Saturday, June 25, 2016

The Saker — US Options in the Ukraine: trigger a religious war?


The Saker admits this is pure speculation on his part but it is useful backgrounder for understanding the complicated situation in Eastern Europe and Turkey, home of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Like the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) tEastern Europe and Russia, which border Turkey, have a long history and people today have been enculturated into it. Orthodoxy is central to the culture there.

The Vineyard of the Saker
US Options in the Ukraine: trigger a religious war?
The Saker

2 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

OT but of possible interest to MNE, Matt Stoller Twitterstorm laying out idealogical roots of post-WWII globalism beginning with George Ball and forward to Brexit.

Here's most of it:
--The basic dynamic re: #Brexit and #TPP is that post-WWII we stretched multinationals around the globe to keep nation-states from warring.
--National industries and nationalism were seen as causal factors in two recent wars that killed tens of millions.
--"to fulfill its full potential the multinational corporation must be able to operate with little regard for national boundaries..."
-- "or, in other words, for restrictions imposed by individual national governments"." George Ball helped create the post-war trade agenda.
-- Ball was a huge proponent of the EU. Opposed Vietnam War, seen as very liberal. Supported multinationals over national sovereignty.
-- By late 60s Nixon opposed free trade. Maurice Stans negotiated textile controls w/Japan/Taiwan/Hong Kong, was called racist for doing so
-- The Ball generation sought to prevent war, understood the multinational as a responsible actor constrained by antitrust and regulation.
-- Lifting of restrictions on multinationals in the 1980s/1990s led to monopolies, financial disasters, w/no sovereign capacity to govern.
-- Sovereign state power to make war originally would be checked by corporate supply chains, free trade, orgs like IMF
-- But the cure for nationalist warfare - multinationals - mutated. And multinationals unfettered do not meet human needs.
-- So people are crying out for some sovereign aside from the corporation (which is a grant of sovereign power). And nationalism is back!
-- But this is not a right-wing phenomenon. Many on the left, though not socialists, want localism. Nation-state is more local than IMF.
-- But the old DNA of George Ball is still there. If you do not see the virtues of free trade and multinationals, then.. warmonger!
-- For globalizing elites, it literally is unthinkable to stop stretching corporations around the world. They cannot imagine it...
-- ... because they see it as restarting World War II. They think they are peaceniks.
-- That is why Germany, France, etc want to punish UK or Greece for bucking them. Don't these people realize that WORLD WAR will come?!?!
-- It's not really about greed. It's about who governs. The current order sees sovereign states as illegitimate actors.
-- Opposing the TPP is a posture, serious people don't do that. What England just voted for is simply not done, not even possible.
-- Checking the multinational is happening. China is doing it. And so are the people themselves. Hence, movements globally, #Brexit, etc.
-- There are different ways of organizing our culture. We do not have to choose between 'world war' and 'banker control'.
-- The key is to convince existing political institutions or build new ones that can govern and meet human needs.
22 retweets 29 likes
-- Some things must be negotiated globally. Like climate change, fishing treaties, existential global threats, etc.
-- But there's no reason to have giant global (or even national) monopolies. It leads to 'absentee landlordism'.
-- Anyway, these institutions can be restructured. They were made by people, they can be reordered by people. Don't forget that.
-- I don't know the future. But if people don't realize it is a choice, then stuff gets bad really quickly.

Tom Hickey said...

Thanks, Dan. Great info.

Most of what happened post-WWII was designed to prevent another such situation from arising. The thinking is that this the purpose of the institutions put in place and added to.

However, the game morphed into the old game of empire when the Anglo-American elite used their control to direct the process in their interest and to shut out possible competitors.

Cynical and hypocritical. Now the people, who don't usually pay attention, are waking up and smelling the coffee owing to the squeeze that has been put on them because "freedom and democracy."

The result is the brink of WWIII.

Overreach aka hubris. Nemesis is here to fix that.

In the ancient Greek religion, Nemesis (/ˈnɛməsɪs/; Greek: Νέμεσις), also called Rhamnousia/Rhamnusia ("the goddess of Rhamnous") at her sanctuary at Rhamnous, north of Marathon, was the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods). Another name was Adrasteia, meaning "the inescapable".

The name Nemesis is related to the Greek word νέμειν némein, meaning "to give what is due",[2] from Proto-Indo-European nem- "distribute".


Wikipedia