Civil War in Ukraine: Western Empire vs Russia

In the latest episode of RT's CrossTalk, we have professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen as guests. I thought that the discussion was very good. Both professors seem very knowledgeable and open minded. It would be interesting to have them as guests on SOTT radio.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9674pRBm6g&sns=em

Aragorn said:

In the latest episode of RT's CrossTalk, we have professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen as guests. I thought that the discussion was very good. Both professors seem very knowledgeable and open minded. It would be interesting to have them as guests on SOTT radio.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9674pRBm6g&sns=em

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This was very good, thank you!

What I found interesting is that they came close in the discussion to describing Pathocracy, when for example they said that Washington lives "in another reality" or that they are trying to shape "the world in their image". Will RT and their guests make the "psychological connection" at some point?

luc said:

axj said:

The aversion of Germans towards strong leaders because of recent history is a somewhat unique case, I think. And I'm not sure if it's completely true. There was Schroeder who stood up to Bush and did not join the Iraq war, for example. Also, looking at the "long-reigning" Merkel and Kohl before, maybe stability is what people in Germany look first and foremost for in a strong leader?

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Well, with Schroeder, I think this was just a show to ensure his victory in the upcoming elections. What were the consequences of his not joining the Iraq-war? Nothing. In fact, Germany supported it with logistics in a hidden way... My interpretation is that the PTB just needed Schroeder in power for him to "enforce" the cruel and brutal "Agenda 2010" to cripple social welfare and instill a neo-liberal agenda. This was more important to the PTB than the irrelevant "moral support" for Bush...

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I think Schroeder is a genuinely positive influence in politics, overall. Looking at how he just celebrated his 70th birthday with Putin in St. Petersburg and all the German media going nuts about it - this is just priceless. Also, not joining the Iraq war was more than not giving "moral support" to Bush, it meant that German soldiers were out of harms way - which is a huge thing, in my opinion.

You're probably right that his role in reducing the welfare state was questionable at best. However, it seems that those reforms were what got the German unemployment significantly down and the economy up again for years to come. Was it worth the cost of reducing the welfare state? I am undecided on this. Without the reforms and with the economy going down, the end result might have been even worse for even more people.

I've just finished Gustav Le Bon's "The Crowd: Study of the Popular Mind" and it sure explains a lot of things we are seeing. It also seems obvious that there are parts of it that influenced Political Ponerology. Definitely worth reading and studying, though as yet, I have no ideas as to how humans can get out of the mess they are in considering the way they are made and how easily they are played as this book reveals.

An interesting argument on why the sanctions against Russia are and will remain intentionally ineffective:

Intentionally Ineffective Sanctions

The United States doesn't want to threaten regime survival in a country with massive military power. Nor does it want to engage in an action that would trigger an invasion of Ukraine and force the United States to either back away or join a war it is unprepared for. It also will try to avoid mistakenly seizing U.S. and European assets -- assets deployed by Russia deliberately to bait Washington into making just such a mistake.

The Obama administration has a final major reason to avoid effective sanctions. If someone had said a year ago that U.S.-Russian relations would reach the present point, they would have been laughed at, something I can attest to. Foreign investment is a major component of the U.S. economy, and distinguished political leaders are an excellent source of capital. If you are the leader of China, Saudi Arabia or India, all of which have problems with the United States that could conceivably mushroom, you might think twice before investing your money in the United States. And there are more countries than those four that have potential conflicts with the United States.

The U.S. sanctions strategy is therefore not designed to change Russian policies; it is designed to make it look like the United States is trying to change Russian policy. And it is aimed at those in Congress who have made this a major issue and at those parts of the State Department that want to orient U.S. national security policy around the issue of human rights. Both can be told that something is being done -- and both can pretend that something is being done -- when in fact nothing can be done. In a world clamoring for action, prudent leaders sometimes prefer the appearance of doing something to actually doing something.

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_http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/us-opts-ineffective-sanctions-russia

Oligarchical topography of Ukraine: Andrei Fursov

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXLUJpqaQpY

The analysis is in Russian with English subtitles.
High level intelligence on the Ukrainian rat's nest.

Up to this recent Revolution in Ukraine, I have to admit, I didn't know a lot about Ukraine and it's people. Looking more into their History, I came across a term, "Holodonor." These people have/had endured immense suffering under Stalin's Communist government.
They were able to achieve their Independence in 1991, which under the present conditions, appears short lived, thanks to the interventions of NATO, U.S., U.K., and Israel forces. In my view, Russia's Putin and his Statesmanship qualities in governance are far removed from Stalin's Soviet Union dictates. If anything, the illegal coup in Kiev placed the Ukrainian people back under conditions reminiscent of Stalin's Communist regime, where as, Putin is expressing their Independence and their right to govern themselves by ballot and votes? It may only be through Putin's diversity and Statesmanship that Ukraine will get it's independence back?

A short summary of the Holodonor:
_http://www.holodomorct.org/history.html

The term Holodomor refers specifically to the brutal artificial famine imposed by Stalin's regime on Soviet Ukraine and primarily ethnically Ukrainian areas in the Northern Caucasus in 1932-33.

In its broadest sense, it is also used to describe the Ukrainian genocide that began in 1929 with the massive waves of deadly deportations of Ukraine's most successful farmers (kurkuls, or kulaks, in Russian) as well as the deportations and executions of Ukraine's religious, intellectual and cultural leaders, culminating in the devastating forced famine that killed millions more innocent individuals. The genocide in fact continued for several more years with the further destruction of Ukraine's political leadership, the resettlement of Ukraine's depopulated areas with other ethnic groups, the prosecution of those who dared to speak of the famine publicly, and the consistent blatant denial of famine by the Soviet regime.

1917
The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin take power in Russia.

1922
The Soviet Union is formed with Ukraine becoming one of the republics.

1924
After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin ascends to power.

1928
Stalin introduces a program of agricultural collectivization that forces farmers to give up their private land, equipment and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms. Stalin decides that collective farms would not only feed the industrial workers in the cities but could also provide a substantial amount of grain to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance his industrialization plans.

1929
Many Ukrainian farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective farms, which they regarded as similar to returning to the serfdom of earlier centuries. Stalin introduces a policy of "class warfare" in the countryside in order to break down resistance to collectivization. The successful farmers, or kurkuls, (kulaks, in Russian) are branded as the class enemy, and brutal enforcement by regular troops and secret police is used to "liquidate them as a class." Eventually anyone who resists collectivization is considered a kurkul.

1930
1.5 million Ukrainians fall victim to Stalin's "dekulakization" policies, Over the extended period of collectivization, armed dekulakization brigades forcibly confiscate land, livestock and other property, and evict entire families. Close to half a million individuals in Ukraine are dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to remote, uninhabited areas such as Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter. A great many, especially children, die in transit or soon thereafter.

1932-1933
The Soviet government sharply increases Ukraine's production quotas, ensuring that they could not be met. Starvation becomes widespread. In the summer of 1932, a decree is implemented that calls for the arrest or execution of any person – even a child -- found taking as little as a few stalks of wheat or any possible food item from the fields where he worked. By decree, discriminatory voucher systems are implemented, and military blockades are erected around many Ukrainian villages preventing the transport of food into the villages and the hungry from leaving in search of food. Brigades of young activists from other Soviet regions are brought in to sweep through the villages and confiscate hidden grain, and eventually any and all food from the farmers' homes. Stalin states of Ukraine that "the national question is in essence a rural question" and he and his commanders determine to "teach a lesson through famine" and ultimately, to deal a "crushing blow" to the backbone of Ukraine, its rural population.

1933
By June, at the height of the famine, people in Ukraine are dying at the rate of 30,000 a day, nearly a third of them are children under 10. Between 1932-34, approximately 4 million deaths are attributed to starvation within the borders of Soviet Ukraine. This does not include deportations, executions, or deaths from ordinary causes. Stalin denies to the world that there is any famine in Ukraine, and continues to export millions of tons of grain, more than enough to have saved every starving man, woman and child.

Uncovering the Truth:

“Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
(as reported by the New York Times correspondent and Pulitzer-prize winner Walter Duranty)

Denial of the famine by Soviet authorities was echoed at the time of the famine by some prominent Western journalists, like Walter Duranty. The Soviet Union adamantly refused any outside assistance because the regime officially denied that there was any famine. Anyone claiming the contrary was accused of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. Outside the Soviet Union, Western governments adopted a passive attitude toward the famine, although most of them had become aware of the true suffering in Ukraine through confidential diplomatic channels.


In fact, in November 1933, the United States, under newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt, chose to formally recognized Stalin's Communist government and also negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The following year, the pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations. Stalin's Five-Year Plans for the modernization of the Soviet Union depended largely on the purchase of massive amounts of manufactured goods and technology from Western nations. Those nations were unwilling to disrupt lucrative trade agreements with the Soviet Union in order to pursue the matter of the famine.

