West stuck at a crossroads

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey | Pravda.Ru

The Soviet Union had done its job but could not easily co-exist with hostile forces spending trillions of dollars in weapons…and launching subversive campaigns to discredit the socialist model

Obama and the UK's Cameron: Bosom buddies in war planning. An age of repugnant hypocrisy. Where the Nuremberg tribunal now that we need it?

Obama and the UK’s Cameron: Bosom buddies in war planning. An age of repugnant hypocrisy. Where is the Nuremberg tribunal now that we need it?

[J]ust when the conflict in Novorossiya was beginning to move from deployment to discussion, from live fire to ceasefire, instead of helping to push the warring parties towards a win-win position (the perfect resolution of a conflict), what does the West do? Impose more sanctions on Russia. The West, blinded by its own hatred, is heading for the precipice.

It is not intended here to debate the question of the ceasefire in Novorossiya, hailed by some as a relief from fighting, death and destruction of families, criticized by others as a means to save the face of the Kiev Government which, after sending its troops to murder civilians, committing war crimes, saw its assault stalled and at the time of the ceasefire (which Kiev had previously refused to sign) was losing heavily in a lightning counter-attack by the Donbass separatist forces.

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Yet the Ukraine conflict serves the main purpose of this article, which is to highlight where the West has gone wrong in recent years and to debate a healthier approach to international relations. Let us begin with the rancor the West obviously feels towards Russia.

The author states that “the West” feels rancor toward Russia. We beg to differ. The barrage of attacks and media demonization of Russia, Putin, etc., is a fabrication, a cynical propaganda maneuver organized by Western elites in pursuit of hegemony. It has nothing to do with an authentic feeling of disgust over Russian crimes, which they know were never committed.

Hardly a day goes by without a Russophobic comment being made in the Western media, and this goes right back to the rise of Vladimir Putin, a strong man, and the fall of Boris Eltsin, a weak man, at the end of the 1990s. It is not because Vladimir Putin is anti-West: he is not. He constantly refers to countries which hold a dagger in their left hand as “our partners” while trying to do business with, and forge closer ties with, those who would do their utmost to destroy Russia and grab its resources. The bad will does not come from him, for sure. It is because Vladimir Putin is pro-Russia (as his massive popularity ratings show) and as such, makes Russia a tougher nut to crack by those who have long been planning for its break-up into easily-controlled States.

The rot set in with the voluntary dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 following anti-COMECON movements in Eastern Europe. The immediate response of the West was to talk of the “collapse” of the USSR with reference to the fact it “lost”, soundbites picked up even in Russia itself and used by many here. But just one moment please. The Soviet Union did not “lose” anything or “collapse”. Its separation was provided for in its Constitution, and what took place was a voluntary dissolution of the Union, in the event by the political class over and above the heads of the citizens. The Soviet Union, basically, had done its job but could not easily co-exist with hostile forces spending trillions of dollars and launching subversive campaigns to discredit the model, forcing countries to increase their internal security and then being blamed for being repressive.

So, when someone does not win a fight, but spends a lot of energy spreading rumors that the opponent lost, the chip lies on whose shoulder? What the West was intending all along was to encroach Eastwards after getting the Warsaw Pact to dissolve, again in an act of goodwill, and after promising that it would not.

Once again, we see where the goodwill was coming from and we see also a response not in kind, but with bad will.

And the bad will approach from a West blinded by arrogance and greed (look at the Imperialist past of its main member States) has been visible time and time again in Yugoslavia, where Serbia was demonized and attacked illegally as its heart (Kosovo) was torn out against every shred of international law, although under this, today, Kosovo is Serbia and always will be. We saw the bad will approach in Iraq, a country destroyed against every fiber of legality purely through economic greed (US energy lobby) and the wish for protagonism (Blair), we saw it again in Libya (*), we saw it again in Syria.

It is almost as if the West has something to prove, to justify itself, or else to pursue a wish to humiliate Russia and provoke a war.

But the reality of the matter is simple. NATO’s budget, paid by the taxpayers in its Member States, is 1.2 trillion USD a year, every year. How many hospital beds, how many school places, could that amount of money fund? So to justify its existence as a supra-national organism (unelected and therefore unconstitutional) it has to invent a foe, in an “us and them” approach to international relations. The Somali pirates were cool for a while, until we discovered they were protesting against Western ships dumping toxic waste in lawless Somalia (what? Didn’t the western newspapers mention that? Tut-tut)…needed someone bigger…hey! What about Russia?

