Ukraine and neo-Nazis - The Anti-Empire Report #132 By William Blum

The Anti-Empire Report #132

By William Blum – Published September 16th, 2014

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Ukraine and neo-Nazis

Ever since serious protest broke out in Ukraine in February the Western mainstream media, particularly in the United States, has seriously downplayed the fact that the usual suspects – the US/European Union/NATO triumvirate – have been on the same side as the neo-Nazis. In the US it’s been virtually unmentionable. I’m sure that a poll taken in the United States on this issue would reveal near universal ignorance of the numerous neo-Nazi actions, including publicly calling for death to “Russians, Communists and Jews”. But in the past week the dirty little secret has somehow poked its head out from behind the curtain a bit.

On September 9 NBCnews.com reported that “German TV shows Nazi symbols on helmets of Ukraine soldiers”. The German station showed pictures of a soldier wearing a combat helmet with the “SS runes” of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps. (Runes are the letters of an alphabet used by ancient Germanic peoples.) A second soldier was shown with a swastika on his helmet. 

On the 13th, the Washington Post showed a photo of the sleeping quarter of a member of the Azov Battalion, one of the Ukrainian paramilitary units fighting the pro-Russian separatists. On the wall above the bed is a large swastika. Not to worry, the Post quoted the platoon leader stating that the soldiers embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of “romantic” idea.

Yet, it is Russian president Vladimir Putin who is compared to Adolf Hitler by everyone from Prince Charles to Princess Hillary because of the incorporation of Crimea as part of Russia. On this question Putin has stated:

The Crimean authorities have relied on the well-known Kosovo precedent, a precedent our Western partners created themselves, with their own hands, so to speak. In a situation absolutely similar to the Crimean one, they deemed Kosovo’s secession from Serbia to be legitimate, arguing everywhere that no permission from the country’s central authorities was required for the unilateral declaration of independence. The UN’s international court, based on Paragraph 2 of Article 1 of the UN Charter, agreed with that, and in its decision of 22 July 2010 noted the following, and I quote verbatim: No general prohibition may be inferred from the practice of the Security Council with regard to unilateral declarations of independence. 

Putin as Hitler is dwarfed by the stories of Putin as invader (Vlad the Impaler?). For months the Western media has been beating the drums about Russia having (actually) invaded Ukraine. I recommend reading: “How Can You Tell Whether Russia has Invaded Ukraine?” by Dmitry Orlov 

And keep in mind the NATO encirclement of Russia. Imagine Russia setting up military bases in Canada and Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Remember what a Soviet base in Cuba led to.

Has the United States ever set a bad example?

Ever since that fateful day of September 11, 2001, the primary public relations goal of the United States has been to discredit the idea that somehow America had it coming because of its numerous political and military acts of aggression. Here’s everyone’s favorite hero, George W. Bush, speaking a month after 9-11:

“How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am – like most Americans, I just can’t believe it because I know how good we are.” 

Thank you, George. Now take your pills.

I and other historians of US foreign policy have documented at length the statements of anti-American terrorists who have made it explicitly clear that their actions were in retaliation for Washington’s decades of international abominations.  But American officials and media routinely ignore this evidence and cling to the party line that terrorists are simply cruel and crazed by religion; which many of them indeed are, but that doesn’t change the political and historical facts.

This American mindset appears to be alive and well. At least four hostages held in Syria recently by Islamic State militants, including US journalist James Foley, were waterboarded during their captivity. The Washington Post quoted a US official: “ISIL is a group that routinely crucifies and beheads people. To suggest that there is any correlation between ISIL’s brutality and past U.S. actions is ridiculous and feeds into their twisted propaganda.”

The Post, however, may have actually evolved a bit, adding that the “Islamic State militants … appeared to model the technique on the CIA’s use of waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” 

Talk given by William Blum at a Teach-In on US Foreign Policy, American University, Washington, DC, September 6, 2014

Each of you I’m sure has met many people who support American foreign policy, with whom you’ve argued and argued. You point out one horror after another, from Vietnam to Iraq. From god-awful bombings and invasions to violations of international law and torture. And nothing helps. Nothing moves this person.

