Russian Documentary: "World Order" exposes US-driven NWO conspiracy

[Laura]

I'm creating a separate thread for this topic.

2016: Russian Documentary Aims to Avert Nuclear War - Western Media Still Busy Demonizing Putin

If ‘World Order’ is a piece of propaganda, it is sophisticated and serves certain higher values, not the interests of individuals or power for power’s sake. In effect, it is a wake-up call to avert nuclear war by reining in exceptionalism and safeguarding the principles of the UN Charter.
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/russian-documentary-aims-avert-nuclear-war-western-media-still-busy-demonizing-putin

The Russian documentary World Order, released by the state broadcaster Pervy Kanal on Sunday, 20 December and posted on youtube, received some attention in Western mainstream media, which is not always the case with news generated in Moscow. Euronews, in particular, drew on a minute or two out of this one hour forty-nine minute film to present good tidings to the world: President Putin had just publicly stated that he is ready to cooperate with European countries on shared concerns including terrorism, environmental issues and organized crime notwithstanding the sanctions being applied to Russia over Ukraine. This happy finding ignores completely the nature and overall content of the film in question, which heads in a direction 180 degrees at variance with the Euronews spin, as I will explain in a minute.

Meanwhile, BBC reporting on New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world on Friday morning, 1 January, showed Vladimir Putin delivering his 2016 greetings to his countrymen over the caption “Russia names Nato as threat to security.” In a classic propaganda exercise, the editorial staff of the British Broadcasting Company merged two very different pieces of news that bear the same dateline: the anodyne salutation of the Russian president and the 41 page National Security doctrine which he had signed earlier in the day. This is propaganda not only because the stories were unrelated but because the Nato threat is covered explicitly in just one page out of the 41, which take in a great many other security metrics such as education, import substitution, religious and spiritual convictions. I mention this case because the major arguments set out in the Russian Security Doctrine flagged by the BBC are precisely the same as those in World Order. For both, ultimate authorial responsibility rests with one man: Vladimir Putin.

Thus, one might ask why interpretation of the film was positive and interpretation of the doctrine is negative. With this arbitrariness and unimaginable superficiality driving the news that Western elites, not to mention the general public, take in with their morning coffee is it any wonder that we hear repeatedly that Russian state behavior is unpredictable? And is it any wonder that even well-meaning fighters for peace in the West are misguided about what constitutes the way forward in relations with Russia if we are to formulate an alternative to the War Party that controls Washington and Brussels.

In what constitutes a rare exception to the meager coverage given by mainstream media of the airing of the documentary World Order, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper correctly identified the form and rather significant bits and pieces of its content. In “Vladimir Putin: ‘We don’t want the USSR back but no one believes us,” Allison Quinn, their Kiev- based reporter, correctly likens the new film to the documentary Crimea. A Way Home, released in mid-March on the same state channel to coincide with the anniversary of the ‘Crimean Spring.’ Like that documentary, World Order is built around interview segments. Quinn tells us vaguely that although the film includes ‘interviews with other political figures and leaders, Mr. Putin is undoubtedly the headliner.”

As indicated by the title of Quinn’s article, he and his editors, chose to stress Putin’s denial in the film that Russia is just the USSR with another name and that it is seeking to restore the Soviet empire. He also correctly calls attention to an exchange between Putin and the interviewer that was featured in the film’s trailer, where the President spoke about nuclear war as necessarily catastrophic for the planet, as something he could not imagine anyone deciding upon, while also speaking of Russia’s ongoing modernization of its nuclear arsenal and the key place of nuclear arms as deterrent in the country’s military doctrine.

These and a couple of other points picked up by Quinn are indeed among the most newsworthy sound bites in the film. However, the Telegraph, like all other MSM, has missed entirely what the documentary is about. Moreover, their reporter says nothing about who directed the documentary, about who the ‘political figures’ appearing in it are.

Without mincing words, the documentary World Order is a devastating critique of US global hegemony in the name of democracy promotion and human rights ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992. It is directly in line with the Russian President’s first repudiation of the American unipolar world issued in his speech to the Munich Security Conference in February 2007 and his further, ever more explicit exposes in a succession of speeches that took on specific manifestations of ‘American exceptionalism.’

World Order illustrates through graphic footage and the testimony of independent world authorities the tragic consequences, the spread of chaos and misery resulting from US-engineered regime change and color revolutions, of which the violent overthrow of the Yanukovich regime in Ukraine in February 2014 is only the latest example. The very title of the film follows on Vladimir Putin’s address to the 70th anniversary gathering of the UN General Assembly in September 2015 which had as its central message that world order rests on international law, which in turn has as its foundation the UN Charter. By flouting the Charter and waging war without the sanction of the UN Security Council, starting with the NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 and continuing with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 up to its illegal bombings in Syria today, the United States and its NATO allies have shaken the foundations of international law.

What constitutes the ‘added mile’ in Vladimir Putin’s reasoning set out in World Order is his identification of the root cause of the failure to bring the USA back to reason all this time. It lies not in given individuals, like Barack Obama or George W. Bush, but in the mentality of Western, and in particular American elites formed by their impunity, their ability to walk away from the catastrophes their policies create without any feeling of responsibility, without being held to account. Their evasion of responsibility and failure to learn from error come from being the richest and militarily most powerful nation on earth.

World Order presents lurid evidence of the brutality which flows from American policies when functioning if flawed states are converted into failed states through color revolutions, as has happened across the Middle East and North Africa since the new millennium. We are shown Saddam Hussein’s final moments before execution, then the denunciation of this judicial murder by Muammar Gaddafi before a laughing audience of Arab League deputies, then the barbaric mob murder of Gaddafi himself followed by the exultant face of Hillary Clinton after this triumph of US foreign policy. We also listen to Gaddafi’s detailed prediction of the vast flood of refugees and spread of jihadists in North Africa that would follow should his regime be toppled. And we are given video footage from the 2015 refugee flows into Europe with their mob scenes at state borders that bear out those warnings.

The foreign interviewees in World Order comprise an impressive and diverse selection of leaders in various domains, including American film director Oliver Stone, former National Security Council director for Russia under George W. Bush and current managing director at Kissinger Associates Thomas Graham, former IMF Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former president of Pakistan Perwez Musharraf, former French foreign minister and premier in 2005-07 Dominique Villepin, former president of Israel Shimon Perez, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and deputy leader of the Die Linke party in the German Bundestag Sahra Wagenknecht. These are the participants making substantial statements. Others, like UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, put in cameo appearances.

The remarks by and about Strauss-Kahn and Perwez Musharraf support the film’s charge that the USA plots against and destroys foreign leaders who dare to oppose America’s total control over global flows of money, goods and people. Wagenknecht, who is an outstanding and at times fiery orator, addresses the question of Germany’s subservience to American Diktats and its de facto circumscribed sovereignty. All of these testimonials play to Putin’s long-standing argument, reiterated in the film, that the West European allies of the USA are nothing more than vassals. She and others also support the Russian allegation that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) represent another area in which the USA is undermining the global institutions (WTO) so as to impose its will on all nations in violation of international law.

Finally, with regard to content, Vladimir Putin’s closing remarks about the place of nuclear arms in Russia’s military doctrine must not be played down. Saying aloud that Russia has not and will not brandish its nuclear truncheon, is, in effect doing just that. All of this is of one piece with the way Russia’s aerospace forces have conducted their attacks in Syria on the Islamic State and on the armed opposition to Assad these past two months. The use of heavy bombers flying from the Kola peninsula on 15,000 km missions with the help of night-time in-flight refueling; the use of cruise missiles fired from frigates in the Caspian Sea at distances of 1300 km to targets in Syria; and the use of cruise missiles launched from Russian submarines in the Mediterranean have all had a political dimension far exceeding military necessity in the Syrian theater: they demonstrate Russia’s capability of waging global war, including global nuclear war. These actions are also depicted in the film.

Is World Order propaganda? It most certainly is. Is it directed primarily at the Russian domestic audience, as the Telegraph newspaper insists? No. Like all of Putin’s foreign policy addresses, whether delivered abroad or at home, as in the Valdai Discussion Club, whether issued with subtitles in English or not, its primary audience is in Washington, D.C. with a secondary audience in Brussels. One may suppose that the purpose is not to touch off or accelerate an arms race but, on the contrary, to bring the other side to its senses and persuade it of 1) Russia’s seriousness about defending militarily what it sees as vital national interests and 2) its ability to deliver massive destruction to an enemy even in the face of a possible first nuclear strike, and so to reinstate the Mutually Assured Destruction deterrence that America’s global missile defense was supposed to cancel out.

As I said in my introduction, no MSM outlet has taken the time to explain who made this film. Its director and co-author is in fact one of the most intelligent and fair-minded presenters on Russian television, Vladimir Soloviev, who is best known today for prime time evening debates on hot domestic and international issues in which the ‘other side,’ whether Ukrainian or American or the Russian opposition parties in the Duma, is always present in what amounts at times to astonishing openness of discussion on live television, when it does not descend into shouting matches. Soloviev has a Ph.D. in economics from the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was an active entrepreneur in the 1990s and spent some time back then in the USA, where his activities included teaching economics at the University of Alabama. If he is the author of propaganda, one can be certain it is sophisticated and serves certain philosophical and ethical values, not individuals or power for power’s sake.

As Euronews reported, in World Order Vladimir Putin lists several areas of common concern over which Russia is prepared to cooperate with the West. Indeed these very same prospective areas of cooperation come up repeatedly in the public writings and speeches of the relatively few ‘fighters for peace’ who are trying to draw the world community back from the brink into some kind of détente.

However, pulling that raisin out of cake is to seriously misunderstand the very clear dominant message coming out of Russia: that the destruction of world order by US-led ‘democracy promotion’ and spread of ‘universal values’ will not be tolerated and that Russia has set down certain red lines, such as against NATO expansion into Ukraine or Georgia over which it will fight to the death using all its resources. We ignore these messages at our peril. (Article continues - go to link).

Yep and almost the full documentary is availabe by now in english here:
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,40382.msg622610.html#msg622610

Well worth the watch and share...

Documentary parts here for convenience:

(28 Dec 2015)
Vox Populi Evo just put up part 1, w/ subtitles:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cf6_1451260176&comments=1

World Order. Part 2/7: Democracy: First Blood. Eng. Subs.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3c9_1451337341

World Order. Part 3/7: Color Revolution Technology - forced democratizaion. Eng. Subs.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=555_1451410073#aqQsjfL8fqbpzpWF.99

World Order. Part 4/7: Refugee Crisis as a result of democratization by US. Europe - US vassal. Eng. Subs.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4bd_1451583257

World Order. Part 5/7: Unity in Diversity. Guarantee for stable development of the world. Eng Subs
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5ee_1451583820

World Order. Part 6/7: Geopolitical Struggle Must be Civilized. Eng. Subs. (reUpload):
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=37d_1451701945

