660 Polish Attorney General confirms investigation into training of Ukraine neo-Nazis in Poland

Polish Attorney General confirms investigation into training of Ukraine
neo-Nazis in Poland

Newsletter published on 30-04-2014

(1) Jack Lew: Sanctions On Russia Taking Toll
(2) US Treasury's Jewish head, Jacob Lew, trumpets sanctions, but Putin
says they 'benefit Russia'
(3) Trotskyist ISO & other "Left" groups back Ukraine putsch, demonize Putin
(4) Ukraine: Poland trained putchists two months in advance - Thierry
Meyssan
(5) Polish Attorney General confirms investigation into training of
Ukraine neo-Nazis in Poland
(6) German magazine Der Spiegel campaigns for war and rearmament

(1) Jack Lew: Sanctions On Russia Taking Toll

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/29/jack-lew-russia-sanctions_n_5233204.html

by  DONNA CASSATA

Posted: 04/29/2014 11:22 am EDT Updated: 04/29/2014 11:22 am EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says sanctions on Russia
to deter its aggressive moves toward Ukraine are taking an economic toll.

Lew tells a House panel the United States and its allies remain unified
in imposing costs on Russia, and says additional penalties announced
Monday will have an impact.

He said the goal was clear — forcing Russia to pursue a diplomatic solution.

The West has pursued penalties since Russia annexed the Crimean
Peninsula, and in response to violence in Ukraine involving pro-Russian
separatists.

Lew said the United States is prepared to take additional steps if
Russia doesn't change its ways. He defended the penalties against some
Republican and Democratic critics in Congress and insisted there has
been a substantial deterioration in the Russian economy.

(2) US Treasury's Jewish head, Jacob Lew, trumpets sanctions, but Putin
says they 'benefit Russia'

http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=928

Jewmerica’s Pseudo Sanctions Against Russia

By Brother Nathanael Kapner

April 29, 2014 ©

JEW-RUINED AMERICA continues to wage war on Christian Russia…this time
with a third round of sanctions targeting Putin’s inner circle.

What makes for an especially ugly scenario regarding Jewmerica’s malice
toward Russia is that the “official” announcement comes from US
Treasury, headed by the Jew, Jacob Lew.

It appears that Jacob Lew, (an Orthodox Jew) relishes the idea of
targeting Putin’s closest advisers as well as the “personal” bank of
members of the Russian government.

Jacob Lew, (tribalist Jew that he is), got his Jew assistant, David
Cohen, “Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence,” to
chime in with a hateful dig on how sanctions are ‘harming’ the Russian
economy:

“With its currency at an all-time low, its stock market down twenty
percent, and a marked rise in interest rates, Russia is bearing the
costs of its unlawful effort to undermine the security, stability, and
sovereignty of Ukraine.” View Entire Story Here.

Jew lies! Just like their father the devil.

It’s JEWMERICA that has undermined Ukraine’s security, stability, and
sovereignty by funding and imposing ‘regime change’ on the
democratically-elected government of Kiev.

And rules originally designed to lock terrorists out of the global
financial system–now foisted on Russia–are yet another indication that
Jews are hell-bent on destroying Russia’s revival of its Symphony of
Church and State.

The response from Putin is classic: “Over-reliance can lead to a loss of
sovereignty.”

Putin then explained how ‘western-led sanctions benefit Russia:’
1 • Boosts domestic businesses by bringing offshore funds back to Russia.
2 • Gives incentive to create a domestic payment system.
3 • Keeps money domestically instead of in offshore tax havens.
4 • Prompts using Russia’s gold reserves to underpin a national payment
system.

Medvedev’s assertion sums it up: “Sanctions will only make Russia
stronger!” View Entire Story Here, Here & Here.

The shame of Jewmerica imposing pseudo sanctions on Russia is that
America was once a friend and ally of Tsarist Russia, a partner in
promulgating the Christian faith.

What’s noteable (…now sad due to the Jew-takeover of America) is that
the 1832 Russia-US Treaty began with the words, “In The Name Of The Most
Holy and Indivisible Trinity.”

