Dismantle Europe’s Racist and Murderous Migration Regime

By: Jerome Roos


Tens of thousands of migrants risk their lives at sea in hopes of a better life. However, if they survive the perilous trek, they do so only to encounter apathy and discrimination, as well as rejection, in the European Union. | Photo: Reuters 

Published 26 April 2015

Saving the lives of migrants and refugees “shouldn’t bee a priority” for naval patrols, a top EU border agency official stated, revealing the bloc’s lack of interest in fighting the underlying causes of the migrant crisis. A week after a series of migrant boat disasters in the Mediterranean left over 1,200 people dead, the contours of Europe’s official response to the mass drownings are already starting to emerge — and the picture does not look pretty. On Wednesday, the head of the EU border agency Frontex declared that saving the lives of migrants and refugees 'shouldn’t be a priority' for naval patrols. Instead, EU leaders have declared war on the traffickers, vowing to crack down on criminal networks in Libya and elsewhere. 

This approach to the “migrant crisis” as an outgrowth of lawlessness and criminality overseas is dangerously wrongheaded. For all their talk of tackling the problem at its roots, EU leaders are once again fixating on the symptoms — treating the recent spate of sinkings as a failure of border control rather than the complex political, economic and humanitarian crisis it really is. In truth, these traffickers are merely exploiting a cynical opportunity that would not have existed if the EU had actually lived up to its international responsibilities by offering safe passage to migrant workers and political refugees alike. 

People are dying in the Mediterranean today not just because abusive smugglers are able to pursue their reprehensible business undisturbed, but because war, repression and deprivation are pushing millions of desperate souls to flee their homes in search of a better existence in Europe, only to be met with an extremely restrictive migration and deportation regime that leaves them with no options for a proper, legal crossing. It is the inhumane reality of Fortress Europe, with its racist and murderous overtones, that drives innocent migrants and refugees into the arms of opportunistic traffickers to begin with. 

Apart from stepping up search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean, the only way to prevent more tragic drownings in the immediate term would be to offer asylum and safe passage to all political refugees (especially from countries like Syria, Sudan and Eritrea), and to ease visa restrictions for economic migrants who wish to come to Europe to work. 

After all, if they had a legal way to enter Europe, none of these people would be willing to enslave themselves to criminal traffickers or pay extortionate fees for a crossing that will have them risk their lives on crammed and unseaworthy fishing boats. Meanwhile, a more long-term solution would have to address the underlying causes of mass migration itself: from the violent conflicts spreading across Africa and the Middle East to the widening international gulf between the haves and the have-nots, between core and periphery. No one would willingly trawl across the desert or entrust the lives of their children to the shabby dinghies of the smugglers if they actually saw an opportunity to live a decent life in their countries of origin. The best way for Europe to relieve the pressures of mass migration (insofar as migration is a problem at all) would be to fight its underlying causes — something EU leaders have not shown the slightest interest in. 

The problem, of course, is that our leaders are cowards who do not dare to do the right thing for fear of being punished at the polls. Racist Europeans have long guarded their borders and their privileges with virulent jealousy, but there is no doubt that six years of austerity have rendered electorates across the continent more anxious and xenophobic than ever. Right-wing firebrands like Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders are making headway with their anti-immigrant rhetoric, and centrist politicians everywhere are enthralled to their exclusionary populist discourse — one that is wildly out of touch with the complex realities of an increasingly turbulent and interconnected world. 

And so the best thing EU leaders could agree upon during their crisis meeting in Brussels on Thursday was to triple the budget for the Triton sea surveillance mission and to offer an additional 5,000 resettlement places to refugees who survived the crossing. Both measures are utterly farcical: the 5,000 resettlement places pale into insignificance when contrasted to the 3.5 million people who have been displaced in the Syrian civil war alone, while Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri was quick to emphasize that “Triton cannot be a search-and-rescue operation [because] this is not in Frontex’s mandate, and this is in my understanding not in the mandate of the European Union.” 

In the past 15 years, 22.000 people are estimated to have drowned in the Mediterranean in search of a better future in Europe. Last year alone, some 3.500 people lost their lives trying to make the crossing. The numbers are likely to skyrocket in the decades ahead, as the untold damage wrought by global capitalism, regional conflict and climate change will force millions more from their homes. Many of these people still look to Europe with hope and aspiration — yet the beacon they dream of responds by erecting walls and deploying frigates to keep them out. 

Apparently Europeans today would rather recover dead bodies from the sea than welcome living human beings into their societies. This unspeakable brutality has to stop. Europe's racist and murderous migration regime must be dismantled. The easiest, fastest and by far the cheapest way to prevent more unnecessary deaths is to ease visa requirements for migrant workers and to offer safe passage and resettlement to all political refugees. 

There is nothing radical or idealistic about such proposals: it is simply our international responsibility and our historical duty as human beings and privileged citizens of this affluent continent. If we still believe in our own values, we must open our borders to those who yearn for life. Nothing less will do. Jerome Roos is a PhD researcher in International Political Economy at the European University Institute, and founding editor of ROAR Magazine. 

Follow him on Twitter at @JeromeRoos. 

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Theater of the Absurd By: Paul Street

25 May 2015




Elected in the brand name of peace, the Barack Obama has joked to his White House staff that he is “good at killing people.” Hopey-Climate-Changey If want to keep up with United States political culture, you’d better have a strong stomach for the absurd. Four days ago (I am writing on Sunday, May 24th), for example, U.S. President Barack Obama made a stirring speech to graduating U.S. Coast Guard cadets about the scientifically proven reality of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). 

Obama discussed climate change as a grave peril to “our national security” that “undermines the readiness of our [military] forces.” He failed to note that the ecological impact of AGW has transcended nuclear war as the leading threat to the continued viability of human life on Earth. That was pretty absurd. 

