Showing posts with label EURO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EURO. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 June 2014

DISBAND BRIT NAZI ORANGE ORDER & EURO CREEPING FASCISM

A


"The first movement of 20th century fascism emerged in 1910 to enforce the unity of the United Kingdom...

"Sir Edward Carson, raised the 80,000 strong UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) in defence of empire and against unpatriotic socialists and papist nationalists...

"Field Marshall Wilson set up the Specials, a force of 48,000 drawn from the old UVF and Cromwell Clubs.

"Lloyd George described them as analogous to the fascisti in Italy.

"In the years 1920 to 1922 these British fascists forced 23,000 people from their homes and killed 400 in a campaign of ethnic cleansing."

If you think of the Orange Order, you might think of Ulster, the Kincora Boys Home, Clockwork Orange and MI5 and their Kincora Boys. Scotland tells us that the Orange Order have been ordered by London's Secret services to mobilize to keep the Union with Britain, should it vote for independence.


The reality of the Orange Order is that it is a counter-revolutionary institution set up and maintained to target not just Catholics but also 'disloyal' Protestants. It's formation and spread was encouraged by the British state in the years leading up to the 1798 rebellion precisely in order to drive a wedge between ordinary Catholics and Protestants. The 12th of July was picked as the key date to provide an alternative attraction to the marking of Bastille day and in itself to mark the sectarian massacre that led to the formation of the Orange Order.
The sectarian attacks that accompany Orange marches today also go right back to its origins. Again in 1795 up to 7,000 Catholics were driven out of Armagh by Orange Order pogroms. But there was one key difference with today, then many expelled Catholic families were sheltered by Presbyterian United Irishmen in Belfast and later Antrim and Down, and the (mostly) Protestant leadership of the United Irishmen sent lawyers to prosecute on behalf of the victims of Orange attacks. They also sent special missions to the area to undermine the Orange Order's influence.

Indeed the Orange Order probably played a key part in ensuring the failure of the 1798 rebellion. At the time General John Knox, the architect of this policy described the Orange Order as "the only barrier we have against the United Irishmen"2 after the failed rebellion he wrote "the institution of the Orange Order was of infinite use"3 . The survival of the Orange Order since, and in particular the special place it was given in the sectarian make up of the northern state (every single head of the 6 counties has also been a senior member of the Orange Order), reflect its success in this role.

The strategy was simple. In order to prevent Protestant workers identifying with their Catholic neighbours the order offered an anti-Catholic society, led by the wealthy Protestants that offered all Protestants a place in its ranks, and the promise of promotion and privilege. The annual parades were a key part of this strategy, they filled two roles. They allowed the working class Protestant members a day in the sun to mix with their 'betters' and at the same time lord it over their Catholic neighbours.

At the same time they exposed radical Protestant workers to accusations of being 'traitors' for refusing to take part in the events. Much of the imagery of loyalism, the bonfires, the bunting and the painted kerbstones provide an opportunity to demand of every Protestant worker in a community 'which side are you on'.

Right from the start the parades have been accompanied by violence as they attempt to force their way through areas where they are not wanted. The first parades of 1796 saw one fatality, but in 1797 14 were killed during violence at an Orange parade in Stewartstown. In 1813 an Orange parade through one of the first areas of Belfast identified as 'Catholic' saw four more deaths.

The town of Portadown has long been a hot bed of 'contentious' parades, banned marches took place there in 1825 and 1827. In 1835 the Portadown marches claimed their first victim, Hugh Donnelly, a Catholic from Drumcree. Armagh Magistrate, William Hancock, (a Protestant), said:
"For some time past the peaceable inhabitants of the parish of Drumcree have been insulted and outraged by large bodies of Orangemen parading the highways, playing party tunes, firing shots, and using the most opprobrious epithets they could invent ... a body of Orangemen marched through the town and proceeded to Drumcree church, passing by the Catholic chapel though it was a considerable distance out of their way."4

In the relevant stability after the defeat of 1798 the British and local ruling class felt they no longer needed the Order and, as we have seen, went so far as to ban it and its marches. Its survival during these years shows that the institution cannot simply be viewed as dependent on Britain or local Protestant rulers. It also fed off the historical legacy of sectarianism and annually offered a chance for the 'little man' to feel big. In this sense the psychological attraction of Orangism for poor Protestants is similar to the attraction described by William Reich of poor workers/unemployed for fascism.

