Paul Craig Roberts

Americans need to understand that the only thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity [or wanton criminality] of the government.

The Neocon plague. But it goes deeper: they are but a symptom of the advanced capitalism disease.

[dropcap]Neoconservatives[/dropcap] arrayed in their Washington offices are congratulating themselves on their success in using the Charlie Hebdo affair to reunite Europe with Washington’s foreign policy. No more French votes with the Palestinians against the Washington-Israeli position. No more growing European sympathy with the Palestinians. No more growing European opposition to launching new wars in the Middle East. No more calls from the French president to end the sanctions against Russia. 

Do the neoconservatives also understand that they have united Europeans with the right-wing anti-immigration political parties? The wave of support for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists is the wave of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, and Germany’s PEGIDA sweeping over Europe. These parties are empowered by the anti-immigration fervor that was orchestrated in order to reunite Europeans with Washington and Israel.

Once again the arrogant and insolent neoconservatives have blundered. Charlie Hebdo’s empowerment of the anti-immigration parties has the potential to revolutionize European politics and destroy Washington’s empire.  (See my weekend interview with King World News for my thoughts on this potential game-changer.  http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-new-crisis-worse-russia-unleashing-black-swans-west/)

The reports from the UK Daily Mail and from Zero Hedge that Russia has cut off natural gas deliveries to six European countries must be incorrect. These sources are credible and well-informed, but such a cut-off would have instantly produced political and financial turmoil of which there is no sign. Therefore, unless there is a news blackout, Russia’s action has been misunderstood.

We know something real has happened. Otherwise, EU energy official Maros Sefcovic would not be expressing such consternation. Although I am without any definite information, I believe I know what the real story is. Russia, tired of Ukraine’s theft of the natural gas that passes through the country on its way to delivery to Europe, has made a decision to route the gas to Turkey, thus bypassing Ukraine.

The Russian energy minister has confirmed this decision and added that if European countries wish to avail themselves of this gas supply, they must put in place the infrastructure or pipeline to bring the gas into their countries.

In other words, there is a potential for a cutoff in the future, but no cutoff at the present.

These two events–Charlie Hebdo and the Russian decision to cease delivering gas to Europe via Ukraine–should remind us that the potential for black swans, and unintended consequences of official decisions that can produce black swans, always exist. Not even the American “superpower” is immune from black swans.

There is as much circumstantial evidence that the CIA and French Intelligence are responsible for the Charlie Hebdo shootings as there is that the shootings were carried out by the two brothers whose ID was conveniently found in the alleged get-away car. As the French made certain that the brothers were killed before they could talk, we will never know what they had to say about the plot.

The only evidence we have that the brothers are guilty is the claim by the security forces. Every time I hear government claims without real evidence, I remember Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” and Iran’s “nuclear weapons program.” If a US National Security Advisor can conjure up out of thin air “mushroom clouds over an American city,” Cherif and Said Kouachi can be turned into killers. After all, they are dead and cannot protest.

If this was, and we will never know for certain, a false flag attack, it achieved Washington’s goal of reuniting Europe under Washington and Israeli auspices. But this success has an unintended consequence. The unintended consequence is to unify Europe under the anti-immigration policy of the right-wing parties, thus empowering the leaders of those parties.

If this surmise is correct, Marie Le Pen and Nigel Farage will find their lives and/or reputations in danger as Washington will resist the rise of European governments that do not adhere to Washington’s line.

The consternation caused by Russia’s decision to relocate its gas delivery to Europe is proof that Russia holds many cards that it could play that would bring down the political and financial structures of the Western World.

China holds similar cards.

The two countries are not playing their cards, because they do not think that they need them. Instead, the two powers are withdrawing from the Western financial system that serves Western hegemony over the world. They are creating all of the economic institutions that they need in order to be completely independent of the West.

Therefore, the Russian and Chinese governments reason, “Why be provocative and slap down the Western fools. They might resort to their nuclear weapons, and the entire world would be lost. Let’s just walk away while they encourage us to depart with their provocations.”

We can be thankful that Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the Chinese government are both intelligent and humane, unlike Western leaders.

Imagine, for example, the dire consequences for the West if Putin were to become personally involved as a result of the numerous affronts to both Russia and Putin himself. Putin can destroy NATO and the entire Western financial system whenever he wants. All he has to do is to announce that as NATO has declared economic war against Russia, Russia no longer sells energy to NATO members.

The NATO alliance would dissolve as Europe cannot survive without Russian energy supplies. Washington’s empire would end.

Putin realizes that the insolent neoconservatives would have to push the nuclear button in order to save face. Unlike Putin, their egos are on the line. Thus, Putin saves the world from nuclear war by not being provocative.

Now, imagine if the Chinese government were to lose its patience with Washington. To confront the “exceptional, indispensable, unipower” with the reality of its impotence, all China needs to do is to dump its massive dollar-denominated financial assets on the market, all at once, just as the Federal Reserve’s bullion bank agents dump massive uncovered gold contracts on the futures market.

In order to avoid US financial collapse, the Federal Reserve would have to print massive amounts of new dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings. As the Federal Reserve would protect US financial markets by purchasing the dumped Chinese holdings, the Chinese would lose nothing from the sale. It is the next step that is decisive. The Chinese government then dumps the massive holdings of dollars it has received from its selloff of dollar-dominated financial instruments.

Now what happens? The Fed can print dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings, but the Fed cannot print foreign currencies with which to buy up the dumped dollars.

