Myths about Brexit and the EU By The Wayne Madsen Report

 Myths about Brexit and the EU By The Wayne Madsen Report
The upset victory of the Brexit campaign for the United Kingdom to withdrawal from the Europe Union has all the usual suspects pulling their hair, gnashing their teeth, clutching their pearls, and looking for the nearest fainting couch. The gloom and doom predictions that the world now faces an economic catastrophe are on the lips of George Soros-paid operatives and Wall Street con artists who have managed to book themselves on the blathering "news" shows found in the vast wasteland of cable television.

What eventually became the EU, the European Coal and Steel Community, was formed by six Western European countries in 1951. The organization was the brainchild of Robert Schuman, a French politician who swore allegiance to Marshal Petain, the French Vichy leader and ally of the mustachioed German ex-corporal. Schuman was later stripped of his civic rights for his collaboration with the hated German bosche. However, Charles De Gaulle restored Schuman's full citizenship, after which the old Vichy collaborator set about to create a modified version of the Third Reich, the European Union. And to complement his "Fourth Reich-Lite," Schuman advocated a military alliance to give it muscle. It was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Schuman served as a post-war French foreign and prime minister. Schuman's collaborators in his plan to create a federal Europe were fellow Frenchman and OSS/CIA asset Jean Monnet and German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who, as pre-war mayor of Cologne and president of the Prussian State Council, provided the Nazis with various perks, including the right to fly Nazi flags from Cologne city flagpoles.

It is truly amazing to see so many "progressives" lament the UK's vote to leave an organization that was founded by Nazi collaborators and CIA agents-of-influence. There is nothing very democratic about a European superstate that dictates to French bakers how to make baguettes, Greek dairy farmers how to make feta cheese, and English pub keepers how to maintain a proper bar top.
One of the biggest misnomers being proffered by the pasty-faced chattering class is that the UK's Brexit vote is unprecedented. That is flat out wrong. The UK is the third country within the EU to vote to withdraw from the organization create to enable a kinder and gentler European Fourth Reich.

Greenland voted twice to leave the EU. The first vote was when Denmark, its colonial master, joined the EU in 1973. When Greenland achieved home rule status in 1979, it held another referendum and the outcome was the same: a flat no to EU membership.

In 2015, Greece voted by more than 60 percent to reject the terms laid forth by the EU for continued Greek membership in the eurozone. The referendum was a de facto rejection of the EU, which warned Greece that if it rejected the austerity terms for continued inclusion in the eurozone, it was tantamount to a withdrawal from the inner circle of the EU. The ersatz leftist SYRIZA party, created by Soros as a controlled alternative to his hated Communists, set about to accept the EU's draconian economic terms anyway.

The anti-Brexit campaigners also warned that the UK faced a break-up if there was a vote to leave the EU. The Brexit vote was 17.4 million, about 1.2 million more than received by the Remain campaign. The Brexit campaign received a little over a million votes in Scotland. So, while Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in the UK, the 1 million votes against the EU in Scotland gave the Brexit campaign their comfortable lead nationwide. It is doubtful that a million anti-EU Scots will not make themselves heard if Scotland decides to break from the UK and apply to remain in the EU.

Some American media circles compared the Brexit campaign to the Donald Trump campaign in the United States. There is no comparison. Brexit racked up wins in several Labor strongholds throughout England and Wales, including northeastern England; Birmingham and Bradford, England; and Swansea, Wales. The victory for Brexit was not a right-wing victory but more like Trump and Bernie Sanders teaming up on a national ticket. As many anti-EU Laborites can be found in the UK as Conservatives. And they all turned out in force to upset the opinion polls that showed the Remain campaign ahead on the eve of the election. Tories and Labor, alike, do not trust their futures being decided by a bunch of faceless "Eurocrats" in Brussels, which also happens to be the pedophile capital of Europe.
European Union: good riddance

There were published reports that Queen Elizabeth quietly supported Brexit. When the UK first joined the EU in 1973, the Queen's head of state counterparts were largely fellow monarchs like those of the Benelux countries, Denmark, Sweden, and Spain, or presidents who emitted regal airs, for example, Georges Pompidou and Francois Mitterand of France, Walter Scheel of West Germany, and Sandro Pertini of Italy. With the expanded EU, the Queen shares top billing with heads of state from eastern European countries who are glorified paper pushers, political apparatchiks, and dubious businessmen with links to local mafias. For Her Majesty to be considered an equal among such commoners is much too much for the longest reigning British monarch. Even if Scotland goes it alone, the Scottish National Party has vowed to keep the British monarch as the Scottish head of state. Queen Elizabeth, at least, will shine on her own as the head of state of a nation not subservient to a Polish bureaucrat, Donald Tusk, and a Luxembourgeois alcoholic political hack, Jean-Claude Juncker.

The only people who will be hurt by Brexit are the globalists, the ilk who gather behind closed doors at Bilderberg conferences and Davos forums and engage in homosexual-themed hazing activities at the Bohemian Grove. The Labor dandy Peter Mandelson tweeted that his post-referendum morning was the "worst day in post-war British history." Obviously, Mandelson forgot about the Suez crisis, several deadly Irish Republican Army terrorist attacks, and the London transit attacks of 2005. The always-revolting Tony Blair took the occasion for the Brexit victory to call out Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for his lackluster leadership in ensuring Labor support for the Remain campaign. Blair and his Blairites are now planning an intra-party coup against Corbyn, who actually believes in union rights and championing the cause of the working class.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, whose welcome mat to jihadist lotharios everywhere has put the safety of every woman and child in Germany and Europe at risk from sexual assault, waxed nostalgic about the 60-year old Treaty of Rome in the wake of the Brexit vote. Yes, the treaty crafted by the old Nazi collaborator Adenauer and his Vichy pal Schuman. Merkel, who once thought of herself as the next United Nations Secretary General, will soon be lucky to qualify as a Hamburg public toilet attendant.

Anti-EU political leaders in Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Sweden, Hungary, and even Germany have taken heart in the UK referendum outcome. There are calls for similar referenda in their own countries. While pathetic individuals like Merkel, Mandelson, Blair, and others cry themselves to sleep over Brexit, the days of the Schuman-Monnet-Adenauer "Fourth Reich Lite" may now be nearing an end. Tomorrow's Europe will be one where a French President named Marine Le Pen, not an aged hausfrau like Merkel, will be calling the shots. No longer will migrant riff-raff be able to board a boat in Turkey and end up in Paris three days later. "Passeport s'il vous plaît," "Passe bitte," and "passaporta prega" will, once again, be welcomed comments on trains and at border stops throughout Europe.

The Brexit victory also demonstrates that Barack Obama's foreign policy has been an utter disaster. Obama interfered publicly on British soil in two British referenda: he supported the "Better Together" campaign in Scotland and the Remain campaign in the UK. Obama comes up a loser on both. A majority of the UK's voters showed they don't care what Obama thinks or says. The UK will leave the EU, Obama's friend "David" -- Tory Prime Minister David Cameron -- has resigned, and Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has promised another Scottish independence referendum, which is expected to pass easily. Obama's military buildup of NATO against Russia is also in shambles, with leading politicians in Germany, Italy, France, Greece, and other countries tiring of the Pentagon's saber-rattling aimed at Russia. Obama is heading for an esteemed presidential ranking in the history books, right down at the bottom of the list, along with Franklin Pierce, Chester Arthur, and Millard Fillmore.

The people of England and Wales just voted to save European culture, religion, and civilization. As the election returns came in, it was refreshing, in an almost melodic way,  to hear "voting to leave are Stratford-on-Avon, Nottingham, Coventry, Dover, Neath Port Talbot, Cornwall, New Forest, Milton Keynes, Christchurch, Rugby, King's Lynn, Barrow-in-Furness, Isle of Anglesey, Maidstone, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Isle of Wight, Barking and Dagenham, and Stockton-on-Tees." Only those who believe these storied English and Welsh places are not worth saving from mosques, muezzins, and minarets are down in the dumps over Brexit. However, all throughout Europe, a majority of the population is celebrating the news from across the English Channel. As for the "progressives" who just love their globalization and "new world order," there are more Brexits to come: Frexit, Swexit, Grexit, Danexit, Portexit, Spanexit, and more. If they can't stand the thought of living in such a world, perhaps they should consider suicide and help make the world a better place.

Top ten Soros targets in 2016 by Wayne Madsen Report

Top ten Soros targets in 2016 by Wayne Madsen Report
George Soros has a list and he's checking it twice. The list is where he will concentrate the efforts of his Central Intelligence Agency-connected non-governmental organization (NGO) assets in 2016. While supporting the CIA's agenda, Soros always manages to maximize his profits from the chaotic situations he and his operations engineer around the world.

1. Soros will continue to facilitate the arrival of hundreds of thousands of additional, mainly Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to Europe. The political and border destabilization of Europe and the resulting introduction of draconian security measures by the European Union are high on Soros's agenda.

2. Soros is backing a themed revolution for the Srpska Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of Serbia, itself. The Srpska Republic president, Milorad Dodik, is threatening to declare independence from the Bosnia-Herzegovina federation and join Serbia. Dodik has the backing of the Serbian government as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Soros has decided to pull out all the stops to overthrow the Serbian government in Belgrade and the Srpska Republic government in Banja Luka and thus ensure compliant and anti-Russian governments take over power in both republics.

3. Soros will martial his resources in Haiti to ensure that banana company mogul Jovenel Moise wins the presidential run-off in Haiti's postponed election. Moise is the hand-picked successor of current president Michel Martelly, a singer by profession. Soros's election engineers succeeded in knocking out of a first- or second-place finish the candidate representing former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is despised by Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Soros, for his leftist populist policies.

4. Soros's Open Society Institute and other NGO contrivances will continue to back the failed state of Ukraine. Soros will especially shore up Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the American Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, and Odessa regional governor Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Soros-installed president of Georgia who is now a wanted criminal by the government in Tbilisi. Soros will continue to see to it that Ukrainian regular and irregular military forces continue to cause border problems for the Russian autonomous republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the east and that sanctions against officials of Lugansk, Donetsk, and Crimea are not only maintained but strengthened.

5. Soros will press the opposition-controlled National Assembly of Venezuela to rescind Venezuela's diplomatic recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two republics that broke way from Georgia.

6. Soros's operatives in China will continue to stir up political problems for Beijing in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao with increased street demonstrations. Soros will also step up his financial and political support for secessionists in Tibet, East Turkestan (Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Republic), and Inner Mongolia.

7. With the Argentine presidency and the Venezuelan National Assembly falling under the control of right-wing fascist-oriented political parties, Soros will mobilize his Latin American assets to force Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from the presidency. She has been battling an attempt by the Brazilian Congress to impeach her. Soros despises Rousseff for a number of reasons but chiefly they are her commitment to the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa; her family links to Bulgaria during its communist past; her rejection of Soros's "Third Way" politics; Rousseff's opposition to privatization of state-owned enterprises -- industries into which Soros wants to invest heavily; and Rousseff's opposition to Brazilian public schools being used to promote homosexual life styles. Soros's main goal is to have Rousseff replaced with a right-winger who will pull Brazil out of the BRICS bloc.



8. Another BRICS leader Soros sees as vulnerable is Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa. Soros's goal is to destroy the BRICS by peeling away South Africa and Brazil from the alliance, leaving only China and Russia as members after India can be persuaded the alliance is dead. Zuma and his African National Congress are also Soros targets because of their opposition to Israeli policies in Palestine and same-sex marriage. Soros backs the Democratic Alliance party, which receives much of its financial support from South African Zionists and the Jewish-dominated diamond industry.

9. Whoever the Republican U.S. presidential candidate turns out to be, Soros will throw his money and the backing of his NGOs to Hillary Clinton, a personal friend. Soros can be expected to finance intense opposition research and a massive 527 political action committee ad campaign against the GOP presidential candidate.

10. In the various presidential elections scheduled for 2016, Soros forces will back the most anti-Christian and pro-Muslim presidential candidates in the Central African Republic; Antonio Vitorino, a noted "Eurocrat," for president of Portugal; the pro-West Benin Prime Minster Lionel Zinsou for president of Benin; hedge fund manager Pedro Kuczynski for president of Peru; Juan Cohen for president of the Dominican Republic; all the anti-Putin candidates in the Russian election for the State Duma; pro-Saakashvili candidates in the Georgian parliamentary election; pro-NATO/EU parties in the Montenegro parliamentary election; and pro-EU/NATO parties in the Romanian parliamentary election.

Soros will work to defeat the Bolivian constitutional amendment referendum that will permit President Evo Morales to run for another term. They will also work against the re-election of Robert Fico as Prime Minister of Slovakia and the election of Samia Nkrumah, the daughter of Ghana's founding president Kwame Nkrumah as president of Ghana. In the Tanzanian constitutional referendum, the Soros forces will seek to protect the present union status quo and defeat any attempt by Zanzibar to secede and go its own way.

Europe and Ukraine: A tale of two elections by Pepe Escobar

Europe and Ukraine: A tale of two elections

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

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Published time: May 27, 2014 09:26

Ukrainian presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko walks in front of screen displaying results of the presidential elections in Ukraine prior his press-conference in Kiev on May 26, 2014. (AFP Photo / Sergei Supinsky)

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The regime changers in Kiev decided to hold a presidential election on May 25, the same day as European Parliament elections, in order to demonstrate their desire to follow a European-centric foreign policy.Circumstances surrounding the European and Ukrainian elections were far from being a mere coincidence.

Talk about two elections somewhat joined at the hip! In the end, the Ukraine election did actually represent European foreign policy in action – manifested in regime change leading to the specter of civil war.

Few in Europe would have noticed how this process is so far away from “democracy” –instead enshrining intolerance and an ideology of blind confrontation, as represented by this “debate” in Kiev driven by a clueless Yale historian.

Key facts that should be understaood are how the West ignored the Odessa massacre, as well as the detention of Russian journalists; and how the West dismissed the aspirations of eastern and southern Ukrainians as the work of “pro-Russians” or “terrorists.” These people simply became objects of repression - fully supervised by the West, with now the whole regime change theatre of the absurd in Kiev legitimized through an election charade.

Way beyond the established fact of an Atlantic push against Russian western borderlands, Ukraine remains a catfight of local oligarchies. No wonder the new Ukrainian president is also an oligarch; the 7th wealthiest citizen in the land, who owns not just a chocolate empire, but also automotive plants, a shipyard in Crimea and a TV channel. The only difference is that he’s a NATO oligarch

It’s the economy, stupid

Meanwhile, in NATOstan, local and transnational elites have been desperately trying to spin a measure of success. Abstention remains notable – only roughly 4 in 10 Europeans take the trouble to vote on what goes on in Strasbourg, with a majority alienated enough to legitimize the mix of internal European austerity and international belligerence.