The Orange Order's complex nature is also shown by the events of 1881 when it was possible for the Land league to hold a meeting in the local Orange hall at Loughgall. Micheal Davitt told the crowd that the "landlords of Ireland are all of one religion - their God is mammon and rack-rents, and evictions their only morality, while the toilers of the fields, whether Orangemen, Catholics, Presbyterians or Methodists are the victims".

Eurofascism
By Sergei Glazyev

Current events in Ukraine are guided by the evil spirit of fascism and Nazism, though it seemed to have dissipated long ago, after World War II. Seventy years after the war, the genie has escaped from the bottle once again, posing a threat not merely in the form of the insignia and rhetoric of Hitler’s henchmen, but also through an obsessive Drang nach Osten policy. The bottle has been uncorked, this time, by the Americans. Just as 76 years ago at Munich, when the British and the French gave Hitler their blessing for his eastward march, so in Kiev today, Washington, London and Brussels are inciting Yarosh, Tyahnybok, and other Ukrainian Nazis to war with Russia. One is forced to ask, why do this in the 21st century? And why is Europe, now united in the European Union, taking part in kindling a new war, as if suffering from a total lapse of historical memory?

Answering these questions requires, first of all, an accurate definition of what is happening. This, in turn, must start with identifying the key components of the events, based on facts. The facts are generally known: Yanukovych refused to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, which Ukraine had been under pressure to accept. After that, the United States and its NATO allies physically removed him from power by organizing a violent coup d’état in Kiev and bringing to power a government that was illegitimate, but fully obedient to them. In this article, it will be called “the junta.” The goal of this aggression was to gain acceptance of the Association Agreement, as is evidenced by the fact it was indeed, prematurely, signed by the EU leaders and the junta only a month after the latter had seized power. They reported (the document bearing their signatures has not yet been made public!) that only the political part of the agreement has been signed, the part that obligates Ukraine to follow the foreign and defense policy of the EU and to participate, under EU direction, in settling regional civil and military conflicts. With this step, adoption of the Agreement as a whole has become a mere technicality.

In essence, the events in Ukraine mark the country’s forcible subordination to the European Union — what may be called “Euro-occupation.” The EU leaders, who insistently lecture us on obedience to the law and the principles of a law-based state, have themselves flouted the rule of law in this case, by signing an illegitimate treaty with an illegitimate government. Yanukovych was ousted because he refused to sign it. This refusal, moreover, needs to be understood in terms not only of the Agreement’s content, but also the fact that he had no legal right to accept it, because the Association Agreement violates the Ukrainian Constitution, which makes no provision for the transfer of state sovereignty to another party.

According to the Ukrainian Constitution, an international agreement that conflicts with the Constitution may be signed only if the Constitution is amended beforehand. The U.S.- and EU-installed junta ignored this requirement. It follows that the U.S. and EU organized the overthrow of Ukraine’s legitimate government, in order to deprive the country of its political independence. The next step will be to impose their preferred economic and trade policies on Ukraine, through its accession to the economic part of the Agreement. Furthermore, although the current Euro-occupation differs from the occupation of Ukraine in 1941 in that, so far, it has occurred without an invasion by foreign armies, its coercive nature is beyond any doubt. Just as the fascists stripped the population of occupied Ukraine of all civil rights, the modern junta and its American and European backers treat the opponents of Euro-integration as criminals, groundlessly accusing them of separatism and terrorism, imprisoning them, or even deploying Nazi guerrillas to shoot them.

As long as President Yanukovych was on track to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, he was the recipient of all kinds of praise and coaxing from high-ranking EU officials and politicians. The minute he refused, however, American agents of influence (as well as official U.S. representatives, such as the Ambassador to Ukraine, the Assistant Secretary of State, and representatives of the intelligence agencies), together with European politicians, began to castigate him and extol his political opponents. They provided massive informational, political, and financial aid to the Euromaidan protests, turning them into the staging ground for the coup d’état. Many of the protest actions, including criminal attacks against law enforcement personnel and government building seizures, accompanied by murders and beatings of a large number of people, were supported, organized, and planned with the participation of the American Embassy and European officials and politicians, who not only “interfered” in Ukraine’s domestic affairs, but carried out aggression against the country via the Nazi guerrillas they had cultivated.

The use of Nazis and religious fanatics to undermine political stability in various regions of the world is a favorite method of the American intelligence agencies. It has been employed against Russia in the Caucasus, in Central Asia, and now even in Eastern Europe. The Eastern Partnership program, which the U.S. encouraged the Poles and EU officials to initiate, was aimed against Russia from the outset, with the objective of breaking the former Soviet republics’ relations with Russia. This break was supposed to be finalized by contracting legal Association Agreements between each of these countries and the EU. In order to provide political grounds for these agreements, a campaign was launched to fan Russophobia and spread a myth called “the European choice.” This mythical “European choice” was then artificially counterposed to the Eurasian integration process, with Western politicians and the media falsely depicting the latter as an attempt to restore the USSR.

The Eastern Partnership program has failed in every single former Soviet republic. Belarus had already made its own choice, creating a Union State with Russia. Kazakhstan, another key Eurasian country (though not formally an Eastern Partnership target) likewise chose its own path, forming the Customs Union with Russia and Belarus. Armenia and Kyrgyzstan have decided to join this process. The province of Gagauzia has spurned the adoption of Russophobia as a cornerstone of Moldovan policy; the Gagauz referendum, rejecting European integration in favor of the Customs Union, challenged the legitimacy of Chişinău’s “European choice.” Georgia, the only republic to have made a relatively legitimate decision in favor of Association with the EU, paid for its “European choice” with the loss of control over a part of its territory, where people did not want to live under Euro-occupation. The same scenario is now being imposed on Ukraine — loss of a part of its territory, where the citizens do not accept the leadership’s “European choice.”

The coercion of Ukraine to sign the EU Association Agreement became entangled with Russophobia, as a reaction of the Ukrainian public conscience, wounded by the decision of the people of Crimea to join the Russian Federation. Since the majority of Ukrainians still do not automatically think of themselves as divided from Russia, there has been a strong push to inculcate a perception of this episode as Russian aggression and the annexation of part of their territory. This is why Brzezinski talks about the “Finlandization” of Ukraine, as a way to anesthetize the brains of our political elite during the American operation to sever Ukraine’s ties with historical Russia. While under anesthesia, we Russians are supposed to accept a feeling of guilt for our mythical oppression of the Ukrainian people, while the latter are force-fed loathing for Russia, with which they have allegedly battled for ages over Little Russia and Novorossiya.

Only a superficial observer, however, would see the current anti-Russian hysteria in the Ukrainian media, so striking in its frenzied Russophobia, as a spontaneous reaction to the Crimean drama. In reality, it is a piece of evidence that the war being waged against Russia is now entering an overt phase. For two decades, we were fairly tolerant of the manifestations of Nazi ideology in Ukraine, not taking it too seriously, in view of the apparent absence of clear preconditions for Nazism. The lack of such preconditions, however, was completely compensated by the persistent sowing of Russophobia through support for numerous nationalist organizations. The discrepancy between their ideology and historical accuracy does not bother the fuehrers of these organizations. In return for a pittance from NATO member countries, they are completely unrestrained in painting Russia as the enemy image. The result is unconvincing, because of our common history, language and culture: Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is a major holy site of the Orthodox world, and it was at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy that the modern Russian language took shape). Therefore wild lies are employed, playing on tragic episodes in our common history, such as the Revolution and the Civil War, as well as the Holodomor famine of the 1930s, which are falsely attributed solely to Russian tyranny. Russophobia, based on Nazism, is being made the cornerstone of Ukraine’s national identity.

This article is not concerned with exposing the objective absurdity of the Ukrainian Nazis’ hysterical Russophobia, but rather with establishing the reasons for its re-emergence in the 21st century. This requires an awareness that such “Ukrainian Nazism” is an artificial construct, created by the age-old enemies of the Russian world. Ukrainian exclusionary nationalism and fascism, cultivated from abroad, has always been aimed at Moscow. At first it was promoted by Poland, which viewed Ukraine as its own borderland, and established its own vertical power structure to administer it. Then came Austria-Hungary, which invested large amounts of money over a long period of time, to encourage Ukrainian separatism. During the German fascist occupation, these separatist tendencies were the ground in which the Bandera movement and the Polizei sprang up, aiding the German fascists in establishing their order in Ukraine, including though punitive operations and enslavement of the population. Their modern followers are now doing likewise: under the guidance of their American instructors, guerrillas of the Banderite Right Sector are conducting punitive operations against the population in the Donbass, helping the U.S.-installed junta “cleanse” cities of supporters of greater integration with Russia, and assuming police functions for the establishment of a pro-American, anti-Russian order.

It is obvious that without steady American and European support, neither the coup d’état nor the existence of the Kiev junta would have been possible. Unfortunately, as the famous dictum goes, “history teaches us, that history teaches us nothing.” This is a catastrophe for Europe, which has more than once had to deal with instances of the proto-fascist model of government that has now taken shape in Ukraine. It involves, essentially, a symbiotic relationship between the fascists and big capital. A symbiosis of this type gave rise to Hitler, who was supported by major German capitalists, seduced by the opportunity, under the cover of national-socialist rhetoric, to make money from government orders and the militarization of the economy. This applied not only to German capitalists, but also Europeans and Americans. There were collaborators with the Hitler regime in practically all the European countries and the United States.

Few people realized that the torch marches would be followed by the ovens at Auschwitz, and that tens of millions of people would die in the fires of World War II. The same dynamic is playing out in Kiev now, except that the shout of “Heil Hitler!” has been replaced by “Glory to the heroes!” — heroes whose great feat was to execute defenseless Jews at Babi Yar. Moreover, the Ukrainian oligarchy — including the leaders of some Jewish organizations — is financing the anti-Semites and Nazis of Right Sector, who are the armed bulwark of the current regime in Ukraine. The Maidan sponsors have forgotten that, in the symbiotic relationship between Nazis and big capital, the Nazis always get the upper hand over the liberal businessmen. The latter are forced either to become Nazis themselves, or to leave the country. This is already happening in Ukraine: the oligarchs who remain in the country are competing with the petty fuehrers of Right Sector in the domain of Russophobic and anti-“Muscovite” rhetoric, as well as in grabbing the property of those former Nazi-sponsors who have fled to Moscow.

The current rulers in Kiev count on protection from their American and European patrons, pledging to them daily that they will fight the “Russian occupation” to the last standing “Muscovite.” They obviously underestimate how dangerous Nazis are, because Nazis truly believe they are a “superior race,” while all others, including the businessmen who sponsor them, are viewed as “sub-human” creatures, against whom violence of all sorts is permissible. That is why Nazis always prevail, within their symbiotic relationship with the bourgeoisie, who are then forced either to submit, or flee the country. There is no doubt that if the Bandera followers are not forcibly stopped, the Nazi regime in Ukraine will develop, expand, and penetrate more deeply. The only thing still in doubt will be Ukraine’s “European choice,” as the country reeks more and more of the fascism of 80 years ago.
Of course, Eurofascism today is very different from its 20th-century German, Italian, and Spanish versions. European national states have receded into the past, entering the European Union and submitting to the Eurobureaucracy. The latter has become the leading political power in Europe, easily quashing any bids for sovereignty by individual European countries. The bureaucracy’s power is based not on an army, but on its monopoly over the issuance of currency, over the mass media, and over the regulation of trade, all of which are managed by the bureaucracy in the interests of European big capital. In every conflict with national governments during the past decade, the Eurobureaucracy has invariably prevailed, forcing European nations to accept its technocrat governments and its policies. Those policies are based on the consistent rejection of all national traditions, from Christian moral standards to how sausages are produced.

The cookie-cutter, gender-neutral, and idea-free Europoliticians little resemble the raving fuehrers of the Third Reich. What they have in common is a maniacal confidence that they are in the right, and readiness to force people to obey. Although the Eurofascists’ forms of compulsion are far softer, it is still a harsh approach. Dissent is not tolerated, and violence is allowed, up to and including the physical extermination of those who disagree with Brussels’ policies. Of course, the thousands who have died during the drive to instill “European values” in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Moldova, and now Ukraine, do not compare with the millions of victims of the German fascist invaders during World War II. But who has tallied up the indirect human casualties from the promotion of homosexuality and drugs, the ruin of national manufacturing sectors, or the degradation of culture? Entire European nations are disappearing in the crucible of European integration.

