837 Western Military Interventions in Syria & Libya led to Brexit - Michael Hudson

Western Military Interventions in Syria & Libya led to Brexit - Michael
Hudson

Newsletter published on 1 July 2016

(1) Hillary supported by Military Industrial Complex, Neocons and State
Dept hawks
(2) Trump as the ‘Relative Peace Candidate’ - John V. Walsh
(3) Trump ignorant of Neocon and War hawk catechisms and sophistries -
David Stockman
(4) Neocon/Obama attempt at Regime Change in Syria leads to Brexit,
breakup of EU
(5) Western Military Interventions in Syria & Libya led to Brexit -
Michael Hudson
(6) Euro-federalists were financed by CIA - easier to control one
central, unelected government, than a group of sovereign nations
(7) Washington fears Brexit will Unravel its anti-Russia Policy

(1) Hillary supported by Military Industrial Complex, Neocons and State
Dept hawks

From: "Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com [shamireaders]"
<shamireaders-noreply@yahoogroups.com>  Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 10:20:08
-0500 Subject: [shamireaders] Fwd: John V Walsh

Dear All,??

Hillary is supported by the Military Industrial Complex, the Neocons and
even the current State Department is eagerly waiting for her in the
White House.

The only real difference is that a Clinton presidency absolutely means
more Middle East wars, and a Trump presidency may not. Which is why the
Republican establishment is doing its best to ensure that Trump loses
which is what AIPAC (Israel Lobby) wants, sensing that someone with his
wealth and ego may not be as malleable as Hillary, who they now already
have deep in their pockets, totally compromised.

Trump seems like a loose cannon – but he did not become a billionaire
several times over by being foolishly incompetent.

(2) Trump as the ‘Relative Peace Candidate’ - John V. Walsh

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2016/06/94902-trump-as-the-relative-peace-candidate/

Trump as the ‘Relative Peace Candidate’

By My Catbird Seat - Jun 21, 2016

The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is
no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose
vaunted ‘exceptionalism’ is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face."

Hillary Clinton has shown no real remorse over her support for neocon
"regime changes," aggressive wars and belligerence toward Russia,
leaving the oft-obnoxious Donald Trump as the relative peace candidate,
says John V. Walsh.

By John V. Walsh

Until recently the progressive mind has been resolutely closed and
stubbornly frozen in place against all things Trump. But cracks are
appearing in the ice. With increasing frequency over the last few months
some of the most thoughtful left and progressive figures have begun to
speak favorably of aspects of Trump’s foreign policy.

Let us hear from these heretics, among them William Greider, Glen Ford,
John Pilger,Jean Bricmont, Stephen F. Cohen and  William Blum. Their
words are not to be construed as "endorsements," but rather an
acknowledgement of Trump’s anti-interventionist views, the impact those
views are having and the alternative he poses to Hillary Clinton in the
current electoral contest.

First let’s consider the estimable  William Greider, a regular
contributor to The Nation and author of Secrets of the Temple. He titled
a recent  article for the Nation, "Donald Trump Could be The Military
Industrial Complex’s Worst Nightmare: The Republican Front Runner is
Against Nation Building. Imagine That."
<http://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-could-be-the-military-industrial-complexs-worst-nightmare/>

Greider’s article is brief, and I recommend reading every precious word
of it. Here is but one quote:

"Trump has, in his usual unvarnished manner, kicked open the door to an
important and fundamental foreign-policy debate."

And here is a passage from Trump’s interview with the Washington Post
that Greider chooses to quote:

"‘I watched as
<http://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-could-be-the-military-industrial-complexs-worst-nightmare/>
and they’d be blown up,’ Trump told the editors. ‘And we’d build another
one and it would get blown up. And we would rebuild it three times. And
yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn.… at what point do you say hey,
we have to take care of ourselves. So, you know, I know the outer world
exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that but at the same time, our
country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially in the inner
cities.’"

Trump talks about building infrastructure for the inner cities,
especially better schools for African-American children, rather than
bombing people of color halfway around the world! That is hardly racism.
And it is not how the mainstream media wants us to think of The Donald.

Next, Glen Ford, the eloquent radical Left executive editor of Black
Agenda Report, a superb and widely read outlet, penned an  article in
March, 2016, with the following title:

"Trump Way to the Left of Clinton on Foreign Policy – In Fact, He’s Damn
Near Anti-Empire." <http://www.blackagendareport.com/trump_anti-empire>

Ford’s piece is well worth reading in its entirety; here are just a few
quotes:

–"Trump has rejected the whole gamut of U.S. imperial war rationales,
from FDR straight through to the present."

–"If Trump’s tens of millions of white, so-called ‘Middle American’
followers stick by him, it will utterly shatter the prevailing
assumption that the American public favors maintenance of U.S. empire by
military means."

–"Trump shows no interest in ‘spreading democracy,’ like George W. Bush,
or assuming a responsibility to ‘protect’ other peoples from their own
governments, like Barack Obama and his political twin, Hillary Clinton."

–"It is sad beyond measure that the near-extinction of independent Black
politics has placed African Americans in the most untenable position
imaginable at this critical moment: in the Hillary Clinton camp."

