Scientists must ask corporations for permission before
publishing independent research on genetically modified crops. That restriction
must end.
By Matt Collins
Advances
in agricultural technology—including, but not limited to, the genetic
modification of food crops—have made fields more productive than ever. Farmers
grow more crops and feed more people using less land. They are able to use
fewer pesticides and to reduce the amount of tilling that leads to erosion. And
within the next two years, agritech companies plan to introduce advanced crops
that are designed to survive heat waves and droughts, resilient characteristics
that will become increasingly important in a world marked by a changing
climate.
Unfortunately,
it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as
advertised. That is because agritech companies have given themselves veto power
over the work of independent researchers.
To
purchase genetically modified seeds, a customer must sign an agreement that
limits what can be done with them. (If you have installed software recently,
you will recognize the concept of the end-user agreement.) Agreements are
considered necessary to protect a company’s intellectual property, and they
justifiably preclude the replication of the genetic enhancements that make the
seeds unique. But agritech companies such as Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta go
further. For a decade their user agreements have explicitly forbidden the use
of the seeds for any independent research. Under the threat of litigation,
scientists cannot test a seed to explore the different conditions under which
it thrives or fails. They cannot compare seeds from one company against those from
another company. And perhaps most important, they cannot examine whether the
genetically modified crops lead to unintended environmental side effects.
Research
on genetically modified seeds is still published, of course. But only studies
that the seed companies have approved ever see the light of a peer-reviewed
journal. In a number of cases, experiments that had the implicit go-ahead from
the seed company were later blocked from publication because the results were
not flattering. “It is important to understand that it is not always simply a
matter of blanket denial of all research requests, which is bad enough,” wrote
Elson J. Shields, an entomologist at Cornell University, in a letter to an
official at the Environmental Protection Agency (the body tasked with
regulating the environmental consequences of genetically modified crops), “but
selective denials and permissions based on industry perceptions of how
‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’ a particular scientist may be toward [seed-enhancement]
technology.”
Shields
is the spokesperson for a group of 24 corn insect scientists that opposes these
practices. Because the scientists rely on the cooperation of the companies for
their research—they must, after all, gain access to the seeds for studies—most
have chosen to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. The group has submitted
a statement to the EPA protesting that “as a result of restricted access, no
truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions
regarding the technology.”
It
would be chilling enough if any other type of company were able to prevent
independent researchers from testing its wares and reporting what they
find—imagine car companies trying to quash head-to-head model comparisons done
by Consumer Reports, for example. But when scientists are prevented from
examining the raw ingredients in our nation’s food supply or from testing the
plant material that covers a large portion of the country’s agricultural land,
the restrictions on free inquiry become dangerous.
Although
we appreciate the need to protect the intellectual property rights that have
spurred the investments into research and development that have led to
agritech’s successes, we also believe food safety and environmental protection
depend on making plant products available to regular scientific scrutiny.
Agricultural technology companies should therefore immediately remove the
restriction on research from their end-user agreements. Going forward, the EPA
should also require, as a condition of approving the sale of new seeds, that
independent researchers have unfettered access to all products currently on the
market. The agricultural revolution is too important to keep locked behind
closed doors.
Americans
live in matrix of total lies
 |
| US President Hussein Obama |
By
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
The March payroll jobs report released April 4
claims 192,000 new private sector jobs.
Here
is what John Williams has to say about the claim:
“The
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) deliberately publishes its seasonally-adjusted
historical payroll-employment and household-survey (unemployment) data so that
the numbers are neither consistent nor comparable with current headline
reporting. The upside revisions to the January and February monthly jobs
gains, and the relatively strong March payroll showing, reflected nothing more
than concealed, favorable shifts in underlying seasonal factors, hidden by the
lack of consistent BLS reporting. In like manner, consistent
month-to-month changes in the unemployment rate or labor force simply are not
knowable, because the BLS cloaks the consistent and comparable numbers.”
Here
is what Dave Kranzler has to say: “the employment report is probably the most
deceptively fraudulent report produced by the Government.”
As
I have pointed out for a decade, the “New Economy” jobs that we were promised
in exchange for our manufacturing jobs and tradable professional service jobs
that were offshored have never shown up. The transnational corporations and
their hired shills among economists lied to us. Not even a jobs report as
deceptive and fraudulent as the BLS payroll jobs report can hide the fact that
Congress, the White House, and the American people have sat sucking their
thumbs while corporations maximized profits for the one percent at the expense
of everyone else in the United States.
Let’s
look at where the alleged jobs are. The BLS jobs report says that 28,400 jobs
were created in March in wholesale and retail sales. March is the month that
Macy’s, Sears, JC Penny, Staples, Radio Shack, Office Depot, and other
retailers announced combined closings of several thousand stores, but more
retail clerks were hired.
The
BLS payroll jobs report claims 57,000 jobs in “professional and business
services.” Are these jobs for lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers, and
managers? No. The combined new jobs for these middle class professional skills
totaled 10,400. Employment services accounted for 42,000 of the jobs in
“professional and business services” of which temporary help accounted for
28,500.