The Italian word fascio, from which “fascism” derives, denotes a union, or something bound together. In its current understanding, it refers to unification without preservation of the identity of what is integrated — whether people, social groups, or countries. Today’s Eurofascists are trying to erase not only national economic and cultural differences, but also the diversity of human individuals, including differentiation by sex and age. What’s more, the aggressiveness with which the Eurofascists are fighting to expand their area of influence sometimes reminds us of the paranoia of Hitler’s supporters, who were preoccupied with the conquest of Lebensraum for the superior Aryan race. Suffice it to recall the hysteria of the European politicians who appeared at the Maidan and in the Ukrainian media. They justified the crimes of the proponents of Eurointegration and groundlessly denounced those who disagreed with Ukraine’s “European choice,” taking the Goebbels approach that the more monstrous a lie is, the more it resembles the truth.

Today the driver of Eurofascism is the Eurobureaucracy, which gets its directions from Washington. The United States supports the eastward expansion of the EU and NATO in every way possible, viewing these organizations as important components of its global empire. The U.S. exercises control over the EU through supranational institutions, which have crushed the nation-states that joined the EU. Deprived of economic, financial, foreign-policy and military sovereignty, they submit to the directives of the European Commission, which are adopted under intense pressure from the U.S.

In essence, the EU is a bureaucratic empire that arranges things within its economic space in the interests of European and American capital, under U.S. control. Like any empire, it strives to expand, and does so by drawing neighboring countries into Association Agreements, under which they hand their sovereignty over to the European Commission. In order to make these countries accept becoming EU colonies, fear-mongering about an external threat is employed, with the U.S.-guided media portraying Russia as aggressive and bellicose, for this purpose. Under this pretext, the EU and NATO moved quickly to occupy the countries of Eastern Europe after the Soviet Union collapsed; the war in the Balkans was organized for this purpose. The next victims of Eurofascism were the Baltic republics, which Russophobic Nazis forced to join the EU and NATO. Then Eurofascism reached Georgia, where Nazis under American guidance unleashed civil war. Today, the Eurofascists are using the Georgian model in Ukraine, in order to force it sign the Association Agreement with the EU, as a subservient territory and a bridgehead for attacking Russia.
The U.S. sees the principal threat to its plans for putting the Eurobureaucracy in charge of the post-Soviet area, as being the Eurasian integration process, which is developing successfully around the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union. The EU and the U.S. have invested at least $10 billion in building up anti-Russian networks, in order to prevent Ukraine from taking part in that process. In parallel, using the support of Polish and Baltic Russophobes, as well as media under the control of American media moguls, the United States is inciting European officials against Russia, with the goal of isolating the former Soviet republics from the Eurasian integration process. The Eastern Partnership program, which they inspired, is a cover for aggression against Russia in the former Soviet area. This aggression takes the form of forcing former Soviet republics to enter EU Association Agreements, under which they transfer their sovereign economic, trade, foreign-policy and defense functions to the European Commission.

For Ukraine, the Association Agreement with the European Union means transferring to Brussels its sovereign functions of regulating trade and other foreign economic relations, technical standards, and veterinary, sanitary, and pest inspections, as well as opening its market to European goods. The agreement contains a thousand pages of EU directives that Ukraine would be required to follow. Every section mandates that Ukrainian legislation be brought into compliance with the requirements of Brussels. Moreover, Ukraine would assume the obligation to comply not only with current Brussels directives, but also future ones, in the drafting of which Ukraine will have no part.

Plainly put, after signing the Agreement, Ukraine is to become a colony of the European Union, blindly obeying its demands. These include requirements which Ukrainian industry is unable to carry out, and which will harm the Ukrainian economy. Ukraine is to completely open its market to European goods, which will lead to a $4 billion increase in Ukraine’s imports and drive uncompetitive Ukrainian industrial products out of the market. Ukraine will be obliged to meet European standards, which would take 150 billion euro of investment in economic modernization. There are no sources for such amounts of money. According to estimates by Ukrainian and Russian economists, Ukraine, after signing the Agreement, can look forward to a deterioration of its already negative balance of trade and balance of payments, and, as a consequence, default.

Thus, signing the Association Agreement would mean an economic catastrophe for Ukraine. The EU would achieve certain advantages, by way of an expanded market for its products and the opportunity to acquire devalued Ukrainian assets. U.S. corporations, for their part, would gain access to shale gas deposits, which they would like to supplement with pipeline infrastructure and a market for nuclear fuel elements for power plants. The main goal, however, is geopolitical: after signing the Association Agreement, Ukraine would not be able to participate in the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It is for this outcome that the U.S. and the EU resorted to aggression against Ukraine, organizing an armed seizure of power by their protégés. While they accuse Russia of annexing Crimea, they themselves have taken over Ukraine as a whole, by installing a junta under their control. The junta’s mission is to strip Ukraine of its sovereignty and put it under the EU, through signing the Association Agreement.