Yet the vote on Sunday went way beyond “anti-establishment,” nationalist – and frankly xenophobic or even fascistic – parties consolidating the rejection of “more EU.”

Hardly discussed in the pre-vote campaigns were the Snowden NSA revelations; the shady negotiations between Washington and Brussels over a free trade agreement which will be a boon for US Big Business; and how the financial casino supervised by the European Central Bank, the IMF, and the European Commission (EC) will remain untouched, further ravaging the European middle classes.

The anti-EU crowd performed very well in France, the UK, Denmark and Greece. Not so well in Italy and the Netherlands. The mainstream did relatively well in Germany and ultraconservative Spain – even though losing votes to small parties.

A general view shows press crews working in the hemicycle of the European Parliament during the announcement of the European Parliament elections results on May 25, 2014 in Brussels. (AFP Photo / Georges Gobet)

In Italy, the ruling Democratic Party of current Prime Minister Matteo Renzi did very well (almost 41 percent). The Italian Tony Blair keeps promising a vague “radical reform” – whatever that means. As for the anti-establishment 5 Star party of comedian Beppe Grillo, it lost a lot of votes.

In regions such as northwest France, which includes Normandy – a traditional bastion of the Left – Marine Le Pen’s National Front got a whopping 32.6 percent of the vote. With Francois Hollande’s pathetic socialists in power, Le Pen could not but have the last laugh.

And that duly prompted a portentous intellectual nullity such as the former executive editor of the International Herald Tribune to roar that Marine Le Pen is the French Vladimir Putin.

Essentially, European voters said two things out loud: either “the EU sucks,” or “we couldn’t care less about you, Eurocrat suckers.”

As if that sea of lavishly pensioned Brussels apparatchiks – the Eurocrats - would care. After all, their mantra is that “democracy” is only good for others (even Ukrainians…) but not for the EU; when the European flock of sheep votes, they should only be allowed to pick obscure Brussels-peddled and Brussels-approved treaties.

Brussels, anyway, is bound to remain the Kafkaesque political epitome of centralized control and red tape run amok. No wonder the EU is breathlessly pivoting with itself as the global economy relentlessly pivots to Asia.

Follow the money

To believe that an EU under troika austerity will bail Kiev out of its massive outstanding debts is wishful thinking. The recipe - already inbuilt in the $17 billion IMF “rescue” package is, of course, austerity.

Oligarchs will remain in control, while assorted plunderers are already lining up. Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – for whom hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were expendable –“observed” the elections, and most of all observed how to privatize Telecom Ukraine, as she is doing now with Telekom Kosovo.

There’s no evidence Right Sector and Svoboda will cease to be crypto-fascist, racist and intolerant just because Poroshenko – the King of Ukrainian Chocolate – is now the president. By the way, his margin for maneuver is slim, as his own markets – not to mention some of his factories – are in Russia. Heavy industry and the weapons industry in eastern Ukraine depend on Russian demand. It would take at least a whopping $276 billion for the West to “stabilize” eastern Ukraine. The notion of the EU “saving” Ukraine is D.O.A.

Moscow, once again, just needs to do what it is doing: nothing. And make sure there will be no economic or political help unless a federalized – and Finlandized - Ukraine with strong regions sees the light of day.

Even the Brookings Institution has reluctantly been forced to admit that the US neo-con gambit has failed miserably; there’s no Ukraine without Russian help.

A man assists a woman with the casting of her ballot at polling station in the southern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk on May 25, 2014. (AFP Photo / Anatolii Stepanov)

So it’s up to the Chocolate King to prove himself a leader of all Ukrainians, and only then will he have a shot at entente cordiale with – and even help from - Moscow.

Signs so far are mixed. Poroshenko said Ukraine could “possibly” become an EU member state by 2025 (it won’t happen). He ruled out entering NATO (wise move). He rejects federalization (dumb move). He believes that with a strong economy Crimea would want to be back (wishful thinking). Still, he believes in reaching a compromise with Moscow (that’s what Moscow always wanted, even before regime change).

What a mess

Back in NATOstan, there’s the crucial point of what happens to the ultra-right-wing anti-EU brigade in the Parliament in Strasbourg. They may all abhor the EU, but the fact is this ideological basket case will hardly form an alliance.

An alliance would mean at least 25 Parliament members coming from at least 7 different countries. Marine Le Pen has already stepped into the ring. She has an agreement with the nasty Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and could also count on the Austrian FPO and the Belgian Vlaams Belang. The Swedish Democrats – which are in fact crypto-Nazis – are sitting on the fence. The Greek neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn and the Hungarian Jobbik are out. As for UKIP, they definitely don't see themselves as part of this “family.”

