Cops, Russia and nuclear war

Badge of honor: The NYPD has literally turned their backs on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The reaction from officers watching Officer Rafael Ramos' funeral on giant TV screens followed comments from police union officials who had said Mayor Bill de Blasio contributed to a climate of mistrust that contributed to the killings of the two New York Police Department officers.

I'm glad to see this increase in tension. The cops turned their back on the mayor because so many of us have turned their backs on the cops. The Mayor himself is the least important part of this situation.

Quite simply, many police departments around this country have become evil. Not only do the cops kill with impunity, they routinely rob the citizen of their cars and other goods.

Decent people must shun evil people. We must do every legal thing we can to make the evil people feel despised. We must turn our backs on the police.

When cops react as they did on this occasion -- when they try to convince themselves that they are the oppressed, not the oppressors -- we know that they understand, deep down, that they have earned the righteous hatred of their moral betters.

I am convinced that the tactic of social ostracization, if applied with sufficient ruthlessness, will work. Despite all the talk we hear about the insularity of "cop culture," we know that all human beings -- yes, even cops -- are social animals. They shop, they go to parties, they attend church, their kids go to school. People simply do not want to be despised. Eventually, after years of being regarded as human filth, rank-and-file police officers will weaken. They will stop believing their own lies. They will seek to rejoin our culture. 

Watch out for those BRICS! Yes, things look very bad for Russia right now. But China is coming to Russia's financial rescue.

Diane Johnstone offers a blunt but accurate assessment:

For over a year, the United States has played out a scenario designed to (1) reassert U.S. control over Europe by blocking E.U. trade with Russia, (2) bankrupt Russia, and (3) get rid of Vladimir Putin and replace him with an American puppet, like the late drunk, Boris Yeltsin.

The coup we engineered in Ukraine is really an American business takeover. Putin is innocent; the west is simply up to its usual thieving ways.

Ukraine has rich soil as well as shale oil reserves. The U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill is particularly active in Ukraine, investing in grain elevators, animal feed, a major egg producer and agribusiness firm, UkrLandFarming, as well as the Black Sea port at Novorossiysk. The very active U.S.-Ukraine Business Council includes executives of Monsanto, John Deere, agriculture equipment-maker CNH Industrial, DuPont Pioneer, Eli Lilly & Company. Monsanto plans to build a $140 million “non-GMO corn seed plant in Ukraine”, evidently targeting the GMO-shy European market. It was in her speech at a Chevron-sponsored meeting of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council a year ago that Victoria Nuland mentioned the five billion dollars spent by the U.S. in the last twenty years to win over Ukraine.

The U.S. grip on Ukraine’s economy is now complete. The stage is set to begin fracking, perhaps transforming Hunter Biden into Ukraine’s newest oligarch.

Nobody is mentioning this, but the controversial trade agreement between the E.U. and Ukraine, whose postponement set off the Maidan protests leading to the U.S.-steered February 22 coup d’état, removes trade barriers, allowing free entry into E.U. countries of agricultural exports produced in Ukraine by U.S. corporations. The Ukrainian government is deeply in debt, but that will not prevent American corporations from making huge profits in that low-wage, regulation-free and fertile country. European grain producers, such as France, may find themselves severely damaged by the cheap competition.

War? Johnstone, like other observers, sees war as a distinct possibility:

The danger of outright war between the two nuclear powers is actually much greater than during the Cold War. We are now in a sort of Frozen War, because nothing the Russians say or do can have any effect. The neocons who manufacture U.S. policy behind the scenes have invented a totally fictional story about Russian “aggression” which the President of the United States, the mass media and now the Congress have accepted and endorsed. Russian leaders have responded with honesty, truth and common sense, remaining calm despite the invective thrown at them. It has done no good whatsoever. The positions are frozen. When reason fails, force follows. Sooner or later.

Historians may one day mark Ukraine and Syria as the two places where the neocons of Washington overplayed their hand. If the Russians and the Chinese, working together, can weather this assault, the world will see America as The Irrelevant Empire. We don't make anything anymore. Our financial services industry is universally despised. Who needs us?

The fall of the American empire and the rise of the BRICS alliance won't be easy. As Johnstone notes, and as this writer seconds, the transition carries a risk of war.

The world is in turmoil. Like in the early 1940’s, something tremendous is gaining shape, something irreversible.

Almost all of us who have been analyzing the Empire fighting against the propaganda and nihilism it spreads, and its venomous tentacles extending to every corner of the globe, know that ‘appeasing’ Western imperialism is clearly impossible, as it is impractical, and even immoral.

Some would ask, why now? Why is there suddenly such a rush to fight the final battle for the total control over the planet?

The answer is very clear: for the first time disgust with the Empire is widespread, and worldwide. Many people are getting cured from blindness.

The mask of benevolence and rationality has been torn off by powerful media outlets based in the countries of Latin America, in Russia, China, Iran, but also in North America where the independent media is playing an increasingly important role. It is not even a matter of some elaborate ‘objectivity’, anymore. To get things right, it is enough to call fascism by its real name, as it is sufficient to identify mass murder perpetrated by the Empire on all continents!

The mask has fallen and what is now exposed is horrifying: the face of a monster, with blood and pus, a greedy grin and merciless fangs. It is a monster that is still in love with itself, unable to see its dreadfulness. It remains proud of its fundamental religious dogma, which it often doesn’t even see as ‘religious’. It dwells on self-righteousness, and at the same time, on its twisted market-fundamentalist faith that everything and everybody are for sale. It is a monster full of complexes – both those of superiority and inferiority.

But Russia cannot be defeated. When the survival of the world is at stake, Russia stands up, enormous, powerful and frightening. And it fights as no other nation can; it fights for humanity, not only for itself. And it wins.

When such a moment comes, there is only one possible way how to defeat Russia: it is to destroy the entire world.

Are you ready for that, Mr. Obama? Are you ready for it, corporate America and Europe? Are you ready for it, Pentecostal Christians, Televangelists and other morally defunct beings?

This analysis is a bit behind the times. Obama will be out of the picture soon enough; he is already transitioning into lame duck status. The Pentecostals and televangelists are indeed morally deficient, but they too are losing power. They are being replaced by the Ayn Randroids, who are every bit as fanatical, and every bit as annoyingly religious (howevermuch they would deny the charge). And they are even more evil.

Oddly, the great corporations running America and Europe may offer some hope. When faced with the choice between a world in ruins and a world in which the affluent can simply do business in new places with new partners, they will not choose apocalypse.