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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Helmut Schmidt, Traitor to Democracy

It seems to be the Kremlin's strategy to pick off ex-German leaders one-by-one and turn them into neo-Soviet operatives. First it was Gerhard Schroeder, and now Helmut Schmidt. He says that Russia deserves credit for not invading other countries, just happening to overlook the minor fact that it has no such power and the equally minor fact of its brutality within Russia itself. Now, that beacon of truth on Russia, the German publication Der Speigel rips him several well-deserved new ones:

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt used to refer to journalists derisively as "highwaymen." There is a certain cruel irony in the fact that Schmidt himself is a journalist today, although members of the profession might be inclined to interpret this as a sign of its irresistibility. A man with his range of experience -- as a soldier, a cabinet minister and chancellor for almost eight years -- can expect that people will listen when he speaks. Of course, listening to Schmidt doesn't necessarily mean agreeing with him, at least not automatically. Even former chancellors can be wrong or guilty of exaggeration, especially when they address us as journalists. And being wrong or exaggerating isn't exactly unheard of in journalism.

"I do not believe that someone who disagrees with me should be criticized for that reason alone," Schmidt said at a ceremony to celebrate his 85th birthday in 2003. And he added: "But he must be criticized if he states an opinion that is not real." Let us subject the various opinions to a reality test. Schmidt says: "Russia poses far less of a threat to world peace today than, for example, the United States. You can go ahead and print that." These were the words Schmidt uttered in an interview with his own paper, the weekly Die Zeit. He also said that, although he does not view Russian President Vladimir Putin as a flawless democrat, he does consider him an "enlightened potentate."

But why are the Americans more dangerous than the Russians? Why should we be more afraid of the cradle of democracy than of a potentate, no matter how "enlightened" Schmidt says he is? And is it even relevant whether the censor is educated, disadvantaged, harsh or amiable? What is important, however, is that the censor engages in censorship, while the potentate gives arbitrariness free rein.

Isn't precisely the opposite of what Schmidt says true? That the experienced American democracy is fundamentally less dangerous than Russia, which, after surviving czarism and communism, has experienced only a few years of Putin-style democracy? Even the loud and sometimes insufferable America of President George W. Bush is already significantly less dangerous than it was when he came into office. Today Bush is a dog that barks but can no longer bite. He is limited by four factors, which, in their absoluteness, are foreign to Putin: his own people, the US Constitution, the independent judiciary and the free press. All four factors lend legitimacy to the United States -- and withdraw it again. This is precisely the beauty of a democracy: the people have the first and last word.

Bush will soon disappear into obscurity, never to be seen again. Putin, on the other hand, might stay on the scene, only wearing a different hat, perhaps as an oligarch, as the head of Russian energy giant Gazprom or even as prime minister. Even Schmidt agrees that the Russian president's future is wide open and that, unlike Bush, a constitution, the people, a free press or a constitutional court won't be standing in his way. This may be typically Russian, but it is sinister nonetheless.

Russia today is a country adrift. Since former President Mikhail Gorbachev gave up the Soviet empire, Russia has been lurching like an anchor ripped from the ground. At times it wants to be part of Europe, which explains Putin's efforts to convince Germany and France to join him in a pact against America in the run-up to the Iraq war. And at times the Russians seem more drawn to Asia, where Putin has long been pushing for an expansion of Russia's regional alliance with the Chinese into a military alliance. As if to demonstrate that they are indeed moving in this direction, the two countries recently held joint maneuvers.

According to Helmut Schmidt, the Russian military has not entered any foreign territory since Gorbachev came into power. The Russians, says Schmidt, have not engaged in any aggressive acts, even allowing Ukraine and Belarus to break away from the former czarist empire. And this was done without so much as a civil war, which, in Schmidt's view, is an astonishing achievement.

It certainly is an astonishing achievement, but one that stems from an astonishing weakness. Moscow today must content itself with the proper treatment of Russian minorities in its former satellite republics. Experts in the West are convinced that the Russian military is in a sorry state, making Putin a reluctant pacifist. Of course, this assessment doesn't take the bloody war in Chechnya into account.

