Tag: US

Where is the United States of Pindostan?

If you talk to a Russian about the international political situation, sooner or later you will be informed that there is a country in North America that you’ve never heard of. Its name is ‘Pindosia,’ ‘Pindostan’ or, more officially, ‘United States of Pindostan,’ and you will be told that one part of it, called Alaska, used to belong to Russia. Part of the word—‘stan’—stands for underdeveloped state, as in ‘ Pakistan,’ ‘Kazakhstan,’ or ‘Uzbekistan.’ The citizens of this country in plural form are called ‘pindoses,’ in singular—‘pindos.’

There are more than 316 million ‘pindoses’ in ‘Pindostan.’

Today, this country has a black President, and the Russians have a nickname for him too. He is called Maximka—after a character from a popular Soviet movie, made in 1952, which told the story of a black boy saved by the Russian sailors from the cruelty of the vicious American slave-traders who were terribly abusing him and calling him just that—“Boy.” In the film, the saved boy was fed well by the Russian crew, given the name Maximka, and became one of their own in the end.

But by the modern-day Russian legend, Maximka, unfortunately, has grown up into an ungrateful Russophobe.

One can assume that the reader by now has a clue what this country is.

The word ‘pindos’ in Russian is highly offensive, and defines a helpless creature that is a product of a very bad educational system, one who can survive in this world only with the help of various gadgets. The origin of the word is unknown, and the philologists are fighting to establish it. The most popular explanation states that this word was invented by Russian peacekeepers in Serbia with the purpose of describing a NATO soldier, who was seen by them as a strange, clumsy figure with his 90 lbs. of bulletproof vest, weapons, radios, flashlights and so on.

From afar, he looked very strange to the Russian eye—like a penguin.

The Russians have had their favorite, most-hated pindoses. One of them, the constant laughingstock in the media, used to be the US Ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul. He was a huge fan of Twitter and if judged by the number of his tweets, spent more time on his gadget than actually doing his job. After more than two years of service there, upon his departure, he received only two words in Russian—via Twitter—from the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs: “Goodbye Mikhail.”

Today his place has been taken by the spokesperson for the US Department of State, Jen Psaki. She has an anti-fan club of haters who consider her not to be very bright—they even invented their own anti-IQ unit called 1 Psaki. One who has 3 Psakis has a brain of a clam. The term ‘psaking’ in Russian political newspeak means to know nothing about the subject while saying something banal and politically correct. She is so popular that when she injured her foot and came in front of the cameras with the cast on, all major Russian TV channels and newspapers reported the event.

Another hated ‘pindos’ is Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), famous in Russia for his periodic tweets to ‘Dear Vlad.’ In 2011, for example, Mr. McCain tweeted Putin, “Dear Vlad, The #ArabSpring is coming to a neighborhood near you.” Usually reserved and purposefully polite while talking about his ‘partners from over the Big Pool’ (Big Pool being the Atlantic Ocean ), this time Mr. Putin shot back, saying that Mr. McCain “has a lot of blood of peaceful civilians on his hands. He must relish and can’t live without the disgusting, repulsive scenes of the killing of Gadhafi.” “Mr. McCain was captured in Vietnam and they kept him not just in prison, but in a pit for several years,” Mr. Putin added. “Anyone [in his place] would have had his roof moved over.” The last three words in Russian slang mean “suddenly to become insane.”

Today, according to the respected Moscow ‘Levada Center,’ which measures political sentiment in Russian society, 74% of Russians have negative feelings towards the USA. It hasn’t always been like this; in the 1990s, 80% had positive attitude toward America.

Currently, 76% of Russians hate Obama personally and only a meager 2% like him. In 2009 only 12% of Russians had extremely negative feelings towards Obama.

These are the maximum peaks of anti-American feelings in Russia in years but the sociologists believe they could go even higher in the near future.

Anti-American sentiment has been growing slowly in Russia since the war in former Yugoslavia. But the sharp recent increase happened as a result of the US-led sanctions that were imposed on Russia after the ‘Russian annexation of Crimea.’ For example, just last week Visa and MasterCard completely stopped their operations in Crimea, leaving more than 2 million people there without access to their money. 75% of Russians do not believe that their country is responsible for the events in Ukraine. On the contrary, they blame the US.

When the sanctions began, many Russian businesses responded by putting up ‘Obama Is Sanctioned Here’ signs on their doors and windows.

However today they went much farther.

The owners of the Moscow supermarket “Electronics on Presnya” are using American flag doormats so the customers could wipe their dirty feet off, according to the British tabloid Daily Mail. “Customers have been filmed wiping their feet on the fabled stars and stripes as they enter and exit stores across Moscow, as struggling retailers take a hopeless swipe at their Cold War adversaries,” reports the newspaper. According to the Moskovky Komsomolets Moscow newspaper, the nation’s business owners decided to put the US flag under the Russians’ feet because of the strained relations between the two countries. “New doormats with the American flag were put at every exit so that America would not think that she is allowed to everything,” they say. “From one perspective, of course it is a flag, but from the other, because of this entire situation in the world, regular folks are suffering. All the electronics we import, mostly from China and buy for dollars. We have to work directly so the US would have no chance to manipulate the prices.” (The Russian ruble lost about 50% of its value because of the economic sanctions by the western countries and a fall in the oil price.)