The point is, Russia does not have a chip on its shoulder about the Soviet Union. The Union brought many countries and peoples into the front line of development in just one or two generations, became a pioneer in technology and scientific and cultural development, spent 250 billion USD a year in development programs in the countries it freed from the yoke of imperialist tyranny and implemented a public social model providing public services for free or at highly reduced costs. Guaranteed housing, free. Zero unemployment. Free education, free healthcare, free electricity, free gas, free water supply…

Russia is moving on. Russia has a growing relationship with the BRIC block which represents a quarter of Humankind, and excellent relations with Latin America. Russia is highly respected in Africa which might smile at the West but behind closed doors, we all know what its political class says.

We do, but the Western leaders don’t. And here is the crux of the matter. As we can see in electoral processes (Scotland’s being an exception), the political class in the West is becoming more and more divorced from the people, who trust neither of the alternatives presented as center-left or center-right, when in fact both the programs are the same and both are controlled by the lobbies which dictate Western policy.

The reason why is that Western politicians in general live in crystal balls centered around the corridors of power in their capital cities. From time to time they have to put on a smile and go around shaking hands and look “honest” on TV, then they are free to break their election promises and spend the next four years feathering the nests of the lobbies which placed them in power and which dictate their choice of Ministers (Job descriptions are written from the CV, meaning that only the chosen candidate will fill the requisites).

Protected by an army of sycophantic civil servants, the politician in the West has no idea about what life is like for the common citizen because (s)he has rarely seen one. The result of this is that they have no idea at all of how the world is developing, how people think or where the hearts and minds of the people lie.

If they knew that the West is, in general, hated by the vast majority of humankind, who see deployment of troops instead of development and education in territories which the West controlled for centuries, if they knew that these days war is not seen as being “cool”, if they knew that demonology and hate campaigns fall on deaf ears, if they knew that nobody with any sense these days believes a word they say…

Perhaps the West would not be stuck at a crossroads banging its head against a wall seeing its little world falling apart as it uses and creates terrorist factions to implement its policies and then consistently sees things going wrong. As for Russia, Russia has moved on. Moscow, not Washington, Vladimir Putin, not Obama or Cameron, represent the hearts and minds of the international community, whose foundations are discussion, dialogue and diplomacy over bullying, blackmail and belligerence, whose foundations are development and education and not deployment and enmity.

The people of the world wish to live together as friends, we want to study together, play together, practice sport together, laugh together, enjoy each other’s’ cultural differences together, learn each other’s’ languages, eat together, drink together and visit each other. We want to celebrate our diversity, not use it as a means to raise political or religious banners.

If Obama, Cameron and their sickening bunch of friends could for once do a little introspection, they might begin to show some emotional intelligence and change tack.

If their lobbies allowed them to.

(*) http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/06-11-2011/119534-indictment_nato-0/

(timothy.hinchey@gmail.com)

The Comic Book Simplicity Of Propaganda

medialens

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02 October 2014

The Comic Book Simplicity Of Propaganda

pro-elite bias of the ‘mainstream’ news media. The grassroots power of social media in exposing and countering this bias was heartening to see. But the issue of independence for Scotland is just one of many where the traditional media consistently favour establishment power.

corporate media performance is that elite interests are routinely favoured and protected, while serious public dissent is minimised and marginalised. The BBC, the biggest and arguably the most globally respected news organisation, is far from being an exception. Indeed, on any issue that matters, its consistently biased news coverage – propped up, by a horrible irony, with the financial support of the public whose interests it so often crushes – means that BBC News is surely the most insidious propaganda outlet today.

Consider, for example, the way BBC editors and journalists constantly portray Nato as an organisation that maintains peace and security. During the recent Nato summit in Wales, newsreader Sophie Raworth dutifully told viewers of BBC News at Ten:

4, 2014)

The same edition of BBC News at Ten relayed, uncontested, this ideological assertion from Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen:

source of insecurity, instability, war and violence afflicting much of the world. True to form, BBC News kept well clear of that documented truth. Nor did it even remind its audience of the awkward fact that Rasmussen, when he was Danish prime minister, had once said:

military grandeur and pomposity of the sort that would have elicited ridicule from journalists if it had taken place in North Korea, Iran or some other state-designated ‘enemy’. Media Lens challenges you to watch this charade without dissolving into laughter or switching it off before reaching the end.

