theintercept | European colonial movements came in different flavors, and Zionism was
unique in that its members — certainly after World War II — were fleeing
not just persecution, but also extermination. Still, it was of
psychological necessity shot through with colonization’s standard
ideological racism.Rudolf Sonneborn, an American who
would go on to make a fortune in the oil business, was secretary of the
Zionist Commission in Palestine following World War I. He reportedOpens in a new tab that“the
average [Arab] is inferior even to our average Negro … I believe there
is very little to ever fear from them. Besides, they are a cowardly
race.”
This was also true for Christian Zionists. George Biddle, a friend of
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the ultra-WASPy descendant of the original
settlers on the Mayflower, took this view in an article in The AtlanticOpens in a new tab
after visiting Israel shortly after its 1948 founding. First, Biddle
enthused about how Israel would serve Western interests. Then, he
explained that Arabs were “foul, diseased, smelling, rotting, and
pullulating with vermin and corruption.” Fortunately, they “were about
as dangerous as so many North American Indians in modern mechanized
war.”
The fact that European Jewry were the greatest victims of the racism
that was central to this worldview, which Zionism adopted (in a less
virulent form), is one of the most bizarre twists of human history.
In any case, Europe’s centurieslong reign of piracy and mass death
should make it clear why people around the world — including such
far-flung, surprising places as South KoreaOpens in a new tab and PeruOpens in a new tab
— look at Israel’s action in Gaza with particular concern. It is not a
coincidence that the genocide case at the International Court of Justice
in The Hague was brought by South Africa with the participation of
Irish lawyers.
But what happens now? No one knows.
Israel was, in a sense, both too early and too late. If it had been
founded earlier, it could have massacred the entire Arab population,
just as the United States killed most Native Americans and Australia
wiped out huge swaths of the country’s Aboriginals. Then there would be
no Palestinians left for the world to be concerned about.
On the other hand, if it had come along later, Zionists might have
believed that they should join forces with the decolonization movements
across the Mideast and the world in the 1950s and 1960s. But in our
timeline, an Arab nationalist approached Ben-Gurion about fighting the
U.K.’s colonial forces together while Palestine was still under the
British mandate — and Ben-Gurion reported him to the British.
In any case, despite the dreams of the Israeli right, the “expel
and/or kill them all” solution is (probably) no longer available. But
it’s also extremely difficult to imagine a South Africa outcome, in
which Jewish Israelis accede to becoming a minority in a one-person,
one-vote, one-state Palestine.
Meanwhile, some parts of the Arab world fantasize about an Algeria
analogy, in which (after massive bloodshed) the colonists go back to
where they came from. Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, recently
claimed every Jewish Israeli “has a second nationality and has his bag
ready.” This is both factually false and extremely foolish. Israelis are
not going anywhere any more than Americans or Australians are.
wsws | To better understand the narrow social basis of the campaign to
silence opposition to Israel’s genocide, it is useful to understand who is
leading it. This campaign of censorship and intimidation is being led
by an alliance of billionaires, Zionists, the far-right and top
government and political leaders of American imperialism.
The
first major group involved are a handful of multi-billionaires and
economic power players whose stranglehold over the global economy
positions them to control the political and cultural leadership of the
major universities and other significant institutions.
As the World Socialist Web Site noted in an article written by an anonymous Harvard employee:
Just
as inequality in general is increasingly incompatible with what remains
of democracy, so is the subordination of universities to wealthy donors
incompatible with academic freedom. The right-wing, pro-Zionist “donor
revolt” is a qualitative development in big-money university donors
attempting to use their power and influence to shape campus discourse.
That these donors wield such influence—and that many of them seek to do
so publicly—is an indication of how deeply compromised academia already
is.
Indeed, universities are largely reliant on this
stream of cash. According to the Council for Advancement and Support of
Education, in 1980 private donations to US colleges and universities
amounted to $4.2 billion. Today they have surged to $59.5 billion.
These
are some of the major billionaires whose “donor revolt” is leading to
the attack on basic rights of free speech and protest on US campuses.
Les Wexner – One of the most important capitalists in retail
sales, Wexner has amassed $10.6 billion, and is the 192nd richest
person in the world, according to Bloomberg. Wexner founded L
Brands, which controls, or previously controlled, Bath & Body Works,
Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Express, and several other
major brands. While Wexner no longer controls L Brands, his foundation,
the Wexner Foundation, donated tens of millions of dollars to Harvard
over the last few decades and has now pulled millions of dollars of
future support. (He is also the billionaire who became the launching pad
for convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who managed Wexner’s
personal holdings for nearly two decades).
Idan Ofer –
Idan and his brother Eyal are the 77th and 87th richest people in the
world, owning $42 billion, according to Bloomberg. Together they control
Ofer Global, the Zodiac Group, Quantum Pacific Group and Global
Holdings, each of which are massive industrial, energy and real estate
investment firms. They own about half of Israeli Corp., Israel’s largest
holding company. Collectively their companies take in hundreds of
billions of dollars a year in revenue through shipping, fertilizers,
industrial chemicals, energy and real estate. Miller Global Properties,
one of the various “small”’companies that they have a leading ownership
in, is notable for controlling various landmark properties, such as the
Pebble Beach golf course, the Aspen ski resort and the Bevely Hills
Hotel. Idan Ofer and his wife Batia both quit the Harvard Kennedy School
Dean’s Executive Board in an attempt to pressure the university to
crack down on the outcry of pro-Palestinian sentiment on the campus.
Idan Ofer’s companies have been at the heart of multiple chemical leak
and environmental scandals in Israel. Eyal was formerly an intelligence
officer in the Israeli Air Force; he now resides in Monaco.
Bill Ackman – Ackman is an American billionaire who runs
Pershing Square Capital, a hedge fund with about $20 billion under
management. Ackman owns $4 billion personally. Pershing Square Capital
holds significant shares of major US companies, including a 10 percent
ownership of Target, one percent of Procter & Gamble, 10 percent
control of Chipotle, a 7 percent share of Universal Music Group, and
over a billion dollars in Netflix. Ackman is currently leading a vicious
campaign to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay. Previously Ackman
fought to get Harvard to release all the names of students who signed a
pro-Palestinian statement, demanding that employers refuse to hire these
students.
Ken Griffin – Griffin is the 35th richest
person in the world, with over $37 billion in assets. He is the CEO of
Citadel, a massive $52 billion hedge fund based in Miami. Citadel owns a
significant share in some of the largest technology and bioscience
companies, including Microsoft, Activision, Boston Scientific, Nvidia,
Humana, Apple, Comcast, Merck, and Adobe. Griffin has donated over half a
billion dollars to Harvard and is pressuring the university to adopt a
stronger pro-Israel stance.
Cliff Asness – Asness is an
American billionaire who founded AQR Capital Management, which has over
$100 billion under management. Asness severed all his donations to the
University of Pennsylvania and has publicly begun a campaign to pressure
the university to stop “support[ing] evil.” In a diatribe published in
the Wall Street Journal, he described the pro-Palestinian protests as a reflection of the “deep and systematic rot on elite college campuses.”