Demonizing Trump

Next let’s turn to John Pilger, the left-wing Australian journalist and
documentary film maker who has been writing about Western foreign policy
with unimpeachable accuracy and wisdom since the Vietnam War era.
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/23/a-world-war-has-begun-break-the-silence/>
Here are some of his comments on Trump:

–"Donald Trump is being presented (by the mass media) as a lunatic, a
fascist. He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure.
That alone should arouse our skepticism."

–"Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than
those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from
the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama."

–"In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described
the paramount aim of American foreign policy as ‘a world substantially
made over in [America’s] own image’. The ideology was messianic
Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. …"

–"Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says
the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn’t want to go to war with
Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary
Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of
asystem whose vaunted ‘exceptionalism’ is totalitarian with an
occasional liberal face."

The money quote is: "The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but
Hillary Clinton." When Pilger submitted his article to the "progressive"
magazine Truthout, this sentence was deleted, censored
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/29/trump-and-clinton-censoring-the-unpalatable/>
as he reported, along with a few of the surrounding sentences. Such
censorship had not been imposed on Pilger by Truthout ever before.

Truthout’s commitment to free speech apparently has limits in the case
of The Donald versus Hillary, rather severe ones. So one must read even
the progressive press with some skepticism when it comes to Trump.

Trump has also been noticed by the Left in Europe, notably by the sharp
minded Jean Bricmont, physicist and author of Humanitarian Imperialism
who writes
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/30/trump-and-the-liberal-intelligentsia-a-view-from-europe/>
here:

Trump "is the first major political figure to call for ‘America First’
meaning non-interventionism. He not only denounces the trillions of
dollars spent in wars, deplores the dead and wounded American soldiers,
but also speaks of the Iraqi victims of a war launched by a Republican
President. He does so to a Republican public and manages to win its support.

"He denounces the empire of US military bases, claiming to prefer to
build schools here in the United States. He wants good relations with
Russia. He observes that the militarist policies pursued for decades
have caused the United States to be hated throughout the world. He calls
Sarkozy a criminal who should be judged for his role in Libya. Another
advantage of Trump: he is detested by the neoconservatives, who are the
main architects of the present disaster."

Gambling on Nuclear War

And then there is Stephen F. Cohen, contributing editor for The Nation
and Professor Emeritus of Russian History at Princeton and NYU. Cohen
makes the point that Trump, alone among the presidential candidates, has
raised five urgent and fundamental questions, which all other candidates
in the major parties have either scorned or more frequently ignored. The
five questions all call into question the interventionist warlike stance
of the U.S. for the past 20 plus years. Cohen enumerates the questions
here, thus:

–"Should the United States always be the world’s leader and policeman?

–"What is NATO’s proper mission today, 25 years after the end of the
Soviet Union and when international terrorism is the main threat to the
West?

–"Why does Washington repeatedly pursue a policy of regime change, in
Iraq, Libya, possibly in Ukraine, and now in Damascus, even though it
always ends in ‘disaster’?

–"Why is the United States treating Putin’s Russia as an enemy and not
as a security partner?

–"And should US nuclear weapons doctrine include a no-first use pledge,
which it does not?"

Cohen comments in detail on these questions
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/22/trumps-five-questions-on-us-foreign-policy/>
here. Whatever one may think of the answers Trump has provided to the
five questions, there is no doubt that he alone among the presidential
candidates has raised them – and that in itself is an important
contribution.

At this point I mention my own piece, which appeared late last year.
Entitled
"<http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/30/who-is-the-arch-racist-hillary-or-the-donald/>
Who is the Arch Racist, Hillary or The Donald"? Like Cohen’s pieces it
finds merit with the Trump foreign policy in the context of posing a
question.

Lesser Evil

Finally, let us turn to Bill Blum, who wrote an article entitled,
"American Exceptionalism and the Election Made in Hell (Or Why I’d Vote
for Trump Over Hillary)." Again there is little doubt about the stance
of Blum, who is author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II, a scholarly compendium, which Noam
Chomsky calls "Far and away the best book on the topic."

Blum begins his piece: "If the American presidential election winds up
with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated,
and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so,
paid well … I would vote for Trump. …

"My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the
greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And
when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster.
 From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse
place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who
should be prosecuted."

And he concludes: "He (Trump) calls Iraq ‘a complete disaster’,
condemning not only George W. Bush but the neocons who surrounded him.
‘They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there
were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass
destruction.’ He even questions the idea that ‘Bush kept us safe’, and
adds that ‘Whether you like Saddam or not, he used to kill terrorists’. …

"Yes, [Trump]’s personally obnoxious. I’d have a very hard time being
his friend. Who cares?"

I have concluded with Blum’s words because they are most pertinent to
our present situation. The world is living through a perilous time when
the likes of the neocons and Hillary Clinton could lead us into a
nuclear Armageddon with their belligerence toward Russia and their
militaristic confrontation with China.

The reality is that we are faced with a choice between Clinton and
Trump, a choice which informs much of the above commentary. Survival is
at stake and we must consider survival first if our judgments are to be
sane.

