Hu nach Lissabon, wo er mit dem portugiesischen Premierminister José Sócrates Gespräche über die Entwicklung einer umfassenden strategischen Partnerschaft beider Länder führte. Dabei wurde über die Vertiefung der bilateralen Wirtschafts- und Handelsbeziehungen gesprochen. Hu unterstrich, er betrachte Portugal als potenziellen Alliierten in der Strategie zum Ausbau einer strategischen Partnerschaft zwischen China und Europa.

Den Staatsbesuchen des chinesischen Präsidenten in Frankreich und Portugal war die beispiellose Unterstützungsaktion Chinas für den griechischen Anleihemarkt vorausgegangen. Wie ich Anfang Oktober an dieser Stelle geschrieben habe, war der chinesische Premierminister zu einem überraschenden Staatsbesuch nach Griechenland gereist, in ein Land also, das normalerweise eines so hochrangigen Besuchs nicht würdig wäre. China bot Griechenland damals seine Hilfe bei der Schuldenkrise an. Bei einer Pressekonferenz Anfang Oktober in Athen erklärte Wen Jiabao: »Wir besitzen bereits griechische Staatsanleihen und werden solche auch in Zukunft kaufen. Wir werden Anstrengungen unternehmen, den Ländern der Eurozone und Griechenland zu helfen, die Krise zu überwinden.«

Insgesamt gesehen wird nun deutlich, dass man sich in Peking entschlossen hat, eine politische Wende in Richtung auf die Europäische Union zu vollziehen und sich schrittweise aus einer zu großen Abhängigkeit von Washington zu lösen. Bezeichnenderweise hält sich US-Präsident Barack Obama, der darum kämpft, seine angeschlagene Präsidentschaft nach der vernichtenden Niederlage bei den Zwischenwahlen zum US-Kongress zusammenzuhalten, derzeit zu einem Besuch in Indien auf, wo das Pentagon ausdrücklich seine eigene Version einer »militärisch-strategischen Partnerschaft« aufbaut. Wenn die USA Indien militärisch umgarnen, so haben sie dabei ein Land im Auge, das zu einer strategischen Bedrohung werden könnte: China. Doch China antwortet jetzt mit einer Gegenstrategie, sodass man in Washington die eigenen Initiativen vielleicht schon bald bereuen wird. Bleiben Sie dran …

 

mardi, 16 novembre 2010

Washington treibt Pakistan in Allianz mit China

Washington treibt Pakistan in Allianz mit China

F. William Engdahl / http://info.kopp-verlag.de/

 

Sollte es das Ziel von Hillary Clintons State Department sein, die Bildung einer wachsenden Allianz von Staaten zu forcieren, die die US-Außenpolitik ablehnen, dann ist diesem Bemühen glänzender Erfolg beschieden. Das jüngste Beispiel ist Pakistan: Die USA machen Druck, weil Pakistan angeblich zu »sanft« mit den Taliban und al Qaida (oder was die USA so bezeichnen) umgeht. Der Effekt ist, dass Pakistan in eine engere Allianz mit China, dem einstigen Partner in der Zeit des Kalten Krieges, gedrängt wird, und zu den USA auf Abstand geht.

 

 

Im Im vergangenen Monat hat Obamas Präsidialamt dem US-Kongress einen Bericht übermittelt, in dem der pakistanischen Armee vorgeworfen wurde, sie vermeide »militärische Einsätze, die sie in direkten Konflikt mit den afghanischen Taliban oder mit al-Qaida-Kämpfern bringen würden«, dies sei eine »politische Entscheidung«. Der Druck, den die USA in den vergangenen Monaten erzeugt haben, um den Krieg in Afghanistan auf das benachbarte Kirgisistan und jetzt auch Pakistan auszuweiten, birgt die Gefahr, dass in der gesamten Region, die ohnehin zu den instabilsten und chaotischsten der ganzen Welt zählt, ein Krieg ausgelöst wird, bei dem zwei Atommächte, nämlich Indien und Pakistan, in eine direkte Konfrontation geraten könnten. Die Politiker in Washington scheinen nicht den geringsten Schimmer von der komplizierten, historisch gewachsenen Kluft zwischen den Stämmen und Ethnien in der Region zu haben. Anscheinend glauben sie, mit Bomben ließe sich alles lösen.

Wenn die Regierung in Pakistan nun verstärkt unter Druck gesetzt wird, so werden dadurch allem Anschein nach die militärischen und politischen Bindungen an Washington nicht etwa gefestigt, wie es noch unter dem Ex-Präsidenten, dem »Starken Mann« Musharraf in gewisser Weise der Fall gewesen war. Vielmehr wird Pakistans jetziger Präsident Asif Zardari China, dem geopolitischen Verbündeten aus der Zeit des Kalten Krieges, in die Arme getrieben.

Laut einem Bericht in Asian News International hat Zardari in Washington bei einem Treffen mit Zalmay Khalilzad, dem ehemaligen US-Botschafter in Pakistan und neokonservativen Kriegsfalken, die US-Regierung beschuldigt, sie »arrangiere« die Angriffe, die den Taliban in Pakistan angelastet werden, um einen Vorwand zu schaffen, unbemannte Drohnen auf pakistanisches Gebiet abzufeuern.* Angeblich habe Zardari gesagt, die CIA habe Verbindungen zu den pakistanischen Taliban, die als Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan oder TTP bekannt sind.

Obwohl das Militär in Pakistan von der Unterstützung der USA abhängig ist, herrscht Berichten zufolge im Land eine stark anti-amerikanische Stimmung, die weiter angeheizt wird, wenn Zivilisten bei amerikanischen Drohnenangriffen verletzt oder getötet werden. Auch über die wachsenden militärischen Kontakte Washingtons zu Pakistans Rivalen Indien herrscht große Empörung.
Angesichts der stärkeren Hinwendung Washingtons zu Indien setzt die pakistanische Elite im einflussreichen Sicherheits-Establishment verstärkt auf die Beziehungen zwischen Islamabad und Peking. Pakistan und China verbindet eine, wie oft gesagt wird, »wetterfeste« Freundschaft: eine Allianz aus der Zeit des Kalten Krieges, die aus der geografischen Lage und der beiderseitigen Antipathie gegen Indien erwachsen ist.

Anfang dieses Jahres hat China angekündigt, in Pakistan zwei Atomkraftwerke bauen zu wollen, eine strategische Antwort auf das Nuklearabkommen zwischen Indien und den USA. Dem Vernehmen nach verhandelt der staatliche chinesische Atomkonzern China National Nuclear Corporation zurzeit mit den pakistanischen Behörden über den Bau eines Atomkraftwerks mit einer Leistung von einem Gigawatt.

China hat Pakistan für die Zusammenarbeit bei der Bekämpfung potenzieller muslimischer Aufstände in der Unruheprovinz Xinjiang an der Grenze zu Pakistan und Afghanistan gewonnen. Außerdem baut China Dämme und Anlagen zur Erkundung von Edelmetallen. Von größter strategischer Bedeutung ist der von China betriebene Bau eines Tiefseehafens in Gwadar am Arabischen Meer in der pakistanischen Provinz Belutschistan, von dem aus Öl aus dem Nahen Osten über eine neue Pipeline in die chinesische Provinz Xinjiang transportiert werden soll. Washington betrachtet dies beinahe als kriegerische Handlung gegen die US-Kontrolle über den strategisch lebenswichtigen Ölfluss aus dem Nahen Osten nach China. Die Unruhen ethnischer Uiguren in Xinjiang im Juli 2009 trugen eindeutig die Handschrift amerikanischer NGOs und Washingtoner Geheimdienste, anscheinend sollte damit die wirtschaftliche Tragfähigkeit der Pipeline untergraben werden.

China dringt auch in Süd- und Zentralasien weiter vor, verlegt Pipelines über das Gebiet ehemaliger Sowjetrepubliken und erschließt die Kupferfelder in Afghanistan.
Nach Aussage des pensionierten indischen Diplomaten Gajendra Singh »zeigt Hintergrundmaterial in britischen Archiven, dass London sich ein schwaches Pakistan als Verbündeten im Süden Sowjetrusslands geschaffen hat, um die westlichen Ölfelder im Nahen Osten zu schützen, denn die sind noch immer der Preis, um den der Westen im Irak, im Iran, in Saudi-Arabien und anderen Gebieten am Golf, am Kaspischen Becken und in Zentralasien kämpft«.

CIA-tactieken binnenkort ook in Europa?

CIA-tactieken binnenkort ook in Europa?
Wie pleegt de bomaanslagen in Irak?


22 juli 2010 - Ex: http://www.zonnewind.be/

Door Christopher King

voitures-piegees-explose-quasi.jpgAutobommen en andere soorten aanslagen zijn dagelijkse kost in Irak, ondanks officiële retoriek dat het geweld is afgenomen. Op 18 juli vernamen we het nieuws dat er 43 doden vielen en 40 mensen gewond raakten door een zelfmoordaanslag in het zuid-westen van Bagdad. Volgens Christopher King is het zeer waarschijnlijk dat de CIA - of Israël in opdracht van de CIA - verantwoordelijk is voor de aanslagen, om zo de bezetting van Irak te mogen voortzetten en verder uit te bouwen, net als de andere aanslagen het werk zijn van de CIA of Israël, om de militaire aanwezigheid in het Midden-Oosten en zuid-oost Azië te rechtvaardigen.

Op 10 mei waren er meer dan tien bomaanslagen en schietpartijen in Irak. Daarbij kwamen 85 mensen om het leven en raakten meer dan 300 personen gewond. Dit waren gecoördineerde aanslagen, duidelijk gepleegd door één en dezelfde organisatie.

Het antwoord van de Verenigde Staten op deze en andere aanslagen was de plannen voor een terugtrekking van zijn troepen uit Irak uit te stellen. Eén van Obama's verkiezingsbeloften was om de Amerikaanse troepen uit Irak terug te trekken tegen mei 2010. Het is inmiddels niet alleen vrij duidelijk dat dat niet gebeurd is, maar tevens kwamen we na de verkiezingen te weten wat "terugtrekking" inhield: 50.000 manschappen zullen achterblijven als 'instructeurs', naast 4.500 speciale eenheden en tienduizenden huurlingen.

Op dit moment wordt zelfs de beloofde terugtrekking heroverwogen omdat men zich zorgen maakt om de veiligheid van de Iraakse burgers. Denkend aan de meer dan 1 miljoen Iraakse burgerslachtoffers en de vier tot vijf miljoen mensen die op de vlucht zijn voor de ellende van de bezetting is het moeilijk voor te stellen dat men in Washington zo diep getroffen is door een paar honderd slachtoffers door 'binnenlandse' schermutselingen. Sommigen noemen dat een vooruitgang in de Amerikaanse benadering...

Terwijl de aanslagen van de laatste maanden de VS een excuus geven om de symbolische terugtrekking verder uit te stellen, moeten we eens nadenken over wie er achter de aanslagen kunnen zitten.

Er wordt al langer beweerd dat de CIA, met behulp van lokale groeperingen achter de aanslagen zit. Het zijn de typische smerige trucs van deze duistere organisatie, die bovendien worden gefinancierd door de Amerikaanse regering. Zolang er olie in de grond zit in Irak zullen de VS het land nooit verlaten, en mede daarom is het ongelooflijk dat de Westerse media en zelfs de vredesbewegingen nog geloven in een terugtrekking van de Amerikaanse troepen. Terugtrekken was nooit de bedoeling van de VS. Een leger dat maar tijdelijk wil blijven bouwt geen versterkte legerbases zoals de VS dat in Irak - en elders in Azië - hebben gedaan en nog steeds doen. Het is daarom zeer vervelend voor de VS dat de verkiezingen in Irak eerder dit jaar niet de gewenste trekpop aan de macht hielpen.

De recente serie aanslagen, naast een lange reeks kleinere - maar niet minder dodelijke - aanslagen is niet het werk van een klein groepje extremisten. Het gaat hier om een grote, goed georganiseerde organisatie met veel financiële middelen en uitgebreide Westerse ondersteuning.

De gebruikelijke, niet nader genoemde regeringsmedewerkers van onduidelijke nationaliteit beweren uiteraard dat 'Al-Qaeda' verantwoordelijk is voor de aanslagen. Waarom ook niet, niet waar? Maar werd generaal David Petraeus niet geëerd voor zijn succes in het volledig elimineren van die spookorganisatie in Irak? Of was dat slechts het gevolg van zijn betalingen aan de Awakening Councils zodat die het klusje klaarden? Was 'Al-Qaeda' überhaupt ooit in Irak? Aangezien de hele aanval op Irak gebaseerd was op een dik pak leugens hebben we namelijk sowieso geen enkele reden om ook maar iets te geloven van wat de Amerikaanse regering, het leger of de Westerse gevestigde media over Irak of enig ander conflict waar Westerse landen bij betrokken zijn te geloven.

Ook de mensen die actief zijn in Irak weten vaak niet wie wat doet, en de loyaliteiten veranderen dagelijks. Daarnaast is het zeer aannemelijk dat 'Al-Qaeda' helemaal niet wil dat de VS uit Irak vertrekken, omdat de aanwezigheid de Amerikanen grote schade berokkent. Er zijn zelfs Iraakse groeperingen die munt slaan uit de Amerikaanse aanwezigheid en die willen dat ze blijven. Of dergelijke groeperingen in staat of zelfs bereid zouden zijn aanslagen op een dergelijke schaal te plegen is zeer twijfelachtig.

Daarnaast is het zeer waarschijnlijk dat dat hele 'Al-Qaeda' niet bestaat. Het is de Amerikaanse boeman, gebruikt om de mensen angst aan te jagen. Maar er zit sleet op. Net als op de pauzeloze beschuldigingen aan het adres van Iran dat zij achter de vele aanslagen in Irak zouden zitten. Niet dat daar ooit enig bewijs voor geleverd wordt. Daarbij is met Irak ook een Iraanse concurrent tijdelijk of voorgoed uitgeschakeld. Het is allemaal onzinnige propaganda - net zoals Saddam's nucleaire programma, zijn massavernietigingswapens, zijn ondersteuning van 'Al-Qaeda' en zijn mobiele chemische laboratoriums dat waren. Inmiddels is uitgebreid aangetoond dat dat allemaal verzinsels waren.

Wat wel zeker is? Het feit dat de Amerikaanse invasie van Irak ongekende vernietiging heeft veroorzaakt en dat de voortdurende aanwezigheid van de Amerikanen het grootste probleem van de Iraakse bevolking is - en die van Israël uiteraard.

Ja, de Israëliërs zijn ook in Irak, en ze zijn niet zo gek op Arabieren. In 2005 hoorden we dat ze in Noord-Irak de Koerden trainen. Brigade-Generaal Janis Karpinski, aangeduid als hoofdverantwoordelijke voor de mishandeling van gevangenen in Abu Ghraib zei dat ze geschokt was toen ze zag dat er Israëlische ondervragers werkzaam waren in Irak. Er valt dus genoeg te ontkennen voor de Amerikanen en voor de CIA, wanneer er zo nu en dan vragen gesteld worden. Wanneer Amerikanen en Israëliërs ergens samenwerken is dan ook alles mogelijk. Zagen we onlangs geen Israëlische 'instructeurs' in Georgië?

De Israëliërs, de CIA, het Amerikaanse en het Britse leger vermoorden allemaal met regelmaat verdachte 'militanten' en tegelijkertijd grote aantallen onschuldige burgers - vrouwen en kinderen. Niemand is in hun ogen onschuldig. Het zijn moslims, ziet u... In scene gezette aanslagen zijn dat ook niet iets waar de Amerikaans-Israëlische broederschap zijn hand voor omdraait. We weten allemaal hoe Israël op 8 juni 1967 probeerde de USS Liberty tot zinken te brengen, en hoe het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie vervolgens (zoals zo vaak) samenspande met de Israëliërs om de aanslag in de doofpot te stoppen. Opvarenden van de Liberty werden bedreigd om niet over het incident te spreken. De meeste Amerikanen hebben geen weet van het incident, dat met toestemming van de Amerikanen plaatsvond om later de Syriërs of de Egyptenaren de schuld te kunnen geven. De Amerikaans-Israëlische broederschap gaat veel verder dan de meeste burgers bereid zijn te onderkennen en het is daarom belangrijk om te proberen de manier van denken die bereid is tot het offeren van de eigen soldaten te doorgronden.

Waarom zouden we geloven dat de pleger van de 'aanslag' op Times Square, Faisal Shahzad dat deed in opdracht van de Pakistaanse Taliban – ook al denkt hij dat zelf? Hebben ze hem misschien hun lidkaarten getoond? Of waren deze Taliban misschien eerder van een Pakistaanse organisatie die gesteund werd door de CIA en Israël om Amerikanen te laten denken dat er een Pakistaanse Taliban bestaat die de VS willen aanvallen - allemaal om de Westerse misdaden te rechtvaardigen en de oorlog aan de praat te houden?

Faisal Shahzad simplistische constructie explodeerde niet en dat was ook nooit de bedoeling. Het was zelfs geen bom, slechts enkele jerrycans benzine, een paar gasflessen, wat vuurwerk en de verkeerde soort kunstmest. Volledig onschadelijk, maar zeer deugdelijk om de gemiddelde burger in de VS en Europa de stuipen op het lijf te jagen.

Je kunt geen wereldrijk opbouwen zonder collaborateurs in de bezette gebieden. Ze worden echter makkelijk gevonden, en Faisal Shahzad was er zo een. Net als Mahmoud Abbas, de Sjah van Perzië, Karzai in Afghanistan, Maliki in Irak, Tony Blair en Gordon Brown in Groot-Brittannië en Jan-Peter Balkenende en Maxim Verhagen in Nederland. Naast dergelijke kopstukken is uiteraard de medewerking van het grootste deel van het politieke establishment nodig om militaire bases in de bezette gebieden te kunnen vestigen - zie waar de bijna 800 militaire bases gevestigd zijn en je kent de vazalstaten van het Amerikaanse Rijk.

We krijgen een constante stroom tegenstrijdige berichten van de Amerikanen en onze eigen medeplichtige, onderworpen oorlogsmisdadigers te verwerken: ze gaan zich terugtrekken uit Irak en Afghanistan, maar tegelijkertijd zal het een lange oorlog worden. Het doel van deze onzin is om iedereen iets te geven dat ze kunnen geloven en tegelijkertijd iets om te negeren. Het is geavanceerde psychologie.

Maar goed, het zijn barre tijden en er is zeer dringend behoefte aan eerlijke, oprechte mensen die bereid zijn op te treden om Europa te redden. Europa redden betekent eerst en vooral een terugtrekking van alle Europese troepen uit Azië en niet langer betrokken zijn bij de Amerikaanse misdaden tegen de mensheid. Maar het is niet gemakkelijk. Enkele vazalstaten hebben al mogen ondervinden hoe lastig het is van de Amerikaanse bloedzuigers af te komen. Japan wil af van de Amerikaanse bases op Okinawa, maar de Amerikanen weigeren te vertrekken. Duitsland, Nederland en België willen de Amerikaanse kernwapen van hun grondgebied verwijderd zien. Maar de VS stellen dat dat een NAVO-kwestie is en de inmiddels bekende niet nader genoemde regeringsmedewerkers zeggen dat "individuele staten geen standpunt moeten innemen over unilaterale vraagstukken". Wat moet je dan?

Met de NATO First Act of the United States, zal het virtueel onmogelijk zijn om de Amerikaanse legerbases en de Amerikaanse kernwapens uit Europa te verwijderen, hoezeer Europese landen dat nu of in de toekomst ook zouden willen. Want hoewel de First Act zegt dat op verzoek van Europese landen bases gesloten kunnen worden en kernwapens verwijderd, blijkt in de realiteit dat de VS dat helemaal alleen beslissen. En dat is logisch. Zouden de Romeinen uit Gallië vertrokken zijn op verzoek van de lokale bevolking?

Nu denkt u misschien dat de huidige economische crisis en de situatie in het Midden-Oosten slecht zijn. Fout. Het is nog veel erger. Denk niet dat wat de VS en Israël uitspoken in het Midden-Oosten niet ook in Europa zou kunnen gebeuren. Denk niet dat er geen Europese vredesactivisten naar Guantanamo zullen verdwijnen wanneer het verzet tegen Amerikaanse bases en kernwapens in Europa groeit. Ons Europese politieke establishment collaboreert met de Amerikaanse bezetter en zal u zonder meer uitleveren wanneer Washington daarom vraagt. Uiteraard voelt het niet als een bezetting - zolang we meewerken. Met Amerika onder toenemende (zelf gecreëerde) economische en geopolitieke druk ziet de toekomst voor Europa er even somber uit als de toekomst van de andere gebieden die de VS hebben bezet.

Nu al zien we onze vrijheden ernstig aangetast als het gaat om gevoelige kwesties. Protest tegen oorlogen en kernwapens is ook in Europa nauwelijks nog mogelijk zonder te stuiten op bruut optreden van de overheden c.q. politie. Wie 'The End of America' van Naomi Wolf heeft gelezen weet dat de stap van willekeurig politiegeweld tijdens vreedzame demonstraties zoals we het nu zien, naar een stadion met 7.000 opgesloten tegenstanders van het regime (Pinochet, 1973) niet zo groot is. De bomaanslagen in Irak en Afghanistan zijn dus wellicht niet zo ver weg, en de vraag wie er werkelijk achter zit verdient wel degelijk uw aandacht.

samedi, 13 novembre 2010

How the Left Won the Cold War

How the Left Won the Cold War

 
 
fascist-leftists.jpgThe following address was delivered to the HL Mencken Club's annual meeting in Baltimore, October 22, 2010.
I’m often asked why there is need for an independent or non-aligned Right. Aren’t Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Rich Lowry covering all our bases? Why should we create a movement on the right when FOX and those middle-aged people marching around at Tea Parties with costume-store wigs, are doing our job? Why give ammunition to the Democrats by showing that our side is divided? We should be pulling together so we can pummel Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in next month’s referendum on Obamacare.

Engaging this question fully would require more than a ten-page exposition. Indeed there is no way to address it without being in this instance a Hegelian. It was the great German philosopher Hegel who argued that the true definitions of concepts and movements are necessarily genetic. Such definitions can not be dealt with properly, unless we go back to the origin of what is being defined. A tree is not what it first appears to be, but the history of that object, from the time it was a seedling. So too there is no way to understand where we are at the present time without noticing where we were before. The present state of any institution or movement reflects a dialectical process teeming with strife. It is only when, according to Hegel, conflicting forces can be brought together in a permanent synthesis that the inherent contradictions are resolved. Before that point is reached, the dialectic must go on, as something integral to what is being formed.

My intention is not to belabor you with Hegelian concepts. It is rather to bring up the unfinished dialectic of the right, for understanding why we do not belong to the authorized “conservative movement” and why that movement has become an echo of the Left. Allow me then to start with this generalization. In the second half of the 20th century, the other side, from our perspective, won almost everywhere in the West. But the Left that prevailed was not the gerontocracy and garrison socialism associated with Soviet rule. This Left had little to do with occupation armies in baggy pants, with inefficiently distributed goods and services, and with an arsenal of atomic missiles. The Left that triumphed was a truly radical one, and it celebrated its victories in Western countries that were straining to practice more egalitarian forms of democracy.

Whether the American civil rights movement and its later implications for feminists, gays, transvestites, and illegals, the ascent of antifascism and tiers-mondialisme in France, Italy, Spain and the Lowlands, or the morbid preoccupation of Germans with their undemocratic past and troubling Sonderweg, the post-Communist Left has had a constant task. It seeks to right the wrongs of the past, and specifically those wrongs that are blamed on White Christian, Indo-European civilization.

It may be superfluous to go over here the characteristics of this Left, since most of you are aware of what is being described. I might also recommend my book The Strange Death of European Marxism, which shows how the present Left differs from both Marxism in theory and Communism in practice. This movement is conventionally referred to as cultural Marxism, and it is now at war with anything that is not sufficiently radical in the social sphere. It adherents blame bourgeois society for such evils as “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” and the horrors of Hitler’s Third Reich. This post-Marxist Left appeals to the guilty conscience of the West for having held down everyone else and for not having fought with enough determination against “fascism.”

Though in Europe this Left defends Communist regimes and typically plays down the crimes of Stalin’s Russia, it is not primarily interested in socialism. It is interested above all in reconstructing society, in integrating Western nation states into global organizations and in opening Western countries to Third World immigration and to popularizing non-Christian or non-Judeo-Christian religions. For those who may have noticed, the EU has become a major instrument for this desired social experiment in Europe.

Where this Left overlaps Christian theology is in its stress on guilt and the need for atonement. But the Christian attitudes have been recycled into a replacement theology, one that develops a cult of revolutionary saints and victims, and one that produces a liturgical calendar centered on politically correct remembrance. In this replacement theology victimizing groups are expected to exhibit unconditional atonement toward those considered historical victims.

This post-Marxist Left began to supplant Communism as the major leftist ideology in the West before the fall of the Soviet Empire. Already in the 1960s, a youth culture rejecting bourgeois standards of conduct and in close alliance with anti-colonial Third World revolutionaries, had taken root in Europe. Energy began to flow in the large Communist parties in France and Italy away from traditional party cadres toward young radicals. This rising elite were concerned with combating discrimination against women and immigrants and the marginalization of gays more than they were with the nationalization of productive forces. Although the emerging order became more apparent after the violent demonstrations of the soixante-huitards in Paris in May 1968 and the organization of Red Brigades in Germany and Italy, signs of a changing guard were present before.

In a perceptive work, Sognando la rivoluzione: La sinstra italiana e le origini dei sessantottanti, the Milanese political historian Danilo Breschi shows how Communist youth organizations and workers’ strikes fell into the hands of what the old cadre called “decadent bourgeois adolescents.” While those who showed up for strikes in the 1960s in Turin, Genoa, Milan, Bologna and other cities in the northern industrial belt were self-proclaimed anti-capitalist radicals, recruited from Catholic Action, Trotskyist factions, and ethnic minorities, for the under-30 demonstrators, the real agenda was more ambitious -- but also more feasible. It was a social-cultural transformation to be engineered from above. Longtime advocates of Marxism, like film-maker P.P. Pasolini and Marx-scholar Lucio Colletti, raged against these usurpers, and they called for ousting them from respectable leftist gatherings. Colletti went so far as to call the police to eject these “decadents” from his office; and Pasolini saw their agitation on the Italian Left with growing apprehension and referred to their statements as a “verbal disease.”

