Freeland Responds to Putin: Liberalism Will Prevail! (Nazis Will Help)

The bottom line is that Canada is effectively collaborating with Ukranian Nazis. 

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Matthew Ehret

Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He is also the co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation.

July 10, 2019

© Photo: Wikimedia

The elite attempting to control the world under an “end of history” neo-liberal doctrine have created a mountain of unresolvable paradoxes for themselves in Ukraine since unleashing the anti-Russian Euromaidan color revolution in late 2013 that unseated a pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych government, and replaced it with a Nazi-infested technocratic regime which has played out like a disastrous circus for the past five years.

The paradox created is fairly straight forward: The Euromaidan was always wired to promote the integration of Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic neoliberal order. When Yanukovych announced his plans to reject that euro integration in favour of joining the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, some thought there could be no other way but violent regime change. Sounds simple and the plan worked. Within months, Yanukovych was out and a pro-NATO/EU regime was in power.

Here’s the rub: The only way to activate a violent overthrow required the unleashing of vast networks of third generation neo-Nazis to carry out the sort of dirty work which no one else had the stomachs to handle.

While anti-Russian sentiment wasn’t difficult to come by in western Ukraine, finding people with the shameless bloodlust to kill and be killed could only be rallied from among such networks that had been led to believe that the real villain of WWII was Stalin and not Hitler. Today these networks have come to dominate the military, police, and bureaucracy of Kiev under such names as the Azov Battalion, Svoboda (Socialists/Nationalist Party), Right Sector, and National Corps. With the rise in influence of such fascist networks, laws were passed resulting in Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera becoming a national hero, nazi-styled book banning of authors who don’t acquiesce to the state’s official narrative of history, and state support for fascist training camps for children.

Hence the uncomfortable paradox: fascist droves of neo-Nazis have gained international notoriety with the World Jewish Congress, US Holocaust Memorial Museum and human rights organizations writing letters of condemnation of the countless violent attacks on the LGBT community, feminists, and Jews which have multiplied since 2014– often with the complicity of the state police and military.

But of course that cannot be admitted or else the entire game is up, and so by maintaining the lie, ever greater mountains of uncomfortable fallacies build upon each other creating a castle on sand whose collapse is now beginning to be felt.

Calling out this castle on the sand in the clearest terms, President Vladimir Putin gave an interview prior to the G20 in Osaka exclaiming that the problems and paradoxes facing today’s world are traceable to a singular root cause: the breakdown of the paradigm of liberalism.

A Clash Between Paradigms

Speaking to the Financial Times in the Kremlin, Putin said:

“The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population… I am not trying to insult anyone, because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia as it is. But we have no problems with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish. But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles. I cannot even say exactly what genders these are, I have no notion. Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”

Defending the principle of morality against the collapsing liberal order which denies truthfulness in favor of mass opinion, Putin said: “Deep inside, there must be some fundamental human rules and moral values. In this sense, traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist.”

As much as some took these words as a breath of fresh air, certain political figures treated those words as poison.

Canada’s Ukrainian-Nationalist Rhodes Scholar Chrystia Freeland was among those who took the most visceral offense to Putin’s message when she spoke to a crowd of confused technocrats during the third Ukraine Reform Congress in Toronto Canada (July 2-4^th) stating: “Putin is not hiding what he’s up to. He thinks that the liberal idea, the whole way that we live, the whole notion of how we built our society- THAT’S what he’s opposed to! The reason why Canada takes the positions we do is because we do not agree that the liberal idea is dead.”

Freeland’s Global Affairs website stated the purpose of the conference and Canada’s relationship to Ukraine in the following terms: “Following the Revolution of Dignity in early 2014, Ukraine’s government committed to implementing democratic and economic reforms in line with its European aspirations. Russian aggression, which started in 2014 with the illegal invasion and occupation of Crimea, has drawn Ukraine into a bloody conflict in the east of the country. This conflict has placed significant pressure on the Ukrainian government’s ability to carry out its reforms.”

During the conference, agreements were made to provide money for gender reforms, anti-corruption legislation, integration of the private sector in the government and Canada’s refusal to recognize Russian-issued passports to Eastern Ukrainians. Forty-five million dollars in aid was added to the $785 million already spent on Ukraine’s plastic surgery with a focus on “stopping Russian aggression” and “ensuring the irreversibility of reforms” (whatever that means).

Canada also announced that its programs to train Ukrainian police and military would be extended until 2021 and 2022 respectively. This once again puts Canadian armed forces directly into a situation where they are collaborating with neo-nazi forces such as Vadym Troyan, Serhiy Knyazev, Andry Biletsky, and Dmytro Yarosh.

Nazis and Banderites Exposed

Vadym Troyan acted as Chief of Police of Kiev region from November 16, 2016- February 8, 2017 where he was responsible for the purge of all forces loyal to former President Yanukovych. Troyan was replaced with current Chief of Police Knyazev who is collaborating closely with the Canadian officials in the creation of Ukraine’s national police academy. After being replaced by Knyazev in 2017, Troyan became the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Kiev where he currently oversees the Azov-affiliated National Corps who define themselves as the reserves of the Ukrainian armed forces, yet whose stylized swastikas embedded in their logos betray their true allegiances. It should be noted that Troyan is an unrepentant Banderite who made his name as a leader of Azov and the Patriot of Ukraine (founded in 2005 to create a national socialist state of Ukraine which was incorporated into Azov in 2014.) For those who believed Knyazev was any better, those beliefs were put to rest when he exclaimed on television “I apologize. I am a Banderite too! Glory to Ukraine!”

Dmytro Yarosh (former Right Sektor leader) is now a leader of the National Corps Party, and is the current commander of the Ukraine Volunteer Army being trained by Canadian military personnel.

Andriy Biletsky is the leader of National Corps (the political party created by Azov in 2016), former commander of Azov and co-founder of Svoboda. Azov has introduced over 10 000 members to the “national militia” which is tightly integrated with the Ukrainian army. Biletsky has stated that his mission is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade against the semite-led untermenschen.”

One of the key Nazis leading this process is Andriy Parubiy, Chairman of the Rada (parliament) who has interfaced closely with Freeland for years. Parubiy is a co-founder of the National Socialist Party (Svoboda) and a leading figure behind the deployment and protection of right-wing storm troopers around the nation.