3, 2014)

BBC Raworth: Toxic and brainless anchorwoman, like the rest.

This propaganda campaign, enabled by BBC News and other corporate news media, prepared the way for the US-led bombing on ‘Isis group targets’ in Syria that began overnight on 22-23 September. In line with other power-friendly reporting, the Independent described the illegal intervention as ‘air strikes’ forming ‘part of the expanded military campaign authorised by President Obama, who has vowed to “degrade and destroy” Isis militants.’

reported that ‘US and allies have deployed jets and missiles against militants’. The emphasis on ‘militants’ and ‘Isis targets’ overlooked the fact that, as usual, innocent civilians would suffer; as indeed they have, with seven civilians, including five children, killed in a bombing raid on a village in northern Syria. The Guardian’s report was based heavily on rhetoric deployed by high-ranking Pentagon figures, an anonymous ‘US official’ and President Obama. Tucked away at the end of the lengthy Guardian article was a tentative foray into the illegality of this latest US act of aggression:

war crime. But it would be beyond the pale for journalists in ‘the mainstream’ to report it as such.

oppressive, torture-ridden regime in Saudi Arabia, Sopel stretched the term ‘moderate’ beyond the limits of credibility.

wrote:

as usual, were the ‘prospective benefits’ of yet another Western-led attack in the Middle East: he made no attempt to address the longstanding US need for strategic control of the region’s natural resources. Nor did Gardner broach the ‘propaganda impact’ of White House, Pentagon and Downing Street manipulation of the public in its channelling of disinformation via compliant Western news media. Again, this is the norm. If any young aspiring BBC journalist were to demonstrate a dangerous tendency for questioning this norm, never mind defying it, then he or she would never get within visible range of the ‘security’ correspondent’s exalted position.

overwhelming majority of MPs were in favour of bombing Iraq: 524 (81% of all MPs) and just 43 against (7%).

massive propaganda campaign had succeeded in boosting support for bombing in just six weeks from 37% to 57%. That support amongst MPs (81%) was much higher than amongst voters (57%) gives the lie, yet again, to the notion that parliamentary ‘democracy’ is a real reflection of public interests and opinion.

infamously supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the paper showed its pro-war colours, couched in hand-wringing rhetoric about ‘doing the right thing’. Raining British bombs down on Iraq once again ‘was the right and moral thing to do.’ The refrain was echoed throughout Britain’s national newspapers, a remarkable indictment of ‘our free press’. A tweet from the Independent even opined:

history clearly shows, to crush the threat of any such indigenous development and thus maintain the West’s grip on the region’s rich resources.

Our Caring, Truthful And Fearless Leaders

noted the craven ‘mainstream’ silence to the attack on Galloway which:

told his followers on Twitter:

Israel. Political ‘leaders’ are virtual puppets with little, if any, autonomy; condemned to perform an elite-friendly role that keeps the general population as passive and powerless as possible. The corporate media plays an essential role here, as the British historian and foreign policy analyst Mark Curtis observes:

related that:

He continued:

piece exposing the state-corporate propaganda that is so crucial to keeping the public in a state of general ignorance and passivity. There ‘could hardly be a better time than now’, he said, to study the effects of this ‘insidious propaganda’ in the so-called ‘free world’. He continued:

The result?

safe and secure. Sadly, the truth behind this ‘web of deceit’ is not so comforting.

DC

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The Comic Book Simplicity Of Propaganda

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The second Media Lens book, ‘NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century’ by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press. John Pilger writes of the book:

“Not since Orwell and Chomsky has perceived reality been so skilfully revealed in the cause of truth.” Find it in the Media Lens Bookshop

In September 2012, Zero Books published ‘Why Are We The Good Guys?’ by David Cromwell. Mark Curtis, author of ‘Web of Deceit’ and ‘Unpeople’, says:

‘This book is truly essential reading, focusing on one of the key issues, if not THE issue, of our age: how to recognise the deep, everyday brainwashing to which we are subjected, and how to escape from it. This book brilliantly exposes the extent of media disinformation, and does so in a compelling and engaging way.’

Russian fifth column at work—The Saker

DISPATCHES ON THE UKRAINE / RUSSIA FRONTS | BY THE SAKER

(1)

An example of the Russian 5th column at work

Putin with Medeyev: Caught in a curious dilemma, and baffling immobilism.