This post-Marxist, anti-bourgeois Left had less sympathy for Communist parties than they do for other socialist groups, and they have gotten on particularly well with the Greens. As the Greens shifted their focus from environmentalism to filling Western countries with the Third World poor and with promoting alternative lifestyles, they became indistinguishable from the post-Marxist Left. By the end of the Cold War, Communism in the West had become obsolete because the cultural Marxist Left had taken its place and because this replacement Left was shaping the left side of the political spectrum in western Europe.

The Communist parties in France, Italy, and Germany continued to function as one of several bastions of Cultural Marxism but not usually as its vital center. A similar process unfolded in the Soviet empire more slowly. Under the noses of Communist officials in East Germany, cultural radicals, and most prominently Stasi informant and now head of the German Party of the Democratic Left, Gregor Gysi, were coming into their own. The DDR’s collapse allowed these radicals to join those in the West who were pushing the same antibourgeois projects, namely, gay and feminist rights, harping on fascist dangers, and turning nation states into branches of a global managerial regime.

One might try to challenge the eventual direction of my argument by insisting this has nothing to do with FOX or Glenn Beck. The conservative movement proclaims itself to be anti-leftist. It mocks the glorification of Islam and upholds Western democratic and feminist ideas; and it defends the sovereignty of the American state against international organizations. A well-paid GOP satirist, Mark Steyn, actually derides Europeans and Canadians nonstop for catering to anti-Western fanatics. I could not therefore be suggesting that our official conservatives represent cultural Marxist or liberal Christian quirks.

In fact I am suggesting precisely this view.

And I would make the further point that what separates our authorized right-center from the post-Marxist Left, in Europe and on the American and Canadian Left, is mostly quantitative. While the Left pushes Political Correctness without buts or ifs, the conservative movement expresses it in a less extreme form. But both groups reflect in varying degrees the same general cultural movement. Like our Left and like the dominant ideology in Western Europe, our 30- and 40-some conservative publicists are immersed in a leftist culture. And the result is something that all of them believe things that adults in the 1950s, including Communist sympathizers, would barely have understood.

It would be no exaggeration to say that Sarah Palin, who is an outspoken advocate of anti-discrimination laws for women, is more radical socially than were French and Italian Communist leaders sixty years ago. While old-fashioned CP members favored a centrally controlled economy and rooted for the Soviet side in the Cold War, unlike Sarah, they were not eager to punish sexists. And they didn’t give a hoot about gays, up until the time Communist parties were under siege from the post-Marxist Left. It is inconceivable that Communists of this era would have followed Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, John Podhoretz, the neocon New York Post and the WSJ in affirming government-enforced “gay rights.” Two historians of the post-World War Two Communist movements in France and Italy, Annie Kriegel and Andrea Ragusa, depict a party leadership that belonged, even in spite of itself, to a bourgeois age. They stress the degree to which Communist parties embodied the social attitudes of the pre-Vatican Two Church.

Acceptable critics of the Islamic invasion of Europe like Steyn and Christopher Caldwell are targeting (and this must be noted) a specifically European experiment in multiculturalism. America’s willingness to take in and naturalize just about anybody does not bother these critics; presumably our big tent can hold lots more than we already have. By declaring ourselves to be a “propositional nation” held together by human rights and the belief in universal democratic equality, we are opening our doors to the world, or at least to those in the world who affirm our universalist creed.

I’ve also learned over the last two decades thanks to movement conservative celebrities: that Martin Luther King was acting specifically as a conservative Christian theologian when he spearheaded the civil rights revolution; that gay marriage, properly understood, may be a conservative “family value;” and that we are duty-bound to convert Muslims to our current notion of women’s rights and gay rights. It is precisely these ideas that make us “Western”; and if we truly value the glories of our civilization, which came into existence during some recent phase of late modernity, we should work to spread everywhere our high ideals. Equally relevant, those who have challenged our human rights beliefs, and most outrageously 19th-century counterrevolutionaries were actually “liberals.” Otherwise these mislabeled conservatives would have embraced the American creed of democratic equality!

A striking example of how deeply leftist thought patterns have affected the Right can be discerned in William F. Buckley responses to the attacks in the liberal/neocon press against the “anti-Semites” Joe Sobran and Pat Buchanan. In National Review in December 1991 and March 1992 and in his subsequent In Search of Anti-Semitism, Buckley distinguishes between those who are anti-Semites by conviction and those who are “contextually” anti-Jewish. His key distinction goes back to the Marxist notion of being an “objective reactionary,” meaning someone who challenges the preferences of the Communist Party. Buckley’s argument from context likewise recalls the charge in Europe against those who challenge multiculturalism, as greasing the skids for neo-Nazis.

From this standpoint, it does not matter whether or not one says something that is objectively correct. What counts is not upsetting certain VIPs. In Buckley’s brief, neither the malefactors nor the victims have anything to do with the European Holocaust. The catastrophe is being placed at the doorstep of anyone who allows himself to be intimidated into accepting it. Furthermore, the blame in this instance affects American Christians, who are required to show prescribed sensitivity toward particular American Jews. There are surrogate victims and surrogate victimizers, the first being Buckley’s dinner companions and those journalists who felt outraged, and the second being those who made offending remarks but who had nothing to do with Nazi crimes. Offenders had to be driven off the pages of National Review and out of polite society. They are or were the equivalent of what the Communists used to call “social fascists” and what the European guardians of PC consider “fascistoid.” Such antisocial types are contextually dangerous and therefore must be ostracized lest they do harm.

Note that our two contextual anti-Semites were not abetting violence against Jews, any more than European critics of Muslim immigration or German scholars who question the exclusive blame of their country for every major war are trying to unleash pogroms. They have simply run afoul of certain elite groups, by reopening an inconvenient debate. The conservative movement plays this game by declaring any question it doesn’t want raised forever closed. Such questions now include, among a myriad of other things, objecting in any way to the major congressional legislation of the 1960s.   

 

What did remain in the conservative movement from the 1950s through the 1980s was anti-Communism. American conservatives throughout this period were in favor of resistance to Communist expansion and generally viewed the Soviets as an evil empire. But the movement’s arguments against the evil empire changed over the decades, from defending Western civilization against a godless foe to standing up for global democratic values against a reactionary homophobic Russian enemy.

And these changing reasons for an anti-Soviet stand tell much about the movement’s leftward drift. This drift became a forced march after the neoconservatives ascended to power, and its consequences help explain why there is an independent Right. We more than others have resisted the post-Marxist Left. We remain at war with the cultural and political forces that reshaped the Left in the 1960s; the conservative movement by contrast has made its peace with those forces -- while emphatically denying what has happened.

The authorized conservative movement has worked to blur this truth. The “victory of the West” in the Cold War is placed into an invented series of conservative triumphs, going from Reagan’s “conservative revolution” in the 1980s through the presidency of Bush II. In the Heritage Foundation’s embellishment, even the Clinton presidency belonged to an “ongoing conservative revolution” that began with Reagan and culminated in Dubya’s democratic crusading. Like Reagan and Bush I and II, Clinton supposedly practiced fiscal conservatism and advanced American concepts of human rights, albeit not as effectively as his Republican rivals. There have also been “good” Europeans who aided this conservative march, including an otherwise run-of-the-mill social leftist Tony Blair, who rallied to the Bush administration. Thatcher and Kohl were two other friends, who supported us during the Cold War. The German chancellor Kohl was obsequious enough, that is, “conservative” enough in the current Pickwickian sense, to make sure that his country’s unification would be a passing stage in his country’s merger with an international body. “Conservative” outside the U.S. means going along with neoconservative policies.

 

Movement conservatives have also applied the “C” label to things that have nothing to do with any genuine Right. Democratic equality and moderate feminism are two such preferred values that the conservative movement has claimed for itself. Conservative think-tanks have also reinvented self-described leftists as men and women of the Right. The reinventions of King, Joe Lieberman, and Pat Moynihan as “conservative” heroes all exemplify this practice. And such manipulations have their use. The movement can claim to be doing well, even when the Left triumphs.

Conservative publicists have also reconstructed the 1960s, by divorcing its cultural radicalism from its politics. Although nasty hippies, we are told, fouled the air by not brushing their teeth and by smoking pot, the 1960s also produced legislative reforms that would have pleased Edmund Burke. It was the Civil Rights Act that according to Jonah Goldberg bestowed on our country economic freedom -- for the first time. And the Voting Rights Act was another “conservative” landmark, because thereafter the federal government made sure that all citizens would be able to vote. In fact it kept certain parts of the country under perpetual federal surveillance, lest the Black-voting proportion fell below certain expected turnouts. After all, voting for one or both of our two institutionalized parties is a “conservative” practice. And presumably the more people of different pigmentation vote, the more “conservative” we become. And equally important, the Immigration Reform of 1965 filled the U.S. with a “conservative” Catholic electorate, the benefits (or conservatism) of which have still to be ascertained.

In the 1950s and 1960s conservatives held markedly different views. While they held no brief for those who were occupying university buildings or taking drugs, they were at least equally unhappy with that era’s political reforms. Not even in their wildest dreams could most of them have imagined that such far-reaching attempts at remaking our country attitudinally and ethnically would one day be declared conservative. And I would make the obvious point that one doesn’t have to applaud Jim Crow laws (and I for one don’t) in order to recognize that measures that were taken to end “discrimination” have created a permanent governmental straightjacket from which we’re not likely to extricate ourselves. There was nothing “conservative” about the congressional and bureaucratic measures by which that straightjacket was constructed.

But today’s conservative movement is about preserving the 1960s. It has turned that decade’s transformative legislation into the cornerstone of “conservative” politics. And then there was that other questionable triumph for the Right. Supposedly the collapse of the Soviet Empire belonged to a series of conservative victories in the West, associated with Reagan, Thatcher, and their successors. But the end of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe did not cause the ideological shift that is sometimes ascribed to it. The Soviets left the stage of History after a more radical Left had taken over; and this occurred preeminently in the West, which had never suffered the fate of a Soviet occupation. This replacement Left reshaped Communist organizations long before the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and in its milder form, it determined the general political culture in Western countries, including that of a transformed American Right.

One cannot complete the story of why there is an independent Right without also looking at the big picture. We are part of that picture, as much as those who now oppose us. But unlike those movement conservatives who do know the truth, we are not given to manipulating the facts. In the West, there were no conservative victors in the Cold War; such victors, if they existed, were the renascent nations of Eastern Europe. And even these deserving victors may be threatened with moral defeat, if the Left that has triumphed in the West, including this country, continues to gain ground.

Paul E. Gottfried

Paul E. Gottfried

Paul Gottfried has spent the last thirty years writing books and generating hostility among authorized media-approved conservatives. His most recent work is his autobiography Encounters; and he is currently preparing a long study of Leo Strauss and his disciples. His works sell better in Rumanian, Spanish,Russian and German translations than they do in the original English, and particularly in the Beltway. Until his retirement two years hence, he will continue to be Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, PA.

vendredi, 12 novembre 2010

Russia Is Drying up - Is a US-Climate Weapon Involved?

wheat-field-2.jpg

Russia Is Drying up – Is a US-Climate Weapon Involved?

Ex: http://www.currentconcerns.ch/

The Russian economy is expecting enormous losses because of the immeasurable heat that is raging in the central territories of Russia.
About 20% of all crops have been destroyed. In winter this may lead to a rise in prices. Moscow is enveloped in dark smoke that has been caused by fires raging in those territories. The prognoses of experts do not make it better. Droughts, severe storms and inundations will take place more frequently and will become more extreme.
Alexei Kokorin, head of the program “Climate and Economy in the Sector of Energy”, initiated by the ecologic foundation WWF,  declared that this tendency (drought) is not an accident and will recur.”1
“The declaration of the WWF speakers shows which direction the development of the climate is going to take. Nevertheless it is not a question of “global climatic warming” which is a subject discussed in many debates, i.e. scientific debates and pseudoscientific debates.2 The theory of “global climatic warming” has still to be proved, but the exceptional heat (which has broken out in Russia and in some neighboring territories) could have reasons that are neither natural nor scientific.
As early as in the seventies, the question of weather regulation (as one form of social regulation) has been raised  by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book “Between Two Ages”. Of course, this classic author of American geopolitics had to reflect on the probability of how not only social, but also geo-politic systems are to be influenced by the climate. Other experts, too, seized this theme, even if information on the development of climatic weapons and the tests being conducted will probably never be published.
In 2000, Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economy at the University of Ottawa (Canada), wrote that a partial climatic change could be the result of the application of a new generation of “non-lethal weapons.” For several years Americans have been searching for opportunities to regulate the climate in various regions in the world. Such a technology is being developed in the framework of the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP)3 and might be the cause of phenomena as for example droughts, hurricanes, and floods.
From a military perspective, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, an instrument serving to destabilize the agriculture and ecologic systems of certain regions.4 The technical basis of that program is an electromagnetic system which is built from 360 radio transmitters and 180 antennas whereof all are 22 meters high. The system  is designed to explore processes within the ionosphere.5
The station that radiates 3600 kilowatt into the sky, is the strongest installation world-wide to influence the global ionosphere.6
The program was started in 1990 and is financed by the Office of Naval Research and by the research laboratory of the US Air Force. Moreover, several important universities are participating.
All that prepared the ground for the breeding of rumours and presumptions. You may also laugh at the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez who attributed the earthquake in Haiti to HAARP (http://fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2755), but similar rumors were brought forward after the earthquake in the Chinese province of Sichuan in 2008. Moreover, there are several indications pointing to the  American  program  for climate changes as being systematic in some countries and even partially concerning the universe.

2902246885_small_1.jpgThus, for example, the American pilotless space machine X-37B was sent into the orbit with laser weapons on board, according to certain sources of information. The “New York Times” wrote that this news was vehemently denied by the Pentagon whose experts conceded that the machine was in fact actually designed for promoting military operations and for doing “subsidiary jobs”. 7 X-37­B had already been built in 1999 within the framework of a NASA program. Since 2006 the US Air Force has been dealing with this program, but its budget and its aims are strictly confidential.    •
Author: Dr Andrei Areschev is an expert working for the Foundation for Strategic Culture.
The opinion of the author does not need to correspond to that of Ria Novosti.
Source : RIA Novosti 30/7/2010, www. interaffairs.ru/read.php ?item=231      
1    Odnako. – 2010, No 28., p. 33.
2    For details concerning the Wildlife Foundation, see: www.globoscope.ru/content/articles/2892/
3    Program site: www.haarp.alaska.edu/. The HAARP station is located in Alaska, 250 km north-east of Ankoridge.
4    Chossudovsky M. Washington’s New World Order Weapons Can Trigger Climate Change www.mindfully.org/Air/Climate-Change-Weapons.htm
5    www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/gen.html
6    www.kp.ru/daily/24494/648410/
7    Surveillance Suspected as Spacecraft’s Main Role. By William J. Broad, www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/science/space/23secret.html?_r...
8    The Times claimed that the secret unmanned vehicle might be testing laser weapons: www.newsru.com/world/24may2010/kosmorazvedhtml
www.fondsk.ru

samedi, 06 novembre 2010

Ezra Pound and the Occult

PoundNoelStock.jpgEzra Pound and the Occult
 

Brian Ballentine

In 1907, when Ezra Pound was still teaching Romance languages at Wabash
College in Indiana, he completed the poem "In Durance":

I am homesick after mine own kind
And ordinary people touch me not.
Yea, I am homesick
After mine own kind that know, and feel
And have some breath for beauty and the arts (King 86).

Pound left America and its "ordinary people" behind for Europe shortly after. When he arrived in London in 1908, Pound wasted no time becoming a part of the community of writers which he considered his "own kind." He was quickly running among the more prestigious of London’s literary society including members from the Rhymer’s Club and W. B. Yeats’s publisher Elkin Mathews. Of course, it was Yeats’s association that Pound truly desired and successfully sought out. In Poetry 1, Pound begins his "Status Rerum" by declaring that he found "Mr. Yeats the only poet worthy of serious study" (123). Pound would eventually be content to condense his esoteric community of cutting edge writers down to two men: himself and Yeats. In 1913 he wrote Harriet Monroe proclaiming that London’s writers are divided into two groups: "Yeats and I in one class, and everybody else in the other" ("Status Rerum" 123).When Pound first met Yeats, the older poet was heavily involved and experimenting with theurgy, or magic, that is performed with the aid of beneficent spirits. This form of occult study was not at all of interest to Pound. Shortly after their introduction, it was arranged for Pound to serve as Yeats’s "secretary" at the winter retreat Stone Cottage. Not trying to hide his skepticism , Pound wrote this letter to his mother just prior to his first winter with Yeats at Stone Cottage:

My stay at Stone Cottage will not be in the least profitable. I detest
the country. Yeats will amuse me part of the time and bore me to
death with psychical research the rest. I regard the visit as a duty to
posterity (Paige 25).

The purpose of this research is to expose the various types of occultism that were prevalent during Pound's life and determine what elements of the occult he subscribed to. Although there are signs of an occult influence all the way through his later writing, Pound’s own stance on the occult is difficult to pin down. Pound’s own belief in the occult was one that was constantly being rethought and revised. There are moments when Pound was on the brink of exploration into Yeats’s world of spirits as well as moments when he was ready to abandon the occult altogether. Pound’s exploration of "retro-cognition," his revitalization
of the Greek idea of the "phantastikon," his pursuit of gnosis or what he termed a "crystal" state, and his associations with some of
London’s premiere occultists provide evidence for the former. The latter is demonstrated in his revisions on the original 1917 Three Cantos and his apparent desire to be disassociated with the "pseudo-sciences" of the occult. Much of the occult element that dominated the original publication has been edited entirely out of the final and existing copy. In any case, much of Pound’s writing is indebted to an occult influence and it will be explored in this paper.