But that all came to an end in 1913 when Jewry harassed President Taft
out of office for his support of “preferred trade” with Russia and
installed their puppet Woodrow Wilson instead…preparing the way for the
Jew-owned Federal Reserve.

It’s been all downhill for Jew-ruined America ever since.

(3) Trotskyist ISO & other "Left" groups back Ukraine putsch, demonize Putin

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/16/swuk-a16.html

The International Socialist Organization and the Ukraine crisis

By Bill Van Auken

16 April 2014

Approaching two months after the US-backed, fascist-led coup in Ukraine,
the former Soviet republic is being pushed to the brink of civil war and
has become the focal point of an imperialist offensive in Eastern Europe
that has the potential of unleashing a nuclear third world war.

In the course of this escalating and deadly dangerous global crisis, the
American public has been subjected to a ceaseless barrage of
pro-imperialist propaganda that turns reality inside out. The fascist
thugs of the Right Sector and Svoboda are portrayed as crusaders for
democracy; Russia is cast as a powerful imperialist bully bent on
conquest; and Washington and NATO are depicted as selfless defenders of
small nations.

It is not just the corrupt and servile corporate media that serves as
the transmission belt for these lies, which are designed to overcome the
overwhelming hostility of the American working class to any US military
intervention. They find a particularly insidious form in the coverage of
the Ukraine crisis by the International Socialist Organization, whose
“left” twist on the media’s version of events is merely a pseudo-left
justification for the policies and aims of US imperialism.

This is by no means a sudden political departure for this organization.
It is of a piece with the line it developed first in Libya, where it
provided a “democratic” and “human rights” cover for the US-NATO war for
regime-change against Gaddafi, and then in Syria, where it cast the
US-backed right-wing Islamists fighting to topple the Assad regime as a
popular “revolution” and defended the supposed right of these
“revolutionaries” to accept CIA weapons and money and even to support
direct US military intervention.

In its response to the Ukrainian events, the ISO adopts essentially the
same formula, portraying a violent coup by a minority led by right-wing
and fascist parties and orchestrated by Washington and its allies as a
mass popular democratic uprising.

In this, it in no way distinguishes itself from its counterparts among
the pseudo-left parties of Europe, such as the French New
Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), which hailed the clashes on Kiev’s Maidan
(Independence Square) as a “mass revolt for democracy,” and the German
Left Party, whose leading members reacted to the events by voting in
favor of an anti-Russian military deployment.

The ISO seeks to cover its naked apology for US-backed regime-change by
adopting the formal standpoint that what is involved is a conflict
between two rival imperialist blocs—Russia, on the one hand, and the US
and its NATO allies, on the other. In doing so, it revives a slogan that
was employed by its ideological forebears during the period of the Cold
War—“Neither Washington, Nor Moscow”—a subject to which we will return.

In reading the ISO’s publication Socialist Worker, however, there is no
mistaking which of these supposed imperialist blocs it sees as the main
aggressor and enemy. In a March 12 article written in the run-up to the
referendum in Crimea, it demonizes Russian President Vladimir Putin as
“the butcher of Chechnya, persecutor of LGBT people and jailer of
political dissidents.”

By contrast, the name Barack Obama is never mentioned in the ISO’s
coverage, much less any description of him as the butcher of
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc., or as the director of drone
assassinations, repression and spying the world over.

The same article condemns “some on the left in the US and Europe” for
insisting that the “‘main enemy,’ imperialism, is ‘at home.’” To take
this position, the ISO argues, means “renouncing the mass uprising that
overthrew the Yanukovych regime and accepting the lying justifications
of Russian imperialists for trying to maintain power in their ‘backyard.’”

The “main enemy is at home” was a slogan popularized by the German
revolutionary and anti-militarist Karl Liebknecht in seeking to mobilize
the working class against the betrayal carried out by the German Social
Democratic Party in supporting German imperialism during the First World
War. It has been the bedrock principle of any genuine socialist response
to imperialist war ever since.

The explicit renunciation of this principle by a political organization
operating inside the United States, the world’s foremost imperialist
power and source of militarism, has unmistakable implications. In its
Solomon-like wisdom of condemning all “imperialisms” equally, the ISO
defines itself as a willing tool of US imperialist policy.

