Lovefest in Korea Leaves US Regime Fuming

Dateline Feb 11, 2018
espite all efforts of the paranoid and unpredictable US regime, the Koreans are making love not war during the 2018 Winter Olympics. The US regime is furious and pulling out all the hate stops to tarnish North Korea, and try and put South Korea back on the US colonial leash. While not exactly an anti-colonial attack dog, South Korea’s democratically elected peace-president Moon Jae-in is showing signs that he is not an America poodle either.

A departure from the colonialist script: South Korean President Moon Jae-in speaks during the opening ceremony of the 132nd IOC session ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Gangneung, South Korea, Monday, February 5, 2018.

Every four years the US regime uses the Olympics as an opportunity to rain chaos and hate during the Olympics’ historical tradition of bringing the world’s best athletes together in celebration of world unity, human dignity, fraternity among all nations and the possibilities when nations come together in peace.

Happiness, unity and peace are a threat to the paranoid US regime, which is dedicated to war, death, and chaos. Like a drone hurling bombs at wedding parties and funerals, the unpredictable US regime tries to sabotage anything good and decent that might come from a peaceful gathering of nations. Such a large gathering during the Olympics of world leaders, athletes and people of the world sets off the military-industrial-complex’s algorithm of a meeting of high profile targets in need of a signature strike.

As Obama said, “I have two words for you, Predator Drone; you won’t even see it coming”. It worked for Obama during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. From the time of the announcement in July of 2007, for almost eight years until 2014, Russia was preparing for the celebration of its emergence like a phoenix from the ashes of chaos sown by US infiltrators of neoliberalism, looting of state enterprises, and imposing austerity on Russian citizens during the decade of the 1990’s.

The US economic advisors to Russia’s drunken and abjectly corrupt president Boris Yeltsin led Russia down a yellow brick road they said would lead to a golden transformation from communism to a Western style capitalism, with consumerist abundance for all. When the neoliberal transformation turned into a train wreck the US Nobel Prize winning economists said it was just a temporary hard landing. The savage free marketism orgy went on for over a decade, during which most Russians saw their economic and social security vanish, their lifespan index plummet, criminality fester in every nook and cranny of society, and their national sovereignty reduced to that of a humiliated vassal state at the mercy of the Washington plutocracy. By the turn of the millennium, the Russian people had had enough of US-style voodoo economics and elected Vladimir Putin as their leader. Putin told the US thank you very much and showed the esteemed economic shamans the exit door and kicked them out. The US would never forgive Putin and they would do everything they could to shun, vilify and regime-change him.

During the years while Vladimir Putin was engineering a recovery of Russia’s economy, the US’s Obama regime was spending $5 billion plotting a coup d’etat in Ukraine. The coup was timed for when Russia would be overjoyed celebrating the Sochi Olympics. To prepare the US public for a resumption of a US-led Cold War the international cartel of Western propaganda organs, led by the New York Times and the Guardian, began laying the groundwork of anti-Russian propaganda. The propandists led a vilification project portraying Vladimir Putin as a thuggish, homophobic killer of journalists, a ruthless operator who invaded Georgia, and is an evil dictator. While the Russians and the rest of the world celebrated the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, US backed fascists instigated a violent overthrow of Russia’s neighbor and historical cousin country Ukraine (in fact Ukraine is the cradle of Russian civilization), the original rus, and its democratically elected government.

The US in its ruthless pettiness always looks for an opportunity to rain on the parade of some other country that it wants to punish for not being one of its lackeys, or for not showing sufficient deference to the global hegemon. For the 2018 Winter Olympics the US planned to ramp up tensions and impose more economy killer-sanctions on North Korea in order to put an even brighter contrasting glow to the US dominated Western-style capitalist South Korean so-called miracle economy.

In 2017 the US regime got a sneaking suspicion that things were not going as planned. The feisty South Korean people said they had had enough of the US backed corrupt puppet president Park Geun-hye, granddaughter of the despotic US-backed dictator Park Chung-hee (1963 to 1979). In late 2016 the South Korean people began mass protests holding candlelight vigils demanding the resignation of Park Geun-hye.

Trump and Pence—two moral and intellectual imbeciles, two turds catapulted to the summit of US power— vividly personify the bankruptcy of US politics and the emptiness of its claims to be a real democracy.

Candlelight vigils have become a tradition of South Korean protesters since the 2002 killing of a South Korean girl by US occupation soldiers. When the soldiers were being court martialed by the US military, the South Korean people held candlelight vigils demanding justice. They didn’t get it. The soldiers were found not guilty (surprise!), but the non-violent candlelight vigils continued as a traditional form of protest whenever the South Koreans demonstrated against injustice, US arrogance, and political corruption.

The candlelight vigils against Park Geun-hye continued and grew in 2017 until the South Korean parliament caved in to the demonstrators and impeached Park for corruption and influence peddling. Park Geun-hye is now in prison, where her grandfather should have once been too, if an assassin’s bullet had not found him first in 1979. Her grandfather had also been a collaborator during Korea’s humiliation of Japanese colonialism. Collaboration and corruption do run in the family, but these dynastic vices are virtues in the eyes of the Americans who instinctively seek out the most corrupt to use as their local shills.

In May 2017 elections that followed Park’s ouster the South Korean people, especially the younger generation, said they had had enough of US instigated animosity between them and their Northern brothers and sisters. Moon Jae-in ran an elections campaign on a platform of anti-cronyism with South Korea’s giant industrial monopolies, increased social programs for the people and a Sunshine Policy 2.0 similar to that of President Kim Dae-jung (1998 to 2008). Moon won a landslide victory on his platform of peace and social justice for the people.

The US regime has been sulking, plotting and hyperventilating with sarcasm, saber rattling and retaliation against both South Korea and North Korea for resuming a warming of relations that started in the early 21^st century under Kim Dae-jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his Sunshine Policy in 2000. Before Moon could even take office in May, the US regime humiliated him and caused him to lose face by putting THAAD missiles in South Korea. Thousands of South Koreans protested against the THAAD’s, but since the US has military operational (colonial) control in South Korea the peoples’ protests were disregarded. Instead the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson rained on the Sunshine before it even dawned. In April 2017 Reuters reported:

“[Tillerson] expected to discuss tougher sanctions [with Congress], which US officials say could include oil embargo, banning North Korean airlines, intercepting cargo ships, and punishing Chinese and other banks for doing business with Pyongyang…all options are on the table.”