So was the spectacle of the president speaking against the specter of AGW after he had just recently cleared the way for the giant global and climate-changing oil corporation Royal Dutch Shell to begin drilling in the Arctic Ocean this summer. Shell got approval to petro-pillage the U.S. portion of the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska. The company’s drilling leases are in a remote, untouched, and pristine area that provides critical habitats for several rare species and large marine mammals. It’s a treacherous area characterized by extreme storms, likely to cause massive oil spills. The New York Times described Obama’s decision as “a devastating blow to environmentalists.” It might have added “and to prospects for a decent future.” 

Environmental groups have long warned against the madness of drilling in the area, which holds 22 billion barrels of oil and 93 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. More than five years ago, Obama almost singlehandedly undermined desperate international efforts to set binding limits on global carbon emissions in Copenhagen. His environmental record ever since has been calamitous, greasing the skids for the United States’ fracking-based emergence as the world’s leading oil and gas producer in the name of so-called energy independence. 

Such is the record of a president who was elected on a promise to (among other things) reduce climate change. And the “first green president” is not done contributing to the very process he described to Coast Guard graduates as a dire threat to U.S. security. Obama is pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) through Congress over and against the public’s understandable suspicion of such “free trade” (investor rights) agreements. As the environmental group Friends of the Earth reminds us, the TPP is “a platform for economic integration and government deregulation for nations surrounding the Pacific…

The TPP is a potential danger to the planet, subverting environmental priorities, such as climate change measures and regulation of mining, land use, and bio-technology.” There are a number of understandable and respectable responses (horror and disgust come to mind) to Obama’s Arctic Ocean move, but surprise is not one of them. Next time you see a liberal Democrat U.S. environmentalist, ask him (to amend the absurd Sarah Palin): “so how’s that hopey-climate-changey thing working out for ya?” 

Populist Hillary Clinton 

Meanwhile, the front-running U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has recently been spending a lot of time in Iowa in local coffee shops, restaurants, and community colleges. She’s impersonating a nice middle-class lady who wants to fix the rules of game so that the wealthy corporate and financial Few no longer dominate the country and “everyday people” get a fair shake. She’s striking the populist pose. It’s a farce. 

As New York Times reporter Carolyn Ryan recently noted, the Clintons “operate…in an international orbit” and “a world awash in money and connections and a very privileged place.” Mrs. Clinton enjoys a net worth of $13 million and “a high-flying lifestyle” (Politico). New disclosure forms revealed last week that she and her husband “earned” $30 million since January of last year. 

Most of that money – more than $25 million — came from roughly 100 paid speaking engagements given largely to elite corporate and financial audiences. The Clintons’ long pro-Big Business, militantly neoliberal policy record (a topic I addressed in a recent ZNet essay) is richly consistent with these opulent wealth and “earnings” (takings). It’s unsettling to see Hillary masquerading as a champion of “everyday people” in their struggle with the plutocratic 1 percent. It’s absurd. Still, many “mainstream” media personnel seem absurdly willing to play along with the fake-populist ruse. 

 During a recent discussion of the social Democrat Bernie Sanders’ bid to challenge Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries on the “P”BS Newshour, the constantly smiling political commentator Amy Walter pronounced that Hillary had gone so far left that “on economic issues, I don’t know that there is that much room for somebody like Bernie Sanders to outflank her.” That was an absurd comment. There’d be quite a bit of such room if reporters and commentators like Walter would decide to function as serious investigators instead of corporate hacks. Any honest and thoughtful look at Sanders’ 12-point program would identify numerous areas where he stands well to the progressive portside of Hillary Clinton on economic issues. 

The Not-So Nordic Bernie Sanders 

Not that Sanders is beyond nonsense. He has courageously identified himself with the social-democratic policies of Scandinavia, going on ABC News to say that the US has a lot to learn Sweden, Norway, and Denmark when it comes to social programs and the distribution of wealth and income. He fails, however, to call for the significant reductions in the United States’ giant “defense” (empire) budget, which eats up 57% of U.S. federal discretionary spending and accounts for nearly half the world’s military spending. Giant cuts in the nation’s gargantuan war budget would be required to implement his populist economic program and implement the “Nordic model” of welfare capitalism. 

The Scandinavian states have tiny military budgets compared to the U.S., something Sanders fails to mention in accord with his continuing faith in, or refusal to openly question, the necessity and virtue of the Pentagon System – and in accord with his own captivity to so-called military Keynesianism. Here he is repeating the most elementarily obvious mistake of previous Democratic Party- and Empire-captive U.S. “socialists”– people like Bayard Rustin and Michael Harrington), who failed to forthrightly oppose the military system even as it strangled the War on Poverty in its fiscal cradle. Absurd. 

IS/US 

Of course, you can almost hear Sanders and his advisors discussing the untouchable nature of the US military budget in light of media reports on the continuing forward march of the barbaric and arch-reactionary Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, Syria, and (apparently now even) Libya. Who could make a serious bid for the U.S. presidency calling for the slashing of the Pentagon budget while the nightly news carries regular chilling images of depraved, arch-fundamentalist IS head-choppers on the black-flagged rise? 

The deeper absurdity, of course, is that the IS is largely the creation of the very U.S. military empire that no serious U.S. Democratic presidential candidate is willing to seriously confront. The mindless devastation criminally imposed on Iraq – on absurdly false pretexts – by the world’s greatest killing, dismembering, destroying, and displacing machine (the U.S. military) in the openly absurd name of “Iraqi Freedom” gave rise to al Qaeda in Iraq and then to the Islamic State. U.S.-led Western support for a prolonged and bloody armed uprising in Syria re-destabilized Iraq and expanded the jihadist base in Syria (where al-Qaeda-like elements easily hijacked the “moderate opposition” to the Assad regime). 

 As the heroic British Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn notes: “ISIS is the child of war…The movement’s toxic but potent mix of extreme religious beliefs and military skill is the outcome of war in Iraq since the US invasion of 2003 and the war in Syria since 2011. Just as violence in Iraq was ebbing, the war was revived by the Sunni Arabs in Syria…it was the war in Syria that destabilized [bordering] Iraq when jihadi groups like ISIS, then called al-Qaeda in Iraq, found a new battlefield where they could fight and flourish…

It was the US, Europe, and their regional allies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates that created the conditions for the rise of ISIS. They kept the war going in Syria, though it was obvious from 2012 that Assad would not fall… 

He was not about to go, and ideal conditions were created for ISIS to prosper.” 

Nobel Peace Farce 

Elected in the brand name of peace, the Barack Obama has joked to his White House staff that he is “good at killing people.” He is also proficient at broadening the political and ideological spread of jihad by widening the geographic reach and the frequency of America’s practice of murdering people suddenly from the sky. George W. Bush may have him beat when it comes to body count, but Obama takes the prize when it comes to technologically sophisticated killing scope and personal involvement in imperial homicide. 

Obama individually oversees the Pentagon and CIA’s Kill List, which designates “bad guy” Muslims for remote-control assassination without the irritating technicalities of law and politics – and without the risk of U.S. casualties. These cowardly killings and their considerable collateral damage have been remarkably effective, emotionally potent jihadist recruiting bonanzas from Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – and indeed in Muslim communities around the world. 

 They have also mocked the Nobel Peace Prize that some silly Scandinavians preposterously gave Obama in 2009 – and the bust of Dr. Martin Luther King that sits behind Obama in the Oval Office. Perhaps the Nobel committee hoped that Obama would be guided by the revered award in the same way that Dr. King was four decades earlier. As King said on April 4, 1967, explaining why he could not stay silent on the U.S. crime in Vietnam, “a burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964: I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission – a commission to work harder that I had ever worked before for ‘the brotherhood of man.’ 

This is a calling which takes me beyond national allegiances …to the making of peace.” Obama has taken a rather different path, keeping the American “machine set on kill” (Allan Nairn’s excellent metaphor). In light of extensive advance warnings produced by a hardy cadre of U.S. and other (e.g. the Australian writer and filmmaker John Pilger) Left writers and activists (this writer included), it was foolish for the Nobel selectors to expect anything else from Kill List Obama. It’s a useful reminder that the United States has no monopoly on elite absurdity. 

 Paul Street’s latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014) 0 0 Tags Barack Obama U.S.

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GMO-colonization of Ukraine

GMO-colonization of Ukraine

Nikolai MALISHEVSKI | 23.05.2015 | 00:00




Powerful Western corporations want to make Ukraine the largest GMO (genetically modified organisms) grower. As time goes by, genetically modified organisms can become a poison to take away many human lives. This fact is ignored. Europe does not need GMO (the production is strictly limited there). Ukraine could very well become a test ground for GMO crops in Europe, something the rest of the European Union has been looking to prevent. Monsanto, an American multinational agromultinational and agricultural biotechnology corporation, is now moving in on Ukraine with plans to institute GMOs nationwide.

More than 40 years ago, Agent Orange was one of 15 herbicides used by the U.S. military as a defoliant in the Vietnam War. The former Monsanto Company was one of nine wartime government contractors who manufactured it to eliminate vegetation (many believe the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam was paramount to committing a military crime. It gives rise to cancer and destroys human immune system).



Monsanto says soybeans production will bring in over $1 billion to increase the corporation’s profits twofold in five years. Monsanto is powerful enough to influence the US government. For instance, in 2013 US President Barack Obama signed into law the controversial HR 933 (the «Monsanto Protection Act»), which contains a provision that grossly protects biotech corporations such as the Missouri-based Monsanto Company from litigation. With the president’s signature, agriculture giants that deal with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered (GE) seeds were given the go-ahead to continue to plant and sell man-made crops, even as questions remain largely unanswered about the health risks these types of products pose to consumers.

Genetically modified organisms have so far been banned by law in Ukraine, but the EU association agreement signed by the new Ukrainian government calls for closer cooperation in biotechnology.

In Walking on the West Side: the World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict, a report released in July 2014, the Oakland Institute exposed how international financial institutions swooped in on the heels of the political upheaval in Ukraine to deregulate and throw open the nation’s vast agricultural sector to foreign corporations, including genetically modified organisms and cultures. Jesus Madrazo, the Vice President of Monsanto, has said «Ukraine has the opportunity to further develop the potential of conventional crops, which is where we are currently concentrating our efforts. We also hope that at some point biotechnology is a tool that will be available to Ukrainian farmers in the future». The Ukrainian government and Monsanto do their best to make it materialize as soon as possible.

U.S. corporation Monsanto plans to build a seed plant in Ukraine in 2016. This was discussed at the meeting in Washington between Minister of Agriculture and Food of Ukraine Oleksiy Pavlenko with the representatives of Monsanto. The plant will manufacture corn seed of conventional selection for the domestic market and export. At the same time Monsanto Ukraine is launching a social development program titled «Grain Basket of the Future». It has been formally announced that the project will help rural villagers in the country improve their quality of life.

Monsanto says it is looking for places to build corn seed plants in the so called corn belt of Ukraine. The region of Vinnitsa (Vinnytsia) is on the priority list. Valeriy Khadzhymatov, the chief executive of the Seed Association of Ukraine, says Monsanto accounts for around 20% of Ukraine’s corn seed production. With a factory launched in 2015 its share will grow by 10%.

Robert Hunter Biden, the son of US Vice President Joe Biden, is currently Chairman of the Board of the World Food Program USA (launched in support of the United Nations World Food Program - WFP). His appointment in 2014 to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings has attracted controversy. He is the one to provide political support for Monsanto activities. Monsanto is a corporation with teeth - it has signed a contract with Academi, the largest private military contractor (it had been called Blackwater till February 2009, and then it changed its name for Xe Services LLC to be renamed into Academi in January 2010). According to unconfirmed information, Monsanto has purchased Academi.