  John V Walsh

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com. He has
contributed to Consortium News, CounterPunch.com, DissidentVoice.org,
Antiwar.com, LewRockwell.com and other sites concerned with issues of
war and peace.

(3) Trump ignorant of Neocon and War hawk catechisms and sophistries -
David Stockman

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/whats-wrong-with-these-people/

In Praise Of Ignorant Politicians…..Unschooled In Beltway Delusions

by David Stockman

June 22, 2016



The Imperial City deserves to be sacked by insurgent politicians of the
very ignorant kind. That is, outsiders unschooled in its specious
groupthink and destructive delusions of grandeur.

That’s why Donald Trump’s challenge to the beltway’s permanent
bipartisan ruling class is so welcome. He is largely ignorant of the
neocon and war hawk catechisms and sophistries propounded by joints like
the Council on Foreign Relations.

But owing to his overweening self-confidence, he doesn’t hesitate to lob
foreign policy audibles, as it were, from the Presidential campaign’s
line of scrimmage.

It is these unpredictable outbursts of truth and common sense, not his
bombast, bad manners and bigotry, that has the Acela Corridor in high
dudgeon. The Donald’s establishment bettors are deathly afraid that he
might confirm to the unwashed electorate of Flyover America what it
already suspects.

Namely, that Washington’s hyper-interventionism and ungodly expensive
imperial footprint all around the globe has nothing at all to do with
their security and safety, even as it saddles them with massive public
debts and the threat of jihadist blowback to the homeland.

For Trump’s part, the fact is that most of his wild pitches——the Mexican
Wall, the Muslim ban, waterboarding—-are basically excesses of campaign
rhetoric that would likely get fashioned into something far more
palatable if he were ever in a position to govern. By contrast, the
fundamental consensus of our bipartisan rulers is a mortal threat to
peace, prosperity and democratic rule.

Worse still, the beltway consensus is so entombed in groupthink that the
machinery grinds forward from one folly to the next with hardly a peep
of dissent. Nothing could better illustrate that deleterious dynamic, in
fact, than the NATO warships currently trolling around the Black Sea.

For crying out loud, the very thought that Washington is sending
lethally armed destroyers into the Black Sea is an outrage. That
eurasian backwater harbors no threat whatsoever to the security and
safety of the citizens of America—–or, for that matter, to those of
Germany, France, Poland or the rest of NATO, either.

The shrunken remnants of the Russian Navy—- home-ported at Sevastopol on
the Crimea, as it has been since Catherine The Great—-could not uncork
the Dardanelles with war-making intent in a thousand years. Not in the
face of the vast NATO armada implacably positioned on the Mediterranean
side of the outlet.

So what is possibly the point of rattling seaborne missile batteries on
Russia’s shoreline? It assumes a military threat that’s non-existent and
a hostile intent in Moscow that is purely an artifact of NATO propaganda.

In truth, these reckless Black Sea naval maneuvers amount to a rank
provocation. With one glance at the map, even the much maligned high
school educated voters who have rallied to Trump’s cause could tell you
that much.

The same can be said for the 31,000 NATO troops conducted exercises in
Poland and the Baltic republics right alongside the border with Russia.
These are not isolated cases of tactical excess or even far-fetched
exercises in "deterrence". Instead, they directly manifest Imperial
Washington’s hegemonic raison d etat.

Indeed, these utterly pointless maneuvers on Russia’s doorsteps are just
a further extension of the same imperial arrogance that stupidly
initiated a fight with Putin’s Russia in the first place by igniting a
Ukrainian civil war on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.

Washington not only sponsored and funded the overthrow of Ukraine’s
constitutionally elected government, but did so for the most superficial
and historically ignorant reason imaginable. To wit, it objected to the
decision of Ukraine’s prior government to align itself economically and
politically with its historic hegemon in Moscow.

So what?

There was nothing at stake in the Ukraine that matters. During the last
700 years, it has been a meandering set of borders in search of a
country. In fact, the intervals in which the Ukraine existed as an
independent nation have been few and far between.

Invariably, it rulers, petty potentates and corrupt politicians made
deals with or surrendered to every outside power which came along. These
included the Lithuanians, Turks, Poles, Austrians, Czars and commissars,
among others.

Indeed, in modern times Ukraine functioned as an integral part of Mother
Russia, serving as its breadbasket and iron and steel crucible under
czars and commissars alike. Crimea itself was actually Russian territory
from 1783, when Catherine The Great purchased it from the Turks, until
the mid-1950’s, when in a fit of drunken stupor the newly ascendant
Khrushchev gifted it to his Ukrainian compatriots.

Given this history, the idea that Ukraine should be actively and
aggressively induced to join NATO was just plain nuts. You might wonder
what bantam brains actually came up with the scheme, but only until you
recall that NATO itself has been a vestigial organ since 1991.

It’s now in the business of self-preservation and concocting missions,
not securing the peace of anyone, anywhere on the planet.

The Ukraine intervention has already caused NATO, the IMF and Washington
to pony up more than $40 billion of aid, which has gone straight down
the proverbial rathole. The part that wasn’t stolen by the thieving
oligarchs Washington installed in Kiev has been used to prosecute an
horrific civil war which has killed and wounded tens of thousands of
civilians caught in the cross-fire and destroyed what is left of the
Ukrainian economy.