In his essay "Ezra Pound’s Occult Education," Demetres Tryphonopoulos warns other critics not to view Pound’s skeptical letter to his mother as a rejection towards all forms of the occult. He states that "it is only theurgy and spiritualism that Pound rejects" (76). These "pseudo-sciences" are what Tryphonopoulos believes to be "the areas of human interest which many true occultists would reject as involving the degradation of humanity" ("Occult Education" 74). Yeats’s other interests in astrology and numerology, both of which were popular in the early twentieth century, are also included among the "pseudo-sciences." Occult studies such as gnosticism and theosophy are understood as legitimate pursuits by scholars like Tryphonopoulos. Gnosis, an esoteric form of knowledge that made possible the direct awareness of the Divine, was one of Pound’s major interests with the occult. James Longenbach argues that Pound labored over creating a "priest-like status" for himself and his work (92). The quest for becoming as close to God as possible led Pound on a long exploration of occult texts. According to Walter Baumann, Pound’s quest drove him to "provide further ingredients for [his] own vision of Paradise" (311). These esoteric components or "ingredients" then become the source of much difficulty in understanding Pound’s work. To date only a few scholars have made the occult element in Pound’s work more accessible and in the past only people "deeply steeped in occult literature" could successfully navigate his writing (Baumann 318). Pound never came so far around as to accept Yeats’s interests in what he considered less useful facets of the occult, but he would humor Yeats. The older poet was also interested in astrology and asked Pound for his birth date so he could determine his horoscope. In a letter to Dorothy Shakespear Pound exclaimed:

The Eagle [Yeats] is welcomed to my dashed horoscope tho’ I
think Horace was on the better track when he wrote
"Tu ne quaesaris, scire nefas, quem
mihi quem tibi
Finem dii dederunt" (Litz 113).
[Ask not, we cannot know, what ends the gods have set for me, for thee]

Despite Pound’s show of pessimism, he provided Yeats with all of the necessary information, which included writing a letter to his mother for the exact time of his birth. He told his mother that "half a million people, some of them intelligent, who still believe in the possibility of planetary influences . . . When astrology is taken hold of systematically by modern science there will be some sort of discoveries. In the meantime there is no reason why one should not indulge in private experiment and investigation (Paige 152).A subject of particular interest to both men is something that psychologists today have termed "retro-cognition." Yeats, Pound and the rest of England received their introduction to this phenomenon when Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain published An Adventure in 1911. On August 10, 1901 the two women claimed to have been strolling through the Versailles gardens and found themselves transported back into the eighteenth century. Apparently, neither of them had realized what had occurred at the time but recounted the experience in a narrative:

We walked briskly forward, talking as before, but from the moment we left the lane an
extraordinary depression had come over me. . . In front of us was a wood, within which,
and overshadowed by trees, was a light garden kiosk, circular and like a small bandstand,
by which a man was sitting. There was no greensward, but the ground was covered by
rough grass and dead leaves as in a wood. The place was so shut that we could not see
beyond it. Everything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant; even the trees
behind the building seemed to have become flat and lifeless, like a wood worked in a
tapestry (41).

Ten years of research in the French National Archives led them to believe that all the things they saw that day existed not in 1901 but in 1789. Also, they determined the person Moberly saw by the terrace, who is referred to as a "man" in the narrative, to be Marie Antoinette (Longenbach 222-23).Shortly after the publication of An Adventure, Yeats completed two essays for Lady Gregory’s Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland. In his essays, Yeats references An Adventure, making it highly probable that the two men had possession of the book during the Stone Cottage years if not sooner. An Adventure became an important beginning for the work of Pound and how the artist can relate to the spirit of his ancestors. The key to these relations with the past is the soul. Pound borrowed from a lot of different sources to derive his own theories on the human soul. He used Cicero’s idea of the "immortality of the soul" in De Senectute (Longenbach 222-23).He also borrowed from Plato and the Phaedrus in the Spirit of Romance: "And this is the recollection of those things which our souls saw when in company with God-when looking down from above on that which we now call being, and upward toward the true being" (140-41). Pound himself claimed to have had two experiences with retrocognition which were extremely important to him. As Longenbach writes, "Pound’s poetic goal was the cultivation of ‘adventures,’ the soul’s visionary memories of the paradise or the past it once knew" (229).Pound recounts his own experiences with retrocognition in an essay on Arnold Dolmetsch published in 1914. "So I had two sets of adventures. First, I perceived a sound which was undoubtedly derived from the Gods, and then I found myself in a reconstructed century- in a century of music, back before Mozart or Purcell, listening to clear music, to tones clear as brown amber" (Eliot 433). Pound was drawing on or participating in what he determined to be the soul’s eternal memory. His essay begins with a description of his first adventure:

I have seen the God Pan and it was in this manner: I heard a bewildering and pervasive music moving from precision to precision within itself. Then I heard a different music, hollow and laughing. Then I looked up and saw two eyes like the eyes of a wood- creature peering at me over a brown tube of wood. Then someone said: Yes, once I was playing a fiddle in the forest and I walked into a wasps’ nest. Comparing these things with what I can read of the Earliest and best authenticated appearances of Pan, I can but conclude that they relate to similar experiences. It is true that I found myself later in a room covered with pictures of what we now call ancient instruments, and that when I picked up the brown tube of wood I found that it had ivory rings upon it. And no proper reed has ivory rings on it, by nature. . . .Our only measure of truth is, however, our own perception of truth. The undeniable tradition of metamorphoses teaches us that things do not remain always the same. They become other things by swift and unanalysable process (Eliot 431).

Pound’s own understanding of truth and what he perceived to be his reality are bold advancements from what was presented in the original An Adventure. The visionary’s experience becomes the sole measure of reality and therefore Pound’s encounter with Dolmetsch as Pan becomes factual. In his essay, "Psychology and Troubadours," Pound draws a parallel between himself and early visionaries who had no way of differentiating imaginary visions from a "real" environment: "These things are for them real" (Spirit of Romance 93). Also, although Pound’s adventures and experiences cannot technically be affirmed in any way, they "stand in a long tradition of similar experiences recorded in the literature of folklore, mythology, and the occult" (Longenbach 230). In the essay on Dolmetsch, Pound works to place himself in this tradition when he writes: "When any man is able, by a pattern of notes or by an arrangement of planes or colours, to throw us back into the age of truth, everyone who has been cast back into that age of truth for one instant gives honour to the spell which has worked, to the witch-work or the art-work, or whatever you like to call it" (Eliot 432). Like Moberly and Jourdain, who had peered into the past and subsequently took ten years to write about it, Pound was wrestling with putting his visions into poetry. The "arrangement of planes or colours," the "art-work" which "throws us back into the age of truth" is what Pound wanted to create with the early Cantos. Pound began writing the first of the Cantos around 1910 but did not pursue them in earnest until 1915. It was during this time that Pound is documented in his letters as having read Robert Browning’s poem "Sordello" out loud to Yeats at Stone Cottage. Although Pound had read the poem before, it was not until he read it to Yeats that "Sordello" became a major influence. He praises the poem in a letter to his father on December 18, 1915: "It is probably the greatest poem in English. Certainly the best long poem since Chaucer. You’ll have to read it sometime as my big long endless poem that I am now struggling with starts out with a barrel full of allusions to ‘Sordello’" (Bornstein 119-20). However, the original support Pound relied on from Browning would soon be replaced with occult references. In the June, July and August 1917 edition of Poetry Magazine, Pound published his Three Cantos. These three were supposed to be the beginning of his existing long work The Cantos. Even after the highly positive review of Browning’s poem to his father, Pound would have nothing to do with Browning’s style. The original opening, which served more or less as a dialogue with Browning, is deceiving. Pound makes no effort to sustain Browning’s technique through his poem. It does not function in a lyric mode, rather it is an "apologia for the lyric mood" (Nassar 12). Pound began to question Browning’s elaborate metaphor for the stage and his character’s acting on it. Pound did not hide his "aesthetic and philosophic problems" (Nassar 13) that he had with Browning when he wrote:

. . . what were the use
Of setting figures up and breathing life upon them,
Were’t not our life, your life, my life extended?
I walk
Verona. (I am here in England.)
I see Can Grande. (Can see whom you will.)
You had one whole man?
And I have many fragments, less worth? Less worth?
Ah, had you quit my age, quit such a beastly age and
cantankerous age?
You had some basis, had some set belief (Poetry, June 1917, 115).

As if to answer his own question, and provide Browning with proper examples, Pound continued with passages in the mode of An Adventure. The only way to contain the "beastly and cantankerous age" in which one lived was to tap into the past as Moberly and Jordain had done.