[I]n recent days bad economic news have been pouring in for Russia: the prices of bread, cheese, medicine, meats and many other products have been going up, some of them sharply. At the same time, the Ruble has reached a new low against the Dollar, which forced the Russian Central Bank to intervene to defend the Ruble. No doubt, Obama would say that the sanctions are showing their effectiveness.
Except for one problem: no economist has been able to directly link the US/EU sanctions with what we are observing. In fact, the reality is much simpler.In the case of commodity prices what is happening is quite simple: Russian companies have seized the opportunity presented by these sanctions to sharply raise their prices and make an extra profit. So far, so good. That was predictable. In fact, the Russian government and Putin himself had predicted that and they had warned that the state would be closely monitoring any such price increases and that legal action would be taken against any speculators.This is where things become interesting.The person in charge of this monitoring is Arkadii Dvorkovich, a Deputy Prime Minister in Dmitry Medvedev’s cabinet who has dismissed it all saying that when he goes shopping for bread he does not notice any price increases. So who is this Dvorkovich character anyway?

Arkadii Dvorkovich

Turns out that he is a pure product of the Atlantic Integrationist clan. Himself a rather modest oligarch (his official personal income in 2011 was only 4 millon Rubles), he is married to a much bigger oligarch, Zumrud Khandadashevna Rustamova, who, according to the Russian Wikipedia, is a member of the board of directors of major companies like the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Kombinat, the gold mining Polius Zoloto, or the main Moscow airport Sheremetevo. Her official yearly income is already a healthier 42 million Rubles. Dvorkovich, who attended Duke University in the USA, is also involved in all sorts of more or less shady companies and deals including the infamous Skolkovo project.

Dvorkovich, the Kremlin's Chief Economic Adviser, participates in the Reuters Russia Investment Summit in Moscow

Arkadii Dvorkovich is the perfect equivalent of Tim Geithner in the US: both young men in key economic positions shamelessly betraying the public interest. Capitalism’s DNA clones them that way.

In fact, I would argue that Dvorkovich is so typical of the Atlantic Integrationists that he could be their poster boy. By sabotaging the Kremlin’s efforts to prevent Russian businesses to profit from the sanctions, Dvorkovich not only stands to get some terrific kickbacks, but he also contributes to the 5th columns efforts to convince the general public that western sanctions are crippling Russia.

The good news is that the Eurasian Sovereignists are fighting back and that several Russian TV channels have already reported about these abnormal price increases and about the fact that Dvorkovich seems to be doing exactly nothing about it.

Over and over again we observe the same phenomenon: the President orders the Prime Minister and his government to do something, and the latter just ignore him. This is a typical example of how the 5th column works in Russia and, in the future, I plan to provide more examples of this here.

—The Saker

(2)

UNINTENDED FARCE OCT. 1, 2014
Murderous lawyers, mainstream officials, the decline of the state and fish soup

[S]everal of you have posted links about that in the comments, but I want to confirm in a separate post that the murderous thug I mentioned a yesterday has been identified. Here is the info Russia Insider posted about him:

Apparently he was arrested on charges of violence during the melee, and held for a while, but then released. During the court proceeding deciding his release, pro-Kiev activists demonstrated in support of him in front of the court buildings.His name is Vsevolod Goncharevskii (middle name: Eduardovich). He is a lawyer, and well-known pro-Kiev activist. 47 years old, a resident of Odessa. Here he is speaking to local TV stations (in Russian). Here are three news stories (in Russian) reporting his arrest, trial, and release.

So the authorities new about him and even put him on trial but then let him go. But that is hardly the most interesting fact. The most amazing about this story is that Goncharevskii is STILL not only an activist of the Euromaindan movement, but even a leader!

After the brutal assault on the Parliamentarian Nestor Shufrich yesterday, the leadership of the Euromaidan movement organized a press conference today to explain that it was all Shufrich’s fault because he had no business coming to the city of Odessa in the first place. This is the standard Kiev regime notion about “Euro-democracy” and “free speech”, so that is not what is amazing. But take a look at the video and guess who is sitting second from the right?

Panel with Goncharevskii (click to enlarge)

[B]y the way, the mayor of Odessa, Palitsa, has also declared that Shufrich is a provocateur and that he assaulted the Right Sector thugs. But then, Odessa now “belongs” to Igor Kolomoiskii, so all that is par for the course.]

