Perimeters

WaPo:  Brussel’s Bombings Bring New Security Measures!

"Neffenger said local law enforcement officers also may conduct random checks of cars and taxis driving toward the airport, a practice already in place at the Los Angeles airport.

“You have to get away from thinking about a perimeter,” he said. “I’m much more interested in thinking about the security environment that is essentially from the moment that you make a reservation to the moment you physically arrive at the airport.” 

"[Is it time to set up checkpoints outside airports?]

 Fifteen years ago, one day after 9/11,  Barfo wrote:

In all events, this war against terrorism on which we embark today, like the war on drugs on which we embarked years ago, cannot be won. Today our politicians in all but chorus denounce the “heinous assault against civilization and freedom;” but just you wait, tomorrow they will palaver about the required “sacrifices” and “tools” needed to defend our homes and loved ones. What sacrifices? What tools? None other than the loss of the liberty supposedly defended.

This war is nothing that can be won with a handful of battles. On the contrary, it presupposes a continuous engagement. And who is the enemy? All Arabs? No.... not all.... The American militias? Perhaps, but not always. The Irish? At times. The Basque?  Could be. What the Government will have to presume is that everyone is at least a potential terrorist. In the most fundamental sense that is a presumption that is entirely antithetical to the concept of civil friendship, i.e., societas.

In present day England they have already mounted cameras on every corner in the country in order, it is said, to defend against IRA terrorism. But what this entails is that every movement anyone makes in public is made under the all seeing eye of the Command and Control Center

Such things are but the visible manifestation of what is in actuality a policio-military apparatus of espionage and control that is gradually being erected over us. Bit by bit, the denizens of this country have been led to accept incremental police measures, soothingly reassured at each step that -- the police being husbands and fathers themselves -- these powers will not be abused. Bit by bit, fear has been insinuated between government and the governed and, ultimately, between citizens and neighbors themselves. And, as always, fear goes shadowed with intolerance and hatred of anything different or unusual.

The most stupid thing about this new “war” is that the security it purports to achieve cannot be attained.   The problem presented by so-called terrorism is not the criminality of the act but the criminalisation of the actor.  The difference between “lawful war” and “unlawful terrorism” is not that the former is in actual fact less terrorist, but that it occurs within a larger context of regularity and stability.  The unofficial terrorist, on the other hand, is like the ordinary criminal who, precisely because he is a nobody, has nothing to loose.

To declare war against an unseen, amorphous, invisible enemy who is given no option other than implacable hate, is a gross stupidity which can only be explained by this country’s overweening arrogance and self-righteousness. For that pride the Devil will have to be paid.

-o0o-

Elsewhere at the time, the Barfo pointed out that every wall has two sides.  If people are kept  out; others are kept in.   Duh.  Neffenger is wrong.   The concept of "perimeter" still exists; it is what used to be known as the borders of a country.  All else in between is what is known as a prison.

Scurry little mice, scurry.  The Devil demands his due.

©Barfo

Chicken Feed & Hypocrisy

NEW YORK TIMES  DECLARES WAR  ON BERNIE

No sooner was Hillary’s loss a done failure in New Hampshire, than the New York Times fired a broadside at Bernie.

In a front page Op-Ed, Marc Schmitt of the “New America” foundation declared that the era of expansive liberalism was over; the future belonged to invisible incrementalism. 

“The essence of Mr. Sanders’s version of liberalism is government programs. Expansive initiatives that provide benefits to a broad cross-class constituency,...

“That’s in sharp contrast to the policy approach of the Obama administration since about 2011, and also to Hillary Clinton and most of Mr. Sanders’s congressional colleagues...

“[T]he future of social and economic policy will involve, for better or worse, these complex, incremental and often invisible changes, instead of big programs.”

If one substitutes the word chicken-feed for incrementalism you know all you need to know about Hillary’s “progressivity” and the Times’ left-over centrism. 

Schmitt’s piece cannot be considered a “guest column” printed — on the front page — as “diversity of view.”  The New America foundation is headed by Anne-Marie Slaughter a political intimate of Hillary Clinton whom the Times has endorsed for president.  Schmitt’s piece is a Times broadside in alter voce and represents what the Times thinks is bad about Sanders and good about Clinton.

Feel the Invisibility

One might wonder exactly what “often invisible” changes might be.  Does the author of this assertive piece mean  “You’re feeling better, you just don’t feel it.” ?

Actually, yes. He goes on to say, “Citizens don’t see or feel these initiatives and may not know that they are benefiting from a government initiative at all.”

Not only do they not feel the benefits, the benefits might actually not exist! 

As an example of invisible incrementality, Schmitt cites an obscure regulatory tweak which will “set millions of Americans up with low risk, low-cost retirement savings accounts.”  Five paragraphs later, Schmitt acknowledges that the tweak will “not be enough to meet the shortfall in Americans’ retirement savings or reduce inequality of wealth.”

Rejoice!  Not only will you not feel the invisible benefit, you won’t be benefitted at all!  You will be incrementally less screwed.

Think tanks are the modern version of feudal vassals or roman clientela.   All three are made up of interlocking (and often inter-marrying) networks  of  patronage existing through  complex social bonds in service of agreed upon socio-economic-military interests as symbolized in some grand personage.    Roman clients were expected to attend, applaud and make  hubbub about and for their patrons, including  a display of Fumbling the Scrolls (Oh how many scrolls!) in the great man’s wake, as he made his way through the forum.   

In the present case, the New York Times is simply orchestrating the parade.  What it and Hillary’s coterie have decided is that, for better or worse, the incremental benefits will be so eensy teensy weensy, you won’t even notice them!  Hurrah for “common sense” programs.  Phooey on big, broad, gauche liberalism!

But the Times did not only have Bernie in its sights.  It was taking aim just as much at Theodore Roosevelt who, back in 1910, pronounced,

“Where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the national government...

“The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from overdivision of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock."

Contrast,  the New York/New America Times Op-Ed,

"[Hillary’s] agendas are most interesting and novel for the absence of big, universal programs that require legislative action. Instead, they test the limits of what government can do by rearranging the pieces of existing programs, using regulations, incentives to states, tax credits and “nudges” informed by behavioral economics in place of direct spending."

“Most interesting?”  Certainly not “novel.”  What the Times is advocating — and what it makes abundantly clear that Hillary is trumpeting — is a return to what did not work under Wilson or Hoover. 

“Nudges  informed by behavioral economics”?  What the hell is that?  It’s Hooverian “volunteerism” dressed up in millenial-speak; for the difference between Hoover and Roosevelt was not that Hoover did nothing, but that he refrained from “broad-based” mandatory national programs to address a national crisis.   

Hillary’s ghosted Op-Ed is also hard nudge advocacy for Justice Rehnquist’s “New Federalism” — the core of which was his engineered devolution of power to the "laboratory of the states"  (quoth) as testers and tinkerers’ of social fixes. 