“Education
and health services” accounted for 34,000 jobs or which ambulatory and home
health care services accounted for 28,000 of the jobs.
The
other old standby, waitresses and bartenders, accounted for 30,400 jobs. The
number of Americans dependent on food stamps who cannot afford to go out to eat
or to purchase a six-pack of beer has almost doubled, but the demand for
restaurant meals and bar drinks keeps rising.
There
you have it. This is America’s “New Economy.” It the jobs exist at all, they
consist of lowly paid, largely part-time employment that fails to produce
enough income to prevent the food stamp rolls from doubling.
Without
growth in consumer income, there is no growth in aggregate consumer demand.
Offshoring jobs also offshores the income associated with the jobs, resulting
in the decline in the domestic consumer market. The US transnational
corporations, pursuing profits in the short-run, are destroying their long-run
consumer base. The transnational corporations are also destroying the outlook
for US universities, as it makes no sense to incur large student loan debt when
job prospects are poor. The corporations are also destroying US leadership in
innovation as US corporations increasingly become marketeers of foreign-made
goods and services.
As
I predicted in 2004, the US will have a third world work force in 20 years.
The
unemployment figures are as deceptive as the employment figures. The headline
unemployment rate of 6.7% does not include discouraged workers. When
discouraged workers are included among the unemployed, the US rate of
unemployment is 3.4 times higher than the announced rate.
How
many times has John Williams written his report? How many times have I written
this article? Yet the government continues to issue false reports, and the
presstitute financial media continues to ask no questions.
The
US, once a land of opportunity, has been transformed into an aristocratic
economy in which income and wealth are concentrated at the very top. The highly
skewed concentration at the top is the result of jobs offshoring, which
transformed Americans’ salaries and wages into bonuses for executives and
capital gains for owners, and financial deregulation, which produced financial
collapse and the Federal Reserve’s bailout of “banks too big to fail.” The
trillions of dollars of new money created by the Federal Reserve has produced
massive inflation of stock prices, making owners even richer.
Sooner
or later the dollar’s value will suffer as a result of the massive creation of
new dollars. When that occurs, the import-dependent American population will
suffer a traumatic drop in living standards. The main cost of the bank bailout
has yet to hit.
As
I write I cannot think of one thing in the entire areas of foreign and domestic
policy that the US government has told the truth about in the 21st century.
Just as Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, Iran has no nukes,
Assad did not use chemical weapons, and Putin did not invade and annex Crimea,
the jobs numbers are fraudulent, the unemployment rate is deceptive, the
inflation measures are understated, and the GDP growth rate is overstated.
Americans live in a matrix of total lies.
What
can Americans do? Elections are pointless. Presidents, Senators, and US
Representatives represent the interest groups that provide their campaign
funds, not the voters. In two decisions, the Republican Supreme Court has made
it legal for corporations to purchase the government. Those who own the
government will decide what it does, not those who vote.
All
Americans can do is to accept the serfdom imposed on them or take to the
streets and stay in the streets despite being clubbed, tasered, arrested, and
shot by the police, who protect the power structure, not the public.
In
America, nothing is done for the public. But everything is done to the public.
Africa
Beware of Imperialism’s Fatherly Advice
 |
| President John Mahama ECOWAS Chairman |
Washington’s
military tentacles daily tighten their grip on Africa, in ever deepening
collusion with France. “Allowing the U.S., France and others to essentially
take charge of Africa’s militaries creates or maintains an almost childlike
dependence on imperialist forces.”
Throughout
Africa, supposedly sovereign, independent countries are teeming with western
military personnel who claim to be friends, advisors or partners with Africans.
In truth, they create paternalistic relationships that lock a continent into
submissive, subordinate facilitation of its own domination and exploitation.
Perhaps
no entity flings “partnership” rhetoric with greater frequency and abandon than
U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). An AFRICOM statement says: “AFRICOM’s Theater
Security Cooperation programs (TSCP) remain the cornerstone of our sustained
security engagement with African partners, are focused on building operational
and institutional capacity and developing human capital, and provide a
framework within which the command engages with regional partners in
cooperative military activities and development.”
Nevertheless,
it is France and not AFRICOM that is the undisputed master of paternalism in
Africa. During the colonial era, a French government official boasted of a
strategy to transform “the best indigenous [African] elements into complete
Frenchmen.” Even during the period of decolonization France presented itself as
a benevolent guardian and attempted to strong-arm its colonies into a
continuing master-servant relationship. At the time, only the people of Guinea
had the pride and character to sever ties with the colonizer. In recent years
France has maintained an active military presence in Africa, particularly in
places like Mali and Libya. It is therefore troubling that through AFRICOM the
U.S. is now formally making common cause with France, which unlike the U.S.
makes no efforts to disguise its troops in Africa as advisors.
A
French Special Forces officer said: “The Americans want to get involved in
Africa.
That’s
good for us. We know that with the Americans it will be more efficient. We use
American logistics – that’s what we are missing. On the other hand, we provide
the local knowledge.” With respect to support the U.S. is supplying France,
Reuters reported: “The United States fast-tracked the sale of 12 Reaper drones
to France last year, the first two of which started operating in Niger in
January alongside U.S. drones already there.”
