Quote:On May 23, 42 Arab military and security officials attending the third annual Moscow International Security Conference were briefed by a team of top Russian government officials on the growing danger of "color revolutions." The uniform message presented by the Russian speakers was that the United States and NATO have adopted a new mode of warfare, focused on the use of irregular warfare forces, religious fanatics, and mercenaries, combined with the heavy use of information warfare. In a series of English language power-point graphs and maps, presenters gave a detailed chronology of the past decade, highlighting Western regime change operations in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Russian officials and several Belarus counterparts argued that the U.S. and Western allies have devised a new form of warfare which is cheaper than all former modes of large-scale conventional warfare, produces fewer casualties, but seeks to achieve the same regime change objectives. They argued that this new form of irregular warfare violates the Geneva conventions, draws civilian populations directly into conflicts, and violates other traditional rules of war. They also asserted that the efforts have frequently failed, leading to widespread instability and the global spread of terrorism. The Russian speakers argued that, while the US and other Western powers profess to oppose terrorism, the consequences of their "color revolutions" have frequently bolstered the very terrorist organizations they are simultaneously combating.

Russian speakers on the May 23 panel were among the leading military and diplomatic aides to President Vladimir Putin: Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff General Valery Gerasimov, Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Nikolay Bordirzha, Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff General Vladimir Zarudnitsky, and Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Bogdanov. Belarus Minister of Defense Yury Zhadobin was also a prominent speaker.
RIA Novosti quoted Foreign Minister Lavrov warning: "Regime change operations in sovereign states, various color revolutions' provoked by external forces, cause apparent damage to international stability. Attempts to impose homemade recipes for internal changes on other nations, without taking into account their own traditions and national characteristics, to engage in the export of democracy,' have a destructive impact on international relations and result in an increase of the number of hot spots on the world map."

Dr. Anthony Cordesman, the American military analyst who holds the Burke Chair on Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, attended the Moscow conference and issued a 52-page report, based on his own notes with copies of many of the Russian power-point charts. He titled his report "A Russian Military View of a World Destabilized by the US and the West." He said that American security officials must take careful note of the views expressed at the Moscow international conference because they inform Russian strategic moves, including a serious effort to re-establish strong ties to Arab regimes in the Middle East, starting with Egypt. He warned American strategists that the Russian assessment marks a serious change on the part of Moscow:

"The end result is a radically different reading of modern history, of US and European strategy, their use of force, and US and European goals and actions from any issued in the West and in prior Russian literature. Western experts can argue the degree to which this represents Russian anger over the West's reaction to events in Ukraine, Russian efforts at persuading developing nations and Asia to back Russia in a reassertion of its strategic role in the world, propaganda to cloak the character Russian actions in the Ukraine and near abroad, an effort to justify Russian action in Syria, very real Russian concern over US and European actions that have destabilized key MENA and Central Asian states, and a host of other possible motives and intentions.

"What is critical is that the US and Europe listen to what Russian military leaders and strategists are saying. These are not Russian views the US and Europe can afford to ignore."

This harsh reassessment coincides with the development of Russia's new strategic economic and security agreements with China. If the Russia-China partnership matures and expands to encompass India and other nations of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) at the upcoming summit in Brazil in July, this could mean the beginning of a new bipolar world order. Such a new bipolar system would be drastically different than the Cold War era, but would nonetheless mean a new period of strategic competition and simmering conflict.

Paul Rigby Wrote:Outstanding speech (with English subtitles), not least on the subject of Ukraine:

[video=vimeo;98184722]http://vimeo.com/98184722[/video]

Quote:Wagenknecht has argued that the Left Party must pursue radical and anticapitalist goals, thereby remaining distinct from the more moderate Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Green Party. She has criticized the Left Party's participation in coalition governments, especially the Berlin state government, which has made cuts to social spending and privatized some services.[SUP][6][/SUP]
She has expressed strong support for the rise of left-wing leaders in Latin America, such as Hugo Chávez.[SUP][7][/SUP] She serves as a spokesperson for the Venezuela Avanza solidarity network, and she is an alternate on the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Mercosur.[SUP][4][/SUP]

Keith Millea Wrote:

Paul Rigby Wrote:Outstanding speech (with English subtitles), not least on the subject of Ukraine:

I don't know that woman but I would vote for her in a nano-second........

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Quote:Britain and the USA have come far closer to open armed combat with each other in modern times than most people realise. In many ways, this was the biggest war in modern history that never happened.

Tired of being told about a special relationship' that didn't seem to me to exist and which nobody in Washington has ever heard of I decided to look into what really went on between our two countries.

And I found plenty of things which will shock anyone used to the standard shoulder to shoulder' sentimental view of the links between London and Washington.

And, as I researched the subject for a BBC Radio 4 programme, I came across a rare and long- hidden sound archive that will, I think, surprise all who listen to it.

In the silence of a library at America's Princeton University, the ancient tape-recording begins to play, and the gruff voice of Admiral Arleigh Burke speaks from beyond the grave.

The librarian and I are the first people to have listened to it since it was made in January 1966.
Burke, one of the US Navy's greatest fighting sailors, is recalling a conversation with John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's Secretary of State. Dulles has just wondered out loud if there is any way to stop Britain's Fleet from launching its attack on Suez in 1956.

Admiral Burke describes his reply: And I said, "Mr Secretary, there is only one way to stop them. We can stop them. But we will blast the hell out of them." '

He [Dulles] said, "Can't you stop them some other way?"

I said, "No, if we're going to threaten, if we're going to turn on them, then you've got to be ready to shoot. I can't give these people orders to do something. They can't do it in the first place no matter who gives them orders to demand and then get laughed at. The only way you can stop them is to shoot. And we can do that. We can defeat them the British and the French and the Egyptians and the Israelis the whole goddam works of them we can knock off, if you want. But that's the only way to do it." '

He then sent orders to the admiral in charge of the US Sixth Fleet, Cat Brown. I gave him orders to go to sea, to be prepared for anything, to have his bombs up, to be checked out, so that we would be ready to fight either another naval force or against land targets, and to make sure of all his targeting data a little cautionary dispatch but it ended up to be prepared for any war eventuality.'

Cat Brown sent back, "Who's the enemy?"

And I sent back, "Don't take any guff from anybody." '

History records (though few know) that America's Sixth Fleet duly stalked our ships, fouling our sonar and radar, and shining their searchlights at French and British ships by night.

Admiral Sir Robin Durnford-Slater, second-in-command of Britain's Mediterranean Fleet, complained to his superiors: We have already twice intercepted US aircraft and there is constant danger of an incident. Have been continually menaced during past eight hours by US aircraft approaching low down as close as 4,000 yards and on two occasions flying over ships.'

General Sir Charles Keightley, commander of Middle East land forces, wrote afterwards: It was the action of the US which really defeated us in attaining our object.' He complained that the movements of the US Sixth Fleet endangered the whole of our relations with that country'.

Washington, in the end, pulled the plug on our Suez invasion by threatening a run on the Pound Sterling. But the naval clashes are barely known to the British or American public.

There is a wry footnote to this. Burke himself was honoured by having an entire class of destroyers named after him. And one of these the USS Winston S Churchill flies the British White Ensign alongside the Stars and Stripes, and usually carries a Royal Navy officer on her bridge.

We are so used to seeing those two flags flying side by side, that we forget they have not always done so.

The USA's national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, actually describes a British bombardment of Baltimore in 1813, and a less-frequently sung verse uses the words their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution'. To refer to us, the British invader.

Ancient history? Not really. Tough rivalry has been at the core of our relationship from the start. Border disputes about Canada and clashes in the Caribbean troubled both sides. After we built a commerce raider for the Confederates during the Civil War, the victorious North was so furious it demanded the whole of Canada as recompense eventually settling for the equivalent of several billion pounds.

In the years after the First World War, Britain was forced by a series of treaties to accept that the US Navy was catching up in size, power and global reach. In many ways the low point came in the 1930s. Many Americans, and most US politicians, mistrusted and disliked Britain as snobbish, untrustworthy and colonialist. They thought we had misled them into joining the First World War.
They were also angry that we had defaulted on our war debts. If we wanted to fight another European war, they said, we would have to pay for it ourselves and they were not joining in. This was not as now portrayed the view of a minority of pro-German Nazi sympathisers in the isolationist Mid-West.

In fact, it began among liberal-minded college students at Yale. Two future presidents John F Kennedy and Gerald Ford were supporters of the America First movement, which campaigned for the US to stay out and leave us to stew in our own juice. Another supporter was Yale president Kingman Brewster, who later became American ambassador to London.

Oddly enough, Americans know this it is all described in a powerful book by Lynne Olson, titled Those Angry Days, which was on US bestseller lists for months, but is unknown here. Not as unknown, though, as the secret drama which resulted from America's cold indifference to Britain's solitary plight in 1939 and 1940.

This episode is left out of all major histories. It concerns the transfer of the British Empire's entire life savings to North America, in a series of secret and frantic convoys.

The money was not just payment for war supplies. In the end, this huge handover of wealth, in gold and securities, was first used to get round Congressional rules forbidding us to buy war material on credit. The first ultra-secret shipment of gold actually went in the warships which accompanied George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their tour of Canada and the USA a few months before war broke out.

Later, increasingly heavy payments, most of which are still in vaults in Fort Knox, were used to persuade a bitter and unsentimental US Congress that Britain was so broke that if Congress did not support Lend-Lease (under which the US supplied Allied nations with defence materials), Hitler would win and they would face an untamed Germany across the Atlantic.

Semi-secret records, uncovered in the 1970s by the veteran journalist Alfred Draper, record the rapidly increasing tonnage of gold, usually carried by heavily armoured warships in small, fast convoys, being hurried to the USA via Canada.

We may never know how much went to the USA at least £500,000,000 at 1940 prices, an immense sum by any calculation of today's values. But by handing it to the USA we completely altered the balance of wealth between the old world and the new, for ever.

One particularly bitter incident caused Churchill to rage privately that America was acting like a bailiff seizing the goods of a bankrupt. Britain was brusquely ordered by Franklin Roosevelt to hand over all the gold we had gathered in South Africa. The American cruiser Louisville was dispatched to collect it, carefully floodlighting her neutral flag as she made her way across the South Atlantic.

British businesses in the USA, including the very profitable American Viscose, were sold off at knock-down prices. Churchill described these actions as harsh and painful', and wrote later: I had a feeling that these steps were taken to emphasise the hardship of our position and raise feeling against the Opponents of Lend-Lease.'

But at the time British diplomats in Washington had to use all their skill to persuade the premier to tear up a letter of great bitterness and reproach which he wanted to send to the President.

Canadian-born Lord Beaverbrook, then Minister of Aircraft Production and Churchill's close friend, wrote to the Prime Minister: They [the Americans] have conceded nothing. They have exacted payment to the uttermost for all they have done for us. They have taken our bases without valuable consideration. They have been given our secrets and offered us a thoroughly inadequate service in return.' All this was the background to the moving meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August 1941.

The BBC was able to find very rare sound archives of sailors from both American and British Navies, singing the hymn Onward Christian Soldiers as part of a joint service held on the decks of mighty warships from both nations.

But the seeming unity was a fake. Churchill once again was frustrated and disappointed by the meeting. The Atlantic Charter' that resulted threatened Britain's Empire and its Naval dominance, and the USA still would not join the war. In the end, in one of modern history's most awkward and unexpected facts, it would be Hitler who declared war on the USA, not the other way round.

This bleak unsentimentality was not accidental or isolated. It continued throughout the war and beyond. The Bretton Woods conference in 1944 made it clear the USA would usurp Britain's economic dominance once the war was over.

Britain's John Maynard Keynes fought hard to save something from the wreck but the USA's negotiator, Harry Dexter White, is now known to have been a secret Soviet agent who had no interest in helping Britain recover her former glory.

The interesting question is whether White would have behaved any less brutally if he hadn't been working for Stalin as well as Roosevelt.

The USA accepted our vital help with developing the atom bomb, then abruptly shut us out of its own post-war nuclear secrets, claiming it could not find a co-operation agreement made by Roosevelt and Churchill.

And so it continued, through Suez, to the present day, obscured by modern nuclear and espionage co-operation which is far more one-sided and less generous than it looks few realise that the USA offered Polaris missiles to France before it offered them to us.

And how much control do we really have over our modern Trident missiles. Are they even ours?
For me, the great revelation came one afternoon in Washington, back in 1994, when I took a phone call from a White House West Wing aide. She'd heard that I was worried about Bill Clinton's policy of laundering Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein.

President Clinton had given him a visa to visit the USA, and so handed him the respectability to move into mainstream politics, which he has exploited ever since.

The aide said that surely I recognised that America had the right to intervene in other countries to make peace as in …Yugoslavia.

I tried hard not to swear. Did she really think, I asked coldly, that Britain, the USA's greatest friend and oldest ally, was in the same category of countries as Yugoslavia?

In the long, embarrassed silence that followed, I realised that the answer was Yes'.
I have never since heard the words' Special Relationship' without laughing.