By David Swanson WAR IS A CRIME Exposing the Saudi connection reveals the incredible hypocrisy of the US ruling class, writ large in the Clinton-Bush-Obama administrations.
MINDBLOGGING HYPOCRISY Bush kissing Saudi tyrant Abdullah. There is no limit to what the US ruling class will do to get their way. The gesture also sums up the repugnant mendacity of the Bush clan. And these people dare talk about fealty to democracy? (Public domain/public service)
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]as the United States compelled to attack Afghanistan and Iraq by the events of September 11, 2001? A key to answering that rather enormous question may lie in the secrets that the U.S. government is keeping about Saudi Arabia.
Some have long claimed that what looked like a crime on 9/11 was actually an act of war necessitating the response that has brought violence to an entire region and to this day has U.S. troops killing and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Could diplomacy and the rule of law have been used instead? Could suspects have been brought to trial? Could terrorism have been reduced rather than increased? The argument for those possibilities is strengthened by the fact that the United States has not chosen to attack Saudi Arabia, whose government is probably the region’s leading beheader and leading funder of violence.
But what does Saudi Arabia have to do with 9/11? Well, every account of the hijackers has most of them as Saudi. And there are 28 pages of a 9/11 Commission report that President George W. Bush ordered classified 13 years ago.
Senate Intelligence Committee former chair Bob Graham calls Saudi Arabia “a co-conspirator in 911,” and insists that the 28 pages back up that claim and should be made public.
Philip Zelikow, chair of the 9/11 Commission, has noted the “likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to Al Qaeda.”
Zacarias Moussaoui, a former al Qaeda member, has claimed that prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family were major donors to al Qaeda in the late 1990s and that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One using a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
Al Qaeda donors, according to Moussaoui, included Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many of the country’s leading clerics.
Bombing and invading Iraq has been a horrible policy. Supporting and arming Saudi Arabia is a horrible policy. Confirming Saudi Arabia’s role in funding al Qaeda should not become an excuse to bomb Saudi Arabia (of which there’s no danger) or for bigotry against Americans of Saudi origin (for which there’s no justification).
Rather, confirming that the Saudi government allowed and quite possibly participated in funneling money to al Qaeda should wake everyone up to the fact that wars are optional, not necessary. It might also help us question Saudi pressure on the U.S. government to attack new places: Syria and Iran. And it might increase support for cutting off the flow of U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia — a government that takes no second place to ISIS in brutality.
I’ve often heard that if we could prove that there weren’t really any hijackers on 9/11 all support for wars would vanish. One of many hurdles I’m unable to leap to arrive at that position is this one: Why would you invent hijackers to justify a war on Iraq but make the hijackers almost all be Saudi?
However, I think there’s a variation that works. If you could prove that Saudi Arabia had more to do with 9/11 than Afghanistan (which had very little to do with it) or Iraq (which had nothing to do with it), then you could point out the U.S. government’s incredible but very real restraint as it chooses peace with Saudi Arabia. Then a fundamental point would become obvious: War is not something the U.S. government is forced into, but something it chooses.
That’s the key, because if it can choose war with Iran or Syria or Russia, it can also choose peace.
This email may be unlawfully collected, held, and read by the NSA which violates our freedoms using the justification of immoral, illegal wars absurdly described as being somehow for freedom.
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Europe slouching towards anxiety and war
By Pepe Escobar | Reprinted from RT
Medusa, by Caravaggio (1595). A suitable icon for the modern tyranny of the Eurocrats. (Public domain)
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Rome’s ruins speak eloquently of the ephemeral qualities of empire. (CC BY-SA 2.5 pl)
The Medusa is rampaging, and hardcore squeezing launched by its myriad of troika serpents will be titanic. The next crucial showdown will be a Brussels summit of EU leaders on February 12. Perseus Tsipras better polish his shield and spear to perfection.
Better call Vlad
Then there’s the other crucial vector in this Age of Anxiety remix: Russia.
Moscow could indeed bail outbail out Athens, a possibility which has already been mentioned. So the Western corporate spin about Greece supporting this week’s extension of sanctions against Russian interests is nonsense.
Here is the essential background. And directly from Varoufakis, there is proof that Greece was not even consulted. Another nail in the lavish coffin of the myth of EU “democratic” practices.
Don’t expect puny EU puppets posing as “leaders” — who derive their prestige by being vassals of the amnesiac Empire of Chaos — to cultivate any historical memory. Which brings us to Ukraine.
Ukraine was — and remains — such a red line for Russia. And Washington and Brussels always knew it.
Moscow, slowly but surely, is starting to counter-punch on the financial/economic war unleashed by the Masters of the Universe. Moscow has finally — and painfully — understood that the real Masters of the Universe are those who control central bank credit. The notion that central banking is an independent mechanism is pure fiction; it answers to private banking groups.
In parallel, on the military chessboard, things are getting heavy. Moscow may finally sell S-300 anti-missile systems to Damascus and Tehran.
Moreover, Russian Armed Forces chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov has been on the record saying Moscow will immediately respond to a US missile defense system that violates the START III Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Pentagon analysts know very well how Russian weapons systems are superior to the US missile defense system.
And just in case puppets from Washington to Brussels are not listening, wait for the Star Wars S-500 anti-missile system, to be operational by 2017, or even earlier. The S-500 travels at the speed of 15,480 miles an hour, with a range of 2,174 miles — and is capable of shooting down any ICBM Washington can throw at Russia. Translation: Russian airspace sealed to any incoming US nuclear ICBM.
Unlike the loud, bully-bomb-drone-sanction Empire of Chaos, Russia speaks louder, with action, patience, and stealth — very much Asian qualities. While Russia is existentially attacked via the oil/ruble/derivatives war, its leaders are silently preparing for the worst.
Gorbachev — who knows one or two things about cold wars — does have a very serious point; if Washington persists in its folly, this could get terribly ugly, and Europe will be caught in the deadly crossfire.
Dreaming of another EU
Which brings us back to Rome. It does not hurt to imagine what would be an alternative EU, a “Roman” EU, centered in Rome, Athens, and Istanbul –not in Brussels-Frankfurt-Strasbourg. The center of the current EU happens to coincide with the center of the 8th/9th Century Frankish Empire; Charlemagne revisited — or, according to some historical strands, the first emperor who tried to unify Europe. Other historical currents privilege an even earlier strand of German raw power tamed by Gallic culture and sophistication.
I’d rather channel Gibbon, as I did this week, back to that night in October 1764 when, sitting in meditation in front of the Campidoglio (what a fabulous point of view), after a serious pilgrimage among Roman ruins, he decided to write “Decline and Fall,” the dissolution of a world that was literally founded in stone.
As Oxford’s Bryan Ward-Perkins has brilliantly noted, Europe carries at the deeper levels of its psyche the fear that if Rome crumbled, the same can happen to the most superb modern civilizations. And we all know, this current non-elected Eurocrat-ravaged EU — which despises Greece, antagonizes Russia, wallows in the mire of Empire of Chaos vassalage, and treats most of its citizens as heavily-taxed garbage — could hardly be described as “superb.”