In the ensuing decades, Ukrainian émigré groups sought acknowledgment of this tragic, massive genocide, but with little success. Not until the late 1980's, with the publication of eminent scholar Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow," the report of the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine, and the findings of the International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932–33 Famine in Ukraine, and the release of the eye-opening documentary "Harvest of Despair," did greater world attention come to bear on this event. In Soviet Ukraine, of course, the Holodomor was kept out of official discourse until the late 1980's, shortly before Ukraine won its independence in 1991. With the fall of the Soviet Union, previously inaccessible archives, as well as the long suppressed oral testimony of Holodomor survivors living in Ukraine, have yielded massive evidence offering incontrovertible proof of Ukraine's tragic famine genocide of the 1930's.

On November 28th 2006, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament of Ukraine) passed a decree defining the Holodomor as a deliberate Act of Genocide.

Russian Lawmaker proposes Domestic Internet
_http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140428/189429763/Russian-Lawmaker-Proposes-Domestic-Internet.html

MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) – A senior Russian lawmaker voiced a proposal Monday to establish a domestic digital computer network in Russia, banning access for users in the Unites States and European Union.

Maxim Kavdjaradze, a member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, said the system could be financed by regional governments and be named Cheburashka, after one of the most famous Soviet cartoon characters.

“We should think about how to create our own information system in Russia to pull out from under the US wing, otherwise information leaks will continue,” Kavdjaradze said during a discussion on a law on bloggers at a session of the Federation Council.

The senator said Russia could create such a system together with other Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member states – Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – or with countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We have the prime minister [Dmitry Medvedev] both on Facebook and Twitter and everyone has started sitting on social networks and telling where they have been and where they go. Someone on the servers is storing up this information,” Kavdjaradze said.

Creating such a system is an issue of information security to protect the country from “information attacks, cyber-attacks and attempts to split society,” he added.

Similar proposals on a range of infrastructure projects independent from Western countries have been on the rise as the country’s economy was recently subjected to US sanctions.

On Friday, Russia’s lower house of parliament passed a bill to establish a national card payment system in a bid to diversify the country’s financial system away from global powerhouses Visa and MasterCard, which denied services to several Russian banks under the sanctions.

As a reaction to Crimea reunifying with Russia last month, the US introduced targeted sanctions against Russian officials and Rossiya Bank, considered by the US Treasury to be a private bank for many Russian government officials.

Following the move, international payment system operators Visa and MasterCard stopped client operations for cardholders at Rossiya Bank, SMP Bank, as well as their subsidiaries Sobinbank and Investkapitalbank with no prior notice, causing a serious drop in the consumer confidence of the banks.

Bank Rossiya reacted to the sanctions by closing all its correspondent accounts in US banks, announcing it will operate only on the domestic market using the ruble.

Moscow has repeatedly criticized Washington for using the “language of sanctions” against Russia, saying the move was counterproductive and mutually destructive.

Laura said:

I've just finished Gustav Le Bon's "The Crowd: Study of the Popular Mind" and it sure explains a lot of things we are seeing. It also seems obvious that there are parts of it that influenced Political Ponerology. Definitely worth reading and studying, though as yet, I have no ideas as to how humans can get out of the mess they are in considering the way they are made and how easily they are played as this book reveals.

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This book is available for free in Kindle format on Amazon:

The Crowd; study of the popular mind by Gustave Le Bon
Link: http://amzn.com/B004UJNFQI

Avala said:

Patience said:

RT video from the last few hours:

_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L4k62QabIM

Is anyone who speaks Russian able to tell who exactly the police in this video are lined up against?

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As far as I can see and understand, the police is making buffer zone between two groups.

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Yes, it is
arrived in Donetsk group supports the new government in Kiev, local groups against

axj said:

An interesting argument on why the sanctions against Russia are and will remain intentionally ineffective:

Intentionally Ineffective Sanctions

The United States doesn't want to threaten regime survival in a country with massive military power. Nor does it want to engage in an action that would trigger an invasion of Ukraine and force the United States to either back away or join a war it is unprepared for. It also will try to avoid mistakenly seizing U.S. and European assets -- assets deployed by Russia deliberately to bait Washington into making just such a mistake.

The Obama administration has a final major reason to avoid effective sanctions. If someone had said a year ago that U.S.-Russian relations would reach the present point, they would have been laughed at, something I can attest to. Foreign investment is a major component of the U.S. economy, and distinguished political leaders are an excellent source of capital. If you are the leader of China, Saudi Arabia or India, all of which have problems with the United States that could conceivably mushroom, you might think twice before investing your money in the United States. And there are more countries than those four that have potential conflicts with the United States.

