Fear and Loathing in Ukraine

Despite favorable – even fawning – propaganda in Western media, the U.S./E.U.-backed regime in Ukraine tramples on traditional liberal values of tolerance and pluralism, notes James W Carden.

By James W Carden

The overnight train from Kiev to Slavyansk gives a passenger, if nothing else, ample time to read and think. On a return trip to war-torn eastern Ukraine in March, I took the opportunity the 13-hour journey afforded to re-read Judith Shklar’s seminal essay, The Liberalism of Fear.

Written in 1989, at the time of what in retrospect looks like an era of unhinged, to say nothing of embarrassing, American triumphalism, Shklar, unlike many of her contemporaries in the academy (particularly Francis Fukuyama who published The End of History? in the National Interest that year), took a sober accounting of her time. Shklar warned, quite presciently, as it turns out, that “anyone who thinks that fascism in one guise or another is dead and gone ought to think again.”

The neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol on a banner in Ukraine.

The neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol on a banner in Ukraine.

The Liberalism of Fear essentially seeks to answer the question: What is the baseline requirement for a good society? What is the absolute precursor it must achieve without which it would be impossible to achieve democratic norms, pluralism, cultural freedom, and a market economy (be it democratic-capitalist or democratic-socialist) to develop?

In a biographical essay on Shklar, written after her untimely death in 1992, the philosopher Seyla Benhabib wrote that for Shklar, cruelty “was the chief vice, the summum malum, that liberalism must avoid.” In singling out the corrosive effect cruelty has on society Shklar was, according to Benhabib, “calling attention to the accompanying sentiments of fear, degradation, and humiliation that would ultimately make a liberal polity impossible.”

Shklar’s liberalism of fear has no positive program, it is essentially negative; as she herself notes, her liberalism resembles “Isiah Berlin’s ‘negative liberty’” though “it is not exactly the same.” What the liberalism of fear is also not, as she makes clear, is utopian. Then what is it?

According to Shklar, the liberalism of fear is a liberalism that is grounded “in the conviction of the earliest defenders of toleration, born in horror, that cruelty is an absolute evil an offense against God or humanity. “

The liberalism of fear is resolutely anti-fascist: It must, according to Shklar, reject political doctrines which “do not recognize any difference between the spheres of the personal and the public … it requires [that] every public policy be considered with this separation in mind and must be consciously defended,” she continues by noting that, “the limits of coercion begin, though they do not end – with a prohibition upon invading the private realm.”

The reason for Shklar’s emphasis on the dangers posed by the erasure between the public and private surely has something to do with her biography. As she recounted in the 1989 Charles Homer Haskins lecture, she was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1928 during the inter-war years but had to flee with her family when the war came:

“[J]ust before the Russians arrived, my uncle put us on a plane to Sweden, where we remained far too long, until well after the German invasion of Norway. By then there was only one route out of Europe, the Trans-Siberian railroad, which slowly took us to Japan. It was not an easy trip, but miraculously we escaped.”

Shklar, according to Benhabib, “carried into her political thought the indelible marks of disbelief in the face of a world gone insane.” Hence her desire to help build liberalism a sturdy enough intellectual edifice which would not succumb to the barbarity that racked Europe between 1914 and 1945. Are we in danger of a repeat performance today? I wonder.

Shklar also tackles the tricky topic of political spirituality. We are told, in the U.S. anyway, that the EuroMaidan in Ukraine was a “Revolution of Dignity” and that the sacrifices of the “Heavenly Hundred” who died on the Square should not be in vain. The implicit instruction is for the West to gloss over and ignore the violent nature of the revolution, which saw a democratically elected president flee in the face of violence.

It is reasonable to infer that Shklar would have taken a dim view of all this claptrap. “The consequences of political spirituality,” she wrote, “are far less elevating than it might seem. Politically it has usual served as an excuse for orgies of destruction.”

Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine's Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)

Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)

How do we apply Shklar’s criteria to the situation in Ukraine as it obtains today? In Shklar’s vision of liberalism, there are absolute minimums which societies need to meet. From what I saw, Kiev is not meeting them.

The Ukraine crisis poses some very tough questions on the nature of statehood and nationality within the modern European nation-state. As the British political scientist Richard Sakwa has noted, the outcome of the crisis will likely determine which of two paths Ukraine will chose: will it go the route of a monist, in many ways, exclusionary society where Ukrainian is the sole official or even acceptable language or will Ukraine choose the model that Western countries aspire to, that of a pluralistic society in which there is toleration for differences in language, religion, culture and even historical narratives?

I can tell you the path on which it is currently embarked. Kiev’s decommunization policy seems, at first glance, somewhat reasonable, especially to Western ears, which too easily associates communism with the monstrous criminality of the early Bolsheviks, of Stalin, of Pol Pot.

However, in its rush to purge itself of its communist past – in renaming street signs, toppling statues of Lenin, and banning the current iteration of the communist party – the government in Kiev is driving dissent underground, shaming and alienating millions of Russian speakers in the Donbas, and driving a stake through the heart of pluralism.

The insignia of the Azov battalion, using the neo-Nazi symbol of the Wolfsangel.

The insignia of the Azov battalion, using the neo-Nazi symbol of the Wolfsangel.

Shklar warned against such campaigns, warning that any “theory that gives public authorities the unconditional right to impose beliefs and even a vocabulary as they may see fit upon the citizenry can be described as even remotely liberal.”

In the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk locals are afraid to express even a modicum of sympathy with the Soviet past lest they draw the unwanted attention of the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine), so dissent manifests itself here and there – usually at night  – in what one local described as a “graffiti war” in which painted slogans of the Azov battalion and other Ukrainian armed forces groups are defaced with red paint.

The push to decommunization might reasonably be said to encourage hooliganism. In Kiev in late March, a group of young thugs physically attacked elderly pensioners who were marching with Soviet flags. The concerted effort to erase the Soviet past isn’t the only attack on pluralism. A gay rights parade was brutally attacked in Lviv in late March.

The question which then arises is this: why are these incidents met with complete silence or, at best, utter indifference by the European Union and the rest of the international community?

James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee for East-West Accord’s eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.  [This piece is adapted from a lecture given to students of the National Nuclear Research University (Moscow) in March.]

19 comments for “Fear and Loathing in Ukraine

  1. Baldurdasche
    April 5, 2016 at 14:14

    It’s important that honest appraisals of Ukraine’s sad situation are distributed. The upbeat patter coming from theKyiv propaganda factory, directed at the EU, and Holland particularly, verges on the ridiculous – if they weren’t trying to frighten the pants off everybody at the same time.

    The ‘Garden of Eukrainie’ is delightful (free of russian gas) – but there are a couple of large poisonous snakes in it, demanding that ‘???? and Eva’ stomp them out.

  2. J'hon Doe II
    April 5, 2016 at 13:09

    How Family that Runs Azerbaijan Built an Empire of Hidden Wealth

    Documents peel away three layers of secret ownership in a conglomerate and lead to gold mines and overseas real estate

    By Will Fitzgibbon, Miranda Patrucic and Marcos García Rey
    Apr 4, 2016

    Excerpts ——

    —Friendship with U.S.

    Despite global criticism of Azerbaijan’s mounting authoritarianism, the Aliyev regime has been a friend of successive U.S. administrations. The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Aliyevs’ Azerbaijan, including millions for military and security training. Azerbaijan’s government is one of the largest buyers of influence in Washington D.C. and, together with its lobbyists, spent at least $4 million in 2014 alone burnishing the country’s image. The country has taken members of Congress on all-expenses-paid visits to Azerbaijan, lavishing the lawmakers with silk scarves, crystal tea sets and rugs.

    Azerbaijan’s importance in energy, as a supply route to American troops in Afghanistan and its potential role in the fight against ISIS makes the United States a reluctant critic, said former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard D. Kauzlarich, now an adjunct professor at George Mason University.

    “Being where it is – bordered by Russia and Iran in a very unstable geopolitical environment – is a factor that makes it among the more unique countries in the region,” said Kauzlarich, who was U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan from 1994-1997.

    Its levels of corruption and elite control of the economy make it stand out in a part of the world where these things aren’t unusual, he added.

    “The franchising out of economic activity to families and clans that are important for maintaining the current regime in power is not an unusual pattern,” said Kauzlarich. “However, it certainly has been perfected in Azerbaijan.”

