New Zealand is under siege by the Atlas Network

We have a handful of years to achieve a monumental shift from fossil fuel towards renewable energy: Atlas partners aim to ensure this does not take place.

March 3, 2024, by: Lucy Hamilton,  https://theaimn.com/new-zealand-is-under-siege-by-the-atlas-network/—

Just as the Atlas Network-connected Advance body intervened in the Voice referendum in Australia and, in recent weeks, a by-election, similar organisations spawned from the American model are distorting New Zealand’s politics from within as well as from without.

One of the key researchers into the Atlas Network, Lee Fang, observed that it has “reshaped political power in country after country.” In America, every Republican president since Ronald Reagan has begun office with a Roadmap provided by the Heritage Foundation, primary Atlas Network partner. The “Mandate” for 2025 puts America on a hard path to fascism should a Republican win in November. Britain’s economy and standing have been savaged by Atlas partners’ impacts on the Tories. In New Zealand, the recently-elected rightwing coalition government is aping the new “Atlas president” of Argentina, aiming to privatise national assets, but is increasingly also imitating Atlas strategies recently seen in Australia, inflaming racial tensions and harming the wellbeing of Māori people.

Dr Jeremy Walker called Australia’s attention to the local Atlas partner organisations’ impact on the Voice to Parliament referendum and is now helping draw together the focus on the New Zealand partners’ very similar distortion of their national debate. There is a deep racism at the heart of this ultra-free market ideology that has licensed the international right to exploit resources and people around the globe untrammelled, largely in American corporate interest, but more broadly for any corporation or allied sector big enough to be a contender. (They do not, by contrast, fight for the renewable energy sector’s interests, as a competitor to their dominant fossil fuel donors; this shapes their climate crisis denial and delay, and colours their loathing of First People’s capacity to interfere with their profits by environment-driven protest. A sense of Western Civilisation as the apex of human existence and deep disdain for non-Western cultures also pervade the network.)

The Atlas model is to connect and foster talent in the neoliberal sphere. Young men (mostly) are funded or trained to replicate the talking points that Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWI) and lobbyists have built into a global network of over 500 bodies in 100 nations. The fact that neoliberal orthodoxies are more religious ideology that fact-based theories explains why their impact has been so utterly disastrous everywhere they have reshaped societies. The goal is to spawn replicating bodies with benign-sounding names that promote the UHNWI and corporate talking points – but with a veil hiding the self-interest that is obvious when those groups speak for themselves. Some of the bodies feign being thinktanks, which George Monbiot recently renamed junktanks to clarify their disingenuousness. Others are “astroturf” organisations that pretend to be grass roots bodies representing popular opinion. Another model is the beach-head in universities, an independent organisation within those institutions intended to dignify the neoliberal religion and the chosen strategies, including climate denial. All these produce material to fill civic debate and train more acolytes to enter politics, strategy companies and junktanks. Mainstream media elevates their standing by hosting their operatives as experts without explaining that the benign-sounding organisation to which they belong is a foreign-influence operation’s local outlet.

These groups damage local conditions to favour international corporations. They lobby for the removal of the “regulations” that are actually protections for the public – as workers, as consumers, as residents. They push for the privatisation of national treasures so that (often foreign) corporations can exploit the profits at the expense of the public. The greater the damage to the local democracy, the easier it is for them to act unimpeded. The stronger their infiltration of the media, the harder it is for the local electorate to understand the stakes. The politicians and strategists that emerge from the sphere (or are its allies) know that none of this wins votes, so they fill the space with culture war division to distract the voter from paying attention. Race and sexuality are their most obvious targets, as reactionary nostalgia for a mythical past of white picket fences pervades their ideology: a valorisation of “Christianity” and “family” and the “sacredness of marriage” (preached by adulterous politicians) is equally apparent in their propaganda.

The coalition that took power in NZ late in 2023, after a campaign centred on attacking the country’s founding Waitangi Treaty, has considerable Atlas infiltration. There is concern about Atlas fossil fuel and associated tobacco interests perverting policy in parliament, as well as senior ministerial aides who might be compromised. The government has promised to repeal Jacinda Ardern’s ban on offshore gas and fuel exploration, plans to sell water to private interests, not to mention planning to enable the selling off of “sensitive” NZ land and assets to foreign corporations, just as Argentinian Milei is intending.’

One of the government members, the Act Party, began its existence as an Atlas partner thinktank and continues that close connection. It was founded by former parliamentarian Denis Quigley with two members of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), the Atlas Network’s inner sanctum. One, Roger Douglas, was responsible for Rogernomics in NZ which has been described as a “right wing coup” that worked to “dismantle the welfare state.” The other, Alan Gibbs, who has been characterised as the godfather of the party, and a major funder, argued Act ought to campaign for government to privatise “all the schools, all the hospitals and all the roads.” This may not be surprising since he made much of his fortune out of the privatisation of NZ’s telecommunications.

The Act Party is currently led by David Seymour who functions as a co-deputy prime minister in the government. He has worked almost his entire adult life within Atlas partner bodies in Canada and boasts a (micro) MBA dispensed by the Network.

Fatal Flaws Undermine America’s Defense Industrial Base

“military industrial complex” has grown to such proportions that it is no longer subordinated to the government and national interests, but rather the government and national interests are subordinated to it.

the collective West has organized itself as a profit-driven rather than purpose-driven society………………………………across the collective West, the defense industry, like all other industries in the West, exists solely to maximize profits.

By Brian Berletic, Orinoco Tribune. February 24, 2024  https://popularresistance.org/fatal-flaws-undermine-americas-defense-industrial-base/

The first-ever US Department of Defense National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) confirms what many analysts have concluded in regard to the unsustainable nature of Washington’s global-spanning foreign policy objectives and its defense industrial base’s (DIB) inability to achieve them.

The report lays out a multitude of problems plaguing the US DIB including a lack of surge capacity, inadequate workforce, off-shore downstream suppliers, as well as insufficient “demand signals” to motivate private industry partners to produce what’s needed, in the quantities needed, when it is needed.

In fact, the majority of the problems identified by the report involved private industry and its unwillingness to meet national security requirements because they were not profitable.

For example, the report attempts to explain why many companies across the US DIB lack advanced manufacturing capabilities, claiming:

Prior to the invasion, weapon procurements for some of the in-demand systems were driven by annual training requirements and ongoing combat operations. This modest demand, along with recent market dynamics, drove companies to divest excess capacity due to cost. This meant that any increased production requirements would require an increase in workforce hours in existing facilities—commonly referred to as “surge” capacity. These, in turn, were limited further by similar down-stream considerations of workforce, facility, and supply chain limitations.

Costs are most certainly a consideration across any defense industry, but costs cannot be the primary consideration.

A central element of Russia’s defense industry is Rostec, a massive state-owned enterprise under which hundreds of companies related to national industrial needs including defense are organized. Rostec is profitable. However, the industrial concerns organized under Rostec serve purposes related to Russia’s national interests first and foremost, be it national health, infrastructure or security.

Because Russia’s defense industry is purpose-driven, it produced military equipment because it was necessary, not because it was profitable. As a result, Russia possessed huge stockpiles of ammunition and equipment ahead of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022. In addition to this, Russia maintained large amounts of surge capacity enabling production rates of everything from artillery shells to armored vehicles to expand quickly over the past 2 years.

Only relatively recently have Western analysts acknowledged this.

Many elements of the traditional DIB have yet to adopt advanced manufacturing technologies, as they struggle to develop business cases for needed capital investment.

In other words, while adopting advanced manufacturing technologies would fulfill the purpose of the US Department of Defense, it is not profitable for private industry to do so.

Despite virtually all the problems the report identifies stemming from private industry’s disproportionate influence over the US DIB, the report never identifies private industry itself as a problem.

If private industry and its prioritization of profits is the central problem inhibiting the DIB from fulfilling its purpose, the obvious solution is nationalizing the DIB by replacing private industry with state-owned enterprises. This allows the government to prioritize purpose over profits. Yet in the United States and across Europe, the so-called “military industrial complex” has grown to such proportions that it is no longer subordinated to the government and national interests, but rather the government and national interests are subordinated to it.

US defense industrial strategy built on a flawed premise

Beyond private industry’s hold on the US DIB, the very premise the NDIS is built on is fundamentally flawed, deeply rooted in private industry’s profit-driven prioritization.

The report claims:

The purpose of this National Defense Industrial Strategy is to drive development of an industrial ecosystem that provides a sustained competitive advantage to the United States over its adversaries.

The notion of the United States perpetually expanding its wealth and power across the globe, unrivaled by its so-called “adversaries” is unrealistic.

China alone has a population 4-5 times greater than the US. China’s population is, in fact, larger than that of the G7 combined. China has a larger industrial base, economy, and education system than the US. China’s education system not only produces millions more graduates each year in essential fields like science, technology, and engineering than the US, the proportion of such graduates is higher in China than in the US.

China alone possesses the means to maintain a competitive advantage over the United States now and well into the foreseeable future. The US, attempting to draw up a strategy to maintain an advantage over China (not to mention over the rest of the world) regardless of these realities, borders on delusion.

Yet for 60 pages, US policymakers attempt to lay out a strategy to do just that.

Not just China, but also Russia

While China is repeatedly mentioned as America’s “pacing challenge,” the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is perhaps the most acute example of a shifting balance of global power.

Despite a combined population, GDP, and military budget many times greater than Russia’s, the collective West is incapable of matching Russian production of even relatively simple munitions like artillery shells, let alone more complex systems like tanks, aircraft, and precision-guided missiles.

While the US and its allies appear to have every conceivable advantage over Russia on paper, the collective West has organized itself as a profit-driven rather than purpose-driven society.

In Russia, the defense industry exists to serve national security. While one might believe this goes without saying, across the collective West, the defense industry, like all other industries in the West, exists solely to maximize profits.

To best serve national security, the defense industry is required to maintain substantial surge capacity – meaning additional, unused factory space, machines, and labor on standby if and when large surges in production are required in relatively short periods of time. Across the West, in order to maximize profits, surge capacity has been ruthlessly slashed, deemed economically inefficient. Only rare exceptions exist, such as US 155 mm artillery shell production.

While the West’s defense industry remains the most profitable on Earth, its ability to actually churn out arms and ammunition in the quantities and quality required for large-scale conflict is clearly compromised by its maximization of profits.

The result is evident today as the West struggles to expand production of arms and ammunition for its Ukrainian proxies.

The NDIS report would note:

Prior to the invasion, weapon procurements for some of the in-demand systems were driven by annual training requirements and ongoing combat operations. This modest demand, along with recent market dynamics, drove companies to divest excess capacity due to cost. This meant that any increased production requirements would require an increase in workforce hours in existing facilities—commonly referred to as “surge” capacity. These, in turn, were limited further by similar down-stream considerations of workforce, facility, and supply chain limitations.

Costs are most certainly a consideration across any defense industry, but costs cannot be the primary consideration.

A central element of Russia’s defense industry is Rostec, a massive state-owned enterprise under which hundreds of companies related to national industrial needs including defense are organized. Rostec is profitable. However, the industrial concerns organized under Rostec serve purposes related to Russia’s national interests first and foremost, be it national health, infrastructure or security.

Because Russia’s defense industry is purpose-driven, it produced military equipment because it was necessary, not because it was profitable. As a result, Russia possessed huge stockpiles of ammunition and equipment ahead of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022. In addition to this, Russia maintained large amounts of surge capacity enabling production rates of everything from artillery shells to armored vehicles to expand quickly over the past 2 years.

Only relatively recently have Western analysts acknowledged this.

Sad Clown with the Circus Closed Down*: Zelenskiy’s Demise

When it comes to love for the limelight and delusions of grandeur, Zelenskiy outstrips most politicians and not least of all Putin. Almost all politicians are egoistic, but Zelenskiy is narcissistic.

Zelenskiy’s inexperience and ego likely played pivotal roles in his disastrous decision-making.

Zelenskiy himself remained mired in personal corruption as the Pandora Papers demonstrated

Zelenskiy’s failures also have made him eminently expendable

by GORDONHAHN , December 11, 2023,  https://gordonhahn.com/2023/12/11/sad-clown-with-the-circus-closed-down-zelenskiys-demise/—

Introduction

         Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zeleneksiy appears to be at the end of the line politically and perhaps biologically. Portraying himself as a fighter for peace, anti-corruption, and full democratization when he ran for and won the presidency in 2019, he proceeded to lead the country into war, further corruption, and de-republicanization (authoritarianization).

On both a personal and global level this is high tragedy. A superb comedian and actor stars in a television fictional series as the president of Ukraine, rises in popularity, wins the country’s presidency on a peace platform, and leads the country into a catastrophic, easily avoidable war that threatens the survival of his country and himself.

The unreality of Ukraine refracts in our century of simulacra and disinformation through this icon moved from the television screen to real life politics, and the tragedy of it all is sold as a heroic triumph on the road to universal democracy, peace, and brotherhood.

In the real world, however, there is a rub. The country is historically divided along every conceivable line (ethnic, linguistic, cultural, political, ideological, economic, and social), an almost accidental state cobbled together by communists but claimed by hapless republicans and determined ultra-nationalists. Thus, Zelenskiy becomes president of a fundamentally divided country further riven by schism as a result of two ‘revolutions’ – really revolts – and a civil war compounded by foreign (Russian) intervention.

                  ****************************

Zelenskiy’s emergence and victory are as surreal as the Maidan regime of which he assumed leadership. 

The warmonger neocons, run the show of the puppet figurehead Biden.

Contribution from readers Tom and Sue Millon, 10 July 23

For Republicans and corrupt democrats, it’s never been about the debt of the USA or ending devastating military conflict. It has never been about domestic tranquility. As the arch neocon Dick Cheney said, “Reagan taught us that the debt doesn’t matter.” It’s about re-allocating the federal budget to the people who put you in office: arms makers, the military. oil companies, slumlords, tech giants. If you don’t have a lobbyist, a PAC or a dark money conduit, you don’t count for a damn thing in Washington dc. America and the world is paying the price of this. The neocons run Biden now. Their think tanks and focus, are heavily funded by arms makers and the military. The warmonger neocons, run the show of the puppet figurehead Biden.
Their goals are out of touch with anything that is rational. They are not preventing the escalation of this potential nuclear confrontation, they are encouraging it.

Eve Ottenberg
From the human-caused climate catastrophe to a nuclear showdown between Washington and Moscow or Beijing, to fascism ascendant, three terrifying disasters loom over humanity like the shadow of death. These threats have lurked for some years, but the Ukraine war, facilitated by Joe Biden’s arrival in the white house in 2021 and his pronounced aggressiveness toward Moscow, shifted nuclear Armageddon to center stage and pushed the doomsday clock close to midnight.