By the words of the shopping center’s attorney Konstantin Trapaidze, the doormats with the American flag do not break any Russian law. “It is very probable that the doormats have a decorative character. Yes, people are walking on them but nobody prohibited this. They produce not only doormats with the flag on them but also furniture upholstery. The breaking of the law would be when someone would start burning such a doormat or real flag demonstratively, or tear it up.”

Major Russian TV channel Vesti eagerly reported that fact. They also added that some Moscow stores were selling the toilet paper with American flag imprinted on it. The pricetag was $1 per roll.

A number of Russian politicians have been working very hard to keep the flames of rage burning. Last week, the Speaker of the Russian Parliament, Sergei Naryshkin, raised the issue of starting an international investigation of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings by the US in 1945, as a ‘crime against humanity’ has no time limit. He wanted nothing less than a new Nuremberg trial with the US at the criminal’s bench.

Vladimir Putin, from his side, during his most recent press conference, used the occasion to show his negative attitude toward one of America ’s most popular products. Answering a question about Russian drink Kvass, he said, “I don’t know how harmful Coca-Cola is, but a lot of specialists say that it is, especially for children. I don’t want to offend Coca-Cola, but we have our own national non-alcoholic beverages, and we shall help them to win our stores’ shelves.”

He could have chosen another brand as an example of an unhealthy soda, since there is no shortage of different drinks in Russia’s stores. But to no one’s surprise, the Russian President chose for his attack the very symbol of Pindostan.

Source: New York Observer

Castro reaffirms Communist rule in Cuba

President Raúl Castro declared victory for the Cuban Revolution on Saturday in a wide-ranging speech, thanking President Obama for “a new chapter” while also reaffirming that restored relations with the United States did not mean the end of Communist rule in Cuba.

In a televised speech before Parliament and a group of favored guests — including Elián González, the center of a tug of war in 2000 between Cuban exiles and Havana, and the three men convicted of spying in the United States who were released as part of the historic agreement announced on Wednesday — Mr. Castro alternated between conciliatory and combative statements directed at the United States.

He stoked the flames declaring near the end of his statement, “We won the war.” But he also praised Mr. Obama for starting the biggest change in United States-Cuba policy in more than 50 years.

“The government in Cuba will still repress and throw into jail anyone who opposes the Castro regime,” said Blanca Gonzalez, 65, who moved to the United States 13 years ago. Her son Normando Hernandez spent seven years in a Cuban prison, she said, for “practicing independent journalism”; he was freed in 2011.

“All Obama is doing is throwing a lifeline to the Castros so that they can continue crushing the people of Cuba,” said Roberto Delgado Ramos,78, who said he was arrested twice, in 1960 and 1964, for “counterrevolutionary activities” and served a total of 12 years in prison. “The Castros are the ones who need to pay for the blood that they have spilled.”

Source: NYT

WIN/Gallup poll: US represents threat to world peace

Is the most dangerous country in the world the United States of America? According to a new poll from WIN and Gallup International, the U.S. represents the largest threat to world peace today.

In their annual End of Year poll, researchers for WIN and Gallup International surveyed more than 66,000 people across 65 nations and found that 24 percent of all respondents answered that the United States “is the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” Pakistan and China fell significantly behind the United States on the poll, with 8 and 6 percent, respectively. Afghanistan, Iran, Israel and North Korea all tied for fourth place with 4 percent.

Much of the animosity toward America comes from Muslim Middle Eastern and North African nations, all located in a region most likely to be affected by American military actions over the past decade. Forty-four percent of Pakistani respondents, for instance, voted America as the most dangerous nation, despite Pakistan’s acceptance of U.S. foreign aid. The Chinese and Russians rated the United States as dangerous even more than Pakistanis did, at 54 and 49 percent, respectively.

However, a plurality of people polled in several officially American-allied nations also rated the United States as dangerous. Thirty-seven percent of Mexicans and 17 percent of Canadians view their neighboring country with suspicion on the world stage. A surprising 13 percent of American respondents rated their own nation the biggest threat to world peace as well.

While poll respondents seem anxious about the United States’ role in world affairs, many of them would have no problems moving to America if they could. The United States topped WIN/Gallup’s list of top countries people would move to with 9 percent of the vote. Canada and Australia came in second with 7 percent apiece, while 38 percent said they were happy exactly where they are.

Overall, responders seemed remarkably optimistic about their own futures, despite any misgivings about the United States. Nearly 50 percent of responders say that 2014 will be better than 2013, the first time since 1990 that people thought a better year was on the way.

“Despite an unstable economic situation, our happiness index is extremely high all over the world except in Europe,” Jean-Marc Leger, President of WIN/Gallup International Association, said in a statement. “Moreover people think that 2014 will be better than 2013. Optimism is back in the world.”

Throwing Republicans under the bus for torture?

