REALINEAMIENTOS

¿Para dónde irá la Argentina en la actual turbulencia internacional?

 

Por Charles H. Slim

El mundo nunca ha estado tan interconectado como lo esta hoy y quienes lo habitamos, y en especial los gobiernos deberían estar más conscientes de los problemas que nos incumben a todos sin distinciones de nacionalidad, etnias ni religiones, pero la sordera y los engaños siguen siendo la pauta en las relaciones internacionales, un serio problema para lograr establecer soluciones en común.

La Argentina actual no es una excepción y en realidad nunca lo fue. Sus políticos han creído que los valores agregados de las vastas riquezas de su territorio, los recursos naturales y su situación geográfica eran suficiente para presentar a su país como una potencia digna de créditos sin condicionamientos. Bueno, estaban equivocados y hoy lo están sintiendo en carne viva.

Al ver tan solo como se halla la situación institucional se podría decir que más que un país, existen veinticuatro ya que, ese es el número de provincias que conforman el sistema de reparto territorial de tipo federal. Prueba de esto es el desdibujado y parco papel del presidente de la república Alberto Fernández quien solo ha servido para poner en evidencia la escuálida y débil situación institucional y política en la que se halla el estado argentino. Tanto es así que en Pekín y Washington se han hecho la misma pregunta ¿Con quién debemos tratar?

Pero a esto hay que inevitablemente sumarle el contexto internacional que tiene efecto sobre toda la economía global y que ciertamente impacta con mayor agudeza sobre las economías más precarias y poco desarrolladas, entre ellas la de la Argentina.

Esto no significa validar las exageraciones del presidente Fernández que alude para excusar su calamitosa gestión hablando de la pandemia ni de la guerra en Ucrania y ello por el simple motivo de que en ninguno de estos casos hubo un involucramiento directo que justifique esos argumentos. Si nos referimos a la pandemia por el contrario, la falta de recursos para gestionar soluciones y la falta de medios logísticos para transporte de elementos sanitarios como las vacunas, no fue por la pandemia en sí, sino por una incompetencia demostrada con la desestructuración de su Fuerza Aérea ejecutada por su propia gente y la notable falta de inversión en las áreas críticas del país. 

Pero en este particular momento, por estas horas, no solo la Argentina está en una crisis. En lo particular que ocurre con Argentina no es otra cosa que la reedición de un drama lacrimógeno en el que los argentinos son protagonistas y siguen incurriendo de manera cíclica como en aquella película del día de la marmota. A ello se suma el mundo en vilo ante una escalada que se puede advertir con las maniobras militares más grandes que la OTAN llevara a cabo desde su fundación en 1949.

¿Y en qué puede afectar esto a la Argentina? Primero que todo, el país tiene una base de la OTAN en el atlántico sur a menos de 300 kilómetros de su costa patagónica y a la vez, una base de comunicaciones de la república popular China. Con este tablero, Buenos Aires no puede escaparse por la tangente con su acostumbrada neutralidad y sin excusas deberá tomar partido. El gobierno se aferrará como sea para lograr un apoyo de China mientras que la oposición brega por regresar a la órbita de EEUU.

Profundizando en esto preguntemos por qué el 17 de abril pasado llego -aunque se diga que estaba programada- sin aviso la Jefa del Comando sur (SOUTHCOM) la generala Laura Richardson para entrevistarse con el presidente Fernández y su responsable del ministerio de defensa Guillermo Taiana, que dicho sea de paso no fue una visita social ni tampoco para reafirmar los marcos de cooperación institucional entre el Pentágono y unas Fuerzas Armadas inoperativas por un abandono propiciado por sus gobiernos.

Las tratativas por acceder a los aviones chinos JF-17 con la posible instalación de una fábrica para su producción nacional, la cooperación estratégica satelital mediante tecnología que proporcionaría la firma china NORINCO y la construcción de un puerto multipropósito en Ushuaia es sin dudas la base de esta visita, aunque ciertamente se enmarca en una situación política mucho más amplia y compleja de interés para Washington y sus socios de la OTAN que abarca otras áreas más allá de la relación bilateral y hemisférica.