Trust between the Kremlin and western governments vanished long ago, so it’s hard to see how this calamity ever gets resolved. Russian officials watched the U.S. fork over more than $30 billion in armament to Ukraine with billions more in the pipeline, arm neo-Nazis, whitewash them and cover Kiev’s government payroll. They’ve seen (and often destroyed) the weapons Washington sent. Those weapons would never include long-range missiles that could strike inside Russia, Biden promised. Well, that oath wasn’t worth the toilet paper it was written on. The U.S. would never provide Ukraine with tanks, Biden swore up and down – until he changed his mind. American fighter jets, he gave his word, would not fly in Ukraine. Well, now we see what his word is worth. What next? NATO troops in Ukraine? Because then the bombing of U.S., European and Russian cities will commence. It’s called World War III. Biden knows this. So do the Russians. And despite their loud protests in the face of this nonstop U.S. escalation, they have become ominously quiet about their red lines.

Once upon a time in Bucharest back in 2008, Moscow basically told the west that if its neighbor Kiev joined NATO, that would be the end of Ukraine. Feckless Eurocrats and birdbrain American presidents did not listen. Years passed. Washington sponsored a coup against the duly, legally elected leader of Ukraine in 2014, then installed a west friendly, Russophobic regime, or perhaps more accurately a puppet, whose idiotic economic policies led to a population outflow of millions of Ukrainians, as Washington proceeded massively to arm and train far-right fanatics.

Through all of this, until December 2021, Moscow only protested about its red lines in general terms. It also periodically indicated it might snap. Then, in late 2021, the Kremlin sent detailed letters to Washington, listing Russian security concerns, chiefly that Ukraine should not join NATO. Moscow also was alarmed at the fate of Donbas Russians, 12,000 of whom Ukraine had slaughtered since 2014 and on whose borders Kiev had massed troops and, in early 2022, dramatically stepped up assaults, as noted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Such a deadly uptick signaled assault and possibly ethnic-cleansing for Russian-speaking Ukrainians. But the U.S. blithely responded with hokum about NATO being a defensive organization. Hokum any half-wit can see right through by looking at U.S. missiles in Poland and Romania, two countries that border Russia.

Washington also insisted on every country’s sacred right to join NATO, though decades ago when Moscow mentioned joining, it got the cold shoulder; apparently Russia did not have that right. So the Kremlin could be excused for regarding NATO as a hostile military axis. Indeed, as our leading public intellectual Noam Chomsky said, “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was clearly provoked, while the U.S. invasion of Iraq was clearly unprovoked.” (He also said whataboutism is “otherwise known as elementary honesty.”) Both invaders wrecked the target country, Russia more slowly, but make no mistake, that will be the outcome if this war doesn’t end soon.

The moral of the story is that if you can avoid war, that is a very good idea. If someone says “I will attack, if you don’t stop threatening me,” well, listen. The peacemakers are blessed, but sadly they were absent from the world’s imperial capital, Washington, in December of 2021. Currently they are absent everywhere they are needed, period.

So now, thanks to Biden, we stare down the barrel of nuclear war. The alternative in 2024 will likely be Trump, who promises accessories like martial law, a presidency for life, show trials of his political enemies and possibly nuclear war with China, in short, fascism. For this lousy choice we can blame our corrupt plutocracy and its media parasites. Put another way, those who rise to the top in Washington are not the cream of the crop, but the cream that curdled, years ago. Obama, Bush, Clinton – slick hustlers all, who slaughtered innocents across the globe, and all very short-sighted about anything other than looking out for the main chance, even if it meant bombing helpless residents of impoverished nations.

Meanwhile in the U.S. imperial capital, blood-soaked neocons run the show. This led to events May 26, when Russia’s foreign ministry summoned U.S. diplomats “over what it called ‘provocative statements’ by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan,” according to RT. “The American official was de facto supporting Ukrainian strikes against Russian territory.” Given that Sullivan’s up to his elbows in blood for his responsibility in this Ukrainian debacle, the blood of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and tens of thousands of Russian ones, I’m not surprised he was, de facto or otherwise, basically advocating World War III. Moscow called his endorsement of Ukrainian attacks on Russia “hypocritical and untruthful.” That’s called understatement.

Sullivan, secretary of state Antony Blinken and his undersecretary Victoria Nuland are in charge in Washington, instead of the unfocussed, forgetful figurehead, Joe Biden, and they want war, for decades, if they so choose.

Inauspiciously, sane, non-neocons now resign from the Biden regime en masse, a development covered in depth by Moon of Alabama May 25. Rick Waters, head of the state department’s “China House” leaves his post. After the ridiculous spy balloon hysteria, with its wild delusions of assault and evil designs by a mortal enemy, Waters was one of the more rational actors, trying to limit the damage, reportedly emailing state department staff to postpone some sanctions and export controls on China, you know, moves that could have been viewed as, um, hostile.

Also dispiriting to those hoping to restrain imperial war schemes, deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman announced her retirement. Sherman backed the original Iran nuclear pact and pushed hard to get an inept Biden administration to return to it, something, contrary to campaign promises, Biden couldn’t manage to do. As a result, the Middle East teeters constantly on the edge of regional war, which the pact would have helped prevent. Colin Kahl, a defense undersecretary departs this summer. He opposed escalating the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. Nor was he popular with lunatic Sinophobes. To make the loss of these realists even worse, Biden tapped a ferocious China hawk to head the joint chiefs of staff, thus replacing the less rabid though rather ineffectual Mark Milley. All these moves spell trouble. They mean maniacal warmongers run the empire.

So the situation has deteriorated dangerously, and this is what Chomsky predicted if Washington didn’t face the “ugly” post-invasion choice of rewarding Moscow by enforcing Kiev’s neutrality and the Minsk Accords for the Donbas. No one has documented the U.S. empire’s depravity as long and relentlessly as Chomsky. His new book, Illegitimate Authority, continues this effort, singling out the triad of cataclysms – climate collapse, nuclear war and fascism – thundering in humanity’s front yard like the crack of doom. These interviews, collected from Truthout, at first zero in on how rich countries burning oil, gas and coal have crushed anything resembling a normal climate, with a few that focus on rising fascism.

For Republicans and corrupt democrats, it’s never been about the debt. As the arch neocon Dick Cheney said, “Reagan taught us that the debt doesn’t matter.” It’s about re-allocating the federal budget to the people who put you in office: arms makers, the military. oil companies, slumlords, tech giants, If you don’t have a lobbyist, a PAC or a dark money conduit, you don’t count for a damn thing in washington dc. Same goes for the , neocons whose think tanks are and focus, are heavily funded by arms makers and the military. The warmonger neocons, that run the show of the demented old, puppet figurehead biden.
Their goals are out of touch with anything that is rational. They are not preventing the escalation of this potential nuclear confrontation, they are encouraging it.

But when the book reaches early 2022, it shifts its emphasis to Ukraine. Chomsky is well aware of Washington’s provocations, while regarding Moscow’s response to them as criminal. He quotes Eastern Europe specialist Richard Sakwa: “NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage threats provoked by its enlargement.” Well, now NATO has provoked a threat that, according to one whose hands are red with blood from this war, Nuland, could last “16 years.”

