http://www.alternet.org/economy/krugman-how-american-capitalism-fails-and-northern-european-socialism-succeeds-job-creation

AlterNet / By Janet Allon

And why that’s not a story the mainstream media likes to tell.

May 26, 2014 |

Paul Krugman wrote his column this morning in the New York Times from Europe, a place which—conservatives like Paul Ryan would like you to believe—demonstrates the complete failure of the welfare state. That’s because, as Krugman points out, “Our political discourse is dominated by reverse Robin-Hoodism — the belief that economic success depends on being nice to the rich, who won’t create jobs if they are heavily taxed, and nasty to ordinary workers, who won’t accept jobs unless they have no alternative.”

France, a country that the American media and conservatives particularly love to bash, is having particular success in employment rates. Krugman reports this “startling, little-known fact: French adults in their prime working years (25 to 54) are substantially more likely to have jobs than their U.S. counterparts.”

Hmmm. There’s a story you won’t hear told in the mainstream media.

He continues:

It wasn’t always that way. Back in the 1990s Europe really did have big problems with job creation; the phenomenon even received a catchy name, “Eurosclerosis.” And it seemed obvious what the problem was: Europe’s social safety net had, as Representative Paul Ryan likes to warn, become a “ hammock” that undermined initiative and encouraged dependency.

But then a funny thing happened: Europe started doing much better, while America started doing much worse. France’s prime-age employment rate overtook America’s early in the Bush administration; at this point the gap in employment rates is bigger than it was in the late 1990s, this time in France’s favor. Other European nations with big welfare states, like Sweden and the Netherlands, do even better.

What about young people? Doesn’t America, with all of its problems, still kick France’s ass when it comes to the employment rate of those younger than 25. Yes, Krugman concedes. Then he wonders if that is something we should be bragging about, since it is certainly due in part to the fact that French students receive a lot more financial aid for their education than American students do, so they are not immediately saddled with huge debt to work off, much less work their way through school.

“Is that a bad thing”” Krugman wonders.

Us too.

Also, the French take more vacations and retire earlier than we do.

How horrible! Who would want to live in a place like that.

But, getting back to Krugman’s main point: “On the core issue of providing jobs for people who really should be working, at this point old Europe is beating us hands down despite social benefits and regulations that, according to free-market ideologues, should be hugely job-destroying.”

In fact, he writes, our “cruel experiment” in depriving so-called lazy unemployed Americans of their long-term benefits so they will get off their asses and look for work has been an abject failure. Did people in terrible straits find jobs?

“No — not at all,” Krugman replies. “Somehow, it seems, the only thing we achieved by making the unemployed more desperate was deepening their desperation.”

Will people listen to the European example? Krugman is doubtful. He concludes:

I’m sure that many people will simply refuse to believe what I’m saying about European strengths. After all, ever since the euro crisis broke out there has been a relentless campaign by American conservatives (and quite a few Europeans too) to portray it as a story of collapsing welfare states, brought low by misguided concerns about social justice. And they keep saying that even though some of the strongest economies in Europe, like Germany, have welfare states whose generosity exceeds the wildest dreams of U.S. liberals.

http://rt.com/op-edge/161712-ukraine-new-president-opposition-talks/

Published time: May 27, 2014 15:19

Ukraine’s new President Poroshenko says the “anti-terrorist operation” needs to be stepped up and needs to be “more efficient” which means more violence and resistance until there is decisive victory, political analyst Daniel Patrick Welch told RT.

RT: On the day of his election victory, Petro Poroshenko said he wants negotiations with the east… but that the military operation needs to be stepped up… Isn’t he contradicting himself?

Daniel Patrick Welch: He has no interest in that. He is lying, he is not contradicting himself. He has absolutely no intention of conducting negotiations, and he has said so in various others forms. He said that the operation needs to be stepped up and needs to be what he called “more efficient”. And we see what it means today, that means involving shelling against civilians, bombs that fall through the air, occupied apartment blocks, fighter jets and helicopter gunships and grenade launchers against urban populations.

RT: We are now seeing intense fighting in the east of Ukraine. Given the incoming president’s position – are we going to see more bloodshed?

DW: Yes, there already has been shelling at the Donetsk airport on Tuesday, which was followed by the RPG attack on a truck evacuating the wounded, in which it is reported to be 35 dead and 50, wounded, according to self-defense sources. It is a huge ramp up, and it is a very scary thing. Remember that he [Poroshenko] refers to all of them as terrorists. Just a couple of weeks ago when we had the referendum in the east, you had an enormous, overwhelming majority of people voting. So what they are saying now is that the entire population of the east oblast are in fact terrorists or as the more radical, the Right Sector and “Svoboda”, call them “kolorady”, Colorado beetles – insects. People are insects and what you do with insects is that you stamp on them and that is the only thing they have in store for these people. It is a very dangerous and scary development, a huge escalation.

RT: Why the West is ok with the way elections were held and with a new president who wants to continue military action against his own people?

DW: They put this puppet in control, Willy Wonka as the Ukrainians have taken to calling him; Chocolate King, in control in a farcical election in order just to provide a fig leaf to what they have been planning all along which is Zbigniew Brzezinski’s plan to scare and encircle Russia. Doing it through killing large numbers of people in southeast Ukraine does not bother them at all.

RT: Kiev describes its actions in the east as an anti-terror operation. So how can they justify the air assault on Donetsk Airport on Monday, where there were civilian casualties?