A fuller-bore reaction could hardly be imagined. Rehnquist’s New Federalism might better have been called the New Feudalism, because the States were holdovers from the pre-monarchical era.  No — I am not making this up.  The Andrus Plan of 1688 had sought to consolidate the colonies into a single Dominion in common; but the Colonies (that is the Chief Families in them) revolted at the prospect of loosing their manorial privileges, including some rather peculiar ones.

It is hardly unfettered imagination to imagine Rehnquist slurring and salivating at how the States were best suited to “test” and incrementally  “experiment” with social issues such as Negro slavery.

After writing a clerk’s memo against desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) — (“I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by "liberal" colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.") —  Rehnquist went back to Arizona were he became national campaign manager for Barry Goldwater...   Hillary Clinton’s own youthful hero.

To ramble on in this vein may seem like a digression, but it is actually not.  It helps to put things in historical context because the Times hopes you wont.  

It supported Clinton (II) because he “refashioned the Democratic Party’s approach to government”  He “stood up to the spendthrifts in his own party”  He “bucked the democratic leadership to secure the free trade agreement”   In the same breath, without a blush, it lauded Clinton’s “promise” to ease “unfair attacks on the poor and legal immigrants.”

It supported Mondale noting that, “He has laudably continued the deregulation begun by Jimmy Carter.” 

It endorsed McGovern, Humphrey, Johnson and Kennedy because Goldwater was a loose cowboy and because the Times bore a deep (and mutual) animosity against Nixon on account of the latter’s anti-semitism and hopelessly pathetic, back water petite bourgeois background.

But this apparent liberalism was only “situational” like the occasional lapse at a truck stop. More true to form it  endorsed Eisenhower twice, Thomas Dewey twice and Wendell Wilkie over FDR.

In 1936   the editorial board pronounced, “The New York Times, a conservative newspaper in its own sphere, believes that the public interest will best be served” by the reelection of Roosevelt because the president will “make his second Adminstration more conservative than the first”  and his reelection will provide insurance against radicalism of the sort which the United States [i.e. its ruling class] has most to fear.”

1933 endorsed FDR because “his speeches have not [sic] indicated clear and strong and burning convictions.... Imagine what would have been done by such a man as William J. Bryan...!” 

In 1912 it endorsed Wilson first, Taft second... any one but Roosevelt third.  “It would be an ill omen and ... want of sense if so large a part of the people should yield to the appeals of Mr. Roosevelt.

This sketch of the Times’ editorial trajectory indicates what a fundamentally conservative paper the Times actually is.   It may espouse socially symbolic “liberal” causes on behalf of “cognized groups” but it reacts with horror and disparagement at any “broad based” programs aimed at ending the economic alienation of the working class.

Let us be clear.  The fundamental injustice of the U.S. political economy is that it alienates the worker from the fruits of his own productivity.  He produces economic value (“profit”) but it accrues to others rather than himself. To make matters worse he is economically oppressed by a variety of taxes, fees and other transfers of wealth labelled as “cost of living.”  His work itself is alienated from his own free will.  It is not an expression of anything he wants or of any collaboration among self-owning men; rather he is simply a unit of labour (a “human resource”) in someone else’s scheme. The American worker is “free” to travel where he wants, to tune in the channel where he wants, to sing the hymns and buy the junk he wants; but he is in all fundamental respects a slave and a serf.  

Neither Bernie Sanders nor LBJ nor either of the two Roosevelts proposed to fundamentally alter this system. They wanted some broad and pervasive adjustments that would render it less unjust; return some greater quantum of value to the worker who produced it; spread the costs and ease the burden of overall living expenses; provide the worker with economic security and social leisure if not actually determinative political power.

It is this adjustment which the Times disparages today and has always disparaged as “radicalism.”   What it toots as “incrementalism” is simply code for the least redistribution of anything the ruling class can get away with.

The genocidal vileness of the Times’ invisible incrementalism is best illustrated in relation to climate change.  Exactly what degree of imperceptible incremental reductions in global warming does the Times have in mind?  Something small enough not to be noticed at all?

What kind of insanity is this?

Oh but surely when the Times decries “broad brush liberal” approaches it doesn’t have global warming in mind.  Oh but surely it does, because “broad brush” reductions in global warming are absolutely not possible without predicate broad-brush reforms to the industrial-financial system which produces global warming.

One of the key ingredients of Clintonian Triangulation, is what might be called “issue alienation” — disconnecting the necessary relationships between various aspects of an underlying problem. 

In fact “issue alienation” is the key feature of so-called U.S. “liberalism.”  It is what enables a creeps like the Clintons to pretend to be all in favor of Black empowerment or women’s rights or Our Precious Children even while they work to end welfare, curtail unions and undercut the laws and programs which would give people — including Blacks, women and children — real security and real opportunity. 

In tandem,  issue-alienation allows the Clintons — and their toney clarions in the Times (or is it the reverse?) — to erect a moralistic Potemkin Village of cognized group chicken feed (“entitlements”) and pleasant but largely symbolic measures which hide the political disenfranchisement and economic impoverishment they actually -- and broadly -- promote.

As if matters could not be more nauseating than they are, one need only recall that there was nothing “incremental” about NAFTA or the TPP or the 2009 bank bailout.  When it comes to safeguarding the core interests of American Capital, Blue Dog Democrats and the Times get as non-incremental and broad based as necessary.

To niggardly stinginess one can add grotesque hypocrisy. That is what the Times and Hillary stand for.

   

©

Bearclaw meets Pancake

Appearances are a substantial part of politics.  One has to look the part,

even if one is short, pot-bellied and bald. Appearances are to humans what alpha-smell is to dogs. 

Sniffing the candidates’ butts, it was obvious that Sanders lost Wednesday night’s debate with Clinton.  He looked like a wet bunny who had been hit on the back of its head while Mme. Clinton puffed and strutted on stage like a cock.

Clinton was full of double-daring and aggro-victimhood.  “Enough is enough” she cried, as if her patience were truly exhausted beyond human endurance at having to put up with “insinuations” that she was Goldman’s Girl.

Mark Hannah's Boy

One could but feel for poor President McKinnley...

But instead of ripping Hillary a third asshole, Sanders just hunkered down and mummbled that money had too much influence in politics. 

Hillary’s reply the previous day that she had accepted $650,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sacks because “that’s what they offered” was the kind of clueless insouciance that has marked others in history with indelible infamy. In Hillary’s case the cluelessness was faux and Sanders ought to have raked her over her words seven times over.  He didn’t.

Far worse, was Sander’s complete failure rally his own cause and define himself as the standard-bearer for American “progressives."

The issue came up when Clinton was asked if she considered herself a “progressive.”  With shameless sophistry, Clinton replied that she did because she believed in making progress.

By that definition, Louis XIV, Peter the Great and Herr Autobahn himself were “progressives.”  But that is not what the word means in U.S. political history.  In terms of this country’s historical traditions, “progressivism” has a defined ideological meaning which neither Clinton nor Obama meet.

By the end of the 19th century, it was obvious to most disinterested people that laissez faire capitalism was corrosive to civil society and that economic individualism had to be replaced with mechanisms of economic responsibility.

Voices as disparate as Bismarck’s and Pope Leo X called for an end to predatory capitalism and for measures that would guarantee the economic security and social welfare of the working class.  As Bismarck stated,

The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence;... If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices,

Before century’s close, Germany had enacted health insurance (1883), accident insurance (1884)  old age and disability (1889) and  worker protections (1891). These were of course first steps but significant enough that the flow of German emmigration to America was stopped.

Why should not the labor soldier receive
a pension as much as the veteran?

Bismarck’s programs were dubbed state socialism.  Unlike Marxist socialism, they did not call for the abolishment of capitalism but rather for government regulated “cooperation” between capital and labor for the benefit of that nation as a whole.  Both sides of the class divide had responsibilities to one another and to the commonwealth as an organic entity.

In the United States, such ideas began to take hold under a call for a New Nationalism to replace antiquated notions of “state sovereignty” and unregulated private enterprise.

By the 1880’s, corporate power, assisted by corrupt legislatures and a reactionary judiciary, had completely subverted any meaningful existence of “democracy.” Not surprisingly social and cultural deterioration ensued.  Around the country, under the banner of “progressivism,” reformist movements strove to correct various perceived failings in the system. 

Two key players emerged: Herbert Croly the intellectual and Theodore Roosevelt, the politician.  It is typically said that Roosevelt’s famous New Nationalism speech in Osawatomie Kansas (August 1910) was “influenced” by Croly’s book The Promise of American Life (November 1909)

However, Croly’s book itself discusses various “nationalist” and trust-busting reforms Roosevelt had advocated as president. The truth is that Croly and Roosevelt played off one another, reinforcing each other’s goals until their partnership ended in 1916.

Croly was frankly impressed by Bismarck’s national reforms which he felt had far exceed in scope and effect the merely liberal ameliorations tepidly introduced in France and England.

"The German Empire presents still another phase of the relation between democracy and nationality,  ...    She is at the present time a very striking example of what can be accomplished for the popular welfare by a fearless acceptance on the part of the official leaders of economic as well as political responsibility, and by the efficient and intelligent use of all available means to that end.  ... ".

Given the traditions and temperament of Americans, Croly envisioned a democratic "bottom up" version of Bismark's "top down" socialism. 

Like Bismarck’s state socialism, the essence of Croly and Roosevelt’s progressive, new nationalism was a rejection of the concept of the state as the mere container of competing selfish interests.  Rather, government stood for and in service of an overarching commonwealth from which all parties derived benefits but to which all parties owed responsibilities.   As articulated by Roosevelt,

"Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.... Nor should this lead to awar upon the owners of property."

But 

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.   ...

"One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege.   ...  At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress.

"In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will.

"...  our government, national and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests.   ...  so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit.

"Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The way out lies, not in attempting to prevent such combinations, but in completely controlling them in the interest of the public welfare."

These principles became the under-structure of Roosevelt’s Progressive Party which he co-founded in 1912.   Because, by 1912, the United States was so utterly out-of wack and behind the times both politically and economically (although not in the accumulation of private profits), much of the Progressive Party’s platform sounds merely reformist and ad hoc. Indeed Croly felt that it did not go far enough.

But Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” went beyond tinkering at the edges and beyond calling for government to be “the chief almoner of the nation” (as Justice McReynolds would later scathingly characterize FDR’s plan for social security).  Roosevelt’s progressive platform rejected Jeffersonian individualism as the beacon of U.S. politics, in favor of  a  more socially unitary concept of the state as “the family of us all” in which all segments played co-responsible parts.   As Roosevelt put it from porch of the railroad car,

"The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good.

"The national government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the national government.

"The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from overdivision of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock.

"This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare. I t demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people.

That was the banner Sanders supposedly raised with his advocacy of “democratic socialism.”   That was the banner Sanders let fall to the ground with his failure to nail Clinton on her weaseling definition of “progressive.”

When Sanders agreed that Obama was a progressive he all but undercut the raison d’etre of his own candidacy.   If Obambi is a progresssive, then vote for Hillary because there is hardly a wit of difference between the two.  Both (as Hillary correctly pointed out) were recipients of Wall Street’s largesse.  Both are as much “Mark Hannah’s Boys” as McKinley.    Teddy Roosevelt would never, ever have said (as Obama did ) that he did “not begrudge” Lloyd Blankenfein or Jamie Dimon their billions.

No real progressive would have shurgged off the colossal, disparate accumulation of wealth with Obambi's insulting insouciance “That’s part of the free market system,"

We were loathe and reluctant to believe those more cynical observers on the  U.S. left who from the start denounced Sanders as a mere stalking horse for the DNC, who would get  younger voters all enthused only to switch the bait once Hillary rode her triumphal chariot into the convention hall.   (Ave! Ave!)   But his performance the other night was so tepid and pathetic that one is left thinking that perhaps the cynics were right.

marche de triomphe

Hillary's Inner Goldwater

Recoiling from her victory in Iowa, Hellary Clinton lashed out at Bernie Sanders saying,

“Our founders knew if we were going to survive as the great democracy they were creating we would have to have a system that kept the passions at bay ...”

Oh! the progressivity!  What “the Founders" knew is that if they were to survive as a ruling class they had to keep the populace at bay. Anyone who has gone to law school or studied U.S. political history must know that the Federalist Convention of 1788 was a pre-emptive counter-coup by the conservative elements who feared those populist, democratic movements they called "mobocracy."

There were a several factors which impelled the newly sovereign states toward a “more perfect union.” Among them,  intra-state jealousy which made the newly minted “republics” susceptible to being played off against one another by some foreign power. Settlements of claims and access to credit was another.  But the chief concern was democratic radicalism among single family farmers, indentured servants and a growing number of young, illiterate under-employed hired hands.  

James Madison, put it succinctly in Federalist Paper 10, in which he famously discussed the "inflamed passions" of political factions

"But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society."

Madison went on to say that while “the causes of faction cannot be removed, ... relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.”

Controlling the “effects” of the lower classes was thus the principal purpose of the “more perfect union.”

The Federalists succeeded admirably. They resurrected House of Lords (the Senate) and gave it effective veto over the lower popular House. If that didn't work, they concocted a judicial form of Curia Regis, to veto anything that might get by the Senate. From the Holy Roman Empire, they borrowed an Electoral College to insure that no passionate leader would ever really be elected president without approval from the better, cooler class. They dressed up institutional deadlock as "checks and balances" and packaged the whole reactionary affair as "the world's first and best democracy."

Even States’ rights got into the act; for it has always been assumed and understood that the States themselves would be the first line of defense in “handling their own.”  Over and over throughout the course of U.S. history movements for national, popular reform have been broken on the rock of state sovereignty — or “federalism” as it is sometimes called.

On the other hand, the “imperative” of national (“interstate”) commerce gets trucked out whenever the issue concerns the facilitation of railroads, industrial development, corporate rescue or the promotion of more innovative financial “products.” The entire premise of F.D.R’s  “national regulation” was implicit in Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824)  and  in the Lexicon of Doubletalk that regulates political discourse, “regulation” includes the granting of privileges and immunities to corporate capital. 


The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court frankly (and correctly) dubbed F. D. Roosevelt’s reforms as National Capitalism.   But the truth is that national capitalism was always the American Agenda.  When  Calvin Coolidge said that the “business of America is business” he was not being polemical but laconically factual.

Hillary knows all of this (at least instinctually) and is perfectly content with it.   She is more than content with the "super-delegate" system which gives 12 to  20 percent of primary and convention votes to unelected delegates, appointed on the simple of their status as "party officials" and "friends of the establishment."  Her unmistakable allusion to Madison's essay on the "impulses of passion" could not be more clear. Anyone who knows Hillary knows that keeping the populace at bay is what she has always been about.

This is the same shameless Hillary who just last Fall was gushing over how much she admired Eleanor Roosevelt... you know that passionate advocate of the not-so-well-off.  But at last Hellary’s Inner Goldwater has burst out.  It could not be repressed forever.   Hopefully people will not forget it in favor of the bullshit she puts on a plate.

.

Hillary's Loss in Iowa

There are no Pyrrhic Victories in sports; but in politics, as in war, some wins protest too much.  Hellary's expected three point victory over Bernie Sanders bespeaks nothing but failed leadership and  stunning electoral distrust.

The question is not what Hellary takes out of Iowa but what she put in.   And what she put in was something like a Soviet tank assault.  Hillary went into Iowa with millions of dollars at her back and the Democratic Party machinery fully at her disposal.   Like the legions of the Later Empire, she went into battle with awesome recognition and glittering armour.   And in spite of this terrifying political might, an aged mouse from Vermont pulls within three fucking points?

The Clinton Camp, which is good at nothing if not at self-promotion, will clang, cymbal and gong Hellary's victory for all the ear can bear.  But to anyone of reason it will ring hollow. 

The vote tomorrow is not the national election, which historically is always close.  This is a primary election among a subsidiary part of the electorate that is presumptively well disposed to a person who has been at the centre of the Democratic Party's power structure for two decades and who is, in all but name, the President's anointed successor.    This is not the battle against the foe but rather a rallying of the troops.  And the troops are all but mutinous. 

Hellary may walk away with the prize; but it will be a battered horn. 

©

Palin's Personal Holocaust

Ranting in front of a crowd of cheering admirers Sarah Palin blamed Obama for “single-handedly” “ruining” her “plans and dreams” as to, you know, “regarding me becoming Vice President”

“I can’t help thinking that, if I had been elected Vice-President, Bristol and Willow wouldn’t have gotten into that drunken brawl and Track wouldn’t have threatened his girlfriend and whatnot,” she said. “Thanks, Obama.”

The question is not why is she mad, but why does anyone — anyone at all — listen to her?

Palin’s rant bespeaks the culture of victimization that has seized the United States.  Not only does everyone look for ways to self-describe him or herself as a victim, but one can even attain victimhood by being at risk of being victimized. 

Victimization is, of course, egotism in negative form — a self-asserting masochism.  Nietzsche called it the spirit of resentment. 

More than that, this outward-blaming, inward turning emigration constitutes a rejection of political life and the social values such life presupposes.  

What we see in Palin’s personal holocaust, is the culmination of individualism and fulfillment Democracy in America.  It was Alexis de Tocqueville who coined the word “individualism.”  Ever since, Amurkans have taken it as a badge of honor.  But it was not so intended by de Tocqueville.

I HAVE shown how it is that in ages of equality every man seeks for his opinions within himself; I am now to show how it is that in the same ages all his feelings are turned towards himself alone. Individualism is a novel expression, to which a novel idea has given birth.  ..

Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness.   ...

not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

Amurkans listen to her because seeing themselves reflected in her self-absorption is the full extent of their capacity for social feeling.  In the end, all individualism devours itself.

© 

Our Present Future

Manuel Vals, France's prime minister, stated yesterday that France's state of emergency would last indefinitely. It is a total and global war that we are facing with terrorism," he added. "The war we are conducting must also be total, global and ruthless."

Really?

Ah, indeed...

 

Total war is the demand of the hour. The danger facing us is enormous. ...  The question here is not one of method, but of the goal, namely eliminating the danger

Danke, Vals.

©

Raps Nacht im Köln

One has to sneer at the inconvenient marriage between Germany’s politically correct left and its politically incorrect right, over the “sexual assaults” which allegedly took place in Cologne’s cathedral square on New Year’s Eve.

Even now, no-one - and that includes the police - really knows what happened.   BBC

And yet, without knowing what really happened, the official world, the media and the public have gone off half-cocked over the issue. (Actually, full blown cocked.)

Just months ago, Marine Le Pen, of the Front National found herself dragged into court for saying that Muslim public praying in streets was like an “occupation.”  Now  But aside from the squirming as the multi-cultural, Kumbaya Left finds itself embraced-in-schadenfreude by the cultural integrity volk at PEGIDA, the real issue is the danger of language and how our species’ supposedly superior capacity for articulated howling turns us into beasts worse than hyenas.

Shrieking headlines — not just in the tabloid press — have screeched about women “running the gauntlet,” “sexual attacks” and “rape-fests.”  If one asks if anyone was actually “raped,” as in unconsented vaginal intercourse, the answer is an indignant accusation of misogyny.

So let’s go back to basics.

The word “assault” derives from the Latin ad-saltus meaning to leap or jump at.  It does not require any contact because the harm is in the spooking.  This makes the concept of “sexual assault” rather problematic. 

Is rushing to embrace someone a sexual assault? If so, how is it distinguished from a gushing co-sharing of our common humanity?   If “sexual assault” refers to a “jumping at” which is sexually motivated, how do determine a person’s motive?

Unfortunately, to make matters less clear, the word “assault” is commonly used as the equivalent of a “battery” which originally meant a hitting of some sort.

Now, a rape could be called a sexual battery, because the essence of rape is that the male penis is used an instrument of violence on the person.  But in that case the word “rape” is sufficient to describe what happened.

Alas, to make matters more unfortunate, the legal definition of “battery” is not limited to hitting but encompasses any “offensive touching, howsoever slight.”

This creates a whole host of uncertainties in its own right.  But in the context of “sex crimes” it can be supposed that a “sexual assault” is coterminous with a “sexual battery”

What then constitutes a offensive sexual contact which is not rape?  Well... tit-grabbing, crotch groping and butt slapping come to mind.  An attempt to make close, labial contact might also qualify.

But since an “assault” does not require contact, vague hand motions accompanied by lewd and leering remarks would also qualify. 

The ultimate result is that the term “sexual assault” encompasses a very wide spectrum of conduct. 

This is not to say that crotch grabbing is nice (or, in the current puritanically correct lexicon, “appropriate”).  It is to say that some sexually motivated “offensive” touching is not as serious as rape. 