    —Bigger offshore network revealed

    The fact that Aliyev’s family can be linked to offshore companies is not new. A 2013 investigation by ICIJ showed that Aliyev, his wife and his daughters owned or were otherwise connected to offshore companies. Now Mossack Fonseca’s files greatly expand on what is known and disclose new companies belonging to the President’s two daughters, Leyla and Arzu.

    The documents show Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva controlled two previously hidden British Virgin Islands-incorporated firms — Kingsview Developments Limited and Exaltation Limited. It is unclear from the files the purpose of the first company, but the second was incorporated in January 2015 to own a British property worth more than $1 million.

    https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160404-azerbaijan-hidden-wealth.html

  3. Robert
    April 4, 2016 at 21:55

    This article is bullshit for the most part, especially about Maidan Square and the “violent” removal of a democratically elected President. In any case, Ukraine is a poor country flailing as it simply struggles to survive Putin’s incursions and the culture of corruption and cronyism it inherited from its Soviet and post-Soviet past.

    I won’t try to justify my comments with facts or link those facts together in a logical rebuttal–it would be too long and pointless anyway, given the audience. My only aim is to speak out in support of the human beings in Ukraine who are simply trying to obtain a better future (one more like western countries than Russia) and for the most part are reasonable people who care less if someone speaks Russian or Ukrainian, or both, as most do.

    You may now continue with your inane debates over trivia, fascists, and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

    • Zachary Smith
      April 4, 2016 at 22:57

      I won’t try to justify my comments with facts or link those facts together in a logical rebuttal–it would be too long and pointless anyway, given the audience.

      You know the Truth, but won’t share it – not even in the form of links to the “long” Truthful Information.

      That suggests to me that either those links don’t say what you would like, or they’re to some Nazi sites in Ukraine.

    • Curious
      April 4, 2016 at 23:33

      Robert,

      I think the number of angels is Pi. Now that this is solved, please feel free to add some content, or as Zachary Smith says, some “truth” for those of us who are less learned and informed than you.

      Thank you.

    • Joe L.
      April 5, 2016 at 11:51

      CNN:”In declassified document, CIA acknowledges role in ’53 Iran coup” (August 19, 2013):

      Shortly after Mossadegh’s election, the CIA began to plan his overthrow. The goal of the coup was to elevate the strength of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and appoint a new prime minister – Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi.

      Before the coup, the agency – along with the British Secret Intelligence Service – helped foment anti-Mossadegh fervor using propaganda, according to CIA documents. “In Iran, CIA and SIS propaganda assets were to conduct an increasingly intensified effort through the press, handbills and the Tehran clergy in a campaign designed to weaken the Mossadeq government in any way possible,” Wilber wrote.

      On August 19, 1953, the coup swung into full effect as the CIA and British intelligence agency helped pull pro-Shah forces together and ORGANIZED LARGE PROTESTS AGAINST MOSSADEGH.

      “The Army very soon joined the pro-Shah movement and by noon that day it was clear that Tehran, as well as certain provincial areas, were controlled by pro-Shah street groups and Army units,” Wilber wrote. “By the end of 19 August … members of the Mossadeq government were either in hiding or were incarcerated.”

      In order to provide Zahedi, the country’s new prime minister, with some stability, the “CIA covertly made available $5,000,000 within two days of Zahedi’s assumptions of power.”

      After the coup, Mossadegh was sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out. The former leader died in Tehran in 1967.

      END OF ARTICLE

      But Robert, maybe you believe that all protests must be puritanical against some sort of villain. There were also “protests” in 2002 in Caracas, Venezuela against Hugo Chavez. Looking at that coup attempt, it is VERY similar to what happened in Ukraine with snipers on roofs who killed people on both sides but blamed on the government by the media who manipulated the footage (which US media also did), large protests, along with funding by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy for the coup plotters – I believe many of them received cabinet positions in their short lived coup government, and let us not forget about the IMF almost immediately offering loans to the new coup government. After the coup attempt failed, it would seem that many of the coup plotters fled to the US. Now in Ukraine you have Natalie Jaresko, who is an AMERICAN who used to work for USAID in Ukraine, becoming Ukraine’s finance minister and “Yats is our guy” became Prime Minister as Nuland’s phone call eluded to. This is not rocket science to see because it has been done before.

