• Après l’adhésion à l’OTAN, le mouvement pour la paix privé de subventions en Suède
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2024/03/19/apres-l-adhesion-a-l-otan-le-mouvement-pour-la-paix-prive-de-subventions-en-

    Tandis que le pays vient de rejoindre l’Alliance atlantique et se remilitarise à marche forcée, le gouvernement de droite, soutenu par l’extrême droite, a supprimé les aides aux organisations œuvrant pour la paix et le désarmement.

    Au poteau les munichois ! Heureusement qu’on a l’extrême droite pour nous protéger de tous ces dangereux pacifistes qui si on les laissait faire nous vendraient aux stalinomaoistes.

    #otan #paix #désarmement

  • #OTAN
    La Suède a officiellement rejoint aujourd’hui l’Otan, devenant ainsi le 32e pays de cette alliance militaire. Le Premier ministre suédois, Ulf Kristersson, a déclaré que ce jour était « une victoire pour la liberté », ajoutant que la « Suède laissait derrière elle 200 ans de neutralité et de non-alignement militaire ». Tous les pays membres ont ratifié cette adhésion, qui nécessite un consensus. La Suède a demandé à adhérer à l’Otan en mai 2022, après l’invasion de l’Ukraine par la Russie.

    #UE
    Le Parti populaire européen (PPE), une coalition de droite majoritaire au Parlement européen, a désigné aujourd’hui Ursula von der Leyen comme sa candidate à la présidence de la Commission européenne, l’une des deux branches exécutives de l’UE. Cette Allemande issue du parti chrétien-démocrate CDU sera donc candidate pour un second mandat. En France, les Républicains, qui font partie du groupe PPE, se sont opposés à sa candidature, l’accusant de « laisser la majorité européenne dériver à gauche ».

    #SÉNÉGAL
    Le président sénégalais, Macky Sall, a annoncé hier soir la tenue de l’élection présidentielle le 24 mars et la formation d’un nouveau gouvernement. Le Conseil constitutionnel, qui a confirmé la date aujourd’hui, avait exigé que cette élection se tienne avant le 2 avril. Macky Sall avait annoncé en février son report, ce qui avait suscité une crise politique dans le pays. Les députés sénégalais ont adopté hier soir une loi d’amnistie couvrant les manifestations de 2021 à 2024, considérée par plusieurs organisations des droits humains comme un « déni de justice » pour les familles des personnes mortes lors de ces mobilisations.

    #UKRAINE
    Emmanuel Macron a reçu aujourd’hui les chefs des principaux partis français pour aborder le soutien de la France à l’Ukraine, avant un débat et un vote parlementaire sur le sujet prévus les 12 et 13 mars. À l’issue de la réunion, le secrétaire national du PCF, Fabien Roussel, a rapporté que le président avait déclaré qu’il ne devait y avoir « aucune limite » dans le soutien français à l’Ukraine, ce qu’a confirmé Jordan Bardella, président du RN.

    #ÉCONOMIE
    Le CAC 40, un indice rassemblant 40 des principales entreprises cotées à la Bourse de Paris, a dépassé aujourd’hui les 8 000 points, une première depuis sa création en 1988. Plusieurs entreprises du CAC 40 ont récemment annoncé des bénéfices records pour 2023. Le nombre de points est mesuré en référence à sa valeur d’origine, fixée à 1 000 points. Cela signifie qu’un investissement de 1 000 euros en 1988 dans un produit indexé sur le CAC 40 représente une valeur de 8 000 euros aujourd’hui.

    #VIANDE
    L’origine des viandes, c’est-à-dire les lieux d’élevage et d’abattage, devra désormais apparaître dans les restaurants et les cantines pour les produits transformés (nuggets, jambons, etc.), selon un décret entré en vigueur aujourd’hui. Cette obligation existait déjà pour les viandes non transformées dans les établissements servant des repas.

  • Die NATO und ihre Geschichte – Die North Atlantic Treaty Organization

    https://www.geschichte-lernen.net/geschichte-der-nato


    Die verschiedenen Phasen der Nato Erweiterungen von 1945 bis 2017 | Autor: Patrickneil | Lizenz: CC BY-SA 3.0

    Inhaltsverzeichnis

    1. Geschichte der Nato Gründung

    2. Was ist die Nato? Die Nato Strukturen

    Zivile Organisation der Nato
    Militärische Organisation der Nato

    3. Die NATO während des Kalten Krieges
    4. Glasnost, Perestroika, Wiedervereinigung und die Auflösung des Warschauer Paktes
    5. Der Wendepunkt: Der Krieg in Ex-Jugoslawien
    6. Die NATO im Zeichen der Bekämpfung des Terrors
    7. Der „Kalte Frieden“: Die NATO-Osterweiterung und Russland

    Die Nato Mitgliedsstaaten als Liste

    8. Der Krieg in der Ukraine und der Georgien-Konflikt
    8. Ausblick

    #OTAN #histoire #auf_deutsch

  • La version française intégrale de l’interview de Vladimir Poutine par Tucker Carlson

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Mis5nZ_ESj8

    Source : Librairie tropique https://www.librairie-tropiques.fr/2024/02/poutine-parle-au-monde-libre.html

    La version originale (en Anglais) sur le site de Tucker Carlson

    https://tuckercarlson.com/the-vladimir-putin-interview

    Timestamp Headline
    00:00:00 Introduction

    00:02:00 Putin gives a history of Russia & Ukraine

    00:25:04 NATO Expansion

    00:30:40 NATO & Bill Clinton

    00:41:10 Ukraine

    00:48:30 What triggered this conflict?

    01:02:37 A peaceful solution?

    01:11:33 Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?

    01:24:13 Re-establishing communication with the US

    01:36:33 How powerful is Zelensky?

    01:48:36 Elon Musk & AI

    01:51:07 Imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich

    #Russie #otan #nato #Ukraine #Histoire #usa #ue #interview #journalisme #géopolitque

  • Pendant ce temps, en #Méditerranée sud-orientale, la routine...

    "Moyen-Orient : les #incendiaires crient « Au feu ! »
    (par Manlio Dinucci)

    Alors qu’ils prétendent le contraire, l’#Otan et l’#UE poursuivent ensemble le projet de destruction de l’#État_palestinien. L’attaque du #Hamas n’est qu’un prétexte pour accomplir enfin le plan des « #sionistes #révisionnistes », énoncé dans les années 30 par Vladimir Jabotinsky et son secrétaire particulier, Bension Netanyahu (père de Benjamin #Netanyahu). (...)"

    https://www.voltairenet.org/article220225.html

    #politique #international #Israël #États_Unis #Palestine #Proche_Orient #bonne_année #et_surtout_la_santé #caricature #seenthis #vangauguin

  • "12e paquet de #sanctions contre #Moscou : un contournement sera mis en œuvre, prévient le #Kremlin"

    Le 13e est offert ! C’est #Noël ! :-D :-D :-D

    « Il y a des possibilités de contourner ces sanctions. Il y en a, et elles seront mises en œuvre [...] pour garantir nos intérêts », a déclaré le porte-parole du Kremlin Dmitri Peksov, réagissant au douzième paquet de sanctions de l’UE.

    L’Union européenne a adopté le 18 décembre un douzième paquet de sanctions contre Moscou, interdisant notamment l’importation de diamants russes. Cela concerne les diamants naturels ou synthétiques et les bijoux dès janvier, ainsi que les diamants russes taillés dans d’autres pays à partir de septembre 2024.