What this ultimately means is that conservative and moderate parties, as per the status quo, will remain in control, expressed via an extremely likely coalition of the European People’s Party (center-right) and the Socialists and Democrats (center-left).

What comes next, in the second half of 2014, is the appointment of a new EU Commission. That’s Kafka redux, as in the bureaucrat-infested executive arm of the EU, which shapes the agenda, sort of (when it’s not busy distributing subventions in color-coded folders for assorted European cows.)

There are 5 candidates fighting for the position of EC president. According to the current EU treaty, member states have to consider the result of EU Parliament elections when appointing a new president. Germany wants a conservative. France and Italy want a socialist. So expect a tortuous debate ahead to find who will succeed the spectacularly mediocre Jose Manuel Barroso.

The favorite is a right-winger of the European People’s Party, former Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker. He is an avid defender of banking secrecy while posing himself as a champion of“market social economy.”

Then there’s more Kafka: choosing the new president of the EU Council and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Translation: the EU won’t decide anything, or “reform” anything for months. That includes the critical negotiations with the Americans over the free trade deal.

It’s absolutely impossible to spin these Sunday elections as not discrediting even more the EU project as it stands.

As I’ve seen for myself, since early 2014, in 5 among the top EU countries, what matters for the average citizen is as follows: how to deal with immigration; how to fight the eradication of the welfare state; the implications of the free trade agreement with the US; the value of the euro –including an absurdly high cost of living; and what the ECB mafia is actually doing to fight unemployment.

With Kafka in charge for the foreseeable future, what’s certain is that Paris and Berlin will drift further and further apart. There will be no redesign of the EU’s institutions. And the next Parliament, filled with sound and fury, will be no more than a hostage of the devastating, inexorable political fragmentation of Europe.“Saving” Ukraine? What a joke. The EU cannot even save itself.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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EU and NATO hypocrisy on Ukraine by Wayne Madsen

EU and NATO hypocrisy on Ukraine

In one of the most blatant displays of hypocrisy in modern international affairs, the same state, supranational, and non-governmental organization actors who stood at the forefront of splitting apart Yugoslavia into seven smaller independent states are also standing at the helm in calling for the preservation of the unity of Ukraine. These players include the European Union, NATO, and the World Bank/International Monetary Fund, in addition to the United States, Britain, Germany, and organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

In fact, the OSCE expelled Yugoslavia from membership in 1992 because it did not want to listen to the Yugoslavian representative present his nation's views on the planned dismemberment of his country to the other OSCE delegations. The contradictions of how the OSCE treated Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and how it is dealing with Russia, Crimea, and the independence-seeking Russian-speaking regions of eastern and southern Ukraine serve as textbook examples of Western hypocritical policies. In the 1990s, the OSCE, which was already infiltrated by George Soros operatives, championed the independence of the constituent nations of Yugoslavia, starting with Slovenia and Croatia, and then moving into the country that would spark a bloodbath: Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the OSCE, the EU, and NATO performed their nation-busting, Yugoslavia was broken into seven nations: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia.

The European "Triune" of the EU, NATO, and the OSCE, however, has vigorously opposed the retrocession of Crimea to Russia and declarations of sovereignty by Donetsk, Lugansk, and Odessa in Ukraine even though these regions have more of a claim to self-determination than did the NATO and EU creation of Kosovo, an Albanian-run statelet in the middle of the Balkans led by organized crime figures and terrorists.

The EU and the United States maintain that any change in Ukrainian borders must be approved by a national referendum held in all of Ukraine. Yet, no national referendum on the preservation of Yugoslavia was ever held. NATO and the EU supported the various breakaway republics of "South Slavia," without any regard to the wishes of the Yugoslav people as a whole.

When Serbs, who found themselves trapped in the newly-independent countries of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, declared their wish for self-determination, they were branded "secessionists" and then "war criminals." In this regard, NATO and the EU treated the Serbs living outside of Serbia proper in the same manner as the moribund and corrupt Western organizations are treating the Russians trapped inside a Ukraine governed by a coalition of neo-Nazis and austerity-driven technocrats.

NATO and the EU were more than happy to have ethnic Serbs have their future determined by the ideological descendants of the pro-Nazi Ustashe in Croatia and the pro-Hitler Bosniak Muslims running Bosnia from Sarajevo. The situation for the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia was no different than that which has befallen ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians in eastern and southern Ukraine. In both the cases of Yugoslavia and Ukraine, the EU, NATO, Soros's organizations, and the neoconservative think tanks in Washington allied with ethnic nationalists tainted with a neo-Nazi hue.