So not only are the Kiev regime Nazis blaming a victim for a brutal assault, but they are quite happy to sit together with a well-known murderous thug. And I am not talking about some minor Nazi gang or some Right Sector people here, not at all, I am talking about the very mainstream and “highly respectable” Odessa Coordination Center of the Euromaindan movement. It don’t get more mainstream then that. At least not in Nazi Banderastan.

In fact, Seva Goncharevskii is all over the news in Banderastan. Here, he demonstrates with his Right Sector pals in support of the Ukrainian armed forces. Here he is helping volunteers dig trenches around Odessa. Here he is being interviewed and protests his persecution by the authorities and claims, in perfect Russian, that he is totally innocent.

This example is a perfect illustration of the true face of the Euroukraine which I call “Banderastan”. An ugly, racist, unapologetically Nazi and thuggish face, the face of a “Ukrainian Interahamwe” – a monster created by the West, nurtured by the West for centuries, and a monster which is now armed and free to roam the Ukrainian land.

Kiev regime mob justice in action

This is what they did to a couple accused of dealing drugs:

In the meantime, the “popular lustrations” (mob attacks on people deemed “disloyal”) continue, and even though they are completely illegal, the cops do nothing. Over the past 24 hours, many people, including at least one hospital director, have been brutally assaulted, tossed into trash containers and forced to sign letters of resignation.

On a semi-comical note, the Rada is now proposing that only those who have been officials in the previous administration for more than one full year be “lustrated”. Why? Because Poroshenko served as Minister of Trade and Economic Development for Yanukovich for a little less than a year.

In reality none of this is funny in the least. It is, however, significant because all these are clear signs of a society falling apart, of a social order basically destroyed and replaced by a rule by violence on all levels. This is most important because a society which goes down that road cannot do anything but comprehensively collapse because, truly, it ceases to be a “society”.

It is an open question as to whether there is really any kind of “authority” in the rump-Ukraine. While Poroshenko appears to have some control over Kiev while Kolomoiskii “own” Odessa, it is only the Right Sector which has branches in all of the rump-Ukraine and enough activists to scare any official or civil servant from Lvov to Dnepropetrovsky and from Chernigov to Odessa. This all begins to look eerily similar to Afghanistan, Libya or Iraq where one group (more or less) controls the capital while the rest of the country is completely out of control and run by various armed gangs.

The Ukraine was always a historical fiction, a completely artificial entity, originally conceived by the Papacy but which truly acquired a material form only thanks to Lenin and Stalin (the Kiev regimes should not be tossing down their statues, they should honor them as their “founding fathers, really). But from 1991 through 2013 it did exist. It was very imperfect and it suffered from many problems, but at least it did exist. Now that Ukraine is gone forever. If you boil an aquarium, it is easy to make fish soup out of it. But you cannot turn a fish soup back into an aquarium. What we are observing today is this process of “social boiling” from which there is no way back.

SELECT COMMENTS
NOTE TO TGP READERS: We often provide a sampler of comments from original threads to show the diversity of opinion surrounding these issues, along with additional information. We do not endorse all views expressed, either culturally or politically by authors or commenters. For example, The Saker is a nationalist who has no use for socialism. Many of his readers share such convictions, and are even fiercely anticommunist, some going so far as to express sympathies for the Tsar. Obviously, as revolutionists and anti-imperialists we do not share such positions. Thus specific statements we disagree with or disapprove we mark with “[sic]”. Still, we hold a flexible, non-dogmatict view of events and historical figures.—Eds)

Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Commander: “The US is Training and Funding Us”

REPORTING: RUSSIA INSIDER

WAR UPDATE Fri, Sep 26

Federico Pieraccini

Neonazis openly display their flags and symbols in Kiev, with most of the population in support or intimidated.

[A] commander of one of the Ukrainian neo-nazi battalions, the Donbass, Semyon Semyonchenko, has just returned from the US, where he met with senior senators from both parties, and received commitments of material support.

He posted a comment on Facebook in which he gives a detailed explanation of this assistance.

He was also received by IRI (International Republican Institute) and NDI (National Democratic Institute), the international branches of the two main American political parties, and met with democratic Senator Robert Menendez and republican senator Robert Corker.

New Jersey's Sen. Bob Menendez is an influential Cuban worm and child whoremonger still actively polluting American politics.

RUSSIA DESK

One of the main goals of his trip was to get training and much more from the US military. Judging by his FB post, it seems he has accomplished this.

“Yesterday I signed a contract to organize training courses for the fighters and officers of the battalion Donbass by mobile groups of instructors from the United States, held by military that are not currently in service.