    L’interdiction était « prévisible » et l’industrie diamantaire s’y était « préparé », a de surcroît ajouté Dmitri Peskov.
    La liste des personnalités européennes interdites d’entrée en #Russie élargie

    En réponse à ces sanctions européennes, le ministère russe des Affaires étrangères a annoncé le 19 décembre avoir élargi la liste des représentants des institutions européennes et des États membres de l’#UE interdits de séjour en Russie.

    Le président Vladimir Poutine martèle régulièrement que ces sanctions ont échoué à mettre à genoux l’économie russe, pointant notamment la croissance du PIB russe et l’ouverture vers de nouveaux marchés mais aussi l’impact négatif de ces sanctions qui se sont retournées contre leurs promoteurs, notamment l’Allemagne qui s’est coupée du gaz russe. (...)"

    https://francais.rt.com/russie/108497-12e-paquet-sanctions-contre-moscou-contournement-kremlin

    #humour #politique #démagogie #Occident #propagande #atlantiste #panpanculcul #otantacule #hypocrisie #onion_européen #vangauguin

  • T’inquiète, #FB / #Facebook, mon compte est restreint,
    et le tien aussi, #guignol... :-D :-D :-D
    Et ta sœur, la #démocratie US Universelle, elle est restreinte ?

    #démagogue #OTAN #politique #hégémonique #withgodonourside #with_god_on_our_side #comics #comique_de_service #Occident

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  • Germany aims for a ‘war-ready’ military

    It’s the most momentous shift in German defense priorities since 2011.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is forcing Germany to turn its military into a powerful and well-financed fighting force focused on defending the country and NATO allies, Germany’s chancellor said on Friday.

    “Today, nobody can seriously doubt what we in Germany have been avoiding for a long time, namely that we need a powerful Bundeswehr,” Olaf Scholz said on the second day of a political-military conference presenting the deep change in Berlin’s strategic thinking.

    “Our peace order is in danger,” he warned, also mentioning the war between Hamas and Israel and adding that Germany needs “a long-term, permanent change of course.”

    But to defend Germany and its allies, the German military, or Bundeswehr, “needs to be upgraded for this. Only a Bundeswehr that is so strong … can ultimately prevent the worst from happening,” said Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. “We need a Bundeswehr that can defend itself and wage war in order to defend our security and our freedom.”

    Just how to get there is laid out in a 34-page military and strategic doctrine.

    The change in thinking is apparent from the first paragraph of the text: “War has returned to Europe. Germany and its allies once again have to deal with a military threat. The international order is under attack in Europe and around the globe. We are living in a turning point.”

    The enemy is also clear: “The Russian Federation will remain the greatest threat to peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area.” China also gets a nod for "increasingly aggressively claiming regional supremacy.”

    It’s the first new doctrine since 2011 — a time when Dmitri Medvedev was Russia’s president, Russia was seen as the source of cheap energy to fuel Germany’s economic miracle and Berlin’s defense spending had shrivelled.

    Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, killing thousands and wreaking destruction across the country, has ended any remaining illusion in Berlin that the Kremlin can be a partner and not a foe.

    “The first defense policy guidelines in over a decade are a response to this new reality,” Pistorius said.

    Since the end of the Cold War, Berlin has missed NATO’s current defense-spending target of 2 percent of GDP for over three decades.

    Germany will hit the goal this year — thanks in large part to the €100 billion special fund created in the wake of the Russian invasion. Scholz insisted that this isn’t a one-off. “We will guarantee this 2 percent in the long term, throughout the ’20s and ’30s.”

    It’s going to take more than just money to get the Bundeswehr back into fighting trim.

    The new doctrine says Germany will scale back foreign missions to focus on European and national defense to become “war-ready.”

    It also promises the “expansion of robust and secure defense industry capacities," as well as using civilians and not soldiers to do functions where military personnel are not needed, and to cut the red tape to speed up military procurement.

    “The central action that follows from the turning point is overcoming the organizational and bureaucratic sluggishness that has slowed down the troops for years,” Scholz said.

    Germany’s military has been hollowed out over recent years. At a military exercise last December to prepare a tank brigade for inclusion in NATO’s “high readiness” response force, all 18 of the modern German infantry fighting vehicles failed. There have also been problems with the readiness of other parts of the military.

    “We must be the backbone of deterrence and collective defense in Europe,” says the strategy. "Our population, but also our partners in Europe, North America and the world, expect us to face up to this responsibility. As a state and society, we have neglected the Bundeswehr for decades.”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-war-military-bundeswehr-defense-nato
    #Allemagne #armée #paix #guerre #Bundeswehr #liberté #sécurité #ordre_international #Russie #Chine #war-ready #industrie_militaire #OTAN #NATO

  • Général Michel Yakovleff « La France se prépare à une guerre en Europe » - #Mutation_Magazine
    https://mutation-magazine.com/general-michel-yakovleff-la-france-se-prepare-a-une-guerre-en-eur

    Le conflit entre la Russie et l’Ukraine dure depuis bientôt deux ans, il s’agit de la première guerre sur le sol européen depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale. L’armée française s’entraîne depuis quelques années en prévision d’une guerre de haute intensité. Michel Yakovleff, ancien général de corps d’armée et ancien membre de l’état-major de l’OTAN, analyse la situation.

    avec des illustrations de Laurent Courau
    https://mondocourau.com
    #Europe #OTAN #guerre #cyber_guerre #Russie #Ukraine #armement #armée_française

    • La France, sous l’influence de ses états majors, a toujours entretenu le retour éventuel du spectre de la guerre. Jusque dans les années 90, de grandes manœuvres avaient lieu annuellement surtout dans la région Est et aussi en Allemagne, où un contingent occupait le terrain. Si on a pu croire pendant les deux dernières décennies que les velléités bellicistes de nos dirigeant avaient été mises en sourdine, c’étaient à la faveur d’une pause dans l’affrontement des deux blocs historiques OTAN vs Russie/Chine. Mais les généraux sont teigneux : ils ont continué à entretenir le « moral des troupes » en saupoudrant leurs capacités de nuisance sur les états d’Afrique, en particulier dans la zone sahélienne. Et notre petit timonier n’a aucune envie de céder sa place en tant que gendarme global, même si, « en même temps » (et plus souvent qu’à son tour) il se fait rosser par un autre Guignol ...

      Ceci dit, à force de clamer partout « nous sommes en guerre », les élites de la macronie ont fini par accoucher du SNU ... Mais mettre ainsi toute une nation sous pression et ce de façon récurrente, c’est quand même une belle illustration de la #stratégie_du_choc ...

      Les forces françaises en Allemagne : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forces_fran%C3%A7aises_en_Allemagne

      Les interventions de l’armée française dans le monde depuis 1981 :
      https://www.vie-publique.fr/eclairage/20138-chronologie-les-interventions-exterieures-de-larmee-francaise

    • Subvention à l’industrie de l’armement : la Région Bretagne complice du massacre
      https://contre-attaque.net/2023/11/08/subvention-a-lindustrie-de-larmement-la-region-bretagne-complice-du-

      En France, l’argent public sert à distribuer des « aides » aux grandes entreprises qui réalisent déjà des bénéfices astronomiques. Les gouvernements néolibéraux ont voté des programmes de distribution d’argent aux grandes firmes pour les « inciter » à créer des emplois en France. C’est tout bénef’. Et parmi les entreprises « soutenues », certaines sont particulièrement nocives voire criminelles.

      « Scorpion » un programme franco-israélien – pour « Synergie du contact renforcé par la polyvalence et l’infovalorisation », un acronyme aussi pourri que cette collaboration de la mort.

      Comment Israël développe Scorpion, futur cœur de la défense francaise https://seenthis.net/messages/908917
      Un article de Jean Stern (mars 2021)

      Dans une opacité complète, militaires et ingénieurs français et israéliens coopèrent sur la guerre du futur, alliant commandement numérique, drones et robots, même si sur le front des ventes d’armes, les deux pays sont également des concurrents.

      #Israël #Thales

  • Of tanks and tankies : What’s ‘left’ for geography after the invasion of Ukraine | Ian Klinke, 24 July 2023
    https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tran.12627

    While it seems clear that Georgia’s potential NATO membership was a crucial trigger for the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, it is not certain to what extent NATO enlargement, actual or prospective, explains the annexation of Crimea in 2014, let alone the invasion of 2022.

    There is an epistemological problem at the heart of this question. NATO sceptics take Russia’s long-held fear and disdain of NATO, restated frequently since Putin’s famous speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, at face value. But is it not also possible that the Kremlin, which has been all too willing to distort its mutual history with NATO (Sarotte, 2023), hid its imperial ambitions behind a grievance with NATO? In the absence of any conclusive evidence, arguments about NATO’s decisive impact depend on a counterfactual. One has to imagine how 30 years of European history would have unfolded without the alliance. In pursuing such counterfactual arguments, sceptics tend to neglect, however, that whereas NATO’s ability to shape European security in the 1990s was considerable, its influence began to wane in the 2000s with Russia’s economic recovery and the decline of US soft power.

    There are ethical problems too with an insistence on NATO’s contribution to the current war. In urging the Western alliance ‘to understand just how threatening the map of its own enlargement looks to Russia’ (Megoran, 2022b), we are not only being invited to visualise the world from an ‘enemy’ perspective (without doubt an important exercise). We are also asked to see some form of fragility behind the act of aggression. Indeed, Megoran’s map renders enlargement as a military campaign with arrows that penetrate ever closer towards Russia’s post-Soviet territory. His map is probably intended as a corrective to a dominant media narrative that depicts the war as one of Russian imperial aggression only. Yet the analysis slips too easily into its own form of geopolitics and struggles to distinguish itself from a realist interpretation (Specter, 2022). Critical geopolitical interventions would certainly do well to differentiate themselves from those who simply restate the Kremlin line and render Russia’s war a mere response to US foreign policy and cultural divisions in Ukraine (for a particularly crass example by a geographer, complete with authoritative Stalin quotes, see Dunford, 2023).

    La carte de Megoran discutée ici :

    Et sur le #whataboutism dans ces discussions.

    In the view of liberals, any discussion of NATO’s geopolitics smacks of whataboutism (Lucas, 2022). But while ‘whataboutery’, as Irish Republicans called it in the 1970s, certainly has a bad reputation, it still fulfils an important role (Burgis, 2022). Why, for instance, does Poland welcome Ukrainian refugees when it continues to push others back across the Belarusian border and how does it justify the tension between such regimes of hospitality (Barszcz & Bialasiewicz, 2022)? What are the geopolitical and moral implications of considering a no-fly zone over Ukraine but not over Yemen or Gaza? Why is the plight of the Ukrainians framed in such different ways to that of the Palestinians and why is it more controversial to understand the Israeli occupation as colonial? The answer surely has to do with a larger and often unspoken geopolitics that whataboutery can help to uncover. Although the latter can serve as a deflection tactic, which is why the Kremlin has engaged in the practice since Stalin’s days, it can also be the basis for serious discussion. Analytically and morally, it allows us to expose and critique the position from which the West speaks and acts, and thus to establish a firmer moral coordinate system. But much like other strategies of counter-mapping and counter-narrating, whataboutery needs to be carried out with careful attention to the political and historic context. It cannot be done without paying the most serious attention to the history of Russian imperialism and its wars, which to this day involve in the most direct way geographical institutions and their knowledge claims (Mykhnenko, 2023).

    #ukraine #otan

  • NATO - Opinion: Remarks by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at joint committee meeting at the European Parliament, 07-Sep.-2023
    https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm

    And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

    Via Thomas Fazi sur X :
    https://twitter.com/battleforeurope/status/1700092944714273049

    #OTAN #guerres

  • Avant le MH 17 : USTICA - .

    « La raison de l’interview sur le massacre d’Ustica, croyez-le ou non, est qu’une personne de 85 ans commence à penser qu’il lui reste peu de temps et à se demander s’il y a quelque chose d’utile qu’elle peut encore faire, quelque chose d’inachevé qu’elle peut essayer de terminer ».

    https://www.librairie-tropiques.fr/2023/09/avant-le-mh-17-ustica.html


    #Comaguer , #Macron , #ustica , #OTAN , #Italie , #Kadhafi

  • Strategies Against #BRICS - GERMAN-FOREIGN-POLICY.com
    https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/news/detail/9329

    According to Berlin, continuing the attempt to divide BRICS will hardly be successful. Already before the BRICS summit, SWP was recommending that it would be better to adopt a sort of strategy of inclusion. This could possibly consist of opening major events, such as the Munich security Conference, more to issues pertaining to the Global South.[11] This could help prevent the perception of the evolving world order as “having been imposed by the West.” The first declaration made by Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock after the BRICS summit in Johannesburg contained elements of this strategy of inclusion. Baerbock announced that cooperation would continue, not only with the BRICS countries – with the exception of Russia and to a limited extent with China – but also with the new members. “We want to cooperate with the countries around the world, of course also with those who have views that differ from ours.”[12] It is unlikely that BRICS members would forego genuine independence for such offers of integration.

    #OTAN

  • The Looming War Against China - Economic Logic has been Replaced by National Security Overrides
    https://braveneweurope.com/michael-hudson-the-looming-war-against-china

    Cet article décrit pourquoi les États Unis ont besoin de provoquer une guerre avec la Chine. C’est une analyse froide et effrayante.

    25.7.2023 by Michael Hudson - The July NATO summit in Vilnius had the feeling of a funeral, as if they had just lost a family member – Ukraine. To clear away NATO’s failure to drive Russia out of Ukraine and move NATO right up to the Russian border, its members tried to revive their spirits by mobilizing support for the next great fight – against China, which is now designated as their ultimate strategic enemy. To prepare for this showdown, NATO announced a commitment to extend their military presence all the way to the Pacific.

    The plan is to carve away China’s military allies and trading partners, above all Russia, starting with the fight in Ukraine. President Biden has said that this war will be global in scope and will take many decades as it expands to ultimately isolate and break up China.

    The U.S.-imposed sanctions against trade with Russia are a dress rehearsal for imposing similar sanctions against China. But only the NATO allies have joined the fight. And instead of wrecking Russia’s economy and “turning the ruble to rubble” as President Biden predicted, NATO’s sanctions have made it more self-reliant, increasing its balance of payments and international monetary reserves, and hence the ruble’s exchange rate.

    To cap matters, despite the failure of trade and financial sanctions to injure Russia – and indeed, despite NATO’s failures in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO countries committed themselves to trying the same tactics against China. The world economy is to be split between US/NATO/Five Eyes on the one hand, and the rest of the world – the Global Majority – on the other. EU Commissioner Joseph Borrell calls this as a split between the US/European Garden (the Golden Billion) and the Jungle threatening to engulf it, like an invasion of its well-manicured lawns by an invasive species.

