The news of world conflict grows more serious each day, or so it seems. What was a Ukraine crisis, has now been superseded by first a refugee emergency, and now a NATO-Russia potential for confrontation. However, even despite the growing discord in between the United States and her allies and the Russian sphere, there emerges a path to an “honorable peace.” I’ve unearthed documents and historically significant ideals for democracy, which tell of the only realistic possibility for solving the current crisis. What you are about to read, is a telling manifesto for peace in our world today. Please pay close attention.
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” – A. J. Liebling
The Premise
It is no secret in the West that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of commanding a “repressive regime,” of being a veritable Czar, with utter and complete control over every event in his country. Some even say Russia under Putin longs for a new Soviet Empire, a reestablishment of former territorial control over much of Europe. Some of those proclaiming they want peace, from Washington or London, they contend no true democracy reins in Russia today. President Barack Obama, members of the United States house and senate, parliamentarians from the UK and the EU, and all their supporting agencies of détente, preach human rights and the further democratization of Russia and the CIS, as the only true course to peace in our time. And it is true, the march of democracy has never been stronger.
As an American journalist, I can identify with the rhetoric Barack Obama or Senators like John McCain use, to infuse in the waiting public the notion, the concept, of how our world would be safer if Russia were simply more democratic. This side of the great debate today, it gains momentum in the ebb and flow of international relations. I’ve even discovered a document with 14 points, which should suffice to set our world straight, if only Mr. Putin and the Russian people would adhere to the principles set forth. Here are the 14 points western leaders like Obama, Cameron, and EU President Jean-Claude Juncker surely condone, as a solution to Russian inclusion among the great democracies of the world. For Russia to be truly democratic, she must ensure that:
1. The equality of all peoples of Russia and a real right for national development, self determination, self rule, and governmental independence.
2. Russia must confirm a popular worker front, before which the interests of the government are subordinate to the goals of raising the well-being and development of the nation.
3. She must preserve peace and the establishment of peaceful relations with all nations of the world, an provide for all round development of international collaboration.
4. Russia must take a wide range of government actions for the strengthening of the family and marriage. A true equality for women.
5. Russia must liquidate forced labor and grant to the laborers a real right to free labor which creates their material well-being, the confirmation of a wage for all types of labor in an amount that can support an appropriate standard of living.
6. Russia must liquidate the collective farms, and return the land to the private ownership of farmers.
7. She must establish protected private labor ownership, and reestablish trade, crafts, domestic industry, and the granting of the right of private initiative and an opportunity for it to participate in the economic life of the nation.
8. Russia must grant the intelligencia the opportunity to freely create for the well-being of their people.
9. Mr. Putin’s government must grant social justice and defend laborers from any exploitation, regardless of their origin and former activities.
10. All this must be done without exception to the real right for free education, medical care, vacation, and senior welfare.
11. The Russians must destroy the regime of terror and force and liquidate forceful repopulations and mass exiles. They must establish a true freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, press.
12. The liberation of political opponents of Bolshevism and the return to the motherland from the jails and camps of all who were repressed for their battle against Bolshevism must be accomplished.
13. Russia must reestablishment national property ruined during wars – cities, villages, factories, and plants at cost to the government.
14. Russia must support the “orphans of war.”
The Evangelicals
On June 4th, 2009, American President Barack Obama gave a speech in Cairo, Egypt. In that speech, the US president elaborated on what democracy means for him. He professed America’s current commitment to basically the 14 points above:
“No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who would hold power: You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.”
With this I offer you the most stark and crystallized irony imaginable. Mr. Obama was right, elections do not create true democracy.
The 14 points I’ve outlined for you, they were not penned by Barack Obama. Those tenets of freedom and it’s evangelism were not conjured from some modern think tank along the Potomac River. The 14 points which seem to indemnify Mr. Obama’s resolve, they are part of something known as the Prague Manifesto (Пражский Манифест in Russian). This manifesto, created in 1944 in Czechoslovakia, was crafted by the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, an anti-communist coalition of former Soviet military. The committee was led by a former Soviet General, one Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov, who collaborated with Nazi Germany in World War II.
Prague, at the time of the writing of this manifesto, was still firmly under the control of Hitler’s forces. Without going into a history lesson here, let me say Vlasov and his conspirators were eventually hung for treason to their country. Interested readers may find further irony in the fact there’s a monument to the Russian Liberation Movement bearing the general’s name, in
Nanuet, New York. To make a long story short, while the Russian Liberation Movement ( Комитет Освобождения Народов России, abbreviated as КОНР) was disbanded at the end of the war, elements of the organization took part in the creation of the CIA run, Congressionally run propaganda broadcaster, Radio Liberty, which is Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty today.
It’s appropriate to leave off this subheading with Radio Free Europe. One of the headlines there speaks volumes for where America stands today evangelizing our special breed of democracy. “Sending a Signal to Moscow” could not be more inflammatory. The story is about NATO inviting tiny Montenegro into the flock of nations under the wings of US F16s. The “strong message” proclaimed there in no uncertain terms being, “Russia cannot divide Europe!”
World Liberty
I know some reading this have grown interested. At least I know some of you are a bit shocked that the Nazis promoted democratizing Russia and the Soviets so openly. What’s going to be more ironic, and confounding for some, is the realization that today’s breed of democratic idealism is not even American at all. But few are ready to receive that message, I have enough trouble telling people about Barack Obama destroying what’s left of our collective American Dream. I will however go so far here as to warn you all, that Russians are in fact the only people on Earth somehow preserved for liberty. That’s a curious statement, one I will elaborate on at a future date. For now please take note of the quote from A. J. Liebling I began with, it begs the question; “Who does own the presses?”
Radio Liberty is obviously government controlled, anyone breathing recognizes this. It’s also common knowledge, much of the mainstream western media is owned by only a few well to do entrepreneurs. But before I leave off here, having shown the reader democracy as we see it today could be a Nazi idea, freedom of the press does not in fact exist. I offer the example of yesterday’s Russian Ministry of Defense press conference regarding Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s involvement with ISIL, and illegal oil revenues. You all know the Russia contention, but can you guess how many western newspapers carried the news as of yesterday? One, the answer is only one. An independent paper known for its Pulitzer Prize winning separateness, The Las Vegas Sun was the only media covering the story straight. This morning Reuters reacted to a vehement Tweet series by me and others, and ran the Defense Ministry’s evidence verbatim, and that’s it.
Hank Greenspun, founder of the Las Vegas Sun, he died in 1989, but his motto of “fighting for the little guy” somehow remained alive there in Nevada. As for our great republic and American democratic ideology, like I said, Obama’s brand of liberty is probably not even American at all. To keep you on the hook, and to shorten this discourse, I’ll leave that story for later. But as you absorb today’s news, as the Turkey-NATO-Russia drama continues to unfold, please consider just how free people really are, when the printing presses are wholly owned, and maybe even by Nazis like those in Prague, back in 1944.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe