Saturday, December 13, 2014

Canada Prepares for War in Europe: Sends Military Police to Kiev

"Non-lethal" Canadian aid the the Kiev Fascists: Source
The Harper government is seeking deeper ties with Ukraine's Kiev junta, and has signed an agreement aimed at broad military cooperation. As part of this agreement, Canada has sent a team that will seek training opportunities with Ukrainian forces in the areas of military police, medical personnel and "personal protective measures," although, according to the CBC report, neither the minister of Defense, Rob Nicholson, nor the Department of National Defence "could (would?) say what that meant in practical terms."

As we wrote in August, Nazi Nato appears to be setting the stage for a proxy war with Russia, a project in which Canada is a full participant. As a correspondent identified as Larchmonter 445 quoted by the Saker asks:
In the context of US cruise missiles into Poland and 100 US tanks into Latvia, also right on the Russian border, how do you interpret these developments?

Thursday, December 11, 2014

If you wondered How Low the US and Its Allies Have Sunk in Hypocrisy and Brutality, Read This

Yes, National Review, We Did Execute Japanese for Waterboarding


By Paul Belaga

Huffington Post, May 25, 2011: In a CNN debate with Ari Fleischer, I said the United States executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding. My point was that it is disingenuous for Bush Republicans to argue that waterboarding is not torture and thus illegal. It's kind of awkward to argue that waterboarding is not a crime when you hanged someone for doing it to our troops. My precise words were: "Our country executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime we are now committing ourselves." Mr. Fleischer, ordinarily the most voluble of men, was tongue-tied. The silence, rare in cable debates, spoke volumes for the vacuity of his position.

Image source
Now Mark Hemingway of the National Review Online has asserted that I was wrong. I bookmark NRO and read it frequently. It's smart and breezy -- but on this one it got its facts wrong.
Mr. Hemingway assumed I was citing the case of Yukio Asano, who was convicted of waterboarding and other offenses and sentenced to 15 years hard labor -- not death by hanging. Mr. Hemingway made the assumption that I was referring to the Asano case because in 2006 Sen. Edward Kennedy had referred to it. (Sen. Kennedy accurately described the sentence as hard labor and not execution, by the way.)

Monday, December 8, 2014

Dumb Lefties — Left Handers, That Is

My present topic is not politics but handedness. In particular the findings of a recent investigation that left-handers are deficient in cognitive skills, have higher rates of mental and behavioral disability than normal people, and earn less.

As a lefty, this comes as a shock, brought up as I have been to the idea that we lefties are smarter than the right-handed mass. For example, among left-handed rulers there was Ramses II, whose reign is considered by many historians to mark the pinnacle of Egyptian art and culture; Alexander the Great, conqueror of the Persian Empire; Charlemagne, who invented joined-up writing, while founding an empire that set Western Europe on the march from stinking backwater to dominant global power; and, in Washington, DC, sometimes identified as the home of a "vast left-handed conspiracy," four of the last five US presidents (George Dubya Bush being the exception and obviously the dimmest of the lot).

Gold Is Not Money

Speaking before the spooky Council on Foreign Relations, Former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Bubbles Greenspan, said:
Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency.
So what's a currency?

It is:
A system of money in general use in a particular country.
And what's money?

 It is:
something (such as coins or bills) used as a way to pay for goods and services and to pay people for their work 
So where is gold used to buy a pair of shoes, a loaf of bread, a Boeing airliner?

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Ukraine Update

Russia Insider:
EU Seeks Russian Aid to Ukraine While Sanctioning Russia for Its Actions in Ukraine. LOL



Deep Resource:
Crimea for Dummies

James Petras:
The Rise of German Imperialism and the Phony “Russian Threat”

Moscow Times:
Crimean Government Steps Up Confiscation of Beachfront Property Stolen by Kiev Officials

Deep Resource:
Putin and Hollande Meet at a Moscow Airport

BBC:
When 1,000 people have died in less than three months, when civilians cower in basements and tens of thousands more flee their homes we can no longer speak of a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.
And here's the Obama-backed Nazified President Porshenko boasting that forcing children to cower in basements is how Ukraine will win the war



Fort Russ:
Has Hollande Been Cured of the Bulgarian Syndrome by Putin and Nazarbaev?

John Pilger:
Weaponized media target Russia

Russia-Insider:
Ukraine’s New American Finance Minister Lost $100 Million of US Taxpayer Funds

BBC:
Source
Merkel condemns Russia 'interfering' in Eastern Europe
Merkel the NeoCon mouthpeace: only the US and its puppets to interfere in Eastern Europe

AP:
French president supports autonomy for Ukraine’s southeast
Better to face reality late than never.

WUFYS:
Bulgarian nationalist party leader proposes referendum on NATO and EU exit
US commanded sanctions and blocked Russian pipeline projects in response to Russia's response to the American-inspired Kiev coup, seem to be hurting EU nations and the integrity of the EU more than they hurt Russia or threaten Russian unity.

AP:
French leader reaches out to Putin in Moscow

Arkady Molev:
You who chase the Nazi criminals all over the world… how can you miss the Lviv Nazi Renaissance? 

Putin Quote (via Pravda):
This little country America, relies on foreign oil and is telling the whole world and us what to do. Never mind that we're the largest country in the world with our own resources of oil and gas that can supply every nation. America, trillions in debt printing paper money while we have a vast gold supply and trillions in reserves. America has forgotten history. Hitler with millions of soldiers could not conquer us. We met the Nazis face to face and pushed them back to Berlin. A country like the US that overthrows governments for corporate interests like the coup in Kiev will be overthrown in the end.
Deep Resource:
War Again in Europe? Not in Our Name!

Tyler Durden:
Kissinger Warns "We Need A New World Order"; Ukraine Should Forget Crimea & NATO

Patrick L. Smith:
New York Times propagandists exposed: Finally, the truth about Ukraine and Putin emerges

John Mearsheimer:
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault — The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin

Monday, December 1, 2014

Russia's Puny Economy and Dying Population

In August, while speaking with John Micklethwait and Edward Carr from The EconomistPresident Obama remarked:
Russia doesn’t make anything. Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking.
Russia's puny economy and general decline is a common theme among those who disparage Russia. For example, in discussing the threat posed by Russia to European security, former UK Ambassador Craig Murray recently blogged:
Russia is not a great power. Its total GDP is about the same as Spain’s – and Spain is pretty knackered. Russia has even less economic clout as a basis for world domination than the UK. Russia’s economy is not diversified. It is over-dependent on raw commodity production and export.  ...  It will not be long before Poland plus the Baltic states are economically stronger than Russia.
Let's consider these claims. OK, Russia doesn't make anything except, um:

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Russophobia and Nationalism, the Tinder to Ignite WW III

Ukrainians, we are to understand, hate the Russkies. Why? Well, so we are now being told, it is because Stalin, who was in fact a native of Georgia, not Russia, killed so many of them, intellectuals and peasants alike: the Holodomor, the forced labor, the Gulag, etc.

But in fact, this rather ancient history seems to have little to do with it. Rather, Russophobia in Ukraine seems to be an extremely recent phenomenon. Thus, for example, in 2010, a Pew Trust survey found a large majority of Ukrainians believed that they had been better off under the Soviet Union, i.e., under Russian domination, than under the post-Soviet "free enterprise" regime.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Plain Language, Better English

How often do you use words the meaning of which you do not know — Excruciating, for example, or abject, or that favorite of headline writers, lurid?

Yes, you may use those words appropriately, which is to say in accordance with common usage, but do you really know what they mean?

Perhaps you do, but most people, it seems, do not. The Reuters headline: Horror film "Buried" an excruciating experience, for example, nicely demonstrates the incomprehending and absurd use of a multisyllabic Latinate adjective.

Excruciating is a word derived from the Latin ex, out of or from, and cruciare, to crucify. Now to be buried alive must certainly be horrific, but few would imagine it to be closely comparable to the torment of crucifixion. To be buried alive is to be cast into darkness, crushed and suffocated. To liken live burial with crucifixion thus robs the word excruciating of useful meaning. It makes it merely another in a long list of rather meaningless intensifiers, its only merit being its multisyllablicity, to coin a term, that makes it hiss, pop and slither off the tongue.

Monday, November 24, 2014

American Imperialism Versus Russian Nationalism: The Great Role Reversal

Anyone trying to understand why international tensions are rising and why the World appears to be lurching toward a nuclear showdown between East and West needs to understand not only the difference between Russia and America in self-identification and foreign policy objectives, but also how those differences have so recently changed.

Russia, under the Bolsheviks, was a godless tyranny driven by an ambition for global conquest to be achieved by any means. Confronting Soviet Communism, America was a largely Christian nation constitutionally committed to individual liberty, democracy and human rights.

Today, Russia has restored the Orthodox Christian church (which dates back over 1000 years to the baptism of Vladimir of Kiev in 988), eschews imperial ambitions, and functions politically under a constitution that recognizes human rights, and provides for local self-government and the democratic election of President and Parliament.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

How Canada's Government Came to Love Ethnic Cleansers Wearing Swastikas

Canada's Foreign Minister, John Baird. 
Currently working feverishly, according to the CBC, in preparation to bomb Syria, while continuing a bombing mission without regard for the death of civilians in Iraq, John Baird nevertheless took time from his busy schedule to pen a diatribe for the (Toronto) Star against Vladimir Putin for his "aggression" in Ukraine (reader comments worth noting).

Russia, claims Baird, is guilty of murderous aggression in the Ukraine that has cost an estimated 4000 lives. But in fact, all that Russia has so far done is allow volunteer fighters and gifts of arms and ammunition to flow across the border with Ukraine in support of the self-defence forces of the people of Eastern Ukraine, ethnic Russians threatened with extermination by their own government.

Monday, November 17, 2014

The Myth of Western Democracy

Accountability through periodic free and fair elections is a good thing in itself, apart from any effects it may have on the quality of government or economic growth. The right to participate politically grants recognition to the moral personhood of the citizen, and exercise of that right gives that person some degree of agency over the common life of the community. The citizen may make poorly informed or bad decisions, but the exercise of political choice in and of itself is an important part of human flourishing.

Francis Fukuyama: Political Order and Political Decay
The above statement must be among the most inane to have been uttered by a serious student of the political order. From a scholar of the stature of Francis Fukuyama it is simply preposterous and is explicable only as the price of publication in today's globalist world order, where the money power controls almost every avenue of public expression, including book publication.

Carroll Quigley, the historian of the New World Order, stated in a lecture on The Mythology of American Democracy:
Democracy is not the highest political value. Speeches about democracy and the democratic tradition might lead you to think this is the most perfect political system ever devised. That just isn't true. There are other political values which are more important and urgent—security, for example. And I would suggest that political stability and political responsibility are also more important.

In fact, I would define a good government as a responsible government. In every society there is a structure of power. A government is responsible when its political processes reflect that power structure, thus ensuring that the power structure will never be able to overthrow the government. If a society in fact could be ruled by a minority because that elite had power to rule and the political system reflected that situation by giving governing power to that elite, then, it seems to me, we would have a responsible government even though it was not democratic.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

A Suicidal Collapse of Western Civilization?

...it is cultural suicide, which adds to economic suicide and spells doom for the future of Western Europe. I have in mind here the heavy immigration from Islamic nations -- with most immigrants unwilling to adjust to the prevailing culture of the host country.

By Fred Singer

The American Thinker, November 16, 2014; My background is basically European -- and more specifically, Western European. I have lived and worked in many of those countries, and I know most of the major cities intimately -- from Stockholm in the north, Newcastle, London, Paris, The Hague, Munich, Vienna, to Rome and Erice, Sicily in the south. I have also spent several months in Moscow and in Jerusalem as a guest of academic institutions.

Economic Suicide

The ongoing economic suicide of Europe is based on a faulty understanding of the climate issue by most Western politicians and on their extreme policy response, based on emotion rather than logic and science. The major European economies have reacted irrationally to contrived, unjustified fear of imagined global-warming disasters.

Perhaps I should explain that the climate has not been warming for the past 18 years -- and even if it had been warming, it would be no disaster. The EU wants to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, a natural plant-fertilizer, by 40% within 15 years — by 2030. This insane drive to replace energy sources from fossil fuels that release plant-friendly CO2 into the atmosphere has led to greatly increased costs of energy. As is well understood, such actions not only hurt economic growth, but they increase poverty levels and therefore threaten the social fabric of these nations.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

The Weakness of Russia: What Putin Must Do

By James Petras

The US-EU sponsored coup in the Ukraine and its conversion from a stable Russian trading partner, to a devastated EU economic client and NATO launch pad, as well as the subsequent economic sanctions against Russia for supporting the Russian ethnic majority in the Donbas region and Crimea, illustrate the dangerous vulnerability of the Russian economy and state.

The current effort to increase Russia’s national security and economic viability in the face of these challenges requires a critical analysis of the policies and structures emerging in the post-Soviet era.

Pillage as Privatization

The James Petras Website, November 8, 2014: Over the past quarter century, several trillion dollars worth of public property in every sector of the Russian economy was illegally transferred or violently seized by gangster-oligarchs acting through armed gangs, especially during its ‘transition to capitalism’.