The corporation also has its spin doctors in Ukraine – the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC). Morgan Williams, president and CEO of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, says genetically modified seeds should be legalized in Ukraine to boost agricultural production. The U.S.-Ukraine Business Council’s 16-member Executive Committee is packed with U.S. agribusiness companies, including representatives from Monsanto, John Deere, DuPont Pioneer, Eli Lilly, and Cargill.

* * *

The Food Safety & Sustainable Agriculture Forum 2014 held in China’s capital on July 25-26 included genetic researchers, university professors, medical doctors, veterinarians, livestock farmers, arable farmers, agricultural consultants, mothers, NGO founders and leaders and social activists from China, Taiwan, the U.S.A, Russia, U.K., France, Denmark, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil and Peru. Irina Ermakova, VP of Russia’s National Association for Genetic Safety, tells the forum was introduced to dire information on genetic deformity and sterility of animals, the pathology of internal organs and reproduction disorders among pigs, autism and imbecility among children – all caused by the use of genetically modified organisms.




All this plethora of information about negative effects of GMO is of no importance to Ukrainian government. The regime gradually and irreversibly converts the country into a reservation of Monsanto.

In early May Ukrainian media was reported with delight that Monsanto Ukraine (the branch off Californian giant) offers its new product - selective herbicide Guardian Tetra.




The process of GMO-colonization of Ukraine is at full speed…

Näkökulma: Älä ryssi, suomalainen

Yle maailmalla 23.5.2015 klo 11:42 | päivitetty 23.5.2015 klo 11:42

Moni suomalainen suhtautuu Venäjään nykyään aiempaa epäilevämmin, jopa vihamielisesti. Mutta voisiko tavallisiin venäläisiin vielä yrittää asennoitua ilman ennakkoluuloja, kysyy Erkka Mikkonen Moskovasta.

Kuva: Yle

Me suomalaiset olemme aina rakentaneet identiteettimme sen mukaan, keitä me emme ole. Ruotsalaisiksi meistä ei ole, vaikka pyrkisimmekin toimimaan länsinaapurin esimerkkiä seuraten.

Venäläisiä meistä taas ei saa edes väkisin, eikä suomalaisen ajattelun mukaan idästä ole loputtoman uhkan lisäksi mitään muuta tullutkaan.

Parhaimmillaankin Venäjä tuntuu olevan vain talviuntaan nukkuva karhu, jota ei pidä turhaan ärsyttää. 

Suomesta päin katsottuna venäläisten tapa elää on yksinkertaisesti väärä. Ja mikä pahinta, he eivät tunnu edes itse tajuavan sitä.

Meidän vaalimamme sananvapaus, ihmisoikeudet ja demokratia eivät näytä juurtuvan Venäjälle. Sen sijaan viranomaisten mielivaltaa, korruptiota ja köyhyyttä on sitäkin enemmän.

Kun Putin pullistelee ja kansa tukee varauksetta, on yhtälö selvä: kaikki venäläiset ovat pahoja

Viimeistään Venäjän häikäilemätön toiminta Ukrainassa on saanut suomalaisen sormen taas pystyyn: venäläinen on ja pysyy pahana, vaikka sitten voissa paistaisi.

Venäjän johdon röyhkeät puheet suurvalta-aseman palauttamisesta ja historiallisesta oikeudesta ulkovenäläisten suojelemiseen nostavat luonnollisesti suomalaisten karvat pystyyn. Venäjän toiminta suorastaan velvoittaa suhtautumaan epäluuloisesti tai jopa vihamielisesti kaikkeen, mikä liittyy Venäjään.

Ennakkoluulojen kasvaessa lopetamme ajattelemisen. Kun Putin pullistelee ja mielipidetutkimukset kertovat kansan tukevan häntä varauksetta, on yhtälö selvä: kaikki venäläiset ovat pahoja.

Keksitkö sinä yhtään hyvää asiaa venäläisistä?

Suomalaisten stereotypioiden mukaan venäläisethän pröystäilevät, eikä heillä ole käytöstapoja. He meikkaavat liikaa ja pukeutuvat mauttomasti.

Pitäisikö ihmiseen suhtautua ennen kaikkea yksilönä, eikä maansa edustajana?

Venäläiset ovat äänekkäitä, eivätkä kunnioita toisia. He haisevat hieltä.

Ja ennen kaikkea venäläiset kuvittelevat olevansa parempia kuin muut ja korostavat loputtomasti omaa kansallista ylivertaisuuttaan.

Mutta miten on meidän suomalaisten laita?

Olisikohan meidän aika päästä eroon turhista ennakkoluuloistamme? Voisimmeko suhtautua venäläisiin kuten mihin tahansa kansallisuuteen, historian vääryyksistä tai poliittisista kriiseistä huolimatta?

Pitäisikö ihmiseen suhtautua ennen kaikkea yksilönä, eikä maansa edustajana?

Jos emme pysty näkemään venäläisvastaisten ennakkoluulojemme taakse, sorrumme samanlaiseen nurkkakuntaisuuteen, jollaisesta niin usein itse syytämme venäläisiä.

Informaatiosodan ja propagandan aikakautena avoin suhtautuminen venäläisiin saattaa ensituntumalta kuulostaa lapsellisesta, jopa silkalta trollaukselta.

Silläkin uhalla: suomalainen, älä ryssi, vaan suhtaudu tavalliseen venäläiseen ilman turhia ennakkoluuloja.

• Erkka Mikkonen@erkanomiaYle UutisetMoskova

Putin Accuses 'Quasi-Partners' of Counting on Russia Collapse

Putin says that there were vultures waiting to pick Russia apart. They’ll have to keep waiting!
Elizabeth Piper

(Reuters)

Darya Korsunskaya 16 hours ago |




Still kicking

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin accused some of Russia’s “quasi-partners” on Monday of counting on the country’s collapse by cutting its banks off from the global financial system at a time when oil prices had plunged.


“After the fall in oil prices from $100 a barrel to 50, 160 billion out of 500 did not come into the economy,” he said, apparently counting in dollars.Speaking in Russia’s second city of St Petersburg, Putin said they had been proved wrong and the economy had easily weathered the crisis, deepened by Western sanctions imposed to punish Moscow over its policies in Ukraine.


