Israel's Leaders Are Using a Kidnapping to Push a Sinister Agenda, By Joshua Tartakovsky, June 24, 2014

Source: http://bit.ly/1qcPgM5

[Blogger's Note: Tartakovsky's insightful analysis was written before the discovery of the three murdered lads.]


The Israeli government is using the kidnapping of three youths to spread chaos and destroy Palestine's unity government.



The disappearance of three Israeli youth in the Occupied West Bank on June 12, 2014 has expectedly reignited nascent Israeli fears and traumas.

The Israeli public has for the most part readily adopted the position of Prime Minister Netanyahu who stated that he knows “for a fact” that Hamas kidnapped the teenagers even while offering no evidence. A massive Israeli campaign calling on the international community to “bring back our boys” did not acknowledge the nearly 200 Palestinian children who are imprisoned illegally by Israel. Since the kidnapping, Israel launched massive raids on various cities and villages throughout the West Bank and searched private homes recklessly. 500 Palestinians were arrested so far and 5 people killed, including a 14 year old boy, yet the Israeli government has failed to provide evidence that Hamas was behind the kidnapping or locate the missing youth. Although no credible Palestinian group has claimed responsibility for the act, and while Hamasdenied outright that it was involved,Netanyahu said that "those who perpetrated the abduction of our youths were members of Hamas -- the same Hamas that Abu Mazen made a unity government with," referring to the recentunity government formed between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas on June 2.

Kidnapping of soldiers and citizens tends to be seen as a form of psychological torture in Israel and in such times, passions run high, hateful incitement comes easy and difficult questions are often not asked. When Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, Haneen Zoabi,claimed that the kidnappers should not be seen as terrorists, even though she may not agree with them, in light of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, she came under a barrage of personal attacks. Some have suggested that she is a “traitor” whileother Israeli politicians likened her to al Qaeda. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Zoabi is a “terrorist” and clarified that "the fate of the kidnappers and the fate of the inciter who encourages kidnapping Hanin Zoabi should be the same." Member of Knesset Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home Party introduced a “Zoabi law” to the Israeli parliament for its approval, in which those who support terrorism will be disqualified from running for parliament, although Zoabi had not expressed support for the act. Due to her statements, a criminal investigation will be launched against Zoabi by the Israeli police.

While Prime Minister Netanyahu called on Mahmoud Abbas to end the unity government, saying that “there can be no alliance with the kidnappers of children," he has failed to provide evidence that Hamas was behind the act. Hamas would appear to have little incentive to carry out a kidnapping shortly after joining a unity government, thereby losing all international legitimacy. Indeed, the former head of the Missing in Action section of the Mossad, Rami Igra, said in an interview that Netanyahu’s explicit blaming of Hamas, alsoadopted by the United States,“is more political than based on fact.” In his view, there is no evidence for Hamas’ involvement and the group has not claimed responsibility for the act.

Similarly, Gershon Baskin, a prominent Israeli negotiator who was responsible for negotiations with Hamas regarding the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, wrote on his Facebook page that hehighly doubts that Hamas was behind the action. Baskin stated that “the Israeli intelligence is convinced that the military wing of Hamas Ezzedine al Qassam is responsible for the abduction of the teens. A high level person within the intelligence community told me '100% it's qassam.' I just spoke with a senior Hamas official in Gaza who swears that it is not and doesn't not believe that someone from Qassam would take this action without approval from the political level and he says "100% the political level did not approve this." “Who to believe?” Baskin asked. “I think that the Israeli intelligence is guided by a misguided concept fostered by Netanyahu,” he wrote.

Since there is no evidence yet that Hamas carried out the kidnapping, an accusation that it strongly denies, and as the three youth remain out of sight, one may wonder if the Israeli government is not using the kidnapping to achieve certain political goals, as the former Mossad official suggested. Netanyahu appears to be using this opportunity to jeopardize the new Palestinian unity government, achieved after years of dispute, that receivedAmerican recognition, despite Israel’sstrong opposition to it. A massive arrest of Hamas members or their deportation can possibly neutralize the organization in the West Bank while limiting its power to Gaza. Holding Hamas guilty of conducting the kidnapping will grant credence to Israel’s claim that Hamas should be isolated by the international community and is not trustworthy.

Furthermore, as Israeli soldiers have been raiding Palestinian cities in large numbers, and as the death toll slowly mounts, it is possible that Netanyahu is hoping to ignite a third uprising (intifada), which would back his claim that Palestinians cannot be negotiated with and that they must be repressed by military means. Parents of the missing youth appeared before the UN Human Rights Council recently, yet they did not publicly confront Netanyahu on his incompetence in locating their missing children.