The U.S. sanctions strategy is therefore not designed to change Russian policies; it is designed to make it look like the United States is trying to change Russian policy. And it is aimed at those in Congress who have made this a major issue and at those parts of the State Department that want to orient U.S. national security policy around the issue of human rights. Both can be told that something is being done -- and both can pretend that something is being done -- when in fact nothing can be done. In a world clamoring for action, prudent leaders sometimes prefer the appearance of doing something to actually doing something.

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_http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/us-opts-ineffective-sanctions-russia

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That is Stratfor (read CIA) maker of idea of colored revolutions. Maybe there is some truth in what they are saying, but more likely lies for the benefit of the CIA. I would take anything they say with the big bag of salt.

axj said:

I think Schroeder is a genuinely positive influence in politics, overall. Looking at how he just celebrated his 70th birthday with Putin in St. Petersburg and all the German media going nuts about it - this is just priceless. Also, not joining the Iraq war was more than not giving "moral support" to Bush, it meant that German soldiers were out of harms way - which is a huge thing, in my opinion.

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I agree. It was strange that he wasn't more popular with the left-wing Germans or the Germans in general, I mean, he saved a lot of lives. I remember him consistently being bashed over silly things like having had four wives and that stuff. For a politician I found him rather likeable, like a guy you wouldn't mind having a beer with.

axj said:

You're probably right that his role in reducing the welfare state was questionable at best.

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I am not sure, but didn't he lay the foundations for Hartz 4, THE welfare program of the last decade?

On a side note, this guy seemed to have done the right thing a year ago:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/23/gerard-depardieu-russian-citizen_n_2749455.html

And this is his address

MOSCOW — French actor Gerard Depardieu got a new permanent address in Russia – 1 Democracy Street – on Saturday, adding a final touch to his quest to get Russian citizenship.

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M.T.

Aragorn said:

Laura said:

I've just finished Gustav Le Bon's "The Crowd: Study of the Popular Mind" and it sure explains a lot of things we are seeing. It also seems obvious that there are parts of it that influenced Political Ponerology. Definitely worth reading and studying, though as yet, I have no ideas as to how humans can get out of the mess they are in considering the way they are made and how easily they are played as this book reveals.

Click to expand...

This book is available for free in Kindle format on Amazon:

The Crowd; study of the popular mind by Gustave Le Bon
Link: http://amzn.com/B004UJNFQI

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I'll be reading it. Thanks for the suggestion.

axj said:

I think Schroeder is a genuinely positive influence in politics, overall. [...]

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Minas Tirith said:

I agree. It was strange that he wasn't more popular with the left-wing Germans or the Germans in general, I mean, he saved a lot of lives. [...]

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I must say, I'm a little surprised at your comments here. I think of Schröder more as the "German Tony Blair", with all that this entails - remember the Schröder-Blair-paper [1][2]?

What he and his administration have done is basically:

- dragging Germany into the first war (Kossovo) since the Nazi times, using outrageous lies and media manipulation [3]. As we all know, this war was illegal and caused many innocent lives and misery.
- repeating it with Afghanistan
- destructing the welfare state in a true neo-liberal fashion, thus
- plundering the middle/underclass and making the rich more rich
- "Liberalisation" of the banking sector, thus creating the very conditions for the financial crisis
- mobbing the powerful then-finance minister Oskar Lafontaine, who was about to regulate the banking sector even more tightly
- creating a huge low-wage sector unheard of before in Germany
- consolidating the media via a powerful network of production companies, PR firms etc.
- corrupting the unions
- Privatization of the health sector
- etc.

Really, I can hardly see any positive outcomes of the Schröder-Fischer gang administration. I wrote some background on Fischer here - he's basically a power-hungry thug and his take-over of the Green party could be seen as a textbook example of a pathocratic infiltration.

Remember the story how Schröder "rattled on the fence of the chancellery" screaming "I want in there!!" when he was young? Well, I think that's a hint that it was always about power for him, nothing else. His destructive policies at the German an international oligarch's bidding reflect that, I think.

Minas Tirith said:

I am not sure, but didn't he lay the foundations for Hartz 4, THE welfare program of the last decade?

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Hartz IV is probably better characterized as THE destruction of the welfare state of the last decade! See, since Hartz IV, people on social welfare are hardly able to survive. What's worse, they have to file paper work for every little thing and can be forced to do senseless jobs for no money at all. For many, all the bureaucracy has become nearly a full time job! Add to the mix the harrassment by the bureaucrats of the "Agency for Work", who are entitled to "sanction" recipients of welfare to the point where they cannot buy food anymore, you can see that it's a cruel system that breaks people psychologically. I think only psychopaths can come up with something like that.

