The Orientalism of Western Russophobia
Max Parry
An illustration from a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Russia’s Turn to its Asian Past” depicting Vladimir Putin as Genghis Khan.
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of Edward W. Said’s pioneering book, Orientalism, as well as fifteen years since the Palestinian-American intellectual’s passing. To bid farewell to such an important scholar shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Said fiercely criticized until his dying breath before succumbing to leukemia, made an already tremendous loss that much more impactful.
His seminal text forever reoriented political discourse by painstakingly examining the overlooked cultural imperialism of colonial history in the West’s construction of the so-called Orient. Said meticulously interrogated the Other-ing of the non-Western world in the humanities, arts, and anthropology down to its minutiae. As a result, the West was forced to confront not just its economic and political plunder but the long-established cultural biases filtering the lens through which it viewed the East which shaped its dominion over it.
His writings proved to be so influential that they laid the foundations for what is now known as post-colonial theory. This became an ironic category as the author himself would strongly reject any implication that the subjugation of developing countries is a thing of the past. How apropos that the Mandatory Palestine-born writer’s death came in the midst of the early stages of the ‘War on Terror’ that made clear Western imperialism is very much alive.
Despite its history of ethnic cleansing, slavery, and war, the United States had distinguished itself from Britain and France in that it had never established its own major colonies within the Middle East, Asia or North Africa in the heart of the Orient. According to Said, it was now undergoing this venture as the world’s sole remaining superpower following the end of the Cold War with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Today’s political atmosphere makes the Bush era seem like eons ago. Thanks to the shameful rehabilitation of neoconservatism by centrist extremists, Americans fail to understand how Trumpism emerged from the pandora’s box of destructiveness of Bush policies that destabilized the Middle East and only increased international terrorism. Since then, another American enemy has been manufactured in the form of the Russian Federation and its President, Vladimir Putin, who drew the ire of the West after a resurgent Moscow under his leadership began to contain U.S. hegemony. This reached a crescendo during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election with the dubious accusations of election interference made by the same intelligence agencies that sold the pack of lies that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. The establishment has even likened the alleged intrusion by Moscow to 9/11.
If a comparison between the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and the still unproven allegations of Russian meddling seems outrageous, it is precisely such an analogy that has been made by Russiagate’s own biggest proponents, from neoconservative columnist Max Boot to Hillary Clinton herself.
Truthfully, it is the climate of hysteria and dumbing down of discourse to such rigid dichotomies following both events where a real similarity can be drawn. The ‘with us or against us’ chasm that followed 9/11 has reemerged in the ‘either/or’ post-election polarity of the Trump era whereby all debate within the Overton window is pigeonholed into a ‘pro vs. anti-Trump’ or ‘pro vs. anti-Russia’ false dilemma. It is even perpetrated by some on the far left, e.g. if one critiques corporate media or Russiagate, they are grouped as ‘pro-Trump’ or ‘pro-Putin’ no matter their political orientation. This dangerous atmosphere is feeding an unprecedented wave of censorship of dissenting voices across the spectrum.
In his final years, not only did Edward Said condemn the Bush administration but highlighted how corporate media was using bigoted tropes in its representations of Arabs and Muslims to justify U.S. foreign policy. Even though it has gone mostly undetected, the neo-McCarthyist frenzy following the election has produced a similar travesty of caricatures depicting Russia and Vladimir Putin. One such egregious example was a July 2018 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Russia’s Turn to Its Asian Past” featuring an illustration portraying Vladimir Putin as Genghis Khan.
The racist image and headline suggested that Russia is somehow inherently autocratic because of its past occupation under the Mongol Empire during its conquest of Eastern Europe and the Kievan Rus state in the 13th century. In a conceptual revival of the Eurocentric trope of Asiatic or Oriental despotism, the hint is that past race-mixing is where Russia inherited this tyrannical trait. When the cover story appeared, there was virtually no outcry due to the post-election delirium and everyday fear-mongering about Russia that is now commonplace in the media.
The overlooked casual racism used to demonize Russia in the new Cold War’s propaganda doesn’t stop there. One of the main architects of Russiagate, former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, in an interviewwith NBC‘s Meet the Press on the reported meddling stated:
And just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned.”
Clapper, whose Office of the DNI published the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”, has been widely praised and cited by corporate media as a trustworthy source despite his previous history of making intentionally false statements at a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee denying that the National Security Agency (NSA) was unconstitutionally spying on U.S. citizens.
The disclosures of NSA activities by whistleblower Edward Snowden that shocked the world should have discredited Clapper’s status as a reliable figure, but not for mainstream media which has continuously colluded with the deep state during the entire Russia investigation. In fact, the scandal has been an opportunity to rehabilitate figures like the ex-spymaster complicit in past U.S. crimes from surveillance to torture. Shortly after the interview with NBC, Clapper repeated his prejudiced sentiments against Russians in a speech at the National Press Club in Australia:
But as far as our being intimate allies, trusting buds with the Russians that is just not going to happen. It is in their genes to be opposed, diametrically opposed, to the United States and to Western democracies.”
The post-election mass Trump derangement has not only enabled wild accusations of treason to be made without sufficient evidence to support them, but such uninhibited xenophobic remarks to go without notice or disapproval.
In fact, liberals have seemingly abandoned their supposed progressive credence across the board while suffering from their anti-Russia neurological disorder. In an exemplar of yellow journalism, outlets like NBC News published sensational articles alleging that because of the perceived ingratiation between Trump and Putin, there was an increase in Russian ‘birth tourism’ in the United States.
More commonly known by the pejorative ‘anchor babies’, birth tourism is the false claim that many immigrants travel to countries for the purpose of having children in order to obtain citizenship. While there may be individual cases, the idea that it is an epidemic is a complete myth — the vast majority of immigration is motivated by labor demands and changes in political or socio-economic factors in their native countries, whether it is from the global south or Eastern Europe. Trump has been rightfully criticized for promoting this falsehood regarding undocumented immigrants and his executive orders targeting birthright citizenship, but it appears liberals are willing to unfairly apply this same fallacy toward Russians for political reasons.
In order to make sense of the current groupthink hysteria towards Moscow, it must be understood in its context as an extension of the ongoing doctoring of history regarding U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War. Americans living within the empire are proselytized into a glorified and nationalist version of their entire background, beginning with merchants and explorers ‘discovering’ the continent and the whitewashing of indigenous genocide. This imaginary narrative includes the version of WWII taught in U.S. schools and the arms race with the Soviet Union that followed. The West presents an entirely Anglospheric perspective of the war starting with its very chronology.