      One thing when I read your comment I almost thought that I heard the Star Spangled Banner playing softly in the background but the truth is that is not far from the truth because the hand of Uncle Sam was definitely present in Ukraine, the biggest prize, which was even more than Victoria Nuland handing out cookies – it was a coup d’état.

      Oh and if you are interested in learning about the involvement of the US in the coup against Venezuela in 2002 then watch John Pilger’s “War on Democracy” (https://vimeo.com/16724719) where you can hear former Senior CIA Officials plainly say that the US could care a less about democracy and that the US will overthrow a democracy if it is in US’ interests, get used to it world OR you can watch Oliver Stone’s “South of the Border” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvjIwVjJsXc).

    • Tom in AZ
      April 7, 2016 at 22:02

      “I won’t try to justify my comments with facts or link those facts together in a logical rebuttal”

      Well, thanks for your inane nonsense, based as you said, on no facts. And thanks again for moving on to where they can’t wait to hear your drivel…

  4. Curious
    April 4, 2016 at 18:53

    Why are these incidents met with complete silence or, at best, utter indifference? This is a very good question, and it has to asked over and over again. Please ask it to the editors of the US “paper of record” who have created their own puffed up arrogance, ignorance, parroting of government talking points and a deliberate cropping of photos which may have included the Nazi symbols in Maidan.

    Having not read the book by Shklar I will stretch the aspect of ‘fear’ a bit further. There is another aspect of fear these days in the West for example. People fear losing their jobs and the ability to support their loved ones. Although this fear has always existed I believe it has intensified in the US since 911 and the crash of ’08-’09. This fear is one reason why there is silence in the West and most likely in journalism as well. Since most of the media in the US is owned by 5-6 corporations, it is easier to control the information one consumes. It takes a daring, or fearless person to properly inform the listeners/viewers outside of the controlled narrative. But of course this person would not get any air time nor ‘listening ears’ these days in the larger media. In the case of Ukraine the narrative here in the US is very controlled. Why take down statues of Lenin and leave up statues of Stepan Bandera? Why is everyone consumed by Hitler, or communism, and not informed about the Nachtigall battalion? Some have said that battalion even shocked the Nazis. As Shklar wrote ‘cruelty is an absolute evil’ some of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ which has happened in Ukraine is worth noting and can also provide a historical context for some of what is playing out today. Why can someone, or anyone defend the use of the Avoz battalion for their own gain?

    The study of Bandera is a study in total intolerance and his sense of Ukrainian ethnic purity which is an antithesis to your article and the book by Shklar.

    I started to pay attention to Maiden and Ukraine after Kiev announced Ukrainian as the only official and spoken language in the country. Why this has not been widely reported is also unacceptable. To restrict ones use of language and culture goes beyond simple ethnocentricity and allegiance, as it is control and exclusion.

    On your thought about language: Your concept of pluralism and “toleration for differences in language” is very important. I studied the language of Nazi Germany for years and I can’t agree with you more. I’ll end with a quote from Victor Klemperer in his book ‘The language of the Third Reich’. He writes: “It isn’t only the Nazi actions that have to vanish, but also the Nazi cast of mind, the typical Nazi way of thinking, and it’s breeding ground: the language of Nazism.” As a linguistic scholar in Dresden, he lived it.

    I personally fear that the people who use intolerance, or a battalion of hate, don’t know what they are playing around with. To use Avoz as pawns for awhile doesn’t take into account the desire of some people wanting ethnic purity for 40-50+ years. Do they think they will turn these people into ‘moderates’ for their National Guard? The EU, as you have noted, should be very wise to this fact or they have not studied their own history. People are paying for their silence, and it is evil.

    I realize I could only answer your question with more questions, but I believe much of the silence is out of ignorance, control, and the pursuit of ones own agenda in the news, which is to gain advertising dollars as much as possible and therefore to not rock the corporate boat.

    Thank you for your article…. I got a bit stirred up myself.