    From an economic vantage point, NATO’s behavior since its military buildup to attack Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern states in February 2022 has been a drastic failure. The U.S. plan was to bleed Russia and leave it so economically destitute that its population would revolt, throw Vladimir Putin out of office and restore a pro-Western neoliberal leader who would pry Russia away from its alliance with China – and then proceed with America’s grand plan to mobilize Europe to impose sanctions on China.

    What makes it so difficult in trying to evaluate where NATO, Europe and the United States are going is that the traditional assumption that nations and classes will act in their economic self-interest is not of help. The traditional logic of geopolitical analysis is to assume that business and financial interests steer almost every nation’s politics. The ancillary assumption is that governing officials have a fairly realistic understanding of the economic and political dynamics at work. Forecasting the future is thus usually an exercise in spelling out these dynamics.

    The US/NATO West has led this global fracture, yet it will be the big loser. NATO members already have seen Ukraine deplete their inventory of guns and bullets, artillery and ammunition, tanks, helicopters weapons and other arms accumulated over five decades. But Europe’s loss has become America’s sales opportunity, creating a vast new market for America’s military-industrial complex to re-supply Europe. To gain support, the United States has sponsored a new way of thinking about international trade and investment. The focus has shifted to “national security,” meaning to secure a U.S.-centered unipolar order.
    The world is dividing into two blocs: a post-industrial US/NATO vs the Global Majority

    U.S. diplomats became increasingly worried as Germany and other European countries came to rely on imported Russian gas, oil, and fertilizer as the basis for its steel, glass-making and other industries. They became even more worried as China had become the “workshop of the world” while the U.S. economy de-industrialized. The fear was that growth by China and its neighboring Eurasian countries benefiting from the Belt and Road expansion threatened to make that part of the world the main growth area, and hence a magnet for European investment. The logical prospect was that politics would follow economic interest at the expense of America’s ability to maintain a unipolar world economy with the dollar at its financial center and trade subject to U.S. protectionist unilateralism.

    By joining America’s crusade to destroy the Russian economy and promote regime change, Germany’s and other European countries’ refusal to trade with Russia has destroyed the basic energy foundation of their industry. Destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline has plunged the German and other European economies into depression involving widespread bankruptcies and unemployment. In place of Russian gas, the NATO countries must now pay up to six times as high a price for U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG), and must build new port facilities to physically import this gas.

    The European leaders sponsored and financed by U.S. election meddling over the past seventy years have done what Boris Yeltsin did in Russia in the 1990s: They have agreed to sacrifice Europe’s industrial economies and end what had been its profitable trade and investment integration with Russia and China.

    The next step is for Europe and the United States to stop trading and investing with China, despite the fact that these NATO countries have benefited from the flowering of this trade, relying on it for a wide range of consumer goods and industrial inputs. That line of prosperous trade is now to be ended. NATO’s leaders have announced that importing Russian gas and other raw materials (including helium and many metals) runs the “risk” of becoming dependent – as if Russia or China might find it in their economic or political interest to abort this trade simply to hurt Europe and to do to it what the United States has been doing to force it into submission.

    But submission to what? The answer is, submission to the logic of mutual gains along lines leaving the U.S. economy behind!

    By trying to prevent other countries from following this logic, U.S. and European NATO diplomacy has brought about exactly what U.S. supremacists most feared. Instead of crippling the Russian economy to create a political crisis and perhaps breakup of Russia itself in order to isolate it from China, the US/NATO sanctions have led Russia to re-orient its trade away from NATO countries to integrate its economy and diplomacy more closely with China and other BRICS members.

    Ironically, the US/NATO policy is forcing Russia, China and their BRICS allies to go their own way, starting with a united Eurasia. This new core of China, Russia and Eurasia with the Global South are creating a mutually beneficial multipolar trade and investment sphere.

    By contrast, European industry has been devastated. Its economies have become thoroughly and abjectly dependent on the United States – at a much higher cost to itself than was the case with its former trade partners. European exporters have lost the Russian market, and are now following U.S. demands that they abandon and indeed reject the Chinese market. Also to be rejected in due course are markets in the BRICS membership, which is expanding to include Near Eastern, African and Latin American countries.

    Instead of isolating Russia and China and making them dependent on U.S. economic control, U.S. unipolar diplomacy has isolated itself and its NATO satellites from the rest of the world – the Global Majority that is growing while NATO economies are rushing ahead along their Road to Deindustrialization. The remarkable thing is that while NATO warns of the “risk” of trade with Russia and China, it does not see its loss of industrial viability and economic sovereignty to the United States as a risk.

    This is not what the “economic interpretation of history” would have forecast. Governments are expected to support their economy’s leading business interests. So we are brought back to the question of whether economic factors will determine the shape of world trade, investment and diplomacy. Is it really possible to create a set of post-economic NATO economies whose members will come to look much like the rapidly depopulating and de-industrializing Baltic states and post-Soviet Ukraine?

    This would be a strange kind of “national security” indeed. In economic terms it seems that the U.S. and European strategy of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive and far-reaching an error that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.

    Today’s fighting against Russia on the Ukrainian front can be thought of as the opening campaign in World War III. In many ways it is an outgrowth of World War II and its aftermath that saw the United States establish international economic and political organizations to operate in its own national self-interest. The International Monetary Fund imposes U.S. financial control and helps dollarize the world economy.

    The World Bank lends dollars to governments to build export infrastructure to subsidize US/NATO investors in control of oil, mining and natural resources, and to promote trade dependency on U.S. farm exports while promoting plantation agriculture, instead of domestic food-grain production. The United States insists on having veto power in all international organizations that it joins, including the United Nations and its agencies.

    The creation of NATO is often misunderstood. Ostensibly, it depicted itself as a military alliance, originally to defend against the thought that the Soviet Union might have some reason to conquer Western Europe. But NATO’s most important role was to use “national security” as the excuse to override European domestic and foreign policy and subordinate it to U.S. control. Dependency on NATO was written into the European Union’s constitution. Its objective was to make sure that European party leaders followed U.S. direction and opposed left-wing or anti-American politics, pro-labor policies and governments strong enough to prevent control by a U.S.-client financial oligarchy.

    NATO’s economic program has been one of adherence to neoliberal financialization, privatization, government deregulation and imposing austerity on labor. EU regulations prevent governments from running a budget deficit of more than 3% of GDP. That blocks Keynesian-type policies to spur recovery. Today, higher military arms costs and government subsidy of energy prices is forcing European governments to cut back social spending. Bank policy, trade policy, and domestic lawmaking are following the same U.S. neoliberal model that has deindustrialized the American economy and loaded it down with debt to the financial sector in whose hands most wealth and income is now concentrated.
    Abandoning economic self-interest for “national security” dependence on the US

    The post-Vilnius world treats trade and international relations not as economic, but as “national security.” Any form of trade is the “risk” of being cut off and destabilized. The aim is not to make trade and investment gains, but to become self-reliant and independent. For the West, this means isolating China, Russia, and the BRICS in order to depend fully on the United States. So for the United States, its own security means making other countries dependent on itself, so that U.S. diplomats won’t lose control of their military and political diplomacy.

    Treating trade and investment with other countries than the United States as involving “risk,” ipso facto, is a projection of how U.S. diplomacy has imposed sanctions on countries that resist U.S. domination, privatization and subordination of their economies to U.S. takeover. The fear that trade with Russia and China will lead to political dependency is a fantasy. The aim of the emerging Eurasian, BRICS and Global South alliance is to benefit from foreign trade with each other for mutual gain, with governments strong enough to treat money and banking as public utilities, along with the basic monopolies needed to provide normal human rights, including health care and education, and keeping monopolies such as transportation and communication in the public domain to keep the costs of living and doing business low instead of charging monopoly prices.