Xenophobic anti-Russian attitudes, which now pervade the governments in Berlin, Washington, London, and eastern Europe, were also prevalent in these same capitals in the early 1990s. Johann Reismuller, the editor of the influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, championed the cause of independent Croatia and Slovenia by deploring the "Yugo-Serbs" as "Russian Bolsheviks" who had no place in the European Union. Today, individuals like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright, John Kerry, have brought their respective Polish Catholic and Jewish Czech "baggage" to bear on steering U.S. policy on a decidedly anti-Russian course. Brzezinski, Albright, and Kerry have adopted Russophobia as a hallmark of American foreign policy in the same manner as they embraced "Serbophobia" as U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s. The only difference is that where they championed the dissolution of Yugoslavia they now seek to maintain the unity of Ukraine. In both cases, they sought to tweak the nose of the Russian bear.

The Slavophobe, Serbophobe, and Russophobe Hungarian Jew George Soros (left) has been at the heart of the troubles of Yugoslavia and Ukraine. Hungarians are not a Slavic people.

The progressive left has been co-opted by the Soros gang to demonize Russia just as they were co-opted to paint Serbia as some sort of evil aggressor. Condemning Serbs in the Bundestag, German Green leader Joschka Fischer equated Serbs with the German Nazis. It has been reported from a number of sources that Fischer, a radical leftist friend of German radical and "Paris 68" provocateur Daniel Cohn-Bendit, both had Cold War links to the CIA. Green Party leader Petra Kelly considered Fischer to be an "upstart" and a "careerist." The question remains: What organization provided Fischer with his lifetime career? Perhaps the same one that provided Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., the poseur "progressive," with his own storied career.

The fact that the CIA and Soros were covering all bases in Europe in seeking the dismemberment of Yugoslavia is evidenced by the fact that independence for Croatia and Slovenia was supported by Fischer on one side and the octogenarian Otto von Habsburg, the heir to the crown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, when the CIA is involved in anything, strange bedfellows are always commonplace.

The use of Pussy Riot "feminists" like Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, recently feted by the U.S. Senate, is nothing new. During the campaign to break up Yugoslavia, public relations spinners like the Ruder Finn public relations firm, contracted by Croatia, successfully marketed the meme to the international press that Serbs were running "rape camps." The intent was to stir feminist outrage toward Serbia. The story of rape camps was patently false but, was nevertheless, run as a legitimate news story by The New York Times and Newsday. CNN's Christiane Amanpour echoed other propagandists in the news media in reporting non-existent Serbian "atrocities" against "defenseless" Muslim Bosnians. In fact, CNN never reported that the Bosnian Muslims were well-armed. The CIA enabled a number of Arab and other Muslim paramilitary units to enter Bosnia to support the Muslim government in Sarajevo. These paramilitary units included one led by one Osama Bin Laden who moved in and out of Bosnia on a Bosnian diplomatic passport issued, with the approval of the CIA, by the Bosnian embassy in Vienna. Another Muslim paramilitary leader in Bosnia was one Colonel Mohammed Atta of the Egyptian Air Force.

Today, there are reports that takfiri fighters, some linked to Al Qaeda, are being sent into Ukraine from Syria to help the Kiev government fight the Russian secessionists in the east. There are also reports of Chechen terrorist groups arriving in Ukraine to fight the Russians.

Likewise, Jewish-American groups were targeted in a campaign that painted the Serbs as Nazis. Leading Jewish neocons like Richard Perle and Douglas Feith set up the "Bosnia Defense Fund" to funnel millions of donated dollars from Qatar, Brunei, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia to the Bosnian government based on the so-called "Muslim cleansing" threat posed by Serbia.

The final nail in the coffin of Yugoslavia was brought about by the International Criminal Court, an institution which the United States rejects having jurisdiction over its own affairs, but is systematically used by Washington to carry out its political agendas. The indictments for war crimes destroyed any chance that any Yugoslav leader, including Slobodan Milosevic, who suspiciously died while in custody of the ICC in The Hague in 2006, could ever maintain political power. Now, the ICC has stated that it is looking at possible criminal indictments of pro-Russian Ukrainian and Crimean leaders, as well as the leadership of the Kremlin itself. Like the OSCE, the ICC is jam-packed with Soros operatives.

THE ROVING EYE - Why the EU can't 'isolate' Russia - By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Why the EU can't 'isolate' Russia By Pepe Escobar German Chancellor Angela Merkel could teach US President Barack Obama one or two things about how to establish a dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin. As if Obama would listen. He'd rather boost his constitutional law professor self, and pompously lecture an elite eurocrat audience in the glittering Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, like he did this Wednesday, on how Putin is the greatest threat to the US-administered global order since World War II. Well, it didn't go that well; most eurocrats were busy taking selfies or twittering. Putin, meanwhile, met with the CEO of German engineering and electrical conglomerate Siemens, Joe Kaeser, at his official residence outside Moscow. Siemens invested more than US$1.1 billion in Russia over the past two years, and that, Kaeser said, is bound to continue. Angela was certainly taking notes. Obama couldn't behave otherwise. The constitutional law expert knows nothing about Russia, in his (meager) political career never had to understand how Russia works, and may even fear Russia - surrounded as he is by a coterie of spectacularly mediocre aids. His Brussels rhetorical tour de force yielded absolutely nothing - apart from the threat that if Putin persisted in his "aggression" against eastern Ukraine or even NATO members-countries the president of the United States would unroll a much stiffer sanction package. What else is new, considering this by supreme CIA asset and former Pentagon head in the first Obama administration, Bob Gates, is what passes for political analysis in the US. The $1 trillion game-changer  Demonized 24/7 by the sprawling Western propaganda machine as a ruthless aggressor, Putin and his Kremlin advisers just need to play Sun Tzu. The regime changers in Kiev are already mired in a vicious catfight. [1] And even Ukraine's acting Prime Minister Arseniy Petrovych "Yats" Yatsenyuk has identified the gloomy times ahead, stressing that the signature of the economic part of the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU has been postponed - so there will be no "negative consequences" for industrialized eastern Ukraine. Translation: he knows this will be the kiss of death for Ukrainian industry, on top of it coupled with an imminent structural adjustment by the International Monetary Fund linked to the EU (maybe) bailing out a bankrupt Ukraine. Asia Times Online's Spengler coined a formulation: "A specter is haunting Europe, and that is the specter of a Russian-Chinese alliance at the expense of Europe." The alliance is already on - manifested in the G-20, the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. There are military technology synergies on the horizon - the ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense system is to be unveiled by Moscow, and Beijing would absolutely love to have it. But for the real fireworks, just wait a few weeks, when Putin visits Beijing in May. That's when he will sign the famous $1 trillion gas deal according to which Gazprom will supply China's CNPC with 3.75 billion cubic feet of gas a day for 30 years, starting in 2018 (China's current daily gas demand is around 16 billion cubic feet). Gazprom may still collect most of its profits from Europe, but Asia is its privileged future. On the competition front, the hyper-hyped US shale "revolution" is a myth - as much as the notion the US will be suddenly increasing exports of gas to the rest of the world any time soon. Gazprom will use this mega-deal to boost investment in eastern Siberia - which sooner rather than later will be configured as the privileged hub for gas shipments to both Japan and South Korea. That's the ultimate (substantial) reason why Asia won't "isolate" Russia. ( See Asia will not 'isolate' Russia, Asia Times Online, March 25, 2014.) Not to mention the much-anticipated "thermonuclear" (for the petrodollar) possibility that Russia and China will agree payment for the Gazprom-CNPC deal may be in yuan or rubles. That will be the dawn of a basket of currencies as the new international reserve currency - a key BRICS objective and the ultimate, incendiary, new (economic) fact on the ground. Time to invest in Pipelineistan  Even though its centrality pales compared to Asia, Europe, of course, is not "expendable" for Russia. There have been rumbles in Brussels by some poodles about canceling the South Stream pipeline - pumping Russian gas underneath the Black Sea (and bypassing Ukraine) to Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Italy and Austria. The Bulgarian Economy and Energy Minister, Dragomir Stoynev, said no way. Same for the Czech Republic, because it badly needs Russian investment, and Hungary, which recently signed a nuclear energy deal with Moscow. The only other possibility for the EU would be Caspian gas, from Azerbaijan - following on the trail of the Zbig Brzezinski-negotiated Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, which was conceived expressly to bypass both Russia and Iran. As if the EU would have the will, the speed and funds to spend billions of dollars to build yet another pipeline virtually tomorrow, and assuming Azerbaijan had enough supply capacity (it doesn't; other actors, like Kazakhstan or ultra-unreliable Turkmenistan, which prefers to sell its gas to China, would have to be part of the picture). Well, nobody ever lost money betting on the cluelessness of Brussels eurocrats. South Stream and other energy projects will create a lot of jobs and investment in many of the most troubled EU nations. Extra sanctions? No less than 91% of Poland's energy, and 86% of Hungary's, come from Russia. Over 20% of the foreign lending of French banks is to Russian companies. No less than 68 Russian companies trade at the London Stock Exchange. For the Club Med nations, Russian tourism is now a lifeline (1 million went to Italy last year, for instance.) US Think Tankland is trying to fool American public opinion into believing what the Obama administration should be applying is a replay of the "containment" policy of 1945-1989 to "limit the development of Russia as a hegemonic power". The "recipe": weaponize everybody and his neighbor, from the Baltic nations to Azerbaijan, to "contain" Russia. The New Cold War is on because, from the point of view of US so-called "elites", it never really left. Meanwhile, Gazprom's stock price is up. Buy now. You won't regret it. Notes: 1. Popcorn Please While "Putin's Agitators" Rule in Kiev, Moon of Alabama, March 26, 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.