Judging by the past, Israel has conveniently accused Hamas of actions other groups committed and targeted the former accordingly to achieve its political goals. In August 2011, following a bloody attack carried out by a jihadist group from Sinai near the Israeli city of Eilat, Israel chose to blame Hamas for the attack andbombed various targets in Gaza, although it failed to provide concrete evidence linking it to the act. The recent kidnapping came at a time of uncertainty, as Israel faced immense pressure to recognize the Palestinian unity government. It therefore should come as little surprise that Netanyahu has utilized the occasion to deflect international pressure and jeopardize a Palestinian unity government, thereby avoiding the need to make a peace agreement that would involve giving Palestinians independence in the West Bank. However, such political uses of a tragedy, if indeed this is the case, do not come without their dangers. As Baskin has warned, focusing on Hamas may be a distraction from following the actual perpetrators and disrupting a unity government may lead to even greater chaos.
_____________________________________________
Joshua Tartakovsky is an American-Israeli independent researcher and a graduate of Brown University and LSE.

Boris Kagarlitsky on Ukraine: A country that might have been. 26 06 14

(photo: A statue of Lenin toppled by Maidan protesters in Kiev).

translated by Renfrey Clarke for Links
 





Source: http://links.org.au/node/3911

When the monument to Lenin in Kiev was demolished, one of the writers for the Ukrainian website Liva (“Left”) joked sadly: the modern Ukrainian state was created as a result of a revolution, and would last just as long as the corresponding monuments remained standing. If the statue of Lenin was smashed, Ukraine too would fall to pieces.

It was, in fact, only a few weeks after the “fall of Lenin” that the collapse of the state began.

When people argue that Ukraine was constructed early in the 20th century on an artificial basis, it can be objected that the same might be said of almost all European nations, including highly successful ones.

The French kings, and then the republic, applied considerable efforts to assembling disparate territories and communities into a unified society that later served as a model of national identity for all Europe. Bismarck needed to strive at length to ensure that Hanoverians, Saxons and Prussians recognised themselves first of all as Germans.

The trouble, however, is that the “work” of the Ukrainian rulers over the past quarter-century has had precisely the opposite effect. The problem lies not in the “constructed nature” of the Ukrainian state, but in the construct itself, or more correctly, in what the ideologues and practitioners of “independence” did with this construct.

The elements from which modern-day Ukraine was “assembled” (not only territorial elements, but also economic, social and cultural ones),were gathered together in the course of the Russian Revolution, and during the processes of building, defending and developing the Soviet Union. As with any such process of construction, these elements in the course of historical development could potentially be “ground into” one another, fitted together into a unified whole, and integrated. Or, they could spin off in different directions. For the development of the state to follow the road of national integration, appropriate policies were necessary. Formally speaking, this was the goal proclaimed by the presidents who succeeded one another in Kiev.

But in practice, all their measures served to promote a directly opposite result. Trying mechanically to implant a “Ukrainian identity” that was artificially conceived and did not answer the real needs of the majority of the population, they essentially robbed the people of any chance of independently working out a common, collective identity.

A state will always create its own myths, sanitising and idealising history, but these myths will only work if they do not absurdly and flagrantly contradict the logic of actual historical development, along with obvious facts that lie on the surface and remind people constantly of their presence.

This means at the very least that the Ukrainian state was obliged—even if merely for the sake of its self-preservation—not just to recognise the Soviet heritage but also to rest on it and develop it, since this was the heritage of the very epoch during which Ukraine came together within its modern boundaries and in its contemporary form. Properly speaking, all successful post-colonial states from Canada to India have acted in this fashion. However critically they might regard the British Empire, they rest on the structures established by this empire, and do not deny this fact. They are proud of the role they themselves played in the history of this empire and stress that without them, the empire’s history would not have been possible. This applies in particular to the Soviet Union, which at least in relation to Ukraine, did not act as a predatory foreign empire.

Ukraine’s neighbour Belarus has been highly successful in making use of the Soviet heritage as the basis for its identity as a state, often counterposing its own fidelity to Soviet tradition to the actions of Russia in disowning this tradition. However we might view the regime of “Papa” Lukashenko, the modern Belarusian state has proven viable, though no one initially might have believed this possible.

Language

No less absurd, in Ukraine, has been the attempt to make Ukrainian the sole official language. In practice, this has doomed the state to provincialism and to alienation from its own cultural roots. It would be completely natural and effective to proclaim both Ukrainian and Russian as state languages, and to promote this, together with a genuine federalism, as the basis for and proof of Ukraine’s European choice. Ukraine would thus provide a counterbalance to a centralist and uniform Russia. But the Kiev elites have acted in directly opposite fashion.

