Author Archives: marserene

About marserene

R. Moore BA Berkeley, MA University of Oregon Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies

Russian Anglo-American relations

The Federal Reserve is in the news. Ron Paul’s End the Fed and James Corbett’s Century of Enslavement: The History of The Federal Reserve provide thoughtful and interesting sources on this financial body. In 1913, the year prior to World War I, the Federal Reserve was created, in order to turn money making into a private enterprise. Putting money making into the hands of a small group of bankers took finance out of the realm of the public state (See: Glossary of Open Politics in The Road to 9/11 Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America by Peter Dale Scott) and allowed for direct control of financial warfare. Removal of “international obstacles” in the way of world financial hegemony was a task not far down the road. The first target was Russia with its stubborn monarchy sitting on wealthy resources. An assertion that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was a private enterprise funded by the West is well researched ( See Anthony Sutton’s Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution) but not a common knowledge. The events that ended the Romanov’s dynasty were brought about by Kerensky and his Provisional Government, which rapidly led to the Bolsheviks takeover. The Bolsheviks negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany which gave Germany all its territorial gains in the war. After the Allied victory, concessions as well as Romanovs’ treasures and gold were given to Western groups looking to plunder Russian resources while the United States did not officially recognize the Bolshevik regime and complained about Russia’s funding of Bolsheviks in the U.S.
Isn’t it interesting that after Stalin’s deportation in 1929 of the “Internationalists”, supporters of the “world revolution”, and the head of the Concessions Committee – Trotsky, that the U.S. markets collapsed in October 1929? Did Stalin’s renegotiations of Trotsky’s concession deals affect the U.S. economy in 1929 after “freebies from Russia” were no longer available? It certainly led to a 1930 embargo by France and America. In 1933 Britain no longer allowed Russia to use gold to buy or sell anything but grain. In 1933 the U.S. pulled the rug out from any gold payments by going off the gold standard. This in turn pushed and stimulated Stalin’s removal of Kulaks (individual households and farms of prosperous peasants) in the expansion of Collective Farms for the increase in grain production for export. In essence Stalin’s nationalization and socialism were aimed to increase defense abilities and industrialization of the country, devastated after the 1st World and the Civil Wars. This sounds familiar because of Hitler’s National Socialism and its arms buildup agenda in similarly broken and downfallen Germany.
Mistrust of the Soviet Union seemed to be the prevalent Western position through the 1920-s and 1930-s. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, signed August 23, 1939, is still pointed to as a sign that Russia today cannot be trusted as the Soviet Union then could not be. This Treaty was a non-aggression pact which, if one can put themselves in Russia’s shoes, was necessary considering the defeat it recently received by the Germans. A treaty with the last war’s victor was a deal. One also must consider the loss Russia experienced in the Sino-Russian war of 1905 and remaining concern about the instability of its Eastern boarders. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty provided Russia with Germany’s promise not to support Japan against Russia. Britain was instrumental in helping Japan to develop its navy which won the major victory in 1905 at the Battle of Tsusima. The British Royal navy gave a lock of Admiral Nelson’s hair to the Imperial Japanese navy to commemorate that victory.
The actual border that resulted after the annexation of Poland in September 1939 approximated the border of the Russian Empire prior to the outbreak of the 1st World War in 1914. If it is difficult to follow this track being taken to describe Stalin’s position then the situation is not being looked at from the Russian defensive point of view at that time of the impending new world war. Military solutions to diplomatic and political disputes were legitimate strategies in the mindset of the pre-nuclear era. Russia lost a in a direct conflict with Great Britain and France and Ottoman Turkey in the Crimean War of 1853-1856 and again in an indirect conflict with Britain against Japan in the Sino-Russian war of 1905. One may agree that old powers don’t forget old grudges.
The beginning of the mistrust and envy of the West toward Russia might have begun with the abdication of Napoleon on April 6th 1814. The French failed campaign against Russia in 1812, resulted in the coalition of nations called the Sixth Coalition, led by Emperor Alexander I of Russia and Fredrick William III – emperor of Prussia. They defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, and pursued him and his army to Paris with the intention of occupying it. Napoleon went into exile on Elba on April 11, 1814, from which he escaped ten months later.
The one hundred days of Napoleon saw his escape and gathering of forces. This galvanized a Seventh Coalition to confront the outlaw. The British were first to engage Napoleon’s small army at Waterloo and defeated him on June 18, 1815. The Duke of Wellington issued the Malplaquet Proclamation on June 22, 1815, restoring King Louis XVIII to his French throne, and so the world believes that the British defeated Napoleon not the Russians. That same year, 1815, another alliance was signed by Russia’s Alexander I and Prussia’s William III. It was the Holy Alliance which was not signed by the Prince Regent of Britain. It was an alliance of autocracy and its ally patriarchy. It was touted as a threat to liberty and self-determination in Central and Eastern Europe. It lasted until the Crimean War of 1853-1856 where Austria failed to aid Russia against Britain. A last stab in the corpse of that German Russian alliance was the 1866 Austro-Prussian war that separated those two German powers. [This alliance was strengthened through royal families’ relations and a long history of cultural and economic connections.] It took fifty years to separate Russia and the German speaking world after their joint effort to save Europe from Napoleon and one hundred years later the Romanov dynasty was gone in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution. Is there a mind guiding the course of history?