DW: I do not know. Even though I was expecting it, I was shocked by the brutality and ruthlessness that came to life. Actually, what happened while the election was going on, while the farce has been played out, there were people shelling Slavyansk on Monday, not just on Tuesday. This is going to further escalate unless and until the fascists are stopped. The only trouble is that whether there are negotiations or not they do not want any negotiations. And what the people of the east, and not just in the east, there was an attack in Carpathian Ruthenia against the Right Sector’s block post as well. So this is oligarch returning despite all that [has been] made and promised, and you are going to have further resistance until there is a decisive victory. There has to be some help from outside and a much broader mobilization of Donbas because they have ruthless people against them.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com . Follow him on Twitter

Published time: May 20, 2014 11:28

Just imagine if the democratically-elected government of Canada had been toppled in a Russian-financed coup, in which far-right extremists and neo-Nazis played a prominent role.
That the new unelected ‘government’ in Ottawa cancelled the law giving the French language official status, appointed a billionaire oligarch to run Quebec and signed an association agreement with a Russian-led trade bloc.

Just imagine…

If Russia had spent $5 billion on regime change in Canada and then a leading Canadian energy firm had appointed to its board of directors the son of a top Russian government politician.

Just imagine…

If the Syrian government had hosted a meeting in Damascus of the ‘Friends of Britain’- a group of countries who supported the violent overthrow of David Cameron’s government.

That the Syrian government and its allies gave the anti-government ‘rebels’ in Britain millions of pounds and other support, and failed to condemn ‘rebel’ groups when they killed British civilians and bombed schools, hospitals and universities.

That the Syrian Foreign Minister dismissed next year’s scheduled general election in the UK as a ‘parody of democracy’ and said that Cameron must stand down before any elections are held.

Just imagine…

If in 2003, Russia and its closest allies had launched a full-scale military invasion of an oil-rich country in the Middle East, having claimed that that country possessed WMDs which threatened the world and that afterwards no WMDs were ever found.

That up to 1 million people had been killed in the bloodshed that followed the invasion and that the country was still in turmoil over 10 years later.

That Russian companies had come in to benefit from the reconstruction and rebuilding work following the ‘regime change’.

Just imagine…

If the pro-Russian journalists who had faithfully parroted the claims that the Middle Eastern country that Russia had invaded in 2003 had WMDs did not apologise afterwards or show any contrition despite the enormous death toll; but instead carried on in their well-paid jobs to propagandize more illegal wars and ’interventions’ against other independent countries, and attacked those honest journalists who didn’t peddle the war lies.

Just imagine…

If over forty people protesting against the central government had been burnt to death by pro-government extremists in Venezuela.

That the Venezuelan government had launched a military offensive against people protesting for greater autonomy/federalization following visits by the head of the Russian SVR and Dmitry Medvedev to Caracas.

Just imagine….

If last August over six hundred people protesting in camps against the government in Minsk in Belarus had been massacred by armed forces. That this spring, the courts in Belarus had handed out death sentences to over 600 supporters of opposition parties.

Just imagine….

If Russia had spent the years following the end of the old ‘Cold War’ surrounding the US with military bases and pushing for Canada and Mexico to join a Russian military alliance. That earlier this month Russia carried out major military exercises in Mexico.

Just imagine….

If we had heard leaked telephone calls between a high ranking official from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Russian Ambassador in Canada in which they discussed who should/shouldn’t be in the Canadian government. That their approved candidate subsequently became the new, unelected Prime Minister following a Russian-financed ‘regime change’.

That the high ranking Russian official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said : ‘Fxxx the EU’.

Just imagine…

If the Syrian air force had bombed a weapons depot in Israel and also bombed convoys which security officials said were carrying weapons to anti-government forces in Syria.

Just imagine…

If leading Russian politicians attended anti-austerity street protests in western Europe, handed out cookies to those protesting, and supported the protestors’ calls for the governments to step down.
Imagining what would happen if any of the above events occurred, and comparing it to what has happened in reality is highly instructive as it shows us what is wrong with the world today.
Actions have been taken by the US and its allies which would be considered totally outrageous if carried out by other countries. All we have to do is to switch the names of the countries concerned to see the double standards.

If Russia had attacked an oil-rich Middle Eastern nation in 2003, and pro-Russian journalists peddled the same sort of deceitful pro-war, WMD propaganda that neocons and faux-leftists did in the west when the US invaded Iraq, then we can be sure that Russia would have been regarded as an international pariah, and the journalists who acted as cheerleaders for the illegal invasion would be discredited for the rest of their lives. But the US is not subject to sanctions or treated as an outcast, its President in 2003, George W. Bush and his close ally Tony Blair, have yet to stand trial for war crimes, and the media ‘pundits’ who supported the invasion of Iraq are still in place and now pushing for a new Cold war against Russia and new military ‘intervention’ against Syria.

If Russia had spent $5bn on toppling the democratically-elected government of either Canada or Mexico, and installed a pro-Russian junta in its place, we can be sure that within hours, a full scale military invasion by the US would have taken place, in order to remove the new ‘government’ from power. Western television news channels and elite pundits would be enthusiastically supporting the US action – declaring it to be a ‘response to Russian aggression’ and saying it was totally justified. But when the regime changing was done by the US in Ukraine, and a pro-US junta installed in power in Kiev, it’s a very different story. The same people who would cry ‘foul’ at the top of their voices if Russia engineered a coup in Canada or Mexico, celebrate the unlawful toppling of the legitimate government of Ukraine.