Today Russia, still a huge country, is being humiliated wherever it turns. The president of Iran has co-opted Moscow's former role as America's adversary. A country with a gross domestic product about the size of Connecticut's now plays the role that Stalin and his successors had in fact reserved for Russia.

Economically speaking, the Chinese are well ahead of the Russians. The neighboring country, which is already unable to satisfy its own thirst for natural resources with its own reserves, is rapidly shooting to the top echelon of the world's economic powers. In doing so, the Chinese are not shutting off anyone's natural gas supply or withdrawing any flyover rights. Instead, they have used hard work to supply products to their customers worldwide and cunning to develop into a "soft power." The Russians, on the other hand, still resort to stomping their boots impatiently whenever something isn't quite to their liking.

Russia has oil and natural gas, diamonds, copper and lumber, and yet it has failed to establish a truly impressive industrial empire on the basis of its riches. Despite Putin's efforts to restructure the economy, the country's fortunes rise and fall with the price of oil. The current president may be an oil-and-gas baron, but he is not the leader of a modern industrialized nation. These many weaknesses make today's Russia unpredictable and dangerous. The best antidote to internal disintegration and humiliation from abroad is a dose of megalomania. And while it may not eliminate the pain, at least it diminishes it.

America has isolated itself internationally

And now to America. The superpower is experiencing a difficult phase not unlike the period in the early 1970s, when the Vietnam War was approaching its inglorious end. The country senses that no one is impressed by its tough talk on the so-called "clash of civilizations" and the "war on terror," as long as success remains elusive on the real war fronts. The Taliban in Afghanistan are confident again, thriving within the population like fish in water. Iraq remains a constant challenge, refusing to be pacified. The United States has isolated itself internationally. No one on the planet, not even in its remotest corners, is currently sending Bush the message that the world wants more of America.

The domestic mood is by no means gung-ho when it comes to the war in Iraq. The Americans are defiant. They don't want to lose the war, and yet their support for it is waning. The strategy of aggression, of launching attacks based on suspicion alone and the doctrine of the preemptive strike are now seen as military and political failures.

Schmidt rightfully characterizes the Iraq war as "a war of choice, not a war of necessity." But even this choice is no longer available to the outgoing president. Another ground war is no longer an option. Even the military is tired of war. "We are overstretched," the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff recently said. Preparations are already underway for a partial withdrawal from Iraq. The man in the White House may be gritting his teeth, but he is bringing the first troops home -- reluctantly and gruffly -- but bringing them home he is.

Bush would be truly dangerous if he could do as he wished. But he can't. This is precisely the difference. In a democracy, the will of the individual is answerable to the people, and not the other way around. I, in any case, prefer narrow-minded democrats over enlightened potentates any day. Of course, enlightened democrats -- the kind of person Helmut Schmidt once was and will hopefully remain for a long time -- are the best thing for the country.

3 comments:

Artfldgr said...

Don’t Forget…

Chancellor Helmut Kohl

Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 ("West Germany" between 1982 and 1990) and the chairman of the Christian-Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) from 1973-1998. His 16-year tenure was the longest of any German chancellor since Otto von Bismarck During his time in office, he was the architect of the German Reunification and together with French President François Mitterrand the Maastricht Treaty which created the European Union.

During a visit to London in March 23, 2000, former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev referred to the emerging European Union (EU) as "the new European Soviet."


Cities throughout Eastern Europe erupted in joyous celebrations on May 1, as eight former components of the Soviet bloc and two Mediterranean island nations were welcomed into the European Union. Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"--the EU's official anthem--resounded throughout Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus, accompanied by fireworks displays, speeches, parties and concerts. The additions bring the EU's membership to 25 nations and its population to 450 million.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the largest expansion to date of the European Union fell on May Day, the one holiday on the Communist calendar solely devoted to the celebration of the "inevitable" triumph of socialism over capitalism. Then again, perhaps it is not a coincidence at all. Certainly, many of those who thronged to city squares in the newcomer states of the old Soviet bloc must have reflected on the stark contrast between this festive May 1 celebration and previous ones under their old Soviet masters, typified by stolid-faced commissars, hours-long parades of Red Army armaments and troops, and endless seas of red flags festooned with hammers and sickles.