“It’s a big figure. And at the same time our quasi-partners limited access of our banks to refinance on the European markets.”


Putin did not make clear what he included in his calculations. Russia has lost income because of a fall in export revenues in dollar terms, a sharp decline in foreign investment and capital flight.


“Apparently someone was counting on some sort of collapse,” Putin told lawmakers. “No collapse happened. The Russian economy is easily overcoming these artificial barriers … The peak of (debt) payments has passed. If someone counted on causing some kind of collapse, nothing came of it.”


Putin and his government have become increasingly upbeat about the economy, lauding a recovery of the rouble which, after falling by around 40 percent last year on weak oil prices and sanctions, has firmed by about 15 percent this year.


But Russia is slipping into recession and consumers are hurt by double-digit inflation, spurred by a ban on Western food imports imposed in retaliation to the Western sanctions.


Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said earlier this month that Russia had lost 25 billion euros from sanctions, or 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, but could cope with the “new economic reality”.

It's High Time Russia Got Rid of its Oligarchs

Putin has not gone far enough in making a clean break with the flawed, destructive system he inherited from Yeltsin

Russia's economic elites are dysfunctional parasites

He should get rid of the oligarchs and nationalize the banking sector

He should strengthen the national, public, and productive aspects of the Russian economy

He should continue his long-overdue economic pivot to Asia, and emulate Asian economic strengths

James Petras



Russia's billionaire rentiers – ill suited to the task of innovating



The author is a professor of sociology at Binghamton university in New York, and a committed leftist.

This is an excellent analysis of what has transpired economically in Russia over the last 20 years, and a call for dramatic changes.

This is an abridged version of an article that originally appeared at James Petras

In 2014, the Western offensive to isolate, encircle and eventually undermine any possibility of an independent Russian state went into high gear.

The US financed a civil-military coup ousting the elected regime of President Viktor Yanukovytch, who had opposed EU annexation and NATO affiliation. Washington imposed a puppet regime deeply hostile to Russia and ethnic Russian-Ukrainian citizens in the southeast and Crimea.

Russian opposition to the coup and support for pro-democracy federalists in the south-east and Crimea served as a pretext for Western sanctions in an effort to undermine Russia’s oil, banking and manufacturing sectors and to cripple its economy.


Imperial strategists in Washington and Brussels broke all previous agreements with the Putin Administration and tried to turn Putin’s oligarch allies against the Russian president by threatening their holdings in the West (especially laundered bank accounts and properties).


Russian state oil companies, engaged in joint ventures with Chevron, Exxon, and Total, were suddenly cut off from Western capital markets.


The cumulative impact of this decade-long Western offensive culminating in the current wave of severe sanctions was to provoke a recession in Russia, to undermine the currency (the ruble declined 23% in 2014), drive up the cost of imports and hurt local consumers.


Russian industries, dependent on foreign equipment and parts, as well as oil companies dependent on imported technology for exploiting the Arctic reserves were made to feel the pain of ‘Putin’s intransigence’.


Despite the short-term successes of the US-EU war against the Russian economy, the Putin Administration has remained extremely popular among the Russian electorate, with approval ratings exceeding 80%. This has relegated Putin’s pro-Western opposition to the dust bin of history.


Nevertheless the Western sanctions policy and the aggressive political – NATO military encirclement of Russia, has exposed the vulnerabilities of Moscow.


Russian Vulnerabilities: The Limits of Putin’s Restoration of Russian Sovereignty


In the aftermath of the Western and Russian oligarch’s pillage of the Russian economy and the savage degradation of Russian society, President Putin pursued a complex strategy.


First, he sought to differentiate between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ oligarchs: the latter included oligarchs willing to co-operate with the government in rebuilding the economy and willing to confine their activity to the generous guidelines set forth by President Putin.


They retained enormous economic power and profits, but not political power. In exchange, Putin allowed the ‘economic’ oligarchs to maintain their dubiously-acquired business empires.


In contrast, those oligarchs who sought political power and financed Yeltsin-era politicians were targeted – some were stripped of their fortunes and others were prosecuted for crimes, ranging from money laundering, tax evasion, swindles and illegal transfer of funds overseas up to financing the murder of their rivals.


The second focus of President Putin’s early political strategy was to deepen Russian cooperation with Western states and economies but on the basis of reciprocal market exchanges rather than one-sided, Western appropriation of Russian resources prevalent under Yeltsin.


Putin sought to secure greater political-military integration with the US and EU to ensure Russian borders and spheres of influence. To that end, President Putin opened Russian military bases and supply lines for the US-EU military forces engaged in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and he did not oppose the EU-US sanctions against Iran.


Putin acquiesced to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, despite Russia’s long standing economic ties with Baghdad. He joined the five powers ‘overseeing” the Palestine – Israeli ‘peace’ talks and went along with Washington’s one-sided support of Israel. He even gave the ‘green light’ to the NATO bombing of Libya, naively assuming it would be a limited affair – a ‘humanitarian’ intervention.


As a result of Putin’s political and diplomatic collusion with the Washington-NATO military expansion, Russian trade, investment and finance with the West prospered. Russian firms raised loans in Western capital markets; foreign investors flocked to the Russian stock market and multi-nationals formed joint ventures.


Major oil and gas ventures flourished. The Russian economy recovered the living standards of the Soviet era; consumer spending boomed; unemployment fell from double to single digit; salaries and back wages were paid and research centers, universities, schools and cultural institutions began to recover.


The third component of Putin’s strategy was the state recovery (re-nationalization) of the strategic oil and gas sector. By outright purchase and buy-outs, through financial audits and the confiscation of the assets of gangster oligarchs, the Russian state takeover of oil and gas was successful.


These re-nationalized sectors formed joint ventures with Western oil giants and led Russian exports during a period of peak energy demand. With the rise in oil prices over the Putin decade, Russia experienced a consumer-driven import boom – from agricultural commodities to luxury jewelry and autos… Putin consolidated his electoral support and deepened Russia’s ‘integration’ in Western markets.


Putin’s expansion and growth strategy looked exclusively westward to the EU and US, and not east to Asia/China or south to Latin America.


With this focus on the West, Putin’s initial tactical success began to expose Russia’s strategic vulnerabilities. The first signs were evident in the Western support for the corrupt oligarchs’ anti-Putin campaign and the media’s demonization of the Russian judicial system which prosecuted and convicted gangster oligarchs, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky.


The second sign was the West’s financial and political support of the Yeltsin-era neo-liberals competing against Putin’s United Russia Party and candidates…It became clear that Putin’s effort to restore Russian sovereignty conflicted with the West’s plans to maintain Russia as a vassal state.


The West favorably counterpoised the Golden Years of unrestrained pillage and domination of the Yeltsin period to the Putin era of an independent and dynamic Russia – by constantly tying the Russian president to the defunct Soviet Union and the KGB.


In 2010, the US encouraged its client, President Saakashvili of Georgia to invade Russia’s protectorate in South Ossetia.


This was the first major indication that Putin’s accommodation with the West was counter-productive. Russian territorial borders, its allies and spheres of influence became Western targets. The US and EU condemned Russia’s defensive response even as Moscow withdrew its troops from Georgia after applying a sound beating.


Georgia was a militarist dress rehearsal; one of several western planned and financed coups – some dubbed ‘color revolutions’ other’s NATO ‘humanitarian interventions’. Yugoslavia in the Balkans was fragmented by NATO bombing and Ukraine had several ‘color’ uprisings up to the present bloody ‘civil war’.


Washington and Brussels interpreted Putin’s series of conciliatory measures as weakness and felt free to encroach further on Russia’s frontier and to knock off regimes friendly to Russia.


By the middle of the second decade of the new century, the US and EU made a major strategic decision to weaken Russia’s security and its economy sovereignty: to seize control over Ukraine, expel Russia from its Black Sea military base in Crimea, convert the Ukraine into an advanced NATO outpost and cut Eastern Ukraine’s economic ties with Russia – especially the Russian market for the strategic Ukrainian military weaponry.


The coup was financed by the West, while far-right and neo-Nazi Ukraine gangs provided the shock troops .The Kiev junta organized a war of conquest directed at purging the anti-coup, pro-democracy forces in the southeast Donbas region with its Russian ethnic majority and heavy industrial ties to Russia.


When Putin finally recognized the clear danger to Russia’s national security, his government responded by annexing Crimea after a popular referendum and started to provide sanctuary and supply lines for the embattled anti-Kiev federalists in eastern Ukraine.


The West exploited the vulnerabilities in the Russian economy, which had resulted from Putin’s development model, and imposed wide-reaching economic sanctions designed to cripple Russia’s economy.

Western Sanctions, Russian Weakness: Rethinking Putin’s Strategic Approach
Western aggressive militarism and the sanctions against Russia exposed several critical vulnerabilities of Putin’s economic and political strategy. These include

Dependence on Western-oriented ‘economic oligarchs’ to promote his strategy for Russian economic growth;

Acceptance of most of the privatizations of the Yeltsin era

Decision to focus on trade with the West, ignoring the China market

Embrace of a gas and oil export strategy instead of developing a diversified economy

Dependence on his allied robber-baron oligarchs – with no real experience in developing industry, no true financial skills, scant technological expertise and no concept of marketing – to restore and run the peak manufacturing sector


In contrast to the Chinese, the Russian oligarchs have been totally dependent on Western markets, finance and technology and have done little to develop domestic markets, implement self-financing by re-investing their profits or upgrade productivity via Russian technology and research.


In the face of Western sanctions Putin’s leading oligarch-allies are his weakest link in formulating an effective response. They press Putin to give in to Washington as they plead with Western banks to have their properties and accounts exempt from the sanctions. They are desperate to protect their assets in London and New York.


In a word, they are desperate for President Putin to abandon the freedom fighters in southeast Ukraine and cut a deal with the Kiev junta.


This highlights the contradiction within Putin’s strategy of working with the ‘economic’ oligarchs, who have agreed not to oppose Putin within Russia, while transferring their massive wealth to Western banks, investing in luxury real estate in London, Paris and Manhattan and forming loyalties outside of Russia.


In effect, they are closely tied to Russia’s current political enemies. Putin’s tactical success in harnessing oligarchs to his project of growth via stability has turned into a strategic weakness in defending the country from crippling economic reprisals.


Putin’s acceptance of the Yeltsin-era privatizations provided a certain stability in the short-run but it led to the massive flight of private capital overseas rather than remaining to be invested in projects to insure greater self-sufficiency.


Today the capacity of the Russian government to mobilize and convert its economy into an engine of growth and to withstand imperial pressure is much weaker than the economy would have been if it was under greater state control.


Putin will have a difficult time convincing private owners of major Russian industries to make sacrifices – they are too accustomed to receiving favors, subsidies and government contracts. Moreover, as their financial counterparts in the West press for payments on debts and deny new credits, the private elites are threatening to declare bankruptcy or to cut back production and discharge workers.


The rising tide of Western military encroachments on Russia’s borders, the string of broken promises regarding the incorporation of Eastern Europe into NATO and the bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, should have shown Putin that no amount of unilateral concessions was likely to win Western acceptance as a bona fide “partner”. Washington and Brussels were unwavering in their strategy to encircle and maintain Russia as a client.


Instead of turning west and offering support for US-NATO wars, Russia would have been in a far better position to resist sanctions and current military threats if it had diversified and oriented its economy and markets toward Asia, in particular China, with its dynamic economic growth and expanding domestic market, investment capacity and growing technical expertise.


Clearly, China’s foreign policy has not been accompanied by wars and invasion of Russian allies and encroachment on Russia’s borders.


