By Patrick Lawrence ***, July 13, 2022
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/07/13/patrick-lawrence-the-imaginary-war/
*** For those who don’t know much about Patrick Lawrence, you owe it to yourself to read how he saw through Russia-gate from the very start. ( See: https://raymcgovern.com/2019/04/18/dnc-gate-patrick-lawrence-saw-through-it-from-the-start/ ).
By Ray McGovern, July 13, 2022
The Carnegie Endowment has made a stab at rehabbing James Clapper, whose imagery analysis unit lied us into the war on Iraq. For Clapper’s second try, Carnegie used the title (now get this) “Getting the Intel Right With James Clapper, July 11, 2022”.
On Nov. 13, 2018, Clapper appeared at Carnegie hawking his memoir, “Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence”, in which he openly admits to making the cardinal sin in the intelligence-analysis trade – cooking intelligence to the taste of policy makers. Hard truths, indeed.
That Nov. 2018 talk was not virtual; there was ample time for Q & A. I had read Clapper’s book; then-President of Carnegie, William Burns (now CIA director), indulged my questioning for as long as he could, then moved to rescue Clapper. (See: Clapper’s Credibility Collapses, https://consortiumnews.com/2018/11/14/clappers-credibility-collapses/ )
In an unusually candid section of his book, Clapper gingerly places the blame for “the failure” to find (non-existent WMD) “where it belongs — squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.” [Emphasis added.]
Clapper goes on to explain in his book:
“… we heard that Vice President Cheney was pushing the Pentagon for intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and then the order came down to NIMA [the National Imagery and Mapping Agency] to find (emphasis in the book) the WMD sites. We set to work, analyzing imagery to eventually identify, with varying degrees of confidence, more than 950 sites where we assessed there might be WMDs or a WMD connection. We drew on all of NIMA’s skill sets … and it was all wrong.”
“To support his [Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003] speech, NIMA (which Clapper headed) had gone through the difficult process of declassifying satellite images of trucks arriving at WMD sites just ahead of the weapons inspectors to move materials before they could be found, and my team also produced computer-generated images of trucks fitted out as ‘mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.’ Those images, possibly more than any other substantiation he presented, carried the day with the international community and Americans alike.”
So, it was Clapper who was responsible for those computer-generated images.
That was all wrong too.
A Specialist on Russia?
Typically, Clapper also saluted when “the order came down” from President Obama in the fall of 2016 to find “intelligence” to support the narrative that Russia was interfering in the 2016 election. Evidence? Shemvidence! It turns out that such subversive behavior fit in well with Clapper’s familiarity with what Clapper had learned about Russian genetics as well as its “historical practices and techniques”.
During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on May 28, 2017, the retired James Clapper talked about “everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election” … “And just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So, we were concerned.” [Emphasis added.]
I suppose one can give Clapper the benefit of the doubt and concede that he may truly believe what he says about the Russians. His lying about other important issues, however, shows a rather dismissive attitude toward the truth. In fact, he has a record of perjury.
During sworn congressional testimony in March 2013, he claimed that NSA does not “wittingly” collect data on millions of Americans. The revelations from Edward Snowden’s leaks almost immediately disproved that claim and revealed that NSA was illegally spying on millions of Americans as part of a mass surveillance program.
Will Carnegie’s confab help rehab the ubiquitous James Clapper, who is now a “security analyst” for CNN? It probably will help with those who know little else about him. Readers are invited to judge for themselves – to the point of watching his do-over at Carnegie; personally, I did not have the stomach for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqVftOVmNEE
Why This Matters
The results of an informal poll I did recently shows that 80 percent of Americans still believe that the Russians interfered in 2016 to elect Donald Trump. The Establishment media has had such success in the five-year campaign that Americans have been conditioned to believe just about anything about the Russians.
Fortunately, no evidence collected by the Jan. 6 Commission has so much as hinted at any Russian involvement. Even Mrs. Clinton has backed off that one, for the nonce. But see below for where she tried to lead Nancy Pelosi back in January.
Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote at the time, entitled Round Up the Usual Suspects; Don’t Forget Putin
by Ray McGovern Posted on January 21, 2021
Interviewed by Mrs. Clinton Monday [Jan 17], Speaker Nancy Pelosi eagerly rose to the bait when Clinton spoke of “her concerns that the outgoing commander-in-chief was compromised by the Kremlin”. Setting the stage, Clinton expressed the hope that “we’ll find out who he [Trump] is beholden to, “who pulls his strings”.
Clinton added ominously: “I would love to see his phone records to see whether he was talking to Putin the day that the insurgents invaded our Capitol”. She then asked Pelosi if the nation needs “a 9/11-type commission to investigate and report everything they can pull together.”
Pelosi agreed on the need for such a commission, and proceeded to burnish her own anti-Putin credentials:
“As I said to him [Trump] in that picture with my blue suit … pointing rudely at him, ‘With you Mr. President, all roads lead to Putin.’’ Pelosi conceded that she does not know ‘what Putin has on him politically, financially, or personally, but what happened last week was a gift to Putin.”
Putin’s Useful Idiots?
Pelosi added, “And these people, unbeknownst to them, they are Putin puppets. They were doing Putin’s business when they did that at the incitement of an insurrection by the president … so, yes, we should have a 9/11 commission and there is strong support in the Congress for that.”
What leaps out of this Clinton-Pelosi pas de deux is who is leading the dance. Clinton hints broadly (not, of course, for the first time) that Putin is pulling Trump’s strings. It is Clinton who voices suspicion that Trump and Putin were somehow coordinating on the phone on Jan. 6; and it is she who suggests that “a 9/11-type commission” might be needed.
Due largely to the captive “mainstream” media, ‘Russia Russia Russia’ has proved to be the gift that keeps giving for the Democrats. Are there limits to the degree of credence Americans will give to corporate media spinning all the sins attributed to Russian President Putin? Why the insinuation that he may be partly to blame for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6?
Russia is Convenient
It’s a matter of convenience. For the Democrats it has been super-convenient to blame Mrs. Clinton’s defeat in 2016 on Russia, although key aspects of that case (Russian “hacking” of the DNC, for example) have been debunked.
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
July 10th, 2022
For Franciscan Father Richard Rohr, Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) is a shining example of someone who “practiced the better.” Instead of relying on judgment and criticism, Francis understood the power of simply living a better way:
Francis lived in the pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war. [Emphasis added.] Francis was himself a soldier, and the son of a cloth merchant; he came from the culture he critiqued, and he challenged these emerging systems at the beginning of their now eight centuries of world dominance. Rather than fighting the systems directly and risk becoming their mirror image, Francis just did things differently. …
Francis was born as people started measuring time by clocks instead of church bells. When Christian leaders started counting, Francis stopped counting. He moved from the common economy of merit to the wondrous economy of grace, where God does not do any counting, but only gives unreservedly. …
As Europe began to centralize and organize everything at high levels of control [and] when Roman Catholicism under Pope Innocent III (1160–1216) reached heights of papal and worldly power, Francis answered, “There is another way that is much better!” When people began a style of production and consumption that would eventually ravage planet Earth, he decided to love Mother Earth and live simply and barefoot upon her. And Francis did it all with a “perfect joy” that comes from letting go of the ego.
Francis didn’t bother questioning Church doctrines and dogmas. He just tried to live the way that Jesus lived. In The Legend of Perugia, one of the earliest accounts about Francis, he reminds the first friars that they only know as much as they do. His emphasis on action, practice, and lifestyle was foundational and revolutionary for its time and is at the root of Franciscan alternative orthodoxy. Francis and Clare fell in love with the humanity and humility of Jesus. For them, Jesus was someone actually to imitate and not just to worship.
The early Franciscan friars and Poor Clares wanted to be gospel practitioners instead of merely “word police,” “inspectors,” or “museum curators” as Pope Francis calls some clergy. Both Francis and Clare offered their rules as a forma vitae, or form of life. They saw orthopraxy (correct practice) as a necessary parallel, and maybe even precedent, to verbal orthodoxy (correct teaching). History has shown that many Christians never get to the practical implications of their beliefs. “Why aren’t you doing what you say you believe?” the prophet invariably asks. As the popular paraphrase of a line from Francis’s Rule goes, “Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.”