    Anti-China hate has come especially from Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Foreign Minister. NATO is warned to “de-risk” trade with China. The “risks” are that (1) China can cut off key exports, just as the US cut off European access to Russian oil exports; and (2) exports could potentially be used to support China’s military power. Almost any economic export COULD be military, even food to feed a Chinese army.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to China likewise explained that all trade has a military potential and thus has a national-security element. All trade has a military potential, even selling food to China could be used to feed soldiers.

    The US/NATO demand is that Germany and other European countries should impose an Iron Curtain against trade with China, Russia and their allies in order to “de-risk” trade. Yet only the US has imposed trade sanctions on other countries, not China and other Global South countries. The real risk is not that China will impose trade sanctions to disrupt European economies, but that the United States will impose sanctions on countries breaking the US-sponsored trade boycott.

    This “trade is risk” view treats foreign trade not in economic terms but in “National Security” terms. In practice, “national security” means joining the U.S. attempt to maintain its unipolar control of the entire world’s economy. No risk is acknowledged for re-orienting European gas and energy trade to U.S. companies. The risk is said to be trade with countries that U.S. diplomats deem “autocracies,” meaning nations with active government infrastructure investment and regulation instead of U.S.-style neoliberalism.

    The world is dividing into two blocs – with quite different economic philosophies
    Only the United States has imposed trade sanctions on other countries. And only the United States has rejected international free trade rules as national security threats to US economic and military control. At first glance the resulting global fracture between US/NATO on the one hand and the expanding BRICS alliance of Russia, China, Iran and the Global South might seem to be a conflict between capitalism and socialism (that is, state socialism in a mixed economy with public regulation in labor’s interests).

    But that contrast between capitalism and socialism is not helpful upon closer examination. The problem lies in what the word “capitalism” has come to mean in today’s world. Back in the 19th and early 20th century, industrial capitalism was expected to evolve toward socialism. The U.S. and other industrial economies welcomed and indeed pressed for their governments to subsidize a widening range of basic services at public expense instead of obliging employers to bear the costs of hiring labor that had to pay for basic needs such as health care and education. Monopoly pricing was avoided by keeping natural monopolies such as railroads and other transportation, telephone systems and other communications, parks and other services as public utilities. Having governments instead of business and its employees pay for these services increased the global competitiveness of national industry in the resulting mixed economies.

    China has followed this basic approach of industrial capitalism, with socialist politics to uplift its labor force, not merely the wealth of industrial capitalists – much less bankers and absentee landlords and monopolists. Most important, it has industrialized banking, creating credit to finance tangible investment in means of production, not the kind of predatory and unproductive credit characterized by today’s finance capitalism.

    But the mixed-economy policy of industrial capitalism is not the way in which capitalism evolved in the West since World War I.

    Rejecting classical political economy and its drive to free markets from the vested rent-extracting classes inherited from feudalism – a hereditary landlord class, a financial banking class and monopolists – the rentier sector has fought back to reassert its privatization of land rent, interest and monopoly gains. It sought to reverse progressive taxation, and indeed to give tax favoritism to financial wealth, landlords and monopolists.

    The Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector has become the dominant interest and economic planner under today’s finance capitalism. That is why economies are often called neofeudal (or euphemized as neoliberal).

    Throughout history the dynamics of financialization have polarized wealth and income between creditors and debtors, leading to oligarchies. As interest-bearing debt grows exponentially, more and more income of labor and business must be paid as debt service. That financial dynamic shrinks the domestic market for goods and services, and the economy suffers from deepening debt-ridden austerity.

    The result is de-industrialization as economies polarize between creditors and debtors. That has occurred most notoriously in Britain in the wake of Margaret Thatcher and the New [Anti-]Labour Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s “light touch” deregulatory approach to financial manipulation and outright fraud.

    The United States has suffered an equally devastating shift of wealth and income to the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sectors in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts for the wealthy, anti-government deregulation, Bill Clinton’s “Third Way” takeover by Wall Street. The “Third Way” was neither industrial capitalism nor socialism, but finance capitalism making its gains both by stripping and indebting industry and labor of income.

    The new Democratic Party ideology of deregulated finance was capped by the massive bank-fraud collapse of 2008 and Barack Obama’s protection of junk-mortgage lenders and wholesale foreclosures on their financial victims. Economic planning and policy was shifted from governments to Wall Street and other financial centers – which had taken control of in government, the central bank and regulatory agencies.

    U.S. and British diplomats are seeking to promote this predatory pro-financial and inherently anti-industrial economic philosophy to the rest of the world. But this ideological evangelism is threatened by the obvious contrast between the US-British failed and de-industrialized economies compared to China’s remarkable economic growth under industrial socialism.

    This contrast between China’s economic success and the NATO West’s “garden” of debt-ridden austerity is the essence of today’s campaign by the West against the “Jungle” countries seeking political independence from U.S. diplomacy so as to uplift their living standards. This ideological and inherently political global war is today’s counterpart to the religious wars that tore European countries apart for many centuries.

    We are witnessing what seems to be an inexorable Decline of the West. U.S. diplomats have been able to tighten their economic, political and military control leadership over their European NATO allies. Their easy success in this aim has led them to imagine that somehow they can conquer the rest of the world despite de-industrializing and loading their economies so deeply in debt that there is no foreseeable way in which they can pay their official debt to foreign countries or indeed have much to offer.
    The traditional imperialism of military conquest and financial conquest is ended

    There has been a sequence of tactics for a lead-nation to carve out an empire. The oldest way is by military conquest. But you can’t occupy and take over a country without an army, and the US has no army large enough. The Vietnam War ended the draft. So it must rely on foreign armies like Al Qaeda, ISIS, and most recently Ukraine and Poland, just as it relies on foreign industrial manufactures. Its armaments are depleted and it cannot mobilize a domestic army to occupy any country. The US has only one weapon: Missiles and bombs can destroy, but cannot occupy and take over a country.

    The second way to create imperial power was by economic power to make other countries dependent on U.S. exports. After World War II the rest of the world was devastated and was bullied into accepting U.S. diplomacy maneuvering to give its economy a monopoly on basic needs. Agriculture became a major weapon to create foreign dependency. The World Bank would not support foreign countries growing their own food, but pressed for plantation export crops, and fought land reform. And for oil and energy trade, U.S. companies and their NATO allies in Britain and Holland (British Petroleum and Shell) controlled the world’s oil trade.
    Control of world oil trade has been a central aim of US trade diplomacy.

    This strategy worked for US assertion of control over Germany and other NATO countries, by blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline and severing Western Europe from access to Russian gas, oil, fertilizer and also crops. Europe has now entered an industrial depression and economic austerity as its steel industry and other leading sectors are invited to emigrate to the United States, along with European skilled labor.

    Today, electronic technology and computer chips have been a focal point of establishing global Economic Dependency on U.S. technology. The United States aims to monopolize “intellectual property” and extract economic rent from charging high prices) for high-technology computer chips, communications, and arms production.

    But the United States has deindustrialized and let itself become dependent on Asian and other countries for its products, instead of making them dependent on the US. This trade dependency is what makes U.S. diplomats feel “insecure,” worrying that other countries might seek to use the same coercive trade and financial diplomacy that the United States has been wielding since 1944-45.