If the answer is “no”, we can still see a trend and say that in the early 19th century Napoleon tried to unify Europe under dictatorship and after mid-century the unity created to resist Napoleon was dissolved. By early 20th century, post-World War I, we see further isolation of Russia after a terrible war between it and Germany and with the Russian Revolution. Patterns, trends and results do suggest some intentionality. It might be ridiculous to expect the media to have a memory as that can see this, but it is still a plausible theory that Western empire builders had been trying to isolate and destabilize Russia for a long time.
Despite the attempts to isolate Russia in the 30-s, the West and Russia needed each other to defeat the Third Reich. By 1942 Stalin’s clamoring for a Second Front to be opened against Germany reached a deafening pitch and to the point, that Churchill and Roosevelt were concerned that Stalin would reach a separate peace with Hitler. To assure Stalin that the West was honest about opening a Western Front, Churchill met Stalin in Moscow in the summer of 1942. After a formal diplomatic meeting that achieved nothing, the two great leaders met in Stalin’s Moscow apartment for dinner and drinks. Archibald Clark Kerr, the British diplomat in Moscow who later helped put together the Yalta and Potsdam conferences for the “Big Three”, stated in his diary that Churchill was in a ‘triumphant mood’ when he returned to his dacha early in the morning from the personal meeting with Stalin. He also quoted Churchill as having said that Stalin was a ‘great man’ with whom he had ‘cemented a friendship’.
Let’s jump less than three years forward to Fulton Missouri in May 1946, after the defeat of Hitler, to Winston Churchill’s speech to the crowd in that small town of 7,000 in the American Midwest. He told the crowd of 40,000 about the great treaty Britain has had with Portugal since 1384 as a historic record of the Temple of Peace, and the greatness of the Magna Carta, and the Bill of Rights. He also mentioned the trust and mutual assistance between Britain, America and Canada inside that Temple. The main point of the speech after that was to exclude Russia, the Soviet Union from that temple on ideological reasons and proclaim that an Iron Curtain had descended upon Eastern Europe at the hands the Soviet Union and international communist organizations. Why didn’t Churchill try harder to meet for drinks with his good friend? Did he change his mind about the ‘great man’, Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam? Why didn’t Churchill give a somewhat different speech in Moscow? It was easier to go to rural America to draw a large crowd and “woo” Americans into an ideological struggle. Let’s not forget that NATO was formed in 1949 before the Soviets responded with the formation of the Warsaw Pact. Someone’s grandparent or great-grandparent may say that NATO was created in response to the Soviet’s denying Western forces access to their sectors of Berlin, which was landlocked by East German, the Soviet zone of Germany. This crisis is known as the Berlin Blockade when in September 1948 Soviets blocked western allied road, rail and canal access to their sectors of Berlin in an attempt to supply all of Berlin with Soviet food, fuel etc. It was like having Berlin in the Soviet trade zone. Western allies stubbornly held on to their claims in Berlin with the Berlin airlift. Let’s also not forget that France and Britain did not invite any Soviets to the negotiations that led to the signing of the treaty of Brussels, signed by Britain, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands in March 1948, six months before the Berlin Blockade. This treaty is considered the precursor to NATO. If the Soviets had been invited and included on defense treaties, as they should have been since they were at the conferences in Yalta and Potsdam, it isn’t difficult to imagine that Stalin’s friend Churchill might have received an invite to Stalin’s 70th birthday party in 1949 for a great evening of drink and reminiscences of the dark days in 1942. But Stalin was still in power and Churchill had been voted out as Prime Minister and Churchill had already given his Iron Curtain speech.
Is it of any benefit to the United States to take sides in this two hundred year old relationship of competition, shaky alliances and backstabbing between Britain and Russia? Who keeps their agreements and is more trustworthy? Clearly today Britain lines up with the U.S. often and Russia pushes back. Grandparents and great-grandparents, professors in American Universities and the U.S. government still point to the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 as reasons to distrust Russia. It is not apologetic to propose that the Soviets were responding to Warsaw Pact treaty obligations. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were in that pact. Ukraine is not part of NATO. Drang nach Osten, thrust to the East, is an inevitable reality for a western peninsula like Western Europe. This term carries connotations of Teutonic knights and their moves into Slavic lands for war and colonization. The term was revived during German nationalist movements in the late 19th century and adopted by Nazi ideology. Drang nach Osten translates into Vladivostok in Russian. Russia and Europe have more in common than Sir Winston Churchill knew. It is time to set aside our grandparent’s and great-grandparent’s mistrust of Russia. The world would experience greater prosperity and peace if the United States and Russia would put aside differences and cooperate.