In
return for U.S. support, France takes on the large, sustained military
operations in Africa that are off-limits to the U.S. because of military budget
cuts and a U.S. public that is increasingly war weary. The U.S. military is
left to lurk in Africa’s shadows training and manipulating African armies and
staging occasional quick-hit raids on alleged terrorists.
Although
the U.S. must remain committed to the militarization of Africa in order to
preserve its empire, the situation is nevertheless awkward. Congressman Frank
A. LoBiondo said: “It’s a balancing act. Many of these [African] countries consider
the U.S. a partner and strong ally, but they have serious concerns about what
our footprint looks like.”
Africa’s
concern should extend beyond what the U.S. footprint “looks like.” At issue is
the continent’s dignity. Horrific, devastating attacks such as the recent
murders of dozens of children at a Nigerian boarding school by the group Boko
Haram, make it easier for western countries to persuade African governments
that they lack the expertise and resources to counter terrorism. But allowing
the U.S., France and others to essentially take charge of Africa’s militaries
creates or maintains an almost childlike dependence on imperialist forces.
Africa should have enough pride to engage in an independent analysis of its own
circumstances. In some cases it is likely the solutions won’t require a
military approach at all.
Human
Rights Watch researcher Eric Guttschuss told a UN news service the “root
causes” of support for Boko Haram are “poverty and unemployment, driven by poor
governance and corruption.” Guttschuss added that one of the group’s former
leaders rallied support “by speaking out against police and political
corruption [on behalf of Nigeria’s] vast numbers of unemployed youth.”
Abdulkarim
Mohammed, another Boko Haram researcher, noted: “Boko Haram is essentially the
fallout of frustration with corruption and the attendant social malaise of
poverty and unemployment…The young generation sees how [the nation’s resources]
are squandered by a small bunch of self-serving elite which breeds animosity and
frustration, and such anger is ultimately translated into violent outbursts.”
Thus,
African leadership has the capacity to address the root causes of the Boko
Haram crisis without inviting western military involvement. A regional, if not
continental focus on the needs of the most desperate elements of African
societies would do much to eliminate the pool of recruits for groups engaged in
violent attacks on civilians. Long-term, the solution is certainly the
elimination of neo-colonial governments and a continent-wide, unified approach
to the mass control and use of Africa’s natural resources. However, when Africa
begins to walk down that path it will almost certainly find that its current
western military “partners” will become fierce military adversaries.
Mark
P. Fancher
is an attorney who writes frequently about the U.S. military presence in
Africa. He can be contacted at mfancher@comcast.net.
.jpg) |
| Ghanaians March Against GMOs |
Russia
will not import GMO products, the country’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
said, adding that the nation has enough space and resources to produce organic
food.
Moscow
has no reason to encourage the production of genetically modified products or
import them into the country, Medvedev told a congress of deputies from rural
settlements on Saturday.
“If
the Americans like to eat GMO products, let them eat it then. We don’t need to
do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food,” he said.
The
prime minister said he ordered widespread monitoring of the agricultural
sector. He added that despite rather strict restrictions, a certain amount of
GMO products and seeds have made it to the Russian market.
Earlier,
agriculture minister Nikolay Fyodorov also stated that Russia should remain
free of genetically modified products.
At
the end of February, the Russian parliament asked the government to impose a
temporary ban on all genetically
altered products in Russia.
The
State Duma’s Agriculture Committee supported a ban on the registration and
trade of genetically modified organisms. It was suggested that until
specialists develop a working system of control over the effects of GMOs on
humans and the natural environment, the government should impose a moratorium
on the breeding and growth of genetically modified plants, animals, and
microorganisms.
Earlier
this month, MPs of the parliamentary majority United Russia party, together
with the ‘For Sovereignty’ parliamentary group, suggested an amendment of the
existing law On Safety and Quality of Alimentary Products, with a norm set for
the maximum allowed content of transgenic and genetically modified components.
There
is currently no limitation on the trade or production of GMO-containing food in
Russia. However, when the percentage of GMO exceeds 0.9 percent, the producer
must label such goods and warn consumers. Last autumn, the government passed a
resolution allowing the listing of genetically modified plants in the Unified
State Register. The resolution will come into force in July.
122
World Leaders on NSA Target List
 |
| Edward Snowden, former NSA contractor who had a conscience |
A list of high-priority intelligence targets published over the
weekend includes the names of over a hundred current and former heads of state,
who were systematically targeted by the United States National Security Agency
(NSA). The list appears to be part of a wider “Target Knowledge Base” assembled
by the NSA in order to help produce “complete profiles” of what the NSA calls
“high-priority intelligence targets”.
The list is contained in a classified top-secret briefing created by
the NSA in 2009. It was published by
German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which said it acquired
it from American intelligence defector Edward Snowden. Snowden, a former
computer expert for the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency, is currently
living in Russia, where he has been offered political asylum.
The leaked briefing explains the function of an extensive NSA signals
intelligence (SIGINT) collection program codenamed NYMROD. The computer-based program
is allegedly able to sift through millions of SIGINT reports and collate
information on individual targets from the transcripts of intercepted telephone
calls, faxes, as well as computer data.