Chomsky also addresses the imbecilic fantasy of regime change, noting that historically this has led to worse, more extreme leaders, for which he cites a convincing discussion by Andrew Cockburn. Chomsky called NATO dreams of overthrowing Vladimir Putin “foolish,” because someone far more menacing would very likely take over. Among Kremlin leaders, Putin is, in fact, a moderate, with far less of an appetite for war than the others who advocated invading Ukraine for years, while he demurred.

In March 2022, when neutral countries sponsored talks between Moscow and Kiev, Chomsky warned, “negotiations will get nowhere if the U.S. persists in its adamant refusal to join…and if the press continues to insist that the public remain in the dark by refusing even to report Zelensky’s proposals.” Well, nowhere is exactly where they went, thanks to the then U.K. prime minister, the buffoonish Boris Johnson, who jetted into Kiev, allegedly at Biden’s behest, and clarified to Zelensky that while the Ukrainian president might be ready for peace, the west was not. That scuttled the talks.

That’s where we are now. Washington just extracted itself from losing a 20-year military quagmire in Afghanistan. Now it’s up to its neck in a proxy war its boosters say could last decades. Unfortunately for the imperial team, its opponent in this latest bloodletting is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. This is not some helpless undeveloped country that Washington can bully and then prevaricate about pusillanimous American behavior not amounting to a military defeat. Russia is a great power and a nuclear one.

The British-American coup that ended Australian independence

Guardian, John Pilger, Thu 23 Oct 2014

In 1975 prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died this week [Oct 2014], dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy. The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price.

Across the media and political establishment in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.

Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.

……………………………………… Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner which, as Edward Snowden revealed recently, allows the US to spy on everyone. “Try to screw us or bounce us,” the prime minister warned the US ambassador, “[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention”

Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.”

Pine Gap’s top-secret messages were decoded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the decoders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the “deception and betrayal of an ally”. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and referred to the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as “our man Kerr”.

Kerr was not only the Queen’s man, he had longstanding ties to Anglo-American intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, The Crimes of Patriots, as “an elite, invitation-only group … exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA”. The CIA “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige … Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”.

When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term, in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”……………………………..

The Americans and British worked together. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain’s MI6 was operating against his government. “The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,” he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, “We knew MI6 was bugging cabinet meetings for the Americans.” In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the “Whitlam problem” had been discussed “with urgency” by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: “Kerr did what he was told to do.”

…………………………….. On 11 November – the day Whitlam was to inform parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.

John Pilger’s investigation into the coup against Whitlam is described in full in his book, A Secret Country (Vintage), and in his documentary film, Other People’s Wars, which can be viewed on http://www.johnpilger.com/

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence

Return to Russia: Crimeans Tell the Real Story of the 2014 Referendum and Their Lives Since — RADIATION FREE LAKELAND

Originally posted on In Gaza: Crimeans gather with Russian national and Crimea flags in Sevastopol, Crimea, March 14, 2018. Alexander Zemlianichenko | AP Eva Bartlett traveled to Crimea to see firsthand out how Crimeans have fared since 2014 when their country reunited with Russia, and what the referendum was really like. October 9, 2019, Mint…

Return to Russia: Crimeans Tell the Real Story of the 2014 Referendum and Their Lives Since — RADIATION FREE LAKELAND

SIMFEROPOL, CRIMEA — In early August I traveled to Russia for the first time, partly out of interest in seeing some of the vast country with a tourist’s eyes, partly to do some journalism in the region. It also transpired that while in Moscow I was able to interview Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry.

High on my travel list, however, was to visit Crimea and Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) — the former a part of Russia, the latter an autonomous republic in the east of Ukraine, neither accurately depicted in Western reporting. Or at least that was my sense looking at independent journalists’ reports and those in Russian media.

Both regions are native Russian-speaking areas; both opted out of Ukraine in 2014. In the case of Crimea, joining Russia (or actually rejoining, as most I spoke to in Crimea phrased it) was something people overwhelmingly supported. In the case of the Donbass region, the turmoil of Ukraine’s Maidan coup in 2014 set things in motion for the people in the region to declare independence and form the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

In March 2014, Crimeans held a referendum during which 96 percent of voters chose to join Russia. This has been heavily disputed in Western media, with claims that Crimeans were forced to hold the referendum and claims of Russian troops on the streets “occupying” the peninsula.

Because Western media insisted the referendum was a sham held under duress, and because they bandy about the term “pro-Russian separatists” for the people of the DPR, I decided to go and speak to people in these areas to hear what they actually want and feel.

From the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula………………………………………………………………

In the evening, we stay in the home of Vlad’s friend Tata, a Russian woman who moved to Crimea in 2012.

Since there was so much hype in Western media about a Russian takeover of the peninsula, I ask the burning questions: Were Crimeans forced to take part in the referendum? What was the mood like around that time? Tata replies:

“I never saw so many people in my life go out to vote, of their own free will. There was a period before the referendum, maybe about two months, during which there were two holidays: International Women’s Day, March 8, and Defender of the Fatherland Day, February 23.

……………………………………………………………I never saw tanks, I never saw Russian soldiers. I never saw any of that in the city.”

I ask Tata about how life had changed after the referendum:………………………………….

After the Soviet Union collapsed, it wasn’t the will of the Crimean people to join Ukraine. People were always Russian here; they always identified as Russian. Ukraine understood this well, and put nothing into Crimea, as punishment. Ukraine didn’t build any hospitals, kindergartens or roads.

In the past four years, the Crimean government has built 200 new kindergartens. This is the most obvious example of how things have improved. They also built the new Simferopol airport.

I worked in aviation. It took three years to build an airport of this standard in Yekaterinburg, Russia. It took half a year in Simferopol.”

International Jazz Festival……………………………………………………….

Construction everywhere……………………………………….

I remark on how kind and gentle people are here, as in Russia. Vlad replies:

“It shouldn’t be surprising — people are people anywhere. But Western media conditions us with stereotypes of Russians as cold and hard, vilifying an entire nation.”

The coastal city of Yalta lies further west along the peninsula. The drive there the following day is more beautiful still, the road flanked by mountains to one side, hills cascading down to the Black Sea on the other, endless wineries and, before Yalta itself, the stunning cliff-top castle known as “Swallow’s Nest.”

In the evening, we stay in the home of Vlad’s friend Tata, a Russian woman who moved to Crimea in 2012.

Since there was so much hype in Western media about a Russian takeover of the peninsula, I ask the burning questions: Were Crimeans forced to take part in the referendum? What was the mood like around that time? Tata replies:

“I never saw so many people in my life go out to vote, of their own free will. There was a period before the referendum, maybe about two months, during which there were two holidays: International Women’s Day, March 8, and Defender of the Fatherland Day, February 23.

Normally, people would go away on vacation during these holidays. But that year, Crimeans didn’t go anywhere; they wanted to be sure they were here during the referendum. We felt the sense of a miracle about to happen. People were anxiously awaiting the referendum.

There were military tents in the city, but they were not erected by the military, but by local men. They would stand there every day, and people could come and sign a document calling for a referendum.

I went one day and asked if I could add my name but I couldn’t, because I have a Russian passport. Only Crimean citizens could sign it. This was the fair way to do it.

At that time, my husband was in America. One day, he was watching CNN and got scared and called me because he saw reports of soldiers in the streets, an ‘invasion’ by Russia.

The local navy came from Sevastopol to Yalta and anchored their ships off the coast, made a blockade to ensure no larger Ukrainian or other ships could come and attack.

But I never saw tanks, I never saw Russian soldiers. I never saw any of that in the city.”