We already know how the US would respond, if another country sought to put nuclear weapons close to its territory – in 1962 the world came to the brink of war in the Cuban missile crisis. But while a third world war would undoubtedly be threatened again if Russian forces held military exercises in Mexico, it’s not considered provocative for NATO to hold military exercises in Estonia.

If the governments of Belarus and Venezuela had responded as brutally towards anti-government protesters as the Egyptian military regime did last August, or sent in the tanks and used heavy weaponry against their own people as the western-backed Kiev junta has, then we can be sure that the great ‘humanitarians’ of the faux-left would be screeching not just for punitive sanctions but for air strikes too and for Presidents Lukashenko and Maduro to be carted off to The Hague.

We all know too what would have followed if it had been the Syrian air force that had bombed a weapons depot and convoys in Israel and not the other way round. Why do we tolerate such brazen hypocrisy?

There is no legal or moral basis for saying that the US and its allies should be able to do things, which if done by other countries, would be condemned as wrong and punished with the imposition of sanctions and/or military attack or invasion. International law and the principles of non-interference in other nations should apply equally to all: regardless of the country’s political system or form of government. The British government has no more right to interfere in the internal affairs of Syria than the Syrian government has to interfere in the internal affairs of Great Britain. The US has no more right to ‘regime change’ in countries bordering Russia, than Russia has to ‘regime change’ in countries bordering the US.

We need a new international order based on the equality of all sovereign nations: a new “World of Equals”, as envisaged by this year’s Belgrade Forum, whose declaration can be read here. If we can imagine that and work to put it in place by exposing current western hypocrisy and double standards whenever they occur then the world would be a much safer place.

May 24, 2014

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/24/the-state-departments-ukraine-fiasco/

Exclusive: The State Department’s handling of the Ukraine crisis may go down as a textbook diplomatic fiasco, doing nothing to advance genuine U.S. interests while disrupting cooperation with Moscow and pushing Russia and China back together, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

American diplomacy, by definition, is supposed to advance the national interests of the United States, not contribute to international crises that undermine those interests. Yet, by that standard, the U.S. State Department and Secretary of State John Kerry have failed extraordinarily during the current Ukraine crisis.

Besides ripping Ukraine apart – and getting scores of Ukrainians killed – the U.S.-supported coup in February has injected more uncertainty into Europe’s economy by raising doubts about the continued supply of Russian natural gas. Such turbulence is the last thing that Europe’s fragile “recovery” needs as mass unemployment now propels the rise of right-wing parties and threatens the future of the European Union.

Any new business downturn in Europe also would inflict harm on the U.S. economy, which itself is still clawing its way out of a long recession and needs a healthy Europe as an important trading partner. But the crisis in Ukraine, spurred on by Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and other anti-Russian hardliners, is now complicating the U.S. recovery, too.

There’s also the problematic impact of pulling Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and locking it into Europe’s: the scheme would shift the financial burden for Ukraine’s impoverished population of 45 million people onto Europe’s back, even as the EU is straining to meet the human needs of the jobless in Greece, Spain and other countries devastated by the Great Recession.

One of Ukraine’s principal exports to Europe has been low-wage Ukrainian workers, including participants in the criminal underworld, most notably prostitution. The willingness of Ukrainians to take the lowest-paying jobs across Europe has exacerbated the Continent’s unemployment situation and is sure to become an even bigger problem if a bankrupt Ukraine is more fully integrated into Europe.

Plus, the State Department’s endless stoking of tensions between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin has caused other complications for U.S. foreign policy, including what is emerging as a historic rapprochement between China and Russia, a coming together highlighted by the signing of a major new gas deal on Wednesday.

The $400 billion pact means that Putin, in effect, has countered U.S. efforts to use limited U.S./EU sanctions to isolate Russia by deftly playing the China card and aligning the two emerging countries as an economic and political counterforce to American dominance.

Though the natural gas deal has been in the works for months, the Ukraine crisis provided the urgency to get the agreement signed. The crisis also provided the impetus to solidify the closer geopolitical bonding between China, the world’s ascending economy, and Russia, its resource-rich neighbor.

The two longtime adversaries, who faced off as communist rivals during the Cold War, have joined together recently as a bloc on the United Nations Security Council to block Western initiatives on Syria, for instance. That means that instead of isolating Russia at the UN, the State Department’s hawkish approach to Ukraine has had the opposite effect. Russia now has a new and powerful ally.

The Ukraine crisis could inflict other collateral damage on President Obama’s initiatives toward resolving thorny disputes around Syria’s civil war and Iran’s nuclear program. In both areas, President Putin provided important assistance to President Obama in securing agreements: Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to accept constraints on its nuclear activity.

Though the Russians have not pulled out of those U.S. collaborations yet, the strains over Ukraine – if they are not eased – could undermine valuable cooperation toward reaching resolution of those two complicated and dangerous Mideast problems.

Pouring Fuel in the Fire

Yet, even as President Putin and other Russian leaders have tempered their rhetoric regarding Ukraine in recent weeks, the U.S. State Department continues to talk tough, bombarding Putin with both warnings and insults.