World Order. Part 7/7: Interests of the Country Must Be Above All. Eng. Subs:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=357_1451779536

 

[Gaby]

[...]As I said in my introduction, no MSM outlet has taken the time to explain who made this film. Its director and co-author is in fact one of the most intelligent and fair-minded presenters on Russian television, Vladimir Soloviev, who is best known today for prime time evening debates on hot domestic and international issues in which the ‘other side,’ whether Ukrainian or American or the Russian opposition parties in the Duma, is always present in what amounts at times to astonishing openness of discussion on live television, when it does not descend into shouting matches. Soloviev has a Ph.D. in economics from the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was an active entrepreneur in the 1990s and spent some time back then in the USA, where his activities included teaching economics at the University of Alabama. If he is the author of propaganda, one can be certain it is sophisticated and serves certain philosophical and ethical values, not individuals or power for power’s sake.[...]

I haven't watched the last part, but this is a very good and accurate review.

I was also surprised about these debates aired in TV where Soloviev and company discuss pretty much everything with "cool" heads.

Putin also reminds Soloviev in the documentary about his past role in the secret services. It seems it had to do with this "philosophical and ethical values".

Putin also told Soloviev that Western leaders might not agree with current Russian policies, but some Western citizens do. Maybe all those letters of support are read after all? ;)

Off to watch the last part now. Highly recommended!

 

[Cosmos]

It is indeed a must watch!
A lot of recent very interesting statements from Putins interview are in there too...

 

[Keit]

I was also surprised about these debates aired in TV where Soloviev and company discuss pretty much everything with "cool" heads.

Yes, these debates are usually very interesting. Real pity western people aren't able to understand what is being said. Soloviev also has a radio program. He is usually pretty insightful, with one big reservation. He is Jewish and rather supportive of Israel, along with another popular political commentator Satanovsky. So in all their programs and debates they either talk about Israel in a positive way (it has the right to defend itself, it takes care of its own, etc), or just don't talk about it. So this should be taken into account, and also can explain the cautious approach of Putin and Russia in general toward Israelis policies, or why you don't hear about any overt condemnation of their actions on national TV.

 

[Cosmos]

Putin also told Soloviev that Western leaders might not agree with current Russian policies, but some Western citizens do. Maybe all those letters of support are read after all? ;)

It is pretty clear that Putin choose his words very careful there and thus made it quite clear what he wants to express to all sane people in the world.

What he meant there comes pretty clearly down to:

"I know that a lot of people in other countries, especially in countries were the leaders hammer against russia, don't share this view and are on our side. So please people in those countries, if you want, be wise enough to not believe and follow those elites anymore and demand and enforce a civilized change from within"

It is a direct call for resistance, directed to the ordinary sane people in the world, who can see what happens in their countries...

 

[Rich]

It is indeed a must watch!
A lot of recent very interesting statements from Putins interview are in there too...

I agree, just started watching the first part and Putin really does display his knowledge, understanding and frustrations with what we are up against.

 

[Cosmos]

I was also surprised about these debates aired in TV where Soloviev and company discuss pretty much everything with "cool" heads.

Yes, these debates are usually very interesting. Real pity western people aren't able to understand what is being said. Soloviev also has a radio program. He is usually pretty insightful, with one big reservation. He is Jewish and rather supportive of Israel, along with another popular political commentator Satanovsky. So in all their programs and debates they either talk about Israel in a positive way (it has the right to defend itself, it takes care of its own, etc), or just don't talk about it. So this should be taken into account, and also can explain the cautious approach of Putin and Russia in general toward Israelis policies, or why you don't hear about any overt condemnation of their actions on national TV.

I'm pretty sure Putin and staff know exactly what zionist israel/USA is up to, also in their country. And probably also that Soloviev might be one of them. They simply know how sneaky they operate and that they need to tackle the issue very carefully and step by step. It's like being directly confronted with the biggest, well organized and smartest petty tyrant there is. So indeed they have to be very careful how and in which way to play him out. They play very nice to their faces meanwhile planning on how to combat those monsters. It's simply masterful. All we have seen by now, there is simply no way, to not see it that way...

 

[Gwenllian]

Thank you so much for posting, Laura. I watched the first part, but didn't know that all parts had already been translated into English. Also, a huge thank you to the people of Vox Populi Evo. Without them a large part of the world population (in the West) wouldn't be able to watch these documentaries. So, I am very grateful.

I was also surprised about these debates aired in TV where Soloviev and company discuss pretty much everything with "cool" heads.

Yes, these debates are usually very interesting. Real pity western people aren't able to understand what is being said. Soloviev also has a radio program. He is usually pretty insightful, with one big reservation. He is Jewish and rather supportive of Israel, along with another popular political commentator Satanovsky. So in all their programs and debates they either talk about Israel in a positive way (it has the right to defend itself, it takes care of its own, etc), or just don't talk about it. So this should be taken into account, and also can explain the cautious approach of Putin and Russia in general toward Israelis policies, or why you don't hear about any overt condemnation of their actions on national TV.

I'm pretty sure Putin and staff know exactly what zionist israel/USA is up to, also in their country. And probably also that Soloviev might be one of them. They simply know how sneaky they operate and that they need to tackle the issue very carefully and step by step. It's like being directly confronted with the biggest, well organized and smartest petty tyrant there is. So indeed they have to be very careful how and in which way to play him out. They play very nice to their faces meanwhile planning on how to combat those monsters. It's simply masterful. All we have seen by now, there is simply no way, to not see it that way...