THE ROVING EYE - Russian sanctions as war and farce - By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Russian sanctions as war and farce By Pepe Escobar If we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks exactly as if it was not there - Marshal Georgy Zhukov Let's start with the serious stuff. As Russia's Federation Council ratifies a treaty with Crimea, concluding the formal annexation, Ukraine signs the political chapters of an association agreement with the European Union (EU). The signing of the full EU agreement will only happen later in 2014. These are the facts on the ground. Now let's turn to comedy hour - also known as the sanctions war. The oh-so democratic EU has punished the democratic Crimea referendum by sanctioning 33 Russians and Crimeans with asset freezes and travel bans, according to that Magritte-style walking fiction, European Council President Van Rompuy. The EU also canceled the EU-Russia summit in Sochi on June 3. And the vast, Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the European Commission (EC) has taken time out from subsidizing European cows to prepare for "possible economic sanctions", according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The EU is irretrievably split on what to do. Whatever it does, Moscow's capacity to make the EU badly hurt is stronger. There may be another meek set of sanctions next week, as Merkel advertised. But that's it. European poodle action mirrors His Master's Voice - as in US President Barack Obama solemnly imposing, by executive order, further sanctions on "senior officials of the Russian government." Other US targets are private businessmen close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Only exceptionalist logic legally allows sanctions on private individuals deemed responsible for political steps taken by the country they live in. International lawyers should have thought about sanctioning the entire US population for the Bush-Cheney junta's disaster. Well over 60% of Americans and Europeans are against a New Cold War against Russia. Putin's approval rating in Russia is around 75% - and arguably similar all across the developing world. Still, no one will lose money betting on the juvenile amateurism of the Obama administration. As if they and selected European minions could intimidate Moscow with some cosmetic "message". The American sanction religion, imposed with a conquistador/slave owner fury, did destroy Iraq for years - and was supposed to destroy Iran as well. But Russia is not Iraq or Iran. I love a man in sanction uniform Sanctioned Russians are not exactly quaking in their made-in-London brogues. After all, the practical impact of these sanctions is exactly zero. And most people targeted have minimal direct links with the US. The original American list included Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin and presidential aide Vladislav Surkov. They laughed it off, loudly - adding it felt like a badge of honor. The expanded list includes key Putin advisers and even some of his friends. Obama, Iran-style, sanctioned the Bank of Russia - a minor player (less than US$10 billion in assets; compare it with giant Sberbank at $528 billion). But Bank of Russia is used by some Gazprom subsidiaries for some low-key deals - even as Gazprom owns its own bank, GazpromBank. The "message" here is that Washington is watching Gazprom. Chief of Presidential Administration Sergei Ivanov is a key adviser on Ukraine and a top negotiator with the US, the EU and NATO. The - counterproductive - "message" implied here is that Moscow and Washington are not talking anything substantial in the immediate future. So much for the West's "diplomatic efforts". Then there's Yuri Kovalchuk, a board member of the Bank of Russia, a key business adviser and - allegedly, no conclusive evidence - Putin's personal banker. The message here is of the "I'm gonna git you sucka" kind. Finally, among the notables, there's Gennady Timchenko, who has absolutely nothing to do with Ukraine. He's an energy deal operator, controlling oil and natural gas trading firm Gunvor. In this case, the "message" is that the US will target Russia's energy deals. Message void, because the EU - which needs Gazprom badly - is not inclined to sanction Timchenko. Other sanctioned include the head of the Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov, Chief of Military Intelligence Igor Sergun and Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin. They are all part of the Russia-US team involved in the Northern Distribution Network - the long, across-Central Asia highway that will allow NATO to flee Afghanistan. A swift Moscow counter-attack would be to leave the Americans and Europeans hanging dry - or to close the NDN altogether. I want to be sanction-free Moscow, predictably, struck back. The Russian Foreign Ministry has "repeatedly" stressed that using sanctions is a "double-edged thing" and it will have a "boomerang" effect against the US. Already barred from entering Russia is a nasty bunch including the senile John McCain, plus Robert Menendez, Daniel Coats, Mary Landrieu, Harry Reid, John Boehner and Obama advisers such as the cosmic mediocrity Ben Rhodes. Vicky "F**k the EU" Nuland has not made the list - yet. Moscow is playing it cool because it may choose among a staggering array of counterpunches. It enjoys the support of the BRICS group of emerging powers, the non-aligned movement (NAM) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Composing with the US, Moscow agreed to impose sanctions on Iran, and is a key player in the P5+1 nuclear negotiations. If the sanction comedy goes on, Moscow has already announced it will play hardball with the P5+1, will cease to sanction Iran, and may even, finally, weaponize Tehran with jewels of the S-400 variety. Moscow - the number one oil and gas exporter on the planet - can also play further hardball with Europe's dependency on Gazprom; clinically target US companies working in Russia; speed up the BRICS-coordinated escape from the US dollar, as in a new international payment system in a basket of currencies for the BRICS as well as other emerging markets; and even activate the ultimate economic nuclear bomb - which is to accept payment for Russian oil and gas in ruble, yuan, euros or gold, thus delivering a terminal blow to the petrodollar. And that, ladies and gentlemen, will be the end of the comedy hour. 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.