The United States committed war crimes when they tortured prisoners of war and Iraqi civilian internees.

Although it is common knowledge around the world and in America, it was President Obama who admitted at a press conference that America tortured detainees after 9/11.

The President’s remarks came ahead of a soon-to-be-declassified Senate report about the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program”, a nicer way of saying “torture”.

In speaking about the CIA, the President said, “We tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values. A lot of those folks were working hard and under enormous pressure, and are real patriots. But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong.”

Why are these torturers not being prosecuted? Torture is a war crime; it does not matter if people were patriotic, afraid, angry, or following orders, torture remains a criminal offence.

Former vice-president and convicted war criminal Dick Cheney’s daughter does not think torture is a violation of international law, and is furious at President Obama.

Ms. Cheney has asserted that President Obama’s statement about the Bush-Cheney torture program “was an amazing and stunning display of a president, a leader, a Commander in Chief who seems to take no responsibility for anything that’s happened on his watch.”

Cheney is angry because her father’s culpability in ordering torture will be officially exposed in the upcoming Senate report. For the record, George W. Bush was president from 2001-2009. In 2002 Barack Obama served as an Illinois State Senator until 2005 when he was elected to the US Senate.

President Obama included his own administration when he told a press conference a while ago that “we” tortured detainees.

According to Liz Cheney, “This president is an utter disgrace. He’s expending more time, more energy, more passion, more aggressive activity in targeting and going after patriots, heroes. CIA officers and others who kept is safe after 9/11. He’s lying about what they did, he’s slandering them, he went to Cairo and did it in 2009. Today he did it from the podium of the Oval Office. It’s a disgrace. It’s despicable.”

Another report, incidentally, concluded the Bush/Cheney authorization of so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ of detainees in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was ineffective and yielded no critical intelligence. It might actually be the best indication yet that these detainees had nothing to do with 9/11.

President Obama admitted indirectly that America tortured detainees in 2011 when he told reporters that despite Republican presidential candidates praising war criminals who tortured prisoners, he believed, like international humanitarian agencies and the world court, that water boarding is torture.

In 2010 Dick Cheney admitted to authorizing torture, and just last March he told a sold-out crowd at American University he had no regrets and bragged that “If I would have to do it all over again, I would. The results speak for themselves.”

Cheney was lying, of course, and the Senate report will indeed say that the CIA torture was “ineffective and yielded no credible intelligence.”

Liz Cheney, a proud lesbian, nevertheless insists on calling her father a “hero”.

Cheney also said that despite being convicted of war crimes with Bush, Rumsfeld, and company, “the accusations he’s a war criminal for using torture are not true.”

The Obama administration has failed to prosecute anyone associated with the torture program, even though war crimes were prosecuted with extreme prejudice after World War II by the United States.

During war crime tribunals after World War II at The Hague, it was established that following orders was not a justification for torture.

America lost whatever standing it had in the world after Bush launched a regime-changing war against Iraq which left the country in ruins.

By throwing Bush, Cheney, and company under the bus, Obama and Democrats possibly hope to gain some of their lost moral standing and popularity after the Iraq disaster.

A large body of Democrats believe that while the Bush-Cheney cabal have already been convicted of war crimes in absentia, and they need to be arrested, sent to The Hague, and prosecuted for war crimes.

US racial inequality protests entering fifth day

From Chicago and Miami to Philadelphia and New York, angry race demonstrations in the US are entering a fifth day.

Protesters shut down freeways, chanting “I can’t breathe” and held “die-ins” in the streets. On Saturday, two police officers were injured as demonstrators smashed windows and hurled rocks at police, authorities said.

Black protesters are furious about a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white New York City police officer in the choking death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, and took to the streets nationwide late Sunday in a fifth day of demonstrations.

Officers used smoke and tear gas after crowds refused to disperse. Six people were arrested Saturday in Berkeley, bringing to at least 300 the number of people arrested across the country during the protests following the decision not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo.

Marchers in Berkeley, California, chanted: “Shut it down for Michael Brown.” The white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri who shot Brown, was also aquitted.

In Chicago, about 100 churches organized peaceful rallies throughout the day while in Miami protesters marched onto interstate 195, shutting down the causeway in both directions.

In Philadelphia, about 200 protesters and clergy staged a “die-in,” in which demonstrators lie down on the street, outside the South Philadelphia Sports Complex following the Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Seahawks game.

Fans leaving the stadium could be heard jeering at the protesters. A black protester said such taunts show work remains to be done on educating people about racial inequality.

In Miami protesters marched onto Interstate 195, shutting down the road in both directions.

Black pro athletes joined in with their own form of protest Sunday: Davin Joseph, an offensive lineman for the St. Louis Rams, penned “I can’t breathe” on his cleats, and Johnson Bademosi, a defensive back for the Cleveland Browns, wore a shirt with the same message penned on the back. That followed Derrick Rose, a point guard for the Chicago Bulls, who on Saturday night also wore a shirt bearing the words during a pre-game warm-up.

Fresh war in Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was fired amidst significant foreign-policy leaks on Saturday morning.