Indeed, Pashalis. These four qualities of the great warriors come into play here, i.e. control, discipline, forbearance and timing.
Sometimes I do not get what Putin and his team are doing, but then when I give it some time and thought I will understand it eventually and in hindsight. I am not a strategist. :D

 

[Keit]

Indeed, Pashalis. These four qualities of the great warriors come into play here, i.e. control, discipline, forbearance and timing.
Sometimes I do not get what Putin and his team are doing, but then when I give it some time and thought I will understand it eventually and in hindsight. I am not a strategist. :D

Toward the end of the documentary Putin said that he has to work with everyone. That he has no privilege to follow his personal preferences, but has to do everything for the best interests of Russia. Even if it means tolerating unacceptable behavior toward himself. That I think is the essence of what he is doing, and that's why he is the best statesman this planet has at the moment. He may not be perfect as a person, or perhaps his policies are not ideal, but he does his best and puts the betterment of his country before his own personal interests. And this puts him in a vivid contrast to the rest of the egotistical psychos in power, and many people can see it, or at least sense it on some level.

 

[seek10]

It is indeed a must watch!
A lot of recent very interesting statements from Putins interview are in there too...

I agree, just started watching the first part and Putin really does display his knowledge, understanding and frustrations with what we are up against.

Now, It is on Sott.
http://www.sott.net/article/309707-Russian-Documentary-World-Order-exposes-US-driven-NWO-conspiracy-with-english-subtitles

 

[Gwenllian]

Indeed, Pashalis. These four qualities of the great warriors come into play here, i.e. control, discipline, forbearance and timing.
Sometimes I do not get what Putin and his team are doing, but then when I give it some time and thought I will understand it eventually and in hindsight. I am not a strategist. :D

Toward the end of the documentary Putin said that he has to work with everyone. That he has no privilege to follow his personal preferences, but has to do everything for the best interests of Russia. Even if it means tolerating unacceptable behavior toward himself. That I think is the essence of what he is doing, and that's why he is the best statesman this planet has at the moment. He may not be perfect as a person, or perhaps his policies are not ideal, but he does his best and puts the betterment of his country before his own personal interests. And this puts him in a vivid contrast to the rest of the egotistical psychos in power, and many people can see it, or at least sense it on some level.

Thanks, Keit. I just finished watching the documentary. What you wrote makes perfect sense. But I don't mind if he is not perfect. He is a human being in the first place with his own personal history full of suffering. I don't know much about Russian policies, but I suspect it must be pretty rough for policy-makers to build a country which had been destroyed almost completely. And as Shane said during one of the Truth Perspective radio shows: maybe we should change our definition of a saint. Maybe we should look at Putin with an open mind and no anticipation, also considering the fact that the dark forces are very powerful and probably wish to eliminate him. But just like Hugo Chávez and other leaders who had to fear for their lives he keeps going. That in itself I find awe-inspiring. :)

 

[angelburst29]

Indeed, Pashalis. These four qualities of the great warriors come into play here, i.e. control, discipline, forbearance and timing.
Sometimes I do not get what Putin and his team are doing, but then when I give it some time and thought I will understand it eventually and in hindsight. I am not a strategist. :D

Toward the end of the documentary Putin said that he has to work with everyone. That he has no privilege to follow his personal preferences, but has to do everything for the best interests of Russia. Even if it means tolerating unacceptable behavior toward himself. That I think is the essence of what he is doing, and that's why he is the best statesman this planet has at the moment. He may not be perfect as a person, or perhaps his policies are not ideal, but he does his best and puts the betterment of his country before his own personal interests. And this puts him in a vivid contrast to the rest of the egotistical psychos in power, and many people can see it, or at least sense it on some level.

In my way of thinking, Putin's "self-sacrificing for the greater good" so ALL will benefit? It takes strong Will and masterful inner discipline, to even contemplate a position like that. Sort of like - being between a rock and a hard place - with just enough wiggle room to navigate the chaotic waters, without getting crushed.

The Documentary, along with what Putin is trying to convey, in terms of instrumenting "peaceful Diplomatic solution's" to resolving problems, becomes even more explicit, when more information comes to the forefront, in what is really involved in International Affairs.

This is just one small example of the "forces" working against Putin/Russia in instigating a New World Order.

The Pentagon’s Law of War Manual: A Blueprint for Total War and Military Dictatorship
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pentagons-law-of-war-manual-a-blueprint-for-total-war-and-military-dictatorship/5498949

January 03, 2016 - The new US Department of Defense Law of War Manual is essentially a guidebook for violating international and domestic law and committing war crimes. The 1,165-page document, dated June 2015 and recently made available online, is not a statement of existing law as much as a compendium of what the Pentagon wishes the law to be.

According to the manual, the “law of war” (i.e., the law of war according to the Pentagon) supersedes international human rights treaties as well as the US Constitution.

The manual authorizes the killing of civilians during armed conflict and establishes a framework for mass military detentions. Journalists, according to the manual, can be censored and punished as spies on the say-so of military officials. The manual freely discusses the use of nuclear weapons, and it does not prohibit napalm, depleted uranium munitions, cluster bombs or other indiscriminate weapons.

The manual might have more properly been titled A Manifesto for Total War and Military Dictatorship.

The manual is an expression of the incompatibility of imperialist militarism and democracy.

In the 25 years since the liquidation of the USSR, and especially over the 14 years since the launching of the so-called “war on terror,” the United States has been almost perpetually at war, seeking to offset its economic decline by threats and military violence around the world.