IMAGINING NEW FRIENDSHIPS

What if Russia and the United States of America became close allies?

What if Russia were a close ally like Britain or Israel? When reports surface to the effect that “Putin has blood on his hands” or “Kiev has asked the security council of the United Nations to designate the Russian separatists as terrorists”, then mainstream media outlets would emphasize the importance of President Vladimir Putin in his efforts to strengthen the economy of Russia and promote trade in the Eurasian zone, and his brilliant role in the peaceful transfer of Crimea to the Russian State. Talk radio hosts like Glenn Beck might even say “I stand with Russia!” Some of the measurable effects would be the continuation of trade between Russia, Scandinavia and Europe, the return to subsidized natural gas to Ukraine. Other benefits would be exchange of intelligence and the trust in that intelligence.
Could people in the Pentagon, Whitehouse or Congress begin to trust? They would have to remind themselves of some simple facts. The Russian empire of the Tsars was not a threat to the United States of America. The Soviet Union had not invaded any country that did not share its border. Some people will remind us of the Cuban Missile crisis and the fear that swept the country. Do we want to return to the days when most heads of the household had to seriously consider whether the family budget could accommodate a bomb shelter? Hey, that was more than fifty years ago! Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, and we have better communications now to help us understand one another. It would be a return to a very dark age if a director of the CIA would describe Russians as mysteriously as Lt. General Hoyt Sanford Vandenburg did when he said of Molotov’s speech of October 30, 1946: “Soviet leaders only speak in algebraic symbols.” Such statements could get a student a failing grade in an International Studies or Russian class and these days and wouldn’t receive a “like” as a comment on a news article. But then Hillary Clinton’s comment (March 5 Washington Post, Phillip Rucker) likening Putin’s move in Crimea to Hitler in the thirties is a “dark age” comment. To many who have not taken the time to read Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for example and therefore understand the detailed context of Hitler’s rise to power let alone Mein Kampf where Hitler outlined his intent to expand the boundaries of Germany militarily and justify it with a racist ideology, the comment passes as a show of historical knowledge. Still, Putin is not Adolf Hitler. Since the development of the printing press it has been difficult to create and propagate new religions so to the rise of maniacal dictators must be near impossible until internet connections are dropped in mass and bread for the hungry becomes a political slogan again. Otherwise anecdotal comparisons to Hitler are pedantic and anachronistic.
The worst days of Russian and US relations were fifty or more years ago, so we are headed for rapprochement if we consider US and British relations as a model. The Brits burned our White House in 1814, yet only one hundred and three years later, the Americans brandished their bayonets to help White Hall defeat the Hun in World War One.
The expansion of NATO and containment of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union might be seen as an attempt to fulfill a cryptic prophecy. To achieve total world domination the nexus of central banks of the US, UK and EU need the resources of Russia. It is Russia that is not part of a world domination plan so it must be made malleable to Western control. When you have the power to print money, as the Federal Reserve does, and you don’t answer to anyone, expansion of power is the only plan unless you deconstruct yourself. Step by step acquisition of power through the destruction of rivals like Gaddafi and his African development bank marks the progress of time. (See: “Semantics – The Rise and Fall of Muammar al Gathafi” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVHzAinRH4g)
A real move of genius has been the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) development bank in Shanghai. (For an excellent discussion of The BRICS Development Bank see Professor Horace G. Campbell’s article: “The Future of the BRICS Development Bank” at http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/29/the-future-of-the-brics-development-bank/) These five developing nations have given themselves leverage in the IMF, World Bank system. It is a start of a world financial system without pride of place. This alliance is discrete and possesses a serious challenge to US, UK, EU and Japanese domination.
It seems impossible for the US banking, military, intelligence complex to change course or alter its thinking. Look at the more than 100 US military facilities in Italy, more than forty in Germany, those in Japan etc. and realize that gains from World War II have been held as well as hegemonic thinking since the war’s aftermath. The next installment of The Moore Chronicles will look at the origin of NATO, a human centered story with a strong element of spite.