From 1990 to 1999, over 6 million Russian citizens died prematurely as a result of the catastrophic collapse of the economy; life expectancy for males declined from 67 years during the Soviet era to 55 year during the Yeltsin period. Russia’s GNP declined sixty percent – a historic first for a country not at war. Following Yeltsin’s violent seizure of power and his bombing of the Russian parliament, the regime proceeded to ‘prioritize’ the privatization of the economy, selling off the energy, natural resources, banking, transport and communication sectors at one-tenth or less of their real value to well-connected cronies and foreign entities. Armed thugs, organized by emerging oligarchs “completed” the program of privatization by assaulting, murdering and threatening rivals. Hundreds of thousands of elderly pensioners were tossed out of their homes and apartments in a vicious land-grab by violent property speculators. US and European academic financial consultants “advised” rival oligarchs and government ministers on the most “efficient” market techniques for pillaging the economy, while skimming off lucrative fees and commissions –fortunes were made for the well-connected. Meanwhile, living standards collapsed, impoverishing two thirds of Russian households, suicides quadrupled and deaths from alcoholism, drug addiction, HIV and venereal diseases became rampant. Syphilis and tuberculosis reached epidemic proportions – diseases fully controlled during the Soviet era remerged with the closure of clinics and hospitals.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

All the News the Mainstream Media Want You to Forget

President Porky Declares War on His Own People

Vinyard of the Saker: The Nazi plan for Novorussia: children bombed into basements and total war

Kiev's Latest Failed Assault on Eastern Ukraine

Fort Russ: The failed Ukrainian blitzkrieg that everyone failed to notice

Fatal Mistake, Did Kissinger say? 

 Yes, according to many news sources

Funny thing, though, in Spiegel's English translation, "fatal mistake" has become a mere "mistake." Nothing to worry about, then, folks.

Germans, En Masse, Abandon Germany's CIA-Bought Mass Media

Russia Insider: Germans Turn on Lying News Sites

Ukie Nazi Warriors Acknowledge Brit Alliance

Independent: White widow 'dead': Reports Samantha Lewthwaite killed in Ukraine dismissed as false

The White Widow, Samantha Lewthwaite, widow of alleged 7/7 London Tube train bomber Lindsay Germaine, is wanted by Interpol in connection with the planned bombings in Kenya. Concerning reports Lewthwaite had been killed by a Russian sniper while fighting with the Ukie Aidar battallion, the Independent reports:
Aidar commander Sergiy Melnychuk told BuzzFeed News the reports were false. He said: “We don’t have any white widows, and nor could we. They’re [the Russians} trying to drive a wedge between us and our British allies.”
So there's confirmation that the Brits are aiding the Nazis in the Ukraine civil war.

Bollocks from the New World Ordure: SEAL Who Claims To Have Killed Bin-Laden a Liar Says Fellow Warrior 

Mail Online. EXCLUSIVE - SEALS AT WAR: Fellow warriors brand Rob O'Neill a LIAR after he claims he was the shooter who fired three bullets into Bin Laden's head.

LOL. Liars lying about the lies they've told.

Related:  Bin Laden died in 2001


Loony Conspiracy Theory — Not?

ALEX JONES: GOVERNMENT HAD OSAMA BIN LADEN FROZEN FOR YEARS

How Mid-Term Elections Affect Obama

Finian Cunningham. America’s Moribund Democracy a Harbinger of More War: 
"With Republican control over the Congress, US President Barack Obama is now a lame-duck leader who can’t even quack."

How a Girl From Small-Town British Columbia Exposed JP Morgan's Humungus Mortgage Theft

Meet Alayne Fleischmann, the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking


Matt Taibbi: The nine-billion-dollar witness.


Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Benign Genocide of the Western Nations: The Role of Planned Reproductive Dysfunction

The Saker has a post on "Western Sexual Dysfunction," prompted by the MSM's bizarre interpretation of a courteous gesture by Vladimir Putin's toward the wife of Chinese President Xi, during this month's APEC meeting in Beijing.

Putin "hits on" Obama? Source
"Putin Hits on Chinese First Lady," blares the Council on Foreign Relations magazine Foreign Policy — an obvious absurdity picked up by other news outlets. Oddly, the same theme has not been repeated by the media in the context of Putin's friendly pat on Obama's shoulder at the same APEC meeting. But perhaps such an interpretation would raise unbecoming questions about Obama's sexual orientation.

According to the Saker, the West's sexual problems are cultural and religious in origin. But a more parsimonious explanation is that Wesstern sexual dysfunction has been deliberately induced to serve the purpose of the New World Order.

Sexual dysfunction has to be gauged primarily according to its reproductive consequences. By that measure, the West is severely sexually dysfunctional, with the indigenous majority in virtually every Western state having a fertility rate well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

In Greece and Bosnia, for example, the locals are rapidly approaching extinction with a fertility rate of only 1.3. Germany, Italy and Bosnia are headed for oblivion too, with a fertility rate of only 1.4.

By the same standard, the Russians are doing slightly better with a fertility rate of 1.6 but not as well as the Brits and the Americans who appear to be maintaining something close to population stability with a fertility rate of 1.9.

But the latter figure conceals the extent to which the native born are losing out to immigrants. For example, in Britain, native-born mothers match the poor performance of Russian women with a fertility rate of 1.6, whereas Libyan immigrants are hitting 5.6. Many other immigrant groups are well over 4.0, and Bangladeshi mothers, at 3.9, are doing much better than their sisters back home in Bangladesh.

This process of benign genocide is the result of a toxic culture, which protects the right to the slaughter of the unborn, holds in high regard billionaire pornographers such as Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconni, and makes instruction in fellatio part of the school curriculum.

Some may attribute such decline to undue permissiveness or the abandonment of religion. But the process of Western genocide, both racial and cultural, is too systematic for that. Rather it is more reasonably understood as the result of a deliberate policy to destroy the powerful Western nation states, the better to subordinate them to the Anglo-Zionist New World Order, with its oligarch-owned pseudodemocracy.

Putin's Russia, where the fertility of the native born has rebounded from a 1999 low of less than 1.2, being resistant to covert destruction, is in line for subordination by harsher measures.

Related:

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Feminist Flakes

UK Labor MP, Harriet Harman and UK Liberal-Democratic Party leader Nick Clegg sporting forty-five-quid feminist T-shirts.
Here are the women in Mauritius who made the shirts. They earn sixty-two cents and hour and sleep 16 to a dorm. 

Not only does Ms. Harman, the woman on the left, seem to be a phony feminist quite happy enjoy the fruits of the sweated labor of her brown-skinned sisters in Mauritius, but she seems to have a contempt for civil rights in general having been closely affiliated with the National Council for Civil Liberties, an organization with scant regard for the welfare of children targeted by paedophiles.

Nicky Clogg, the woman on the right, also appears to have little regard for the welfare of children targeted by paedophiles, having rejected calls for an inquiry into reports of a Westminster "child sex ring."

Interestingly, despite their reported poverty, those Mauritian garment workers manage to look a lot better dressed than that pair of rich old women in T-shirts.

Source:

RedPillTimes:
T-ShirtGate. The DailyMail UK exposes feminism for what it really is…a wealthy, white women, elitist, power club

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Myths of the Globalist New World Order: Did German Nationalism Really Cause Two World Wars?

Nationalism is the enemy of empire. Genocide, the destruction of the racial and cultural identity of the nation states, is thus an essential policy of the New World Order.

The European nation states, subordinates of the US hegemon since WWII, are already in an advanced stage of dissolution as racially and culturally distinct communities. The process of universal genocide is driven by a combination of anti-natalist policies, including mass slaughter of the unborn and state-mandated education in the arts and perversions of non-reproductive sex, combined with unrestricted immigration and state-enforced multiculturalism. As a result, the indigenous peoples of Europe are already isolated cultural and even linguistic minorities in many cities including London, Oslo, and Marseilles.

Now Russia as an independent nation state is targeted for destruction by the forces of the New World Order. The assault is both internal and external. Internally, Russia is attacked by means of US-backed fifth columnists such as the punk anti-Christian group, Pussy Riot, and oligarch traitors and opportunists such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky.  Externally Russia is attacked both economically, by means of US-EU sanctions and other machinations to undermine Russia's foreign trade relationships; and militarily, including the the US-inspired genocidal assault on ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and subversion among non-Russian minorities, such as the Tartars and Chechens, within the Russian Federation.

To keep the ball rolling, unrelenting propaganda glorifying the historical necessity of globalization under a system of Western democracy while demeaning independent sovereign nations spews from the corporate-controlled founts of news and entertainment and the state-controlled educational establishment.

Francis Fukuyama, of Stanford, Johns Hopkins and George Mason Universities, the Rand Corporation and the State Department is among the more prominent scholarly propagandists for globalization. In his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man he argued that Western liberal democracy marked the end of human sociocultural evolution and thus the end of international conflict.