The same government that orchestrated a coup led by fascists in the Ukraine, that backs a military dictatorship and repression in Egypt, and that supports mass killings and destruction in Gaza can hardly be expected to remain true to the rule of law and democratic principles at home.

Through both the Bush and Obama administrations, the “war on terror” has been accompanied by a steady abrogation of democratic rights within the United States, including a barrage of police state legislation such as the Patriot Act, unrestricted spying on the population by the National Security Agency and other agencies, the militarization of the police, and the establishment of precedents for the detention and assassination of US citizens without charges or trial.

In this context, the Pentagon manual is a significant milestone in the drive to establish the framework of a police state.

In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned about the dangers posed by the “military-industrial complex.” But America’s current military-corporate-intelligence establishment has metastasized far beyond anything Eisenhower could have imagined. Bloated with unlimited cash, dripping with blood from wars of aggression, it boldly announces its independence, its hostility to democracy and the rule of law, and its readiness to carry out war crimes and other atrocities at home and abroad.

The Pentagon manual reflects international imperialist tendencies. Its authors state that it “benefited from the participation of officers from the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force and the Australian Royal Air Force on exchange assignments with the US Air Force.” They continue: “In addition, military lawyers from Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia reviewed and commented on a draft of the manual in 2009 as part of a review that also included comments from distinguished scholars.” (P. v)

The manual, which “reflects many years of labor and expertise,” applies to the entire Department of Defense, which includes the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, four national intelligence agencies including the NSA, and numerous other subordinate departments and agencies, totaling 2.13 million active duty personnel and 1.1 million reservists. The manual notes, “Promulgating a DoD-wide manual on the law of war has been a long-standing goal of DoD lawyers.” (P. v) The new document supersedes various policy documents that had accumulated piecemeal within different sections of the military and intelligence agencies.

It is the outcome of a continuous effort through both Democratic and Republican administrations over a long period, including the Bush and Obama administrations. It was issued at the highest levels of the state, having been prepared by a “Law of War Working Group” that “is chaired by a representative of the DoD General Counsel and includes representatives of the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; the Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant of the Marine Corps; the offices of the General Counsels of the Military Departments; and the Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” (Pp. v-vi)

The Pentagon general counsel is Stephen W. Preston. Preston was general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2009 to 2012, during which time the CIA covered up its own war crimes and obstructed efforts to investigate its illegal torture program. It is unclear to what extent the manual has been reviewed or approved by any civilian authority.

The significance of Nuremberg

The Law of War Manual is replete with references to the Nuremberg proceedings, a complex and significant event in the history of the post-World War II period and the history of international law. The manual opens with this tribute:

After World War II, US military lawyers, trying thousands of defendants before military commissions, did, in the words of Justice Robert Jackson, ‘stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of law’ in ‘one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.’ Reflecting on this distinctive history, one chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff observed that ‘[T]he laws of war have a peculiarly American cast.’ And it is also true that the laws of war have shaped the US Armed Forces as much as they have shaped any other armed force in the world. (P. ii)

The Pentagon of 2015 paying tribute to the Nuremberg precedent is like the world’s top-polluting corporation expressing appreciation for efforts to protect the environment. If the precedent of Nuremberg were applied impartially today, it would be necessary to arrest and prosecute all of the top officials in the Pentagon, the world’s leading perpetrator of illegal aggression. After the triumph of the Allies over Germany and Japan in the Second World War, the victorious powers convened international tribunals to prosecute major war criminals of the defeated powers. The most famous trial took place from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany and featured the prosecution of Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and other leading Nazis.

There was an undeniable component of “victors’ justice” in the proceedings. The same week in August 1945 that the United States, the USSR, Britain and France forged an agreement to establish the International Military Tribunal, the United States committed some of the most heinous crimes of the war: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nonetheless, the democratic legal positions espoused at Nuremberg stand in sharp contrast to the corrupt and lawless American political establishment of today, which asserts the right to abduct or assassinate any person without charges or trial anywhere on earth, attack any country “preventively,” and spy on the entire world’s population.

At the time of the Nuremberg tribunals, a majority view emerged among the major Allied governments rejecting calls to execute leading Nazis summarily on the basis of a “political decision.” Instead, the defendants were offered a full and fair trial, during which they were permitted to call witnesses, present evidence and argue in their own defense.

The most important principle that emerged from the Nuremberg proceedings was the concept that the decision to launch a war of aggression is the fundamental crime from which all other war crimes flow. While the Nuremberg prosecutors exposed some of the greatest crimes in human history, they maintained that the primary crime was the decision by Hitler and his close associates to launch the war in the first place.

The chief US prosecutor was Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. His assistant, Telford Taylor, emphasized in a memorandum to Jackson that the underlying motivations and aims of the Nazis were not the decisive legal questions: “The question of causation is important and will be discussed for many years, but it has no place in this trial, which must rather stick rigorously to the doctrine that planning and launching an aggressive war is illegal, whatever may be the factors that caused the defendants to plan and to launch.”

In other words, launching a war of aggression is a criminal act—a crime against peace—no matter what arguments or policies are invoked to justify it.

Similarly, the Nuremberg prosecutors rejected the argument that those who committed crimes were justifiably “following” or “relaying” orders. Nuremberg Principle IV reads, “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility…provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

These were powerful democratic conceptions that reverberated long after the trials. During the Vietnam War, as Taylor himself noted in his memoir, “thousands of young men contended…that under the Nuremberg principles they were legally bound not to participate in what they regarded as the United States’ aggressive war.”