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The controversy surrounding American Sniper
David Walsh
“The work never raises a single question about the legitimacy of the Iraq war, its origins, its historical context or its larger geopolitical implications. American Sniper is intended to block questioning and criticism…”
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he promotion and defense of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper is the latest means by which the political and media establishment in the US is pursuing its militaristic agenda. Such is the ferocity of this campaign that the relatively toothless critical comments of filmmaker Michael Moore and actor-director Seth Rogen have provoked controversy and brought down upon them a torrent of abuse. The two have been denounced as “traitors,” and Moore has received death threats.
American Sniper
American Sniper is part of the effort to create a mythology around the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US military, an undertaking that has destroyed that Middle Eastern country’s infrastructure, provoked a murderous sectarian civil war and led to the deaths of one million or more Iraqis. The motive is not simply to legitimize past crimes, but to intimidate and poison public opinion and undermine opposition to future and even greater crimes.
Eastwood’s protestations about his movie beg the question whether the man is a complete hypocrite or a clueless moron unable to see the obvious sociopolitical effects of the films he so carefully crafts.-Eds
The hero of American Sniper is Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), a Navy SEAL who reportedly killed 160 or more Iraq insurgents. The film paints him as an upright, patriotic, God-fearing individual who was prompted to join the military, above all, by the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks.
The sequences set in Iraq present the American forces as engaged in a righteous campaign against an almost inconceivably savage and evil foe. American Sniper’s attitude toward Iraqis, and Arabs generally, is hostile and contemptuous. The US forces represent order, modernity, civilization and sanity; the Iraqis—superstition, backwardness, treachery and violence. The American soldiers are obliged, according to the logic of the film, to exterminate great numbers of Iraqis both in self-defense and as some sort of act of public hygiene.
The work never raises a single question about the legitimacy of the Iraq war, its origins, its historical context or its larger geopolitical implications. American Sniper is intended to block questioning and criticism.
A determined attempt is underway in the US to revive the jingoistic spirit of “My country, right or wrong,” so discredited in the eyes of millions through the experience of the Vietnam War.
The primitivism of the film’s outlook is matched by the primitivism of the psychology and motivations depicted. The stolid Kyle is single-minded about protecting American lives; his rather whiny wife is single-minded about having him return home; the filthy Iraqis are single-minded about killing Americans, etc. Whitewashing a bloody, criminal operation in a comprehensive fashion is a time-consuming and, in its own way, demanding task; the filmmakers had little energy left over to create believable, complex human characters or dialogue.
It should be noted that Eastwood’s film considerably downplays and dilutes Kyle’s semi-fascistic views and behavior. Cooper is a far more subdued and sorrowful individual than Kyle as the latter describes himself in his autobiography.
The son of a Southwestern Bell and AT&T manager, who was also a deacon and owned a small business, Kyle (whose plan was to become a ranch manager) grew up in semi-rural, north-central Texas in an atmosphere steeped in militarism, anti-communism and “family and traditional values.” It is hard to conceive of a more reactionary background.
As for Kyle’s insights into the Iraq war, his ghost-written memoir states: “Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages.’”
He adds: “My country sent me out there so that bullshit wouldn’t make its way back to our shores. I never once fought for the Iraqis. I could give a flying fuck about them… I loved what I did. I still do… it was fun. I had the time of my life being a SEAL.”
When he was investigated for allegedly killing an unarmed civilian, Kyle, an anti-Muslim bigot, told an army colonel: “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”
Kyle also served briefly as a bodyguard for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Extreme right-wing Christian fanaticism and related fascistic notions are reportedly prevalent in elite US death squads such as the SEALs and Army Special Forces.
The liberal critics, who have either shifted far to the right themselves or are thoroughly cowed, generally responded favorably to American Sniper. David Denby in the New Yorker, for example, argued that the film “is both a devastating war movie and a devastating antiwar movie, a subdued celebration of a warrior’s skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery.”
The New York Times’ A.O. Scott, while not quite placing the present work among Eastwood’s “great movies,” found that “its considerable power derives from the clarity and sincerity of its bedrock convictions. Less a war movie than a western… it is blunt and effective, though also troubling.”
Official Hollywood joined in the foul campaign to promote American SniperJanuary 15 by bestowing six Academy Award nominations on the film, including in the Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay categories.
The critics, the media and the entertainment establishment were clearly going to present no problem to the pro-war counter-offensive aimed at deadening public consciousness.
The “controversy” that emerged in late January was more of a provocation than anything else. The ultra-right, pleased as punch with the film and its commercial success, was simply waiting for someone well known to say the wrong thing.
American Sniper
When Michael Moore and Seth Rogen (fresh from participating in his own sinister provocation, the anti-North Korean film The Interview ) uttered a couple of “wrong things,” they were pounced on and undeservedly branded as opponents of the valiant American military.
On January 18, without mentioning the film, Moore tweeted, “We were taught that snipers were cowards… Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders [are] worse.” He tweeted a second time to the effect that defending “your home… from invaders” who have come 7,000 miles was “brave.”
Rogen tweeted January 19 that American Sniper “kinda reminded me” of the Nazi propaganda film shown in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
The two came under ferocious attack. Rogen threw in the towel immediately, asserting he had been misunderstood: “I actually liked American Sniper. It just reminded me of the Tarantino scene… I wasn’t comparing the two.”
Moore’s quick retreat did more damage to the left than if he had kept his peace. His zig-zags are typical of softheaded liberalism. (Ryota Nakanishi, via flickr)
Moore, who hasn’t a political leg left to stand on (especially after vociferously defending Kathryn Bigelow’s pro-torture Zero Dark Thirty ), wrote a miserable, defensive comment on Facebook in which he disputed the right-wing’s claim that “Michael Moore hates the troops.” He asserted that he had opposed the “senseless” Iraq war, but insisted, “I’m the one who has supported these troops,” and referred to the “brave young men and women” of the military.
This is truly fighting on your knees. It is one thing to explain that individual members of the armed forces are not responsible for the crimes of the US government and military, and that they are also victims of the imperialist war drive. It is quite another to praise the troops as heroes, as though the fact that they are involved in crimes is of no consequence, and accommodate oneself to the permanent militarism that has afflicted the US for the past 15 years, as Moore does.
The occupation of Iraq produced the decimation of Fallujah (where white phosphorus was used) and other cities where resistance was put up, the barbarity in Abu Ghraib, the massacre in Haditha, the gang-rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family in Al-Mahmudiyah, the war crimes committed by the group of US military personnel in Baghdad known as the “Leavenworth 10,” the murders carried out by Marines in Hamdania, the Baghdad airstrike known as “Collateral Murder,” and countless other atrocities.
Violence and mayhem directed against the Iraqi population were committed by American forces in Iraq on a daily basis, only a tiny portion of which ever became public knowledge. That is the nature of colonial “counter-insurgency.” The US military-intelligence apparatus is the principal force for violence and terror on the planet, as masses of people around the globe understand all too well.
The American Sniper affair needs to be seen in the context of the unremitting drive to glorify the US military, intimidate and overcome opposition, and make those who are hostile to war and militarism feel isolated and alone. The desperate character of the pro-militarist effort speaks to the crisis of American capitalism, whose efforts in the Middle East and Central Asia have so far resulted largely in reversals and failure.