    The United States is left with one remaining tactic to control other countries: trade sanctions, imposed by it and its NATO satellites in an attempt to disrupt economies that do not accept U.S. unipolar economic, political and military dominance. It has persuaded the Netherlands to block sophisticated chip-engraving machinery to China, and other countries to block anything that might contribute to China’s economic development. A new American industrial protectionism is being framed in terms of national security grounds.

    If China’s trade policy were to mirror that of U.S. diplomacy, it would stop supplying NATO countries with mineral and metal exports needed to produce the computer chips and allied inputs that America’s economy needs to wield its global diplomacy.

    The US is so heavily debt-laden, its housing prices are so high and its medical care is so extremely high (18% of GDP) cannot compete. It cannot re-industrialize without taking radical steps to write down debts, to de-privatize health care and education, to break up monopolies and restore progressive taxation. The vested Financial, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE sector) interests are too powerful to permit these reforms. That makes the U.S. economy a failed economy, and America a Failed State.

    In the wake of World War II the United States accumulated 75% of the world’s monetary gold by 1950. That enabled it to impose dollarization on the world. But today, nobody knows whether the U.S. Treasury and New York Federal Reserve have any gold that has not been pledged to private buyers and speculators? The worry is that it has sold European central-bank gold reserves. Germany has asked for its gold reserves to be flown back from New York, but the United States said that it was unavailable, and Germany was too timid to make its worries and complaints public.

    America’s financial quandary is even worse when one tries to imagine how it can ever pay its foreign debt for countries seeking to draw down their dollars. The United States can only print its own currency. It is not willing to sell off its domestic assets, as it demands that other debtor countries do?

    What can other countries accept in place of gold? One form of assets that may be taken as collateral are U.S. investments in Europe and other countries. But if foreign governments seek to do this, U.S. officials may retaliate by seizing their investments in the United States. A mutual grabbing would occur.

    The United States is trying to monopolize electronic technology. The problem is that this requires raw-materials inputs whose production presently is dominated by China, above all rare-earth metals (which are abundant but environmentally destructive to refine), gallium, nickel (China dominates the refining), and Russian helium and other gasses used for engraving computer chips. China recently announced that on August 1 it will start restricting these key exports. It indeed has the ability to cut off supplies of vital materials and technology to the West, to protect itself from the West’s “national-security” sanctions against China. That is the self-fulfilling prophecy that U.S. warnings of a trade fight has created.

    If U.S. diplomacy strongarms its NATO-garden allies to boycott China’s Huawei technology, Europe will be left with a less efficient, more expensive alternative – whose consequences help separate it from China, the BRICS and what has become the World Majority in a self-reliant alignment much broader than was created by Sukarno in 1954.

    –----

    Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the author of Killing the Host (published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by Islet). His new book is J is For Junk Economics.

    #USA #Europe #OTAN #Chine #capitalisme #impérialisme #guerre

  • Par Oui Dire : Rencontre avec Anne Morelli - Ukraine et Principes élémentaires de propagande de guerre Rtbf

    Relever quelques principes majeurs de la propagande de guerre, c’est l’objectif d’Anne Morelli, historienne et professeur honoraire à l’ULB, avec un petit livre concis et efficace : ‘Principes élémentaires de propagande de guerre (utilisables en cas de guerre froide, chaude ou tiède…)’ .
    Le livre est traduit en néerlandais, allemand, italien, espagnol, portugais, esperanto et japonais.
    Ni en anglais ni en russe !
    La nouvelle édition en français vient de sortir chez Aden. Un entretien avec Anne Morelli, par Pascale Tison

    https://audio.audiomeans.fr/file/PcNCvtcnHj/1dea6ebd-5e6b-489a-8b12-aad74d356097.mp3

    #Ukraine #propagande #Histoire #guerre #otan #Russie #médias #journalistes #RTBF #Anne_Morelli

    Source : https://auvio.rtbf.be/media/par-oui-dire-par-oui-dire-3056853

  • OTAN suspend ton viol

    Camarades, venons en aide à la presse française de révérence !
    19 Juillet 2023

    Pour les malheureux journalistes du Monde, de BFMTV, de Mediatarte , de Libération, FranceTV, et autres gazettes de référence hexagonales, contraints par d’odieux magnats cyniques de relayer la propagande de la CIA et de l’OTAN, nous avons concocté une petite revue de presse qui leur permettra d’être mieux informés de la vox populi américaine à propos de ce qui se passe en Europe ...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTE5bldj2Z4


    #Cornel West, #OTAN, #Ukraine, #Grey Zone, #The Hill, #Max Blumenthal, #Brianna et Roby

  • [ARTICLE ORIGINAL - EN] Chris Hedges : Ils ont menti sur l’#Afghanistan et l’#Irak ; maintenant ils mentent sur l’#Ukraine. Le public américain s’est fait avoir, une fois de plus, en déversant des milliards dans une nouvelle guerre sans fin.

    Le scénario que les proxénètes de la #guerre utilisent pour nous entraîner dans un fiasco militaire après l’autre, notamment au Vietnam, en Afghanistan, en Irak, en #Libye, en #Syrie et aujourd’hui en Ukraine, ne change pas. La liberté et la démocratie sont menacées. Le mal doit être vaincu. Les droits de l’homme doivent être protégés. Le sort de l’Europe et de l’#OTAN, ainsi que celui d’un « ordre international fondé sur des règles », est en jeu. La victoire est assurée.

    Les résultats sont les mêmes. Les justifications et les récits sont démasqués comme des mensonges. Les pronostics optimistes sont faux. Ceux au nom desquels nous sommes censés nous battre sont aussi vénaux que ceux que nous combattons.

    https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/08/chris-hedges-they-lied-about-afghanistan-they-lied-about-iraq-and-they-a

  • Nato members may send troops to Ukraine, warns former alliance chief
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/07/nato-members-may-send-troops-to-ukraine-warns-former-alliance-chief

    A group of Nato countries may be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states including the US do not provide tangible security guarantees to Kyiv at the alliance’s summit in Vilnius, the former Nato secretary general Anders Rasmussen has said.

    Rasmussen, who has been acting as official adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Ukraine’s place in a future European security architecture, has been touring Europe and Washington to gauge the shifting mood before the critical summit starts on 11 July.

    [...] He made his remarks as the current Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said the issue of security guarantees would be on the agenda at Vilnius, but added that Nato – under article 5 of the Washington treaty – only provided full-fledged security guarantees to full members.

    [...] Rasmussen said: “If Nato cannot agree on a clear path forward for Ukraine, there is a clear possibility that some countries individually might take action. We know that Poland is very engaged in providing concrete assistance to Ukraine. And I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Poland would engage even stronger in this context on a national basis and be followed by the Baltic states, maybe including the possibility of troops on the ground.

    [...] He said that “some Nato allies might be in favour of the security guarantees to actually avoid a real discussion on Ukraine’s membership aspirations. They hope that by providing security guarantees, they can avoid this question. I don’t think that is possible. I think the Nato issue will be raised at the summit in Vilnius. I’ve spoken with several eastern European leaders, and there is a group of hardcore, eastern central European allies that want at least a clear path for Ukraine towards Nato membership.”

    S’agit-il de menaces d’#alliance_entrapment ?
    #ukraine #otan

  • Kein Bündnis mit dem Hauptfeind – Fünf Thesen zur Konferenz „Was tun ?! DIE LINKE in Zeiten des Krieges“
    https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=97359

    Le parti Die Linke change de cap et abandonne sa position fondamentale contre la guerre au profit d’une politique otaniste. C’est assez inquiétamt parce que nous sommes en train de perdre la dernière voix contre les illusions suicidaires dans les parlements de la république.