    • Dieter Heymann
      April 5, 2016 at 07:06

      Bandera. An interesting event happened when the Wehrmacht in 1941 entered and took Lvov. The German commander failed to immediately occupy the local radio station which gave the Banderistas the opportunity to broadcast the establishment of an independent Ukraine. Hitler was furious when he learned it. Slovakia had already caused so much trouble that there were not going to be any more independent states in Greater Germany.
      Germany had earlier played a role in the formation of an independent Ukraine after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 when the budding Red Army could not prevent the German army to essentially occupy much of Ukraine.

  5. J'hon Doe II
    April 4, 2016 at 17:10

    Hillary Clinton’s State Department Increased Chemical Arms Sales To Middle East Countries That Gave To Clinton Foundation

    By DAVID SIROTA

    As Egyptian democracy protesters massed in the streets of Cairo in 2011, provoking a bloody crackdown from the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented herself as a champion of human rights. Clinton was “deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protesters,” she told reporters at the State Department. “Egyptian authorities,” she urged, should not impede “peaceful protests.”

    But behind the scenes, Clinton pursued contrasting aims. She cautioned the White House about backing the ouster of President Mubarak, whom she had previously described as a family friend. Her State Department cleared Egypt to continue purchasing arms the U.S. government classified as “toxicological agents,” a broad designation that included chemical and biological weapons, as well as vaccines — this, at the very moment Mubarak’s forces were unleashing one toxicological agent, tear gas, against protesters demanding his ouster.

    The Clinton-run State Department’s approval of chemical and biological exports to the Egyptian government increased in volume just as dollars flowed from Mubarak-linked entities into the coffers of Clinton family concerns. A group closely associated with the Mubarak government paid Bill Clinton a $250,000 speaking fee in 2010, less than 4 months before the Egyptian revolution began. In 2012, a firm with an ownership stake in the company that manufactured the tear gas reportedly used by Egyptian security forces against the uprising paid $100,000 to $250,000 for another Bill Clinton speech.

    The approval of American chemical weapons sales to Egypt as Mubarak’s associates were stocking Clinton family interests with cash is but one example of a dynamic that prevailed though Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. During the roughly two years of Arab Spring protests that confronted authoritarian governments with popular uprisings, Clinton’s State Department approved $66 million worth of so-called Category 14 exports — defined as “toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment” — to nine Middle Eastern governments that either donated to the Clinton Foundation or whose affiliated groups paid Bill Clinton speaking fees.

    That represented a 50 percent overall increase in such export approvals to the same countries over the two years prior to the Arab Spring, according to an International Business Times review of State Department documents. In the same time period, Arab countries that did not donate to the Clinton Foundation saw an overall decrease in their State Department approvals to purchase chemical and biological materials. The increase in chemical, biological and related exports to Clinton Foundation donors was part of a larger jump in overall arms sales authorized by Hillary Clinton’s State Department to foreign governments that gave her family’s foundation at least $54 million, according to a previous IBTimes analysis.

    The State Department, the Clinton campaign and the Clinton Foundation did not respond to questions about the deals.

    The donations to the Clinton Foundation and the concurrent increase in export approvals of toxicological, biological and chemical agents and associated hardware raise questions about whether the contributions improperly influenced arms export decisions, said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

    “The goal of conflicts-of-interest standards and government ethics standards is to set up a system where the public can be confident that officials are a making decisions on their merits, and not that there is a financial stake in the matter,” Clark told IBTimes. “Did these donations influence State Department decision-making? Why did they donate to the Clinton Foundation? Is it possible that they perceived that the donation would ingratiate themselves — or not — with policymakers?”

    Prior to Clinton’s tenure at State, Congress and the public could see some of the details of Category 14 exports. Those interested in scrutinizing the sales were supplied a breakdown of the transactions into separate categories such as “tear gases and riot control” and other wares classified as “medical countermeasures” like vaccines to protect against exposure to chemical and biological warfare. But as Clinton’s State Department increased its export approvals, it also stopped providing a breakdown of such exports. Key details are now effectively secret.

    http://www.ibtimes.com/hillary-clintons-state-department-increased-chemical-arms-sales-middle-east-countries-1949653

  6. J'hon Doe II
    April 4, 2016 at 16:53

    How Hillary Clinton kept her wealthy friends close while at State Department

    E-mail exchanges involving former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and major donors to her family’s causes number in the dozens out of the thousands of pages of messages released so far.

    By Tom Hamburger
    October 5, 2015

    The note to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton from liberal financier George Soros demanded “urgent attention from the highest levels of the U.S. government.” Clinton swiftly alerted a top aide to what she described as a “very forceful message which is good — and needed.”

    The e-mail exchange, in which Soros warned of growing unrest in Albania, illustrates how Clinton interacted with major donors to her family’s causes during her tenure at the State Department, staying in touch with her political network before her 2016 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. And they show how these donors, some of them with interests before the U.S. government, gained high-level access to press their policy concerns inside the Clinton-led State Department.

    Soros, a top contributor to the Clinton Foundation, was one of several major donors whose messages were disclosed by the State Department last week as part of the ongoing release of the former secretary’s e-mails. Other exchanges included references to entertainment mogul Haim Saban, who has said he would pay “whatever it takes” to propel Clinton to the White House in 2016, as well as other major Clinton Foundation donors such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, fashion industry executive Susie Tompkins Buell and Ukrainian steel magnate Viktor Pinchuk.

    ::
    (Soros is heavily financially invested in the Ukraine overthrow)

  7. MG
    April 4, 2016 at 15:18

    “… utter indifference by the European Union and the rest of the international community…”
    European Union and the rest of the international community have no idea what is going on in Ukraine or can locate it on the map. Political elites and governments drive all the narrative for their own purposes hence indifference for these particular issues.

  8. StevenM
    April 4, 2016 at 14:01

    It is becoming more evident day by day that the value systems that the West is insisting on keeping and imposing on other nations (either by force, soft power, colorful revolutions, or media propaganda…) are just tools to impose dominance, with no respect to human rights or democracy. E.g. Ukraine or Turkey…

  9. J'hon Doe II
    April 4, 2016 at 13:15

    Encirclement of Russia: the War for Ngorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan

    By Olivier Renault
    April 03, 2016

    Theme: US NATO War Agenda
    SCO-azerbaijan-nuland

    Encirclement of Russia: the war in Ngorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan: April 3, 2016: There have been military clashes between the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan since the night of Friday to Saturday. Many deaths are reported.

    The strong fighting is reported between Martakert and Hadrut on the front line. The Armenian army based in Nagorno-Karabakh, mainly populated by Armenians,** reportedly shot down two drones, tanks and two helicopters according to sources of the Armenian news agency. Baku announced that the Armenian army has lost a number of soldiers.

    Plan U.S.A.?

    Is it because Armenia refused to become a NATO base? According to the NATO website*** dated March 10, 2016 Armenia would be a basis for the establishment of partnerships. NATO would, therefore, try to support Armenia in its intent to keep Nagorno-Karabakh and to infiltrate the lines of Russian diplomacy?

    NATO has, in any case, the desire to open a new front against Russia, since, according Azernews article dated as of March 10, 2016, as on the NATO website, we clearly see NATO’s attempts to obtain agreements with Armenia and Azerbaijan to encircle Russia. Azerbaijan, which has been trying for years to distance itself from Russia has finally agreed to become the NATO base against Armenia since 10 March 2016. Azerbaijan, as an ally to Turkey including on the Armenian genocide issue and as a NATO partner, would attack Armenia to injure an ally to Russia, which refused to support NATO%?

    In any case, the war between NATO and Russia is resuming in Karabakh while NATO threatens Russia in Ukraine and in the Baltic countries. Since 2014 strong NATO troop movements have been observed in Central Europe. Night-time movements of NATO military convoys have been seen by people in Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Poland.

    In 2017 NATO must consolidate its troops in countries of the European Union border with Russia. With new fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh the threat of a Third World War is getting closer and NATO’s intent to encircle Russia is confirmed. The Russian President, as ever, calls for ceasefire!

    Translated from French by Tom Winter, in Novorossia Today

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/encirclement-of-russia-the-war-for-ngorno-karabakh-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan/5518224

  10. Oleg
    April 4, 2016 at 13:02

    Well, a really interesting view. However, in my opinion, it stops a bit short. A society must develop to survive, and the end of history is something that should not and will not happen, as the end of development is death. A society without development is a society in decline. The late Soviet Union was an example of this “zastoy”, or stagnation, and ultimately it was this stagnation that brought the ultimate end to it. So the question is how do we achieve sustained development without revolutions and cruelty and associated atrocities. And the answer is again simple. Develop the civil society. In time, developed, mature civil society will arrange for liberalization and sustained development without need for revolution. One must understand that a revolution is first and foremost a breakdown of law and order that follows the destruction of the mechanisms of state and brings about countless suffering of the population. This is what happens now in Ukraine. This also happened in the Russian Empire in 1917, in France in 1793, and so on. It is said that Americans are so keen on regime changes because the origin of their state is a revolution too. I do not want to offend anyone, but the American revolution was somewhat theatrical and really different from the ones in Russia and France and elsewhere. Some chests of tea were thrown overboard and some taxes were not paid. Some frontier forts were attacked and even the White House was burned, although some 30 years later and in a war that was actually declared by the US. However, overall, the everyday life in the colonies was not affected and the law and order, inasmuch as it was kept before the revolution, was maintained. This is vastly different from the events that the populations of France and Russia had to endure. Again, I do not want to offend anyone, but sometimes I wish that some of the people who cry so loud about regime changes and the new American century etc take a kind of time machine and just go to Russia of 1917 or France of 1793. Or to Russia in early 1990s. I lived there at that time and I do not wish anyone to experience it firsthand. Or, why the time machine? Just go to present-day Ukraine! I do wonder sometimes why the neocon couple Kagan/Nuland wouldn’t decide to live as they preach and go to live in Ukraine for a while. Not as expats or diplomats, of course, but as ordinary citizens. Let them taste their own medicine.

    The bottom line is simple. You want freedom and liberalism – keep the neocons and their mania of regime change and color revolutions away. Exactly because any regime change breeds cruelty and mass sufferings.

    • Brad Owen
      April 4, 2016 at 14:20

      In the American Revolutionary War, we were spared the “necessity” of slaughtering the ruling, elite “Establishment”, like what happened in Russia and France. But also, the TORIES (anti-revolution, pro-Empire) NEVER LEFT. They went underground…and into banking houses…and just across the border into the Canadian Colony (they were usually the wealthy and powerful Colonists who wanted to manage the Colonies for the Mother Country. This circumstance accounts for our ENTIRE historical drama; various versions of “Patriot vs. Tory”). Anyway, via the RoundTable activities of Cecil Rhodes, Milner, et al… and the manipulations of City-of-London via Wall Street Houses of (Tory) Finance (the Morgan crew), and the Essex County Junto (piratical, smuggling Shipping Magnates-now-become Insurance firms), we are now firmly ensconced within the RoundTable’s Empire of The City and The Street (one Head of a two-headed Imperial Eagle; the other Head is the SME (Synarchist Movement for Empire), from the Atlantic-to-the-Urals…they’re still working on it. In any case, USA and Russia are targeted for take-down and assimilation into the Empire of the Two-Headed Eagle (West and East Roman Empire; the original, LITERAL Fascists). This titanic struggle has been centuries-in-the-making, and reaching its’ End-Game now. The SME is trading Siberia for Africa as its’ “Resource Bank”, abandoning Siberia to the very powerful Asia Grouping. The whole Zionist episode is a local tactical maneuver to block passage, via the Middle East Isthmus, into Africa, by the Asia Grouping, which starts at Iran and proceeds to the tip of the Korean Peninsula, including the Subcontinent…a VERY powerful grouping. This was George Orwell’s S.O.S. message to the World, as best as I can decipher.

      • J'hon Doe II
        April 4, 2016 at 16:00

        Brad Owen, your contribution (comments) on this page are as guiding lights to me and anyone who’d follow the wealth of clues you’ve array’d before us. I’ve just spent at least an hour or more researching history of the Two-Headed Eagle and where that led me… !

        I read Quigley in “The Anglo-American Establishment” some years ago, but your above statement provided a longer and deeper look (via Google) into history – that I will continue to pursue.

        Huge Gratitude.

  11. Brad Owen
    April 4, 2016 at 12:08

    A brilliant insight! The degree of manifest cruelty in Society marks it on the scale of Liberalism (little) to Fascism (much). It does work! I admire the simplicity of it. And it encapsulates everything Jesus tried to tell the stone-hearted brutes of His day.

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