For months the US regime has been raising the volume of the rhetoric against North Korea, threatening war, installing THAAD missiles, shipping more nukes to Guam, threatening a first strike nuclear attack, conspiring with military allies, and tightening the screws of killer economic sanctions. All options are on the table except the diplomatic option. The US refuses to sit at the same table with Koreans.

The proponents of economic sanctions claim that they are a non-violent means of coercion. That is not true. Economic sanctions are war by other means. Any coercion of one country against another is aggression, especially if that country is acting within it legal rights as a sovereign nation. North Korea has broken no international law and it has as much right as South Korea, Japan and the US to have nuclear power for electricity, to test missiles and to even have a nuclear arms program for self-defense and to possess nuclear bombs.

North Korea has not committed aggression against any other country or threatened to attack anyone except in self-defense. The US, its allies and the UN have overstepped their bounds in punishing North Korea for what they have every legal right to do. If the US is so concerned about nuclear proliferation, then they should start living up to their own obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and go talk to their friends Pakistan, India, and Israel too.

In the 21^st century economic sanctions, embargos, blockades, call them whatever; they are weapons of mass destruction that kill civilians and non-combatants indiscriminately. Economic sanctions kill by restricting the imports of food, medicine, fuel and other essentials. Economic sanctions deny the victim the ability to export its products in exchange for hard currency, puts a freeze on their foreign assets, and makes international transactions nearly impossible.

Killer economic sanctions strangle the ability of a country to sustain the civilian infrastructure necessary for the health and life of their citizens. Even when economic sanctions are so-called “smart sanctions” that target limited sections of a victim’s economy and individuals, all economic sanctions have the effect of intimidating other countries from all economic activity for fear of inadvertently violating the sanctions or just angering a muscular US foreign policy attitude that has hundreds of ways of retaliating against those that have displeased it. Economic killer-sanctions are a weapon that a strong country can use against a weak country to try to force a change in its behavior, as if a domineering parent were disciplining a naughty child. That is not how grown up diplomacy is supposed to work.

North Korea has proven that the US propaganda is a lie that North Koreans refuse to sit at the diplomatic table. The North Koreans have offered time and again to negotiate with the US, it has offered to suspend its nuclear program in return for acts of goodwill by the US in return, and North Korea has even offered multiple times to negotiate a final peace treaty to the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with an armistice, but not a final peace.

North Korea and South Korea are meeting, talking and marching under a unified flag at the Olympics. The US is throwing a tantrum and accusing Kim Jong-un’s extended olive branch as a dirty trick to divide South Korea from its master, the US. The US regime is berating its South Korean underlings as being weak, off the colonial leash, and going it alone without its US paternalistic protection.

Good for South Korea. They deserve the liberation and independence the US promised them in 1945. South Korea had been under the boot of Japanese subjugation from 1905 to 1945. Since 1945 the South has been under the subjugation of the US boot. North Korea has been independent since the Russians left in 1948. They are nobody’s puppet and they want to go their own way. They want to be Koreans and not Western clones. That is their right. They deserve respect. We can start by using their correct name which is The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK).

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About the author

David William Pear, currently serving as a senior contributing editor, is a progressive columnist writing on economic, political and social issues. He is also a regular columnist and commenter on OpedNews. His articles have been published by The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Russia Insider, Pravda and many other progressive publications. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, St Pete for Peace, CodePink and International Solidarity Movement. In February of 2015 he was part of a people-to-people delegation to Cuba with CodePink. In November of 2015 he was a delegate with CodePink to Palestine to show solidarity with Palestinians. In 2016 David spent 10 weeks in Palestine with the Palestinian non-violent resistance group International Solidarity Movement (ISM). David frequently makes extended trips to Russia as a private citizen. After retiring from finance in 2009, David earned a certification as an Emergency Medical Technician. David is a Vietnam veteran having served as a member of the 5th Special Forces Group as a combat advisor to the Army of the Republic of (South) Viet Nam. David resides with his wife and three cats in Clearwater Beach, Florida.

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David has a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the University of Maryland and attended classes at George Washington University to receive his Certified Financial Planner certification. He also attended courses at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for his certification as a Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA). He has volunteered for public health service, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, emergency medicine and needs of the homeless. His hobbies include boating, fishing and motorcycle touring. He is also a licensed skydiver (USPA-inactive).

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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

Rebellion in Munich

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. WE MUST BREAK THE IMPERIAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE.

Sophie Scholl-
THE FINAL DAYS

My generation has seen that history does repeat itself. We know world wars I and II and we have seen “regime change” in action from country to country, from Libya to Iraq. Those who think that history does not repeat itself might read some of these lines about what once happened and what is happening today.

Sophie with soldiers.

After World War II the area with the great fountain in front of Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU) on the famed Ludwigsstrasse was named the Geschwister Scholl Platz in honor of the anti-Nazi brother and sister Scholl who led the student White Rose resistance movement in 1943 against the Nazi dictatorship. In the main building of the university—in which I also studied in the 1960s—not many years earlier Sophia and Hans Scholl had distributed anti-regime leaflets and paid for it with their lives.

In the best known film about the Scholl siblings, The Final Days, (2005, see addendum) Sophie (Sophia) Scholl joins the White Rose student organization run by her brother Hans. They have prepared copies of their sixth anti-Nazi leaflet. Sophie and Hans place stacks of the leaflets outside university lecture rooms. With only minutes left until the period ends, Sophie then goes to the top floor and pushes the remaining copies over the balustrade. As Hans and Sophie are leaving, a janitor who saw Sophie scatter the leaflets holds them until police arrive and arrest them. The siblings are taken to the Munich Stadelheim Prison and interrogated by the Gestapo. Initially Sophie claims she and Hans had nothing to do with the fliers; she just noticed them in the hall and pushed a stack off the railing because it is in her nature to play pranks. She is about to be dismissed when the order arrives to hold her. The investigation has incontrovertible evidence that Sophie and Hans were responsible for the distribution of anti-Nazi leaflets. Sophie concedes her involvement (as does Hans) but determined to protect the others she maintains that the production and distribution of the leaflets in cities throughout the region were entirely the work of her brother and herself. Sophie argues that before 1933 (the date of the Nazi take-over) laws guaranteed freedom of speech. She then describes atrocities committed by the Nazis including reports of concentration camps related by soldiers returning from the Eastern Front. She assumes all blame, and refuses to name accomplices.