July 10, 2022 (6 minutes)
Ray interviewed on The Critical Hour
July 11, 2022, 13 minutes
The questions posed led me to comment candidly on the regrettable state of Western statesmen like EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yes, the same Blinken who, in one breath excoriates China and the “systemic challenge” it supposedly represents, and in the next makes a pathetically quixotic attempt to cajole his Chinese counterpart to abandon Beijing’s lockstep with Russia on Ukraine. (It’s a bipolar world again: the lily-white West pitted against pretty much everyone else – most of whom are people of color.)
Blinken
Since Blinken and President Joe Biden will spend two days in Israel later this week, I called to mind the key role Blinken played in greasing the skids for the attack on Iraq in March 2003, in large part to eliminate what Israel argued was an existential threat from armed-to-the-teeth-with-WMD Saddam Hussein.
The Israelis loudly rejoiced when Biden nominated Blinken to head the State Department, The Times of Israel noting:
Tony Blinken, US President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for secretary of state, is the stepson of a Holocaust survivor whose stories shaped his worldview and subsequently his policy decisions, including in the Middle East.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/where-blinken-stands-on-jewish-issues-from-immigration-to-israel/
I have a feeling this Middle East trip will yield as much success as Blinken and Biden were able to achieve during their recent trip to the Far East – that is, zero success.
Borrell
Josep Borrell, for his part, recently lamented that the West had failed to win a “battle of narratives” (sic) on Ukraine and – worse still – that countries of the “Global South” won’t join in punishing Russia because [get this!] they are more concerned about their own national interests. In Borrell’s dismissive words, they worry more about “the consequences of the war for themselves” than in going after the supposed culprit. Wow.
Among the other issues discussed was Lithuania’s restrictions on the passage of sanctioned material through Lithuania to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In response, the governor of Kaliningrad has just proposed a total ban on the movement of goods between Russia and the Baltic states.
I suggested that Russia had all kinds of levers to press in these circumstances and that its response to the Lithuanians is likely to be low key and proportionate. But who knows? I’ve guessed wrong before. And the Lithuanians are not above jabbing the bear in its other eye with a more lethal stick. And, just on general principle, it’s best to avoid provoking the kind of bear not likely to be deterred by bear-spray.
“BERLIN BULLETIN” NO. 203; July 11, 2022
By Victor Grossman
https://victorgrossmansberlinbulletin.wordpress.com/2022/07/11/the-war-germany-the-le
(Text below)
In 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby to salute it. Wilhelm Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure, the boy was safe. But “Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to some symbol. Or else!
In current media, every mention of the war in Ukraine must start with a denunciation of that monster Putin. Or else! What epithet is more withering than “Putin-lover”!
I, too, am not a Putin-lover. And I have a great hatred of war, especially war rained from the skies or aimed from a distance. Waging war, against civilians, even against young uniformed “adversaries,” is inherently wrong. But I will not bow my head to this modern “Gessler’s hat”, no matter what epithets I may be pelted with (crossbows are rarely available). Actually, for my last Berlin Bulletin, while some readers accused me of being too “pro-Putin” others said I was too “anti-Putin”!
Despite my horror at the death, destruction and misery I see daily on TV, my entire background demands a careful analysis of a conflagration which may yet fling flames across more borders and can all too easily kindle atomic annihilation. Why did Russia send an army into Ukraine? Was it pure imperialism? A terrible miscalculation? Did Putin see it as a dire necessity? Or was it a baited trap?
To start with, I cannot forget, deny or ignore what I have seen happen since 1945; how the Pentagon, White House, Congress and those behind them sought the defeat of one pro-socialist effort after another. They failed in Cuba and Vietnam, they succeeded in Ghana, Grenada, Chile – and, most important, in Europe! By utilizing every weakness, blunder, even offense, and exerting every form of pressure, Poland was won by a team led by Ronald Reagan, “Polish Pope” John Paul II, the CIA and a few experts in the AFL-CIO. In 1989-90 it was the GDR’s turn, with help from US Ambassador to Bonn Vernon Walters, a former CIA Deputy Director who had played a major role in Poland. In 1991 came the glorious victory over the USSR, where Yeltsin, an alcoholic marionette, opened the gates to ten years of chaos, desolation and sell-out to new Russian oligarchs and not so new US corporations.