Although Canadian officials have made efforts to play dumb around these inconvenient facts, Colonel Brian Irwin (Canada’s military attaché in Kiev) was caught meeting with officers from the Azov Battalion.

So when Canada proudly announces that it will extend operation UNIFIER to train Ukraine “security forces” until March 31 2022, or announces that Freeland successfully changed Canada’s laws to permit providing “lethal aid” to Ukraine in 2017, we should really think about who is actually benefiting. What should come as a particularly disturbing shock is that the “lethal aid” provided to Ukraine by private Canadian arms manufacturers has never been made public with Global Affairs responding with the evasive answer “for reasons of commercial confidentiality , the department does not comment on any application of permits [to sell weapons to Ukraine].” The closest thing to an answer from a government official has been Trudeau’s statement at the Toronto conference “we already see the investments from Canadian companies in the production of ammunition in Ukraine”.

Zelinsky and Trudeau: Two Actors in Over their Heads

Both Justin Trudeau and Volodymyr Zelensky presented a spectacle at the Toronto event, as both statesmen have gained well-earned reputations for having compensated for their lack of political credentials by having been actors. In the case of Zelensky, he played a president on television before getting elected, while Trudeau served as a 2^nd rate high school acting teacher before Liberal Party controllers decided to use him as their plaything to sweep into power in 2015.

As Trudeau pledged continued support for the NATO Contact Point Embassy of Kiev which it co-controls with Britain, Zelensky stated: “I hope that Canada will continue to be a conductor of Ukraine on the way to full membership in the alliance”. Proving his comedic reputation well earned, Zelensky ended his Toronto speech saying “it is a great honour for Ukraine that such a powerful state like Canada supports Ukraine with such devotion.”

Canada as Posterchild of Liberalism

Even though an ugly picture has been presented, one question was not addressed which should be on your mind: Why Canada?

Why has Canada played such a prominent role in Ukraine’s post-Soviet existence and especially since the launching of the Nazi-led Euromaidan? Why is this relatively unpopulated monarchy so actively making enemies with nations like China, Russia, and even America?

To answer that question, it is useful to revisit the statement on liberalism eloquently given by Putin. “Liberalism”, by its very essence denies truthfulness in favor of “popular opinion”. Under a “liberal” geopolitical order, whoever controls “popular opinion” controls the forces defining humanity’s existence. What liberals cannot admit is that mankind is the only species whose existence is not merely bounded by genetic instincts or environmental conditions alone.

Of course, technocrats, behaviorists and oligarchs wish to believe that is all we are, but the reality as Putin so clearly stated, is something more. We are a species defined by qualities that transcend matter and are tied to principles of conscience, reason, and aesthetics.

As a nation founded upon British Aristocratic principles of hereditary power (Canada is a monarchy after all), the role selected for this northern nation in the wake of WWII, was to become a “Middle Power” who would act as counterweight to the shifting centers of gravity during the Cold War as it slid from communist Russia, Cuba or China towards Capitalist America or Europe, at one time befriending Nixon or Carter and another time befriending Castro or Mao.

Trudeau’s total lack of principle made him the perfect puppet in a time when keeping British Canada close to all sides of the Great Game was most useful for the British. Above, Pierre Trudeau gets chummy with Castro, Chairman Mao, Thatcher, and Reagan

In the years since Freeland and Justin Trudeau’s ascendancy to the throne, Canada’s use in a geopolitical “great game” has been one of corralling flocks of sheep towards emotionally-driven policies such as de-industrializing to fight global warming, promoting self-enslaving free trade acts, “democratic” regime change and in some cases, risking outright nuclear war.

This has taken the form of Canada’s guiding role in the Lima Group of Latin American nations against Venezuela, the “Alliance for Multilateralism”, the defense of WTO-run order or rallying the nations to fight man-made climate change. The common denominator amongst all of these Canadian-led initiatives is a total lack of substance and religious belief that nations can be bent by the “force” of popular opinion. Liberalism.

The Father of Modern Liberalism Revisited

I’d like to end this report with a bone-chilling quote from a leading architect of the currently collapsing liberal world order named Lord Bertrand Russell. This celebrated “logician, and architect of the Cold War wrote a very ugly yet influential book called The Impact of Science on Society in 1952 where he stated:

“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology. Mass psychology is, scientifically speaking, not a very advanced study, and so far its professors have not been in universities: they have been advertisers, politicians, and, above all, dictators. This study is immensely useful to practical men, whether they wish to become rich or to acquire the government. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.” Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part…

This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship…The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Although it took some decades for Russell’s blueprint to “make its great strides”, the very fact that its success has led to society’s self-destruction should be a sufficient proof that this philosophy (merely a repackaged paganism for the modern age) is not only obsolete as Putin says, but constructed in defiance of the true nature of mankind as a species of reason, morality and free will destined for something much greater than liberals can ever imagine.

The Sorry State of Canadian Democracy

“The Liberals and Conservatives are essentially opposite sides of the same coin, both supporters of the global status quo as envisioned by the corporate powers.”

Source

In spite of the “writ” not having been “dropped” Canada is already in full election mode.  Of course, politicians are always electioneering as their main purpose once in power is to stay in power in order to reap its rewards and benefits.  Otherwise, instead of politicians running the country we could simply let the bureaucrats do their uncelebrated mundane work of the daily running of the country.  Unfortunately, it is not that simple as the rules and policies the bureaucracy follows are put out by various political parties – massaged and manipulated over time – and not  put out on the basis of “universal values” or “constitutional values” whatever they may be.  In the meantime, electioneering has started with the many policies, plans, promises, platitudes, and homilies being announced for consumption by the incumbents and wannabes.

Within domestic affairs and identity politics are many topics used to shape and steer discussions in attempts to sway the popular will.  What is seldom discussed – and very little understood, are the actions and belief systems that really underlie our society.  In a broad perspective Canada’s position as a neoliberal, austerity imposing, capitalist member of the western elite, the western U.S. sponsored empire, is seldom if ever questioned.

It is seldom discussed because the true powers that be – the elite powers of those within the Washington consensus group of institutions – the bankers, financial officers, and corporate managers of the large private and public businesses and institutions – do not want it discussed.  They do not want ‘democracy’ to be more than a superficial status.  Their control of monetary policy, their centralized control of the media steers the world the way they want it to operate and be perceived, making our democratic institutions essentially a rubber stamp for their economic dominance.

Our institutions operate within the parameters acceptable to the corporate greed towards ever-increasing profits at the expense of the global environment, and at the expense of the global citizenry.  While science has long warned about climate change and environmental pollution of all kinds – a very real occurrence – even those who pay attention to it are so entwined within societies’ structures that very little is done about these scientific concerns.  Along with that, part of the same underlying paradigm are increasingly vast disparities in income and wealth levels both domestically and in other countries.  A small group of super elites control vast amounts of wealth and thus power, generally working together to secure their realm.

If this broad if somewhat short generalized view is used as the lens through which to view Canada’s political parties, there are rather few underlying differences between the parties as seldom if ever are the underlying factors questioned..

Essentially it all comes down to maintaining the status quo of western financial dominance of the world, its resources, and people.  The Liberals and Conservatives both actively support the military industrial complex that is the not so hidden fist keeping – or trying to – control of the world’s governments.  Perhaps they present it differently, the Conservatives wanting to put the military out to “punch above its weight” while the Liberals soften the blow with “rule of law” and “peacekeeping forces,” both serving the empire well.  Few question it – from Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria to Ukraine, Canada willingly supports the empire.  Venezuela reveals the ultimate ugliness of it all as Canada has for decades – with notables such as Ben Rowswell and Allan Culham (former ambassadors), and Chrystia Freeland (current Foreign Minister) – openly advocating the overthrow of a duly elected government.  How democratic!

Israel serves as another example of an empire under non-democratic control.  A government that denies twenty percent of its population the same civic status as the ethnic religious majority, that guards 1.8 million people in an open air prison on survival rations only, and that has created a series of militarily ruled or controlled bantustans is not democratic.  Yet there is no Canadian political party that decries this situation, all fearful of the domestic religious vote (Christian and Jewish) and the repercussions of not supporting the empire’s outpost in the Middle East.  For the latter, it is truly not so much fear of what might happen but an overwhelming blind willingness to support the dominant power of the west.

All major parties – Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, and Greens – support the fully outdated position of wanting a two-state position, while Israel continues to ignore all those dead positions and continues building illegal settlements on occupied territory while the rest of the world turns away.  Israel is not the only place where Canadians uphold the status of the West’s military control of wealth and resources.

Throughout Africa, through much of the Middle East, Canada’s military-business connections help maintain the extraction of wealth through current supra-national corporate models of governance.  So-called “free trade” agreements, onerous World Bank predatory lending, and IMF “structural adjustment programs” (debt and more debt) maintains control of many governments and many supposedly sovereign economies.  In essence, globalization is about controlling the world’s wealth while guarding the people – the workers, labourers – behind sovereign borders.  Canada is in full partnership with all this.

Canada’s Adventures in Neoliberal Imperialism Continue

Blowback – refugees, poverty, and the environment

Obviously, all is not well with globalization as millions of people attempt to escape the worst of its violent dangers and impositions.  The large displacement of people in the Middle East and Africa  is placing pressure on Europe as refugees continue to arrive en masse when escaping domestic mayhem.  The same holds true in the Americas as thousands of Hispanic/indigenous people attempt to travel to the U.S. in order to escape the violence and corruption and despotism at home.  Most of that violence is caused by the economic impositions of globalization combined with the history of U.S. interventions to control governments that objected to U.S.corporate dominance.

Blowback from globalization also has an impact on the Canadian domestic scene.  Hyped up fears of terrorism have increased the powers of the security state (with much learned from Israel’s control of its Palestinian population) and increased the unjustified glorification of the Canadian military both through the media and with a larger budget.  Canada is a member of the “five eyes”, the family members inheriting the British empire and who now share information and security methodologies.  Another form of blowback are the heightened fear of terrorism ad “other” – mainly focussed on refugees with a Muslim background but extending out to the created fears generated by identity politics.  These fears and prejudices are used in different ways to control the domestic electorate, a diversion from the reality of the overall non-democratic governance of the military-financial- corporate powers.

Two other perspectives can view this same phenomenon – income disparity/poverty and global environmental change.

Most everyone pays lip service to poverty.  Many offer solutions on a small scale through NGOs acting on small targeted goals in specific areas – actions that certainly aid a small number of people but in no way address the source of poverty.  Musicians sing about it, politicians talk about it, the media keeps us focused on these feel-good/do-good attempts without addressing the underlying causes (and note, poverty does not equate to terrorism).  Until the base structures of western globalization are deconstructed or contained (or collapse) poverty will continue its destructive pathways – malnutrition, starvation, poor health, serfdom, wage slave labour, exploitation et al.  Poverty, other than small domestic pockets, many of indigenous people, does not register on Canada’s domestic political scene.  However, climate change and global warming do have an impact.

At this point, it is mainly different parties and different jurisdictions arguing about how to control carbon output using some form of establishment acceptable monetary initiatives (cap and trade, carbon tax).  Extrapolating from current trends all that money manoeuvering will have little impact due to the nature of our profit-oriented consumer culture.  As one small but important factor consider Canada’s export of garbage, plastic waste, and e-waste to poorer less developed countries in Southeast Asia.  Those outlets now are closed and very little of our waste/garbage is actually recycled or reused.  Most is incinerated at 1400 degrees Celsius with the subsequent volatile gases dispersing through the atmosphere.

Canadian consumer culture continues its money habits of purchasing stuff, and “planned obsolescence stuff” continuing the degradation of the environment both from chemical pollution and carbon-induced warming.  Global warming, while obviously important and becoming more and more a political and media talking point hides the dangers of thousands of chemical products behind a smokescreen (quite literally).

Canadians who think they are “green” and want to eliminate poverty, need to consider the following. Are you really willing to accept the huge changes necessary in order to achieve a clean sustainable world –  i.e., far less consumption, less travel, less stuff, no more debt purchases?  The latter is very difficult because while the wealth of the top elites has risen dramatically, wages have stagnated over the past several decades.  Simply using the “3 Rs” will not do it unless the reduce aspect is taken to its necessary full extension.

Consider also Canada’s military.  Can you recognize our actions in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and maybe soon Venezuela and Iran as being part of U.S. corporate elites striving for full control?  Do you support Canada’s role within the globalization paradigm of controlling other countries economies through predatory financial practices, up to and including the use of mercenaries to protect corporations against indigenous protests?

Do you support the U.S. military actions – overt and covert – used to maintain the economic dominance of the super elites and their global corporations?  Do you support the many western interventions in the Middle East considering the terrorists we are supposedly fighting have been used, supplied, and trained in part by the western military and political establishments?  More broadly, ask what role the 800+ military bases, the dozen or so carrier groups, play in attempting to subordinate the rest of the world to our non-sustainable demands.  The U.S. military is the largest institutional user of oil in the world.  In 2007 it ranked as the 35th largest sovereign user, and ranks 3rd globally on a per capita basis.  Canada is a large part of the U.S. empire and plays a large role in creating poverty, terror, and environmental disasters around the world through our support of their military adventurism.

In other words, if you support the military as it is currently used, you achieve nothing against poverty and your green colour is a veneer over the actual economic lifestyle choices you make.

The veneer is readily maintained by mainstream media, the vast majority of which is owned and financially controlled by the military-financial-corporate elites. It combines a willful ignorance of our predations with massive amounts of diversions.  One of the main diversions includes all the propaganda associated with the various wars of control and the manipulation of the terrorist “threat”.  The diversions extend well beyond through all aspects of consumerism – the entertainment of movies, film, television, the internet in all its aspects through to major sports activities, and on to leisure and holiday consumption.  As corporate profits rise and wages stagnate, consumers rely heavily on debt to achieve the advertised/propagandized ideals of the good life.  All the debt, trillions of dollars, simply feeds more money and power to the controllers of a corporate financialized economy.

Back to Canadian political parties

In Canada, these issues present a serious problem as to which party or candidate to support.  The Liberals and Conservatives are essentially opposite sides of the same coin, both supporters of the global status quo as envisioned by the corporate powers.  The supposedly “left” New Democrats similarly follow this status quo, are not very green, and tend to move to the right once the political dollars become a more central interest.  That leaves the actual Greens, although they are not as green as they would like to be perceived – support for U.S. actions, support for Israeli actions, with no real action plan regarding environmental changes addressing our military supported consumer society lowers their credentials as a truly ‘green‘ party.

The Liberals quashed their election reform agenda after realizing it could negatively affect their majority control in parliament.  In opposing moves they announce a climate “emergency” then a day later approve a 12-14 billion dollar pipeline project to move tar sands – diluted bitumen or dilbit, but not oil – to an ecologically sensitive coastline.  Given Canada’s current economic-political fight with China, it is a bit ridiculous to think China will buy more of our dirty oil.  Economic health as determined by a high energy consumer economy does not go together with a good environment.

The Conservatives acquiesced on the lack of electoral reform for the same reason.  They are pro big oil, frequent climate change deniers although a recent policy statement recognized that, yes, after all these years of working against the idea, global warming is happening.  They offer no real solutions other than a variant on the inefficient cap and trade idea, but with no stated costs or implementation factors.

The two smaller parties offer little.  The NDP has failed to truly distinguish themselves from the two larger parties, creating policy positions frequently accepted and adopted (if not implemented) by the Liberals and for which the Conservatives cry “socialism” over.  The Greens have some initiatives in the right direction but with their support of the military and of government attempts to change foreign governments, they have yet to create a policy that will change the momentum/inertia of a debt-ridden, consumer-based, media biased, military/corporate society.

Other than perhaps voting for the lesser evil of the group, a spoiled ballot or no vote at all are the better options.

Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Jim Miles, Global Research, 2019

China Removes Its Ambassador From Canada, Decides Canucks Are Too Nuts Under Technocrat Trudeau Regime

“the reason why some people are used to arrogantly adopting double standards is due to Western egotism and white supremacy – in such a context, the rule of law is nothing but a tool for their political ends and a fig leaf for their practicing hegemony in the international arena” Ambassador Lu

Matthew EHRET

Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.

June 21, 2019

China Removes Its Ambassador From Canada, Decides Canucks Are Too Nuts Under Technocrat Trudeau Regime

As the international financial system is becoming increasingly shaped by the spirit of cooperation and long term development shaped by China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the greater Russia-China alliance, Canada’s adherence to the “old liberal order” has caused the Asian giant to make a tough decision: Remove its Ambassador Extraordinary Plenipotentiary Lu Shaye from the Northern Monarchy until saner heads become a factor in Canadian politics.

This has left the already beleaguered government of Justin Trudeau (and Chrystia Freeland… let’s not kid ourselves here) in an embarrassing situation as Trudeau’s requests to meet with Xi Jinping at the upcoming G20 have gone ignored for the past several days. Freeland has announced that her many requests to speak with China’s Foreign Minister have similarly gone unheeded.

Since attaining power in 2015, the Liberal Government has demonstrated nothing but constant belligerence to China. Many then watching the Canadian political scene had hoped that Trudeau would continue the pro-China traditions which his father initiated in 1970 and which paved the way to China’s opening up under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping a few years later.

This did not occur.

Rather than adapt to the shifting current of the times which calls for nations to reject “each against all” geopolitics and instead join a new win-win framework driven by the Belt and Road Initiative model of development, Canada has only dug its heels ever deeper into the ground in defense of the sinking Titanic of Globalization. This was seen by Canada’s unrelenting support for the COP21 depopulation agenda, the anti-China Trans-Pacific Partnership, the anti-Russia/China NATO missile shield, and anti-everybody WTO system.

Once the Chinese government made their disapproval of Canada’s behavior known with the December 2017 rejection of the Canada-China special relationship, Trudeau and Freeland were assigned to take on a more aggressive tone against China, first by blocking the sale of Canada’s Aecon to China due to “security risks” in May 2018, arresting Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou in December 2018, firing a pro-Chinese ambassador in January 2019 and mobilizing international support against China’s human rights abuses due to China’s arrest of two Canadians on espionage charges and the death penalty given to a Canadian drug smuggler.

How a low level “middle power” like Canada ever gained the hubris to believe that it could intimidate a country like China is a mystery, but it happened.

Now Xi Jinping has sent a clear message that it will no longer tolerate a mosquito who thinks it is a dragon trying to bully China any longer. China’s ambassador Lu Shaye has done everything for 3 years to offer Canada the opportunity to join the Belt and Road Initiative and open up to a new system of cooperation with China’s investment into decayed North American infrastructure. In a recent Ottawa event Ambassador Lu said:

“China and Canada could engage in third-party market cooperation, create a kind of synergy and achieve triple-win by combining the needs of developing countries, China’s production capacity, and Canada’s advantages in capital and technology. Canada is one of the members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which provides favourable conditions for the country to participate in the Belt and Road facility connection.”

With the total rejection of these peace offerings, Lu Shaye has induced Canada to demonstrate where its true allegiance lay. Once Canada’s true colors were exposed, Ambassador Lu himself, breaking with the typical protocols of subtle and polite diplomatic conduct for which the Chinese are well known, called out the “racist, Five Eyes Intelligence network” which is really trying to run the world. In January 2019 Ambassador Lu described the hypocrisy of the western technocratic elite who attack China saying:

“the reason why some people are used to arrogantly adopting double standards is due to Western egotism and white supremacy – in such a context, the rule of law is nothing but a tool for their political ends and a fig leaf for their practising hegemony in the international arena”

Now with Canadian elections fast approaching and finding only anti-Chinese vitriol even among the Conservative Party of Andrew Sheer (the only contender against Trudeau), China has decided that Ambassador Lu can be more productive if re-deployed to France where greater opportunities for BRI-cooperation can be found. Of course, China’s wish that Canada take part in the BRI and its new Arctic extension remains firmly on the table awaiting only a sane political leadership to arise and accept this ticket to the future.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

US must invade Venezuela to scare Iran and North Korea: Senator Graham

This buffoon and his entire family should be sent to the front line of the next fake US war. Fair is fair.

Source

http://www.presstv.com

Sat Jun 15, 2019

US Sen. Lindsey Graham during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 1, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

A hawkish Republican senator has suggested that the United States should take military action against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro so countries opposing the US are intimidated and surrender to Washington’s demands.

To handle foreign conflicts “we need points on the board,” Senator Lindsey Graham, who is a close ally of President Donald Trump, was quoted as saying on Friday by Fox News.

The warmonger from South Carolina told Fox News that the US needed to resolve its issues with other countries using military actions.

The Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary suggested using US military force to resolve America’s conflicts with countries opposed to US foreign policy.

“Do what Reagan did in Grenada. Put military force on the table … start with your own backyard,” he suggested.

Graham implied that after the US military invasion of Venezuela, other Latin American counties, as well as countries opposed to US foreign policies such as  North Korea and Iran, would be intimidated and give in to US demands.

“Fix Venezuela, and everybody else will know you’re serious,” Graham, who is a notorious supporter of US interventionism, suggested to the Fox News host.

Graham has in the past repeated his call for US military intervention in Venezuela. Last month, as representatives of the Venezuelan government and opposition forces were meeting in Norway for talks on resolving the political crisis in the Latin American country, the Republican senator dropped another Grenada reference aimed at scaring government representatives.

In 1983, Reagan ordered US troops to invade the small Caribbean island nation of Grenada, resulting in an easy victory for the Americans.

Venezuela halts services at consulates in Canada until it ‘regains sovereignty in foreign policy’

“Venezuela hopes that Canada will soon recover sovereignty over its foreign policy to foster a better climate for dialogue and mutual respect for the benefit of both peoples.”

Source

http://www.rt.com

9 Jun, 2019

Protest against American attempts at a ‘regime change’ in Venezuela and Canada’s complicity in the campaign, Toronto, 16 September, 2017. © Global Look Press / ZUMA Press / Creative Touch Imaging Ltd

Venezuela will no longer provide services at its consulates in Canada in response to Ottawa shutting down its embassy in Caracas. Canada must stop toeing the US line in its foreign policy, it said.

Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza announced on Saturday a temporary suspension of all services at the country’s consulates general in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. All of their functions will fall upon the embassy in Ottawa, the ministry said in a statement.

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The diplomatic scale-down comes in retaliation to the Canadian government’s recent decision to temporarily close its embassy in Caracas and redirect all consular assistance to its embassy in Colombia.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry slammed the move, calling it a “political decision” that is “far from being administrative” and reflects Ottawa’s “continued hostility” towards and “disciplined subordination to the aggression of the Trump administration against the Venezuelan people and its democratic institutions.”

The ministry accused Ottawa of supporting the “perverse financial blockade” Washington has imposed on Caracas in an act of “economic war.” The crippling economic sanctions are estimated to have already cost the Latin American country’s economy over $130 billion.

Venezuela hopes that Canada will soon recover sovereignty over its foreign policy to foster a better climate for dialogue and mutual respect for the benefit of both peoples.

Canada was among the first to embrace self-proclaimed ‘interim president’ Juan Guaido, the opposition leader behind the failed coup attempt of April 30, with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland calling Maduro’s government a “regime fully entrenched in dictatorship,” as it recognized Guaido’s authority in January.

At a joint press conference with her Cuban counterpart on Friday, Freeland copied Washington’s talking points as she reaffirmed Canada’s support for Guaido, noting that she has “much respect” for the US-backed opposition politician, while calling for a “peaceful transition” through “free and fair elections” in Venezuela.

Like the US, which sees Cuba as the main sponsor of Maduro’s government, Freeland suggested that it would have “a role to play” in the transition process, but did not elaborate.

Canada has slapped Venezuela with a barrage of punitive sanctions, targeting over a hundred Venezuelan officials for “undermining democratic institutions.”

Trump Gives Away What Is Not His or Israel’s

Source: Trump Gives Away What Is Not His or Israel’s – American Herald Tribune

ahtribune.com

BY Jeremy Salt

March 22 ,2019

Trumpery: dictionary definition, ‘articles of little or

no value.’ As applied to cheap jewelry, vulgar, garish

and tasteless. As applied to paintings, trompe l’oeil, ‘to deceive the eye,’ from the French verb tromper, to deceive.

 

Hubris grips Israel. Absolute power has had its usual effect of absolute corruption, of morality, legality, and justice as well as the money deals that have enriched corrupt Israeli politicians.

No one dares stop Israel.  Not the UN and not western governments. They can but they don’t or they won’t.  Israel can kill Palestinians on the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza, without any meaningful intervention by the ‘international community.’  

On the West Bank, a corrupt Palestinian Authority has done much of its dirty work, administering the occupied territory on behalf of the occupier, not the occupied.  In East Jerusalem, it has acted as the conduit for the sale of Jerusalem properties to Zionist settlers, with straw men, Palestinians, and bogus companies set up to transfer properties without owners knowing that the real purchasers are Zionist settlers.

Most of the money for these purchases comes from the US, where Donald Trump has now followed up his “recognition” of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with his “recognition” of the occupied Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.

He did this in a tweet, without telling the relevant arms of his own administration beforehand. The State Department was taken by surprise and so was everyone else, except the Israeli government. It knew because Trump had passed on the word. Behind the scenes, John Bolton and the US ambassador to Israel, David Freedman, effectively Israel’s American ambassador to Israel, worked to set this up.

The parallel to Trump’s unilateral White House action is US recognition of Israel in 1948.   Because of the probability of extreme bloodshed, early in 1948 the US had backed away from the 1947 partition plan and was seeking a UN trusteeship over Palestine.   That was the policy followed until Truman upended it on May 14 by recognizing Israel de facto, without informing the State Department or the US delegation at the UN.

The UN Secretary-General had been informed, and it was in the wastepaper basket in his office that the screwed-up ticker tape message sent to him was found.  The US delegation ’s head, Warren Austin, was so disgusted he walked out of the UN building and left it to his deputy to make the formal announcement of recognition.  The enraged Cuban delegation threatened to pull Cuba out of the UN.  

The US has never been an honest broker but at least in the 1940s and 1950s, there were sensible people who recognized the great dangers for the US in supporting Zionism and the state of Israel.  

Loy Henderson, a senior State Department official, responsible for Middle Eastern policy, wrote that support for a Jewish state would violate US policy of allowing a majority vote by the population of any territory to determine its form of government.

He warned that support for Israel would involve the US “in international difficulties of so grave a character that the reaction throughout the world as well as in this country will be very strong.”

Secretary of State George Marshall opposed partition and wrote that if Truman recognized Israel, he would vote against him in the next elections.  

Truman’s double-dealing was to repeated by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s when he told the Israeli ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin, that he need not worry about being forced into signing the nuclear-non proliferation treaty in return for the supply of US planes and tanks.   

Johnson would make sure they would be provided without any conditions, blindsiding his own officials, who thought they were going into negotiations with a strong hand, only to be treated with discourtesy by Rabin.  

Israel got the lot then, the tanks and the planes and the freedom to develop nuclear weapons without having to sign the NPT, and it has got the lot ever since.  Military and economic grants have now reached unprecedented levels.  On top of the $3.8 billion aid, Israel will receive for 2019 it is now the beneficiary of a ten-year $38 billion ‘defense’ package, signed into law in August 2018.  

These sums of money, enabling the occupation of Palestine and the killing of Palestinians, are augmented by smaller grants, $50 million here or $50 million there, the icing on an enormous and very tasty cake. Israel still has the freedom to develop nuclear weapons without US interference.

In December 2017, Donald Trump “recognized” Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, on the same day that Zionist snipers were killing unarmed Palestinians along the Gaza fence line.  He has now followed this by “recognizing” the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.

The banality of the man is summed up in the means of communication, not a White House press conference, not a State Department communique, but a tweet, the same conduit he uses for talking about his children or abusing his political opponents or telling the world how great the Mexican wall will be. 

Of course, there can be no “recognition” because both East Jerusalem (‘at least’ as there is no good reason to separate the occupation of the east in 1967 from the occupation of the west in 1948) and the Golan Heights are occupied territories in fact and under international law.   

With these two announcements, the US has finally ruled itself out as any kind of honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians.  It never has been, of course.  Some presidents tried hard to bring balance into the relationship – Jimmy Carter for example – but all eventually caved in.

The Golan Heights is part of Syria.  In 1967 it was seized by Israel during its war against Egypt and Syria.  This was no “pre-emptive” attack as the Zionists have claimed ever since but a blitzkrieg aimed at destroying Arab military capacity, destroying Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abd al Nasser and seizing the rest of Palestine. 

The seizure of the Golan involved the expulsion of 90,000-130,000 Syrians and Palestinians. Some fled, others were driven out but, just like 1948, no one was allowed back.  About 100 villages were destroyed and ploughed over.

In 1974, after a war which Egypt and Syria would have won on the battlefield had not Anwar al Sadat betrayed the Syrian president, Hafez al Assad, new lines of demarcation were drawn up on the Golan, leaving about 70 percent in the hands of the Zionists. 

Before withdrawing from some of the territories they had occupied, Zionist units deliberately destroyed the city of Quneitra. It was never rebuilt, the ruins standing as testimony to the complete bastardry of the army which had occupied it.

Since that time Israel has filled the occupied Golan with about 30 settlements and 25,000 settlers. Archaeological relics are plundered, the Golan’s vital water resources are drained off and Israeli and foreign tourists contribute to the economy of occupation.   In recent years the occupied Syrian communities, mainly Druze, have had to put up with wounded terrorists being transported across their land from Syria to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals.  On occasion, they have attacked these convoys.  Most Druze remain committed to their Syrian identity.

In his tweet, Trump wrote that the “recognition” of the occupied Golan as Israeli is important to “regional stability.” The opposite is true, of course. ‘Regional stability’ is even more seriously threatened. With these announcements, Trump has put his administration entirely in Israel’s pocket. 

Trump may well give Netanyahu’s election prospects a boost by turning his tweeted intention into a formal policy statement before the Israeli elections in early April.  Both the Jerusalem and the Golan declarations, however, are a sign that Israel and its lobbyists in the US have seriously overplayed their hand and that in buckling to their pressure, Trump has worsened Israel’s standing in the US.    