No one, male or female, likes “unwanted” sexual attention.  A wink from someone we find incredibly hot, is just as incredibly welcome.  Oh lucky day!  That same act — the wink — from someone we are not in the least interested in is annoying, icky, repugnant.  That’s why bitches snap.  It’s natural.  It’s also the luck of the draw.

What distinguishes what happened at Cologne from Rio’s Carnevale?  Not much.  Inebriated, happy males, venting their sexual urges by whistling, making lewd comments and perhaps groping is not the Rape of the Sabines. 

What would the world say of same Pious Nellie, who walked out of the festive crowds at Rio complaining (indignantly) about being “sexually assaulted” ?  C’mon, comes to mind.

In ordinary circumstances, a male butt slapping a woman at work or in the supermarket, without being signaled to do so, could rightly be reproved with a misdemeanor.  But walking into a crowd of foreseeably inebriated party goers on New Years Eve???  What were the women thinking?  That they were going to sing Nun Danket?

Well... this is Germany and not Brazil.  So perhaps a certain Buddenbrooksian Pall hangs over things.  Still it would be nice to know what happened before the press works itself up into a frenzy over the sexual holocaust on RapsNacht.

Being Reminded

The Archbishop of Canterbury has seized the occasion of the New Year to remind us that “Jesus was a refugee” too — the point being...., uh, that we should welcome refugees into our hearts?

We might remind the archbishop (and other 401k Liberals) that Jesus was also a PWOP — a person without a pension.

Conditional Condition Alert (CCA)

Heimatland Sicherheits Deinst Secretary Jeh Johnson Wednesday activated the National Terrorism Advisory System, warning the public of "self-radicalized actors who could strike with little or no notice."   Johnson said there was no specific information about a pending attack but that the Department was concerned that "terrorist-inspired individuals and homegrown violent extremists may be encouraged or inspired to target public events or places."

So.... the government issues an alert on the basis that there is no impending danger to be alert to? 

Are they really that stupid or do they just want us to suck cop dick?

©

Black, Gold & Green

President Barack Obama praised a landmark climate change agreement approved Saturday in Paris, saying it could be "a turning point for the world."  Obama , called the agreement "the best chance we have to save the one planet that we've got.  (CNN)

The agreement sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well  by limiting global warming to well below 2°C.  The agreement is due to enter into force in 2020.   (EU-GOV)

In other words, the (non-binding) agreement locks in six more years of delay before setting a goal that is insufficient to reverse global warming.    The agreement does nothing to stop deforestation, ocean pollution or species extinction.  Unbelievably this is hailed by the corpstream media as an environmental victory. 

Equally as unbelievable, the Reformed Liberal media in the U.S. hails its iconic Obama for his ecological leadership in “producing” (i.e. conducing to) an agreement — you know as if it were a commodity.

Needless to say, a lot of ink and bytes are spent on dissecting the technicalities of the non-agreement — of the so called “framework” which sets us “on a course” for dealing with global warming.    But it occurs to us that there is a very simple why the United States will never really get behind an agreement to detox the world from oil:  petrodollars.

We are no expert in economy, but everything we have been able to research agrees on one point: without petrodollars the United States would go bankrupt. 

I shall leave the technicalities to others, but the general agreement seems to be that the life blood for the U.S. monetary system (and hence its economy) is the fact that everyone in the world buys and sells oil in dollars.

This is very important to the United States.  So important in fact that the U.S. is evidently willing to invade, overthrow and/or kill anyone who refuses to sell oil in petrodollars, as was recently the case in Libya.  (This was widely reported, right?)

If this is true — that the solvency of the U.S. government and of the economy it bankrolls — is dependent on the sale of oil then isn’t it equally obvious that the U.S. cannot really get behind any program that calls for independence from oil.  After all,  no sale no petrodollar.

This is not to say that capitalism as such is not inherently destructive to the world’s ecology on which depend for life itself.  It is, for all the reasons explained by others and here.

It is to say that the world’s largest and most important economy cannot move away from oil-dependence within any timeline likely to avoid ecostrophy.

©

Trumpify

Trumpify v. engl. 1. to render loud, aggressive, ignorant 2. to dumb down & stir up

Screwed Up Priorities

The New York Slimes ran its first front page editorial ever since 1920, calling for a ban on assault weapons and ammunition in the name of reasonableness against outrage.   The reasoning of the rag's editorial board seems to be that these weapons put people at risk of their being misused and "enough is enough." 

It is not worth the pecking to disabuse gun control advocates of their illogic.   Because they are illogical no amount of reasoning will make a dent into the rock-like matter of their crania.    But it is worth pointing out that if the Slimes is going to fulminate broadside on its front page it really ought to fulminate against a risk -- actually a known and certain eventuality -- that will affect all of humanity and every living thing.

The Men in Black

Who would have thought that the European Council would make l’Ancien Regime look like a neighbourhood block party. There is a subtext to the Grexit Crisis which betrays, all too vividly, the European Union’s democratic facade.

First the visuals.  Young, earnest provincials in their Sunday best walking up steps to meet men in black at some central place.  The hauteur is palpable.  This is not a question of nose-in-air.  The men in black are very ostensibly very friendly, as if, it were all an engagement among equals.  No.  The hauteur all but drips from the fact that the men in black are pleased to show that they have no need to be unfriendly.  Why should they be?  They are in control.  They will get what they want.   No need to belabour that Tsirpas is Le President de Patatras

Yes, they will welcome Le President de Patatras as if he were always one of us, and we would never be so gauche as to wonder where you might have been all these years. 

We shall assume you are one of us and, as such, will be expected to behave like one of us.

And being expected to behave like one of us, the Eurocentrals from La Cour d’ Europe, you will be expected to sell your people into penury in the name of economic stability and growth, just as we have done.

Let’s be clear: there is not a leader of the Eurogroup or of the European Council or any other ministerial menage  — whether of the left, center or right,  who has not sold his or her country to the Mandates of Haute Finance.

Moloch will not be denied.

Christine Lagard is very sweet about it.  She affects a persona that is a cross between Florence Nightingale and a concerned school teacher.  She might even be called the “Nun from the Fund”  Smiling gently and sweetly, she stands ready, always, even now, to help the Greeks achieve discipline on the path to sustainable economic growth.

Ah but oh... toujours cherchez the missing prepositional phrase:  “economic growth” for whom?  What Lagarde calls “sustainable” most normal people, people of flesh and blood, call “unbearable.”

The men and women in black are all from les grand ecoles, as the French call them or “school boys” as they are known in England. They are, for the most part, blood of the upper middle class who have been place on the road toward sustainable advancement and for whom the world is an vast “entre nous.”

When the president, whom we should at least have expected would have behave as one of us, does not, the smiles drop and we hear words like: “betrayal,”  “amateur,”  “cowboy,” “a mere academic,”  en fin, Le President de Patatras.  But worst of all: populist.

There is no democracy in Europe.  There is a parliamentary facade worthy of Potemkin for rule by the bloodless. 

