Miles Report No. 67 - Chrystia Freeland and the Russians
This morning I came across an article in Counterpunch discussing Canada-Russia relations [1]. In short it noted that Canada continues its hostile relationship towards Russia vis a vis Ukraine, but in contrast it noted,
Russia’s scientific cooperation in the Arctic has been stellar for decades and remains so. He cited a string of scientific, political and transport treaties and agreements going back decades between the eight member countries of the Arctic Council–Russia, The United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden.
Earlier in the commentary, Roger Annis wrote,
Canada has played a leading, provocative role in the military threats by the NATO military alliance against Russia during the past two years. It has encouraged and joined the economic and political sanctions of its fellow imperialist countries against the Russian economy and politicians and businessmen.
Canada has been a leading voice describing the 2014 referendum vote of the Crimean people as a Russian “annexation”. It condemns Russia for assisting the people of eastern Ukraine in resisting the military onslaught against them begun in April 2014 by the right-wing government that came to power in a coup in February 2014. That onslaught is spearheaded by extremist and fascist paramilitary battalions with which the government is allied but which Western media blacks out of its reporting.
It gets worse. Canada, along with the United States and Britain, has soldiers and police on Ukrainian soil in ‘training missions’ whose ultimate goal is not disclosed but which gravely threaten and destabilize the entire border region between Russia and eastern Europe. Ukraine’s constitution expressly prohibits the presence of foreign soldiers on its soil, but the country’s Parliament happily agreed to waive that last April in order to welcome the Western troops.[2]
Canada also participates in the ongoing NATO military exercises on land and sea in eastern and western Europe whose goal is to send Russia the message: ‘obey our diktats, or else’.
Finally the article gets to the crux of the issue, the influence of the U.S. in the region:
The question to be answered in this regard, then, is where U.S. policy is headed.
Secondly, as Dion has signalled, there will be no change in Canada’s support to the right-wing regime in power in Kyiv. Too many years of coddling and support to Ukraine’s ultra-nationalists have passed….Too many lead voices in the anti-Russia bandwagon in Canada, beginning with lead attacker and now Minister of International Trade Chrystia Freeland, are comfortably at the center of power in the new government of Justin Trudeau.
Before looking at the U.S. influence in Russia and the Ukraine, I took a side trip towards Chrystia Freeland. She is a journalist by career, not the best of qualifications for a political career (dare I mention Duffy and Wallin?), but balanced with degrees in Russian history and Slavonic studies. Or perhaps not, as those degrees come from Harvard and Oxford, exalted by most, but producing mostly mainstream thinkers leaning towards the right, which is where her career in journalism went, writing for major right wing establishment newspapers.
Nothing unusual there, but I followed by reading her short essay “My Ukraine - A personal Reflection on a Nation’s Dream of Independence and the Nightmare Vladimir Putin has Visited Upon It.” It is published as a Brookings Essay and is available cheap on-line. Within that essay Freeland simply demonstrates that her opinions and knowledge are received through rose tinted polarized lenses.
While I can rest sympathetic with those in the Ukraine who wish for independence, I have little sympathy for those who seemingly wilfully do not see or address the larger geopolitical picture that involves U.S. interests against Russia. Various comments throughout the essay are simply wrong, misleading, or conjectural presumptions.
The first comment I highlighted says,
Putin’s Russia was on its way to becoming a full-fledged dictatorship that would eventually be vulnerable to a popular uprising.
Essentially a conjecture that is proving very wrong. Putin’s ratings are extremely high by anyone’s standards. The only way he would be removed would be by a CIA/NGO/NSA disinformation campaign that somehow persuaded the military to stage a coup. Not likely.
Shortly after that Freeland describes Russia’s leadership as “increasingly despotic and xenophobic.” If it is despotic, the Russian people are certainly not calling it that, as that is essentially the propaganda of western mainstream media (MSM); as for xenophobic, that would be a good thing in relation to the Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, along with Paul Wolfowitz’s first strike nuclear policy, and the neocon Project for a New American Century(PNAC) et al.
Next she discusses the Maidan uprising very briefly, without mentioning anything to do with the Privy Sector, the Banderists, and other right wing paramilitary neonazi groups that - by most researchers studies - were responsible for the killings in the Maidan and later for the massacre in Odessa. Nor does she mention the phone calls/emails of Victoria Nuland, assistant Secretary of State, in which she talked about placing Yatsenuk and Poroshenko into power. $5 billion U.S. dollars went into U.S./CIA efforts to install a puppet U.S./NATO government in Ukraine.
Shortly after that she notes the “war of aggression, occupation, and annexation that followed...what might be the start of a new cold war.” Hmmm, a good dose of MSM bias here. The aggressors were the CIA /State Department supported right wing goons. Later on she says, Yanukovich, “with Moscow’s support...unleashed bloody force on the demonstrators.” In light of the above, this is simply a lie.