The massive supply of dollars dumped in the exchange market by China would have no takers. The dollar’s value would collapse. Washington could no longer pay its bills by printing money. Americans living in an import-dependent country, thanks to jobs offshoring, would be faced with high prices that would seriously erode their living standard. The United States would experience economic, social, and political instability.

Putting aside their brainwashing, their defensiveness and patriotic support of the regime in Washington, Americans need to ask themselves: How is it possible that the government of the United States, an alleged Superpower, is so unaware of its true vulnerabilities that Washington is capable of pushing two real powers until they have had enough and play the cards that they hold?

Americans need to understand that the only thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity of the government.

What other country would let a handful of Wall Street crooks control its economic and foreign policy, run its central bank and Treasury, and subordinate citizens’ interests to the interests of the one percent’s pocketbook?

A population this insouciant is at the total mercy of Russia and China.

Yesterday there was a black swan event, an event that could yet unleash other black swan events. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-16/largest-retail-fx-broker-stock-crashes-90-swiss-contagion-spreads The Swiss central bank announced an end to its pegging of the Swiss franc to the euro and US dollar. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-15/its-tsunami-swiss-franc-soars-most-ever-after-snb-abandons-eurchf-floor-macro-hedge-

Three years ago flight from euros and dollars into Swiss francs pushed the exchange value of the franc so high that it threatened the existence of the Swiss export industries. Switzerland announced that any further inflows of foreign currencies into francs would be met by creating new francs to absorb the inflows so as not to drive up the exchange rate further. In other words, the Swiss pegged the franc.

Yesterday the Swiss central bank announced that the peg was off. The franc instantly rose in value. Stocks of Swiss export companies fell, and hedge funds wrongly positioned incurred major hits to their solvency.

Why did the Swiss remove the peg? It was not a costless action. It cost the central bank and Swiss export industries substantially.

The answer is that the EU attorney general ruled that it was permissible for the EU central bank to initiate Quantitative Easing–that is, the printing of new euros–in order to bail out the mistakes of the private bankers. This decision means that Switzerland expects to be confronted with massive flight from the euro and that the Swiss central bank is unwilling to print enough new Swiss francs to maintain the peg. The Swiss central bank believes that it would have to run the printing press so hard that the basis of the Swiss money supply would explode, far exceeding the GDP of Switzerland.

The money printing policy of the US, Japan, and apparently now the EU has forced other countries to inflate their own currencies in order to prevent the rise in the exchange value of their currencies that would curtail their ability to export and earn foreign currencies with which to pay for their imports. Thus Washington has forced the world into printing money.

The Swiss have backed out of this system. Will others follow, or will the rest of the world follow the Russians and Chinese governments into new monetary arrangements and simply turn their backs on the corrupt and irredeemable West?

The level of corruption and manipulation that characterizes US economic and foreign policy today was impossible in earlier times when Washington’s ambition was constrained by the Soviet Union. The greed for hegemonic power has made Washington the most corrupt government on earth.

The consequence of this corruption is ruin.

“Leadership passes into empire. Empire begets insolence. Insolence brings ruin.”

Ruin is America’s future.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

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Corey Oakley
Editor, Red Flag (Australia)

“The history of the West’s relationship with the Muslim world – a history of colonialism and imperialism, of occupation, subjugation and war – cries out in protest against the quaint idea that ‘Western values’ entail a rejection of violence and terror as political tools…”

[dropcap]It was Herald Sun[/dropcap] cartoonist Mark Knight who tipped me over the edge.

To be fair, he wasn’t wholly responsible. If it wasn’t for all the lunacy that preceded him, I probably would have dismissed his cartoon as just another Herald Sun atrocity, more a piece of Murdoch-madness to be mocked rather than trigger for outrage. But context is everything. And after days of sanctimonious blather about freedom of speech and the Enlightenment values of Western civilisation, his was one pencil-warfare cartoon too many.

The cartoon in question depicts two men – masked and armed Arab terrorists (is there any other kind of Arab?) – with a hail of bomb-like objects raining down on their heads. Only the bombs aren’t bombs. They are pens, pencils and quills. Get it? In the face of a medieval ideology that only understands the language of the gun, the West – the heroic, Enlightenment-inspired West – responds by reaffirming its commitment to resist barbarism with the weapons of ideas and freedom of expression.

It is a stirring narrative repeated ad nauseam in newspapers across the globe. They have been filled with depictions of broken pencils re-sharpened to fight another day, or editorials declaring that we will defeat terrorism by our refusal to stop mocking Islam.

It is well past time to call bullshit. Knight’s cartoon made the point exceptionally clear, but every image that invoked the idea that Western culture could and would defend itself from Islamist extremism by waging a battle of ideas demonstrated the same historical and political amnesia.

Reality could not be more at odds with this ludicrous narrative.

For the last decade and a half the United States, backed to varying degrees by the governments of other Western countries, has rained violence and destruction on the Arab and Muslim world with a ferocity that has few parallels in the history of modern warfare.

It was not pencils and pens – let alone ideas – that left Iraq, Gaza and Afghanistan shattered and hundreds of thousands of human beings dead. Not twelve. Hundreds of thousands. All with stories, with lives, with families. Tens of millions who have lost friends, family, homes and watched their country be torn apart.

To the victims of military occupation; to the people in the houses that bore the brunt of “shock and awe” bombing in Iraq; to those whose bodies were disfigured by white phosphorous and depleted uranium; to the parents of children who disappeared into the torture cells of Abu Ghraib; to all of them – what but cruel mockery is the contention that Western “civilisation” fights its wars with the pen and not the sword?