Now why is that? Are these people just stupid? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions. Consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, and if you don’t deal with these basic beliefs you may as well be talking to a stone wall.

The most basic of these basic beliefs, I think, is a deeply-held conviction that no matter what the United States does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what horror may result, the government of the United States means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are always honorable, even noble. Of that the great majority of Americans are certain.

Frances Fitzgerald, in her famous study of American school textbooks, summarized the message of these books: “The United States has been a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world: throughout history it had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and diseased countries. The U.S. always acted in a disinterested fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took.”

And Americans genuinely wonder why the rest of the world can’t see how benevolent and self-sacrificing America has been. Even many people who take part in the anti-war movement have a hard time shaking off some of this mindset; they march to spur America – the America they love and worship and trust – they march to spur this noble America back onto its path of goodness.

Many of the citizens fall for US government propaganda justifying its military actions as often and as naively as Charlie Brown falling for Lucy’s football.

The American people are very much like the children of a Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don’t want to know, but then wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window.

This basic belief in America’s good intentions is often linked to “American exceptionalism”. Let’s look at how exceptional US foreign policy has been. Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
2. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
3. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
4. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
5. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
6. Led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American teachers, especially in Latin America.

This is indeed exceptional. No other country in all of history comes anywhere close to such a record.

So the next time you’re up against a stone wall … ask the person what the United States would have to do in its foreign policy to lose his support. What for this person would finally be TOO MUCH. If the person mentions something really bad, chances are the United States has already done it, perhaps repeatedly.

Keep in mind that our precious homeland, above all, seeks to dominate the world. For economic reasons, nationalistic reasons, ideological, Christian, and for other reasons, world hegemony has long been America’s bottom line. And let’s not forget the powerful Executive Branch officials whose salaries, promotions, agency budgets and future well-paying private sector jobs depend upon perpetual war. These leaders are not especially concerned about the consequences for the world of their wars. They’re not necessarily bad people; but they’re amoral, like a sociopath is.

Take the Middle East and South Asia. The people in those areas have suffered horribly because of Islamic fundamentalism. What they desperately need are secular governments, which have respect for different religions. And such governments were actually instituted in the recent past. But what has been the fate of those governments?

Well, in the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a secular government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women, which is hard to believe, isn’t it? But even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women’s rights in Afghanistan. And what happened to that government? The United States overthrew it, allowing the Taliban to come to power. So keep that in mind the next time you hear an American official say that we have to remain in Afghanistan for the sake of women’s rights.

After Afghanistan came Iraq, another secular society, under Saddam Hussein. And the United States overthrew that government as well, and now the country is overrun by crazed and bloody jihadists and fundamentalists of all kinds; and women who are not covered up are running a serious risk.

Next came Libya; again, a secular country, under Moammar Gaddafi, who, like Saddam Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in important ways be benevolent and do marvelous things for Libya and Africa. To name just one example, Libya had a high ranking on the United Nation’s Human Development Index. So, of course, the United States overthrew that government as well. In 2011, with the help of NATO we bombed the people of Libya almost every day for more than six months. And, once again, this led to messianic jihadists having a field day. How it will all turn out for the people of Libya, only God knows, or perhaps Allah.

And for the past three years, the United States has been doing its best to overthrow the secular government of Syria. And guess what? Syria is now a playground and battleground for all manner of ultra militant fundamentalists, including everyone’s new favorite, IS, the Islamic State. The rise of IS owes a lot to what the US has done in Iraq, Libya, and Syria in recent years.

We can add to this marvelous list the case of the former Yugoslavia, another secular government that was overthrown by the United States, in the form of NATO, in 1999, giving rise to the creation of the largely-Muslim state of Kosovo, run by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA was considered a terrorist organization by the US, the UK and France for years, with numerous reports of the KLA being armed and trained by al-Qaeda, in al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, and even having members of al-Qaeda in KLA ranks fighting against the Serbs of Yugoslavia. Washington’s main concern was dealing a blow to Serbia, widely known as “the last communist government in Europe”.

The KLA became renowned for their torture, their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts; another charming client of the empire.

Someone looking down upon all this from outer space could be forgiven for thinking that the United States is an Islamic power doing its best to spread the word – Allah Akbar!

But what, you might wonder, did each of these overthrown governments have in common that made them a target of Washington’s wrath? The answer is that they could not easily be controlled by the empire; they refused to be client states; they were nationalistic; in a word, they were independent; a serious crime in the eyes of the empire.

So mention all this as well to our hypothetical supporter of US foreign policy and see whether he still believes that the United States means well. If he wonders how long it’s been this way, point out to him that it would be difficult to name a single brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population. And in recent years as well, Washington has supported very repressive governments, such as Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.

And what do American leaders think of their own record? Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was probably speaking for the whole private club of our foreign-policy leadership when she wrote in 2000 that in the pursuit of its national security the United States no longer needed to be guided by “notions of international law and norms” or “institutions like the United Nations” because America was “on the right side of history.” 

Let me remind you of Daniel Ellsberg’s conclusion about the US in Vietnam: “It wasn’t that we were on the wrong side; we were the wrong side.”

Well, far from being on the right side of history, we have in fact fought – I mean actually engaged in warfare – on the same side as al Qaeda and their offspring on several occasions, beginning with Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s in support of the Islamic Moujahedeen, or Holy Warriors.

The US then gave military assistance, including bombing support, to Bosnia and Kosovo, both of which were being supported by al Qaeda in the Yugoslav conflicts of the early 1990s.

In Libya, in 2011, Washington and the Jihadists shared a common enemy, Gaddafi, and as mentioned, the US bombed the people of Libya for more than six months, allowing jihadists to take over parts of the country; and they’re now fighting for the remaining parts. These wartime allies showed their gratitude to Washington by assassinating the US ambassador and three other Americans, apparently CIA, in the city of Benghazi.

Then, for some years in the mid and late 2000s, the United States backed Islamic militants in the Caucasus region of Russia, an area that has seen more than its share of religious terror going back to the Chechnyan actions of the 1990s.

Finally, in Syria, in attempting to overthrow the Assad government, the US has fought on the same side as several varieties of Islamic militants. That makes six occasions of the US being wartime allies of jihadist forces.

I realize that I have fed you an awful lot of negativity about what America has done to the world, and maybe it’s been kind of hard for some of you to swallow. But my purpose has been to try to loosen the grip on your intellect and your emotions that you’ve been raised with – or to help you to help others to loosen that grip – the grip that assures you that your beloved America means well. US foreign policy will not make much sense to you as long as you believe that its intentions are noble; as long as you ignore the consistent pattern of seeking world domination, which is a national compulsion of very long standing, known previously under other names such as Manifest Destiny, the American Century, American exceptionalism, globalization, or, as Madeleine Albright put it, “the indispensable nation” … while others less kind have used the term “imperialist”.

In this context I can’t resist giving the example of Bill Clinton. While president, in 1995, he was moved to say: “Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, the brave Americans who fought and died there had noble motives. They fought for the freedom and the independence of the Vietnamese people.” Yes, that’s really the way our leaders talk. But who knows what they really believe?

It is my hope that many of you who are not now activists against the empire and its wars will join the anti-war movement as I did in 1965 against the war in Vietnam. It’s what radicalized me and so many others. When I hear from people of a certain age about what began the process of losing their faith that the United States means well, it’s Vietnam that far and away is given as the main cause. I think that if the American powers-that-be had known in advance how their “Oh what a lovely war” was going to turn out they might not have made their mammoth historical blunder. Their invasion of Iraq in 2003 indicates that no Vietnam lesson had been learned at that point, but our continuing protest against war and threatened war in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere may have – may have! – finally made a dent in the awful war mentality. I invite you all to join our movement. Thank you.

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Notes

1. NBC News, “German TV Shows Nazi Symbols on Helmets of Ukraine Soldiers”, September 6 2014
2. BBC, March 18, 2014
3. Information Clearinghouse, “How Can You Tell Whether Russia has Invaded Ukraine?”, September 1 2014
4. Boston Globe, October 12, 2001
5. See, for example, William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower(2005), chapter 1
6. Washington Post, August 28, 2014
7. Foreign Affairs magazine (Council on Foreign Relations), January/February 2000

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.