More recently, on July 12, 2013, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden invoked the Nuremberg principles to justify his refusal to conceal evidence of illegal spying. “I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945,” he said. “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore, individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

The Nuremberg precedent expressed the confidence of the United States as the dominant imperialist power emerging out of the Second World War. The American ruling class felt that it could afford, under the circumstances, not only to assert democratic principles, but to declare that these principles were universal, applying to all countries, including the United States itself.

Thus, on July 23, 1945, Jackson told the International Conference on Military Tribunals, the inter-allied body that prepared the trials, “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” [1]

Seventy years later, America’s leaders have much less in common with jurists like Jackson and Taylor than they do with Nuremberg’s defendants. While the Pentagon pays tribute to the Nuremberg precedent, a partial list of the countries subjected to US military violence since the liquidation of the USSR includes Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Nigeria and Yemen.

If launching a war of aggression is illegal, arrest warrants should be forthcoming for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Brennan, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, James Clapper, John Ashcroft, Joe Biden, John Kerry and their criminal co-conspirators. All of these individuals should be in the dock, right where Göring and company sat, on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.

Ample evidence exists for indictments. One powerful exhibit in such a trial, for example, would be a November 27, 2001 memorandum by Donald Rumsfeld that contemplates various phony justifications for a war of aggression against Iraq. Under the profoundly incriminating headline “How start?” Rumsfeld ponders the possibilities: “Saddam moves against Kurds in north? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept. 11 attack or to anthrax attacks? Dispute over WMD inspections? Start now thinking about inspection demands.”

Rumsfeld’s memorandum is one of many proofs that there was a conspiracy to launch the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the basis of lies and pretexts. As a result of this illegal aggression, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, if not more, and millions have been turned into refugees. An entire society has been devastated, leading to the rise of movements such as ISIS, and trillions of dollars worth of property have been destroyed or wasted.

The Nuremberg trials featured similar exposures of the criminal Nazi conspiracy to invade Poland based on false pretenses. To provide a casus belli for the war they had already decided to launch, the Nazis staged a provocation known as the Gleiwitz incident. During the Nuremberg proceedings, this incident was exposed as a staged attack on a German radio station by German forces posing as Poles. Hitler had boasted to his generals: “Its credibility doesn’t matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.”

Do as I say, not as I do

Notwithstanding its repeated invocations of the Nuremberg precedent, the Pentagon’s Law of War Manual features a strong element of “do as I say, not as I do.”

For example, on the subject of aggressive war, the document declares, “Aggression is the most serious and dangerous form of the illegal use of force… Initiating a war of aggression is a serious international crime.” (P. 44) This is a plain statement of the Nuremberg precedent.

However, as one reads further, it emerges that this principle applies only to countries other than the United States. The manual notes that the US has refused to recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC), under which the US could be prosecuted for crimes of aggression.

The document states, “The United States has expressed the view that the definition of the act of aggression in the Kampala amendments to the Rome Statute does not reflect customary international law.” (P. 45) The US also expressed “concerns regarding the possibility of the ICC exercising jurisdiction over the crime of aggression without a prior determination by the Security Council that a State has committed an act of aggression.” (P. 1,112) Such a Security Council determination, of course, would be subject to a US veto.

The refusal of the United States to recognize the authority of the ICC has deep historical significance. The United States played a leading role in establishing the Nuremberg precedent, but now refuses to submit to its enforcement. This amounts to an admission that if the United States were subject to an impartial application of the Nuremberg precedent today, virtually all of official Washington would have to be transported to jail. It exposes as fraudulent all of America’s posturing as a kind of self-appointed “world policeman” with the authority to sanction and attack other states that allegedly violate international law.

Similarly, the Pentagon manual declares that torture is illegal: “For example, it would be unlawful, of course, to use torture or abuse to interrogate detainees for purposes of gathering information.” (P. 309) But the document fails to explain how the CIA came to implement a systematic and sadistic torture program with the integral participation of high-level officials in the White House, for which nobody has ever been held accountable.

The manual is full of caveats, disclaimers and weasel words. For example: “This manual is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity against the United States, its departments, agencies, or other entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.” (P.1) In other words, the law of war does not apply to us, only to you. Passages like this reveal that the “law of war” manual does not represent “law” as such, but policies determined unilaterally by the Pentagon.

The Pentagon’s hypocrisy (and sometimes plain incoherence) on the subjects of torture and aggression is an expression of the crisis of bourgeois rule in the United States and the contradictions of American foreign policy. On the one hand, the US constantly seeks to dress up its imperialist projects in the costume of international legality. To justify the first Gulf war (1991), America denounced Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as illegal “aggression.”

Just last year, American political leaders were denouncing Russian “aggression” in Ukraine. After the United States orchestrated a coup in Ukraine, and while American commandos and dollars were pouring in, John Kerry accused Russia of violating Ukraine’s “national sovereignty” and “territorial integrity.” Obama declared, “There is a strong belief that Russia’s action is violating international law.”

On the other hand, notwithstanding all the talk about international law, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity, America invades and bombs anywhere it sees fit, without any regard for such considerations. Where the United States can obtain international legal approval for its aggression, it does so, but otherwise the aggression takes place anyway.

The manual states,

“[T]he authority to take actions under the law of war would be viewed as emanating from the State’s rights as a sovereign entity rather than from any particular instrument of international law.”

In other words, the United States can freely ignore treaties and conventions and other “instruments of international law”—such as the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United States announced in 2002 that it would not follow—while still claiming to adhere to its own version of international law.