The US groveling to Israel over many decades would now seem to have reached its apogee. All that remains is the plan being cooked up by Trump, John Bolton, Jared Kushner, and David Freedman, in continuous consultation with the Israeli government, to bury the Palestinian question forever.

Americans are aware more than ever of how Israel dictates US foreign policy.  Jewish Americans know it in increasing numbers, especially on university campuses. They have the same moral consciousness as anyone else and are appalled by Israel’s atrocious record over many decades. They are distancing themselves both from Israel and Zionism and of course, they completely abhor the Netanyahu government and Israel’s even more openly racist and fascist parties.

Two Muslim members of Congress have recently sharpened the debate with exposure of the lobby’s vote-buying political influence.  Senior Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have declared they will not be attending the annual AIPAC conference in Washington on March 24-26.  In years gone by, such defiance by a US politician would be regarded as suicidal but not now. This is partly the measure of how the wind is blowing in the US.

Trump’s two declarations end all illusions.  Even in the minds and the hearts of those who desperately cling to the hope of a genuine peace process, there can surely be no hope left.   One would have to be completely deluded to see something in nothing.  What is left is surrender or resistance. Either you or us.  Not a peace of the brave as pronounced on the White House lawns in 1993 but a peace of the grave.

Many Palestinians never thought peace with Israel was possible. They have been proven right. Those who continued to place their trust in the “international community” or in the application of international law or the bona fides of the Israeli government have been proven wrong. George Habash read the situation correctly back in the 1950s and 1960s. Hasan Nasrallah reads it correctly now. 

The abandonment by the US of the remnants of a peace process that was never a peace process in the first place creates grave dangers, not regional stability, especially when taken in the context of a possible Israeli war with Hizbullah or Iran or on both of them.

The US has left the supporters of a genuine peace process with nothing in their hands.  There is no two-state solution in sight, only a bogus one-state ‘solution’ which turns all of Palestine into Netanyahu’s apartheid Jewish state.  

If Palestine, any part of it, is to be redeemed, only the option of force seems left for those who will not surrender. After more than seven decades of chicanery, lies, and brutality from Israeli governments, this conclusion would be self-evident.

It is not a question of wanting it or wishing for it.  Force is abhorrent but there has never been a time in history when an occupied people have not resisted the occupier to the utmost limits of their endurance.   

Both the Palestinians and the Zionists conform to the historical pattern, one as the occupied and the second as the occupier. Israel thinks it can break the Palestinians down by the application of brute force but after more than seven decades it has still not succeeded.  Instead, in the minds of many, it has only strengthened the lesson that what has been taken by force, ultimately can only be taken back by force.

When there is no peace, no remote possibility of peace, the pendulum must swing back to war.  When it comes, and sooner or later it will come, Israel is going to take such punishment that it might finally see reason, if by then it is not too late to see reason.  It would be better to see reason before the event but that is not going to happen.

Hizbullah has the capacity to inflict great damage on Israel.   The Iron Dome and the Arrow anti-missile ‘defense’ systems will stop only a fraction of the volume of missiles that will pour into Israel in the event of war with Hizbullah or the war with Iran which Netanyahu has wanted for years.  Even Hamas now says it has rockets that can reach any part of Israeli territory. Even if Israel ‘wins’, a nebulous concept in the context of such a destructive war, it will be seriously wounded. 

Israel’s greatest defense system would have been to reach a generous settlement with the Palestinians long ago but what it has actually settled for is ideology, the fulfillment of the Zionist dream that is a Palestinian nightmare, and the continued theft of Palestinian land over the security of its Jewish citizens. 

They are in the Middle East and want to stay there.  They want a future for their children, but what kind of future is on offer from Israel’s racist politicians, settlers and rabbis?  The answer?  The same kind of violent future that is on offer for the Palestinians.  Is this the choice any sane person would want to make?

WRITER

Jeremy Salt

Jeremy Salt has taught at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specialising in the modern history of the Middle East.  His most recent book is “The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.)

Is this the Age of Anxiety? The Age of Stupidity? The Age of Hybrid War?

Asia Times

By Pepe Escobar 
in Bangkok
Special to Consortium News

Is this the Age of Anxiety? The Age of Stupidity? The Age of Hybrid War? Or all of the above?

As right populism learns to use algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) and media convergence, the Empire of Chaos, in parallel, is unleashing all-out hybrid and semiotic war.

Dick Cheney’s Global War on Terror (GWOT) is back, metastasized as a hybrid mongrel.

But GWOT would not be GWOT without a Wild West scarecrow. Enter Hamza bin Laden, son of Osama. On the same day the State Department announced a $1 million bounty on his head, the so- called “UN Security Council IS and Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee” declared Hamza the next al-Qaeda leader.

Since January 2017, Hamza has been a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the State Department – on par with his deceased Dad, back in the early 2000s. The Beltway intel community “believes” Hamza resides “in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.”

Remember these are the same people who “believed” former Taliban leader Mullah Omar resided in Quetta, Baluchistan, when in fact he was safely ensconced only a few miles away from a massive U.S. military base in Zabul, Afghanistan.

Considering that Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Qaeda in Syria, for all practical purposes, was defined as no more than “moderate rebels” by the Beltway intel community, it’s safe to infer that new scarecrow Hamza is also a “moderate”. And yet he’s more dangerous than vanished fake Caliph Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi. Talk about a masterful example of culture jamming.

Show Me The Big Picture

A hefty case can be made that the Empire of Chaos currently has no allies; it’s essentially surrounded by an assortment of vassals, puppets and comprador 5^thcolumnist elites professing varied degrees of – sometimes reluctant – obedience.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy may be easily deconstructed as a crossover between The Sopranos and late-night comedy – as in the whole episode of designating State Department/CIA regime change, lab experiment Random Dude as President of Venezuela. Legendary cultural critic Walter Benjamin would have called it “the aestheticization of politics,” (turning politics into art), as he did about the Nazis, but this time it’s the Looney Tunes version.