The problem is not that the Russian language is subject to particular suppression in Ukraine. No one is prevented from speaking or writing Russian, and attempts to enforce the Ukrainianisation of education have petered out time after time. Ukraine has needed Russian not simply as the language that the population in almost all the largest cities speak and will continue to speak, but as a powerful instrument for state building. Rejecting Russian as such an instrument would automatically throw the state system back by a century or more.

A language is not simply words, but the product of development over many centuries, a tool sharpened and refined for the performance of particular tasks. In order to bring the Ukrainian language to the same qualitative level as Russian (or English, or French) would require 100-150 years. It is no accident that such countries as Ireland or India, after freeing themselves from British rule, not only refrained from driving the English language out of the state arena, but on the contrary, made it an obligatory element of their political culture.

If a decision were taken to make Ukrainian the exclusive language of state affairs in Ukraine, it would be necessary to invest money in translating not just hundreds but thousands of books on philosophy, politics, mining, astronomy, sociology, archaeology and history from all the languages of the world. In order to banish the Russian language as a medium for the transmission of global knowledge and a bridge to European culture, it would be necessary to spend 20 years raising a generation with a command of English to match that of the average Scandinavian, and at the same time to train a new intelligentsia that along with possessing faultless English, was also fluent in French, German and Italian.

This would all cost a great deal of money. But if the funds and the willingness for it are lacking, Ukrainians need to choose from the outset not to go to war on the Russian language and culture, but to employ them as resources for their own national construction. They need to declare Gogol, Babel and Bulgakov to be national classics, explaining to the entire world how much closer the speech of Kiev is than that of Moscow to the roots of the Russian language, and demanding that Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan pursue an agreed linguistic policy on the basis that the Russian language is their common property.

Nationalist intelligentsia

Instead of this, vast sums have been spent on feeding a nationalist intelligentsia that deliberately refuses to engage in any positive cultural activity, since the criterion for success has been loyalty to the official ideology and a better knowledge (as far as possible) of the “native tongue”. But a language in which new cultural treasures and serious scholarly texts are not being created is not only failing to develop; it is not genuinely alive, and is undergoing decline. Now that the market approach to book publishing has replaced the Soviet policy of supporting Ukraine’s national literature and culture, the degradation of these latter is inevitable.

The nationalist intelligentsia has transformed knowledge of the “native tongue” into a source of power, a source that operates only under conditions of constant confrontation with other languages and cultures, that is in objective contradiction with the everyday practice of society, and that guarantees incessant and painful conflict at the very foundations of the life of the state.

Nationalism is a good ideology for mobilising aggressive movements, but not unfortunately for constructing a state. Not a single successful modern nation has been built by nationalists. No people can develop under conditions in which its political life and state ideology are based on neurotic contradictions.

Ultimately, however, political and cultural contradictions are based on economic practice. The economy of Soviet Ukraine combined the backward agrarian west and the developed industrial south-east within a unified organism. During the Soviet epoch, planned development was aimed at raising the west to the level of the eastern regions, and in part this was successful. But in the course of the post-Soviet decades we have observed the collapse of industry in western Ukraine, which has now become increasingly dependent on the redistribution of resources from the east.

There is nothing essentially wrong with redistribution. But for this to take place, it was also necessary to allow the Ukrainian south-east to develop, to grow, to expand its economy and to modernise itself. It was necessary to invest money in the region. But this was not done; the resources of the south-east were used by the oligarchs in purely parasitic fashion. The industry of the south-east was like a milk cow that no-one fed.

Meanwhile, the redistribution of resources did not bring prosperity to the western regions either. Just enough reached them to let them survive, but not enough to allow them to develop. The western regions remained poor, and the population became increasingly declassed (it was precisely these declassed youth who provide the base for the Right Sector). But ever-greater sums went to support the parasitic elite in Kiev and its numerous hangers-on, from the owners of expensive restaurants to the innumerable public relations specialists and political scientists who provided the clientele for restaurants of a slightly lower class.

Economic policy
Just as inevitably as its cultural policy, the economic policy implemented by the Ukrainian state has doomed the state to collapse. The elite that has grown up on the basis of this economic policy is not only uninterested in development, but does not even understand what it is. Along with the hordes of the nationalist intelligentsia, and the no less numerous stratum of Russian-speaking ideological and political hirelings, the members of the elite all bear responsibility in one fashion or another for the downfall of the Ukrainian state.

This state no longer exists, and it will not be restored. A “cold” civil war began in Ukraine long before the first shots rang out. The economic crisis and the subsequent political shocks then made certain that this conflict would advance to its “hot” phase.

The south-east has gone its own way, and here we are not speaking only of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, but also of all the other provinces that objectively have finished up in the position of occupied territory. The resistance that is growing in these provinces has to develop its own program and concept of state construction, carrying out the tasks with which nationalist Kiev is not alone in having failed to cope.

Equally inept have been the leaders in Donetsk and Lugansk who by force of accident have reached the summit of power in their unrecognised republics. In order to hold out, Novorossiya ["new Russia", a traditional name for the largely Russian-speaking eastern and southern provinces of Ukraine.] needs to discover its own political face, to solve the problems left unsolved by the old elite, and to transform itself as a society.

It may be that after a time we shall again see a Ukrainian state that is not divided by the fronts of a civil war. But this will be a fundamentally different state, constructed on the basis of quite different principles, not only political and cultural but social and economic as well. However tragic this might sound, the road to founding such a state lies through civil war. Ukraine will again be united only if the forces of the insurgent south-east raise their banner over Kiev.

'Is fascism always antisemitic? No, it is not.' by Andrew Taylor, 25 06 14

Before addressing the core of the Fascist credo I want to lay to rest the unhistorical myth that antisemitism is an invariable element of Fascist power.   My idea for writing on this subject arose from conversations with liberal friends who backed away from the idea of a surge of fascism in Ukraine, saying that since Ukrainian Jews are not being especially persecuted under the Kiev regime its doubtful they have powerful fascist elements operating there.

The Mainstream press has been calling Right Sector and Svoboda "imaginary Nazis" on the basis of the Israeli and Zionist deal struck with The Right Sector: (See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/putins-imaginary-nazis-105217.html#.U6ti2UBVWEk)

Early in March of this year right after the Maidan coup d' etat, the Israeli ambassador in Kiev, Reuven Din El, met with Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh 'opening a hotline' with the fascist movement to “prevent provocations"...Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League wrote the following in the Huffington Post:

"Dmitro Yarosh, leader of Right Sector, met with Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Reuven Din El, and told him that their movement rejects anti-Semitism and xenophobia and will not tolerate it. He said their goals were a democratic Ukraine, transparent government, ending corruption, and equal opportunity for all ethnic groups".
...
"Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, together with UDAR leader Vitaliy Klichko, brought Svoboda into the opposition coalition in 2012. Now, having brought Svoboda into the government, it is up to Prime Minister Yatsenyuk to ensure that anti-Semitism is not tolerated and that democratic norms are adhered to. By sending that message to the people of Ukraine now, the prime minister will reassure the Jewish community and set an admirable example.

"Guiding Ukraine’s nationalists to adopt the path of Metropolitan Sheptytsky will be a major test of Ukraine’s democratic development and an important step forward for the country. If achieved, the future of Ukraine’s Jewish community may be bright, not bleak."
(See:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abraham-h-foxman/in-ukraine-new-government_b_4875833.html)

This has been deeply disturbing to me. Is the message that Israel and diaspora Zionist leadership abroad will tolerate the glorification of Stephan Bandera, the persecution and murder of anti-Maidan activists, tolerate White power and neo-nazi flags and banners, the publication and distribution of National-Socialist literature...as long as the Jews of Ukraine are not molested? Despicable rhetoric from top Ukrainian politicians calling Russian-identity people of The Donbass and Odessa and the people of Russia "subhuman" is ok so long as 'our people' are not targeted? (See a critique of  Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yatsenyuk's message which he inscribed in the official book of the Embassy of Ukraine in the USA: "We will commemorate the heroes by cleaning our land from the evil"...

“They lost their lives because they defended men and women, children and the elderly who found themselves in a situation facing a threat to be killed by invaders and sponsored by them subhumans. First, we will commemorate the heroes by wiping out those who killed them and then by cleaning our land from the evil”, - he said.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/06/ukraine-echoes-of-the-third-reich-yatsenyuks-subhumans-.html
Since than the Kiev authorities have continued in the rhetoric and promises of the Third Reich.
The Ukrainian govt has decreed Hitler's Land im Osten (land in the east) as a promise to volunteer soldiers willing to fight the people of the Donbass: The Kyiv Post news story on this development was entitled: "Ukraine's Land Agency give land to soldiers in the east for free"
...

"Land parcels will be given out for free to the servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other military formations, as well as to the employees of Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine that are defending territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country in eastern and southeastern regions of Ukraine." http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraines-land-agency-give-land-to-soldiers-in-the-east-for-free-352100.html

Fascism is not inherently antisemitic. It is inherently anti-individualistic, that is ~ inherently antagonistic to the dignity and destiny of the human subject. Fascism castigates the 'moral decay' in Liberalism, 'the impotence of Democracy' and the 'abomination' of Socialism because liberalism, democracy and socialism are all manifestations/phases of individualism that affirm to different degrees the emancipation of the human person.

Contrary to popular commonplace notions, above all things, it is fascism not socialism which is the bitter enemy of Individualism (1). Fascism is intrinsically anti-socialist and in fact grabs power in history in response to the gains of the people, the gains of the Left. Hegel's influence notwithstanding, Marx's fundamental option was for the emancipation of the person and the Class from domination/exploitation by others. His theory of 'The State' after all, posits that the state with its coercive powers will at last wither away, and its dying off will destroy all the tentacles which have marked the un-freedom of humankind. Socialism is the expansion  of "des droits de l'homme" from the realms of morality and politics to the economic social realm. It is the fulfillment of the individual in a free association of individuals, the harmonisation of the one and the many. True, for Marx, the working-class passes by revolution from the coercive capitalist state where the few control the many  by means of the coercive socialist state (where the many control the few), but this is a  transition, a temporary period of working-class power that is succeeded by a stateless communist world.

How does antisemitism fit into the Fascist worldview? The case of German Nazism has become the rule in determining this question, rather than merely one historical incidence of a certain genre of Fascism. In point of fact German antisemitic Fascism was rather different from that of Italy or Spain in this regard, and was in many ways sui generis in its antisemitic racialism. In 1920's and early 30's Italy, the fascists were quite friendly with the Jewish component of the capitalist establishment and of the 117 original members of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, founded on 23 March 1919, five were Jewish cadre. Antisemitism was most decidedly not the policy or belief of mainstream Italian Fascism. Whether due to direct German Nazi pressure or Mussolini's frustration that Italian Zionists rejected his mid 30s proposal that Ethiopia would make an ideal Holy Zion given that Falashas were already resident there (2), it can not be claimed that before the late 1930's Italian Fascism was intrinsically or even typically antisemitic.

As viciously single-minded and obdurate as was the antisemitism of German Fascism, in fact the historical record of The Third Reich indicates that Zionism's relationship with Nazism was to say the least ambiguous, with some Zionists collaborating with the Nazis (3)(a) and with Zionist leaders opposing the early 1930's worldwide Boycott of the Hitler Regime (3)(b).

If Fascism is not intrinsically antisemitic, but anti-individualist, anti-liberal and anti-socialist, what are some of its other distinguishing hallmarks? Political Scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt  wrote an article a decade ago about fascism (“Fascism Anyone?,” Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20) Analyzing the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Pinochet (Chile), and Suharto (Indonesia)  Britt claims that all had 14 elements in common.  I will conclude by including an excerpt listing his 14 characteristics which he terms the "identifying characteristics of fascism":

"1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

"2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

"3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.

"4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.

"5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.

"6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

"7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

"8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.

"9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

"10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

"11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

"12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.

"13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.

"14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.

Source for Lawrence Britt article excerpt: http://www.deliberation.info/the-14-characteristics-fascism/


Notes
(1.) The 'individualism' often alleged to be manifested by both libertarianism and consumer-capitalism are perverse misnomers. Marx's idea of the individual and freedom is 'freedom for' not 'freedom from' society.
(Cf. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts)

(2) Ray Moseley. Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce. First Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004. pp115-116.

(3)(a) an example is depicted in In Ben Hecht's book "Perfidy"(1961) describing the events surrounding the 1954–1955 Kastner trial in Jerusalem when a leading member of David Ben Gurion's Mapai party was accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the genocide of Hungarian Jewry. "Perfidy” relates this history of a Hungarian Zionist leader who arranged for his family and several hundred socially prominent Jews to escape while facilitating the removal of the rest of Hungarian Jews to Nazi concentration camps;  Hannah Arendt, in her 1960 book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report in the Banality of Evil,” writes: “To a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.”

(3)(b) In “The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine” (which has as an afterword remarks by Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League), the pro-Israel writer Edwin Black reports that Zionist leaders in 1933 concluded a secret pact with the Third Reich that transferred 60,000 Jews and $100,000 to Palestine, the Zionists promising in return that they would halt the worldwide boycott “that threatened to topple the Hitler regime in its first year”; also see the documentation of certain Zionist leaders with Nazism in Lenni Brenner's 2 books: “Zionism in the Age of Dictators,” Lawrence Hill and Co (March 1983), and “51 Documents, Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis” , Croom Helm Ltd. (1983)

The Transformation of Russia’s Foreign Policy, by Maxim Bratersky 24/06/2014

(photo: Building of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Maxim Bratersky is Professor of the Department of International Affairs at the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the Higher School of Economics.

Source: http://valdaiclub.com/politics/69680.html


Twenty-two years have passed since 1992 when Russia began to form its foreign policy as the successor to the Soviet Union, and Russia’s views of the outside world and its role in it have gone through a deep transformation. These changes were particularly noticeable after the 2012 presidential election which marked a watershed in relations between Russia and the rest of the world.

The purpose of integration into Western structures was replaced with an idea of preserving Russia’s independence and turning towards partners in the East and the South. The goal of completely dissolving the national economy into the world market was changed for a goal of ensuring the country’s re-industrialization, laying foundations for its economic independence, and establishing an economic association of its own. The strategy of looking for compromises with Western leaders gave way to an idea of restructuring the world system in cooperation with a group of non-Western countries, where Russia would be one of the leaders. In Russia’s foreign policy philosophy the values of naive liberalism of the 1990s were replaced with ideas of realism and statism, and the vacuum in Russia’s foreign policy ideology was filled with an idea of gathering the Russian World and giving priority to the protection of traditional Christian values.

The reasons for such fundamental changes can be found in the internal sources of Russian foreign policy and in the external environment which shaped and transformed it. Russia could not and did not want to adopt the matrix of Western society and the Western political system, which would have been pernicious to the country’s political unity and its economic independence. At the same time, the main factor that caused Russia to revise its initially absolutely pro-Western and Eurocentric policy was the reluctance of the U.S. and Europe to integrate Russia into the Western world on terms acceptable to it. Another factor was changes in the distribution of power in the world, due to which active participation in the life of the non-Western world can be viewed as a full-fledged alternative to integration into the Western world.

FAILURE OF INTEGRATION INTO THE WEST
The incompatibility of the Western and Russian views of Russia’s integration into the “Big West” was present in the Russian-U.S. and Russian-European relations (above all, those between Russia and the EU) from the beginning, but whereas at first both parties sought not to focus on these differences, over the years they deemed it less and less necessary to keep silent about them. Politically, the West viewed Russia as a country that had lost the Cold War, and denied it the right to security interests or markets, which were consistently taken away from it. Economically, the West pushed Russia to integrate deeply into the world economy on liberal principles, while actively opposing any manifestations of Russian monopoly in foreign trade, protectionism and attempts to conduct a national industrial policy. These efforts, together with Russia’s ousting from its traditional markets in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, turned this country into an economic semi-colony that was technologically and financially dependent on the West. The West was strongly opposed to the preservation in Russia of a political regime that could concentrate resources on politically prioritized areas and act on behalf of the Russian economy, making Russian economic players conduct a coordinated economic policy towards foreign counterparts.

The West was ready to integrate Russia and largely succeeded in this economically, but it did not want to integrate Russia as a country having sovereignty, national interests, and the will and ability to promote these interests. It would like to integrate Russia as an aggregate of individual economic and political players who would operate in their rational, selfish interests and who would not be capable of pooling their efforts for their common advantage.

In the 2000s, such a form of integration stopped suiting Russia, and it raised the issue of a “big bargain” – an agreement to include Russia in the system of Western institutions (NATO, EU), and its elites, in Western elites. Russia proposed combining the economic potentials of itself and Europe in the project of a “United Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals” and jointly restructuring the existing security system in Europe. Also, it insisted on the introduction of a visa-free regime between Russia and the EU. These proposals were not propaganda, as Russia seriously wanted a rapprochement with the West, especially Europe. However, all of its proposals were torpedoed by the United States which feared to lose its influence on European affairs, and by those Europeans who viewed a united and governable Russia only as a threat and a problem.

In this situation, the West opted not to maintain the status quo and carried out several waves of NATO’s and the EU’s enlargement, closely approaching Russia’s borders. It built up its military potential with former allies of the Soviet Union, and its economic potential with what had formerly been COMECON assets. In the mid-2000s, the EU began to limit opportunities for productive investment in Europe by Russian capital and for Russian companies’ earnings, seeking to reduce its expenses and Russian revenues by means of non-market methods.

Contradictions between the West, above all the United States, and Russia came to a head in 2008, after the Georgian-Russian conflict in South Ossetia, which was provoked by Atlantic initiatives to integrate Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and by a deadlock in negotiations for a strategic cooperation agreement between Russia and the EU.

In 2009, after the G20 summit in London, Russia came to the conclusion that the existing financial and monetary system controlled by the West was at variance with its interests. The idea of integration with the West was finally sidelined in 2013-2014 because of an information war launched by the West against the Sochi Olympics, the Syrian crisis and an acute crisis that broke out in Ukraine.