Semyonchenko in visit at the International Repubblican Institute. Behind him, on the right, Tennessee Senator Robert Corker.

They will work under the traditional training system used by the Navy Seals and Delta Force. Standards have been developed for each department (reconnaissance, special forces, security, etc.) and for each non-commissioned officer.

Particular attention will be paid to the individual training and teamwork. We will use the maximum number of practical exercises.

Another important point is the training of sergeants (NCOs) to allow it to act independently and managing a team.

The instructors will also be used to prepare the internal security forces, and that training is one of the forms of indirect assistance that Ukraine is receiving.“

After his meeting with NDI and IRI he also added:

“They were very useful talks. We explained to them the situation in Ukraine as objectively as possible. We are confident that everything will go according to plan as we hoped, “

US Refuses to Back Democracy Activists in Hong Kong

FACT & OPINION
The Obama Hypocrisy

hk_protests_07011

DAVE LINDORFF

[T]he US claims to be supporting democracy from Ukraine to Cuba, and from Somalia to Iraq, often by bombing the alleged opposition, or by supporting proxy wars and subversion. But one place where real democracy activists are battling against the forces of repression they are curiously getting scant backing from the United States: Hong Kong.

There, student activists, a local occupy movement, and now the independent trade union movement, are mobilizing to prevent China from going back on a pledge made in 1997 to allow Hong Kong people in 2017 to elect their city’s “mayor,” called the chief executive, by popular vote.

The government in China, which assumed sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, at the time established what was called a Basic Law governing Hong Kong, and granting the former British Colony self-rule for at least the next 50 years, calling the policy “one-country, two-systems.” As part of that Basic Law, the partially-elected, partially-appointed legislative council was dissolved, and new elections were held. The appointed British governor was replaced with a chief executive appointed by a panel of business leaders and other prominent figures hand-picked by the central government in Beijing. But over the course of the ensuing 20 years, the number of members of the Legislative Council who are directly elected by the citizens of Hong Kong was to be gradually increased (it is currently 40 out of 70, with the balance elected by so-called functional constituencies — basically the professions like law, banking, etc.), and in 2017, the chief executive was to be directly elected.

hong-kong-protest-anticommunist-sign-web

(Click to enlarge.)

The truth of the matter is that while the protests may be genuine, and a segment of the American financial elite abhors the idea of disturbances in Hong Kong, the disturbances can easily be manipulated to create paralyzing chaos in China, and even foment anticommunism, thereby dislodging her as a significant ally of Russia.—Eds

Now China says that this last crucial democratic reform will not happen. Instead of picking their own “mayor” democratically, China says Hong Kong residents will have to choose between candidates who will first be vetted by the government in Beijing, which will only allow to run for office those deemed to be suitably “patriotic” and to “love China.”

That backslide from a promise of true democracy has sparked a huge and growing protest in Hong Kong which began with students, who tried to occupy the grounds in front of the Legislative Council building. The students last week were joined by the large Hong Kong Occupy Central movement–the latter a local democracy movement inspired by the 2011 US occupy movement. Earlier this week Hong Kong police, who over the years generally have shown considerable restraint in dealing with public protests, acted more like today’s militarized American cops, firing rounds of teargas into the peaceful crowds, spraying pepper spray into the faces of sitting protesters, wielding batons and making large-scale arrests.

This repressive turn by police backfired, as normally passive and apolitical Hong Kong residents poured out to support the embattled young protesters, bringing them food, medical supplies and water, and even standing and facing police along with the students and occupy activists. Then today, in a big development, the Hong Kong trade union movement joined the protests, with the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the only independent labor union in China, calling on its members to go on strike in support of the students and activists.

Three major unions in the confederation, representing beverage workers, teachers and dockworkers, walked off their jobs in response to the call.

This is a powerful movement, and one that clearly has China’s leaders sweating. In part this is because of what the strike and protest mean for Hong Kong itself and for Beijing’s control there, and also because of the image protest and police repression sends to people in Taiwan, the independent island nation that China considers to be an integral part of China and which it wants to lure into its fold (Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, considered a friend of China, announced today his support for the Hong Kong protesters, and also said he rejects Beijing’s proposal of a similar “one-country, two-systems” merger for repatriating Taiwan). But what probably worries Beijing most is the fear that this democracy protest in Hong Kong might spill over into China, for example into the adjacent province of Guangdong. There people have ready access to Hong Kong television news broadcasts. (China has already reportedly blocked Instagram to prevent photos of the massive HK demonstrations from spreading around the country.)