The equation of US imperialism and Russia—while, in fact, branding
Russia as the principal aggressor—is ludicrous. Washington and its NATO
allies spend ten times as much on their military machines as Russia. In
terms of its share of global gross domestic product (GDP), Russia
accounts for roughly 3 percent as opposed to nearly 19 percent for the
US. Dependent on energy exports, the Russian economy has more in common
with Iran than it does with a major imperialist power.

The Putin government, resting upon a corrupt layer of oligarchs who
enriched themselves by looting state property after the dissolution of
the Soviet Union, confronts a relentless threat from US and European
imperialism from a position of weakness. While resorting to military
maneuvers and appeals to Great Russian chauvinism, it is desperately
seeking some means of accommodation with Washington.

US imperialism has shown no desire for a compromise. Having steadily
encircled Russia with military bases, a missile shield and the
transformation of former Soviet bloc countries into NATO members, it is
determined to eliminate Moscow as even a regional rival and turn Russia
into a semi-colony.

As for “renouncing the mass uprising that overthrew the Yanukovych
regime,” nowhere does the ISO even approach a class analysis of this
“uprising” or an examination of its programmatic aims. By all accounts,
the class composition of those who occupied Kiev’s Maidan was
overwhelmingly petty-bourgeois and drawn from the more conservative and
rural west of the country. No strike movement accompanied the clashes in
the capital, and there was no involvement by the Ukrainian working class
as a class in this movement. The domination of right-wing and fascist
forces was not some accident, but reflected the social elements involved.

The main demand that accompanied the beginning of the anti-Yanukovych
demonstrations last November was reactionary—the demand for the
integration of Ukraine into the European Union. This demand reflected
the interests of privileged layers of the middle classes and sections of
the bourgeoisie, not the working class, which has learned in recent
years that the EU stands for austerity, poverty and repression. The
Maidan protests promoted a brutal International Monetary Fund austerity
program that will, in addition to slashing wages and social benefits and
increasing utility prices, result in the wholesale closure of mines and
factories and the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, especially
in the industrialized east of the country.

Even some of the ISO’s own periphery found the organization’s largely
uncritical attitude toward the Maidan protests and its refusal to oppose
US imperialism’s machinations in the region unsettling.

The ISO, one reader commented in a letter posted March 6,
“underestimates the impact of the fascists and neo-Nazis on the protest
movement.” The reader continued, “Not every protest movement is
intrinsically progressive. It is important for socialists to be able to
determine the class nature of mass mobilizations in a world that is
increasingly unstable.”

The letter concluded, “It seems to me that our primary obligation, as
socialists in the US, is to oppose any war moves by our own imperialism.”

The ISO did not bother to reply.

What is most striking about Socialist Worker’s coverage of the Ukrainian
events is its utter silence on the role played by the United States and
Germany in instigating the crisis in Ukraine for the purpose of
installing a right-wing nationalist regime completely subservient to
Washington and NATO.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s top official on Europe and
Eurasia—a former chief of staff to Dick Cheney and wife of Project for a
New Century founding chairman Robert Kagan—played the lead role in the
regime-change operation in Ukraine. Her machinations are passed over in
silence.

There has been no mention by Socialist Worker of her infamous recorded
phone call with the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, in which
Nuland specified which of the US-backed right-wing opposition leaders
should be included in the new government. She decreed that Arseniy
Yatsenyuk of the Fatherland Party—whom she refers to as “Yats”—should
head up the new regime. Sure enough, once the right-wing violence in
Kiev forced Yanukovych to flee the country, “Yats” was installed as
prime minister.

Nor is there any mention of her bragging in a videotaped speech last
December that Washington had funneled some $5 billion into Ukraine to
back right-wing forces seeking to install a pro-NATO regime.

Curiously, the only reference to Nuland by Socialist Worker was over her
meeting with then-President Viktor Yanukovych in December of 2013, in
which she demanded that he subordinate his government to the
International Monetary Fund and the EU and warned him that a crackdown
on the Maidan demonstrators would be “impermissible.” Socialist Worker
helpfully includes a link to a Radio Free Europe video of Nuland’s
speech following this meeting.

The real content of the ISO’s supposedly even-handed approach toward US
imperialism and Russia is spelled out in a March 11 article posted in
the run-up to the referendum on Crimea’s annexation. The article demands
that Russia’s maneuvers in Crimea “be unconditionally condemned by all
revolutionaries claiming to be anti-imperialists.”

The article then goes on to state, “But it should be obvious that
condemning Russian imperialism does not by any means amount to a defense
of Western interests… Intervention by the US and European Union
(EU)—whether in the form of diplomatic or economic pressure or the
actual military operations—won’t be carried out because of concerns for
democracy or the conditions of ordinary people in Ukraine.”

The fact that the ISO feels compelled to assert that it “should be
obvious” that it is not backing Western imperialism only reveals that it
is anything but obvious. Its formulations, demanding “unconditional
condemnation” of Russia while casting Western intervention in Ukraine as
a hypothetical, point clearly to its real position.

In this context, the ISO’s dusting off of the old state capitalist
slogan, “Neither Washington, Nor Moscow,” is meant only to mask the
organization’s real role, which is to serve as a consistent apologist
for US imperialism.

Nonetheless, the revival of this slogan—which dovetails with the
resurgence within the capitalist media and political establishment of
the kind of demonization of Russia that was cultivated during the Cold
War—is significant. By pointing to the political origins of the ISO, it
helps explain how and why this tendency has ended up in the camp of
imperialism.

“Neither Washington nor Moscow, but International Socialism”—it is
noteworthy that the ISO has dropped this last phrase—was the slogan
initiated by Tony Cliff when he broke with the Fourth International in
1950. Adapting to a wave of anti-communist hysteria, Cliff rejected the
defense of North Korea against US imperialism, which waged a
near-genocidal war that claimed the lives of over 3 million people.

Cliff, who founded the International Socialists (later the Socialist
Workers Party) in Britain, adopted the “theory” of state capitalism,
which proclaimed the Soviet Union a new form of class society and the
Stalinist bureaucracy a new ruling class. In addition to renouncing the
defense against imperialism of the Soviet Union and the nationalized
property relations established by the October 1917 Revolution, this
demoralized and essentially anti-communist perspective wrote off the
revolutionary role of the working class and its ability to establish its
own state and new forms of property relations. [...]

The dissolution of the Soviet Union is a matter of complete indifference
to the ISO. To the extent it is even mentioned in its writings on
Ukraine, it is presented as a generally progressive development that
allowed a flowering of Ukrainian nationalism.

 From the ISO’s writings, one would have no inkling of the catastrophe
capitalist restoration unleashed upon workers in Ukraine, where wages
were cut by two-thirds and more than half of the population was driven
below the poverty level. Ukraine’s GDP per capita plummeted from $1,979
in 1990 to $837 in 1998.

This strategic experience, repeated across the former USSR, is the
essential starting point for understanding the origins of the current
crisis and developing a genuine socialist response to both the threat of
imperialist war and the corrupt and oppressive rule of the capitalist
oligarchs in both Russia and Ukraine.

The ISO has no interest in developing such an alternative. In both its
perspective and social composition, there is little to distinguish it
from the privileged middle class layers that direct outfits such as
USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, which have served as the
conduits for Washington’s funding of the ultra-right in Ukraine. The ISO
is in all essentials a specific breed of NGO, whose job is to provide
the crimes of US imperialism with a pseudo-left cover.

(4) Ukraine: Poland trained putchists two months in advance - Thierry
Meyssan

http://www.voltairenet.org/article183373.html

Ukraine: Poland trained putchists two months in advance

by Thierry Meyssan

Lies have shorter and shorter legs. Two months after the change of
regime in Kiev, the Polish press has disclosed the role of Donald Tusk’s
government in preparing the coup. The new revelations belie Western
discourse and demonstrate that the current interim government of
Oleksandr Tourtchynov was imposed by NATO in violation of international law.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS | 19 APRIL 2014

{photo}
In his capacity as EU negotiator, Radoslaw Sikorski signed a crisis
settlement agreement with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, in the
evening of February 21, 2014. The following morning, the men he had
secretly trained in Poland were about to take power.
{end photo}

{inset} This article is based on information obtained by the Polish
opposition. I erroneously cited as my source the satirical weekly Nie,
which published a pastiche mixing truths and non-truths. The data it
provides needs to be verified.
In any case, the matter concerning the training of Pravy Sector members
has in the meantime been brought before the Attorney General of Poland.
Thierry Meyssan, April 22, 2014. {end inset}

The Polish left-wing weekly Nie (No) published a startling witness
account of the training given to the most violent of the EuroMaidan [1]
activists.

According to this source, in September 2013, Polish Foreign Minister
Radoslaw Sikorski invited 86 members of the Right Sector (Sector Pravy),
allegedly in the context of a university exchange program. In reality,
the guests were not students, and many were over 40. Contrary to their
official schedule, they did not go to the Warsaw University of
Technology, but headed instead for the police training center in
Legionowo, an hour’s drive from the capital. There, they received four
weeks of intensive training in crowd management, person recognition,
combat tactics, command skills, behavior in crisis situations,
protection against gases used by police, erecting barricades, and
especially shooting, including the handling of sniper rifles.

Such training took place in September 2013, while the Maidan Square
protests were allegedly triggered by a decree suspending preparations
for the signing of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement,
which was issued by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov on November 21, i.e.
two months later.

The Polish weekly refers to photographs attesting to the training, which
show the Ukrainians in Nazi uniforms alongside their Polish instructors
in civilian clothing.

These revelations warrant a fresh look at the resolution adopted in
early December 2013 by the Polish Parliament (Sejm), pledging its "total
solidarity with Ukrainian citizens who, with strong determination, are
showing the world their desire to achieve the full membership of their
country in the European Union." Naturally, the MPs were not yet aware of
their country’s involvement in the training of the very individuals who
were planning - and ultimately achieved - a violent takeover of power.

This scandal illustrates the role assigned by NATO to Poland in Ukraine,
analogous to the one entrusted to Turkey in Syria. The government of
pro-European liberal Donald Tusk is fully committed to playing its role.
Foreign Affairs Minister Radoslaw Sikorski - a journalist and former
political refugee in the United Kingdom - was the mastermind behind
Poland’s integration into NATO. As a member of the "Weimar Triangle", he
was one of three EU representatives who brokered the 21 February 2014
agreement between President Viktor Yanukovych and the three main
EuroMaidan leaders [2]. Needless to say, the Ukrainian president was
unaware of the Polish representative’s entanglement with the rioters. As
for the Interior Minister and special services coordinator, Bart?omiej
Sienkiewicz (the great grand-son of novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, best
known for Quo Vadis?), he co-founded the Office for State Protection
(Urzd Ochrony Pa?stwa), Poland’s current intelligence agency. He also
co-created and served as vice-president of the Centre for Eastern
Studies (O?rodek Studiów Wschodnich), a national think-tank dealing with
the situation in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, with particular
emphasis on Ukraine and Turkey. It exerts a profound influence on the
West’s perception of current events, through its agreements with
Carnegie Foundation [3].

During Yulia Tymoshenko’s government (2007-2010), the current interim
president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Tourtchynov, had served as intelligence
chief and deputy prime minister. He liaised at the time with the Poles
Donald Tusk (already Prime Minister), Radoslaw Sikorski (then Defense
Minister) and Bart?omiej Sienkiewicz (director of the private
intelligence firm ASBS Othago).

To overthrow the government of its neighbor state, Poland resorted to
Nazi activists in the same way that Turkey uses Al-Qaeda to overthrow
the Syrian government. Not only is it not surprising to see the current
Polish authorities rely on the grand-children of the Nazis that the CIA
tucked into the NATO Gladio network to fight against the Soviet Union,
but we should also be reminded of the controversy which broke out in the
2005 Polish presidential election, when journalist and MP Jacek Kurski
revealed that Józef Tusk, the grandfather of Donald Tusk, had
intentionally enrolled in the Wehrmacht. After denying the facts, the
Prime Minister finally admitted that his grandfather had indeed served
in the Nazi army, but claimed he had been forcefully conscripted after
the annexation of Danzig. A recollection that speaks volumes about how
Washington selects its agents in Eastern Europe.

In summary, Poland trained a mob of thugs to overthrow the
democratically-elected president of Ukraine and pretended he was
subscribing to an appeasement agreement with him on 21 February 2014,
while his rioters were in the process of seizing power.

Moreover, there is no doubt that the coup was sponsored by the United
States, as evidenced by the telephone conversation between Assistant
Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt [4].
Similarly, it is clear that other NATO members, including Lithuania (in
the past, Ukraine was dominated by the Polish-Lithuanian empire), and
Israel in its capacity as a de facto member of its military command
structure, took part in the coup [5]. This arrangement suggests that
NATO now runs a new Gladio network in Eastern Europe [6]. In addition,
following the coup, mercenaries working for Greystone Ltd., a subsidiary
of Academi, were deployed in the country in coordination with the CIA [7].

These facts radically modify the perception that we may have had of the
coup of 22 February 2014. They undermine the arguments provided supplied
to the press by the U.S. Department of State (points 3 and 5 of the
factsheet dated March 5) [8] and constitute an act of war under
international law. Therefore, the arguments peddled by the West
regarding the ensuing the events, including the accession of Crimea to
the Russian Federation and the current uprisings in East and South
Ukraine, are null and void.

(5) Polish Attorney General confirms investigation into training of
Ukraine neo-Nazis in Poland
Polish Attorney General confirms investigation into training of Pravy
Sector agents in Poland

http://www.voltairenet.org/article183533.html

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 29 APRIL 2014

Publications sympathetic to the Polish government harshly criticized
Thierry Meyssan’s article discussing the training drills set up by the
Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Ukrainian Pravy Sector activists
in September 2013, i.e. prior to the Maidan events in Kiev [1].

In their opinion, Thierry Meyssan’s denunciations seriously harmed their
country by giving the impression that Poland had participated in the
organization of a coup in Ukraine, while she generously interceded to
resolve the crisis. Furthermore, they deemed his claims to be unfounded
since the humorous article in Nie magazine referenced by the author had
already been rebutted by the Ministry’s spokesman.

Thierry Meyssan then published a correction pointing out that Nie was
not his original source and that he regretted having cited it. He
further explained that his information came from the Polish political
opposition, who had submitted the matter to the Attorney General of
Poland [2]. Therefore, his correction in no way detracts from the
information provided in his article; and, above all, he maintains his
accusations.

The said publications then accused the author of having invented the
whole thing, discarding that the Attorney General had ever opened an
investigation into the matter, or that it had even been referred to him.

Below you will find a letter from the Office of the Attorney General,
dated 15 April (that is to say, prior to the article by Thierry
Meyssan), attesting to the April 14 opening of an investigation into
"the training of Ukrainian Pravy Sector activists in Poland, "under
Article 142, paragraph 1 of the Polish Penal Code.

(6) German magazine Der Spiegel campaigns for war and rearmament

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/23/germ-a23.html

By Peter Schwarz

23 April 2014

One of the most unmistakable signs of the return of German militarism is
the barrage of war propaganda in the media. The conservative Die Welt
and FAZ, the liberal Süddeutsche and Zeit and the “Green” taz newspaper
have all published a torrent of articles urging German rearmament and
more aggressive action against Russia.

The most recent example of such propaganda is provided by Dirk
Kurbjuweit in the magazine Der Spiegel .

In an essay entitled “The Power of the Powerless,” Kurbjuweit declares
that the West needs the “properties of [the war god] Mars, i.e. weapons,
military capabilities, and on occasion the resolve to use them.” He
adds, “Not to rearm, not to engage in economic competition, to stay out
of world affairs would be equally noble and insane”.

In support of his demand for war and rearmament, Kurbjuweit employs an
argument reminiscent of a third-rate fantasy novel: There are the good
and the bad. The good ones are “western democracies”, the bad are the
“authoritarian states”, Russia and China. Facts, arguments and events
that contradict his black and white depiction are obscured, distorted or
simply denied.

The rulers in Russia and China “oppress their people”. China is
“expansive” and will soon be “an authoritarian superpower”. Russian
President Vladimir Putin has “revived Russia’s thirst for power… These
regimes have no problem with morality. Legitimacy is secondary for them
given that their own legitimacy is doubtful”.

The West, however, “fails to engage in active power politics, it will
not conquer territories and change maps”. The Western democracies “have
a moral foundation that limits warlike activities. They are limited to
resolving internal conflicts peacefully. This has an effect on their
determination. They must seek a legitimate basis for foreign deployments”.

Kurbjuweit concedes that the US has indeed “on occasion sometimes acted
abroad like an authoritarian regime”. But Obama “has ended this policy”.
He acts like “a dove of peace… This America has no designs on hegemonial
power”.

Dirk Kurbjuweit is 51 years old. He wrote for Die Zeit for nine years,
and 15 years for Der Spiegel. He has also written several books. He
cannot be excused on the basis of naivety or ignorance.

He knows that the wars that devastated Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and
other countries emanated not from Russia or China, but from the United
States and its European allies. He knows that “dove of peace” Obama has
built up a global monitoring network, carries out an illegal drone war
with thousands of victims, and is expanding US power in East Asia in
opposition to China as part of his “pivot to Asia”.

Kurbjuweit also knows that the “expansive project” of the West is not,
as he claims, dedicated to “democracy”. In order to subject Ukraine to
their influence and repel Russia, Berlin and Washington worked together
with known fascists, nationalists and right-wing oligarchs to organized
a violent putsch in Kiev.

Kurbjuweit is simply regurgitating imperialist propaganda. His lies
about the alleged democratic and moral motives of the West hide an
extremely reactionary argument. The West is weak and indecisive because
it is democratic; Russia and China are strong because they are
authoritarian—this theme runs like a red thread through his essay.

“The West behaves gently and compliantly in the Ukraine crisis. But what
if the world is not allocated along pacifist rules?” he asks in his
opening paragraph. “Currently authoritarian regimes have the advantage.
One reason is their determination”, he writes. Again and again,
Kurbjuweit emphasizes the inevitability of further conflict with Russia
and China. The West should not hope that the local ruler will end up
like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, “but should be prepared for further
confrontations”.

The conclusion is inescapable: In order to survive in a conflict between
“authoritarian states” and “Western democracies”, the latter must
renounce all and any democratic legitimacy. It was the Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet who once proclaimed: “Democracy must be bathed in blood
occasionally, so that it can continue to exist”. Now Kurbjuweit suggests
something similar in order to conduct a victorious war against Russia
and China.

Finally, Kurbjuweit advises against relying on the United States, which
“has become quite moody… Europe should look urgently to establish its
own army, military strategy and common foreign policy”.

Kurbjuweit has been campaigning for some time for a revival of German
militarism. In early February he published an article in Der Spiegel
entitled “The change of the past”, in which he declared “it is high
time” for a “revision” of the assessment of German responsibility for
the First and Second World Wars.

In the article he attacks the German historian Fritz Fischer, who
demonstrated in his 1961 book Germany’s Aims in the First World War that
Germany bore a significant share of the responsibility for the outbreak
of the First World War. Fischer’s theses were “in principle outrageous”,
the Berlin historian Herfried Münkler tells Kurbjuweit.

Regarding the Second World War, Kurbjuweit draws upon Ernst Nolte, who
unleashed the “historian’s controversy” in 1986, with his assertion that
National Socialism was an understandable reaction to Bolshevism. In
discussion with Kurbjuweit, Nolte not only defends his past thesis but
goes on to assert, without being challenged, that Poland and England
bore a large responsibility for the Second World War because they
refused to forge an agreement with Hitler. He accuses the Jews of having
“partial responsibility for the Gulag, because some Bolsheviks were Jews”.

Nolte’s arguments have been backed up by the Berlin-based historian Jörg
Baberowski, who explains in an interview with Kurbjuweit that Nolte had
been “wrongly treated” and adds that Hitler was “not cruel”.

This trivialization of the historical crimes of German imperialism is
preparing the path for new crimes. This is made abundantly clear by
Kurbjuweit’s latest plea for war and rearmament.