No hay perder de vista que el escenario de la actual guerra entre EEU-OTAN contra Rusia, no se reduce a la Europa del este ni tampoco a la potencial extensión de este al Mar de la China. Todo el mundo es un teatro de operaciones no declarado y es por ello que Washington esta tratando de unificar las lealtades en todo el hemisferio ante una posible escalada no convencional que no solo implicaría el uso de armas nucleares sino de las silenciosas e invisibles armas biológico-químicas.

Las posibilidades de este tétrico escenario se potencian con un posible fracaso de un intento de contraofensiva de las fuerzas ucranianas que podría lanzarse en breve. Según fuentes de inteligencia, Joe Biden y su gente no están dispuestos a que eso pase y mucho menos que la guerra tenga un final abrupto.

El espectro geopolítico se está moviendo rápidamente y aunque Buenos Aires no lo quiera es parte del mismo. La OTAN esta programando mega ejercicios militares tanto en Europa como en el Asia-Pacífico con una velada y advertible intensión que no tiene nada de pacífica. Se trata de una gigantesca provocación dirigida particularmente a China, principal rival de los intereses de EEUU.

En lo regional, al Departamento de Estado lo que realmente preocupa son los acercamientos políticos y las tratativas comerciales para llevar las actividades de inversión chinas tanto para desarrollo de infraestructura sobre la Hidrovía en el río Paraná como la extracción del Litio que se extienden tanto en el norte argentino como en Chile y Bolivia.

El posicionamiento de Brasil y su abierto cuestionamiento a la subordinación del dólar para el comercio exterior en boca de su presidente en la última cumbre del BRICS saco de quicio a los burócratas de Washington quienes ven en eso un peligroso eje en el que se alinean Brasilia, Pekín y Moscú. En este contexto a los norteamericanos les interesa que Brasil no arrastre a sus vecinos y en especial a la Argentina que tiene una importante presencia china en su territorio. 

Como no podía ser de otro modo, los sectores liberales y libertarios argentinos (políticos, medios y empresariales) quienes forman parte del llamado círculo rojo, se alinean incondicionalmente detrás de Washington y es por ello que aplauden con entusiasmo las visitas de estos altos exponentes del poder estadounidense con la esperanza de que sea la solución para una crisis marcada por una explosión de los precios de los bienes básicos y una trepada rampante del dólar que está licuando los salarios de los argentinos.

En resumen de cuentas se puede intuir que una parte del gobierno está tratando de reforzar el alineamiento con China mientras que la oposición compuesta por un rejunte de oportunistas y conversos que hoy se declaran liberales buscan pulsear por EEUU ¿Viene un menemismo del siglo XXI?

 

 

 

BOND'S FAULT

The fatal flaws of the Ukrainian intelligence services SBU would be responsible for Russia's entry into Ukraine and suggest further failures to come, but who runs the SBU?

By Sir Charlattam

When someone wants to take the blame for something, they will accuse someone else, even if it is notoriously wrong. Governments do the same thing all the time, regardless of nationality, and that includes the British government. We can say that this is part of human nature, so we do not apply it to a particular nationality. A few days ago an American media report charged that Russia's success in its incursion into Ukraine was due to the work of Ukrainian SBU double agents who in turn served the FSB and the Russian SVR.

As quoted in this article (https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-double-agent-russian-invasion-fsb-intelligence-operatives/ ), the Americans are surprised by these Russian "moles" and even somehow try to argue that Moscow's penetration into Ukraine predated the launch of Special Operation Z, as if this was the reason for the capture of important strategic points in the country. Clever and witty indeed, but this argument fails to explain Washington's position and the interference that the Americans and their partners have been having inside Ukraine.

If Russian intelligence was operating under Kiev's nose, why did NATO-controlled counter-intelligence fail to disrupt the Russian network?

It is worth remembering that when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in July 1991, not only did NATO remain intact, but Washington continued its creeping advance eastwards. They were obviously already discreetly in Ukraine establishing contacts, but they were there. At that very moment both the Americans and the MI6 boys set their sights on Russia because Ukraine has always been the strategically important point of penetration into Russian domains. Do you think the Russians didn't know that, why would they allow their Western partners to play dirty in their backyard?

This makes it clear that the issue in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022 or even after the coup d'état of February 2014, or even after the so-called colour revolution of November 2004. All these are just episodes of the same cause and executed by the same hand that takes us back to that 1991 when the Soviet Union was crumbling and I would even dare to think that the first steps were already being taken after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which by the way did not fall because of the magic words of Ronald Reagan.

