Tag Archives: Freedom

The Emperor Obama

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

As You Like It, Shakespeare

Like any pagan Roman Emperor of old, the Emperor Obama has visited his oldest colony (75 years, ever since the ’alliance’ of 1941, ‘the special relationship’). Like any Emperor, he received homage from his local vassal ruler, meddled, told his subjects how to vote, insulted and threatened them if they did not obey him, and received tribute from the local royalty, being presented with Prince George, the two-year old future tributary King. All were too frightened to tell him about his new clothes: for he is living on borrowed time, in a fool’s paradise.

However, today, the day after, is the national day, St George’s Day according to the Catholic calendar, and 400 years since the death of Shakespeare. England and indeed all four nations of these Isles have still a question to answer: To be or not to be? In the frenzy to destroy by suicide their national identities, is this the end of England, the end of these Isles and indeed the end of Europe? However, today, for the Church, is Lazarus Saturday and so the eve of Palm Sunday. This is the day on which the four-day dead, already corrupt, was raised from his tomb. Lazarus chose ‘to be’. So all is still possible. To England we say: Lazarus, come forth!

In the Church of the Holy Wisdom

A Greek journalist writes: “I met Ishmael who is Turkish in 1975, in England, where I was attending university. We became good friends and after graduating we kept in touch. Ishmael lives in Istanbul (Constantinople), a stone’s throw from Hagia Sophia. Recently he wrote a letter to me. “In the past year, at night, when we are outside, the smell of incense that you Christians burn in church overpowers us.”

Democracy Struggles To Recover From Betrayal

Democracy Struggles To Recover From Betrayal

Paul Craig Roberts March 20, 2016

I thank you for your commitment. It is what sustains the website and my commitment to all the work it takes to explain reality in contrast to the matrix of lies in which Western peoples live. My columns are re-posted by many websites and are translated into a large number of languages. This large readership is sustained by a relatively small number of donors

It is like Margaret Mead said, “a small number of committed people can change the world.”

With much help from the failures of neoliberal economic policy and neoconservative foreign policy, we are changing the world.

Look at Bernie Sanders’ inroads on the corrupt Clintons’ control of the Democratic Party. Look at how easily Donald Trump defeated the Republican establishment’s candidates. Some Americans are catching on, shedding their unawareness. I am not confident that Sanders or Trump could bring change. In The Deep State (2016), Mike Lofgren concludes that powerful private interest groups, such as the military/security complex and the financial sector, have hijacked democracy. Still, voters’ interest in Sanders and Trump, despite the beating they receive in the media, is a positive sign. Voters are supporting them not so much for their positions on issues as for the fact that neither are part of the Washington establishment. Many voters now understand that the political establishment represents the One Percent, not them.

A New Russia has appeared on the scene and demonstrated to the entire world its power to checkmate the hegemonic ambition of the crazed neoconservatives who have controlled the US government since Bill Clinton. The world now understands that the leadership for peace comes from Russia not from warmonger Washington.

Washington’s vassals in Europe are in disarray, with the Northern European EU members plundering the Southern EU members, with all of Europe overrun with refugees fleeing Washington’s hoax “war against terrorism.” Europeans are beginning to realize that the establishment political parties that they have blindly supported since World War 2 are nothing but agents of Washington, who serve Washington and not Europeans. Merkel, Cameron, Hollande are puppets of Washington, not leaders of the German, British, and French people.

The Chinese government is finally beginning to realize that the neoliberal American economic policies that it has so slavishly been copying have led it into economic difficulties. Perhaps China will now cease to follow America into oblivion.

The Russians have learned that being part of the Western system subjects them to economic sanctions and makes it easy for Washington to interfere in Russian internal affairs. The Russians are beginning to show that their desire for their independence is greater than their desire to be accepted by a corrupt, immoral, decadent, and failing West.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders speak to Americans’ loss of economic opportunity and financial independence. Today the 99 Percent are slaves to their debt burdens and lack of productive employment, while those who deceived them into these burdens and lowly-paid employment in domestic services are reveling in multi-million dollar annual paychecks.

The US Treasury, Federal Reserve, and financial regulators are corrupted by the private financial interests that control them. The US government serves only the One Percent. Despite this obvious fact, many Democratic Party voters—-traditionally the less well off, union members, and American blacks—-are turning out for Hillary Clinton, a tried and proven representative of the One Percent. The Clintons have been enriched to the amount of $153 million by the ruling One Percent who own the Clintons lock, stock, and barrel. Yet the dispossessed vote for Hillary. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/

Clearly, many American voters, as Thomas Frank made clear in his book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, still have no clue as to their own interests and vote to elect their worst enemies.

