THE ROVING EYE Crimea and Western 'values' By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Crimea and Western 'values' By Pepe Escobar Every sane sentient being knows that Ukraine's "unity" is not worth a new hot or warm war. Or even the current Western-peddled Cold War-style hysteria. Especially when Russia, once again, fights fascism - as embodied by some of the key players now in power in Kiev, and the US and EU's response is to relentlessly demonize Russia. Crimea - historically, culturally, sentimentally - is Russian, conquered by Catherine the Great from the Ottomans in 1783. Sevastopol was founded by Catherine. If a swing band would play a version of I Left My Heart in Sevastopol, all hearts involved would be Russian. Yet those eminent Western practitioners of state idolatry have ruled that the population of Crimea has no right to conduct a referendum to decide its future - be it rejoining Russia or remaining in Ukraine with a huge degree of autonomy, according to the 1992 constitution. The eminences could not possibly admit that does not suit their geopolitical power play. Thus the current Mass; a ritualistic, hysterical invoking in unison of "international law" (Obama), (distorted) history and even morality (in the US's case, considering the historical record, a positively dreadful joke). No question the original inhabitants of Crimea are the Tatars - whose rights will be fully protected in a new Crimea. They had not achieved their self-determination for the same reason Native Americans also did not. Yet much more alarming in the whole case is how the West once again conveniently, selectively manipulates the arbitrary carving of colonized lands - the key reason of ongoing, intractable geopolitical disasters. South Sudan's independence was obsessively fought for by Washington - helped by Hollywood clones of the Clooney variety. The pretext was to correct an arbitrary colonial carving. So that applies to Sudan, but it does not apply to Crimea. Thomas Jefferson's "insurgents" had the right to rebel against the British, but Crimeans cannot rebel against what most view as an illegal, fascist-laden, putschist regime in Kiev. [1] And that is superimposed on an arbitrary colonial carving; Ukrainian-born former premier Nikita Khrushchev, then at the head of the USSR, gave Crimea away to Ukraine, in the name of Soviet solidarity, without a Crimean referendum. Washington - via a NATO war - dismantled the former Yugoslavia in the name of the "right of nations". While Crimea is not allowed a peaceful referendum, Kosovo - essentially a drug mafia scam - had the right to be "liberated". It would be so complicated to explain to public opinion that was essential for the maintenance of Camp Bondsteel - the largest military base outside of the US. The Empire of Bases trumps any "right of nations". The arbitrary carving of the Pakistani tribal areas via the Durand Line - yet another imperial British masterpiece - is the key reason for Pakistan and Afghanistan being eternally at odds. But that suits the Empire - even at the risk of miserably losing a war (NATO in Afghanistan), because that keeps it "involved" in the crucial intersection of Central and South Asia, close to both China and Russia. These few examples - Iraq in itself would be worth zillions of bytes - show there are no "international law" or universal values. Only when the Empire says so. Flying blindly into the night Obama's foreign policy could now be interpreted as the geopolitical equivalent of the doomed Malaysia Airlines Boeing, flying blindly into the deep Asian night before a fatal plunge (into the Indian Ocean?) - taking with it a load of unsuspected costumers. The New Great (Threat) Game in Eurasia proceeds with its infernal logic. Russia should be sanctioned because it's not behaving like a true democracy - those that are allowed to bomb Iraq and Libya and support weaponized jihadis in Syria, always for a good, uplifting reason. Would the Khaganate of Nulands gang in Washington have the balls to force Obama to sanction "communist China" because they illegally occupy Tibet and Xinjiang, without the consent of their original Tibetan and Uighur inhabitants, which will never be offered even the dream of a referendum? Obama said, "We completely reject a referendum patched together in a few weeks with Russian military personnel basically taking over Crimea." What he could not say is that the new supplicant puppet - interim prime minister "Yats" - has already kneeled before the Emperor; his "foundation" has been supported by the usual suspects (including the NED, the State Department and NATO ) [2]; and that "teams from the Treasury and Justice departments and the FBI" have been to Kiev to "to unravel the kleptocracy of Yanukovych's deposed government", as the proverbial "officials" put it to US corporate media - leading to furious, unconfirmed rumors that all Ukrainian gold deposits may have already been shipped to the US, in what would be a regal repayment for the US$5 billion or so (copyright Victoria "F**k the EU" Nuland) Washington has spent to advance regime change. Once again; this is always about NATO encroaching on Ukraine and the regime changers trying some ruse to deprive Russia from its naval base in Sevastopol. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, is already on a charm offensiveplugging "treaty obligations with our NATO allies", under the (false) premise that Moscow is about to invade Ukraine (which is not even part of NATO - yet). And this is also about Pipelineistan [3]; not accidentally, Crimean Supreme Council speaker Vladimir Konstantinov already stated that Crimea wants Gazprom to develop the peninsula's oil and natural gas deposits, and not US Big Oil. In the threat game, Russia's Deputy Economy Minister Alexei Likhachev already announced "symmetrical" sanctions if the EU proceeds with their own. That aspiring Metternich, John Kerry, issued a deadline to Moscow. It takes China to behave sensibly. Shi Mingde, the Chinese ambassador in Berlin, said that, "sanctions could lead to retaliatory action, and that would trigger a spiral with unforeseeable consequences … We don't see any point in sanctions." As much as non-brainwashed world public opinion don't see any point in the West's moral lessons. Notes: 1. Kiev Snipers Shooting From Bldg Controlled By Maidan Forces – Ex-Ukraine Security Chief, RT, March 13, 2014. 2. See here. 3. Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry, The Guardian, March 6, 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.