Marc Rowan – Rowan
is co-owner of Apollo Asset Management, one of the largest private
equity firms. He has over $6 billion in personal wealth. He halted his
donations to University of Pennsylvania, using “Wall Street tactics
to ‘strong-arm’” the university, in the words of Business Insider.
Apollo has sprawling investments in real estate, cruise companies
(Norwegian, Regent), hotels (Harrah’s Entertainment), education (McGraw
Hill), entertainment (Chuck E. Cheese), private security (ADT) and
retail (Smart and Final). Apollo co-founder Leon Black was formerly CEO
of the company before revelations emerged that he had paid Jeffrey Epstein over $100 million for tax planning and consulting services.
Zionists, antisemites and ethno-nationalists
Complementing
this group of billionaires are a series of ethno-nationalists, both
Zionists and MAGA Trumpers, who are more closely coordinating the effort
to censor outrage against Israel’s genocide.
A recent, 2023 film, Israelism,
made by two Jewish filmmakers, provides a window into the mechanisms
used to promote Zionism in American culture and equate it with Judaism.
One central figure in the film is Abe Foxman, an American lawyer and
multi-millionaire who was the national director of the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) from 1987 to 2015. Foxman and the ADL are major fixtures in
the American Zionist lobby, heavily promoting organizations such as
Birthright.
ZeroHedge | As the MSM turns on President Joe Biden heading into the 2024 election, the Washington Post had an interesting piece on Thursday exploring a little-known connection between the Bidens and the du Pont family,
which revolves around a 2001 case in which then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE)
was voted in as a prominent new member of a prestigious Golf Club in
Wilmington, Delaware, founded by a du Pont heiress.
That year, Biden, known for his "Middle-Class Joe" image and modest
financial status, joined the exclusive Fieldstone Golf Club, a symbol of
prestige and power. This move painted a contrasting picture: a
politician aligned with working-class values, yet rubbing shoulders with
the state's most affluent family, renowned for their chemical company
empire.
At the time, Biden walked a delicate line.
On one hand, he campaigned as an Amtrak-riding “Middle-Class Joe”
striving to make ends meet, and accurately described himself as “one of
the poorest members of Congress” — reporting $221,000 in combined income
with his wife that yearand $360 in charitable contributions. -WaPo
Biden's
connection to the du Ponts extended beyond social interactions. His
staffing choices, political allies, and personal real estate investments
all reflected a deep integration with this influential family. His
acquisition of a mansion built by a du Pont member further underscores
this relationship.
Yet, Biden's entry into the Fieldstone Golf Club raised eyebrows and led to a brief FBI investigation in 2007.
The inquiry centered on how Biden obtained his club membership,
especially as it involved an "unused" ticket from a company owned by the
club's founder, potentially bypassing a substantial partnership fee.
The FBI's probe, which included photographing Biden's personal locker
at the club, eventually closed without any allegations of wrongdoing.
It's unknown whether Biden was ever informed about the FBI
investigation.
In response to an inquiry, the White House told the Post:
"These bizarre suggestions from more than 20 years ago are confusing
given the fact that the Post is reporting that President Biden was fully
responsible for membership dues at the golf club and all out-of-pocket
costs associated with it. Frankly, the Post’s own reporting suggests
this supposed matter was closed 15 years ago with no finding of
wrongdoing. If you want to dig deep on who’s funding a president’s golf
habits, we might have some suggestions."
Yet, this story
reveals the delicate balance Biden navigated between his public identity
as a relatable politician and his private interactions with Delaware's
elite. While maintaining his image as a defender of
middle-class interests, Biden also sought inclusion in the state's upper
echelons, epitomized by his association with the du Ponts and his
membership at Fieldstone.
For someone
raised in Delaware with Biden’s blue-collar background, “it would be
quite an accomplishment” to rise into the same social circles as the du
Ponts, said Joseph Hurley, a Wilmington attorney who grew up with Biden
and represented Moseley.
“It’s like, ‘I’ve really arrived,’ because the du Ponts were the family, the king’s-family type thing,” he said. -WaPo
Biden
often cited the long role of the du Pont family in Delaware in his
family story - writing in his memoir that his father moved the family
from Scranton, PA to a suburb of Wilmington, which was made more economically stable thanks to so many well-paid DuPont employees.
"DuPont meant security for today and better times for the future," Biden wrote.
Years later, Biden recalled that his mother urged him to value his heritage with as much pride as the state’s best-known family.
“Like I’m a du Pont or something,” Biden recalled. “You’re a Biden.
Nobody is better than you, and everybody’s equal to you,” his mother
told him.
Still, he envied the position and power of those who founded the DuPont company.
Elected to the Senate in 1972,he
served in Congress alongside Rep. Pierre “Pete” du Pont IV, who later
became Delaware’s governor and ran for president. Biden’s close adviser
and Senate chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, had worked for DuPont as a
plastics engineer.
counterfire | It is not surprising that Marx’s concept of class is unpopular in the
mainstream. Marx’s picture of a brutally divided society with organised
robbery at its heart amounts to a devastating moral condemnation of
capitalism. It also directly contradicts the various ways in which the
establishment want us to understand the world we live in. Their
preferred model of society is a giant market in which individuals
interact freely and equally. In reality, of course, individuals are born
into society with drastically different levels of wealth. Marx stressed
however that it is the way production is organised that more than anything shapes society. ‘The arrangement of distribution’ he says in Capital,
‘is entirely dependent on the arrangement of production’. What people
consume, even what people regard as needs, depends in the first instance
on what is produced in any given society. The way the goods are
distributed depends on the distribution of wealth, itself determined by
one’s position in the productive process.
Politicians also like to tell us ‘we are all in it together.’ This
illusion can only gain traction because the economy appears to operate
independently of human will and control. The idea can’t survive contact
with an understanding that the whole system is driven by a tiny minority
forcing profit from the labour of the many. We are also told that
capitalist investors are ‘wealth creators’. Looked at from the point of
view of class, the capital that an investor brings to the table has been
extracted – stolen – from past labour. The investor is simply recycling
the spoils to make still more money.
Marxism also challenges the idea that capitalism will ‘lift up’ the
poor over time. Capitalism has produced unimaginable wealth, but as Marx
predicted, its drive to keep wages down means that for most of its
existence the distribution of that wealth has become more and more
unequal. Forty years of neoliberal capitalism has brought us to the
extraordinary point at which just eight men are worth as much as half
the world’s population. Marx’s analysis leads to the devastating
conclusion that the poor are poor because the rich are rich. Generalised poverty and inequality are a necessary outcome of a system based on competition for profit.
The most radical aspect of all of Marx’s class analysis is however
that it shows that in the process of conquering the world and achieving
by far the highest levels of exploitation in history, capitalism has
created its own nemesis, its own ‘grave digger’ in the working class.
Marx believed workers had the potential to overthrow existing conditions
for a number of reasons. The first was directly economic. The fact that
workers are denied the material benefits of a more and more productive
society gave them an immediate interest in resistance. The second was
that the degradation experienced by most of humanity under capitalism
was concentrated in the working class. The denial of human
self-fulfilment, the ‘notorious crime of the whole of society’, was most
acutely experienced in exploitation and its attendant alienation.