The New York Times reported that the United States will expand its mission in Afghanistan in 2015, with US troops participating in direct combat with the Taliban.

This flies in the face of Obama’s very public announcement six months ago in the Rose Garden that US troops in Afghanistan would be shifting into a “training and advisory” role next year.

American airpower will furthermore support Afghan forces. This bombshell was strategically leaked ahead of a holiday week in which Americans will be shopping for bargains in a very bleak economy.

The Afghanistan reversal is a new hawkish posture and Hagel’s departure after he helped to manage a withdrawal from Afghanistan and shrink the Pentagon budget, will be regarded as a logical step.

Obama’s decision, made during a furious White House debate in recent weeks with his senior national security advisers, came over the objection of some of his top civilian aides, who argued that American lives should not be put at risk next year in any operations against the Taliban when Al Qaeda is actually rising in Iraq.

But the military pushed back and curiously Hagel’s departure directly coincides with the new aggressive attack plan for Afghanistan.

ISIS’s rapid emergence, it’s unhindered oil sales and other foreign-policy crises possibly contributed to Hagel’s ouster.

The United States is changing course toward a more aggressive foreign policy: it is recommitting to the war in Afghanistan, which is by far the country’s longest, spanning two two-term presidencies.

The number of troops in Iraq has doubled, and the administration will soon seek an authorization from a Congress that is extremely unlikely to include a provision that outlaws direct combat by US troops, in a distinctly interventionist climate.

‘Sanctions are aimed at regime change in Russia’

The ultimate goal of the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by some Western nations is to stir public protests and oust the government, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

“Western leaders publicly state that the sanctions must hurt [Russia’s] economy and stir up public protests. The West doesn’t want to change Russia’s policies. They want a regime change. Practically nobody denies that,” he told a leading think-tank in Moscow.

Lavrov said that the tensions between Russia and the West had been brewing for years before the Ukrainian crisis, adding that now the Europeans had decided to go for all-or-nothing and play chicken with Russia. But at least the positions have been made clear, Lavrov said.

Russia and the EU are having a moment of truth focused on Ukraine, Lavrov said, but stressed that Moscow would not be the one to break off ties with Europe. However, Russia won’t simply go back to how things were before the crisis hit, he said.

“The EU is our largest partner,” Lavrov said. “Nobody is going to shoot himself in the foot and reject cooperation with Europe, but everyone understands that it won’t be business as usual anymore.

“But we don’t need the kind of business we had. [That] was like ‘Russia must do this and must do that,’ and we want to cooperate as equals,” he added.

He laid the blame for the escalation on an “aggressive minority” among EU nations, who pursue ideologically-driven grabs of power in eastern Europe, including Ukraine, instead of focusing on the serious problems that Europe is facing due to the turmoil across the Mediterranean in North Africa and the Middle East.

“Exporting any kind of ideology, whether it is democratic or communist or any other kind, won’t do any good,” he warned.

Ideology blinds Europeans to some problems, which Russia believes need to be solved, Lavrov said. For example, EU officials are reluctant to speak about the persecution of Christians by Muslim militants in Iraq and Syria or elsewhere, because they fear that this would be perceived as politically incorrect. Meanwhile there is a growing Christianophobia in the world, he said.

“Most of EU members avoid discussing this issue. They are ashamed to pronounce it as they were ashamed to put a phrase acknowledging the Christian roots of Europe into the EU Constitution,” Lavrov said. “If you don’t remember and don’t respect your own roots and traditions, how can you respect the traditions of other people?”

‘Russia not anti-American’
Lavrov blamed the US for claiming global leadership at a time when both its resources and leadership skills are in decline. Particularly, he said, Washington is increasingly tuning its policies with electoral cycles, as long-term goals are sacrificed for short-term gains of popularity among voters.

“We cannot accept the position of those who tell us: ‘Put up with it. Everyone has to suffer from America having elections every two years, and nothing should be done about it. Relax and take it as a given’. This won’t do. We won’t take it because the stakes are too high,” Lavrov said.
He added that while some take Russia’s opposition to America’s global influence as anti-Americanism, this is not the case.

“It’s not about anti-Americanism or forming some sort of anti-American coalition. It’s about the natural desire of an increasing number of nations to ensure their vital interests and doing it in a way they see right, not the way they are being told by a foreign party,” he said.

If the US pursues leadership not out of a false perception that it has a God-given burden to take responsibility for everybody, but by developing the skill to form a consensus, Moscow would be the first to back Washington, Lavrov said.

But now Washington is bullying other nations into toeing their line, and few dare to object publicly out of fear of reprisal, while complaining in private, he added.

Official: China recognises Crimean referendum

China is against the declaration of independence by any ethnic groups through referendums, but this does not apply to Crimea, the acting director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s European-Central Asian Affairs department, Gui Congyou, told Russian media on Friday.

“We should take a very careful and well-considered attitude to tackling nationalities’ issues. We are against any nationality gaining independence through referendums. As far as Crimea is concerned, it has very special features. We know well the history of Crimea’s affiliation,” the diplomat said.

“On the whole, the nationalities’ problems in some countries stem from double standard policies by certain states, which, proceeding from their own selfish interests, support one ethnic group and push it towards holding an independence referendum. This is a manifestation of double standards serving the interests of the United States. In a bid to achieve its aims, the US resorts to intervention in the internal affairs of other states by using force without UN Security Council authorization. China is firmly against this approach,” Gui said.

In his opinion, “such actions trigger aggravations of inter-ethnic contradictions and result in armed conflicts.”

On Russia’s stance on crisis in Ukraine

China supports Russia’s stance on settling the crisis in Ukraine, Gui Congyou stressed.

“China reacts with full understanding to the challenges and threats Russia has faced in connection with the Ukrainian issue and supports Moscow’s approach to its settlement. We are not interested in an armed conflict on the Ukrainian territory and wish to see the issue settled by political means. We are against external intervention in Ukraine’s internal affairs through government coups.”

“As for the causes of the Ukrainian crisis, in a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin the Chinese leader, Xi Jingping said that ‘there is no smoke without fire’,” Gui added.

“Personally, I believe that some states and blocs stick to the Cold War mentality and are involved in geopolitical games with the aim to infringe on the geopolitical interests of Russia. China is strongly against anyone harming the security of other countries for the purpose of protecting one’s ‘absolute security’,” he noted.

Pat Buchanan questions ‘endless war’

Pat Buchanan, a former US Presidential candidate, is a leading voice of American Conservatism.  In excerpt from an article that appeared on his website on Tuesday, he is less than flattering about the Republican Party:

“How do you like the Journal’s war?”

So boasted the headline of William Randolph Hearst’s New York flagship that week in 1898 that the United States declared war on Spain.

While Hearst’s Journal, in a circulation battle with Joe Pulitzer’s World, was a warmongering sheet, it did not start the war.

Yet the headline comes to mind reading the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages seem to have concluded that on Nov. 4 America voted for new wars in the Middle East, and beyond.

On Nov. 15, its lead editorial declared that the great “question before President Obama and Europe is how to stop the Napoleon of the Kremlin.”

Putin is Napoleon? Has the Journal lost it?

Vladimir Putin is 62. By age 40, Napoleon’s empire encompassed nearly all of Europe. France had swallowed Belgium, Holland, parts of Germany and the Italian coast to Rome. The Emperor had alliances with Austria, Russia, Denmark, Sweden and a truncated Prussia. Virtually all the resources, industries and populations of Continental Europe were at the service of the French Empire.

Putin has reacquired Crimea, which belonged to Russia before the United States was a nation, and is about the size of Vermont.

Napoleon made it to Moscow. Does the Journal think Putin will make it to Paris, as Czar Alexander I did, or to Berlin, as Stalin did?

The Journal hails the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 18-0 vote to arm the Ukrainians, and urges Congress to do the same.

And what would be the result of U.S. heavy weapons arriving in Kiev?

Would Putin recoil in shock and awe and scurry out of Crimea?

Probably not, as the Journal itself concedes, “In 15 years running Russia, Mr. Putin has never stood down.”

And if Putin, seeing U.S. weapons arriving in Kiev, sent in the Russian army to annex Luhansk and Donetsk, took Mariupol on the Black Sea coast, established a land bridge to Crimea, and then offered to negotiate, what would Kiev do?

Even with U.S. weapons Ukraine cannot defeat Russia.

What would we do? Accept defeat? Send U.S. advisers or troops into Ukraine? Launch strikes on Russian forces? Blockade Crimea? Are we really prepared for war with Russia, over Donetsk?

Since Nov. 4, the Journal and its neocon allies have been cawing for U.S. troops to fight ISIL in Iraq and Syria, for U.S. air strikes on Assad’s regime, for bombing Iran, and for arming Ukraine to fight the Russians in a war that Kiev would surely lose.

Was this what America voted for on Nov. 4?

Is this what the Grand Old Party has on offer – endless war?

China, Russia concerned about TTP

China and Russia are both concerned by the US determination to strengthen its influence in the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian defense minister said Tuesday after talks with his Chinese counterpart.

Senior US officials earlier said the Asia-Pacific region will become the top priority of the country’s foreign policy.

“We have also expressed concern about the US attempts to strengthen its military and political influence in the Asia-Pacific region,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said after talks with his Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan.

According to Shoigu, Russia-China military relations will be further enhanced with a view to form a collective regional security system. The parties discussed the response to the common threats in the region and particularly agreed on common steps in countering international terrorism.

At the most recent summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Beijing US President Barack Obama promoted the idea of an ambitious 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP). Its terms have not been fully revealed, however it is believed intent is to curb the further economic expansion of China, as well as increase US influence in the region.

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin labeled the Trans-Pacific Partnership as another attempt by the US to build the architecture of regional economic cooperation that benefits the United States.

“We plan to hold another joint naval exercise next spring in the Mediterranean Sea. A joint exercise is also planned in the Pacific Ocean,” the Russian defense minister said following talks with Chang Wanquan.