As for a “new” cold war, it is arguable that the old one never died, as noted by Brzezinski, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the neocons. In reality, the grand chessboard would indicate that we are in hot war - if only by proxy - in the Middle East, where the U.S. sort of supports ISIS/Turkey/Saudi Arabia and other despotic authoritarian theocratic dictators, and Russia supports the Syrian government.
The biggest lie is Freeland’s argument about Putin’s “Big Lie.” She says,
Many Russians have themselves been duped into viewing Washington, London, and Berlin as puppet masters attempting to destroy Russia. This subterfuge is, arguably, Putin’s single most dramatic resort to the Soviet tactic of the Big Lie.
Pardon my language, but on this one I have to reflect on Jon Stewart and call it news from Bullshit Mountain News[3].
The Real ‘Big Lie’
The above statement is truly one of the bigger lies of all. The Russians have certainly not been “duped” into thinking that Washington and London are attempting to destroy Russia. The Russians know that as a certainty, backed up in part by the information presented above concerning the overall geopolitical intentions of the U.S. and its own NATO puppets. I leave Germany out, because apart from Merkel’s ineptitude, and slavishness to the U.S. line (NSA spying not withstanding), Germany has many close industrial ties to Russia that have not been broken - another part of U.S.intentions. What is missing is the biggest lie - the one about the U.S. empire being a peaceful one that is spreading democracy and freedom around the world.
That has never been true since the first inroads against the “savages” that populated the new world and has continued on through most of South America, most of Asia, and on into Africa, the last place to have a military command placed over it. The U.S. is always about corporate profit, greed, and power in spite of its fine rhetoric otherwise - capitalism backed up by a military. The Federalist Papers describe how the U.S. government was set up in order to avoid the strength of “factions”, those outside the mainstream interests of the powerful seeking to remain in power - as of course it was a “faction” that engineered the American Revolution in the first place.
U.S. hegemony and the petrodollar.
Even that only speaks a partial truth. The key element in the current series of wars concerns the position of the U.S. petro dollar as the global reserve currency. The U.S. cannot stand any interference in its desire to achieve global dominance in all spheres, as outlined in the PNAC group mentioned earlier. Libya wanted an African dollar based on gold, without referencing the U.S. dollar (and it had oil). Iraq started using Euros and gold to sell its oil. Sudan was starting to do the same thing with China. Iran, way back in 1953, had its government overthrown because it wanted to sell its own oil. Ironically, now that the U.S. tried to contain/destroy Iran, it mainly forced it into using other currencies (rouble, rupee, as well as gold) and shoved it into the Russia-China New Silk Road endeavours.
Ukraine is but a small part of all this as it was intended to disrupt Russia to enable the U.S. to essentially control its resources - but most importantly to keep it from having an independent political policy that did not agree with U.S.hegemony. Thus Ukraine is a pawn thrown at Russia, not for the good of the Ukrainians, but for the demise of Russia’s independent power.
There are other falsehoods within Freeland’s essay. She says that Russia used “overwhelming force” to try and crush the Ukrainian coup. As now noted in Syria, if that were true, Ukraine would have been entirely owned by Russia within a few days if not a couple of weeks - but Russia did not want Ukraine’s problems. The Russian government did not fall for the trap the U.S./NATO was trying to set for it. As with all western MSM she says, “Russia is isolated, less respected, and surrounded by suspicious neighbours.” The west may want to believe that, but it is not so arguable that the U.S. is viewed globally as a greater threat than Russia.
Canada - the ultimate U.S. pawn - Harper redux
Canadians, subject to the U.S. MSM and a Canadian MSM that is not significantly different in its acceptance of the U.S.geopolitical lies, are generally ignorant, often wilfully, of the reality of what is happening in all areas where the U.S. and NATO are interfering in other countries business in order to maintain the U.S.hegemony of the petrodollar.
It has been interesting to note that essentially there has been little change between the Liberal government and the old Harper conservative government. In the original cited essay, Annis cited Stephane Dion,
“Canada was speaking to the Russians even during the tough times of the Cold War. And now we are not speaking … because of the former policy, of the former government. In what way is it helping our interests in the Arctic?”
Will that hold up to Trudeau’s promise “to push back “the bully that is Vladimir Putin”?” All the major political parties would agree more with Trudeau’s comments rather than accept Dion’s approach, and would probably not accept any of the argument that ultimately it is U.S. geopolitical/financial hegemony that is at the bottom of it all. That in spite of its historical record of destroying countries and governments that go independently against its own desire for hegemony.
Ukraine, unfortunately, is just another sacrificial pawn in the grand chessboard.
[1] “What Does Canada’s Opening to Dialogue with Russia Signal?” Roger Annis, Counterpunch, February 01, 2016.
[2] See ‘West Ukraine is now a permanent playground for NATO forces.’ by Ulrich Heyden, published in German on Telepolis, Nov 26, 2015, translated to English for New Cold War.org.
[3] Youtube reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT5fzEL8Vrc