Whatever the intentions of the aging Eastwood, who continues to insist that his film is “antiwar,” American Sniper serves to fuel xenophobia and, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, fan anti-Muslim hatred and violence. In its own way, this crude propaganda effort demonstrates that American imperialism has no intention of withdrawing from the Middle East, or any other part of the globe. The entire business comes as a serious warning.
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Washington’s Armchair Warriors Want War with Russia
Robert Parry What happened to that Reset button?
The armchair warriors of Official Washington are eager for a new war, and they are operating from the same sort of mindless “group think” and hostility to dissent that proved so disastrous in Iraq.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f you wonder how the lethal “group think” on Iraq took shape in 2002, you might want to study what’s happening today with Ukraine. A misguided consensus has grabbed hold of Official Washington and has pulled in everyone who “matters” and tossed out almost anyone who disagrees.
Part of the problem, in both cases, has been that neocon propagandists understand that in the modern American media the personal is the political, that is, you don’t deal with the larger context of a dispute, you make it about some easily demonized figure. So, instead of understanding the complexities of Iraq, you focus on the unsavory Saddam Hussein.
The verminous neocon Elliott Abrams has made a career of pushing for criminal policies. He cut his teeth in the Reagan administration. His baleful influence continues unchallenged to this day. (Miller Center, via flickr)
This approach has been part of the neocon playbook at least since the 1980s when many of today’s leading neocons – such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan – were entering government and cut their teeth as propagandists for the Reagan administration. Back then, the game was to put, say, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega into the demon suit, with accusations about him wearing “designer glasses.” Later, it was Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and then, of course, Saddam Hussein.
Instead of Americans coming to grips with the painful history of Central America, where the U.S. government has caused much of the [appalling] violence and dysfunction, or in Iraq, where Western nations don’t have clean hands either, the story was made personal – about the demonized leader – and anyone who provided a fuller context was denounced as an “Ortega apologist” or a “Noriega apologist” or a “Saddam apologist.”
So, American skeptics were silenced and the U.S. government got to do what it wanted without serious debate. In Iraq, for instance, the American people would have benefited from a thorough airing of the complexities of Iraqi society – such as the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shiite – and the potential risks of invading under the dubious rationale of WMD.
But there was no thorough debate about anything: not about international law that held “aggressive war” to be “the supreme international crime”; not about the difficulty of putting a shattered Iraq back together after an invasion; not even about the doubts within the U.S. intelligence community about whether Iraq possessed usable WMD and whether Hussein had any ties to al-Qaeda.
All the American people heard was that Saddam Hussein was “a bad guy” and it was America’s right and duty to get rid of “bad guys” who supposedly had dangerous WMDs that they might share with other “bad guys.” To say that this simplistic argument was an insult to a modern democracy would be an understatement, but the propaganda worked because almost no one in the mainstream press or in academia or in politics dared speak out.
Those who could have made a difference feared for their careers – and they were “right” to have those fears, at least in the sense that it was much safer, career-wise, to run with the herd than to stand in the way. Even after the Iraq War had turned into an unmitigated disaster with horrific repercussions reaching to the present, the U.S. political/media establishment undertook no serious effort to impose accountability.
Almost no one who joined in the Iraq “group think” was punished. It turns out that there truly is safety in numbers. Many of those exact same people are still around holding down the same powerful jobs as if nothing horrible had happened in Iraq. Their pontifications still are featured on the most influential opinion pages in American journalism, with the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman a perfect example.
Though Friedman has been [intentionally] wrong again and again (and he knows it, but that’s the job of a propagandist—Eds.), he is still regarded as perhaps the preeminent foreign policy pundit in the U.S. media. Which brings us to the issue of Ukraine and Russia.
A New Cold War
From the start of the Ukraine crisis in fall 2013, the New York Times, the Washington Post and virtually every mainstream U.S. news outlet have behaved as dishonestly as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq. Objectivity and other principles of journalism have been thrown out the window. The larger context of both Ukrainian politics and Russia’s role has been ignored.
Again, it’s all been about demonized “bad guys” – in this case, Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s elected President Vladimir Putin – versus the “pro-Western good guys” who are deemed model democrats even as they collaborated with neo-Nazis to overthrow a constitutional order.
Again, the political is made personal: Yanukovych had a pricy sauna in his mansion; Putin rides a horse shirtless and doesn’t favor gay rights. So, if you raise questions about U.S. support for last year’s coup in Ukraine, you somehow must favor pricy saunas, riding shirtless and holding bigoted opinions about gays.
“Those who could have made a difference feared for their careers – and they were “right” to have those fears, at least in the sense that it was much safer, career-wise, to run with the herd than to stand in the way…”
Anyone who dares protest the unrelentingly one-sided coverage is deemed a “Putin apologist” or a “stooge of Moscow.” So, most Americans – in a position to influence public knowledge but who want to stay employable – stay silent, just as they did during the Iraq War stampede.
One of the ugly but sadly typical cases relates to Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen, who has been denounced by some of the usual neocon suspects for deviating from the “group think” that blames the entire Ukraine crisis on Putin. The New Republic, which has gotten pretty much every major issue wrong during my 37 years in Washington, smeared Cohen as “Putin’s American toady.” (See Appendix for an example of this kind of attack, by Cathy Young, an employee of the WaPo/Slate propaganda machine.)
And, if you think that Cohen’s fellow scholars are more tolerant of a well-argued dissent, the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies further proved that deviation from the “group think” on Ukraine is not to be tolerated.
The academic group spurned a fellowship program, which it had solicited from Cohen’s wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, because the program’s title included Cohen’s name. “It’s no secret that there were swirling controversies surrounding Professor Cohen,” Stephen Hanson, the group’s president, told the New York Times.
In a protest letter to the group, Cohen called this action “a political decision that creates serious doubts about the organization’s commitment to First Amendment rights and academic freedom.” He also noted that young scholars in the field have expressed fear for their professional futures if they break from the herd.
He mentioned the story of one young woman scholar who dropped off a panel to avoid risking her career in case she said something that could be deemed sympathetic to Russia.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: When even this man, demonstrably one of the great malignant figures of US foreign policy, and fanatical anti-Russian, begins to sound like the voice of reason, we know the country’s leadership has gone off the rails. (CSIS, flickr)
Cohen noted, too, that even established foreign policy figures, ex-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, have been accused in the Washington Postof “advocating that the West appease Russia,” with the notion of “appeasement” meant “to be disqualifying, chilling, censorious.” (Kissinger had objected to the comparison of Putin to Hitler as unfounded.)
In other words, as the United States rushes into a new Cold War with Russia, we are seeing the makings of a new McCarthyism, challenging the patriotism of anyone who doesn’t get into line. But this conformity of thought presents a serious threat to U.S. national security and even the future of the planet.
It may seem clever for some New Republic blogger or a Washington Post writer to insult anyone who doesn’t accept the over-the-top propaganda on Russia and Ukraine – much as they did to people who objected to the rush to war in Iraq – but a military clash with nuclear-armed Russia is a crisis of a much greater magnitude.
Botching Russia
Professor Cohen has been one of the few scholars who was right in criticizing Official Washington’s earlier “group think” about post-Soviet Russia, a reckless and mindless approach that laid the groundwork for today’s confrontation.
To understand why Russians are so alarmed by U.S. and NATO meddling in Ukraine, you have to go back to those days after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Instead of working with the Russians to transition carefully from a communist system to a pluralistic, capitalist one, the U.S. prescription was “shock therapy.” [Note: Parry here, as a genuine liberal, seems to imply that a transition from communism to a “pluralistic capitalism” was a good and desirable thing, but it wasn’t and it isn’t. In what country on earth is this wonderful pluralistic capitalism to be found? Nor does he indicate why the USSR imploded, not only as result of inevitable domestic policy errors, but a 75 year war waged nonstop by the West to prevent the Soviet system from showing its true superiority over plutocratic rule.—Eds)
As American “free market” experts descended on Moscow during the pliant regime of Boris Yeltsin, well-connected Russian thieves and their U.S. compatriots plundered the country’s wealth, creating a handful of billionaire “oligarchs” and leaving millions upon millions of Russians in a state of near starvation, with a collapse in life expectancy rarely seen in a country not at war.
Yet, despite the desperation of the masses, American journalists and pundits hailed the “democratic reform” underway in Russia with glowing accounts of how glittering life could be in the shiny new hotels, restaurants and bars of Moscow. Complaints about the suffering of average Russians were dismissed as the grumblings of losers who failed to appreciate the economic wonders that lay ahead.
As recounted in his 2001 book, Failed Crusade, Cohen correctly describes this fantastical reporting as journalistic “malpractice” that left the American people misinformed about the on-the-ground reality in Russia. The widespread suffering led Vladimir Putin, who succeeded Yeltsin, to pull back on the wholesale privatization, to punish some oligarchs and to restore some of the social safety net.
Though the U.S. mainstream media portrays Putin as essentially a tyrant, his elections and approval numbers indicate that he commands broad popular support, in part, because he stood up to some oligarchs (though he still worked with others). Yet, Official Washington continues to portray oligarchs whom Putin jailed as innocent victims of a tyrant’s revenge.
Last October, after Putin pardoned one jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, neocon Freedom House sponsored a Washington dinner in his honor, hailing him as one of Russia’s political heroes. “I have to say I’m impressed by him,” declared Freedom House President David Kramer. “But he’s still figuring out how he can make a difference.”
New York Times writer Peter Baker fairly swooned at Khodorkovsky’s presence. “If anything, he seemed stronger and deeper than before” prison, Baker wrote. “The notion of prison as cleansing the soul and ennobling the spirit is a powerful motif in Russian literature.”
Yet, even Khodorkovsky, who is now in his early 50s, acknowledged that he “grew up in Russia’s emerging Wild West capitalism to take advantage of what he now says was a corrupt privatization system,” Baker reported.
In other words, Khodorkovsky was admitting that he obtained his vast wealth through a corrupt process, though by referring to it as the “Wild West” Baker made the adventure seem quite dashing and even admirable when, in reality, Khodorkovsky was a key figure in the plunder of Russia that impoverished millions of his countrymen and sent many to early graves.
In the 1990s, Professor Cohen was one of the few scholars with the courage to challenge the prevailing boosterism for Russia’s “shock therapy.” He noted even then the danger of mistaken “conventional wisdom” and how it strangles original thought and necessary skepticism.
“Much as Russia scholars prefer consensus, even orthodoxy, to dissent, most journalists, one of them tells us, are ‘devoted to group-think’ and ‘see the world through a set of standard templates,’” wrote Cohen. “For them to break with ‘standard templates’ requires not only introspection but retrospection, which also is not a characteristic of either profession.”
A Plodding Pundit
American by birth but Israeli by allegiance, the fatuous Tom Friedman, an imperial propagandist par excellence, has used his high perch on the New York Times to sell wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and other tragic theaters of American meddling, not to mention shill for Israel’s despicable treatment of the Palestinians. He is now busy providing excuses for a US confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine—an Armageddon-in-the-making manufactured by the neocon brigade in Washington. Friedman is the kind of toxic columnist that typifies the squalid Western punditocracy—and mainstream journalists, in general— a profession riddled with people who routinely put their cozy careers serving the status quo ahead of their duty to inform.
Arguably, no one in journalism proves that point better than New York Times columnist Friedman, who is at best a pedestrian thinker plodding somewhere near the front of the herd. But Friedman’s access to millions of readers on the New York Times op-ed page makes him an important figure in consolidating the “group think” no matter how askew it is from reality.
Friedman played a key role in lining up many Americans behind the invasion of Iraq and is doing the same in the current march of folly into a new Cold War with Russia, including now a hot war on Russia’s Ukrainian border. In one typically mindless but inflammatory column, entitled “Czar Putin’s Next Moves,” Friedman decided it was time to buy into the trendy analogy of likening Putin to Hitler.
“Last March, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine, supposedly in defense of Russian-speakers there, was just like ‘what Hitler did back in the ‘30s’ — using ethnic Germans to justify his invasion of neighboring lands. At the time, I thought such a comparison was over the top. I don’t think so anymore.”
Though Friedman was writing from Zurich apparently without direct knowledge of what is happening in Ukraine, he wrote as if he were on the front lines: “Putin’s use of Russian troops wearing uniforms without insignia to invade Ukraine and to covertly buttress Ukrainian rebels bought and paid for by Moscow — all disguised by a web of lies that would have made Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels blush and all for the purpose of destroying Ukraine’s reform movement before it can create a democratic model that might appeal to Russians more than Putin’s kleptocracy — is the ugliest geopolitical mugging happening in the world today.
“Ukraine matters — more than the war in Iraq against the Islamic State, a.k.a., ISIS. It is still not clear that most of our allies in the war against ISIS share our values. That conflict has a big tribal and sectarian element. It is unmistakably clear, though, that Ukraine’s reformers in its newly elected government and Parliament — who are struggling to get free of Russia’s orbit and become part of the European Union’s market and democratic community — do share our values. If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine’s new democratic experiment and unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western country around Russia will be in danger.”
If Friedman wished to show any balance – which he clearly didn’t – he might have noted that Goebbels would actually be quite proud of the fact that some of Hitler’s modern-day followers are at the forefront of the fight for Ukrainian “reform,” dispatched by those Kiev “reformers” to spearhead the nasty slaughter of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
But references to those inconvenient neo-Nazis, who also spearheaded the coup last February ousting President Yanukovych, are essentially verboten in the U.S. mainstream media. So, is any reference to the fact that eastern Ukrainians have legitimate grievances with the Kiev authorities who ousted Yanukovych who had been elected with strong support from eastern Ukraine.
But in the mainstream American “group think,” the people of eastern Ukraine are simply “bought and paid for by Moscow” – all the better to feel good about slaughtering them.
We’re also not supposed to mention that there was a coup in Ukraine, as the New York Times told us earlier this month. It was just white-hat “reformers” bringing more U.S.-sponsored good government to Ukraine.
In his column, without any sense of irony or awareness, Friedman glowingly quotes Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s new finance minister (leaving out that Jaresko is a newly minted Ukrainian citizen, an ex-American diplomat and investment banker with her own history of “kleptocracy.”)
Friedman quotes Jaresko’s stirring words: “Putin fears a Ukraine that demands to live and wants to live and insists on living on European values — with a robust civil society and freedom of speech and religion [and] with a system of values the Ukrainian people have chosen and laid down their lives for.”