Workers have through their experience the most acute consciousness of
the immensely destructive and degrading capacities of capitalist
accumulation.
Secondly, as well as having an interest in change, workers have the
means to make it happen. Just as workers rely entirely on capitalists
for their livelihood, capitalists are completely dependent on workers
for their profits. Powerless as individuals, collectively, workers have
immense potential power. As Marx put it, ‘of all the instruments of
production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class
itself’. By forcing huge numbers of workers together at the point of
production, capitalism creates a counter-power. Struggles over pay and
conditions have the capacity to generalise into a political conflict
between different class organisations:
Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people
unknown to one another. Competition divides their interests. But the
maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their
boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance – combination…
If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages,
combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as
the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and
in the face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association
becomes more necessary to them than that of wages…In this struggle – a
veritable civil war – all the elements necessary for a coming battle
unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a
political character.
FT | Many say the crisis was triggered by Netanyahu’s decision to form an electoral alliance with extreme ultranationalists previously on the fringes of politics.
The divisive veteran premier, who is on trial for corruption, returned to power in December by manufacturing a coalition dependent on ultraorthodox parties and ideologically driven religious Zionist leaders.
These include Itamar Ben-Gvir, who in 2007 was convicted of inciting for racism and is now Netanyahu’s national security minister, and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a self-declared homophobe whose Religious Zionist party is one of the main drivers behind the legal reform.
Both men live in settlements in the occupied West Bank that most of the international community consider illegal. They represent the religious nationalist settler movement and support the annexation of Palestinian territory. Ultraorthodox leaders hold other key posts, including the interior and religious affairs ministries.
After last year’s election — the fifth in less than four years — the coalition’s 64 seats in the 120-member Knesset are split between Likud, with 32, and the ultraorthodox and religious Zionist parties.
🇮🇱 ALERTE - Israël s’enfonce dans le chaos en raison d’un projet de réforme visant à accroître le pouvoir des élus sur les magistrats. Le plus gros syndicat de travailleurs va appeler à la #grèvegénérale. Les universités se mettent en grève. Manifestations massives à #TelAviv. pic.twitter.com/jSKPB9pFX9
In coalition agreements with the parties, Netanyahu committed to a number of policies that would have a far-reaching impact on Israeli society, including expanding the powers of Rabbinical courts and tightening rules around religious conversions and immigration.
He also pledged to annex the West Bank “while choosing the timing and considering the national and international interests of the state of Israel”.
Since winning the election last year, the coalition has drafted legislation on a number of fronts, ranging from the legal reforms to changes that allow people convicted of crimes, but spared jail time, to serve as ministers. It has also legalised nine Jewish settler outposts deep in the West Bank, which even Israel had deemed to be built illegally.
Simcha Rothman, a MP with Smotrich’s Religious Zionist party, who heads the Knesset’s justice committee and is an architect of the planned judicial changes, considers the moment a “great opportunity” for “the believers”.
“What brings together the ultraorthodox, a religious Zionist like me [and] a secular like Netanyahu . . . is the deep belief that Israel is and should always be the homeland of the Jewish people,” he says.
Rothman says the legal reforms are needed to rein in the “unchecked and unbalanced” powers of judges. He blames the Supreme Court for having a “big part in radicalising” Palestinians of Israeli citizenship, and argues that in its current form it can block parents’ autonomy over how they educate their children, and even economic policies.
He complains that Jewish aspects of the state have been eroded, with “progressive elites” staging a “power grab in culture and academia”. He says an Israeli child can spend a year in school without opening a Bible and condemns a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that it was OK for people to bring non-kosher food into hospitals during Passover.
In his mind, “Israel was helpless against trends that would make Israel lose its Jewish identity”.
“I think it’s time for the public in Israel to decide if they want to be a country ruled by its people or by its judges,” Rothman says. “A constitutional moment is always some kind of a crisis, but it’s very important.” The government’s goal, he adds, is to “bring Israel back to normality”.
tikkunolam | As over 600,000 Israelis marched in scores of cities throughout the country and in major world capitals, cracks began to form
in the governing coalition. Facing near munity in the ranks of the
IDF, defense minister Yoav Gallant called on Bibi Netanyahu to put a
halt to the legislative steamroller being rammed through the Knesset. He
did so in a dramatic national TV address, which was clearly intended as
a shot across the prime minister’s bow.
Already, the ruling
coalition passed a law legalizing five settlements Israel had promised
George Bush would not be populated. It also passed a law removing the
attorney general’s right to disqualify a prime minister convicted of a
criminal offense. This will protect Netanyahu if he is convicted on any
of the corruption charges he confronts in his current trial. As
Opposition leader Benny Gantz said in a TV interview, there are dozens
more pieces of legislation that will follow if the government continues
this onslaught.
Regardless of Gallant’s political opinions about this agenda, as a
former army general, he understands that Israel must have a cohesive
fighting force. When there is munity within, the country cannot protect
its citizens. Not to mention, that the IDF is most significant
unifying institution in the country. It defines Israeli identity and
most citizens serve in it. For many Israelis the army and the state are
indistinguishable. For that reason, Gallant defines his allegiance to
the state via the army. If the army is not with the government, then
the latter cannot or should not function.
To clarify, I am
defining Israeli reality as most Israelis see it, in the above
paragraph, and not offering my own opinion, which is highly critical, as
readers will know.
Two senior Likud MKs followed suit
announcing support for Gallant. On the other side, a number of
Netanyahu stalwarts denounced Gallant. Fascist firebrand, Itamar Ben
Gvir, called for the PM to immediately fire him.
I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow he calls for erecting a scaffold in
Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street and hanging Gallant by the neck till he is
dead, as judges used to say in the old Hollywood westerns.
Netanyahu
has two choices: he can accede to Gallant and declare a ceasefire.
That would involve members of the governing coalition and opposition
negotiating a compromise legislative agenda that would ensable some of
the proposed “reforms,” while eliminating the most objectional ones.
Even if he agreed to this option, these negotiations would have no
guarantee of success, since the sides are so far apart.
Or Netanyahu can reject Gallant’s call and go full steam ahead,
throwing in his lot with the radical elements of his coalition, the
anti-democracy coup plotters, Yariv Levin and Simcha Rotman. As I wrote in a recent post,
this will bring a confrontaton between the legisltiave and judicial
branches of Israeli government. Until now, the Supreme Court has
exerted limited powers compared to high courts in most democratic
countries. But at least it could review legislation and declare it in
violation of Israel’s quasi constitutional Basic Laws.
In that
sense, the Court would take up the laws passed by the far-right
governing coalition and likely strike down most, if not all of them.
The legislative body really has very little recourse at that point. It
cannot force the Court to arrive a different conclusion short of taking
the justices out in the courtyard and offering them a choice between
life or death. The Knesset has no enforcement provision that would
enable it to override the Court. Thus, its edict will prevail.
It
remains to be seen how the coup plotters will react. Perhaps after
reading the decisions, they will water down or rephrase new proposed
bills in the hope the justices will be willing to approve them. Since
the Court is a right-wing institution, it remains possible that they
will approve some of the current legislation; and improve even more if
it is modified or recast.