If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

Sliding Down in Anger

By SAUL LANDAU

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1802

"It’s worse than you can imagine,” a Member of Congress confided to me, referring to the downward spiral of the economy. “We just gave all those hundreds of billions to the bankers so they would lend it and they didn’t lend it and they still want more. The bankers don’t know what they’re doing and Tim Geithner [Treasury Secretary] doesn’t know what he’s doing. We all know this is the worst economic slump of our lifetime.”

While the arcane Washington budget processes – each Senator and Member trying to grab something for his or her district or State -- unfold, the poor should start to worry. They have already lost or about to be lose homes, jobs and health care. The propertied classes focus on their major concern: their property, which stands immeasurably higher in their moral guidelines than the lives and welfare of those without or with less.

The remaining masters of the universe on Wall Street still cling to the idea of their own infallibility. “El Duce is always right,” Mussolini said about himself – before the Partisans hanged him.

The capitalists oddly enough believe in capitalism and have done all in their power to spread the word. Their public promoters convinced lots of working people that capitalism and the American flag go together. Capitalism means freedom, so the very notion of nationalizing banks – forget socialism – looms in their minds as akin to the Holocaust.

The big bankers and their corporate brethren have connected to political power, one step below them, by simply throwing money at politicians who eagerly catch it. They also endow think tanks whose mavens will then explain to the gullible public why the United States needs perpetual war – to spread freedom (capitalism).

Count the victims of this cavalier assumption. Since the 1950-3 Korean War, US forces have overthrown -- or attempted to -- governments by force and violence in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Iran and Indonesia. They encouraged military coups in countless other nations in the third world.

Until the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the battle against communism justified the interventions. The Reds have since been replaced as the demon by the Terrorists. Thus, Afghanistan and Iraq join the victim nations, with Pakistan inching its way onto the list.

The wars cost the lives of countless US servicemen and women and many more of the natives -- in the name of protecting freedom. To question the worthiness of service in any of the wars – Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf--became tantamount to questioning the flag itself.

The mantra that surrounds the start of all the new wars remains numbingly in place. The President asks young people to fight because the nation’s freedom is at risk. Having said the magic words, the President then goes on to suck money from the taxpayers to “win” the noble struggle. Official language assumes “we” are good and those opposing us are bad. Listen to what Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told US and European attendees at a security conference. “To win in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war, we need to identify and separate the ‘irreconcilables’ from the ‘reconcilables,’ striving to create the conditions that can make the ‘reconcilables’ part of the solution, even as we kill, capture, or drive out the irreconcilables.” (Remarks at 45th Munich Security Conference, February 8, 2009) Imagine a top British general in 1776 making similar remarks to his fellow officers regarding the populace in the American colonies!

“Reconcilables” means those the United States can buy or intimidate to collaborate with its policy goals. Some people would call them traitors. Later, after US forces withdraw and the “friendlies” become pariahs in their own country, the US government might reconcile itself to bring a few of them to the United States -- as they did with some members of the Hmong people after the Vietnam War.

Bush sent troops to Afghanistan in October 2001 to find and kill Osama bin Laden. Somehow the mission has changed into one of making Afghans reconcile to a US-designed order. This has not worked in Korea, Vietnam or anywhere else where US troops tried to export our – now sinking – way of life to people with different cultures. But it has been expensive.

The harsh fact, unmentioned in the US media, is that the United States, with its vast technological superiority and military power did not win in Korea or Vietnam, cut and ran in Laos and left Cambodia in such a mess that the bloody Khmer Rouge could take power there and slaughter a percentage of the population. Similarly, Washington policy “experts” do not reflect on the fact that all the CIA coups yielded little of permanence. Indeed, the blowback from CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala are still evolving.

The coups in Brazil and Chile have eroded military power in those countries and brought to the presidency socialists who have defied Washington – something that would not have been permitted fifty years ago. But how many of the powerful in the nation’s capital ask the question as budget time comes around: how can we afford to continue spending on wars we never seem to win when the state of our own economy is in virtual collapse?

The current military budget maintains “268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. Others are scattered around the globe in places like Aruba and Australia, Bulgaria and Bahrain, Colombia and Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, and of course, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- just to name a few. Among the installations considered critical to our national security are a ski center in the Bavarian Alps, resorts in Seoul and Tokyo, and 234 golf courses the Pentagon runs worldwide.” (David Vine, “The Costs of Empire: Can We Really Afford 1,000 Overseas Bases?” FPIF, March 10)

As the Congressman assured me, “the only thing that can put a halt to this military spree is for the public to get wind of how much were pissing away on this overseas nonsense. My God, it’s going to cost more trillions of dollars than we see in this round of bailouts. People have to start asking of the military budget just as they ask of the bank bailouts: do these expenditures really keep us stable?”

The rich and powerful think mainly about preserving and expanding their wealth and power. President Obama must realize that under the emergency powers of his office, he not only has the authority to seize our assets, but also has access to all the assets of America’s richest men for meeting those emergencies that threaten the common good.

It has become apparent to millions of people that the nation faces a severe crisis. One year ago, who could have predicted Congress would bailout banks and monster sized insurance giants, that GM would teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and our fabled way of life would become a joke for millions of recently foreclosed families?

Soon, lots of people will ask: If we bail out the banks then why shouldn’t we control them -- or even own them? The bankers screwed up. Why should they get any of our money? Maybe they’ll even question why Congress should continue funding a massive military institution that hasn’t won a real war since 1945 to the tune of some three quarters of a trillion dollars a year?

Saul Landau is an IPS Fellow, author of A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD (Counterpunch) and director of forty films, available on dvd from roundworldproductions.com