The Burden of Enlightenment

We keep hearing that Putin must put a leash on his terrorist-dogs, who occupied Ukraine.
Yet no US leader or news source mentioned the US-NATO support of Kiev let alone the nature of its regime. Calls for Russia to quit helping the rebels in Donetsk and Lugansk are a bit disingenuous.
Did Andrew Jackson retrieve Davey Crocket from the Alamo? He, like Alexander Borodai, was a volunteer. We do not read articles about Americans volunteering to fight for the IDF. They are good people exercising their liberty to fight for democracy therefore it would be absurd to ask the President of the United States to revoke their agency. This is the broad view from afar. This view takes into account an attempt to understand the point of view of others, namely Russians trying to help fellow ethnic Russians under assault from a US-NATO supported Kiev regime. It is a point of view that can move around in time to reflect on how situations and conflicts came about.
We all know the point of view of tragedy when we read about the mourners of the flight. The lack of coverage of civilian tragedy in Donetsk or Odessa in US media is not part of the texture that is intentionally presented to the people. The surface we see is our enemy that is pursued every day. Pieces from the past, such as how the current conflict started, do not matter. The gist of Anne Applebaum’s rapid response story, is compounded by chatter on radio. A week later we hear that the crash scene was “violated” and not handled professionally while no one hears about the body that fell through a roof into someone kitchen. Oh, yes, some of the rebels initially on the scene of the crash were drunk. Counter that image with the polished caskets and Hearses filing past solemn mourners in Sydney and Amsterdam and then this patchwork quilt become opaque. There is no movement back in time to reflect on causes, circumstance and pull back as we wait for the next accusatory article or televised interview that pushes for answers that the interviewee cannot give: Does Putin have a soul?
Is the EU on a path toward revival of colonialism?
The current bandwagon to jump on is sanctions. Hearing the PM of the UK talk about big countries bullying little countries is laughable. It seems that only the EU and US countries have the ability of self-governance and they are so enlightened that they must tell others what to do.

The Entertaining World of International News, a View from America

From the way we are treated, it is obvious, that our government and mainstream media does not trust us and have a low opinion of people’s intelligence.

Did anyone read that Russia was using the Sochi Olympic Games for propaganda?