The list provided
to Der Spiegel by Snowden contains 122 names of
international political figures, said the newsmagazine, adding that all of them
were “heads of foreign governments”. It includes the name of German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Ukraine’s Yulia Tymoshenko, as
well as Belarussian strongman Alexander Lukashenko. Colombia’s former
President, Alvaro Uribe, and Malaysia’s Prime Minster from 2003 to 2009,
Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi, also figure on the list.
Interestingly, the leaders of Malaysia, Somalia, the Palestinian
Authority and Peru top the NSA’s list of high-value executive targets. It
is worth noting that, according to the leaked presentation, intelligence
collated through NYMROD is shared by the NSA with its sister agencies in the
so-called five-eyes alliance, which consists of SIGINT agencies in the United
Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
In a separate
article published Saturday, Der Spiegel said that the NSA
collaborated with its British equivalent, the General Communications
Headquarters, in order to compromise the networks of private telecommunications
firms who provided service to individuals included in the NYMROD high-value
target database. The newsmagazine said a 26-page document in its possession
“explicitly names” three German telecommunications providers, Stellar, Cetel
and IABG.
A history of the First World War in 100 moments: Our
unique series captures sense of what it was like to be in the Great War
How
do you remember a war that destroyed four empires, killed 18 million people and
left tens of millions of other lives irreparably broken? Today, as the world
prepares to mark the centenary of a conflict that left no corner of the planet
untouched, we begin a unique daily series that attempts to make sense of an
incomprehensibly huge chapter in human history by distilling it to a mere 100
'moments': episodes, big or small, that in one way or another capture a sense
of what it was like to be caught up in the catastrophe of the First World War.
Boyd Tonkin introduces our first moment.
By around 10.30am, the panic had already
subsided. Yes, it had been a vicious and unsettling terror attack. As the
six-car motorcade rolled along Appel Quay, beside the river Miljacka in the
heart of Sarajevo, someone had thrown a small bomb. It bounced off the car, a
handsome Gräf & Stift Double Phaeton, carrying Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria and his Czech wife Sophie Chotek, the Duchess of Hohenberg but not –
thanks to the snobbish protocols of the Vienna court – formally the
Archduchess. The bomb exploded under the vehicle behind. It inflicted injuries,
the worst a heavily bleeding head wound to Colonel Erik von Merizzi – adjutant
to the governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Oskar Potiorek.
Nedeljko
Cabrinovic, the teenage Serbian militant who had thrown the device, swallowed
his dose of cyanide and jumped off a bridge. The low-grade toxin merely scoured
his throat, and he landed on a sandbank left by the shrunken summer flow. He
was arrested and led away proclaiming “I am a Serbian hero!” Elsewhere, unknown
to the royal couple and their minders, assailant after assailant from two
separate terror cells had given up and melted away. Muhamed Mehmedbasic had
failed to launch his bomb. Paralysed with fear, Cvjetko Popovic had hidden his
in a basement. Trifko Grabez quit his position and was engulfed in the milling
crowds. Vaso Cubrilovic “felt sorry” for the duchess when he saw her in the
open car, and would not draw his gun.
No
one had died. In this province, the authorities expected spectacular stunts by
Serbian radicals enraged by the official annexation in 1908 of Bosnia – already
occupied for 30 years – into the Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1910, Bogdan
Zerajic, of the Young Bosnia movement, had emptied a pistol at the then
governor as the Bosnian parliament opened. All the bullets missed save the
last, aimed at himself – for suicide attacks had lately come into vogue. What
made today's incident, on the warm Sunday morning of 28 June 1914, more
troubling was the security bungle that had left the royal couple's protection
detail stranded at the railway station. Still, the hothead extremists
represented no one but themselves. At dinner the previous evening at the Hotel
Bosna in the nearby spa of Ilidze, Sophie had told a Bosnian Croat leader that
“wherever we have gone, people have treated us with so much friendliness – down
to the last Serb, too”.
On
with the show – although Franz Ferdinand was visibly rattled. At Sarajevo town
hall, the mayor, Fehim Curcic, embarked on his flowery, and unamended, speech
of welcome. At this point, the Archduke's pent-up fears exploded. He butted in:
“I come here as your guest and you people greet me with bombs!” Soon he
regained his composure. In a gracious reply, he mentioned the population's
pleasure in “the failure of the assassination attempt”. Inside the town hall,
Sophie went off for a meeting with Muslim ladies (Bosnia was more Muslim than
Serb), segregated so that they could remove their veils with her. She told them
that she missed her children. Now it was time to resume the programme.
Potiorek
advised a swift exit from the city but the couple insisted on a detour to
hospital to visit the casualties. No one had informed the driver. When he
turned down Franz Joseph Street, Potiorek instructed him to return to the quay.