The future visible in St Petersburg By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE The future visible in St Petersburg By Pepe Escobar The unipolar model of the world order has failed.  - Vladimir Putin, St Petersburg, May 22 In more ways than one, last week heralded the birth of a Eurasian century. Of course, the US$400 billion Russia-China gas deal was clinched only at the last minute in Shanghai, on Wednesday (a complement to the June 2013, 25-year, $270 billion oil deal between Rosneft and China's CNPC.) Then, on Thursday, most of the main players were at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum - the Russian answer to Davos. And on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his Shanghai triumph, addressed the participants and brought the house down. It will take time to appraise last week's whirlwind in all its complex implications. Here are some of the St Petersburg highlights, in some detail. Were there fewer Western CEOs in town because the Obama administration pressured them - as part of the "isolate Russia" policy? Not many less; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may have snubbed it, but Europeans who matter came, saw, talked and pledged to keep doing business. And most of all, Asians were ubiquitous. Consider this as yet another chapter of China's counterpunch to US President Barack Obama's Asian tour in April, which was widely described as the "China containment tour". [1] On the first day at the St Petersburg forum I attended this crucial session on Russia-China strategic economic partnership. Pay close attention: the roadmap is all there. As Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao describes it: "We plan to combine the program for the development of Russia's Far East and the strategy for the development of Northeast China into an integrated concept." That was just one instance of the fast-emerging Eurasia coalition bound to challenge the "indispensable" exceptionalists to the core. Comparisons to the Sino-Soviet pact are infantile. The putsch in Ukraine - part of Washington's pivot to "contain" Russia - just served to accelerate Russia's pivot to Asia, which sooner or late would become inevitable. It all starts in Sichuan In St Petersburg, from session to session and in selected conversations, what I saw were some crucial building blocks of the Chinese New Silk Road(s), whose ultimate aim is to unite, via trade and commerce, no less than China, Russia and Germany. For Washington, this is beyond anathema. The response has been to peddle a couple of deals which, in thesis, would guarantee American monopoly of two-thirds of global commerce; the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - which was essentially rebuked by key Asians such as Japan and Malaysia during Obama's trip - and the even more problematic Trans-Atlantic Partnership with the EU, which average Europeans absolutely abhor (see Breaking bad in southern NATOstan, Asia Times Online, April 15, 2014). Both deals are being negotiated in secret and are profitable essentially for US multinational corporations. For Asia, China instead proposes a Free Trade Area of Asia-Pacific; after all, it is already the largest trading partner of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). And for Europe, Beijing proposes an extension of the railway that in only 12 days links Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, to Lodz in Poland, crossing Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus. The total deal is the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe network, with a final stop in Duisburg, Germany. No wonder this is bound to become the most important commercial route in the world. [2] There's more. One day before the clinching of the Russia-China gas deal, President Xi Jinping called for no less than a new Asian security cooperation architecture, including of course Russia and Iran and excluding the US. [3] Somehow echoing Putin, Xi described NATO as a Cold War relic. And guess who was at the announcement in Shanghai, apart from the Central Asian "stans": Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and crucially, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The facts on the ground speak for themselves. China is buying at least half of Iraq's oil production - and is investing heavily in its energy infrastructure. China has invested heavily in Afghanistan's mining industry - especially lithium and cobalt. And obviously both China and Russia keep doing business in Iran. [4] So this is what Washington gets for over a decade of wars, incessant bullying, nasty sanctions and trillions of misspent dollars. No wonder the most fascinating session I attended in St Petersburg was on the commercial and economic possibilities around the expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), whose guest of honor was none other than Li Yuanchao. I was arguably the only Westerner in the room, surrounded by a sea of Chinese and Central Asians. The SCO is gearing up to become something way beyond a sort of counterpart to NATO, focusing mostly on terrorism and fighting drug trafficking. It wants to do major business. Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mongolia are observers, and sooner rather than later will be accepted as full members. Once again that's Eurasian integration in action. The branching out of the New Silk Road(s) is inevitable; and that spells out, in practice, closer integration with Afghanistan (minerals) and Iran (energy). The new Crimea boom St Petersburg also made it clear how China wants to finance an array of projects in Crimea, whose waters, by the way, boasting untold, still unexplored, energy wealth, are now Russian property. Projects include a crucial bridge across the Kerch Strait to connect Crimea to mainland Russia; expansion of Crimean ports; solar power plants; and even manufacturing special economic zones (SEZs). Moscow could not but interpret it as Beijing's endorsement of the annexation of Crimea. As for Ukraine, it might as well, as Putin remarked in St Petersburg, pay its bills. [5] And as for the European Union, at least outgoing president of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso understood the obvious: antagonizing Russia is not exactly a winning strategy. Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, has been one of those informed few advising the West about it, to no avail: "Russia and China are likely to cooperate even more closely ... Such an outcome would certainly benefit China, but it will give Russia a chance to withstand US geopolitical pressure, compensate for the EU's coming energy re-orientation, develop Siberia and the Far East, and link itself to the Asia-Pacific region." [6] On the (silk) road again The now symbiotic China-Russia strategic alliance - with the possibility of extending towards Iran [7] - is the fundamental fact on the ground in the young 21st century. It will extrapolate across the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Non-Aligned Movement. Of course the usual shills will keep peddling that the only possible future is one led by a "benign" empire. [8] As if billions of people across the real world - even informed Atlanticists - would be gullible enough to buy it. Still, unipolarity may be dead, but the world, sadly, is encumbered with its corpse. The corpse, according to the new Obama doctrine, is now "empowering partners". To paraphrase Dylan ("I left Rome and landed in Brussels"), I left St Petersburg and landed in Rome, to follow yet another episode in the slow decadence of Europe - the parliamentary elections. But before that, I was fortunate to experience an aesthetic illumination. I visited a virtually deserted Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where two dedicated, extremely knowledgeable researchers gave me a private tour of some pieces belonging to arguably the most outstanding collection of Asian manuscripts on the planet. As a serial Silk Road traveler fanatic, I had heard about many of those documents, but I had never actually seen them. So there I was, on the banks of the Neva, a kid in a (historical) candy store, immersed in all those marvels from Dunhuang to Mongolia, in Vedic or Sanskrit, dreaming of Silk Roads past and future. I could stay there forever. Notes: 1. China Thwarts U.S. 'Containment' With Vietnam Oil Rig Standoff, Forbes, May 8, 2014. 2. Le president chinois appelle la Chine et l'Allemagne - construire la ceinture economique de la Route de la Soie (in French), Xinhua, March 30, 2014. 3. China calls for new Asian security structure, Washington Post, May 21, 2014. 4. Russia plans to build up to eight new nuclear reactors in Iran, Reuters, May 22, 2014. 5. Naftogaz Debt to Gazprom Stands at $4 Bln - EU Energy Commissioner, Ria Novosti, May 28, 2014. 6. See here. 7. China, Iran and Russia: Restructuring the global order, Al Jazeera, May 20, 2014. 8. In Defense of Empire, The Atlantic, March 19, 2014. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Russia, Chechnia and the Ukraine - the *choice* to keep hoping for the impossible - THE VINEYARD OF THE SAKER - A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE VINEYARD

MONDAY, MAY 26, 2014

Russia, Chechnia and the Ukraine - the *choice* to keep hoping for the impossible

As you probably know, the two Russian journalists who worked for the LifeNews, Oleg Sidyakin and Marat Saichenko, were finally freed and brought back home via Grozny in Chechnia.  You might even have heard that the President of Chechnia, Ramzan Kadyrov, played a special role in their liberation.  I think that the importance of this event might be under-estimated by many observers and I want to briefly comment on that.

It all really began in Crimea where, before the operation of the Russian Polite Armed Men in Green (PAMG), when there were some very serious tensions between the various parties including the Muslim Tatars.  At that time, Ramzan Kadyrov for the first time made a statement from faraway Grozny saying that he will not tolerate any "abuses against the Chechen" minority in Crimea.  Since there are not all that many Chechens in Crimea and since soon thereafter PAMG solved the problem anyway, this statement was rapidly forgotten.  But think again, besides being a statement in support of the Chechens in Crimea, who was that statement directed against?  Clearly, the threatened party was not the pro-Russian one, but the pro-Ukrainian forces, including those Tatars (mainly linked to Turkey) who had been manipulated by the USA to take action against the pro-Russian population of Crimea.  It is now clear that what happened in this instance is that Kadyrov did openly say that which Putin could not (for obvious political reasons).  In the end, it was Putin who eventually engaged his PAMG, but it was Kadyrov who had made the threat.