I know people who are social workers and have to deal a lot with the welfare system, and they all say it's an absolute nightmare since the Schröder reforms. No one understands the complicated rules, laws, court decisions etc., oftentimes not even the social workers or bureaucrats, systematic harassment etc. There are many articles on these things and recently a whistleblower came out with some insights from within [4]. It's crazy. And this system puts a lot of pressure on the working middle class, who are terribly afraid of becoming "Hartz IV" and are willing to work more for less money. I think this fear was a main reason for implementing this system in the first place.

BTW, Schröder-Buddy and the "inspiration" for Hartz IV, Peter Hartz, has quite a history, as it turned out later [4]:

On 8 July 2005[1] Hartz offered his resignation (which was accepted a few days later) amidst allegations of wrongdoings in his area of responsibility at Volkswagen, which include :

• kickbacks to Volkswagen managers from bogus companies doing real estate business with Volkswagen, especially at the Czech subsidiary Škoda Auto;
• favours to members of the workers council (Betriebsrat), which are illegal under German law (the chairman of the workers council, Klaus Volkert, had resigned 30 June 2005), and;
• the use of prostitutes at the company's expense, sometimes in company-owned apartments and under the influence of Viagra, which had been prescribed by the company's medical service.

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axj said:

[...] However, it seems that those reforms were what got the German unemployment significantly down and the economy up again for years to come. Was it worth the cost of reducing the welfare state? I am undecided on this. Without the reforms and with the economy going down, the end result might have been even worse for even more people.

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...or so the neo-liberal narrative goes. It's basically the same old "trickle-down economics": Make the rich richer, and the poor will somehow benefit from that - which of course, never happens. It's the same thing the IMF does: "We rent you money, but you have to cripple the welfare state, and give the money to the rich instead". Did the unemployment go down in Germany? We all know how fake and unreliable these statistics are. But even if it went down a little - there's now a huge low-wage-sector where people have to work many underpaid jobs to survive, or get additional welfare payment to make ends meet.

I remember the debates at the time, and I got dragged into this flawed thinking as well. Arguments like "if you don't cut social welfare and make labor cheap, the companies will go abroad". Turns out, of course, that these companies will go abroad the minute they are able to, no matter what! It's just a blackmail tactic. Some jobs, they can't move abroad, so they want them cheap, in order to make more money that they can spend on their chairmen (or prostitutes, see above).

axj said:

Looking at how he just celebrated his 70th birthday with Putin in St. Petersburg and all the German media going nuts about it - this is just priceless. Also, not joining the Iraq war was more than not giving "moral support" to Bush, it meant that German soldiers were out of harms way - which is a huge thing, in my opinion.

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Of course I agree that it was good of Schröder not to join the Iraq war. But did it make any difference? Hardly. German troops would have played no significant role, it really was more about "public support". And, as I said, Germany did support the war logistically. I imagine Schröder telling US diplomats "pff, you know, it's all a show for the upcoming elections, you know we support you! Now, is there any favor I can do for you?"

As for the Putin-connection - I see it this way: Putin knew how important the German-Russian business relations are (as we can clearly see today), and catered to Schröder's narcissism and greed by giving him attention and the prospect of earning a lot of money after his term. So Schröder & friends got very busy in the German-Russian business relations at a time where Russia was not so much "on the radar" and indeed made a lot of money. While that was smart from Putin's side, it doesn't make Schröder and his policies any better.

A good summary of Schröder's policies is this article (German):
_http://www.jungewelt.de/2014/04-12/004.php

That's the way I see it, at least. Sorry for going a bit off-topic.

[1] _http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/suedafrika/02828.pdf
[2] _http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6der-Blair-Papier
[3] _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XcN5lBMOko
[4] _http://www.shz.de/lokales/kiel/wer-nicht-sanktioniert-der-fliegt-id6133106.html
[5] _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hartz

Edit: fixed quote, added a link

Ridiculous sanctions keep coming, and Russian officials keep showing that they have a sense of humor.

http://www.sott.net/article/278234-US-keep-shooting-oneself-in-the-foot-with-ridiculous-sanctions-US-should-send-astronauts-to-space-station-by-trampoline-Russian-official

Facing sanctions from the United States government, a high-ranking Russian official took to Twitter today (April 29) to express his frustration, warning that NASA has few options should Soyuz flights to the International Space Station cease.

"After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline," wrote Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's deputy prime minister, in a Russian-language tweet highlighted by NBC News.

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