RUSSIA'S OWN GEO-ECONOMIC PROJECT

Until the second half of the 2000s, Russia’s strategic goal was integration with Europe on acceptable terms, namely, the preservation of Russia’s political sovereignty and its own economic and government systems. Russia agreed to a prospective evolution of its law and government systems towards European standards, but it insisted on harmonization of European and Russian approaches and opposed one-sided “normative” aggression of Europe. In this connection, there were wide discussions in Russia of an idea of United States of Europe. Moscow emphasized the European nature of the Russian state and Russian civilization and proposed a concept of synergy of European capital and technologies with Russia’s natural and human resources, as well as Russia’s “hard power,” which would have made Europe competitive in the global economy and would have formed the third center of power in the world, along with the U.S. and China. Therefore, Russia sought equal integration, above all in the economic sphere, rather than a unilateral surrender of its positions.

Individual European countries showed interest in this position of Moscow, but the EU as a whole, newly adopted EU members, and the U.S. which was behind them successfully prevented the discussion from developing in this vein. The EU demanded that Russia adopt the European norms and principles, which would have removed the last obstacles to Russia losing what was left of its competitiveness. The Russian state, playing the role of regulator in relations between the global and national economies, would have been deprived of its controlling role. National budget-forming industries would have been demonopolized, would have lost their advantages over Western companies and would have had to compete in the global economy only in the price and financial areas where Western players had advantages in access to capital and institutions. Russia’s military-industrial complex would have been weakened and eventually destroyed, and agriculture would have failed to meet competition with subsidized European products. In the future, the country’s territorial integrity would have been called into question. The relative weakness of economic ties between various regions of the Russian Federation would not have ensured reallocation of resources in the national interest, and the atomization of the Russian politics and the federal system would have led to a reorientation of individual regions towards the interests of foreign partners instead of the interests of the nation.

On the other hand, it became evident to Russia that its further integration into the world economy within the framework of the Western model of globalization would lead to the conservation of the country’s technological and economic dependence. Russia continued to view itself as one of the leading industrial and technological powers, experiencing temporary difficulties, and still hoped for the revival of its industry and the creation of a developed services sector. However, the open economy, built by Russia in the 1990s-2000s, locked the country in the niche of a raw materials appendage of the developed world and did not give international and national capital sufficient incentives for investment in production and R&D in Russia.

Another obstacle to investment in Russia was a disadvantageous investment climate in the country. However, even its relative improvement in the late 2000s did not change the situation radically. The developed world has enough production capacities to serve all Russian needs, and their transfer to Russia would lead to losses of the West in jobs, budget revenues and general wealth. From the standpoint of international capital, the most cost-effective policy was the import by Russia of goods and services from the developed world in exchange for Russian raw materials. This is the nature of an open economy: it allows a country to maximize the efficiency of its economy within the framework of the concept of relative costs, but it does not give incentives to make qualitative changes in this economy and bring it to a new, higher level.

Russia decided not to increase its attractiveness to international capital through cutting costs, primarily social ones. Instead, Moscow stepped up efforts to create a geo-economic project of its own, which would have a strong market element and a large consumer market and would thus strengthen Russia’s position in negotiations with international capital and international trade and financial institutions.

In the global competition for capital, technologies and profits Russia had to choose between joining giant economies of the 21st century, the EU, China and U.S. projects – as a subordinate source of raw materials and consumer of imported products – and the creation of its own regional economic association that would cause international capital to enter the Russian market on Russian terms and help it carry out a new industrial policy.

No doubt, the creation of the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union jointly with Kazakhstan and Belarus also had other economic goals (the development of domestic trade and economies of scale, partial restoration of industrial cooperation, and, possibly, the creation of a regional currency) and political goals (the creation of a new center of power). However, its main objective is not the restoration of the Soviet Union as a political entity but the construction of a more harmonious and modern economy and the strengthening of Russian positions in negotiations on terms for the country’s integration into the global economy. It should be noted that the success of this project is important for any geo-economic orientation of Russia, Western or Eastern. It should also be pointed out that Russia took the Ukrainian operation of the U.S. and the EU not only as a threat to its national security but also as an attack on this plan intended to strengthen Russia’s positions in the global economy.

RENATIONALIZATION
In recent years, in view of a growing awareness of the impossibility to reach the declared goals of national economic development (re-industrialization, modernization, import substitution in key areas, and the placement of industries that are key to national security in the zone of national political sovereignty) in conditions of an open economy, the Russian leadership has set a goal of re-nationalization of political and economic elites. In the context of building a policy to strengthen the political sovereignty and economic independence of Russia, the situation where Russian officials and politicians owned Western assets, which made them vulnerable to political pressure, became intolerable. Moscow also came to understand that in conditions of an open economy, free investment and a free flow of capital, it cannot guarantee foreign and domestic investment in priority industries.