Commentators and EU political leaders declared that this historic accession of the eight former captive nations marked the final triumph of Western "democracy" and the free market economic model over Communist totalitarianism. But others perceive an entirely different dynamic at work in the European Union, leading to a completely opposite outcome. Communist countries celebrate May Day, according to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, "by mobilizing the working people in the struggle to build socialism and communism." The program of the European Union, whose institutions are thoroughly dominated by international collectivists--socialists, "former" Communists, extreme environmentalists, feminists--aims at the same objective: "to build socialism and communism," albeit with a kinder, gentler face than the older Soviet model.

Former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev, for instance, has described the EU as "the new European Soviet." Gorbachev made that observation during a March 2000 visit to London. Was the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union merely joking? Absolutely not, says Christopher Story, who publishes the London-based Soviet Analyst. The EU political, economic and social program is "purely a Communist program," Mr. Story told THE NEW AMERICAN in a January 2002 interview. Gorbachev was sending a message to his fellow one world socialists, said Story, and he was absolutely "correct in describing the EU as 'the new European Soviet.' One does not need an advanced degree in Leninist studies to see this."
William f Jasper senior editor of THE NEW AMERICAN

Also from “Leninists Still Leading” / article written in 1995
Golitsyn makes clear throughout The Perestroika Deception that the personalities on the stage of the so-called "former" Soviet Union are all secret members of the Communist Party, KGB officers, members of the huge Komsomol network numbering over 50 million, or members of the nomenklatura — or, at a lower level, druzhiny (vigilantes), who are used for staged demonstrations, televised provocations, and street events. As Golitsyn writes on page 19 of The Perestroika Deception:
Lenin advised the Communists that they must be prepared to "resort to all sorts of stratagems, maneuvers, illegal methods, evasions and subterfuge" to achieve their objectives. This advice was given on the eve of his reintroduction of limited capitalism in Russia, in his work Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder.
... Another speech of Lenin's ... in July 1921 is again highly relevant to understanding "perestroika." "Our only strategy at present," wrote Lenin, "is to become stronger and, therefore, wiser, more reasonable, more opportunistic. The more opportunistic, the sooner will you again assemble the masses round you. When we have won over the masses by our reasonable approach, we shall then apply offensive tactics in the strictest sense of the word." |Emphasis in original.]
If you examine the backgrounds of prominent Russian figures, you will find that they have long Communist Party/ KGB or Komsomol pedigrees. Yet for some inexplicable reason, the Western media have accepted their sudden, orchestrated, mass "conversion" to Western-style norms of behavior, their endless talk of "democracy," and their acceptance of "capitalism," as genuine. "Scratch these new, instant Soviet "democrats," "anti-Communists," and "nationalists" who have sprouted out of nowhere, and underneath will be found secret Party members or KGB agents," Golitsyn writes on page 123 of his new book. In accepting at face value the "transformation" of these Leninist revolutionary Communists into "instant democrats," the West automatically accepts as genuine the false "Break with the Past" — the single lie upon which the entire deception is based.
In short, the "former" Soviet Union — and the East European countries as well — are all run by people who are steeped in the dialectical modus operandi of Lenin. Without exception, they are all active Leninist revolutionaries, working collectively towards the establishment of a world Communist government, which, by definition, will be a world dictatorship.
It is difficult for the West to understand the Leninist Hegelian dialectical method — the creation of competing or successive opposites in order to achieve an intended outcome. Equally difficult for us to comprehend is the fact that these Leninist revolutionaries plan their strategies over decades and generations. This extraordinary behavior is naturally alien to Western politicians, who can see no further than the next election. Western politicians usually react to events. Leninist revolutionaries create events, in order to control reactions to them and manipulate their outcomes.
Before Gorbachev — acting on the instructions of the Leninist strategic collective — embarked upon perestroika, he achieved a breakthrough by convincing the former British Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, that he was someone she could do business with. This was done by personal contact, and through the intermediation of a dispatched defector, Oleg Gordievsky, his role being to reassure the British government that Gorbachev was "genuine." in her book The Downing Street Years, Lady Thatcher even admits that she mistook Gorbachev's style for the substance. I explain this in my introduction to Golitsyn's new book: "As he cast his spell [over Mrs. Thatcher], Gorbachev unlocked the key to the control of the Western mind — and to the restructuring of the entire world. The West followed Lady Thatcher's prompting, mistaking the style for the substance. The disastrous consequences of this millennial error are now crowding in upon Western civilization, threatening its very survival."
The purpose of perestroika, culminating in the "Break with the Past," has been to convince the gullible West that Communism is dead, that the Soviet Union has collapsed, and that we are friends, not enemies anymore — a lie which was duly embedded in the Joint Declaration of Twenty-Two States, signed by Western and Warsaw Pact leaders on November 19, 1990. The Declaration asserted that the signatories are "no longer adversaries," and represented the culmination of the deception which had been managed for Western public consumption by Gorbachev's close KGB associate, Georgi Arbatov. Since publishing an article in the June 1988 issue of Kommunist, in which he said that "the image of the enemy" was being eroded and was vanishing, Arbatov had repeated this message at every opportunity. Of course, as a trained Leninist revolutionary who followed Lenin's advice to his associates to use language deceptively, Arbatov meant that the enemy would continue to exist. It was only his image which was to "vanish."
The trick worked. The West foolishly and recklessly ignored Arbatov's repeated mention of the phrase "the image of the enemy," and jumped to the hazardous and unwarranted conclusion that the enemy himself was disappearing.