For example, it is said that the conflict ‘officially’ began with the September 1st, 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. This mythology immediately frames the war from an Eurocentric viewpoint by separating the Sino-Japanese war that was already underway as the Pacific Ocean theater began long before the ‘surprise’ Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and U.S. entry into the conflict.
The truth is that nearly everything Americans are taught about U.S. participation in the war is either a mischaracterization or a lie, with its role in the Allied victory inflated exponentially. The widely held misconception that the 1944 Normandy landings in the Allied invasion of France was the decisive turning point in Europe is a fairy tale. The ‘D’ in D-Day does not stand for ‘decision’ as many Westerners assume, and when the Allied forces converged on Germany from East and West it was the Soviets who captured Berlin.
Although Operation Overlord may have been the largest invasion transported by sea in history, the real watershed in the Great Patriotic War was the Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad the previous year, the biggest defeat ever suffered by the German army. The U.S. only took on the Wehrmacht once it was exhausted by the Red Army which bore the real burden of overcoming Germany.
Just three years earlier, the British army had been completely vanquished by the Nazi armed forces. Omitted from Hollywood folklore like Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk is that the Germans were entirely capable of pressing on with an invasion of the British isles but abruptly halted their advance — what stopped them? Quite simply, Hitler’s fanatical desire to conquer the Soviet Union and eradicate communism which he regarded as a greater threat to the Third Reich than Western capitalism. It is not surprising that the Eastern Front became a higher priority considering that the ruling classes in Britain, France and the U.S. had previously financed the German rearmament in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
The Germans did not hold the same hatred for the West that it reserved for the Russians. In fact, the Führer personally admired the U.S. so much for the extermination of its natives that he named his armored private train ‘Amerika’, a mobile version of the Wolf’s Lair. The Nuremberg race statutes were partly inspired by Jim Crow segregation laws in the U.S. and many of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials tried to excuse their atrocities by arguing the similarity between Nazi race theories and the eugenicist movement which actually originated in the United States.
Auschwitz physician Josef Mengele was even previously employed as an assistant to the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics institute that was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Hitler also preferred an attack on the Soviets over an invasion of Britain because of the eugenics of Lebensraum. Nazi Germany, like Britain and France, was really an imperial settler colonialist state and Hitler viewed the Slav inhabitants of the USSR as ethnically inferior to the ‘master race.’ The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had been a strategic move to buy time for the Soviets in preparation for a German onslaught, at the time the most powerful military power in the world.
Britain and France had rebuffed Stalin’s efforts to form an alliance in 1938, leaving the USSR no choice but to sign a non-aggression pact with Germany, knowing full well it was only a matter of time until Hitler would eventually embark on his Masterplan for the East.
Operation Barbarossa, in June 1941, broke the agreement and the German dictator ultimately sealed his own fate. Although the Soviets were victorious, the slaughter that proceeded it had no parallel in human history as 27 million citizens would lose their lives in the fight compared to less than half a million Americans. Even worse, the West has made a mockery of this sacrifice with their refusal to fully acknowledge the USSR’s contribution despite the fact that they did the vast majority of the fighting and dying while 80% of all German casualties were on the Eastern Front.
Meanwhile, the Cold War had already begun before the Second World War even ended. Whether or not Stalin was fully aware of either the U.S. capability or plans to use the atomic bomb against Japan is still a matter of debate, as U.S. President Harry S. Truman changed his story numerous times over the years.
Nevertheless, their use is incorrectly attributed by the West to have brought the war’s end and very few Americans realize this tale was told entirely for political reasons. The purported rationale was to allegedly save the lives of American soldiers that would be lost in a future Allied invasion of Japan planned for the Autumn of 1945. Controlling the narrative became crucial in ‘justifying’ the use of such deadly weapons which held the secret motivation to begin an arms race with the Soviets.
Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that the USSR would eventually break its neutrality treaty with Japan and enter the Pacific theater later in the year. That was until Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage just a few months later while American nuclear physicists were busy at work enriching uranium in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Then, just a day prior to newly inaugurated President Truman’s meeting with Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in July, the U.S. army and Project Y successfully detonated a nuclear weapon for the first time with the Trinity test as part of the expensive Manhattan Project. After his face-to-face with Truman at Potsdam, whom everyone agrees at least hinted to Stalin of the new U.S. weaponry, the Soviet premier suspected the new U.S. leader would go back on the previous agreement at Yalta with Roosevelt that included compromises with the USSR in the Pacific.
The ugly truth is that the U.S. was well aware that the Japanese were willing to conditionally surrender on the basis of immunity for Emperor Hirohito. However, the U.S. secretly wanted to achieve an Allied victory ideally without Soviet participation so it could demonstrate its exclusive nuclear capability in order to dominate the post-war order. Japan didn’t relinquish following the first bombing of Hiroshima but the second, Nagasaki, three days later — both of which mostly impacted civilians, not its military.
What else happened on August 9th, 1945? The Soviet Union declared war on Japan upon realizing that the U.S. was backtracking on its pledge with the underhanded use of ‘Fat Man and Little Boy’ that instantly killed more than 200,000 civilians. The timing gave the appearance that the bomb resulted in the surrender when it was the Soviet invasion of occupied Manchuria in the north against Japan’s military stronghold that was the real tipping point which led to an unconditional acceptance of defeat.
According to the Western narrative, the Cold War only began following Winston Churchill’s invitation to the U.S. by Truman after being surprisingly voted out of office in 1946. At Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, he gave a speech entitled “Sinews of Peace”, widely known as the Iron Curtain speech, where he condemned Soviet policies in Europe and popularized the moniker for the boundary dividing the continent after the war:
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an “iron curtain” has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.”
Although the term ‘iron curtain’ predates Cold War usage to describe various barriers political or otherwise, what is not commonly known is that Churchill likely appropriated the term from its originator, none other than the German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels himself, who used it in reference to the Soviet Union. In February 1945, he wrote in Das Reich newspaper:
If the German people lay down their weapons, the Soviets, according to the agreement between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, would occupy all of East and Southeast Europe along with the greater part of the Reich. An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered.”
The ‘Nazi megaphone’ himself may have gotten the term from the Wehrmacht propaganda publication Signal which in 1943 published an article entitled “Behind the Iron Curtain” that described:
He who has listened in on the interrogation of a Soviet prisoner of war knows that once the dam is broken, a flood of words begins as he tries to make clear what he experienced behind the mysterious iron curtain, which more than ever separates the world from the Soviet Union.
Is it any wonder that British newspaper The Guardian is now illustrating cartoons in its anti-Russia propaganda today that imitate Goebbels’ anti-Soviet posters during WWII?
Although Stalin was unaware of Churchill’s lifting of Nazi phraseology, he still detected the resemblance between Western and Third Reich policies toward the Soviet Union in the Fulton speech during an interview with Pravda:
A point to be noted is that in this respect Mr. Churchill and his friends bear a striking resemblance to Hitler and his friends. Hitler began his work of unleashing war by proclaiming a race theory, declaring that only German-speaking people constituted a superior nation.
Mr. Churchill sets out to unleash war with a race theory, asserting that only English-speaking nations are superior nations, who are called upon to decide the destinies of the entire world. The German race theory led Hitler and his friends to the conclusion that the Germans, as the only superior nation, should rule over other nations. The English race theory leads Mr. Churchill and his friends to the conclusion that the English-speaking nations, as the only superior nations, should rule over the rest of the nations of the world.
Actually, Mr. Churchill, and his friends in Britain and the United States, present to the non-English speaking nations something in the nature of an ultimatum: “Accept our rule voluntarily, and then all will be well; otherwise war is inevitable.”
But the nations shed their blood in the course of five years’ fierce war for the sake of the liberty and independence of their countries, and not in order to exchange the domination of the Hitlers for the domination of the Churchills. It is quite probable, accordingly, that the non-English-speaking nations, which constitute the vast majority of the population of the world, will not agree to submit to a new slavery.”
It is easy to see the parallels between Stalin’s explanation for the geopolitical tensions underlying the Cold War and Edward Said’s postcolonial theory. From a Marxist perspective, one of Said’s shortcomings was a reductionism in understanding empire to cultural supremacy, one of the reasons he unfortunately conflated Marxism with Orientalism as well. When it came to the Cold War, Said also demonstrated a lack of understanding of internationalism. He wrote:
By the time of the Bandung Conference in 1955, the entire Orient had gained its independence from the Western empires and gained a new configuration of imperial powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Unable to recognize “its” Orient in the new Third World, Orientalism now faced a challenging and politically armed Orient.”
Yet who foremost ‘armed’ the movements of national liberation? The USSR, including support for the Palestinians during most of its history. Nevertheless, Stalin’s description of the West’s prerogative for post-war hegemony based on the belief in its primacy has many overlaps with the idea that the Occident exercised patronizing dominance over the East.
Today, even though the Berlin Wall has long since fallen and Eastern Europe is under free enterprise, the political establishment in the West is still clinging to this attitude and misunderstanding of Moscow to fulfill its need for a permanent global nemesis with a desire to eventually colonize Russia with foreign capital as it did under Boris Yeltsin.
Russia has historically possessed a unique and ambivalent identity located between the East and West, having been invaded by both European and Asian empires in previous centuries. Said included Russia in Orientalism in his analysis of European countries and their attitude toward the East, but did not note that Russia is in many respects the Orient within the Occident, as more than 75% of its territory as the largest nation in the world is actually located in Asia while three quarters of its population live on the European side.
Russia may be partly European, but it is certainly not Western. Then again, Europe is not a continent unto itself but geographically connected to Asia with the arbitrary division between them based on cultural differences, not landmass, where Russia is an intermediate. Expansionism under Peter the Great may have brought Western European ‘cultural values’ and modernization to Russia, but the majority of its territory itself remains in Asia.
Even after the presumed end of the Cold War, Russia has been excluded from the European Union and instead joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), while developing strong ties with China. As recently disclosed documents from the National Security Archive prove, NATO has broken its promise to Mikhail Gorbachev during the George H.W. Bush administration that it not expand eastward following Germany’s enrollment. It has since added 13 countries since 1999, 10 of which were former Warsaw Pact states.
Russia’s alliance with China has been solidified precisely because it is still not treated in the same regard as other European nations even after the adoption of a private sector economy. In order to justify its continued armament and avoid obsolescence, NATO has manufactured an adversarial relationship with Moscow.
Contrary to the widespread perception of his rhetoric, in terms of policy-making President Trump has been equally as hostile to Moscow as his predecessors, if not more so in light of the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). What the usual suspects behind the attempted soft-coup against him fail to understand is that Trump’s tact toward Putin is more likely an inverted version of the ‘only Nixon could go to China’ strategy, an unexpected style of diplomacy based on the pragmatic objective of containing Beijing by dividing America’s two primary foes.
The liberals still in denial about their election defeat continue to underestimate Trump, but the Chinese are not fooled. The architect behind Nixon’s détente with Mao, Henry Kissinger, is even believed to have encouraged Trump to ease tensions with Moscow in order to quarantine China and don’t think they haven’t noticed. Ultimately, the divide between Trump and his enemies in the establishment is really a disagreement over strategy in how to surround China and prevent the inevitable downfall of the U.S. empire.
The ongoing demonization of Moscow is ultimately about China as well. It was only a matter of time until the uncertain allegations of election interference were also leveled against Beijing without proof as a Joint Statement from the U.S. intelligence agencies recently showed.
Make no mistake — underneath the West’s Russophobia lies Sinophobia and as Washington’s real geopolitical challenger, China will in due course emerge as the preferred bogeyman. The bipartisan hawkishness has created an environment where rapprochement and diplomacy of any kind is seen as weakness and even a sign of treason, making the prospect of peace seemingly impossible. As China continues to grow, it will find itself more squarely in the crosshairs of imperialism, regardless of whether Trump’s strategy to renew relations with Moscow against Beijing is successful. Until then cooler heads at the highest levels of government must prevail as they thankfully did at the height of the first Cold War for the sake of peace between Russia, the U.S. and the entire world.
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An interesting insight into western Russophobia
https://off-guardian.org/2019/03/09/the-orientalism-of-western-russophobia/#comment-149576
“According to the Western narrative, the Cold War only began following Winston Churchill’s invitation to the U.S. by Truman after being surprisingly voted out of office in 1946.” Well, “West” is pretty general. A side project of mine is listing all the references to the start of the Cold War (trivial version) that I come across. There’s more than one. And there certainly can be. As well, The superpower rivalry between the USSR and USA (trivial version – Chomsky) could start at different times in different places. The US, in Stalin’s mind, schemed against the USSR when Allen Dulles convinced General Wolff to stop fighting allies in Italy, which Stalin interpreted as a move that would allow German forces to contrate better on their fight with the Soviets. Ervand Abrahamian cites the efforts of Britain and the US to grab all of Iran’s oil concessions in northern Iran, squeezing out the Soviets as potential concession holders, as the start of the Cold War in Iran. And so on…
The hatchet-job the West attempts on Putin is beautifully described in Alex Krainer’s “Grand Deception”.