The disaster in Ukraine may be termed aggression against Russia by the U.S. and its NATO allies. This is a contemporary version of Euro-fascism, which differs from the previous face of fascism during World War II in that it employs “soft” power with just some elements of armed action in cases of extreme necessity, as well as the use of Nazi ideology as a supplementary rather than an absolute ideology. One of the main defining elements of Eurofascism has been preserved, however, and that is the division of citizens into superior ones (those who support the “European choice”) and inferior ones, who have no right to their own opinions and toward whom all is permitted. Another feature is the readiness to use violence and commit crimes in dealing with political opponents. The final aspect that needs to be understood, is what drives the rebirth of fascism in Europe; without grasping this, it is impossible to develop a resistance plan and save the Russian world from this latest threat of Euro-occupation.

The theory of long-term economic development recognizes an interrelationship between long waves of economic activity and long waves of military and political tension. Periodic shifts from one dominant technological mode to the next alternate with economic depressions, wherein increased government spending is used as an incentive for overcoming the crisis. The spending is concentrated in the military-industrial complex, because the liberal economic ideology allows enhancement of the role of the state only for national security objectives. Therefore, military and political tension is promoted and international conflicts provoked, to justify increased defense spending. This is what is happening at present: the U.S. is attempting to resolve its accumulated economic, financial, and industrial imbalances at other countries’ expense, by escalating international conflicts that will allow it to write off debts, appropriate assets belonging to others, and weaken its geopolitical rivals. When this was done during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the result was World War II. The American aggression against Ukraine pursues all of the above-mentioned goals. First, economic sanctions against Russia are intended to wipe out billions of dollars of U.S. debt to Russia. A second objective is to take over Ukrainian state assets, including the natural gas transport system, mineral deposits, the country’s gold reserves, and valuable art and cultural objects. Third, to capture Ukrainian markets of importance to American companies, such as nuclear fuel, aircraft, energy sources, and others. Fourth, to weaken not only Russia, but also the European Union, whose economy will sustain an estimated trillion-dollar loss from economic sanctions against Russia. Fifth, to attract capital flight from instability in Europe, to the USA.

Thus, war in Ukraine is just business for the United States. Judging by reports in the media, the U.S. has already recouped its spending on the Orange Revolution and the Maidan by carrying off treasures from the ransacked National Museum of Russian Art and National Historical Museum, taking over potential gas fields, and forcing the Ukrainian government to switch from Russian to American nuclear fuel supplies for its power plants. In addition, the Americans have moved ahead on their long-term objective of splitting Ukraine from Russia, turning what used to be “Little Russia” into a state hostile to Russia, in order to prevent it from joining the Eurasian integration process.

This analysis leaves no room for doubt about the long-term and consistent nature of the American aggression against Russia in Ukraine. Washington is directing its Kiev puppets to escalate the conflict, rather than the reverse. They are also inciting the Ukrainian military against Russia, aiming to drag Russian ground forces into a war against Ukraine. They are encouraging the Nazis there to initiate new combat operations. This is a real war, organized by the United States and its NATO allies. Just like 75 years ago, it is being waged by Eurofascists against Russia, with the use of Ukrainian Nazis cultivated for this purpose.

What is surprising is the position of the European countries, which are tailing the U.S. and doing nothing to prevent a further escalation of the crisis. They should understand better than anybody, that Nazis can only be stopped with force. The sooner this is done, the fewer victims and less destruction there will be in Europe. The avalanche of wars across North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, and now Ukraine, incited by the U.S. in its own interests, threatens Europe most of all; and it was the devastation of Europe in two world wars that gave rise to the American economic miracle in the 20th century. But the Old World will not survive a Third World War. To prevent such a war means that there must be international acknowledgement that the actions of the U.S. constitute aggression, and that the EU and U.S. officials carrying them out are war criminals. It is important to accord this aggression the legal definition of “Eurofascism” and to condemn the actions of the European politicians and officials who are party to the revival of Nazism under cover of the Eastern Partnership.