Of course, from London, our parliamentary politicians looked down from the lectern and, like servile seconds, held out their hands to a George H. Bush who, embarking on the final stages of a planned war in the Persian Gulf, declared on 11 September 1990 that a "New World Order" was being born.

So in London they immediately turned to Washington for instructions and cried out What can we do for you? In what they do best.

Intrigue and deception is the Foreign Office's best known business or rather, they run that business as it is run by the boys in MI6, MI5 and resources of the SAS and SBS (Naval Intelligence Division) who in turn are subservient to the games of the American CIA. I'm not saying anything new that they don't know in Whitehall, let alone Vauxhall. All the talents were supposedly put on standby under NATO's wing but were never disconnected. Indeed, during the romance of Perestroika that disconnection was partial and apparent as many sections continued to operate in the breakaway republics that sought to break away from Moscow's administrative and political control at a time when political and economic crisis was devouring Russia. Chechnya and Dagestan were specific examples of such operations, supporting first the pro-independence and then the Islamists who - despite being labelled terrorists - were sheltered in London.

The dangers to peace were not extinguished by Fleming's James Bond and certainly not by the real-life archetype of the British agent operating for governmental shenanigans. On the contrary, what a boon to stability and world peace British intelligence gave British intelligence by cooperating for decades (and secretly) with neo-Nazi groups and mafia criminals in Eastern Europe with the fixation of screwing Russia. While the government propaganda machine was intoxicating the minds of Western citizens with a tuxedoed Bond and an unstirred milkshake drink who didn't muss his hair when fighting, the real, silent, shadowy British agent was contacting sinister Ukrainian ex-Nazis and their puppies who jumped the fence to work on our side against the USSR.

With the collaboration of reformer Mikhail Gorbachev and the subsequent ramshackle management of Boris Yeltsin, the opportunity to fragment and carve up the spoils of an impoverished Russia came within a millimetre of being achieved. Through the cracks of that fragmentation crept MI6 and the CIA working tirelessly to achieve their goals that were not and never will be for the benefit of the Russians. Bond's cunning and charm were supposed to have opened the doors of the Kremlin itself to Britain. Why did they fail to achieve those aims? No doubt it was the appearance of Vladimir Putin.

There are no manners or glitter with today's agents operating abroad. The reality is more cruel and revealing than any spy movie and the reality is that there was never any glamour. The dirty deeds and intelligence methodology did not, do not and will not appear to have anything democratic about them. Russia knows how far the British can go in their games and Syria (with the use of chemical weapons) was a field of glaring evidence of this.

Today MI6 is refining its tactics to dangerous levels to play dirty in the midst of the NATO-Russia struggle. There is little difference between one of them and mere football hooligans. The problem is that they serve the British government supposedly for the security and defence of the UK, but in reality we remain the caboose of White House decisions and NATO plans. At the end of the day, when it all goes wrong and things turn against us, who will Downing Street hold responsible?

 

 

STRATEGICALLY GIFTED

Why is Argentina a country without a destiny of its own?

 

By Sidney Hey

If the capitals in some way reflect the general situation in their countries, when you arrive in Buenos Aires there is no doubt that you can sense a situation that could be seen in Central America in the late seventies and mid-eighties, when political and economic instability was mixed with guerrilla violence. It is true, there does not seem to be such political violence here, although insecurity due to the absence of authoritative leadership and lack of direction and the penetration of drug trafficking seems to be looming large.

What has happened to Argentina? The collapse of its economy can be felt in the streets. The capital city is less than a reflection of its former self. Walking through the streets of the Retiro neighbourhood, the closed businesses, the squalor of the settlements in front of its bus terminal and the rampant crime that lurks around Plaza San Martin and the English Clock, paints a sepia-coloured picture.

There I understood why many businessmen and commercial representatives from other countries were arriving, which I happened to spot when I arrived at Ezeiza after my little holiday with mates in “Horbat”. It's not that I think it's wrong or that I have the moral high ground for this criticism, it's just that it looked like a flock of vultures circling a dying prey; when I saw the situation with my own eyes I understood why.