While Russia has now turned to increase economic ties with Asia in the face of growing NATO threats, a great deal of time and space has been lost over the past 15 years. It will take another decade to reorient the Russian economy, with its major industries still controlled by the mediocre oligarchs and kleptocrats, holdovers from the Yeltsin period.


With the closure of Western markets, Putin has had to ‘pivot’ to China, other Asian nations and Latin America to find new markets and economic partners. But his growth strategy still depends on oil and gas exports and most of Russia’s private ‘business leaders’ are not real entrepreneurs capable of developing new competitive products, substituting Russian technology and inputs and identifying profitable markets.


This generation of Russian ‘business leaders’ did not build their economic empires or conglomerates from the ‘bottom up’ – they seized and pillaged their assets from the public sector and they grew their wealth through state contracts and protection. Moscow now asks them to find alternative overseas markets, to innovate, compete and replace their dependence on German machinery.


The bulk of what passes for the Russian industrial capitalist class are not entrepreneurs, they are more like rent collectors and cronies – oriented to the West. Their origins are more often as gangsters and warlords who early on strong- armed their rivals out of the public giveaways of the 1990’s.


While these oligarchs have sought to gain respectability after consolidating their economic empires and hired public relations agencies to polish their images and economic consultants to advise them on investments, they have never demonstrated any capacity to grow their firms into competitive enterprises.


Instead they remained wholly dependent on capital, technology and intermediary imports from the West and subsidies from the Putin Administration.


The so-called Russian “capitalist” rentiers stand in sharp contrast to the dynamic Chinese public and private entrepreneurs – who borrowed overseas technology from the US, Japan, Taiwan and Germany, adapted and improved on the technology and are producing advanced highly competitive products.


When the US-EU sanctions came into force, Russian industry found itself unprepared to substitute local production and President Putin had to arrange trade and import agreements with China and other sources for inputs.


The biggest strategic flaw in Putin’s economic strategy was his decision to concentrate on gas and oil exports to the West as his ‘engine of growth’. This resulted in Russia’s dependency on high prices for commodity exports and Western markets. With this in mind the US and EU exploited Russia’s vulnerability to any drop in the world price for energy and its dependence on Western oil extraction technology, equipment and joint ventures.


Putin’s policy has relied on a vision of economic integration with the West alongside greater co-operation and political connections with the NATO powers. These assumptions have been proven wrong by the march of events: US and EU cooperation was tactical and contingent on asymmetrical, indeed unilateral, concessions from Russia – especially its continued willingness to sacrifice its traditional allies in the Balkans, Middle East, North Africa and especially the Caucuses.


Once Russia began to assert its own interests, the West turned hostile and confrontational. Ever since Russia opposed the coup regime in Kiev, the West’s goal has been the overthrow of Putin’s Russia. The ongoing Western offensive against Russia is not a passing phase: it is the beginning of a prolonged, intensified economic and political confrontation.


Though Russia is vulnerable, it is not without resources and capacity to resist, defend its national security and advance its economy.


What is to be Done?


First and foremost Russia must diversify its economy; it must industrialize its raw materials and invest heavily in substituting local production for Western imports. While shifting its trade to China is a positive step, it must not replicate the previous commodities (oil and gas) for manufactured goods trading pattern of the past.


Secondly, Russia must re-nationalize its banking, foreign trade and strategic industries, ending the dubious political and economic loyalties and rentier behavior of the current dysfunctional private ‘capitalist’ class. The Putin Administration must shift from oligarchs to technocrats, from rentiers to entrepreneurs, from speculators who earn in Russia and invest in the West to workers co-participation– in a word it must deepen the national, public, and productive character of the economy.


It is not enough to claim that oligarchs who remain in Russia and declare loyalty to the Putin Administration are legitimate economic agents. They have generally disinvested from Russia, transferred their wealth abroad and have questioned legitimate state authority under pressure from Western sanctions.


Russia needs a new economic and political revolution - in which the government recognizes the West as an imperial threat and in which it counts on the organized Russian working class and not on dubious oligarchs.


The Putin Administration has pulled Russia from the abyss and has instilled dignity and self-respect among Russians at home and abroad by standing up to Western aggression in the Ukraine.


From this point on, President Putin needs to move forward and dismantle the entire Yeltsin klepto-state and economy and re-industrialize, diversify and develop its own high technology for a diversified economy.


And above all Russia needs to create new democratic, popular forms of democracy to sustain the transition to a secure, anti-imperialist and sovereign state. President Putin has the backing of the vast majority of Russian people; he has the scientific and professional cadre; he has allies in China and among the BRICs; and he has the will and the power to “do the right thing”.


The question remains whether Putin will succeed in this historical mission or whether, out of fear and indecision, he will capitulate before the threats of a dangerous and decaying West.

St, Cohen: On neo-nazis in Ukraine and the foolishness of demonising Putin

Top Russia Scholar Gives US Media, Politicos, a Public Spanking: LONG Interview (Cohen)

A blistering, lengthy interview in Salon.com in which Princeton’s Stephen Cohen pulls out all the stops and fires broadside after broadside at US Russia policy and how the mainstream media has dealt with it.
Bravo. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.


Charles Bausman

OPINION Sat, Apr 18




It's well-deserved

Extraordinary, long interview with Stephen Cohen. 5700 words, with Part 2 coming next week. Cohen takes no prisoners, covers all the bases, and does not mince words.

He slices Tim Snyder of Yale, (who accused Cohen of being a Putin apologist) wondering how he can call himself a professor, dices Joe Biden and Boris Yeltsin, and then fricasses Brzezinski , Samantha Power, Victoria Nuland, Paul Wolfowitz, Strobe Talbott, and Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post, comparing the latter two to jilted husbands.

He says current US Russia policy reminds him of the behavior of heroin addicts, says George Bush Jr. was a liar (about the Iraq war), calls Obama a “shrinking failure”, says the NATO expansion argument is “crazy”, compares it to the AARP, - golly, and this is only the first half.