Sergei Glazyev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation







Saturday, 12 May 2012

EURO SLAVERY Christy Moore






How Soon Do Empires Forget The Lessons of History!
The 67th Anniversary of the Victory over Nazi-Fascism

By Fidel Castro

May 11, 2012 "
Information Clearing House" -- No political event can be judged outside of the era and the circumstances in which it took place. No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

The privilege of having known persons, even the locations where some of the events related to the historic battle took place, augmented the interest with which I awaited the anniversary this year.

The colossal deed was fruit of the heroism of a group of peoples that the revolution and socialism had united and intertwined to put an end to the brutal exploitation that the world had been putting up with throughout the millennia. The Russians were always proud of having headed that revolution and of the sacrifices they were capable of in bringing it to fruition.

This very important anniversary of the victory could not be understood under the colours of a flag or a name other than the one that presided over the heroism of the combatants of the Great Patriotic War. Without a doubt, something untouchable and unforgettable remained: the anthem whose unforgettable notes accompanied millions of men and women to challenge death and to crush the invaders who wished to impose a thousand years of Nazism and holocaust on all humanity.

With those ideas in mind, I enjoyed the hours I dedicated to the most organized and martial procession I could ever imagine, whose protagonists were men formed in the Russian military universities.

The Yankees and the blood-thirsty NATO armies could not imagine that the crimes committed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the attacks on Pakistan and Syria, the threats against Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, the military bases in Latin America, Africa and Asia could take place with absolute impunity, without the world becoming aware of the unusual and crazy threat.

How soon do empires forget the lessons of history!

The military technology exhibited in Moscow on May 9th demonstrated the impressive capacity of the Russian Federation to provide a proper and varied response to the conventional and nuclear resources of imperialism.

It was just the ceremony we were waiting for on the glorious anniversary of the Soviet victory over fascism.

Fidel Castro Ruz - May 10, 2012

Is The United States An Accidental Empire? 
By The Globalist
May 10, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --  The United States was born out of a struggle against an imperial power. Beginning in the 1840s — seven decades after its founding — it embarked on a succession of "wars of choice" that were profoundly at odds with its founding principles and left it with an empire of its own. This inaugural "Thomas Paine" column looks at how American changed — and how its empire is handicapping its future.

Our present predicament didn't happen overnight. It was a long time in the making. Along the way, America changed. We forsook our birthright, we deceived ourselves and, ever so slowly, our loadstar changed from liberty to force. When it was all over, we woke up and had an empire.

The United States broke with the foreign policy of its Founders in three wars of choice. We used guns to annex two-fifths of Mexico. We used guns to remove Spain from its colonies in the Caribbean and the Philippines. We used guns to replace Germany as the leading military power in Europe.

In the seven decades between the start of the Mexican-American war in 1848 and America entering World War I in 1917, the die was cast.

We didn't go to war with Mexico, Spain and Germany to defend ourselves. President James Polk proclaimed it was our Manifest Destiny to redraw our southern border to include almost half of Mexico. Likewise, President McKinley thought it was our Manifest Destiny to replace Spain as a colonial power in Cuba and the Philippines. In World War I, President Woodrow Wilson repackaged Manifest Destiny as saving the world for democracy.

War no longer needed to be justified as defending our country. War was now justified as promoting democracy around the world. Americans were now a force for good in the world.

The U.S. Constitution was subverted in the wars against Mexico, Spain and Germany. Yes, Congress declared war in the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War and World War I. But the legitimacy of the congressional declaration was undermined by Presidential lies:

Americans weren't attacked on American soil, as President Polk claimed. In fact, volunteer American soldiers were attacked on Mexican soil.

The Spanish didn't sink our ship in Havana, as President McKinley claimed.

The Germans sunk our ship, but President Wilson didn't mention the American guns on board which violated our declared neutrality. Wilson's Secretary of State resigned in protest.

Each of these presidential lies was an impeachable offense. There were no impeachment proceedings. We just looked the other way.

These three wars of choice redefined American exceptionalism into something very different from what the Founders intended. We were no longer exceptional because of our unique form of government. The federal government no longer existed to protect the sovereignty of the individual.

The government now existed to promote democracy abroad. Never mind that the American republic was never a democracy. (The Constitution established a republic. The Founders rejected democracy because it didn't protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority.)