That’s when Putin stepped in, just in time to save Russia from total collapse, using his own set of oligarchs, crossing himself piously as he knelt in church but keeping a tight state hold on banks and basic resources. This was not at all what American businessmen and politicians wanted. So the US-led military pact NATO, breaking its promise of 1990 not to move an inch eastwards, advanced, one regime-changed ally after the other, towards complete encirclement of Russia: in 1999 Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, in 2004 Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; then the hinterland in fragmented, bombed ex-Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia. Only a few more were needed to close a tight ring around Russia. Afghanistan did not pan out, nor did Georgia (though attempts are vigorously continuing). But most important was Ukraine, which could block Russia from the Black Sea and reached to within 400 miles of Moscow.
The elected president of that huge gem, unwilling to become part of the encircling noose, sought a more neutral position. “Not enough!” said NATO and sent in Nuland. Victoria Nuland, deputy in Hillary Clinton’s State Department (and wife of a top cold war strategist), went to Kyiv, dealt out at least $5 billion and even tasty cookies to a largely right-wing, anti-Russian crowd, and maybe a few to the mysterious snipers who forced the president to flee for his life. In a famous hacked phone call she personally chose the next Ukrainian ruler, banker-politician Yatzenyuk, a man supported by the “Freedom Party” of Oleh Tyahnybok, who had denounced a “Jewish-Russian Mafia” and praised Ukraine’s new hero Stepan Bandera, who led in murdering thousands of Jews and Poles in 1941.
One of the new rulers’ first measures discriminated against the many Russian-speakers, limiting the use of all but Ukrainian, making them second-class citizens and in Crimea angry enough to vote, with a big majority, to break with Ukraine and rejoin with Russia (to which they had belonged until 1954) and in eastern Donbas to form two separate republics, much as Albanian-speaking people in Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008. In such decisions national pride, or self-defense – superseded complex international rules. Military operations against Donbas were soon launched, using the fascistic “Azov” militia units.
With Ukraine now a new segment in the ring around Russia, USA-NATO built up its strength there, first with “non-lethal” arms and trainers, letting allies like Lithuania pass on bigger stuff. Then came a series of military maneuvers. Defender-Europe 20 was hindered by Covid-19 but, in 2021, Sea Breeze was conducted in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea with more than 30 warships and 40 planes from 32 countries not far from the Russians’ southern naval base of Sevastopol.
Then it was Operation Cossack Mace, this time to “improve compatibility between British and Ukrainian military formations, strengthen mutual relations, joint planning and perform battalion and tactical operations.” Two British-built naval bases were planned near the short Russian coast.
In September 2021 it was Rapid Trident 21. “To increase combat readiness, defense capabilities and interoperability, the exercise features joint jumps of Ukrainian and U.S. paratroopers and, for the first time, service members will conduct battalion tactical exercises of a multinational battalion with combat shooting in a single combat order … The purpose is to prepare for joint actions as part of a multinational force during coalition operations.” Joining the USA and Ukraine were Bulgaria, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, Moldova, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Turkey and the UK.
Such activities were allegedly for peace, defending Ukraine against “authoritarianism.” But Russia viewed the threat of cutting it off in the Baltic and Black Sea, plus 700 or 800 big or small USA bases on six continents, in a very different way. Washington was a safe 7800 miles away; St. Petersburg and Moscow were under the noses of those missile launchers, warplanes and warships, and the USA alone had a 13-1 preponderance over Russia in military spending. Bipartisan American politicians were outdoing themselves in reviling Russia, nor could the Maidan events with Victoria Nuland be forgotten.
As for Putin, like him or hate him, it is hardly surprising that he was alarmed, perhaps even for personal reasons in view of the fates of other leaders disliked by Washington: Allende, dead in his bombed residence, Lumumba, tortured and murdered, Saddam Hussein, hanged, Muammar Gaddafi, fatally sodomized, the Afghani Najibullah, castrated and stringed up, Usama Bin Ladin, shot in his rooms and dumped into the ocean, Slobodan Milošević, mysteriously dying in a prison cell. (Fidel Castro was luckier, surviving over a hundred bungled CIA assassination attempts.)
In a 14-page historical summary, Putin wrote:
“We respect the Ukrainian language and traditions. We respect Ukrainians’ desire to see their country free, safe and prosperous.” … “Russia is open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues. But it is important for us to understand that our Ukrainian partner defend its national interests not by serving someone else’s, that it not be a tool in someone else’s hands to fight against us.”
That was in July 2021. How sincere were such words? What did they mean in February 2022? Daring to ignore the “Gessler hat,” I think basic Russian policy must be seen not as expansionist but as defensive. In 2015 Russia agreed to the Minsk II agreement to avoid further warfare in Donbas and resolve the conflict with negotiations and compromises. Kyiv ignored, indeed undermined Minsk II; Germany and France, its co-sponsors, abandoned it. Foreign Minister Lavrov made proposals to discuss a neutral Ukraine. At first Zelensky seemed interested – until pressure from Washington and London to “stay tough” prevailed; Lavrov’s further requests to negotiate differences, above all to remove NATO troops and maneuvers from Russian borders, were rejected in December 2021 by Secretary of State Blinken, as “very obvious nonstarters”. Was that rejection Putin’s “red line”? Who knows? I only wish they had been “starters” instead – for the White House and Pentagon. That could have saved the Ukrainians immense suffering and exile – although it might have meant fewer billions for Northrup-Grumman or Raytheon.
And on February 24? Did Putin perhaps march into an elaborate trap – as Russia had once done in Afghanistan? Did he consider a big impending Ukrainian offensive against the Donbas republics and their Russian-speaking population, where 14,000 had died in ten years of battle, as an immediate danger to Russia? Did the many US-Ukrainian biological laboratories – admitted to by Victoria Nuland in a US Senate committee hearing – seem an immediate threat? I cannot know.
One commentator, turning to history, recalled the surprise attack on the USSR by the Nazi armies in 1941, resulting in up to 27 million deaths and vast destruction. He surmised that Putin, seeing a growing, hostile Ukrainian army, with NATO (or the USA leaders) guiding it from the wings, decided that a first attack was necessary to prevent any repetition of 1941.
Putin defended the invasion of Ukraine with the following words:
“Today we are told that we started a war in Donbas, in Ukraine. No, it was unleashed by this same collective West which organized and supported the unconstitutional armed coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, then encouraged and justified genocide against the people of Donbas …
“The West is fighting Russia with all the tools that are also used in a war: weapons, sanctions, money, media, diplomacy. The only thing that slows the West down from intervening with its own soldiers is the danger of nuclear war.
“Ukraine is only the unfortunate sacrificial pawn of the West, which had been prepared for this role since 2014 and with which the West has provoked Russia (with the Maidan coup in 2014, arms deliveries, construction of NATO bases, etc.) until Russia saw no choice but to take military action to protect its own security interests. At the beginning of February 2022, the West rejected the security guarantees proposed by Russia in December 2021 and even refused to talk about them.” [Emphasis added. Biden had told Putin on December 30 that “Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine”. Biden was apparently overruled by others; a huge problem – who speaks for “ Washington”?]
That is Putin’s position. True or not, and for whatever reason, invasion was a tragic choice! Aside from the misery in Ukraine it has led to a dangerously explosive polarization, painfully splitting the world’s weak left-wing forces for peace and progress.
Reaction in Germany
And in Germany? For years the unified country was torn between two forces. Some economic groups, like gas importers and exporters of manufactured and agricultural goods, wanted to get along with Russia (and even more with China), a policy symbolized by Angela Merkel and the Baltic pipelines. This was angrily opposed by men along the Potomac, in Charles Koch’s Wichita HQ and similar locations, who wanted both to export fracked gas and to head off even limited German-Russian reconciliation. They were aiming at the eventual defeat of Russia, then China, as major barriers to their plans for world hegemony, prudently labeled “the rule of order,” democracy, liberty (and free markets!) as against “authoritarianism.”
Closely beholden to them was that force in Germany, the Atlanticists, whether because of ideology, intertwining corporate and financial interests, or perhaps even personal career hopes. After February 24th, inside and outside the governing coalition, the Atlanticists won full victory, filling the media with angry denunciation of everything Russian, working to permanently break off all commercial ties with Moscow, starting with the Baltic oil pipelines, even though this may well cause industrial shutdown s and maybe very chilly room temperatures. Christian Democrats, Free Democrats, and first and foremost the Green party joined the attack, with the young Green foreign minister Annalena Baerbock demanding that as many and as heavy weapons possible to be sent to Kyiv, with her cherished goal the “ruin of Russia”.