The Gräf & Stift had no reverse gear; it had to be pushed. Beside the
stationary car, by a fluke, stood another young Serbian revolutionary called
Gavrilo Princip. Rather than flee, he had kept his ground along the advertised
royal route. Princip fumbled with his bomb but failed to detonate it. Instead,
from five feet away, he fired two shots. Sophie was hit in the stomach; Franz
Ferdinand in the neck. Both bullet wounds proved fatal. As he tried to staunch
the blood, Count Harrach heard the Archduke say, “Sophie, Sophie, don't die –
stay alive for our children.” Just after 11am, both were dead.
After
a beating by furious bystanders, Princip was taken into custody. As minors,
none of the Belgrade-based trio tasked with the assassination was subject to
the death penalty under the empire's law. Princip received a 20-year sentence
and died in 1918 of consumption, exacerbated by grim conditions, in the
military jail at Theresienstadt. Other, adult, conspirators did later hang.
A
second cell, made up of local Serbs, had been put in place as one of several
distractions to blur the conspiracy's chain of command. Students enraptured by
the romance of the Serbian struggle against the Habsburg yoke, Princip,
Cabrinovic and Grabez had pored over the preparations for this high-impact
assassination. Independent Serbia – to its friends a brave powerhouse of Slavic
identity; to its foes a rogue state that sponsored indiscriminate terror – had
emerged the biggest winner from the two bloody Balkan wars of 1912-1913. Its
territory had expanded, mostly at the expense of the Ottoman empire. Yet Bosnia
remained under the Viennese boot. That it held more Muslims and Catholics than
Orthodox Serbs hardly troubled “irredentist” nationalists who believed that
“where a Serb lives, there is Serbia”.
Princip
and his co-conspirators belonged to “Unity or Death!”, a remarkably open
“secret” society with contacts at the top of the Belgrade government. Most
people knew the group by a more colourful name: the Black Hand. Via the
intermediary Milan Ciganovic, the trio reported to a Black Hand chieftain, Voja
Tankosic. Behind him stood one of Europe's most formidable secret agents, the
head of Serbian military intelligence: Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, known as
“Apis” after the Egyptian bull god. Apis often acted alone, though not
unobserved. Nikola Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister and a wily survivor, both
used him and feared him. Only schoolchildren and saloon-bar chatterers any
longer seek one-word replies to the question, “Who caused the First World War?”
If that inquiry had an answer, then –although only in a deeply myopic
perspective – one non-trivial response might be: “Apis”.
In
the days after 28 June, opinions as to the gravity of the outrage varied.
Although the Vienna press fulminated about this “blow of fate”, in Paris, St
Petersburg, London and Berlin it looked more like a grotesque but routine
Balkan atrocity. Besides, no one beyond his family seems to have liked the heir
to the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy very much. The author Arthur Schnitzler
referred to his “appalling unpopularity” in a diary entry on the day of the
killings. Vienna politician Josef Redlich reported the next day that “there is
no sense of grief” in the city. Most accounts of the assassination as a
world-historic turning-point date from much later – by the great nostalgist
Stefan Zweig, for instance, whose memoirs lament “the shot that in a single
second was to shatter the world of security and creative reason”. At the time,
the many enemies of Austria rejoiced, often with unseemly glee. “Grazie
Serbia!” piped up one Italian newspaper. More fool them – but not yet.
In
his heavy-handed way, the peace-loving Franz Ferdinand had envisioned the
reform of the creaking dual monarchy into a multi-ethnic commonwealth, a United
States of Greater Austria made up of 15 equal peoples. He hated the idea of
even a regional conflict. Against Vienna belligerents such as the army chief
Baron Conrad von Hötzendorf, he vociferously backed alternatives to military
entanglements in the Balkans or beyond. In October 1912, as the first Balkan
campaign threatened to suck in Austria, the Archduke warned the Foreign
Minister, Count Leopold Berchtold, about the dangers of entering the “witches'
kitchen of war”.
Even
after his murder, that witches' kitchen felt more like myth than fact. Europe,
after all, had weathered some storms over the past few years. Both Balkan wars
had almost dragged in other powers, most nearly during the “winter crisis” of
1912-1913. Then, a fresh-minted pro-Serbian policy in Russia took the Foreign
Minister, Sergei Sazonov, to the brink of mobilisation. In 1911, the Agadir
incident, when Germany sent a warship to Morocco as a riposte to French claims
of sole control, had tested the limits of British support for France under the
Entente Cordiale of 1904. It resulted in a few scary weeks.
Agadir
ended in November 1911, with the usual imperialists' carve-up. In December
1913, Russia unsheathed its diplomatic sabres again when General Otto Liman von
Sanders took command of a Turkish army corps in Constantinople. But the Ottoman
navy already employed a British admiral, Arthur Limpus. Neither France nor
Britain felt very much alarmed. Europe in 1914 was a multi-polar system in
which five big powers not only played chess with one another but simultaneously
within their own rivalrous cabinets and chancelleries. It expected to witness
sporadic flare-ups. These were controlled explosions.
Thousands
of books have sought to explain how a nasty local outrage in Sarajevo – albeit
one engineered by a hostile state – led to the end of the world. For the world
of 1914 did end during the four succeeding years and their decades-long
aftermath. Some 10 million combatants died, and at least eight million
civilians. The wounded, a huge proportion disabled for life, numbered more than
21 million. Four empires succumbed immediately – the Russian, Austrian, German
and Ottoman. After a delusionary bounce of post-war acquisitions, two more
expired of their wounds later: the French and British. Without the Great War,
and its botched outcomes, the Second World War is inconceivable. By some
lights, the “short 20th century” that began with the guns of August 1914 only
closed with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Look at Ukraine, and Crimea
today, and it would not be absurd to hear the echo of those weapons – and of
Princip's .38 revolver on the corner of Franz Joseph Street.
Hindsight
makes sages of us all. But no one in Europe on 28 June 1914 was in possession
of a working crystal ball. For all the “future war” genre of speculative
fiction during the Edwardian years – such as Erskine Childers' bestseller The
Riddle of the Sands in 1903 – sober heads proclaimed that globalised commerce
and a mesh of close alliances made general conflict unthinkable. In his
peace-mongering tract of 1909, The Great Illusion, Norman Angell had mocked
big-power war as a futile throwback.
Shortly
before Sarajevo, many prudent observers thought that Europe had begun to go off
the boil. In Britain, the apparently anti- German – more strictly, pro-Entente
– policies of the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had come under withering
criticism by a doveish majority within his Liberal Party. Inflammatory
Anglo-German “press wars” had ceased by 1912. The mandarin policy-maker Arthur
Nicolson wrote in May 1914 that “since I have been at the Foreign Office I have
not seen such calm waters”. Yet, five weeks after 28 June, Europe was at war.
The
“July Crisis” of 1914 remains arguably the most complex sequence of events in
all European history. Still, not a single word of its script was written in
advance. Luckily, we can now trace that chain – or rather cluster – of
occurrences armed with one of the greatest of those long shelves of explanatory
books: Christopher Clark's masterpiece, The Sleepwalkers. As Clark makes clear,
every deed – or refusal to act – counted. “Short-term, contingent realignments”
shifted rapidly across an “opaque and unpredictable” system. The many later
“narratives of inevitability” substitute consoling fiction for messy truth.
They mean that “contingency, chance and agency are squeezed out of the field of
vision”.
Focus
on selected moments, as The Independent's new series does, and that “agency”
returns to centre stage. Each choice and chance genuinely mattered, although
none made a decisive difference in itself. Its agents, like its millions of
victims, lived the First World War not as a vast span or grand plan but day by
day, crisis by crisis, shock by shock. Spotlight key events and we may, just
for a while, glimpse that lost world before hindsight. By 24 July, after
Austria had drawn up an ultimatum to Serbia, the British Prime Minister,
Herbert Asquith, could indeed tell his confidante Venetia Stanley in one of his
intimate letters that “We are within measurable or imaginable distance of a
real Armageddon”. Then he consoles himself, and her. “Happily, there seems to
be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators.”
The
Russians Aren’t Coming
 |
| Russian Army Chief Vladimir Putin |
It’s back to
the future. It’s reminiscent of Cold War fearmongering. It claimed the Russians
are coming.
Norman
Jewison’s 1966 film titled “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming”
portrayed a Soviet threat, albeit satirically.
Today,
outrageous headlines irresponsibly suggest Russian hordes threaten Ukraine.
Truth is polar opposite. It doesn’t matter.
On March 28,
Ukraine’s propaganda news service Ukrinform headlined
“Russia continues to redeploy troops to Ukrainian border.”
It quoted
Kiev’s Military and Political Studies Center head Dmytro Tymchuk saying:
“According to
live data of the Information Resistance group, redeployment of Russian troops
to the border of Russia with Ukraine has continued over the past day.”
In Rostov
region, he claimed columns of technology were “fixed.” They’re “heading to the
state border.”
Included are
150 armored personnel carriers and 400 units of motor vehicles near the town of
Millerovo, Tarasovsky settlement and the town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, he said.
Overnight at
Rostov-Tovarny’s railway station, he claimed “eight MLRS (multiple rocket
launchers) Uragan arrived (on) 12 freight cars.”
So did “four
BTR-80, about a dozen units of automotive vehicles (including fuel trucks),” he
added.
“In Belgorod
region…the column of vehicles was fixed, moving in the direction of the state
border (30-40 km from the border): about 30 units of automotive vehicles, about
10 units of tracked engineering equipment.”
BBC aired
fake footage alleging Russian tanks heading for Ukraine’s border.
CNN hyped the
bogus threat headlining ” ‘The hordes are coming:’
Ukrainians fear Russian invasion in northeast.”
CBS
News headlined ”Putin reaches out to Obama as
Russian troops continue to mass on Ukraine border.”
Foreign
Policy (FP) magazine is a neocon Washington Post publication.
It headlined “The Russians Are Coming – 10 very good
reasons not to believe Vladimir Putin when he says he’s totally not going to
invade eastern Ukraine.”
Ten lies
followed straightaway claiming:
(1) Up to
50,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border; other putschist reports
claimed 100,000;
(2) “Putin
enjoys embarrassing the United States…;”
(3) “The IMF
bailout;” FP portrayed grand theft loan-sharking as responsible lending;
(4) Legitimate
Crimean reunification is illegal;
(5) What will
Western nations do about threatened Russian invasion;
(6) Russian
comments are anti-Western;
(7) “Russia’s
military and arms trade relies on Ukraine;”
(8) “The
Kremlin lies shamefully and farcically;”
Daily
malicious media Big Lies are ignored.
(9) Russian
“Kombinatsiya” (disinformation) “is very much in evidence now;” and
(10)
“Modernizatsiya (modernization)” plans “the largest and most ambitious
re-armament and modernization program” of Russia’s military since the Soviet
Union’s dissolution.
Doing so
wrongfully suggests a threat. Russian military spending is minuscule compared
to America’s bloated defense budget.
Washington
Post neocons headlined ”Donetsk
fearful of Russian military might on Ukraine’s border.” They ludicrously
claimed residents keep their cars “gassed up in case their families need to
flee advancing tanks.”
Murdoch’s The
Sunday Times headlined ”The Russians are coming. We’re ready.
As Moscow’s forces mass on the eastern border, volunteers are flocking to
bolster Ukraine’s poorly equipped national guard.”
FP’s article
hyped a nonexistent planned Russian Ukrainian invasion. Other Western
mainstream media echo the same Big Lie.
It repeats
with disturbing regularity. It does so despite no evidence whatever suggesting
it.
Russian
expert Dmitry Vostok said “(b)efore casting aspersions upon Russia, (Western
leaders) should (consider) their own interventions.”
Their
collective memories are short. They ignore or mischaracterize numerous imperial
interventions. They blame victims for their crimes.
They claim
holier than thou reasons for lawless aggression. They threaten more. They
justify the unjustifiable.
They defend
the indefensible. They claim ravaging and destroying one nation after another
to save them is OK.
They lack
moral authority. Their agenda is world domination. They threaten world peace.
They risk humanity’s survival.
They turn
truth on its head. Big Lies repeat. Mainstream media echo them. They call
self-defense terrorism. They call Putin’s all-out conflict resolution
initiatives aggression.
Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is a consummate diplomat. He does his nation
proud.
He endures
plenty dealing with Western leaders. He outshines them all. He deserves Nobel
Peace Prize recognition. Recipients include a rogue’s gallery of war criminals.
Obama is Exhibit A.
Lavrov was
clear and unequivocal. He said Moscow has no intention of invading Ukraine.
Claims otherwise are spurious.
“We have
absolutely no intention of and interest in crossing Ukraine’s borders,” he
stressed.
“The only
thing we really want is that the work should be collective and the lawlessness
that some Western countries are trying to sweep under the rug and paint the
situation in bright colors should be stopped, so that they realize their
responsibility.”
Russia “had
no other choice than to accept Crimea,” he added. “We didn’t bother reflecting
about what the reaction would be.”
“We had no
other choice. The choice we eventually made came from our history,
international law, Russian statehood and our responsibility for the lives of
those ethnic Russians who found themselves stranded abroad in a single day.”
Reunification
is entirely legal. International law principles affirm everyone’s right to
self-determination. Crimeans overwhelmingly chose to join Russia.
Moscow was
obligated to oblige. Western nations plotted for years to split Ukraine from
Russia, said Lavrov.
“It feels as
though our Western colleagues…have long been working to ‘tear’ Ukraine away
from Russia.”
“Once they
realized they had been wrong and it had been a mistake to act in violation of
all post-Soviet agreements, they couldn’t own up to it.”
“A false idea
of pride stood in their way. And all the sanctions we are seeing now are a
knee-jerk reflex that makes them want to find a reasonable way to remedy their
hurt feelings.”
The same “you
are either with us or against us” notion” exists. “We have long since given
that up but unfortunately this kind of mentality is still there in the minds of
politicians who today define the West’s stance,” Lavrov added.
He criticized
Western nations for bullying 50 countries to vote against Crimean reunification
legitimacy.
Threats were
made. Nation were told they’d “face consequences.” Moscow’s UN envoy Vitaly
Churkin said:
“Many
(nations) complained that they were experiencing enormous pressure from Western
powers to make them vote” against reunification legitimacy.
“(T)he
pressure produced a certain effect. Some countries voted (the wrong way)
grudgingly, shall I say, and complained to us about the strong pressure they
had experienced.”
Washington
and rogue Western partners ousted legitimate Ukrainian governance. They
elevated a rogue’s gallery of societal misfits to power.
They’re
miscreants. They’re dangerous. They’re fascist extremists. They’re
illegitimate. They represent mob rule.
On March 30,
RT International headlined ”Ukrainian nationalists attack
anti-coup motor rally with hammers and bats,” saying:
Southeastern
Ukrainians “are facing increasingly violent intimidation.” Western media
suppress what’s happening. Putschists are portrayed as democrats.
Euromaidan
thugs attacked cars displaying Russian, regional and Ukrainian flags. They came
from Melitopol. They headed for a Zaporozhye anti-government rally last week.
Eye witness
Artyom Tymchenko told RT:
“When the
motor rally was about to enter Zaporozhye, it became clear that an ambush was
being organized by the Maidan criminals.”