However, as I noted in December, Jaresko headed a U.S. government-funded investment project for Ukraine that involved substantial insider dealings, including $1 million-plus fees to a management company that she also controlled.
Jaresko served as president and chief executive officer of Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which was created by the U.S. Agency for International Development with $150 million to spur business activity in Ukraine. She also was cofounder and managing partner of Horizon Capital which managed WNISEF’s investments at a rate of 2 to 2.5 percent of committed capital, fees exceeding $1 million in recent years, according to WNISEF’s 2012 annual report.
In the 2012 report, the section on “related party transactions” covered some two pages and included not only the management fees to Jaresko’s Horizon Capital ($1,037,603 in 2011 and $1,023,689 in 2012) but also WNISEF’s co-investments in projects with the Emerging Europe Growth Fund [EEGF], where Jaresko was founding partner and chief executive officer. Jaresko’s Horizon Capital also managed EEGF.
From 2007 to 2011, WNISEF co-invested $4.25 million with EEGF in Kerameya LLC, a Ukrainian brick manufacturer, and WNISEF sold EEGF 15.63 percent of Moldova’s Fincombank for $5 million, the report said. It also listed extensive exchanges of personnel and equipment between WNISEF and Horizon Capital.
Though it’s difficult for an outsider to ascertain the relative merits of these insider deals, they involved potential conflicts of interest between a U.S.-taxpayer-funded entity and a private company that Jaresko controlled.
Based on the data from WNISEF’s 2012 annual report, it also appeared that the U.S. taxpayers had lost about one-third of their investment in WNISEF, with the fund’s balance at $98,074,030, compared to the initial U.S. government grant of $150 million.
In other words, there is another side of the Ukraine story, a darker reality that Friedman and the rest of the mainstream media don’t want you to know. They want to shut out alternative information and lead you into another conflict, much as they did in Iraq.
But Friedman is right about one thing: “Ukraine matters.” And he’s even right that Ukraine matters more than the butchery that’s continuing in Iraq.
But Friedman is wrong about why. Ukraine matters more because he and the other “group thinkers,” who turned Iraq into today’s slaughterhouse, are just as blind to the reality of the U.S. military confronting Russia over Ukraine, except in the Ukraine case, both sides have nuclear weapons.
APPENDIX
The piece below is a hatchet job on Stephen Cohen, and the larger truths about the US/NATO role, Russia, the Ukraine, and Novorussia, authored by Cathy Young, employed by the Washington Post/ Slate neocon-infested disinformation machine.
We reproduce the article in toto for purposes of education, since just about every sentence and passage constitute a deliberate falsehood or an instant of upending the truth. The crowning moment comes when, willfully ignorant of history, or the fact that it is the United States that leads humanity in the art of shameless and totalitarian political propaganda, Young asks in feigned disbelief, “Does Stephen Cohen not know that Russian disinformation and fakery has (sic) been extensively documented?”. —Eds
Putin’s Pal
Stephen Cohen was once considered a top Russia historian. Now he publishes odd defenses of Vladimir Putin. The Nation just published his most outrageous one yet.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow (RIA-Novosti)
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] few months ago, at the height of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict over Crimea, Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton, acquired a certain notoriety as the Kremlin’s No. 1 American apologist. As Cohen made Russia’s case and lamented the American media’s meanness to Vladimir Putin in print and on the airwaves, he was mocked as a “patsy” and a “dupe” everywhere from the conservative Free Beacon to the liberal New York and New Republic. Now, as the hostilities in eastern Ukraine have turned to the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, Cohen is at it again—this time, with a long article in the current issue of The Nation indicting “Kiev’s atrocities” in eastern Ukraine and America’s collusion therein. The timing is rather unfortunate for Cohen and The Nation, since the piece is also unabashedly sympathetic to the Russian-backed militants who appear responsible for the murder of 298 innocent civilians.
Some of Cohen’s critics have assumed that he is a lifelong leftist hack who simply transferred his allegiance from the Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia. The truth is more complex. While Cohen regularly argued against anti-Soviet hawks in the Cold War–era in his TV appearances and writing (including a monthly column in The Nation, “Sovieticus,” in the 1980s), he was no fan of the Soviet regime, which blacklisted him from travel there from 1982 to 1985. He had friends among Soviet dissidents—gravitating, however, toward those of the democratic socialist or even Marxist persuasion. Cohen’s own interest in “socialism with a human face” was reflected in his scholarly work: His first book, published in 1973, was a well-received biography of Nikolai Bukharin, the Bolshevik leader and victim of Stalin’s purges who at one point advocated a mixed economy and more humane politics.
In the late 1980s, Cohen was an ardent enthusiast of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroikareforms; he and his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, now editor in chief of The Nation, co-authored Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers, whose subjects—officials, journalists, and intellectuals—were all proponents of top-down change to bring about a kinder, gentler Soviet socialism. Those dreams ended in a rude awakening in 1991 with the demise of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet collapse is generally seen as the result of the system’s internal rot; Cohen, however, has blamed it on Boris Yeltsin’s power-grabbing, aided by the pro-Western “radical intelligentsia” that “hijacked Gorbachev’s gradualist reformation.” His antipathy to Yeltsin led him to sympathize with the views of those Russians who saw their country during the 1990s as “semi-occupied by foreigners—from shock-therapy economists to human-rights advocates,” and who credited Putin with taking it back. In Newsweek’s February 2008 roundup of expert opinions on Putin and his legacy, Cohen’s contribution—entitled “The Savior”—asserted Putin was the man who “ended Russia’s collapse at home and re-asserted its independence abroad.” As U.S.-Russian relations worsened, Cohen grew increasingly strident in his denunciations of the “demonization” of Putin by the American media.
Cohen’s new article in The Nation hits a new low. The charge Cohen makes is a serious one: that the pro-Western Ukrainian government, aided and abetted by the Obama administration, the “new Cold War hawks” in Congress, and the craven American media, is committing “deeds that are rising to the level of war crimes, if they have not done so already.” He is referring to the Ukrainian military assaults on cities and towns held by pro-Russian insurgents, including artillery shelling and air attacks.
The rising civilian toll of the fighting in eastern Ukraine is a fact. To what length governments and armies must go to avoid noncombatant casualties when waging war in populated areas, particularly against irregular fighters who may deliberately mix with civilians, is a dilemma that plagues modern warfare. (Cohen’s hero once tackled this issue head-on by carpet-bombing Chechen cities.) Concerns about possible “indiscriminate” and “disproportionate” use of force by the Ukrainian military in rebel areas have been raised by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations; most recently, Human Rights Watch has criticized the Kiev military’s use of Grad rockets in the fighting for Donetsk. None of them, however, have accused Kiev of war crimes. And, far from being hushed up by the American media, the story was covered both by the Daily Beast (whose reporting has generally been sympathetic to the pro-Western government) and by the Associated Press.