Sophie, her brother and a married friend with three children, Christoph Probst, are charged with treason, troop demoralization and abetting the enemy. In a show trial they are condemned to death. Sophie declares that many people agree with what she and her group have said and written, but they dare not express such thoughts. She has the courage to tell the court that “where we stand today, you (the procurator) will stand soon.” That same day Sophie is guillotined. The blade falls and the picture goes black. Footsteps are heard, then Hans's voice exclaims "Es lebe die Freiheit!" ("Long live Freedom!"), before the blade falls again. Probst is brought in next and the blade falls once more. In the closing shot, thousands of leaflets fall from the sky over Munich. A title explains that copies of the White Rose manifesto were smuggled to Scandinavia and then to England, where the Allies printed millions of copies of the "Manifesto of the Students of Munich" that were subsequently dropped on German cities. The first frames of the credits list the names of the seven members of the White Rose group who were executed, more than a dozen who were imprisoned, and supporters and sympathizers who received draconian punishments.

Twenty-five years later during student rebellions across the West, in Munich Sophia and Hans Scholl were remembered. They were already symbols of resistance; now they became a reminder that history does indeed repeat itself. Courage was the question. Courage has always been the ultimate question for each of us. After all, knowledge requires courage. Again today, in another place and time, I have recalled the Scholls. Maybe that is part of the reason that in recent days I began keeping a Facebook log of manifestations of Fascistic violence throughout Italy, echoing the way it began in the 1930s in Germany, and now what is happening in many places in the world.

December 6, 2017: Fascists-Nazis are on the attack across all of Italy. Today Nazi-Fascist demonstrations in front of the offices of the Liberal La Repubblica, one of Europe's major newspapers, and the leftist Espresso weekly magazine, both in Rome. "We're here to stay, they announce. "No truce now." and they are strong throughout the country. Masked faces, fire bombs in the center of Rome. Fascists-Nazis! No holds barred.

December 7, 2017: militants of Fascist Forza Nuova (New Force) are rampaging throughout Italy. After yesterday's demonstrations at the newspaper, La Repubblica and left-wing weekly Espresso, handmade bombs were planted early this morning in front of a Carabiniere station on Rome's central Piazza San Giovanni. At the same time the press is reporting on extensive million Euro financial dealings of Forza Nuova (FN) in Kiev, Ukraine and in Crimea. These are dangerous signals of the growing Fascist menace and financial maneuvers to support it. Let no one think spreading Fascism in Europe or the USA is merely sensationalistic journalism. It started this way for Hitler in Munich and Mussolini in Rome. The Nazi government in Ukraine is becoming a symbol of what is possible elsewhere. The history of Fascism is being repeated.

December 10, 2017: militants of Forza Nuova and anti-Fascists clashed on the streets of a cold Milan, the capital of north Italy, clashes squashed then by police anti-riot forces. The tam tam of the social networks got many anti-fascists on the streets in record time and the Fascists got the worst of the conflict this time. The Fascists were on the streets to demand that public housing be awarded only to Italians, not immigrants. Opposition to immigrants is a major point on the Fascist agenda which creates support for their organizations such as Forza Nuova in Milan and Casa Pound in Rome, in general, among the lower working classes especially in Italy’s major cities.

Everyday history repeats itself. Especially historical evils. It does not require courage to become aware of what evils are happening around us. Courage is however required to do something about those evils. Before arriving in Munich I had witnessed the first stirrings among the student population in Berkeley. I had admired the fiery orators, and imagined emulating them. I marveled at their awareness and interpretations of the events in the world: the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War.

Munich-München: While living in Munich after Slavic studies at Berkeley I began reading my Lenin and my Marx more seriously, more personally, studies which eventually changed my world outlook. I had trouble grasping the historical difficulty of synchronizing European Socialism with Russian Communism and the significance of the concept of revolution. Not that I believed then in the possibility of the resurgence of Nazism that had assassinated its best people; Hitler was dead and gone forever. As was his evil spirit, I thought. But I still did not realize that the much ballyhooed de-nazification never actually took place. Instead the U.S. government had enlisted German Nazis in its war against the Soviet Union. Russia too grabbed the few nuclear scientists it could in its efforts to catch up with America’s nuclear capabilities, while the USA and the Vatican assisted a great number of top Nazis to escape to Latin America. Yet the times of revolution in Europe seemed were over and done, and I accepted the maxim that the history of Nazism could not repeat itself. On the other hand, it became clearer each day that Germany was an instrument of American power—not an ally as some claim today—but a vassal and an occupied country. I had witnessed it happening; authority in new Germany was infested with ex-Nazis. In 1967 the war in Vietnam was raging, over a half million US soldiers were there and the yearly military draft of young Americans growing. In that period German youth looked at everyone over forty with suspicion. Nazi! Fascist! Murderer!

[dropcap]U[/dropcap]niversity students in Munich were becoming infused with the ardor that eventually blossomed into revolutionary 1968 and gave birth to the terrorist Red Army Faktion, also known as the Baader-Meinhoff Gang. Hans and Sophia Scholl had been beheaded only a little over a decade earlier. Die Weisse Rose, the White Rose, might live again.

One precise historical precedent to the 1967-68 student revolt in Munich was remembered by some young people aiming at remaking society: on November 7, 1918 Munich workers led by the bearded Berlin journalist, pure-of-purpose Kurt Eisner had staged a socialist revolution—local and more or less spontaneously—and people discussed the role of “good intentions”—that only good could flow from good—and the eventual emergence of the ideal political leader. It was still disconcerting to me that Eisner’s politics was bloody business. For Eisner’s revolutionary regime—in the words of Max Weber ‘run by poets, semi-poets, mezzo-philosophers and schoolteachers’—left a trail of blood and violence behind it. There is a place in Munich’s Müllerstrasse where the Workers Regime executed a certain Countess Westarp and nine hostages. At some point in those years I read and remembered the Brecht quote: Welche Niedrichkeit würdest Du nicht begehen um die Niedrigkeit abzuschlagen? Eisner’s subsequent electoral defeat and assassination by the anti-Semitic Bavarian aristocrat, Count Anton von Arco-Valley, in April of the next year led to a bloody military repression of the “Socialist” participants in Catholic Bavaria’s only political deviation to the left: in the cellar in the St. Georg Palais the reactionary White Guard shot twenty-one youths of the St. Joseph Gesellenverein. Bavaria was then ripe to become the seedbed of the National Socialism of Adolph Hitler.