“Our military cooperation has great potential and the Russian side is ready to develop it in a wide range of directions,” Shoigu added.

The Russian defense minister recalled that in May Russia and China successfully participated in joint Naval Interaction 2014 exercises, when a squadron of warships from Russia’s Pacific Fleet sailed into the East China Sea to perform various training and defense scenarios.

Russian and Chinese ground forces are taking part in annual military drills to prepare cooperative responses in case of destabilization in Central Asia.

Meanwhile the United States and the European Union are discussing more sanctions against Russia, a high-ranking US administration official said Tuesday.

“I would say that the question of the intensification of the sanctions is under discussion at this point,” the official said.

“When the president was In Australia over the weekend [at the G20 forum’s summit]…. He began a conversation about next steps to increase the pressure on Russia as well as next steps to provide additional financial support to Ukraine,” the US official added.

The discussion has been launched ahead of the US Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit to Ukraine on November 21.

US whites a minority by 2050

A new baby boom of Hispanic, Asian and black children is coming to America – and it will make whites a minority by 2050.

The surge is not due to new immigrants coming to the United States – but instead stems from the immigrants who are already here having children, according to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.

His new book, Diversity Explosion, recounts how falling white birth rates and rising birth rates for minorities will change way the United States of America looks – and votes – forever.

There are already nearly as many non-white babies being born as white children, according to Census Bureau statistics. It’s only a matter of time before minorities children outnumber white ones.

The result, Frey tells the Atlantic, will be very similar to the Baby Boom after the Second World War – except this time it will be minority children being born.

‘Back in the 1950s, we had a lot of Americans across the board in their childbearing years – we had all these babies,’ he said.

‘Now, that’s really only the case for some of the newer minorities.’
And it’s not just cities that will be changing. The suburbs are already becoming more diverse and are likely to become progressively less white year after year.

Between 2000 and 2010, the population of Hispanics in suburbs grew by more than eight million. Major cities added just three million Hispanics.

Even among black Americans, the population of suburban dwellers is growing. In the last decade, the population of suburban blacks grew by three million and the population of urban blacks shrank by several hundred thousand.

Source: Daily Mail

 

Hungary threatened by Maidan-style protest

Budapest has been shaken by several days of mass street demonstration against plans by Viktor Orban’s government to introduce a tax on the internet. According to the media, 100,000 Hungarians came out onto the streets of Hungary’s capital to tell the prime minister “no”.

In and of itself, the internet tax is a weak excuse for the organisation of 100,000-strong demonstrations. And, of course, demands to abolish the tax turned into demands for the resignation of Hungary’s ‘dictatorial’ and ‘corrupt’ government. Attacks were also launched on government buildings: as one, internet users pelted them with stones, notebooks and mobile phones.

Other signs of a ‘Hungarian Maidan’ were also evident: demonstrators defiantly jumped around chanting “He who does not jump pays the tax” (the Ukrainian version of this standard spectacle is “He who does not jump is a Moskal”). Local human rights defenders declared that introducing a tax on the internet is an assassination attempt on freedom of speech unacceptable for a democracy.

Among the demonstrators was the U.S. charge d’affaires in Hungary, Andre Goodfriend, who previously reported that the US authorities had banned six Hungarian nationals close to the Hungarian prime minister from entering the country.

It appears that Washington was protesting against the corrupt practices of these Hungarian nationals and expressed its displeasure to Viktor Orban in Brussels. On her Twitter page, the European Commissioner for Competition, Neelie Kroes, backed the street demonstrations and called for those who still had not done so to join them.

Western media write that Orban is under the influence of Putin. Orban himself has had to state more than once that he is not a pro-Russian but a pro-Hungarian politician, but he continues to be accused of yielding to pressure from Moscow. And no wonder: he has introduced restrictions on the work of foreign companies in the country, has too much power concentrated in his hands, and has approved Hungary’s neoliberal Constitution.

Orban is guilty before European democracy in a number of ways. As the father of five children, he resolutely opposes attempts to register the cohabitation of same-sex couples as ‘marriage’. He was also opposed to economic sanctions against Russia, calling them nonsensical, and saying they would do more harm to EU countries than to Russia. In addition, he is calling for compensation from Brussels for the losses incurred by Hungarian manufacturers as a result of curtailed cooperation with their Russian partners.

The head of the Hungarian government is not able to withstand all pressure, however. It was not long before Orban had to declare that Hungary stood with Germany in its assessment of events in Ukraine, and that the introduction of sanctions was a justified move.

It is easy to conclude that the change in the Hungarian prime minister’s initial position was a consequence of pressure from Berlin.

Thus, representatives of Deutsche Telekom’s subsidiary Magyar Telekom, Hungary’s largest internet company, have expressed their outrage at Orban’s plans to introduce a tax on the internet. Berlin is also putting pressure on Orban in other ways. Following German Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth’s visit to Budapest during the street demonstrations, the Hungarian prime minister declared that the government had listened to the people and the tax would not be introduced.