Sweet lie!-Was I there truly? . . .
Let’s believe it . . .
No, take it all for lies
I have but smelt this life, a wiff of it-
. . . And shall I claim;
Confuse my own phantastikon,
Or say the filmy shell that circumscribes me
Contains the actual sun;
confuse the thing I see
With actual gods behind me?
Are they gods behind me?
How many worlds we have! If Botticelli
Brings her ashore on that great cockle-shell-
His Venus (Simonetta?),
And Spring and Aufidus fill the air
With their clear outlined blossoms?
World enough.
(Poetry, June 1917, 120-21)

 

Eugene Nassar claims that Pound demonstrated the "mind circumscribed by its diaphanous film-its limits-[which] imagines gods when in the presence of beauty . . . The mind as ‘phantastikon’ may be intuiting transcendent truths" (12). Pound wrestled with the "truth" about his occult link to the past in his revisions on Three Cantos all the way up until its republication in 1925. The once long opening addressed to Browning was reduced to the opening four lines of Canto II:

Hang it all, Robert Browning,
There can be but the one Sordello.
But Sordello and my Sordello?
Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana" (6).

Following the address to Browning, Pound presents his vision of his characters or in this case "Ghosts" that "move about me / Patched with histories" (Poetry 116). There is no need for Pound to go "setting up figures and breathing life into them" because his characters were already part of a living past. Pound’s "fragments" are in fact not "less worth" because together they form a more complete whole than Browning’s characters. Pound sees these apparitions hovering over the water at Lake Garda. As with his Imagist poetry, these early portions of the Cantos reflect Pound’s attention to presenting the clearest possible picture of his experience:

And the place is full of spirits.
Not lemures, not dark and shadowy ghosts,
But the ancient living, wood white,
Smooth as the inner bark, and firm of aspect,
And all agleam with colors-no, not agleam,
But colored like the lake and like the olive leaves (Poetry June 1917, 116).

 

Pound used specific people and places, such as Lake Garda, to set up a desired historical backdrop. Often with Pound, the more oblique source was championed. The names are obscure and esoteric, leaving "ordinary people" in the dark just as Pound intended. Pound’s references to antiquated places, his use of foreign language, all in addition to his occult content, contribute to a higher level of difficulty in his poetry:

‘Tis the first light-not half light-Panisks
And oak-girls and the Maenads
Have all the wood. Our olive Sirmio
Lies in its burnished mirror, and the Mounts Balde and Riva
Are alive with song, and all the leaves are full of voices (Poetry June 1917,118).

 

The visionary experiences that Pound recreates in the Three Cantos are matched with these areas to "emphasize their origin in the meeting of a particular consciousness with a particular place" (Longenbach 232). This association was a technique that Pound had already begun experimenting with in some of his writing such as "Provincia Deserta." Yeats put it into his own words in a portion of his prose piece Per Amica Silentia Lunae: "Spiritism . . . will have it that we may see at certain roads and in certain houses old murders acted over again, and in certain fields dead huntsmen riding with horse and hound, or in ancient armies fighting above bones or ashes" (354). The spirits that haunt Pound’s Cantos are ones which he spent much time excavating from history during his reading at Stone Cottage. Also, Pound used specific names and places from his research to create a sense of locality. In the first Canto it was places such as Sirmio, and in the second there were others such as the Dordogne valley in France:

So the murk opens.
Dordogne! When I was there,
There came a centaur, spying the land,
And there were nymphs behind him.
Or going on the road by
Salisbury
Procession on procession-
For that road was full of peoples,
Ancient in various days, long years between them.
Ply over ply of life still wraps the earth here.
Catch at Dordoigne (Poetry July 1917, 182).

At the same time that Pound was struggling with the original Three Cantos, Yeats was preparing his own take on An Adventure. The older poet was busy formulating what he called the "doctrine of the mask" (Autobiography 102). According to Yeats, this doctrine "which has convinced [him] that every passionate man . . . is, as it were, linked with another age, historical or imaginary, where alone he finds images that rouse his energy" (Autobiography 102). Yeats’s link to the past came in a voice which he claimed to have heard for awhile but ignored. The voice even provided him with information leading to its identity. Yeats discovered that he was communicating with a Cordovan Moor named Leo Africanus. However, he did not take Leo seriously until a seance conducted on July 20, 1915. After the seance, Yeats began to consider the possibility of an anti-self existing from another period of time. Communication with this opposite personality would lead to a more complete existence as well as a better understanding of the self. Yeats began writing letters to Leo and in turn would write letters back to himself believing that Leo’s intentions could be conveyed through him. Now that Yeat’s theory had advanced to a stage where his opposite existed in another century, his idea advanced from one that was grounded in psychology to a theory that had just as much to do with history (Longenbach 190-91). There is no documented proof of Pound ever participating in one of Yeats’s seances. Despite Pound’s lack of involvement, it is impossible to overlook the parallels between the two poets work at the time. Pound was using his own ghosts and their historical associations in his early Cantos. In his final winter at Stone Cottage, Pound took interest in the seventeenth-century Neo-Platonic occult philosopher John Heydon. In 1662, Heydon published his Holy Guide. Although Pound enthusiastically read Heydon’s book, he presented a mixed image of him with Heydon’s debut in the original Three Cantos . In the final version of the original Three Cantos III, Pound introduces Heydon in a fashion that is somewhere between mockery and praise:

Another’s a half-cracked fellow-John Heydon,
Worker of miracles, dealer in levitation,
In thoughts upon pure form, in alchemy,
Seer of pretty visions (‘servant of God and secretary of nature’);
Full of a plaintive charm, like Botticelli’s,
With half-transparent forms, lacking the vigor of gods. . .
Take the old way, say I met John Heydon,
Sought out the place,
Lay on the bank, was ‘plunged deep in the swevyn;’
And saw the company-Layamon, Chaucer-
Pass each his appropriate robes; (Poetry Aug, 1917, 248)

 

Walter Bauman refers to Heydon as Pound’s "spiritual brother" (314). Despite the not-so flattering introduction of Heydon, Pound would appear to agree with Bauman. One possible explanation for Pound’s harsher opening remarks on Heydon could be that many people of Heydon’s own time did not think highly of his work. To many, Heydon was simply "a charlatan trifling with occult lore" (Bauman 306). In any case, Pound seems to make a point of acknowledging Heydon’s uncertain past before citing him as a credible source. Pound begins to spell out exactly what one could obtain by reading Heydon in a section of his prose piece Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir. In section 16, Pound writes positively about artists like Brzeska, Wyndham Lewis and Jacob Epstein who were on the forefront of the new movement Vorticism. Here he discusses the power a work of art can have:

A clavicord or a statue or a poem, wrought out of ages of knowledge, out of fine perception and skill, that some other man, that a hundred other men, in moments of weariness can wake beautiful sound with little effort, that they can be carried out of the realm of annoyance into the realm of truth, into the world unchanging, the world of fine animal life, the world of pure form. And John Heydon, long before our present day theorists, had written of the joys of pure form . . . inorganic, geometrical form, in his "Holy Guide" (157).

 

Pound also closes the section with a final reminder to read "John Heydon’s ‘Holy Guide’ for numerous remarks on pure form and the delights thereof" (Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir 167). There are several facets of the occult found in Pound’s memoir. He infers that the perfect work of art is layered with history. It is hundreds of years and hundreds of men in the making. The "realm of truth" is reached when the mind, as Nassar previously described it, has the ability to imagine "gods when in the presence of beauty." The "transcendent truths," that are a conglomeration of the past, can then be tapped as a source for the pure form Pound is describing (Nassar 12).Much of Pound’s desire for a pure truth goes hand in hand with his quest to be close to the Divine and obtain his "priest-like status." His use of Heydon becomes clearer as one reads that Heydon pondered questions such as "if God would give you leave and power to ascend to those high places, I meane to these heavenly thoughts and studies (Heydon 26). Pound borrows almost verbatim from Heydon and then cites him in "Canto 91":

to ascend those high places
wrote Heydon
stirring and changeable
‘light fighting for speed’ (76).

Heydon continues stating that people involved with studies such as his should realize that "their riches ought to be imployed in their own service, that is, to win Wisdome" (31). This "Wisdome" was something Pound wanted to make certain the masses or the "ordinary people" would not be privy to. It was exactly the divine wisdom, or gnosis, that Pound was in search of. Pound was asking the same questions and desiring the same answers that Heydon was asking hundreds of years earlier: "let us know first, that the minde of man being come from that high City of Heaven" (33). With these overt connections to Heydon, Pound’s opening remarks on him as a "half-cracked fellow" remain puzzling. Again, it is likely that Pound was initially shy about such overt references to a less-than-favorable occultist just as he was with some of Yeats’s mysticism. As it turns out, the title "Secretary of Nature" was actually Heydon’s and was printed on the title page of Holy Guide. Pound was respectful enough to include the title. Also in the Cantos, Heydon is in the company of men such as Ocellus, Erigena, Mencius and Apollonius. Pound appears to have thought much higher of Heydon than his opening remarks lead a reader to believe. In total, over half a dozen quotes are taken from Heydon’s work adding to the "crystal clear" quality of Pound’s Cantos (Davie 224).