All three organizations also extensively document abuses and bona fide atrocities by the insurgents whom Cohen calls “resisters,” from kidnappings to savage beatings, torture, rape, and murder. Cohen entirely omits these inconvenient facts, conceding only that the rebels are “aggressive, organized and well armed—no doubt with some Russian assistance.” And he concludes that “calling them ‘self-defense’ fighters is not wrong,” since “their land is being invaded and assaulted by a government whose political legitimacy is arguably no greater than their own, two of their large regions having voted overwhelmingly for autonomy referendums.”
Is Cohen the one person in the world who puts stock in the results of the Donetsk and Luhansk “referendums,” which even Russia did not formally recognize? Pre-referendum polls in both regions found that most residents opposed secession; they were also, as a U.N. report confirms, kept from voting in the presidential election by violence and intimidation from the insurgents. Nor does Cohen ever acknowledge the known fact that a substantial percentage of the “resisters” are not locals but citizens of the Russian Federation—particularly their leaders, many of whom have ties to Russian “special security services.” Their ranks also include quite a few Russian ultranationalists and even neo-Nazis—a highly relevant fact, given that much of Cohen’s article is devoted to claims that Ukrainian “neo-fascists” play a key role both in the Kiev government and in the counterinsurgency operation.
On this subject, Cohen’s narrative is so error-riddled that one has to wonder if The Nation employs fact-checkers. (According to The Nation’s publicity director, Caitlin Graf, “All of The Nation‘s print pieces are rigorously fact-checked by our research department.”) Cohen asserts that after the fall of pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, the far-right Svoboda party, and the paramilitary nationalist group Right Sector got a large share of Cabinet posts, including ones for national security and the military, because Ukraine’s new leaders were “obliged to both movements for their violence-driven ascent to power, and perhaps for their personal safety.” In fact, Svoboda (which has tried to reinvent itself as a moderate nationalist party, despite a genuinely troubling history of bigotry and extremism) got its Cabinet posts as part of a European Union–brokered agreement between Yanukovych and opposition leaders, made shortly before Yanukovych skipped town. Right Sector has no such posts—early reports that its leader, Dmytro Yarosh, got appointed deputy minister for national security were wrong—and the government actually moved to crack down on the group in April. Cohen also neglects to mention that the Svoboda-affiliated acting defense minister, Ihor Tenyukh, was sacked in late March and replaced with a nonpartisan career military man.
Cohen’s claims about the “mainstreaming of fascism’s dehumanizing ethos” in Ukraine are equally spurious—and rely heavily on Russian propaganda canards. Thus, he asserts that Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called the rebels “subhumans”; in fact, even the pro-government Russian newspaper Vzglyad admitsthis was an English mistranslation of nelyudi, literally “inhumans” or “monsters.” (The word also exists in Russian, and Russian officials have freely used it toward their own “resisters” in the Caucasus.) He reports that a regional governor (Yuri Odarchenko of the Kherson region) “praised Hitler for his ‘slogan of liberating the people’ in occupied Ukraine” in his speech at a Victory Day event on May 9. In fact, as a transcript and a video show, Odarchenko said that Hitler used “slogans about alleged liberation of nations” to justify invading sovereign countries and “the aggressor” today was using similar slogans about “alleged oppressions” to justify aggression against Ukraine. And, in Cohen’s extremely tendentious retelling, the May 2 tragedy in Odessa, where clashes between separatists and Kiev supporters led to a deadly fire that killed some 40 separatists, becomes a deliberate holocaust reminiscent of “Nazi German extermination squads.”
In a downright surreal passage, Cohen argues that Putin has shown “remarkable restraint” so far but faces mounting public pressure due to “vivid accounts” in the Russian state-run media of Kiev’s barbarities against ethnic Russians. Can he really be unaware that the hysteria is being whipped up by lurid fictions, such as the recent TV1 story about a 3-year-old boy crucified in Slovyansk’s main square in front of a large crowd and his own mother? Does Cohen not know that Russian disinformation and fakery, including old footage from Dagestan or Syria passed off as evidence of horrors in Ukraine, has been extensivelydocumented? Is he unaware that top Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself, have publicly repeated allegations of war crimes that were quickly exposed as false, such as white phosphorus use by Ukrainian troops or a slaughter of the wounded in a hospital? But Cohen manages to take the surrealism a notch higher, earnestly citing the unnamed “dean of Moscow State University’s School of Television” (that’s Vitaly Tretyakov, inter alia a 9/11 “truther”) who thinks the Kremlin may be colluding with the West to hush up the extent of carnage in Ukraine.
SAVOR HERE A COMMENT BY A WELL INFORMED READER (from the original Slate thread):
Art Bremer Sep 7, 2014 ….Absolutely atrocious article by a dishonest and ignorant individual. Individual because terms like “writer” or “journalist” does not apply here. She is misleading the American public into the wrong perception of the crisis. A Russian who hates Russians, her snippet is based more on her personal emotions and attitudes rather than solid facts, thus revealing her rusophobic nature (she propably would reject label “Russian” and would say that she is an “American”, but she was born and lived in Russia). I wonder where did she get all her “facts” from when writing this “masterpiece”? Obviously from the other Western mainstream media. Clearly, she hasn’t set her own foot on the ground of Ukraine. Clearly, she hasn’t conducted her own investigation on the subject in question. Wow! She’d make good friends with another “star” of her own like Masha Gessen…Both of them exemplify poor writing and feeble and dishonest journalism. Ladies and Gentlemen! Please, read more articles of a true, honest intellectual of modern America Mr. Cohen. He reflects the true nature of the events happening in Ukraine and provides honest and correct analysis of the crisis. I know so because….. well I went there and I saw everything.
There is no question that eastern Ukraine is currently dealing with a human rights catastrophe. All evidence suggests that it is overwhelmingly the responsibility of the Russia-sponsored militants, though there is almost certainly wrongdoing on the part of Kiev as well. If, as Cohen charges, the Obama administration, the “hawks,” and the “establishment media” are covering up for Kiev for political reasons, the U.N. and the leading human rights groups would have to be complicit in this cover-up.
It is embarrassing to see Cohen—once a serious scholar whose work was praised by the likes of British historian Robert Conquest—sink to the level of repeating Russian misinformation; it is no less of an embarrassment that The Nation would print something so shoddy. One likely element of truth in Cohen’s account is that Putin is indeed feeling the pressure of public sentiment in favor of saving Ukraine’s ethnic Russians from the “fascist junta”—not because of actual Kiev atrocities, but because the Kremlin has wound up a propaganda machine it cannot stop. By recycling this propaganda and giving it the imprimatur of a respectable American magazine, Cohen and The Nation are not doing Russia, or anyone, any favors.
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[dropcap]A[/dropcap]lexis Tsipras is the leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left in Greece (Syriza), who recently was elected Prime Minister. This interview was conducted in October 2014 in Athens by Haris Golemis, who is an economist, Director of the Nicos Poulantzas Institute (Greece), and member of the Central Committee of Syriza. It was translated by Maria Choupres, and first published in the Transform Network Yearbook for 2015.
Alexis Tsipras’s first act after being sworn in was to lay flowers on the National Resistance Memorial in Kaisariani, to honor the resistance fighters and as a symbol of liberty from German occupation.