It makes it clear that William Browder, a ferocious, devious Walter Mitty character, has been co-opted by the American deep state to push its absurd (and dangerous) anti-Russia hysteria.
“It is even perpetrated by some on the far left, e.g. if one critiques corporate media or Russiagate, they are grouped as ‘pro-Trump’ or ‘pro-Putin’ no matter their political orientation.” That’s the far (real) Left? That’s news to me, as in I don’t think so.
the author was referring to the counterpunch contingent if you click on the hyperlink
A minor quibble.
The USA did indeed have Asian colonies, The Philippines in particular.
But rather than call them ‘colonies’, which they were in all but name, they were called ‘territories’. Pointedly the brown people in the were not permitted to vote.
While any form of anti-Semitism is deemed totally unacceptable, blatant xenophobia against the Russian Federation is far more than permissible, it is openly encouraged across the mainstream media.
Personally, I have no strong feelings towards Israel or the Russian Federation, but I would like to hear just one cogent argument to justify the status quo, from anyone who supports it as being reasonable and acceptable. Otherwise, the logical reaction would be to see it as simply hollow propaganda.
Given that the Israelis are definitely guilty of Genocide, should it really be regarded as antisemitic to liken Israel to the Nazis? Incidentally has Prince Charles ever criticised Israel?
“Netanyahu’s Brand of Tolerance for Anti-Semitism Goes Back 120 Years” by Daniel Lazare (Consoritum News)
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/31/netanyahus-brand-of-tolerance-for-anti-semitism-goes-back-120-years/
I found the above linked-to article interesting. You may as well.
The racist Thirdworldist madness and philistinism can be appreciated in the total incomprehension of a conflict like the IIWW and other military confrontations around the world. The Second World War only becomes a World War when the Western powers and their colonies, that controlled most of the planet, linked the conflicts that until then have been only partial and regional. That is why, the Anglo-French declaration of war against Germany in 1939 is a good enough date for the starting of a conflict that, little by little, becomes more and more universal. Complaining about this would be like denying that there was a IIWW because Afghanistan was neutral during the conflict… you racist Eurocentric b*******…!!!
‘Western’ imperialism (and there are a few) is just one among many. East, West, North and South, imperialism has been a extended ‘practice’ of the human race in history, with clear advantages and disadvantages, and only a ‘negative’ Eurocentric and irrationally tormented and stolid mind could be blind to it and become the dull fodder of Thirdworldist racist theories. Chinese, Japanese, Islamic, African, Indian, Mesoamerican and Inca Empires, to name but a few, have been as cruel or more than any Western Empire, with the difference that at least the rule of the West over extensive parts of the planet, has brought some standardisation, universal communication and ‘democratisation’ of rapid technological and institutional change, as well as the rapid diffusion of ‘Communist’ ideals, ideology and organisations. The Russians themselves, in particular, are or rather ‘were’, the first ones to be very aware of the dangers of Oriental Imperialism and Despotism and its brutal disadvantages, as they were dangerously exposed to it throughout their history and forged their national consciousness in struggle against it. No one, in this world (except perhaps Spain), has fought more stubbornly to escape the claws of Oriental slavery than the Russians. So much so that even the Russian Revolution could be understood, and was understood by Lenin and the Bolsheviks and all revolutionaries, as a breakout from Oriental tyranny, underdevelopment and backwardness and as a UNION WITH THE WEST.
Interesting article, Russia in the World of Neo-Empires, by Rostislav Ishchenko, in today’s Saker Vineyard. I do not know if his final paragraph is true but it sounds good:
“Russia’s task in the “beautiful new world” of Neo-Empires is non-trivial. It is necessary to walk between the Scylla of maintaining efficiency while fighting against constant external threat, and the Charybdis of dehumanization for the sake of efficiency, a dehumanization which undermines the very foundation of a state. Our advantage over competitors (US, China, EU) is that we in Russia acknowledge this task and try to solve it, while other Neo-Empires are about to sacrifice the very meaning of their existence (representation of people) to the Moloch of theoretical efficiency.”
Think he’s saying: “We’re playing chess, whilst you are playing snakes and ladders.”
Cut’n’Paste. “Nearly all the leaders of the liberal opposition [in Russia] are either fully Jewish or have Jewish background”
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/03/03/nearly-all-the-leaders-of-the-liberal-opposition-in-russia-are-either-fully-jewish-or-have-jewish-background/
If true (ie, if it were a statistically verifiable fact) it would be what Milosovic calls “an anti-Semitic fact”.
PPS As I suspected, the Link itself has the following Mission Statement:
“The Occidental Observer will present original content touching on the _themes of white identity, white interests, and the culture of the West_. Such a mission statement is sure to be dismissed as extremism of the worst sort in today’s intellectual climate—_perhaps even as a sign of psychiatric disorder_.”
Vexarb, as often stated in threads re Fascism or Global Warming, has no interest in the psychiatric state of anyone who presents a fact or propounds a hypothesis: only whether the fact is verifiable and the hypothesis sound.
The heading of that Occidental Observer article appears to be a quotation from the Jerusalem Post. Hence the statement is probably fact; JP being in a good position to verify that: ““Nearly all the leaders of the liberal opposition [in Russia] are either fully Jewish or have Jewish background”
But there has to be context….. Knowing a source makes you interrogate the hypothesis in a different way. For example, why are they saying this and for what purpose – context.
All the liberal opposition in Russia probably are fully Jewish or have Jewish backgrounds, BUT SO DO the ACTUAL ‘government’. Conclusion?
Mikalina, thanks for that fact also (if it is a fact). Conclusion I would draw is based on what my Jewish wife told me 70 years ago: Jews tend to get to the top of their profession. Corollary: Jews can be justifiably criticized as being among the Leading Capitalists, Communists, Liberals, Fascists, Socialists, Conservatives, Labour Unionists and, as you say, Russian (and U$) government members.
So one question should be: How do Jews get to the top of their profession? The same can be asked of other conspicuously successful expatriate groups such as expatriate Scots, Parsees, Chinese and Indians (the last three having been subject to prejudice in various countries). How much of “expatriate vigour” is natural selection through get-up-and-go, how much is ethnic solidarity and ethnic networking? And what about the native population: why do they cede to minority groups in certain areas? (There used to be a saying in Russia: one Jew is worth ten Russians, and one Armenian is worth ten Jews.)
There is a lot to discuss here. But the drift of the argument is, that the world is in a bad way, with wars and economic exploitation, and Anglo Zio Capitalist Jews are conspicuously on the bad side. So are some Anglo Zio Capitalist Scotsmen: those two B’s, Blair and Brown.
