http://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/14/can-the-world-avert-a-new-cold-war
Consortiumnews.com – November 14, 2014
Can the World Avert a New Cold War?By Annie Machon————————–Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service (the U.S. counterpart is the FBI). She is also a British member of Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.————————–The West is charging off into a new Cold War with Russia under banners of hypo-crisy, from charges of “expansionism” to complaints about disrespect for individual rights. This lack of balance could have grave consequences for the world, says former British intelligence officer Annie Machon.Last weekend, I was invited onto RT to do an interview about the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, particularly focusing on the speech delivered by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, during his visit to Berlin.I would like to expand on some of the topics I mentioned – how to encapsulate an alternative geopolitical perspective different from the Western orthodoxy in under four minutes? A task even Monty Python would find challenging!The first issue was Gorbachev’s recent comments about the dangers of a new Cold War arising around the crisis in Ukraine. Though there are a variety of geopolitical factors involved in these new East-West tensions, the front line of this new Cold War remains the Internet, which emerged in the 1990s – after the original Cold War ended – as an outlet for political diversity circumventing the traditional gatekeepers for information.In the 1990s, the United States had a golden opportunity – in fact a perfect storm of opportunities to assert its global hegemony. It was the last superpower left standing in a newly unipolar world, history had supposedly ended and capitalism had triumphed. The Soviet Union had disintegrated and the newly shorn Russia was tottering, its vast national wealth being assiduously asset-stripped by the globalized neocon élite and its economic “shock therapy.”Simultaneously, the new World Wide Web was exponentially growing and the key pioneers were predominantly American companies. After a panicked phase of playing catch-up to the Internet’s exhilarating burst of democratization, Western spy agencies saw the potential for total mastery of the Internet, creating a surveillance panopticon, a single location from which a watchman can observe all inmates of an institution without them knowing they are being watched. In this case, the institution was the entire planet and the inmates were the world’s people. It was an opportunity that the KGB or the Stasi could only have fantasized about. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we are now beginning to get glimpses of the full horror of the surveillance under which we all now live.Building on the old Echelon model, which was so nearly overthrown in Europe back in July 2001, the National Security Agency suborned, bought and prostituted other intelligence agencies across Europe to do its bidding. Germany, at the nexus of east and west Europe, remains a front line in this battle, with the BND possibly working unconstitutionally to do the NSA’s bidding, even apparently to the detriment of its own national interest. Some politicians and many hacktivists are fighting back.Reneging on a Deal …Why the Meddling? …King Dollar …A Patient BearThe Russian bear is being baited, increasingly surrounded by yapping curs. I thought this sport had been made illegal hundreds of years ago, at least in Europe – but obviously not in the dirty realm of international politics. It is a marvel that the bear has not lashed out more in the face of such provocation.There was a chance for peace when the Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago. If the United States had upheld its side of the gentlemen’s agreement about not expanding NATO, if the neocon “shock therapy” predators had not pounced on a weakened post-Soviet Russia, and if closer integration could have been achieved with Europe, the future could have been rosy.Unfortunately, I have to agree with Gorbachev – we are indeed facing a new Cold War, and this time it is clearly of America’s making. But Europe will bear the brunt, through trade sanctions, energy shortages and even, potentially, war. It is time we Europeans broke away from our American vassalage and looked to our own future. — emphasis, m.z. —————–Martin Zeisglobalcrisis/globalchange Newsmartin.zeis@gmxpro.net
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Can the World Avert a New Cold War?
By Annie Machon
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