Typical were the comments in the lead story of the Washington Post on Saturday with writer Karen DeYoung quoting State Department and other U.S. officials berating Putin despite his conciliatory remarks about his willingness to work with the new Ukrainian government that will emerge from a disputed election on Sunday.

She wrote: “Western governments express deep uncertainty at what Russia will do, and it was symptomatic of their equally deep mistrust of Putin that few took him at his word [about working with the new government]. U.S. officials parsed his language as leaving a hole big enough to drive a brigade of Russian soldiers through.”

The Post quoted the harsh rhetoric emanating from State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, who told the Russians: “Pull the rest of your troops back. … Put your money where your words are. Come on.”

DeYoung herself termed the Russian military deployment along Ukraine’s eastern border “threatening,” but didn’t mention the Russian rationale for the initial deployment, as an effort to deter the slaughter of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who objected to the violent overthrow of their elected President Viktor Yanukovych. This context of what’s happening in eastern Ukraine is almost always missing.

Instead, the major U.S. news media, particularly the New York Times, has made great fun by mocking Putin as a liar for saying that, first, he had ordered Russian troops to pull back from the border, and then that he ordered some to return to their bases. The Times conflated these two different statements as one and then favorably quoted NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as saying there was no evidence of a Russian pullback. Gotcha, another Putin lie!

Yet, while showing their trust in Rasmussen’s honesty and forthrightness, the Times and other mainstream outlets haven’t bothered to inform their readers that this was the same Anders Fogh Rasmussen who as Danish prime minister last decade was a staunch supporter of the Iraq War and a gullible believer in President George W. Bush’s claims about Iraq’s non-existent WMD.

For instance, Prime Minister Rasmussen declared, “Iraq has WMDs. It is not something we think, it is something we know. Iraq has itself admitted that it has had mustard gas, nerve gas, anthrax, but Saddam won’t disclose. He won’t tell us where and how these weapons have been destroyed. We know this from the UN inspectors, so there is no doubt in my mind.”

Pretty much everything in that statement was wrong — and Rasmussen appears to have been wrong, too, about Russia’s pullback of troops, which has now been confirmed, at least in part, by the Pentagon. But, for days, the Times let Rasmussen, in effect, call Putin a liar without any independent checking, just one more sign of the long pattern of U.S. media bias against Russia during the Ukraine crisis. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Twisting Putin’s Words on Ukraine.”]

Blaming Russia

In line with that bias pervading the mainstream U.S. media for months, the Post’s DeYoung added her own inflammatory rhetoric, stating “if Russian-inspired violence breaks out, it could be the start of far more serious and widespread international upheaval.” All violence, it seems, must be “Russian-inspired.”

DeYoung is presumably referring to the resistance in eastern Ukraine against the imposition of the coup regime’s authority. The U.S. media has repeatedly treated these ethnic Russians in the east as Putin’s “minions,” being armed and directed by Russian special forces although no evidence has emerged to support that allegation.[See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Retracts Russian-Photo Scoop.”]

But DeYoung’s characterization of “Russian-inspired violence” fits with Official Washington’s “group think” that has treated the Ukraine crisis as instigated by Putin supposedly so he can begin reclaiming territory lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

But the evidence clearly indicates that the uprising in Kiev was driven by a mix of popular dissatisfaction with Yanukovych, Western support and encouragement for the disorders, and violent neo-Nazi militias that despise the ethnic Russians in the east and spearheaded the Feb. 22 putsch that drove Yanukovych from office.

Still, the U.S. mainstream media has insisted on whitewashing the neo-Nazis brown shirts because their key involvement complicates the preferred American narrative of white-hat idealistic protesters taking on black-hat Yanukovych, backed by even blacker-hat Putin. Any reference to the well-documented role of neo-Nazis militias in the putsch is dismissed as “Russian propaganda” or the “Russian narrative.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s Inconvenient Neo-Nazis.”]

So, instead of a balanced account, the American people have been fed Official Washington’s “group think” of some master conspiracy engineered by Putin that requires your believing that Putin first orchestrated the EU’s reckless association offer to Ukraine last year, then got the International Monetary Fund to insist on draconian austerity measures which Yanukovych rejected, then arranged the angry demonstrations at the Maidan while also secretly training neo-Nazi militias in western Ukraine to provide the muscle to carry out the February putsch – all the while pretending that he was trying to save Yanukovych’s government and appearing to be distracted by the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Of course, this grand conspiracy theory never made any sense and also lacked any evidence. What really happened was that neoconservatives in and around the State Department and Congress fed the flames of western Ukraine’s discontent against Yanukovych’s government that had been elected primarily with votes from the southern and eastern ethnic Russian sections.

The Neocon Role

There were, of course, legitimate complaints about Ukraine’s pervasive political corruption, which has been an endemic problem since the hasty privatization that followed the Soviet collapse in 1991 and turned Ukraine into a country dominated by a handful of extremely wealthy oligarchs.

But the evidence is clear that powerful neoconservatives in Washington, including some still ensconced at the State Department, helped organize U.S. support for the protests that led to Yanukovych’s ouster.

In late September, the neocons were furious over Putin helping Obama find a way out of an impending U.S. attack on Syria, an intervention that the neocons hoped might notch another “regime change” on their belts. So, their focus quickly turned to driving a wedge between the two leaders, with Ukraine becoming that wedge.