And that is only to concern ourselves with the latest round of atrocities. It is not even to consider the century or more of Western colonial policies that through blood and iron have consigned all but a tiny few among the population of the Arab world to poverty and hopelessness.

It is not to even mention the brutal rule of French colonialism in Algeria, and its preparedness to murder hundreds of thousands of Algerians and even hundreds of French-Algerian citizens in its efforts to maintain the remnants of empire. It is leaving aside the ongoing poverty, ghettoisation and persecution endured by the Muslim population of France, which is mostly of Algerian origin.

The history of the West’s relationship with the Muslim world – a history of colonialism and imperialism, of occupation, subjugation and war – cries out in protest against the quaint idea that “Western values” entail a rejection of violence and terror as political tools.

Of course the pen has played its role as well. The pens that signed the endless Patriot Acts, anti-terror laws and other bills that entrenched police harassment and curtailed civil rights. The pens of the newspaper editorialists who whip up round after round of hysteria, entrenching anti-Muslim prejudice and making people foreigners in their own country. But the pens of newspaper editors were strong not by virtue of their wit or reason, but insofar as they were servants of the powerful and their guns.

Consideration of this context not only exposes the hypocrisy of those who create the narrative of an enlightened West defending freedom of speech, it also points to the predictability and inevitability of horrific acts of terrorism in response. Of course we will never know what was going through the minds of the three men who carried out this latest atrocity. But it is the height of ahistorical philistinism to ignore the context – both recent and longstanding – in which these attacks took place.

The idea that Muslim outrage at vile depictions of their religious icons can be evaluated separately from the persecution of Muslims in the West and the invasion and occupation of Muslim countries is the product of a complete incapacity to empathise with the experience of sustained and systemic oppression.

What is extraordinary, when even the most cursory consideration of recent history is taken into account, is not that this horrific incident occurred, but that such events do not happen more often. It is a great testament to the enduring humanism of the Muslim population of the world that only a tiny minority resort to such acts in the face of endless provocation.

In the days ahead, a now tired and exhausting theatre of the absurd will continue to play out its inevitable acts. The Western politicians who lock up their own dissidents and survey the every movement of their citizenry will go on waxing lyrical about freedom of thought. Muslim leaders of every hue will continue to denounce a terrorism they have nothing to do with, and will in turn be denounced for not doing so often or vigorously enough. The right will attack the left as sympathisers of Islamist terrorism, and demand we endlessly repeat the truism that journalists should not be killed for expressing their opinions. They will also demand that we accept that white Westerners, not Muslims, are the real victims of this latest political drama.

Meanwhile, Muslims in the West will, if they dare to walk the streets, do so in fear of the inevitable reprisals. And pencils aren’t what they will be afraid of.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Red Flag . He is also on the editorial committee of the Marxist Left Review journal www.marxistleftreview.org.
He may be reached at Email: corey@redflag.org.au

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Killing in war through different moral lenses

American Sniper (2014)
By Chris Driscoll |  Stranger in a Strange Land 

WARNER BROS/MALPASO PRODUCTIONS

[dropcap]Chris Kyle,[/dropcap] the sniper upon whose life the new Clint Eastwood movie, “American Sniper” is based, worked for a while as Sarah Palin’s body guard. Enough said? Well, yes, probably for most of you, that one fact tells you all you need to know about this dubious American hero being glorified in Eastwood’s latest cinematic endeavor. But there’s more, much much more, to tell.

First though, allow me to introduce the other hero of this contrast and comparison in sniper films, the other famous sniper upon whose life a movie was based: Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev.
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Vasily was a sharpshooter in the Battle of Stalingrad, the most horrendous conflagration during the entire Second World War. He was played by Jude Law in the 2001 movie “Enemy at the Gates.”

Kyle, “The Devil of Ramadi”, via Benjamin, flickr

These sniper movies make for a stark contrast between two wars, one a desperate defensive struggle against Nazi occupation and genocide, the other, an aggressive war of imperial plunder based on hypocrisy,  taking the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and turning to rubble a whole  ancient civilization. I guess we should not be surprised that the morals or lack of morals in the two men neatly reflect the morality or lack of morality in the two wars, the Soviets’ Great Patriotic War (World War II) and the U.S. War on the People of Iraq.

LEARN MORE ABOUT VASILY ZAITSEV, THE GREATEST SNIPER OF WORLD WAR 2 AND HERO OF THE SOVIET UNION.

[learn_more caption=”The amazing story of Valery Zaitsev-Click on this bar.”]

This Hero of the Soviet Union killed more than 300 Nazi soldiers in the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II and taught scores of other snipers.

Vasily Zaitsev was born into a family of peasants in the village of Yelenovsk in the Chelyabinsk Region in the Urals. His grandfather taught him to hunt at a very early age. As bullets were scarce, Vasily learnt to pull the trigger just once per animal. This is how he grew up to become a sharpshooter.

In 1937 Vasily was recruited into the Red Army.
Despite his small frame, he was sent to serve in the Soviet Navy in the Pacific, near Vladivostok. But when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union, Zaitsev, like many of his comrades, volunteered to be transferred to the frontline. At the time he had already reached the rank of Sergeant Major.

On the eve of 22 September 1942 Zaitsev crossed the Volga River and joined the 1047th Rifle Regiment of the 284th Rifle Division of the 62nd Army. He made a name for himself during the first encounters with the enemy in the flame-lit city. One day, Zaitsev’s commanding officer called him up and pointed at an enemy officer in a window 800 meters away. Vasily took aim from his standard-issue Mossin-Nagant rifle, and with one shot, the officer was down. In less than a few moments, two other Nazi soldiers appeared in the window, checking their fallen officer. Vasily fired two more shots, and they were killed. For this, together with the Medal for Valor, Vasily was also awarded a sniper rifle.