Indeed, it was the neocon meddlers from Washington who crushed Ukraine’s
last semblance of civil governance when they enabled ultra-nationalists
and crypto-Nazi to gain government positions after the putsch. In one
fell swoop that inexcusable stupidity re-opened Ukraine’s blood-soaked
modern history.

That includes Stalin’s re-population of the Donbas with "reliable"
Russian workers after his genocidal liquidation of the Kulaks in the
early 1930s. It also encompasses the large-scale collaboration by
Ukrainian nationalists in the west with the Nazi wehrmacht as it laid
waste to Poles, Jews, gypsies and other undesirables on its way to
Stalingrad.

And then there was the equal and opposite spree of barbaric revenge as
the victorious Red Army marched back through Ukraine on its way to Berlin.

What beltway lame brains did not understand that Washington’s triggering
of "regime change" in Kiev would re-open this entire bloody history of
sectarian and political strife?

Moreover, once they had opened Pandora’s box, why was it so hard to see
that an outright partition of Ukraine with autonomy for the Donbas and
Crimea, or even accession to the Russian state from which these
communities had originated, would have been a perfectly reasonable
resolution?

Certainly that would have been far preferable to dragging all of Europe
into the lunacy of the current anti-Putin sanctions and embroiling the
Ukrainian factions in a suicidal civil war.

After all, the artificial country of Czechoslovakia, created on a
political whim at Versailles, was peacefully and inconsequently devolved
into its separate Czech and Slovakian nations. The same of true of
Yugoslavia.

In that instance, it was American bombers which forced the partition of
Kosovo from its Serbian parent. And even then, this Washington
sanctioned partition ended up in the hands of a criminal mafia that
makes Putin appear sainted, to boot.

In short, the current spat of NATO saber-rattling exercises on Russia’s
borders is living proof that Washington is enthrall to a permanent
ruling class of educated fools and power-obsessed apparatchiks,

Is it any wonder, therefore, that the Imperial City continues to
squander scarce fiscal resources on the obsolete machinery of NATO and
the bloated cold war military establishments of its members that have no
legitimate purpose.

No wonder Trump’s establishment bettors scolded and harrumphed when he
had the temerity to suggest that NATO was too expensive and possibly
obsolete.

But of course it is!

It’s mission ended 25 years ago when Boris Yeltsin mounted a soviet tank
vodka flask in hand and stood done the Red Army. The very geopolitical
earth parted right there and then.

Indeed, two years earlier, President Bush 41 and his able Secretary of
State, James Baker, had promised Gorbachev that in return for
acquiescing in the reunification of Germany that NATO would not be
expanded "by a single inch".

Time and again that promise has been betrayed for no good reason except
imperial aggrandizement. Now a military alliance which had no purpose
other than to contain 50,000 Soviet tanks on the central front has been
joined by the likes of Albania, Croatia, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia and
Bulgaria, too.

Has the ascension of these micro-states added to the security and safety
of the citizens of Lincoln NE or Springfield MA?

No it hasn’t. It has actually subtracted from national security by
threatening a third rate power with a GDP no larger than that of the New
York SMSA and an annual defense budget amounting to less than 30 days of
Pentagon spending.

As to the necessity of the current naval maneuvers, even the leaders of
Bulgaria—-a nation check-by-jowl to Russia’s Black Sea fleet—— have
demurred, pointing out the obvious.

To wit, the Black Sea is a place for sailboats and vacationers, not NATO
warships. [...]

That’s the beginning of good sense. Disbanding NATO would be the next
rational step forward.

(4) Neocon/Obama attempt at Regime Change in Syria leads to Brexit,
breakup of EU

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950406001394

Sun Jun 26, 2016 9:20

Brexit Syria Blowback: Goodbye to Regime Change

TEHRAN (FNA)- Even long before the British people decided to leave the
European Union on June 23, we already knew that something was terribly
wrong with the bloc, and that it had something to do with the Syria
blowback and the subsequent refugee crisis. We just didn't know its
social, economic, and political consequences would be so immense.

What started as a gambit by the War Party in Washington and its NATO
partners in Brussels to regime change Syria - to be used as a lever to
bargain with Iran and Russia for a few more regional designs and venal
status quo - has metastasized into an astonishing social, economic and
political earthquake about the disintegration of the European Union as
we know it.

Mind you, it was Iran's Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei who had
warned some five years ago that the US-led campaign to regime change
Syria could have serious consequences not only for the Middle East but
the EU and the West in its entirety ( although the Western neoliberal
establishment never paid any attention).

True, Brexit proved that it’s economy, but it also proved that it's
regime change wars,  immigration, and the Syrian refugee crisis that
forced the Brits to say no to the EU. But serious bets can be made that
the warmongers and regime changers in Brussels won’t learn anything from
the shock therapy and won’t change course. There will be
rationalizations that after all the UK was always demanding special
privileges when dealing with the EU. But they will never end their
special relationship and deadly romance with "moderate" terrorists in Syria.

