The following remarks were delivered at a conference marking the 25th anniversary of the NATO bombing of Serbia: “The 1999 Red-Green Bombing Terror against Serbia,” held on March 20, 2024, at the Bundestag in Berlin hosted by MdB Dr. Rainer Rothfuß and his Alternative for Germany parliamentary group.
To counteract the Soviet influence in Europe, at the end of WWII the United States created a network of pro-American elites. Thus, the CIA financed the Congress for Cultural Freedom in which many European intellectuals participated. Among the most distinguished ones were Raymond Aron and Michel Crozier. Responsible for designing an anti-communist ideology welcomed by the conservative right as well as the socialist and reformist left of Europe during the Cold War, these networks were reactivated by the Bush administration. Today, they are the European sounding board of American conservatives.
As a CIA official in the early 1950s, Mr. Braden was head of the International Organizations Division, which promoted anti-communism by secretly funding groups including the AFL-CIO and the National Student Association, sending the Boston Symphony Orchestra on a European tour and publishing Encounter magazine. After Ramparts magazine exposed the CIA’s system of funding anti-communist front organizations all over the globe, Mr. Braden defended the program in an article in a 1967 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. He said the secret program was his idea.
“The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.”
Francis Fukuyama, who hasn’t seen a regime change op that he hasn’t liked, and Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, are salivating over the Wagner Group mutiny!
The Neocons are not new. They have tried to influence U.S. foreign policy since the 1930’s. They are not conservative. If conservatism means maintaining the status quo, then the Neocons, who advocate broad changes, are just the opposite. Furthermore, if the early pioneers of neoconservatism are those who eventually sought global stability through use of American power and promotion of its values, then the pioneers of neoconservatiam were radical leftists The more prominent devotees were followers of Leon Trotsky:
Since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, the White House and the entire US media have proclaimed that the conflict was an “unprovoked war” launched by a single man, Vladimir Putin, on February 24, 2022.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: The war in Ukraine has fundamentally changed NATO, but then you have to remember the war didn’t start in 2022. The war started in 2014. And since then, NATO has implemented the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.
The long simmering political crisis in Pakistan is now boiling over. Terrified that the campaign of ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan for immediate new elections could inadvertently precipitate an explosion of mass working class anger against brutal IMF-dictated austerity, soaring food prices and mass joblessness, the government and military are resorting to dictatorial forms of rule.
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince – except that it acted secretly – the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
When somebody rejects all of the practical paths towards fighting imperialism and class exploitation, on the basis that they feel we should be taking a purer path, then you had better make sure this other path is viable. If it’s not viable, and they’re saying this simply to complain rather than to offer a serious alternative, then you shouldn’t even entertain them. Because what’s the point of validating somebody who has nothing constructive to say? Unless an option is practicable, it’s not worth bringing up.
I find it funny that many of the sectarians had no problems working with The Libertarian Institute and Antiwar.com but they had problems with Libertarians running the Rage Against the War Machine! Egotism?!
As with any mythological symbol, the ‘Trident’ of Ukraine is full of ‘pre-history’ – most of it made-up, false, or deliberately fabricated and misleading. Although there is no archaeological evidence, Ukrainian nationalistic history (which attempts to construct a Ukrainian identity that is separate and distinct from Slavic Russian), paints a picture of exotic origins! This symbol is nothing less than the trident of the Greek god Poseidon! If this ‘origin story’ is correct, then the Ukrainians, despite being the obvious (and scientifically proven) descendants of marauding Scandinavians (exactly the same as their Russian neighbours), are nothing less than the modern survivors of a colony of ‘White’, and ‘European’ Greeks who settled in the area around two thousand years ago! The fact that Ancient (and Classical) Greeks were Southern Europeans who routinely ‘mixed’ with Middle Eastern and Asian people (hence their ‘olive’ complexion) appears lost on on these Ukrainian ultra-nationalists. Here, we start to see the ‘irrationality’ of Eurocentric racism.
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