See Gilad Atzmon’s presentation on the difference between the Jewish elite and other nationalities:
It is important not to forget:
With $5 billion a year on media manipulation, surely their reach would be much farther than we could possible imagine.
Said’s ‘Orientalism’ is an extremely reactionary, regressive and anti-Marxist book. A manifesto of apology and justification for the Oriental brutal oligarchies that, as the essential mediators and collaborators of the necocolonialist policies that they themselves support and create around the world, seek, by all possible means, including the infiltration of Western academia and ‘free’ societies, to defend the survival of their barbarous, corrupt, ruthless, backward and terrorist, guilty ‘comprador’ regimes. For that reason, it is not strange that ‘Orientalism’ has become the ‘Bible’ of ‘culture’ (rather ‘anti-culture’) studies and the Thirdworldist racist and supremacist reaction against Western Working Class and World progress, which is, essentially, the same thing. Said’s book is a mixture of lies, trite assertions and Oriental racist prejudices and hate against WESTERN societies, scientific knowledge, experience and exploration, a book that could have only been written by someone that has missed and misunderstood the real class and universal roots a Western culture. A culture that is the ONLY one critical with itself and of universal in scope, incorporating to its proud tradition the best fruits of ALL the cultures of the planet. In the same way, the unfounded accusations of Russophobia from the supporters of Thirdworldism, try to hide their irrational, racist and corrupt servility to the savage oligarchs that have plunder the wealth of the workers of the USSR, China and other countries around the world.
These “brutal oligarchies” are with very few exceptions puppet dictatorships, with satraps appointed by Washington to serve vested globalist corporate interests. This “western culture” has drowned the planet in blood for the past five hundred years. Said might be forgiven for searching in vain for its “proud tradition.”
Mohammed Marandi had an interesting take on western cultural imperialism.
Previously, western travellers in the 18th-20th centuries in the Middle East/ North Africa/ Turkey/ Iran, were struck by cultural differences which they interpreted as evidence of western cultural superiority and oriental decadence. Those societies were far more tolerant of homosexuality than the west, where it was vigorously suppressed. Women dressed in a far more revealing way than in the west, where they were covered up apart from their faces. So of course we were superior to these “filthy foreigners.”
Fast forward to the present day. Western countries are far more tolerant of homosexuality and women dress in a more revealing fashion. This is now taken as evidence of western cultural superiority. So in effect, whatever happens to be the norm in western society at a particular time is held to be superior.
When I was living in Africa and Asia, people sometimes told me they wished they had pale or white skin, though particularly darker skinned women often had smooth and silky skin that was quite attractive. People would sometimes come up and ask if they could have their photograph taken with a white person. This is probably something that developed in the colonial period.
From the real world, a post by somebody who is bored with bluster from “The West”, Our hold on the Middle East has been reduced to Israel and Saudi Arabia, yet “The West” dreams of fighting Russia:
“bored muslim BTL Saker Vineyard, March 08, 2019 at 10:02 pm EST/EDT
The Arab tribes of Iraq, from 2003 onwards gave the U.S. occupation forces hell. 14 out of the total 16 battalions of the U.S. military were effectively bogged down with no end in sight. They were chasing insurgents who chose where and when to hit, armored columns were shredded by daisy chained IED’s and shapeh charges, and Iraqi snipers were instilling terror into the hearts of Coalition troops…. Needless to say, all the uploaded videos of IED attacks, and all of many sniper videos were mysteriously deleted from YouTube.
Syria is already organizing the Arab tribes, … their final declaration was ominous for any occupiers. They promised to evict the US military and expel lackey Kurds. Interestingly enough, even Iraqi tribal leaders showed up at the last big conference in Syria.
Look for the Syrian volunteer National Defense Forces to also shed engage in civilian clothes, which would give the Syrian government plausible deniability.
US, British, French and SDF Kurds will bleed volumes in [Northern] Syria. The fighting will be close and personal. [Because] Arab and Iranian fighters have learned how to negate air power. Its an old Soviet tactic, used especially at Stalingrad, nicknamed by the Soviets ‘to grab and hug the enemy’. When air forces cannot engage effectively, equivalent of losing your queen in chess right at the start. In 2006 using this tactic to neutralise Israeli air power, 4500 Hezbollah stopped 75,000 Israeli IDF troops and two armored battalions. 44 out of 400 Merkava MBT’s were totally destroyed. In essence, the Israeli forces were not even able to hold even the smallest of Lebanese border villages.
Iranian General Salami recently made a trip to Syria, and said ” There is a whole Islamic army ready to engage in total war against arrogant powers’ . Iran has brought in about 40-50 thousand Afghan volunteers; there are Chechen volunteers in the thousands (who routed Ukrainian military in 2015 in the Donbass, who fight much like Hezbollah, and are hard lethal in artillery. Just ask the Ukies); there are tens of thousands of hardcore Iranian Basij volunteers, and the Basij number around 17 million in Iran, so there will be no shortage of volunteers. There are Pakistani’s, Malaysians, Indonesians, along with many thousands of former terrorists who have been re-educated, who now know who the real enemy is, and are ready to go.
Times have changed and this is a different war. Their (US, UK and France) small bases and limited troops in the ME will quickly be overrun and taken prisoner if they are lucky enough not to be annihilated.
And we have China, who regards Pakistan and the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon [“Arch of Stability”] as an integral, vital and indispensable part of its crucial and gargantuan OBR Silk Roads. The Chinese have already linked up Pakistan and Iran, soon they will link up Iraq and Syria. The Chinese own Haifa port, are building a massive port in Lebanon, and plan to build another massive port in Yemen as soon as the Houthi’s prevail. China looks forward to US&Co being expelled from the region. and will supply the forces of the Axis of Resistance with all the cheap, yet very lethal weapons needed for this most important endeavor. It is actually crucial for Chinese and Russian and Iranian, and also Arab plans for the future and the future generations who should, and will live in peace and prosperity. As the Chinese like to say, a win-win.”
A reply to Bored Muslim (above) by Grieved on March 07, 2019 · at 11:02 pm EST/EDT
“Good summary. One point:
…the new Syrian Army offensive on the region of Idlib. If history were to repeat itself, we should expect Washington to threaten Damascus.
But history cannot repeat itself, because the US is weaker today than it was back then, just half a year ago. In the interim, it has wasted some of its remaining force in the Venezuela debacle, and has strengthened the world’s image of its weakness. Its dotage, even.
Many things appear lofty in the cerebral atmosphere of wishes and desires – but it is on the ground that the very simple reality lives and moves, and wins and loses. The reality on the ground is unadorned, unpretentious, barely articulate, yet unimpeachable because it is final. And the ground is already won.