The principle of a free rational economic choice, which implies full freedom to use legal revenues, was politically limited. Government officials, leading politicians and the management of state corporations became the first targets of the new policy. They were urged not to place their personal assets abroad. One of the factors that played a major role in this campaign was sanctions announced by Western countries in connection with the Ukrainian crisis against some Russian businessmen that are close to the Russian president and their businesses. Government officials and state-run businesses realized that their assets placed in the West were no longer protected and could be frozen and even confiscated for political reasons.

The next step in the re-nationalization efforts was the “deoffshorization” of the Russian economy to return offshore assets under the national jurisdiction of Russia.

The third part of this campaign was proposals and moves to de-dollarize the national economy, finance and foreign trade and to significantly broaden the use of the ruble in foreign trade.

The above measures were followed up with efforts to stimulate the ruble crediting of the national economy and stop the illegal export of capital (the Central Bank’s policy). In the same context one should also consider the decision to establish a national payment system for internal and potentially international payments for private purchases in the conditions of politically motivated resistance from international payment systems. Simultaneously, the government is addressing the problem of transferring profits from payment transactions from foreign economies into the national one.

State-controlled companies may be asked to reorient their investment and purchasing policies towards domestic needs. One can also expect growing protectionism in areas that will be given priority for development.

The most important thing in the above measures is to find a good compromise between economic efficiency, to be ensured by an open economy, and national security interests, to be served by protectionist measures.

A WORLD WITHOUT THE WEST AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE WESTERN WORLD
The 21st century is a time of a global redistribution of power in the world (in the economic, military and ideological areas), a return of states into world politics, and major changes in globalization processes. The non-Western world has already surpassed the Western world not only in population, territory and resources but also economically. The European project has lost its momentum and, it seems, is unable to exist without spreading to ever new territories. One should soon expect changes in the world political system, the international financial management system, and the system of distributing incomes from the world economy, when the non-Western world will either demand its share of power in the world system, or will create a system of its own as an alternative to the Western system.

Russia views the upcoming changes as a chance to break out of the subordinate development paradigm, in which it has been since the Soviet Union’s break-up, and to return to the world stage as a co-manager of the new world order.

Russia has long been growing increasingly dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs – when its interests were ignored, whereas the West, on the contrary, did not set any restrictions for itself and aggressively promoted its geopolitical and economic interests. The main factors that were behind the rejection by Russia of the paradigm imposed on it included: the consistent NATO and EU enlargement to the East, the deployment of the European missile defense subsystem, the aggression against Yugoslavia, the interventions in Iraq and Libya, the Syrian crisis, and the attempt to establish a Western protectorate over Ukraine. The growing differences affect not only national security interests but also issues of global economic management, the distribution of incomes from the world economy, as well as issues of ideology and values.

These differences became obvious in the late 2000s-early 2010s, which was manifested in the clash between Russia and the West in South Ossetia and Syria, in different approaches to ways to overcome the global economic crisis, in the information war against Russia on the eve of the Olympic Games in Sochi and, in a particularly acute form, in the Ukrainian crisis.

The prospect of a full-scale confrontation with the West, the introduction of sanctions against Russia, and the division of the UN General Assembly over Ukraine caused Russia to step up contacts with the “non-West,” which it had already begun to build within the framework of the BRICS association and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and bilateral ties with its partners in the Middle East and Latin America.

Partly under the influence of circumstances and partly of its own free will, Russia has become the first major country of the “non-West” to challenge the West. Specifically, it is counteracting Western policies on international matters of importance to Moscow, stimulating the creation of political institutions as alternatives to the West, and working to establish alternative payment, currency and investment institutions.

Russia is now much more proactive in its foreign policy than it is dictated by its economic status. At the same time, in the context of the general redistribution of power in the world, Russia is now preparing for itself the status of one of the leaders of the future non-Western world, thus seeking to compensate the relative weakness of its economy with determination and the demonstration of an ability for leadership.

The non-Western world is still very amorphous, and its future contours are blurred. It is united by a growing rejection of the world’s status quo and the way power and wealth are distributed in it. If Russia succeeds in its efforts, the contours of the non-Western world will become clearer, although there is little hope that it will be free of minor or major problems. Yet its construction gives Russia a chance, whereas in the present world, the way it has been developing in the last 25 years, its chances are becoming more and more illusory.