Monday, June 09, 2014

Empire's White-Knighting Explained

In an article published in Counterpunch on Friday, Diana Johnstone pulls back the curtain on the Ukraine crisis:
"In September 2013, one of Ukraine’s richest oligarchs, Viktor Pinchuk, paid for an elite strategic conference on Ukraine’s future that was held in the same Palace in Yalta, Crimea, where Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met to decide the future of Europe in 1945. The Economist, one of the elite media reporting on what it called a “display of fierce diplomacy”, stated that: “The future of Ukraine, a country of 48m people, and of Europe was being decided in real time.” The participants included Bill and Hillary Clinton, former CIA head General David Petraeus, former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, former World Bank head Robert Zoellick, Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, Shimon Peres, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Mario Monti, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite, and Poland’s influential foreign minister Radek Sikorski. Both President Viktor Yanukovych, deposed five months later, and his recently elected successor Petro Poroshenko were present. Former U.S. energy secretary Bill Richardson was there to talk about the shale-gas revolution which the United States hopes to use to weaken Russia by substituting fracking for Russia’s natural gas reserves." 
Ah yes, the shale gas canard that's physically and mathematically impossible: the U.S. simply does not have the shipping and processing capabilities to meet Europe's gas needs - nor is there nearly as much shale gas in the fracking wells as originally estimated. Doesn't stop the world's biggest conmen from trying, though.
"U.S. policy, already evident at the September 2013 Yalta meeting, was carried out on the ground by Victoria Nuland, former advisor to Dick Cheney, deputy ambassador to NATO, spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton, wife of neocon theorist Robert Kagan. Her leading role in the Ukraine events proves that the neo-con influence in the State Department, established under Bush II, was retained by Obama, whose only visible contribution to foreign policy change has been the presence of a man of African descent in the presidency, calculated to impress the world with U.S. multicultural virtue. Like most other recent presidents, Obama is there as a temporary salesman for policies made and executed by others."
The truth hurts. But it's blindingly obvious.

"A trap was thereby set for Putin. He was damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t. He could underreact, and betray Russia’s basic national interests, allowing NATO to advance its hostile forces to an ideal attack position.
Or he could overreact, by sending Russian forces to invade Ukraine. The West was ready for this, prepared to scream that Putin was “the new Hitler”, poised to overrun poor, helpless Europe, which could only be saved (again) by the generous Americans."
Except Putin saw the trap, and sidestepped it masterfully. Which is why the Empire and the Kiev junta have been escalating atrocities, desperately seeking to re-establish control of the narrative. But with each video, with each photo, of "democratic democrats" democratically murdering civilians in Donbass, it becomes increasingly obvious that the Imperial media are lying. Soon enough, they won't be able to fool anyone except the most gullible.

But Donbass, or even Ukraine in general, are merely a square on the much bigger chessboard - to borrow Uncle Zbig's term, since he's the author of Empire's current "strategy". At one point Johnstone quips that "The United States needs an enemy to save the world from." Very true. And this sort of demented white-knighting was very much on display in Normandy on Friday.

What the Empire is really after here is re-establishing dominance over Europe. Back in the mid-90s, this was done by "midwifing" a war in Bosnia - stoking the conflict and sabotaging European peace efforts, so the Americans could ride in and save the day. (Read the final chapters of Richard Holbrooke's memoir, if you don't believe me.) Now, it's all about exploiting "the anti-communist, anti-Russian and even pro-Nazi nostalgia of northeastern Europe to raise the false cry of 'the Russians are coming!' in order to obstruct the growing economic partnership between the old EU, notably Germany, and Russia," argues Johnstone. And adds:
"With 28 members of diverse language, culture, history and mentality, the EU is unable to agree on any foreign policy other than the one Washington imposes."
Now, the impression even Johnstone is succumbing to is that the EU is united and marching in lockstep with Washington on "resisting evil Russian aggression." Sure, they may have gotten the Bulgarians to halt pipeline construction, but let's face it - bullying Bulgaria isn't particularly hard. Have the French canceled the assault ship contract? No. Has there been a surge of voter anger at the establishment? Remember, the Empire is all about perception management.

The latest propaganda meme is that by not sending tanks into Donbass, Putin is "betraying" his people and "caving in" to the Empire. Yet there is nothing - nothing! - in the man's track record to suggest he would do that. Quite the opposite.

Perhaps a bit more faith is in order.

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