All this reflects a political weakness that (and let no one doubt it) will be exploited by speculators and the local financial sectors and those who are coming to the country to buy everything for a handful of dollars. I think Argentines have already seen this and it was not so long ago. Those who are over forty years old know this very well. The so-called “Menemist” era of the 1990s, characterised by the hasty and indiscriminate opening up to foreign capital, making Argentines believe that privatisation was the panacea to solve all problems, was a demonstration of what should not be repeated.

But this is a country of stark political contrasts and of course they are not spontaneous. Here one day there is a nationalist movement and the next day its referents have become as liberal as the Lib Dems of London themselves and all depending on where the money comes from. The same is true of their geopolitical positioning.

What we will certainly not find here are British socialist liberals such as Jeremy Corbin or Irish politicians such as former Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who are honouring intellectual honesty even against the most dangerous interests. On the contrary, in Argentina, those who call themselves liberals and democrats support aberrations such as Israeli apartheid and Washington's unjustifiable hegemonist policies, and it is these same people who have been encouraging Israel to be taken as a model to imitate.   

The ideological contradiction was in moving from an elephantine welfare state in the middle of the last century that had been created by Peronism itself to a failed attempt to shrink that state by handing over important strategic sectors to foreign hands. Certainly, the Americans, British and Germans can be very grateful to the Peronist Carlos Menem, because thanks to his privatisation bungling, seconded by the economy minister Domingo Cavallo, they pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars in just a couple of years without making risky, let alone lasting, investments.

On that occasion Argentina did not change its geopolitical weight at all and continued to decline.

Peronism masked in new rags returned alternately in 2003 and 2019, but the problems not only remain the same, but have worsened. The myth that “Peronists know how to manage real power” is now seen to have been just that, a myth. Your president is not a genetic Peronist (even if he claims to be one), although he is not the only one of his kind. Those who claim to be pure Peronist leaders are not pure Peronists either, as they should be almost a hundred years old, and what is least convenient for a country in crisis is a gerontocracy of corrupt first-timers.

It is safe to say that what is called “Peronism” is an empty cardboard box. What can you find inside an empty box? Some direct their Peronist hopes to the one they call “boss”, Mrs Cristina Fernández, but in the prospect of social reality, her followers are much less than some pollsters report. Looking at it from a bird's eye view you can only see a motley crew of “superstars” or “divas” more concerned with the attention they seek to arouse in others than with addressing the severe problems afflicting their country. Such is the degree of atomisation and ideological mutations in this (dissociated) society that it would be very difficult to make a study of anthropogeography. If I were asked for an opinion, I would say that they have no future as an option to be considered.

I do not agree with those who say that several of its exponents, especially the “PRO” of former president Macri and some candidates of progressive radicalism are the “bishops” of some embassies in Buenos Aires, mainly from the USA, Great Britain and in some cases Israel. Indistinctly those who represent the "libertarians" and even the old-smelling classical liberals are intertwined, or better said, threaded with the same thread. There is no doubt that all of them -to different degrees and nuances- have an affinity with each of these foreign actors, but to believe that the governments of these countries designate them as their political agents to operate within the country is a little more difficult to believe. This does not mean that Washington in particular is concerned about the power vacuum that is emerging, especially when the Brazilian government of Lula Da Silva has given clear signs of its geopolitical positioning in favour of the BRICS, and this translates into China and Russia.

Argentina's is just like door frame. Current reality shows an institutional weakness that should not surprise us since the state's foundations are so corroded by decades of degradation that they resemble a necrotic state.

Geopolitically, Argentina is an invisible entity, it is like a big hole in the Southern Cone and today, in several foreign capitals, they are planning to take its place, to inject it with financial funds that in appearance will revive the republic; but it will not be for free. As I was leaving this wonderful country for my quarters on the great island of “Oz”, I said to myself in the form of a question: “See you forever?”

 

 

RESOURCES

BLOODY

A video of an alleged beheading of a Ukrainian soldier could be something much more than revenge in a vicious war Are gory proxy productions making a comeback?

 

By Sidney Hey

When the US media broadcast a video showing alleged PMC Wagner soldiers cutting off the head of a Ukrainian soldier, I could not help but be reminded of the horrible image of Iraq in 2004, when similar videos began to spread of the beheading of the unfortunate (never American) at the hands of alleged “insurgents” or “Al Qaeda” Islamists, which ten years later “ISIS” would make a central part of its propaganda. That was nothing more than a hoax by Anglo-American intelligence proxies that, while real in the execution itself, was not executed by those it purported to show.