In that case, they can be pretty much sure that people in other parts of
Europe are watching and that the Brexit blowback and contagion is real.
Scotland and Northern Ireland want to leave the UK, while a large number
of people in Sweden, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and even Poland
and Hungary want special status inside the EU, or else. Across Europe,
the extreme right stampede is on and they mean business too. And we
haven't even started talking about the vast majority of young people in
Britain who voted Remain and now want a second vote, or they may be
contemplating "something else."

With that in mind, Brexit doesn't mean Britain will be free from further
impacts of the Syria war. The same is true for the political system in
Brussels. Syrian refugees will keep coming to Fortress Europe because
the war is still ongoing. Arguably, in the best possible case, Syria
talks would lead to some sort of permanent ceasefire, but the country
will still remain in ruins, and millions more will still try and go
beyond the ruins of their lives and communities to find "hope" in Europe.

The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East – first Iraq,
now Syria – are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United
States, France, the European Union and NATO. Before that, there was the
wilful destruction of Afghanistan. Before that, there was the theft of
Palestine and the imposition of Israel. So the regime changers with
ancient instincts of their own superiority better take note:

-The Brits may be gone, but the blood in Brussels, Washington and London
has never dried. All this has now come home to Europe, and even the most
effective propagandists of the Syria war can no longer afford to look
the other way and say the show must go on.

-The aim of the failed war was to affect regime change in Damascus. With
the European Union gripped with socio-economic and political
catastrophes and falling apart, the wealthy war criminals better say
goodbye to regime change too.

-An EU that has failed to create a new, better way of doing politics,
merely growing its original democratic deficit also lacks real
democracy. It has had a woefully inadequate, cynical response to the
refugee crisis caused by leading EU member states’ warfare – so,
mismanagement and lack of leadership.

-Though few will say so these days, the warmongers can agree that
referendum and democracy are bad for the West. These two confer less
legitimacy on Western politics, not more, and they can no longer say
'never again'. People want more and they want now. They don't want to
see any more rich war criminals groomed in the fakery and  political
treachery of post-modernism to stay the costly course in Syria.

-The long-suffering people of Syria courageously used a nationwide
referendum to demand their president remain in office and fight
foreign-backed terrorism with full force. They also said they don't want
Western democracy and referendum which are crushing the life out of
their country. They have been betrayed by the world community, just as
the British have been betrayed by the political system in London and
Brussels with all that brutal austerity policies and lies about war
mongering, the dispatch of occupying forces to Iraq, Syria, Yemen and
Libya, and above all, Western bomb aimers to Saudi Arabia and the build
up of NATO troops and war material on Russia’s western borders.

All told, by voting to leave the EU, the Britons have also said yes to
democracy, peace and security in Syria. It's a full-blown crisis for
London and Brussels, and indeed a revolt against the political
establishment in Washington. The warmongers are wounded and the people
of good conscience in Europe should waste no more time to demand a quick
end to the Syria war.

(5) Western Military Interventions in Syria & Libya led to Brexit -
Michael Hudson

http://www.unz.com/mhudson/how-western-military-interventions-shaped-the-brexit-vote/

How Western Military Interventions Shaped the Brexit Vote

Michael Hudson and Gregory Wilpert

  June 25, 2016

GREGORY WILPERT, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Gregory
Wilpert, coming to you from Quito, Ecuador.

Britain's referendum in favor of leaving, or exiting, the European
Union, the Brexit referendum, as the results are known, won with 52
percent of the vote on Thursday, June 23, stunning Europe’s political
establishment. One of the issues that has raised concern for many is
that what does the Brexit mean for Britain's and Europe's economy and
politics. This was one of the main topics leading up to the referendum,
but a lot of disinformation [reigned] in the discussion.

With us to discuss the economic and political context of the Brexit is
Michael Hudson. He is a research professor of economics at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City, and author of Killing the Host: How
Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. Also, he is an
economics adviser to several governments, including Greece, Iceland,
Latvia, and China. He joins us right now from New York City.

Thanks, Michael, for joining us.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here again.

WILPERT: So let's begin with the political context in which the Brexit
vote took place. Aside from the right-wing arguments about immigrants,
economic concerns, and about Britain's ability to control its own
economy, what would you say–what do you see as being the main kind of
political background in which this vote took place?

HUDSON: Well, almost all the Europeans know where the immigrants are
coming from. And the ones that they're talking about are from the Near
East. And they're aware of the fact that most of the immigrants are
coming as a result of the NATO policies promoted by Hillary and by the
Obama administration.

The problem began in Libya. Once Hillary pushed Obama to destroy Libya
and wipe out the stable government there, she wiped out the arms–and
Libya was a very heavily armed country. She turned over the arms to
ISIS, to Al-Nusra, and Al-Qaeda. And Al-Qaeda used these arms under U.S.
organization to attack Syria and Iraq. Now, the Syrian population, the
Iraqi population, have no choice but to either emigrate or get killed.

So when people talk about the immigration to Europe, the Europeans, the
French, the Dutch, the English, they're all aware of the fact that this
is the fact that Brussels is really NATO, and NATO is really run by
Washington, and that it's America's new Cold War against Russia that's
been spurring all of this demographic dislocation that's spreading into
England, spreading into Europe, and is destabilizing things.

So what you're seeing with the Brexit is the result of the Obama
administration’s pro-war, new Cold War policy.

WILPERT: So are you saying that people voted for Brexit because they are
really–that they were concerned about the influence of the U.S.? Or are
you saying that it’s because of the backlash, because of the immigration
that happened, and the fact that the right wing took advantage of that
[crosstalk].

HUDSON: It’s a combination. The right wing was, indeed, pushing the
immigrant issue, saying wait a minute, they're threatening our jobs. But
the left wing was just as vocal, and the left wing was saying, why are
these immigrants coming here? They're coming here because of Europe's
support of NATO, and NATO's war that's bombing the Near East, that is
destabilizing the whole Near East, and causing a flight of refugees not
only from Syria but also from Ukraine. In England, many of the so-called
Polish plumbers that came years ago have now gone back to Poland,
because that country's recovered.

But now the worry is that a whole new wave of Ukrainians–and basically
the U.S. policy is one of destabilization–so even the right-wing, while
they have talked about immigrants, they have also denounced the [inaud.]
fact that the European policy is run by the United States, and that you
have both Marine Le Pen in France saying, we want to withdraw from NATO;
we don’t want confrontation with Russia. You have the left wing in
England saying, we don't want confrontation with Russia. And last week
when I was in Germany you had the Social Democratic Party leaders saying
that Russia should be invited back into the G8, that NATO was taking a
warlike position and was hurting the European economy by breaking its
ties with Russia and by forcing other sanctions against Russia.

So you have a convergence between the left and the right, and the
question is, who is going to determine the terms on which Europe is
broken up and put back together? Will it simply be the right wing that's
anti-immigrants? Or will it simply be the left saying we want to
restructure the economy in a way that essentially avoids the austerity
that is coming from Brussels, on the one hand, and from the British
Conservative Party on the other.

And again, you have Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch nationalists,
saying, we want Holland to have its own central bank. We want to be in
charge of our own money. And under Brussels, we cannot be in charge of
our own money. That means we cannot run a budget deficit and spend money
into the economy, and recover with a Keynesian-type policy.

So the whole withdrawal from Europe means withdrawing from austerity. If
you look at the voting pattern in London, in England, you had London to
stay in. You had the university centers, Oxford and Cambridge, voting to
stay in. You had the working class, the old industrial areas of the
north and the south. You had the middle class and the industrial class
saying, we’re getting a really bad deal from Europe. We want to oppose
austerity. And we don’t want Brussels to give us not only the
anti-labor, pro-bank policies, but also the trade policy that Brussels
was trying to push onto Europe, the Obama trade agreement that
essentially would take national economic policy out of the hands of
government and put it into the hands of corporate bureaucracy,
corporation courts. And the bureaucracy in Brussels, then, is largely
pro-bank, pro-corporate, and anti-labor.

WILPERT: That actually brings up the issue of the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership, or the TTIP. It was one of the things that
the Cameron government was really pushing for, this relationship between
the European Union and the United States. Now that Britain is presumably
going to be leaving the European Union, don't you think that this might
open the possibility of just a TTIP between Britain and the United
States? In other words, that it will–it has been one of the arguments,
actually, of those who were opposed to Britain leaving the EU, that it
will tie Britain even closer to the United States than it was before,
and by virtue of the fact that it's leaving Europe.

HUDSON: I think just the opposite. I've gotten phone calls today from
Britain, and I've been on radio with Britain. The whole feeling is that
this makes the TTIP impossible, because you can't do a TTIP just with
Britain. You have to do it with all of Europe. And this prevents Europe,
and I think Britain, too, from making this kind of trade policy. The
rejection of Eurozone austerity is, essentially, a rejection of the
neoliberal plan that the TTIP is supposed to be the capstone of.

WILPERT: And what do you think this means, then, in general for Europe's
future? One of the things that–one of the dangers that many perceive is
precisely that Europe, as a European Union, is going to fall apart. Do
you think that's the likely scenario here? Or–.

HUDSON: I watched Marine Le Pen today in France, and you could see from
her face that she was overjoyed. She thinks all of a sudden, almost
every European interview where the people–there was such unleashing of a
feeling of freedom, a feeling of yes, we can do it. When Ireland voted
not to join the European Union people just ignored the popular vote. But
now it can't be ignored anymore.

And I think that the British vote is a catalyst for moves in Spain,
Italy, the Five Star movement in Italy, the Podemos in Spain, to say, we
are–we have an alternative to Europe. Europe is sort of like the Soviet
Union in the ‘30s and ‘40s. There was an argument, is it reformable or
not? There is a feeling, and I think it’s correct, that the European
Union, the Eurozone, and the euro, is not reformable, as a result of the
Lisbon treaties and the other treaties that have created the euro.
Europe has to be taken apart in order to be put together not on a
right-wing, neoliberal basis, but on a more social basis.

Now, ironically, the parties who call themselves socialists are now
moved to the ultra-right, to the neoliberal. The French socialists, the
German social democrats. But you're having real radical parties arise in
Italy, Spain, Portugal, and potentially in Greece, again, that are going
to say, well, the key of any government, of any national government, has
to be the ability to issue our own money, to run a deficit, spending
into the economy to make the economy recover. We cannot recover under
the Lisbon agreements, under the Eurozone, where the central bank will
only create money to give to banks, not money to spend into the economy,
to actually finance new investment and new employment. And we cannot be
part of a Eurozone that insists that pensions have to be cut back in
order to make the banks whole and save the one percent losing money.

So for the first time you’re having the real left wing in Europe talking
about financial issues, not about political philosophy, or the fact that
countries are not going to go to war again. Nobody ever believes that
France, Germany, and other countries in Europe are going to go to
military war again. There is a fear that the countries in Europe may go
to war against Russia, pushed by NATO, pushed by adventurism of the U.S.
stance towards Russia.

And so all of a sudden the Eurozone that was supposed to be a bulwark of
military peace has become belligerent, and even more so if Hillary would
win in the United States. And there's a feeling we do want peace. That
means we have to withdraw from the Eurozone. And essentially,
withdrawing from Brussels means withdrawing from NATO and withdrawing
from the United States.

So you could say that the vote to withdraw from Europe is, it’s really a
vote of the British middle class, the working class, to withdraw from
the U.S. neoliberalism that has been running Europe for the last ten years.

WILPERT: Okay. Unfortunately we’ve run out of time, but thanks so much,
Michael, for your insight on this. I’m sure we’ll come back to you
again, as we always do. So thanks again for joining us.

HUDSON: Good to be here.

WILPERT: And thank you for watching the Real News Network.

(6) Euro-federalists were financed by CIA - easier to control one
central, unelected government, than a group of sovereign nations

From: Iskandar Masih <iskandar38@hotmail.com> Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016
12:55:52 +0000

In fact, the US wanted the EU because it makes it much easier to control
one central, unelected government, than a group of sovereign nations. US
intelligence agencies played a key role in creating the EU for precisely
these reasons.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Euro-federalists-financed-by-US-spy-chiefs.html

Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels

12:00AM BST 19 Sep 2000

DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence
community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum
for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist
movement.

The documents confirm suspicions voiced at the time that America was
working aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into a European
state. One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a
campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by
Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic
Services, precursor of the CIA.

The documents were found by Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown
University in Washington. They include files released by the US National
Archives. Washington's main tool for shaping the European agenda was the
American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman
was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then.

The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The
board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA's first director, and a
roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA.
The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most
important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for
example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement's funds.

The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly
funded and controlled by Washington. The Belgian director, Baron Boel,
received monthly payments into a special account. When the head of the
European Movement, Polish-born Joseph Retinger, bridled at this degree
of American control and tried to raise money in Europe, he was quickly
reprimanded.

The leaders of the European Movement - Retinger, the visionary Robert
Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak - were
all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was
handled as a covert operation. ACUE's funding came from the Ford and
Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to
the US government.

The head of the Ford Foundation, ex-OSS officer Paul Hoffman, doubled as
head of ACUE in the late Fifties. The State Department also played a
role. A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the
vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to
pursue monetary union by stealth.

It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which "adoption of
such proposals would become virtually inescapable".

(7) Washington fears Brexit will Unravel its anti-Russia Policy
From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@lorinna.net> Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016
15:41:55 +1000

By Finian Cunningham

June 29, 2016

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/348600-washington-fears-brexit-unravel/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44991.htm

Britain’s stunning referendum vote to leave the European Union has
thrown a cat among the pigeons, not least in Washington, where it is
feared that the "Brexit" could scupper its anti-Russian policy.

That tacit policy is a foundation of the postwar international order
whereby Washington – thanks to its trusty British acolyte – has been
able to exert hegemony over Europe. Nearly seven decades of American
transatlantic domination are at risk of crumbling.

The unscheduled, hasty visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry to
Brussels followed by London on Monday is a sure sign that Washington is
alarmed at the historic decision by the British electorate to quit the
EU – after 43-year membership of the bloc.

"Kerry urges Britain, EU to manage their divorce responsibly," was how
American news outlet ABC
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/kerry-visit-brussels-london-talks-uks-eu-exit-40137593>reported
the diplomat’s detour. The outlet went on to say with a pretense of
chivalry that Kerry’s concern was "for the sake of global markets and
citizens".

More to the point, Washington’s perplexity is specific and self-serving.
In particular, the loss of British influence inside the EU will impact
on Washington’s carefully constructed policy of trying to isolate
Russia. American objectives to isolate Russia go much further back than
the past two years over Ukraine. Indeed, one can trace the anti-Russia
policy to immediately after the Second World War, a policy that was
intimately shared by the British establishment, as expressed by Winston
Churchill in his famous 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech, marking the onset of
the Cold War against the West’s erstwhile wartime Soviet ally.

Former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, gave full expression to
these fears in an
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-brexit-is-a-win-for-putin/2016/06/25/800e4d3c-3b06-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html>opinion
piece in the Washington Post at the weekend. The headline read: "How
Brexit is a win for Putin".

The tone is almost panic-stricken. McFaul alludes to Russia’s growing
economic and political influence with China and Eurasian integration:
"Europe is now weakening as Russia, its allies and its multilateral
organizations are consolidating, even adding new members. Putin, of
course, did not cause the Brexit vote, but he and his foreign policy
objectives stand to gain enormously from it."

The former US envoy, who also served as national security adviser to the
Obama administration, laments how Britain as Washington’s "closest ally"
will have less leverage for American interests over the rest of Europe.

With regard to Russia, this means that the EU’s economic sanctions
against Moscow and the build-up of NATO military forces are put into
serious doubt. Both aspects have been led by Washington, with Britain as
a strident advocate of sanctions and NATO militarism. Now that London
does not have a vote in Brussels, America’s policy of hostility towards
Russia is blunted.

Britain’s exiting of the EU puts Washington’s in a geopolitical dilemma.
As the New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/europe/john-kerry-brexit-european-union.html>
headlined: "With ‘Brexit,’ Washington’s direct line to the continent
suddenly frays".

The NY Times reports: "American officials struggling to reimagine their
strategy after Britain’s decision to divorce the European Union say the
most urgent challenge will be to find a way to replace their most
reliable, sympathetic partner in the hallways of European capitals. It
will not be easy." When Britain first joined the early European Economic
Community in 1973, it was following a policy directed by Washington.
With its "special relationship", as coined by Churchill, Britain would
ensure that Washington’s geopolitical interests prevailed on the
continental Europeans, in particular the Germans and French, who were
always suspected of being inclined towards socialism and rapprochement
with Russia.

It is
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/27/the-european-union-always-was-a-cia-project-as-brexiteers-discov/>
arguable that the EU was a political project engineered by the American
Central Intelligence Agency, for which Britain served a crucial steering
role.

Britain would thus bring a strong NATO perspective to the emerging EU.
The US-led military alliance’s unofficial objective from its postwar
inception in 1949 was, according to British Lord Ismay, the first
secretary-general, to "keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the
Russians out". And Britain’s presence within the EU – as the second
biggest economy after Germany – ensured that this anti-Russian ideology
always remained a potent force, even 25 years after the Cold War
supposedly ended.

Today, the 28-member EU bloc is barely distinguishable from the
28-member NATO military alliance in terms of adopting US-led policies,
and in particular its anti-Russia policy. The renewal of European
economic sanctions against Moscow has only served to inflict huge damage
on EU nations. It is self-defeating and absurdly based on scant evidence
of "Russian aggression". But the policy prevails in large part due to
Washington’s and Britain’s "NATO-ization" of the EU.

This is why the loss of Britain from the EU is so disconcerting to
Washington and its Atlanticist advocate in London. British Foreign
Secretary Philip Hammond has been most vocal since the referendum,
<http://www.rferl.org/content/brexit-russia-eu-britain-influence-sanctions-policy/27819247.html>
warning that "the Kremlin will be happy with the result".

Unlike Washington’s admonitions against a Brexit in the run up to the
referendum, Moscow refrained from making any such pronouncements, saying
that it was an internal British political matter. Russian President
Vladimir Putin
<https://www.rt.com/news/348201-putin-brexit-weak-economies/> dismissed
comments by British and American politicians who inferred "Kremlin
rejoicing" over the Brexit as "a manifestation of low political culture".

The snide, anti-Russian invective is really a reflection of the malign
purpose with which Washington and London have been working for decades
in order to impale a wedge between Europe and Russia.

Washington has much to lose as a hegemonic world power if Europe and
Russia were to move closer together politically, economically and in
terms of mutual security. The US and its transatlantic British cipher –
being closely aligned in global finance capital – must do all in their
power to make sure that Europe and Russia do not converge as natural
partners.

With Britain now reverting to "Little England" as American media are
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/world/europe/britain-rattles-postwar-order-and-its-place-as-pillar-of-stability.html>
mocking, there are moves ahead for Washington to recruit a new surrogate
within the EU for its hegemonic ambitions. Germany is top of the list as
the replacement for Britain. France is seen as too unreliable, while
Poland and the Baltic states are too lightweight, from Washington’s
viewpoint.

However, the Brexit has unleashed a Europe-wide public revolt of anti-EU
sentiment. Part of that antipathy stems from the kind of oligarchic
politics, financial oppression and NATO militarism that people associate
with Washington’s influence on Europe.

Washington will not find an automatic, easy substitute for its British
surrogate. No European state could ever replace Britain as the most
loyal and fervent servant of American interests.

Russia is entitled to feel relief, if not rejoicing, over the Brexit
result. And not just Russia, but many other countries and people who
long for more peaceful international relations, free from Washington’s
and NATO’s warmongering machinations.

Britain’s diminished influence over European policies means Washington
is also curbed.

Nothing can be taken for granted, but there is a fair chance that Europe
might be freer henceforth to develop normal, more harmonious relations
with Russia.

Germany, whose postwar reconciliation with Russia was once a source of
immense hope during the 1960s, 70s and 80s under its "Ostpolitik", might
now be able to resume that trajectory.

And no wonder Washington is panicked.