Counterpunch | facilitating the purchase of critical infrastructure— and housing is
critical infrastructure, by Wall Street is predatory, short-sighted, and
systemically de-stabilizing. Permitting unlicensed hotels (AIRBNB),
unlicensed taxis (Uber), and the systematic refusal to collect state and
local taxes for online purchases (Amazon), reflects a contrived and
wholly nonsensical ‘individualist’ ethos of capitalism where individuals
born into the bailed-out class effectively govern the US. This is the
political context in which Joe Biden bailed out corrupt and / or
incompetent bank managers and corporate depositors at SVB.
Political architecture where a small group of politicians, oligarchs,
and corporate executives erase the lines between corporate and state
interests to use state resources for their own benefit while treating
the populace as rubes and marks deserving of being preyed upon 1)
reasonably well describes the US at present and 2) fits the definition
of Italian fascism as state corporatism. Add in unhinged militarism
motivated by imperialist objectives and ‘liberal democracy’ looks and
feels like fascism to those on its receiving end.
It is clear that this view of the architecture isn’t widely shared,
with most Americans relying on the imagined choice that voting for
duopoly party candidates provides. Missing from that view is the
proletarianization of the US that has taken place over the last five
decades, with the exception being the PMC (Professional-Managerial
Class), which manages state and corporate affairs for the rich. The
genesis of the PMC in service to power has it parroting the logic of the
rich in exchange for privileges that the remaining 85% of the
population doesn’t receive.
SVB, like SBF (Sam Bankman Fried) of crypto infamy before it, is a
weathervane helpful for reading the direction of the prevailing winds,
but not a whole lot more. The system that produced it is coming unglued,
with mass Covid deaths far out of proportion to the size of the
population, failing healthcare and banking systems, a proxy war underway
that risks nuclear annihilation, and a government that sees its role as
working with corporations to loot the world. Underestimate the risk of
truly horrific outcomes at your own peril.
Last, on a personal note, I, and most of the people I know, are so
angry about this state of affairs that I don’t see how existing
political unions hold. The people running the country never cared much
about us, but unity in ‘nation’ led to a sense of shared interests that
disappeared with the neoliberal turn. As I’ve written before,
revolutionaries don’t make revolutions, existing power does. While I’m
not holding my breath, if the current political leadership doesn’t lead
to a revolution, revolution isn’t possible.
NYTimes | On
Saturday, an entrepreneur named Alexander Torrenegra, who was an S.B.V.
depositor for two companies as well as his own personal accounts,
explained what happened on Twitter. “Thursday, 9 AM: in one chat with
200+ tech founders (most in the Bay Area), questions about SVB start to
show up.” he wrote. “10 AM: some suggest getting the money out of SVB for safety. Only upside. No downside.”
It’s
easy to see how a whisper network of a few hundred C.E.O.s — all
convinced they have exceptional vision, all working themselves into a
panic — could spiral out of control. But what happened in that chat is
an extension of the fundamental way that these venture capitalists
operate, which is groupthink on a staggeringly consequential scale.
Top
tier firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner
Perkins subject candidates to a rigorous screening process that ensures
that only the strongest founders leading the most promising businesses
proceed to the next level. Or that’s what I once believed, anyway. But
the screening process places significant emphasis on “culture fit,”
which is industry speak for whether a founder fits into the venture
capital firm’s full portfolio of companies and conforms to their ideas
about how a founder is supposed to look and behave. A founder’s ability
to navigate this process is considered a good indicator of the company’s
success. Unfortunately for women and people of color, culture fit often
boils down to being a white male engineer with a degree from an elite
university.
Some screening mechanisms
are more subtle, like whether the V.C.s are already in your professional
network, or one or two degrees removed. The industry line is that
relationships will help founders attract capital, talent, and business
partners. True, but the result is a largely homogeneous and even
self-reinforcing community that’s difficult for outsiders to crack.
It’s
this sort of insularity, emphasis on existing relationships, and
reliance on intangible measures of competency that fueled last week’s
bank run. The V.C.s expect the companies in their portfolio to use
approved vendors. When it comes to legal counsel, that generally means
tech-friendly law firms like Morrison & Foerster or Wilson Sonsini.
When it comes to banks, it has meant S.V.B.
S.V.B.,
in turn, assessed its clients’ creditworthiness in part by who their
funders were. As my colleagues and I saw, an investment from a top tier
V.C. could be the ticket to a package of favored services, including things like home mortgages for the founders of these start-ups.
I
opened my account at S.V.B. in 2017, when I had meetings lined up with
some top tier V.C.s to raise money for a digital media company. Like
everyone else who heads to Buck’s of Woodside (a favored venue for
early-stage deal making) with a deck and a dream, I tried to anticipate
the screening mechanisms and make sure I passed. And despite the fact
that I was not a first-time founder, and having worked in tech and tech
adjacent companies, was decently well networked, I suspected they might
regard a 40-year-old woman without an engineering degree as not quite
the culture fit of their dreams. I wasn’t contractually obligated to
bank with S.V.B., but as with so many other unspoken norms, I was aware
that I would be evaluated by my choices.
Disaster
has now struck, but I don’t see any public introspection from the
investment community participants who both helped create the dangerous
conditions and triggered the avalanche by directing portfolio companies
to withdraw en masse.
It was not the venture-capital backed companies that chose or agreed to
keep all their deposits at SVB. It was their venture capital investors
that forced this arrangement on them, confirmed by a reader: “Speaking
as a former customer as dictated by my VCs.” This distinction matters
because it puts the locus of influence and favor-trading much higher up
the food chain.
nueberger |It’s highly possible, one could even say likely, that those
massive deposits — Roku alone kept almost half a billion dollars in a
single account — were part of a corrupt set of practices by the bank itself and its big-dollar clients.
SVB would typically require, as part of its venture debt investments into emerging companies, that the money would be held in an account with SVB. SVB would then offer concierge, I think they called it white glove, services to the founders including personal LOCs, mortgages etc.
David Dayen, in an excellent, comprehensive piece, writes:
“So you have depositors that either didn’t know the first thing about
risk management, or were bribed by the bank into neglecting it.”
Keep
in mind who these depositors are: the very very wealthy in the West
Coast venture capital world. The corruption didn’t start just with the
bank. The VCs often initiated it. As a friend and former Silicon Valley
entrepreneur pointed out to me recently:
SVB
was a special case. VCs required the companies they funded to keep their
cash there. So the companies (and their employees) really were victims,
not incompetent at risk management. In exchange the VCs received
various favors from the bank. This is how Silicon Valley works behind
the scenes. I was in one deal where the lead VC for our
funding required a secret kickback of a certain % of the company stock
and that this arrangement be kept secret from the firm. This is typical.
Where Does That Leave Us, Part I
Where
that leaves us is here: The U.S. banking system, which hasn’t been
private in my recent memory, has been officially taken under the wing of
the federal government, with every deposited dollar now de factoinsured by the FDIC.
The Fed says its new lending facility is big enough to cover all US uninsured deposits and that it is "prepared to address any liquidity pressures that may arise" https://t.co/XwS40BS4hk@FinancialTimes
To
cover these claims, the FDIC normally collects money from the banks
receiving the insurance benefit. This means that the covered banks
prepay a reasonable amount for a bailout of depositor funds up to
$250,000 per account.