I ask Tata about how life had changed after the referendum:

When I came here in December 2012, everything was dilapidated and run down. The nice roads you were driving on, they didn’t exist when we were a part of Ukraine. I didn’t understand why Crimea was still a part of Ukraine. It was Russian land ever since the Tsars, the imperial time of Russia. This is where the Russian soul is, and the soul of the Russian navy.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, it wasn’t the will of the Crimean people to join Ukraine. People were always Russian here; they always identified as Russian. Ukraine understood this well, and put nothing into Crimea, as punishment. Ukraine didn’t build any hospitals, kindergartens or roads.

In the past four years, the Crimean government has built 200 new kindergartens. This is the most obvious example of how things have improved. They also built the new Simferopol airport.

I worked in aviation. It took three years to build an airport of this standard in Yekaterinburg, Russia. It took half a year in Simferopol.”

Finally, after night falls, we drive into the city of Koktebel, where an annual Jazz Festival is starting.

During all these hours of driving, the roads are smooth and well-trafficked, and I don’t see a single Russian military vehicle.

The next day, I walk through Koktebel, taking in the local markets brimming with produce, cheeses, and other goods, and every so often come across a streetside stand laden with fresh fruits. In the late afternoon, I walk along the sea, past packed beaches, and meet with a Crimean woman, Yaroslava, who lives in Austria but every summer returns to her beloved Crimea. She is ardently supportive of the decision to have joined Russia and spends much of her time back in Austria trying to educate people on why Crimeans wanted to be a part of Russia.

These are reasons I hear throughout my travels in Crimea: We wanted to be able to speak our native language [Russian] and be educated in that language; we wanted to be able to practice our cultural traditions; we have always been a part of Russia and we wanted to return.

Yaroslava is busy helping out with the Jazz Festival and wants to use the rest of our short time talking to help me arrange future meetings with people in Crimea. We decided to do a proper interview via Skype in the future when time allows.

I drift on to the Jazz Festival, where a talented pianist and band play beach-side to an enthusiastic crowd. Some songs later, I drift back along the beach, passing numerous musicians busking, and a pulsing nightlife that isn’t going to bed any time soon.

…………………………………As I stand to orient the map route and zoom in to look for any signs of cafes, a woman walks by me and says with a smile something with the word “shto,” which I think means “what.” When I reply in English, she laughs and flags down another woman, Yana, who speaks English well and insists she and her husband drive me.

As we drive, we chat. I ask her about the referendum, mentioning that many in the West have the notion that it was done under duress, with a heavy military presence to influence the vote. She laughs, saying: “There were no troops, no military, around us during the referendum.” She speaks of the joy of Crimeans to vote, says that maybe 98 percent of Sevastopol voters had voted in favor [it was apparently 96 percent, but close enough], and adds, “We are now under the wing of Russia.”

I ask about developments since then. She mentions the improvements in roads, also the modern trolley-buses and regular buses, the opening of kindergartens and schools, and free courses (like music) for children……………………………………..

Ukrainians in Crimea

In Simferopol anew, I meet Anastasiya Gridchina, the Chair of the Ukrainian Community of Crimea, an organization formed in 2015 whose main goals, she tells me, “are to have friendly relations between two great peoples: Ukrainians and Russians — not the politicians but the people. The second goal is to preserve inter-ethnic peace in the Republic between different nationalities.”

Gridchina explains that in Crimea there are more than 175 nationalities, just 20 less than in all of Russia, but in a very small territory. Hence the importance of preserving inter-ethnic peace. After Russians, Ukrainians comprise the second largest population in Crimea.

I ask Anastasiya whether she supported, much less participated in the referendum.

“I worked very hard in order that we could have a referendum. I live in Perevalne, the last settlement in the mountains above Alushta. There was a Ukrainian military detachment which did surrender. In February 2014, I was among a line of people standing between the Ukrainian and Russian military detachments, to prevent any bloodshed. The fear that prevailed at that time was that nationalists from Ukraine would come here and we would have massacres.

In February, there was a confrontation outside the Parliament here in Simferopol. It was organized by leaders of the Mejlis — the Crimeans Tatars. On the other side, there were some pro-Russia organizations who were protecting the Parliament. They were far less [numerous] than the Mejlis. The Mejlis were armed with sticks and knives. There were clashes and two people were killed, but thankfully it didn’t escalate beyond that.

When the news came that there would be a referendum, people relaxed. They had a chance to express their point of view and 96 percent of the population of Crimea voted for Crimea to return to Russia.”

Since she is Ukrainian, I ask Anastasiya why she wanted Crimea to join Russia:

“I’ve lived in Crimea all my life, and my language is Russian. And I know the history of Crimea, which has always been Russian territory, which has a history beginning with the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. So, it is Russian-speaking territory, first of all. That’s why I believe it should be in the Russian Federation, not in Ukraine.”

I ask about the claims that Russian soldiers invaded Crimea:

“Whatever they might have said about Russian soldiers forcing people to participate in the referendum, it was all lies, pure lies. We did not see any soldiers on the streets, especially on the day of the referendum.

I gave an interview to foreign journalists before the referendum. But when they published it, they changed my words. I said we were very thankful to the Russian troops that were here, that protected us from the attacks of Ukrainian nationalists prior to the referendum. But they translated it that I said ‘Please, we want Ukrainian soldiers to defend us from those Russian soldiers.’

The Russian troops that were here were not on the streets on the day of the referendum but, at the time in general, they were there to protect civilians from an attack by Ukrainians.

On the day of the referendum, there were no soldiers, no military. The only security were there to prevent any illegal actions. No military people were there, no arms, no armored personnel carriers, no military equipment, nothing. Only members of the election commission and the people voting.”

I ask whether many Ukrainian Crimeans left following the referendum:

“There were those who immediately after the referendum left Crimea for Ukraine because it was their personal wish. Nobody prevented them from going. Even the soldiers had an option: to stay and continue military service here, or to leave……………

Finally, Anastasiya gives me a message for the people outside of Crimea:

“I’d like to tell people around the world, welcome to Crimea, come here yourselves and see and hear with your own eyes and ears, to understand that all the lies you hear about Crimea, that we are oppressed or under pressure from the military…this is all lies, this is all not true.

Also, that we are not allowed to speak Ukrainian is a lie. One of the state languages is Ukrainian. Russian and Tatar are also state languages.”……………………

Next, I speak to Yuri Gempel, a member of Parliament, and the chairman of the Standard Commission on Inter-Ethnic Relations of the Parliament of Crimea.

“Crimea, under Ukraine, was robbed,” Gempel says. He continues:

“Everything was taken by the government and representatives of the ruling elite of Ukraine. For the 23 years Crimea was a part of Ukraine, they robbed Crimea. Not a single kindergarten was built in Crimea during those years. Kindergartens built during Soviet times stopped functioning.

But the main issue is that during that time, the people still felt themselves to be in Russian territory, not Ukrainian, in language, culture and in spirit. Under Ukrainian rule, Crimeans were made to speak Ukrainian, although Crimeans’ native language is Russian. People were deprived of the right to be in state service if they did not speak Ukrainian.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

As for the claims that Russia invaded Crimea and of Russian forces intimidating voters, I believe the many people I met who denounced those claims and articulated very clearly why they wanted to join Russia, or as they say, “return to Russia.” https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2019/10/10/return-to-russia-crimeans-tell-the-real-story-of-the-2014-referendum-and-their-lives-since/

How US and Ukraine’s far-right made pro-peace Zelensky a ‘no peace’ president

the exalted version of Zelensky promoted to NATO state audiences today is a sharp contrast to the pro-peace candidate that Ukrainians overwhelmingly elected four years ago.

it is no wonder that the same US political establishment that sabotaged Zelensky’s peace mandate now holds him up as a hero.

In October 2019, as he took steps to implement Minsk in the face of far-right protests and US hostility, Zelensky assured Ukrainians that he was “the president of peace,” and that “ending this war is of utmost importance to me.” He added: “I, the president, am not ready to sacrifice our people. And that is why I choose diplomacy.”

Elected in 2019 to bring peace to Ukraine, a Zelensky aide now declares that “there is no peace with Russia, and Ukraine must arm itself to the teeth.”

Aaron Maté https://mate.substack.com/p/how-us-and-ukraines-far-right-made?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=105251040&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email 26 Feb 23,

Volodymyr Zelensky marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by rejecting any negotiations with the Kremlin.

“There is nothing to talk about and nobody to talk about over there,” Zelensky declared.

The Ukrainian President delivered the message just two weeks after his French and German counterparts urged him, at a meeting in Paris, “to start considering peace talks with Moscow,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

But as an adviser explained to the New York Times, Zelensky is now “more at peace with himself,” and therefore has no need to entertain the possibility of peace with his neighbor.

He has a clear understanding what Ukraine should do,” the adviser said. “There is no ambiguity: There is no peace with Russia, and Ukraine must arm itself to the teeth.”

Zelensky’s “clear understanding” of the need to reject peace with Russia and turn his country into a NATO arms depot is a resounding victory for the Ukrainian far-right and its US government allies. As I wrote here last year, these two powerful forces, aligned by their converging interests in prolonging the post-2014 war in Ukraine’s Donbas region, sabotaged the peace platform that Zelensky was elected on in April 2019. As Adam Schiff put it, the US has used Ukraine’s civil war “so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

The commemoration of the first anniversary of Russia’s cross-border invasion to end Schiff’s bipartisan “fight” has yielded more insight into how the US, in concert with its ideological allies in Ukraine’s powerful far-right, helped convert Zelensky from pro-peace candidate to “no peace” president.

In a fawning profile, the Washington Post approvingly recounts how Zelensky shifted from naively “thinking peace with Putin was possible” to now believing that “victory is the only answer.” Although the Post attempts to cast Zelensky’s “transformation” as the result of “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat,” the details tell a different story.

The Post describes a summer 2019 exchange between the then-rookie president and the top US diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor. At the time, Zelensky was “expressing curiosity” about the Steinmeier Formula, a German-led effort to revive the stalled Minsk Accords. Minsk, reached in 2015, called for granting limited autonomy to the rebellious Donbas regions in eastern Ukraine in exchange for their demilitarization. Ukraine’s far-right, the driving force behind the 2014 Maidan coup that triggered the ensuing Donbas war, had opposed Minsk’s implementation at every turn.

Zelensky, Taylor recalls, “hoped” that the Steinmeier initiative “might lead to a deal with the Kremlin.” The Ukrainian president “pointed to a document explaining the formulation, thinking that somewhere in the details of the legalese a workable compromise with Moscow might be found.”

But Washington knew better: no compromise with Moscow could be allowed. “No one knows what it is,” Taylor told Zelensky of the German plan. “Steinmeier doesn’t know what it is… It’s a terrible idea.”

The Steinmeier plan was in fact a simple idea, and a welcome one to anyone interested in bringing peace to Ukraine. For his part, Taylor was never shy about advocating war. In a December 2014 letter to The Washington Post, Taylor denounced an opinion article that had opposed sending US arms to Ukraine and advocated an agreement between NATO and Russia to resolve the Ukrainian crisis. Backers of such steps, Taylor wrote, are “advocating that the West appease Russia.… Now is not the time for appeasement.”

This explains why Taylor was similarly hostile to the “terrible” plan named after former German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The Steinmeier Formula called for holding local elections in the rebel-held Donbas areas under Ukrainian law and international supervision. If OSCE monitors certified the results, then Ukraine would regain control of its eastern border and enact a special status law granting the rebellious Donbas regions limited autonomy.

But this road map, along with a similar initiative from French diplomat Pierre Morel, “got nowhere because of opposition in Ukraine,” former UK diplomat Duncan Allan observed for the UK government-funded think tank Chatham House. When Zelensky tried to revive it in late 2019, Allan added, “[a]nother sharp reaction in Ukraine forced him to back down.” As the New York Times now notes in passing, “a backlash at home — with street protesters in Kyiv accusing him of treason for surrendering land — steered the Ukrainian president to a political formula in which he rejected concessions” with Russia.

Specifically, that “backlash” in Ukraine included not only violent protests but outright threats to Zelensky’s life.

“Zelenskyy said he was ready to lose his ratings, popularity, position,” Right Sector co-founder Dmytro Yarosh, commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army and former senior Ukrainian military advisor, said shortly after Zelensky’s May 2019 inauguration. “No he would lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk – if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the [Maidan] Revolution and the [Donbas] War.” (Two years after threatening to hang the president from a tree, Yarosh was given a repeat appointment as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian military subsequently claimed that the appointment was withdrawn).

Despite the internal and external opposition, Zelensky departed a meeting with Putin in December 2019 feeling “hopeful”, the Post reports. “Within weeks, Russia agreed to a broader prisoner exchange and offered Ukraine a $3 billion gas arbitration settlement as well as a new gas transit deal.”

But on top of the far-right backlash at home, Zelensky’s peace initiative faced direct hostility from Ukraine’s patron in Washington. After warning Zelensky against pursuing a “terrible” European-brokered peace plan, William Taylor soon became a hero of Trump’s first impeachment over Ukraine. At the impeachment proceedings, which kicked off in October 2019 just as Zelensky was trying to follow through on his peace mandate, Taylor was summoned to assure Congress and a Russiagate-crazed media class that Trump’s pause on weapons subsidies for the Ukrainian fight against the Russia-backed Donbas rebels endangered “our national security.” (For his services, the New York Times lauded Taylor as “a septuagenarian Vietnam veteran with a chiseled face and reassuring gray hair,” while the Washington Post declared him to be a “meticulous note taker.”)

The prevailing imperative to use Ukraine “to fight Russia over there” (Schiff) meant that Zelensky had no chance to pursue the “terrible” Minsk agreement that Taylor and other influential proxy warriors opposed.

“The reality is that Ukraine depends on political, diplomatic, economic and military support from the West, and particularly from the United States,” Samuel Charap of the Pentagon-tied RAND Corporation wrote in November 2021. Up to that point, “Ukraine has shown little desire” to “[implement] its obligations under the Minsk II agreement,” and the US had “not yet used its influence to push for progress on the Donbas conflict.” If the Ukrainian government could be pushed “toward complying”, Charap noted, that “might actually invite de-escalation from Russia” while saving Ukraine “from calamity.”

But by then, Zelensky had decided to side with the forces that had sabotaged him. According to the Post’s account, citing David Arakhamia, the leader of Zelensky’s faction in parliament:  “By early 2021, Zelensky believed that negotiations wouldn’t work and that Ukraine would need to retake the Donetsk and Luhansk regions ‘either through a political or military path.’” As a result, “[t]he Kremlin disengaged.”

Zelensky’s early 2021 decision that “negotiations wouldn’t work” explains why, in early 2022, he shunned all opportunities to prevent Russia’s looming invasion. At the final talks on implement Minsk, a “key obstacle,” the Washington Post reported, “was Kyiv’s opposition to negotiating with the pro-Russian separatists.” When Germany proposed a last-minute deal in which Ukraine would “renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal,” Zelensky turned it down, according to the Wall Street Journal. After rejecting diplomacy, Zelensky’s government then significantly increased its shelling of the Donbas, a potential step toward trying to “retake the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” via the “military path” that the Washington Post has newly confirmed.

And as the recent disclosures of former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet underscore, the US went from sabotaging Zelensky’s peace mandate before the Russian invasion to blocking diplomatic efforts in the period since.

As a result, the exalted version of Zelensky promoted to NATO state audiences today is a sharp contrast to the pro-peace candidate that Ukrainians overwhelmingly elected four years ago.

In October 2019, as he took steps to implement Minsk in the face of far-right protests and US hostility, Zelensky assured Ukrainians that he was “the president of peace,” and that “ending this war is of utmost importance to me.” He added: “I, the president, am not ready to sacrifice our people. And that is why I choose diplomacy.”

By now choosing to reject diplomacy, President Zelensky has shown that he is more than willing to sacrifice his people for the sake of his NATO state patrons’ desired proxy war against Russia. Accordingly, one year into the catastrophic Russian invasion that it helped provoke, it is no wonder that the same US political establishment that sabotaged Zelensky’s peace mandate now holds him up as a hero.

How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia

In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.

But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.

The Grayzone, ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN AND MAX BLUMENTHAL·MARCH 4, 2022

While Western media deploys Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewish heritage to refute accusations of Nazi influence in Ukraine, the president has ceded to neo-Nazi forces and now depends on them as front line fighters.

Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.

Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy. 

With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.

Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.

Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen”, vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.

Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.

By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.

A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.

This February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, US media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the US government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”

In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.

But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.

The president’s Jewishness as Western media PR device 

Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.

Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.

Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool. 

A few examples of the US media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above [on original] for video ): ………………………………….

Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014. 

In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremists militias.

Backed by Zelensky’s top financier, neo-Nazi militants unleash a wave of intimidation

Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.

With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing US-based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several US white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov. 

Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.

In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.

When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”

Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents……………………………

Zelensky failed to rein in neo-Nazis, wound up collaborating with them

Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”

A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.

During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.

As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”………………………………………………..

Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine…………………………………………………………

In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine…………………………………….

Ukrainian state-backed neo-Nazi leader flaunts influence on the eve of war with Russia 

On February 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics………………………………….

“If we get killed…we died fighting a holy war”

…………………………………… With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv.

On February 27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.

…………………… Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.  

According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”

Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.

Other video filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.

On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.

Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.

“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”
 https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/

 

Hard-Wired for Corruption -The arms trade and Australia’s lax monitoring regimes

Chris Douglas concludes that from an anti-bribery/corruption risk perspective, Naval Group should not have been put on the shortlist for the Future Submarines program, let alone selected to partner with Australia to build the submarines. The ‘contract of the century’ was mired in unacceptable risk from the outset due to Defence’s poor risk-management processes and non-existent specific anti-bribery/corruption measures. A formal inquiry is needed both to examine how this deeply flawed decision was reached and to help prevent the situation recurring in future major defence procurement projects.

‘In the arms business, it’s always a time of war’, wrote Roeber. Without war, there is no revenue, no profit, no growth. Countries with established arms manufacturing industries therefore have a perpetual economic driver towards conflict and warfare.

To give just one example, there is no visibility around what or how much weaponry Australia has exported to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates during the years of the Yemen war.

 https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/hard-wired-for-corruption?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Michelle Fahy 1 Aug 22, The international arms trade, worth around US$200 billion a year, represents less than 1 per cent of world trade yet is said to account for about 40 per cent of its corruption. While estimates vary, there is little dispute amongst long-term arms industry researchers that it is the most corrupt industry on the planet. Indeed, it is said to be hard-wired for corruption.

The World Peace Foundation (WPF), housed at Tufts University in America, produces extensive research on the global arms trade, including a compendium of corrupt arms deals. It says that ‘Corruption within the industry is often treated in terms of isolated incidents, when it is, in fact, representative of the business model for the industry’.

This finding is supported by research for Transparency International’s (TI) Government Defence Integrity (GDI) index, which assesses the quality of controls for managing corruption risk in defence and security institutions. The GDI shows that 86 per cent of global arms exports between 2016 and 2020 originated from countries at moderate to very high risk of corruption in their defence sectors, while 49 per cent of global arms imports went to countries at high to critical risk of defence corruption. Australia is rated as a moderate corruption risk in the GDI, with two key areas of concern being the lack of transparency in defence procurement and weak anti-corruption safeguards on military operations.

The legal trade in arms has long been known for its susceptibility to corruption. This is due to the high value and complexity of arms deals, the close association between the arms industry and political power, and the secrecy claimed necessary for national security, all of which shield arms-related activities from scrutiny. As arms industry expert Joe Roeber pointed out, ‘Defence goods are complex and each contract contains a mix of special requirements. Comparison is remarkably difficult and effective monitoring by public watchdogs is all but impossible. An unknowable price can be manipulated to accommodate any amount of covert payments’. Further, there are very few major arms deals on offer globally each year—usually less than 10 in the range of tens of billions each meaning competition is intense—while only a small number of people make the decision on what to buy…

‘In the arms business, it’s always a time of war’, wrote Roeber. Without war, there is no revenue, no profit, no growth. Countries with established arms manufacturing industries therefore have a perpetual economic driver towards conflict and warfare.

For example, in the month leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and just days after a horrific attack in Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition using a Raytheon missile that killed 90 people and injured 200, Raytheon’s CEO told investors that global tensions represented ‘opportunities for international sales’, and that he expected to ‘see some benefit’ from ‘the tensions in Eastern Europe [and] in the South China Sea’. Meanwhile, Just Security has noted that the ‘well-documented risks of corruption in the arms industry and the potential for profiteering from an arms race in the Ukraine war’ are risk factors embedded in the massive flow of lethal weaponry from the West into Ukraine…

Blanket secrecy

All countries justify secrecy around arms-related activity with claims of protecting ‘national security’. The Australian government, for example, imposes a high level of secrecy over its arms procurement, sustainment and export deals, with politicians and the Department of Defence resisting demands for greater transparency…

Australia also relies on ‘commercial-in-confidence’ justifications to protect arms industry interests. This, in combination with national security claims, has led to almost blanket secrecy around Australia’s arms exports. To give just one example, there is no visibility around what or how much weaponry Australia has exported to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates during the years of the Yemen war. The government has only released information about the number of export permits it has approved or declined (by March 2021 Australian approvals to these two nations topped 100). However, permit numbers are not useful, as not all permit approvals translate into actual exports, and permits can cover numerous types of equipment, small or large quantities, extend for varying time periods, and even cover multiple destinations.

This is significant because the decades-long UK Campaign Against the Arms Trade has amassed a ‘mountain of evidence of corruption in arms sales to Saudi’ showing that bribery is central to the Saudi government’s approach to arms deals. Andrew Feinstein, author of the exhaustively researched 600-page book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, told ABC radio in 2018 that he had never seen a Saudi arms deal that didn’t involve ‘massive amounts’ of corruption, and that the percentage of a Saudi contract paid in bribes could be up to ‘about 35 per cent of the contract price’. The United Arab Emirates is also known for its secrecy, corruption, and money laundering links.

Australia’s decreasing commitment to anti-corruption measures

Australia’s extraordinary current spending on military capability—$270 billion in a decade, on top of the usual defence budget—means the domestic arms industry is awash with cash. At the same time, the public’s limited ability to scrutinise this spending has been eroded further by a defence minister, Peter Dutton, who has restricted Defence’s engagement with the media. The combination of record sums of money and little scrutiny provides fertile ground for corruption.

Australia’s performance on anti-corruption measures has nose-dived in recent years:

• It recorded its worst ever score on a global anti-corruption index in 2022, dropping four points (from 77 to 73) and falling to 18th place. Australia has now dropped 12 points in a decade, from a high of 7th (85 points) in 2012.

• Its membership status at the Open Government Partnership risks being put under review because it has ‘acted contrary to the OGP process’ and failed to submit its latest national action plan.
• Its negligible attempts to investigate and prosecute cases of foreign bribery have been criticised by the Working Group for the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention (it expressed concern over ‘the continued low level of foreign bribery enforcement… given the size of Australia’s economy and the high-risk regions and sectors in which its companies operate’ and ‘its long-standing challenges in attributing wrongdoing to corporate entities’).
• It has been named an ‘international laggard’ in expanding anti-money-laundering laws in line with recommendations by the G7’s Financial Action Task Force, one of only three countries, alongside Haiti and Madagascar, to have failed to do so. Australia now risks being put on a grey list of countries that don’t meet international money-laundering standards. (Australia has been resisting anti-money-laundering regulation for fifteen years.)
• A dedicated federal anti-corruption body still has not been established…

Red flags

‘The biggest corruption risk in an arms deal is a company’s decision to pay bribes to secure the deal’, says Sam Perlo-Freeman, former Program Manager for Global Arms and Corruption, World Peace Foundation, Tufts University. Decisions to pay significant bribes are made at a company’s highest levels, and while no amount of technical anti-corruption measures will eliminate high-level corrupt behaviour, strong whistleblower protection mechanisms can increase the probability of exposure. Other anti-corruption measures are also important, particularly at lower levels where zealous company employees might be tempted to cut corners to advance their careers. However, such technical measures do not tackle the underlying political and economic drivers of high-level corruption in the arms industry, where winning large deals is necessary for corporate survival and price is not the primary concern. As Joe Roeber noted incisively, bribery in this context ‘is not just a simple add-on to the procurement process, but distorts the decisions. What would the equilibrium level of trade be without the stimulus of corruption?’ …

No evidence has emerged of…extensive corrupt practices in Australia, but there are regular red flags of possible arms industry corruption. Chris Douglas, a 31-year veteran of financial crime investigation for the Australian Federal Police, who now runs his own consultancy, is an Australian expert in anti-bribery and corruption measures. He says that such compliance programs are a necessary component of good corporate and public governance—essential for preventing corruption in the defence industry. Although he has lodged numerous Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) with the Defence Department about anti-bribery/corruption measures on major procurements, he says, ‘I have not detected an ABC [anti-bribery/corruption] program being used in any of the major defence projects I have examined’.

Douglas says that the Department of Defence ‘has not caught up with modern corporate management practices’ and has no understanding of how to use anti-bribery/corruption risk-based assessments to manage the significant risks posed by bribery and corruption in its projects, particularly major ones. As he puts it: ‘That any department would not undertake an ABC risk assessment when such large sums of money are involved, in an industry that is rated high for corrupt behaviour, speaks volumes about a poor culture within that department’.

Repeated cost blowouts and delays are just two of the red flags for corruption that are regularly found in Australian defence procurement and sustainment projects. The cost of these to the public is substantial.

While there are numerous examples of red flag projects, here are just three.

Naval Group—submarine contract

This contract was abandoned with the arrival of AUKUS, but the original deal with Naval Group requires a public inquiry to examine the full extent of the process by which the internationally lucrative ‘contract of the century’ was awarded. The need for an inquiry has been amplified given the shock shredding of Defence’s largest ever contract, a decision which made international news and may yet cost Australia billions.

HISTORIC CONTEXT OF THE REFERENDA IN UKRAINE.

Popular Resistance, By Moon of Alabama., September 24, 2022, Educate!

Voting for membership in the Russian Federation has started in four oblast of Ukraine:

………………….. The Ukrainian regime has resorted to pure terrorism to prevent the votes from happening:

” Ukrainian partisans, sometimes working with special operations forces, have blown up warehouses holding ballots and buildings where Russian proxy officials preparing for the vote held meetings. Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that they are engaged in a campaign to assassinate key Russian administration officials; more than a dozen have been blown up, shot and poisoned, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials.“

Such behavior by the Zelenski regime against its still Ukrainian compatriots will only encourage the people in the four oblast to vote for an alignment with Russia.

The propaganda in the ‘west’ will declare that the vote is irregular and that the results, likely to be pro-Russian, will be fake.

But a view on historic election outcomes since Ukrainian independence in 1991 show clear geographic preferences in east and south Ukraine for pro-Russian policies:

[ The original here shows a graphic chart illustrating voting patterns over the years]

The graphic above is from research published by the Eurasian Research Institute of the International Hoca Ahmet Yesevi Turkish-Kazakh University. Its author writes:

“As we can see, the have always been a clear-cut geographical split in the way the regions of Ukraine vote for particular candidates. The East and West division or also referred as Southeast and Northwest division was always present throughout the electoral history of the independent Ukraine. It is conventionally believed that the eastern part of Ukraine is more influenced by Russia politically, economically and culturally. Therefore, the presidential candidates proposing more pro-Russian agenda usually gain much more political support in eastern regions than in other parts of Ukraine.

On the other hand, the western part of the country has traditionally been more pro-European with strong reference to traditional core Ukrainian ethnic traditions and values. Consequently, presidential candidates with pro-European political agenda and traditional Ukrainian appeal usually had strong support in western regions of the country. It is interesting to note that preferences of the electorate were not related to the geographical origin or background of the presidential candidates and any candidate could easily become popular in the east as well as in the west. Moreover, the same candidate could be both pro-eastern and pro-western in different periods of time as did Leonid Kuchma in 1994 and 1999, who is the only Ukrainian president to serve two consecutive terms from 1994 to 2005.“

The division is consistent with ethnic and linguistic differences between those parts of Ukraine.

In 2014, after the violent fascist coup in Kiev, one of the first laws implemented by the new government removed the Russian language from official use. Instead of overcoming the differences between its people it only sealed the predominant split in Ukraine.

The election promise of the current Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelenski to make peace with the Russia aligned rebellious Donbas region by adhering to the Minsk 2 agreements was rewarded with a large share of southeastern votes for his presidency. However, after having been threatened with death by fascists, Zelenski has made a 180 degree turn and has since posed as Ukrainian nationalist. In consequence he has lost all support in southeastern Ukraine.

The southeastern parts of today’s Ukraine have for centuries been part of the central Russian empire. They were only attached to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine under Lenin’s rule in 1922 and, in the case of Crimea, in 1954 under Nikita Khrushchev who himself had grown up in the Donbas region.

A likely high turnout and majority vote for membership in the Russian Federation will only correct the historic misalignment created by those illogical transfers.
 https://popularresistance.org/historic-context-of-the-referenda-in-ukraine/