This time again, Kadyrov got involved by issuing an amazing statement which most commentators overlooked.  Here is what he said about the two kidnapped reporters:

The Ukraine's leadership continues to use Fascist methods. We demand the immediate release of Sidyakin and Saychenko. If the folks in Kiev don't come back to their senses and do not let these journalists go back home, we will not stand by in silence and watch as mock them, for them to their knees and keep them with bags on their heads. We have the forces and the capabilities to influence those who are holding these journalists in captivity. I therefore advise them to free these journalists or otherwise we will have resort to some tough actions.

I don't know about you, but when I read that I went "wow!".  There is a Chechen President (who is also and-ex warlord) who is clearly giving the Ukies an ultimatum which they better not ignore.  They didn't.

During 4 days of secret negotiations a group of Chechen negotiators sent by Kadyrov flew to Kiev in his personal jet and had some very frank conversations with the right people in Kiev.  The Chechens probably used the typical mix of threats and bribes to prevail and, as a direct result of this operation, the two reporters were freed.

What is very interesting, is that there is mounting evidence that Putin was involved all along even though he never said a word about it.  First, it is well know that Putin is personally very close to Kadyrov and that a strong friendship binds these two men who have immense respect for each other.  But now we can also make sense of a comment made by Putin who declared that the kidnapped journalists were kept in a "zindan" (a prison hole in the ground), something which he apparently learned through Kadyrov's people in Kiev.  Finally, one has to know Kadrov's quasi obsession in stressing at every step that he is always acting exclusively with the full support of the Kremlin to completely exclude the possibility of a unilateral action on Kadyrov's side.

This time again, Kadyrov said that which Putin could not say.

It was also interesting for me to hear the testimony of the two reporters who told that they understood that something dramatic had changed in their condition when they heard a voice pick up the phone and say "salaam aleikum".  Soon thereafter their handcuffs were taken off and they were told "take off the hood off your heads, you are safe now, you are under the protection of the President of Chechnia".

Why do I consider this so important?

Because the image of Chechnia and the Chechens is radically changing in Russia.  The media openly calls Kadyrov a hero and Russian citizens rejoice when they hear the Islamic "salaam aleikum" because they know that they are now safe.  This is huge!  What a change from only 10 years ago.

Kadyrov in reality plays a role which is a much bigger one than "just" the President of Chechnia (and a hugely successful one at that!).  He is clearly Putin's "ally number 1", especially in security matters, and the two men clearly work closely together as a kind of "tag team".  This kind of special role does a lot to restore the pride of the Chechen people and it also does a lot to change the terrible image many Russians had of Chechens as a result of the horrors of the time when Chechnia was ruled by psychopathic Wahabis.  Instead of being "terrorist barbarians" the Chechens are now increasingly seen as tough and reliable allies of Russia and of the Russian President.

As for the Chechens, they are still feared, but this time outside Russia.  During the 08.08.08 war the Georgians ran as fast as they could as soon as they heard that the Chechen battalion had arrived.  Nowadays, the Ukraine is full of rumors that Chechens have arrived to support the Donetsk and Lugansk republics.  To my knowlege this has not happened (yet?) and apparently there is some confusion between a "Vostok battalion" (Eastern battalion) in the Ukraine and the Chechen "Vostok battalion" which saw action in 08.08.08.  The former is composed of local volunteers from the Donbass while the latter is now formally part of the 291st Motor-Rifle regiment of the 42nd Guard Motor-Rifle Division of the Russian armed forces.  But I would not put it past Kadyrov to send in Chechen special forces as "volunteers" into the Donbass if things get really ugly there. Of course,  the key thing would be to get Putin's go ahead for such a move.

I find that absolutely remarkable.  By 2000 Chechnia was in ruins, a huge amount of Chechens had been killed, Grozny was was completely destroyed and plans were made to abandon the city and build a new capital elsewhere.  Almost all western experts were unanimous in their conclusion that the guerrilla war and terrorism operations would never stop and that Chechnia would become a "constantly bleeding wound in the soft underbelly of Russia" or some equally stupid cliche.  Now, 14 years later, Grozny is a superb city, traditional Islam has completely replaced Wahabism, Chechen terrorists and warlords have all been eliminated one by one, Chechnia has a very low crime rate, French actor Gerard Depardieu has an apartment in downtown Grozny, Russians increasingly see Chechens as their toughest and most dependable allies and the enemies of Russia literally tremble in fear at the possibility that "the Chechens might come".  Who could have ever imagined that?!

Will that be enough to heal the wounds of the past?

I don't know for sure, but I fervently hope so.  For one thing I will always blame the regime of Eltsin and his Jewish oligarchs more than Dudaev and his Chechen followers for the first Chechen war.  True, what the Chechens did during and after that war was simply beyond barbaric and I fully supported the 2nd Chechen war in which Russia simply did what had to be done (and did so brilliantly).  So I believe that both sides share the guilt and the pain of what happened.  Still, Russia is so much bigger and more powerful that the Chechens who had no chance as soon as the Russian people supported the military action (which was not the case in the first Chechen war) and I believe that Akhmad Kadyrov had the wisdom to see that this war would end up in the quasi-total elimination of the Chechen people and that it had to be stopped.  I think that Putin also understood this and that he believed that such an outcome would also be a disaster for Russia.  So these two men did the unthinkable and stopped a war which was about to turn into a total war until one side would wipe out the other.  It is as easy for me to write these terrible words as it is for you to read them.  But think about it, we are truly talking about an unspeakable horror which almost happened.  And the murder of Akhmad Kadyrov could have made this outcome inevitable had it not been for his son Ramzan who replaced his father and did an absolutely brilliant job to make his dream come true: Chechnia today is both Islamic and free.  It has a huge degree of autonomy, but it also is the most faithful and strongest ally of the Russian President.  I would even say that Chechnia is the single most important factor of stability in the entire Caucasus region.

I am under no illusion about the possibility of a "Ukrainian Kadyrov" appearing on the world scene anytime soon.  But if such a miracle could happen in Chechnia, I want to at least hopethat it is possible in a future Ukraine, one freed from oligarchs and Nazis as much as Chechnia is now Wahabi-free.

Hope dies last and this is a hope I simply want to keep in my heart, no matter how naive it might seem to the "realists" out there.  I don't want to believe that a "Banderastan" can survive in what is a Christian holy land for which literally millions of people died to keep in Orthodox and free.  Right now the picture out of the Ukraine is a terrible one.  But Chechnia in 2000 was even worse.  So I will keep hoping.

The Saker

THE ROVING EYE - Asia will not 'isolate' Russia By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE
Asia will not 'isolate' Russia
Envy the fly on the wall in The Hague when cool Xi Jinping met Barack Obama, pivoting around himself because China and the rest of Asia will not "isolate" Russia. China is Russia's strategic partner and along with Japan and South Korea (essentially US protectorates) identifies more with a steady supply of oil and gas, and business deals struck in Moscow, than helping stir an anachronistic Western-provoked New Cold War.

Any (bureaucratic) doubts the New Cold War is on have been dispelled by the Group of Seven issuing a pompous, self-described Hague Declaration. Abandon all hope those who expected The Hague to become the seat of a tribunal judging the war crimes of the Cheney regime. 

The G-7 also cancelled its upcoming summer summit in Sochi as a means of "punishing" Moscow over Crimea. As if this carried any practical value. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded with class; if you don't want us, we have better things to do. [1] Everyone knows the G-7 is an innocuous, self-important talk shop. It's in the G-20 - much more representative of the real world - where crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic issues gain traction. 

The Hague Declaration comes complete with the kiss of death, as in, "The International Monetary Fund has a central role leading the international effort to support Ukrainian reform, lessening Ukraine's economic vulnerabilities, and better integrating the country as a market economy in the multilateral system." That's code for "wait till structural adjustment starts biting". 

And then there will be "measures to enhance trade and strengthen energy security" - code for "we will destroy your industry" but "are not very keen on paying your humongous Gazprom bill". 