Ordinary citizens have matured and the passage of time has taught them how far their government can go to manipulate them. Beheadings were presented -very conveniently and deliberately- by the Anglo-American media as the hallmark of “Islamist terrorism”. That, in addition to being an excuse to maintain the occupation, was the most important and Machiavellian rehearsal of what we know today as “hybrid warfare”. I have no doubt that here we are in something similar to what was done repeatedly in Iraq (with the ISIS hoax) and then tried to be replicated in Syria; the only thing that changes is the scenario, nothing else.

But is the sudden appearance of this video a coincidence, or is it rather a response to key events played out by PMC Wagner? Without mincing words, the mercenaries of this private Russian company are a pain in the ass for the AFU, let alone the foreign mercenaries recruited by the CIA and MI-6. The announcement by the leader of this group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, of the capture of the administrative centre of the city of Artemovsk by placing flags of the group and of the Russian Federation was a devastating blow to the morale of the AFU and also to the Atlanticist advisors who closely follow the operations on the ground. But the bad news does not stop there. The Wagner PMCs are also advancing relentlessly along the entire Donetsk Oblaz line, one of the latest strategic conquests being the Zaliznyanskoye settlement. How could they try to turn this situation around?

The staging and realism would be explained by the duplication of uniforms and insignia depicting PMC men played by foreign butchers posing as experienced Russians (from Iraq and Syria). Added to this, the impossibility of observing identifying features on these supposed Russian soldiers raises many suspicions about who these killers really are. If we look back a few years we see several similar hoaxes in which intelligence agencies produced audio-visual hoaxes such as the videos of a supposed Osama Bin Laden dubbed by impostors and the grand theatrical operation of his “assassination in Abbottabad, Pakistan” in may 2011. And that's where the more interesting questions begin. Why couldn't these guys be ISIS assets hired for these gruesome productions? To answer who their contractors are, for those who know where this fake Islamist franchise came from, would be redundant.

The release of this video does not seem coincidental. Even looking at the context of the place where it took place, it seems to show a very different season than the current one; more precisely, this vile act would have been carried out in spring or perhaps last summer (2022), so why is it being published now? Let's leave aside the supposed concern for brutality and inhumanity that the media like CNN, the BBC and the whole spectrum of media outlets that depend on Wall Street and the City of London. It's that the cheque has to come in every month if you want a story tailored to the government.

If we give a vote of confidence to these discredited media we must ask them where are the videos showing similar crimes carried out by Ukrainian Nazi extremists against Russian soldiers or even those carried out against pregnant Russian-speaking Ukrainian women in the Donbass? As the sense of humanity is very peculiar and random for liberal democracies, I anticipate that they will not want to give an answer.

The impact of seeing a human being beheaded is significantly horrifying, but also, its impact is psychologically exploitable for those who seek to demonise their enemy. Undoubtedly the image of PMC Wagner is being discredited. Because it has proven to be an important and effective backbone of Russian forces. When the administration of George Bush and Dick Cheney needed to cling to power amidst great questioning over the inconsistencies shown by the occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the losses from resistance operations, the CIA and military intelligence battalions under then General David Petraeus digitised counter-intelligence actions involving the actions of fake Islamists including “Al Qaeda-Iraq” and its successor in the charade, the “Islamic State of Iraq”. In the same muck was aligned the smiling Tony Blair who gladly and unscrupulously allowed the same dirty tactics to develop that would look like a bloody and indiscriminate insurgency that if not contained could leap into Europe.

Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq which had been hushed up, Russia can not only stand up to the dirty tricks and media censorship of the West but also gather evidence and bring it to the attention of international bodies which in turn have demonstrated a shocking opacity if we can in any way describe their incompetence.

What this video shows is perhaps one of thousands of episodes of the brutality of war or the falsification of a crime intended to sully the face of PMC Wagner, an outstanding tactical revelation on the battlefield that has shattered the expectations of NATO's masterminds.

The logic of this is clear and the message it conveys is “the Russians are evil and only the Russians are evil” and thus takes the other crimes committed by both regular army units and neo-Nazi groups led by NATO advisors out of the picture.