Carl Gershman, a leading neocon and longtime president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to urge the U.S. government to push European “free trade” agreements on Ukraine and other former Soviet states and thus counter Moscow’s efforts to maintain close relations with those countries.

The ultimate goal, according to Gershman, was isolating and possibly toppling Putin in Russia with Ukraine the key piece on this global chessboard. “Ukraine is the biggest prize,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

In furtherance of these goals, NED funded scores of projects in Ukraine, training activists, financing “journalists” and organizing business groups, according to NED’s annual report.

After Yanukovych rejected the IMF’s terms for European association as too drastic – because they would hit the already hard-hit Ukrainian people even harder – his removal from power became the State Department’s goal, as Assistant of State Nuland urged on the demonstrators in the Maidan by passing out cookies and reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.”

Sen. John McCain, a leading neocon hawk, also showed up in Kiev to rally the protesters, speaking next to a Svoboda party banner honoring World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera whose paramilitary force helped exterminate Jews and Poles. Bandera is a hero to the right-wing nationalists in western Ukraine though despised by the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

In an intercepted phone call, Nuland was caught telling U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt that her preference to replace Yanukovych was Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom she called “Yats.” After the Feb. 22 coup, Yatsenyuk emerged as the new prime minister with the neo-Nazis gaining control of four ministries, including the office of national security headed by neo-Nazi Andriy Parubiy. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine, Through the US ‘Looking Glass’.”]

One of Yatsenyuk’s first moves was to approve the IMF austerity plan, while Parubiy incorporated some of the neo-Nazi militias into the National Guard and dispatched them as storm troopers to confront the resistance to the coup regime in the east.

Amid all the political chaos and violations of the Ukrainian constitution (which was ignored in the abrupt impeachment of Yanukovych), Crimea arranged a hasty referendum which showed some 96 percent support for seceding from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, a request that Putin and the Russian government accepted.

Typically, the New York Times and other major outlets summarize the Crimean switch as a Russian “invasion” with Putin supposedly dispatching troops to seize control of the peninsula with the help of a “sham” referendum.

Almost never does the U.S. press note that the Russian troops were already in Crimea under an arrangement with Ukraine allowing Russians to maintain their historic naval base at Sevastapol. The vote also clearly reflected the popular will of the Crimean people given their historic ties to Russia and the chaos in Ukraine.

Medvedev’s Comments

“We did not annex any part of Ukraine,” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told Bloomberg News this past week, “The population of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea held a referendum and voted for self-determination and for joining Russia in accordance with the existing procedure. And that’s what they did.

“They started by proclaiming independence and after that, they asked to join Russia. We satisfied their request. The Russian Constitution was amended so that Crimea could join Russia as the result of a popular vote. Crimea is a special and unique story.” That was a reference to Crimea being a longtime part of Russia.

Regarding any other parts of Ukraine, Medvedev added, “Any conjectures about Russia wanting to annex some territories are mere propaganda. … It is essential to calm tensions in Ukraine. We all see what’s happening there: the situation is nothing short of a civil war, as a matter of fact. This is what we should all be thinking about.”

Pressed by Bloomberg’s Ryan Chilcote on guaranteeing that Russia would not accede to requests from Ukrainian separatists in eastern Ukraine, Medvedev responded, “we (I’m referring to all those who sympathize with Ukraine – European countries and as far as I understand, the United States and, of course, Russia, which is the closest to Ukraine) should do all we can to de-escalate tensions – a measure that everyone is talking about now.

“In other words, we should do everything to stop the spread of civil war on Ukrainian territory. As for the positions of people in Lugansk, Donetsk and other [eastern] parts of Ukraine, our stance is simple – their positions deserve respect. If they hold some referendums, we should understand what they want and why they express such views.

“So in the future, the main point is to make sure that Ukraine’s central, de facto authorities and those who live in these parts of Ukraine establish a fully-fledged dialogue based on mutual respect and understanding, a dialogue that takes into account the position of eastern Ukraine. This would ease tensions; otherwise the conflict will continue, and we will most likely hear the same appeals [for secession] that were discussed at the referendums.”

Medvedev added: “Let our partners in the dialogue, namely the EU and the United States, guarantee us something, for example, that they won’t interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs. Let our Western partners guarantee us that they won’t lure Ukraine into NATO, that the Russian language won’t be prohibited in eastern Ukraine, and that some senseless movement such as the Right Sector won’t start killing people there. Let our partners guarantee this.”

The key Ukraine question now is: Can Putin and Obama overcome Official Washington’s chest-thumping hysteria and deescalate the violence — along with the rhetoric — for the good of all rational parties in the dispute?

I’m told that Putin, though stung by Obama initially joining the anti-Russian stampede, has begun working again with Obama with the goal of a possible summit meeting in Normandy on June 6 during the ceremonies honoring the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

Yet, even if the pieces of a shattered Ukraine can be glued back together, one still has to wonder why the U.S. State Department and other parts of Official Washington undertook this provocative project in the first place: contributing to the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government, violently destabilizing the country, heightening tensions with Russia, stirring up new threats to the EU and U.S. economies, and pushing Russia and China back together.