Yet the battle formations of a Maidan-style protest movement in Hungary remain ready to go. The leader of the protests, liberal Balazs Nemes, has reported that the protesters are in touch with each other and are ready to go back out onto the streets the instant that the authorities decide to launch an offensive on their civil rights. Balazs Nemes has referred to Viktor Orban’s leadership style as “the most appalling tyranny”.

The Hungarian prime minister’s independence, including with regard to Russia, has long irritated both Brussels and Washington.

Viktor Orban’s statements regarding his intention of finding allies in Europe capable of opposing the introduction of new sanctions against Russia together have not gone unnoticed.

Western capitals have been particularly outraged by the fact that on 4 November 2014, the Hungarian parliament passed a law allowing the construction of the South Stream pipeline to take place in Hungary, despite the position of the European Commission. Thanks to this law, Hungary now has a legal basis for refusing to comply with the requirements of the EU’s Third Energy Package.

Protests in Budapest against “the most appalling tyranny” are a warning to Viktor Orban, and a reminder of the fate of another Viktor – Viktor Yanukovych.

The street protests organised in the Hungarian capital should also be regarded as a warning to eastern European ‘Russophiles’ like Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico or Czech President Miloš Zeman, since their attitude towards anti-Russian sanctions and events in Ukraine is much like that of Orban.

Source: Ron Paul Institute

‘Nigga’ used 500 000 times daily on Twitter

This season, the US National Football League is attempting the impossible: banning the n-word within the chalk-lined borders of its purview.

As with the previous attempts, the NFL’s “zero tolerance” policy — which gives referees leeway to issue a 15-yard penalty for a first offense and ejection for a second — comes with good intentions: to establish a field of play free of the most racially charged word in American history.

The policy, though, was widely criticized as being heavy-handed and out of touch. As the league wrestled with the issue, a team of Washington Post journalists examined the history of this singular American word, its spread through popular culture and its place in the vernacular today.

But like the others, it is almost certainly doomed to fail; to be ignored, at best — or mocked and flouted, at worst.

If there is one thing certain about the modern n-word, it is that it defies black-and-white interpretations and hard-and-fast rules.

The word is too essential as an urban slang term to be placed in a casket and buried, as NAACP delegates attempted to do in a 2007 mock “funeral” for the word.

It is too ingrained in youth culture to be eliminated from city streets, as the New York City Council attempted with a symbolic resolution banning the word the same year. And more than likely, it will prove too complex and nuanced to be policed by football referees wielding yellow flags and penalties. Never mind the troublesome optics of a group of mostly white NFL executives dictating the language rules of a majority-black player pool.

If anything, in 2014, it is the very notion of banning the n-word that appears dead and fit for burial. It was a long and noble fight, waged largely — but not exclusively — by an older generation for which the word is inseparable from the brutality into which it was born. If there is still a meaningful n-word debate left to have, it is over context, ownership and the degree to which it should be tethered to its awful history — or set free from it.

A word that is used 500,000 times a day on Twitter — as “nigga” is, according to search data on the social media analytics Web site Topsy.com — is almost by definition beyond banning. By comparison, “bro” and “dude” — two of the terms with which the n-word is synonymous to many people younger than 35 — are used 300,000 and 200,000 times, respectively. For many of this generation, the word is tossed around unthinkingly, no more impactful than a comma.

“It’s such a regular part of my vernacular. It’s a word I use every day,” said comedian/actor Tehran Von Ghasri, a 34-year-old D.C. native of African American and Iranian American heritage. “I’m a ‘nigga’ addict.”

But any larger exploration of this subject leads to the inevitable conclusion that it isn’t just the NFL that has an n-word problem. It’s all of America.

Source: Washington Post

The ECB holding Europe hostage

The European Central Bank – ECB – invented yet another tool to hold Europe hostage vis-à-vis Russia

The ECB has just launched – effective 4 November 2014 – a new watchdog to control and regulate the European banking system. It is called the Single Supervisory Mechanism – SSM. It is supposed to monitor and reign in European banks that do not ‘behave’ in terms of overstretching their investment and risk lending as compared to their capital base.

In fact, the SSM is one pillar of the three pillar ‘security’ system put in place by the ECB and the European Commission – EC.

The Single Resolution Mechanism – SRM – is ECB’s strong arm to save or liquidate ‘troubled’ banks. In other words, it will administer ‘bail-ins’ to ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks in distress; meaning – over-indebted banks will rescue themselves from depositors’ money, or from shareholders. This practice was tested in Cyprus in 2013. As reported by Reuters on 30 July 2013 – According to Cyprus’s central bank, “47.5 percent of deposits exceeding 100,000 euros in Bank of Cyprus would be converted into equity to recapitalize the troubled lender as part of an international financial bailout for the island”.

This confiscating or stealing of depositors’ funds, also called the ‘haircut’ in the denigrating jargon of the Occident, is better known as a ‘bail-in’ – since it avoids the taxpayer, those who have been bearing the brunt in previous US and European ‘bail-outs’.

This atrocious predatory and outright criminal imposition by the infamous troika (ECB, EC, IMF), with no legal backing whatsoever, went largely without protests in the rest of Europe, it was shortly thereafter accepted by the EC as the new ‘norm’.