 Vasily Zaitsev’s name quickly became known across the Soviet Union. Between 10 November and 17 December he was credited with 225 verified kills, 11 of them snipers. The Soviets soon organized a school of snipers based in a metal hardware factory, marking the beginning of the sniper movement in the Red Army. “For us there was no land beyond the Volga,” Zaitsev once said in a famous quote, revealing his fervent loyalty to the Motherland.

Jude Law as Zaitsev in Enemy at the Gates. (Paramount/Mandalay)

Zaitsev would hide in all sorts of locations – on high ground, under rubble, in water pipes. After a few kills he would change his position. Together with his partner Nikolay Kulikov, Zaitsev would hide and sting. One of Zaitsev’s common tactics was to cover one large area from three positions with two men at each point – a sniper and scout. This tactic, known as the “sixes,” is still in use today and was implemented during the war in Chechnya.

In his memoirs, Vasily recalls a certain sly Nazi sniper he tracked for a week – they called him the “Supersniper.” He was allegedly Heinz Thorvald, aka Erwin König, a high-ranking Werhmacht officer and head of the Berlin sniper school. There is little known about König’s identify. He reportedly came to Stalingrad to kill Zaitsev, who had already caused much havoc and drained Nazi morale. Zaitsev writes that the sniper was highly skilled and was very hard to find. But when two of Vasily’s comrades were injured by a sniper, Zaitsev and Kulikov began searching the area, and Vasily noticed a glimpse of light under a piece of metal. When Kulikov lifted a helmet on a stick from a window, Erwin König fired and revealed himself as he peeked to see whether his target was dead. It was then that Zaitsev shot him in the head.

Ed Harris as Maj. Konig in Enemy at The Gates (2001). Movie still (Paramount/Mandalay)

The sniper duel is loosely depicted in the feature film “Enemy at the Gates,” directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Jude Law as Zaitsev and Ed Harris as Major König. Vasily continued teaching Soviet soldiers while sniping Nazi troops until January 1943 when he was severely wounded and blinded by a mortar. He was taken to Moscow, where he was operated on by Professor Filatov, the famous Russian ophthalmologist. While he was in hospital, his rifle was given to the best snipers in his school. His students, the “zaichata,” were credited with more than 6,000 kills during World War II.

Vasily Zaitsev (left) training a companion. (Za Rodinu, via flickr.)

With his sense of sight restored, Zaitsev returned to the frontline, where he continued teaching snipers, commandeered a mortar platoon and became a Regiment Commander. He fought in Ukraine, at the Dnepr and in Odessa, sniping the enemy at the Dniestr River. But during the victorious day of 9 May 1945, he was in hospital again. He ended the war with the rank of Captain. After the war, Zaitsev lived in Kiev, where he studied at a textile university and then worked as an engineer before becoming the director of a textile plant.

Mamayev Kurgan is a dominant height overlooking the city of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in Southern Russia. The name in Russian means “tumulus of Mamai.”
The original Mamayev Kurgan was a Tartar burial mound 102 metres high. The current formation is dominated by a memorial complex commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943). The battle was a decisive Soviet victory over Axis forces on the Eastern front of World War II and arguably the bloodiest battle in human history.
After the war, the Soviet authorities commissioned the enormous Mamayev Kurgan memorial complex. Vasily Chuikov, who led Soviet forces at Stalingrad, lies buried at Mamayev Kurgan, the first Marshal of the Soviet Union to be buried outside Moscow. Soviet sniper Vasily Zaitsev was also reburied there in 2006.

Vasily Zaitsev died in 1991 and was buried in Kiev, although his final request was to be buried in the land he fought so hard to defend – Stalingrad. His wish came true on the 63rd anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, when Vasily Zaitsev was reburied with full military honors at Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, a monument in honor of the millions of victims of the battle. His rifle is on display in the Museum for the Defense of Stalingrad.

Vasily Zaitsev’s highest awards include: Hero of the Soviet Union, Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner (twice), Order of the Patriotic War (First Class), Medal for the Defense of Stalingrad and the Medal for the Victory Over Germany.

SOURCE: RUSSIAPEDIA
[/learn_more]

MAIN ARTICLE RESUMES HERE

After the war, Zaitsev, unlike Kyle, did not go into politics–or reality TV shows–but rather, he settled in Kiev where he took correspondence courses to become an engineer, and worked his way up to become the director in a textile factory. During the war, after being wounded, he wrote two books on sniper tactics which militaries around the world, including the U.S. military, still use today in sniper training.

Kyle, who tragically lost his life in Dec. 2013 when a post-traumatically stressed Iraq War vet went berserk on him at a shooting range in West Texas, was a notorious and well-exposed public liar. So, little about Eastwood’s movie—based on Kyle’s book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History“—can be relied upon.

Gov. Jesse Ventura at the podium. (2008). Via Cory Barnes/flickr.

“So you turn around and sue, expecting $2 million from a military widow and her fatherless children? Yeah, like that is going to help your reputation, jackass.”

“Chris Kyle was a true American patriot–the soldier who stood up for his country and saved so many lives by doing the job his Commander-in-chief gave him, taking out the bad guys. For his extraordinary work, Chris was known as “The American Sniper.” He was senselessly murdered on our own soil while helping a military brother. His widow and young children will forever feel a lot more “hurt” than you will, Jesse, after a sad verdict in your ridiculous lawsuit against Chris. . .”