What would a “reasonable amount” be to
cover all funds on deposit in the U.S.? Are the banks willing to prepay
it? Highly unlikely. After all, who’s going to make them? The government
they control?
So the federal government has nationalized the
banking system, or nationalized its insurance of bank deposits to 100%
of risk, all at no new cost to the banks.
What do you think these banks will do next, with that worry off their backs? I hesitate to find out, but I know we’re about to.
Where Does That Leave Us, Part II?
The
second “where does that leave us?” leaves the financial realm and
enters the political. If Saagar Enjeti is right (see the clip above),
the rich decided that taking even a 10% loss (“haircut”) via the normal
unwinding process was still too big an ask.
Meanwhile, in East Palestine OH where the working class makes its life, this went on:
With a population of about 5,000 people, there are roughly 2,600 residential properties in East Palestine
according to Attom, a property data provider. The average value of a
property there in January of this year, prior to the derailment, was
$146,000, according to Attom.
Taken together, the value of
all residential real estate in the town adds up to about $380 million,
including single family homes and multi-family properties.
Those
values are only a fraction of the money that Norfolk Southern earns.
Last year it reported a record operating income of $4.8 billion, and a
net income of $3.3 billion, up about 9% from a year earlier. It had $456
million in cash on hand on its books as of December 31.
It’s been returning much of that profit to shareholders, repurchasing $3.1 billion in shares last year and spending $1.2 billion on dividends. And it announced a 9% increase in dividends just days before the accident.
A
year ago its board approved a $10 billion share repurchase plan, and it
had the authority to buy $7.5 billion of that remaining on the plan as
of December 31. (Emphasis added)
The point couldn’t
be more simple. When the wealthy face losses, the government they
control bails them out, within days if necessary.
When the rest
of us faces losses, we’re on our own. Neither the wealthy who caused the
mess nor the government that represent “the people” will step up to the
plate.
And it will be this way forever unless force is applied.
theatlantic | “In the past two years,
democracies have become stronger, not weaker. Autocracies have grown
weaker, not stronger.” So President Joe Biden declared in his 2023 State
of the Union address. His proud words fall short of the truth in at
least one place. Unfortunately, that place is right next door: Mexico.
Mexico’s
erratic and authoritarian president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is
scheming to end the country’s quarter-century commitment to multiparty
liberal democracy. He is subverting the institutions that have upheld
Mexico’s democratic achievement—above all, the country’s admired and
independent elections system. On López Obrador’s present trajectory, the
Mexican federal elections scheduled for the summer of 2024 may be less
than free and far from fair.
Mexico
is already bloodied by disorder and violence. The country records more
than 30,000 homicides a year, which is about triple the murder rate of
the United States. Of those homicides, only about 2 percent are
effectively prosecuted, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution (in the U.S., roughly half of all murder cases are solved).
Americans
talk a lot about “the border,” as if to wall themselves off from events
on the other side. But Mexico and the United States are joined by
geography and demography. People, products, and capital flow back and
forth on a huge scale, in ways both legal and clandestine. Mexico
exports car and machine parts at prices that keep North American
manufacturing competitive. It also sends over people
who build American homes, grow American food, and drive American
trucks. America, in turn, exports farm products, finished goods,
technology, and entertainment.
Each
country also shares its troubles with the other. Drugs flow north
because Americans buy them. Guns flow south because Americans sell them.
If López Obrador succeeds in manipulating the next elections in his
party’s favor, he will do more damage to the legitimacy of the Mexican
government and open even more space for criminal cartels to assert their
power.
We are already
getting glimpses of what such a future might look like. Days before
President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived in
Mexico City for a trilateral summit with López Obrador in early January,
cartel criminals assaulted the Culiacán airport, one of the 10 largest
in Mexico. They opened fire on military and civilian planes, some still
in the air. Bullets pierced a civilian plane, wounding a passenger. The
criminals also attacked targets in the city of Culiacán, the capital of
the state of Sinaloa.
By the
end of the day, a total of 10 soldiers were dead, along with 19
suspected cartel members. Another 52 police and soldiers were wounded, as were an undetermined number of civilians.
The violence was sparked when, earlier in the day, Mexican troops had arrested
one of Mexico’s most-wanted men, Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of the
notorious cartel boss known as “El Chapo.” The criminals apparently
hoped that by shutting down the airport, they could prevent the
authorities from flying Guzmán López out of the state—and ultimately
causing him to face a U.S. arrest warrant.
The criminals failed. But the point is: They dared to try. If the Mexican state decays further, the criminals will dare more.
dailycaller | “The biggest problem is that for Jewish students there are two
standards for how universities treat harassment … but Jewish students
have not been treated fairly,” Rossman-Benjamin said.
In 2022, a report
released by StopAntisemitism, which describes itself as the “leading
non-partisan U.S based organization” combating anti-Jewish hate, gave a
failing grade to both UCLA and UC Berkeley because of past incidents and
Jewish students reporting that they felt unsafe on campus.
UC
Berkeley Asst. Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof told the DCNF that the
university recognizes the “rising tide of antisemitism” and noted that
is “one of the reasons we respond quickly to address antisemitic
incidents and support our Jewish community.”
“Among the “robust programming” referred to above by the ADL, is UC Berkeley’s Antisemitism Education Initiative,
launched by members of our faculty in 2019, “Mogulof said. “We also
take great pride in our kosher dining facility—the first of its kind in
the UC system; a vibrant Hillel chapter; the broad range of other Jewish
student groups; and the aforementioned Berkeley Institute for Jewish
Law and Israel Studies; The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life;
and our Center for Jewish Studies.”
Mogulof also pointed
to a 2022 Anti-Defamation League’s statement praising the campuses
Hillel community, Jewish program and “Israel-related course offerings,”
and explained that the university has a “strong stance against BDS.”
UC
Davis also struggled with several antisemitic incidents in the past
year. In February 2022, during a Zoom presentation by Israeli chemist
Sason Shaik, multiple individuals joined the call and started “broadcasting antisemitic messages,” according to a press release.
Later
that summer, four men dressed in black holding antisemitic held banners
on an overpass bridge claiming that “the Holocaust is an anti-white
lie” and “Communism is Jewish,” according to the Times. Several months afterward in October, several swastikas were found in a first-year-student dormitory, according to a university press release.
A UC Davis spokesperson told the DCNF that the university’s Principles of Community reject all forms of discrimination.
“UC
Davis is partnering with the city of Davis and Yolo County to create
Hate-Free Together, a community-wide framework to combat the recent
string of local hate incidents and prioritize the well-being and safety
of all residents,” the spokesperson explained.
All of the
incidents at UC Davis were condemned by university leaders, a step that
Marcus noted was an improvement from the past, but he also pointed out
that many of these statements by UC schools were “weak.”
“It’s a
good sign that UC [campus] chancellors are condemning antisemitism, this
is an improvement from past years,” Marcus said. “The fact is they need
not only to speak in clear plain terms but also to back it up with
action.”