Since publication of the book was followed by the seemingly endless "War Against Terror," the rise of ethnocentric nationalism in Europe, and the current US-NATO effort to dismantle the Russian Federation, the timing if Fukuyama's book declaring the arrival of the era of global governance, cultural uniformity and racial homogenization  was not ideal. Indeed it earned the author some ridicule. But undeterred, in his latest work, Political order and Political Decay — a curious mishmash of ideas and information on topics ranging from the rise of the Mafia to the origins of the US Forest Service, Fukuyama does not neglect the role of a globalist shill. Otto von Bismarck (German Minister President, Foreign Minister and later Chancellor from 1862 until 1890), Fukuyama writes, "forged a modern German nation through war, and unleashed an aggressive nationalism that culminated in the two World wars."

So there you have it. The sovereign nation state is a great and abiding evil that must be eradicated to make way for a New World Order, under which the entire world will live for evermore in liberal democratic harmony, consuming junk food and Internet porn, each self-actualizing individual boosting their self-esteem by Tweeting and Face-book posting to the vast profit of oligarchs who, reportedly, view their clients as "dumb fucks".

But was German nationalism really the cause of two World Wars?

Well, actually, no.

World War 1 was a direct result, not of German, but of Serbian nationalism. The trigger for war was the assassination in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia, of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian imperial throne. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was a Serb nationalist backed by the Serbian state, which sought to incite a nationalist revolt among the slavs of Bosnia as a step toward the creation of a greater Serbia at the expense of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires.

Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife
Austria-Hungary responded by declaring war on Serbia with the assurance of German support. What motivated Kaiser Willhelm's decision was not some upsurge of aggressive German nationalism. Rather, it was the belief that if a generally expected wider European war were to break out it was better that it break out before Russia completed its ongoing military build-up, the sequel to humiliating defeat by Japan in the war of 1904–05, and before Germany's only significant ally, the crumbling Austro-Hungarian empire, had grown even weaker.

Moreover, whatever Germany's responsibility for World War 1, neither the Kaiser nor his Chancellor wished for a general war. On the contrary, both hoped that if Austria-Hungary dealt promptly with Serbia, other European powers would accept the action without intervention, or that if a prompt settlement of the dispute were not achieved, Germany and Britain might somehow work out a deal to prevent other powers being dragged in.

And it was Russia, not Germany, that took the step that made a general conflagration inevitable. By declaring war on Austria-Hungary, nominally in support of their Serbian co-ethnics, but motivated also, if not mainly, by hopes of imperial conquest at the expense of Austria-Hungary and the Turkish Empire, Russia's action tripped the switch that made war between Triple Alliance (Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy) and the Triple Entente (France, Russia and Britain) obligatory upon all parties.

In launching the war, Russia was strenuously urged on by the French, who hoped that, with Germany crushed by the weight of Russia's huge army, France could recover from Germany the territory of Alsace-Lorraine annexed to Prussia following the war of 1870–71.

Appalled once the reality of war emerged, the German Kaiser engaged in futile last-minute appeals to his cousin Tzar Nicholas II to halt the war on Austria-Hungary. He also attempted to halt implementation of Germany's strategic plan, which required an immediate and massive attack on France with the aim of knocking her out of the war at a stroke, before turning the weight of Germany's army against the slow-moving Russian behemoth. But by that time, Wilhelm, had ceased to count. The military, having received the command to advance, informed the Kaiser, falsely, as it now seems, that the strategic plan was immutable and irreversible. General war in Europe was the result.

Britain's declaration of war was delayed by liberals in cabinet who threatened resignation. However, Germany's strategic plan required not only an attack on France, but passage of the German army through Belgium, the neutrality of which had been guaranteed by all the European powers. Anxious to see their great power rival crushed, this breach of Belgian sovereignty, freed the war faction in Britain  to join the slaughter.

So much for German nationalism in 1914.

But what about 1939. Hitler's government was undoubtedly nationalist and undoubtedly aggressive. But German nationalism was by no means a key factor in the origins of the World War 2. Hitler never won more than 37% of the popular vote in a German election, he never gained a majority in the Reichstag, and after 1934, when he achieved power by backroom maneuvers involving manipulation of the senile chancellor, Field Marshall Hindenberg, he never gave Germans a chance to vote at all. So whether Germans under the Third Reich were nationalistic or not made little if any difference to German policy.

Rather, a strong argument can be made that Germany's dysfunctional and eventually pathological post World War 1 governments were a direct result of the stupidity of those who imposed on Germany terms of peace that included amputation from Germany of large tracts of territory with German majority populations and the imposition on Germany of a bill for vast and totally unpayable reparations.

