Showing posts with label AngoZionist Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AngoZionist Empire. Show all posts

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Return of the Magyars: Hungary’s President Calls Out the US as Morally and Financially Bankrupt

Note from The Saker: amongst my many blind spots and list of topics I know practically nothing about there is, to my great shame, the topic of Hungarian politics. Therefore please address your comments, criticisms and reactions (and thanks!!!) to American Kulak but not to me. I am most definitely the least qualified to say anything at all about this.

Cheers and enjoy!

The Saker

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Return of the Magyars: Hungary’s President Calls Out the US as Morally and Financially Bankrupt

by American Kulak

With so many developments in Ukraine and now a renewed US war on Syria with the Islamic State as the pretext, it has been easy to overlook important developments in the struggle to restore sovereign nations in Europe. As described in my last guest post here at the Vineyard, Scottish independence vote on Thursday, September 18 has forced Anglo-American mainstream media to cover the topic of ‘separatism’ as a wave spreading from the Scottish Highlands to Spain’s Catalonia. Many mainstream media outlets have repeated ridiculous propaganda about NATO or the EU coming apart and the economic sky falling from a Scottish ‘Yes’ vote (James Bond film reference deliberate in that sentence). Some of the usual Russophobic voices have started whining about ‘pro-Kremlin bloggers’ trolling Washington and London on Twitter with humorous captions supporting Scotland’s independence [https://twitter.com/torrek_info/status/509325448338472960], or the positive statements Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond has made about Vladimir Putin. [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/30/alex-salmond-vladimir-putin-remarks]

A Short Disclaimer Regarding Hungary


Today’s topic is the next target for the Empire’s Two Minutes Hate propaganda in Europe (besides Marie Le Pen and the National Front of France): the ancient nation of Hungary and her proud president, Viktor Orban. Let me start by saying that as an American citizen and independent blogger, I have no financial or blood ties to Hungary, nor is my intent to defend all of Budapest’s policies. My purpose in this post is to examine why the Empire increasingly views the Hungarian government with disdain and has sent out its usual NGO and media mouthpieces to trash President Viktor Orban personally and attack his ‘Putinist’ pro-Russian worldview. In doing so I approach this post from the perspective of someone who is a neophyte to Hungarian politics, but not to the overall games the European Union plays to keep its member nations as vassals to what Saker calls the ‘Anglo-Zionist’ Empire.

Why is Budapest Emerging as a Key Russian Ally Within the European Union?
A Millennium of Hungarian History and Its Relevance to Novorossiya


The Hungarians, for those Saker readers who may not be familiar with their history, are descended from the same great migrations out of central Asia in the first millennium AD as the Bulgars, with Russian scholars believing the Magyars came out of a southern Urals homeland east of the Volga steppe. Driven by ancient enemies known as the Pechenegs who alternated between warring with the Orthodox Christian Eastern Roman Empire and serving as mercenaries of Byzantium, the Hungarians settled in the Danube River and Carpathian basins. Their language, like that of the Finns, is non-Indo European and easily exceeds Finnish and Basque as the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language on the European continent. Only a few decades after Prince Vladimir baptized the Kievan Rus in 987, the first Christian monarch of the Magyars Saint Stephen I converted the traditional seven Hungarian tribes to Christianity in the early 10th century. Under Stephen’s successful reign prior to the Great Schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople, Hungary prospered as the major trading route between the Germanic Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantines. Stephen’s younger sister married a Venetian prince who at that time was a key ally of Byzantium, while Stephen’s wife was a Bavarian princess. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_I_of_Hungary]

The historic parallels between Hungary and Rus did not stop with Stephen and the Second Rome, but continued in the 13th century. During those turbulent decades the Mongol Tartars, who subjugated nearly all of Russia, were turned back by Hungarian knights and their Holy Roman Empire allies. Unfortunately, wars in the following two centuries with the Poles and German kingdoms and dynastic struggles weakened the Hungarians, until they succumbed to the Ottoman Turkish advances and were forced into alliance with the Catholic Hapsburgs. This also led to the counter-reformation in the Hungarian lands, with negative consequences for Protestants and Orthodox Christians alike. In 1686 after the Turks decisive defeat by the Polish-led armies at the Battle of Vienna the future Hungarian capital of Buda was liberated from the Ottoman yoke, and the last Ottoman raid from Crimea into Hungary was recorded in 1717. After the 1708 Battle of Trenscen the Hungarians were fully absorbed into the Papist Hapsburg Empire which became known as Austro-Hungary. During World War I the Hungarians suffered huge casualties fighting the Serbs and Russians on behalf of their Hapsburg emperor.

After WWI the key document many Hungarian nationalists to this day regard with bitterness, the Treaty of Trianon [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon], was signed in 1920 which cost Hungary 71% of its territory and 66% of its pre-war population -- an even more punitive outcome than the Allied diktats imposed on the Germans in the punitive Treaty of Versailles produced by the same victors. This lost territory included the TransCarpathian region which is today in far southwestern Ukraine, where the Hapsburgs had kept thousands of ethnic Rusyns in concentration camps for returning to Orthodox Christianity or refusing to convert to Papism during the First World War. It is from this territory that ethnic Rusyn and ethnic Hungarian community leaders have issued a joint statement in both languages about their desire to achieve the full autonomy within Ukraine they were promised in 1991 and denied since then by Kiev. In the same early August statement viewable with English subtitles on the Anti-Maidan YouTube channel, the Hungarian and Russian-speaking Rusyn leaders denounced Kiev’s war against Novorossiya and mentioned Rusyn/Hungarian solidarity based on a 1,000 years of peaceful coexistence. This statement was carried on Hungarian television and is viewable here: [http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e14_1408064269]. More background on the Rusyns undergoing Hapsburg and other persecutions from a pro-Rusyn/Russian perspective can be found here: [http://02varvara.wordpress.com/tag/rusyn/].

It’s no accident, that on the heavily Empire-manipulated platform of Wikipedia, the Rusyns are covered under ‘Peoples of Ukraine’ despite the fact that they are spread across borders with Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, and that the Rusyn autonomy or separatist movement dating back to 1991 is dismissed as a Kremlin project [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusyns#Trans-Carpathian_separatist_movement]. In short, regardless of Hungary’s willingness to sell the Kiev regime hundreds of T-72 battle tanks to replace catastrophic Ukrainian losses of armor in recent months, Kiev views Hungarian nationalism with suspicion. The Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and Galicia Nazis (correctly in my opinion) suspect alongside their Anglo-American globalist patrons that if Ukraine completely implodes Trans-Carpathia could secede like Novorossiya, but with Hungarian rather than Russian sponsorship.

The worst nightmare of the Kiev junta is not only losing Kharkov, Zaporozhe and Odessa regions to Novorossiya, but facing a simultaneous NAF and Russian-allied uprising in the guerrilla-friendly Carpathians backed by Hungarian guns and fighters. Even a peaceful, anti-war and anti-oligarchic Hungarian/Rusyn Maidan would have to be crushed by the Kiev Nazis using brutal methods Washington and Brussels would have trouble excusing or imposing a news blackout over.

One other point is relevant to the paragraph above. Under the notorious 1938 Munich agreement between Nazi Germany and her allies and the Western powers, Hungary made territorial gains at the expense of Czechoslovakia, which was completely carved up between Nazi Germany, Hungary, the pro-Nazi Slovak regime of the time, and the sainted ‘Christ between two thieves’ Poles. This included Carpatho-Ruthenia, which became western Ukraine after the War. The Nazis cultivated the fascist Arrow Cross Party as allies, and had no interest in any maintaining Czech-granted autonomy for any Russophilic peoples as they plotted to invade the Soviet Union. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZALmLkFmAF8&src_vid=biy1mH8o8_M&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_105606].

The Hungarians participated in Operation Barbarossa and fought alongside their uneasy Romanian and German allies until the Soviets smashed the Axis lines near Stalingrad in November 1942. The Hungarians like the Bulgarians sought to switch sides as soon as it was obvious Nazi Germany was doomed in mid-1943 but a fascist puppet regime was installed to keep Hungary in the war. The Arrow Cross Nazi puppet state collapsed under Red Army guns in early 1945. In October and November of 1956 a Hungarian uprising against the Soviets was crushed by Red Army tanks sent by Nikita Khrushchev. This uprising had been inspired by broadcasts into Hungary by Radio Free Europe, but the Eisenhower Administration did very little to help the Hungarian freedom fighters besides raise token protests. Washington notably refused to cancel US grain shipments to the Soviet Union at that time and hosted Khrushchev (as pointed out in a recent column by Patrick J. Buchanan) within months of the Soviets killing thousands of Hungarians. The anniversary of the October 23rd uprising became a national holiday in 1989 when Communist regimes across the Warsaw Pact collapsed. Among the young Hungarian activists celebrating their country’s return to the West was a then 26-year-old co-founder of the Hungarian Alliance of Young Democrats, Viktor Orban. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidesz]

Why President Viktor Orban is Viewed as a Traitor to the Atlanticists and the Empire

James S. Denton is listed as the publisher and editor of World Affairs on his bio. World Affairs is the magazine of Freedom House, one of the many taxpayer-funded NGOs that has been in the business of regime change in Eastern Europe and Eurasia since the CIA and State Department decided to ‘outsource’ these propaganda functions during the mid-1980s. Interestingly enough, despite Hungarian President Viktor Orban’s alleged turn towards ‘Putinism’ Mr. Denton still lists himself as a former adviser to then Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary here: [http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/staff-bios]. Presumably Denton was an advisor to Orban in 1998 when the democratic, anti-Communist reformer became the second youngest Prime Minister in Hungarian history. With a generally positive world economy during the years from 1998 to 2002 Orban’s government was able to cut taxes, abolish university tuition for qualified students, and expand maternity benefits, while attracting German industry with low-cost Hungarian labor. Most importantly to the Empire, in 1999 Hungary joined NATO along with Poland and the Czech Republic over Russia’s objections. That same year Hungary was forced to participate in the war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by participating in a trade embargo against Belgrade.

In recognition of Orban’s loyal efforts on behalf of NATO in 2002 he was awarded the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute’s Freedom Award and awards from the ‘New Atlantic Initiative’ and Germany’s ‘Förderpreis Soziale Marktwirtschaft’. Orban was clearly accepted by the trans-Atlantic elites. But everything started to change in 2010 when his Fidesz returned to power after six years in opposition. Suddenly Orban’s party had a two thirds majority, enough to change the Hungarian constitution, and Orban became a ‘European Hugo Chavez’ in the words of the German Green party politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit -- ironically, a former 1968 radical whose younger self would’ve appreciated Red Chavismo. This started a wave of propaganda against the Hungarian government alleging that it was crushing the opposition, restricting a free press, in short demonizing Fidesz as the Hungarian version of United Russia and Orban as the Hungarian Putin.

To be fair, Orban did not take the German and Anglo-American/Atlanticist criticism lying down. He denounced German TV propaganda against Hungary, reminding Merkel about Nazi occupation of his country during WWII, and refused to back off the anti-EU rhetoric he had cleverly promoted since at least 2006. Orban’s critics doubled down on their shrill rhetoric accusing him of destroying democracy and minority rights in Hungary, signing sweetheart nuclear energy and gas deals with Russia, and pandering to the ultra-nationalist if not fascist Jobbik party which has won 20% of the vote and made anti-Jewish statements. The same Jobbik party the Empire’s propaganda shills like Jamie Kirchick of the neocon propaganda-staffel ‘Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ alleges is part of a vast Putinist conspiracy to bring right wing parties to power across Europe using covert Kremlin cash. [http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/168942/why-hungarys-jobbik-party-won-while-it-lost]

Orban’s ‘Infamous’ ‘Illiberal’ Speech of July 26, 2014 and Why the Empire (Correctly) Sees It as Treason Against the ‘New World Order’

Which brings us to the present controversies -- not only over Orban’s stubborn refusal together with the Austrians to support more sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, but above all over Orban’s speech this summer denouncing the USA’s dominance of Europe and the EU’s subservience to a declining American Empire. To the Atlanticist elites who had long condemned Orban as an aspiring dictator -- the ‘Mussolini of Hungary’ as the shriveling circulation Newsweek dubbed him -- Orban had declared war on democracy. [http://www.newsweek.com/hungarys-mussolini-vows-make-eu-member-illiberal-state-262127]

For Charles Gati, a Senior Research Professor of European and Eurasian Studies at Johns Hopkins University [http://www.sais-jhu.edu/charles-gati], the sense of betrayal was personal: Orban had been one of his brightest young students in the heady days after the fall of Communism in Hungary. For Orban to describe the United States as a malign cultural and economic influence on Europe was a slap to the face to Gati and others like Freedom House’s James S. Denton who had groomed Orban to be a reliable satrap of benevolent US hegemony. Gati’s op-ed for the same AEI that had once given Orban its Freedom Award was titled, “Putin’s Mini-Me: The Mask is Off”. [http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/08/07/the-mask-is-off/] In his American Interest piece Gati quotes Orbán telling a room in Washington back in 1998: “whatever I know about contemporary politics and history I’ve learned from Professor Gati.” Gati accused his former pupil of issuing an “incoherent” rant against the USA that made no sense in the original Hungarian or when translated into English, full of anti-American “clichés”. Nearly all Western media outlets that covered Orban’s speech delivered to a group of peaceful Hungarian nationalists at a ‘right-wing’ youth summer camp in late July concurred. No one apparently wanted to quote the speech or take it seriously as a patriotic cry from the heart against the decadence and decline of the Western civilization Orban had embraced as a young man.

The Essence of ‘Orbanism’ -- Disillusionment with the West and the Search for a Eurasian Future


So, what exactly did Orban say in Kotscse near Lake Balaton, that was so shocking the press-titutes were terrified to quote it at any length? Here are the most important excerpts, in my opinion, as translated by The Budapest Beacon and preserved here: [http://hungarianspectrum.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/viktor-orbans-speech-at-the-xxv-balvanyos-free-summer-university-and-youth-camp-july-26-2014-baile-tusnad-tusnadfurdo/]. Orban starts by referring to the defining moment of Hungarian politics, the change or Die Wende of 1989, saying for too long Hungarians have clung to the recent past rather than addressed the 21st century future:

My speech today is not connected to the elections. Our acting president introduced us as regime changers, and did it by recalling the regime change. This represents well that for our generation the regime change is the generational experience to which we compare everything, against which we measure everything, from where we start to define everything that happens around us. It seems natural, although it is rather a disadvantage for us, not an advantage.
As speeches go, this is hardly controversial stuff. But what follows is what has angered Washington’s propagandists of unshakable Western hegemony and unending Anglo-American dominance:
I would suggest to shortly remind ourselves that in the 20th Century there have been three major world-regime changes. At the end of World War I, at the end of World War II, and in 1990. The common points in these were – I might have mentioned this here once – that when the changes manifested it was clear for all of us that we are going to live in a different world overnight. Let’s say it was very clear here after Trianon [the previously mentioned Hungarian ‘Versailles diktat’ of 1920 that cut off Budapest from ancient lands - AK], just as it was in Budapest after World War II as well. If the people looked around and saw the invading Soviet troops they knew that a new world was about to begin. In ’90 when we succeeded in breaking and displacing the communists, it was clear after the first parliamentary elections that a new world had arrived for us: the wall in Berlin collapsed, elections were held and this is another future.
Now I must quote Orban at length, for he gets to the essence of his statement -- ‘the West’ as a unitary entity led by the USA with a [soon to be Scotland-less] United Kingdom sidekick looks washed up, and it’s Davos-attending Western politicians and tycoons themselves who are saying so. Orban also -- shock, horror -- dismisses the so-called ‘economic recovery’ in the United States since 2008 as the middle class destroying, Federal Reserve-pumped up and fake stats fraud that it is:
The statement intended to be the basic point of my talk here is that the changes in the world nowadays have the similar value and weight. We can identify its manifestation – that point when it became clear – as the financial crisis of 2008 or rather the Western financial crisis. And the importance of this change is less obvious because people sense it in a different way as the previous three. It was unclear in 2008 during the huge Western financial collapse that we are going to live in a different world from now on. The shift is not that sharp as in the case of the three previous world regime changes and it somehow slowly resolved in our minds, as the fog sets on the land. If we look around and analyze the things happening around us, for six years this has been a different world from the one we lived in. And if we project the processes for the future – which always has a risk – it is a reasonable intellectual exercise, and we see well that the changes will only have a bigger impact.

Well, Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen, for the sake of illustrating the deepness of this change, without any particular order, I assembled a few sentences, ideas from the Western World, as well as one or two from the Eastern World, too, that are stunning. If we assessed them through the lens of the pre-2008 liberal worldview, we would be shocked. Yet if we do not view it that way but understand from these sentences how long a way we have gone in terms of public speech, topics and their articulations in these last six years, then these sentences to be quoted will help us understand how profound the change is that is taking place in the world today.
Very briefly: In America, the President of the US has made numerous and repeated statements regarding how America has been engulfed by cynicism, and the task for American society and the American government is to declare war on cynicism originating from the financial sector. Before 2008, such a statement would have resulted in exclusion from gentlemanlike international discourse, additionally because of the characteristics of the financial system, it would probably have even been tainted with as being sinister, making any utterance of such sentences extremely perilous. Contrary to this, these ideas constantly appear in the American press as of late. The US president says that if a hardworking American constantly has to choose between career and family, that America will lose its place in the world economy. Or the President openly speaks about economic patriotism. He [Obama] says such sentences that would still earn beating and stoning in today’s provincial Hungarian public life. For example, he openly speaks about how companies employing foreigners should pay their fair share in taxes. Or he openly speaks about how companies employing Americans should be supported before anyone else. These are all voices, ideas and sentences that would have been unimaginable six or eight years earlier.

To proceed further, according to a well-recognized analyst, the strength of American “soft power” is deteriorating, because liberal values today incorporate corruption, sex and violence and with this liberal values discredit America and American modernization [This is the so-called ‘cliche’ that Gati found so intolerable, which appears self-evident to the Kulak and millions of other Christian and traditionalist Americans - AK]. Also, the Open Society Foundation [funded by George Soros - AK] published a study not long ago analyzing Western Europe. In this, we could read a sentence which says that Western Europe was so preoccupied with solving the situation of immigrants that it forgot about white working class. Or the British prime minister said that as a consequence of the changes happening in Europe, many became freeloaders on the back of the welfare systems. One of the richest Americans, who was one of the first investors in the company Amazon stated that we are living in a society that is less and less capitalist and more and more feudal, and if the economic system does not reform itself then middle class will disappear, and, as he puts it, “the rich will be attacked by pitchforks”. Therefore, he [Orban is referring to the German-born Amazon.com billionaire investor Nick Hanauer’s article published in Politico here: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.VBJjGfldV8E -AK] thinks a middle-up economic model is needed instead of a top-down model. It is not my intention to interpret these sentences, simply to cite them here in order to show the novelty of these ideas that were impossible to talk about only six years ago.

Or, similarly from America, the number of unemployed youth has drastically risen [Mr. Orban clearly doesn’t buy the ‘cooked’ US unemployment numbers contrasted with the real 16-20% unemployment figures compiled by John Williams published at ShadowStats.com - AK], and in the case of the most promising career options, children from families with affluent families receive a far greater advantage – this is said in the homeland of social mobility [a reference by Orban, perhaps, to the millions of Hungarians who emigrated to the USA prior to and after WWII - AK]. Or to cite something else: another respected analyst said that the internet, understood by the liberal world as the greatest symbol of freedom for many long years, is being colonized by big corporations. His statement suggests that the big question is whether great capitalist companies, meaning international corporations, would be successful in doing away with the neutrality of the internet. Going forward, to quote a development that is both dear and unexpected for us, the English prime minister, who awkwardly avoids his party being identified as Christian Democratic, stands up in before the public stating that Christianity is a core principle of British values, and despite multiculturalism, Great Britain is a Christian country in heart, and this is a fact to be proud of.

Besides suggesting the USA is a power in cultural and economic decline, Orban added blasphemy to heresy by suggesting Hungary could learn much from the rising BRIC nations, plus the Hungarians old Ottoman overlords the Turks who have modernized their economy under the authoritarian and double-dealing (between Iran, Russia, and China on one side and NATO and the Sunni Persian Gulf states on the other) Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

Everyone was only talking about competition in the world economy. Globalization on the international scale made it necessary to do a lot of talking, writing and analysis about it, and this phenomenon is known in details. We can more or less know why a major economic interest group, for example the European Union, is competitive, or why it is losing its competitiveness. However, according to many, and I belong to them, today this is not the principal question. It remains an important question. As long as people live off money and economy, this will remain an important question. Yet there is an even more important race. I would articulate this as a race to invent a state that is most capable of making a nation successful. As the state is nothing else but a method of organizing a community, a community that in our case sometimes coincides with our country’s borders, sometimes not, but I will get back to that, the defining aspect of today’s world can be articulated as a race to figure out a way of organizing communities, a state that is most capable of making a nation competitive. This is why, Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen a trending topic in thinking is understanding systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, maybe not even democracies, and yet making nations successful. Today, the stars of international analyses are Singapore, China, India, Turkey, Russia. And I believe that our political community rightly anticipated this challenge, and if we think back on what we did in the last four years, and what we are going to do in the following four years, than it really can be interpreted from this angle. We are searching for and we are doing our best to find – parting ways with Western European dogmas, making ourselves independent from them – the form of organizing a community, that is capable of making us competitive in this great world-race.
By great world race and dismissing mere economic competition as the only deciding factor of the 21st century, Orban was hinting strongly that the first duty of any Hungarian government is the preservation of the Hungarian peoples, wherever they may live. Because some Jobbik members who may indeed be fascists speak this way, as do the Ukrainian Nazis who imagine the Cossacks of Rostov or Krasnodar oblasts don’t realize that they are Ukrainians, it’s easy to label such ideas ‘fascist’. But Hungary, as many observers of its demographics have pointed out, is a nation experiencing or facing severe graying and population decline.

Clearly when Orban says ‘competitive in this great world-race’ he means preserving the Hungarians as a people rather than seeing them slowly replaced by peoples from the Middle East [North Africa, the Levant and Turkish Kurdistan all seem primed for population explosions and lengthy unrest in the years to come- AK] or elsewhere during this century. Just in case there was any confusion about what Orban meant, his reference to the ‘white working class’ of Great Britain should make it clear: the purpose of a sovereign nation is the health and long-term well-being of the majority population of that nation, not globalist ‘values’ or economic growth divorced from human needs. While I am personally not a fan of Alexandr Dugin, one most acknowledge this is much closer to Duginism and Eurasianism than Orban’s old Atlanticist, pro-EU positions. Orban’s use of the phrase ‘non-liberal state’ is in fact, almost pure Duginism, perhaps taken straight from the pages of Dugin’s book The 4th Political Theory by an Orban speechwriter. In the book, Dugin contends that after three centuries liberalism dating to the acts of tolerance that ended Europe’s bloody 30 Years Wars and restored the British crown after Cromwell’s revolt, liberalism has exhausted itself. [You can watch English subtitles of Dugin summarizing his book in less than ten minutes, and describing how many European languages it has been translated into here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QrnJKf-hhE]

Orban Vows to Resist the Empire’s Colored Revolution and ‘NGO-istan’ Tactics


Consequently, what is happening today in Hungary can interpreted as an attempt of the respective political leadership to harmonize relationship between the interests and achievement of individuals – that needs to be acknowledged – with interests and achievements of the community, and the nation. Meaning, that Hungarian nation is not a simple sum of individuals, but a community that needs to be organized, strengthened and developed, and in this sense, the new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not deny foundational values of liberalism, as freedom, etc.. But it does not make this ideology a central element of state organization but applies a specific, national, particular approach in its stead.


Is Orban a Eurasianist?


Like Dugin, like Igor Strelkov, and like Vladimir Putin, Orban calls out a fifth column in his country. These are, of course, the same Rockefeller and Fortune 500 funded foundations, think tanks, and NGOs that cultivated Central European politicans like... former AEI employee and husband to the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum Radek Sikorski. [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/22/poland-foreign-minister-alliance-us-worthless] And former Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, who has called the EU the 4th Reich (German Continental economic dominance under Washington’s tutelage [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/cyprus/9948545/Southern-Europe-lies-prostrate-before-the-German-imperium.html]) and compared Brussels bureaucrats to their Soviet predecessors [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8289920.stm]. And of course, the AEI and Johns Hopkins ‘educated’ Viktor Orban, who now defies the EU.

Whereas Sikorski was caught on tape bitterly telling a fellow Polish politician when he thought no one was listening that Poland has sexually serviced the US and received nothing in return; Orban has turned on his former handlers and now calls them out for what they are -- foreign agents of influence and globalist occupiers of his country:

Now, Hungarian NGO landscape shows a very particular image. Ideally a civil politician as opposed to professional is an individual who is organizing bottom-up, financially independent and the nature of his work is voluntary. If we look at civil organizations in Hungary, the one that appears before public, now debates around the Norwegian Fund brought this on the surface, then what I will see is that we have to deal with paid political activists here. And these political activists are moreover political activists paid by foreigners. Activists paid by definite political circles of interest. It is hard to imagine that these circles have a social agenda. It is more likely that they would like to exercise influence through this system of instruments on Hungarian public life. It is vital, therefore, that if we would like to reorganize our nation state instead of the liberal state, that we should make it clear, that these are not civilians coming against us, opposing us, but political activists attempting to promote foreign interests. Therefore it is very apt that a committee was being formed in the Hungarian parliament that deals with constant monitoring, recording and publishing foreign attempts to gain influence, so that all of us here, you as well will be aware of who are the characters behind the masks.
Since this piece has been exceptionally lengthy even by the Vineyard’s standards, I will leave the Saker and his readers with Orban’s conclusion for his compatriots who happen to live outside Hungary’s present borders -- in what is a clear message to Kiev, Bucharest and ultimately Washington that national identity won’t be crushed under EUro-globalism:

Now the only question that remains, honorable ladies and gentlemen, and it is a question that I am not entitled to answer, that in times like this, when anything could happen, should we be afraid, or should we instead be hopeful? Because the present order of the world is not exactly to our taste, that this future, although it is uncertain, it could even cause huge trouble, it also holds opportunities and developments for our Hungarian nation. So instead of seclusion, fear and withdrawal I recommend courage, prospective thinking, rational, but brave action to the Hungarian communities in the Carpathian basin [the old Rusyn lands - AK] but also throughout the world. As anything can happen, it can easily happen that our time will come. Thank you for your honorific attention.

Friday, April 18, 2014

The thing which everybody seems to be missing

Okay, I decided to squeeze in one more post before taking time off for Holy Paskha, this is well worth it.

Some of you have asked about China's role in all this, in what the real interests of the USA are, how the EU is positioning itself and what Russia does or does not want.  And, somehow, bogged down by the minutiae of the unfolding events I managed to never mention something which Putin, Lavrov and many other top Russian politicians have repeatedly said:

What is happening today before our eyes is the end of one international system and the birth of a qualitatively different one.

Interestingly, Putin has declared that for him the point of no return was reached when the USA and its allies at the UNSC and NATO clearly and grossly twisted the intention of the UNSC on Libya and "upgraded" what should have been a "no fly" zone to a free-fire zone to attack and bomb Libya [of course, it was pretty darn clear to Putin that the "all necessary means to protect civilians" of the resolution was an open ended invitation for the AngloZionists to "interpret" it in any way they wanted; now his says that Russia was "lied to" in order to not blame Medvedev for walking into a 10 foot wide hole.  But that is irrelevant here].  Putin says that from then on he had acquired the conviction that the West could not be negotiated with and had to be simply stopped.  Then Syria happened: for the first time since the end of WWII the USA had decided to do something and was stopped by an outside power in the most humiliating way possible.

The Russian stance on Syria was an overt challenge to US world hegemony.  It was clearly understood as such in Washington and now, following the crisis in the Ukraine, the Russians have openly admitted this.

So this is the real stake of the civil war in the Ukraine: for the USA it is to punish Russia for daring to challenge the world hegemon; for Russia it is to unseat this hegemon and replace him by a multi-polar international system in which sovereign countries act within the bounds of international law.  You could say that even though most of the Security Council is vehemently opposed to that, Russia is trying to show to the world that the USA does not own the UN and that it only represents 1/5th of the P5 and 1/15th of the UNSC.

The West has slouched into a position of total submission to the USA and its domination tools over Europe: the EU and NATO.  The central Europeans have even volunteered to become a US protectorate, a territory to house US missile systems and secret CIA prisons.

With the exception of Iran and Syria, the Arab and Muslim world has sold out, some to the USA, others to Saudi Arabia, most to both at the same time.  Latin America tries hard, but is still heavily dependent on the USA while Africa just wants to survive the best it can.  As for Asia, some parts are as sold out as Europe (Japan, Korea), others are trying to keep a low profile, while China is clearly quietly standing behind Russia but in an externally undeniable way even though China stands to benefit more than any other country on the planet from a change in the international order.

The Russians would have much preferred to wait, to buy time, but the US determination to punish it for daring to oppose it on Syria literally forced them to fold and surrender or openly accept the US challenge and stand firm.

I will repeat that again and again - Putin had no other choice.

And now that this is all in the open, you can be absolutely sure that Russia is not playing to return to the status quo ante.  With an amazing candidness both Putin and Lavrov have openly spelled out their goal on Russian TV (Lavrov on the show "Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev" and Putin on during his 4 hours long Q&A yesterday).

So this is the Russian end-goal: to unseat the USA from its role as a world hegemon.  And that goal implies a much longer, bigger and more sustained effort that just force the freaks in Kiev to the negotiating table.  Among other things, this goal implies that Russia must:

1) Force the Europeans to fully realize the outrageous price they are paying for being the obedient and silent vassals of the USA and slowly drive a wedge between the USA and Europe.
2) Force the USA to admit that it does not have the military might to punish or, even less so, "regime change" anybody they don't like.
3) Encourage China and other Asian powers to openly stand with Russia in demanding that international law be adhered to by the West.
4) Gradually replace the dollar with other currencies in international trade and thereby slow down the financing of the US debts by the rest of the planet.
5) Create the conditions for Latin America and Africa to be able to make choices about its future and replace the current monopoly enjoyed by the West in setting the terms of North-South relations.
6) Present another civilizational model which openly reject the current Western paradigm of a society run by small and arrogant minorities.
7) Challenge the current liberal and capitalist economic order embodied in the Washington Consensus and replace it by a model of social and international solidarity (call it "21 century socialism" if you want).

All of the above can be summed up in one word: re-sovereignization.

Since he got elected, Putin mentioned many times the need for a re-sovereignization of Russia.  The Ukrainian crisis has forced him reveal the real end goal of his agenda: to re-sovereignize the entire planet.

This is a tall order and it will take many years, possibly decades, to achieve this goal, though my personal feeling is that the total incompetence and infinite arrogance of of the 1%ers plutocrats which rules over the western world will continue to accelerate that process.

The big question now is this: can the AngloZionist Empire follow the example of the Soviet Empire and collapse without triggering a massive bloodbath on its way down?

There will be violence, for sure, as has been with the former Soviet Union.  But if we can avoid a global conflagration or even a large scale massive war then that would have to be considered as success because it is when they collapse that empires become the most dangerous and unpredictable.

I hope that the above answers many of the questions which have been posted here.

Many thanks and kind regards,

The Saker

PS: I just got this amazing video of a woman stopping a APC in Kramatorsk with her bare hands.  I guess she could be seen as a symbol of what Russia wants to do with the AngloZionist Empire:

 

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Today every free person in the world has won!

We feel that we won; Lebanon won; Palestine won; the Arab nation won, and every oppressed, aggrieved person in this world also won. Our victory is not the victory of a party. I repeat what I said in Bint Jbeil on 25 May 2000: It is not the victory of a party or a community; rather it is a victory for true Lebanon, the true Lebanese people, and every free person in the world. Don’t distort this big historic victory. Do not contain it in party, sectarian, communal, or regional clans. This victory is too big to be comprehended by us. The next weeks, months, and years will confirm this.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, “Divine Victory Speech”, 2006


Following the past few, truly incredible, days which saw momentous developments taking place at an amazingly rapid pace, I think that it is time to take a moment to calmly and carefully reflect about what I consider to be a historical event of an immense magnitude. Formally, this event will be recorded as the “The address of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the State Duma deputies, Federation Council members, heads of Russian regions and civil society representatives in the Kremlin”. In reality, of course, this was much more. This was the address of the New Russia to the entire world and, especially, to the many people worldwide who reject the social, economic and political model embodied in the current AngloZionist Empire otherwise known as “The West”, including those inside the so-called “West”.

The great disconnect between the 1% and 99%

In the hours following Putin's speech I was amazed to see the total disconnect between what I just had heard, the reaction of the people in Russia, and the way the official corporate media covered the event. In Russia senior political figures compared what had just taken place with the victory against Nazi Germany in 1945, they repeated over and over again that what had just taken place would create a new world order and that the nature of the system of international relations had been changed forever.  And yet, the western corporate media spoke about the pomp of the ceremony and how Putin had justified the Russian annexation of Crimea. Had they listened to a different speech?!

But then came the reactions of the readers of my blog who in increasing numbers were reporting that they had listening to Putin's speech with tears in their eyes. Many even praised Putin in terms that would make even a Kremlin PR officer blush with embarrassment. What was going on here? Clearly my readers were not only apprising the contents of Putin's speech and expressing their overall agreement with his views, no, they were having a deeply emotional reaction to something which they had felt deep inside their gut and in their souls, something which powerfully resonated deeply inside them. Why? Very few of these readers had any connections to Russia, even less had any Russian roots. Some had even served in the US military against the Soviet-backed Vietnamese. The vast majority were old enough to vividly remember the Cold War and how it felt to live under the bulleye of the Soviet nuclear forces. And yet these people clearly totally rejected the official view of the corporate media and adopted a radically different view. Why?

I have to mention here that every since my blog acquired a better visibility (roughly over the past 6 months) I have been getting a lot of emails from literally all over the world and that many of these emails were extremely emotional, clearly written “with gut and soul” and they often gave me the feeling that my correspondent was baring his/her soul showing an immense amount of pain, frustration and even rage, and an even bigger gratitude and appreciation for what I was trying to achieve with this blog. And, again, this made me wonder – what was it that I was doing that was eliciting such an outpouring of gratitude and emotions?! After all, I had never intended my blog as a crowd-pleaser, but only as the “thinly anonymous” blog of just one guy speaking his mind and trying to foster a free exchange of views. And yet, some readers have even claimed that reading this blog had “changed their lives”. Why?! How?! I was honestly baffled by such reactions.

And then I understood

People were hungry, they were literally starved for truth, and even when they did not agree with what I wrote, which happened quite often, they were grateful for the fact that I clearly had no agenda and that I simply spoke the truth as I saw it. It became clear to me that a lot of people fully understood that they were lied to, they just did not always have the means to get to the real story or just enough facts to connect the dots for themselves. In the case of my blog, the fact that I was fluent in five languages meant that I could help them cross the language barrier and my past as a military analyst who had seen the “behind the scenes” true face of the AngloZionist empire made it rather easy for me to debunk many, even if not all, of the lies of the corporate media. Finally, the fact that I had no political agenda or affiliation of any kind, even if I held strong – and often goofy – views about many subjects, meant that I was not trying to “sell my stuff” - it was here to take it or leave it – and that it made no difference to me what people thought of my views.  One of the many positive side-effects of “thin anonymity” (which I define as anonymous enough to have readers focus on ideas and not personalities, anonymous enough not to be bothered by idiots, but clearly not anonymous enough to hide from any person making even a very modest effort to try to identify me) is that I am clearly not even trying to sell myself.  No, what was going on here is something far more basic and I will use an image to make my point: it's not that the food I was cooking was so amazingly tasty, it's that my guests were truly starved and, as the Irish say, “hunger is the best sauce”.

I very much believe that this “hunger” is also what explains the very strong and emotional reaction that so many people have had after listening to Putin. Clearly, this was much bigger than Crimea, the Ukraine or even Russia. These were just triggers which ended up eliciting a Russian reaction which nobody had seriously believed possible.  But many felt that something much more important had just happened.

What am I referring to here? Let's turn to Putin's speech and parse some of its most important segments (the full speech is available here and here and I urge everybody who has not done so yet to read it in its entirety or, better, watch the video here).

Putin's message to the world

Predictably, Putin's speech began by discussing the recent events in Crimea including the results of the referendum. He spoke about what Crimea and Sevastopol meant for the Russian history, culture and nation, and he recalled the horrors suffered by the Tatar people during the Soviet era. He then outlined the circumstances in which Nikita Khrushchev single-handedly (and illegally) transferred Crimea from the Russian Federation to the Ukraine and how, after the fall of the Soviet Union the Ukraine suffered under the rule of corrupt leaders. And then he explained how the legitimate protests of the Ukrainian people were literally hijacked by very different and violent people:

I understand those who came out on Maidan with peaceful slogans against corruption, inefficient state management and poverty. The right to peaceful protest, democratic procedures and elections exist for the sole purpose of replacing the authorities that do not satisfy the people. However, those who stood behind the latest events in Ukraine had a different agenda: they were preparing yet another government takeover; they wanted to seize power and would stop short of nothing. They resorted to terror, murder and riots. Nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites executed this coup. They continue to set the tone in Ukraine to this day (...) we can all clearly see the intentions of these ideological heirs of Bandera, Hitler’s accomplice during World War II.
This reference to WWII is not just a politician's rhetorical exaggeration aimed at eliciting a knee-jerk reaction from the audience, it is something much more important – an unambiguous statement that today, just as during WWII, the very existence of Russia as a country, a culture and a nation was at stake. Of course, the threat to Russia does not come from a few baseball bat wielding nationalist thugs in Kiev or from the new regime in power, if only because this new regime is a complete fiction anyway:
It is also obvious that there is no legitimate executive authority in Ukraine now, nobody to talk to. Many government agencies have been taken over by the impostors, but they do not have any control in the country, while they themselves – and I would like to stress this – are often controlled by radicals. In some cases, you need a special permit from the militants on Maidan to meet with certain ministers of the current government. This is not a joke – this is reality. Those who opposed the coup were immediately threatened with repression
So where does the real danger come from and who is the real aggressor threatening Russia at least as much has Hitler did in WWII? Before answering that question, I would like to note that Putin made a rather candid admission about the so-called “polite armed men in green”. He said:(emphasis added)
The President of the Russian Federation received permission from the Upper House of Parliament to use the Armed Forces in Ukraine. However, strictly speaking, nobody has acted on this permission yet. Russia’s Armed Forces never entered Crimea; they were there already in line with an international agreement. True, we did enhance our forces there; however – this is something I would like everyone to hear and know – we did not exceed the personnel limit of our Armed Forces in Crimea, which is set at 25,000, because there was no need to do so. 
So the mystery of the “polite armed men in green” is now solved: “strictly speaking” they were an “enhancement” to the Russian forces in Crimea which did not exceed the maximal total number of troops allowed by the treaty with the Ukraine. In other words, the number of Spetsnaz GRU troops sent to Crimea was within the terms of the treaty and the other forces seen were, indeed, local self-defense units and not part of the Russian military. Elegant formulation, for sure.

Putin then quoted the position of the UN International Court and the United States on the issue of the secession of Kosovo: “General international law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence” (UNIC) and “ Declarations of independence may, and often do, violate domestic legislation. However, this does not make them violations of international law” (USA) and added:

For some reason, things that Kosovo Albanians (and we have full respect for them) were permitted to do, Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in Crimea are not allowed. Again, one wonders why.
Here we are getting at the core of his argument: the Empire has no other use for International Law then to use it as a fig leaf for its project of world hegemony and when that is not possible, then the Empire simply ignores it and uses brute force:
This is not even double standards; this is amazing, primitive, blunt cynicism. One should not try so crudely to make everything suit their interests, calling the same thing white today and black tomorrow (…) After the dissolution of bipolarity on the planet, we no longer have stability. Key international institutions are not getting any stronger; on the contrary, in many cases, they are sadly degrading. Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right. They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle “If you are not with us, you are against us.” To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organisations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall. (…) We understand what is happening; we understand that these actions were aimed against Ukraine and Russia and against Eurasian integration (…) we have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, led in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today. They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position, because we maintain it and because we call things like they are and do not engage in hypocrisy. But there is a limit to everything. And with Ukraine, our western partners have crossed the line, playing the bear and acting irresponsibly and unprofessionally.
Amazing words coming from the President of a nuclear-armed superpower: not only does he denounce the complete and total hypocrisy of the AngloZionist Empire, he even places it in the direct continuation of three centuries of anti-Russian policies by Western European powers! Not only does he denounce the Empire's double-standards, he even openly ridicules the incompetence of its leaders:
After all, they were fully aware that there are millions of Russians living in Ukraine and in Crimea. They must have really lacked political instinct and common sense not to foresee all the consequences of their actions. Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from. If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard. You must always remember this.
Indeed, one can only wonder what in the world they were thinking in the “imperial high command” when they decided to use Nazis in the Ukraine just like they used al-Qaeda in Afghanistan: did they really think that Russia would yield yet again? Did it even have such an option? Not according to Putin:
It is at historic turning points such as these that a nation demonstrates its maturity and strength of spirit. The Russian people showed this maturity and strength through their united support for their compatriots. Russia’s foreign policy position on this matter drew its firmness from the will of millions of our people, our national unity and the support of our country’s main political and public forces. (…) Obviously, we will encounter external opposition, but this is a decision that we need to make for ourselves. Are we ready to consistently defend our national interests, or will we forever give in, retreat to who knows where? (…) Russia will also have to make a difficult decision now, taking into account the various domestic and external considerations. What do people here in Russia think? Here, like in any democratic country, people have different points of view, but I want to make the point that the absolute majority of our people clearly do support what is happening.
Let's sum up. Putin has now openly stated that:

1) There is no limit to the hypocrisy, lies, evil, stupidity and aggressive nature of the AngloZionist Empire.
2) That this Empire represents by its very nature an existential threat to Russia.
3) That the Russian people are united in their determination to resist this Empire.

Frankly, to me this sounds very much like a declaration of war. Not necessarily a hot war with military forces fighting each other, but something more than a Cold War in which the status quo is an acceptable option. Putin is suggesting that the next war will be a civilizational one, a cultural one and even a moral one, a war in which one side will stand for absolute rule of a cynical world hegemon and the other side for a multi-polar world in which all countries are to be subjected to the same set of rules and principles. But even more importantly than a single set of rules, the kind of international system Russia is seeking to establish is one in which each nation, culture and religion would have the actual, not just theoretical, freedom to live as it want. He clearly said so in his 2013 annual Presidential address to the Federal Assembly when he said:

Today, many nations are revising their moral values and ethical norms, eroding ethnic traditions and differences between peoples and cultures. Society is now required not only to recognise everyone’s right to the freedom of consciousness, political views and privacy, but also to accept without question the equality of good and evil, strange as it seems, concepts that are opposite in meaning. This destruction of traditional values from above not only leads to negative consequences for society, but is also essentially anti-democratic, since it is carried out on the basis of abstract, speculative ideas, contrary to the will of the majority, which does not accept the changes occurring or the proposed revision of values. We know that there are more and more people in the world who support our position on defending traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilisation in every nation for thousands of years: the values of traditional families, real human life, including religious life, not just material existence but also spirituality, the values of humanism and global diversity. Of course, this is a conservative position. But speaking in the words of Nikolai Berdyaev, the point of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.
It is pretty clear that this last sentence expresses Russia's view on the level of civilizational and cultural degradation the AngloZionist Empire has imposed upon the people of Europe and the USA. Furthermore, when Putin says that “destruction of traditional values from above not only leads to negative consequences for society, but is also essentially anti-democratic, since it is carried out on the basis of abstract, speculative ideas, contrary to the will of the majority” he is clearly stating that the AngoZionist Empire is not ruled by the people which live in it, but by minorities, special interest groups, behind the scenes lobbies and cabals who impose their warped agenda upon the rest of the people. 

Again, the bottom line is this: the President of Russia has made an open declaration of war against the 1% elite which currently is in control the AngloZionist Empire. This war will be a multi-level one combining “soft power” (cultural resistance, religious resistance, informational resistance, financial and economic warfare) with “hard power” (a military ready fight the US/NATO if needed, the use of the “energy weapon” to retaliate against economic warfare). In an ironical twist of history, especially for a capitalist society which has ridiculed Marx and repudiated the concept of class warfare, this war will also profoundly be a class war in which oligarchs from different countries will support each other and in which the regular, 99%, people will work together on, for example, the “virtual battlefields” of the Internet.

The crucial battlefield: “global information operations”

“Information operations” is the term used by the US military to refer to “direct and indirect support operations for the United States Military”. Psychological operations, or PSYOPs, are seen as a subset of IO. For our purposes, however, is to extend this concept to not only military operations, but to the full spectrum of national security policies of a country and, in our case, for the “deep state” which holds the reins of power in the AngloZionist Empire. I will thus speak of Global Information Operations or GIOs the core component of which is represented the western corporate media.

For a while in my life I, like many other military analysts, made my living by, among other things, reading the Soviet press every day. Not just the Pravda or Izvestia, but also even more boring or specialized newspapers, magazines and reviews. I listen to the Soviet radio as often as I could, and I never missed a chance to watch the Soviet TV, especially the news shows. At the time I was young, very naïve and very dumb, and I sincerely believed that the Soviet Union was a mortal threat to western Europe and that the only thing which stood between them, the evil commies, and us, the free world, was the military power of the NATO alliance. Looking back at myself and the utter garbage I had in my brain then, I feel embarrassed and, frankly, ashamed of my total credulity. But at the time I was a dedicated soldier of the Cold War whose motto was “know thy enemy”. And I knew my "enemy" really, really, well. I want to explain all of the above before stating the following:

In all honesty and sincerity, I have to say here that in comparison to the modern western corporate media the Soviet press was far more pluralistic, more diverse and more trustworthy. True, the Soviet press simply did not mention certain topics, but that goes to show that, unlike the western corporate media, it did not feel that it could brazenly lie to the point where even what is obvious is categorically and totally denied. For one thing, the Soviet public was far better educated. We all, including myself, used to poke fun at the obligatory lessons in Marxism-Leninism in Soviet schools, but we overlooked that any halfway decent course in Marxism-Leninism will include topics like dialectics, historical materialism and economics: stuff that makes you think.  This is not to say that the Soviet people could not be lied to – they could and they have been – but only that the lies had to be at least halfway credible and present a plausible scenario. In contrast, for a public raised on CNN, BBC or MTV the lies need not be even capable of passing a basic common sense test (as is so vividly illustrated by the western corporate media's coverage of the 08.08.08 war or the events in the Ukraine): the Doublethink predicted by Orwell in his book 1984 is now fully upon us and black can be called white and vice-versa with no problems at all. I would even argue that, in comparison, even the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter contained more information than, say, the NYT, WSJ or the BBC whose level of brazen lying I could only compare to, maybe, the Der Stürmer.

I first noticed this absolutely unprecedented level of outright lying by the western corporate media during the US/NATO war on Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo), but I think that it has only gotten worse since. In contrast, the modern Russian press is extremely diverse and the people in Russia are regularly shown the type of coverage the current events in the Ukraine get in the western press and it leave them baffled. They simply cannot understand how this is possible in a society which externally seems to have all the characteristics of a free and pluralistic society. In the bad old days of the USSR, it was all simple: there was state censorship. But there is no state censorship in the West, no Glavlit and no Goskomizdat, and yet the western press is far more monolithic and dishonest then even the official party press in the USSR. But there is one crucial difference between the USSR and today's AngloZionist Empire: the Internet.

Simply put, the Internet is the only global media not controlled by either governments or corporations (which is really the same thing). Yes, there are numerous attempts by both governments and corporations to change this, but at least for the time being, information is circulating freely throughout the Internet. This introduced amazing changes:

1) a single citizen with a minimal income now had the means to meaningfully oppose the lies of even major corporations or governments: the case of Alain Soral in France is typical of this amazing trend.
2) the resistance to the Empire is now geographically decentralized: as this blog illustrates so well with the amazing diversity of its readers.
3) information simply cannot be suppressed: the world learned of the massacres and atrocities of the Wahabi insurgents in Syria even though the corporate media tried hard to ignore them.
4) low-level classified government documents do regularly get compromised by various individuals who can then leak it without anybody being able to stop it (Assange, Snowden, Manning).
5) an increasing number of people sever their exposure to the corporate media which now mostly subsists on government grants.
6) even those who still watch TV or read the press are aware that they are being lied to.

All this means that we live in a new reality in which the global AngloZionist Empire is now actively opposed by a global resistance which knows no borders, no nationalities and no religions: people from different countries, nations and religions stand together against a common hegemon not just in theory like in “Proletarians of all countries – unite!” slogan, but in actuality and they actively collaborate with each other.

It is to this global resistance to the Empire and its GIOs that Putin addressed his words yesterday. Sure, of course, he was primarily speaking to the people of Russia, Crimea and the Ukraine, but he was also reaching beyond, to all those, probably many millions, who would make the effort to listen to him on YouTube or read a transcript of his speech. Because, of course, all this is much bigger than just a power struggle over a relatively small peninsula in the Black Sea: yesterday, for the first time, a powerful and determined leader openly told the Empire: we know you, we understand what you are trying to do, and we are not going to let you do it. In fact, we reject everything you stand for and we will never let you rule the planet. And today, we have the means to stop you!

Dust storms reported world wide

I think that we are entering a new era which many of us had been hoping for for a very long time. An era when a resistance which used to be only local has finally found a leader capable not of commanding it, no, but capable of representing and inspiring it. I honestly don't think that Putin wanted that. He would have much preferred to be in the shoes of Chinese President Xi Jinping who fully supports Putin, but who prefers to avoid an open confrontation with the Empire, at least until such time when China becomes truly powerful. Iran and Hezbollah have been openly resisting for many years, but they simply did not have the means to reach much further beyond the Middle-East. As for the resistance in Latin America (Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia) it has not been able to effectively deal with more lukewarm or hesitating leaders (Brazil, Chile, Argentina) or with outright US puppet states (Colombia). If anything, the recent vote at the UNSC in which only China abstained and every other member voted against Russia goes to show that on the global scale Russia is alone and that no world leader has the courage to openly stand next to Putin.

Even though I had been following Putin's career very carefully since 1999, it took me until 2008 to fully get a sense of what this man was all about. Still, I know that a lot of people remained skeptical: was he really what he appeared to be or was he simply playing a sophisticated game of “good cop – bad cop” with Medvedev, with each of them catering to their own audience? When Russia was invited to the G8 and when it acceded to the WTO a lot of careful observers wondered whether Putin was really as "anti-Empire" as he claimed to be, or whether he was just conducting a hard bargain for better conditions inside the Empire's international system. I hope that they today these skeptics see that Putin is “for real” and that he is now the de-facto leader of the global resistance against the AngoZionist Empire.

As I have mentioned above, a lot of readers of this blog, with no personal connections to Russia at all, reported yesterday that they had listened to Putin's address with tears in their eyes. This resulted in a rather moving discussion of red-eye triggering “dust storms” reported from various parts of the world (Germany, USA, Uruguay, Austria, Canada and, of course, Russia). One anonymous poster though did not want to use a cute euphemism and simply wrote : “Here it wasn't a dust, it was just a sincere pure cry for the hope of the all humanity around the world, that we can live in peace, mutual respect , abundance and prosperity for everyone around this beautiful earth. I do believe that this is the start of the new era.” In other words: Putin – we heard you!

Conclusion – a victory which belongs to every free person

First, let me be clear about this: what happened in Crimea is definitely a victory, but only one in a much wider war which is far from over. The first rule of warfare is to never underestimate your enemy and to never do what the French call “sell the bear's skin before having killed it”. This is far from over and if this is indeed the “beginning of the end” for the Empire, this is still only the very beginning of a long and most dangerous process. Some Empires die more or less peacefully, destroyed by economic ruin and over-reach, but others need to be defeated in an orgy of violence. Though on my bad days I sometimes daydream about seeing a private of the Russian army plant a Russian flag on the Capitol as Meliton Kantaria did over the Reichstag, I don't think that this would be much of a cause for joy in the midst of a nuclear winter. So the task is to bring down the Empire without bringing down the rest of the planet with it.

Those parts of the planet which have been “liberated” (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, Iran, etc.) need to resist, if needed by force, and remain free. Those parts which are still fought over (Syria, Lebanon, Venezuela, etc.) need to continue their struggle, as for the rest of the world it needs to continue its non-violent, ideological and informational resistance against the Empire and it's lies. We can use the well-known image of a swarm of bees attacking a large animal – individually the bees can do little, but in a coordinated attack they can defeat and even kill the much larger animal.

In the meantime, yes, we can rejoice over our common victory this week and paraphrase the words of Hassan Nasrallah in his absolutely beautiful “Divine Victory” speech and say: “We feel that we won; Russia won; Crimea won; the Slavic nations won, and every oppressed, aggrieved person in this world also won. It is not the victory of a party or a community; rather it is a victory for true Russia, the true European people, and every free person in the world. Don’t distort this big historic victory. Do not contain it in party, sectarian, communal, or regional clans. This victory is too big to be comprehended by us”.

There is a song about war as a metaphor for any resistance to evil and brutality which is very popular in Russia called “A toast to” which has the following words: (see home-made music video here)

Let's toast to life, come on brother, until the end
Let's toast to those who were with us then

Let's toast to life, and may all wars be accursed!
We'll remember those
Who were with us then.

A toast to them, a toast to us
And to Siberia and the Caucasus
To light of distant cities
And to friendship and to love
A toast to you, a toast for us,
To the Airborne Troops and the Spetsnaz
To combat decorations
Let's lift a toast, my old friend!


In the same spirit, I toast to you, all my readers and friends in the resistance, and I wish you courage and steadfastness in the long struggle ahead.  But today, let us celebrate indeed!

The Saker

Monday, March 17, 2014

How the US dream of world supremacy was buried in Crimea

written specially for the Asia Times

These are official results from the referendum in Crimea:
  • 96.77% voted for Crimea to join Russia
  • 02.51% voted for Crimea to remain a sovereign autonomous republic inside the Ukraine
  • 00.72% of the votes were declared invalid
  • 83.10% of the eligible voters participated in this referendum (thus:16.9% did not vote)
As a reminder, this is the official ethnic makeup of Crimea (in 2001):
  • 58.32% Russians
  • 24.32% Ukrainians
  • 12.10% Crimean Tatars
Okay, so what does this mean?

First and foremost, the participation was massive and the 'yes' to Russia won by a landslide.

Second, this was not a vote along ethnic lines.  When we say that are 58.32% Russians in Crimea that does not mean that all of these are eligible voters as children are not allowed to vote.  So the real figure of eligible Russian voters in Crimea is probably well under 50%.  And yet the results show that 96.77% of the eligible voters voted to join Russia.  Where did the rest of the 43.77% (more or less) come from?  It had to be from Ukrainian and Tatar voters.  Even if we assume that 100% of the Russians in Crimea were eligible voters and that they all showed up to vote and all of them voted for the 'yes' to Russia, it still leaves 35.45% of the 'yes' vote to non-Russians.  Even 100% of the Ukrainians does not fill the gap.  In other words, the so-called "Tatar boycott" of this referendum is a complete fabrication of the western media.

Now, this begs the question: why would the Crimean Tatars, who were brutally repressed and massively deported under Stalin and many of whom were seen screaming Allahu Akbar! in clashes with pro-Russian demonstrators suddenly decide to vote for Russia?  Did they suddenly change their minds?  Did the "Polite Armed Green Men" come to their houses and force them to vote at gunpoint?  Of course not.  The explanation is much simpler: in 22 years of independence the Ukraine did exactly nothing to help the Crimean Tatar people, language or culture, nevermind compensating them for their suffering.  In contrast, Russia passed a law called "Law on the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples"(here in Russian; here in a Bing machine translation) as early as 1991 which basically solves the problem for the Crimean Tatars who will get what they have always hoped for right along their brand new Russian passports.  Yes, of course, there are some Crimean-Tatars who would have preferred to remain under Ukrainian sovereignty because they believe that Russians are inherently capable of repeating the actions of Stalin at any time and that Russian nationalism is a threat to them.  I don't mean to suggest that they are smart - only that some of them do really believe that.  Some Muslim radicals want to either be part of Turkey or create their own Islamic state.  Fair enough - but they are a minority within a minority and thus, frankly, quite irrelevant.  The reality is that this entire "Crimean Tatar issue" is a canard cooked up in the West in the desperate hope to find some kind of "ethnic/religious fulcrum" to deny the legitimacy of this referendum and stir up more ethnic trouble.  The results show that this plan clearly failed.

So what is going to happen next?

The Ukraine is dead, long live Banderastan?

Some readers have objected to my use of the word "Banderastan" to describe the Ukraine.  Had they read with a little more attention they would have understood that I do not equate the Ukraine with Banderastan at all.  In fact, the Ukraine is the country which ended its existence in February 2014 and Banderastan is the new national project of the Right Sector and the Liberty Party (yes, the one whose original name was Socialist-National Party).  So what is Banderastan exactly?

Banderastan is the Ukraine which Dmitry Iarosh, Andrei Parubii or Oleg Tiagnibok want to create: a "socialist national" state whose founding principle would be "Бий жидів та москалів - Україна для українців" ("beat the Jews and the Russians - the Ukraine for the Ukrainians").  Simple and clear.  This state would have one language (Ukrainian), one ethnicity (Ukrainian), one leader (Iarosh) and one founding father (Bandera).  The long term political goal of this regime would be to "return" the "rest" of the "Ukrainian land" which now is under Polish or Russian "occupation" and to "punish" the "traitors to the Fatherland".

You can think of the "Banderites" are the Ukie version of the Taliban, but far more evil and infinitely more stupid.  Something like a Ukrainian version of the Interahamwe maybe?

One reader send me this great little video (thanks "JP"!) showing some of these Banderites and what they like to do:



Great stuff, no?

Of course, this project has exactly zero chance to succeed for a few basic reasons:
  • After 22 years of oligarchic rule, the previously wealthy Ukraine is now broke. Banderastan is even in a much worse condition.
  • Most Ukrainians are not "socialist-nationalists", not even in the western Ukraine.
  • Every time the "Banderites" make a move, the reaction to their actions it is more and more determined.
  • Many Russian-speakers and Jews are truly becoming terrified for their future (more about that later)
  • The Banderites have no economic program at all.
The bottom line is simple: there is more to governning or, really, re-building a bankrupt and ruined country and nation than parading in wannabe Nazi uniforms, taking US money, fighting cops and screaming "Glory to the Ukraine!  Glory to the heroes!!".  For all practical purposes the entire Banderite project is now in free fall, regardless of the fact that western leaders stubbornly pretend not to see this.  As for western loans (US, EU, IMF) - they can only delay the inevitable.

So how did we ever get to this crazy situation?

US foreign policy is not run by diplomats, but by politicians.

The main thing to understand about the US foreign policy is that it is basically run by people who have no experience or even understanding of diplomacy and its purposes.  It's not only Mrs Nuland and her famous "fuck the EU!" - it's also Kerry and his constant lies and zig-zags, it is Mrs Rice with her arrogant and always bellicose threats towards Russia and many other countries, finally, it is also Obama himself who combines imperial hubris with a truly phenomenal level of hypocrisy.  The very notion of negotiating anything is profoundly foreign to these Imperial leaders who strongly believe that to truly negotiate is basically a sign of weakness.  For them, the only thing which can be negotiated is the other guy's acceptance of all US terms and conditions.  And if that does not happen, the the US will basically threaten to bomb the other side into submission.  Long gone are they days of George H.W. Bush and his brilliant Secretary of State James Baker who understood how much careful diplomacy and negotiations can achieve.  The Kerry/Rice generation basically believes that they can tell everybody else want they want, and if that does not work, then brute force (whether threatened or actual) will solve the problem anyway.  This is why the US never agreed to negotiate with Gaddafi or Assad and this is why all the offers made by the Russians to find a negotiated solution were systematically rejected.

Russia offered to negotiation as far back as last fall, when the first signs of an imminent crisis began to become apparent.  Lavrov made an offer to begin trilateral negotiations  between the EU, the Ukraine and Russia.  The EU, either under US orders of simply acting on its own delusion of grandeur, contemptuously rejected that option under the pretext that the Ukraine was a sovereign nation and that therefore Russia should have no more say in its future than Paraguay or Vanuatu.  Worse, the EU pretended to believe that the Ukrainian government would sign on to 1'500 pages long text where terms and conditions of the proposed association between the EU and the Ukraine would be spelled out with no second thought about what Russia might do.  Except, of course, that it eventually became gradually clear to Azarov and Yanukovich that Russia really would have no other choice than to shut down its current borders to protect the Russian economy from a deluge of EU products which would inevitably flood the Ukraine.  When, at the last second, Yanukovich announced his notorious reversal, Russia again offered to negotiate and again this offer what rejected.  Some EU bureaucrats apparently still believed that Yanukovich would cave in at the Vilnius summit.  But he did not simply because he could not, at least not without killing the entire Ukrainian economy.  This is when the Americans suddenly literally freaked out because they understood that a 'no' to the EU, even temporary, meant a 'yes' to Russia, and probably a permanent one.  So then Uncle Sam got personally involved.

The goal, strategy and tactics of US foreign policy worldwide and the Ukraine

The overall goal of the US foreign policy worldwide is really very simple: to remain the sole superpower on the planet.  The fact that there are more and more signs which clearly point to the fact that the US is no more a real global superpower only make the achievement of this goal a higher priority.

In this context, the USA has a equally simple strategy towards Russia: do whatever it takes to prevent Russia from becoming a "new Soviet Union" or any other type of challenger to the US worldwide domination.  In practical terms, this means one thing: to do whatever it takes to break away the Ukraine from Russia.  There is, indeed, this rather bizarre notion amongst US elites that with the Ukraine Russia would be a superpower while without it it would not.  This notion is both counter-factual (Russia is already a superpower as we have seen in Syria) and illogical - Russia doe neither need not want the Ukraine which is basically a failed and wholly artificial state, run by oligarchs, with no foreseeable prospects of contributing much, if anything, to the current Russian wealth.  Frankly, and in purely realpolitik terms, the Ukraine is a headache that nobody in Russia really needs.  But nevermind that - the US elites are acting not on the basis of facts or Russian perceptions, but on the basis of their own perceptions: the Ukraine must never be allowed to fall back under Russian "domination" least Russia become a superpower again.

In tactical terms, this strategy is implemented with two simple rules:

a) any anti-Russian force, no matter how ugly or insane, gets US support
b) it's a zero sum game: anything Russia loses the USA wins and vice-versa

The ultimate prize for the US would be to get the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea and put US/NATO bases in the Ukraine, not because there would be much of a military advantage in doing so, but to prevent the Ukraine from ever becoming close to, or part of, Russia again.  Short of that, doing anything to keep an anti-Russian regime in power in Kiev is the next best option.  And if that regime comes to power in a armed insurrection - that's ok.  And if all the key positions in this regime are given to neo-Nazis, that is fine too.  None of that really matters as long as the Russians don't get the Ukraine back.

Of course, the world is much more complex that the primitive representation these ignorant and arrogant politicians have of it.  In fact, not only is the USA the sole party responsible for the current chaos in the Ukraine, it is is also solely responsible for achieving the exact polar result of what it set out to do.

How US incompetence resulted in a "patriotic domino effect" in Russia

As far back as in November of last year I wrote the following about the Russian-speaking population of the Ukraine:
They have no vision, no ideology, no identifiable future goal. All they can offer is a message which, in essence, says "we have no other choice than sell out to the rich Russians rather than to the poor European" or "all we can get from the EU is words, the Russians are offering money". True. But still extremely uninspiring, to say the least.
One month later, I added:
What are these 17 million Russians and several million of Russian oriented Ukrainians doing right now? It's their country which is driven directly over the cliff, and they are doing nothing at all. How many Russian flags did you see in the demonstrations in the eastern Ukraine, in Donetsk, or in Sevastopol? That's right - zero! Even the so-called "Russians" and "pro-Russians" are marching under the yellow-blue flags which are west Ukrainian, Galician colors. You speak of moral and spiritual issues at stake - have you ever heard the east Ukrainians raise such issues? Do they ever speak of the thousands of saints which lived in this hallowed land? Do they ever mention the millions of Russians who died freeing this land from the Poles, the Jesuits and the Jewish overseers which they imposed upon the Orthodox Christians? No, never. All the speak about is money, money and money: "we will be poor with the EU, with Russia our business will flourish" - that is their idea of spirituality. Pro-Russians in the Ukraine? Ha! Let me ask you this: when it became known that Ukrainian volunteers fought on the side of the Chechen Wahabis - did you see any protests in the Ukraine? Or when the Ukrainian government was arming Saakashvili to the teeth - did you see any protests in the Ukraine? No, never. Their version of "pro-Russian" means "we like Russian money". They are not pro-Russian, they are pro-Ruble!
What I wrong then?  Not at all: that was the sad reality then.  What really happened is that over the past few month these almost totally passive Russian population underwent a brutal "shock-therapy" which woke them up from their silent stupor induced by 22 years of Ukrainian nationalist propaganda combined and a deafening silence about them from Russia.  These previously "invisible" Russian speakers suddenly woke up.  How did that happen?

First, there was the Nazi freak show around the Maidan square in Kiev which soon escalated into an armed insurrection.  Then, when Yanukovich was finally overthrow, the new regime's very first decision was to pass a law banning the Russian language from official use and another one lifting the ban on Nazi propaganda.  Simultaneously, a string of violent attacks against "collaborators" of the Yanukovich regime soon turned into an anti-Russian terror campaign.  And for the first time the Russian-speakers really began to fear for their future: they began to rally and protest openly and vocally.

That, in turn, triggered a reassessment of the situation by many Russians in Russia who, up to this point, had accused their compatriots of passivity.  For example, on many talk shows Russian-speakers from the Ukraine who were complaining about their plight were told "we are not going to help you if you don't begin by helping yourself first; you have to speak up and take action against this new regime before we will do anything.  We cannot solve your problems for you - you have to act first.  Then we will help!".  And when the population in the East and South of the Ukraine finally took to the streets, this time not with Ukrainian flags but with Russian ones, the people in Russia took notice and began to change their outlook on the situation.

For a long list of objective reasons, Crimea was by far the most vocal part of this protest movement and it is of no surprise that the next big development took place there.  Russian intelligence services clearly detected some kind of coup about to take place and the Kremlin took the absolutely crucial decision to send in the so-called "Polite Armed Men in Green" (PAMG) normally called "Spetsnaz GRU".  What exactly the Russians detected is still unclear, but what is certain is that the manner in which the PAMGs were deployed into Crimea was not a the way a normal peacetime force is moved, but the way a special force is sent in in a wartime military operation: rapidly, under cover, with heavy fire support and on key objectives to be seized for a subsequent deployment of reinforcements.  That overnight deployment of PAMGs apparently did stop the planned coup as only a few clashes were very vaguely reported and soon forgotten.  The main effect of this move by Putin was to send a powerful message to Russian-speakers in the rest of the Ukraine: Russia will not let the new neo-Fascist regime attack and terrorize you.  What Putin had done was to extend a "psychological shield" over the Russian-speaking East and South of the Ukraine by letting the Banderites know that if they crossed the line they would be engaged and destroyed by the Russian military.  That had a huge effect and soon the protest crowd grew bigger and more determined.  As for the new regime, all it could do was to use the SBU forces to arrest some political leaders.  But beyond that, Kiev has not moved to suppress these regions by military force (at least until now).  Finally, upon seeing the sudden surge of Russian protests in the Ukraine, more and more Russians took to the streets in Russia to express their support for their compatriots in the Ukraine.  The end result of all this has been to wake up a previously semi-lethargic Russian national identity and a sense of patriotism which the Kremlin could never have even dreamed of inducing in the Russian people.

The western press is doing a truly remarkable job of trying not to notice all of this.  Western commentators and politicians are acting as if there was a way to somehow push the genie of Russian patriotism back into the bottle even though they themselves, and not the Kremlin, made him come out of the bottle in the first place.  Worse, the western propaganda still tries to represent the issue as being one about the future of the Ukraine.  It is not.  The Ukraine is now gone, dead, finished, forever relegated to the past.  The issue now is not the future of the Ukraine, but the future of the US Empire.

The tectonic faceplant of the US Empire and its policies

By its arrogance, ignorance and total intransigence the US and its EU colonies have completely redefined the terms of the issue for the Russian people.  In their immense majority when the Russian people look at what is taking place in Kiev they see a replay of the worst years of World War 2 and they are absolutely determined not to let that happen again.  When they see crowds of Ukrainian nationalists marching at night with torches and large photos of Stepan Bandera, Russians (in the Ukraine and Russia) see the rise of an evil which they had to beat down at the costs of millions killed and maimed. This is why I wrote on March 1st "make no mistake about that RUSSIA IS READY FOR WAR".  I meant that literally and I still think that this is true: the Russian people have suffered too much during WWII to let any neo-Nazi thugs terrorize their fellow Russian again.  The depth and intensity of this feeling is not something which can be understood in the EU, and even less so in the USA.  I suspect that the only place in which the vehemence of this determination could be understood is Israel.  In practical terms this means that Russia will not negotiate with any neo-Nazis which threaten the Russian speakers in the Ukraine nor will Russia yield to any western threats or sanctions.  Again, Russia, as a nation, is willing to pay the cost, whatever it might be, to choke and defeat the nasty "Banderastan" which is currently getting so much support from the US and EU.  If the Ukrainian crazies attack the Russians speakers in the East or South, Russia will intervene militarily - you can be sure of that.

There is even a more important consequence stemming from the current events.

In August of 2008, right after the Russian military defeated the US backed regime of Saakashvili during the 08.08.08 war I wrote a two-part article entitled "The real meaning of the South Ossetian war" (part one; part two) which included the following assessment:
The ugly attack by Washington's Georgian puppet on the Russian peacekeepers combined with the absolutely amazing hypocrisy of the Western media and politicians who all fully sided with the aggressor turned into something of a “last straw” for Russia. This seemingly marginal development, at least when assessed quantitatively (“what else is new?”) ended up making a huge qualitative difference: it brought up a new Russian resolve to deal with, to use a favorite Neocon expression, an existential threat represented by the Western Empire. It will take a long while for the West to realize what has really happened and the most obtuse of pundits and politicians will probably hang on to their usual self-righteous rhetoric forever, but historians will probably look back at the month of August 2008 as the moment when Russia decided to strike back at the Empire for the first time.
What has happened this Winter is very much a continuation of the 08.08.08 war: yet again Russia did not want that to happen, but the West gave it no other option than to be willing to go to war if needed to protect itself (in 08.08.08 the Kremlin fully understood that there was a risk of US/NATO involvement on the Georgian side and it had conveyed in no unclear terms to US/NATO commanders that any US/NATO force sent to the theater of operation would be attacked). Still, the chances of a UN/NATO intervention in the 08.08.08 war were relatively small, and the Empire could always pretend that it did not care.  This time around, however, Putin did not confront Saakashvili and his "operetta army", but the President of the United States and the combined power of US and NATO military forces.  For a few days, the situation appeared every bit as critical as during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the world began to fear that WWIII could begin (hence all the rumors about US/NATO military moves and the oblique or even overt threats of US politicians).  The crisis became so acute that The Independent felt that it had to write an editorial entitled "We don't want a war with Russia" which concluded with the following warning:
The Independent on Sunday is not opposed to all wars, regardless of fashionable talk of living in a “post-interventionist” world. We, like President Obama, are opposed to dumb wars. War with Russia would be a dumb war to end all dumb wars
Soon, however, it began to be clear that the US was not willing to go to war over Crimea or the Ukraine.  Predictably, in the confrontation between Barak Obama and Vladimir Putin Obama blinked first.  The referendum which the US tried so hard to prevent went ahead, and its results are an absolute disaster for the USA. There are now some pretty good signs that the USA is throwing in the towel (Moon of Alabama has two good pieces on that; see here and here) and that the West is seeking a way out.

This shows that Obama did much more than just "blink first".  This shows that when push comes to shove, Russia has enough military power and political determination to deny the US Empire one of it's most important strategic objectives: pretending to be the sole superpower.  If the collapse of the US policy on Syria was a painful embarrassment, what just took place in the Ukraine is something of an entirely different order of magnitude:  Russia slapped down the EU, NATO and the US and came on top of a confrontation in which down to the last minute the West tried to bluff its way to victory and instead only achieved a full-spectrum defeat.

Full spectrum dominance is a thing of the past, and everybody now knows it

Two things are certain now.  First, Crimea is now gone, back to Russia, and nothing will change that.  Second, the attempt to turn the Ukraine into a "Banderastan" will fail.  Though there are regular reports of Bandestastani military forces being moved towards the Donbass, I personally don't see how the regime in power in Kiev could crush the current protests in the East and South of the Ukraine. Besides, as soon as what is left on paper of the ex-Ukrainian economy officially collapses, the new regime will have much more pressing issues to deal with than protests.  At some point I expect that the USA and Russia will get together and agree to discreetly show the way out to the hardcore Bandera crazies currently in power.  Some kind of more or less civilized and neutral regime will replace the current one and some kind of more or less civilized and neutral "Ukrainian Confederation" will be created.  If the folks in power in Kiev persist and hang on to power, a good part of the east and south Ukraine will follow the example of Crimea and join Russia.  A temporary split of the Ukraine into two, like what happened in Cyprus, is also possible.  I honestly cannot imagine anybody crazy enough to provoke the Russian military to enter the eastern or southern Ukraine.  On the long term, it would be better for everybody that the Ukraine be allowed to split up into two or three different entities: one western, Latin and neo-Fascist one, one Russian one which would probably join the Eurasian Union or even become part of Russia, and possibly one independent one in the South.  But the dream of a large united Ukraine ruled by russophobic nationalists will not happen - that option is gone forever.

What is next for the AngoZionist Empire?

Externally, nothing much really.  It will be business as usual.  Neither Russia nor China will do anything reckless to provoke the USA which, just as the Russia of the 1990s, will remain a nuclear superpower and one of the major military powers on the planet with which no country will dare ignore.  But the myth of US omnipotence is now gone, forever.  Furthermore, Europe will have to bear the brunt of the consequences of having to manage the gradual transformation of Banderastan into something reasonable and non-threatening.  The EU will sink further in its economic and social crisis and some other crisis will replace the Ukraine in the news.  Externally, little will be change, but to paraphrase my conclusion about the 08.08.08 war, it will take a long while for the West to realize what has really happened and the most obtuse of pundits and politicians will probably hang on to their usual self-righteous rhetoric forever, but historians will probably look back at the month of February 2014 as the moment when Russia successfully beat back the combined power of the USA and Europe and prevailed.

The Saker