At the Nuremberg trials, Jackson characterized the Nazi regime as essentially a monstrous criminal enterprise, a giant illegal conspiracy that invoked “law” only in the most tendentious, cynical and self-serving manner. The defendants, Jackson declared, “are surprised that there is any such thing as law. These defendants did not rely on any law at all. Their program ignored and defied all law… International Law, natural law, German law, any law at all, was to these men simply a propaganda device to be invoked when it helped and to be ignored when it would condemn what they wanted to do.” These words apply with full force to the Pentagon and its manual.

The manual explicitly gives the Pentagon a green light at any future time to repudiate the principles it ostensibly lays down. Its authors write that the document does not “preclude the Department from subsequently changing its interpretation of the law.” (P. 1)

 

[loreta]

Thank you very much Laura for this and others for the comments. Really interesting. I love to see Putin talk, how intelligent he is in his answers, diplomat, very well informed and very direct also. And I like to see how people with sensitivity are looking at this world with human eyes. I just saw the first part, I will continue. Thank you!

 

[Seppo Ilmarinen]

Excellent documentary. I just love how Putin speaks at the same time very diplomatically and strategically, and still telling the truth. He just makes too much sense, so i hope people in the West would watch his interviews and speeches. Any sane person should be able see through the propaganda and lies of western media after listening to him five minutes.

 

[angelburst29]

Anne Williamson authored a book - Contagion: The Betrayal of Liberty which goes into detail, on how the Clinton administration (regime) plundered Russia and it's resources, using U.S. taxpayer money. Williamson lived in Russia, during this time and interviewed many of the personalities involved - later giving testimony to the House Banking Community. She describes the main players and what their roles were and how it was planned, that Russia was slated to be an "Industrial and heavy manufacturing Nation" to further line the elites pockets, using Yeltsin as the front man. They were so engrossed in greed, they never saw V.V. Putin enter the stage !!!

HOW CLINTON AND COMPANY AND THE BANKERS PLUNDERED RUSSIA IN THE '90S
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/faem/letters/likoudis.htm

The Wanderer (September 30, 1999) publicized journalist Anne Williamson's testimony to the House Banking Committee on how the Clinton regime and its friends in the banking community plundered the Russian economy and looted billions of taxpayers' dollars funneled through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other major U.S. banks, and the Harvard Institute for International Development, and mentioned her forthcoming book, Contagion: The Betrayal of Liberty -- Russia and the United States in the 1990s,

Jonathan Hay was the general director of the Harvard Institute of International Development (HIID) in Moscow (1992-1997), who facilitated the crippling of the Russian economy and the plundering of its industrial and manufacturing infrastructure with a strategy concocted by Larry Summers, Andre Schliefer (HIID's Cambridge-based manager), Jeffrey Sachs and his Swedish sidekick Anders Aslund, and a host of private players from banks and investment houses in Boston and New York -- a plan approved and assisted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Contagion can be read on many different levels. At its simplest, it is a breezy, slightly cynical, highly entertaining narrative of Russian history from the last months of Gorbachev's rule to April 2000 -- a period which saw Russia transformed from a decaying socialist economy (which despite its shortcomings, provided a modest standard of living to its citizens) to a "managed economy" where home-grown gangsters and socialist theoreticians from the West, like Hay and his fellow Harvardian Jeffrey Sachs, delivered 2,500 percent inflation and indescribable poverty, and transferred the ownership of Russian industry to Western financiers.

Williamson was an eyewitness who lived on and off in Russia for more than ten years, where she reported on all things Russian
for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and a host of other equally reputable publications. She knew and interviewed just about everybody involved in this gargantuan plundering scheme: Russian politicians and businessmen, the new "gangster" capitalists and their American sponsors from the IMF, the World Bank, USAID, Credit Suisse First Boston, the CIA, the KGB -- all in all, hundreds of sources who spoke candidly, often ruthlessly, of their parts in this terrible human drama.

Her account is filled with quotations from interviews with top aides of Yeltsin and Clinton, all down through the ranks of the two hierarchical societies [..]

The 546-page book (the best part of which is the footnotes) gives a nearly day-by-day report on what happened to Russia.

Once the Clinton regime and its lapdogs in the media defined Russian Boris Yeltsin as a "democrat," the wholesale looting of Russia began. According to the socialist theoreticians at Harvard, Russia needed to be brought into the New World Order in a hurry; and what better way to do it than Sachs' "shock therapy" -- a plan that empowered the degenerate, third-generation descendants of the original Bolsheviks by assigning them the deeds of Russia's mightiest state-owned industries -- including the giant gas, oil, electrical, and telecommunications industries, the world's largest paper, iron, and steel factories, the world's richest gold, silver, diamond, and platinum mines, automobile and airplane factories, etc. -- who, in turn, sold some of their shares of the properties to Westerners for a song, and pocketed the cash, while retaining control of the companies.

These third-generation Bolsheviks -- led by former Pravda hack Yegor Gaidar, grandson of a Bolshevik who achieved prominence as the teenage mass murderer of White Army officers, now heads the Moscow-based Institute for Economies in Transition -- became instant millionaires (or billionaires) and left the Russian workers virtual slaves of them and their new foreign investors.

When Russian members of the Supreme Soviet openly criticized the looting of the national patrimony by these new gangsters early in the U.S.-driven "reform" program, in 1993, before all Soviet institutions were destroyed, Yeltsin bombed Parliament.

Ironically, when Harvard's Sachs and Hay started identifying Russians they could work with, they ignored -- or shunned -- the most capable talent at hand: those numerous Russian economists who for 20 years had been studying the Swiss economist Wilhelm von Roepke and his disciple, Ludwig Erhard, father of Germany's "economic miracle" in anticipation of the day when Communism would collapse.