The Crucifixion of Greece

When, at the end of January, Syriza won the Greek elections, all the leftish zines and blogs were a-flutter with yap about empowerment and a new red dawn.  Ding Dong Austerity is over; the Wicked Witch is Dead!

The establishment press, reformist rags like the Guardian included, were all a-jitter with the potential looming consequences to the Eurozone.   Faxit?  Quixit?  Grexit?

Ignored in the hubbub and froo-lala   was the head of the Greek Communist Party who explained that he would not be entering into a coalition with Syriza because he did not think that palliatives within the system would be fruitful or even possible.

It did not take long for Europe's Albrechtian Ogre to emerge from his cave to squash Syriza under the flesh part of his palm, like a fly.   To say that the humiliation was total is not the half of it.   The hope for economic reform in Greece has been executed; and, not just killed, but killed in away that is cruel and humiliating.   Greece has been crucified, as a abject lesson to those who would question the power of Euro-capitalism.

Gotha Socialism is a mirage.  There is no alternative within the capitalist system.  The system does what it does because of what it is.   It is not a question of excesses within a system but rather of an economic mode of being which is inherently excessive.   Capitalism -- a system of commodification which debases the nature and uses of everything into mere quantifiable exchange for its own sake-- will destroy everything under the sun until people have the courage to opt-out from its grasp. 

#

The Awful Spectre of Victory

Once again, the memory of an appalling holocaust is perverted by an obscene and repugnant revisionism by the guilty perpetrators and self-serving interests groups, not the least of which are the snivellers in Masoch-Staat Deutschland.

Typical of the obscenity was BBC report on the 70th anniversary of the Dresden bombing which, under a cascade of crocodile-tears for the terrible destruction of a beautiful city, repeats the canard that only 25,000 people were killed in the raids.  Perpetrating that falsehood is the real purpose of all the tear-jerking and the falsehood is perpetuated in order minimize guilt and clear the way for enshrining that other “holocaust” as the solely important crime of the war.

Minimizing the casualties is only the piece de resistance of a polemic which begins with an attempt to justify the bombing as an of course regrettable military necessity.  It is alleged that Dresden was the site of industrial factories and rail-hub which were essential to the German war effort.

The claims are bullshit.  In modern warfare any factory has some potential military use.  On the outskirts of Dresden there existed a chemical plant as well as a lens-grinding and small ammunitions factory.  Dresden was also a rail hub for east-north railway traffic.  Given the all out rout that had become the Eastern Front in February 1945 the notion that any of these installations were of value to the German war effort is risible.  If anything, the railway junction would have been used for and by the millions fleeing westward from the murderous Soviet advance.

But let’s not nit-pick.  Let is be assumed that Dresden was the site of militarily useful installations, the indisputable fact is that the aim, thrust, and impact of the bombing was directed at the historic city centre — site of residences, churches, museums, concert halls, city and parks.  Look at the map, with open eyes.

There were no factories next the Frauenkirche.  And while precision bombing was always subject to error, an attack on the rail hub to the north-west of the city did not entail 2,500 tons of “stray” and “unintended” collateral damage of the entire city centre.

Moreover, the attack came in two waves, the first of which dropped almost 1,000 tons of incendiary bombs which are useless against rail-lines but which are excellent at destroying houses and buildings with wooden structures and roofs.  

This first wave, lasting for half an hour at 10 p.m. and consisting of incendiaries followed by explosive bombs, hit the Old City (Altmarkt)  The second wave, three hours later, targetted the “NewCity” (Neustadt) across the river and the “South City” (Sudvorstadt).  It was this second wave that set off the firestorm that turned asphalt into molten liquid and exploded people like so much human popcorn.

All that to hit a rail station to the northwest and factories on the outskirts?  Anyone who believes this “justification” is a criminal moron and anyone who polemicizes it is criminal scum.

Moreoever, area or “carpet” bombing was the explicit policy of British and American air warfare. The express purpose of area bombing was simply to terrorize the civilian population into submission.  This policy, based on the strategic theories of Giulio Drouhet’s Command of the Air, (1921) was adopted by the British and the Americans before the Nazis even came to power. 

As stated by Douhet, “a complete breakdown of the social structure cannot but take place in a country subjected to this kind of merciless pounding from the air. "

Again, open your eyes and look at the pictures of the devastation of German cities.  That kind of bombing had nothing to do with targeting military infrastructure. 

This is not to say that the Allies did not target military installations; it is rather to say that they knew how to do so when they wanted.  The destruction of Dresden was not an accident.  It was a planned and intentional act of sado-terror against civilians.  Period.

To minimize the monstrosity, Allied and interested parties fall back on minimizing the effect of the intended crime. The notion that only 25,000 people were killed is that kind of obscenity that merits a kick in the teeth to the spewer of the sewage.

It is certainly true that, due to the influx of wartime refugees, exact population estimates for Dresden in February 1945 are hard to come by.  But that difficulty is only used as preliminary smoke-screen for making difficult something which is not actually hard to estimate.

The pre-war population of Dresden stood at somewhat over 600,000.  Let it be very generously assumed that 100,000 were away in armed forces.  To the remainder add an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 influxing refugees, for a net result of approximately 700,000 in February 1945.

These figures are consistent with the known number of residences in Dresden.  An RAF assessment completed in 1945 estimated that  around 78,000 dwellings had been completely destroyed; 27,700 were uninhabitable, and 64,500 damaged, but readily repairable.   The total of these figures is 170,200 which is somewhat under the figure of 220,000 homes in all of Dresden.

Assuming 200,000 residences in the city occupied by an average of three persons yields a residential population of 600,000 which is consistent with official population figures. 

If 78,000 dwellings were completely destroyed in a fire-bombing, it is a safe assumption that the contents thereof, including humans were also destroyed.  At one person per dwelling unit, the figure of bombing deaths is 78,000; at 3 per unit, 234,000.

This is a lower estimate given that the city inhabitants had been ordered to accomodate influxing refugees.  A figure of 5 persons per unit would not be out of line with the demographic circumstances in February 1945.

It is of course true that not everyone who inhabits a dwelling is necessarily killed.  The people might have fled in time.  Those that did may have been killed by falling structures or may have survived in city parks.  On the other hand, they may have suffocated in bomb shelters or exploded, like human popcorn, in the heat. 

There really were not many places to run and casualty estimates of 78,000 to 234,000 are not unreasonable.  What is criminally unreasonable is the assertion that notwithstanding that 78,000 dwelling units were demolished  only 25,000 people died.

Some other figures we have come across, list the “houses” in Dresden at 24,000.  This lower figure is not inconsistent given that dwelling units include apartments whereas “houses” designate the apartment building itself.

Kurt Vonnegut, the American novelist and playwrite, who was present in Dresden as a prisoner of war, estimated the deaths at 130,000.  Until the revisionist ilk went to work corroding the truth, accepted estimates in the 1960’s and 1990’s hovered around 180,000 to 200,000.