The NBC hosts were criticized for not mention Gulags or Russia’s Communist past during the opening ceremonies. Critics pointed that some journalists didn’t even have running water in their hotel rooms. How dare those Russians have a Grand Prix in 2014 or the World Cup in 2018? It may snow in the Yekaterinburg venue during a soccer match.

Is this information meant to harm Russia?

The summer of 2013 featured the Ghouta chemical weapons attack in Syria. Russia was blamed for supporting the murderous regime. The United States was very close to launching a “limited strike” against Syria. The launch was averted and President Vladimir Putin helped to negotiate a deal to have all chemical weapons from Syria brought safely to Italy. We later learned that the chemical attack was not perpetrated by Assad’s regime.

“The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), authored by former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd, and Professor Theodore Postol, further exposed how the US-UK-France chemical weapons case against the Assad regime in Syria last August – was a total and complete fraud,” [ http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/01/20/mit-study-further-destroys-washingtons-syria-chemical-weapons-claim/ ]

The Russians’ refusal to accuse the Assad Regime of the attacks was called “support for the regime and propaganda”. Putin’s effort did not matter for the mainstream media, and he was demonized for his support for Assad, just as he continues to be denigrated and demonized now. Again, the mainstream media or any officials never made a fair comment on the positive role of the Russian president in resolving this extremely escalated situation.

What are the results of such attitude?

One-sided and undifferentiated blaming of Russians, using unproven information, naturally undermines the trust of American viewers and readers in their own country’s mainstream media, divides people into two opposing camps, and ultimately does a very bad service for the truth.

The truth is always in-between. The Russian president is not “an angel”, but he is not “the man-eating devil” either. He is not jumping with joy for the deaths of innocent passengers of the shut-down airplane and then “for propaganda” prays on camera in a church for their souls.

From the way we are treated, it is obvious, that our government and mainstream media does not trust us and have a low opinion of people’s intelligence.

       After the downing of the Malaysian flight MH17, on July 17th 2014, the accusations of Russian support for the Donetsk and Lugansk rebels has been repeated by credible sources like William Pomeranz of the Wilson Institute on C-SPAN and by the orotund Mark Levine among many others.                                                                                                                                                          [US –Russian relations. C-SPAN July 21st 2014. William Pomeranz http://www.c-span.org/video/?320552-2/washington-journal-usrussia-relations ]

As early as Friday July 18th, one day after the plane went down, on radio stations across the nation Levine said: “we know who did it.” Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post had “enough facts” laid down together the next day, on July 18 to suggest in her opening sentence that everyone cease discussion and accept Russia’s role as sole instigator of the conflict in the Ukraine.                                                                                                                                                         [ The Malaysia Airlines crash is the end of Russia’s fairy tale. July 18, 2014. Anne Applebaum http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-the-end-of-the-russian-fairy-tale/2014/07/18/3e42715a-0eab-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html ]

According to such experts – a social media post featuring rebels “discussing their role in shooting down the airline” and their cover-up, deleting the post – is the evidence of guilt and Putin’s direct involvement. This tragedy is an opportunity to malign Russia’s president. This year a short piece on MSNBC highlighted a photo of President Ronald Reagan during a visit to the Soviet Union: circled in the background was a young Putin. The intended idea of this piece was that Putin has been a thirsty jackal, who hovered around the fountains of power for decades.

The mind numb comes not from being shown the evidence, but in being told in no uncertain terms, and by suggestion that Russia is just bad. There is some debate about the “show” versus “tell” dilemma. Good writers do both. When a writer tells, there is clarity of the intended message. To hear a writer proclaim the thesis with conviction is good. It can be read later, how the thesis is supported. That is entertainment, MH17 is a tragedy.

On the day of the tragedy our government told us where the plane went down and imposed a conclusion – the location proves that the Russian separatists did it from the ground. Official statements claim to have intelligence, that Russia backs the separatists. We should be happy, that our government has such a great and quick Intelligence sources, and just believe them on bare words, because they don’t trust us – this country’s citizens – to know the exact details and facts about how and from where this Intelligence was gathered.

Our government does not trust us, people who elected it. Why? Why they think that all we deserve as “proof and evidence” – is just a statement – “because we say so”?