Each war of choice made the next one easier. President Polk's decision to take the country to war against Mexico made President McKinley's decision to go to war against Spain seem less unreasonable. It is hard to imagine President Wilson taking the country to war against Germany if Polk and McKinley hadn't gotten their wars.

Now the Constitution was turned upside down. We were set on a trajectory that turned the government against citizens. Wilson tolerated no war dissent and severely limited civil liberties.

We could have turned back to the foreign policy of the Founders. Mexico was no existential threat to the United States. But the war was popular and Polk gave the people what they wanted and made the country richer. We could have stopped there.

The little war with Spain was avoidable, too. But that war was also popular, cost-free and journalism became an accomplice in war. We could have stopped there. But wars of choice had become a habit for ambitious Presidents — and Wilson was ambitious.

Wilson's decision to take the country to war against Germany was far-reaching. The rapid rise of Germany was a reality that the major powers in Europe had to recognize. The Germans built an economy greater in size than the combined economies of France, England and Russia. Rather than let the Europeans find their own solution, Wilson decided to enter into an "entangling alliance" against Germany.

Unlike the two earlier wars of choice, World War I became unpopular at home. Fifty-thousand Americans gave their lives to fight the Kaiser. Clemenceau and Lloyd George ran circles around Wilson at the Versailles peace conference. Wilson lost the peace and the Versailles Treaty was rejected by the U.S. Senate.

World War I made World War II inevitable. Wilson's war of choice created Roosevelt's war of necessity. The French and English demanded onerous reparations from Germany. The ensuing inflation destroyed the Germany economy. Hitler rose to power by exploiting the political backlash inside Germany. The Second World War was a continuation of the unfinished business of the First.

World War II laid the foundation for an American empire. Six million Jews and 30 million Russians perished. This led to the creation of Israel and the outbreak of the Cold War. The United States took over British bases around the globe, and our forward presence gave impetus to bin Laden, 9/11 and the permanent war on terrorism.

The 120 million who perished in these 20th-century conflicts died mostly because of the failure of the existing major powers to accommodate the new strength of Germany on the European continent.
The solutions to yesterday's problems create today's problems. We live with the choices made by those who went before us. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was the worst President in American history: His intervention in the First World War was the equivalent of a European power coming to the United States during the Civil War and saying South wins, North loses.
Now the Germans are back in the driver's seat in Europe. The Germans are once again dominating the economy of Europe. The United States is sidelined by the weakness of our economy and our staggering debt. We have lost our way and don't know how to get out of the empire business.
This article was first published at The Globalist



Poverty in Ireland: the facts

Author: 
Brian O’ Boyle
Ordinary people hardly need to be told that times are tough. Irish living standards have been absolutely decimated over the last four years and now we have the statistical evidence to prove it.
According to the Central Statistics Office Survey on Incomes and Living Conditions (SILC) for example, around 250,000 Irish people are now living in consistent poverty.
This is up by over 50% from the 160,000 deemed to be in absolute poverty in 2009 as a combination of welfare cuts and service reductions take their toll on the most vulnerable.
Alongside absolute poverty, around 1 million Irish people (23%) now experience some form of deprivation.
Deprivation occurs when someone has a lack of basic necessities at least once during the course of a year.
This can happen across the board, but children are particularly vulnerable with one in five kids going to school hungry on a consistent basis.
Perhaps the most shocking statistic to come out of the SILC report concerns the growing gap between rich and poor.
The elites in this country have been very good at pleading poverty.
But the SILC report tells a very different story, with the top 10% of Irish households actually increasing their disposable income by 8% since 2009 at the same time as the poorest 10% lost 26% of their disposable income.
This truly is a case of the rich getting rich at the expense of the poor and a second study carried out by Social Justice Ireland has found similar results.
The headline figure in the Social Justice report found that there are over 700,000 Irish people in poverty.
This is defined as having less than €10,000 for a single person or €24,000 for a family of four, and it comes in the same month as the Sunday Times Rich List revealed that Ireland’s richest 300 people increased their wealth by €12,000 million over the course of two years.
From an average of around €165 million per person each of these people now has around €210 million.
Every cut to schools, hospitals and welfare could have been avoided if these incredibly rich people had been forced to contribute to the welfare of society.
Instead our children’s futures are daily being sacrificed so that the mega rich can continue to accumulate.
April 25, 2012 - 10:53
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