And it was from that history that I learned to mistrust “spontaneous revolution” ... if, that is, it is not one of the first stages of the process of real revolution. I deduced that alone spontaneous uprisings and revolts lead to repression, reaction and the crushing of the revolutionary spirit for long periods afterwards. For what kind of a evolution could a Saupreusen journalist (a Prussian pig as real Muncheners called Northerners) organize among unorganized Munich workers who were just hungry and destitute at war’s end, while even the revolt of the Spartacists-Communists led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, with a real party and the best leftist leaders of Germany behind them, was failing in Berlin.

Historians like to pose terrifying “what if questions”. Since, as it seems, Eisner’s ‘purity of purpose’, instead of engendering good, willy-nilly paved the way for evil, the question here is again spontaneity and chance: What if Eisner had not left Berlin for Munich? Would there still have been a Bavarian Socialist State? And if not, would Adolf Hitler still have been welcomed in aristocratic Catholic Bavaria to march with his men down the avenue past Munich’s great university? And would the history of twentieth century Europe have been different? Or would the same Hitler or another Hitler have emerged elsewhere?

Busy as we youth were in the 1960s with the festive side of Munich, Oktoberfest and Carnival parties, my friends and I didn’t often discuss political subjects like Capitalism and Socialism. Yet, my own past in the American South seemed dead and sometimes I heard a summons, like a call to the future, a future that weighed on my past. I began to wonder about that past: if instead I had been born German in the post-WWI period, I too might have fought for the same ideals as Sophia and Hans Scholl; or, like Brecht I too might have committed ‘any vileness in order to eliminate vileness’. Or, I came to realize, if I had been born German of an earlier generation I could have been together with Rosa Luxemburg—or perhaps by a twist of destiny become a National Socialist Nazi.

Time and place are a mystery. Everything seems to be circles and repetitions. And chance. Subjects and objects. Who decides which is which? Who decides such things? Who brings a Hitler to Munich? How and why do people like Hans and Sophia Scholl emerge from the morass? Is that truly all chance? For as Sophia said in her final words: they wanted to regain their past … the past when the law guaranteed freedom of speech. Their image of the past seems to us reconstructed. Personal. Distinct. Makes you realize that the past is always incomplete. And that history is people. So what about the personal courage she displayed? Though interesting, history cannot account for it … nor for cowardice, either. So the closest to truth might be our own interpretations of what we think might have happened … which is not always even close to reality.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here are times when each single event seems absolute. Eisner in Munich. Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin. I am now cognizant that nothing is absolute, for things are linked and go on changing, fundamentally, and from one moment to the next until you suddenly realize history is repeating itself. So you come to believe less and less in absolutes. You have to mistrust absolutists who demand specific answers, who demand yes or no, who prefer white to black, this to that, and use expressions like ‘in the final analysis’.

It seems I seldom understand what is happening to me while it is happening. And I’m nervous and unclear about what exactly is going on in my world today. But I believe if you open your eyes and begin to really see, you understand everything is ambiguous, ambivalent, two-edged and paradoxical. One says that is life. Still, I am aware of the helplessness you feel when you are unable to see what it is you yourself are doing. Am I alone in that? Or is it the same quagmire with others? I have hated to choose; as if I knew the correct answers and the right choices. I can only guess. I like to think I might have some minimal influence on events—maybe as much as one grain of sand influences the level of the sea. And even if I could exert any influence it might cause damage as political and military leaders prove day by day.
However, in sleepless nights, alone, you might wonder about your own courage. In such moments you might ask yourself: Would I have Sophia’s courage? Courage! The necessary quality, right and just, to awaken awareness of injustice and create dissent. The dissent that can then create the awareness that resistance is the next step … the step toward rebellion and finally revolution.

I believe it was in that period in Munich that I began realizing that I was a social being—another European idea many old friends mistrusted. But I now know, for example, that you can live in America all your life and pay taxes and vote and believe in the Constitution and hang out the flag and hold garage sales and donate to the Red Cross and to missionaries in Africa and go to church on Sunday and always fasten your seat belt and never have an inkling as to what social justice means. One wonders if heroes are born or created by circumstances.

Throughout history heroines like Sophia Scholl have emerged and stepped onto center stage. In the name of justice they have challenged Power by a demand for an apparently normal right even if established Power labels that demand state treason. But always they challenge Power: Antigone, Joan of Arc, Anne Frank and Sophia Scholl.

The question Sophia asked herself was how the individual must act under a dictatorship. She and members of The White Rose instructed Germans to passively resist the Nazi government. The pamphlet used Biblical and philosophical support for an intellectual argument of resistance. In addition to authorship, Scholl helped copy, distribute, and mail pamphlets while also managing the group's finances. She and the rest of the White Rose were arrested for distributing the sixth leaflet at Munich University on 18 February 18, 1943. In the People’s Court on February 22,1943, Scholl was recorded as saying these words:

“Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did.”

Else Gebel who shared Sophie Scholl's cell recorded her last words before being taken away to be executed: "It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go .… What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt."

In a historical context, the White Rose's legacy has had significance for many commentators and artgists, as a demonstration of personal courage, and as a well-documented case of social dissidence in a society of violent repression, censorship, and conformist pressure. Playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag stated in Newsday on February 22, 1993, that "It (the White Rose) is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the twentieth century... The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I do not know why." In the same issue of Newsday, historian Jud Newborn noted that "You cannot really measure the effect of this kind of resistance in whether or not X number of bridges were blown up or a regime fell ... The White Rose really has a more symbolic value, but that's a very important value."

On February 22, 2003, a bust of Scholl was placed by the government of Bavaria in the Walhalla Temple for prominent Germans located near Regensburg in Bavaria. The Scholl Siblings Institute for Political Science at MLU is named for Sophia and Hans Scholl. Many local schools as well as countless streets and squares in Germany have been named after the Scholls. In 2003, in a nationwide competition to choose the top ten most important Germans of all time, Scholl and her brother Hans finished in fourth place, above Bach, Goethe, Gutenberg, Bismarck, Willy Brandt, and Albert Einstein. If the votes of young viewers alone had been counted, Sophia and Hans Scholl would have been ranked first. Earlier, readers of Brigitte, a German magazine for women, voted Scholl "the greatest woman of the twentieth century".