But while the US has actively worked to stoke rebellion in Ukraine, reportedly spending up to $5 billion to fund anti-government “civic organizations” that supported the putsch which ousted the elected government in Kiev earlier this year, while the US has sought, and continues to seek the overthrow of the elected, if dictatorial leader of Syria, Basher al Assad through direct attacks, and while the US is today bombing and rocketing ISIS in Iraq, allegedly in defense of the allegedly democratic government of Iraq, Washington has had little but generalities to offer (like “We support the aspirations of the people of Hong Kong”) in support for the democracy activists of Hong Kong. there hasn’t been one word of condemnation of the China-ordered police crackdown on young people whose struggle just to hold China to its word is a genuine battle for democratic freedom.
hong-kong-protest

The US-backed coup in Ukraine brought in a neo-fascist government, later “elected” by only a portion of the country, which promptly launched a civil war against portions of the country’s eastern region which had rejected the coup and the rigged vote that followed. In Syria, the US a year ago came within a day of launching an air war against Assad aimed at “regime change,” only backing down because of massive opposition among the American people to yet another war in the Middle East.

America is now bombing in Syria, claiming to be targeting ISIS, the very rebels it earlier had trained and armed to topple the Assad regime. The argument is that those ISIS rebels have turned their guns on Iraq, and are supposedly threatening to attack America too. But the strong suspicion, held even by many pro-American governments in NATO, is that this is a subterfuge designed to get a US air war going over Syria, after which the target will shift from ISIS to the Assad government and military (mch as the UN Security Council resolution to allow bombing of Libya to “protect refugees” turned out to be a subterfuge to allow regimg change, with NATO aircraft backing rebels who overthrew the Ghaddafy regime).

Finally, in Iraq, the notion that there is even an Iraqi democracy to defend is laughable. The US first had to orchestrate the ouster of Iraq’s elected Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki before it would supply troops and aircraft for a defense of the Baghdad government. Some democracy!

All this gives the lie to President Obama’s vow in recent speeches in the UN and at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative “to stand with the courageous citizens and brave civil society groups who are working for equality and opportunity and justice and human dignity all over the world.”

Whatever else it is doing, the US is clearly not standing with the courageous citizens and brave civil society groups of Hong Kong.

Of course not. Hong Kong is the gateway to China for American corporations. It is where most of those companies that invest in China have their headquarters. As well, Hong Kong Stock Market is where American investment banks put their money when they want to invest in China’s economy, preferring to buy stocks in so-called “Red Chips” — Chinese state companies that list some of their shares on the reasonably transparent Hong Kong stock market — rather than buying shares on the less-than-transparent and easily manipulated Shanghai or Shenzhen exchanges inside of China.

Don’t expect the US to rock the boat with China.

For years, American business leaders and politicians have parroted the Milton Friedmanesque argument that American corporate investment in China would inevitably lead to democracy there. Never mind that Nobel Laureate Friedman’s theory linking capitalism and freedom never had a shred of real evidence to back it, and that there is, in fact, plenty of evidence, from Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy to Pinochet’s Chile, to debunk it. Almost 40 years of the reintroduction of capitalism in China have not got much in the way of freedom to show for them.

Hong Kong’s citizens have, for some time, had freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion and travel. They have been slowly gaining democratic control over their government too, but now have run up against a Chinese Wall, and are taking to the streets to push down that wall.

The US government, ever the democratic poseur, so quick to finance chaos in Ukraine or to launch missiles, bombers and armed drones in Syria or Iraq in the name of democracy-building, has nothing to say in its defense.

I’m not saying that the US should be threatening drone strikes against China if it presses the crackdown against Hong Kong democracy activists (it shouldn’t be sending drones anywhere!). But certainly the US should be taking a strong public stand in condemning China for going back on its word about allowing democratic election of the city’s chief executive in 2017, and against the violent police crackdown on peaceful protesters.

Oh yeah. What was I thinking! How can the US, or indeed President Obama himself, complain with a straight face about countries or leaders going back on their word? And how can the US, where documents show that the Homeland Security Department orchestrated a nationwide brutal police crackdown on the 2011 Occupy movement, and where the police in most cities act like occupying soldiers in their routine patrol duties, complain about brutal behavior by Hong Kong’s Finest?

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).