 

From the green deep
he saw it,
in the green deep of an eye:
Crystal waves weaving together toward the gt/healing
Light compenetrans of the spirits
The Princess Ra-Set has climbed
to the great knees of stone,
She enters protection,
the great cloud is about her,
She has entered the protection of crystal . . .
Light & the flowing crystal
never gin in cut glass had such clarity
That Drake saw the splendour and wreckage
in that clarity
Gods moving in crystal
(Canto 91, 611)

 

In this selection, the "Pricess Ra-Set" has completed a journey that has allowed a metamorphosis to take place about her. The crystal which has encompassed her represents Heydon’s "pure form" that Pound was himself searching for. Inside this crystal protection "gods are manifest, whatever their ontological status outside" (Nassar 110). Pound’s metaphor shows up in several places. In "Canto 92," Pound describes "a great river" with the "ghosts dipping in crystal" (619). Also, in "Canto 91," Pound wrote:

"Ghosts dip in crystal,
adorned"
. . . A lost kind of experience?
scarcely,
Queen Cytherea,
che ‘l terzo ciel movete
[who give motion to the third heaven]

 

Pound already knew the answer to his own question about experience when he asked it. Crystal was chosen not only for its clarity to represent the pureness of form but it is hard and durable as well. The experience was not lost in the protection of this divine state that is the "crystal."

There are several individuals who were contemporaries of Pound that had a large influences on Pound and exposed him to their own ideas about the occult. People such as Yeats, A. R. Orage, Allen Upward, Dorothy Shakespear, and Olivia Shakespear all had their own occult interests. However, the largest occult influence on Pound, even greater than that of Yeats, was G. R. S. Mead. Mead became a member of Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society in 1884. In 1889 he was Blavatsky’s private secretary and kept that position until her death in 1891. He served as the society’s editor for their monthly magazine but branched off and quit the society altogether in 1909. Blavatsky’s writings and practices aligned themselves more with the "pseudo-sciences" that Pound would not have approved of. Oddly enough, in Mead’s essay "‘The Quest’ - Old and New:

Retrospect and Prospect," he apparently does approve of Blavatsky’s ways either:I had never, even while a member, preached the Mahatma - gospel of H. P. B. [Blavatsky], or propagandized Neo-theosophy and its revelations. I had believed that "theosophy" proper meant the wisdom-element in the great religions and philosophies of the world (The Quest 296-97).

This passage represents thinking that was in line with Pound’s ideas on gnosis and his own pursuit of wisdom. Mead is considered by some to be "the best scholar the Theosophical Society ever produced" (Godwin 245).Pound’s assessment of what he experienced in his visionary episodes as well as his readings was heavily influenced by the writings and teachings of Mead. Pound met him at one of Yeats’s "Monday Evenings" at 18 Woburn Building in London which Mead regularly attended. On October 21, 1911, Pound wrote to his parents: "I’ve met and enjoyed Mead, who’s done so much research on primitive mysticism - that I’ve written you at least four times." [1] In another letter to his parents dated February 12, 1912, Pound praises Mead writing: "G. R. S. Mead is about as interesting - along his own line - as anyone I meet"(Beinecke 238). In a letter to his mother dated September 17, 1911, Pound relays that Mead had asked him to write a publishable lecture. Pound discusses the task with his more skeptical side of the occult: "I have spent the evening with G. R. S. Mead, edtr. of The Quest, who wants me to throw a lecture for his society which he can afterwards print. ‘Troubadour Psychology,’ whatever the dooce that is" (Beinecke 223). Pound did go on to give the lecture which gave birth to his essay "Psychology and the Troubadours." In this essay Pound wrote that "Greek myth arose when someone having passed through delightful psychic experience tried to communicate it to others" (92). Again Pound was referring to an occult "adventure" similar to that of Moberly and Jourdain. Once an individual has undergone this event "the resulting symbol is perfectly clear and intelligible" (Longenbach 91). Pound also endeavors to explain further his idea of the Greek "phantastikon." According to Pound, "the consciousness of some seems to rest, or to have its center more properly, in what the Greek psychologists called the phantastikon. Their minds are, that is, circumvolved about them like soap-bubbles reflecting sundry patches of the macrocosmos" (92). In April of 1913, Pound wrote a letter to Harriet Monroe attempting to clarify this element of his essay: "It is what Imagination really meant before the term was debased presumably by the Miltonists, tho’ probably before them. It has to do with the seeing of visions."

Pound’s phantastikon became his link to tapping into the purest form of "real symbolism." Dorothy Shakespear requested that Pound explain to her the difference between this symbolism and aesthetic or literary symbolism. He wrote her stating:

 

There’s a dictionary of symbols, but I think it immoral. I mean that I think a superficial acquaintance with the sort of shallow, conventional, or attributed meaning of a lot of symbols weakens - damnably, the power of receiving an energized symbol. I mean a symbol appearing in a vision has a certain richness and power of energizing joy - whereas if the supposed meaning of the symbol is familiar it has no more force, or interest of power of suggestion than any other word, or than a synonym in some other language (Pound/Shakespear 302).

 

Of course, the ability to perceive these symbols was not within the reach of everyone. It was only for those who have set sail in the pursuit of higher wisdom. Those in pursuit of gnosis "possess the key to the mysteries of its symbolism and establish themselves as priests - divinely inspired interpreters to whom the uninitiated public must turn for knowledge" (Longenbach 91). From here, the possibilities are endless according to Pound:

"All is within us", purgatory and hell,
Seeds full of will, the white of the inner bark
the rich and the smooth colours,
the foreknowledge of trees,
sense of the blade in seed, to each its pattern.
Germinal, active, latent, full of will,
Later to leap and soar,
willess, serene,
Oh one could change it easy enough in talk.
And no one vision will suit all of us.

Say I have sat then, the low point of the cone,
hollow and reaching out beyond the stars,
reaches and depth, the massive parapets,
Walls whereon chariots went by four abreast (Longenbach 237).

Pound made it a habit to not only read Mead’s article’s and books but he also religiously attended his lectures outside the "Monday Evenings." In another letter to his parents he wrote: "I’m going out to Mead’s lecture. And so on as usual. This being Tuesday" (Beinecke 271). From these readings and lectures, Pound most likely got his inspiration for the beginning of his revised Cantos:

the passing into the realms of the dead, while living, refers to the initiation of the soul of the candidate into the states of after- death consciousness, while his body was left in a trance. The successful passing through these states of consciousness removed the fear of death, by giving the candidate an all sufficing proof of the immortality of the soul and of its consanguinity with the gods (Taylor 319).

The "initiation" process of the soul was one that Pound decided must begin his entire Cantos. "Canto 1" starts with: "And then went down . . ." which initiates a descent that is the beginning of this journey (3). Pound made it clear in "Canto 1" that the Odysseus figure was alive during his descent just as Mead required the figure to be "living." Also, in a blatant attempt to achieve the "consanguinity with the gods," Pound’s character drank the blood of the sheep that was sacrificed to them.

The process that Pound is discussing is palingenesis, or the birth and the growth of the soul. The ultimate goal of the entire process, as Pound saw it, was "the expansion of the initiand’s consciousness into a state where he awakes to his relationship with the gods, and participates in their world" (Celestial Tradition 107). At this initial stage the initiate knows nothing except that he is on a quest for gnosis. As Pound wrote in Canto 47: "Knowledge the shade of a shade, / Yet must thou sail after knowledge / Knowing less than drugged beasts" (30).

The completion of the journey is the passage into what was previously described as "the crystal." This stage is the graduation from the ephemeral world of man to the realm of the gods. The soul has passed "from fire" of the "Kimmerian lands" of "Canto 1" "to crystal / via the body of light" (Canto 91,61). Pound put it much more bluntly when he stated that one must "bust thru" to this realm of understanding but he made his point (Celestial Tradition 107). Although he makes references to the exceptions, Tryphonopoulos contends that "Scholarly comment on Pound’s relation to the occult is virtually nonexistent" ("Occult Education" 75). The difficulty in analyzing Pound’s occult studies is that his reading and influences are so vast. From his amassed material Pound would piece together a detailed mosaic. This method provided a coherence for his presentation. In this fashion, structure begins to surface in even his most dense work The Cantos. Tryphonopoulos understands The Cantos to be a "collection of fragments gathered according to a predetermined plan for the purpose of validating the author’s original value system" (1). Pound seems to be speaking of this in the very late "Canto 110" when he writes: "From times wreckage shored / these fragments shored against ruin" (781). These elements pulled from the rubble of history and which Pound tiles together are what make the picture complete.