CINEMA, LITERATURE AND THEATER

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the 1970s and 1980s, there were three film accounts of Sophia Scholl and the White Rose resistance. The first film was financed by the Bavarian state government and released in the 1970s, entitled Das Versprechen (The Promise). In 1982, Percy Adlon’s Five Last Days presented Lena Stolze as Sophia Scholl in her last days from the point of view of her cellmate, Else Gebel. In the same year, Stolze repeated the role in Michael Verhoeven’s Die Weisse Rose. In February 2005, the movie about Scholl's last days, Sophie Scholl—Die letzten Tage – (The Final Days), featuring actress Julia Jentsch in the title role, was released. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006. For her portrayal of Scholl, Jentsch won the best actress at the European Film Awards and the Silver Bear for best actress at the Berlin Film Festival.

In literature, Shattering the German Night (1986) about the White Rose by Jud Brown and Annette Dumbachs was reissued in an illustrated edition in 2006 as Sophie Scholl and the White Rose. In February 2009, History Press released Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman Who Defied Hitler by Frank McDonough. And in February 2010, Carl Hanser Verlag released Sophie Scholl: A Biography by Barbara Beuys in German.

Playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag’s play The White Rose features Sophie Scholl. We Will Not Be Silent, a drama by David Meyers of Scholl’s imprisonment and interrogation premiered at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia in July 2017.

GAITHER STEWART—Historians like to pose terrifying “what if questions”. Since, as it seems, Eisner’s ‘purity of purpose’, instead of engendering good, willy-nilly paved the way for evil, the question here is again spontaneity and chance: What if Eisner had not left Berlin for Munich? Would there still have been a Bavarian Socialist State? And if not, would Adolf Hitler still have been welcomed in aristocratic Catholic Bavaria to march with his men down the avenue past Munich’s great university? And would the history of twentieth century Europe have been different? Or would the same Hitler or another Hitler have emerged elsewhere?

ADDENDUM/ BONUS FEATURE

About the Author

GAITHER STEWART Senior Editor, European Correspondent } Gaither Stewart serves as The Greanville Post European correspondent, Special Editor for Eastern European developments, and general literary and cultural affairs correspondent. A retired journalist, his latest book is the essay asnthology BABYLON FALLING (Punto Press, 2017). He’s also the author of several other books, including the celebrated Europe Trilogy (The Trojan Spy, Lily Pad Roll and Time of Exile), all of which have also been published by Punto Press. These are thrillers that have been compared to the best of John le Carré, focusing on the work of Western intelligence services, the stealthy strategy of tension, and the gradual encirclement of Russia, a topic of compelling relevance in our time. He makes his home in Rome, with wife Milena. Gaither can be contacted at gaithers@greanvillepost.com. His latest assignment is as Counseling Editor with the Russia Desk. His articles on TGP can be found here. [/su_box]

GAITHER STEWART—Throughout history heroines like Sophia Scholl have emerged and stepped onto center stage. In the name of justice they have challenged Power by a demand for an apparently normal right even if established Power labels that demand state treason. But always they challenge Power: Antigone, Joan of Arc, Anne Frank and Sophia Scholl. The question Sophia asked herself was how the individual must act under a dictatorship. She and members of The White Rose instructed Germans to passively resist the Nazi government...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Lendman on US /NATO/Israel crimes and shenanigans

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US-Dominated NATO and Israel: Humanity’s Greatest Threat. The scum that passes for US leadership is at it again, with a vengeance.

NATO’s killing machine partnered with Israel as an alliance Mediterranean Dialogue member threaten world peace and stability. Their agenda prioritizes militarism and warmaking, not serving as a “bulwark of international peace and security,” as NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg falsely claims.

NATO meet: A pod of criminals and scumbags. And professional sycophants to power. Why are idiots always smiling wanly, like eunuchs, in the presence of the king?

US-led Western imperialism is most threatening of all. Last summer, Sergey Lavrov said in seeking to maintain dominance, the West “act(s) like a bull in a china shop.” It ousted Iraq’s government “under a false pretext.” Its governments said “let’s resolve the problem of Libya, Syria and Iraq, organize elections and eradicate terrorism.”

“They say: first it is necessary to remove Assad, and then we’ll struggle against terrorism.” Gaddafi was ousted and murdered, Libya plunged into chaos. Iraq and Syria are endless cauldrons of violence, the region “turned into a hotbed of terrorism” because of US-led Western policies, Lavrov stressed.

On Monday, he blamed Western nations for pursuing regime change policies, along with backing terrorist groups responsible for violence and chaos in the Middle East. He called Libya “a backyard for terrorists and criminals.” US-led Western countries bear full responsibility for “bomb(ing)” and “violently overthrow(ing)” its government.

He blasted what he called “irresponsible policies,” Trump continuing what his predecessors began. Israel and America partner in each other’s wars. On Monday, Iran’s parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called the Jewish state “aggressive and racist,” a threat to the region and humanity.

“The aggressive and racist nature of the Zionist regime has always been and will remain a threat to humanity and to regional nations,” he stressed. Commenting on the 17th anniversary of Israel ending its illegal occupation of southern Lebanon, he urged Palestinians to follow the example of Lebanese freedom fighters to resist its oppression.

Liberation depends on “harmony, solidarity and resistance,” he stressed. Iran and Syria alone helped Lebanon during years of Israeli occupation, backed by America and other Western countries. Commemorating Lebanon’s liberation, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah blasted Trump’s visit to Riyadh, calling him disrespectful of Islam and Arab nations, consorting with a despotic regime responsible for “the spread of terrorist takfiri ideology,” causing havoc in the region and beyond.

As long as US-dominated NATO exists, waging endless imperial wars and supporting Israel’s rogue agenda, world peace and stability will remain unattainable.

US Threatens Force Against Syria’s Military

It appears just a matter of time before Washington terror-bombs Syrian forces, claiming they threaten US troops on the ground - operating illegally. So do US-led coalition warplanes - terror-bombing vital infrastructure and government sites on the phony pretext of combating ISIS America created and supports.

Sergey Lavrov expressed concern about US threats, saying not only were they made, but force is already ongoing along the Syrian border with Iraq and Jordan, escalating conflict, not taking steps to responsibly end it.