In the new, emerging global economy, it's clear that Russia is the designated center for heavy manufacturing -- just as Asia is for clothing and computers -- with its nearly unlimited supply of hydroelectric power, iron and steel, timber, gold and other precious metals.

When Russian members of the Supreme Soviet openly criticized the looting of the national patrimony by these new gangsters early in the U.S.-driven "reform" program, in 1993, before all Soviet institutions were destroyed, Yeltsin bombed Parliament.

Ironically, when Harvard's Sachs and Hay started identifying Russians they could work with, they ignored -- or shunned -- the most capable talent at hand: those numerous Russian economists who for 20 years had been studying the Swiss economist Wilhelm von Roepke and his disciple, Ludwig Erhard, father of Germany's "economic miracle" in anticipation of the day when Communism would collapse.

Somewhat sardonically, Williamson notes that one, probably unintended, benefit of Gorbachev's perestroika was the recruitment of these Russian economists by top U.S. universities.

In the new, emerging global economy, it's clear that Russia is the designated center for heavy manufacturing -- just as Asia is for clothing and computers -- with its nearly unlimited supply of hydroelectric power, iron and steel, timber, gold and other precious metals.

What is important for Western readers to understand -- as Williamson reports -- is that when Western banks and corporations bought these companies at bargain basement prices, they bought more than just industrial equipment. In the Soviet model, every unit of industrial production included workers' housing, churches, opera houses, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, etc., and the whole kit-and-caboodle was included in the selling price. By buying large shares of these companies, Western corporations became, ipso facto, town managers.

On another level, Contagion is about the workings of international finance, the consolidation of capital into fewer and fewer hands, and the ruthless, death-dealing policies it inflicts on its target countries through currency manipulation, inflation, depression, taxation and war -- with emphasis on Russia but with attention also given to Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, the Balkans, and other countries, and how it uses its control over money to produce social chaos.

[...] particularly interesting is her treatment of the Federal Reserve, and how this "bank" was designed to plunder the wealth of America through war, debt, and taxation, in order to maintain what is nothing more nor less than a giant pyramid scheme that depends on domination of the earth and its resources.

The policies inflicted on Russia by the banks were cruel to the Nth degree; but the policy implementers -- Williamson employs the derogatory Russian word myakigolovy ("soft-headed ones") (Mush Brains) applied to the Americans -- were a foppish lot, streaming into Russia by the thousands (the IMF, alone, with 150 staffers) with their outrageous salaries and per diem allowances, renting out the finest dachas, bringing in their exotic consumer goods, driving up prices for goods and rents, spurring a boom in the drug and prostitution businesses, and then watching, cold-heartedly, the declining fortunes of their hosts as they lost everything -- including the artistic heritage of the country.

Williamson describes brilliantly that heady atmosphere in Moscow in the early days of the IMF/USAID loan-scamming: a 24-hour party.
At a third and more intriguing level, Contagion is about America's criminal politics in the Clinton regime.

Gore, who was raised to be President, has impeccable Russian connections. His father, of course, was Lenin financier Armand Hammer's pocket senator, and it was Hammer who paid for Al Jr.'s expensive St. Alban's Prep schooling; and, as Williamson reports, Al Jr.'s daughter married Andrew Schiff, grandson of Jacob, who, as a member of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., underwrote anti-czarist political agitation for two decades before Lenin's coup, and congratulated Lenin upon his successful revolution.

Williamson also documents Gore's intimate involvement with powerful Wall Street financial houses, and his New York breakfast meeting with multi-billionaire George Soros (a key Russian player) just as the Russian collapse was underway.

Williamson tells an interesting story of Gore's response to the IMF/World Bank/USAID plunder of U.S. taxpayers for the purpose of hobbling Russia.

By March 1999, Russia was now a financial basket case, and billions, if not tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer-backed loans had vanished into the secret bank accounts of both Russian and American gangster capitalists, and the news was starting to make little vibrations on Capitol Hill.

"The U.S. administration's response to the debacle was repulsively similar to a typical Bill Clinton bimbo-eruption operation: Having ruined Russia by cosseting her in debt, meddling ignorantly in her internal affairs, and funding a drunken usurper, his agents denied all error and slandered ('slimed') her," writes Williamson.

As the extent of the corruption of the Clinton-Yeltsin "reform" plan for Russia unfolded, with the attendant Bank of New York scandal, the mysterious death of super banker Edmond Safra in his Monte Carlo penthouse, the collapse of the Russian stock market, and the whiplash effect in Southeast Asia, Congress was pressed to hold hearings. It was just a smoke screen.

"If the FBI, [Manhattan District Attorney] Robert Morgenthau, or Congress were serious about getting to the bottom of the plundering of Russia's assets and U.S. taxpayers' resources, they would show far more professional interest in exactly what was said and agreed in the private meetings [U.S. Treasury secretary] Larry Summers, Strobe Talbott, and [former Treasury Secretary] Robert Rubin conducted with Anatoly Chubais [former Russian finance minister, who oversaw the distribution and sale of Russian industries], and Sergie Vasiliev [Yeltsin's principal legal adviser, and a member of the Chubais clan], and later Chubais again in June and July of 1998.

The Clinton's Russia policy did not just plunder Russians, leaving them destitute while creating a new and ruthless class of international capitalist gangsters at U.S. taxpayer expense; it had the double consequence of bringing all Americans deeper into the bankers' New World Order by increasing their debt load, decreasing their privacy, and restricting their civil rights.