The precise figure will never be known.  But the substance of the crime is evident and palpable.  Mass murder of civilians in Germany was the genocidal aim of the Allied war machine.  Dresden is the awful spectre of “victory.”

©Barfo 2015

Blowback

All night negotiations in Minsk between Russia, Germany, France and the Ukraine have resulted in a diplomatic victory for Russia.  As Putin told the press, “It was a rough night but it’s a good morning.”

First, the big picture.  Russia’s primary geo-political concern was the blatant attempt by the United States to use the Ukrainian “zone of democratic freedom” as a “forward base of operations” for U.S. hegemony.  The neocon gambit of incorporating the Ukraine into N.A.T.O. was as anathema to Russia as the neocon wet dream of controlling the naval base at Sevastopol. Although the Minsk-II agreement is silent on the matter, Ukrainian participation in N.A.T.O. is simply inconsistent with its terms, which call for the withdrawal of “all foreign troops” from Ukrainian soil.

This withdrawal provision is a diplomatic joke inasmuch as Russia denies having any troops in the Ukraine in the first place. Since both N.A.T.O. and Russian troops are not there, the reference to “withdrawal” arguably means that “there shall be” no foreign troops on Ukrainian soil.

In all events, the notion that Russia should not be militarily engaged in the Ukraine so that N.A.T.O. can be, is one of those hypotheses not likely to lift off the ground.

Russia’s next concern was the threat of economic sanctions. From the Russian perspective, sanctions were costly and humiliating.  The arrogance of the United States is so overweening that President Obama felt no constraint in saying, only yesterday, that his country reserved the right of “twisting the arms” of countries who “don’t do what we need them to do.”  Such a bully-boy attitude may be self-gratifying in Washington but it tends not to play well elsewhere.  It will apparently not be played again against Russia; according to BBC News, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said European leaders would be discussing ways to "help and sustain the agreement", but she ruled out the threat of fresh sanctions on Russia.

As for the Ukraine itself, the matter can be broken down into two facets: the economic and the political.  Here, Russian diplomacy has effected a marvelous tromp d’oeil in as much as the agreement preserves Ukrainian political unity just enough to make it responsible for paying debts while its economic integrity is broken just enough to allow the eastern part of the country to maintain its own economic ties with Russia.

This, more than anything else, is Putin’s kick in the teeth to Virginia “Fuck Europe” Nuland.

Obviously a country’s economic balance sheet runs only so far as its political writ.  Preserving Ukraine’s political integrity was not only a point of national honor for Poroshenko, it was also a question loans.  After all, a country’s size, resources and industrial assets are collateral.  IMF  “investment” in the Ukraine was directly proportional to the extent of Ukraine’s political sovereignty.  Keeping the eastern part of the country “within” the Ukraine was a key aim of the Kiev government which did its level best to ethnically cleanse and/or terrorize the Russophile population in the East.

The diplomatic buzz words here are “federalization” and “decentralization”  — the former meaning the de facto break up of the Ukraine and the latter meaning the nominal preservation of Ukrainian territorial integrity.

Having been fairly trounced militarily (a fact seldom reported in the servile U.S. media), Poroshenko went into the talk hoping he would at least be able to keep the shirt of his territorial integrity.  Just look at the man’s worried face in the halls of Minsk.  Putin let him keep his shirt, but only of the thinest cotton.

Poroshenko won the battle of labels.  The Minsk-II agreement speaks only of “decentralization.”  There will be no break up of the Ukraine, as such.  Oh, but what integrity!

According to RT News, “Kiev and the rebels will negotiate the terms for future local elections in the rebel-held areas, which would bring them back into Ukraine’s legal framework. Kiev would adopt legislation on self-governance that would be acceptable for the self-proclaimed republics.” 

In other words, whatever “decentralization” means exactly, it will mean what the rebels want it to mean.  Not only is the Ukrainian government reduced to “negotiating” with rebels, the rebels hold the ultimate veto.

Not only that, but whatever decentralization means, Kiev’s control over its eastern borders is made contingent on reaching an agreement with the rebels.  Again, according to RT news, “after the local elections are held in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, Kiev is to restore control over their borders with Russia. The transition may take time, which would be needed for a comprehensive constitutional reform in Ukraine.”

  
In the “fuck you” language of which Victoria Nuland is so fond, Ukraine gets its borders back if and when it behaves.

  
And, as if good behaviour needed spelling out, the agreement provides “Kiev will implement comprehensive constitutional reform by the end of the year, which would decentralize the Ukrainian political system and give privileges to Donetsk and Lugansk. The privileges include language self-determination, the freedom to appoint prosecutors and judges, and to establish economic ties with Russia.”

It could not be more plain.  “Not federalization” means that Russian will become the official language of Donetsk and Lugansk which are allowed to establish their own economic ties with Russia, regardless of what Kiev wants. 

But here is the real deep kick.  Since Ukraine’s sovereign integrity is so very important to Poroshenko, he will certainly agree that, as a national government, “Kiev will restore economic ties, social payments and banking services in the dissenting areas.”  If he wants to play the part, let him pay the part.

Oh sweet revenge!  The eastern provinces get to trade with Russia as they want, but the government in Kiev has to go on paying for pensions, education and health care and for maintaining that banking system which is being and will be directly funded by the I.M.F. whose loan repayments will be the responsibility of the national government in Kiev.

So much for Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard and the hyena snarling of Washington’s neocons.  During the night Virginia Nuland got fucked hard. It was a rough night, but a good morning. 

©Barfo 2015

A Demonstration of Shambles

President Obama has all but admitted defeat in the gambit to wrench Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence.   His joint press-conference after meeting with German Chancellor Merkel was a Demonstration of Shambles.

While not ruling anything out, Obama acknowledged that “Russia obviously has an extraordinarily powerful military” and, given historical ties and geographical proximity, expecting a Ukrainian military “rebuff” is “unlikely."  

Just as unlikely were American troops doing the rebuffing.  And so,   “We continue to encourage a diplomatic resolution.”   

Of course Obama does not want borders “redrawn at the barrel of the gun” but the implication is that they can be drawn on the green felt of a table. ... just so long as the “ core principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity” are respected.   A name! A name! A kingdom for a name!

Once again, another costly humiliation has been brought to us by Washington’s  neocon network.    Where is Viriginia  ( “Fuck Europe” ) Nuland now?    Unfortunately she’s still at her post.   Obama should fire her. Until neocons are run out of town on a rail they will continue to mislead the U.S. into one disaster after another.

Was the United States so overweening in its arrogance as to think that Russia would allow military and economic penetration on its border?  For a moment of undistilled lunacy there was even talk in Washington about Russia "loosing" its historic and crucial naval base in Sevastopol.   The Russian response was swift and unmistakable.   The reaction in the United States was hysterical frothing at the mouth about Russian aggression.  The ranting might play in Peoria but not in Berlin. 

This is not to say that Paris - Berlin Axis is all sweetness and light.  They wanted to cherry pick the Ukrainian bush, and the US engineered putsch in Kiev allowed them to unleash their I.M.F. dogs on the hapless Ukrainians.   The "Europeans" got their free-meal but they are unwilling to pick up the full tab. 