    8.5.2023 Ein Artikel von Sevim Dagdelen

    Zum Hintergrund: Wir geben die Rede wieder, die die Bundestagsabgeordnete Sevim Dagdelen in Hannover auf dem Auftaktpodium des Kongresses „Was tun? Die Linke in Zeiten des Krieges“ gehalten hat. Das ist interessant im Kontext der im linken Lager aktuell geführten Debatte. Von Sevim Dagdelen.

    Fünf Thesen zur Konferenz „Was tun?! DIE LINKE in Zeiten des Krieges“

    Erstens:

    Im Zuge des Krieges in der Ukraine hat sich die Tendenz beschleunigt, dass DIE LINKE von Führungspersönlichkeiten aus von einer Friedens- in eine Kriegspartei verwandelt werden soll. DIE LINKE vollzieht im Zeitraffer eine Entwicklung der SPD und der Grünen hin zu einer Akzeptanz und Einforderung einer militarisierten deutschen Außenpolitik. Wie bei den Grünen ist zu beobachten, dass man sich in der Tradition von Konvertiten des Krieges an die Spitze der Kriegsparteien in Deutschland zu setzen versucht. Stichworte: Wirtschaftskrieg gegen Russland, Waffenlieferungen in Kriegsgebiete, die Heiligung der NATO und zuletzt ein JA zu Auslandseinsätzen, zu robusten Kampfeinsätzen der Bundeswehr.

    Die Entwicklung der SPD und der Grünen beobachtend, hatten wir in der Vergangenheit immer vor „Türöffnern“ und „Rutschbahnen“ gewarnt. Bei der Linken kann man die Türen fast nicht mehr zählen, die geöffnet wurden, und wie gesagt, man hat den Eindruck, dass die Geschwindigkeit auf der Rutschbahn fast täglich erhöht wird.

    Ganz konkret: Wer in der Vergangenheit im Vorfeld des 1. Mai im Ticker der Agenturmeldungen nach der LINKEN suchte, fand Forderungen nach höheren Löhnen, sicheren Renten und einer friedlichen Außenpolitik. In diesem Jahr 2023 war das zum ersten Mal anders. Die Schlagzeilen beherrschte die Forderung einer ehemaligen Vorsitzenden der Linken nach Waffenlieferungen in ein Kriegsgebiet, ganz konkret in die Ukraine.

    Zweitens:

    Dieser Bruch mit dem friedenspolitischen Grundkonsens der LINKEN blieb – wie auch die vielen vorangegangenen Brüche ganzer Landesverbände etwa in Bremen oder Thüringen mit ihren Forderungen nach Rüstungsexporten – unwidersprochen von der so genannten Führung der Partei. Im Gegenteil befeuert die stellvertretende Parteivorsitzende Schubert, die geistig längst bei der FDP-Rüstungslobbyistin Strack-Zimmermann und dem Panzer-Toni Hofreiter von den Grünen angekommen ist, mit ihrem Ruf nach Waffenlieferungen den Programmbruch.

    Mit diesem Ruf nach Waffenlieferungen gleicht die Linke sich an den Mainstream der Kriegsparteien im Land an. Sie ruft neben ihrer Forderung, den selbstzerstörerischen Wirtschaftskrieg gegen Russland zu intensivieren, Stichwort des Parteivorsitzenden: ‚Sanktionen besser durchsetzen‘, zu einer Beteiligung Deutschlands über die Waffenlieferungen am NATO-Stellvertreterkrieg unter US-Führung gegen Russland auf.

    Um mit Karl Liebknecht zu sprechen. Diese LINKE sucht das Bündnis mit dem Hauptfeind, der im eigenen Land steht.

    Drittens:

    Bei ihrem Akkommodieren mit herrschenden Positionen ist diese LINKE bereit, ein Surplus zu liefern. Und der Überschrift in seinem FAZ-Interview „Putin hat vollzogen, was Hitler nicht geschafft hat“ redet Bodo Ramelow einem ehernen Geschichtsrevisionismus das Wort, gegen den selbst Ernst Nolte als Waisenknabe dasteht. [Bodo Ramelow im Interview mit der FAZ: „Putin hat vollzogen, was Hitler nicht geschafft hat“ (nachdenkseiten.de) ]

    Die Botschaft: Putin ist nicht nur Hitler, nein, Putin ist schlimmer als Hitler. Während zur Legitimation der NATO- und US-Kriege in der Vergangenheit wenigstens noch das Gleichheitszeichen stand: Milosevic ist Hitler, Saddam Hussein ist Hitler und Gaddafi ist Hitler, um die eigenen Regime-Change-Kriege zu legitimieren von Bush zu Obama, sieht sich Ramelow, offenbar um den Mehrwert dieser Linken beweisen zu wollen, zu einem Überbietungswettbewerb veranlasst. Wie gesagt, Putin ist nicht gleich Hitler, sondern er hat sogar vollzogen, was Hitler nicht geschafft hat.

    Diese Kriegslegitimation wurde selbstverständlich gierig aufgesogen. Sie taugt in ihrem pseudo-antifaschistischen Duktus natürlich auch hervorragend als Kriegslegitimation. Am Ende muss dieser Diskurs in der Vergöttlichung der deutschen Rüstungsindustrie münden, die die vielen schönen Waffen für den antifaschistischen Kampf herstellt. Dem Fall nach unten, was die Programmatik angeht, sind damit keine Grenzen mehr gesetzt.

    Viertens:

    Am Ende wirkt der Ukraine-Krieg nur wie der Brandbeschleuniger, was die friedenspolitischen Positionen angeht. Lange vorbereitet ist der Bruch – sowohl durch das permanente Drängen, die Verbrechen der USA und der NATO nicht zu deutlich zu kritisieren, aber auch durch das ständige Drängen als gouvernementalen Präventivschlag, die Kritik der Linken an der NATO abzuräumen.

    Programmatisch vorbereitet auch durch eine Äquidistanz zu Russland und der NATO, um dann zu einer Position überzugehen, wo man die Kritik nur noch auf Russland kaprizierte, aber fortan vom Hauptfeind schwieg. Dieselben Leute, die einem jahrelang erklärten, es gäbe keinen Imperialismus mehr, der Begriff sei überholt, entdeckten ihn wieder im Fahrwasser von Olaf Scholz, aber ausschließlich als russischen Imperialismus. [Olaf Scholz betont Widerstand gegen russischen »Großmachtwahn und Imperialismus« – DER SPIEGEL]

    Und so wie die SPD-Linke sich der Bauernfängerei für den Ersten Weltkrieg und eine linke Zustimmung anschloss, indem sie ihn zum Krieg gegen den Zarismus verklärte, so findet der Imperialismus-Begriff seine Verwendung von Links auf Russland. Zitat Ramelow von 2016: „Wir müssen ja keine begeisterten Nato-Anhänger werden“, wenn wir regieren. Sprache kann verräterisch sein. [Bodo Ramelow: “Wir müssen ja keine begeisterten Nato-Anhänger werden” | ZEIT ONLINE]

    Man muss es Katja Kipping lassen, dass sie hier am weitesten fortgeschritten ist. DIE NATO, die nicht nur entgegen aller Zusagen die Ostexpansion unter der Führung der USA organsiert hat, die in Afghanistan einen 20-jährigen mörderischen Krieg geführt und Länder wie Jugoslawien und Libyen völkerrechtswidrig überfallen hat, wird nur für diese LINKE zu einer regelrechten Friedensallianz. Marx hatte noch davor gewarnt, dass das Selbstbild einer Person oder auch einer Organisation nicht zwingend mit der Wirklichkeit übereinstimmen müsse, aber bei der Kipping-Linken, die würdige Nachfolger gefunden hat, ist es so.