---Describe the Soviet "convergence" strategy.
This is the central objective towards which the secret Leninist revolutionaries are working. Their purpose has been to dismantle overt Communism, to establish apparently "normal" relations with the West, to remove travel restrictions so that large numbers of their agents would be accepted into Western societies, and to "cooperate" with the West — in parallel with the West dropping its antagonistic stance, dismantling its military power, collectivizing its security arrangements, and signing bilateral and multilateral treaties and accords with the "former" Soviet Bloc.
But the West does not understand that these Leninist revolutionaries intend that "convergence" is to be achieved on their (Communist) terms, not on ours. The Leninist meaning of "convergence" is that the West is to "converge" towards the Communists, contrary to the naive belief of Western policy-makers and political establishments.
In New Lies for Old, Golitsyn explained the detailed preparations for "convergence," and predicted that it would form the central theme of the forthcoming false "liberalization." He pointed out that the most prominent agent of influence preparing the West for perestroika was the nuclear scientist and controlled "dissident" Andrei Sakharov. He was the primary advance salesman for "convergence."
Today, the West erroneously believes that open-ended cooperation with these "former" Communists will lead to a peaceful world. That is not their intention. Their purpose is to control the world. They are proceeding towards this objective by eroding national sovereignty in accordance with Lenin' s diktat that the state is to "wither away."
All contemporary collective political arrangements — the so-called European Union; the North American Free Trade Area; the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an intergovernmental agreement requiring the pooling of military intelligence and other anti-state measures; and new regional blocs like the South African Development Community, which has set Southern Africa on the road to integrated security, military and foreign policies, and seeks to usurp national sovereignty in the region — all are devices designed to undermine the state in order to replace nations with regional blocs which are to be the components of a world government. The destruction of national sovereignty is the paramount objective, since as long as nation states continue to exist, world government cannot be established.






Please note that Anatoliy Golitsyn’s work came out DECADES ago…BEFORE the berlin wall came down… he defected in December 1961,
The stuff that he brought out was about the stuff happening NOW… 45 odd years later.

Anonymous said...

Came across an article on the much trumpeted "demcratic/free marketer" Yushchenko in the Ukraine. In light of recent not so democratic Georgian fiasco, this article highlights what a bunch of frauds those vegi-coloured revolutionaries are! So before you start calling Helmut Schmidt a traitor to democracy, and Putin a potenate, have a reality check on your selfserving shameless "democrated" in the near abroad.

I am pasting the article just for reference:
Western aggression: How the US and Britain are intervening in Ukraine’s elections


by John Laughland

Global Research, November 10, 2004
The Spectator - 2004-11-05


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Print this article





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A few years ago, a friend of mine was sent to Kiev by the British government to teach Ukrainians about the Western democratic system. His pupils were young reformers from western Ukraine, affiliated to the Conservative party. When they produced a manifesto containing 15 pages of impenetrable waffle, he gently suggested boiling their electoral message down to one salient point. What was it, he wondered? A moment of furrowed brows produced the lapidary and nonchalant reply, ‘To expel all Jews from our country.’