“I believe this situation is rather alarming as it directly affects Syria’s sovereignty. Certainly, these issues need to be solved, and (Russian forces are involved in) doing this now,” Lavrov explained, adding:

Things would be much easier if Washington agreed to work cooperatively with Moscow, including on “coordinating parameters (for the) de-escalation zones.” On May 18, US-led coalition warplanes terror-bombed Syrian and allied forces within one of the zones, a flagrant war crime - based on the phony claim that they threatened American and its partners, operating illegally in Syria, waging war, not peace, aiding terrorists instead of combating them.

In addition, Pentagon-led coalition warplanes are killing civilians daily, thousands since their illegal terror-bombing began in September 2014 - refusing to take responsibility for their high crimes. Defense Secretary Mattis dismissively called civilian deaths a “fact of life” - turning truth on its head claiming US forces “do everything humanly possible” to avoid civilian casualties.

Noncombatants suffer most in all US imperial wars. Rules of engagement consider them legitimate targets - massacred indiscriminately by warplanes and drone attacks.

NONE OF THIS IS NATURALLY ALLUDED TO, CLARIFIED, REPORTED, OR PUT INTO CONTEXT BY THE PROSTITUTED AMERICAN MEDIA.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Screen Shot 2016-02-19 at 10.13.00 AM

STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: No material by this author or any other author published on this site should be read as a defense of Donald trump and his despicable policies, OR implying that Donald Trump’s regime, or any which might follow, is worse than that which would have been organized under Hillary Clinton and her gang.

Trump’s First 100 Days: The War Party Lives On

by Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report

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Donald Trump has been brought to heel, as Hillary Clinton might say. “Trump has learned in his first 100 days in office that war is the primary marker of Presidential legitimacy.” The War Party’s anti-Russia campaign has crushed any hopes of lessening international tensions. “Where Obama succeeded in neutralizing the left, Trump is succeeding in dropping all so-called populist pretenses in favor of the warm embraces of the ruling elite.”

“US imperialism's domestic agenda has carried its own sort of brutality through the erection of the mass Black incarceration state and the national security state apparatus.”

It was always a pipe-dream to believe that Donald Trump would be an anti-war President. However, the bankrupt coverage of his ascendancy only weakened the already infantile left. Rather than discuss the concrete positions of his campaign, the corporate media and its Washington henchmen helped steer legitimate issues with Donald Trump's racist and sexist character into acceptable means of protest. Furthermore, an anti-Russia campaign was started by the two-headed War Party to soil any hopes for eased relations with Russia and an end to regime change wars around the world. Few paid attention to Trump's campaign positions with any seriousness, giving the War Party plenty of time to ensure that the US imperialist project continued on without legitimate challenge

Yet the gravest challenge facing humanity at this juncture is the threat of a US-led nuclear war with Russia and China. US imperialism has been on this path for over a decade, with the Obama Administration intensifying hostilities with both nations through the US-led "pivot" to Asia and the NATO encirclement of Russia along its border. Trump's campaign promises pushed back against these policies. Trump’s stance proved unacceptable to the ruling class. After inauguration, Trump's promise to intensify the broader war on undocumented workers or to roll back protections for women became a secondary problem. The War Party only cared about resuming its drive to war with Russia and China with the hopes that Trump would follow along.

“An anti-Russia campaign was started by the two-headed War Party to soil any hopes for eased relations with Russia and an end to regime change wars around the world.”

A large reason for the War Party's early success under Trump’s reign is the fact that the US imperialist system operates in the interests of a particular class, not a single individual. Regardless of whether Trump meant what he said or not, the prospect for eased relations with Russia struck fear in the eyes of the dominant class. Russia's growing relationship with China as well as its increasing influence in the Eurasian region generally has once again placed the country in the cross hairs of US imperialism. Russia no longer accepts a neo-colonial status in the world as it did immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. So the ruling class made up a lie and made it up quick about Trump's supposed connection to Russia in order to compensate for the real fear of US imperialism's decline in the world.

The Democratic Party maintains their newfound identity as the liberal-flank of imperialism whose electorate is increasingly being pushed to the right of the Republican Party on issues of war and peace. Where Obama succeeded in neutralizing the left, Trump is succeeding in dropping all so-called populist pretenses in favor of the warm embraces of the ruling elite.

US imperialism utilizes the War Party as the primary tool to fight off the inevitable decline of its economic and military influence. The US capitalist economy has been contracting for decades due to its own internal contradictions. China's market socialist economy will surpass the US by 2018. Just a half century ago, the US capitalist economy made up over 50 percent of the world's total GDP. The monopolization of the US capitalist economy and the rise of the most consolidated finance capitalist class in history occurred in the midst of decline. These developments facilitated a project of endless warfare and military expansion at the expense of everything but the profits of the rich.

“China's market socialist economy will surpass the US by 2018.”

The expansion of war has paralleled the increased misery of the masses in the US and world at large. US imperialism's domestic agenda has carried its own sort of brutality through the erection of the mass Black incarceration state and the national security state apparatus. The US is home of just five percent of the world's population but incarcerates over a quarter of its prisoners. Every US citizen is under electronic surveillance by some intelligence agency, whether it is the NSA, CIA, or all of the above. The intensification of state repression and racism has become necessary in a period where the capitalist economy is in a permanent state of contraction. Technology has made the system of profit accumulation so productive that fewer workers are required for production, especially Black workers. With a US labor participation rate stuck at 63 percent and lower for the racially oppressed, state repression has become all the more important for the realization of the necessary social peace required for capitalist accumulation.

An increase in long-term unemployment has not stopped the declining US capitalist economy from pursuing the privatization of the public sector. In fact, the conditions of late stage capitalism require privatization for the system's very survival. When workers become unemployed and their wages fall, fewer people are able to purchase what is produced. This creates an irreconcilable crisis of under consumption that eventually leads to an economic collapse. The present state of capitalism has rendered such a condition permanent since at least the early 1980s, leading to an unprecedented level of privatization in the realms education, healthcare, transportation, and municipal services nation-wide to compensate.

“With a US labor participation rate stuck at 63 percent and lower for the racially oppressed, state repression has become all the more important for the realization of the necessary social peace required for capitalist accumulation.”