Further a strong case can be made that Britain's policy of "appeasement," which entailed forcing Czechoslovakia to relinquish to Germany it's heavily fortified frontier region, provided Hitler with incitement to help himself to the rest of Czechoslovakia, which he promptly did. The result was to bring the hated German Nazis and the hated Russian Communists into direct confrontation, as may have been the objective of Neville Chamberlain's so-called appeasement policy.

Likewise, Britain's dishonored guarantee of Polish independence had a similar effect, perhaps intentionally so. With Britain's security guarantee in its pocket, the Polish government refused to negotiate Germany's demand for a corridor to the German city of Danzik on the Baltic coast. By such intransigence, Poland provided Hitler with motivation to join with Russia in the total destruction of Poland, an action the British resisted by dropping anti-war leaflets over Germany.

In response to questions about Britain's refusal to take effective action against Germany during the rape of Poland, Britain's Secretary of State for Air, Kingsley Wood, explained to astonished members of Parliament that the  Black Forest could not be bombed with incendiaries to burn German ammunition dumps there because the forest was "private property." He also explained that German munitions factories could not be bombed since the Germans might then do the same to British factories.

The implication that Britain sought to force the totalitarian powers into direct confrontation in the hope that it would lead to a war of mutual annihilation is compelling. But in any case, German nationalism, however much it may have been promoted by Hitler, did not drive Hitler's megalomanic plans. The nationalistic enthusiasm that greeted Hitler's early successes and which was vigorously stoked by the Nazi government may have discourage a coup d'état by responsible Germans who thought Hitler insane, but was never unanimous. Altogether, 77,000 Germans were executed during the war for resistance to Hitler, including Erwin Planck son Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, and many religious figures including the Lutheran priest, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the Catholic Bishop, August von Galen.

Related:

Timeline of Events Prior to the Great War, 1870-1914

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Russian Forces in Novorossiya?

The remarks below appeared as a comment on the Saker blog. The claim that Russia has taken control of Novorossiya, East Ukraine's breakaway provinces, has the ring of truth. The credibility of the Russian government with its own people requires that it protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine threatened by genocidal maniacs in Kiev. But to provide effective protection, Russia needs full control on the ground, which it now has, apparently. In addition, Russian control of defense-related manufacturing capacity of the Donbas may be viewed as a strategic necessity during the several years required to replace that capacity with new plants within the borders of the Russian Federation.

As for the optimistic (from the Russian perspective) assessment for the future, one will have to wait and see. The Empire surely isn't about to throw in the towel:
Larchmonter445 said...
Photo of Zakharchenko today with his wife walking to the voting station, surrounded by nine soldiers in green, unmarked uniforms, no patches, no St. George ribbon markers. Did not look like they were militia. Maybe they were contractors from an outfit called Greenwater. (joking)

So, the message I see is Moscow has taken over the government and has forced out the leaders they don't want in politics and out of the Novorossiya military leadership.

Bezler is out because he never submitted completely even to Strelkov.

The last big name unit leader to stand is Alexey Mosgovoy. With his attitude out of line with Moscow, he might be next to be pushed out.

So, the responsibility for the defense and success of the region and its 4 million people is completely on Moscow.

I think that Putin needed this control because the dangers are directly toward Russia. With only Russian military and political operatives running the Donbass, he will have no interference, delay or mistakes in outcome. I don't see how there is any room for oligarchs and fifth columnists now that all Russian flesh and blood is on the line. Any interference is treason, straight and simple.

Once, this is clearly understood, the West and Kiev will realize they are shelling Russia directly, not indirectly. And they are launching an offensive against Russia directly, not indirectly.

Putin has ended the proxy war. The proto war continues in all forms and dimensions. But the proxy war is ceased. New Russia is Russia de facto if not de jure.

It doesn't matter that no foreign country recognizes Novorossiya. It's a piece of the whole, and will operate with a long open border manned by Russians on both sides. Gas, electricity, water, and whatever they need will come through Rostov.

I wouldn't be surprised that Putin makes an appearance there on some significant day early next year. Flies right in to Donetsk Airport to tell the folks they won! Sort of like he did in Crimea.

It's not about elections and boilers. It's about Russia having a leader who understands strategy and tactics, hearts and minds of Russians, and what to fight with, where to fight, when to fight and with certainty of purpose. If you look at how things have changed and how impossible a proxy war is for the CIA and NATO now, you will see that the West has lost big.

Putin has not only called their bluff on nuclear threats, he has disassembled their 50-60 Billion dollar Ukie war and shoved it up their butts.