It may be understandable at some level that the still-powerful neocons saw the Ukraine wedge as a useful tool in splintering the Putin-Obama cooperation that had eased tensions over Syria and Iran – two of the neocons’ top targets for “regime change” – but it remains a mystery how anyone could think that the Ukraine adventure has served U.S. national interests.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

– from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

e-mail: zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

One can too easily blame capitalism for debasing the culture and intellectual life of the US. The profit motive has surely placed commercial success ahead of artistic merit. Independent purveyors of art and ideas have been either co opted and absorbed by monopoly corporations or ground to a pulp attempting to compete with corporate-sponsored rivals. Culture has become corporate culture, despite the democratizing relief sometimes offered by the Internet.

From producer to consumer, arts and entertainment corporations are the ever-present intermediaries for successful production and realization of cultural commodities. Their goal is profit and not artistic merit.

Similarly, the humanities have been marginalized through the marketization of higher education. The ever present mantra of “running everything like a business” has deeply infected the process of learning, thus sending philosophy, political studies, literature, history and other humanities to the dustbin. That which cannot pay its way deserves no place in the university, say administrators wedded to best business practices. Consequently, the appreciation for and vibrant generation of the humanities is stunted by the dominance of the “practicality” of the sciences and business. Higher learning becomes learning for a purpose, namely, getting ahead.

But the arts and independent thought are threatened by other factors as well. While even those friendly to capitalism will give a reluctant acknowledgment of the economic factors that diminish culture and humanistic pursuits, few accept the significant role of politics in stunting culture and learning. Of course many will readily agree that right wing zealots chip away politically at the liberal values that are believed to be the foundation for cultural and intellectual enrichment. They will eagerly concede that pornography police and music censors retard the free flow of ideas. But they, nonetheless, celebrate the US democratic spirit that continues to nourish the spring of cultural production and intellectual innovation.

Accordingly, they forget, or purposely overlook, the insidious role of Cold War repression that befell intellectual and cultural life in the US from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, with loud echoes today. For nearly a decade and a half, intellectual conformity on class, race, and Communism was rigorously enforced through punishment or fear, especially in the sensitive areas of culture and ideas (the battle of ideas is not merely in academia or among the men and women of letters but in the unions and mass organizations, where a vibrant incubation of radical ideas was replaced with a tepid, mediocre, and intolerant uniformity). Thousands of cultural and intellectual workers lost their jobs, were shunned, or blacklisted. Tens of thousands were frozen with fear and determined to assiduously avoid anything controversial.

Artists and intellectuals grew timid: ironically, some of the best popular cinema of the otherwise mediocre era was offered by ex-Communists who had made their mea culpas and thus earned the right to tackle edgy themes (for example, A Face in the Crowd (Kazan), Sweet Smell of Success, and The Big Knife (Odets). The best of television, a then-new medium seemingly happy to wallow in mediocrity, came from deeply covert writers who had been expelled from Hollywood. When vibrant African American music in the form of a subversive Rhythm and Blues stood to crack the cultural barriers, US entertainment corporations co-opted and whitened the music while transforming it into mildly titillating Rock and Roll (RCA and Elvis Presley), a safer alternative.

The false radicalism of Abstract Expressionism was promoted by a deeply conservative coterie of wealthy art impresarios intent upon overshadowing any subversive messages borne by representational art (see How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, Guilbaut). And mildly mocking satire of upper-middle-class and suburban mores a la New Yorker magazine became the gold standard of popular literature.

Youth rebellion, thought to be a biological imperative, found expression in the middle-class angst of the “beat” generation or through revisiting frontier toughness through the cult of the motorcycle. “Alienation” replaced “exploitation” as the theme of critiques of industrial society…..
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by: W. T. Whitney Jr.

May 15 2014 People’s World

Beginning over 50 years ago, terror attacks emanating from the United States struck ships, crops, and infrastructure in Cuba. They killed people there and around the world. Cuban leaders faced murder plots. Terrorists bombed an airliner fully loaded with passengers. Such murderous, destructive attacks seemed to stop, however, with the Havana hotel bombings in 1997. But you would have lost your bet that terrorist preparations had ended.
On May 7 Cuba’s Interior Ministry announced that four men of Cuban origin living in Miami were arrested on April 26. Jose Ortega Amador, Obdulio Rodríguez González, Raibel Pacheco Santos, and Félix Monzón Álvarez reportedly “admitted that they intended to attack Cuban military facilities in order to promote violence. [T]hree of them had traveled to Cuba in several occasions in 2013 to study the scene and prepare their actions.”

Why is this no surprise? One, the Miami area continues as a safe haven for Latin American terror perpetrators fleeing their homelands, Cuba in the lead with Venezuela not far behind. Secondly, the U.S. government, not shy about anti-terrorist rhetoric, never really has condemned terror assaults against Cuba. Third, U.S. government actions or inaction may signal official approval for anti-Cuban terror.

Thus Luis Posada entered the United States illegally in 2005, never to be convicted on that count, or for serious crimes, among them: the airliner bombing attack in 1976, Cuban hotel bombings, and his plan with others to assassinate former Cuban President Fidel Castro in Panama. Despite requests, the U. S. government refuses to extradite Posada to Venezuela to face legal proceedings related to the airliner bombing.

And in 1998 the Cuban government gave FBI personnel reams of incriminating material on terror activities in Florida. The FBI responded by arresting Cuban undercover agents who helped collect that intelligence information.

And at their trial in Miami, five of those anti-terrorist agents – now known as the Cuba Five- received sentences so outlandish as to suggest that some terrorism is allowable. Their combined total of four life sentences plus 75 years contrasts sharply with the usual 10-15 sentences handed out to defendants convicted of spying for Iraq, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, or Israel.