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is under these conditions that the War Party must operate to fulfill the insatiable lust for capitalist profit on the part of the ruling classes. Each passing day of Trump's Administration exposes the War Party's deep control over the state apparatus. It started with the tomahawk strikes on Syria in early April and the launch of the largest non-nuclear weapon in history on Afghanistan shortly thereafter. Since mid-April, the US has been engaged in military provocations with the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK). Trump has ostensibly taken the bait of the GOP Senate to escalate war on the Korean Peninsula. The corporate media has cast doubt on Trump's abilities to "solve the problem" of North Korea as he proclaimed and many in the Senate are ready for war on the grounds that the DPRK is developing weapons capable of hitting US shores.

Trump has learned in his first 100 days in office that war is the primary marker of Presidential legitimacy. The ruling class was always less concerned about Trump's campaign promises to end free trade agreements and build a wall on the US-Mexico border than foreign policy. Once in office, the lords of capital understood that "economic populism" would ultimately run into the realities of the world capitalist system. The free movement of capital is imperative to the profits of monopolies. Capitalism operates on a global basis and the technological advances the system has made in recent years ensure that there is no turning back from the current race to the bottom. And Trump's immigration wall has run into the reality of an already fully militarized border security system, making the attempt to build a wall nothing but a PR blight for the ruling system.

“The only way the ruling class could accept Trump is if he distanced himself from Russia and China.”

Ruling class opposition to Trump was always meant to change the billionaire's tune on foreign policy and nothing else. Because while Trump's call to end free-trade agreements angered capitalist economists, his campaign promises to ease relations with Russia and curtail regime change wars struck at the heart of the Empire. Worse yet, it mattered not that Trump may have been disingenuous about his foreign policy remarks on the campaign trail. Their mere utterance reminded the US imperialist system of Russia and China's rise in the world, which includes a burgeoning alliance between the two big powers that threatens to reconstruct global economics at the expense of US finance. The only way the ruling class could accept Trump is if he distanced himself from Russia and China.

So far, so good. The War Party has continued to maintain its stranglehold over the governing body of US imperialism. A tumultuous election season has given way to imperial consolidation. The Democratic Party maintains their newfound identity as the liberal-flank of imperialism whose electorate is increasingly being pushed to the right of the Republican Party on issues of war and peace. Where Obama succeeded in neutralizing the left, Trump is succeeding in dropping all so-called populist pretenses in favor of the warm embraces of the ruling elite.

The truth remains that a historic opportunity was missed during the election period to connect the issue of war and peace with the economic base that produces the conditions for endless intervention. Capitalism's crisis activated a number of people to demand economic relief and a scale back of war from their respective sides of the duopoly. Without a movement, these demands became trapped inside of the electoral machine. The consequences speak for themselves. The US is that much closer to a nuclear war and the left remains just as disorganized as it was prior to the 2016 elections. Humanity's future is dependent on the emergence of an organized movement that can articulate how an end to the War Party's reign is inextricably connected to the development of a system responsive to the needs of the people both in the US and globally. Nothing else can change the course of history.

About the Author

Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached atwakeupriseup1990@gmail.com

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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

Will Washington Risk World War III to Block an Emerging EU-Russia Superstate?

By Mike Whitney

“Russia is an inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilization. Our citizens think of themselves as Europeans…That’s why Russia proposes moving towards the creation of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a community referred to by Russian experts as ‘the Union of Europe’ which will strengthen Russia’s potential in its economic pivot toward the ‘new Asia.’” — Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Russia and the changing world”, February 2012

The relentless demonization of Vladimir Putin is just one part of Washington’s multi-pronged strategy to roll-back Russian power in Central Asia and extinguish Putin’s dream of a “Greater Europe”. Along with the attempt to smear the Russian president as a “KGB thug” and “dictator”, the media has also alleged that Moscow intervened in the US presidential elections and that Russia is a serial aggressor that poses a growing threat to European and US national security. The media onslaught, which has greatly intensified since the election of Donald Trump in November 2016, has been accompanied by harsh economic sanctions, asymmetrical attacks on Russia’s markets and currency, the arming and training of Russian adversaries in Ukraine and Syria, the calculated suppression of oil prices, and a heavy-handed effort to sabotage Russia’s business relations in Europe. In short, Washington is doing everything in its power to prevent Russia and Europe from merging into the world’s biggest free trade zone that will be the center of global growth and prosperity for the next century.

This is why the US State Department joined with the CIA to topple the elected government of Ukraine in 2014. Washington hoped that by annexing a vital land-bridge between the EU and Asia, US power-brokers could control critical pipeline corridors that are drawing the two continents closer together into an alliance that will exclude the United States. The prospect of Russia meeting more of the EU’s growing energy needs, while China’s high-speed railway system delivers more low-cost manufactured goods, suggests that the world’s center of economic gravity is shifting fast increasing the probability that the US will continue on its path of irreversible decline. And when the US dollar is inevitably jettisoned as the primary means of exchange between trade partners in the emerging Asia-EU free trade zone, then the recycling of wealth into US debt will drop off precipitously sending US markets plunging while the economy slips into a deep slump. Preventing Putin from “creating a harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok” is no minor hurtle for the United States. It’s a matter of life and death.

Remember the Wolfowitz Doctrine:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Washington’s relations with Russia will always be fractious because Russia poses a perennial threat to US ambitions to rule the world. Geography is fate, and Russia’s geography contains massive oil and gas reserves that Europe needs to heat its homes and fuel its businesses. The symbiotic relationship between supplier and end-user will eventually lead to the lifting of trade barriers, the lowering of tariffs, and the smooth melding together of national economies into a region-wide common market. This may be Washington’s biggest nightmare, but it’s also Putin’s top strategic priority. Here’s what he said:

“We must consider more extensive cooperation in the energy sphere, up to and including the formation of a common European energy complex. The Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea and the South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea are important steps in that direction. These projects have the support of many governments and involve major European energy companies. Once the pipelines start operating at full capacity, Europe will have a reliable and flexible gas-supply system that does not depend on the political whims of any nation. This will strengthen the continent’s energy security not only in form but in substance. This is particularly relevant in the light of the decision of some European states to reduce or renounce nuclear energy.”

If Europe wants a reliable partner that can meet its energy needs, then Russia fits the bill. Unfortunately, the US has repeatedly tried to sabotage both pipelines in order to undermine EU-Russia relations. Washington would prefer that Europe either dramatically curtail its use of natural gas or find other more expensive alternatives that don’t involve Russia. In other words, Europe’s material needs are being sacrificed for Washington’s geopolitical objectives, the primary goal of which is to prevent the forming of Greater Europe.