In another adventure of dubious validity, a profile in the June 2013 issue of “The New Yorker” has Kyle claim he went to New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and he and a friend stationed themselves on top of the Superdome where they proceeded to “take out” about 30 armed looters. A U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman told The New Yorker, “To the best of anyone’s knowledge at SOCOM, there were no West Coast SEALs deployed to Katrina.” He said Kyle’s story, “defies the imagination.” And, of course, there were no reports at the time of 30-some extra dead bodies laying around New Orleans with sniper bullets in their bodies.

As a New Republic headline proclaimed in the magazine’s obituary of the fallen sniper, “If Chris Kyle Had Been a Muslim, We’d Call him an Extremist.” After all, the New Republic opined, he had a “crusader’s cross” tattooed on his arm. In his book, Kyle wrote, “On the front of my arm, I had a crusader cross inked in. . . I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian. I had it put in red, for blood. I hated the damned savages I’d been fighting. I always will. They’ve taken so much from me.”

Kyle also liked to regale his friends with a story about being attacked at a gas station at gunpoint by two assailants, whom he claimed to have shot dead. But again, there were no witnesses, police say they found no bodies, and in general, the story sounds about as accurate as the New Orleans tale.

Reality show star

In 2012 Kyle co-starred in the reality TV show, Stars Earn Stripes, produced by Mark Burnett, in which celebrities supposedly competed in war games on behalf of charities. It was a twisted, repellent concept—half blatant chauvinism cum propaganda for imperial wars, and half insult to the peoples and nations used as mere backdrops for the stars’ ludicrous shenanigans— from the mind of one of Hollywood’s most reactionary power players (Burnett also produces Survivor, and 10 other shows, including The Apprentice, Shark Tank, etc. A Christian “fundie” and proud of it, in 2013 Burnett produced The Bible series that brought in around 100 million viewers, and ended up being the most-watched cable miniseries of the year. In 2014 Burnett went on to produce the feature film Son of God).

Gen. Wesley Clarke, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, was roped in to host Stars Earn Stripes. Along with Kyle were the former “First Gentleman of Alaska,” Todd Palin; singer and actor Nick Lachey; retired professional boxer, Laila Ali, daughter of Mohammed Ali, who should have known better considering her father’s record of opposition to imperial wars; and TV Superman from “Lois and Clark,” Dean Cain. The show was mercifully cancelled after loud protests from many people and organizations, including many veterans.

As noted earlier, character questions had begun to pile up—even in mainstream outlets—by the time Kyle died. In a Guardian (UK) op-ed, Lindy West described Kyle as a “hate-filled killer” and asked, “Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero?” She pointed out that Kyle, in his autobiography called killing “fun”, said he “loved” it, and was convinced that he was taking out the “bad guys”.  “I hate the damn savages,” Kyle said in his book. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis.”

Kyle claimed 255 kills, with 160 confirmed by the Department of Defense, making him the most effective sniper in U.S. history.

All of the above would present difficult issues to a more socially responsible director when seeking to portray as tortured and contradictory an individual as Chris Kyle, but Eastwood does not fit that mould; his specialty, at least in the area of military flicks, is to produce pseudo-serious melodramas that leave out as much of the truth as necessary to end up with a hagiographic image of the chosen heroes. The upshot is highly effective emotional manipulation, and the public (and critics) eat it. I have no idea if Eastwood does this deliberately or not. Either way the effect is the same. 

This is the propaganda imperial America wants people consuming, as America’s new generation of “wars of choice” requires unflagging supporters.  To maintain the necessary propaganda momentum the ruling elite, via the Pentagon, its ubiquitous corporate media, and other less visible tentacles, is not averse at funding and endorsing Hollywood projects that crudely or subtly  manufacture passionate support for foreign interventions and racist hatred of whichever “enemy du jour” falls in Washington’s crosshairs.

Critics accolades misguided

In their almost unanimous acclaim for Eastwood’s film, American critics —aping the producers’  assurances that the film is not really political and not really about Iraq (!) —have only shown the poverty of their intellect or simply their abject careerist conformity.  As Peter Maass put it so well on his comments on the film for The Intercept,

Kyle’s memoir has been turned into a film starring Bradley Cooper and it’s an Oscar contender even before its national release on January 16. The Los Angeles Times hails its action scenes as “impeccably crafted,” while The New Yorker salutes Clint Eastwood for making other directors “look like beginners.” Unfortunately, Hollywood’s producing class, taking a break from exchanging catty emails about A-list stars, has created another war film that ignores history, and reviewers who spend too much time in screening rooms are falling over themselves in praise of it.

They should know better. In 2012, “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, was lavishly praised by most reviewers, and it wasn’t until criticism emerged from political reporters like Jane Mayer and others (I wrote about it too) that the tide turned against the pro-torture fantasy at its core. The backlash, coming after the film made “best of the year” lists, was probably responsible for it (fortunately) being all but shut out of the Academy Awards. Hopefully the praise-and-reconsider scenario will recur with “American Sniper.” (How Clint Eastwood Ignores History in ‘American Sniper‘)

Maass is absolutely spot on. The moral context of a story with grave implications for our society is not something to kick aside as so much extraneous baggage. Zaitsev was shooting at the invaders, Germans—many Nazis—who were in his homeland plundering, murdering, raping and in general doing whatever they could to utterly destroy Stalingrad and kill all its people, not to mention deal a hard morale blow to the Soviet people and smash the Soviet Union itself. Not to mention that Germany had started the war after mounting some pretty cynical false flag events in Poland and elsewhere.