Moreover, the U.S. government made sure those anti-terrorists were convicted. Its Office for Cuba Broadcasting subsidized Miami area journalists to produce over 800 prejudicial newspaper reports or television presentation so as to influence community and jury before and during their long trial.

Lastly, for the sake of destabilization a flood of U.S. money flows through private and university affiliated agencies in Southern Florida on its way to counter-revolutionaries in Cuba. Likely fallout from such a program would be a community ethos that encourages the terrorist faithful to move ahead on their own.

The sparse announcement from the Cuban Interior Ministry indicated that the four men arrested “admitted that these plans have been organized under the leadership of Miami-based individuals, such as Santiago Álvarez Fernández Magriñá, Osvaldo Mitat, and Manuel Alzugaray who are closely linked to international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.”

Lawyer and construction magnate Álvarez contributed mightily to Miami’s terrorist-friendly atmosphere. In August 2004 he sent two airplanes to Panama to fetch Posada and three Miamians released early from prison to which they were sentenced for the assassination attempt against President Castro. Posada was dropped off in Honduras. Álvarez’ yacht brought him to Miami the following year.

In late 2005 Broward County police discovered Álvarez’ cache of 20 automatic weapons, plus grenades, a grenade launcher, ammunition, gas masks, and a silencer. Other illegal weapons belonging to Álvarez surfaced in the Bahamas. Through plea bargaining he and employee Osvaldo Mitat received reduced sentences of 30 months and two years, respectively. Allegedly Álvarez once tried to have Havana’s Tropicana nightclub bombed.

At far as the New York Times is concerned, the arrest in Cuba of men bent on terror is a Cuban problem, not a U.S. one. Its May 8 report said that Álvarez “denies any involvement in the alleged plot. Some others here (Miami) raised questions about how much the case is about crime and how much is about politics…. [A] week after Washington again kept Cuba on its short list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Cuban government publicly announced that violent plots persist. Cuba-watchers said the case was hard to separate from political theater.”

www.thecuban5.org

May 15, 2014

By Salim Lamrani

Since 2009, U. S. agent Alan Gross has been serving a fifteen year prison sentence in Cuba for providing material support to the Cuban opposition. In the meanwhile, three Cuban agents have been incarcerated in the United States since 1998. The possibility of an exchange of prisoners exists. The case of Gerardo Hernández, one of the three Cubans sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment, lends itself particularly well to such a humanitarian agreement. Here, in 25 points, are the reasons why.

1. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the radical sector of the Florida-based Cuban exile community increased its terrorist attacks against Cuba. The tourism industry – a vital sector of the fragile Cuban economy – was a particular target. Bomb attacks resulted in dozens of casualties. Faced with the immunity these violent fringe groups were receiving from U.S. authorities, the Havana government decided to send several agents to the United States to infiltrate these criminal organizations and prevent the realization of further potentially lethal acts.

2. In June 1998, after gathering evidence about the terrorist activities of 64 exiles living in Florida, the Cuban government invited two FBI officers to Havana in order to present them with the evidence that it had accumulated. But, rather than arresting those responsible for these crimes, the FBI arrested the five Cuban intelligence services agents who had infiltrated the criminal organizations: René González Sehweret, Ramón Labañino Salazar, Fernando González Llort, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez and Gerardo Hernández Nordelo.

3. Following a trial that has been denounced by many legal institutions for its numerous irregularities, the five Cubans nonetheless won their case on appeal from a three-judge panel of the Atlanta Court of Appeals. The tribunal found that they had not received a fair trial. The U.S. government, however, lodged an appeal and the Five eventually received a total of four sentences of life imprisonment, and an additional sentence of 77 years. On October 13, 2009, the Atlanta Court of Appeals instructed the Florida court to modify the prison sentences for three of the five defendants. The review that was conducted resulted in Antonio Guerrero’s penalty of life imprisonment plus 10 years being changed to 21 years plus 10 months, plus an additional penalty of five years of supervised release. On December 8, 2009, Fernando González’ sentence of 19 years was reduced to 17 years plus nine months. In the case of Ramón Labañino, his sentence of imprisonment for life plus 18 years was reduced to 30 years in prison. Rene González and Fernando González were freed after serving their entire sentences.

4. Gerardo Hernández was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment plus 15 years in prison for conspiracy to commit a quadruple murder. He is accused of being directly involved in an incident that occurred on February 24, 1996. That day two planes, manned by four pilots from the Florida-based organization Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR), were shot down by Cuban armed forces after having violated Cuban airspace 25 times in 20 months.

5. José Basulto, president of BTTR, a former CIA officer who had participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, is heavily implicated in terrorist acts against Cuba. In a Miami television interview Basulto publicly admitted to having participated in several strikes against Cuba, including a bazooka attack on a hotel in August of 1962.

6. BTTR was founded in 1991 to assist the Cubans trying to reach Florida by sea. In 1994, Washington and Havana signed immigration agreements that authorized the granting of 20,000 visas per year to Cubans wishing to emigrate. These agreements also provide that any person attempting to reach the United States by sea would be returned to Cuba. With this agreement, BTTR lost its reason for being and has since begun organizing raids inside Cuban airspace.

7. A chronology of events permits us to capture the key elements of this story. During the months preceding the serious incident of February 24, 1996, Cuban authorities warned the United States frequently, both through diplomatic notes and unofficial channels, that repeated violations of its airspace constituted a threat to Cuban national security and that the planes involved were running the risk of being shot down. Washington chose to ignore these warnings.

8. Ignoring the risk of being shot down, BTTR aircraft on several occasions provoked the Cuban armed forces by entering Cuban national airspace. In addition to its forays over the capital, BTTR planes created interference between the Havana control tower and aircraft landing at José Martí International Airport, thereby endangering the lives of thousands of Cuban passengers and foreign tourists.

9. On July 13, 1995, BTTR planes flew over the city of Havana and dropped 20,000 leaflets, inciting the population to rise up against the government.

10. On the same day, Cuban authorities sent a letter emphasizing the possibility of a military response to the Federal Aviation Administration. The letter underscored the illegal incursions into Cuban national airspace and the “serious consequences” that such acts could entail if they were to continue .

11. The Government of the United States, instead of taking the necessary measures to prevent such violations of international law, allowed BTTR the latitude necessary to pursue their incursions, despite the fact that the organization, since 1994, had repeatedly filled false flight plans with the Federal Aviation Administration.

12. At no time had Gerardo Hernández participated in the Cuban airspace violations, nor had he incited BTTR members to commit these illegal and dangerous acts. Moreover, Hernandez had never participated at the necessary hierarchical level within BTTR to prevent these flights. Everything was under the control of José Basulto.

13. The State Department issued several statements warning BTTR that its planes ran the risk of being shot down if they continued to violate Cuban airspace.

14. In January 1996, BTTR dropped 500,000 leaflets over Havana inciting the population to overthrow the government. On January 15, 1996, Cuba once again demanded that the U.S. put an end to the repeated violations of its airspace.

15. After new breaches of their national airspace in January 1996, Cuba warned Washington that if these overflights continued, the aircraft would be shot down. Havana reiterated these warnings to all U.S. public figures who visited the island between January 15 and February 23, 1996.

16. On January 22, 1996, the State Department sent an alert to the Federal Aviation Administration: “One of these days, the Cubans are going to shoot down one of those planes .” José Basulto had repeatedly stated in the media that he was aware of the danger.

17. In February 1996, Cuban authorities sent a message to their agents in Miami indicating that in no case should they participate in BTTR flights.

18. On February 23, 1996, the Federal Aviation Agency sent an “Alert Cuba” message to several agencies indicating that BTTR planned a new foray into Cuban airspace the following day. “The State Department said it would be unlikely that the Cuban government would exercise restraint this time .”

19. On 24 February 1996, the government of the United States warned the Cuban authorities that three BTTR planes had taken off from Miami and were able to penetrate Cuban airspace.

20. After several warnings, two of the three planes were shot down by Cuban forces in Cuban airspace, an action that constitutes an act of self-defence under international law. No country in the world – certainly not the United States – would have waited until the 26th violation of its airspace by an organization, after having made numerous appeals for help, to take such a measure.

21. However, the United States asserts that, according to its satellite data, the two planes were shot down in the international zone, which would constitute the crime for which Gerardo Hernández is accused. Of course, publication of satellite data would remove any ambiguity about the matter. However, since 1996, the United States has refused, for reasons of “national security,” to make this information public despite repeated requests from Gerardo Hernández’ lawyers.

22. In any case, Hernández has not been implicated in the decision to shoot down the planes, a decision that was taken by the Cuban authorities at the highest level.

23. In order to convict Gerardo Hernández, the prosecution needed to prove that there had been an illegal scheme afoot to shoot down BTTR aircraft in international airspace and that Hernández had precise knowledge of this scheme and in fact had supported such an action. The prosecution was unable to provide any evidence demonstrating the involvement of Gerardo Hernández in this drama. Better yet, the prosecutor acknowledged that “the evidence presented at trial that attempts [to prove the involvement of Gerardo Hernández] represents an insurmountable obstacle for the United States .”

24. Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch of the Atlanta Court of Appeals has spoken about the case of Gerardo Hernández: “A shoot down in Cuban airspace would not have been unlawful […]. It is not enough for the Government to show that a shoot down merely occurred in international airspace: the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hernández agreed to a shoot down in international airspace. Although such an agreement may be proven by circumstantial evidence, here, the Government failed to provide either direct or circumstantial evidence that Hernández agreed to a shoot down in international airspace. Instead, the evidence points out toward a confrontation in Cuban airspace, thus negating the requirement that he agreed to commit an unlawful act.”

25. For all of these reasons, Barack Obama should use his powers as President of the United States and pardon the three Cubans that are still imprisoned. This will have the immediate effect of freeing Alan Gross and improving relations between Washington and Havana.

Translated from the French by Larry R. Oberg

Docteur ès Etudes Ibériques et Latino-américaines at the University of Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV, Salim Lamrani is a Lecturer the University of La Réunion, and a journalist who specializes in relations between Cuba and the United States.

The author’s latest book is The Economic War against Cuba. A Historical and Legal Perspective on the U.S. Blockade, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2013. http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb3409/  (prologue by Wayne S. Smith and preface by Paul Estrade).

http://www.globalresearch.ca/cuban-five-a-prisoner-exchange-that-could-improve-relations-between-cuba-and-the-united-states/5382416

Contact : lamranisalim@yahoo.fr  ; Salim.Lamrani@univ-reunion.fr

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