To add to the conceptual confusion, despite countless “an offer you can’t refuse” antics unleashed by psychopaths of the John Bolton and Mike Pompeo variety, there’s this startling nugget. Former Iranian diplomat Amir Moussavi has revealed that Trump himself demanded to visit Tehran, and was duly rebuffed. “Two European states, two Arab countries and one Southeast Asian state” were mediating a series of messages relayed by Trump and his son-in-law Jared “of Arabia” Kushner, according to Moussavi.

Is there a method to this madness? An attempt at a Grand Narrative would go something like this: ISIS/Daesh may have been sidelined – for now; they are not useful anymore, so the U.S. must fight the larger “evil”: Tehran. GWOT has been revived, and though Hamza bin Laden has been designated the new Caliph, GWOT has shifted to Iran.

When we mix this with the recent India-Pakistan scuffle, a wider message emerges. There was absolutely no interest by Prime Minister Imran Kahn, the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani intelligence, ISI, to launch an attack on India in Kashmir. Pakistan was about to run out of money and about to be bolstered by the U.S., via Saudi Arabia with $20 billion and an IMF loan.

At the same time, there were two almost simultaneous terrorist attacks launched from Pakistan – against Iran and against India in mid-February. There’s no smoking gun yet, but these attacks may have been manipulated by a foreign intelligence agency. The Cui Bono riddle is which state would profit immensely from a war between Pakistan and Iran and/or a war between Pakistan and India.

The bottom line: hiding in the shadow of plausible deniability – according to which what we understand as reality is nothing but pure perception – the Empire of Chaos will resort to the chaos of no-holds-barred hybrid war to avoid “losing” the Eurasian heartland.

Show Me How Many Hybrid Plans You Got

What applies to the heartland of course also applies to the backyard.

The case of Venezuela shows that the “all options on the table” scenario has been de facto aborted by Russia, outlined in an astonishing briefing by Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and then subsequently detailed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Lavrov. (Wikimedia Commons)

Meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj at a crucial RIC (part of BRICS) summit in China,Lavrov said,“Russia keeps a close eye on brazen US attempts to create an artificial pretext for a military intervention in Venezuela… The actual implementation of these threats is pulling in military equipment and training [US] Special Forces.”

Lavrov explained how Washington was engaged in acquiring mortars and portable air defense systems “in an East European country, and moving them closer to Venezuela by an airline of a regime that is… rather absolutely obedient to Washington in the post-Soviet space.”

The U.S. attempt at regime change in Venezuela has been so far unsuccessful in several ways. Plan A – a classic color revolution -has miserably failed, in part because of a lack of decent local intelligence. Plan B was a soft version of humanitarian imperialism, with a resuscitation of the nefarious, Libya-tested responsibility to protect (R2P); it also failed, especially when the American tale that the Venezuelan government burnt humanitarian aid trucks at the border with Colombia was a lie, exposed by The New York Times, no less.

Plan C was a classic Hybrid War technique: a cyberattack, replete with a revival of Nitro Zeus, which shut down 80 percent of Venezuela’s electricity.

That plan had already been exposed by WikiLeaks, via a 2010 memo by a U.S.-funded, Belgrade-based color revolution scam that helped train self-proclaimed “President” Random Dude, when he was just known as Juan Guaidó. The leaked memo said that attacking the Venezuelan power grid would be a “watershed event” that “would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate.”

But even that was not enough.

That leaves Plan D – which is essentially to try to starve the Venezuelan population to death via viciously lethal additional sanctions. Sanctioned Syria and sanctioned Iran didn’t collapse. Even boasting myriad comprador elites aggregated in the Lima group, exceptionalists may have to come to grips with the fact that deploying the Monroe doctrine essentially to contain China’s influence in the young 21^stcentury is no “cakewalk.”

Plan E—for extreme—would be U.S. military action, which Bolton won’t take off the table.

Show Me the Way to the Next War Game

So where do all these myriad weaponizations of chaos theory leave us? Nowhere, if they don’t follow the money. Local comprador elites must be lavishly rewarded, otherwise you’re stuck in hybrid swamp territory. That was the case in Brazil – and that’s why the most sophisticated hybrid war case history so far has been a success.

In 2013, Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks revealed how the NSA was spying on Brazilian energy giant Petrobras and the Dilma Rousseff government beginning in 2010. Afterwards, a complex, rolling judicial-business-political-financial-media coup ended up reaching its two main objectives; in 2016, with the impeachment of Rousseff, and in 2018, with Lula thrown in jail.

Now comes arguably the juiciest piece of the puzzle. Petrobras was supposed to pay $853 million to the U.S. Department of Justice for not going to trial for crimes it was being accused of in America. But then a dodgy deal was struck according to which the fine will be transferred to a Brazilian fund as long as Petrobras commits to relay confidential information about its businesses to the United States government.

Mattis: Wrote on hybrid war in 2005.

Hybrid war against BRICS member Brazil worked like a charm, but trying it against nuclear superpower Russia is a completely different ball game. U.S. analysts, in another case of culture jamming, even accuse Russia itself of deploying hybrid war – a concept actually invented in the U.S. within a counter-terrorism context; applied during the occupation of Iraq and later metastasized across the color revolution spectrum; and featuring, among others, in an article co-authored by former Pentagon head James “Mad Dog” Mattis in 2005 when he was a mere lieutenant general.

At a recent conference about Russia’s military strategy, Chief of General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov stressed that the Russian armed forces must increase both their “classic” and “asymmetrical” potential. In the U.S. this is interpreted as subversion/propaganda hybrid war techniques as applied in Ukraine and in the largely debunked Russia-gate. Instead, Russian strategists refer to these techniques as “complex approach” and “new generation war”.

Santa Monica’s RAND Corporation still sticks to good ol’ hot war scenarios. They have been holding “Red on Blue” war games simulations since 1952 – modeling how the proverbial “existential threats” could use asymmetric strategies. The latest Red on Blue was not exactly swell. RAND analyst David Ochmanek famously said that with Blue representing the current U.S. military potential and Red representing Russia-China in a conventional war, “Blue gets its ass handed to it.”

None of this will convince Empire of Chaos functionary Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently told a Senate Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon will continue to refuse a “no first use” nuclear strategy. Aspiring Dr. Strangeloves actually believe the U.S. can start a nuclear war and get away with it.

Talk about the Age of Hybrid Stupidity going out with a bang.

Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook.