Another Paul Craig Roberts Interview

A Tale of Two Jokes

I remember a joke from the seventies, when computers were mystical wonderful things.

The American President and the Russian Premier were having an argument about who would win the Cold War. So they consulted the world's biggest computer. After all the relevant data was entered, the computer spinned and whirled and lights flashed. Then the printout said, " In 50 years American will be a socialist nation." The Russian Premier chuckled. 

The American president then said, "Well, let's see what the computer says about Russia." After all the relevant data was entered the computer spinned and whirled and lights flashed. The American President looked at the printout, frowned, and said, "I can't understand it, it is all in Chinese."

There are a lot of ironies in the joke. America "won" the Cold War, yet it can be argued that America is today a socialist nation. I would argue that fascist is a better adjective. China, while currently in a bit of a funk, "is doing quite well, thank you very much." In some ways Russia is more capitalistic than the US, but neither is a capitalist country as both are oligarchies.

These days a joke is "making the rounds" among Russian speakers.

Obama and Putin have an argument. They decide to go to a fortune teller to settle it. They ask, "Will there be war?" The fortune teller deals the cards and pronounces that there will be war. Obama does not seem concerned. He asks the fortune teller about inflation. He asks, "What will be the inflation rate? For example, what will a hot dog cost in ten years?" The gypsy deals the cards and pronounces the judgment of the cards. "A hot dog will cost 30 Rubles," she says.

My point is that Russia is being played and propagandized, maybe self-propagandized, by its humor. No surprise here. All governments and cultures do the same. 

The last few of America's wars have not been against countries that could fight back. It is not clear what will happen. While a Russian victory seems unlikely, so does an American victory. Yet America seems to "hell bent" on war as well. Listen to the propaganda on American nightly news. What will happen if there is conflict? I doubt it will be a "shooting war." But it will instead be asymmetrical—sanctions and such. How will the individual members of NATO respond, countries like Poland that gets most of its natural gas from Russia? Or consider Germany that gets 30%. This gas will be impossible to replace for decades, and the price will double even if they can replace it.

The American response? Obama reinforces the American Pacific Fleet to "piss off" China.

Hubris.

Wiki:

Hubris means extreme pride or self-confidence. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.

Discrimination Against Russians

When I see a "talking head" (blessedly few nowadays as I have "cut the cable") pontificating about the lack of discrimination against Russians in the Ukraine I have to wonder if they are ignorant of the recent history of the area or just want to continue to receive their salaries. 

We have the example of Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic now independent. 

The civil war that broke out in the country after 1992 has meant a massive departure of some 400,000 Russians – and some Uzbeks – so that today the former constitute less than 3 per cent of the population. Russian is not an official language, but a language of ‘inter-ethnic communication’ under the Constitution. Despite constitutional provisions that initially appear to guarantee the use of minority languages, and despite the large percentage of minorities in the country, in particular Uzbeks, minorities are largely excluded from employment in public service.

If you are Russian you will not be employed by any business, so those that remain are informal workers or drive taxi or other such employment. We may read through the 400,000 people who had to leave suddenly. They were mostly Russians. Each of them would have owned their own apartment. They had to leave quickly so what they received was a fraction of the value of their apartment and they arrived back in Russia destitute. The same thing happened and is happening in Uzbekistan. My wife knows of people to whom this happened. 

No persecution of Russians you say? Tell that to the refugees. But you might say, "But those are Moslem countries."  

Yes, but the same thing occurs in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and especially Estonia. The New Republic tells us: 

In Estonia, things are far worse. Ethnic Russians are somewhere between one-fifth and one-quarter of the population. And yet, after Estonian independence in 1991, they were not given citizenship, even if they were born there. Russians who weren't living in Estonia before Soviet times are given a gray passport connoting their official status as "aliens." They can't vote in national elections and have trouble finding work. To get citizenship, they have to pass an Estonian language exam. (Estonian, which is not an Indo-European language but an Ugro-Finnic one, is notoriously difficult, with 14 cases.) The Language Inspectorate, which Russia Today derisively labeled "the language police," performs spot checks on bureaucrats and teachers to make sure they know Estonian. If they fail the test, they lose their jobs. 

The New Republic points out that Estonia is a member of NATO. So if the Russian Federation attacked, all of NATO would respond. It needs to be noted that this expansion of NATO was in direct violation of a signed letter of understanding between the US and Russia signed in 1990—no expansion of NATO to former Soviet republics. Clinton ignored this letter, as has every president since. Can you blame Russia for a reluctance to trust anything any American president says, especially if the "bad blood" rumored to exist between Putin and Obama is real. 

Putin was willing to give a huge amount of money as aid to Ukraine to avoid this whole mess, 15 billion in fact. This was far superior to the offer from the EU that president Yanukovych did not sign. He did not reject an EU agreement, he asked for more money from the EU, as was his responsibility. Yanukovych was leaning toward accepting the better offer from Russia. Note that the proposed EU agreement included cooperation with the EU military, a back door membership in NATO. 

This image is extremely popular in Russia. It shows Obama with the curls of the likely future president of Ukraine showing who really is in charge. Any agreement with Russia was unacceptable to many, including those outside the country in the West. This possibility led to the riots in Kiyv. These riots were instigated by, and to a degree controlled by, the US. Police were burned alive and captives tortured. The president fled. A parliament, surrounded by armed revolu-tionaries who told the parliament how to vote, voted to make Russian a language not usable for official business. This was rescinded quickly, but it clearly shows the intent to follow the example of the Baltic states and discriminate against Russians. Many are leaving Ukraine now for these very reasons. 

So put yourself in Putin's shoes. The US through its EU proxy is trying to continue to violate the letter of understanding that forbids the expansion of NATO. Putin's nation stands to lose a large part of its navel bases in the Crimea region when this happens and the lease on their major warm water ports expires. The Ukrainians signal that they intend to persecute Russians. Russians in the Crimea, where a large part of the Russian navy is based, ask for help. 

What would Putin do? 

My father-in-law is Ukrainian so my wife has friends, relatives, and relatives of friends all on different sides. So I will conclude with a story from a friend of my wife's and her relatives in Ukraine. At a school evaluation meeting by regional authorities at the local grade school their son was asked his name, "Dmitry" he said. The visiting school officials were not pleased. That name was too Russian. It needed to be changed to its more Ukrainian equivalent. I am sure many Ukrainians would be shocked by the boorishness of the officials, but it tells us "which way the wind is blowing."

What should Putin do? 

Who Ya Going Blame?

One reason that Yanukovych is now the former president of the Ukraine was that snipers killed many protesters. Of course Yanukovych was responsible ... of course. When I first heard about the snipers, my first thought was not that the Ukrainian government was responsible. There is a long history of what are called false flags. 

Here is how Wikipedia describes a false flag operation:

False flag (aka Black Flag) operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time. 

Here is where I have discussed this before. 

So did the former Ukrainian government kill the protestors? The foreign minster of Estonia, after a trip to Ukraine, thought that the Ukrainian government was not involved in the sniping. He thinks that it was the protestors themselves. Here is the intercepted phone call: 

Was he right? I have no idea. There is in fact no way to know who killed whom. The main thing to take away from this is that we who are thousands of miles away do not know anything beyond what we are told. 

Do you believe what you are told? 

Crimea Does Not Pay

I guess Russia will find our soon enough if its Crimea play pays. In the meanwhile here is a presentation on the crisis that concentrates on the real issues underneath it all—energy.