Many Americans are still trapped in The Matrix and kept there by the propaganda that masquerades in the US as “news.”

Consider the possible implications if Americans were to enable Hillary Clinton to become President. Trump has said that he would work things out with Vladimir Putin, but Hillary has declared the President of Russia to be “the new Hitler.” How can Hillary work anything out with “the new Hitler”? She cannot.

It is a great irony that the American lower class, traditionally served by the Democratic Party, could put in the White House not only a person who only represents the super-rich but also a person who cannot escape confict with Russia, a country with possibly the most capable military force on the planet.

The psychopathic Washington neoconservatives who have controlled US foreign policy since the Clinton regime, misintepret Vladimir Putin’s peaceful diplomacy as a sign of Russian weakness. The neocons say: “See Putin is weak. He is pulling out of Syria.” But what Putin says is different. Putin says: “We have created the conditions for peace in Syria.” If Washington abuses these conditions, “Russia can, in several hours, build up its forces in Syria to a size capable of dealing with an escalating situation and use the entire range of means at its disposal.”

Putin adds: “We hope the parties involved would show common sense.”
From a position of strength, Putin has rolled the dice. Is there common sense in the West? I fail to see any. I see arrogance, hubris, idiocy, immorality, inhumanity, complete and total stupidity. These are the characteristics of Western governments. They amount to a deranged criminal enterprise organized against humanity.

In the awards of medals to those Russians who served against ISIS, Putin stated: “Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged.” If we take this statement broadly, it means not merely Muslim jihadists but the terrorism of the West—-the destruction of seven or more countries by the US and its vassals in the 21st century, the long-term sanctions against Iran, Russia, and a number of other countries whose governments do not comply with Washington’s dictates. Putin has told Washington and Washington’s European puppets, Cameron, Merkel, Hollande, that he has had enough of them. They must reform themselves, become honorable governments committed to the welfare of humanity, and abandon self-serving policies of plunder.

Considering the total failure of the United States to subdue after 15 years a few thousand lightly armed Taliban, the American people need to understand that the US military, corrupted by privatizations to enhance former vice president Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton and by over-cost weapons systems that serve the profits of the armaments industries and not the military competence of the fighting force, has lost its edge in weapons superiority. The latest over-cost American fighter jet, for example, according to the Air Force’s own conclusions cannot match the old figher it is intended to replace, whereas the lastest Russian fighter is said to have the capability to electronically shut down American control systems, track simultaneously 24 enemy fighters and lock on 10 simultanteously for unavoidable destruction. Members of the US military command have expressed concern over the high quality of Russian weapon systems.

Everyone needs to understand that the establishments of the two American political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, are less interested in winning the election than in continuing to control the party. Trump and Sanders are hated by the party establishments, because Trump and Sanders are not members of the establishment. Control over the party by the party establishment is so important that we have many members of the Republican establishment declaring that if Trump wins the Republican nomination, they will vote for the Democrat. This has happened before. It was Republicans who denied the presidency to Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.

The United States is a failing society. Citizens’ hopes are being snuffed out. There are few good jobs or enough jobs of any kind, as the collapse of the labor force participation rate confirms. People are drowning in debts that they have no prospect of ever paying off. Young adults cannot form independent households. The oligarchy that rules and controls the country has committed America to massively expensive wars and privacy invasions for the purpose of establishing a hegemony that enriches elite private interests.

The corrupt and unrepentant financial sector, having survived its mortgage-backed security fiasco without prosecution or correction has repeated its previous folly with a new weapon of potential financial mass destrution. Speculators have bought up distressed properties and rented them. The rental streams are bundled into financial instruments, as were the mortgage payments previously, and sold to investors. Is a renter more committed and better able to pay than a person with a mortgage?

Jobs offshoring and financialization have drained the US economy of the ability to grow. The ladders of upward mobility have been dismantled, and the service of debt curtails consumer demand for goods and services. The wage saving from offshoring jobs raises corporate profits and brings executive bonuses and capital gains to the One Percent. Financialization diverts consumer purchasing power into the service of debt. The result is stagnation and decline.

Foreign policy based on threats and coercion means constant conflict. The US has been in constant conflict since the Clinton regime overthrew the government in Serbia. Constant conflict is expensive, and Americans have had these expensive costs imposed on them simultaneously with the costs of jobs offshoring and financialization.

It was 20 months ago that Malaysian Airlines flight 17 was destroyed over Ukraine. Despite the inability of the investigation to come to a conclusion, from the first moment Western propaganda has blamed the loss of 298 lives on Russia. Three days after the airliner’s destruction, US Secretary of State John Kerry set in stone the blame on Russia with his claim that “we saw the take-off [of the Buk missile]. We saw the trajectory. We saw the hit. We saw this airplane disappear from the radar screens. So there is really no mystery about where it came from and where these weapons have come from.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ever-curiouser-mh-17-case/5514946

If the US has all the evidence, why hasn’t the US government released it? Obviously, there is no such evidence. Why would Washington fail to release evidence that proved Russian responsibility? Kerry’s evidence no more exists than the alleged evidence the US government claims to have from numerous security cameras that a passenger airliner hit the Pentagon on 9/11. If the government had such evidence why has the government refused to release it for almost 15 years? If the government produced this evidence, it would be a death blow to the 9/11 Truth movement. The evidence no more exists than the alleged evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, that Assad used chemical weapons, that Russia invaded Ukraine.

The terms of the last three US presidents have been used to squander trillions of dollars on pointless wars and construction of a domestic police state on the basis of a non-existant “terrorist threat.” This alleged threat has been reinforced with false flag events and a fake history spun from lies repeateded endlessly by government and its presstitutes.

In 1994 Christopher Lasch wrote in The Revolt of the Elites: “In our time, the chief threat seems to come from those at the top of the social hierarchy.” As Lasch said, the greed of the elites for money and power have undermined the constitutional basis of the United States. The elites have used their power to betray democracy. Will the American people succeed in clawing back their democracy?

Trump: Patriotism and Regime-Change in the West?

For seventy years, ever since 1945, the Western world has by terror been united, since all the once independent states of Western Europe have become feudal vassals of the USA. Cowed by US propaganda which asserted that they would be invaded by the Soviet Union without US ‘protection’, Western European countries dutifully did whatever their master in Washington told them to do, even uniting into an absurd US-concocted European Union.

The large countries of Western Europe (the small ones like Scandinavia, Ireland and Switzerland had no importance) fell one by one. France and the UK were warned off with the Suez Crisis of 1956. With Germany and Italy occupied since 1945, Spain and Portugal controlled by pro-US Fascist juntas, the last resistance in France was overcome with the CIA-orchestrated revolt of 1968 and the overthrow of the anti-American De Gaulle, and in the UK in 1973, as it meekly accepted US orders and joined the then Common Market.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 a generation ago, the need for ‘protection’ and vassal status has in fact disappeared. However, it has continued even more aggressively, with US violence colonizing Eastern Europe, most obviously in Yugoslavia, setting up puppet elites in every country, taking over Local Churches, bribing, threatening, overthrowing the legitimate government in the Ukraine and pushing its troops and tanks to the very borders of Russia, most visibly in Estonia and Norway.

Now, patriotism is beginning to resist. Since the catastrophic EU-organized destruction of Eastern European economies after 1989, since the genocidal US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the consequent and well-predicted anarchy created all through the Middle East and North Africa and its millions of victims, since the US-created financial crash of 2008, and now the rush of millions of immigrants, that may turn into tens of millions, into Europe, Europe has begun to wake up to US manipulations.

A wave of what worried Establishment elites call ‘National Populism’, that is, patriotism, has been spreading through the whole EU. There is now a clear understanding that the European wars of the 20th century were not about nationalism, but about imperialism. It was directed precisely against nation states, at the destruction of the nations, towards building international empires like the Third Reich, and that the EU is simply just another version of the same, a Fourth Reich. The patriots of Europe want the sovereignty of their countries, buried in 1914, back.

Whether the movement is left-wing or right-wing, or more often a combination of both, all EU countries have seen the rise of one form of patriotism or another. Whether it is the National Front in France, UKIP in the UK, Pegida in Germany, Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, Nationalists in Scotland and Catalonia, the sovereignist governments of the Vyshegrad group in Poland, the Czech Lands, Slovakia and Hungary, the desire to remain Christian of the Local Orthodox Churches in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania, resistance to NATO/EU bondage and bribed and blackmailed puppet elites in Non-EU Serbia, Montenegro and Moldova, the movement for national self-determination is the same. Many in Europe want their freedom back.

Now the patriotic movement has spread to the USA itself. Tired of the ever-growing mountain of nineteen trillion dollars of debt, mainly the result of futile and very costly foreign meddling, US voters are turning their backs on the Establishment. Put America first, they say: the richest country in the world, with a tiny elite that is ever richer, run as a police state, with tens of millions of desperately poor and without health care, whose people’s health has been undermined by food poisoned by the rights of lobbies to cause allergies, cancer, diabetes and obesity with their syrup, hormones and additives, is not the future.

Only this can explain the phenomenon of Trump, a billionaire businessman of dubious practices, with little understanding or knowledge outside his own narrow world, but who wants to heal America with some healthy isolationism before any more meddling abroad. Many Americans are tired of being impoverished and indebted, tired of being hated outside the US and seeing their flag burned, tired of seeing their jobs lost to ‘outsourcing’ abroad, tired of futile foreign adventures which bring only more debts, problems and hatred.

This movement is the same movement of patriotism as in Europe. The Western world, a purely artificial, post-1945 construct of the elites, is perhaps at last beginning to fall apart, even if a generation and more too late. People are tired of the totalitarian terrorism, hubris and corruption of their Establishments. Freedom is in the air. Regime-change in the West? All is possible.

An Old Man Remembers

The Englander, 31 January 2100

In this, the last week of the 21st century, we continue our series in which centenarians sum up for us their most vivid memories of turning points in the past century. Today, we hear from Tim Smith, aged 103, who recalls the events of 24 June 2016.

‘Even at my age I remember it well, though I was only a youngster then. The greatest turning-point of this ending century came for our country on 24 June 2016. There were masses of people celebrating in London, well over a million, they say, and of course millions of others in every town, city and village across the country. Everywhere we had Freedom parades and Victory meals – that’s what they were called. I was with the group on Freedom Square (in those days it was called Trafalgar Square), which we filled as well as all the streets around it.

One group there had a whole lot of European Union flags, some said they had been stolen from the offices of the Mayor of London, others said that the Mayor had personally donated them, and these were being burned. Huge cheers went up, as each one was burned. Then they burned effigies of various politicians, one of the old Prime Minister – sorry I’ve forgotten his name but I know it was Scottish – another of the German leader, a woman, though I can’t remember her name now either. It was all filmed, some of the footage must have survived. We were chanting ‘Freedom, Freedom’ and ‘Down with Tyranny’, until we were hoarse. That’s how 24 June came to be a national holiday in England.

Of course, lots of political changes followed, a new Prime Minister, a new political system, new alliances. I mean, think about it: the European Union, as it was called then, collapsed a few years afterwards. Now some say it would have happened anyway, but even if that’s true, the decision of what was then called the ‘United Kingdom’ – doesn’t that sound so old-fashioned! – to leave certainly hastened the end. Then Scotland became independent, a few years after that Ireland was reunited and Wales left in the 2030s. That’s how England got her independence back. But there were lots of other changes, I mean who could have predicted the break-up of what was then still called the United States of America?

The arguments that won? Well, of course there were some nationalists who said ‘we want our country back’. They were mainly poorer people, not very well-educated, unemployed and so on. Then there were the people who had principles, who just wanted freedom from Establishment tyranny – they were calling on Alfred the Great and other figures from history. They were called the ‘Anti-Normans’. Then there were right-wingers called ‘sovereignists’ and left-wingers called ‘anti-globalists’, but they were a mixture of left and right, as it used to be called. But that was far from the majority. Most people who voted for freedom said that we should continue as a global country and not be locked into a customs union in a little corner of Europe. They were internationalists – I was one of them – we wanted more trade with China, India, Russia and so on. They said staying in the Union would mean suffocation.

The people who did not want to leave were generally rich, in those days, they were what was known as ‘Establishment people’, people in Big Business and organizations that have long since disappeared like ‘The Church of England’ and the ‘BBC’, if you’ve heard of them – they were people who had second homes in Italy and France, that type. They used scare tactics, told everyone we would be dirt poor if we voted for freedom and left.

Then there were the Americans; in those days they controlled everything. They were furious with the vote for freedom and tried to make out the vote had been corrupted. They had various organizations under their colonial control, one was called NATO, another one called the IMF and another one called the World Bank. They’re all dead and buried now. Anyway, from that day on, 24th June, everything changed. I’ve told my great-great grandchildren about it – of course they can’t believe it!

The main thing is in those days a lot of people were very pessimistic, they used to say, if we go on like this, the world will end soon. Well, I’m going to be 104 next year and the world is still here and so am I!’

Ex-Czech President Klaus: EU Exists Because It Is in US’ Interest

http://russia-insider.com/en/why-dont-you-ask-merkel-or-gauck/ri11815?utm_source=Russia+Insider+Daily+Headlines&utm_campaign=b1afd287a0-Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c626db089c-b1afd287a0-183204397&ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=b1afd287a0&mc_eid=5c8d1856f4

European Parliament, Strasbourg, 8 July 2015

Threats and Bullying, But Greece Stood Firm

By Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage tells Alex Tsipras: “Your moment has come -lead the Greek people out of the euro with your head held high”. “Get back your democracy; get back control of your country. Give your people the leadership and the hope that they crave.”