The response from the Greek people was immediate – and clear. During the May 2012 elections, Syriza captured seventeen per cent of the vote, and during the second round of elections the following month, Syriza’s numbers increased to 27 per cent – just three percentage points less than the centre right party. It’s important to note that we achieved these numbers despite the mainstream media’s relentless fear mongering. While we did our best to address these scare tactics, we weren’t able to overcome them to the extent needed to be placed first in the elections. We didn’t rest on our laurels after the elections, though. We diligently worked to develop a detailed programme outlining how to exit the crisis, including ending austerity and renegotiating the terms of the debt.
Viable Alternative Solutions
Today, we have a fully comprehensive programme to address the debt. Key aspects include renegotiating the terms with our European partners, along with a detailed plan to spur economic growth, address unemployment, strengthen the welfare state, and provide relief to the members of society hit hardest by the crisis. It is imperative that we implement these changes; austerity and budget cuts are not sustainable and only serve to further destroy social cohesion.
“We achieved these numbers despite the mainstream media’s relentless fear mongering…”
Syriza’s rise is not about a ‘protest vote’ against the mainstream parties responsible for Greece’s demise in the wake of the economic crisis. Syriza is winning over voters because it’s the only party that offers a viable alternative solution. In the recent European elections, we came in first [in Greece] with a four percentage point lead; since then, we’ve been polling at even higher numbers, well ahead of the parties in the ruling coalition government. We’ll see a major shift in the political landscape soon, but this isn’t making us complacent. We remain committed to the work ahead, both on the political and social levels. We’re under no illusions about the challenges we’ll be facing when we first come to power – a historical first for us, as well as for post-war Europe. We’re determined to see this through, with the support of the people, building consensus but not shying away from conflicts when they arise. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “the only thing we have to fear is … fear itself.”
THE EDITORS SAY:
Is Syriza ready to move toward actual socialism or simply deepen welfare capitalism, along the Scandinavian model? Tsipras at times sounds more like the latter. As well, “growth” is not the way to move an economy toward a sustainable future; “growth” is a capitalist fetish that needs to be retired.
To answer the second part of your question, I’d like to point out that while we witnessed a rather dramatic political shift in Greece, similar shifts have also been occurring elsewhere in southern Europe. United Left and Podemos captured eighteen per cent of the vote in Spain in the European elections, very close to the Socialists and the Popular Party whose popularity has since plummeted. These numbers represent an increase of two and a half times from the results of the 2011 national elections. We hope that the United Left and Podemos will have even stronger results in the upcoming 2015 elections. Also, Sinn Fein’s success in the European elections was a significant development for Ireland, another country decimated by the Memoranda for bailing out the banks. Italy is showing signs of an uptick for the left, a trend seen in many European countries, including Slovenia.
The rapid political changes across Europe spurred by the crisis have aided the left, creating new opportunities. The social struggle for decent work and dignity is one of the most critical – and one that the left is deeply committed to. A stronger left increases the chances for major changes in Europe, shifting the balance in favour of labour. Syriza aspires to be the catalyst for these changes, creating a ‘domino effect.’
It is important to note that our work doesn’t just end with abolishing austerity. Our mission is not simply to carry out the unfinished work of post-war social democracy, but rather to enable the radical transformation of society across Europe, based on socialism and democracy. This is our goal as we seek to form new social alliances that will unite the working and middle classes, the unemployed, the most disadvantaged members of society, intellectuals, and social movements, around a common struggle: the struggle to liberate society from the effects of cutthroat profiteering, and to foster social justice and democracy, an economy that will focus on people’s needs, and a welfare state that ensures education, health, and dignity for all. To call a halt to the ‘free-market’ policies responsible for miring Europe in the economic crisis, the European left must have a feasible and realistic political strategy, in addition to a unifying vision – these go together.
HG: Your opponents, on both the right and left, claim that your position on abolishing the Memoranda and austerity, and renegotiating the debt will result in one of two possible outcomes since Greece is not a political heavyweight in the EU. You will either have to backtrack, recognizing that you can’t achieve your goals or you will be forced out of the eurozone and/or European Union. What is your response to such claims?
AT: First off, I think that we should be more worried about what will happen if Greece does not change course and continues being the guinea pig for the neoliberal policies that have been implemented to supposedly address the crisis. There are many people in this country searching through the trash for food or whose homes no longer have electricity. The elderly are faced with the decision whether to spend their pension money on food or medicine – the money they receive isn’t enough for both. The real economy is in shambles, and unemployment has skyrocketed. Our young people consider emigrating as their first option. And the possibility of being stuck living under these conditions for the foreseeable future is all too real – trapped by austerity and recession, without decent wages or work, without dignity.
We do have another choice, though – one where we can feel pride. The European Social Forum’s motto comes to mind: “If not us, then who? If not now, when?”
Obviously, we don’t intend to run the ship into the ground. We are opposed to austerity, and we’re not alone in taking this position; there is growing resistance to these policies, not only in Greece, but across Europe. We’re prepared for the challenges we’ll surely face, and we’re carefully preparing for these; we intend to honour our commitments. With the confidence and support of society, we’ll be building a future on solid foundations.
Being forced out of the Eurozone is no simple matter – first of all, it’s not allowed under the European treaties. A ‘voluntary’ exit is extremely risky, with dangerous consequences for Greece and for Europe – especially given the fragile nature of the current economic, social, and geopolitical realities. It’s in no country’s interest to further disrupt the continent’s already tenuous balance. Such a risk can be avoided altogether if governments and institutions in the EU accept that Greece and other smaller European countries are equal partners in the EU and that they have a democratic right to elect leftist governments. Given these circumstances, I’m personally optimistic about the developments we can expect.
HG: You, along with other members of Syriza, have been in contact with individuals and organizations, including conservative politicians and executives from the private sector, who are not necessarily supporters of the left. You’ve met with Pope Francis, Wolfgang Schäuble, Mario Draghi, representatives of the International Monetary Fund, and even participated in the Ambrosetti Forum. What are you hoping to gain from these meetings, and how has your message been received?
AT: Syriza’s rise was initially treated as a dangerous development by European leaders, as well as by the Greek political mainstream. There was talk of ‘extreme radicals’ willing to risk a eurozone exit and widespread political turmoil in Europe, and the ‘theory of the two extremes’ was used to lump Syriza with far-right and Eurosceptic parties.
This was done to portray Syriza as unfit to negotiate with the European partners, and unfit to run the country, bringing about Greece’s certain downfall if elected. Fortunately, this rhetoric has subsided; most people have come to terms with the likely fact that the next Greek government will be a government of the left. And I think this is a positive development.
The international contacts we’ve made have helped bring about this shift. It’s understandable that many people are interested in meeting us, hearing our views, and exchanging ideas, to get a better sense of our goals. And we’re interested in learning the same about our contacts, as well.
As we’ve become better known, this has helped to dispel the myths and rumours that Syriza wants to create mayhem in Europe; we’re now viewed as a party that will be a reliable ally – or opponent – with a strategic plan, policy positions, and nuanced views. We are open to meeting with anyone, to discussing our policy positions, and exchanging views. This in no way means we will owe future favours or will make concessions in our programme.
Of course, there has been some grumbling – that a left party should not be meeting representatives from the world of ‘capital.’ While I understand these sentiments, I believe it’s important to be able to defend your views; regardless of whom you speak with, what’s key is being able to hold your ground, to express your views, rather than simply saying what the other person wants to hear. Our goal is to show that we can credibly debate the issues, as well as offer a viable alternative to the current political framework. Our discussions, and the way that our views have been received, makes it even more clear to me that meeting with these contacts is absolutely the right thing to do – regardless of whether they hold opposing views.
Our international efforts and the contacts Syriza has made highlight the contradictions and conflicts that exist in Europe, giving us greater insight – something which is exceedingly useful. For example, when Syriza was invited to participate in the Ambrosetti Forum, it was not because the organizers suddenly became fond of our views or because they wanted to coerce us in some way. To be frank, we were invited to help send a message to the German government; our position, that Europe must put an end to austerity and focus instead on growth, was met with applause. Despite this, we were fully aware that we didn’t share common views on the issues of decent work and the welfare state with many of those in attendance. However, on the points where we can agree, we intend to make the most of these alliances; we simply don’t have the luxury not to. I firmly believe that this is the right course of action.
We fear that Syriza may be seeking to make a socialist omelette without having to break any eggs. That is self-delusional or less than honest with the mass of followers in Greece and beyond. Thus, why insist on “growth, growth” the talisman of the capitalists? Why not push for a redistribution of the bloated pie?—Eds
We are in no way opposed to meeting with individuals where we have strong differences of opinion, like Wolfgang Schäuble. Our goal is not to catch anyone off guard with our views. We believe in being transparent. By holding these kinds of meetings we seek to foster dialogue, which may ultimately aid in the process of future negotiations. The members of the current [Greek] government are the only ones not benefiting from our efforts abroad; they cannot continue with the usual scare tactics, trying to paint Syriza as an unwanted partner in Europe that is bent on bringing ruin to Greece.
I’d like to specifically call attention to my visit with Pope Francis, which was organized by transform!. The Pope has an impressive social [justice] agenda. The fact that this meeting took place is indicative of just how critical Greece’s position is considered, both symbolically and literally, given the extremely fragile social balance in Europe. My country has suffered a humanitarian catastrophe that is unprecedented during peacetime, but we are also the country that is closest to reversing the policies that have brought us to this point. This will be significant for all of Europe, and especially for our people and societies. I believe that this is what caught the Pope’s interest and led to our meeting.
This meeting truly illuminated the problems we face in Greece, given the Pope’s global prestige; it helped raise awareness of the situation for people in Europe and beyond. The increase in solidarity positively affects Greece and the Greek people – and Europe, as well. With greater solidarity comes a greater chance for seeing change across all of Europe.
HG: You’ve visited a number of countries in the past that no longer subscribe to neoliberalism, such as Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina. Many of your adversaries consider these visits part of the ‘radical’ days of Syriza, and that you’ve since ‘changed your tune’ and stopped associating with ‘bad company’ now that the party is on the verge of governing Greece. What are your thoughts on this?
AT: Latin America has also been subject to the IMF’s ‘adjustment programmes’ – the same ones that we’ve become subject to in Europe post 2008, from the IMF and others. These programmes were implemented through the use of military force in some cases, with devastating results for society. Today, these countries have cast aside neoliberalism and have developed their economies as they’ve seen fit, putting emphasis on growth. They have broad support from their citizens despite the challenges they face, as they pursue new methods of wealth distribution and productive reconstruction, universal access to healthcare, education, and social security, and the strengthening of their democratic institutions.
And it certainly seems that the efforts are paying off. This greatly interests the left across Europe, as we intend to challenge neoliberalism on the continent. We can certainly benefit from cooperating with Latin America through the exchange of best practices on key matters, such as our shared views on economic crises, debt, or international trade agreements. The left has been following the developments there for quite some time, long before the consequences of the crisis resulted in the historic opportunities that are now before us.
It’s time for our adversaries to make peace with the fact that the left is creating an alternative programme for governing in Europe, as well as new alliances.”
The supporters of neoliberalism are averse to these kinds of developments that are not in line with their views, and would have us believe that only those who support their doctrines are ‘democratic’ regardless of the level of coercion or corruption involved; social movements and politicians who don’t value markets over people are considered populist. It’s time for our adversaries to make peace with the fact that the left is creating an alternative programme for governing in Europe, as well as new alliances. (Tsipras may be daydreaming here; class interests are ruthless, they don’t suffer epiphanies unless absolutely pushed to do so, and most changes of course can be mere short-term adjustments.—Eds)
A close working relationship with our European partners does not preclude us from drawing on certain examples or experiences from Latin America. As we form our political and social strategies, it’s important to monitor how developments are unfolding in Latin America.
HG: Syriza’s chance to govern and implement new policies is a matter of great importance to the left, trade unions, and social movements across Europe – and one of great interest to transform!. In what ways can these supporters and progressive European citizens help during the pre-election period and after your much anticipated win?
AT: This is a really important issue, because the left derives its strength from society.
The dire situation in Greece brought about the opportunity for Syriza to create change. Our efforts will gain momentum when we form our government. We realise there will be many challenges, and the real work will begin once we’ve been elected. We’re not just fighting for change in Greece – ours is a struggle for political change across Europe, a struggle against the current system that allows speculators and the world of capital to hold people hostage. We believe politics and economics should be centred around people’s needs, decent work, a thriving welfare state, environmental protections, democracy.
The left’s success in Greece could create new opportunities across Europe. The left stands together with the various grassroots movements, and all people – be it in the North or the South – who realise that our common future depends on a democratic and social Europe. We’ve received, and continue to receive, so many messages of solidarity and peace from across the globe. Solidarity isn’t something that’s simply an emotional boost – it’s also an important factor in the social and political struggle to change things in other countries.
To give you an example from the European elections – our comrades in Italy chose to name their party L’Altra Europa con Tsipras. It’s not the name that’s significant actually but the message that the party wanted to convey. They explained that they, too, wanted to ‘feel Greek,’ to create momentum for change in Italy, similar to what was happening in Greece. And that boosted momentum for all of us. We both reached the goals we had set out for our respective countries, while sending messages of unity and solidarity.
I truly can’t express just how we felt upon seeing the word, ‘Syriza’ on the walls in Taksim Square during the uprising in Istanbul. We very much rely on the help and support of the left, progressive parties, social movements – of all those who are involved. If we are in fact elected, our government will have the task of putting new policies on the European agenda. To this end, public support from across the European Union, putting pressure on governments, strengthening movements that call for progressive changes, will be our biggest ‘allies.’
We don’t think of ourselves as existing in a separate sphere – we’re a part of the European left, and together with all the parties of the left, we face a common struggle. We’re interested in the success of all these parties; our joint successes will be the only way to achieve the results we hope for, both in the medium and long term. Each step taken forward, each small or big victory, in Europe and beyond, is important because our struggles are shared.
A win for Syriza, and the formation of a left government in Greece, will be a first major step for all of us. The assistance and support from other countries will be critical; it will be a message of hope to the Greek people, fortifying people’s resolve and determination to take matters into their hands.
In today’s highly connected world, every initiative, every show of solidarity, every poster, every message of support that reaches our country from abroad, gives us energy to forge ahead and work toward our goals. The left is here to create change, to foster new social partnerships, to stand up to ‘business as usual.’ And we will do so, with integrity, with a new approach to international relations, with unity and action across the board. •
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