It is in the west of Ukraine that support is strongest for the man who is being vigorously promoted by America as the country’s next president: the former prime minister Viktor Yushchenko. On a rainy Monday morning in Kiev, I met some young Yushchenko supporters, druggy skinheads from Lvov. They belonged both to a Western-backed youth organisation, Pora, and also to Ukrainian National Self-Defence (Unso), a semi-paramilitary movement whose members enjoy posing for the cameras carrying rifles and wearing fatigues and balaclava helmets. Were nutters like this to be politically active in any country other than Ukraine or the Baltic states, there would be instant outcry in the US and British media; but in former Soviet republics, such bogus nationalism is considered anti-Russian and therefore democratic.

It is because of this ideological presupposition that Anglo-Saxon reporting on the Ukrainian elections has chimed in with press releases from the State Department, peddling a fairytale about a struggle between a brave and beleaguered democrat, Yushchenko, and an authoritarian Soviet nostalgic, the present Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych. All facts which contradict this morality tale are suppressed. Thus a story has been widely circulated that Yushchenko was poisoned during the electoral campaign, the fantasy being that the government was trying to bump him off. But no British or American news outlet has reported the interview by the chief physician of the Vienna clinic which treated Yushchenko for his unexplained illness. The clinic released a report declaring there to be no evidence of poisoning, after which, said the chief physician, he was subjected to such intimidation by Yushchenko’s entourage — who wanted him to change the report — that he was forced to seek police protection.

It has also been repeatedly alleged that foreign observers found the elections fraught with violations committed by the government. In fact, this is exclusively the view of highly politicised Western governmental organisations like the OSCE — a body which is notorious for the fraudulent nature of its own reports, and which in any case came to this conclusion before the poll had even taken place — and of bogus NGOs, such as the Committee of Ukrainian Voters, a front organisation exclusively funded by Western (mainly American) government bodies and think-tanks, and clearly allied with Yushchenko. Because they speak English, the political activists in such organisations can easily nobble Anglophone Western reporters.

Contrary allegations — such as those of fraud committed by Yushchenko-supporting local authorities in western Ukraine, carefully detailed by Russian election observers but available only in Russian — go unreported. So too does evidence of crude intimidation made by Yushchenko supporters against election officials. The depiction is so skewed that Yushchenko is presented as a pro-Western free-marketeer, even though his fief in western Ukraine is an economic wasteland; while Yanukovych is presented as pro-Russian and statist, even though his electoral campaign is based on deregulation and the economy has been growing at an impressive clip. The cleanliness and prosperity of Kiev and other cities have improved noticeably.

There is, however, one thing which separates the two main candidates, and which explains the West’s determination to shoo in Yushchenko: Nato. Yanukovych has said he is against Ukraine joining; Yushchenko is in favour. The West wants Ukraine in Nato to weaken Russia geopolitically and to have a new big client state for expensive Western weaponry, whose manufacturers fund so much of the US political process.

Yanukovych has also promised to promote Russian back to the status of second state language. Since most Ukrainian citizens speak Russian, since Kiev is the historic birthplace of Christian Russia, and since the current legislation forces tens of millions of Russians to Ukrainianise their names, this is hardly unreasonable. The continued artificial imposition of Ukrainian as the state language — started under the Soviets and intensified after the fall of communism — will be a further factor in ripping Ukraine’s Russophone citizens away from Russia proper. That is why the West wants it.






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La Russophobe said...

ANONYMOUS:

Please don't post irrelevant content on our blog. If you want to refer to material, just give its link. What you are doing is SPAM and pollution and won't be published again. It's only been published now because you are such a perfect example of how pathetic Russia's "defenders" really are.

Thanks for confirming that you can't defend Mr. Schmidt and instead are reduced to adopting the pathetic neo-Soviet tactic of trying to change the subject. Presumably, you will be happy when both you and Russia go the way of the USSR. Why do you hate Russia so much as that?

By the way, please stop lying too. Georgia has called elections in response to protests, just like Ukraine did, and they will be real contested elections, unlike Russia where protesters are crushed and jailed and Putin "wins" with Soviet-like "majorities."