The Social Democrats were not so clear, with Chancellor Scholz hesitant about sending heavy weapons to Kyiv and getting deeply involved in what could become an open war, NATO vs. Russia. But media attacks grew fiercer, and Scholz bowed to that “Gessler hat,” siding with NATO and Washington, stationing more German troops in Lithuania and demanding an unprecedented sum of €100 billion for more armaments to “protect German security”.
The competition in denouncing Russia grew strong enough to revive half-forgotten tones from the 1930s, like when Lars Klingbeil, a leading Social Democrat, claimed that “Germany’s allies have great expectations and Germany must fulfil them… It is time for it to exit the end-of-history mode and become a leading power on the world stage after almost 80 years of holding back.”
Frightening words! Even more frightening were those of top air corps General Ingo Gerhartz: “For a credible deterrent, we need both the means and the political will, if necessary, to implement nuclear deterrence.” The “old guard” in the established parties were beginning to summon up past glories!
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is all out for those past glories but, like some other far-righters in Europe, did not join the verbal attacks on Russia and opposed armaments for Ukraine! Their main mission in nearly all matters is opposition – above all to the European Union. But as dyed-in-the-wool nationalists, they also support a big German military build-up, a renewed draft and/or compulsory civil service for young men (as also recommended by President Steinmeier!).
The Left – Die Linke – has always stood out as the one party of peace, opposing deployment in Serbia, Afghanistan, Mali or anywhere outside German borders. Now it was split, with the main bone of contention the Ukraine war. Actually, disagreement on related issues was by no means new, though rarely so emotional as at the party congress session in late June.
It was a disastrous year for The Linke. In the September elections the party received only 4.9%, down from 6.9% four years earlier. Its caucus in the Bundestag was only just saved by a special rule; if three or more delegates were elected directly in their districts the caucus was saved, even without 5%. Exactly three scraped through, but proportional representation now gave it 39 deputies, not its previous 69; no longer the strongest opposition party, it had become the weakest. The urgent party reassessment and changes called for by this disaster failed to materialize and the party lost bitterly in three state elections: Saarland – from 12.8% to 2.6%, Schleswig-Holstein, 3.8 to 1.7% and in the key industrial North Rhine-Westfalia from 4.9 to 2.7%! Few workers voted Left. Some prominent members quit. The magazine Der Spiegel falsified a sex-related event (some obscure member’s alleged assault) into a malicious “Me-too” attack on the more militant co-chair Janine Wissler for allegedly covering it up. Her “reformist” co-chair, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, quit her leadership position in a huff, and with new leadership elections now necessary, the party faced total defeat, perhaps a split and even its demise!
In the main dispute the so-called reformers weakened the party’s basic opposition to NATO in hopes of being accepted in a government coalition with the pro-NATO Greens and Social Democrats. Such dubious hopes were rendered fully impossible by the Left’s poor election results. But the reformers still tended to play down or absolve the NATO’s current role, giving Russia and Putin the entire blame for the Ukrainian tragedy while the militant wing of the party viewed the NATO, especially the USA, as provocateurs, whose expansionist policy of deploying armaments and maneuvers along Russian borders was clearly looking for trouble – and, sadly, getting it. The quarrel reflected a deeper rift – between those who called for improvements in child care, pensions, minimum wages but saw socialism only as a future goal in vague clichés while basically accepting a systemic status quo in which they strove to become accepted, despite the growing menace of the billionaires. The militants, while not calling for revolution tomorrow (like some ultra-leftists), nevertheless saw a rejection of the capitalist system as vital – and basic opposition a necessity. The one group accepted NATO, the other opposed it. Their differences colored often hot but very brief Congress debates, which were dominated by the reformers, who won out in the end with about a 60-30 ratio – and managed to slip some very ardent pro-NATO advocates into leading positions. Janine Wissner was re-elected as co-chair (thus rejecting the malicious media smear). For co-chair, the usual male-female, East-West, leftish-reformist balance formula was maintained, and the militant, popular Sören Pellmann from Leipzig, one of the three delegates to save the Left caucus by winning a seat in his district, lost out to the rather moderate Martin Schirdewan, till then a delegate in the European Parliament, who promised to put far more stress on working-class struggles while opposing armament sales to Ukraine and organizing for peace. He seemed to seek Left reconciliation – and, at last, action.
Some on the left deplored the Congress results. Others were glad there had been no split, some political positions had been rescued, a threatened stress on “gender issues,” even in grammar and punctuation, had been averted and a shaky compromise arrived at. It remains to be seen whether The Left can regain roots among working people for the many hardships and big menaces now looming. And much may yet depend on its position regarding Gessler’s hat.
Ray McGovern, July 7, 2022
TIME OUT! Let’s think this through. We are told that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”. But was it?
How can we estimate how far west Russia’s forces will advance, without knowing why Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place? Theories abound; evidence is available but is overlooked, or hidden.
I apply the skills I learned as a Kremlinologist to scrub official statements, rinse them thoroughly, and squeeze out meaning.
This was known, back in the day, as “media analysis” and remains a lucrative tool. Often, though, it requires “getting into the weeds”. Those weeds cannot always be included in more broad-brush analyses like those of John Mearsheimer, but often add a brick or two to the foundation of his incisive conclusions.
To include weeds and bricks in digestible form I included slides. But the tone is informal, unpolished.
There was not enough time to pay adequate attention to the broader implications of the war in Ukraine. The new conditions brought on by the war in Ukraine constitute, in my view, a liminal event. Putin, in effect, has decided to put an end to Peter the Great’s (early 1700s) foundational effort to play catch-up ball with the West and shoehorn a relatively backward Russia into Europe.
Now the “window” Peter tried to break through to Europe has been closed shut – at least for the nonce. Russia is backward no more and has powerful supporters elsewhere – many of whom are similarly fed up with the West.
An iron curtain, so to speak, has been drawn down on the Russian side of Peter’s window, as Putin looks east for less threatening friends – allies even. The world has again become bipolar; but now it’s the lily-white West against pretty much the rest of the world. As the Chinese officials used to put it in the vernacular (while issuing umpteen warnings to the West), “This will come to a no-good end.”
One can but hope that the East will remain aware of Sun Tzu’s dictum of 25 centuries ago:
“Avoiding a clash with great powers does not indicate cowardice, but wisdom, because sacrificing oneself is never an advantage anywhere” (The Art of War ).
By Gilbert Doctorow, July 7, 2022 (35 min)
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/07/07/reaching-the-greater-new-york-audience-with-common-sense-on-ukraine/
It is commonplace, for those of us giving such interviews, to look back and think, Why in heaven’s name did I forget to include this, or that! Doctorow has appended a note regarding what he might have included about the Nazis in Ukraine. Reproduced below is his afterthought:
Live interviews like this are always a challenge. Inevitably you do not get across every argument you prepared in advance. In my mental review of our chat, I have one regret. Though I had requested to be asked about how the Kiev regime can be fascist when its president, Zelensky, is a Jew, I did not give the most relevant answer to that question when we spoke: namely the celebration of the SS-collaborator Bandera by the ultra-nationalists running the show through Zelensky as their front man.
Bandera’s name is being given to streets throughout Ukraine and statues are raised to him. Tattoos bearing Bandera’s image were found to be worn by the Azovstal defenders when they surrendered to Russian forces.
The whole issue of Bandera and the present-day heirs to Ukraine’s collaborationists during WWII was highlighted last week by the scandal over remarks to a German journalist made by the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnyk: he denied that Bandera was anti-Semitic or was in any way responsible for the slaughter of Jews in Ukraine by his followers.
Those remarks elicited a storm of criticism from the Israeli government who called it willful disinformation about the Holocaust. Official Poland also entered the fray and with good reason: Poles were slaughtered by Bandera’s warriors as well. From within Scholz’s government, Germans were incensed. Yesterday Melnyk was removed as ambassador and returned to Kiev, where he likely will be promoted to the position of deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. This whole ugly affair is a good demonstration of the fascist nature of a government nominally headed by Zelensky.