Washington’s war against Russia is becoming increasingly militarized. Recently the Pentagon deployed more combat troops to Syria and Kuwait suggesting that US warplanners intend to shift from the current strategy of arming jihadist militias (to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad), to a more direct use of martial force to seize-and-hold territory in East Syria. There are signs of an uptick in the violence in Ukraine too, as President Trump appears only-too-eager to use a more iron-fisted approach in settling regional disputes than his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Also, NATO has deployed troops and weaponry to Russia’s western flank while the US has spread its military bases across Central Asia. NATO has continued to push eastward ever since the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. The steady buildup of hostile armies on Russia’s western perimeter has been a source of growing concern in Moscow and for good reason. Russians know their history.

At the same time the US is building a ground-based missile defense system in Romania (Star Wars) that integrates the US nuclear arsenal at a site that is just 900 miles from Moscow. The US missile system which was “certified for operation” in May 2016, cancels-out Russia’s nuclear deterrents and destroys the strategic balance of power in Europe.   Putin has responded by ordering appropriate countermeasures. Here are Putin’s comments on the subject:

“It seems that NATO countries, and especially the United States, have developed a peculiar understanding of security which is fundamentally different from our own. The Americans are obsessed with the idea of ‘absolute invulnerability’ for themselves… But absolute invulnerability for one nation means absolute vulnerability for everybody else. We cannot agree to this.”

In the last week, the Trump administration announced that it will deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea citing a need to respond to provocations by North Korea. In truth, Washington is using the North as a pretext for its plan to hem in Russia and China at “axial ends” of the Eurasian heartland as a means of containing the vast landmass that Sir Halford Mackinder called the “pivot area… stretching from the Persian Gulf to China’s Yangtze River.”

Washington hopes that by controlling critical sea lanes, encircling the region with military bases, and aggressively inserting itself where necessary, it can prevent the emergence of an economic colossus that will diminish the United States role as global superpower. America’s future rests on its ability to derail economic integration at the center of the world and prevail in the Great Game where others have failed. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Alfred W. McCoy titled  The Geopolitics of American Global Decline” which helps to shed light on the struggle that is now taking place for control over the so called “world island”:

Following World War II the US became “the first power in history to control the strategic axial points “at both ends of Eurasia” … With fears of Chinese and Russian expansion serving as the “catalyst for collaboration,” the U.S. won imperial bastions in both Western Europe and Japan. With these axial points as anchors, Washington then built an arc of military bases that followed Britain’s maritime template and were visibly meant to encircle the world island….

“Having seized the axial ends of the world island from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945, for the next 70 years the United States relied on ever-thickening layers of military power to contain China and Russia inside that Eurasian heartland. Stripped of its ideological foliage, Washington’s grand strategy of Cold War-era anticommunist “containment” was little more than a process of imperial succession. …

By the Cold War’s end in 1990, the encirclement of communist China and Russia required 700 overseas bases, an air force of 1,763 jet fighters, a vast nuclear arsenal, more than 1,000 ballistic missiles, and a navy of 600 ships, including 15 nuclear carrier battle groups — all linked by the world’s only global system of communications satellites….(“The Geopolitics of Global Decline”, Alfred W. McCoy)

For the last 70 years the imperial strategy has worked without a hitch, but now Russia’s resurgence and China’s explosive growth are threatening to break free from Washington’s stranglehold. The Asian allies have begun to crisscross Central Asia and Europe with pipelines and high-speed rail that will gather together the far-flung statelets scattered across the steppe, draw them into a Eurasian Economic Union, and link them to an expansive and thriving superstate, the epicenter of global commerce and industry. Grand Chessboard brain-trust Zbigniew Brzezinski summed up the importance of Central Asia in his 1997 classic stating:

“Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. ….About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, p.31)

A new global empire is gradually emerging in Central Asia, and while the transformative impact of economic integration has not yet been realized, US efforts to block the embryonic alliance are getting weaker and more desperate all the time. The hyperbolic propaganda about the alleged “Russia hacking” of the presidential election is just one example of this, while the arming of Nazi militants in Kiev is another.

The bottom line is that both Russia and China are using markets, development and raw ingenuity to beat Washington, while Washington relies almost exclusively on deception, covert activity and hard power.  In other words, the former communists are beating the capitalists at their own game. Here’s more from McCoy:

“China is reaching deep within the world island in an attempt to thoroughly reshape the geopolitical fundamentals of global power. It is using a subtle strategy that has so far eluded Washington’s power elites….

Xi and Putin: Leaders with enormous responsibility , leading the world to safe haven while avoiding the provocations of a corrupt empire.

The initial step has involved a breathtaking project to put in place an infrastructure for the continent’s economic integration. By laying down an elaborate and enormously expensive network of high-speed, high-volume railroads as well as oil and natural gas pipelines across the vast breadth of Eurasia, China may realize Mackinder’s vision in a new way. For the first time in history, the rapid transcontinental movement of critical cargo — oil, minerals, and manufactured goods — will be possible on a massive scale, thereby potentially unifying that vast landmass into a single economic zone stretching 6,500 miles from Shanghai to Madrid. In this way, the leadership in Beijing hopes to shift the locus of geopolitical power away from the maritime periphery and deep into the continent’s heartland….” (Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Washington’s Great Game and Why It’s Failing”, TomDispatch)

Washington is not going to let the Russo-China plan go forward without a fight. If economic sanctions, covert activity and financial sabotage don’t work, then US powerbrokers will implement more lethal strategies. The recent deployment of troops to the Middle East suggests that policymakers believe that a direct military confrontation might be the best available option, after all, a shooting war with Russia in Syria or Ukraine would not necessarily escalate into a full-blown nuclear conflagration. No one wants that. But if the fighting can be contained within Syria’s borders, then it would be a practical way to rally the EU allies, torpedo Russia’s “economic integration” plan, and draw Moscow into a long, resource-draining quagmire. Is that what US war-planners have in mind?

It’s a risky plan, but one that Washington would eagerly pursue if it helped to reinforce America’s global supremacy.

The original source of this article is Counter Punch

Copyright © Mike Whitney, Counter Punch, 2017

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

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