Kyle, on the other hand, was the invader in a war of choice that easily qualifies as an international War Crime as per Nuremberg Tribunal laws, while so-called “enemy combatants” like Mustafa were defending their country from imperialist domination and occupation. How many Americans, you may ask, would not resist a brutal invader under exactly similar circumstances? Apparently this elementary question never entered Eastwood’s skull.

And there are other points of congruency. Both films have subplots that feature strong women in supporting roles. In American Sniper, Kyle’s wife, Taya, played by Sienna Miller, portrays the hardships of the wife of a SEAL holding down the home front, and, after Kyle’s return, the difficulty of dealing with a man who’s spent months in a combat zone killing people and being tormented by the inevitable demons. In Enemy Tania, played by Rachel Weisz, is a Stalingrad resident in the local militia who becomes Zaitsev’s love interest during the Battle of Stalingrad.

With Sniper Eastwood apparently yields again to a troubling penchant to sentimentalize bullies or war in general. In Heartbreak Ridge (1986) Eastwood constructed a script that whitewashed the enormous—in fact shameful—disparity between the forces of puny Grenada and the greatest superpower on earth. In his flick, it was the Marines who covered themselves in glory, although even some Marines found the deed a bit short of genuine heroism, considering their own record of combat in practically all latitudes against far more formidable opponents.
.
With Flags of Our Fathers (2006), focusing on Iwo Jima, Eastwood again chose war as the main canvas, and although he tried to “balance” the books by also including the Japanese side of the story, noble he, there’s enough luster and praise for the military to satisfy any man (or woman) in uniform these days.

War can be profitable. Heartbreak, for example, went boffo at the box office, chalking up almost a 1000% return on investment.

Eastwood’s political contradictions

I guess the solution to Eastwood’s riddle is that we should simply note what he does instead of what he says. It is clear that Eastwood is ignorant or indifferent to the distinction between subjective and objective when it comes to evaluating an artist’s social impact.  Whatever he may think subjectively, it’s undeniable that, objectively, where it counts, Eastwood has been more often than not a supporter of conservative approaches to social and foreign policy, and that his cumulative oeuvre has consistently defended a rightwing or establishmentarian position.

Eastwood with Lou Gossett, Jr. and President Ronald Reagan in July 1987. (Credit: Wikipedia/CC)

In 1992, Eastwood acknowledged to writer David Breskin that his political views represented a fusion of Milton Friedman and Noam Chomsky and suggested that they would make for a worthwhile presidential ticket.^[329] In 1999, Eastwood stated, “I guess I was a social liberal and fiscal conservative before it became fashionable.”^[330] Ten years later, in 2009, Eastwood said that he was now a registered Libertarian.^[331]

Despite being heavily associated with firearms in his Westerns and cop movies, Eastwood has publicly endorsed gun control since at least 1973. In the April 24, 1973, edition of the Washington Post, the star stated that “I’m for gun legislation myself. I don’t hunt.”^[332] Two years later, in 1975, Eastwood told People magazine that he favors “gun control to some degree”.^[333] About a year later, Eastwood remarked that “All guns should be registered. I don’t think legitimate gun owners would mind that kind of legislation. Right now the furor against a gun law is by gun owners who are overreacting. They’re worried that all guns are going to be recalled. It’s impossible to take guns out of circulation, and that’s why firearms should be registered and mail-order delivery of guns halted.”^[334] In 1993, he noted that he “… was always a backer” of the Brady Bill, with its federally mandated waiting period.^[335] In 1995, Eastwood questioned the purpose of assault weapons. Larry King, the famous television host and newspaper columnist, wrote in the May 22, 1995, edition of USA Today that “My interview with Eastwood will air on ‘Larry King Weekend’ … I asked him his thoughts on the NRA and gun control and he said that while people think of him as pro-gun, he has always been in favor of controls. ‘Why would anyone need or want an assault weapon?’ he said.”^[336]

But regardless of Eastwood’s motives, there is no doubt that the US establishment welcomes movies like “American Sniper” because they promote support for its wars of plunder, wars that would be difficult to get people behind if not for mountains of propaganda.

The war in Iraq, of course, was founded on lies—nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, and the suggestion that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks—something the media could have easily disproven, had American journalists discharged their duty instead of simply acted as “stenographers to power” safeguarding their careers. In fact it has been massive and nonstop unchallenged lies since 9/11 that have also permitted the inauguration of a new era of “permanent terror psychosis”, with terrible consequences for real democracy and freedom in America and the world.

This is not the place to offer a detailed analysis of the betrayals of the American press, which has now fully integrated itself into the system’s propaganda machine, but it should be said that Hollywood —an engine of mass communications that now comprises both cinema and television—is certainly not an innocent bystander.

Just to enumerate some of the more recent outrages, it is precisely this highly polluted and confused public consciousness that has allowed Washington to assault and destroy Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, a strategy that has now given rise to our own Frankenstein in ISIL, al Qaeda, etc., but which —fortunately for the military-industrial-security complex—provide further fuel for our endless “anti-terror wars”.  The same massive ignorance and disinformation has enabled the West to pull a fascist coup in Ukraine; ignore the genocidal Israeli attack on Gaza and Kiev’s war on Novorussia, while also defusing the “Arab Spring” from Cairo to Bahrain, etc, etc. Ironically, such appalling criminality pales in comparison to the even more catastrophic  policies being rolled out by NATO under US hegemony, including the effort to isolate and destabilize China for the crime of being a competing power, and the vicious and hypocritical demonization of Russia and her leader, Putin—all of it pushing the world that much closer to a final nuclear conflagration.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NOTES
Stalingrad (2013), also presents a realistic vision of this conflict, and, naturally, the Russian perspective. Worth checking out.