All this in the sidelines of a supposed summit on nuclear security in the Netherlands, where US President Barack Obama, at the Rijksmuseum, in front of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, extolled Washington's "support of the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian people". Rembrandt's watchers have never seen anything like it in their glorious lifespan. It pays to be a Nazi after all; you just need to be in the right government, against the right enemy, and fully approved by the hyper-power. 

King Willem-Alexander hosted a lavish dinner for the members of the nuclear security summit at the Royal Palace Huis ten Bosch in The Hague - after Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a (failed) bid to "isolate" Russia. The White House would later add that, as long as Russia continues "flagrantly" to violate international law, "there is no need for it to engage with the G7". Unless, of course, it starts conducting a drone war in Ukrainian badlands - with kill-list attached. 

All about NATO
The US Senate - always enjoying superb popularity ratings - laboriously laid the groundwork for debating a bill backing a US$1 billion loan guarantee for the regime changers in Kiev, plus $150 million in aid also including "neighboring countries". These figures are enough to pay Ukraine's bills for maybe two weeks. 

Meanwhile, in the facts on the ground department, Crimea will be booming soon - tourism included - and may even become a "special economic zone". [2] Subjects of the upcoming IMF/agrobusiness-plundered Khaganate of Nulands will see the results for themselves. 

Hysteria within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that Russia is about to invade everyone and his neighbor literally tomorrow - remember The Russians Are Coming! - persists unabated. Independent observers, The Roving Eye included, always insisted this is all about NATO, and not the European Union. [3] 

Since the go-go days of the Bill Clinton era, NATO has been expanding to the doorstep of Russia. The process graphically represents US hegemony over Europe; NATO "annexed" Eastern Europe even before the EU. And even those certified US Cold Warriors such as Paul Nitze always thought this was a needless, dangerous provocation of Russia. 

Very few remember how "Bubba" Clinton, to make sure terminal alcoholic Boris Yeltsin was re-elected in 1996, postponed NATO's expansion for a year. Afterwards, the expansion turbocharged into NATO as global Robocop - from the Balkans to the intersection of Central and South Asia, and to Northern Africa. 

NATO's humanitarian bombing of Yugoslavia - 36,000 combat missions, 23,000 bombs and missiles - whose 15th anniversary is "celebrated" this week, codified the new realities. NATO had nothing to do with defense; it was a multi-lethal (transformer) attack dog. It was the epitome of clean war; aerial blitzkrieg, and no casualties. And it was totally legitimized by "human rights" over national sovereignty; that was humanitarian imperialism in the making, opening the way to "responsibility to protect" and the destruction of Libya. 

Moscow knows very well the lineaments of the neo-barbarian behemoth at its gates, in the form of NATO bases in Ukraine, assuming the regime changers in Kiev remain in power. And their response has absolutely nothing to do with "Putin's aggression". Or the so-called "Medvedev Doctrine" of Russia theoretically extending military protection to Russians everywhere. As if Russia was about to "threaten" its business interests in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan or Mongolia. 

What the White House calls "the international community" - roughly the "Hague Declaration" G-7 plus a few European minions - could not possibly admit that. Asia, on the other hand, clearly identifies it. China, Japan and South Korea, for starters, identify Russia with a steady supply of oil and gas and further business deals. Even considering that Japan and South Korea are essentially US protectorates, nothing could be more anachronistic in their calculations than a Western-provoked New Cold War. 

Asia will not "isolate" Russia - and Asians and Russians know it, as much as The White House is in denial. Beijing's abstention in "condemning" Moscow - talk about the American angry-schoolmaster brand of politics - is classic Deng Xiaoping-style "keep a low profile", as China is Russia's strategic partner and both are busy working for the emergence of a multipolar world. Not to mention Beijing's utmost rejection of US-style color-coded "revolutions" and regime change ops - as well as that "pivoting to Asia" encirclement ops. 

Oh, to have been an EU-regulated fly on the wall in that Hague room where Obama and Xi were talking; cool Xi meets Obama pivoting around himself. 

Notes:
1. Russia not clinging to G8 if West does not want it - Russian FM, Russia Today, March 24, 2014.
2. Crimea to become Russian special economic zone-Medvedev, Russia Today, March 24, 2014.
3. Why the EU won't annex Ukraine, Russia Today, March 24, 2014.


Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.