In one of his last proud statements before handing his job as European Commissioner to Jean-Claude Juncker, Manuel Barroso exclaimed – “The European Union intends to break the vicious link between sovereigns and their banks. In the future bankers’ losses should no longer become the people’s debt, putting into doubt the financial stability of whole countries.”

There it is. The ratification of the new ‘bail-in’ rule. It is surprising that there is no run of the European banks, as many of them are less stable than they were in 2008, at the onset of the man-made ‘crisis’. Bail-ins might be imminent.

The third pillar will be the Single Resolution Fund – SRF – a stabilization and rescue mechanism for banks facing bankruptcy. It is planned to become effective on 1 January 2016 – if – and that is a big IF – the necessary funding will be put in place by the member countries.

Pillars one and two are compulsory for the Eurozone countries and banks, some 6000 – which is a lot to supervise. The ECB has quickly declared that it – i.e. SSM – will directly monitor the 150 most important ones. The others will continue to be controlled by national mechanisms, whatever these are. They will be given strict regulations to follow by SSM with sanctions or fines if the rules are not followed – to make sure they will not stray.

Membership for non-Eurozone countries is voluntary. Remarkably, the UK has not (yet) volunteered for membership.

This is the biggest boost in ECB’s power since its creation some 16 years ago. ECB now sets all banking standards throughout Europe, according to which a bank may fall or rise. This is a clear infringement on the Eurozone countries sovereignty – one of the key principles to be maintained according to the Lisbon Treaty. There is no covenant in ECB’s regulations that would give it this power leverage. It is all self-serving – and the neoliberal leaders of the Eurozone countries go along with it –to the detriment of their constituency.

And let’s not forget, ECB is intimately linked to Wall Street, the FED and the IMF – Mario Draghi, the ECB President, is a former Goldman Sachs executive.

The SSM is a flagrant conflict of interest – and it looks like the financial czars of this western greed economy are getting away with it. For now.

An independent audit of all European banks, especially those 100 or 150 considered “too big to fail” – and including the ECB itself – would indeed be in order. – Independent means – the auditors would report to a special council of Eurozone countries – but independent of the European Commission. The special council would include representation from member countries parliaments, the banking, industry and service sectors, as well as civil society.

Of course – this is unlikely to happen, equally unlikely as an independent audit of the FED. That would mean transferring power to the people, to those whose money is at play, those who are really interested in a well-functioning banking system – not a predatory one as we know it today.

According to The Guardian, a recent stress test carried out by the ECB on some 100 of the largest European banks, 24, or one of five, failed (including 9 Italian and 3 Greek banks), leaving a hole of 25 billion euros in banking capital – which eventually may need to be bailed-in — if there are no bail-outs and the SRF is not yet functional.

Implementation of the SSM will be a point of no return for European banks, including for individual countries sovereign central banks. Until now, they were nominally free to print their own money. For example, Greece could have rescued them-selves by printing its own euros, instead of submitting to the draconian, literally killer conditions, imposed by the troika. But it didn’t, since the ruling elite in Greece was and is part of the scheme. As of now, there is no ECB rule that forbids a local central bank to print its own money – which in the Eurozone is the euro.

Europeans will be at the mercy of the ECB and through it, of Wall Street and the FED – the defunct greedy dollar based monetary system.

And why do the people not react? – Because they are on purpose misinformed, kept in the dark by the media. The new SSM is presented as a system that would protect them from future crises – when the contrary is true.

However, at least equally important and highly suspicious, is the timing of this new delegation of power for the ECB. The abrogation of Eurozone countries and their banks sovereignty is not coincidental. It comes at a time when a new west-east conflict, a new Cold War with Russia is being instigated by Washington and its European vassals.

ECB’s new strong arm, the Single Supervisory Mechanism, with its transboundary powers and disregard for national sovereignty is intent to hold the Euro system and its countries hostage against Russia, or the new Russia-China alliance. The new watchdog watches that none of them will stray – perhaps into the eastern camp of honest trading, into a new realm of economic prosperity and equality, where banking may serve the peoples development, instead of the accumulation of wealth for a few.

Remember, Mr. Xi Jinping, President of China, visited Germany in March 2014, to offer Madame Merkel participation in the New Silk Road – a new trading alliance from Germany, the western most borders, all the way to Shanghai, covering Russia, the former Soviet Republics, north-western and central China. An incredible potential for trade and development that can hardly be ignored. If Germany accepts, the strongest nation of the Eurozone, the rest of Europe will follow – follow a path of more security and independence than the current alliance with threats and sanctions from a warmongering White House will offer.

Washington is aware of this. They will hold no barrels to sow unrest and destabilize Europe to eventually justify a US intervention, more NATO, more CIA surveillance, more profit-yielding armament – and moving ever a step closer to Moscow. The new banking control mechanism is just an additional – but extremely powerful tool in this direction.

An alternative monetary system, detached from the predatory dollar scheme, will be a welcome means to peacefully counter this latest financial aggression.

Peter Koenig is an economist and former World Bank staff. He worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.