 Distributed by Warner Bros.

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[dropcap]For the global majority, [/dropcap] the disappointing world order is owed in large part to the current capitalist system and its industrialized military operations around the world. After half a century of loans, structural adjustments, industrialization, austerity measures, embargoes, sanctions, wars, and neoliberal trade agreements, wealth has increased and stratified for the powers that have historically orchestrated it. By contrast, the gap between rich and poor has widened, and many nations of the Global South find themselves in disadvantageous positions with regard to international economics and global politics.

This pernicious system is propped up by the United States government first of all, and its close partner, the United Kingdom. In a world that is becoming increasingly tired of Anglo-American authority, the Yankee and British economies rely on arms exports to maintain their supremacy. Currently, as number one and number three of the world’s arms exporters, the US share of the market is about 78 percent, and that of the UK is about 3.5 percent. Moreover, the military-industrial complex espoused by both nations has broadened to include infrastructure projects related to defense, as well as defense-related services, to keep itself relevant. The US and UK present a united front in foreign and domestic policy as they continue to impregnate other countries with a capitalist system to sustain them with arms.

After World War II, the nation-state effectively replaced empire as the legitimate means for international political agency and inter-state relations. This change profoundly redefined national sovereignty and became the first kind of polity to cover the entire globe. Despite this shift in the international political landscape, however, history tells of industrialized nations that endeavored to extract wealth from other states as predatorily as necessary. Whether for primary materials or other goods, the rich world sought to extend its economic inroads into non-industrialized, or newly-industrializing peripheral nations. The extraction from such states also fueled the growth of the industrialized nations and their accumulation and stratification of wealth.

Such predatory intrusions have a simple reason: if the rich nations and their economies can gain a larger workforce for lower wages, then they can increase absolute surplus value, rather than relative surplus value. Karl Marx defined these two forms of capital accumulation a long time ago. Absolute surplus value involves “extensive gains” or a “simple multiplication of the capacity at a given moment. Relative surplus value involves “intensive gains” as an improvement in “production techniques.” So, rather than investing money in fixed capital and hiring skilled workers to use the productivity-increasing technology, capitalists lower their labor costs by spreading out the wages and paying more people to do more work for less. Not only is there less risk relative to the potential rewards, but also the switch to a global wage-slave workforce entails no real transformation in class relations. Those who dominate capital continue to dominate many other spheres. Nations that make themselves capitalist recapitulate the same situation.

Today the US and UK, both powerful warlord states, use weapons and weapons sales to maintain a vicious cycle of wage slavery and control of capital. Do the American or British public truly understand that their taxpayer dollars finance foreign and development assistance around the world to expand military reach into the Global South? Are they aware that their tax dollars increase both a demand for and purchase of American- and British-made weapons abroad? Do British subjects know that their government has lent taxpayer revenue via the Export Credit Guarantee Department so that that other countries may purchase arms from British manufacturers? Both countries thrive on an international demand for products and services from their military divisions. The same demand fuels private defense-related firms at home. It is no secret that Anglo-American foreign policy is attuned to the interests of private financial and business sectors, and weapons sales are an excellent business for the financial elite and the politicians whose elections they fund.

The world community’s response to warring economic oppression has not been one of silence or acquiescence. Many have taken the bull by the horns and addressed the ugly nature of the world’s most powerful warlords and their invasive capitalist system. Whether or not the criticism parries its target without flaw is incidental; the power inherent to many objections to the status quo rests in unmasking the current system that enriches the wealthy, disseminates strife, and does little for the world’s poor.

A great obstacle to critical social theories that seek to correct many of today’s economic and political wrongs has been the simple fact that such criticisms and philosophies stem from the poor’s very own experience with exogenous exploitation of resources and wealth. In typical fashion, the experience and wisdom of the poor are largely ignored, discredited, or dismissed. Nevertheless, Third World scholars and activists have legitimately challenged power-centric theories regarding critical areas of development and globalization. Their theories and dissidence offer insights into a system that does not work for those who make wealth quite like it does for those who control it. After more than a century of numerous large-scale capitalism-induced crises, and horrific instances of war driven largely by economic aims, to think that relationships between the Global South and the Northern states do not serve, ultimately, to accumulate, stratify, and extract wealth from the former by the latter, is dangerously nearsighted.

Much of the world’s industrialization of the Global South, which took place after World War II, has occurred in the least-developed countries (LDCs). For those marginalized states and their impoverished people, industrialization itself has been no guarantor of development. Economic power has only helped the rich world’s most powerful countries to maintain a degree of political and sovereign freedom in the process. Furthermore, a globalization of economic participation has helped to free up national capital from the poorer regions for global circulation.

The US military arsenal has furthered American economic and political interests around the world in deeply influential ways that have indelibly shaped international relations. After World War II, the US government sustained weapons exports through military spending. It created other ways to prop up the military-industrial complex too, such as the rearmament of American allies, the deployment of American troops, and of course, US foreign military aid. The mass manufacture of arms has not only encompassed coercive or domineering political motives; it has also been a pillar of the American economy. Since the mid-20th century, the US has profited from a world at war, and it continues, much like the UK, to sell arms to countries that it must politically and economically repress with its capitalist system.

Source: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/11/08/ghost-in-the-machine-us-and-uk-are-capitalisms-warlords/#sthash.U6jMatmd.dpuf

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By Alex Lantier

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

[dropcap]Directly[/dropcap] challenging the NATO powers’ policy of cutting off credit to Russia to undermine the ruble and bankrupt the Russian economy, China is pledging to extend financial aid to Moscow.