Rossman-Benjamin also pointed out that those statements
had done little to improve the climate for Jewish students on college
campuses, particularly when the complaints had to do with Israel.
“I
talked about the sympathy of the campus community when the antisemitism
is motivated by classical sources … but when it’s motivated by
anti-Zionism nobody cares,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “Not only does nobody
care, they actually would get upset if the university were to address
it … so there is no motivation, in fact, there is an incentive to
complain when Jewish students say, ‘[anti-Zionism] is hurting me.'”
opensecrets | The top seven GOP megadonors
have contributed nearly $222.7 million to Republican candidates and
outside groups. Of the $185.8 million given by the top three Democratic
megadonors, $128 million has come from Democratic megadonor George Soros, the top individual donor this election cycle and a frequent target of anti-semitic attacks from conservative pundits and politicians. Fund for Policy Reform, a 501(c)(4) funded by Soros, has given an additional $25 million to super PACs during the 2022 election cycle.
Soros, an emigre from Hungary
after WW II, is very keen on Eastern European “democracy” and
(according to his Open Society Foundation website) spent $18 billion on
projects around the world since its founding around 1980. An “Open
Society” (term coined by Karl Popper, who Soros claims
as an intellectual father) has open borders to flows of capital, labor
and information. The epitome of a “Closed Society” was the USSR (when
Popper’s book was published in the ’70’s).
I wouldn’t be surprised if Soros has used his
influence in the Democratic Party over the years to ensure that people
like Madeleine Albright (parents fled Czechoslovakia) and Vicky Nuland
(parents fled Ukraine) were placed in high places.
I suspect he was a big supporter of Russophobes like McCain and Graham
as well.
Some of Soros’s “projects” may well have borne
fruit in such diverse areas as the framework for the EU (free flow of
capital and labor); EU and NATO expansion; the growing dominance of
Neocons throughout the DC establishment; and much more.
I’m not a conspiracist, and won’t say that Soros “caused” all of these
things; but in the absence of a countervailing $18 billion force, I
think he surely made a difference by lubricating and tipping the balance
in many ways.
NYTimes | President
Vladimir V. Putin declared on Thursday that Russia’s battle was with
“Western elites,” not with the West itself, in a speech seemingly aimed
more at winning over political conservatives abroad than his own
citizens.
Mr. Putin, addressing an
annual foreign policy conference outside Moscow, appeared intent on
capitalizing on political divisions in the United States and its allies
that have only heightened since they began showering Ukraine with
military aid to fend off the Russian invasion.
Many
of the Russian leader’s themes were familiar, but they took on
particular resonance given the coming midterm elections in the United
States and growing discontent in Europe over the costs of the war.
“There are at least two Wests,” Mr. Putin said.
One,
he said, is a West of “traditional, mainly Christian values” for which
Russians feel kinship. But, he said, “there’s another West — aggressive,
cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal
elite,” and trying to impose its “pretty strange” values on everyone
else. He peppered his remarks with references to “dozens of genders” and
“gay parades.”
Mr.
Putin, as he often does, portrayed Russia as threatened by the possible
expansion of NATO — and the values of its liberal democracies — to
countries like Ukraine that were once part of the Soviet Union.
He
denied that Moscow was preparing to use nuclear weapons in the war in
Ukraine. “We have no need to do this,” he said. “There’s no sense for
us, neither political nor military.”
It
is Mr. Putin himself, however, who has raised that prospect, as have
other senior Russian officials. And past Kremlin assurances about its
intentions have proved unreliable. In the days before the war began, for
example, Russia denied that it planned to invade Ukraine.
The Western “framing” of the current civil war in
“Ukraine” is ahistorical, as much by ignorance as by design. The
division of “Ukraine” and “Poland” by the Prussian, Austro-Hungarian,
and Russian Empires between the Congress of Vienna
and the collapse of the USSR has caused 200 years of horrific suffering
and deeply-held grievance throughout the region that is
incomprehensible to Western audiences.
If you have a strong constitution, read about the events of June-July 1941 in Lwòw (Lviv) where the retreating NKVD’s murder of thousands of ethnic Polish and German “Enemies of the State” was quickly followed by a Banderite pogrom
in which Ukrainian civilians armed with sticks and clubs murdered thousands of
Jewish men and women in the streets — the U.S. Holocaust Memorial has a
fragment of a “home movie” shot by an SS-man of this savage barbarism
conducted against the backdrop
of a modern European city. It will shock you. The Nazis and the Red
Army then conducted another decade of mass-murder and forced
resettlement/ethnic cleansing that even make Pol Pot’s killing fields
pale in comparison.
It is a tragedy that the U.S. State Department and Central Intelligence Agency have annointed no one except grievance-holding refugees from
these Eastern European Killing Fields, like Kissinger, Brzezinski, and
Albright (Korbelovà) and their descendants Kagan,
Nudelmann, and Blinken, to be the “expert” arbiters of American policy
toward the region. Their only interest appears to be in controlling a false and irrelevant narrative that demonizes Russia in order to facilitate the settling of old scores that have no bearing on American interests.
Some countries (Trump's "shitholes") are largely
ignored by the U.S. because they are worthless lacking either natural resources or technology. Some countries, like most European ones, lack natural resources but have technology, so the
U.S. wants them as vassals. Within that
state of vassalage some countries have been allowed to have
social-democratic and even semi-neutral governments - so long as they
absolutely create no trouble for the master. That's the choice made
by South Korea, Singapore, Ireland, Austria, etc.; it takes a degree of skill to enjoy a little autonomy as a U.S. vassal.
The same is not true for resource-rich
non-technological countries. These slave states are harshly
ruled by compradore sellouts who pillage their own people on behalf of a U.S. master. Finally, there are natural enemy states. These are countries that are both technological and
have significant natural resources (e.g. Iran, RF, PRC) Eventually, the U.S. will turn its baleful glare in this regard toward India as well.
At
precisely the same time that CIA-directed psychological torment of
Danish orphans was underway, authorities in West Berlin were dabbling
with something even more diabolical - state-endorsed pedophilia.
Psychologist Helmut Kentler advocated in the 1960s for placing vulnerable youths in the care of pedophiles—on the ostensible basis that “loving environments” would effectively integrate them into society.
An
influential figure, Kentler used his extensive political connections to
market his ideas directly to lawmakers and state institutions.
Kentler
established the Pedagogical Center in February 1965 to conduct various
tests and trials. The results were supposed to help educational
authorities develop best practices for nurturing the nation’s youth.
Fully
endorsed by the city’s Senate and Social Democratic Party (SPD) and
West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, the Center was granted a multi-million
dollar budget, along with 37 staff. It was overseen by SPD Senator for
Schools and Education Carl-Heinz Evers, who knew Kentler personally.
(Brandt later served as West German chancellor 1969 - 1974.)
Children in West Berlin were sent to live with pedophilic foster parents at Kentler’s direction in 1969.
Kentler's ideas gained increased currency in the wake of incendiary student protests, which erupted across much of the Western world the previous year. These mass actions revitalized the writings of Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, in particular his early 1930s works The Sexual Struggle of Youth and The Mass Psychology of Fascism.
Reich’s
thesis was suppression of sexuality went hand-in-hand with obedience to
authoritarianism, as an individual’s perspectives and predispositions
were formed during their formative years. The argument went that it was
necessary for people of all ages to become sexualized, and embrace their
sexuality.
The resurrection of Reich’s ideas was no doubt welcome
to West Germany’s occupying powers. The notion Germans were
psychologically and genetically disposed towards aggression and
dictatorship—and that German society needed to be drastically reordered
to blunt these tendencies—was widespread in the aftermath of World War
II.
It was the Russian intervention to help stop another disastrous
US/Israel 'regime change' operation that led to the zionist neocons flipping
out. 'Russiagate' was born out of Trump's comments
on the US intervention in Syria (These match his previous outspoken
comments on Iraq) and branding Hilary and her state department as the
'mother of ISIS'.
It was because of this that the zionist neocons were able to
suggest that Trump was 'Putin's puppet', this is
now forgotten. The progressive liberals, hungry for any reason to see
Trump as illegitimate, disgracefully ran with it. (Many of them,
particularly those on social media, were just truly ignorant
geopolitically and in terms of zionist neocons) These buffoons have
deluded themselves into being neocons on Russia - with no contextualizing idea what
is really going on. They were unable to accept that Trump won the election
through winning previously solid blue state great lakes states. These states previously voted for Obama twice. They couldn't comprehend why Trump won - so they
accepted any reason given for why it wasn't real.
Generally, zionist neocons have been the most successful
political conspiracy of the 20th and 21st centuries. This is true despite the fact that their
actions and influence have repeatedly brought disastrous consequences home to roost. This is true despite the fact that they represent a tiny interest group. Zionist neocons have run roughshod
over numerous supposed democracies. Despite their serial failures, zionist neocons have never faced any consequences for their serial evil manipulations..
Only their political proxies ever do.
Everyone goes on about George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But it's the swarm of zionist neocons that these two empowered - working in the background (and increasingly out in the open) who remain politically
active and face no real scrutiny. This includes zionist neocon columnists in the MSM who face no consequences or scrutiny. This is why major media outlets keep giving them a platform from which to spread their increasingly transparent and
hysterical lies.
Zionist neocons are right wing Jewish nationalists. Any attempt to explain what is going on without reference to this fact and
to their influence - means they will get away with it. Zionist neocons have gotten away with serial misuses of American
military hegemony since the end of the cold war. In order to solve the zionist neocon problem, you have to name it.
None of the zionist neocon program makes any sense from the perspective of hard-nosed American national interest. This is why America can't be negotiated with
- because the zionist neocon program isn't about American interests. Peeling Russia
off China is an imperative American interest. However, what has unfolded here to date is entirely counterproductive because zionist neocons are driven by ethnic animus toward Russia and a
short-term desire to remove obstacles to regime change in Syria. Russia and China coming together
is a problem for later.
It is also inescapable to not notice that a lot of
highly ethnocentric supposedly left-wing anti-war Jews are most
prominent and energetic in pushing this, from Sean Penn and Ben Stiller
to Paul Mason and Jon Stewart.
At what point are we supposed to finally trust our own eyes, stop pretending that the emperor has any clothes, and call out the source of our national predicaments?
pluralistic | Kids, drug users, political radicals, sex workers and terrorists are
all unwelcome in mainstream society. They struggle to use its money, its
communications tools, and its media channels. Any attempt to do so
comes at a high price: personal risk, plus a high likelihood that some
or all of their interactions and transactions will be interdicted –
their work seized and destroyed or blocked or deleted.
Using a new technology comes at a cost. If it's 1979 and you're Walt
Disney Pictures, you've got no reason to explore the VCR. The existing
system works great for you – and it works great for your audience. You
can always find a movie theater willing to show your movies, your
audience is happy to be seen entering that cinema, and the bank gladly
accepts ticket revenues as deposits.
But if you're into smutty movies, none of that is true. Just mailing
your 8mm films across state lines is risky – maybe it gets seized and
incinerated, maybe a postal inspector shows up at your door with a
search warrant. Most theaters won't show your movies, and most people
don't want to be seen in the ones that will.
Given all those structural barriers, it makes sense that the
technophiles who also happen to be involved in the sex trade will get a
hearing from their colleagues – unlike the traditional media execs whose
endorsement of the VCR made them persona non grata within their
companies. That is, technophilia is a deficit if you're doing something
socially acceptable, and an asset if you're doing something that's
socially disfavored.
Which is why technophiles are leading figures among terrorists and
kids and sex workers and drug users and political radicals. The kids who
left Facebook for Instagram weren't looking for the Next Big Thing;
they were looking for a social media service that their parents and
teachers didn't use. The kids who were technophiles discovered Instagram
and the others followed their lead. They endured the hassle of learning
a new service and re-establishing social connections, because that
hassle was less than the hassle of staying on Facebook, subject to
scrutiny by the adult authorities in your life.
One corollary of this phenomenon is that technophile circles have
disproportionate numbers of socially disfavored people. If you're a
normie who just likes new tech, the services and systems you seek out
will have higher-than-baseline numbers of people into sex, as well as
radicals, kids, druggies and terrorists.
Another corollary of this phenomenon is that the founders of new
technologies will always start out by courting these marginal groups –
they are the vanguard, after all – and then, eventually, turn on them.
Sex workers know this story well. Sex workers' content and
transactions turned companies from Tumblr to Instagram, Paypal to Twitch
into multi-billion-dollar enterprises, whereupon these companies turned
on sex workers and kicked them off the platform, seizing their money
and destroying their creative work in the process.
No one knows this story better than Susie Bright, a pioneering
sex-positive, high-tech feminist author, critic, educator and performer.
Bright helped found the seminal lesbian magazine On Our Backs,
practically invented serious film criticism for pornographic videos,
edited many classic erotic books, and has used the courts to win justice
for many sex-positive causes.
Bright is also a technophile. I met her on The WELL, an early online
service, in the early 1990s. She was already a desktop publishing
pioneer by then (On Our Backs was the first magazine to be laid
out in Pagemaker). Since then, Bright has been at the forefront of
every technological development and human rights struggle for sex
workers.
mid.ru |Question: After your statement about the possibility
of a nuclear war, of the third world war, the whole world is asking: is
there a real risk of that happening?
Sergey Lavrov: It
looks like by the whole world you mean Western media and politicians.
This is not the first time I note how skillfully the West twists what
Russia’s representatives say. I was asked about the threats that are
currently growing and about how real the risk of the third world war is.
I answered literally the following: Russia has never ceased its efforts
to reach agreements that would guarantee the prevention of a nuclear
war. In recent years, it was Russia who has persistently proposed to its
American colleagues that we repeat what Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald
Reagan did in 1987: adopt a statement reaffirming that there can be no
winners in a nuclear war, and therefore it must never be unleashed.
We failed to
convince the Trump Administration, because it had its own ideas on this
issue. However, the Biden Administration agreed to our proposal. In June
2021, at a meeting between President of Russia Vladimir Putin and US
President Joseph Biden in Geneva a statement was adopted on the
inadmissibility of a nuclear war. Let me stress: this was done at our
initiative.
In January
2022, five permanent members of the UN Security Council adopted a
similar statement at the highest level, also at our initiative: there
can be no winners in a nuclear war. It must never be unleashed. In order
to achieve this goal, President Vladimir Putin proposed convening a
summit of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. This
proposal was supported by our Chinese colleagues and France. The United
States and the United Kingdom, which always defers to it, are holding
back this important event for the time being.
After I said
this, I urged everyone to exercise utmost caution not to escalate the
existing threats. I was referring to the statement made by President
Vladimir Zelensky in February that it had been a mistake for Ukraine to
give up its nuclear weapons and it was necessary to acquire them again.
There was also a statement made by the leadership of Poland about their
readiness to deploy American nuclear weapons on their territory, and
much more.
Somehow there
were no questions from the media about the statements made by Vladimir
Zelensky and Poland. Or after the statement by Foreign Minister of
France Jean-Yves Le Drian, who said suddenly: Let us not forget that
France also has nuclear weapons. This is what I was talking about. When
Western journalists take words out of context and distort the meaning of
what I or other Russian representatives actually said, this does them
no credit.
Question: Several days ago, President Vladimir Putin said Russia had “unparalleled weapons.” What did he mean?
Sergey Lavrov: Everyone
knows this well. Three years ago, during his Address to the Federal
Assembly, President Vladimir Putin presented the latest Russian
innovations. First of all, these included hypersonic weapons. He gave a
frank and detailed explanation that Russia began developing them after
the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Back
then President George W. Bush, answering the question why his country
was destroying this essential document, which ensured global stability
to a large extent, told President Vladimir Putin they were going to
withdraw from the treaty to create an anti-missile system that would not
be aimed against Russia. He said they were concerned about North Korea
and Iran, and “you can do whatever you want in response.” They will also
consider this as not aimed against the United States.
We had no
choice but to work on hypersonic weapons because we knew perfectly well
that the US missile defence system would not be aimed at North Korea and
Iran but against Russia and then China. We needed weapons that were
guaranteed to overpower missile defences. Otherwise, a country that has
missile defence systems and offensive weapons may be tempted to launch
the first strike thinking that a response will be suppressed by its
missile defence systems.
This is how
we developed these weapons. They are described in detail in specialised
publications. We don’t hide that we have them. We were even ready to
hold talks with the US on including a discussion on the new systems that
have already been developed or will be developed in the future in the
treaty on strategic stability that would replace the current New START.
Today the Americans have suspended all these talks. We will rely on our
own resources.
Question: When
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was visiting Kiev, the city was
hit by missile strikes. What would you say in response to Western media
and President Vladimir Zelensky who regard these strikes as a
provocation against the UN?
Sergey Lavrov: We
gave constant warnings. When he announced the launch of the special
military operation, President Vladimir Putin said it will be aimed
against the military infrastructure in Ukraine used to oppress civilians
in the east of the country and create a threat to the security of
Russia. They know very well that we are attacking military targets in
order to deprive the Ukrainian radicals and the Kiev regime of the
opportunity to receive reinforcements in the form of weapons and
ammunition.
On the other
hand, I have not heard President Vladimir Zelensky say a word about a
situation that is in no way related to either a military plant (whatever
it is called) or any other military facilities. I mean the Tochka-U
missile strikes at the centre of Donetsk over the recent weeks, or the
civil railway station in Kramatorsk and several other places, including
Kherson (just the day before yesterday). The reason for these strikes
was clearly to terrorise civilians and prevent the people living in
these regions from deciding their fate. The majority of people there are
tired from the oppression they have been suffering all these years from
the Kiev regime, which is increasingly becoming a tool in the hands of
neo-Nazis, the United States and its closest allies.
Those who
came to power after a bloody unconstitutional coup launched a war
against their own people and against everything Russian, banning the
Russian language, education, and media. They adopted laws promoting Nazi
theories and practice. We have warned them. All our warnings met a wall
of silence. As we understand now, back then the West led by the United
States already intended to encourage the Ukrainian leaders (Petr
Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky, who came after him) in every possible
way in their desire to create threats for Russia.
Our warnings
issued in November and December 2021 about the need to stop NATO’s
reckless expansion to the east and agree on security guarantees that
that will not be related to the accession of new countries to the
military-political bloc were rejected. I would even say the answer we
received was not very polite: “It’s none of your business,” “we will
expand NATO as we wish,” and “we won’t ask for your permission.”
At the same
time, the Ukrainian regime gathered about 100,000 troops along the
conflict line with Donbass and intensified strikes thus violating the
Minsk agreements and the ceasefire. We had no choice but to recognise
these two republics, sign an agreement on mutual assistance with them
and, upon their request, defend them from the militarists and Nazis who
are flourishing in today’s Ukraine.
Question: This
is how you see it, while Vladimir Zelensky puts it differently. He
believes denazification doesn’t make any sense. He is a Jew. The Nazis,
Azov – there are very few of them (several thousand). Vladimir Zelensky
refutes your view of the situation. Do you believe Vladimir Zelensky is
an obstacle to peace?
Sergey Lavrov: It
makes no difference to me what President Vladimir Zelensky refutes or
does not refute. He is as fickle as the wind, as they say. He can change
his position several times a day.
I heard him
say that they would not even discuss demilitarisation and denazification
during peace talks. First, they are torpedoing the talks just as they
did the Minsk agreements for eight years. Second, there is nazification
there: the captured militants as well as members of the Azov and Aidar
battalions and other units wear swastikas or symbols of Nazi Waffen-SS
battalions on their clothes or have them tattooed on their bodies; they
openly read and promote Mein Kampf. His argument is: How can there be
Nazism in Ukraine if he is a Jew? I may be mistaken but Adolf Hitler had
Jewish blood, too. This means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish
people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews. “Every
family has its black sheep,” as we say.
As for Azov,
there is evidence being published now confirming that the Americans and
especially the Canadians played a leading role in training the
ultra-radical and clearly neo-Nazi units in Ukraine. During all these
years, the goal was to insert neo-Nazis into the regular Ukrainian
troops. Thus, the Azov fighters would play a leading role in every unit
(battalion or regiment). I read such reports in Western media. The fact
that the Azov battalion is clearly a neo-Nazi unit was recognised by the
West without any hesitation until the situation in early 2022, when
they began to change their minds as if on cue. Japan even apologised to
Azov recently for having listed it as a terrorist organisation a few
years ago because of its neo-Nazi ideology.
Journalists
(from some Western media outlet) interviewed Vladimir Zelensky and asked
him what he thought about Azov and the ideas that Azov preaches and
puts into practice. He said there were many such battalions and “they
are what they are.” I would like to emphasise that this phrase – “they
are what they are” – was cut out by the journalist and it was not
included in the interview that was aired. This means the journalist
understands what this person says and thinks. He thinks about how the
neo-Nazis can be used to fight Russia.
Question: There
are several thousand or perhaps tens of thousands of neo-Nazi
militants. Can their presence excuse the denazification of a country
with the population of 40 million? There are such battalions as the
Wagner Group, who also draw inspiration from neo-Nazi ideas, serving
with the Russian troops.
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