    Folgerichtig wird die Revision des Programms gefordert, die Positionen zur NATO müssten weg, denn eine „generelle Ablehnung sei überholt“, so Kipping. [Generelle Ablehnung überholt: Kipping: Linke muss NATO-Position überdenken – n-tv.de]

    Fünftens:

    Eine Rückkehr zum friedenspolitischen Grundkonsens ist mit dieser LINKEN-Führung nicht zu machen. Die LINKEN-Führung steht eben auch nicht nur für das Stillhalten bei den Forderungen nach Waffenlieferungen, nein, viel schlimmer setzt sie auf einen Wirtschaftskrieg an der Seite des US-Imperialismus, der vor allem die eigene Bevölkerung trifft. Wer aber den sozialen Krieg gegen die eigene Bevölkerung mit einfordert, der macht sich natürlich auch völlig unglaubwürdig im Hinblick auf eigene soziale Forderungen und wird von der Bevölkerung zunehmend als Teil des Problems wahrgenommen. Es braucht aber eine glaubwürdige soziale und friedliche Kraft in diesem Land, die kein Bündnis mit dem Hauptfeind im eigenen Land eingeht. Es ist unsere historische Verantwortung, am Ende einer Partei, die zur Kriegspartei mutiert, nicht auch noch Legitimität zu verleihen.

    Unsere historische Verantwortung ist es, uns gegen Wirtschaftskriege und Waffenexporte zu stellen und gegen einen Militärpakt, der auf Aufrüstung, Eskalation, Expansion und Überfälle setzt. Es braucht eine Kraft, die auf einen sofortigen Waffenstillstand, unkonditionierte Verhandlungen und ein Ende des Wirtschaftskrieges setzt. Es braucht eine Kraft, die glaubwürdig für Frieden, Freiheit und soziale Gerechtigkeit eintritt.

    #gauche #Allemagne #impérialisme #OTAN

  • Bruits de bottes et menaces de guerre | Éditorial de Lutte Ouvrière
    https://www.lutte-ouvriere.org/editoriaux/bruits-de-bottes-et-menaces-de-guerre-654151.html

    Lundi, ont eu lieu les commémorations du 8 mai 1945. C’était la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale en Europe mais pas la fin des guerres qui ont continué de faire rage dans de très nombreux pays. Depuis un an, le conflit en Ukraine montre que la guerre n’est pas une affaire passée pour l’Europe : elle fait maintenant partie de notre présent. 

    Longtemps, les gouvernements ont fait croire que la barbarie guerrière était derrière nous et que c’en était fini des bombardements et des tranchées, des villes rasées et des déportations de population.

    La population avait eu droit au même boniment après la guerre de 14-18, qui avait été un massacre sans nom : 10 millions de morts en Europe, des millions de blessés, d’amputés, de gazés et de « gueules cassées ». 500 000 soldats tués rien qu’à Verdun pour que chaque camp retrouve, au final, les positions qu’il tenait au début de l’offensive !

    L’ampleur des souffrances et des destructions était une « première » et tous les gouvernants de l’époque la présentèrent comme « la der des ders », c’est-à-dire la dernière des guerres. Vingt ans plus tard, en 1939, cela recommença !

    La Deuxième Guerre mondiale rationalisa si bien l’horreur qu’elle fut la plus meurtrière de toute l’histoire. Aux 20 millions de soldats tués, s’ajoutent 40 à 60 millions de civils bombardés et affamés et 6 millions de Juifs, mais aussi des Tziganes et d’autres minorités qui périrent dans les camps d’extermination nazis. De nombreuses villes furent transformées en champs de ruines.

    La Première et la Deuxième Guerres mondiales eurent fondamentalement les mêmes causes : la nécessité d’expansion des trusts capitalistes et la guerre économique qui en résulte.

    Sous leurs dehors inoffensifs, la concurrence et la compétitivité sont l’expression de cette guerre économique. Les défenseurs du #capitalisme nous en chantent les vertus, mais par définition, elles signifient l’affrontement entre intérêts privés. Affrontements que les États relaient avec les moyens que leur confère leur puissance économique, politique et militaire.

    La #guerre_mondiale n’est pas une calamité apportée par tel ou tel monstre dictatorial. Elle est la prolongation de la guerre économique des trusts capitalistes pour contrôler les matières premières, les chaînes de production et s’assurer des marchés à l’échelle mondiale.

    Alors oui, la Première Guerre devait inévitablement être suivie d’une Deuxième. Et la Deuxième Guerre mondiale sera suivie d’une Troisième. Il en sera ainsi tant que dominera le système capitaliste.

    Les #relations_internationales, les #alliances et les retournements d’alliance, les relations pacifiques ou guerrières ne sont pas guidées par le bonheur des peuples, la liberté ou la démocratie. Elles résultent des calculs et des rapports de force entre États et des intérêts capitalistes qu’ils représentent.

    La guerre en Ukraine ne fait pas exception. Les va-t-en guerre expliquent qu’il faut défendre un petit pays agressé par son puissant voisin. Comme si l’#Ukraine n’était pas le théâtre de l’affrontement entre les #États-Unis et la #Russie depuis au moins trente ans ! Comme si le camp impérialiste derrière l’#OTAN équipait, formait et renseignait les troupes ukrainiennes de façon désintéressée !

    La #guerre contre la Russie de Poutine et la mise à l’index de la Chine de Xi Jinping sont les traductions politiques et militaires des rivalités économiques qui opposent ces grandes puissances entre elles. Les travailleurs n’ont à prendre parti ni pour les unes, ni pour les autres. Ils ont à se battre pour renverser ce système capitaliste qui nous condamne à l’exploitation et aux guerres.

    Les États-Unis et les puissances impérialistes occidentales, dont la France, règnent sur l’ordre mondial en levant l’étendard de la paix et de la démocratie. Mais c’est un ordre où les dictatures pullulent ! C’est un ordre qui alimente en Afrique, au Moyen-Orient, en Asie, des guerres sans fin ! C’est un ordre qui plonge des régions entières dans le dénuement et chasse de chez eux des centaines de millions de femmes, d’hommes et d’enfants et qui les transforme en parias !

    Les combats meurtriers en Ukraine ou les accrochages entre les États-Unis et la Chine rendent de plus en plus concrète la menace d’une guerre généralisée. 

    Tous les États s’y préparent en se réarmant à marche forcée. À nous de dire non à une nouvelle guerre impérialiste. Ce combat est indissociable du combat social que les travailleurs ont à mener contre le pouvoir d’une classe capitaliste qui, pour ses parts de marché et ses profits, est prête à plonger le monde entier dans la barbarie.

    #militarisation #Troisième_guerre_mondiale

  • L’#Otan va ouvrir à Tokyo son premier bureau de liaison en #Asie
    https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/defense-l-otan-va-ouvrir-a-tokyo-son-premier-bureau-de-liaiso

    L’Alliance atlantique et le #Japon prévoient d’approfondir leur coopération dans le domaine de l’intelligence artificielle, des technologies quantiques et surtout de la cybersécurité – un secteur où les menaces chinoises et russes sont de plus en plus présentes. Pour le Japon, soucieux de renforcer ses capacités en la matière, les expertises de l’Otan “seraient instructives”, note le Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

    #Chine #états-unis