“Near the
railway station the column was stopped by the Maidan bandits, who started
beating people, taking their property, smashing cars.”
Motorists
said Right Sector thugs attacked them.
“The police,
who are supposed to sort out the situation, are not going about their job with
any enthusiasm, and although the attackers didn’t hide their faces, no one has
been arrested so far.”
“Which simply
leads to the conclusion that they acted under the protection of the criminals
currently in power.”
Vladimir
Balagura heads an anti-putschist initiative called “Our Town.”
“It is very
scary to witness when people are running at you with weapons, shovels, and
batons, with chains, metal rods,” he said.
RT said
Dnepropetrovsk residents are threatened. “Ukrainian vigilantes” are targeting
people they call “pro-Russian thugs.”
Right Sector
neo-Nazis established their own political party. Their January 2014 manifesto
states:
“(A)ll those
those who at this point would try to tame the revolutionary energy of the
masses should be proclaimed traitors and punished in the most severe way.”
“Death to the
regime of internal occupation! Freedom or death! Glory to Ukraine!”
On May 25,
sham presidential elections are scheduled. A previous article said aspirants
look more like a police lineup.
Democracy is
strictly verboten. Various candidates registered to participate. Others
submitted bids. It’s unclear how many will stay in the race.
Former
heavyweight boxing champion turned politician Vitaly Klitschko dropped out.
He’ll participate in Kiev’s mayoral race instead.
A mid-March
poll showed billionaire chocolate magnate Pyotr Poroshenko had 36.2% support.
He hasn’t officially registered to participate. He’s expected to do so.
Klitschko had
12.9% support. He endorsed Poroshenko’s candidacy.
Convicted/imprisoned/now
illegally freed mega-crook Yulia Tymoshenko’s approval was 12%.
Ousted Party
of Regions’ Sergey Tigipko scored 10%. Other candidates have single-digit
support or practically none at all.
In early
March, Right Sector neo-Nazi leader Dmytro Yarosh announced his candidacy.
Russia’s Investigative Committee (IC) said he’s wanted for involvement in
killing Russian soldiers in Chechnya.
If
apprehended, he’ll be prosecuted. IC representative Vladimir Markin said
there’s enough evidence against him to put him on a “wanted list.”
He openly
boasts about “…fighting Jews and Russians till I die.”
He calls
Russia Ukraine’s “eternal enemy.” He said war between both countries is
inevitable.
He openly
supports Chechen militants. He backed Georgia’s 2008 aggression against South
Ossetia.
Yarosh and
likeminded Right Sector extremists are the worst of a bad lot of rogues running
Ukraine.
They’re
gun-toting, radicalized terrorists. Imagine them and likeminded extremists
holding influential portfolios in Ukraine’s government.
They’re
cold-blooded killers. They believe in barrel-of-a-gun rule. State terrorism
defines their agenda. Anyone opposing them is targeted for elimination.
Yarosh has
delusions of grandeur. He enjoys too little support to become president. Unless
he intends seizing it by force. His extremism suggests anything is possible.
He and other
Right Sector leaders have thousands of supporters. They’re militants. They’re
capable of anything. They threaten everyone opposing their agenda.
Their
extremism risks civil war. So do Svoboda neo-Nazis. Their leader Oleh Tyahnybok
is a presidential aspirant. It remains to be seen what follows May elections.
On Sunday,
John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov met in Paris. Crisis conditions in Ukraine was
discussed. Nothing was resolved. Washington remains hardline. Ahead of talks
Lavrov said:
“We have no
common plan yet. We view the situation differently. Right now we are exchanging
views, but we cannot say that we have found a single approach to the problem.”
“To find a
solution that would suit both of us we need regular consultations.”
On March
30, Itar Tass headlined
“An Action in support of bank Rossiya to take place in Moscow.”
Russia’s
national currency will replace dollar transactions. Putin wants an independent
payment system. Itar Tass quoted action organizers saying:
“Russia, at
its present stage of development, should not be dependent on foreign
currencies; its internal resources will make its own economy invulnerable to
political wheeler dealers.”
“In order to
protect the bank’s customers from dishonest actions by foreign financial
institutions AB Rossiya has decided to operate only in the domestic market and
exclusively with the national currency of the Russian Federation – the rouble.”
“The bank has
already notified some U.S. banks that it is closing its correspondence
accounts. Similar notifications have been sent to other foreign financial
institutions.”
VTB bank
president Andrei Kostin said Rossiya’s decision to delink from foreign
currencies is a step forward to work exclusively with the ruble.
“We have been
moving towards wider use of the Russian rouble as the currency of settlement
for a long time. The rouble became fully convertible quite a long time ago,” he
added.
Kostin urges
Russian products sold abroad and foreign good bought transacted solely in
rubles.
“Only then
are we going to use (its) advantages of…being a foreign currency in full
measure,” he added.
Sanctions cut
both ways. Moscow signaled earlier about responding to Western measures.
It remains to
be seen what follows. East/West tensions remain heightened. Washington bears
full responsibility.
Targeting
Russia is longstanding US policy. Doing so risks belligerence replacing
diplomacy.
His new
book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”
Visit his
blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio
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