Novorossiya is a small item in this struggle. Putin has put it into perspective. It is another heroic event in Russia versus fascism. If the fighting flares up again, the results will be even more one-sided. MiGs will be based at Donetsk. And S-300's will be guarding the airspace. White truck convoys will be by the thousands in months ahead.

Watch for the return of Chinese investment which has been on hold. They had deals in East Ukraine. I suspect they'll be rebuilding some of the infrastructure. They do that faster than anyone.

It will be safe for Malaysian Airliners to fly over Donbass once again.

The underdog won. The bully got whipped. All along the battle was against the satanic. God wins those battles. You just have to have faith.
Related:

Zero Hedge:
US Army Sends 100 Tanks To Eastern Europe To "Deter Russian Aggression"
BBC:
Dumb Germans Quote:
Germany said Russia's recognition of Sunday's "extremely questionable" poll was "incomprehensible"

Tass:
Donetsk Republic hails Kiev’s decision to cancel law on special status of Donbass

Tass:
Over 20 civilians killed in shelling by Ukrainian army in Luhansk — acting police chief

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Why Won't Those Goddam Ukrainian Moskals Just Die, Instead of Holding Fake Stinkin' Elections

The Brainwashing of the West

CTV:
Pro-Russian rebels hold rogue elections in eastern Ukraine ...

CBC:
Ukraine rebels hold election despite international outcry
(Outcry by CBC, Foreign Policy, Reuters, etc. etc. LOL)

Wall Street Journal:
Pro-Russia Rebels Open Polls Across East Ukraine in Renegade Elections

Foreign Policy:
Eastern Ukraine's Fake State Is About to Elect a Fake Prime Minister

Reuters:


  • Europe won't recognize vote in eastern Ukraine, Merkel tells Putin 
  • (Merkel tells Putin! Why doesn't she tell the East Ukrainians that Germany doesn't give a damn about their right not to live under a Nazi-backed government that has just killed thousands of them, including hundreds of women who were raped before they were murdered.)
  • The PuffHo:
    Ukraine Breakaway Regions Hold Criticized Elections
  • Oh, and here's a good one:

    The Interpreter:
    Fake Monitors “Observe” Fake Elections in the Donbass
    The “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) and “Luhansk People’s Republic” (LNR), which are officially considered terrorist organisations by the Ukrainian authorities, will hold “parliamentary elections” on Sunday, November 2, on the territories occupied by them with the help of the Russian army.

    These “elections” are widely considered illegal and illegitimate ...
    Yes these are clearly "terrorist" organizations, since they have been fighting punitive battalions in Nazi regalia sent by the US/UK/Canada/Austrialia/EU-backed Kiev government to "kill those damn Russians."

    Meantime:

    Incumbent Donbass leaders Zakharchenko and Plotnitsky win elections - final results

    US General NcNeely pranked to reveal NATO plans for military assistance to Ukraine

    Ukraine Lawmaker: Today we are ready to invade Russia

    Eric Margolis: Afghanistan, None Dare Call It Defeat

    USAma Bin Laden died in December, 2001 of Marfan Syndrome

    Saturday, November 1, 2014

    Ukraine Proxy War on Russia: the Empire Folds?

    In March this year, Henry Kissinger wrote: Ukraine must become a bridge between East and West. Russia, he said:
    must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States.

    The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709 , were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.
    In conclusion, he wrote:
    1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.

    2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.

    3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people.
    In the more than six months since Kissinger offered the only possible sane position on Ukraine, the US and its vassal European states, plus Canada and Australia have worked diligently to stoke civil strife in Ukraine as a means of provoking Russia into a proxy war with the West. The result has been a spectacular display of Western stupidity, dishonesty, grotesque hypocrisy, and the warm embrace of avowed Nazis and genocidal Russophobic maniacs, with results as humiliating, though not as painful, as they deserve to be.

    But, as Winston Churchill remarked, the Americans can always be relied upon to do the right thing — after they have tried every alternative, and the truth of Churchill's maxim as applied to Ukraine seems to be confirmed by the recent willingness of one America's most bullshit-ridden broadcast channels to allow the truth about Ukraine to be stated baldly, as in this interview with Prof. Anton Fedyashin of the American University, Washington, DC:



    Related posts by CanSpeccy 

    Russian Insider:
    Pro-West Snipers Murdered Kiev Demonstrators in False Flag: Canadian Academic Analysis


    Former Soviet PM: Kiev Leaders Are Freaks, Idiots - They've Lost Donbas Forever