European Parliament, Staatsburg, 8 July 2015

“Thank you. What we’re seeing in this chamber this morning and indeed across the whole of Europe is an irreconcilable cultural difference between Greece and Germany. A split between the North and the South of Europe. The European project is actually beginning to die. Nobody in this room will recognise that the peoples of Europe are saying, we were never asked whether we want in this. This has been foisted upon on us and we need to understand why the EMU doesn’t work. Those monsters Kohl and Mitterrand, backed up by the clever but dangerous Delors believed that if they put in place an economic and monetary union then as night follows day, there would be political union and there would be an acceptance of this project and the North and South of Europe would converge. That we would all start to love each other and we would all start to feel a European identity, that we would all start to show allegiance to the flag and the anthem.

Those, of course, that criticised this were told we were extremists and we lacked vision. Well one vision we didn’t lack is we understood the countries of Europe are different and if you try to force together different people and different economies without first seeking the consent of those people it is unlikely to work and the plan has failed. This isn’t just Greece we’re talking about today, the whole of the Med now finds itself in the wrong currency and yet virtually nobody in the political arena has the courage to stand up and say that. Indeed, I feel that the continent is now divided from North to South, there is a new Berlin wall and it is called the euro. The old enmities have been resumed. Just listen to the way the German leader of the CDU group this morning attacked Mr Tsipras. He was actually disgusting but it shows the way North and South feel about each other.

Mr Tsipras, your country should never have joined the euro, I think you acknowledge that. But the big banks, big business and big politics forced you in. Goldmans Sachs, the German arms manufacturers, they were all very happy when the bailouts began. They weren’t for the Greek people, those bailouts were for French, German and Italian banks. They haven’t helped you at all. These years of austerity, years of high employment and increasing poverty, none of it’s worked. In fact, your debt GDP ratio has gone from 100 percent at the start of the crisis to 180 percent right now. It would be madness sir, to continue on this course.

You have been very brave. You called that referendum. When one of your predecessors tried to do the same the bully boys in Brussels had him removed. They tried their best again, Mr Juncker said you would have to leave the Euro and leave the EU. Even Mr Schulz, the president of the parliament, who one would have thought might have been neutral, said that if the Greeks voted no then power supplies might even go down. There were threats and bullying but the Greeks stood firm. But sir, you cannot have your cake and eat it. They will give you no more these people. They cannot afford to, if they give you more they have to give other Eurozone members more.

So your moment has come, and frankly if you have the courage you should lead the Greek people out of the Eurozone with your head held high. Get back your democracy; get back control of your country. Give your people the leadership and the hope that they crave. Yes it will be tough in the first few months but with a devalued currency and with friends of Greece all over the world, you will recover.

The Fight for Freedom in Europe Continues

The article below was written within days of the G7 meeting in Germany. Thus, those who support the neo-Nazi puppet regime in Kiev, issued a proclamation from Hitler’s villa outside Munich (!)proclaiming a fight against ‘corruption’! Of course, in the real world the ghetto-like G7 is now irrelevant, surpassed by the economies of the five BRICS countries. Indeed, there are those who fight for freedom from US/EU/NATO tyranny and corruption and work for the liberation of the peoples of the Ukraine from the CIA-run Kievan dictatorship. Reader, read on:

Slovak volunteer in the Donbass: “It’s our way of fighting the EU and NATO.”

Posted: 12 Jun 2015 12:05 PM PDT

Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten
June 11, 2016

Translated from the German by Tom Winter

A surprising melange is coming into view at the Ukraine front: Mercenaries from the Czech Republic and Slovakia have shifted over to the Donbass to fight against NATO. Their home countries are powerless: the rebels apparently pay better.

The Slovaks and Czechs who are currently fighting in eastern Ukraine with the volunteer militias against the Kievan Army intend to put together their own unit that would be part of the so-called International Brigade of the 15th Army.

“The Brigade has a lot of Czechs and Slovaks. They get around 350 Euros a month; they live in barracks and are equipped with tanks and armoured personnel carriers,” reports the Slovakian news portal aktuality.sk.

The news portal conducted an interview Monday with a Slovak mercenary soldier, who says that the most prominent Slovak fighter in Ukraine was Martin “Sojka” Keprta, but that he is now hospitalized with injuries from the fighting.

So far as equipment is concerned, the Slovak source says there are old Mosin-Nagant repeating rifles from Soviet times, plus Kalashnikovs of two different calibres, 5.45, and 7.62 mm, and anti-tank weapons, including PTURs,** grenade launcher RPGs, and all the other weapons that they have captured.

When asked about the involvement of Russian officers or commanders in the Eastern Ukraine conflict, the man says: “In our unit there is no Russian commander. Russia helps us politically and morally. They also provide us with humanitarian aid, which is more than necessary. The Russian military doesn’t have to be here on the spot: Every day the admissions committee in Donbass registers five to twenty people, who are signed in and are going to serve. We have, in contrast to the opposite side, of course, a shortage of motorized transport. ”

Then the Slovak mercenary shares the political motivation behind his service in eastern Ukraine. The mercenary, literally: “We see the EU as a dictatorship and NATO as an aggressive pact. This is our way of fighting the EU and NATO.”