He rails against American hypocrisy, a lack of a serious debate in the US, and war crimes aided and abetted by Washington, rightly calling them “shameful”.

American media is “one hand clapping” and has “apologized for fascism”. He compares American journalists reporting about Ukraine to stenographers for Kiev.

It is not all carnage - he has strong praise for Russia scholars George Kennan, Jack Matlock, Isaiah Berlin.

We tried to pull out some good quotes, but honestly, it was hard to do, because the whole thing is one long, well deserved tirade. Lively reading from start to finish - we highly recommend taking the time for the whole thing.

Now this brings us to an observation: One reason Cohen goes on like this is that he has such a ridiculously rich target. US and EU policy and media have been such fantastic failures on this that one can spend a whole afternoon savaging them, and still be only half way through the mess.

It is a blunder of such epic proportions one strains for historic parallels: the Vietnam disaster, we suppose; Iraq, well yes, but that is about it.

And it’s not over. This could beat those two yet unless a responsible adult steps in and disciplines the neo-con media dolts and their true believers in office who wrought this moral and policy outrage.

This whole publication came into existence 6 short months ago because the need to point out the nonsense was so urgent, the target so rich, the hypocrisy and stupidity so rank.


The public spanking is not going to stop. It’s going to go on, and more voices will join in, and more people will start paying attention, sparks will fly, and well, we promise one thing, it will be entertaining…, and heads will roll.


As we never tire of pointing out, we’re just getting started.


Some choice quotes:


On the media:


… the Times and the Washington Post … basically re-write whatever the Kiev authorities say …


… in the past … the media were open—the New York Times, the Washington Post—to debate. They no longer are. It’s one hand clapping in our major newspapers and in our broadcast networks.


apologists in the media … ignored the role of … ultra-nationalists who looked, smelled and sounded like neo-fascists.


I would be willing to wager … that there’s less democracy … in Ukraine … today than there was before … that’s a hypothesis … I think … the Times and the Post should be exploring.


One phenomenon among Russia-watchers is that you create an artifice, and that’s your Russia. And when it disappoints you, you never forgive … Check out Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post … writing from Moscow during the ’90s that democracy was going to be great. So did most the guys who are now were still in editorial positions. Russia let them down.


They can’t forgive Russia anymore than they can the ex-wife who cheated on them.



On NATO:


Ukraine is about NATO-expansion-no-matter-what. Washington can go on about democracy and sovereignty and all the rest, but it’s about that … The hypocrisy, or the inability to connect the dots in America, is astonishing.


We can’t be children about this. Washington controls the IMF. Washington controls NATO. NATO and the IMF are the two agencies that can make war happen on a broader basis in Ukraine and in regard to Russia, or stop it.


People say every country that qualifies has a right to join NATO. No, they do not. NATO is not a junior Chamber of Commerce. It’s not a non-selective fraternity or sorority. It’s a security organization, and the only criterion for membership should be, “Does a nation enhance the security of the other member countries?”


The Ukrainian crisis proves beyond any doubt, being the worst international crisis of our time, that the indiscriminate expansion of NATO has worsened our international security. That’s the end of that story.


I don’t know what they think NATO is. Is it like AARP (American Association of Retired People) membership and you get discounts in the form of U.S. defense funds? It’s crazy, this argument.


US hypocrisy about fascism in the Ukraine:


“Is there a neo-fascist movement in Ukraine that … we should be worried about?” The answer is 100% yes. But admitting this in the United States has gotten a 100% no until recently,


German intelligence is … better than American intelligence when it comes to Ukraine - Merkel’s clearly worried about this. (fascist problem)


When you read the testimony of [Assistant Secretary of State] Nuland, this is never mentioned. But what could be more important than the resurgence of a fascist movement on the European continent? I’m not talking about these sappy fascists who run around the streets in Western Europe. I’m talking about guys with a lot of weapons, guys who have done dastardly things and who have killed people. Does that warrant discussion?


To what degree Russia is involved in East Ukraine:


By saying that this is not a civil war, it’s just Russian aggression—this omits the human dimension of the entire war, and also the agency of the people who are actually fighting in the east—the hairdressers, the taxi drivers, the former newspaper reporters, the school teachers, the garbage men, the electricians, who are probably 90 percent of those fighting. There are Russians there, from Russia. But Ukraine’s army has proved incapable of defeating or even holding off what began as a fairly ragtag, quasi-partisan, ill-equipped, untrained force.


US hypocrisy and guilt regarding war crimes in East Ukraine:


The horror of this has been Kiev’s use of its artillery, mortars and even its airplanes, until recently, to bombard large residential cities, not only Donetsk and Luhansk, but other cities. These are cities of 500,000 … or 2 million to 3 million. This is against the law. These are war crimes. …


The United States has been deeply complicit in the destruction of these eastern cities and peoples. When Nuland tells Congress there are 5,000 to 6,000 dead, that’s (not true) . … German intelligence says 50,000.


Ever since the Clinton administration, we’ve bleated on about the right to protect people who are victims of humanitarian crises. You’ve got a massive humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine. You’ve got 1 million people or more who have fled to Russia - another half a million having fled elsewhere in Ukraine. I don’t notice the United States organizing any big humanitarian effort.


Where is Samantha Power, the architect of “right to protect?” We have shut our eyes to a humanitarian crisis in which we are deeply complicit. This is what’s shameful, whether you like or don’t like Putin.


The foolishness of demonizing Putin:


There is very little basis for many of the allegations made against Putin, and that the net result was to make rational analysis in Washington on Russian affairs at home and abroad impossible, because it was all filtered through this demonization.


If we didn’t stop, I argued, it was only going to get worse to the point where we would become like heroin addicts at fix time, unable to think about anything except our obsession with Putin. … This has now happened fully. The article was turned down by the New York Times


It’s preposterous. But the demonization of Putin has become an institution in America. It is literally a political institution that prevents the kind of discussion that you and I are having.