The price was stiff enough.   The U.S. had no chestnuts in the fire, but the Germans certainly did and, as Putin correctly pointed out, this is going to hurt you as much as it does us.  Perhaps not exactly "as much" but enough to hurt the punisher.    

The U.S. may have mastered the art of Twitter Subversion, but the Russians are no strangers to the fifth column.    They know how to disguise their operations and, in the case of a neighboring country with large numbers of ethnic Russians and all sharing the same alphabet, this was easy enough.  The U.S. could cavil all it wanted, but given its own support for frank and forthright neo-nazis, its shrieks of tu quoque!! did not carry much moral weight.

Post Soviet Russia has no interest in lording over ethnic Ukrainians.  It simply is not necessary in the present global economy.  But neither are they about to let Ukrainian nationalists lord it over ethnic Russians just so the IMF can lay its paws on industrial assets in the east.  With the lunatics in Washington screaming for military intervention, Paris and Berlin had enough and went hat in hand to Moscow.

Ah the sweet schadenfreude!

The fact is that the Ukraine is more of a cross-roads than a country.  Its viability depends on a kind of looseness, or laissez aller between its various ethnic factions.  Even the Ukrainians don't have much stomach for the hard-line being pushed by the aggro-cons in Washington.   Not reported by the presstitutes in the West is the  fact that the Ukrainian army has spent most of its time showing its back to the Separatists.  Things have got so bad that the Kiev government announced the other day the employment of "barrier brigades" to prevent ordinary soldiers from fleeing. 

So who is doing the fighting on behalf of a rump government doing Washington's bidding? The answer is: units like Pravi Sektor and the Azov Brigade (now "regiment') -- ultra nationalists who hate Russians, Communists and Jews.     That kind of nationalism doesn't command as much as it claims even in the west of the country but it certainly doesn't play at all in the east. 

Because the Ukraine is  a cross-roads, there never was an all-or-nothing solution to its problems.  Even Yanukovich's supposed rejection of affiliation with the EU in favor of a customs union with Russia was not the bright line decision it was made out to be in the imbecile western press.  The Ukraine was already in debt to the IMF.  Trade with Russia did not exclude monetary flows to Europeans banks.  Putin was not being polite when he repeatedly made reference to "our partners in the West."   But the maniacs in Washington were not interested in sharing.  They are appalled by the notion that anyone else might have a sphere of influence.  They wanted all of the Ukraine in order to minimize Russia. 

The result has been that instead of a nominally sovereign Ukraine, loosely integrated and economically tied to Russia we have a nominally united Ukraine half of which is owned by the IMF and the other half of which remains tied to Russia. 

A Demonstration of Shambles

President Obama has all but admitted defeat in the gambit to wrench Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence.   His joint press-conference after meeting with German Chancellor Merkel was a Demonstration of Shambles.

While not ruling anything out, Obama acknowledged that “Russia obviously has an extraordinarily powerful military” and, given historical ties and geographical proximity, expecting a Ukrainian military “rebuff” is “unlikely."  

Just as unlikely were American troops doing the rebuffing.  And so,   “We continue to encourage a diplomatic resolution.”   

Of course Obama does not want borders “redrawn at the barrel of the gun” but the implication is that they can be drawn on the green felt of a table. ... just so long as the “ core principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity” are respected.   A name! A name! A kingdom for a name!

Once again, another costly humiliation has been brought to us by Washington’s  neocon network.    Where is Viriginia  ( “Fuck Europe” ) Nuland now?    Unfortunately she’s still at her post.   Obama should fire her. Until neocons are run out of town on a rail they will continue to mislead the U.S. into one disaster after another.

Was the United States so overweening in its arrogance as to think that Russia would allow military and economic penetration on its border?  For a moment of undistilled lunacy there was even talk in Washington about Russia "loosing" its historic and crucial naval base in Sevastopol.   The Russian response was swift and unmistakable.   The reaction in the United States was hysterical frothing at the mouth about Russian aggression.  The ranting might play in Peoria but not in Berlin. 

This is not to say that Paris - Berlin Axis is all sweetness and light.  They wanted to cherry pick the Ukrainian bush, and the US engineered putsch in Kiev allowed them to unleash their I.M.F. dogs on the hapless Ukrainians.   The "Europeans" got their free-meal but they are unwilling to pick up the full tab. 

The price was stiff enough.   The U.S. had no chestnuts in the fire, but the Germans certainly did and, as Putin correctly pointed out, this is going to hurt you as much as it does us.  Perhaps not exactly "as much" but enough to hurt the punisher.    

The U.S. may have mastered the art of Twitter Subversion, but the Russians are no strangers to the fifth column.    They know how to disguise their operations and, in the case of a neighboring country with large numbers of ethnic Russians and all sharing the same alphabet, this was easy enough.  The U.S. could cavil all it wanted, but given its own support for frank and forthright neo-nazis, its shrieks of tu quoque!! did not carry much moral weight.

Post Soviet Russia has no interest in lording over ethnic Ukrainians.  It simply is not necessary in the present global economy.  But neither are they about to let Ukrainian nationalists lord it over ethnic Russians just so the IMF can lay its paws on industrial assets in the east.  With the lunatics in Washington screaming for military intervention, Paris and Berlin had enough and went hat in hand to Moscow.

Ah the sweet schadenfreude!

The fact is that the Ukraine is more of a cross-roads than a country.  Its viability depends on a kind of looseness, or laissez aller between its various ethnic factions.  Even the Ukrainians don't have much stomach for the hard-line being pushed by the aggro-cons in Washington.   Not reported by the presstitutes in the West is the  fact that the Ukrainian army has spent most of its time showing its back to the Separatists.  Things have got so bad that the Kiev government announced the other day the employment of "barrier brigades" to prevent ordinary soldiers from fleeing. 

So who is doing the fighting on behalf of a rump government doing Washington's bidding? The answer is: units like Pravi Sektor and the Azov Brigade (now "regiment') -- ultra nationalists who hate Russians, Communists and Jews.     That kind of nationalism doesn't command as much as it claims even in the west of the country but it certainly doesn't play at all in the east. 

Because the Ukraine is  a cross-roads, there never was an all-or-nothing solution to its problems.  Even Yanukovich's supposed rejection of affiliation with the EU in favor of a customs union with Russia was not the bright line decision it was made out to be in the imbecile western press.  The Ukraine was already in debt to the IMF.  Trade with Russia did not exclude monetary flows to Europeans banks.  Putin was not being polite when he repeatedly made reference to "our partners in the West."   But the maniacs in Washington were not interested in sharing.  They are appalled by the notion that anyone else might have a sphere of influence.  They wanted all of the Ukraine in order to minimize Russia. 

The result has been that instead of a nominally sovereign Ukraine, loosely integrated and economically tied to Russia we have a nominally united Ukraine half of which is owned by the IMF and the other half of which remains tied to Russia.