On the same day, the Slovak government released an opinion on the investigative report of aktuality.sk. The Slovak newspaper TERAZ Slovensko quoted the Foreign Ministry in Bratislava: “Such adventurers act alone and actively contribute to the destabilization of Ukraine and the undermining of diplomatic efforts. They hurt the foreign policy interests of the Slovak Republic.

“The government keeps an open and clear distance from these adventurers. The priority of the foreign policy of Slovakia remains the stabilization of the situation in Ukraine in order to achieve a peaceful solution to the crisis through diplomatic negotiations. We support the independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and condemn all attempts to escalate the conflict. ”

The spokesman for the Slovak Interior Ministry, Petar Lazarov, on the other hand wanted weigh in “for security and tactical reasons:” “Slovaks who are fighting for a foreign military or their units without authorization from the president face a prison sentence of two to eight years.”

In eastern Ukraine there are numerous mercenaries from Europe. They are fighting against one side or the other. There are also mercenaries of the US company Academi, formerly Blackwater, among them.

**Mosin-Nagant is a five-shot, bolt action rifle first developed in 1891, corresponding to an American Winchester; the PTUR (“bassoon”) is a wire-guided rocket launched from a tripod-mounted tube. Big enough to require a three-man team.]

Translator’s note: There are European politicians pushing for independence from NATO, Wagenknecht in Germany, and Fillon in France, for instance. They won’t go to jail. Mercenaries from Academi won’t go to jail either.

Greece: The Thirst for Freedom Spreads

Every attempt to bring the peoples of Europe under central control has always been catastrophic. Whether it was the centralizing military might of pagan Rome 2,000 years ago, the feudal papal project that opened in the 11th century and lasted until the 16th century, Napoleon 200 years ago, the Central Powers 100 years ago, the Third Reich 75 years ago or the EU Fourth Reich today, centralization under Rome, Paris or Berlin has always brought disaster in its wake. Blinded by their arrogance to the point of self-delusion, the centralizers have never learned from history, but always think that they are cleverer fools than the fools who went before them. Elitists to the core, they have always ignored the people and their thirst for freedom.

The fault-lines of Europe have always been clear. In the Western corner the Protestant North and the Catholic South will never see eye to eye. However much Latin bureaucrats try to force individualistic Protestants into their jesuitical collectivist straitjacket they will not fit, and however much Lutheran-Calvinist Merkels tries to foist Lutheran-Calvinist austerity on Catholics, they will not accept it either. However, beyond that, the 11th century dividing line between Orthodox Europe and the secularist rest in the Western corner is far older and far more fundamental. The attempt by Berlin-Brussels to absorb even the 17% of the Orthodox world of Romania, Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus, let alone the 83% of the Orthodox world in Russia, Serbia, Georgia and the Middle East, has been disastrous. As for the Ukraine, the Eurocrats have blood on their hands.

Through its totally unrealistic promises, which it has been encouraged to make by Washington and its NATO legions, the EU has de facto unleashed a civil war in the Ukraine. This opposes the 80% of the Orthodox Ukrainians with foreign volunteer fighters from Russia, and even from France and Catalonia, to the 20% of the far west Catholic Galicians (formerly in Poland) and their US-paid junta in Kiev. Thousands are dead. In the east dead bodies in NATO uniforms (no doubt belonging to those trained in NATO camps in Lithuania and elsewhere) have been found at Donetsk airport, together with the bodies of foreign mercenaries paid for by the oligarch Kolomoisky, and quantities of US arms.

Meanwhile, young Ukrainians are fleeing abroad from recruiting parties looking for cannon fodder for the junta’s hugely expensive and wasteful war; others who have enough money simply pay the $1,000 as a bribe to get exempted. Civil war threatens to spread to Kharkov in the north and Odessa in the south and in Kiev itself an oligarch coup d’etat against the disastrous puppet Poroshenko is rumoured. Cold and bankruptcy menace the whole country. As for Russian sanctions, they are hitting the EU hard, whether it is Greek fruit-growers, German carmakers, French tourist-operators or Welsh dairy farmers. Indeed, Russia has received open support from seven EU countries, notably from Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Czechia and now from the new democratically-chosen government of Greece.

Thus, Gabriel Avramidis of the right-wing Independent Greeks Party (ANEL) has said that Greece must adjust its geopolitical priorities and turn towards Russia. And ANEL has joined a coalition government with the left-wing party (SYRIZA) which won last Sunday’s parliamentary election. Avramidis said, ‘We believe that Greece should make a geopolitical turn towards the Russian Federation’. It is no coincidence that their leader Panos Kammenos visited Moscow on 15 January. The Russian Minister of Agriculture stated that if Greece comes under EU pressure, Russia is ready to lift the embargo and begin to buy Greek agricultural products with a 30-year treaty. Avramidis also described recent statements that Russia plans to build a gas pipeline to supply natural gas to Central and Eastern Europe via Turkey and Greece and to end the transit of Russian gas to Europe through the Ukraine by 2019 as very important.

Interestingly, the first meeting of the leader of SYRIZA, Tsipras, with a foreign ambassador since being elected Greek Prime Minister was with Russia’s Andrey Maslov. And his first act as PM was to visit a rifle range where the Nazis executed 200 Greeks on 1 May 1944. We have further evidence that Tsipras will substantially realign his country’s national interest away from the west and towards the east. The Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias is due in Brussels on Thursday to discuss possible additional sanctions on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. Before the cabinet even met for the first time, the Greek government said that it disagreed with an EU statement in which Donald Tusk raised the prospect of “further restrictive measures” on Russia.”

In recent months Kotzias has written on Twitter that sanctions against Russia are not in Greece’s interests. And he said in a blog that a new foreign policy for Greece should focus on stopping the ongoing transformation of the EU ‘into an idiosyncratic empire, under the rule of Germany’. Meanwhile, left-wing parties in Scotland and Catalonia want freedom from colonial centres, and right-wing parties in France, England and elsewhere want freedom from Brussels-Berlin. They defy the EU Superclass and fight for faith, heritage and sovereignty. The war for freedom which began in the Ukraine last year is spreading.

An Interview with Popular Russian Author and Politician Nikolai Starikov

The new elections in the western Ukraine (they did not take place elsewhere) have, with a small turnout and reports of widespread rigging, re-elected the corrupt oligarch leader, who calls himself ‘Poroshenko’ (his mother’s surname), as head of the Kiev junta. Having lost the support of the Church and the masses, with support only from nationalistic sects, his Ukraine faces bankruptcy. The USA and the EU which installed the present regime have no money to subsidize it. With two lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their defeated troops scurrying to leave both countries, the Middle East in a bloodbath because of Western-armed and financed Islamic terrorists, terrorism throughout northern Africa, ebola in western Africa and a China which has overtaken the USA, the Western world, itself bankrupt, has cares other than the backward and provincial Ukraine.

With winter coming, the anti-Church Poroshenko has ordered temperatures inside Ukrainian homes not to exceed 15 degrees Celsius (60 Fahrenheit). The only warm homes in the Ukraine are in the Crimea, which voluntarily returned en masse to Russia after a 60-year occupation by the Ukraine, and in the newly-liberated areas of the eastern Ukraine which have regained their freedom from the neo-Nazi tyranny in Kiev, which suppresses free speech and internet and censors the media. Meanwhile, the US-ordered civil war against the Free Ukraine continues in the east and the north and the south, further draining the Kiev’s finances. In a word, the Ukrainian tragedy continues. Below we reprint an interview with a popular Russian Orthodox historian on the current situation in the Ukraine:

(http://russia-insider.com/en/tv_politics_ukraine_christianity_society/2014/10/27/08-26-19am/heres_what_russians_really_think).

Nikolay Starikov, a historian, is an extremely popular author and blogger from St. Petersburg. Several of his books are current best-sellers. He is on TV all the time, one of the most visible of a new type of up-and-coming politician. He recently founded The Great Fatherland Party, a conservative, patriotic party which espouses Christian values. The thing to understand is that he is very mainstream. He echoes what a majority of Russians believe.

Part of his success is that he is very articulate and intellectual. On TV, he often plays a professorial role, explaining complex subjects in terms people can understand – history, economics, current events. He has a very reasonable, matter-of-fact, cut-to-the-chase demeanour and it is a hit with the public. If you want to understand what Russia is thinking, and where it is heading, pay attention to this man. Here is the interview with him:

You say you are a “nationalist” Russian. Whom do you consider Russian? Are Russian values different from Ukrainian values?

Russians and Ukrainians are one people. 100 years ago there were Great Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians), and White Russians (Belarussians). These definitions are more appropriate than current designations. It is not offensive to say “Little Russia” because it just means “original,” with Kiev the Russian city from which all of Russia originated.

Therefore, Ukrainians and Russians are the same people with slight cultural, culinary, and linguistic differences.

Being Russian is not just ethnicity but a specific world view.

Overall, there are no separate values between Russians and Ukrainians, who, along with other nationalities comprise a big “Russian world”.

Are there any values that are specific to the Russian world and are different from, say, European or American values?

Yes. The main difference is their goal in life. In the Russian world, the goal of life is to follow certain morals and commonly held values, such as duty. Western traditions are more egotistical, living for oneself. Today’s Western consumer society is a direct result of that.

If I could sum it up, being Russian means serving God. In the West, it is more of an agreement with God.

Is there room for cooperation between these different civilizations?

It is not only possible, but we must find a compromise. The problem, however, is that there needs to be an effort from both sides. There was a search for compromise between 1945 and 1991.

Now the West does not want to listen to Russia, it does not want to see Russia on the world map. A good example is current American attempts to pit two parts of the same people [Ukrainians and Russians] against each other.

Russians are ready for a compromise. But we are not the ones instigating civil war in Canada or Mexico.

So what do you think accounts for what you see as anti-Russian American policy?

First, I have no doubt that America is behind the Ukrainian coup, much like the coups in Libya, Syria and other countries, and even in friendly countries like Egypt.

The reasons are the same as the reasons behind World War I and World War II: to weaken competitors and make the dollar—and now keep the dollar— as the only reserve currency.

In our interview with Denis Pushilin (former leader of one of the regions in East Ukraine), he said he would like to see Donetsk as part of a Russian Empire. What are your views on this statement?

I think Mr. Pushilin has a rather narrow view. We must talk not just about Donetsk and Lugansk, but about the entire territory of present-day Ukraine.

This territory is the cradle of the Russian world and I would like to see Ukraine as a part of it. If certain parts of Ukraine don’t want to be a part of the Eurasian Union or Customs Union, then they can choose to go in another direction. That is what we are talking about when we talk about the federalization of Ukraine. But right now there are attempts to suppress the will of the eastern Ukrainian people with military force. It should be up to the locals to decide which path they take.

How can the conflict in Ukraine be resolved?

There are usually two ways. One is a military victory of one side over the other. The other way is for the two sides to lay down their arms and start negotiating. Right now, the Ukrainian government, which came to power as a result of a coup, is being backed by the West and that is why it has adopted such an inflexible line towards eastern Ukraine.

If Europe and America would tell Ukraine to start negotiating, they would do so immediately because they are essentially puppets of the Washington regime.

If they are Washington’s puppets, why is President Putin calling for dialogue with them?

In order for the bloodshed to stop, you must negotiate with someone. Mr. Putin, along with millions of Russians, considers the current Ukrainian government as simply being amoral politicians. But in order to stop the fighting, we must talk with someone.

What is your opinion on the recent presidential elections in the Ukraine?

I am ready to consider them legitimate as soon as the United States approves of the recent Syrian elections that took place amid a military conflict.

Many experts have suggested that what Russia really wants is a frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine, which it could then use to its own advantage. What is your assessment of this claim?

Russia does not want any conflicts on its borders, as they may spill over into Russia. For the United States this is a distant conflict and most State Department officials cannot find Ukraine on a map.

You have repeatedly referred to the government in Kiev as “fascist.” Besides claims that they are using military force against civilians, what other similarities do you see between Kiev and Nazi Germany?

If people see Hitler and those who fought alongside Nazis as their idols, can we not call these people Nazis?

You are talking about Stepan Bandera [the Ukraine nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis during their invasion of the Soviet Union]?

Yes.

Can you name some specific organizations or people that you consider “Nazis”?

Right Sector, Svoboda, and anyone who marches through the streets with posters of Bandera.

You have mentioned earlier that only a small minority of people in eastern Ukraine have taken up arms. What accounts for such a small number of those willing to fight?

There is nothing new about this. Even during the Russian civil war, tens of millions of people did not take up arms. Most normal people are usually hesitant to fight, thinking any crisis will just blow over.

And yet the Maidan protests attracted thousands of people.
Yes, but I don’t think they all signed up to join Right Sector and went to fight in the East.

We are not talking about military matters, but simply people showing up to express support for their point of view.
There were also two million people who voted for secession in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. There are only about four thousand people who are ready to fight, and those are people who signed up for the Ukrainian National Guard. The Eastern separatists have more people than that.

What is the future of Russia-NATO relations?

I see a future of relations that are courteous and without constant provocations, such as the ones by NATO against Russia. Our American colleagues would understand our position better if we wanted to put a couple hundred missiles in Mexico and Canada. They should remember the rather strong reaction by President John Kennedy to Soviet attempts to put missiles in Cuba.

Those defending NATO expansion say that those countries wanted to be part of NATO.

Okay. But Cuba also wanted to house Soviet missiles voluntarily.
If America did not object to Russian missiles in Cuba, would you support Ukraine joining NATO?

That would be a great trust-building measure on their part, and Russia would feel that America is a friend.