The US was allowed to bluster and threaten in its retreat, but it won’t be given the luxury of threatening again – only the empty bluster, and its continual retreat, in its decline.”
I believe the following excerpt from a much longer documentary is relevant here to more fully realize the depraved depths to which power has gone, will go, and is currently going. It shows the heart beat of what any caring person is up against. Of course, everyone knows this. We are all together in this echo chamber.
Oddly, what concerns me most is that at minute 6:15, there are people [Americans], in an audience laughing at a description of fellow Americans slaughtered in WW11. I seem alone in my concern with this particular observation.
I find it strange. I have played this clip for numerous people to see if anyone noticed. They didn’t. I find this even stranger….but revealing.
I think of my efforts in an organization to stop John Mc Cain in 1989 from calling off the search for MIA’s in Vietnam, and his subsequently successful efforts to thwart war crime prosecutions which would most certainly have gone to the top. This conference was fully compromised by day three. From the top. I watched it happen. Yet, I recall my real reason for walking away in disgust was watching most participants become more concerned with how well informed they were or how they would be seen as part of a grand movement, rather than maintaining focus on the most important goal. Bringing our men home. A goal that never occurred. I lost much of my faith in humanity right there. The (DIA) had received more than 1,600 firsthand reports of sightings of live American prisoners and nearly 14,000 secondhand accounts. To no avail.The MIA’s and POW’s were abandoned – to the outrage of their grieving families. Thanks John. Thanks self absorbed, people. Little has changed. And now we just lowered the flag to half mast for Mc Cain!!! Am I beating a dead horse?
In order to never become apathetic, in December I visited Vietnam for the 50th anniversary of our MyLai massacre. 50 years! Acknowledging our crimes there might have set a president for what has followed…..more of the same. Our crimes in North Korea were well hidden, but Vietnam was wide open to view. I now blame us, ‘we the people’, and of course…. Thanks again John, our hero.
The people laughing in this clip at at minute 6:15 are laughing at the death of their own people. Some kind of Freudian response to cover real emotion? I think not. Am I cynical? You bet. With an equal portion of disgust and outrage.
All this I say, simply to contextualize my personal reason for posting this clip here. This shouldn’t even be necessary, but it is. So………………why are they laughing? Assuming anyone is even interested.
https://www.brasscheck.com/video/trading-with-the-enemy/
“…the Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, which is a typical Russian technique.”
So Clapper confirms that the Russians comprise a race. From his list of their racial attributes it sounds suspiciously like the human race.
Imagine the howls of outrage if he’d said the same about Jews.
Or Muslims, or almost any other ethnic or religious group on can think of.
Or if that cartoon of a vampire like Putin’s head on a giant spider threatening the world was replaced by a stereotypical hook nosed Jewish caricature figure.
“The establishment has even likened the alleged intrusion by Moscow to 9/11.”
Well why not? It was the establishment that created both.
I have to laugh each time I see the self styled Meyer Lansky – Trump, and his backer Sheldon Adelson … who was calling his debt in if Trump didn’t recognise Jerusalem as ‘Israel’s’ capital??? It is clear to all but the swamp creatures that they are a set of con men. There is not ONE Statesmen among them. Even Bernie Sanders is reading from their script now.
The two people actually speaking the truth, Tulsi Gabbard and Ilhan Ohma are being set up to have their reputations shredded, and I believe that Ilhan Ohma’s life may even be in danger for daring to speak out against Israel..
saying ”The United States should castigate Israel just like it does Iran” and also said that she “almost chuckles” when Israel is referred to as a democracy, and that she supports BDS against Israel.. She has apologised however for “unknowingly” using an ”anti-semitic trope” in a 2012 tweet “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel,” but insisted she won’t be shying away from future criticism of the Jewish state. God bless her. It’s just such a pity that the men in congress /representatives and senate don’t have balls as big as hers.
Both Russia and China stand in the way of the Empire gaining full spectrum dominance over the entire planet. And to save itself, the Empire needs to get its paws on what Russia and China have. And both Putin and Xi are certainly not going to get on their knees and ask: How high sir? Hence the full throttle demonisation of both China and Russia in the Western propaganda organisations. I’ve said this numerous times now, but we are in for a very perilous journey ahead. The very real danger of nuclear war plus economic collapse plus climate change. And most people can’t even see where all this is heading.
The Author completely OMITS … the FACT … that GREAT BRITAIN has been a JEWISH PAWN since 1695 and its Policies have been directed by the necessitites of that JEWISH RULING OLIGARCHY .
Secondly , the Author does not appear to be aware , that the USA equally has been RULED by a predominantly JEWISH OLIGARCHY since 1913 .. at latest … and that US Policies , just like the British have been directed at serving the Interests of this nefarious CLAN.
Thirdly , and contrary to statements by the Author ..the FACT , that the Zio ANGLOSAXON ENTITY dominated by JEWS most certainly has created its own COLONIAL REGIME in the LEVANT , a completely MURDEROUS WAR CRIMINAL …THE STATE OF ISRAEL
FINALLY … the Author scates smoothly over the Fact that as long as the SOVJET was in CONTROL by the same JEWISH Entity which governs its BIRTH HELPERS : the USA and Great Britain … the Sovjet participated full throttle in the ZIO GLOBALIST Efforts in PALAESTINE ..
I choose to IGNORE such Bullshit portraying Russia as NON European … Russians and Europeans have overwhelming exactely the same Culture .. within that beautifull DIVERSITY which characterizes OUR WORLD
in truth .. most of todays Europeans come from the Eurasian Steppes ..
Equally I would like to remind of some additional FACTS :
There are 850 Million People in Europe … there are additional approx 160 Million People in Russia and affiliated countries :
Together we are OVER 1 BILLION PEOPLE ! …. Approximately 3 Times as many as in the USA !
A combined Area with uniformly highly educated , disciplined and civilized People .. unsurpassed by any other Region of the Globe .
An area characterized by INFRASTRUCTURE and INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY with a productive Apparatus DWARFING anybody else
Together with all the necessary RAW MATERIALS and LAND for FOOD PRODUCTION with the most advanced EXTRACTION methods as well as AGRICULTURAL Know How
The combined area has PLENTY of WATER, the miracle molecule of Life as well as all the ENERGY it needs .
Combined owning the biggest chunk of Global CAPITAL as well as GOLD … far more than any other ENTITY
And the Region has CULTURE … ancient Beautifull Intertwined Culture , which makes us RICH ..in our Minds
TOGETHER Europe and Russia needs NO ONE ..
It needs no new Vasals ..
It is entirely selfsufficient and satisfied just to be ITSELF ,
having all the Potential for development needed as well as ample Space for its People.
And it has the Populations and MILITARY INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY necessary to defend it self ! … Against anyone !
And ..If abstracting from CORRUPT POLITICAL ELITES bribed by the ZIO ANGLOSAXON ENTITY
… with Developmentat Goals ….completely in SYNCHRONY … without any desire to Dominate each other
EUROPE is THE PRIZE currently fought about ..
even if this is not mentioned in any Publication or by any Politician.
And it is fought about with such a FEROCITY that the ZIO GLOBALIST CARTEL
is willing to DESTROY it .. if it does not fold under its Domination …
Because such a Creation would immediately spell the END of the ZIO GLOBALIST EMPIRE .
And exactely THAT is what we are witnessing
I am reminded upon reading this of Herr Otto Flick’s contemptuous throwback:
‘Well: what do you want me to do about it?’
There is nothing new in saying the UK and US ruling classes were fascists in the 1930s, nothing new in saying Truman was no Roosevelt, nothing new in saying Churchill was thrown out because warmongering against Stalin was more important to him than rebuilding a bombed-out Britain.
There is nothing new in saying that Russia made all the WWII sacrifices but US rode in on a white horse claiming heroism.
There is nothing new in saying the two nuclear strikes in Japan were power projections to place US centre stage.
There is nothing new in public Russophobia, even as the UK/US elites fund moneymaking inside Russia. Hell, the pupils of Eton had a private audience with the new Hitler, but the Daily Mail neither called them traitors nor demanded Eton College be closed for aligning itself with Hitler.
What would be new is a practical set of consequences for the little men and middle men whose unquestioning sheep-like herd behaviour allows all this nonsense to be perpetuated.
Where is the call for every American wishing to work abroad to sit a history exam to prove they are not brainwashed idiots? Paid for at their own expense, of course. No way should we have to pay to decontaminate their brain from nonsense.
Where is the call requiring all Americans to accurately describe their murdering since 1945 to allow any right to trade outside the US ever again? Nowhere. You do not get anywhere appeasing Americans. Just look at the UK: a true vassal state now, with pathetic wastrels calling themselves Ministers saying vassaldom to the US is the great aim of Brexit. America wants UK food markets and to rape the NHS to bring in US-style healthcare. That is a reason to declare war, not a reason to develop closer ties.
Where is the call to simply refuse to pay the US a single penny to occupy military bases? Tell them all to go home……
The problem with Western education is that it is all sitting in classrooms reading, not getting your hands dirty and doing.
The same with political discourse…..
Excellent deduction my dear Rhys, I could not have said it better or more concisely. I am going to re post this, where ever it will fit, if that’s ok?
After taking steps to counter financial blockade by “the West” (ie, by Anglo Zio Capitalists) Russia Is Now Running a healthy $200bn Trade Surplus
https://russia-insider.com/en/russia-now-running-incredible-200bn-trade-surplus/ri26432
Sssh! don’t tell the sheeple.
The Occidentalism of YouTube; deleting Middle East Observer:
https://thesaker.is/urgent-youtube-terminates-middle-east-observer-after-almost-10-years-online/
Actually it’s not old Kipling of the British Empire, “East is East and West and West, and never the twain shall meet”. It’s money and power, and the power of money; especially the money power of Anglo Zio Capital. If Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq had not thwarted an AZC military attempt to divide their hydrocarbon wealth among Rothschild energy companies, and add their land and water to Greater Israel, then YouTube would not have deleted Middle East Observer. The masters of the “West” (which includes Eastern countries like Australia, Saudi Arabia and Israel) do not want their slaves to know of their defeats in the Middle East.
If Russia had still been like it was in the Yeltsin years, with Life Expectancy going down because the wealth of the country was being sucked out to the West by Russian Jews in league with Anglo Jews, then Russia and especially Putin would not be demonized and facing war. The masters of “the West” (which includes Australia, Saudi Arabia and Israel) do not want their slaves to know of their defeats in Russia. It threatens the prestige of Zio Capitalists, and hence their power; not to mention their money.
Vexarb: believe me, I don’t think the ‘masters of “the west” even have to try at all when it comes to Australia. Most Aussies are completely clueless and completely oblivious to what’s going on except for whatever 30 second soundbites they heard on Channel 7 or 9. And if you challenge what they regard as ‘The Truth’ – you are smeared as a Russian troll or conspiracy nut. Saw that item about Middle East Observer over at The Saker earlier. And MEO certainly won’t be the last to be terminated for ‘breaching community standards’. The censorship of the internet, of Facebook and Twitter is only going to accelerate.
Totally agree but would say that it is worse than you portray. The “intelligent” liberal intellectuals don’t get their get their “news” from Channel 7 or 9, but from the ABC, the Guardian, the Age/SMH, or the Australian (yes really the Australian). On pretty well every weekend the ABC has an anti-Chinese article – this weekend is no exception with one about the Confucius Institutes. It has anti-Russian articles slightly less frequently. There is almost always no substance in these articles and quite often they quote “intelligence sources”. The Australian’s Middle East opinions are dictated in Tel Aviv and the Age/SMH is only slightly less predisposed. I have totally given up on Australian media – and indeed on arguing with my friends and colleagues about international politics.
Wonderful Land of Oz, “the Lucky Country”. As Napoleon said, it’s better to be lucky than smart.
The smartest people make the biggest messes.
And Yeltsin’s Russia was not the only country to have its wealth being sucked out by Anglo Zio Capitalists, and Life Expectancy going down:
“Life expectancy has decreased for three years in a row now in the U$A while globally it continues rising. This decrease in U$ life expectancy is largely being driven by people increasingly killing themselves by suicide, or by terminal drug or alcohol abuse…. often an indicator of deep underlying despair.
These numbers indicate that something is deeply wrong in American society; something that is driving more and more people to kill themselves.
from: https://www.axios.com/deaths-suicide-drugs-alcohol-mortality-rate-epidemic-18971e4f-760f-415d-910d-046de83c967c.html
In 2017, more than 151,000 Americans died of suicide or causes related to drugs or alcohol — the highest rate in U.S. history, according to a new study by Trust for America’s Health and Well Being Trust.
The drug and suicide epidemics have hit rural America hardest, at the same time that blue collar jobs are disappearing and technology and automation is transforming the workforce.”
Unlike the parallel situation in Russia, no Putin arose to save the U$A from its life-sucking oligarchs.
And the poor little lambs wrote on their suicide note, “We were too menny”. — Jude the Obscure
The irony in this is that the people who despair are the ones that Trump appeals to as his base — they’re the supporters of MAGA, they’re the ones that believe its the Chinese who stole their jobs and so on. Its not the first time in history that the people who are feel the brunt of negative policies become the most ardent supporters of the people responsible for those policies.
The glimmer of hope is that its not really a global conspiracy that drives this as a sort of consensus, a herd of cats all clamoring for the spoils. This means that things aren’t necessarily that well thought out. The Yeltsin years in Russia were a missed opportunity because the greed and triumphalism of the neocons outstripped their common sense — they went for broke from Day One with their armies of advisors and the Russian people noticed before their society was so fragmented that they couldn’t recover. (There’s a reason why the neocons love Balkanization — let the rubes squabble among themselves while the spoils are carried off.)
“”The ugly truth is that the U.S. was well aware that the Japanese were willing to conditionally surrender on the basis of immunity for Emperor Hirohito.”” Had Japan not been defeated 3 months after Germany’s unconditional surrender (8th May 1945) the US would have had to invite the USSR to fight Japan together (See Yalta). But then they might have had to share the Yamashita gold.
Russia is as much or little authoritarian as the Russian people want. They are not smurfs who can be directed. It may look like that but procedure (two party democratic) is not as relevant as results.
Living standards matter more than who dines in the Kremlin, and as long as they are reasonable and progress is made – what do the US want? They want a say over the Russian economy, play monopolists, and want to be worshipped as the heroes of the universe. Russians have other things on their mind. The tuning into Russia hatred by the American, Australian, and British media is quite braindead. The WSJ was a respectable publication before Murdoch bought it for so much money that a hidden agenda was peaking out from underneath his usual blanket of lies.
Maybe – surfs.
After 1945 Churchill was voted out through democracy; Stalin strengthened his grip not only over Russia but also over central Europe and China – by supporting Mao. Korea and Vietnam were next in line.
The US military-industial-oil-financial complex gathered strength too under crippled president Roosevelt.
By the time general Eisenhower stepped down as president the US cabal was in as much power as Soviet or PR China’s leaders.
Today balancing power between these forces is good but exchanging the US frying pan for a Xi-Chinas fire won’t be an improvement. Dissidents in China can’t even travel due to his new “social credits system”.
In the US, dissidents are stripped naked and thrown into hellhole dungeons and tortured for decades, often without the trouble of a travesty of a trial in one of their kangaroo courts.
In the UK, dissidents have to take refuge in foreign embassies for years to avoid trumped up charges fabricated by a “judicial” system used for political persecution.
In Israel, dissidents are just gunned down like dogs without further ado (provided they are the goyim.)
It could be that dissidents in China don’t get too bad a deal.
Eisenhower was a stooge. It’s well documented.
Hence he did this as his final act
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisenhower-warns-of-military-industrial-complex
The US $tranglehold on the world is weakening.
They are pulling out all stops through the age old technique of Divide and Rule.
Bad luck you dumb fuckers.
The www is pouring cold, clear water on your blood soaked agenda.
And China is more than a fly in the ointment.
China is most certainly more than a fly in the ointment. I wish the left would wake up to that fact. With facial recognition cameras on every corner, linked to supercomputers able to track the movement of every city dweller and the Chinese social credit system denying the right to travel or even use a phone to those brave individuals investigating widespread government corruption, the Chinese Communist Party demonstrates its superiority in controlling its people. Meanwhile the left sees only the plank in the American eye, ignoring the fact that what China is pioneering, the right in the US and in EUrope will emulate.
Wake up before it’s too late!
Actually, the country that really pioneered “CCTV on every street corner” is the UK. They were even experimenting with facial recognition years, maybe a decade, ago. You don’t really notice it until you get a crime like a terrorist bombing when you find the culprits identified and their movements traced within 24 hours (example was the 7/7 bombers). Day to day the biggest impact of surveillance is the ANPR system — vehicle registration plates are designed to be machine readable (again, early adoption — back when they first did this computers were not powerful enough to read many styles of plates). Every time you pass a camera your vehicle is logged into a national database in case its needed to track your movements later. The ANPR system is also used for routine law enforcement — vehicle registration, speed enforcement (via average speed calculation), lane enforcement, congestion zone enforcement and, of course, rapidly catching up with anyone seen leaving the scene of a crime.
One of the more interesting uses of video technology was after some riots by young people in 2012. The police collected video of the incidents and then set about systematically prosecuting the people involved, a process that took months.
So really China is just playing catch up. They’re working with much newer technology — cheaper and a whole lot more powerful. It will probably be on sale to anyone who wants it at bargain prices in the not too distant future.
(I should also remark that the fashion for ‘hoodies’ first appeared in the UK because young people like to hang out, they annoy respectable people and CCTV could identify them.)
(I should also point out that the first use of wide area surveillance of populations using computerized databases was a pilot program in Belfast in the early 70s. What this did was use patterns of consumption — food, milk deliveries, energy use and so on — to try to track people who were hiding in the population.)
You make some good points: but the 7/7 bombers example? With the fourth of the “Stepford Four” badly photoshopped in, half in front and half behind the railing …catching a train that wasn’t running that morning? Just before they blew themselves up, leaving only their identity cards? I think the salient point of CCTV is that whenever something significant happened there was never any decent footage because the cameras are off. Or it is edited. Especially when the police callously execute someone on the Tube after a botched surveillance op. You have to wonder who the criminals are? One of them is now running the Met.
Everyone in Canada has a credit rating, in what way does the Chinese system differ from this?
In reality the genie of mass surveillance-hello, there security state- has left the bottle. This is not to say it is not a world of problems needing to be addressed but that we would do better to deal with our problems, involving our government and our capitalist run media, than to presume that all is well and benignly managed here while we tear our hair out about the much cruder and less comprehensive surveillance measures being taken in China. A country by the way which the US and its allies are openly besieging by arming and training turkic militias, employing wahhabi agitators in doing so.
Don’t you realise that every telephone call, every e mail, every text message in the world, is monitored, recorded, and stored for ever in Nevada?
But wait, there’s more. Read: ‘The Shadow Factory’, James Bamford, a book published about 10 years ago. To anyone that read it, the Snowden and other ‘revelations’ were old news.
The NSA stores in Utah; you gambled in Nevada.
It is exactly because of Xi-China that the US should not loose too much power: let them balance each other out.
Obama was a “babe in the woods” for Chinese tactics; Trump is an enigma for them, so much better.
All this stupidity of hassling Russia while the new (old) kid on the block – China – is growing by the minute. Lets have Hulk vs Dragon.