On Saturday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed the need for mutual aid between China and Russia in remarks on the ruble crisis, which has seen a drastic 45 percent fall in its value against the dollar this year. “Russia has the capability and the wisdom to overcome the existing hardship in the economic situation,” Wang said. “If the Russian side needs it, we will provide necessary assistance within our capacity.”

On Sunday, Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng told Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV that Beijing would strengthen ties with Moscow in energy and manufacturing, predicting that Chinese-Russian trade would hit its target of $100 billion this year despite the ruble crisis. As the ruble’s value in dollars or euros swings wildly, Gao proposed moving away from the dollar in financing Chinese-Russian trade and instead using the Chinese currency, the yuan or renminbi.

Gao said China would focus on “fundamental factors such as how the two economies complement each other,” Reuters reported. “Capital investors may be more interested in a volatile stock or foreign exchange market. But in terms of concrete cooperation between the two nations, we shall have a balanced mentality and push forward those cooperations,” Gao said.

Yesterday, China Daily cited Li Jianmin of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences saying that aid to Russia could pass through channels like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) or the BRICS forum. Significantly, both the SCO (an alliance of China, Russia, and Central Asian states) and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) exclude the United States and Europe.

Li noted that already last month, when Chinese and Russian premiers Li Keqiang and Dmitry Medvedev met in Kazakhstan, they signed extensive deals on railways, infrastructure and development in Russia’s Far East region, north of China. “Loans, cooperation in major projects, and participation in domestic infrastructure investment in Russia are options on the table,” he added. In one such deal last month, China signed a $400-billion, 30-year deal to buy Russian gas.

These offers of assistance cut across the economic war on Russia launched by US and European imperialism to punish Moscow for opposing their neo-colonial restructuring of Eurasia.

In retaliation for Russian support for President Bashar al-Assad against NATO’s proxy war in Syria and Russian opposition to the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev, the NATO powers sought to financially strangle Russia. As Russian oil revenues fell in line with the fall in world oil prices and the ruble collapsed, they worked to cut off credit to Russia and demanded that Russia acquiesce to the Kiev regime. (See: Imperialism and the ruble crisis)

The basic financial mechanism of this strategy was laid out in London’s Financial Times by Anders Aslund of the Petersen Institute for International Economics. “Russia has received no significant international financing—not even from Chinese state banks—because everybody is afraid of US financial regulators,” he wrote. With a yearly capital outflow of $125 billion, liquid foreign currency reserves of only $200 billion, and total foreign debts of $600 billion, Russia would run out of dollars and be bankrupted in as little as two years, Aslund calculated.

Now, however, Beijing appears to be accepting the risk of a showdown with the United States and publicly preparing to throw a financial lifeline to Russia. Chinese currency reserves of $3.89 trillion are the world’s largest and, on paper at least, allow Beijing to easily repay Russia’s debts.

Angela Merkel: Even Germany is having second thoughts about the strategy pursued by Washington. (Flickr=DonkeyHotey)

Significantly, the calls of Wang and Gao to aid Russia came a day after a divided European Union (EU) summit on Russia last week. Though the EU supported US sanctions against Russia, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi all publicly opposed calls for more sanctions. Leading European newspapers also warned of the risk of a collapse of the Russian state.

As it weighs its response to the ruble crisis, the Chinese regime, facing a cooling economy and rising social protests in the working class and peasant masses, doubtless also fears the consequences of an outright economic and political implosion of its northern neighbor.

The economic conflicts erupting between the major powers over the oil crisis and the imperialist war drive in Eurasia testifies to the advanced state of the crisis of world capitalism, and the rising risk of world war.

Chinese aid to Russia, should it materialize, will exacerbate US conflict with China. Washington has tried to militarily encircle it through the “pivot to Asia,” allying with Japan, Australia, and India. Plans for war with China, both economic and military, are doubtless being pored over on Wall Street and in the Pentagon.

A year ago, in an article titled “China must not copy the Kaiser’s errors,” Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf warned China against any action that could be construed as a challenge to US global hegemony. He indicated that a Chinese policy replicating the German Kaiser’s challenge to British hegemony before the outbreak of World War I in 1914 would lead to a similar outcome: all-out conflict.

“If open conflict arrived, the US could cut off the world’s trade with China. It could also sequester a good part of China’s liquid foreign assets,” Wolf wrote, recalling that China’s “foreign currency reserves, equal to 40 percent of GDP are, by definition, held abroad.” Such naked theft of trillions of dollars that China has earned from trade with the United States and Europe would directly raise the prospect of a collapse of global trade and preparation for war between nuclear-armed powers.

With its ever more reckless and violent policies, US imperialism is vastly overplaying its hand, discrediting itself at home and fueling opposition from rival states. By driving Russia and China together, in particular, Washington is undoing what was long seen as a major achievement of US imperialist statecraft: the 1972 rapprochement between US President Richard Nixon and Chinese leader Mao Zedong, which turned China into a US ally against the former Soviet Union.

“Many Chinese people still view Russia as the big brother, and the two countries are strategically important to each other,” Renmin University Associate Dean Jin Canrong said, referring to Soviet backing for China as it fought the United States in the Korean War, shortly after the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949. “For the sake of national interests, China should deepen cooperation with Russia when such cooperation is in need.”

“Russia is an irreplaceable partner on the international stage,” the CCP-linked Global Times wrote in an editorial yesterday. “China must take a proactive attitude in helping Russia walk out of the current crisis.”

The author is a senior analyst with wsws, information arm of the Social Equality Party. 

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